Carrying trade

“ The wars which followed in the train of the French revolution, created a demand for our exports, and invited our shipping for the carrying trade of a very considerable portion of Europe. American bottoms not only carried the colonial productions to the several parent states, but our merchants became the purchasers of them in the French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies. A new era was established in our commercial history. Large numbers of individuals embarked in commercial enterprises, and the other departments of industry were comparatively deserted. ”

“ Lastly, when it is employed in exchanging one description of the produce of foreign industry for another, or in what is termed the carrying trade, it then serves wholly for the support and encouragement of the industry of the two foreign nations, and adds only to the annual produce of the country the profits of the merchant—book 2, chap. ”

“ We have inland navigation. Our last exports did not exceed £1,000,000. Our export trade is entirely in the hands of foreigners. We have no manufactures—depend for supplies on other nations—and so far are we from having any carrying trade, that, as I have already said, our exports are in the hands of foreigners. Besides the profit that might be made by our natural materials, much greater gains would accrue from their being first wrought before they were exported. ”

“ It is in the fetching and carrying manufactures, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed. In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. ”

“ The day are gone when the merchant adventurer sent out his ships, laden with merchandise, which were to bring home to him the produce of distant lands. There are, of course, a number of merchants who, having their own establishments in foreign parts, do both an import and an export business, balancing their own transactions without many bills of exchange passing; but, on the whole, trade is now much more specialised, there are importers and exporters, and their transactions are entirely independent of each other. ”

“ The countries not possessing a native supply, could obtain it only by what was called a favourable balance of trade, that is to say, by exporting to a value exceeding that of their imports, and receiving the difference in money. ”

“ The vulgar theory disregards this benefit, and deems the advantage of commerce to reside in the exports: as if not what a country obtains, but what it parts with, by its foreign trade, was supposed to constitute the gain to it. An extended market for its produce—an abundant consumption for its goods—a vent for its surplus—are the phrases by which it has been customary to designate the uses and recommendations of commerce with foreign countries. ”

“ The lists of imports and exports and of the places from which they flowed to and from the centres of trade, as they swelled in bulk from time to time, show how busily and steadily the threads of commerce had been weaving together the labour and interests of mankind, and extending a security and bounty of existence unknown in former ages. ”

“ On the other hand war withdrew workers from constructive industry, and restricted supply at the very time it intensified demand. Every country at war, therefore, sought by means of commerce to relieve the strain on its own resources, importing needed supplies from abroad; each group of belligerents sought to prevent the other group from profiting by this process. The tendency to an increase of imports was accompanied by a tendency to a decline in exports. A country at war could not afford to do business as usual in its foreign trade. ”

“ The case which we have just examined, is an example in how remarkable a manner every cause which materially influences exports, operates upon the prices of imports. According to the ancient theory of the balance of trade, and to the associations of the generality of what are termed practical men to this day, the sole benefit derived from commerce consists in the exports, and imports are rather an evil than otherwise. ”

“ On the other hand, there are imports so entirely of foreign origin, and so free from considerations of competition with domestic industry, that a large revenue may be raised upon them in the custom-house, without disturbing the freedom or equity of international trade. ”

“ A danger to foreign trade is that our exports might conceivably be limited to certain quarters, and might thus rest upon a frail and shifting foundation. Fortunately, however, this is not so, for our commerce is being built upon the prosperity of the whole world. ”

“ With an extension of our trade in this quarter, we shall require no advancement of our position; and if war follows in the train of commerce, we shall then have the double satisfaction of protecting our trade and our frontier. ”

“ The first branch of foreign trade, which is the export and import of goods, depends on the money. if one half of the people are imployed, and the whole product and manufacture consumed; more money, by imploying more people, will make an overplus to export: if then the goods [Pg 24] imported ballance the goods exported, a greater addition to the money will imploy yet more people, or the same people before employed to more advantage; which by making a greater, or more valuable export, will make a ballance due. ”

“ The merchants who have the responsibility of the import trade at the different marts also must satisfy themselves that they get good things, and all the traders must obey the State merchant in these particulars. ”

“ But do we, civilized beings, indulge in the absurd and barbarous notion that we must own the countries with which we wish to trade? Here are our official reports before us, telling us that of late years our export trade has grown enormously, not only of farm products, but of the products of our manufacturing industries ”

“ The manufacturer or the merchant must take the pains to accommodate a direct import trade to the exigencies of the local market. As an example, smaller bales and shorter lengths are requisite in the piece goods. The establishment of sample warehouses at the treaty ports, and in the more important trade-centres of the interior, where bales of shirting, cotton and woollen goods, cases of farming implements, &c., could be opened and sold for cash, would appeal to the natives. ”

“ Organizations have been voluntarily created in many of the trades, such as rubber, wool, jute, tin, etc., to act as consignees when required and to perform other duties in connection with importations, under and by direction of the War Trade Board. ”

“ Not content with exporting the various productions of their own country, they carry on the trade of various parts of the globe, which, but for their instrumentality, could not have obtained, or ever have become acquainted with each other's produce. ”

“ Countries which export food, have the former advantage, but not the latter. But our own colonies, and the countries which supply us with the materials of our manufactures, maintain a hard struggle with us for an equal share of the advantages of their trade; for their exports are also of a kind for which there exists a most extensive demand here, and a demand capable of almost indefinite extension by a fall of price. ”

“ An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each, by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. ”

“ Our overseas trade falls off greatly, because we need many of our merchan [8] t ships for transport and supply, because we cannot produce such large quantities of goods for export, and because we cannot trade with enemy countries at all. ”

“ We send school-books and machinery to China; she sends us tea, matting, and bamboo. The whole right theory of trade is a give-and-take between men and nations, based on a just price, and with a deep law of Value, not yet wholly formulated, underlying each transaction. ”

“ Bounteous harvests had set a tide of prosperity to all parts of the world. Trade had reached the summit of a register in volume and account. The transport of the world's goods was busied as never before. With every outward stern wash went a full lading of our manufactures—a bulk of coal, a mass of wrought steel; foam at the bows—returning, brought exchange in food and raw materials, grist to the mills of our toiling artisans—a further provision for continuation of our trading. There were no idle keels swinging the tides in harbour for want of profitable employment ”

“ Prosperity of American commerce and shipping.—The European wars, therefore, introduced American commerce to a new era of prosperity. “No one was limited to any one506 branch of trade; the same individual was concerned in voyages to Asia, South America, the West Indies, and Europe.” Our ships gathered the products of distant countries, coffee, sugar, tea, pepper, etc., and purveyed them to the people of Europe. In many years the value of foreign exports exceeded that of domestic exports ”

“ Thus trade becomes both import and export. The first step is for the tradesman or his representative to travel about peddling goods, or for an owner of wares or money to offer capital to an itinerant merchant with the object that the latter may divide the profits with him later on. ”

“ And along with this vast aggrandizement of manufacturing industry and commerce, there has been a steady increase of both imports and exports, as well as of revenue from customs. The increase in imports has consisted of articles of luxury and raw materials for manufacture. And, as if to leave nothing wanting in the demonstration, the increase of exports has constantly included more and more of the products of agriculture. ”

“ Classes of wares imported; manufactures.—The table shows, on its face, only one thing with clearness, that the people used already a considerable part of their surplus to478 purchase articles of food, of the nature rather of luxuries than of necessaries, which could not be produced to advantage at home. This feature has ever since characterized the import trade of the country. In the recent commerce of the United States we find, beside the class of colonial products, two other classes comprising the bulk of the remaining imports, manufactures and material for manufacturing. ”

“ Today one out of every six manufacturing jobs is tied to exports. So first, I offer a strategic trade policy, including new free trade agreements with the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. By increasing trade we increase American jobs. ”

“ The value of our exportations likewise may be much advanced when we perform it our selves in our own Ships, for then we get only not the price of our wares as they are worth here, but also the Merchants gains, the changes of ensurance, and fraight to carry them beyond the seas. ”

“ The sum of the doctrine of the writers of the work on the subject of foreign commerce is given in the following words:—"That trade which makes money flow in most plentifully upon us, enables our people to subsist themselves better by their labour, raises the value of our lands, and occasions our rent to be better paid, must always be reckoned the best trade; for these are the only rules by which it is possible to state and determine the value of any particular trade, or of the general trade of the whole nation." ”

“ First and principally, they are forced to leave those trades which they cannot keep from other Nations, who have better means by situation, wares, Shipping, Munition and the like, to perform these affairs with more advantage than they are able to doe. ”

“ Suppose that a country should be opened to our merchants, disposed to buy from us in abundance, but which can sell to us scarcely anything, as every commodity which it affords could be got cheaper by us from some other quarter. Nevertheless, our trade with this country will enable us to obtain from all other countries their commodities at a lower price. At the first opening of this commerce of mere exportation, we must have received in payment a large quantity of money; for which our customer will have been indemnified by other countries, in exchange for her commodities. ”

“ These, it seems, might become more efficient through organization and more aggressive and scientific methods.
On the other hand, the export trade of certain of the big combinations is beginning to be pushed with commendable zeal and efficiency. Trade at large, to reach its greatest volume, must include the pushing of smaller lines of goods. ”

“ Growth of the sphere of commerce and resulting specialization of production.—The world has gone far toward realizing the ideal of the early free trader, that wherever a man318 might be, he should share in the productive advantages of all other men, wherever they might be. Customs tariffs have been able to check the movement of commerce; they have been powerless to stop it. The sphere of ordinary trade, which was once the manor, a mere hamlet or village ”

“ The excess of the value of imports over that of exports, which is regarded by some as an adverse and alarming symptom in British trade, is in large part readily accounted for on the ground of shipping receipts, insurance returns, interest on capital employed in foreign trade, merchants' profits, and the income derived from foreign investments. ”

“ From a practical point of view, to analyze American foreign trade in detail would be an endless and useless task. It has grown to be what it is through exports of food-stuffs and raw materials, followed naturally by the surplus products of manufacturing. Of imports the same may be said, reversing the order of the progression. The land furnished the material, and labor came at its call from all parts of the world. ”

“ I do not doubt that a very largely increased foreign trade is accessible to us without bartering for it either our home market for such products of the farm and shop as our own people can supply or the wages of our working people. ”