viii 
PREFACE 
new trains of thought must serve as a further excuse for my failure to 
carry out to the full the same method of treatment in this Part as in 
the preceding. 
A more important restriction of the scope of the book is the elimina- 
tion of all discussion, or nearly all, of the controversy about protec- 
tion and free trade. On this matter I have said so much elsewhere 
that it seemed otiose to go into it again! The intellectual problems 
raised by it are much simpler than many others in the subject at 
large; while the historic and descriptive aspects are quite too exten- 
sive for full treatment in the present book. Some ways in which the 
general theory of international trade bears on the controversy regard- 
ing protection are considered in one place or another, especially in 
Chapters 13 and 16. 
Finally a word may be said on another limitation of the scope of the 
book. It is strictly an inquiry on a particular phase of the system 
of private property and capitalistic enterprise. It assumes that 
system to exist, for good or ill, and examines merely in what way it 
works. There is no attempt to evaluate this phase of it, or any other; 
to consider how far it is satisfactory or in what ways it might be 
mended. I have abundant sympathy with those who question 
whether the situation as thus laid bare by cold-blooded analysis is 
satisfactory. What we see is the working of international trade thru 
the medium of money payments, and of money movements this way 
and that; thru shifting prices and incomes, slow and painful adjust- 
ments, friction and uncertainty and waste motion; obscure forces 
with which men struggle blindly and wunavailingly. But these 
unwelcome features appear in every part of the existing economic and 
social organization. The whole capitalistic system is on trial; and 
not least, its monetary machinery. It is not at all inconceivable that 
international trade should be conducted thru a process quite different 
from that now in use and examined in these pages. There might be 
direct and conscious barter between nations, in place of that veiled 
barter which so mystifies the ordinary man. Speculations of this 
kind are beyond the scope of the present volume, which accepts the 
world as it is and simply examines in what way trade is now carried 
on between the several countries. 
11 refer the reader to my Tariff History of the United States (8th ed., 1923); 
Some Aspects of the Tariff Question (2nd ed., 1916) ; and the volume of collected 
papers entitled The Tariff, Free Trade and Reciprocity.