COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE AND PROTECTION 193 
tection. The woolen industry, on the other hand, nearly as old, 
has continued to need the prop of tariff support; and this to an 
extent not easy to explain satisfactorily. The manufacture of 
silks, the youngest of all, has grown with extraordinary speed to 
great dimensions, and has progressed toward independence in the 
degree to which its raw material has been made homogeneous and 
its products amenable to the machine. However different their 
degree of dependence on protection, each of the textile industries 
presents within its own limits differences and apparent anomalies 
analogous to those noted in agriculture and the iron trade. Most 
of the standard cottons, for example, are made to advantage within 
the country; but some finer goods and specialties continue to be 
imported. While most woolen goods need protection, some need 
protection more than others. Large groups of silk fabrics seem to 
be independent of protection; but other large groups have by no 
means reached that stage, and still others are imported in face 
of high duties. Everywhere we find within the same industry 
some branches that possess greater advantages than others, or less 
disadvantages. 
The line of cleavage between those textiles that are made to 
advantage in the United States or with no great disadvantage, and 
those that labor under so great a disadvantage that they continue 
to be imported notwithstanding high duties, is most often that 
between cheaper and medium goods on the one hand, finer and more 
expensive articles on the other. When it is asked why this 
pervading difference, the answer commonly given is that the finer 
goods must be more carefully finished and call for more labor; 
therefore high wages are a peculiarly strong obstacle to their pro- 
duction in the United States. Where machinery can be much 
used, as with the cheaper goods (such as are made and sold in great 
quantities), the American producers can more easily hold their own 
without protection; the explanation, it is said, being that less of 
the expensive labor is involved and more use is made of machinery. 
But it requires no great economic insight to see that this only 
pushes the question back a step. Why is not the machinery itself 
more expensive? The machinery was made by labor. It is a