IN HENRY C. CAREY IN GERMANY.1 'N a short essay, Baron William von Kardorff-Wabnitz, a member of the Imperial German Parliament, sets forth his reasons for advocating Mr. Carey's theories, and urges their adoption in the practical working of trade, finance, and tariff, instead of the present fashion of English free-trade doctrines. He endorses Carey's laws of national wealth as applicable to the existing state of affairs in Germany, and he urges the study of Carey's works, instancing the fact of his own conversion from Free Trade to Protection, as one of the first fruits of reading Carey's Social Science The strong position held by Mr. Carey in Germany and Russia is attested by this little essay, with its constant reference to the frequent use of Carey's theories and proofs in all discussions of the important questions treated by him in his well-known volumes. The author boldly declares himself in favor of maintaining a Protective Tariff based upon that which was for years common to Russia, France and America, and urges the example of these countries, and the success of their national industries in time of high protective duties, as a reason for renewing them in Germany, so as to restore its old prosperity. A few years of an energetic system of protection served to establish the fame and use of American agricultural machines and railroad cars through the world. France has withstood the results of a disastrous war, and has reëstablished its trade and its manufactures on a greater scale than ever, by keeping up its system of Protection, and leaving to a few theoretical professors the luxury of believing in Free Trade. Our German economist contrasts sharply the theories of Adam Smith and Henry C. Carey as to the wages of labor, and cites, with great emphasis, the rule laid down by Carey, that the wages of labor always advance faster than the profits of capitalists. He urges on the German farmer the invariable truth that protection to native industry means a gain to the farmer, who can sell his pro 1 GEGEN DEN STROM! Eine Kritik der Handels politik des deutschen Reichs an der Hand der Carey-schen Forschungen, von Freiherr Wihelm von KardorffWabnitz, Berlin, 1875. Verlag von Julius Springer. [Against the Current! a review of the Tariff Policy of the German Empire in the light of Carey's Discoveries.] duce to workingmen at hand, as well as to the manufacturer, who in his turn secures good workmen when he can get them cheap food. He shows that Germany has lost the exportation of grain to England, which draws its supplies from Russia and America; that German wool has been driven out by colonial wool; that rape seed has surrendered to petroleum; that foreign countries have practically excluded German spirits; that these and other harsh conditions have proved unfavorable to German agricultural industry, which has been still more depressed by the growing importation of cloth, and woolen goods, and iron ware, all of which could and ought to be made at home. Germany imports seventy-five millions of agricultural products, which she ought to raise within her own borders. The very land-holders have brought this about by their Free Trade doctrine, and by their hostility to manufactures, with the invariable result of reducing the land-owner from his apparent importance to the lesser but more useful task of a food supplier to the factory hands, the real wealth-producers of a country. Even the serious question of "strikes" is more likely to be solved by a steady system of protection, than by irregular and fitful changes from high to low wages, or back again. Our German tariff man seconds heartily all of Mr. Carey's views as to the system by which Great Britain built up its present overwhelming strength in textile and iron industries; shows that even now foreign goods pay fifteen per cent. duty in the colonies, while English wares pay only five. He adopts Mr. Carey's rule that cheap production depends, not on cheap labor, but on amount of production, certainty of market, and cheap and constant supply of raw material. He points out the advance in American textile industry in contrast to the falling off in Germany, and shows that the Tariff which has done this, can and ought to be maintained, and do even more. In iron, too, while Germany imports yearly four millions' worth, it can hardly be said that over-production makes its manufacture unprofitable. The same protection which has made America independent would give Germany, too, control of its own supplies of iron. France, with its high duties, is in a more flourishing condition than any country that has adopted Free Trade. Even England, with its boasted free list, shows in its dealing with the duty on spirits a shrewd sense of how and when to protect. There is, it is well known, a drawback or premium on exporting spirits made in Eng land, and there is also a positive prohibition on foreign spirits, for The persistency with which England enforces its Free Trade policy at the expense of the other nations and of its own colonies, is marked by evils that show the unsoundness of its whole financial theory. Capital and labor are growing daily more estranged; class distinctions multiply and increase; the middle class is fast disappearing both in agriculture and manufacture; of two hundred thousand land-owners in Adam Smith's time, only thirty thousand are found to-day; the country is losing and the towns gaining in population; the spirit of trade and the passion for industry have cost and are daily sacrificing national pride, until instead of being the mistress of the seas, England depends on Russian favor for her East India possessions. For the working of Free Trade and Protection in other countries, the author draws his illustrations from Carey's volumes as the source of the soundest knowledge on the subject. The fall of Turkey dates from the time when England and France obliged that unfortunate country never to impose a higher duty than three per cent. on their goods, and thus destroyed native industry only in turn to levy fresh taxes, in the vain hope of recouping the English holders of Turkish bonds. Portugal is another illustration of Free Trade. Even Germany has its own special example in Mecklenberg, which is full of all the mischiefs that illustrate the working of Free Trade. With Mr. Carey's examples drawn from our own experience in the United States, we are all but too familiar. In Russia, in spite of all the disadvantages of its old system of serfdom or peonage, the results of a wise protective system have been surprising, industrial and manufacturing activity steadily and rapidly increasing, railroads and canals covering the whole vast empire, the export of Russian products increasing, the imports of iron and textiles on the decrease, advancing wages, improving prices of land, fall of interest, extension of credit, a growing reserve of gold and silver, all symptoms of national advance and prosperity. But most of all is France the country that attests the truth of Carey's theories. After various experiments in the interest of Free Trade, France has adopted a protective system that is practically prohibitory; and the result is improved wages, favorable balance of trade, plenty of gold and silver, increase of crops, advance in the price of property, diminishing rate of interest, large plans of national improvements set on foot;-and this after paying a war debt of ten milliards and losing two provinces. Turning now to Germany, the author traces the history of its tariff legislation, and shows that Protection enabled it to pay off its old war debt, to develop its national wealth, to secure German ownership of foreign industries, to supply the country with good roads and afterwards with railroads, to improve agricultural returns and of course the value of land throughout the country, to secure a steady rise in wages and a steady fall in interest. Even the poor provinces of the east became rich as granaries for England, and Silesia, Westphalia, the Rhine land, grew great in iron and textile fabrics, and German woolen goods, cotton goods and linen were exported largely, while the government industriously sought to secure fresh markets by reciprocity treaties. The development of national internal industry was rapid, sound and successful, and it brought with it all the fruits of a sound and wise policy. Now Germany has been turned toward Free Trade, and it threatens to do her a lasting injury by inflicting the usual results upon capital, labor, agriculture and all the allied forces of a great industrial country. The success of the advocates of Free Trade will undo all the great achievements of the soldiers and statesmen who made the Germany of to-day, for it will take away the power to hold together the resources of a great country, and will reduce it to the condition of the other victims of the modern English passion for Free Trade. To meet the views advanced by the German advocates of the Manchester school of political economy, one of their opponents in their own Parliament knows of no better guide than Henry C. Carey, and from his volumes draws the arguments and the proofs with which he meets the Free Traders. It is an interesting example of the far-reaching effects of a sound economical philosophy, and it bespeaks a higher praise of the work done by Mr. Carey, than any mere fulsome eulogy. It shows that his writings are an arsenal of truth, from which all who wage war against industrial error can get their arms, and go forth hopefully to do battle. J. G. R. NEW BOOKS. TWO YEARS IN CALIFORNIA: By Mary Cone; with Illustrations. Chicago. S. C. Griggs & Co., 1876. California has not yet lost its interest. The golden haze which surrounded it has brightened into the light of civilization. The traveler, as a rule, no longer enters it through the Golden Gate, but across those mighty mountain barriers which once fenced it in from the rest of the world, but which science and energy have now overleaped. It is no longer El Dorado, but instead, a land flowing with milk and honey, whose wonderfully diversified climate and always fertile soil brings forth all the productions of the temperate zone, with many of the torrid; whose scenery embraces sea, mountain, and valley; the land of the Yosemite and the giant trees. Miss Cone has had good opportunities of knowing California throughout its length and breadth, and has improved them. systematic manner she takes up its history, geography, climate, social state, etc., giving a clearly written and interesting account of everything, abounding in statistics very acceptable to the casual reader, and which the sojourner, either for health or pleasure or profit, will find useful. To hazard a conjecture as to the authoress, we should pronounce her to be, or to have been, a school mistress. Her writing has a didactic tone, a mingling of amusement and instruction, with an occasional moral reflection, which the thoughts of one accustomed to train the young idea, well and faithfully withal, would be apt to assume. If a member of this much-respected class, though, she should be taken strictly to task for various blemishes in her style, such as the too frequent use of words ending in ness. On page 80. we find "healthfulness," "nearness," "greatness," "thankfulness," "richness," "perfectness," "transitoriness;" and the production of such slip-shod flippancy as "the olive, too, seems to be in as good as its native element in this region" (p. 82); " causing the rarefied air to rise and hurry away" (p. 18); "when the wind disturbs the surface of the water, as it almost always contrives to do" (p. 101); "the way is slippery and the slime is ghastly, supernatural, infernal (p. 157); "a certain person in whom the writer has a first class interest" (p. 164). There is a constant and very ill-advised use of quotations, many of them trite, and some unmeaning. On the other hand, the descriptions, of scenery especially, are clear and vivid; the narrative is lively, with a touch of humor, a little forced sometimes; and the writer looks at all sides of her subject in a manner which gives a clear understanding of it. The Chinese have a chapter devoted to them, in which the effect |