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xxviü American preface. 
Tlius it is clear from the figures given tliat we exckange rüde 
products for those which embody skill and taste. Tliis is doubly 
to our disadvantage. Compared witli our rivals, we lose, first, in 
production, because skilled, artistic laboris always best paid ; then 
we lose in transportation, because our products are so bulky. The 
nearer the market, the better at all tnnes : especially is tliis true 
in the case of rüde products, natural or manufactured, the cost of 
transporting which is great when compared with their value. 
Hence it is that manufactures, by providing a convenient market, 
always contribute so muck towards the prosperity of the farmers 
in the immediate neighborkood. The better the manufactures, the 
better for the farmers: 1, Because those engaged in them earn 
more, and so are able to purchase more of the farmers ; 2, Because, 
the more valuable the Commodities into which the farmers can con- 
vert their own, the less it will cost them in the way of transporta 
tion, indirectly, to secure from a distance such Commodities as are 
not produced at home. 
And so the great industrial problem to be solved by the 
American statesman and educator is tliis: How can we make 
the most of our natural resources, which, tkough varied and vast, 
are but the basis of wealtli ? How can we manage to consume 
in home industries the larger part of our raw material, adding 
to its value by the magic toucli of taste and skill ? Instead 
of exporting raw material in the main, how sliall we become an 
exporter in the main of Commodities the greater part of w kose 
value has been added by the processes of manufacture ? Until 
such is the case we shall not attain to the kighest and most endur- 
ing prosperity; we sliall not occupy our true place among the 
nations of the eqrth. The problem cannot be solved by protection, 
of which we liear so much, certainly not by protection alone ; 
nor yet by free trade, whose special function is to distribute natural 
advantages, not acquired ones like skill and taste: it can only be 
solved by education undertaken for definite industrial purposes, 
and directed by reason and experience. And tliis education, in 
its elements, must aim to develop the skill and taste of the "hole 
people, 1 not merely of selected classes. Even if it were in the 
1 In his report on education, John W. Hoyt, of Wisconsin, U. S. Commis- 
sioner to the Paris Exhibition, 18Ü7, says, after quite a full review of the whole