XVI - How Protection Affects the Slave and His Master
...The error of English writers consists in assuming that there is such a thing as a necessary price. The poor labourer in India, we are assured by this same writer, obtains for his cotton no more than the mere rent of his land, leaving nothing for his labour, yet he still cultivates cotton to exchange for the yard of cloth with which he covers his loins.
The people of England first inflicted upon themselves a necessity for competing with the ``cheap'' labour in the manufacture of cottons. That produced a necessity for competition with the ``cheap'' labour of Russia in the production of food, the consequences of which are thus described in the recent quarterly report of the Registrar-general: ``The population of England has suffered, died, and decreased, during the quarter, to a degree of which there is no example in the present century.'' (p. 183)
