What Is Free Trade? Part 10

Imagination takes fright in the effort to appreciate the immense multiplicity of articles which must cross the Bay, the Hudson, the Harlem, and the East rivers, to-morrow, if the lives of its inhabitants are not to become the prey of famine, riot, and pillage.

Yet, as we write, all are sleeping; and their quiet slumbers are not disturbed for a moment by the thought of so frightful a perspective.

On the other hand, forty-five States and Territories have worked to-day, without concert, without mutual understanding, to provision New York. How is it that every day brings in what is needed, neither more nor less, to this gigantic market? What is the intelligent and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated--a regularity in which each one has a faith so undoubting, though comfort and life are at stake.

This power is an _absolute principle_, the principle of freedom of operation, the principle of free conduct.

We have faith in that innate light which Providence has placed in the hearts of all men, to which he has confided the preservation and improvement of our race-_interest_ (since we must call it by its name), which is so active, so vigilant, so provident, when its action is free. What would become of you, inhabitants of New York, if a Congressional majority should take a fancy to subst.i.tute for this power the combinations of their genius, however superior it may be supposed to be; if they imagined they could submit this prodigious mechanism to its supreme direction, unite all its resources in their own hands, and decide when, where, how, and on what conditions everything should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed?

Ah! though there may be much suffering within your bounds, though misery, despair, and perhaps hungry exhaustion may cause more tears to flow than your ardent charity can dry, it is probable, it is certain, we dare to affirm, that the arbitrary intervention of government would multiply these sufferings infinitely, and would extend to you all, those evils which at present are confined to a small portion of your number.

We all have faith in this principle where our internal transactions are concerned; why should we not have faith in the same principle applied to our international operations, which are, a.s.suredly, less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated. And if it is not necessary that the Mayor and Common Council of New York should regulate our industries, weigh our change, our profits, and our losses, occupy themselves with the regulation of prices, equalize the conditions of our labor in internal commerce--why is it necessary that the custom-house, proceeding on its fiscal mission, should pretend to exercise protective action upon our exterior commerce?

CHAPTER XIX.

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE.

Among the arguments which are considered of weight in favor of the restriction system, we must not forget that drawn from national independence.

"What shall we do in case of war," say they, "if we have placed ourselves at the mercy of Great Britain for iron and coal?"

English monopolists did not fail on their side to exclaim, when the corn-laws were repealed, "What will become of Great Britain in time of war if she depends on the United States for food?"

One thing they fail to observe: it is that this sort of dependence, which results from exchange, from commercial operations, is a _reciprocal_ dependence. We cannot depend on the foreigner unless the foreigner depends on us. This is the very essence of _society_. We do not place ourselves in a state of independence by breaking natural relations, but in a state of isolation.

Remark also: we isolate ourselves in the antic.i.p.ation of war; but the very act of isolation is the commencement of war. It renders it more easy, less burdensome, therefore less unpopular. Let nations become permanent recipient customers each of the other, let the interruption of their relations inflict upon them the double suffering of privation and surfeit, and they will no longer require the powerful navies which ruin them, the great armies which crush them; the peace of the world will no longer be compromised by the caprice of a Napoleon or of a Bismarck, and war will disappear through lack of aliment, resources, motive, pretext, and popular sympathy.

We know well that we shall be reproached (in the cant of the day) for proposing interest, vile and prosaic interest, as a foundation for the fraternity of nations. It would be preferred that it should have its foundation in charity, in love, even in self-renunciation, and that, demolishing the material comfort of man, it should have the merit of a generous sacrifice.

When shall we have done with such puerile talk? When shall we banish charlatanry from science? When shall we cease to manifest this disgusting contradiction between our writings and our conduct? We hoot at and spit upon _interest_, that is to say, the useful, the right (for to say that all nations are interested in a thing, is to say that that thing is good in itself), as if interest were not the necessary, eternal, indestructible instrument to which Providence has intrusted human perfectibility. Would not one suppose us all angels of disinterestedness? And is it supposed that the public does not see with disgust that this affected language blackens precisely those pages for which it is compelled to pay highest? Affectation is truly the malady of this age.

What! because comfort and peace are correlative things; because it has pleased G.o.d to establish this beautiful harmony in the moral world; you are not willing that we should admire and adore His providence, and accept with grat.i.tude laws which make justice the condition of happiness. You wish peace only so far as it is destructive to comfort; and liberty burdens you because it imposes no sacrifices on you. If self-renunciation has so many claims for you, who prevents your carrying it into private life? Society will be grateful to you for it, for some one, at least, will receive the benefit of it; but to wish to impose it on humanity as a principle is the height of absurdity, for the abnegation of everything is the sacrifice of everything--it is evil set up in theory.

But, thank Heaven, men may write and read a great deal of such talk, without causing the world to refrain on that account from rendering obedience to its motive-power, which is, whether they will or no, _interest_. After all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of the most sublime abnegation invoked in favor of plunder itself. Just see to what this ostentatious disinterestedness tends. These men, so poetically delicate that they do not wish for peace itself, if it is founded on the base interest of men, put their hands in the pockets of others, and, above all, of the poor; for what section of the tariff protects the poor?

Well, gentlemen, dispose according to your own judgment of what belongs to yourselves, but allow us also to dispose of the fruit of the sweat of our brows, to avail ourselves of exchange at our own pleasure. Talk away about self-renunciation, for that is beautiful; but at the same time practice a little honesty.

CHAPTER XX.

HUMAN LABOR--NATIONAL LABOR.

To break machines, to reject foreign merchandise--are two acts proceeding from the same doctrine.

We see men who clap their hands when a great invention is made known to the world, who nevertheless adhere to the protective system. Such men are highly inconsistent.

With what do they upbraid freedom of commerce? With getting foreigners more skilful or better situated than ourselves to produce articles, which, but for them, we should produce ourselves. In one word, they accuse us of damaging national labor.

Might they not as well reproach machines for accomplishing, by natural agents, work which, without them, we could perform with our own arms, and, in consequence, damaging human labor?

The foreign workman who is more favorably situated than the American laborer, is, in respect to the latter, a veritable economic machine, which injures him by compet.i.tion. In the same manner, a machine which executes a piece of work at a less price than can be done by a certain number of arms, is, relatively to those arms, a true competing foreigner, who paralyzes them by his rivalry.

If, then, it is needful to protect national labor against the compet.i.tion of foreign labor, it is not less so, to protect human labor against the rivalry of mechanical labor.

So, he who adheres to the protective policy, if he has but a small amount of logic in his brain, must not stop when he has prohibited foreign products; he must farther proscribe the shuttle and the plough.

And that is the reason why we prefer the logic of those men who, declaiming against the invasion of exotic merchandise, have, at least, the courage to declaim as well against the excess of production due to the inventive power of the human mind.

Hear such a Conservative:--"One of the strongest arguments against liberty of commerce, and the too great employment of machines, is, that very many workmen are deprived of work, either by foreign compet.i.tion, which is destructive to their manufactures, or by machines, which take the place of men in the workshops."

This gentleman perfectly sees the a.n.a.logy, or rather, let us say, the ident.i.ty, existing between importations and machines; that is the reason he proscribes both: and truly there is some pleasure in having to do with reasonings, which, even in error, pursue an argument to the end.

Let us look at the difficulty in the way of its soundness.

If it be true, _a priori_, that the domain of _invention_ and that of labor cannot be extended, except at the expense of one or the other, it is in the place where there are most machines, Lancaster or Lowell, for example, that we shall meet with the fewest _workmen_. And if, on the contrary, we prove _a fact_, that mechanical and hand work co-exist in a greater degree among wealthy nations than among savages, we must necessarily conclude that these two powers do not exclude each other.

It is not easy to explain how a thinking being can taste repose in presence of this dilemma:

Either--"The inventions of man do not injure labor, as general facts attest, since there are more of both among the English and Americans than among the Hottentots and Cherokees. In that case I have made a false reckoning, though I know neither where nor when I got astray. I should commit the crime of treason to humanity if I should introduce my error into the legislation of my country."

Or else--"The discoveries of the mind limit the work of the arms, as some particular facts seem to indicate; for I see daily a machine do the labor of from twenty to a hundred workmen, and thus I am forced to prove a flagrant, eternal, incurable ant.i.thesis between the intellectual and physical ability of man; between his progress and his comfort; and I cannot forbear saying that the Creator of man ought to have given him either reason or arms, moral force, or brutal force, but that he has played with him in conferring upon him opposing faculties which destroy one another."

The difficulty is pressing. Do you know how they get rid of it? By this singular apothegm:

"In political economy there are no absolute principles."

In intelligible and vulgar language, that means: "I do not know where is the true nor the false; I am ignorant of what const.i.tutes general good or evil; I give myself no trouble about it. The only law which I consent to recognize, is the immediate effect of each measure upon my personal comfort."

No absolute principles! You might as well say, there are no absolute facts; for principles are only the summing up of well proven facts.

Machines, importations, have certainly consequences. These consequences are good or bad. On this point there may be difference of opinion. But whichever of these we adopt, we express it in one of these two _principles_: "machines are a benefit," or "machines are an evil." "Importations are favorable," or "importations are injurious."

But to say "there are no principles," is the lowest degree of abas.e.m.e.nt to which the human mind can descend; and we confess we blush for our country when we hear so monstrous a heresy uttered in the presence of the American people, with their consent; that is to say, in the presence and with the consent of the greater part of our fellow-citizens, in order to justify Congress for imposing laws on us, in perfect ignorance of the reasons for them or against them.

But then we shall be told, "destroy _the sophism_; prove that machines do not injure _human labor_, nor importations _national industry_."

In an essay of this nature such demonstrations cannot be complete. Our aim is more to propose difficulties than to solve them; to excite reflection, than to satisfy it. No conviction of the mind is well acquired, excepting that which it gains by its own labor. We will try, nevertheless, to place it before you.

The opponents of importations and machines are mistaken, because they judge by immediate and transitory consequences, instead of looking at general and final ones.

The immediate effect of an ingenious machine is to economize, towards a given result, a certain amount of handwork. But its action does not stop there: inasmuch as this result is obtained with less effort, it is given to the public for a lower price; and the amount of the savings thus realized by all the purchasers, enables them to procure other gratifications--that is to say, to encourage handwork in general, equal in amount to that subtracted from the special handwork lately improved upon--so that the level of work has not fallen, though that of gratification has risen. Let us make this connection of consequences evident by an example.

Suppose that in the United States ten millions of hats are sold at five dollars each: this affords to the hatters' trade an income of fifty millions. A machine is invented which allows hats to be afforded at three dollars each. The receipts are reduced to thirty millions, admitting that the consumption does not increase. But, for all that, the other twenty millions are not subtracted from _human labor_.

Economized by the purchasers of hats, they will serve them in satisfying other needs, and by consequence will, to that amount, remunerate collective industry. With these two dollars saved, John will purchase a pair of shoes, James a book, William a piece of furniture, etc. Human labor, in the general, will thus continue to be encouraged to the amount of fifty millions; but this sum, beside giving the same number of hats as before, will add the gratifications obtained by the twenty millions which the machine has spared. These gratifications are the net products which America has gained by the invention. It is a gratuitous gift, a tax, which the genius of man has imposed on Nature. We do not deny that, in the course of the change, a certain amount of labor may have been _displaced_; but we cannot agree that it has been destroyed, or even diminished. The same holds true of importations.