THE VALUE OF FREEDOM PART TWO ( THE FREE TRADER )

THE VALUE OF FREEDOM PART TWO THE FREE TRADER
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PART TWO
BASTIAT, THE FREE TRADER
By Frederic Bastiat
In this section are showcased some of Bastiat's most well known articles decrying protectionism and calling for free trade, beginning with his celebrated “Candlemakers’ Petition”. However, the collection here includes many other arguments favouring free trade that deserve attention today. Foremost among them is his dismissal of the principle of “reciprocity” in trade.
Bastiat is perhaps the only economist in the world who has argued for unilateral free trade – that it makes sense to import goods from a country even if that country does not buy our produce. Seeing how the World Trade Organization is close to becoming a “whither trade organization”, with trade being stalled by all kinds of special interests, Bastiat’s call for unilateral free trade makes eminent sense. We don’t need the WTO; we need free trade.
The brief satiric play on how three city aldermen conspire to raise tariffs so that they themselves benefit, is also a superb piece of writing. Schools and colleges should be encouraged to stage this.
“A Chinese Tale” is another less noticed work, which shows how trade restrictions do not “create” jobs; they merely “divert” production.
6. THE CANDLEMAKERS’ PETITION
A Petition
From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, Candlesticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from the Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting.
To the Honorable Members of the Chamber of Deputies.
Gentlemen:
You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for applying your—what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, and, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice—your practice without theory and without principle.
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a foreign rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price – completely free; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us mercilessly.
We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds—in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to
enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat.
Be good enough, honorable deputies, to take our request seriously, and do not reject it without at least hearing the reasons that we have to advance in its support.
First, if you shut off as much as possible all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light, what industry in France will not ultimately be encouraged?
If France consumes more tallow, there will have to be more cattle and sheep, and, consequently, we shall see an increase in cleared fields, meat, wool, leather, and especially manure, the basis of all agricultural wealth.
If France consumes more oil, we shall see an expansion in the cultivation of the poppy, the olive, and rapeseed. These rich yet soil-exhausting plants will come at just the right time to enable us to put to profitable use the increased fertility that the breeding of cattle will impart to the land.
Our moors will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will gather from our mountains the perfumed treasures that today waste their fragrance, like the flowers from which they emanate. Thus, there is not one branch of agriculture that would not undergo a great expansion.
But what shall we say of the specialties of Parisian manufacture? Henceforth you will behold gilding, bronze, and crystal in candlesticks, in lamps, in chandeliers, in candelabra sparkling in spacious emporia compared with which those of today are but stalls.
There is no needy resin-collector on the heights of his sand dunes, no poor miner in the depths of his black pit, who will not receive higher wages and enjoy increased prosperity.
It needs but a little reflection, gentlemen, to be convinced that there is perhaps not one Frenchman, from the wealthy stockholder to the
humblest vendor of matches, whose condition would not be improved by the success of our petition.
We anticipate your objections, gentlemen; but there is not a single one of them that you have not picked up from the musty old books of the advocates of free trade. We defy you to utter a word against us that will not instantly rebound against yourselves and the principle that guides your entire policy.
Will you tell us that, though we may gain by this protection, France will not gain at all, because the consumer will bear the expense?
We have our answer ready:
You no longer have the right to invoke the interests of the consumer. You have sacrificed him whenever you have found his interests opposed to those of the producer. You have done so in order to encourage industry and to increase employment. For the same reason you ought to do so this time too.
Indeed, you yourselves have anticipated this objection. When told that the consumer has a stake in the free entry of iron, coal, sesame, wheat, and textiles, “Yes,” you reply, “but the producer has a stake in their exclusion.” Very well! Surely if consumers have a stake in the admission of natural light, producers have a stake in its interdiction.
“But,” you may still say, “the producer and the consumer are one and the same person. If the manufacturer profits by protection, he will make the farmer prosperous. Contrariwise, if agriculture is prosperous, it will open markets for manufactured goods.” Very well! If you grant us a monopoly over the production of lighting during the day, first of all we shall buy large amounts of tallow, charcoal, oil, resin, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, and crystal, to supply our industry; and, moreover, we and our numerous suppliers, having become rich, will consume a great deal and spread prosperity into all areas of domestic industry.
Will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of Nature, and that to reject such gifts would be to reject wealth itself under the pretext of encouraging the means of acquiring it?
But if you take this position, you strike a mortal blow at your own policy; remember that up to now you have always excluded foreign goods because and in proportion as they approximate gratuitous gifts. You have only half as good a reason for complying with the demands of other monopolists as you have for granting our petition, which is in complete accord with your established policy.
Labor and Nature collaborate in varying proportions, depending upon the country and the climate, in the production of a commodity. The part that Nature contributes is always free of charge; it is the part contributed by human labor that constitutes value and is paid for.
If an orange from Lisbon sells for half the price of an orange from Paris, it is because the natural heat of the sun, which is, of course, free of charge, does for the former what the latter owes to artificial heating, which necessarily has to be paid for in the market.
Thus, when an orange reaches us from Portugal, one can say that it is given to us half free of charge, or, in other words, at half price as compared with those from Paris.
Now, it is precisely on the basis of its being semigratuitous (pardon the word) that you maintain it should be barred. You ask: “How can French labor withstand the competition of foreign labor when the former has to do all the work, whereas the latter has to do only half, the sun taking care of the rest?” But if the fact that a product is half free of charge leads you to exclude it from competition, how can its being totally free of charge induce you to admit it into competition? Either you are not consistent, or you should, after excluding what is half free of charge as harmful to our domestic industry, exclude what is totally gratuitous with all the more reason and with twice the zeal.
To take another example: When a product—coal, iron, wheat, or textiles—comes to us from abroad, and when we can acquire it for less labor than if we produced it ourselves, the difference is a gratuitous gift that is conferred upon us. The size of this gift is proportionate to the extent of this difference. It is a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product if the foreigner asks of us only three-quarters, one-half, or one-quarter as high a price. It is as complete as it can be when the donor, like the sun in providing us with light, asks nothing from us.
The question, and we pose it formally, is whether what you desire for France is the benefit of consumption free of charge or the alleged advantages of onerous production. Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you ban, as you do, foreign coal, iron, wheat, and textiles, in proportion as their price approaches zero, how inconsistent it would be to admit the light of the sun, whose price is zero all day long!
7. RECIPROCITY
OR THE STORY OF STULTA & PUERA
A protective tariff is like a marsh, a rut, a gap in the route, or a steep hill—in a word, it is an obstacle whose effect is to increase the difference between the price the producer receives and the price the consumer pays. It is likewise incontestable that marshes and bogs are, in effect, like protective tariffs.
There are people (a small number, it is true, but there are some) who are beginning to understand that obstacles are no less obstacles for being artificial, and that we have more to gain from free trade than from a policy of protectionism.
But, they say, free trade must be reciprocal. If we lowered the barriers we have erected against the admission of Spanish goods, and if the Spaniards did not lower the barriers they have erected against the admission of ours, we should be victimized. Let us therefore make commercial treaties on the basis of exact reciprocity; let us make concessions in return for concessions; let us make the sacrifice of buying in order to obtain the advantage of selling.
People who reason in this way, I regret to say, are, whether they realize it or not, protectionists in principle; they are merely a little more inconsistent than the pure protectionists, just as the latter are more inconsistent than the advocates of total and absolute exclusion of all foreign products.
The following fable will demonstrate my point.
Stulta and Puera
Once upon a time there were, no matter where, two cities, Stulta and Puera. At great expense they built a highway from one to the other. When it was completed, Stulta said to herself: "Here is Puera flooding us with her products; we must do something about it." Consequently, she created and salaried a corps of Obstructors, so called because their
function was to set up obstacles in the way of traffic from Puera. Soon afterward, Puera also had a corps of Obstructors.
At the end of several centuries, during which there had been great advances in knowledge, Puera became sufficiently enlightened to see that these mutual obstacles could only be mutually harmful. She sent a diplomat to Stulta, who, except for official phraseology, spoke thus: “First we built a highway, and now we are obstructing it. That is absurd. It would have been better to have left things as they were. We should not, in that case, have had to pay, first for the highway, and then for the obstructions. In the name of Puera, I come to propose to you that we remove all at once the obstacles we have erected against each other.”
Thus spoke the diplomat. Stulta asked for time to consider the proposal. She consulted by turns her manufacturers and her farmers. Finally, after several years, she declared that she was breaking off the negotiations.
On receiving this news, the inhabitants of Puera held a meeting. An old man (it has always been suspected that he was secretly in the pay of Stulta) rose and said: “The obstacles created by Stulta are a hindrance to the sale of our goods to her. That is a misfortune. Those that we ourselves have created are a hindrance to our purchases from her. That too is a misfortune. There is nothing we can do about the first situation, but we can do something about the second. Let us deliver ourselves at least from that one, since we cannot eliminate them both. Let us remove our Obstructors without demanding that Stulta do the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to know her own interests better.”
A second councillor, a practical man of affairs, undefiled by principles and reared on the venerable experience of his ancestors, replied: “Do not listen to this dreamer, this theorist, this innovator, this utopian, this economist, this Stultophile. We should all be lost if the obstacles on the highway between Stulta and Puera were not equalized and kept in perfect balance. It would be more difficult to go than to come, and to export than to import. We should be, in relation to Stulta, in a situation of inferiority; for it is more difficult to go upstream than downstream.”
A voice: “The cities at the mouths of rivers have prospered more than those at the headwaters.”
7 The alternative to free trade is managed trade - managed, that is, by diplomats. The lesson here is that free trade is in one's own interests, even if other nations do not follow this policy, and that diplomatically managed trade reciprocities are highly avoidable.
“That is impossible.”
Same voice: “But it is a fact.”
“Very well, then they have prospered against the rules.”
Reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly. The orator followed up his victory by speaking of national independence, national honor, national dignity, domestic industry, inundation by foreign products, tribute paid to foreigners, and murderous competition;7 in short, his motion in favor of the maintenance of obstacles was carried; and if you are at all curious about the matter, I can take you into a certain country where you will see with your own eyes highway maintenance men and obstructors working side by side in the most friendly way in the world, under laws enacted by the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the former to clear the road, and the latter to block it.
8 The French and British ministers of defence at that time, respectively.
8. NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
Among the arguments that have been advanced in favor of the protectionist system, we must not forget the one that is founded on the idea of national independence.
"What shall we do in case of war," people ask, "if we have put ourselves at the mercy of England for iron and coal?"
The English monopolists for their part do not fail to exclaim:
"What will happen to Great Britain in time of war if she makes herself dependent on France for food?"
The one thing that people overlook is that the sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent upon us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.
And observe, too, that one isolates oneself in anticipation of war, but that the very act of isolating oneself is a beginning of war. It makes war easier to wage, less burdensome, and consequently less unpopular. If nations remain permanently in the world market; if their interrelations cannot be broken without their peoples' suffering the double discomfort of privation and glut; they will no longer need the mighty navies that bankrupt them or the vast armies that weigh them down; the peace of the world will not be jeopardized by the caprice of a Thiers or a Palmerston8; and war will disappear for lack of materials, resources, motives, pretexts, and popular support.
9. METAPHORS
Sometimes a sophism expands until it permeates the whole fabric of a long and elaborate theory. More often it contracts and shrinks, assumes the form of a principle, and takes cover behind a word or a phrase.
Paul-Louis used to pray, "May the good Lord deliver us from the snares of the devil—and of the metaphor!" And indeed, it would be hard to say which does more mischief in this world. It is the devil, you say; he puts the spirit of plunder into the hearts of all of us, frail creatures that we are. Yes, but he leaves the repression of abuses entirely to the counteraction of those who suffer from them. What paralyzes this counteraction is sophistry. The sword that malice puts into the hand of the assailant would be powerless if sophistry did not shatter the shield on the arm of the man who is assailed; and Malebranche was right when he wrote on the frontispiece of his book: Error is the cause of man's misery.
Let us see how this takes place. Ambitious hypocrites may have some evil objective, such as, for instance, planting the seeds of international discord in the mind of the public. These fateful seeds may germinate, lead to general warfare, arrest the progress of civilization, cause torrents of blood to be shed, and inflict on the country that most dreadful of all catastrophes—invasion. In any case, and aside from this, these feelings of hostility lower us in the estimation of other nations and compel Frenchmen who have retained any sense of justice to blush for their country. These are undoubtedly great evils; and for the public to protect itself against the machinations of those who would expose it to such risks, it needs no more than a clear insight into their nature. How has it been deprived of this insight? By the use of metaphors. Twist, stretch, or pervert the meaning of three or four words, and the whole job is done.
The word invasion itself is a good example of this.
A French ironmaster says: "We must protect ourselves from the invasion of English iron!" An English landlord cries: "We must repel the invasion of French wheat!" And they urge the erection of barriers between the two nations. Barriers result in isolation; isolation gives rise to hatred; hatred, to war; war, to invasion. "What difference does it make?" say the two
sophists. "Is it not better to risk the possibility of invasion than to accept the certainty of invasion?" And the people believe them, and the barriers remain standing.
And yet, what analogy is there between an exchange and an invasion? What possible similarity can there be between a warship that comes to vomit missiles, fire, and devastation on our cities, and a merchant vessel that comes to offer us a voluntary exchange of goods for goods?
The same is true of the word flood. This word is customarily used in a pejorative sense, for floods often ravage fields and crops. If, however, what they deposited on our soil was of greater value than what they washed away, like the floods of the Nile, we should deify and worship them, as the Egyptians did. Before crying out against the floods of foreign goods, before putting up onerous and costly obstacles in their way, do people ask themselves whether these are floods that ravage or floods that fertilize? What should we think of Mohammed Ali if, instead of spending great sums to raise dams across the Nile so as to extend the area covered by its floods, he used his revenue to dredge out a deeper channel for it, so that Egypt would not be soiled by this foreign slime brought down from the Mountains of the Moon? We display exactly the same degree of wisdom and judgment when we try, by spending millions of francs, to protect our country—from what? From being flooded by the blessings that Nature has bestowed upon other lands.
9 Aldermen are city councillors.
10. PROTECTIONISM, OR THE THREE ALDERMEN9
A DEMONSTRATION IN FOUR SCENES
SCENE 1.
The scene takes place in the mansion of Peter, an alderman. The window looks out upon a beautiful grove of trees; three gentlemen are seated at a table near a blazing fire.
PETER: I must say, there is nothing like a good fire after a satisfying meal. You have to admit that it is very agreeable indeed. But, alas, how many good people are blowing on their fingers from lack of firewood! Unfortunate creatures! A charitable idea that must be an inspiration from Heaven has just occurred to me. You see those fine trees? I want them cut down and the wood distributed among the poor.
PAUL AND JOHN: What! Free of charge?
PETER: Not exactly. My good deeds would soon be at an end if I dissipated my estate that way. I estimate my grove of trees to be worth a thousand livres; by chopping them down, I shall get a good deal more for them.
PAUL: Not so. Your wood as it stands is worth more than that of the neighboring forests, because it performs services that the latter cannot perform. Once your trees are chopped down, they will be good only for firewood, like the rest, and not be worth a denier more per load.
PETER: Ho, ho! Mr. Theorist, you are forgetting that I am a practical man. I should think my reputation as a speculator well enough established to prevent me from being taken for a fool. Do you think I am going to amuse myself by selling my wood at the same price as floated wood?
PAUL: You will simply have to.
PETER: How naive you are! And suppose I stop floated wood from reaching Paris?
PAUL: That would change matters. But how would you go about it?
PETER: Here is the whole secret. You know that floated wood pays ten sous a load on entering the city. Tomorrow I persuade the aldermen to raise the duty to 100, 200, 300 livres—in short, high enough to keep even a single log from getting in. Now do you understand? If the good people do not want to die of cold, they will have no alternative but to come to my woodyard. They will scramble for my wood, I shall sell it for its weight in gold, and this well-organized charitable undertaking will put me in a position to conduct others.
PAUL: What a wonderful project! It gives me the idea for another just as efficacious.
JOHN: Tell us what it is. Does it also involve philanthropy?
PAUL: What do you think of this butter from Normandy?
JOHN: Excellent.
PAUL: Well, maybe! It seemed tolerable to me a moment ago. But do you not find that it burns your throat? I intend to produce a better quality in Paris. I shall have four or five hundred cows and arrange to distribute milk, butter, and cheese among the poor.
PETER AND JOHN: What! As charity?
PAUL: Nonsense! Let us always maintain an appearance of charity. It has so fair a face that even its mask is an excellent passport. I shall give my butter to the people, and the people will give me their money. Do you call that selling?
JOHN: Not according to Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; but whatever you may choose to call it, you will ruin yourself. Can Paris compete with Normandy in the raising of cows?
PAUL: I shall gain the advantage by saving the costs of transportation.
JOHN: All right. But even after paying these costs, the Normans can still beat the Parisians.
PAUL: Do you call it beating someone to let him have things at low prices?
JOHN: That is the customary term. The fact remains that you will be the one who is beaten.
PAUL: Yes, like Don Quixote. The blows will fall on Sancho. John, my friend, you forget the octroi.
JOHN: The octroi! What connection does it have with your butter?
PAUL: From tomorrow on, I shall demand protection; I shall persuade the commune to keep butter from Normandy and Brittany from entering Paris. Then the people will either have to get along without it or buy mine, and at my price, too.
JOHN: I must say, gentlemen, I feel myself quite caught up in the wave of your humanitarianism. "One learns to howl," says the proverb, "by living with the wolves." My mind is made up. No one shall say that I am an unworthy alderman. Peter, this crackling fire has set your soul aflame; Paul, this butter has activated your intellectual faculties; and now I feel that this piece of salt pork is likewise sharpening my wits. Tomorrow I shall vote, and have others vote, for the exclusion of pigs, living or dead; that done, I shall build superb pens in the heart of Paris for the unclean animal forbidden to the Hebrews. I shall become a swineherd and pork butcher. Let us see how the good people of Paris will avoid coming to provision themselves at my shop.
PETER: Not so fast, gentlemen. If you increase the price of butter and salt pork in this way, you will cut beforehand the profit I was expecting from my wood.
PAUL: Well, my project will no longer be so wonderful either, if you levy tribute on me for your logs and your hams.
JOHN: And what shall I gain by overcharging you for my sausages, if you overcharge me for faggots and for the butter on my bread?
PETER: Well, there is no reason why we should quarrel about this. Let us rather co-operate with one another and make reciprocal concessions. Besides, it is not good to consult only one's own self-interest; one should consider mankind as well. Must we not make sure the people are warm?
PAUL: Quite true. And the people must have butter to spread on their bread.
JOHN: Undoubtedly. And a bit of bacon for their stew.
ALL: Hurrah for charity! Long live humanitarianism! Tomorrow we shall take the City Hall by storm.
PETER: Ah! I forgot. One more word; it is essential. My friends, in this age of selfishness, the world is distrustful; and the purest intentions are often misinterpreted. Paul, you plead the case for local wood; John, you defend local butter; and I, for my part, shall devote myself to the protection of the local hog. It is well to forestall evil-minded suspicions.
PAUL AND JOHN (leaving): Upon my word, there's a clever man!
SCENE 2.
Meeting of the Board of Aldermen
PAUL: My dear colleagues, every day large quantities of wood enter Paris, and as a result large sums of money leave the city. At this rate we shall all be ruined in three years, and then what will become of the poor? [Cheers.] Let us ban all foreign wood. It is not on my behalf that I am speaking, because all the wood I own would not make one toothpick. Hence, I am completely free from any personal interest in regard to this question. [Hear! Hear!] But Peter here has a grove of trees and will guarantee to supply fuel for our fellow citizens, who will no longer be dependent upon the charcoal sellers of the Yonne. Has it ever occurred to you that we run the danger of dying of cold if the owners of foreign forests took it into their heads not to deliver wood to Paris any longer? Therefore, let us ban their wood. By this means we shall prevent the
draining away of our money, create a domestic woodcutting industry, and open to our workers a new source of employment and income. [Applause.]
JOHN: I support this proposal by the distinguished previous speaker, who is so humanitarian, and, as he himself said, so completely disinterested. It is high time we put a stop to this brazen laissez passer, which has brought unbridled competition into our market, so that there is not one province whose situation is at all advantageous for the production of any commodity whatsoever that does not flood us with it, undersell us, and destroy Parisian industry. It is the duty of the government to equalize the conditions of production by the imposition of judiciously selected duties, to admit only goods that cost more outside Paris than they do within the city, and in this way to extricate us from an unequal contest. How, for instance, can we be expected to produce milk and butter in Paris in competition with Brittany and Normandy? Just remember, gentlemen, that it costs the Bretons less for their land, their fodder, and their labor. Is it not only common sense to equalize opportunities by a protective town tariff? I demand that the duty on milk and butter be raised to 1000%, and higher if need be. Breakfast may cost the people a little more on that account, but how their wages will go up as well! We shall see barns and dairies rising, creameries multiply, new industries established. It is not that I stand to profit in the least from the adoption of my proposal. I am not a cowherd, nor do I wish to be one. My only desire is to be helpful to the toiling masses. [Cheers and applause.]
PETER: I am delighted to find that this assembly includes statesmen so pure in heart, so enlightened, so dedicated to the best interests of the people. [Cheers.] I admire their disinterestedness, and I can do no better than imitate their noble example. I second their motion, and I add to it a motion of my own to prohibit the entry of pigs from Poitou. It is not that I have any desire to become a swineherd or a pork butcher; in that case, my conscience would make it my duty to remain silent. But is it not disgraceful, gentlemen, that we should be forced to pay tribute to these Poitou peasants, who have the audacity to come right into our own market and seize possession of an industry that we ourselves could carry on; and who, after flooding us with their sausages and hams, take perhaps nothing from us in return? In any case, who will tell us that the balance of trade is not in their favor and that we are not obliged to pay
them the balance due in hard cash? Is it not clear that if this industry were transplanted from Poitou to Paris, it would create jobs for Parisian workingmen? And then, gentlemen, is it not quite possible, as M. Lestiboudois so well observed, that we may be buying salt pork from Poitou, not with what we sell them in return, but with our capital? How long can we go on doing that? Let us not, then, allow a pack of greedy, grasping, false-hearted competitors to come here and undersell us and make it impossible for us to produce the same commodities ourselves. Aldermen, Paris has put her trust in us; it is for us to justify that trust. The people are without jobs; it is for us to create jobs for them; and if salt pork costs them a little more, we shall at least have the consciousness of having sacrificed our personal interests to those of the masses, as every right-thinking alderman should do. [Thunderous applause.]
A VOICE: I hear a great deal of talk about the poor; but, under the pretext of giving them jobs, you begin by depriving them of what is worth more than the job itself—wood, butter, and soup.
PETER, PAUL, AND JOHN: Put our motions to a vote! Put them to a vote! Away with utopians, theorists, abstract thinkers! Put them to a vote! Put them to a vote! [The three motions are carried.]
SCENE 3.
Twenty Years Later: Jacques Bonhomme and His Son.
THE SON: Father, make up your mind to it; we must leave Paris. We cannot live here any longer. There is no work to be had, and everything is frightfully expensive.
THE FATHER: My son, you do not know what a wrench it is for one to leave the place where one was born.
THE SON: It is even worse to starve to death.
THE FATHER: Go, my son, seek a more hospitable land. As for myself, I shall not leave this place, where your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are buried. I long to find at last by their side the rest that has been denied me in this city of desolation.
THE SON: Take heart, dear father; we shall find work somewhere else—in Poitou, in Normandy, or in Brittany. It is said that all the industries of Paris are gradually moving to these distant provinces.
THE FATHER: That is quite understandable. Being unable any longer to sell us wood and provisions, the people of these provinces have ceased to produce beyond their own needs; whatever time and capital they have available they devote to making for themselves what we once used to furnish them with.
THE SON: Just as at Paris they have stopped making fine furniture and beautiful clothing, and have turned to planting trees and raising pigs and cows. Although still young, I have lived to see great stores, elegant neighborhoods, and busy docks along the banks of the Seine overgrown with weeds and underbrush.
THE FATHER: While the hinterland is being covered with cities, Paris is becoming a bare field. What an appalling reversal! And it took just three misguided aldermen, helped by public ignorance, to bring this frightful calamity upon us.
THE SON: Tell me its history, Father.
THE FATHER: It is really quite simple. Under the pretext of establishing three new branches of industry in Paris and of thereby increasing job opportunities for the working classes, these men had the importation of wood, butter, and meat prohibited. They arrogated to themselves the right to provide their fellow citizens with these commodities. First, their prices rose to exorbitant heights. No one was earning enough to afford them, and the small number of those who could obtain some, by spending all their earnings on them, were no longer able to buy anything else. This at once spelled the doom of all the industries in Paris, and the end came all the more quickly as the provinces no longer provided our city with a market for its products. Poverty, death, and emigration began to depopulate Paris.
THE SON: And when is this going to stop?
THE FATHER: When Paris has become a forest and a prairie.
THE SON: The three aldermen must have made a great deal of money.
THE FATHER: At first they realized enormous profits; but in the long run they were engulfed in the general misery.
THE SON: How is that possible?
THE FATHER: This ruin you are looking at was once a splendid mansion encircled by a beautiful grove of trees. If Paris had continued to expand, Squire Peter would get more in rent from it than he could sell it for today.
THE SON: How can that be, since he no longer has any competition?
THE FATHER: Competition among sellers has disappeared, but competition among buyers is disappearing every day and will continue to disappear until Paris has become open country and the brushwood of Squire Peter has no more value than an equal area of brushwood in the forest of Bondy. It is thus that monopoly, like every injustice, carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.
THE SON: That does not seem altogether clear to me, but what is incontestable is the decadence of Paris. Is there, then, no way of repealing this iniquitous law that Peter and his colleagues had the town council adopt twenty years ago?
THE FATHER: I am going to tell you a secret. I am staying in Paris to do just that. I shall call the people to my assistance. It depends upon them to restore the town tariff duties to their former basis, to rid them of the deadly principle that was grafted onto them and that has continued to vegetate there like a parasitical fungus.
THE SON: You are sure to succeed in this from the very first.
THE FATHER: Oh, on the contrary, the task is difficult and toilsome. Peter, Paul, and John understand one another wonderfully well. They are ready to do anything rather than permit wood, butter, and meat to enter Paris. They have on their side the people themselves, who see clearly the jobs that these three protected industries give them, who know how many woodcutters and cowherds they give employment to, but who
cannot have as clear an idea of how much employment would develop in the spacious atmosphere of free trade.
THE SON: If that is all they need, you will enlighten them.
THE FATHER: My child, at your age one never lacks confidence. If I write, the people will not read what I have to say; for with all the hours they must work to eke out their miserable existence, they have no time left for reading. If I speak, the aldermen will shut my mouth. Thus, the people will long continue in their disastrously mistaken ways, and the political parties that place their trust in arousing popular passions will concern themselves far less with dispelling error than with exploiting the prevailing prejudices. Therefore, I shall have on my hands at one and the same time the two most powerful forces of our age—the people and the political parties. Oh! I see a frightful storm ready to burst over the head of anyone bold enough to venture a protest against an iniquity so deeply rooted in this country.
THE SON: You will have justice and truth on your side.
THE FATHER: And they will have force and calumny on theirs. If only I were young again! But age and suffering have exhausted my strength.
THE SON: Well, father, dedicate what strength you still have to the service of your country. Begin this work of liberation and leave me as my legacy the task of completing it.
SCENE 4.
Popular Uprising
JACQUES BONHOMME: Parisians, let us demand the reform of the town tariff duties; let us insist that they be restored to their original purpose. Let every citizen be free to buy wood, butter, and meat wherever he sees fit.
THE PEOPLE: Long live freedom!
PETER: Parisians, do not let yourselves be misled by that word. What difference does the freedom to buy make to you, if you do not have the
means? And how can you have the means, if you do not have a job? Can Paris produce wood as cheaply as the forest of Bondy, meat as inexpensively as Poitou, butter as easily as Normandy? If you open your gates freely to these competitive products, what will become of the cowherds, the woodcutters, and the pork butchers? They cannot do without protection.
THE PEOPLE: Long live protection!
JACQUES BONHOMME: Protection! But is it you, the workers, who are being protected? Do you not compete with one another? Then let the wood dealers experience competition in their turn. They have no right to raise the price of their wood by law unless they also raise wage rates by law. Are you no longer in love with equality?
THE PEOPLE: Long live equality!
PETER: Do not listen to this agitator. We have, it is true, raised the price of wood, of meat, and of butter; but we have done so in order to be able to give good wages to the workers. We are prompted by motives of charity.
THE PEOPLE: Long live charity!
JACQUES BONHOMME: Use the town tariff duties, if you can, to raise wages, or else do not use them to raise commodity prices. What the people of Paris demand is not charity, but justice.
THE PEOPLE: Long live justice!
PETER: It is precisely high commodity prices that make for high wages.
THE PEOPLE: Long live high prices!
JACQUES BONHOMME: If butter is dear, it is not because you are paying high wages to the workers; it is not even because you are making big profits; it is solely because Paris is ill-situated for that industry, because you insisted that people produce in the city what they should be producing in the country, and in the country what used to be produced in the city. It is not that there are more jobs for the people, but only jobs of a
different kind. It is not that their wages are higher, but that the prices at which they buy things are no longer as low.
THE PEOPLE: Long live low prices!
PETER: This man is seducing you with his honeyed words. Let us put the question in all its simplicity. Is it not true that if we grant entry to butter, wood, and meat, we shall be flooded with them? Shall we not perish of the surfeit? There is, thus, no other way of saving ourselves from this new species of invasion than by slamming the gates in its face, and no other way of maintaining commodity prices than by producing an artificial scarcity.
SOME FEW SCATTERED VOICES: Long live scarcity!
JACQUES BONHOMME: Let us put the question to the test of truth. One can divide among all the people in Paris only what there is in Paris; if there is less meat, less wood, less butter, each person's share will be smaller. Now, there will be less of these commodities if we ban them than if we admit them. Parisians, there can be abundance for everyone only in so far as there is general abundance.
THE PEOPLE: Long live abundance!
PETER: This man can talk all he wants; he will never be able to show you that it is in your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition.
THE PEOPLE: Down with competition!
JACQUES BONHOMME: This man can declaim all he wants; he cannot make it possible for you to taste the sweets of restriction.
THE PEOPLE: Down with restriction!
PETER: And I, for my part, declare that if the poor cowherds and swineherds are to be deprived of their daily bread, if they are to be sacrificed to theories, I can no longer be answerable for public order. Workingmen, put no faith in that man. He is an agent of perfidious Normandy; he goes there to get his orders. He is a traitor; he must be hanged. (The people remain silent.)
JACQUES BONHOMME: Parisians, everything I am saying today, I was saying twenty years ago, when Peter took it into his head to exploit the town tariff duties for his own advantage and to your disadvantage. I am not, then, an agent of the Normans. Hang me if you will, but that will not make oppression any the less oppressive. Friends, it is neither Jacques Bonhomme nor Peter who must be killed, but free trade if it frightens you, or restriction if it does you harm.
THE PEOPLE: Let us hang no one, and set everybody free.

11. A Chinese Tale
To be in fashion today, one must show, or pretend to show, feeling, sentimental sensibility, everywhere, even at the customhouse window where they ask, "What do you have
there, friend?"
But for realizing these humanitarian aspirations, the customhouse has, it must be confessed, some rather
strange procedures.
It musters an army of directors, assistant directors, inspectors, deputy inspectors, superintendents, auditors, collectors, department heads, assistant department heads, clerks, supernumeraries, candidates for the jobs of supernumeraries, and candidates for the candidacy, to say nothing of those on active service—all with the object of exercising over the productive activities of the people the bar.
negative action that can be summed up in the word
tax, but quite genuinely bar.
Notice that I do not say
And to bar, not acts repugnant to morality or dangerous to public order, but transactions that are innocent and, as is
admitted, conducive to peace and harmony among nations.
Nevertheless, mankind is so flexible and adaptable that in one way or another it always surmounts these barriers. It is
just a matter of applying more labor.
If people are barred from importing their food from abroad, they produce it domestically. This is more laborious, but one must eat. If they are barred from passing through the valley, they climb over the mountains. This way is longer,
but one must reach one's destination.
All this is regrettable, but it does have its ridiculous side. When the law has in this way created a certain number of obstacles, and when, in order to overcome them, mankind