Sophisms of the Protectionists — 02 - First Series Part 2

OBSTACLE--CAUSE.

The obstacle mistaken for the cause--scarcity mistaken for abundance.

The sophism is the same.

It is well to study it under every aspect.

Man naturally is in a state of entire destitution.

Between this state and the satisfying of his wants, there exists a multitude of _obstacles_ which it is the object of labor to surmount.

It is interesting to seek how and why he could have been led to look even upon these obstacles to his happiness as the cause of it.

I wish to take a journey of some hundred miles.

But, between the point of my departure and my destination, there are interposed, mountains, rivers, swamps, forests, robbers--in a word, _obstacles_; and to conquer these obstacles, it is necessary that I should bestow much labor and great efforts in opposing them;--or, what is the same thing, if others do it for me, I must pay them the value of their exertions.

It is evident that I should have been better off had these obstacles never existed.

Through the journey of life, in the long series of days from the cradle to the tomb, man has many difficulties to oppose him in his progress.

Hunger, thirst, sickness, heat, cold, are so many obstacles scattered along his road.

In a state of isolation, he would be obliged to combat them all by hunting, fishing, agriculture, spinning, weaving, architecture, etc. , and it is very evident that it would be better for him that these difficulties should exist to a less degree, or even not at all.

In a state of society he is not obliged, personally, to struggle with each of these obstacles, but others do it for him; and he, in return, must remove some one of them for the benefit of his fellow-men.

Again it is evident, that, considering mankind as a whole, it would be better for society that these obstacles should be as weak and as few as possible.

But if we examine closely and in detail the phenomena of society, and the private interests of men as modified by exchange of produce, we perceive, without difficulty, how it has happened that wants have been confounded with riches, and the obstacle with the cause.

The separation of occupations, which results from the habits of exchange, causes each man, instead of struggling against all surrounding obstacles to combat only _one_; the effort being made not for himself alone, but for the benefit of his fellows, who, in their turn, render a similar service to him.

Now, it hence results, that this man looks upon the obstacle which he has made it his profession to combat for the benefit of others, as the immediate cause of his riches.

The greater, the more serious, the more stringent may be this obstacle, the more he is remunerated for the conquering of it, by those who are relieved by his labors.

A physician, for instance, does not busy himself in baking his bread, or in manufacturing his clothing and his instruments; others do it for him, and he, in return, combats the maladies with which his patients are afflicted.

The more dangerous and frequent these maladies are, the more others are willing, the more, even, are they forced, to work in his service.

Disease, then, which is an obstacle to the happiness of mankind, becomes to him the source of his comforts.

The reasoning of all producers is, in what concerns themselves, the same.

As the doctor draws his profits from disease, so does the ship owner from the obstacle called _distance_; the agriculturist from that named _hunger_; the cloth manufacturer from _cold_; the schoolmaster lives upon _ignorance_, the jeweler upon _vanity_, the lawyer upon _quarrels_, the notary upon _breach of faith_.

Each profession has then an immediate interest in the continuation, even in the extension, of the particular obstacle to which its attention has been directed.

Theorists hence go on to found a system upon these individual interests, and say: Wants are riches: Labor is riches: The obstacle to well-being is well-being: To multiply obstacles is to give food to industry.

Then comes the statesman;--and as the developing and propagating of obstacles is the developing and propagating of riches, what more natural than that he should bend his efforts to that point?

He says, for instance: If we prevent a large importation of iron, we create a difficulty in procuring it.

This obstacle severely felt, obliges individuals to pay, in order to relieve themselves from it.

A certain number of our citizens, giving themselves up to the combating of this obstacle, will thereby make their fortunes.

In proportion, too, as the obstacle is great, and the mineral scarce, inaccessible, and of difficult and distant transportation, in the same proportion will be the number of laborers maintained by the various branches of this industry.

The same reasoning will lead to the suppression of machinery.

Here are men who are at a loss how to dispose of their wine-harvest.

This is an obstacle which other men set about removing for them by the manufacture of casks.

It is fortunate, say our statesmen, that this obstacle exists, since it occupies a portion of the labor of the nation, and enriches a certain number of our citizens.

But here is presented to us an ingenious machine, which cuts down the oak, squares it, makes it into staves, and, gathering these together, forms them into casks.

The obstacle is thus diminished, and with it the profits of the coopers.

We must prevent this.

Let us proscribe the machine!

To sift thoroughly this sophism, it is sufficient to remember that human labor is not an _end_, but a _means_.

_It is never without employment.

_ If one obstacle is removed, it seizes another, and mankind is delivered from two obstacles by the same effort which was at first necessary for one.

If the labor of coopers becomes useless, it must take another direction.

But with what, it may be asked, will they be remunerated?

Precisely with what they are at present remunerated.

For if a certain quantity of labor becomes free from its original occupation, to be otherwise disposed of, a corresponding quantity of wages must thus also become free.

To maintain that human labor can end by wanting employment, it would be necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter obstacles.

In such a case, labor would be not only impossible, it would be superfluous.

We should have nothing to do, because we should be all-powerful, and our _fiat_ alone would satisfy at once our wants and our desires.

III. EFFORT--RESULT.

We have seen that between our wants and their gratification many obstacles are interposed.

We conquer or weaken these by the employment of our faculties.

It may be said, in general terms, that industry is an effort followed by a result.

But by what do we measure our well-being?

By the _result_ of our effort, or by the _effort itself_?

There exists always a proportion between the effort employed and the result obtained.

Does progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the first term of this proportion?

Both propositions have been sustained, and in political economy opinions are divided between them.

According to the first system, riches are the result of labor.

They increase in the same ratio as _the result does to the effort_.

Absolute perfection, of which _God_ is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz.

, effort none, result infinite.

The second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forms the measure of, and constitutes, our riches.

Progression is the increase of the _proportion of the effort to the result_.

Its ideal extreme may be represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of Sisyphus.

[7] [Footnote 7: We will therefore beg the reader to allow us in future, for the sake of conciseness, to designate this system under the term of _Sisyphism_.

] The first system tends naturally to the encouragement of every thing which diminishes difficulties, and augments production,--as powerful machinery, which adds to the strength of man; the exchange of produce, which allows us to profit by the various natural agents distributed in different degrees over the surface of our globe; the intellect which discovers, experience which proves, and emulation which excites.

The second as logically inclines to every thing which can augment the difficulty and diminish the product; as privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, suppression of machinery, sterility, etc. It is well to remark here that the universal practice of men is always guided by the principle of the first system.

Every _workman_, whether agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher, devotes the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically,--in a word, _to do more with less_.

The opposite doctrine is in use with legislators, editors, statesmen, men whose business is to make experiments upon society.

And even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns _themselves_, they act, like every body else, upon the principle of obtaining from their labor the greatest possible quantity of useful results.

It may be supposed that I exaggerate, and that there are no true _Sisyphists_.

I grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extremest consequences.

And this must always be the case when one starts upon a wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it leads, cannot but check it in its progress.

For this reason, practical industry never can admit of _Sisyphism_.

The error is too quickly followed by its punishment to remain concealed.

But in the speculative industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences, only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted, and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom, that in political economy there is no principle universally true.

Let us see then, if the two opposite principles I have laid down do not predominate, each in its turn;--the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation.

I have already quoted some words of Mr. Bugeaud; but we must look on Mr. Bugeaud in two separate characters, the agriculturist and the legislator.

As agriculturist, Mr. Bugeaud makes every effort to attain the double object of sparing labor, and obtaining bread cheap.

When he prefers a good plough to a bad one, when he improves the quality of his manures;

when, to loosen his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz.

, _to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result_.

We have indeed no other means of judging of the success of an agriculturist, or of the merits of his system, but by observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other article of produce they may need, always diminishing the effort necessary for obtaining any given quantity thereof.

This incontestable tendency of human nature, once proved, would, one might suppose, be sufficient to point out the true principle to the legislator, and to show him how he ought to assist industry (if indeed it is any part of his business to assist it at all), for it would be absurd to say that the laws of men should operate in an inverse ratio from those of Providence.

Yet we have heard Mr. Bugeaud in his character of legislator, exclaim, "I do not understand this theory of cheapness; I would rather see bread dear, and work more abundant."

And consequently the deputy from Dordogne votes in favor of legislative measures whose effect is to shackle and impede commerce, precisely because by so doing we are prevented from procuring by exchange, and at low price, what direct production can only furnish more expensively.

Now it is very evident that the system of Mr. Bugeaud the deputy, is directly opposed to that of Mr. Bugeaud the agriculturist.

Were he consistent with himself, he would as legislator vote against all restriction; or else as farmer, he would practice in his fields the same principle which he proclaims in the public councils.

We should then see him sowing his grain in his most sterile fields, because he would thus succeed in _laboring much_, to _obtain little_.

We should see him forbidding the use of the plough, because he could, by scratching up the soil with his nails, fully gratify his double wish of "_dear bread_ and _abundant labor_."

Restriction has for its avowed object, and acknowledged effect, the augmentation of labor.

And again, equally avowed and acknowledged, its object and effect are, the increase of prices;--a synonymous term for scarcity of produce.

Pushed then to its greatest extreme, it is pure _Sisyphism_ as we have defined it: _labor infinite; result nothing_.

Baron Charles Dupin, who is looked upon as the oracle of the peerage in the science of political economy, accuses railroads of _injuring shipping_, and it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an object must always limit the use of a less perfect means.

But railways can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles of transportation; this they can only do by transporting more cheaply; and they can only transport more cheaply, by _diminishing the proportion of the effort employed to the result obtained_; for it is in this that cheapness consists.

When, therefore, Baron Dupin laments the suppression of labor in attaining a given result, he maintains the doctrine of _Sisyphism_.

Logically, if he prefers the vessel to the railway, he should also prefer the wagon to the vessel, the pack-saddle to the wagon, and the wallet to the pack-saddle; for this is, of all known means of transportation, the one which requires the greatest amount of labor, in proportion to the result obtained.

"Labor constitutes the riches of the people," said Mr. de Saint Cricq, a minister who has laid not a few shackles upon our commerce.

This was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor constitute the riches of the people."

No,--this statesman intended to say, that it is the _intensity_ of labor, which measures riches; and the proof of this is, that from step to step, from restriction to restriction, he forced on France (and in so doing believed that he was doing well) to give to the procuring, of, for instance, a certain quantity of iron, double the necessary labor.

In England, iron was then at eight francs; in France it cost sixteen.

Supposing the day's work to be worth one franc, it is evident that France could, by barter, procure a quintal of iron by eight days' labor taken from the labor of the nation.

Thanks to the restrictive measures of Mr. de Saint Cricq, sixteen days' work were necessary to procure it, by direct production.

Here then we have double labor for an identical result; therefore double riches; and riches, measured not by the result, but by the intensity of labor.

Is not this pure and unadulterated _Sisyphism_?

That there may be nothing equivocal, the minister carries his idea still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard him call the intensity of labor _riches_, we will find him calling the abundant results of labor, and the plenty of every thing proper to the satisfying of our wants, _poverty_.

"Every where," he remarks, "machinery has pushed aside manual labor; every where production is superabundant;

every where the equilibrium is destroyed between the power of production and that of consumption."

Here then we see that, according to Mr. de Saint Cricq, if France was in a critical situation, it was because her productions were too abundant; there was too much intelligence, too much efficiency in her national labor.

We were too well fed, too well clothed, too well supplied with every thing; the rapid production was more than sufficient for our wants.

It was necessary to put an end to this calamity, and therefore it became needful to force us, by restrictions, to work more, in order to produce less.

I also touched upon an opinion expressed by another minister of commerce, Mr. d'Argout, which is worthy of being a little more closely looked into.

Wishing to give a death blow to the beet, he said: "The culture of the beet is undoubtedly useful, _but this usefulness is limited_.

It is not capable of the prodigious developments which have been predicted of it.

To be convinced of this it is enough to remark that the cultivation of it must necessarily be confined within the limits of consumption.

Double, treble if you will, the present consumption of France, and _you will still find that a very small portion of her soil will suffice for this consumption_.

(Truly a most singular cause of complaint!

) Do you wish the proof of this?

How many hectares were planted in beets in the year 1828?

3,130, which is 1-10540th of our cultivable soil.

How many are there at this time, when our domestic sugar supplies one-third of the consumption of the country?

16,700 hectares, or 1-1978th of the cultivable soil, or 45 centiares for each commune.

Suppose that our domestic sugar should monopolize the supply of the whole consumption, we still would have but 48,000 hectares or 1-689th of our cultivable soil in beets."

[8] [Footnote 8: In justice to Mr. d'Argout we should say that this singular language is given by him as the argument of the enemies of the beet.

But he made it his own, and sanctioned it by the law in justification of which he adduced it.

] There are two things to consider in this quotation.

The facts and the doctrine.

The facts go to prove that very little soil, capital, and labor would be necessary for the production of a large quantity of sugar; and that each commune of France would be abundantly provided with it by giving up one hectare to its cultivation.

The peculiarity of the doctrine consists in the looking upon this facility of production as an unfortunate circumstance, and the regarding the very fruitfulness of this new branch of industry as a _limitation to its usefulness_.

It is not my purpose here to constitute myself the defender of the beet, or the judge of the singular facts stated by Mr. d'Argout, but it is worth the trouble of examining into the doctrines of a statesman, to whose judgment France, for a long time, confided the fate of her agriculture and her commerce.

I began by saying that a variable proportion exists in all industrial pursuits, between the effort and the result.

Absolute imperfection consists in an infinite effort, without any result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result, without any effort; and perfectibility, in the progressive diminution of the effort, compared with the result.

But Mr. d'Argout tells us, that where we looked for life, we shall find only death.

The importance of any object of industry is, according to him, in direct proportion to its feebleness.

What, for instance, can we expect from the beet?

Do you not see that 48,000 hectares of land, with capital and labor in proportion, will suffice to furnish sugar to all France?

It is then an object of _limited usefulness_; limited, be it understood, in the _work_ which it calls for; and this is the sole measure, according to our minister, of the usefulness of any pursuit.

This usefulness would be much more limited still, if, thanks to the fertility of the soil, or the richness of the beet, 24,000 hectares would serve instead of 48,000. If there were only needed twenty times, a hundred times more soil, more capital, more labor, to _attain the same result_--Oh!

then some hopes might be founded upon this article of industry; it would be worthy of the protection of the state, for it would open a vast field to national labor.

But to produce much with little is a bad example, and the laws ought to set things to rights.

What is true with regard to sugar, cannot be false with regard to bread.

If therefore the usefulness of an object of industry is to be calculated, not by the comforts which it can furnish with a certain quantum of labor, but, on the contrary, by the increase of labor which it requires in order to furnish a certain quantity of comforts, it is evident that we ought to desire, that each acre of land should produce little corn, and that each grain of corn should furnish little nutriment; in other words, that our territory should be sterile enough to require a considerably larger proportion of soil, capital, and labor to nourish its population.

The demand for human labor could not fail to be in direct proportion to this sterility, and then truly would the wishes of Messrs. Bugeaud, Saint Cricq, Dupin, and d'Argout be satisfied; bread would be dear, work abundant, and France would be rich--rich according to the understanding of these gentlemen.

All that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists, it can but seek continually to increase the _proportion of the end to the means; of the product to the labor_.

Indeed it is in this continuous effort, and in this alone, that intellect consists.

_Sisyphism_ has then been the doctrine of all those who have been intrusted with the regulation of the industry of our country.

It would not be just to reproach them with this; for this principle becomes that of our ministry, only because it prevails in the chambers; it prevails in the chambers, only because it is sent there by the electoral body;

and the electoral body is imbued with it, only because public opinion is filled with it to repletion.

Let me repeat here, that I do not accuse such men as Messrs. Bugeaud, Dupin, Saint Cricq, and d'Argout, of being absolutely and always _Sisyphists_.

Very certainly they are not such in their personal transactions; very certainly each one of them will procure for himself _by barter_, what by _direct production_ would be attainable only at a higher price.

But I maintain that they are _Sisyphists_ when they prevent the country from acting upon the same principle.