Joseph Hume Quotes
Our course, then, is clear; if we desire to put an end to pauperism, or to lessen it, we should import everything we can use or sell, in order that we may employ our unemployed hands, in making the goods by which we pay for these imports.
Hume, Joseph. "Corn Laws." Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 21, T. C. Hansard, 1834, cols. 1197-1216.
Although aggregate employment has remained relatively stable as global free trade has become the U. S. policy, there has been major employment disruption with some types of people benefiting and others like blue collar manufacturing workers having their entire careers wiped out. Port cities like Seattle, Baltimore have boomed while Midwestern manufacturing cities have deteriorated greatly.
Foreign trade creates jobs and eliminates jobs. The people who lost jobs as the result of increased foreign trade are readily identified while the job beneficiaries may never know the reason. So it is a hard political sell even though most of the economic studies have showed that more jobs of more value are created by trade than lost. However, the losers are generally blue collar workers while the beneficiaries are generally white collar and knowledge workers. So there is a socioeconomic class differentiation in the trade issue.
This is a statement that in the early 21st century would be made only by ultra liberals. But in the in the late 1940’s this was not only standard democratic party thinking, but a large number of Republicans thought of the Government as the employer of last resort including their Presidential standard bearer.
Joseph Hume FRS was a Scottish surgeon and Radical MP.
