Part 20

"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: