HUMAN LABOR--NATIONAL LABOR.
To break machines, to reject foreign merchandise--are two acts
proceeding from the same doctrine.
We see men who clap their hands when a great invention is made known
to the world, who nevertheless adhere to the protective system. Such
men are highly inconsistent.
With what do they upbraid freedom of commerce? With getting foreigners
more skilful or better situated than ourselves to produce articles,
which, but for them, we should produce ourselves. In one word, they
accuse us of damaging national labor.
Might they not as well reproach machines for accomplishing, by natural
agents, work which, without them, we could perform with our own arms,
and, in consequence, damaging human labor?
The foreign workman who is more favorably situated than the American
laborer, is, in respect to the latter, a veritable economic machine,
which injures him by competition. In the same manner, a machine which
executes a piece of work at a less price than can be done by a certain
number of arms, is, relatively to those arms, a true competing
foreigner, who paralyzes them by his rivalry.
If, then, it is needful to protect national labor against the
competition of foreign labor, it is not less so, to protect human
labor against the rivalry of mechanical labor.
So, he who adheres to the protective policy, if he has but a small
amount of logic in his brain, must not stop when he has prohibited
foreign products; he must farther proscribe the shuttle and the
plough.
And that is the reason why we prefer the logic of those men who,
declaiming against the invasion of exotic merchandise, have, at least,
the courage to declaim as well against the excess of production due to
the inventive power of the human mind.
Hear such a Conservative:--"One of the strongest arguments against
liberty of commerce, and the too great employment of machines, is,
that very many workmen are deprived of work, either by foreign
competition, which is destructive to their manufactures, or by
machines, which take the place of men in the workshops."
This gentleman perfectly sees the analogy, or rather, let us say, the
identity, existing between importations and machines; that is the
reason he proscribes both: and truly there is some pleasure in having
to do with reasonings, which, even in error, pursue an argument to the
end.
Let us look at the difficulty in the way of its soundness.
If it be true, _à priori_, that the domain of _invention_ and that of
labor cannot be extended, except at the expense of one or the other,
it is in the place where there are most machines, Lancaster or Lowell,
for example, that we shall meet with the fewest _workmen_. And if, on
the contrary, we prove _a fact_, that mechanical and hand work
co-exist in a greater degree among wealthy nations than among savages,
we must necessarily conclude that these two powers do not exclude each
other.
It is not easy to explain how a thinking being can taste repose in
presence of this dilemma:
Either--"The inventions of man do not injure labor, as general facts
attest, since there are more of both among the English and Americans
than among the Hottentots and Cherokees. In that case I have made a
false reckoning, though I know neither where nor when I got astray. I
should commit the crime of treason to humanity if I should introduce
my error into the legislation of my country."
Or else--"The discoveries of the mind limit the work of the arms, as
some particular facts seem to indicate; for I see daily a machine do
the labor of from twenty to a hundred workmen, and thus I am forced to
prove a flagrant, eternal, incurable antithesis between the
intellectual and physical ability of man; between his progress and his
comfort; and I cannot forbear saying that the Creator of man ought to
have given him either reason or arms, moral force, or brutal force,
but that he has played with him in conferring upon him opposing
faculties which destroy one another."
The difficulty is pressing. Do you know how they get rid of it? By
this singular apothegm:
"In political economy there are no absolute principles."
In intelligible and vulgar language, that means: "I do not know where
is the true nor the false; I am ignorant of what constitutes general
good or evil; I give myself no trouble about it. The only law which I
consent to recognize, is the immediate effect of each measure upon my
personal comfort."
No absolute principles! You might as well say, there are no absolute
facts; for principles are only the summing up of well proven facts.
Machines, importations, have certainly consequences. These
consequences are good or bad. On this point there may be difference of
opinion. But whichever of these we adopt, we express it in one of
these two _principles_: "machines are a benefit," or "machines are an
evil." "Importations are favorable," or "importations are injurious."
But to say "there are no principles," is the lowest degree of
abasement to which the human mind can descend; and we confess we blush
for our country when we hear so monstrous a heresy uttered in the
presence of the American people, with their consent; that is to say,
in the presence and with the consent of the greater part of our
fellow-citizens, in order to justify Congress for imposing laws on us,
in perfect ignorance of the reasons for them or against them.
But then we shall be told, "destroy _the sophism_; prove that machines
do not injure _human labor_, nor importations _national industry_."
In an essay of this nature such demonstrations cannot be complete. Our
aim is more to propose difficulties than to solve them; to excite
reflection, than to satisfy it. No conviction of the mind is well
acquired, excepting that which it gains by its own labor. We will try,
nevertheless, to place it before you.
The opponents of importations and machines are mistaken, because they
judge by immediate and transitory consequences, instead of looking at
general and final ones.
The immediate effect of an ingenious machine is to economize, towards
a given result, a certain amount of handwork. But its action does not
stop there: inasmuch as this result is obtained with less effort, it
is given to the public for a lower price; and the amount of the
savings thus realized by all the purchasers, enables them to procure
other gratifications--that is to say, to encourage handwork in
general, equal in amount to that subtracted from the special handwork
lately improved upon--so that the level of work has not fallen, though
that of gratification has risen. Let us make this connection of
consequences evident by an example.
Suppose that in the United States ten millions of hats are sold at
five dollars each: this affords to the hatters' trade an income of
fifty millions. A machine is invented which allows hats to be afforded
at three dollars each. The receipts are reduced to thirty millions,
admitting that the consumption does not increase. But, for all that,
the other twenty millions are not subtracted from _human labor_.
Economized by the purchasers of hats, they will serve them in
satisfying other needs, and by consequence will, to that amount,
remunerate collective industry. With these two dollars saved, John
will purchase a pair of shoes, James a book, William a piece of
furniture, etc. Human labor, in the general, will thus continue to be
encouraged to the amount of fifty millions; but this sum, beside
giving the same number of hats as before, will add the gratifications
obtained by the twenty millions which the machine has spared. These
gratifications are the net products which America has gained by the
invention. It is a gratuitous gift, a tax, which the genius of man has
imposed on Nature. We do not deny that, in the course of the change, a
certain amount of labor may have been _displaced_; but we cannot agree
that it has been destroyed, or even diminished. The same holds true of
importations.
We will resume the hypothesis. America makes ten millions of hats, of
which the price was five dollars each. The foreigner invaded our
market in furnishing us with hats at three dollars. We say that
national labor will be not at all diminished. For it will have to
produce to the amount of thirty millions, in order to pay for ten
millions of hats at three dollars. And then there will remain to each
purchaser two dollars saved on each hat, or a total of twenty
millions, which will compensate for other enjoyments; that is to say,
for other work. So the total of labor remains what it was; and the
supplementary enjoyments, represented by twenty millions economized on
the hats, will form the net profit of the importations, or of free
trade.
No one need attempt to horrify us by a picture of the sufferings,
which, in this hypothesis, will accompany the displacement of labor.
For if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself
in accordance with the law of exchange, and no displacement would have
taken place. If, on the contrary, prohibition has brought in an
artificial and unproductive kind of work, it is prohibition, and not
free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement, in
the transition from wrong to right.
Unless, indeed, it should be contended that, because an abuse cannot
be destroyed without hurting those who profit by it, its existence for
a single moment is reason enough why it should endure forever.