August 4, 2008 (LPAC)--From the Fourth Chapter of Henry C. Carey's Harmony of Interests (1851), "How Protection Tends to Increase Production and Consumption":

A great error exists in the impression now very commonly entertained in regard to national division of labour, and which owes its origin to the English school of political economists, whose system is throughout based upon the idea of making England "the workshop of the world," than which nothing could be less natural. By that school it is taught that some nations are fitted for manufactures and others for the labours of agriculture, and that the latter are largely benefited by being compelled to employ themselves in the one pursuit, making all their exchanges at a distance, thus contributing their share to the maintenance of the system of "ships, colonies, and commerce." The whole basis of their system is conversion and exchange, and not production, yet neither makes any addition to the amount of things to be exchanged. It is the great boast of their system that the exchangers are so numerous and the producers so few, and the more rapid the increase in the proportion which the former bear to the latter, the more rapid is supposed to be the advance towards perfect prosperity. Converters and exchangers, however, must live, and they must live out of the labour of others: and if three, five, or ten persons are to live on the product of one, it must follow that all will obtain but a small allowance of the necessaries or comforts of life, as is seen to be the case. The agricultural labourer of England often receives but seven shillings a week, being the price of a bushel and a half of wheat.

Were it asserted that some nations were fitted to be growers of wheat and other grinders of it, or that some were fitted for cutting down trees and others for sawing them into lumber, it would be regarded as the height of absurdity, yet it would not be more absurd than that which is daily asserted in regard to the conversion of cotton into cloth, and implicitly believed by tens of thousands even of our countrymen. The loom is as appropriate and necessary an aid to the labours of the planter as is the grist-mill to those of the farmer. The furnace is as necessary and as appropriate an aid to the labours of both planter and farmer as is the saw-mill, and those who are compelled to dispense with the proximity of the producer of iron, labour to as much disadvantage as to those who are unable to obtain the aid of the harrow, but small machines, naturally attracted by the great machine, the earth, and when so attracted all work together in harmony, and men become rich, and prosperous, and happy. When, on the contrary, from any disturbing cause, the attraction is in the opposite direction, and the small machines are enabled to compel the products of the great machine to follow them, the land invariably becomes poor, and men become poor and miserable, as is the case with Ireland.

To those who doubt the extent of the loss resulting from this unnatural division of labour, I would recommend a visit to any farm at a distance of thirty or fifty miles from a furnace or a factory, that they may there, on the ground, satisfy themselves of the fact. They will there see days perpetually wasted for want of means of occupation - and other days on the road carrying to market small amounts of produce - and general listlessness resulting from the want of stimulus to activity, on the part of men, while children, male and female, are totally unemployed, and the schoolmaster remains abroad for want of means to pay him when at home. As a general rule, our farmers attach scarcely any value to time. They go to a distant market in preference to selling at a nearer one, when the difference of price to be obtained upon their few pounds of butter, or baskets of vegetables, appears utterly insignificant compared with the loss of time and labour, and they do this because labour is to so great and extant totally valueless. Let the inquirer look to these things for himself, and let him then add the enormous proportion of the labour that is misemployed in badly cultivating large surfaces instead of small ones - in keeping up fences and roads entirely disproportioned to the product of the land - and finally let him add the waste of intellect from the want of proper instruction and frequent communication with their neighbour men - and then let him determine if the loss is not five times over as great as would pay for all the cloth and iron - raw material included - consumed upon the farm. Place the mill there, and all this is saved. The farmer and his horses and wagon are employed in hauling stone and timber for the mill and for houses, and his children find employment in the mill, or in the production of things that can be used by those who work in the mill, and all their extra earnings may go for cloth and iron, for food they had before. I say all, for with the mill come improved roads, and the facility of sending to market the many things for which a market on the land cannot as yet be made.