4. Lower Council of Labor

“What! You have the nerve to demand for all citizens a right to sell, buy, barter, and exchange; to render and receive service for service, and to judge for themselves, on the single condition that they do all honestly, and comply with the demands of the public treasury? Then you simply desire to deprive our workmen of employment, of wages, and of bread?”

That is what is said to us. I know very well what to think of it; but what I wish to know is, what the workmen themselves think of it.

I have at hand an excellent instrument of inquiry. Not those Upper Councils of Industry, where extensive proprietors who call themselves laborers, rich shipowners who call themselves sailors, and wealthy shareholders who pass themselves off for workmen, turn their philanthropy to advantage in a way that we all know.

No; it is with workmen who are workmen in reality that we have to do—joiners, carpenters, masons, tailors, shoemakers, dyers, blacksmiths, innkeepers, grocers, etc. etc.—and who in my village have founded a friendly society.

I have transformed this friendly society, by my own hand, into a Lower Council of Labor, and instituted an inquiry that will be found of great importance, although it is not crammed with figures, or inflated to the bulk of a quarto volume printed at the expense of the State.

My object was to interrogate these plain, simple people as to the manner in which they are, or believe themselves to be, affected by the policy of protection. The president pointed out that this would be infringing to some extent on the fundamental conditions of the Association. For in France, this land of liberty, people who associate give up their right to talk politics—in other words, their right to discuss their common interests. However, after some hesitation, he agreed to include the question in the order of the day.

They divided the assembly into as many committees as there were groups of distinct trades, and delivered to each committee a schedule to be filled up after fifteen days’ deliberation.

On the day fixed, the worthy president (we adopt the official style) took the chair, and there were laid upon the table (still the official style) fifteen reports, which he read in succession.

The first that was taken into consideration was that of the tailors. Here is an exact and literal copy of it.

EFFECTS OF PROTECTION.
REPORT OF THE TAILORS

ADVANTAGES

INCONVENIENCES

None. Note: After all our inquiries, deliberations, and discussions, we have been quite unable to discover that in any respect whatever the policy of protection has been of advantage to our trade.

1st. In consequence of the policy of protection, we pay dearer for bread, meat, sugar, firewood, thread, needles, etc., which is equivalent in our case to a considerable reduction of wages. 2nd. In consequence of the policy of protection, our customers also pay dearer for everything, and this leaves them less to spend upon clothing: whence it follows that we have less employment, and, consequently, smaller returns. 3rd. In consequence of the policy of protection, the materials we sew are dear, and people on that account wear their clothes longer, or dispense with part of them. This, again, is equivalent to a diminution of employment, and forces us to offer our services at a lower rate of remuneration.

Here is another report:

EFFECTS OF PROTECTION.
REPORT OF THE BLACKSMITHS

ADVANTAGES

INCONVENIENCES

None.

1st. The policy of protection imposes a tax upon us every time we eat, drink, or warm or clothe ourselves, and this tax does not go to the treasury. 2nd. It imposes a like tax upon all our fellow-citizens who are not of our trade, and they, being so much the poorer, have recourse to cheap substitutes for our work, which deprives us of the employment we should otherwise have had. 3rd. It keeps up iron at so high a price that it is not employed in the country for ploughs, grates, gates, balconies, etc.; and our trade, which might furnish employment to so many other people who are in want of it, no longer furnishes employment to ourselves. 4th. The revenue that the treasury fails to obtain from commodities that are not imported, is levied upon the salt we use, postages, etc.

All the other reports (with which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader) are to the same tune. Gardeners, carpenters, shoemakers, clogmakers, boatmen, millers, all give vent to the same complaints.

I regret that there are no agricultural laborers in our association. Their report would assuredly have been very instructive.

But alas! In our country of the Landes, the poor laborers, protected though they be, have not the means of joining an association and, having insured their cattle, they find they cannot themselves become members of a friendly society. The boon of protection does not hinder them from being the pariahs of our social order. What shall I say of the grape pickers?

What I notice, especially, is the good sense displayed by our villagers in perceiving not only the direct injury the policy of protection does them, but the indirect injury, which, although in the first instance affecting their customers, rebounds upon themselves.

This is what the economists of the Moniteur Industriel do not appear to understand.

And perhaps those men whose eyes a dash of protection has fascinated, especially our agriculturists, would be willing to give it up if they were enabled to see this side of the question.

In that case they might perhaps say to themselves, “Better far to be self-supported in the midst of a set of customers in easy circumstances than to be protected in the midst of an impoverished clientele.

For to desire to enrich by turns each separate branch of industry by creating a moat around each in succession, is as vain an attempt as it would be for a man to try to leap over his own shadow.