Jacques Bonhomme: Parisians, let us insist upon a reform of the octroi
duties; let us demand that they be instantly brought down to the
former rate. Let every citizen be free to buy his firewood, butter, and
butchers' meat where he sees fit.
The People: Vive, vive la Liberté!
Peter: Parisians, don't allow yourselves to be seduced by that word,
liberty. What good can result from liberty to purchase if you want the
means--in other words, if you are out of employment? Can Paris produce
firewood as cheaply as the Forest of Bondy? meat as cheaply as Poitou?
butter as cheaply as Normandy? If you open your gates freely to these
rival products, what will become of the cowfeeders, woodcutters, and
pork-butchers? They cannot dispense with protection.
The People: Vive, vive la Protection!
Jacques Bonhomme: Protection! but who protects you workmen? Do you not
compete with one another? Let the wood-merchants, then, be subject to
competition in their turn. They ought not to have right by law to raise
the price of firewood, unless the rate of wages is also raised by law.
Are you no longer in love with equality?
The People: Vive, vive l'Egalité!
Peter: Don't listen to these agitators. We have, it is true, raised the
price of firewood, butchers' meat, and butter; but we have done so for
the express purpose of being enabled to give good wages to the workmen.
We are actuated by motives of charity.
The People: Vive, vive la Charité!
Jacques Bonhomme. Cause the rate of wages to be raised by the octroi, if
you can, or cease by the same means to raise the prices of commodities.
We Parisians ask for no charity--we demand justice.
The People: Vive, vive la Justice!
Peter: It is precisely the high price of commodities which will lead,
_par ricochet_, to a rise of wages.
The People: Vive, vive la Cherté!
Jacques Bonhomme: If butter is dear, it is not because you pay high
wages to the workmen, it is not even because you make exorbitant
profits; it is solely because Paris is ill-adapted for that branch of
industry; it is because you wish to make in the town what should be made
in the country, and in the country what should be made in the town.
The people have not more employment--only they have employment of a
different kind. They have no higher wages; while they can no longer buy
commodities as cheaply as formerly.
The People: Vive, vive le Bon Marché!
Peter: This man seduces you with fine words. Let us place the question
before you in all its simplicity. Is it, or is it not, true, that if we
admit firewood, meat, and butter freely or at a lower duty, our markets
will be inundated? Believe me there is no other means of preserving
ourselves from this new species of invasion but to keep the door shut,
and so maintain the prices of commodities by rendering them artificially
rare.
Some Voices in the Crowd: Vive, vive la Rareté!
Jacques Bonhomme: Let us bring the question to the simple test of truth.
You cannot divide among the people of Paris commodities which are not
in Paris. If there be less meat, less firewood, less butter, the share
falling to each will be smaller. Now there must be less if we prohibit
what should be allowed to enter the city. Parisians, abundance for each
of you can be secured only by general abundance.
The People: Vive, vive l'Abondance!
Peter: It is in vain that this man tries to persuade you that it is your
interest to be subjected to unbridled competition.
The People: A bas, à bas la Concurrence!
Jacques Bonhomme: It is in vain that this man tries to make you fall in
love with restriction.
The People: A bas, à bas la Restriction!
Peter: I declare, for my own part, if you deprive the poor cowfeeders
and pig-drivers of their daily bread, I can no longer be answerable for
public order. Workmen, distrust that man. He is the agent of perfidious
Normandy, and derives his inspiration from the provinces. He is a
traitor; down with him! (The people preserve silence.)
Jacques Bonhomme: Parisians, what I have told you to-day,
I told you twenty years ago, when Peter set himself to work the octroi
for his own profit and to your detriment. I am not, then, the agent of
Normandy. Hang me up, if you will, but that will not make oppression
anything else than oppression. Friends, it is not Jacques or Peter that
you must put an end to, but liberty if you fear it, or restriction if it
does you harm.
The People: Hang nobody, and set everybody free.
XIV. SOMETHING ELSE.
"What is restriction?"
"It is partial prohibition."
"What is prohibition?"
"Absolute restriction."
"So that what holds true of the one, holds true of the other?"
"Yes; the difference is only one of degree. There is between them the
same relation as there is between a circle and the arc of a circle."
"Then, if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be good?"
"No more than the arc can be correct if the circle is irregular."
"What is the name which is common to restriction and prohibition?"
"Protection."
"What is the definitive effect of protection?"
"To exact from men _a greater amount of labour for the same result_."
"Why are men attached to the system of protection?"
"Because as liberty enables us to obtain the same result with less
labour, this apparent diminution of employment frightens them."
"Why do you say apparent?"
"Because _all labour saved can be applied to something else_."
"To what?"
"That I cannot specify, nor is there any need to specify it."
"Why?"
"Because if the sum of satisfactions which the country at present enjoys
could be obtained with one-tenth less labour, no one can enumerate the
new enjoyments which men would desire to obtain from the labour left
disposable. One man would desire to be better clothed, another better
fed, another better educated, another better amused."
"Explain to me the mechanism and the effects of protection."
"That is not an easy matter. Before entering on consideration of the
more complicated cases, we must study it in a very simple one."
"Take as simple a case as you choose."
"You remember how Robinson Crusoe managed to make a plank when he had no
saw."
"Yes; he felled a tree, and then, cutting the trunk right and left with
his hatchet, he reduced it to the thickness of a board."
"And that cost him much labour?"
"Fifteen whole days' work."
"And what did he live on during that time?"
"He had provisions."
"What happened to the hatchet?"
"It was blunted by the work."
"Yes; but you perhaps do not know this: that at the moment when Robinson
was beginning the work he perceived a plank thrown by the tide upon the
seashore."
"Happy accident! he of course ran to appropriate it?"
"That was his first impulse; but he stopped short, and began to reason
thus with himself:--
"'If I appropriate this plank, it will cost me only the trouble of
carrying it, and the time needed to descend and remount the cliff.
"'But if I form a plank with my hatchet, first of all, it will procure
me fifteen days' employment; then my hatchet will get blunt, which will
furnish me with the additional employment of sharpening it; then I
shall consume my stock of provisions, which will be a third source of
employment in replacing them. Now, _labour is wealth_. It is clear that
I should ruin myself by appropriating the shipwrecked plank. I must
protect my _personal labour_; and, now that I think of it, I can even
increase that labour by throwing back the other plank into the sea.'"
"But this reasoning was absurd."
"No doubt. It is nevertheless the reasoning of every nation which
protects itself by prohibition. It throws back the plank which is
offered it in exchange for a small amount of labour in order to exert
a greater amount of labour. It is not in the labour of the Customhouse
officials that it discovers a gain. That gain is represented by the
pains which Robinson takes to render back to the waves the gift which
they had offered him. Consider the nation as a collective being, and
you will not find between its reasoning and that of Robinson an atom of
difference."
"Did Robinson not see that he could devote the time saved to _something
else?_"
"What else?"
"As long as a man has wants to satisfy and time at his disposal, there
is always something to be done. I am not bound to specify the kind of
labour he would in such a case undertake."
"I see clearly what labour he could have escaped."
"And I maintain that Robinson, with incredible blindness, confounded the
labour with its result, the end with the means, and I am going to prove
to you..."
"There is no need. Here we have the system of restriction or prohibition
in its simplest form. If it appear to you absurd when so put, it is
because the two capacities of producer and consumer are in this case
mixed up in the same individual."
"Let us pass on, therefore, to a more complicated example."
"With all my heart. Some time afterwards, Robinson having met with
Friday, they united their labour in a common work. In the morning they
hunted for six hours, and brought home four baskets of game. In the
evening they worked in the garden for six hours, and obtained four
baskets of vegetables.
"One day a canoe touched at the island. A good-looking foreigner
landed, and was admitted to the table of our two recluses. He tasted and
commended very much the produce of the garden, and before taking leave
of his entertainers, spoke as follows:--
"'Generous islanders, I inhabit a country where game is much more
plentiful than here, but where horticulture is quite unknown. It would
be an easy matter to bring you every evening four baskets of game, if
you would give me in exchange two baskets of vegetables.'
"At these words Robinson and Friday retired to consult, and the argument
that passed is too interesting not to be reported _in extenso_.
"Friday: What do you think of it?
"Robinson: If we close with the proposal, we are ruined.
"F.: Are you sure of that? Let us consider.
"R.: The case is clear. Crushed by competition, our hunting as a branch
of industry is annihilated.
"F.: What matters it, if we have the game?
"R.: Theory! it will no longer be the product of our labour.
"F.: I beg your pardon, sir; for in order to have game we must part with
vegetables.
"R.: Then, what shall we gain?
"F.:. The four baskets of game cost us six hours' work. The foreigner
gives us them in exchange for two baskets of vegetables, which cost us
only three hours' work. This places three hours at our disposal.
"R.: Say, rather, which are substracted from our exertions. In this will
consist our loss. _Labour is wealth_, and if we lose a fourth part of
our time, we shall be less rich by a fourth.
"F.: You are greatly mistaken, my good friend. We shall have as much
game, and the same quantity of vegetables, and three hours at our
disposal into the bargain. This is progress, or there is no such thing
in-the world.
"R.: You lose yourself in generalities! What should we make of these
three hours?
"F.: We would do _something else_.
"R.: Ah! I understand you. You cannot come to particulars. Something
else, something else--this is easily said.
"F.: We can fish, we can ornament our cottage, we can read the Bible.
"R.: Utopia! Is there any certainty that we should do either the one or
the other?
"F.: Very well, if we have no wants to satisfy we can rest. Is repose
nothing?
"R.: But while we repose we may die of hunger.
"F.: My dear friend, you have got into a vicious circle. I speak of
a repose which will subtract nothing from our supply of game and
vegetables. You always forget that by means of our _foreign trade_
nine hours' labour will give us the same quantity of provisions that we
obtain at present with twelve.
"R: It is very evident, Friday, that you have not been educated in
Europe, and that you have never read the _Moniteur Industriel_. If you
had, it would have taught you this: that all time saved is sheer loss.
The important thing is not to eat or consume, but to work. All that
we consume, if it is not the direct produce of our labour, goes for
nothing. Do you want to know whether you are rich? Never consider the
satisfactions you enjoy, but the labour you undergo. This is what
the _Moniteur Industriel_ would teach you. For myself, who have no
pretensions to be a theorist, the only thing I look at is the loss of
our hunting.
"F.: What a strange conglomeration of ideas! but...
"R.: I will have no buts. Moreover, there are political reasons for
rejecting the interested offers of the perfidious foreigner.
"F.: Political reasons!
"R.: Yes, he only makes us these offers because they are advantageous to
him.
"F.: So much the better, since they are for our advantage likewise.
"R.: Then by this traffic we should place ourselves in a situation of
dependence upon him.
"F.: And he would place himself in dependence on us. We should have need
of his game, and he of our vegetables, and we should live on terms of
friendship.
"R.: System! Do you want me to shut your mouth?
"F.: We shall see about that. I have as yet heard no good reason.
"R.: Suppose the foreigner learns to cultivate a garden, and that his
island should prove more fertile than ours. Do you see the consequence?
"F.: Yes; our relations with the foreigner would cease. He would send us
no more vegetables, since he could have them at home with less labour.
He would take no more game from us, since we should have nothing to give
him in exchange, and we should then be in precisely the situation that
you wish us in now.
"R.: Improvident savage! You don't see that after having annihilated our
hunting by inundating us with game, he would annihilate our gardening by
inundating us with vegetables.
"F.: But this would only last till we were in a situation to give him
_something else_; that is to say, until we found something else which we
could produce with economy of labour for ourselves.
"R. Something else, something else! You always come back to that. You
are at sea, my good friend Friday; there is nothing practical in your
views."
"The debate was long prolonged, and, as often happens, each remained
wedded to his own opinion. But Robinson possessing a great ascendant
over Friday, his opinion prevailed, and when the foreigner arrived to
demand a reply, Robinson said to him--
"' Stranger, in order to induce us to accept your proposal, we must be
assured of two things:
"' The first is, that your island is no better stocked with game than
ours, for we want to fight only with _equal weapons_.
"' The second is, that you will lose by the bargain. For, as in every
exchange there is necessarily a gaining and a losing party, we should be
dupes, if you were not the loser. What have you got to say?'
"' Nothing,' replied the foreigner; and, bursting out a-laugh-ing, he
regained his canoe."
"The story would not be amiss, if Robinson were not made to argue so
very absurdly."
"He does not argue more absurdly than the committee of the Rue
Hauteville."
"Oh! the case is very different. Sometimes you suppose one man, and
sometimes (which comes to the same thing) two men working in company.
That does not tally with the actual state of things. The division of
labour and the intervention of merchants and money change the state of
the question very much."
"That may complicate transactions, but does not change their nature."
"What! you want to compare modern commerce with a system of barter."
"Trade is nothing but a multiplicity of barters. Barter is in its own
nature identical with commerce, just as labour on a small scale is
identical with labour on a great scale, or as the law of gravitation
which moves an atom is identical with that same law of gravitation which
moves a world."
"So, according to you, these arguments, which are so untenable in
the mouth of Robinson, are equally untenable when urged by our
protectionists."
"Yes; only the error is better concealed under a complication of
circumstances."
"Then, pray, let us have an example taken from the present order of
things."
"With pleasure. In France, owing to the exigencies of climate and
habits, cloth is a useful thing. Is the essential thing to _make it_, or
to _get it?_"
"A very sensible question, truly! In order to have it, you must make
it."
"Not necessarily. To have it, some one must make it, that is certain;
but it is not at all necessary that the same person or the same country
which consumes it should also produce it. You have not made that stuff
which clothes you so well. France does not produce the coffee on which
our citizens breakfast."
"But I buy my cloth, and France her coffee."
"Exactly so; and with what?"
"With money."
"But neither you nor France produce the material of money."
"We buy it."
"With what?"
"With our products, which are sent to Peru."
"It is then, in fact, your labour which you exchange for cloth, and
French labour which is exchanged for coffee."
"Undoubtedly."
"It is not absolutely necessary, therefore, to manufacture what you
consume."
"No; if we manufacture something else which we give in exchange."
"In other words, France has two means of procuring a given quantity of
cloth. The first is to make it; the second is to make something else,
and to exchange this something else with the foreigner for cloth. Of
these two means, which is the best?"
"I don't very well know."
"Is it not that which, _for a determinate amount of labour, obtains the
greater quantity of cloth?_"
"It seems so."
"And which is best for a nation, to have the choice between these two
means, or that the law should prohibit one of them, on the chance of
stumbling on the better of the two?"
"It appears to me that it is better for the nation to have the choice,
inasmuch as in such matters it invariably chooses right."
"The law, which prohibits the importation of foreign cloth, decides,
then, that if France wishes to have cloth, she must make it in kind,
and that she is prohibited from making the something else with which she
could purchase foreign cloth."
"True."
"And as the law obliges us to make the cloth, and forbids our making the
something else, precisely because that something else would exact less
labour (but for which reason the law would not interfere with it) the
law virtually decrees that for a determinate amount of labour, France
shall only have one yard of cloth, when for the same amount of labour
she might have two yards, by applying that labour to something else!"
"But the question recurs, 'What else?"
"And my question recurs, 'What does it signify?' Having the choice, she
will only make the something else to such an extent as there may be a
demand for it."
"That is possible; but I cannot divest myself of the idea that the
foreigner will send us his cloth, and not take from us the something
else, in which case we would be entrapped. At all events, this is the
objection even from your own point of view. You allow that France could
make this something else to exchange for cloth, with a less expenditure
of labour than if she had made the cloth itself?"
"Undoubtedly."
"There would, then, be a certain amount of her labour rendered inert?"
"Yes; but without her being less well provided with clothes, a little
circumstance which makes all the difference. Robinson lost sight of
this, and our protectionists either do not see it, or pretend not to
see it. The shipwrecked plank rendered fifteen days of Robinson's labour
inert, in as far as that labour was applied to making a plank, but it
did not deprive him of it. Discriminate, then, between these two kinds
of diminished labour--the diminution which has for effect privation,
and that which has for its cause satisfaction. These two things are very
different, and if you mix them up, you reason as Robinson did. In the
most complicated, as in the most simple cases, the sophism consists in
this: _Judging of the utility of labour by its duration and intensity,
and not by its results_; which gives rise to this economic policy: _To
reduce the results of labour for the purpose of augmenting its duration
and intensity_." *
* See ch. ii. and iii. of _Sophimes_, first series; and
_Harmonies Économiques_, ch. vi.
XV. THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER.
If any one tells you that there are no absolute principles, no
inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction
may be good,
Reply: "Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being imported.":
If any one says that agriculture is the nursing-mother of the country,
Reply: "What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but
corn."
If any one tells you that the basis of the food of the people is
agriculture,
Reply: "The basis of the people's food is corn. This is the reason why
a law which gives us, by agricultural labour, two quarters of corn, when
we could have obtained four quarters without such labour, and by means
of labour applied to manufactures, is a law not for feeding, but for
starving the people." If any one remarks that restriction upon the
importation of foreign corn gives rise to a more extensive culture, and
consequently to increased home production,
Reply: "It induces men to sow grain on comparatively barren and
ungrateful soils. To milk a cow and go on milking her, puts a little
more into the pail, for it is difficult to say when you will come to the
last drop. But that drop costs dear."
If any one tells you that when bread is dear, the agriculturist, having
become rich, enriches the manufacturer,
Reply: "Bread is dear when it is scarce, and then men are poor, or, if
you like it better, they become rich _starvelings_."
If you are further told that when bread gets dearer, wages rise, Reply
by pointing out that, in April 1847, five-sixths of our workmen were
receiving charity,
If you are told that the wages of labour should rise with the increased
price of provisions,
Reply: "This is as much as to say that in a ship without provisions,
everybody will have as much biscuit as if the vessel were fully
victualled."
If you are told that it is necessary to secure a good price to the man
who sells corn,
Reply: "That in that case it is also necessary to secure good wages to
the man who buys it."
If it is said that the proprietors, who make the laws, have raised the
price of bread, without taking thought about wages, because they know
that when bread rises, wages naturally rise, Reply: "Upon the same
principle, when the workmen come to make the laws, don't blame them
if they fix a high rate of wages without busying themselves about
protecting corn, because they know that when wages rise, provisions
naturally rise also."
If you are asked what, then, is to be done?
Reply: "Be just to everybody."
If you are told that it is essential that every great country should
produce iron,
Reply: "What is essential is, that every great country should have
iron."
If you are told that it is indispensable that every great country should
produce cloth,
Reply: "The indispensable thing is, that the citizens of every great
country should have cloth."
If it be said that labour is wealth,
Reply: "This is not true."
And, by way of improvement, add: "Phlebotomy is not health, and the
proof of it is that bleeding is resorted to for the purpose of restoring
health."
If it is said: "To force men to cultivate rocks, and extract an ounce
of iron from a hundredweight of ore, is to increase their labour and
consequently their wealth,"
Reply: "To force men to dig wells by prohibiting them from taking water
from the brook, is to increase their _useless labour_, but not their
wealth."
If you are told that the sun gives you his heat and light without
remuneration,
Reply: "So much the better for me, for it costs me nothing to see
clearly."
And if you are answered that industry in general loses what would have
been paid for artificial light,
Rejoin; "No; for having paid nothing to the sun, what he saves me
enables me to buy clothes, furniture, and candles."
In the same way, if you are told that these rascally English possess
capital which is dormant,
Reply: "So much the better for us; they will not make us pay interest
for it."
If it is said: "These perfidious English find coal and iron in the same
pit,"
Reply: "So much the better for us; they will charge us nothing for
bringing them together."
If you are told that the Swiss have rich pasturages, which cost little:
Reply: "The advantage is ours, for they will demand a smaller amount
of our labour in return for giving an impetus to our agriculture, and
supplying us with provisions."
If they tell you that the lands of the Crimea have no value, and pay no
taxes,
Reply: "The profit is ours, who buy corn free from such charges."
If they tell you that the serfs of Poland work without wages,
Reply: "The misfortune is theirs and the profit is ours, since their
labour does not enter into the price of the corn which their masters
sell us."
Finally, if they tell you that other nations have many advantages over
us,
Reply: "By means of exchange, they are forced to allow us to participate
in these advantages."
If they tell you that under free-trade we are about to be inundated with
bread, _bouf à la mode_, coal, and winter clothing, Reply: "In that case
we shall be neither hungry nor thirsty."
If they ask how we are to pay for these things?
Reply: "Don't let that disquiet you. If we are inundated, it is a sign
we have the means of paying for the inundation; and if we have not the
means of paying, we shall not be inundated."
If any one says: I should approve of free-trade, if the foreigner, in
sending us his products, would take our products in exchange; but he
carries off our money,
Reply: "Neither money nor coffee grows in the fields of Beauce, nor are
they turned out by the workshops of Elbeuf. So far as we are concerned,
to pay the foreigner with money is the same thing as paying him with
coffee."
If they bid you eat butcher's meat,
Reply: "Allow it to be imported."
If they say to you, in the words of the _Presse_, "When one has not the
means to buy bread, he is forced to buy beef," Reply: "This is advice
quite as judicious as that given by M. Vautour to his tenant:
"'Quand on n'a pas de quoi payer son terme,
Il faut avoir une maison à soi.'"
If, again, they say to you, in the words of _La Presse_, "The government
should teach the people how and why they must eat beef,"
Reply: "The government has only to allow the beef to be imported, and
the most civilized people in the world will know how to use it without
being taught by a master."
If they tell you that the government should know everything, and foresee
everything, in order to direct the people, and that the people have
simply to allow themselves to be led, Reply by asking: "Is there a state
apart from the people? is there a human foresight apart from humanity?
Archimedes might repeat every day of his life, 'With a fulcrum and lever
I can move the world;' but he never did move it, for want of a fulcrum
and lever. The lever of the state is the nation; and nothing can be more
foolish than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is simply
to take for granted the existence of collective science and foresight,
after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and
improvidence."
If any one says, "I ask no favour, but only such a duty on bread and
meat as shall compensate the heavy taxes to which I am subjected; only a
small duty equal to what the taxes add to the cost price of my corn,"
Reply: "A thousand pardons; but I also pay taxes. If, then, the
protection which you vote in your own favour has the effect of burdening
me as a purchaser of corn with exactly your share of the taxes, your
modest demand amounts to nothing less than establishing this arrangement
as formulated by you:
Seeing that the public charges are heavy, I, as a seller of corn, am
to pay nothing, and you my neighbour, as a buyer of corn, are to
pay double, viz., your own share and mine into the bargain.' Mr
Corn-merchant, my good friend, you may have force at your command, but
assuredly you have not reason on your side."
If any one says to you, "It is, however, exceedingly hard upon me, who
pay taxes, to have to compete in my own market with the foreigner, who
pays none,
Reply:
"1st, In the first place, it is not your market, but our market. I who
live upon corn and pay for it, should surely be taken into account.
"2d, Few foreigners at the present day are exempt from taxes.
"3d, If the taxes you vote yield you in roads, canals, security, etc.,
more than they cost you, you are not justified in repelling, at my
expense, the competition of foreigners, who, if they do not pay taxes,
have not the advantages you enjoy in roads, canals, and security. You
might as well say, 'I demand a compensating duty because I have finer
clothes, stronger horses, and better ploughs than the hard-working
peasant of Russia.'
"4th, If the tax does not repay you for what it costs, don't vote it.
"5th, In short, after having voted the tax, do you wish to get free from
it? Try to frame a law which will throw it on the foreigner. But your
tariff makes your share of it fall upon me, who have already my own
burden to bear."
If any one says, "For the Russians free-trade is necessary to enable
them to exchange their products with advantage," (Opinion de M. Thiers
dans les Bureaux, April 1847),
Reply: "Liberty is necessary everywhere, and for the same reason."
If you are told, "Each country has its wants, and we must be guided by
that in what we do." (M. Thiers),
Reply: "Each country acts thus of its own accord, if you don't throw
obstacles in the way."
If they tell you, "We have no sheet-iron, and we must allow it to be
imported," (M. Thiers),
Reply: "Many thanks."
If you are told, "We have no freights for our merchant shipping.
The want of return cargoes prevents our shipping from competing with
foreigners," (M. Thiers),
Reply: "When a country wishes to have everything produced at home, there
can be no freights either for exports or imports. It is just as absurd
to desire to have a mercantile marine under a system of prohibition, as
it would be to have carts when there is nothing to carry."
If you are told that assuming protection to be unjust, everything has
been arranged on that footing; capital has been embarked; rights have
been acquired; and the system cannot be changed without suffering to
individuals and classes,
Reply: "All injustice is profitable to somebody (except, perhaps,
restriction, which in the long run benefits no one). To argue from the
derangement which the cessation of injustice may occasion to the man who
profits by it, is as much as to say that a system of injustice, for no
other reason than that it has had a temporary existence, ought to exist
for ever."
XVI. THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT.
Report Addressed to the King.
Sire,
When we observe these free-trade advocates boldly-disseminating their
doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is
implied in the right of property (as has been urged by M. Billault
in the true style of a special pleader), we may be permitted to feel
serious alarm as to the fate of our national labour; for what would
Frenchmen make of their heads and their hands were they left to their
own resources?
The administration which you have honoured with your confidence has
turned its attention to this grave state of things, and has sought
in its wisdom to discover a species of _protection_ which may be
substituted for that which appears to be getting out of repute. They
propose a _law to prohibit your faithful SUBJECTS FROM USING THEIR RIGHT
HANDS_.
Sire, we beseech you not to do us the injustice of supposing that we
have adopted lightly and without due deliberation a measure which at
first sight may appear somewhat whimsical. A profound study of the
system of protection has taught us this syllogism, upon which the whole
doctrine reposes:
The more men work, the richer they become;
The more difficulties there are to be overcome, the more work;
Ergo, the more difficulties there are to be overcome, the richer they
become.
In fact, what is protection, if it is not an ingenious application
of this reasoning--reasoning so close and conclusive as to balk the
subtlety of M. Billault himself?
Let us personify the country, and regard it as a collective being with
thirty millions of mouths, and, as a natural consequence, with sixty
millions of hands. Here is a man who makes a French clock, which he can
exchange in Belgium for ten hundredweights of iron. But we tell him to
make the iron himself. He replies, "I cannot, it would occupy too much
of my time; I should produce only five hundredweights of iron during the
time I am occupied in making a clock." Utopian dreamer, we reply, that
is the very reason why we forbid you to make the clock, and order you to
make the iron. Don't you see we are providing employment for you?
Sire, it cannot have escaped your sagacity that this is exactly the same
thing in effect as if we were to say to the country, "Work with your
left hand, and not with the right."
To create obstacles in order to furnish labour with an opportunity of
developing itself, was the principle of the old system of restriction,
and it is the principle likewise of the new system which is now being
inaugurated. Sire, to regulate industry in this way is not to innovate,
but to persevere.
As regards the efficiency of the measure, it is incontestable. It is
difficult, much more difficult than one would suppose, to do with the
left hand what we have been accustomed to do with the right. You will
be convinced of this, Sire, if you will condescend to make trial of our
system in a process which must be familiar to you; as, for example, in
shuffling a pack of cards. For this reason, we flatter ourselves that we
are opening to labour an unlimited career.
When workmen in all departments of industry are thus confined to the use
of the left hand, we may figure to ourselves, Sire, the immense number
of people that will be wanted to supply the present consumption,
assuming it to continue invariable, as we always do when we compare two
different systems of production with one another. So prodigious a demand
for manual labour cannot fail to induce a great rise of wages, and
pauperism will disappear as if by enchantment.
Sire, your paternal heart will rejoice to think that this new law of
ours will extend its benefits to that interesting part of the community
whose destinies engage all your solicitude. What is the present destiny
of women in France? The bolder and more hardy sex drives them insensibly
out of every department of industry.
Formerly, they had the resource of the lottery offices. These offices
have been shut up by a pitiless philanthropy, and on what pretext? "To
save the money of the poor." Alas! the poor man never obtained for a
piece of money enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those afforded by the
mysterious urn of fortune. Deprived of all the enjoyments of life, when
he, fortnight after fortnight, put a day's wages on the _quaterne_, how
many delicious hours did he afford his family! Hope was always present
at his fireside. The garret was peopled with illusions. The wife hoped
to rival her neighbours in her style of living; the son saw himself the
drum-major of a regiment; and the daughter fancied herself led to the
altar by her betrothed.
"C'est quelque chose encor que de faire un beau rêve!"
The lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have lost it.
The lottery gone, what means have we of providing for our _protégées?_
Tobacco-shops and the post-office.
Tobacco, all right; its use progresses, thanks to the _distinguées_
habits, which august examples have skilfully introduced among our
fashionable youth.
The post-office!... We shall say nothing of it, as we mean to make it
the subject of a special report.
Except, then, the sale of tobacco, what employment remains for your
female subjects? Embroidery, network, and sewing,--melancholy resources,
which the barbarous science of mechanics goes on limiting more and more.
But the moment your new law comes into operation, the moment right hands
are amputated or tied up, the face of everything will be changed.
Twenty times, thirty times, a greater number of embroiderers, polishers,
laundresses, seamstresses, milliners, shirtmakers, will not be
sufficient to supply the wants of the kingdom, always assuming, as
before, the consumption to be the same.
This assumption may very likely be disputed by some cold theorists, for
dress and everything else will then be dearer. The same thing may be
said of the iron which we extract from our own mines, compared with
the iron we could obtain in exchange for our wines. This argument,
therefore, does not tell more against gaucherie than against protection,
for this very dearness is the effect and the sign of an excess of work
and exertion, which is precisely the basis upon which, in both cases, we
contend that the prosperity of the working classes is founded.
Yes, we shall be favoured soon with a touching picture of the prosperity
of the millinery business. What movement! What activity! What life!
Every dress will occupy a hundred fingers, instead of ten. No young
woman will be idle, and we have no need, Sire, to indicate to your
perspicacity the moral consequences of this great revolution. Not only
will there be more young women employed, but each of them will earn
more, for they will be unable to supply the demand; and if competition
shall again show itself, it will not be among the seamstresses who make
the dresses, but among the fine ladies who wear them.
You must see then, Sire, that our proposal is not only in strict
conformity with the economic traditions of the government, but is in
itself essentially moral and popular.
To appreciate its effects, let us suppose the law passed and in
operation,--let us transport ourselves in imagination into the
future,--and assume the new system to have been in operation for
twenty years. Idleness is banished from the country; ease and concord,
contentment and morality, have, with employment, been introduced into
every family--no more poverty, no more vice. The left hand being very
visible in all work, employment will be abundant, and the remuneration
adequate. Everything is arranged on this footing, and the workshops in
consequence are full. If, in such circumstances, Sire, Utopian dreamers
were all at once to agitate for the right hand being again set free,
would they not throw the whole country into alarm? Would such a
pretended reform not overturn the whole existing state of things? Then
our system must be good, since it could not be put an end to without
universal suffering.
And yet we confess we have the melancholy presentiment (so great is
human perversity) that some day there will be formed an association for
right-hand freedom.
We think that already we hear the free Dexterities, assembled in the
Salle Montesquieu, holding this language:--
"Good people, you think yourselves richer because the use of one of
your hands has been denied you; you take account only of the additional
employment which that brings you. But consider also the high prices
which result from it, and the forced diminution of consumption. That
measure has not made capital more abundant, and capital is the fund from
which wages are paid. The streams which flow from that great reservoir
are directed towards other channels; but their volume is not enlarged;
and the ultimate effect, as far as the nation at large is concerned, is
the loss of all that wealth which millions of right hands could produce,
compared with what is now produced by an equal number of left hands.
At the risk of some inevitable derangements, then, let us form an
association, and enforce our right to work with both hands."
Fortunately, Sire, an association has been formed in defence of
left-hand labour, and the Sinistristes will have no difficulty in
demolishing all these generalities, suppositions, abstractions,
reveries, and utopias. They have only to exhume the Moniteur Industriel
for 1846, and they will find ready-made arguments against freedom Of
trade, which refute so admirably all that has been urged in favour of
right-hand liberty that it is only necessary to substitute the one word
for the other.
"The Parisian free-trade league has no doubt of securing the concurrence
of the workmen. But the workmen are no longer men who can be led by the
nose. They have their eyes open, and they know political economy
better than our professors. Free trade, they say, will deprive us of
employment, and labour is our wealth. With employment, with abundant
employment, the price of commodities never places them beyond our reach.
Without employment, were bread at a halfpenny a pound, the workman would
die of hunger. Now your doctrines, instead of increasing the present
amount of employment, would diminish it, that is to say, would reduce us
to poverty.
"When there are too many commodities in the market, their price falls,
no doubt. But as wages always fall when commodities are cheap, the
result is that, instead of being in a situation to purchase more, we are
no longer able to buy anything. It is when commodities are cheap that
the workman is worst off."
It will not be amiss for the Sinistristes to intermingle some menaces
with their theories. Here is a model for them:--"What! you desire to
substitute right-hand for left-hand labour, and thus force down, or
perhaps annihilate wages, the sole resource of the great bulk of the
nation!
"And, at a time when a deficient harvest is imposing painful privations
on the workman, you wish to disquiet him as to his future, and render
him more accessible to bad advice, and more ready to abandon that wise
line of conduct which has hitherto distinguished him."
After such conclusive reasoning as this, we entertain a confident hope,
Sire, that if the battle is once begun, the left hand will come off
victorious.
Perhaps an association may be formed for the purpose of inquiring
whether the right hand and the left are not both wrong, and whether a
third hand cannot be found to conciliate everybody.
After having depicted the Dexteristes as seduced by the apparent
liberality of a principle, the soundness of which experience has not
yet verified and the Sinistristes as maintaining the position they have
gained, they go on to say:--
"We deny that there is any third position which it is possible to take
up in the midst of the battle! Is it not evident that the workmen have
to defend themselves at one and the same time against those who desire
to change nothing in the present situation, because they find their
account in it, and against those who dream of an economic revolution of
which they have calculated neither the direction nor the extent?"
We cannot, however, conceal from your Majesty that our project has a
vulnerable side; for it may be said that twenty years hence left hands
will be as skilful as right hands are at present, and that then
you could no longer trust to gaucherie for an increase of national
employment.
To that we reply, that according to the most learned physicians the left
side of the body has a natural feebleness, which is quite reassuring as
regards the labour of the future.
Should your Majesty consent to pass the measure now proposed, a great
principle will be established: All wealth proceeds from the intensity
of labour. It will be easy for us to extend and vary the applications of
this principle. We may decree, for example, that it shall no longer be
permissible to work but with the foot; for this is no more impossible
(as we have seen) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. You
see then, Sire, that the means of increasing national labour can never
fail. And after all has been tried, we have still the practically
ex-haustless resource of amputation.
To conclude, Sire, if this report were not intended for publicity,
we should take the liberty of soliciting your attention to the great
influence which measures of this kind are calculated to confer on men
in power. But that is a matter which we must reserve for a private
audience.
XVII. DOMINATION BY LABOUR.
"In the same way that in time of war we attain the mastery by
superiority in arms, do we not, in time of peace, arrive at domination
by superiority in labour?"
This is a question of the highest interest at a time when no doubt seems
to be entertained that in the field of industry, as in the field of
battle, the stronger crushes the weaker.
To arrive at this conclusion, we must have discovered between the labour
which is applied to commodities and the violence exercised upon men, a
melancholy and discouraging analogy; for why should these two kinds
of operations be thought identical in their effects, if they are
essentially different in their own nature?
And if it be true that in industry, as in war, predominance is the
necessary result of superiority, what have we to do with progress or
with social economy, seeing that we inhabit a world where everything
has been so arranged by Providence that one and the same effect--namely,
oppression--proceeds necessarily from two opposite principles?
With reference to England's new policy of commercial freedom, many
persons make this objection, which has, I am convinced, taken possession
of the most candid minds among us: "Is England doing anything else than
pursuing the same end by different means. Does she not always aspire at
universal supremacy? Assured of her superiority in capital and labour,
does she not invite free competition in order to stifle Continental
industry, and so put herself in a situation to reign as a sovereign,
having conquered the privilege of feeding and clothing the population
she has ruined?"
It would not be difficult to demonstrate that these alarms are
chimerical; that our alleged inferiority is much exaggerated; that
our great branches of industry not only maintain their ground, but are
actually developed under the action of external competition, and that
the infallible effect of such competition is to bring about an increase
of general consumption, capable of absorbing both home and foreign
products.
At present, I desire to make a direct answer to the objection, leaving
it all the advantage of the ground chosen by the objectors. Keeping out
of view for the present the special case of England and France, I shall
inquire in a general way whether, when, by its superiority in one branch
of industry, a nation comes to outrival and put down a similar branch of
industry existing among another people, the former has advanced one step
towards domination, or the latter towards dependence; in' other words,
whether both nations do not gain by the operation, and whether it is not
the nation which is outrivalled that gains the most.
If we saw in a product nothing more than an opportunity of bestowing
labour, the alarms of the protectionists would undoubtedly be
well-founded. Were we to consider iron, for example, only in its
relations with ironmasters, we might be led to fear that the competition
of a country where it is the gratuitous gift of nature would extinguish
the furnaces of another country where both ore and fuel are scarce.
But is this a complete view of the subject? Has iron relations only with
those who make it? Has it no relations with those who use it? Is its
sole and ultimate destination to be produced? And if it is useful, not
on account of the labour to which it gives employment, but on account
of the qualities it possesses, of the numerous purposes to which its
durability and malleability adapt it, does it not follow that the
foreigner cannot reduce its price, even so far as to render its
production at home unprofitable, without doing us more good in this last
respect, than harm in the other?
Pray consider how many things there are which foreigners, by reason
of the natural advantages by which they are surrounded, prevent our
producing directly, and with reference to which we are placed in reality
in the hypothetical position we have been examining with reference to
iron. We produce at home neither tea, coffee, gold, nor silver. Is our
industry _en masse_ diminished in consequence? No; only in order to
create the counter-value of these imported commodities, in order to
acquire them by means of exchange, we detach from our national labour
a portion less great than would be required to produce these things
ourselves. More labour thus remains to be devoted to the procuring of
other enjoyments. We are so much the richer and so much the stronger.
All that external competition can do, even in cases where it puts an end
absolutely to a determinate branch of industry, is to economize
labour, and increase our productive power. Is this, in the case of the
foreigner, the road to domination!
If we should find in France a gold mine, it does not follow that it
would be for our interest to work it. Nay, it is certain that the
enterprise would be neglected if each ounce of gold absorbed more of our
labour than an ounce of gold purchased abroad with cloth. In this case
we should do better to find our mines in our workshops. And what is true
of gold is true of iron.
The illusion proceeds from our failure to see one thing, which is, that
foreign superiority never puts a stop to national industry, except under
a determinate form, and under that form only renders it superfluous by
placing at our disposal the result of the very labour thus superseded.
If men lived in diving-bells under water, and had to provide themselves
with air by means of a pump, this would be a great source of employment.
To throw obstacles in the way of such employment, as long as men were
left in this condition would be to inflict upon them a frightful injury.
But if the labour ceases because the necessity for its exertion
no longer exists, because men are placed in a medium where air is
introduced into their lungs without effort, then the loss of that
labour is not to be regretted, except in the eyes of men who obstinately
persist in seeing in labour nothing but labour in the abstract.
It is exactly this kind of labour which machinery, commercial freedom,
progress of every kind, gradually supersedes; not useful labour, but
labour become superfluous, without object, and without result. On the
contrary, protection sets that sort of useless labour to work; it places
us again under water, to bring the air-pump into play; it forces us to
apply for gold to the inaccessible national mine, rather than to
the national workshops. All the effect is expressed by the words,
depredation of forces.
It will be understood that I am speaking here of general effects, not
of the temporary inconvenience which is always caused by the transition
from a bad system to a good one. A momentary derangement accompanies
necessarily all progress. This may be a reason for making the transition
gently and gradually. It is no reason for putting a stop systematically
to all progress, still less for misunderstanding it.
Industry is often represented as a struggle. That is not a true
representation of it, or only true when we confine ourselves to the
consideration of each branch of industry in its effects upon similar
branches, regarding them both in thought apart from the interests of the
rest of mankind. But there is always something else to be considered,
namely, the effects upon consumption, and upon general prosperity.
It is an error to apply to trade, as is but too often done, phrases
which are applicable to war.
In war the stronger overcomes the weaker.
In industry the stronger imparts force to the weaker. This entirely does
away with the analogy.
Let the English be as powerful and skilful as they are represented, let
them be possessed of as large an amount of capital, and have as great
a command of the two great agents of production, iron and fuel, as they
are supposed to have; all this simply means cheapness. And who gains by
the cheapness of products? The man who buys them.
It is not in their power to annihilate any part whatever of our national
labour. All they can do is to render it superfluous in the production of
what is acquired by exchange, to furnish us with air without the aid of
the pump, to enlarge in this way our disposable forces, and so render
their alleged domination as much more impossible as their superiority
becomes more incontestable.
Thus, by a rigorous and consoling demonstration, we arrive at this
conclusion, that labour and violence, which are so opposite in their
nature, are not less so in their effects.
All we are called upon to do is to distinguish between labour
annihilated, and labour economized.
To have less iron because we work less, and to have less iron although
we work less, are things not only different, but opposed to each other.
The protectionists confound them; we do not. That is all.
We may be very certain of one thing, that if the English employ a large
amount of activity, labour, capital, intelligence, and natural forces,
it is not done for show. It is done in order to procure a multitude of
enjoyments in exchange for their products. They most certainly expect
to receive at least as much as they give. _What they produce at home is
destined to pay for what they purchase abroad_. If they inundate us with
their products, it is because they expect to be inundated with ours in
return. That being so, the best means of having much for ourselves is
to be free to choose between these two modes of acquisition, immediate
production, and mediate production. British Machiavelism cannot force us
to make a wrong choice.
Let us give up, then, the puerility of applying to industrial
competition phrases applicable to war,--a way of speaking which is
only specious when applied to competition between two rival trades. The
moment we come to take into account the effect produced on the general
prosperity, the analogy disappears.
In a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much the strength
of the army. In industry, a workshop is shut up only when what it
produced is obtained by the public from another source and in greater
abundance. Figure a state of things where for one man killed on the spot
two should rise up full of life and vigour. Were such a state of things
possible, war would no longer merit its name.
This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so absurdly
called industrial war.
Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of their iron ever
so much; let them, if they will, send it to us for nothing; this
might extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but immediately, and as
a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, there would rise up a
thousand other branches of industry more profitable than the one which
had been superseded.
We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labour is
impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all superiority
which manifests itself among a people means cheapness, and tends only to
impart force to all other nations. Let us banish, then, from political
economy all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: to fight with
equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion,
tribute, etc. What do such phrases mean? Squeeze them, and you obtain
nothing... Yes, you do obtain something; for from such words proceed
absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices. Such phrases tend to
arrest the fusion of nations, are inimical to their peaceful, universal,
and indissoluble alliance, and retard the progress of the human race.
THE END.