The Popular Science Monthly, October, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
History
The Popular Science Monthly, October, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
by delegating to another certain kinds of work he saves his own time
and energy. Each one finds out what he can do for the next man, while
the next man finds out what he can do for him.
There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or
estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or
manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another.
That unconscious cerebration affects the minds or habits or acts of
both parties in every purchase and sale. There may be errors in regard
to the service itself. The ignorant man will buy quack medicines that
he had better let alone, but what he pays under the false impression
of benefit to himself is his measure of what he hopes to save; while
the quack medicine vender, taking advantage of the ignorance of others,
filches from them the means of subsistence, even of wealth, under
the pretext of service. As time goes on, however, false measures of
service are eliminated with increasing intelligence, and true benefits
constitute more and more the vast proportion of the exchanges.
The same ignorance which leads the masses of the people of every
country to submit to military dictation, even in a bad cause, also
leads to the wars of tariffs among nations by which prejudice and
animosity are kept up. The false conception that in international
commerce what one nation gains another must lose, is promoted by
the advocates of protection, many of whom very honestly believe
that through the exclusion of foreign goods domestic industry may
be promoted, wholly ignoring the fact that arts and industries are
developed by intelligence and not by legislation.
The advocates of bounties and of special legislation also ignore
the fact that in this country, where mental energy is more nearly
free in its action than in any other, manufactures and the mechanic
arts develop in due proportion according to the age and the natural
resources of the territory or state, nine-tenths or more of the
occupations which are listed under these titles being free in the
nature of things from any possibility of foreign competition through
the import of a product of like kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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