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INTERNATIONAL TRADE

consequences of such duties are the same as those of a decrease in
the country’s demand for imported goods. Indeed, a protective
system may be said to amount in substance to a conscious and
deliberate determination to buy less of imports; and the less of imports
 a country demands, the more favorable are the barter terms
for the imports which it continues to take.
Signs of such tendencies are to be discerned in the international
trade of the United States after 1900. The imports from European
countries tended to slacken or remain unchanged, in face of a rapid
growth in population and wealth. Those from tropical and oriental
regions showed steady and rapid increase. The imports of
textiles into the United States, for example, remained virtually
stationary (in money value) for several decades preceding 1914,
and showed a distinctly declining course during the particular
period here under consideration. Meanwhile population was growing
 fast, and the domestic production of textiles was growing even
faster than population. And a similar tendency is to be observed
in the imports and the domestic production of other goods which
Kuropean countries supply to the United States.
The growth of manufacturing industries in the United States during
 the half-century following the Civil War of 1861-65 is familiar.
Beyond question it was promoted by the protective system. For
the present purpose it does not matter whether the growth is
regarded as healthy or unhealthy — such on the whole as conduced
 or did not conduce to the country’s material prosperity. It
may have led to the development of industries which remained
dependent on tariff support and were in effect a burden on the
country ; or it may have led, thru the processes which are assumed
in the argument for protection to young industries, to an eventually
beneficial nurture of manufactures in which the country proved in
the end to have a substantial and sufficient comparative advantage.
Results of both kinds seem to have accrued.! The question pertinent
 for the present inquiry is merely whether a decline in imports.

1 As I have tried to point out in my book on Some Aspects of the Tariff Question,
 to which the reader is referred for a detailed examination of the points here
indicated.