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PROTECTION FOR MANUFACTURES IN NEW COUNTRIES 149
without the variety. desiderated and without adding
sensibly to its population and resources.

The first point I have to make is to note that the
primary supposition of all in the above extracts, viz.,
that an agricultural f.0pulation is all agricultural, or
almost all agricultura, is itself erroneous. If anyone
follows the distribution of population throughout the
world generally, it will be found that a common model
of distribution in an agricultural country to which the
United States conformed lately, and to which such dis-
similar countries as Ireland and India still conform,
gives 60 per cent. of the population to agriculture and
40 per cent. to other pursuits, including building, tailor-
ing and millinery, transportation, distribution, and the
professions,l In some of the Australasian colonies the
agricultural proportion is even less, the rural population
being only 45 rer cent. of the total. The idea that in
an agricultura population the people are almost all
agricultural is thus, to begin with, entirely wrong, for
only about half are agricultural, and if manufactures are
to be set up so as to diminish the importation of manu-
factured articles the problem will be to divert so much
of this half as is already producing for export where-
with to buy manufactures into manufacturing for home
consumption. But this again is a small proportion. In
every country the exports are very JargeJy not for the
purpose of buying manufactures, but for the purchase
of tea, coffee, sugar, salt, coal, or other articles which
are not produced at home. This is conspicuously the
case in America and 'Our Australian colonies.
The rule may be made even more general. The
predominant industry in any community only employs
about half the people. I have been informed by mili-
tary friends that if a town is permitted to grow up be-
side a fortress its population may be expected to equal
and exceed that of the garrison itself. There is thus,
1 At the last census the proportion in the United States of the
agricultural population was even less than here stated (1904).