Economic Sophisms/Chapter 4
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"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. 0 "'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 Template:Hws Template:Hwe 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 Template:SIC from our exertions. In this will consist our loss. Lahour 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-laughing, 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 eke 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."[1]
IF anyone 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 anyone says that agriculture is the nursing-mother of the country,
Reply: "What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but corn."
If anyone tells you that the basis of the food of the people is agriculture,
Reply: "The basis of the people's food is com. 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 com, 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, bœuf 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:
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Template:FqmQuand on n'a pas de quoi payer son terme, |
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 Template:Hws Template:Hwe, 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."
THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT.
REPORT ADDRESSED TO THE KING.SIRE,
Template:GapWhen 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.
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 distinguếes 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 ex- change 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 Dexteristes, 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 exhaustless 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.
"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 tie 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, deperdition 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 Template:Hws 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.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD. capital, are in little request in B, and will soon fall in price there.
Nor is this all. While A is always selling, and B is always buying, money passes from B to A. It becomes abundant in A, and scarce in B.
But abundance of money means that we must have plenty of it to buy everything else. Then in A, to the real dearness which arises from a very active demand, there is added a nominal dearness, which is due to a redundancy of the precious metals.
Scarcity of money means that little is required for each purchase. Then in B a nominal cheapness comes to be combined with real cheapness.
In these circumstances, industry will have all sorts of motives—motives, if I may say so, carried to the highest degree of intensity—to desert A and establish itself in B.
Or, to come nearer what would actually take place under such circumstances, we may affirm that sudden displacements being so repugnant to the nature of industry, such a transfer would not have been so long delayed, but that from the beginning, under the free régime, it would have gradually and progressively shared and distributed itself between A and B, according to the laws of supply and demand—that is to say, according to the laws of justice and utility.
And when I assert that if it were possible for industry to concentrate itself upon one point, that very circumstance would set in motion an irresistible decentralizing force, I indulge in no idle hypothesis.
Let us listen to what was said by a manufacturer in addressing the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (I omit the figures by which he supported his demonstration):—
"Formerly we exported stuffs; then that exportation gave place to that of yarns, which are the raw material of stuffs; then to that of machines, which are the instruments for producing yarn; afterwards to the exportation of the capital with which we construct our machines; finally, to that of our workmen and our industrial skill, which are the source of our capital. All these elements of labour, one after the other, are set to work wherever they find the most advantageous opening, wherever the expense of living is cheaper and the necessaries Economic Sophisms/Chapter 41 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 42 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 43 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 44 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 45 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 46 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 47 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 48 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 49 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 50 Economic Sophisms/Chapter 51
- ↑ See ch. ii. and iii. of Sophimes, first series; and Harmonies Économiques, ch. vi.