Articles by Engels in the Labour Standard 1881

The French Commercial Treaty


On Thursday, June 9, in the House of Commons,
Mr. Monk (Gloucester) proposed a resolution to the effect that

"no commercial treaty with France will be satisfactory which does not
tend to the development of the commercial relations of the two countries
by a further reduction of duties".

A debate of some length ensued. [1] Sir C. Dilke, on
behalf of the Government, offered the mild resistance required by diplomatic
etiquette. Mr. A. J. Balfour (Tamworth) [2] would compel
foreign nations, by retaliatory duties, to adopt lower tariffs. Mr. Slagg
(Manchester) would leave the French to find out the value of our trade
to them and of theirs to us, even without any treaty. Mr. Illingworth (Bradford)
despaired of reaching free-trade through commercial treaties. Mr. Mac Iver
(Birkenhead) declared the present system of free-trade to be only an imposture,
inasmuch as it was made up of free imports and restricted exports. The
resolution was carried by 77 to 49, a defeat which will hurt neither Mr.
Gladstone's feelings nor his position.

This debate is a fair specimen of a long series of ever-recurring
complaints about the stubbornness with which the stupid foreigner, and
even the quite as stupid colonial subject, refuse to recognise the universal
blessings of free-trade and its capability of remedying all economic evils.
Never has a prophecy broken down so completely as that of the Manchester
School [3] -- free-trade, once established in England,
would shower such blessings over the country that all other nations must
follow the example and throw their ports open to English manufactures.
The coaxing voice of the free-trade apostles remained the voice of one
crying in the wilderness. Not only did the Continent and America, on the
whole, increase their protective duties [4]; even the
British Colonies, as soon as they had become endowed with self-government,
[5] followed suit; and no sooner had India been placed
under the Crown than a 5 per cent duty on cotton goods was introduced even
there, [6] acting as an incentive to native manufactures.

Why this should be so is an utter mystery to the Manchester; School.
Yet it is plain enough.

About the middle of last century England was the principal seat
of the cotton manufacture, and therefore the natural place where, with
a rapidly rising demand for cotton goods, the machinery was invented which,
with the help of the steam engine, revolutionised first the cotton trade,
and successively the other textile manufactures. The large and easily accessible
coalfields of Great Britain, thanks to steam, became now the basis of the
country's prosperity. The extensive deposits of iron ore in close proximity
to the coal facilitated the development of the iron trade, which had received
a new stimulus by the demand for engines and machinery. Then, in the midst
of this revolution of the whole manufacturing system, came the anti-Jacobin
and Napoleonic wars [7] which for some twenty-five years
drove the ships of almost ail competing nations from the sea, and thus
gave to English manufactured goods the practical monopoly of all Transatlantic
and some European markets. When in 1815 peace was restored, England stood
there with her steam manufactures ready to supply the world, while steam
engines were as yet scarcely known in other countries. In manufacturing
industry, England was an immense distance in advance of them.

But the restoration of peace soon induced other nations to follow
in the track of England. Sheltered by the Chinese Wall of her prohibitive
tariff, [8] France introduced production by steam. So
also did Germany, although her tariff was at that time far more liberal
[9] than any other, that of England not excepted. So
did other countries. At the same time the British landed aristocracy, to
raise their rents, introduced the Corn Laws, [10] thereby
raising the price of bread and with it the money rate of wages. Nevertheless
the progress of English manufactures went on at a stupendous rate. By 1830
she had laid herself out to become "the workshop of the world". To make
her the workshop of the world in reality was the task undertaken by the
Anti-Corn Law League. [11]

There was no secret made, in those times, of what was aimed at
by the repeal of the Corn Laws. To reduce the price of bread, and thereby
the money rate of wages, would enable British manufacturers to defy all
and every competition with which wicked or ignorant foreigners threatened
them. What was more natural than that England, with her great advance in
machinery, with her immense merchant navy, her coal and iron, should supply
all the world with manufactured articles, and that in return the outer
world should supply her with agricultural produce, corn, wine, flax, cotton,
coffee, tea, etc.? It was a decree of Providence that it should be so,
it was sheer rebellion against God's ordinance to set your face against
it. At most France might be allowed to supply England and the rest of the
world with such articles of taste and fashion as could not be made by machinery,
and were altogether beneath the notice of an enlightened millowner. Then,
and then alone, would there be peace on earth and goodwill towards men;
then all nations would be bound together by the endearing ties of commerce
and mutual profit; then the reign of peace and plenty would be for ever
established, and to the working class, to their "hands", they said: "There's
a good time coming, boys -- wait a little longer." Of course the "hands"
are waiting still.

But while the "hands" waited the wicked and ignorant foreigners
did not. They did not see the beauty of a system by which the momentary
industrial advantages possessed by England should be turned into means
to secure to her the monopoly of manufactures all the world over and for
ever, and to reduce all other nations to mere agricultural dependencies
of England -- in other words, to the very enviable condition of Ireland.
They knew that no nation can keep up with others in civilisation if deprived
of manufactures, and thereby brought down to be a mere agglomeration of
clodhoppers. And therefore, subordinating private commercial profit to
national exigency, they protected their nascent manufactures by high tariffs,
which seemed to them the only means to protect themselves from being brought
down to the economical condition enjoyed by Ireland.

We do not mean to say that this was the right thing to do in every
case. On the contrary, France would reap immense advantages from a considerable
approach towards Free Trade. German manufactures, such as they are, have
become what they are under Free Trade, and Bismarck's new Protection tariff
[12] will do harm to nobody but the German manufacturers
them" selves. But there is one country where a short period of Protection
is not only justifiable but a matter of absolute necessity -- America.

America is at that point of her development where the introduction
of manufactures has become a national necessity, This is best proved by
the fact that in the invention of labour-saving machinery it is no longer
England which leads, but America. American inventions every day supersede
English patents and English machinery. American machines are brought over
to England; and this in almost all branches of manufactures Then America
possesses a population the most energetic in the world, coalfields against
which those of England appear almost as a vanishing quantity, iron and
all other metals in plenty. And is it to be supposed that such a country
will expose its young and rising manufactures to a long, protracted, competitive
struggle with the old-established industry of England, when, by a short
term of some twenty years of protection, she can place them at once on
a level with any competitor? But, says the Manchester School, America is
but robbing herself by her protective system. So is a man robbing himself
who pays extra for the express train instead of taking the old Parliamentary
train -- fifty miles an hour instead of twelve.

There is no mistake about it, the present generation will see
American cotton goods compete with English ones in India and China, and
gradually gain ground in those two leading markets; American machinery
and hardware compete with the English makes in all parts of the world,
England included; and the same implacable necessity which removed Flemish
manufactures to Holland, Dutch ones to England, will ere long remove the
centre of the world's industry from this country to the United States.
And in the restricted field which will then remain to England she will
find formidable competitors in several Continental nations.

The fact cannot be longer shirked that England's industrial monopoly
is fast on the wane. If the "enlightened" middle class think it their interest
to hush it up, let the working class boldly look it in the face, for it
interests them more than even their "betters". These may for a long time
yet remain the bankers and money-lenders of the world, as the Venetians
and the Dutch in their decay have done before them. But what is to become
of the "hands" when England's immense export trade begins to shrink down
every year instead of expanding? If the removal of the iron shipbuilding
trade from the Thames to the Clyde was sufficient to reduce the whole East-end
of London to chronic pauperism, what will the virtual removal of all the
staple trades of England across the Atlantic do for England?

It will do one great thing: it will break the last link which
still binds the English working class to the English middle class. This
link was their common working of a national monopoly. That monopoly once
destroyed, the British working class will be compelled to take in hand
its own interests, its own salvation, and to make an end of the wages system.
Let us hope it will not wait until then.