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424 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDI~S
prosperity is, it is "undermined." Our primary in-
dustries, it is said, are decaying jour agricultu1't!, our
iron mining, other industries of a primary manufactur-
ing kind, such as the making of pig-iron and steel, of
iron and .steel bars, and so onl In the same way, it is
said, we are not getting on with our leading manu-
factur~s for export-our cotton and woollen manufac-
tures, not to speak of such ",lost" industries as the
silk manufacture, tin-plate making, glass manufacture
and so on. Farther, even our home manufactures, or:
rather our manufactures for home consumption, are
being attacked, and have been attacked for many years,
by the imports of foreign manufactures, so that the
production in these particular industries does not in-
crease as it should, and they are no longer so profitable
as they were. We are prosperous generally, it is ad-
mitted, but the indications for the future are bad. This
"case" is sadly defective in detail when analysed. In
many respects we hold our own better than is supposed
in regard to those industries where decay is alleged,
while foreign competition mostly supplements, and by
no means supplants, the home industries with which it
is engaged. Nor is foreign competition, as far as it is
effective, the consequence of the protectionist measures
of foreign countries which we can possibly counteract.
But leaving aside this obvious criticism, what I desire
to point out is that the ideas themselves assume the
desirability and possibility of a community choosing
deliberately, and by means of its legislature,.a different
economic development from that which the natural
play of economic forces gives it. The free play of those
forces in the United Kingdom has led to an unexampled
development of secondary and what we may call
tertiary industries, the whole of an increasing popula-
tion being as a final result, fully employed j but it would
have been better, we are told, if the dwelopment had
taken a different form. As Mr. Chamberlain put it in
one of his speecifes, he could conceive of a prosperous
community without primary industries and depending