small trades, our unemployed would naturally grow.
The Free Trade theory that the capital and the labour in the lost
trades will find other employment is simply theory. Suppose they
didn't. The Free Trader has no answer except: Look at our enormous
wealth. My countrymen, looking at another man's wealth does not feed
me, clothe me, and house me."[792] "When men are thrown out of work,
by competition, or depression, or any cause, they do not so easily
'transfer their services to some other new employment.' It is easy to
make them do so--on paper. And when they do get a fresh job, is it
always as good as the one lost? Do they not often lose all their
belongings, and get into debt, while looking for that new employment
which the Free Traders talk about so glibly? and do not capitalists
often lose a good deal of capital before they give up the fight for
the trade? Nevertheless, say the Free Traders, we, the nation, are
richer under this system than we should be under Protection. By
employing ourselves in those occupations in which we can produce the
cheapest article, we earn the most wealth in money value."[793] To
this argument the Socialists reply: "Does your moral law say it is
right that men should be thrown on the streets to starve because other
men in other countries produce goods 2-1/2 per cent. cheaper?"[794]

The statistics of an enormous foreign trade, which Free Traders
triumphantly display for the edification of the masses, give,
according to the Socialists, little consolation to the unemployed and
ill-employed workers. "Figures, be they never so dazzling, and
numbers, be they never so round, will not feed the hungry, house the
homeless, or bring light and warmth into the drear, precarious lives
of the mass of our people. The increase of trade means only an
increase of production, and not necessarily of persons employed or
wages gained. With the rapid concentration of industries and the
perfection of labour-saving devices, production has been enormously
increased without any corresponding increase of employment; in some
cases, with an actual decrease of employment. What the workers are
interested in is not the mere growth of profitable trade, but the
extent to which the industries of their country afford them and their
families a security of livelihood, and the reasonable comforts and
recreations which their labour has more than earned."[795]

Most Socialists frankly own that Free Trade has been a failure. "In