In the first place, it is urged that protection will develop the resources of a country, which without it would remain undeveloped.  Of course this, to be of advantage to a country, must be a general aggregate increase of development, for if it be an increase of some resources as a result of diminution in others, the people as a whole can be no better off after protection than before.  But the general resources cannot be increased by a tariff.  There can only be such an increase by an addition to the disposable capital of the country to be applied to the development of resources.  But legislation cannot make this.  If it could it would only be necessary to enact laws indefinitely to increase capital indefinitely.  But, if any legislation could accomplish this, it would not be protective legislation.  As already shown, the theory of protection is to make prices higher, in order to make business profitable.  This necessarily increases the expense of production, which keeps foreign capital away, because it can be employed in the protected industries more profit-ably elsewhere.  The domestic capital, therefore, must be relied upon for the proposed development.  As legislation cannot increase that capital, if it be tempted by the higher prices to the business protected, it must be taken from some other business or investment.  If there are more workers in factories there will be fewer artisans.  If there are more workers in shops there will be fewer farmers.  If there are more in the towns there will be fewer in the country.  The only effect of protection, therefore, in this point of view, can be to take capital from some employment to put it into another, that the aggregate disposable capital cannot be increased, nor the aggregate development of the resources of a country be greater with a tariff than without.

But, secondly, it is said that protection increases the number of industries, thereby diversifying labor and making a variety in the occupations of a people who otherwise might be confined to a single branch of employment.  This argument proceeds upon the assumption that there would be no diversification of labor without protection.  In other words, it is assumed that but for protection our people would devote themselves to agriculture.  This, however, is not true.  Even if a community were purely agricultural, the necessities of the situation would make diversification of industry.  There must be blacksmiths, and shoemakers, and millers, and merchants, and carpenters, and other artisans.  To each one of these employments, as population increases, more and more will devote themselves, and with each year new demands will spring up, which will create new industries to supply them.  I was born in the midst of a splendid farming country.  The business of nine tenths of the people of my native county was farming.  My intelligent boyhood was spent there from 1850 to 1860, when there was no tariff for protection.  There were thriving towns for the general trading.