FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 257

domestic producer, having captured the market for himself,
finds the outlet for his goods as seriously limited by the high
price as it was by competition of imported goods.
The effect, on other industries, of the decrease of
purchasing power available for exchange against their
products, is in some cases serious. Thus, if, in a community
where a large proportion of the people have barely ‘more
“han enough to live on, the price of food is kept high through
restriction of supplies from abroad by a high import duty,
the producers of all the other goods which a prosperous
people might buy find the market for those goods limited,
owing to the small margin left after the purchase of the
necessary supplies of food. Food accounts for half of the
expenditure of large classes, and it is, therefore, clear that
its price is a matter of prime importance to others than
‘hose most directly and obviously concerned. Moreover, the
relation between the level of money-wages and the cost of
living is of importance. If living is dear, wages must be
higher than if living is cheap. This consideration does not
entirely destroy the force of the preceding, for wages do not
fall by as much as the cost of living when living becomes
cheaper. Hence the wage-earning classes have a great
immediate interest, and an important ultimate interest, in
cheap food, while the employers of labour have a considerable
apparent interest, and, indeed, a considerable real interest, in
the cheapness of the food of those whom they employ. Thus
the growing strength of opinion, in England, towards the
middle of the nineteenth century, in favour of free trade in
corn can be understood, apart from the pressure of famine
which hastened the triumph of the policy of free trade.
Employers of labour in the developing manufacturing
industries of the country found their interests opposed to
those of the land-owning classes, both as employers and as
sellers of manufactured goods. They desired to produce
goods at a low money cost, and to have a profitable demand
for those goods at home as well as abroad. In England, at
‘hat time, protection meant import duties on food products,
and that in spite of the long list of manufactured articles
subject to duty. The real weight of the tariff lay in
To