The circumstance that there are no limits to manufacturingproduction (especially since it has been so extraordinarily aidedand promoted by machinery) except the limits of the capital whichit possesses and its means of effecting sales, enables thatparticular nation whose manufacturing industry has continued for acentury, which has accumulated immense capitals, extended itscommerce all over the world, dominated the money market by means oflarge institutions of credit (whose operations are able to depressthe prices of fabrics and to induce merchants to export), todeclare a war of extermination against the manufacturers of allother countries.Under such circumstances it is quite impossiblethat in other nations, 'in the natural course of things' (as AdamSmith expresses himself), merely in consequence of their progressin agriculture, immense manufactures and works should beestablished, or that those manufactures which have originated inconsequence of the commercial interruptions caused by war should beable, 'in the natural course of things,' to continue to maintainthemselves.The reason for this is the same as that why a child ora boy in wrestling with a strong man can scarcely be victorious oreven offer steady resistance.The manufactories which constitutethe commercial and industrial supremacy (of England) have athousand advantages over the newly born or half-grown manufactoriesof other nations.The former, for instance, can obtain skilled andexperienced workmen in the greatest number and at the cheapestwages, the best technical men and foremen, the most perfect and thecheapest machinery, the greatest benefit in buying and sellingadvantageously; further, the cheapest means of transport, asrespects raw materials and also in respect of transporting goodswhen sold, more extended credit for the manufacturers with banksand money institutions at the lowest rates of interest, greatercommercial experience, better tools, buildings, arrangements,connections, such as can only be acquired and established in thecourse of generations; an enormous home market, and, what isequally good, a colonial market equally enormous.Hence under allcircumstances the English manufacturers can feel certainty as tothe sale of large quantities of manufactured products by vigorousefforts, and consequently possess a guarantee for the continuanceof their business and abundant means to sell on credit for years tocome in the future, if it is required to acquire the control of aforeign market.If we enumerate and consider these advantages oneafter another, we may easily be convinced that in competition withsuch a power it is simply foolish to rest our hopes on theoperation of 'the natural course of things' under free competition,where, as in our case, workmen and technical men have in the firstplace yet to be trained, where the manufacture of machinery andproper means of transport are merely in course of erection, whereeven the home market is not secured to the manufacturer -- not tomention any important export market, where the credit that themanufacturer can obtain is under the most fortunate circumstanceslimited to the lowest point, where no man can be certain even fora day that, in consequence of English commercial crises and bankoperations, masses of foreign goods may not be thrown on the homemarket at prices which scarcely recoup the value of the rawmaterials of which they are made, and which bring to a stand foryears the progress of our own manufacturing industries.
It would be in vain for such nations to resign themselves to astate of perpetual subordination to the English manufacturingsupremacy, and content themselves with the modest determination tosupply it with what it may not be able to produce for itself or toprocure elsewhere.Even by this subordination they will find nopermanent benefit.What benefit is it to the people of the UnitedStates, for instance, that they sacrifice the welfare of theirfinest and most cultivated states, the states of free labour, andperhaps their entire future national greatness, for the advantageof supplying England with raw cotton? Do they thereby restrict theendeavours of England to procure this material from other districtsof the world? In vain would the Germans be content to obtain theirrequirements of manufactured goods from England in exchange fortheir fine sheep's wool; they would by such a policy hardly preventAustralia from flooding all Europe with fine wool in the course ofthe next twenty years.
Such a condition of dependence appears still more deplorablewhen we consider that such nations lose in times of war their meansof selling their agricultural products, and thereby the means ofpurchasing the manufacturing products of the foreigner.At suchtimes all economical considerations and systems are thrust into thebackground.It is the principle of self-maintenance, ofself-defence, which counsels the nations to work up theiragricultural products themselves, and to dispense with themanufactured goods of the enemy.Whatever losses may be involved inadopting such a war-prohibitive system, cannot be taken intoaccount during such a state of things.However great the exertionsand the sacrifices may have been by which the agricultural nationduring the time of war has called into existence manufactures andworks, the competition of the manufacturing supremacy which sets inon the recurrence of peace will again destroy all these creationsof the times of necessity.In short, it is an eternal alternationof erecting and destroying, of prosperity and calamity which thosenations have to undergo who do not strive to insure, throughrealisation of their national division of labour and through theconfederation of their own powers of production, the benefits ofthe continuation of their own industries from generation togeneration.
