There stands out, then, the fact that the payment of lower wages by the protected foreign manufacturer was one of the tariffist arguments of the pre-war period, when there was no question of unequal currency exchanges.  To-day, the argument from unequal currency exchanges is that in the country where the currency value is sinking in terms of other currencies the manufacturer is getting his labour cheaper, seeing that wages are slow to follow increase in cost of living.  Both pleas alike evade the primary truth that if country A trades with country B at all, it must receive some goods in payment for its exports, save in a case in which, for a temporary purpose, it may elect to import gold.  But that fact is vital and must be faced if the issue is to be argued at all.  Unless, then, the defender of the occasional tariff system contends that that system will rectify trade conditions by keeping out goods which are made at an artificial advantage, amounting to what is called “unfair competition,” and letting in only the goods not so produced, he is not facing the true fiscal problem at all.  Either he admits that exports and freight charges and other credit claims must be balanced by imports or he denies it.  If he denies it, the discussion ceases:  there is no use in arguing further.  If he admits it, and argues that by his tariff he can more or less determine what shall be imported, the debate soon narrows itself to one issue.

The pre-war tariffist argued, when he dealt with the problem, that tariffs would suffice at will to keep out manufactured goods and let in only raw material.  To that the answer was simple.  An unbroken conversion of the whole yield of exports and freight returns and interest on foreign investments into imported raw material to be wholly converted into new products, mainly for export, was something utterly beyond the possibilities.  It would mean a rate of expansion of exports never attained and not only not attainable but not desirable.  On such a footing, the producing and exporting country would never concretely taste of its profit, which is to be realised, if at all, only in consumption of imported goods and foods.  It is no less plainly impossible to discriminate by classes between kinds of manufactured imports on the plea that inequality in the exchanges gives the foreign competitor an advantage in terms of the relatively lower wage-rate paid by him while his currency value is falling.  Any such advantage, in the terms of the case, must be held to accrue to all forms of production alike, and cannot possibly be claimed to accrue in the manufacture of one thing as compared with another, as fabric gloves in comparison with gold leaf.  In a word, the refusal of protection to gold leaf is an admission that the argument from inequality of currency exchanges counts for nothing in the operation of the Safeguarding of Industries Bill.  In the case of any other import, then, the argument falls.