The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Arthur Goddard, Preface to the English-language Edition
• Henry Hazlitt, Introduction
• First Series, Chapter 1: Abundance and Scarcity
• First Series, Chapter 2: Obstacle and Cause
• First Series, Chapter 3: Effort and Result
• First Series, Chapter 4: Equalizing the Conditions of Production
• First Series, Chapter 5: Our Products Are Burdened With Taxes
• First Series, Chapter 6: The Balance of Trade
• First Series, Chapter 7: A Petition
• First Series, Chapter 8: Differential Tariffs
• First Series, Chapter 9: An Immense Discovery!
• First Series, Chapter 10: Reciprocity
• First Series, Chapter 11: Money Prices
• First Series, Chapter 12: Does Protectionism Raise Wage Rates?
• First Series, Chapter 13: Theory and Practice
• First Series, Chapter 14: Conflict of Principles
• First Series, Chapter 15: Reciprocity Again
• First Series, Chapter 16: Obstructed Rivers As Advocates For the Protectionists
• First Series, Chapter 17: A Negative Railroad
• First Series, Chapter 18: There Are No Absolute Principles
• First Series, Chapter 19: National Independence
• First Series, Chapter 20: Human Vs. Mechanical Labor and Domestic Vs. Foreign Labor
• First Series, Chapter 21: Raw Materials
• First Series, Chapter 22: Metaphors
• First Series, Chapter 23: Conclusion
• Second Series, Chapter 1: The Physiology of Plunder 1*
• Second Series, Chapter 2: Two Systems of Ethics
• Second Series, Chapter 3: The Two Hatchets
• Second Series, Chapter 4: Subordinate Labor Council
• Second Series, Chapter 5: High Prices and Low Prices 17*
• Second Series, Chapter 6: To Artisans and Laborers 23*
• Second Series, Chapter 7: A Chinese Tale
• Second Series, Chapter 8: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc 33* 34*
• Second Series, Chapter 9: Robbery By Subsidy 36*
• Second Series, Chapter 10: The Tax Collector
• Second Series, Chapter 11: The Utopian 53*
• Second Series, Chapter 12: Salt, the Postal Service, and the Tariff 65*
• Second Series, Chapter 13: Protectionism, Or the Three Aldermen a Demonstration In Four Scenes Scene 1.
• Second Series, Chapter 14: Something Else 91*
• Second Series, Chapter 15: The Little Arsenal of the Freetrader 96*
• Second Series, Chapter 16: The Right Hand and the Left 101* (a Report to the King)
• Second Series, Chapter 17: Domination Through Industrial Superiority 108*

Second Series, Chapter 4

Subordinate Labor Council

"What! You have the effrontery to demand for all citizens the right to buy, sell, barter, and exchange, to render and receive service for service, and settle on the price among themselves, on the sole condition that they carry on these transactions honestly and pay their taxes? What are you trying to do—deprive workingmen of their jobs, their wages, and their bread?"

This is what people say to us. I know what to think of it myself, but I wanted to know what the workers themselves think of it.

I had at hand an excellent instrument of inquiry.

It was not one of those supreme industrial councils, where big landlords who call themselves farmers, influential shipowners who think of themselves as sailors, and wealthy stockholders who pretend to be laborers, practice their well-known form of humanitarianism.

No; it was bona fide workingmen, real workingmen, as they say today—joiners, carpenters, masons, tailors, shoemakers, dyers, blacksmiths, innkeepers, grocers, etc., etc.—who in my village have established a mutual-aid society.

I transformed it, by my own personal authority, into a subordinate labor council, and I obtained from it a report that is worth quite as much as any other, though it is not crammed with figures and inflated to the dimensions of a quarto volume printed at government expense.

My aim was to interrogate these good people in regard to the way in which they are, or think they are, affected by the policy of protectionism. The president pointed out to me that this would violate to some extent the principles on which the association was founded. For, in France, in this land of freedom, people who associate give up their right to discuss politics—that is, to take counsel together concerning their common interests. However, after a great deal of hesitation, he agreed to put the question on the agenda.

The council was divided into as many committees as there were groups representing different trades. Each was given a form to be filled out after fifteen days of discussion.

On the designated day, the venerable president took the chair (we are adopting the official style, for in fact it was nothing more than an ordinary kitchen chair), and took from the table (official style again, for it was a table of poplar wood) about fifteen reports, which he read one after another.

The first one submitted was that of the tailors. Here is an exact and authentic copy of its text:

Here is another report:

As the same refrain recurs in all the other reports, I spare the reader their perusal. Gardeners, carpenters, shoemakers, clogmakers, boatmen, millers—all gave vent to the same grievances.

I regret that there were no farmers in our association. Their report would certainly have been very instructive.

But alas, in our section—the Landes16* —the poor farmers, well protected though they are, do not have a sou, and after they have insured their livestock, they themselves lack the means of joining a mutual-aid society. The alleged benefits of protection do not prevent them from being the pariahs of our social order. What shall I say of the vineyardists?

What I find particularly noteworthy is the good sense which our villagers showed in perceiving not only the direct injury that the policy of protectionism inflicts on them, but also the indirect injury that, after first affecting their customers, rebounds upon them.

This, I said to myself, is what the economists of the Moniteur industriel apparently do not understand.

And perhaps those—the farmers in particular—whose eyes are dazzled by a little protection would be willing to give it up if they could see this side of the question.

Perhaps they would say to themselves: "It is better to support oneself by one's own efforts and have customers who are well off than to be protected and have customers who are impoverished."

For to seek to enrich each industry in turn by creating a void around one after another is as futile an endeavor as trying to leap over one's own shadow.

[16.][A department in southwestern France.—TRANSLATOR.]