sole object
of foreign trade is to afford a profit to the merchants, regardless of
the welfare of the mass of the citizens.

Sec. 3. #Choice of the more advantageous occupations#. Let us consider
the cases of two countries somewhat differently situated, such as an
old country like England and a newer country such as was the United
States in the nineteenth century. Now the relative advantages of
various industries in two such countries are very unlike. The newer
country excels in its broad area, its abundant rich lands, its
bountiful natural resources of forests and mines. These are the
superior opportunities which give the economic motives for settlement
and for continued immigration from the other lands. Most of the
newcomers find it to their advantage to develop the peculiar
opportunities of the new land, rather than to go on producing the same
things in the same way as they did in the old country.[6] Thus they
get a larger quantity of products per day's labor, and are able to
gain by trading a part of these for the products of the older country.
Thus the characteristic industries of the two countries must differ.
Without any government supervision, therefore, but simply through the
choice of enterprises, each seeking the best investment of capital for
himself, industries are developed in which each country is either
most markedly superior, or least inferior, to its neighbors. If
either laborers or capitalists in the new country were to turn to
the less-favored industries they would be forced to accept a smaller
reward than they can earn in the more favored.

Sec. 4. #Persistence of difference between nations#. If both men and
wealth interchanged between industries and between countries with
perfect readiness and without any outlay whatever for transportation,
these differences would soon disappear, and perfect equilibrium
of advantage would everywhere result. In every country, in every
occupation, labor and wealth of given quality and amount would receive
the same reward. But the interchange of labor and of products between
countries is never without friction.

The laborers, enterprisers, and investors in a naturally rich country
are thus in a position of more or less enduring advantage relative to
those of older and poorer countries. Differences of the same nature
appear as between different parts of the same country, as between the
Northern and the Southern states of the American union, between the
Eastern and