304 
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 im- 
ports 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 grow- 
ing 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 dur- 
ing 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 con- 
duced 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 per- 
tinent 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 Ques- 
tion, to which the reader is referred for a detailed examination of the points here 
indicated.