Carrying then with us the following provisos; - first, that the political elements of the problem must be separated from purely economic ones; secondly, that the game that is being played is not how to enrich the world in general, but how to enrich your own particular nation, even if at the expense of other nations; and thirdly, that complementary products are to be distinguished from competitive ones; - carrying with us all these, we shall find that the special aspect of the problem which we are here considering, - namely as to how the profit-and-loss account of a nation stands between losing an instrument of production on the one hand, and getting its product cheapened to the consumer on the other, - can be solved with comparative ease. It matters not what the area of industry which we take for examination may be, what the range or variety of trades included, or what the number of nations concerned; - for the economic principle involved, holds alike for the largest as for the smallest, for the most complex as for the most simple, for the many as for the few, for the world of separate nations as for a single nation, - provided always we keep strictly to the unit we have marked out and delimited for discussion.

We can take a single workman and his tools as against other workmen and theirs; a single village with its surrounding country as against other villages and their surrounding country; a whole division of a country with its different towns engaged in different industries, as against other divisions of the same country; or finally, the country as a single political unit with all its industries, as against all other countries and theirs; - and we shall find the solution work out the same in all.

Take, first, an individual isolated workman with his bag of tools. Up to the time of his parting with them, what had he? He had the certainty of a livelihood at a standard of living keeping him in working efficiency, plus the certainty of a continuance of that livelihood during all his normal working life; his times of out-of-work not entering the problem, inasmuch as they belong to the domain of political arrangement, and when due to slovenly laws, laissez-faire, or to the go-as-you-please and take-your-chances species of political incompetency, are no more to be charged against the purely economic principle, than the jamming of a crowd in the exits of a theatre for want of supervision is to be charged to the construction of the building itself when it has once been admitted that this is up to the normal and accepted standard. But if it be urged that a shoemaker cannot live on the boots he has made, we reply that what all trade exists for is precisely this complementary exchange of something you have, for something different which you have not, but which you want or need; and that it is thus a mutual benefit to both the parties concerned. So far, then, all is well with our workman.

But now suppose he parts with his instruments of production, - his hammer and his awls, - for the sake of a cheaper boot than he can make for himself, how then does he stand? Instead of making a living for himself in the present, plus a living in the future during the remainder of his working years, two courses are open to him; - he can either wear his cheaper pair of boots until they are worn out, and during the process, fast, starve outright, or live on charity; or he can spend the difference in price between his own boots and the cheaper ones for which he sold his tools, for a more expensive dinner of chicken and wine than the ordinary meat and ale on which he has been accustomed to live, and afterwards and for the rest of his working life starve or live on charity as before. Clearly our shoemaker has made a bad bargain in parting with those tools! But the balance of profit and loss between losing an instrument of production and getting its product cheaper for the consumer, will be the same if we take an isolated village of working industrials, - with its shoemaker, its blacksmith, its baker, and its surrounding fields, - as our unit of comparison, as against other villages with theirs; as it is a mere reduplication differing in numbers only, and will require no further comment.

But if we still further widen the area and complexity of our unit, and take a manufacturing town with a variety of large capitalised industries, and the surrounding country, as our standard of comparison, as against other manufacturing towns with the same industries, the result will be the same. But in this case, unlike the individual workman who lost his instruments of production - his bag of tools - by directly selling them for the sake of cheaper products than he himself could make, the great capitalist manufacturers of the towns lose their instruments of production - their mills and factories and workshops - not by selling them outright like the workman, but owing to their products being undersold by their respective rivals in other towns; their mills in consequence being closed down, and their workmen thrown out of employment. Here, again, the profit-and-loss account stands as follows; - before the invasion from the other manufacturing towns, we have the workmen maintained for the present in their accustomed style of living plus its future continuance during their normal working lives; and the capitalists living on the current profits from their manufactures, plus the future continuance of these profits during their life-time. But after the invasion has been successfully consummated, and the mills have had to close down, we have not only the livings of the capitalists cut off for the present, but for the future (except in so far as like pensioners they can live on their savings), and when these savings are exhausted, starvation or charity.