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XVI. THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT
Report Addressed to the King
Sire,
When we observe these free-trade advocates boldly-disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied in the right of property (as has been urged by M. Billault in the true style of a special pleader), we may be permitted to feel serious alarm as to the fate of our national labour; for what would Frenchmen make of their heads and their hands were they left to their own resources?
The administration which you have honoured with your confidence has turned its attention to this grave state of things, and has sought in its wisdom to discover a species of protection which may be substituted for that which appears to be getting out of repute. They propose a law to prohibit your faithful SUBJECTS FROM USING THEIR RIGHT HANDS.
Sire, we beseech you not to do us the injustice of supposing that we have adopted lightly and without due deliberation a measure which at first sight may appear somewhat whimsical. A profound study of the system of protection has taught us this syllogism, upon which the whole doctrine reposes:
The more men work, the richer they become;
The more difficulties there are to be overcome, the more work;
Ergo, the more difficulties there are to be overcome, the richer they become.
In fact, what is protection, if it is not an ingenious application of this reasoning – reasoning so close and conclusive as to balk the subtlety of M. Billault himself?
Let us personify the country, and regard it as a collective being with thirty millions of mouths, and, as a natural consequence, with sixty millions of hands. Here is a man who makes a French clock, which he can exchange in Belgium for ten hundredweights of iron. But we tell him to make the iron himself. He replies, "I cannot, it would occupy too much of my time; I should produce only five hundredweights of iron during the time I am occupied in making a clock." Utopian dreamer, we reply, that is the very reason why we forbid you to make the clock, and order you to make the iron. Don't you see we are providing employment for you?
Sire, it cannot have escaped your sagacity that this is exactly the same thing in effect as if we were to say to the country, "Work with your left hand, and not with the right."
To create obstacles in order to furnish labour with an opportunity of developing itself, was the principle of the old system of restriction, and it is the principle likewise of the new system which is now being inaugurated. Sire, to regulate industry in this way is not to innovate, but to persevere.
As regards the efficiency of the measure, it is incontestable. It is difficult, much more difficult than one would suppose, to do with the left hand what we have been accustomed to do with the right. You will be convinced of this, Sire, if you will condescend to make trial of our system in a process which must be familiar to you; as, for example, in shuffling a pack of cards. For this reason, we flatter ourselves that we are opening to labour an unlimited career.
When workmen in all departments of industry are thus confined to the use of the left hand, we may figure to ourselves, Sire, the immense number of people that will be wanted to supply the present consumption, assuming it to continue invariable, as we always do when we compare two different systems of production with one another. So prodigious a demand for manual labour cannot fail to induce a great rise of wages, and pauperism will disappear as if by enchantment.
Sire, your paternal heart will rejoice to think that this new law of ours will extend its benefits to that interesting part of the community whose destinies engage all your solicitude. What is the present destiny of women in France? The bolder and more hardy sex drives them insensibly out of every department of industry.
Formerly, they had the resource of the lottery offices. These offices have been shut up by a pitiless philanthropy, and on what pretext? "To save the money of the poor." Alas! the poor man never obtained for a piece of money enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those afforded by the mysterious urn of fortune. Deprived of all the enjoyments of life, when he, fortnight after fortnight, put a day's wages on the quaterne, how many delicious hours did he afford his family! Hope was always present at his fireside. The garret was peopled with illusions. The wife hoped to rival her neighbours in her style of living; the son saw himself the drum-major of a regiment; and the daughter fancied herself led to the altar by her betrothed.
"C'est quelque chose encor que de faire un beau rêve!"
The lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have lost it.
The lottery gone, what means have we of providing for our protegees? Tobacco-shops and the post-office.
Tobacco, all right; its use progresses, thanks to the distinguees habits, which august examples have skilfully introduced among our fashionable youth.
The post-office!.. We shall say nothing of it, as we mean to make it the subject of a special report.
Except, then, the sale of tobacco, what employment remains for your female subjects? Embroidery, network, and sewing, – melancholy resources, which the barbarous science of mechanics goes on limiting more and more.
But the moment your new law comes into operation, the moment right hands are amputated or tied up, the face of everything will be changed. Twenty times, thirty times, a greater number of embroiderers, polishers, laundresses, seamstresses, milliners, shirtmakers, will not be sufficient to supply the wants of the kingdom, always assuming, as before, the consumption to be the same.
This assumption may very likely be disputed by some cold theorists, for dress and everything else will then be dearer. The same thing may be said of the iron which we extract from our own mines, compared with the iron we could obtain in exchange for our wines. This argument, therefore, does not tell more against gaucherie than against protection, for this very dearness is the effect and the sign of an excess of work and exertion, which is precisely the basis upon which, in both cases, we contend that the prosperity of the working classes is founded.
Yes, we shall be favoured soon with a touching picture of the prosperity of the millinery business. What movement! What activity! What life! Every dress will occupy a hundred fingers, instead of ten. No young woman will be idle, and we have no need, Sire, to indicate to your perspicacity the moral consequences of this great revolution. Not only will there be more young women employed, but each of them will earn more, for they will be unable to supply the demand; and if competition shall again show itself, it will not be among the seamstresses who make the dresses, but among the fine ladies who wear them.
You must see then, Sire, that our proposal is not only in strict conformity with the economic traditions of the government, but is in itself essentially moral and popular.
To appreciate its effects, let us suppose the law passed and in operation, – let us transport ourselves in imagination into the future, – and assume the new system to have been in operation for twenty years. Idleness is banished from the country; ease and concord, contentment and morality, have, with employment, been introduced into every family – no more poverty, no more vice. The left hand being very visible in all work, employment will be abundant, and the remuneration adequate. Everything is arranged on this footing, and the workshops in consequence are full. If, in such circumstances, Sire, Utopian dreamers were all at once to agitate for the right hand being again set free, would they not throw the whole country into alarm? Would such a pretended reform not overturn the whole existing state of things? Then our system must be good, since it could not be put an end to without universal suffering.
And yet we confess we have the melancholy presentiment (so great is human perversity) that some day there will be formed an association for right-hand freedom.
We think that already we hear the free Dexterities, assembled in the Salle Montesquieu, holding this language: —
"Good people, you think yourselves richer because the use of one of your hands has been denied you; you take account only of the additional employment which that brings you. But consider also the high prices which result from it, and the forced diminution of consumption. That measure has not made capital more abundant, and capital is the fund from which wages are paid. The streams which flow from that great reservoir are directed towards other channels; but their volume is not enlarged; and the ultimate effect, as far as the nation at large is concerned, is the loss of all that wealth which millions of right hands could produce, compared with what is now produced by an equal number of left hands. At the risk of some inevitable derangements, then, let us form an association, and enforce our right to work with both hands."
Fortunately, Sire, an association has been formed in defence of left-hand labour, and the Sinistristes will have no difficulty in demolishing all these generalities, suppositions, abstractions, reveries, and utopias. They have only to exhume the Moniteur Industriel for 1846, and they will find ready-made arguments against freedom Of trade, which refute so admirably all that has been urged in favour of right-hand liberty that it is only necessary to substitute the one word for the other.
"The Parisian free-trade league has no doubt of securing the concurrence of the workmen. But the workmen are no longer men who can be led by the nose. They have their eyes open, and they know political economy better than our professors. Free trade, they say, will deprive us of employment, and labour is our wealth. With employment, with abundant employment, the price of commodities never places them beyond our reach. Without employment, were bread at a halfpenny a pound, the workman would die of hunger. Now your doctrines, instead of increasing the present amount of employment, would diminish it, that is to say, would reduce us to poverty.
"When there are too many commodities in the market, their price falls, no doubt. But as wages always fall when commodities are cheap, the result is that, instead of being in a situation to purchase more, we are no longer able to buy anything. It is when commodities are cheap that the workman is worst off."
It will not be amiss for the Sinistristes to intermingle some menaces with their theories. Here is a model for them: – "What! you desire to substitute right-hand for left-hand labour, and thus force down, or perhaps annihilate wages, the sole resource of the great bulk of the nation!
"And, at a time when a deficient harvest is imposing painful privations on the workman, you wish to disquiet him as to his future, and render him more accessible to bad advice, and more ready to abandon that wise line of conduct which has hitherto distinguished him."
After such conclusive reasoning as this, we entertain a confident hope, Sire, that if the battle is once begun, the left hand will come off victorious.
Perhaps an association may be formed for the purpose of inquiring whether the right hand and the left are not both wrong, and whether a third hand cannot be found to conciliate everybody.
After having depicted the Dexteristes as seduced by the apparent liberality of a principle, the soundness of which experience has not yet verified and the Sinistristes as maintaining the position they have gained, they go on to say: —
"We deny that there is any third position which it is possible to take up in the midst of the battle! Is it not evident that the workmen have to defend themselves at one and the same time against those who desire to change nothing in the present situation, because they find their account in it, and against those who dream of an economic revolution of which they have calculated neither the direction nor the extent?"
We cannot, however, conceal from your Majesty that our project has a vulnerable side; for it may be said that twenty years hence left hands will be as skilful as right hands are at present, and that then you could no longer trust to gaucherie for an increase of national employment.
To that we reply, that according to the most learned physicians the left side of the body has a natural feebleness, which is quite reassuring as regards the labour of the future.
Should your Majesty consent to pass the measure now proposed, a great principle will be established: All wealth proceeds from the intensity of labour. It will be easy for us to extend and vary the applications of this principle. We may decree, for example, that it shall no longer be permissible to work but with the foot; for this is no more impossible (as we have seen) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. You see then, Sire, that the means of increasing national labour can never fail. And after all has been tried, we have still the practically ex-haustless resource of amputation.
To conclude, Sire, if this report were not intended for publicity, we should take the liberty of soliciting your attention to the great influence which measures of this kind are calculated to confer on men in power. But that is a matter which we must reserve for a private audience.
XVII. DOMINATION BY LABOUR
In the same way that in time of war we attain the mastery by superiority in arms, do we not, in time of peace, arrive at domination by superiority in labour?"
This is a question of the highest interest at a time when no doubt seems to be entertained that in the field of industry, as in the field of battle, the stronger crushes the weaker.
To arrive at this conclusion, we must have discovered between the labour which is applied to commodities and the violence exercised upon men, a melancholy and discouraging analogy; for why should these two kinds of operations be thought identical in their effects, if they are essentially different in their own nature?
And if it be true that in industry, as in war, predominance is the necessary result of superiority, what have we to do with progress or with social economy, seeing that we inhabit a world where everything has been so arranged by Providence that one and the same effect – namely, oppression – proceeds necessarily from two opposite principles?
With reference to England's new policy of commercial freedom, many persons make this objection, which has, I am convinced, taken possession of the most candid minds among us: "Is England doing anything else than pursuing the same end by different means. Does she not always aspire at universal supremacy? Assured of her superiority in capital and labour, does she not invite free competition in order to stifle Continental industry, and so put herself in a situation to reign as a sovereign, having conquered the privilege of feeding and clothing the population she has ruined?"
It would not be difficult to demonstrate that these alarms are chimerical; that our alleged inferiority is much exaggerated; that our great branches of industry not only maintain their ground, but are actually developed under the action of external competition, and that the infallible effect of such competition is to bring about an increase of general consumption, capable of absorbing both home and foreign products.
At present, I desire to make a direct answer to the objection, leaving it all the advantage of the ground chosen by the objectors. Keeping out of view for the present the special case of England and France, I shall inquire in a general way whether, when, by its superiority in one branch of industry, a nation comes to outrival and put down a similar branch of industry existing among another people, the former has advanced one step towards domination, or the latter towards dependence; in' other words, whether both nations do not gain by the operation, and whether it is not the nation which is outrivalled that gains the most.
If we saw in a product nothing more than an opportunity of bestowing labour, the alarms of the protectionists would undoubtedly be well-founded. Were we to consider iron, for example, only in its relations with ironmasters, we might be led to fear that the competition of a country where it is the gratuitous gift of nature would extinguish the furnaces of another country where both ore and fuel are scarce.
But is this a complete view of the subject? Has iron relations only with those who make it? Has it no relations with those who use it? Is its sole and ultimate destination to be produced? And if it is useful, not on account of the labour to which it gives employment, but on account of the qualities it possesses, of the numerous purposes to which its durability and malleability adapt it, does it not follow that the foreigner cannot reduce its price, even so far as to render its production at home unprofitable, without doing us more good in this last respect, than harm in the other?
Pray consider how many things there are which foreigners, by reason of the natural advantages by which they are surrounded, prevent our producing directly, and with reference to which we are placed in reality in the hypothetical position we have been examining with reference to iron. We produce at home neither tea, coffee, gold, nor silver. Is our industry en masse diminished in consequence? No; only in order to create the counter-value of these imported commodities, in order to acquire them by means of exchange, we detach from our national labour a portion less great than would be required to produce these things ourselves. More labour thus remains to be devoted to the procuring of other enjoyments. We are so much the richer and so much the stronger. All that external competition can do, even in cases where it puts an end absolutely to a determinate branch of industry, is to economize labour, and increase our productive power. Is this, in the case of the foreigner, the road to domination!
If we should find in France a gold mine, it does not follow that it would be for our interest to work it. Nay, it is certain that the enterprise would be neglected if each ounce of gold absorbed more of our labour than an ounce of gold purchased abroad with cloth. In this case we should do better to find our mines in our workshops. And what is true of gold is true of iron.
The illusion proceeds from our failure to see one thing, which is, that foreign superiority never puts a stop to national industry, except under a determinate form, and under that form only renders it superfluous by placing at our disposal the result of the very labour thus superseded. If men lived in diving-bells under water, and had to provide themselves with air by means of a pump, this would be a great source of employment. To throw obstacles in the way of such employment, as long as men were left in this condition would be to inflict upon them a frightful injury. But if the labour ceases because the necessity for its exertion no longer exists, because men are placed in a medium where air is introduced into their lungs without effort, then the loss of that labour is not to be regretted, except in the eyes of men who obstinately persist in seeing in labour nothing but labour in the abstract.
It is exactly this kind of labour which machinery, commercial freedom, progress of every kind, gradually supersedes; not useful labour, but labour become superfluous, without object, and without result. On the contrary, protection sets that sort of useless labour to work; it places us again under water, to bring the air-pump into play; it forces us to apply for gold to the inaccessible national mine, rather than to the national workshops. All the effect is expressed by the words, depredation of forces.
It will be understood that I am speaking here of general effects, not of the temporary inconvenience which is always caused by the transition from a bad system to a good one. A momentary derangement accompanies necessarily all progress. This may be a reason for making the transition gently and gradually. It is no reason for putting a stop systematically to all progress, still less for misunderstanding it.
Industry is often represented as a struggle. That is not a true representation of it, or only true when we confine ourselves to the consideration of each branch of industry in its effects upon similar branches, regarding them both in thought apart from the interests of the rest of mankind. But there is always something else to be considered, namely, the effects upon consumption, and upon general prosperity.
It is an error to apply to trade, as is but too often done, phrases which are applicable to war.
In war the stronger overcomes the weaker.
In industry the stronger imparts force to the weaker. This entirely does away with the analogy.
Let the English be as powerful and skilful as they are represented, let them be possessed of as large an amount of capital, and have as great a command of the two great agents of production, iron and fuel, as they are supposed to have; all this simply means cheapness. And who gains by the cheapness of products? The man who buys them.
It is not in their power to annihilate any part whatever of our national labour. All they can do is to render it superfluous in the production of what is acquired by exchange, to furnish us with air without the aid of the pump, to enlarge in this way our disposable forces, and so render their alleged domination as much more impossible as their superiority becomes more incontestable.
Thus, by a rigorous and consoling demonstration, we arrive at this conclusion, that labour and violence, which are so opposite in their nature, are not less so in their effects.
All we are called upon to do is to distinguish between labour annihilated, and labour economized.
To have less iron because we work less, and to have less iron although we work less, are things not only different, but opposed to each other. The protectionists confound them; we do not. That is all.
We may be very certain of one thing, that if the English employ a large amount of activity, labour, capital, intelligence, and natural forces, it is not done for show. It is done in order to procure a multitude of enjoyments in exchange for their products. They most certainly expect to receive at least as much as they give. What they produce at home is destined to pay for what they purchase abroad. If they inundate us with their products, it is because they expect to be inundated with ours in return. That being so, the best means of having much for ourselves is to be free to choose between these two modes of acquisition, immediate production, and mediate production. British Machiavelism cannot force us to make a wrong choice.
Let us give up, then, the puerility of applying to industrial competition phrases applicable to war, – a way of speaking which is only specious when applied to competition between two rival trades. The moment we come to take into account the effect produced on the general prosperity, the analogy disappears.
In a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much the strength of the army. In industry, a workshop is shut up only when what it produced is obtained by the public from another source and in greater abundance. Figure a state of things where for one man killed on the spot two should rise up full of life and vigour. Were such a state of things possible, war would no longer merit its name.
This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so absurdly called industrial war.
Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of their iron ever so much; let them, if they will, send it to us for nothing; this might extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but immediately, and as a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, there would rise up a thousand other branches of industry more profitable than the one which had been superseded.
We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labour is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all superiority which manifests itself among a people means cheapness, and tends only to impart force to all other nations. Let us banish, then, from political economy all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: to fight with equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute, etc. What do such phrases mean? Squeeze them, and you obtain nothing… Yes, you do obtain something; for from such words proceed absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices. Such phrases tend to arrest the fusion of nations, are inimical to their peaceful, universal, and indissoluble alliance, and retard the progress of the human race.
