§ 8. THE PRESENT CAPITALIST SYSTEM. FOREIGN MARKETS--The answer as far as the capitalist is concerned seems to be: foreign customers in new markets. English manufacturers and capitalists have consistently supported that policy which seemed likely to open up these new markets to their goods. For a long time, as we saw (p. 213), they occupied themselves very wisely in obtaining cheap raw material by passing enactments actuated by Free Trade principles and removing protective restrictions. Cheap raw material having thus been gained, and machinery having now been developed to such an extent as to {220} increase production quite incalculably, England sends her textile and other products all over the world. She seems to find it necessary to discover fresh markets every generation or so, in order that her vast output of commodities may be sold. This policy naturally receives the approval of those engaged in foreign commerce, and most of our wars with countries like China, Egypt, or Burmah, involve commercial interests. But as other foreign nations are also engaging more widely in external trade, the international struggle for new markets is liable to assume at any time a dangerous phase. To-day, indeed, the industrial history of our country seems to have reached a point when production under a purely capitalist system is overreaching itself. It must go on and on without ceasing, finding or fighting for an outlet for the wealth produced, lest the whole gigantic system of international commerce should break down by the mere weight of its own immensity. Meanwhile, English manufacturers are complaining of foreign competition in plaintive tones, which merely means that, whereas they thought some years ago that they had a complete monopoly in supplying the requirements of the world, they are now perceiving that they have not a monopoly at all, but only a good start, while other nations are already catching them up in the modern race for wealth.