To prevent or to let alone, -- such is the eternal alternative of the economists: beyond it their genius does not go.In vain is it cried out at them that it is not a question of preventing anything or of permitting everything; that what is asked of them, what society expects of them, is a reconciliation: this double idea does not enter their head.
"It is necessary," M.Dunoyer replies to M.Dupin, "to distinguish theory from practice."
My God! everybody knows that M.Dunoyer, inflexible as to principles in his works, is very accommodating as to practice in the Council of State.
But let him condescend to once ask himself this question: Why am I obliged to continually distinguish practice from theory? Why do they not harmonize?
M.Blanqui, as a lover of peace and harmony, supports the learned M.
Dunoyer, -- that is, theory.Nevertheless he thinks, with M.Dupin, --
that is, with practice, -- that competition is not exempt from reproach.
So afraid is M.Blanqui of calumniating and stirring up the fire!
M.Dupin is obstinate in his opinion.He cites, as evils for which competition is responsible, fraud, sale by false weights, the exploitation of children.
All doubtless in order to prove that competition within the nation may be useful!
M.Passy, with his usual logic, observes that there will always be dishonest people who, etc.Accuse human nature, he cries, but not competition.
At the very outset M.Passy's logic wanders from the question.Competition is reproached with the inconveniences which result from its nature, not with the frauds of which it is the occasion or pretext.A manufacturer finds a way of replacing a workman who costs him three francs a day by a woman to whom he gives but one franc.This expedient is the only one by which he can meet a falling market and keep his establishment in motion.
Soon to the working women he will add children.Then, forced by the necessities of war, he will gradually reduce wages and add to the hours of labor.Where is the guilty party here? This argument may be turned about in a hundred ways and applied to all industries without furnishing any ground for accusing human nature.
M.Passy himself is obliged to admit it when he adds: "As for the compulsory labor of children, the fault is on the parents." Exactly.And the fault of the parents on whom?
"In Ireland," continues this orator, "there is no competition, and yet poverty is extreme."
On this point M.Passy's ordinary logic has been betrayed by an extraordinary lack of memory.In Ireland there is a complete, universal monopoly of the land, and unlimited, desperate competition for farms.Competition-monopoly are the two balls which unhappy Ireland drags, one after each foot.
When the economists are tired of accusing human nature, the greed of parents, and the turbulence of radicals, they find delectation in picturing the felicity of the proletariat.But there again they cannot agree with each other or with themselves; and nothing better depicts the anarchy of competition than the disorder of their ideas.
Today the wife of the workingman dresses in elegant robes which in a previous century great ladies would not have disdained.-- M.Chevalier:
Lecture 4.
And this is the same M.Chevalier who, according to his own calculation, estimates that the total national income would give thirteen cents a day to each individual.Some economists even reduce this figure to eleven cents.
Now, as all that goes to make up the large fortunes must come out of this sum, we may accept the estimate of M.de Morogues that the daily income of half the French people does not exceed five cents each.
"But," continues M.Chevalier, with mystical exaltation, "does not happiness consist in the harmony of desires and enjoyments, in the balance of needs and satisfactions? Does it not consist in a certain condition of soul, the conditions of which it is not the function of political economy to prevent, and which it is not its mission to engender? This is the work of religion and philosophy."
Economist, Horace would say to M: Chevalier, if he were living at the present day, attend simply to my income, and leave me to take care of my soul: Det vitam, det opes; oequum mi animum ipse parabo.
M.Dunoyer again has the floor:
It would be easy, in many cities, on holidays, to confound the working class with the bourgeois class [why are there two classes?], so fine is the dress of the former.No less has been the progress in nourishment.
Food is at once more abundant, more substantial, and more varied.Bread is better everywhere.Meat, soup, white bread, have become, in many factory towns, infinitely more common than they used to be.In short, the average duration of life has been raised from thirty-five years to forty.
Farther on M.Dunoyer gives a picture of English fortunes according to Marshall.It appears from this picture that in England two million five hundred thousand families have an income of only two hundred and forty dollars.Now, in England an income of two hundred and forty dollars corresponds to an income of one hundred and forty-six dollars in our country, which, divided between four persons, gives each thirty-six dollars and a half, or ten cents a day.That is not far from the thirteen cents which M.Chevalier allows to each individual in France: the difference in favor of the latter arises from the fact that, the progress of wealth being less advanced in France, poverty is likewise less.What must one think of the economists'
luxuriant descriptions or of their figures?
"Pauperism has increased to such an extent in England," confesses M.
Blanqui, "that the English government has had to seek a refuge in those frightful work-houses"....
