IF the Free Traders give themselves so little concern in face of the danger of the greatest of all our trades, - the Shipping trade, - passing to the foreigner, on the ground that we can always turn to something else, it is surely time to consider seriously what the cost of losing a great industry really amounts to, - quite apart from the question which we have just been considering as to the number and character of the trades on which it is still possible to fall back, after the whole or the greater number of the great industries having their roots in the natural resources of a country, have been driven from the field. Or to put it differently, and to reduce the problem to its simplest terms; - How does the balance of profit and loss stand, in the loss, on the one hand, through competition, of an instrument of production, - say, a piece of land, a mill, a factory, or a bag of workman's tools, - and the gain on the other hand to the consumer, in the cheapness of the product which the success of the competing foreign rival involves? Now, if we can only clear the ground of complications at the start, by separating out clearly the various extraneous elements, political or other, in the problem, - which only serve to obscure it while having really nothing to do with it, - so that we have only the purely economical aspects to deal with, we can solve it without difficulty, dip into it where we will.

And the first proviso on which we must insist before we start, is the distinction which I have already made between competitive and complementary products; for it is to the failure to make this simple distinction, that perhaps most of the difficulties and contradictions of the problem of Free Trade and Protection are due. For in the very essence of all industrial exchange, the idea is involved that the products exchanged shall be complementary, and not competitive. No shoemaker as such exchanges his products with another shoemaker, but with the tailor, or baker, or butcher; and all such exchange is at once peaceful and beneficent, blessing him who gives and him who receives; and so far is a distinct addition to the wealth of an individual, a nation, or a world. And when we take the infinite varieties, denominations, qualities, kinds, and subdivisions of every great general industry which the division of labour throughout the world as a whole has thrown into the stream of circulation, there is scarcely a product in any one great trade that will not be found complementary to some other in the same trade.

The exchange between these will also be found to be peaceful, beneficent, a blessing to each party to it, and a distinct addition to the sum of utilities in which real wealth consists, - as the exchange of corn for manufactures, or manufactures for wine. A shoemaker, for example, who makes only ordinary shoes, in exchanging a pair of them with another shoemaker for a pair of patent leather shoes of which the latter makes a specialty, is effecting a complementary exchange in quite as true a sense as if he were exchanging them for bread from a baker. And that is why, as I have said, were the world a single political unity, Free Trade everywhere would, by flooding every part with the products of every other, give a greater market to each and all than would otherwise be possible; and as the exchanges would all be complementary, - inasmuch as each would buy just those things and gradations and varieties of things which he did not himself produce, - a greater amount of exchanges, and a greater satisfaction from them at the least possible cost (owing to the absence of tariff barriers), as well as a greater number and variety of instruments of production, would result; and these are precisely what constitute wealth.

Not that this would involve either the absence of competition, or the equal distribution of wealth over all areas alike, as when water is poured over a level field; on the contrary, as we have seen, the greatest wealth would heap itself up in the geographical areas most favoured by nature for the production of large classes of products of the same general kind, and be withdrawn partly or altogether from those areas that were relatively less naturally productive in all kinds, as well as from those that were relatively almost barren. When once sufficient time had elapsed to enable the competitive industries to test their relative strengths, they would weed one another out, - as animals of the same kind do in Nature, - and after this process of exclusion had been satisfactorily consummated, and, as in the conflicts of rival stags, the stronger only were left, the exchanges between each part and every other would be complementary, and in every way beneficent. But, observe, that being all part of the same political unity, this process of the weeding out by competition of each industry or division and specialisation of industry by others of the same division or kind, is part of the game which is being played, and is accepted by all; and when the population of any area is dispersed, owing to its industries being carried on at a loss, it always has the satisfaction of knowing that the loss is still the gain of its own nation, and that, unlike the Jews in history, its population can find for itself everywhere a home; precisely as when in any particular nation, as in England for example, the great manufacturing and textile trades migrate from one part of the country to another.