EFFORT--RESULT.
We have seen that between our wants and their gratification many
obstacles are interposed. We conquer or weaken these by the employment
of our faculties. It may be said, in general terms, that industry is
an effort followed by a result.
But by what do we measure our well-being? By our riches? By the result
of our effort, or by the effort itself? There exists always a
proportion between the effort employed and the result obtained. Does
progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the
first term of this proportion--between effort or result?
Both propositions have been sustained, and in political economy
opinions are divided between them.
According to the first system, riches are the result of labor. They
increase in the same ratio as _the result does to the effort_.
Absolute perfection, of which God is the type, consists in the
infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz.,
effort none, result infinite.
The second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forms
the measure of, and constitutes, our riches. Progression is the
increase of the _proportion of the effect to the result_. Its ideal
extreme may be represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of
Sisyphus.[A]
[Footnote A: We will therefore beg the reader to allow us in future,
for the sake of conciseness, to designate this system under the term
of _Sisyphism_, from Sisyphus, who, in punishment of his crimes, was
compelled to roll a stone up hill, which fell to the bottom as fast as
he rolled it to the top, so that his labor was interminable as well as
fruitless.]
The first system tends naturally to the encouragement of everything
which diminishes difficulties, and augments production--as powerful
machinery, which adds to the strength of man; the exchange of produce,
which allows us to profit by the various natural agents distributed in
different degrees over the surface of our globe; the intellect which
discovers, the experience which proves, and the emulation which
excites.
The second as logically inclines to everything which can augment the
difficulty and diminish the product; as, privileges, monopolies,
restrictions, prohibition, suppression of machinery, sterility, &c.
It is well to mark here that the universal practice of men is always
guided by the principle of the first system. Every _workman_, whether
agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher,
devotes the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more
quickly, more economically--in a word, _to do more with less_.
The opposite doctrine is in use with theorists, essayists, statesmen,
ministers, men whose business is to make experiments upon society. And
even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns
themselves, they act, like everybody else, upon the principle of
obtaining from their labor the greatest possible quantity of useful
results.
It may be supposed that I exaggerate, and that there are no true
Sisyphists.
I grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extreme
consequences. And this must always be the case when one starts upon a
wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it
leads, cannot but check it in its progress. For this reason, practical
industry never can admit of Sisyphism. The error is too quickly
followed by its punishment to remain concealed. But in the speculative
industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a
long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences,
only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is
revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted,
and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom,
that in political economy there is no principle universally true.
Let us see, then, if the two opposite principles I have laid down do
not predominate, each in its turn; the one in practical industry, the
other in industrial legislation. When a man prefers a good plough to a
bad one; when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen
his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the
atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid
every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has,
and can have, but one object, viz., to _diminish the proportion of the
effort to the result_. We have indeed no other means of judging of
the success of an agriculturist or of the merits of his system, but by
observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he
increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this
principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their
own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other
article of produce they may need, always diminishing the effort
necessary for obtaining any given quantity thereof.
This incontestable tendency of human nature, once proved, would, one
might suppose, be sufficient to point out the true principle to the
legislator, and to show him how he ought to assist industry (if indeed
it is any part of his business to assist it at all), for it would be
absurd to say that the laws of men should operate in an inverse ratio
from those of Providence.
Yet we have heard members of Congress exclaim, "I do not understand
this theory of cheapness; I would rather see bread dear, and work more
abundant." And consequently these gentlemen vote in favor of
legislative measures whose effect is to shackle and impede commerce,
precisely because by so doing we are prevented from procuring
indirectly, and at low price, what direct production can only furnish
more expensively.
Now it is very evident that the system of Mr. So-and-so, the
Congressman, is directly opposed to that of Mr. So-and-so, the
agriculturist. Were he consistent with himself, he would as legislator
vote against all restriction; or else as farmer, he would practise in
his fields the same principle which he proclaims in the public
councils. We would then see him sowing his grain in his most sterile
fields, because he would thus succeed in _laboring much_, to _obtain
little_. We would see him forbidding the use of the plough, because he
could, by scratching up the soil with his nails, fully gratify his
double wish of "_dear bread_ and _abundant labor_."
Restriction has for its avowed object and acknowledged effect, the
augmentation of labor. And again, equally avowed and acknowledged, its
object and effect are, the increase of prices--a synonymous term for
scarcity of produce. Pushed then to its greatest extreme, it is pure
Sisyphism as we have defined it; _labor infinite; result nothing_.
There have been men who accused railways of _injuring shipping_; and
it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an
object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. But railways
can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles of
transportation; this they can only do by transporting more cheaply;
and they can only transport more cheaply, by _diminishing the
proportion of the effort employed to the result obtained_--for it is
in this that cheapness consists. When, therefore, these men lament the
suppression of labor in attaining a given result, they maintain the
doctrine of Sisyphism. Logically, if they prefer the vessel to the
railway, they should also prefer the wagon to the vessel, the
pack-saddle to the wagon, and the sack to the pack-saddle: for this
is, of all known means of transportation, the one which requires the
greatest amount of labor, in proportion to the result obtained.
"Labor constitutes the riches of the people," say some theorists. This
was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor
constitute the riches of the people." No; these theorists intended to
say, that it is the _intensity_ of labor which measures riches; and
the proof of this is that from step to step, from restriction to
restriction, they forced on the United States (and in so doing
believed that they were doing well) to give to the procuring of, for
instance, a certain quantity of iron, double the necessary labor. In
England, iron was then at $20; in the United States it cost $40.
Supposing the day's work to be worth $2.50, it is evident that the
United States could, by barter, procure a ton of iron by eight days'
labor taken from the labor of the nation. Thanks to the restrictive
measures of these gentlemen, sixteen days' work were necessary to
procure it, by direct production. Here then we have double labor for
an identical result; therefore double riches; and riches, measured not
by the result, but by the intensity of labor. Is not this pure and
unadulterated Sisyphism?
That there may be nothing equivocal, these gentlemen carry their idea
still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard them call
the intensity of labor _riches_, we will find them calling the
abundant results of labor and the plenty of everything proper to the
satisfying of our wants, _poverty_. "Everywhere," they remark,
"machinery has pushed aside manual labor; everywhere production is
superabundant; everywhere the equilibrium is destroyed between the
power of production and that of consumption." Here then we see that,
according to these gentlemen, if the United States was in a critical
situation it was because her productions were too abundant; there was
too much intelligence, too much efficiency in her national labor. We
were too well fed, too well clothed, too well supplied with
everything; the rapid production was more than sufficient for our
wants. It was necessary to put an end to this calamity, and therefore
it became needful to force us, by restrictions, to work more in order
to produce less.
All that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human
intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists,
it cannot but seek continually to increase the _proportion of the end
to the means; of the product to the labor_. Indeed it is in this
continuous effort, and in this alone, that intellect consists.
Sisyphism has been the doctrine of all those who have been intrusted
with the regulation of the industry of our country. It would not be
just to reproach them with this; for this principle becomes that of
our administration only because it prevails in Congress; it prevails
in Congress only because it is sent there by the voters; and the
voters are imbued with it only because public opinion is filled with
it to repletion.
Let me repeat here, that I do not accuse the protectionists in
Congress of being absolutely and always Sisyphists. Very certainly
they are not such in their personal transactions; very certainly each
of them will procure for himself _by barter_, what by _direct
production_ would be attainable only at a higher price. But I maintain
that they are Sisyphists when they prevent the country from acting
upon the same principle.