France, according to our supposition, manufactured ten millions of hats at fifteen francs each. Let us now suppose that a foreign producer brings them into our market at ten francs. I maintain that national labor is thus in no wise diminished. It will be obliged to produce the equivalent of the hundred millions which go to pay for the ten millions of hats at ten francs, and then there remains to each buyer five francs, saved on the purchase of his hat, or, in total, fifty millions, which serve for the acquisition of other comforts, and the encouragement of other labor.
The mass of labor remains, then, what it was, and the additional comforts accruing from the fifty millions saved in the purchase of hats, are the net profit of importation or free trade.
It is no argument to try and alarm us by a picture of the sufferings which, in this hypothesis, would result from the displacement or change of labor.
For, if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself in accordance with the laws of trade, and no displacement would have taken place.
If prohibition has led to an artificial and unproductive classification of labor, then it is prohibition, and not free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement which must result in the transition from evil to good.
It is a rather singular argument to maintain that, because an abuse which has been permitted a temporary existence, cannot be corrected without wounding the interests of those who have profited by it, it ought, therefore, to claim perpetual duration.
XXI.
RAW MATERIAL.
It is said that no commerce is so advantageous as that in which manufactured articles are exchanged for raw material; because the latter furnishes aliment for national labor.