The Free Trade manufacturers, who were chiefly interested in cheapness of production, cared little what became of the workers. "The individualist devotees of _laisser faire_ used to teach us that when restrictions were removed, free competition would settle everything. Prices would go down, and fill the 'consumer' with joy unspeakable; the fittest would survive, and as for the rest--it was not very clear what would become of them, and it really didn't matter."[771] The doctrines and the boasts of the Free Traders are usually treated by the Socialists with contempt. "Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, and the condition of the masses, to Free Trade. Things are better than they were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago. _Ergo_--there you are. There is not a word about the development of railways and steamships, about improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post and telephones, about education and better facilities of travel."[772] The unsoundness of the fundamental doctrine of Free Trade, "Buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market," has frequently been exposed by Socialists. Mr. Blatchford, for instance, in a book of his of which more than a million copies have been sold gives prominence to Cobden's pronouncement in the House of Commons in which he expounded the celebrated maxim: Buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market: "To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, what is the meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you have in the greatest abundance and with it obtain from others that of which they have the most to spare; so giving to mankind the means of enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods."[773] Mr. Blatchford then comments upon Cobden's doctrine as follows: "Let us reduce these fine phrases to figures. Suppose America can sell us wheat at _30s._ a quarter, and suppose ours costs _32s. 6d._ a quarter. That is a gain of 1/15th in the cost of wheat. We get a loaf for _3d._ instead of having to pay _3-1/4d._ That is all the fine phrases mean. What do we lose? We lose the beauty and health of our factory towns; we lose annually some twenty thousand lives in Lancashire alone; we are in constant danger of great strikes; we are reduced to the meanest shifts and the most violent acts of piracy and slaughter to 'open up markets' for our goods; we lose the stamina of our people, and we lose our agriculture."[774]