be diminished that those of the half million may be increased?  For an increase cannot be made in the wage rate of one class without a proportionate decrease in that of others.  But the wages of labor in protected industries are not permanently increased by protection.  Another very important factor in ascertaining the value of wages is the continuance or the steadiness of the employment.  Two dollars a day for half the year is no more than a dollar a day for the whole year.  Employment in most protected industries is spasmodic.  In the leading industries for the past ten years employment has not averaged more than three fourths of the time, and not at very high wages.  Within the last year manufacturers of silk, carpets, nails and many other articles of iron, of various kinds of glassware and furniture, and coal producers have shut down their works for a part of the time, or reduced the hours of labor.  Production has been too great.  To stop this and prevent the reduction of profits through increasing competition, the first thing done is to diminish the production, thus turning employes out of employment.  Wages are diminished or stopped until times are flush again.  With the time estimated in which the laborers are not at work, the average rate of wages for the ten years preceding 1880 did not equal the wages in similar industries for the ten years preceding 1860 under a revenue tariff.  Indeed, in many branches the wages have not been so high as those received by the pauper labor, so-called, in Europe.  But it is manifest that the wages in these industries cannot for any long period be higher than the average rate in the community, for, if the wages be higher, labor will crowd into the employments thus favored until the rate is brought down to the general level.  So true is this, that it is admitted by many protectionists that wages are not higher in the protected industries than in others.

Thirdly, the effect of protection is disastrous to most of the protected industries themselves.  We have seen that many of them have in recent years been compelled to diminish production.  The cause of this is manifest.  Production confines them to the American market.  The high prices they are compelled to pay for protected materials which enter into the manufacture of their products disable them from going into the foreign market.  The profits which they make under the first impulse of protection invite others into the same business.  As a result, therefore, more goods are made than the American market can consume.  Prices go down to some extent through the competition, but rarely under the cost of production, increased, as we have seen, by the enhanced price of material required.  The losses threatened by such competition are sought to be averted by the diminution of production.  Combinations of those interested are formed to stop work or reduce it until the stock on hand has been consumed.  Production then begins again and continues until the