Machine breaking and the prohibition of foreign commodities — are two acts
founded on the same doctrine.
We see men who clap their hands when a great invention is introduced, and
who nevertheless adhere to the protectionist system. Such men are grossly
inconsistent!
With what do they reproach free trade? With encouraging the production by
foreigners who are more skilled or more favorably situated than we are, of
commodities that, but for free trade, would be produced at home. In a word,
they accuse free trade of being injurious to national labor?
For the same reason, should they not reproach machinery with accomplishing
by natural agents what otherwise would have been done by manual labor, and so
of being injurious to human labor?
The foreign workman, better and more favorably situated than the home
workman for the production of certain commodities, is, with reference to the
latter, a veritable economic machine, crushing him by competition. In like
manner, machinery, which executes a piece of work at a lower price than a
certain number of men could do by manual labor, is, in relation to these
manual laborers, a veritable foreign competitor, who paralyzes them by his
rivalry.
If, then, it is politic to protect national labor against the competition
of foreign labor, it is not less so to protect human labor against the
rivalry of mechanical labor.
Thus, every adherent of the system of protection, if he is logical, should
not content himself with prohibiting foreign products; he should proscribe
also the products of the shuttle and the plough.
And this is the reason why I like better the logic of those men who,
declaiming against the invasion of foreign merchandise, declaim likewise
against the excess of production that is due to the inventive power of the human
mind.
Such a man is Mr. de Saint-Chamans.
"One of the strongest arguments against free trade," he says,
"is the too extensive employment of machinery, for many workmen are
deprived of employment, either by foreign competition, which lowers the price
of our manufactured goods, or by instruments, which take the place of men in
our workshops."
Mr. de Saint-Chamans has seen clearly the analogy, or, we should rather
say, the identity, that obtains between imports and machinery. For this
reason, he proscribes both; and it is really agreeable to have to do with
such intrepid reasoners, who, even when wrong, carry out their argument to
its logical conclusion.
But here is the mess in which they land themselves: If it be true, a
priori, that the domain of invention and that of labor cannot be
simultaneously extended but at each other's expense, it must be in those
countries where machinery most abounds — in Lancashire, for example — that we
should expect to find the fewest workmen. And if, on the other hand, we establish
the fact that mechanical power and manual labor coexist, and to a greater
extent among rich nations than among savages, the conclusion is inevitable
that these two powers do not exclude each other.
I cannot understand how any thinking being can enjoy a moment's repose in
presence of the following dilemma: Either the inventions of man are not
injurious to manual labor, as general facts attest, since there are more of
both in England and France than among the Hurons and Cherokees, and, that
being so, I am on a wrong road, though I know neither where nor when I missed
my way; at all events, I see I am wrong, and I should commit the crime of
treason to humanity were I to introduce my error into the legislation of my
country!
Or else, the discoveries of the human mind limit the amount of manual
labor, as special facts appear to indicate; for I see every day some machine
or other superseding 20 or 100 workmen; and then I am forced to acknowledge a
flagrant, eternal, and incurable antithesis between the intellectual and
physical powers of man — between his progress and his present well-being; and
in these circumstances I am forced to say that the Creator of man might have
endowed him with reason, or with physical strength, with moral force, or with
brute force; but that He mocked him by conferring on him, at the same time,
faculties that are destructive of each other.
The difficulty is pressing and puzzling; but you contrive to find your way
out of it by adopting the strange mantra: in political economy there are no
absolute principles.
In plain language, this means, "I know not whether it be true or
false; I am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil. I give myself
no trouble about that. The immediate effect of each measure upon my own
personal interest is the only law which I can consent to recognize."
There are no principles! You might as well say there are no facts; for
principles are merely formulas that classify such facts as are well
established.
Machinery, and the importation of foreign commodities, certainly produce
effects. These effects may be good or bad; on that there may be difference of
opinion. But whatever view we take of them, it is reduced to a formula, by
one of these two principles: Machinery is a good; or, machinery is an evil: Importations
of foreign produce are beneficial; or, such importations are hurtful. But to
assert that there are no principles, certainly exhibits the lowest degree of
abasement to which the human mind can descend; and I confess that I blush for
my country when I hear such a monstrous heresy proclaimed in the French
Chambers, and with their assent; that is to say, in the face and with the
assent of the elite of our fellow citizens; and this in order to justify
their imposing laws upon us in total disregard for the real state of the
case.
But then I am told to destroy the fallacy by proving that machinery is not
hurtful to human labor, nor the importation of foreign products to national
labor.
A work like the present cannot well include very full or complete demonstrations.
My design is rather to state difficulties than to resolve them; to excite
reflection rather than to satisfy doubts. No conviction makes so lasting an
impression on the mind as that which it works out for itself. But I shall
endeavor nevertheless to put the reader on the right road.
What misleads the adversaries of machinery and foreign importations is
that they judge of them by their immediate and transitory effects, instead of
following them out to their general and definite consequences.
The immediate effect of the invention and employment of an ingenious
machine is to render superfluous, for the attainment of a given result, a
certain amount of manual labor. But its action does not stop there. For the
very reason that the desired result is obtained with fewer efforts, the
product is handed over to the public at a lower price; and the aggregate of
savings thus realized by all purchasers enables them to procure other
satisfactions; that is to say, to encourage manual labor in general to
exactly the extent of the manual labor which has been saved in the special
branch of industry which has been recently improved. So that the level of
labor has not fallen, while that of enjoyments has risen.
Let us render this evident by an example.
Suppose there are used annually in this country 10 million hats at 15
shillings each; this makes the sum which goes to the support of this branch
of industry £7,500,000 sterling. A machine is invented that allows these hats
to be manufactured and sold at 10 shillings. The sum now wanted for the
support of this industry is reduced to £5,000,000, provided the demand is not
augmented by the change. But the remaining sum of £2,500,000 is not by this
change withdrawn from the support of human labor. That sum, economized by the
purchasers of hats, will enable them to satisfy other wants, and
consequently, to that extent will go to remunerate the aggregate industry of
the country. With the five shillings saved, John will purchase a pair of
shoes, James a book, Jerome a piece of furniture, etc. Human labor, taken in
the aggregate, will continue, then, to be supported and encouraged to the
extent of £7,500,000; but this sum will yield the same number of hats, plus
all the satisfactions and enjoyments corresponding to £2,500,000 that the
employment of the machine has enabled the consumers of hats to save. These
additional enjoyments constitute the clear profit that the country will have
derived from the invention. This is a free gift, a tribute that human genius
will have derived from nature. We do not at all dispute that in the course of
the transformation a certain amount of labor will have been displaced; but we
cannot allow that it has been destroyed or diminished.
The same thing holds of the importation of foreign commodities. Let us
revert to our former hypothesis.
The country manufactures 10 million hats, of which the cost price was 15
shillings. The foreigner sends similar hats to our market, and furnishes them
at 10 shillings each. I maintain that the national labor will not be thereby
diminished.
For it must produce to the extent of £5,000,000 to enable it to pay for 10
million hats at 10 shillings.
And then there remains to each purchaser five shillings saved on each hat,
or in all, £2,500,000, which will be spent on other enjoyments — that is to
say, which will go to support labor in other departments of industry.
Then the aggregate labor of the country will remain what it was, and the
additional enjoyments represented by £2,500,000 saved upon hats will form the
clear profit accruing from imports under the system of free trade.
It is of no use to try to frighten us by a picture of the sufferings that,
on this hypothesis, the displacement of labor will entail.
For, if the prohibition had never been imposed, the labor would have found
its natural place under the ordinary law of exchange, and no displacement
would have taken place.
If, on the other hand, prohibition has led to an artificial and
unproductive employment of labor, it is prohibition, and not liberty, that is
to blame for a displacement that is inevitable in the transition from what is
detrimental to what is beneficial.
At all events, let no one claim that because an abuse cannot be done away
with, without inconvenience to those who profit by it, what has been suffered
to exist for a time should be allowed to exist forever.