ch, the present system is giving us more and
more non-producers--more and more shopkeepers, middlemen, commercial
travellers, advertising agents, dealers, and wasters generally.
According to the last census returns, we find that whilst the
agricultural class shows a terrible decline, and the industrial class
has barely kept pace with the population as a whole, on the other hand
the commercial, or selling class, shows an increase of over 42 per
cent. inside ten years."[803]

Free Trade has been tried and has been found wanting, and a return to
Protection, which is in accordance with the needs of the times and the
spirit of the workers, especially of the trade unionists, is
inevitable. "Capitalist Free Trade is a manifest failure. Trade
unionism is, in its essence, a very sturdy form of Protection, as we
can see, if not here in Great Britain, certainly in America and in
Australia."[804] "Society is constantly changing its form of living:
every day some supposed old truth goes into the limbo of forgotten
things, and, looking around us, those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear may see and hear on all hands the death-knell of the old
Manchester school of political economy."[805]

The claims of Free Trade and the cheap-food cry are disregarded and
treated with contempt. "Free Traders talk about the folly of
Protection. But Free Trade itself is a form of Protection. It protects
the strong and the cunning against the weaker and the more honest. It
protects the cheap and nasty against the good."[806] The founder of
modern Socialism had stated already in 1847: "What is Free Trade under
the present conditions of society? Freedom of capital."[807] Free
Trade undoubtedly directly protects capital and leaves labour
unprotected. "Your food will cost you more! I am to bow down to the
idol of cheapness. I, one of the unemployed. What is cheapness to me,
who have no money at all?"[808] "Your Manchester school treat all
social and industrial problems from the standpoint of mere animal
subsistence."[809] Declarations such as "The Social-Democratic
Federation stands for universal free trade or free exchange and for
the abolition of all indirect taxation,"[810] and "The only form of
Protection advocated by the Social-Democratic Federation is the
protection of the proletariat against the robbery and exploitation of
the master-class"[811] have not the ring of seriousness about them.

Only very rarely are utterances in favour of Free Trad