that a rapid development of varied industries, instead of
maintaining soil fertility, tends to more rapid exhaustion by making more
probable the consumption of cruder products of the farm in villages and
cities too remote for return of fertility, although within the same
country. The development of natural resources under stimulant of a tariff
is admitted by its opponents, but represented as a waste of effort, since
the tendency is to withdraw capital and labor from more productive
industries into less productive, and that, too, at the expense of the more
productive. If factories cannot give an equal profit with farming, it is
absurd to tempt capital away from the farms into factories. So, although
wealth may be accumulated in showy enterprises, the people, as a whole,
are less thrifty and bear unequal burdens. It is further contended that
the total labor of the community, when a part is used in unprofitable
development of resources, is made on the whole less productive, and
therefore the people are less able to buy their neighbors' products, and
must live with diminished comforts. In that case all the haste in
developing natural resources is actual waste.

If, on the other hand, the restrictive tariff invites capital from abroad
for the sake of gaining the trade of a country, the diminished profit of
labor in some foreign country compels emigration, and such emigrants are
likely to follow the capital. Only the poorest of foreign laborers will be
compelled to help themselves by emigration, and only those will gain by
the change of location. Thus it is said a restrictive tariff encourages
the least desirable form of immigration. This is illustrated in the
development of the mining industry through the fostering effects of the
tariff.

There can be no question that any restriction upon trade may foster the
contrivance of combination to secure monopoly. Hence it is often claimed
that the existence of trusts is due in great measure to tariff
restrictions, preventing the competition natural in the commercial world.
It is certainly true that the restriction of a patent right may make
possible the abuses of a trust. If trusts were confined to protected
industries or to countries maintaining protective systems, the weight of
the argument would be stronger. It is certainly true, however, that the
wider the range of competition without restriction, the greater the
protection against combination for sake of monopoly. The monopoly