§ 30 

As soon as a new trade has been discovered in which people can be occupied, their production is thought to be a National gain, though the trade in question does not pay its workmen satisfactorily.

We think that the people who are drawn to this trade did not earn anything before or had not been able to do so, though a man who, without begging or stealing, had unfailingly supported himself and his family in his former trade earned more than in his new one, in which his income is scarcely enough for himself alone, and his wife and children must trudge the streets and live on the earnings of others.

It is quite useful for a Nation to discover new trades; among them there might be one that was more profitable than any of the old ones and might thus increase the National gain. But in the long run to carry on an activity by bounties or by constraint on other citizens will always be an infallible loss to the Nation.

The answer that more people can live when trades are increased is of no avail here, for it is by no means their number that increases the gain of the Nation, but only the value of their products, if it were only in one trade. As long as the soil is not cultivated, the Factories lack workmen and our workshops are empty, anxiety to carry on even more trades is superfluous in my opinion.

Here I recall Aesop's Moral in the fable about the Dog which, while swimming, saw the reflection of the piece of meat in the water and tried to get hold of it, but at the same time lost the piece it had got at the Butcher's. "He who gapes after much," he says, "will often lose the whole piece."

Neither do I consider the argument fully valid that work should be carried on by imported workmen. For if, at great expense to the State, they could be enticed to come to this country to work in a less profitable trade, then, without any expense at all to the State, thousands would have immigrated, had they only been free to support themselves as best they could, i.e. to carry on the trade in which they would have most increased the real gain of the Nation.

As soon as foreigners have immigrated, a sound Policy demands that the best should be got out of their work, and this is infallibly to be secured in the trade that pays its workmen the best wages, but never in those in which they must be a burden to the State and the Public. The first they will find for themselves; the second they will not remain in except by compulsion, and there poverty will at last be the reward of their removal.