SECTION IV.. Further Educational Effects of the Industrial Protective System.

FURTHER EDUCATIONAL EFFECTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL PROTECTIVE SYSTEM.

The sacrifices which the protective system directly imposes on the national wealth consist in products, fewer of which with an equal straining (Anstrengung) of the productive forces of the country, are produced and enjoyed, than free trade would procure. But it is possible by its means to build up (bilden) new productive forces, to awaken slumbering ones from their sleep, which, in the long run, may be of much greater value than those sacrifices. Who would say that the cheapest education is always the most advantageous?[A3-4-1] Only by the development of industry also, does the nation's economy become mature.[A3-4-2] The merely agricultural state can attain neither to the same population nor the same energy of capital, to say nothing of the same skillfulness of labor, as the mixed agricultural and industrial state; nor can it employ its natural forces so completely to advantage.[A3-4-3] How many beds of coal, waterfalls, hours of leisure,[A3-4-4] and how much aptitude for the arts of industry, can be turned to scarcely any account in a merely agricultural state? If, therefore, the protective system could materially promote a national industry, or if it made such industry possible, for the first time, the sacrifice connected therewith, in the beginning, should be considered like the sacrifice of seed made by the sower;[A3-4-5] but this can be justified only on the three following conditions: that the seed is capable of germination; that the soil be fertile and properly cultivated, and the season favorable.[A3-4-6] [A3-4-7]