enterprises can be fostered, exchanges are greatly increased, all the
advantages of exchange are secured within the country, and the general
intelligence of the people is increased. With this comes the enormous
advantage of what is called a home market for the cruder products of
industry. This is especially to the interest of farmers raising bulky
products or those not likely to bear transportation. It is further thought
to foster a better agriculture by a more natural return to the soil of
elements removed in cropping, the nearer body of population making such
return possible. It is also thought to make at once available the natural
resources of a country in mines, quarries, water powers, etc., which might
otherwise long remain useless. It is contended for as a means of checking
unfair competition between a long established community with special
advantages for factory methods, either in large accumulations of capital
or low wages of laborers, and a newer country where capital is scarce and
wages are high. It is sometimes held to be a means of maintaining a high
standard of wages through the advantage actually conferred upon certain
lines of industry, upon a supposition that competition at home without
these favored industries would reduce the wages maintained in other
industries. If a tariff on wool calls into profitable use a large amount
of farm capital in sheep raising, every wheat raiser is at the same time
benefited by reduction of competition in the wheat market. If the capital
and labor employed are enticed from other countries, the effect is the
same by increasing the demand at home for the wheat. That this does not
operate so long as wheat raisers come to a market where a surplus must be
consumed in other countries does not destroy the argument, since the
tendency is to reduce the surplus. The system is also thought to
encourage, in lines of industry likely to prove productive, a rapid
development of labor-saving machinery and new methods of manufacture,
which may some time give to a nation superiority in the markets of the
world. To many there seems a much more important reason for restrictions,
in order to establish every needed form of production for the sake of
national independence. That nation which contains within its own borders
the means of supplying all the wants of its people is supposed to be more
capable of independent growth, and to be freed from hampering competitions
of trade, that may lead to wa