*** Index * < Previous * Next > ***
...We are buying on credit the cloth and iron we should be making, while the labour and capital that should be employed in their production seek in vain for employment. The heavy sufferers are, and are to be, labour and land. The broker takes his usual shave for the notes which pass through his hands, and the grocer takes his usual cent per pound on sugar, but the furnace is closed, and with it the demand for food and labour -- the mine is abandoned, and the miner suffers from want of clothing -- the constructor of railroads obtains no dividend, and the desire to make roads as an investment of capital has passed away, and with it the demand for labour, food, and clothing. By degrees, the same results must be felt by every interest of the nation. The return to labour is diminishing, and the value of land, houses, ships, railroads, and every other species of property, is dependent on the extent of that return -- rising as it rises, and falling as it falls.
The nearer the consumer and the producer can be brought to each other, the more perfect will be the adjustment of production and consumption, the more steady will be the currency, and the higher will be the value of land and labour. The object of protection is to accomplish all these objects, by bringing the loom and the anvil to take their natural places by the side of the plough and the harrow, thus making a market on the land for the products of the land. (p. 190)