Sophisms of the Protectionists Part 36

Reply: Thank you, kindly.

--If they say to you: Our merchant marine must have freight; owing to the lack of return cargoes our vessels cannot compete with foreign ones--

Reply: When you want to do everything at home, you can have cargoes neither going nor coming. It is as absurd to wish for a navy under a prohibitory system as to wish for carts where all transportation is forbidden.

--If they say to you: Supposing that protection is unjust, everything is founded on it; there are moneys invested, and rights acquired, and it cannot be abandoned without suffering--

Reply: Every injustice profits some one (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run profits no one), and to use as an argument the disturbance which the cessation of the injustice causes to the person profiting by it, is to say that an injustice, only because it has existed for a moment, should be eternal.

XVI.

THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT HAND.

[_Report to the King._]

SIRE--When we see these men of the _Libre Echange_ audaciously disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied by that of ownership (a piece of insolence that M. Billault has criticised like a true lawyer), we may be allowed to entertain serious fears as to the destiny of _national labor_; for what will Frenchmen do with their arms and intelligences when they are free?

The Ministry which you have honored with your confidence has naturally paid great attention to so serious a subject, and has sought in its wisdom for a _protection_ which might be subst.i.tuted for that which appears compromised. It proposes to you to forbid your faithful subjects the use of the right hand.

Sire, do not wrong us so far as to think that we lightly adopted a measure which, at the first glance, may appear odd. Deep study of the _protective system_ has revealed to us this syllogism, on which it entirely rests:

The more one labors, the richer one is.

The more difficulties one has to conquer, the more one labors.

_Ergo_, the more difficulties one has to conquer, the richer one is.

What is _protection_, really, but an ingenious application of this formal reasoning, which is so compact that it would resist the subtlety of M. Billault himself?

Let us personify the country. Let us look on it as a collective being, with thirty million mouths, and, consequently, sixty million arms. This being makes a clock, which he proposes to exchange in Belgium for ten quintals of iron. "But," we say to him, "make the iron yourself." "I cannot," says he; "it would take me too much time, and I could not make five quintals while I can make one clock." "Utopist!" we reply; "for this very reason we forbid your making the clock, and order you to make the iron. Do not you see that we create you labor?"

Sire, it will not have escaped your sagacity, that it is just as if we said to the country, _Labor with the left hand, and not with the right_.

The creation of obstacles to furnish labor an opportunity to develop itself, is the principle of the _restriction_ which is dying. It is also the principle of the _restriction_ which is about to be created. Sire, to make such regulations is not to innovate, but to preserve.

The efficacy of the measure is incontestable. It is difficult--much more difficult than one thinks--to do with the left hand what one was accustomed to do with the right. You will convince yourself of it, Sire, if you will condescend to try our system on something which is familiar to you,--like shuffling cards, for instance. We can then flatter ourselves that we have opened an illimitable career to labor.

When workmen of all kinds are reduced to their left hands, consider, Sire, the immense number that will be required to meet the present consumption, supposing it to be invariable, which we always do when we compare differing systems of production. So prodigious a demand for manual labor cannot fail to bring about a considerable increase in wages; and pauperism will disappear from the country as if by enchantment.

Sire, your paternal heart will rejoice at the thought that the benefits of this regulation will extend over that interesting portion of the great family whose fate excites your liveliest solicitude.

What is the destiny of women in France? That s.e.x which is the boldest and most hardened to fatigue, is, insensibly, driving them from all fields of labor.

Formerly they found a refuge in the lottery offices. These have been closed by a pitiless philanthropy; and under what pretext? "To save,"

said they, "the money of the poor." Alas! has a poor man ever obtained from a piece of money enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those which the mysterious urn of fortune contained for him? Cut off from all the sweets of life, how many delicious hours did he introduce into the bosom of his family when, every two weeks, he put the value of a day's labor on a _quatern_. Hope had always her place at the domestic hearth. The garret was peopled with illusions; the wife promised herself that she would eclipse her neighbors with the splendor of her attire; the son saw himself drum-major, and the daughter felt herself carried toward the altar in the arms of her betrothed. To have a beautiful dream is certainly something.

The lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have allowed it to escape them.

The lottery dead, what means have we of providing for our _proteges_?--tobacco, and the postal service.

Tobacco, certainly; it progresses, thanks to Heaven, and the distinguished habits which august examples have been enabled to introduce among our elegant youth.

But the postal service! We will say nothing of that, but make it the subject of a special report.

Then what is left to your female subjects except tobacco? Nothing, except embroidery, knitting, and sewing, pitiful resources, which are more and more restricted by that barbarous science, mechanics.

But as soon as your ordinance has appeared, as soon as the right hands are cut off or tied up, everything will change face. Twenty, thirty times more embroiderers, washers and ironers, seamstresses and shirt-makers, would not meet the consumption (_honi soit qui mal y pense_) of the kingdom; always a.s.suming that it is invariable, according to our way of reasoning.

It is true that this supposition might be denied by cold-blooded theorists, for dresses and shirts would be dearer. But they say the same thing of the iron which France gets from our mines, compared to the vintage it could get on our hillsides. This argument can, therefore, be no more entertained against _left-handedness_ than against _protection_; for this very dearness is the result and the sign of the excess of efforts and of labors, which is precisely the basis on which, in one case, as in the other, we claim to found the prosperity of the working cla.s.ses.

Yes, we make a touching picture of the prosperity of the sewing business. What movement! What activity! What life! Each dress will busy a hundred fingers instead of ten. No longer will there be an idle young girl, and we need not, Sire, point out to your perspicacity the moral results of this great revolution. Not only will there be more women employed, but each one of them will earn more, for they cannot meet the demand, and if compet.i.tion still shows itself, it will no longer be among the workingwomen who make the dresses, but the beautiful ladies who wear them.

You see, Sire, that our proposition is not only conformable to the economic traditions of the government, but it is also essentially moral and democratic.

To appreciate its effect, let us suppose it realized; let us transport ourselves in thought into the future; let us imagine the system in action for twenty years. Idleness is banished from the country; ease and concord, contentment and morality, have entered all families together with labor; there is no more misery and no more prost.i.tution.

The left hand being very clumsy at its work, there is a superabundance of labor, and the pay is satisfactory. Everything is based on this, and, as a consequence, the workshops are filled. Is it not true, Sire, that if Utopians were to suddenly demand the freedom of the right hand, they would spread alarm throughout the country? Is it not true that this pretended reform would overthrow all existences? Then our system is good, since it cannot be overthrown without causing great distress.

However, we have a sad presentiment that some day (so great is the perversity of man) an a.s.sociation will be organized to secure the liberty of right hands.

It seems to us that we already hear these free-right-handers speak as follows in the Salle Montesquieu:

"People, you believe yourselves richer because they have taken from you one hand; you see but the increase of labor which results to you from it. But look also at the dearness it causes, and the forced decrease in the consumption of all articles. This measure has not made capital, which is the source of wages, more abundant. The waters which flow from this great reservoir are directed into other channels; the quant.i.ty is not increased, and the definite result is, for the nation, as a whole, a loss of comfort equal to the excess of the production of several millions of right hands, over several millions of left hands. Then let us form a league, and, at the expense of some inevitable disturbances, let us conquer the right of working with both hands."

Happily, Sire, there will be organized an _a.s.sociation for the defense of left-handed labor_, and the _Sinistrists_ will have no trouble in reducing to nothing all these generalities and realities, suppositions and abstractions, reveries and Utopias. They need only to exhume the _Moniteur Industriel_ of 1846, and they will find, ready-made, arguments against _free trade_, which destroy so admirably this _liberty of the right hand_, that all that is required is to subst.i.tute one word for another.

"The Parisian _Free Trade_ League never doubted but that it would have the a.s.sistance of the workingmen. But the workingmen can no longer be led by the nose. They have their eyes open, and they know political economy better than our diplomaed professors. _Free trade_, they replied, will take from us our labor, and labor is our real, great, sovereign property; _with labor, with much labor, the price of articles of merchandise is never beyond reach_. But without labor, even if bread should cost but a penny a pound, the workingman is compelled to die of hunger. Now, your doctrines, instead of increasing the amount of labor in France, diminish it; that is to say, you reduce us to misery."

(Number of October 13, 1846.)

"It is true, that when there are too many manufactured articles to sell, their price falls; but as wages decrease when these articles sink in value, the result is, that, instead of being able to buy them, we can buy nothing. Thus, when they are cheapest, the workingman is most unhappy." (Gauthier de Rumilly, _Moniteur Industriel_ of November 17.)

It would not be ill for the Sinistrists to mingle some threats with their beautiful theories. This is a sample:

"What! to desire to subst.i.tute the labor of the right hand for that of the left, and thus to cause a forced reduction, if not an annihilation of wages, the sole resource of almost the entire nation!

"And this at the moment when poor harvests already impose painful sacrifices on the workingman, disquiet him as to his future, and make him more accessible to bad counsels and ready to abandon the wise course of conduct he had hitherto adhered to!"

We are confident, Sire, that thanks to such wise reasonings, if a struggle takes place, the left hand will come out of it victorious.

Perhaps, also, an a.s.sociation will be formed in order to ascertain whether the right and the left hand are not both wrong, and if there is not a third hand between them, in order to conciliate all.

After having described the _Dexterists_ as seduced by the _apparent liberality of a principle, the correctness of which has not yet been verified by experience_, and the _Sinistrists_ as encamping in the positions they have gained, it will say:

"And yet they deny that there is a third course to pursue in the midst of the conflict; and they do not see that the working cla.s.ses have to defend themselves, at the same moment, against those who wish to change nothing in the present situation, because they find their advantage in it, and against those who dream of an economic revolution of which they have calculated neither the extent nor the significance." (_National_ of October 16.)

We do not desire, however, to hide from your Majesty the fact that our plan has a vulnerable side. They may say to us: In twenty years all left hands will be as skilled as right ones are now, and you can no longer count on _left-handedness_ to increase the national labor.