Turning now to France, and Northern Europe generally, we find a state of things that is widely different-the circulation there becoming daily more continuous - the demand for human effort following more rapidly on the power to labor being produced — physical and mental faculty becoming more and more developed as it is more and more economized and force increasing from day to day. To what cause may these differences be ascribed? The answer to this question is found in the fact, that the first named of these countries follow in the lead of England, adopting for their guides those economists who hold that the return to agricultural labor tends to diminish that agriculture is, therefore, the least profitable of human pursuits that the proportion of the land-owner tends naturally to increase, and that of the laborer to diminish the tendency towards a state of slavery increasing as matter tends more and more to take upon itself the highest form of which it is capable — that of man. The others follow in the lead of France-adopting the policy of Colbert, which looks to placing agriculture at the head of all pursuits - seeking the attainment of that object by means of measures tending to raise the price of land and labor, while reducing that of the commodities required for the consumption of the landowner and the laborer. The first place trade at the head of the pursuits of man, while the latter seek the extension of commerce. Coming now to England herself, we find ourselves in the home of the philosophers to whom the world is indebted for the theory of over-population-invented, as it was, for the purpose of accounting for the enormous waste of power resulting from want of continuity in the demand for it. At one time, the mill-owner closes his doors, with a view to reduce the price of labor and its ruder products; while, at another, long-continued strikes carry ruin to the homes of both the workman and his employer. Trad bankruptcy and ruin; that real estate has no market value; that dwellinghouses are gradually decaying, and money can with difficulty be raised, even in return for personal property; that most of the necessary articles for consumption are imported from the United States, while the natural products are neglected; and that the money-capital of the country is drained, in the absence of any exchange of trade. They add, that the industrial condition of the inhabitants is at the lowest ebb, and that their moral and social condition is not a whit more elevated."- Falmouth Post. ing centralization is there almost perfect; and centralization and stability are totally inconsistent with each other.* Turning now to the United States, we find a waste of laborpower not exceeded in any civilized country of the world—the amount employed not being even a third of the capability of effort that is produced. Consumption following slowly after production, the markets of the world are always flooded with flour, cotton, rice, and tobacco; and hence it is, that the power of those commodities to command gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, tin, or any other of the metallic products of the earth, steadily diminishes-when, in the natural order of things, it should as steadily increase. When, however, we seek to find the waste of power most complete, we must turn to the closing years of the free-trade period that followed the termination of the great European war-workshops having then been everywhere closed, while wives and children perished for want of food; to the free-trade period of 1842, when the demand for labor had almost wholly ceased; to the years 1850-51, prior to the large import of Californian gold; or, lastly, to the present moment, when the circulation is gradually and steadily declining-when the production of food and clothing is diminishing in its ratio to the population-and when pauperism grows with a growth such as has never before been known. So is it, and so must it be, everywhere. Looking to Spain, we find, as we change our place, the same differences that in the United States attend upon change of time. Throughout the Basque provinces, there are nearly two hundred iron-works in operation; while other departments of manufacture make large "Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, and idle, godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary principle, Time will mend it: till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence, physical and moral; a hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said Needlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair. Thirty thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrifying well of abominations; they have oozed in upon London, from the universal Stygian quagmire of British industrial life; are accumulated in the well of the concern to that extent." -CARLYLE: Latter-Day Pamphlets. - * * demand for labor. "Wherever, therefore, the eye turns, it sees unmistakable signs of cheerful and honest industry" — towns and villages improving and extending-roads well maintained, bridges well constructed, and mines well worked. In striking contrast to this is Aragon, a purely agricultural country, in which there is no demand for labor- that province importing all its finished commodities, and exporting raw materials and men.* The man who must carry his labor or its products to a distant market, must pay the cost of getting there; and when the distance is so great that the whole will be wasted in the operation, he will prefer to waste it at home to wasting it on the road. The cost of carrying a bushel of wheat, potatoes, or turnips, on an ordinary wagon-road in this country, being about a cent per mile, the latter articles cannot, in ordinary seasons, be raised where they are thirty miles from market, nor the wheat where the distance exceeds a hundred miles. Still worse is it with regard to labor, as has been shown that commodity perishing in the act of transportation. In Biscay, the man who has labor to sell is close to him who needs to buy it, while he who raises potatoes has a customer close at hand; and hence the rapidity with which consumption and production follow in each other's train. gon and Valencia afford no markets, and hence the absence of motion in society, the little value of man, and the great value of finished commodities of every kind. § 10. Continuity in the demand for labor-rapidity in the circulation of services. growing commerce -are all but different modes of expression for the same idea. Seeking to find them, we must look to those countries, and parts of countries, in which raw materials and finished commodities tend most to approximate the former rising, with constant increase in the price of labor, land, and the rude products of both; the latter falling, with steady increase in the power of the laborer to command the necessaries, comforts, and even luxuries of life. That this is so, will be obvious to the reader when he studies, once again, the diagram to which his attention has before been called : *Westminster Review, July, 1853: Notice of Wilkomm's Wanderings in Spain. On the left, there is, and can be, no commerce trade there being master, and agriculture having, thus far, no existence. On the right, commerce is rapid land and labor there being high in price, while finished commodities are cheap. So do we find it in all the countries of the world, as we pass from states or provinces that are exclusively agricultural to those in which employments are diversified — in which the circulation becomes more rapid and in which agriculture becomes a science. Look where we may, we find evidence of the fact, that the growth of civilization is in the direct ratio of the rapidity with which consumption follows production; and that, in the social as in the physical world, the greatest amount of force is to be found in connection with the most perfect continuity of motion. § 11. Production consists in directing the natural forces to the service of man. The power to command those forces results from combination, and the more perfect the power of association, the greater is that power. To enable men to associate, there must be difference, resulting from diversity of employment. The more numerous the differences, the greater must be the facility of combination, and the more instantly must consumption follow on production. The more matter tends to take upon itself its highest form that of man- the greater must be the power to maintain commerce; the less must be the waste of that force which results from the consumption of food; and the greater must be the power of each individual to produce something to be given in exchange for what he needs thus offering to others inducements for the exertion of muscular or mental force. The greater those exertions, the more rapid is the circulation, Massachusetts. and the greater the tendency to increase in the power of production and accumulation. § 12. The tendency of modern political economy has been towards changing altogether the signification of the word wealth -limiting it more and more to those material commodities that may be bought and sold; limiting, too, the science itself to the consideration of actions involving sale on one side and purchase on the other. That such should have been the case has been due to the fact, that none of its professors have ever properly discriminated between the two very distinct classes into which society is so much divided the one desiring to effect exchanges with their fellow-men, and thus maintaining commerce; while the other desires to effect changes for them, and thus to perform acts of trade. Extension of the first tends, as has been seen, to the promotion of perfect steadiness in the motion of society; whereas, increase in the other tends necessarily to the production of what are called "gluts" the trader finding it profitable so to act, as to cause those changes in the prices of labor and of commodities which enable him to buy cheaply and sell dearly. The result of this is seen in the fact, that some economists of the modern school have imagined this difficulty of selling to be a consequence of over-production, when the real cause was to be found in obstacles standing in the way of circulation. Not perceiving this, the successor of Mr. J. B. Say, in his professorship, tells his readers, that they "have not now to look, as in the days of Adam Smith, exclusively to the acceleration of production; it being required now to govern it—restraining it within wise limits. It is," as he continues, "no longer a question of absolute, but of relative, wealth-humanity requiring that we should cease to sacrifice to the progress of the general opulence, the great masses of the people who cannot profit by it."* Overpopulation and over-production here travel hand in hand together - both combining for the production of what is most appropriately termed "the dismal science." From the omission above referred to, there has resulted considerable difference as to the true meaning of the word production, * BLANQUI: Histoire d'Economie Politique, vol. ii. p. 146. |