wage-earners by individual or collective bargaining to squeeze out of the profits of the trade at which they work a higher money wage to enable them to pay for dearer bread? If combined pressure forced employers to pay higher wages in such a trade, could they, the employers, throw any considerable part of the burden on landlords in reduced rent, or on the consuming public in enhanced prices of the goods they make? None of these leading questions could be answered without opening up a series of further questions. Indeed, the last-and perhaps the most importantthe question whether increased wages could be squeezed out of a trade by raising prices, obviously involves a repetition of the same circle of questions in relation to each class of consumers upon which our first class proposes to shift its burden. No attempt can here be made towards a practical solution of the question who will really pay, when a tax is said to fall on the consumer. It would, in fact, be necessary to enter into a most minute investigation of the conditions of the trade or occupation from which each consumer drew his income in order to ascertain how far he ultimately bore the tax which raised the price of the commodities he consumed. Not less intricate would be the scientific analysis of the incidence of a tax which fell in the first instance on a particular class of producers, thus affecting the expenses of production of a particular class of commodities. Here, too, it is a question of relative resistance and transferability. §7. We may summarise the theory of the case as follows: A protective system does not "protect" the producers of the nation which imposes it; it “ protects" certain privileged classes at the expense, not ultimately of the consumer, but of other classes of producers. It injures the body of producers in two ways: first, by causing an artificial misapplication of productive energy, which reduces the total productivity of national wealth for exchange and consumption; secondly, by enabling these privileged producers to tax the other producers of the nation which has imposed the tariff, each class of producer suffering in proportion to its inability to shift on to other classes the portion of the tax which falls upon it in a reduction of the purchasing power of the income it receives for the use of its factor of production. Money, cheap, 92 Monopoly, meaning of, 38 Monopoly goods, exchange of, 34, 36; taxation of, 144 N Nations as trading units, 21; Officials, discretion of, 140 Oil, price of, 51; monopoly of, 63 155 Р Paris, bills on, 91 Patriotism in relation to protec- Preferential duties, incidence of, Professions, protected, 44 Quasi-rents, 42 Q R Rents, consumer's, 26; producer's, Rubber, 52 S Saving, 111; nature of, 150; Savings, 3 Scandinavians, 47 Scarcity, effect on cost, 29, 61; Schuster, Mr. Felix (quoted), 108 Scientific tariff, 187, 188 Slavs, 47 Sliding scale, 140 Self-sufficiency, national, 173 Smith, Adam, 47 Socialism in relation to protec- Socialists, 55 Standard of comfort, 8 T Tariff, effect on prices, 84; cumu- Taxation, theory of, 42; of rents, Trade, balance of, how achieved, |