We do not desire, however, to hide from your Majesty the fact that our plan has a vulnerable side. They may say to us: In twenty years all left hands will be as skilled as right ones are now, and you can no longer count on left-handedness to increase the national labor.
We reply to this, that, according to learned physicians, the left side of the body has a natural weakness, which is very reassuring for the future of labor.
Finally, Sire, consent to sign the law, and a great principle will have prevailed: All wealth comes from the intensity of labor. It will be easy for us to extend it, and vary its application. We will declare, for instance, that it shall be allowable to work only with the feet. This is no more impossible (for there have been instances) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. There have even been men who wrote with their backs. You see, Sire, that we do not lack means of increasing national labor. If they do begin to fail us, there remains the boundless resource of amputation.
If this report, Sire, was not intended for publication, we would call your attention to the great influence which systems analogous to the one we submit to you, are capable of giving to men in power. But this is a subject which we reserve for consideration in private counsel.
XVII.
SUPREMACY BY LABOR.
"As in a time of war, supremacy is attained by superiority in arms, can, in a time of peace, supremacy be secured by superiority in labor?"
This question is of the greatest interest at a time when no one seems to doubt that in the field of industry, as on that of battle, the stronger crushes the weaker.
This must result from the discovery of some sad and discouraging analogy between labor, which exercises itself on things, and violence, which exercises itself on men; for how could these two things be identical in their effects, if they were opposed in their nature?