"Raw material being entirely untouched by human labor, our system should exempt it from taxes. Manufactured articles furnishing no material for national labor, we consider as the most fit for taxation."
There is no question here as to the propriety of protecting national labor. Mr. de Saint Cricq and the Bordalese agree entirely upon this point. We have, in our preceding chapters, already shown how entirely we differ from both of them.
The question to be determined, is, whether it is Mr. de Saint Cricq, or the Bordalese, who give to the word labor its proper acceptation. And we must confess that Mr. de Saint Cricq is here decidedly in the right. The following dialogue might be supposed between them:
Mr. de Saint Cricq.—You agree that national labor ought to be protected. You agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our market, without destroying an equal quantity of our national labor. But you contend that there are numerous articles of merchandise possessing value, for they are sold, and which are nevertheless untouched by human labor. Among these you name corn, flour, meat, cattle, bacon, salt, iron, copper, lead, coal, wool, skins, seeds, etc.
If you can prove to me, that the value of these things is not dependent upon labor, I will agree that it is useless to protect them.
But if I can prove to you that there is as much labor put upon a hundred francs worth of wool, as upon a hundred francs worth of cloth, you ought to acknowledge that protection is the right as much of the one, as of the other.
I ask you then why this bag of wool is worth a hundred francs? Is it not because this is its price of production? And what is the price of production, but the sum which has been distributed in wages for labor, payment of skill, and interest on money, among the various laborers and capitalists, who have assisted in the production of the article?
The Petitioners.—It is true that with regard to wool you may be right; but a bag of corn, a bar of iron, a hundred weight of coal, are these the produce of labor? Is it not nature which creates them?
Mr. de St. Cricq.—Without doubt, nature creates these substances, but it is labor which gives them their value. I have myself, in saying that labor creates material objects, used a false expression, which has led me into many farther errors. No man can create. No man can bring any thing from nothing; and if production is used as a synonym for creation, then indeed our labor must all be useless.
The agriculturist does not pretend that he has created the corn; but he has given it its value. He has by his own labor, and by that of his servants, his laborers, and his reapers, transformed into corn substances which were entirely dissimilar from it. What more is effected by the miller who converts it into flour, or by the baker who makes it into bread?