Page:The reciprocity craze.djvu/35

 one-sided Free Trading England does most of this business for them. They had not a single ocean grain-ship floating last year, and they carried only 17½ per cent. of their foreign commerce. Their export and import trade amounted to 309 millions. Let us suppose for a moment that on 82½ per cent. of this they paid 5 per cent. for freight; this would make 12¾ millions more to pay. Then there is the item of passenger fares across the Atlantic, to and fro. Let us say half a million for this. 3. What shall we put down for the 10,000 absentees, and travellers, who flock to Europe every year, and some of whom are among the richest men in the world? Shall we say an average of £300? This would give us 3 millions more. There may be other items for works of art, jewellery, &c., but of them I will take no account, so we will now sum up.

So that before the States can commence to talk about exchanging a dollar's worth of their own products for a dollar's worth of foreign products, they have to pay over to Europe, in money or in kind, no less a sum than 40 millions sterling!

No wonder their exports exceed their imports! What ignorance, what folly, does it not betray, therefore, to build up an argument in favour of Protection, and against Free Trade, on the bare figures which appear in trade returns! In the next chapter the reader will find the true deductions which may be drawn from them.

Now for Sir Edward Sullivan in the Nineteenth Century. On page 8, supra, will be found two passages from his article, "Isolated Free Trade," to which I would again refer the reader. They, and some further extracts which I shall make, betray the fatuous ignorance concerning "imports and exports," which is the characteristic of the whole school of Neo-Protectionists.