Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/21

 darkness of which is feebly illumined by their ill-smelling oil-lamps.

This story is an illustration of the fact that when you have once got protection it is impossible to get rid of it without injuring the people who have invested their capital and labour in the protected industry. The case of the Srimats was an extreme one. The foreign competition with which the palm-oil industry was threatened would have swept the palm-owners out of the market in one day. The sun not only offered a vastly superior article, but he was ready to make a free gift of it to all comers. What tradesman could compete against such odds? The existence of protection interests a number of people in its maintenance, although its maintenance often fatally impoverishes the entire community. What protection really does is to take away labour and capital from those employments where they would produce the greatest return, in order to confine them to industries where they are comparatively unremunerative. The Srimats would have done the best thing possi-