Sophisms of the Protectionists Part 1

Sophisms of the Protectionists.

by Frederic Bastiat.

PREFACE.

A previous edition of this work has been published under the t.i.tle of "Essays on Political Economy, by the late M. Frederic Bastiat." When it became necessary to issue a second edition, the Free-Trade League offered to buy the stereotype plates and the copyright, with a view to the publication of the book on a large scale and at a very low price.

The primary object of the League is to educate public opinion; to convince the people of the United States of the folly and wrongfulness of the Protective system. The methods adopted by the League for the purpose have been the holding of public meetings and the publication of books, pamphlets, and tracts, some of which are for sale at the cost of publication, and others given away gratuitously.

In publis.h.i.+ng this book the League feels that it is offering the most effective and most popular work on political economy that has as yet been written. M. Bastiat not only enlivens a dull subject with his wit, but also reduces the propositions of the Protectionists to absurdities.

Free-Traders can do no better service in the cause of truth, justice, and humanity, than by circulating this little book among their friends.

It is offered you at what it costs to print it. Will not every Free-Trader put a copy of the book into the hands of his Protectionist friends?

It would not be proper to close this short preface without an expression on the part of the League of its obligation to the able translator of the work from the French, Mr. Horace White, of Chicago.

OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN FREE-TRADE LEAGUE, 9 Na.s.sau Street, New-York, June, 1870.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

This compilation, from the works of the late M. Bastiat, is given to the public in the belief that the time has now come when the people, relieved from the absorbing anxieties of the war, and the subsequent strife on reconstruction, are prepared to give a more earnest and thoughtful attention to economical questions than was possible during the previous ten years. That we have retrograded in economical science during this period, while making great strides in moral and political advancement by the abolition of slavery and the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the freedmen, seems to me incontestable. Professor Perry has described very concisely the steps taken by the manufacturers in 1861, after the Southern members had left their seats in Congress, to reverse the policy of the government in reference to foreign trade.[1] He has noticed but has not laid so much stress as he might on the fact that while there was no considerable public opinion to favor them, there was none at all to oppose them. Not only was the attention of the people diverted from the tariff by the dangers then impending, but the Republican party, which then came into power, had, in its National Convention, offered a bribe to the State of Pennsylvania for its vote in the Presidential election, which bribe was set forth in the following words:

"_Resolved_, That while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence."--_Chicago Convention Platform_, 1860.

[Footnote 1: Elements of Political Economy, p. 461]

It is true that this resolution did not commit anybody to the doctrine that the industrial interests of the whole country are promoted by taxes levied upon imported property, however "adjusted," but it was understood, by the Pennsylvanians at least, to be a promise that if the Republican party were successful in the coming election, the doctrine of protection, which had been overthrown in 1846, and had been in an extremely languis.h.i.+ng state ever since, should be put upon its legs again. I am far from a.s.serting that this overture was needed to secure the vote of Pennsylvania for Mr. Lincoln in 1860, or that that State was governed by less worthy motives in her political action than other States. I only remark that her delegates in the convention thought such a resolution would be extremely useful, and such was the anxiety to secure her vote in the election that a much stronger resolution might have been conceded if it had been required. I affirm, however, that there was no agitation on the tariff question in any other quarter. New England had united in pa.s.sing the tariff of 1857, which lowered the duties imposed by the act of 1846 about fifty per cent., i.e., one-half of the previously existing scale. The Western States had not pet.i.tioned Congress or the convention to disturb the tariff; nor had New York done so, although Mr. Greeley, then as now, was invoking, more or less frequently, the shade of Henry Clay to help re-establish what is deftly styled the "American System."

The protective policy was restored, after its fifteen years' sleep, under the auspices of Mr. Morrill, a Representative (now a Senator) from Vermont. Latterly I have noticed in the speeches and votes of this gentleman (who is, I think, one of the most conscientious, as he is one of the most amiable, men in public life), a reluctance to follow to their logical conclusion the principles embodied in the "Morrill tariff"

of 1861. His remarks upon the copper bill, during the recent session of Congress, indicate that, in his opinion, those branches of American industry which are engaged in producing articles sent abroad in exchange for the products of foreign nations, are ent.i.tled to some consideration.

This is an important admission, but not so important as another, which he made in his speech on the national finances, January 24, 1867, in which, referring to the bank note circulation existing in the year 1860, he said: "_And that was a year of as large production and as much general prosperity as any, perhaps, in our history_."[2] If the year immediately preceding the enactment of the Morrill tariff was a year of as large production and as much general prosperity as any in our history, of what use has the Morrill tariff been? We have seen that it was not demanded by any public agitation. We now see that it has been of no public utility.

[Footnote 2: Congressional Globe, Second Session Thirty-ninth Congress, p. 724.]

In combating, by arguments and ill.u.s.trations adapted to the comprehension of the ma.s.s of mankind, the errors and sophisms with which protectionists deceive themselves and others, M. Bastiat is the most lucid and pointed of all writers on economical science with whose works I have any acquaintance. It is not necessary to accord to him a place among the architects of the science of political economy, although some of his admirers rank him among the highest.[3] It is enough to count him among the greatest of its expounders and demonstrators. His death, which occurred at Pisa, Italy, on the 24th December, 1850, at the age of 49, was a serious loss to France and to the world. His works, though for the most part fragmentary, and given to the public from time to time through the columns of the _Journal des Economistes_, the _Journal des Debats_, and the _Libre Echange_, remain a monument of a n.o.ble intellect guided by a n.o.ble soul. They have been collected and published (including the _Harmonies Economiques_, which the author left in ma.n.u.script) by Guillaumin & Co., the proprietors of the _Journal des Economistes_, in two editions of six volumes each, 8vo. and 12mo. When we reflect that these six volumes were produced between April, 1844, and December, 1850, by a young man of feeble const.i.tution, who commenced life as a clerk in a mercantile establishment, and who spent much of his time during these six years in delivering public lectures, and laboring in the National a.s.sembly, to which he was chosen in 1848, our admiration for such industry is only modified by the thought that if he had been more saving of his strength, he might have rendered even greater services to his country and to mankind.

[Footnote 3: Mr. Macleod (_Dictionary of Political Economy_, vol. I, p.

246) speaks of Bastiat's definition of Value as "the greatest revolution that has been effected in any science since the days of Galileo."

See also Professor Perry's pamphlet, _Recent Phases of Thought in Political Economy_, read before the American Social Science a.s.sociation, October, 1868, in which, it appears to me, that Bastiat's theory of Rent, in announcing which he was antic.i.p.ated by Mr. Carey, is too highly praised.]

The _Sophismes Economiques_, which fill the larger portion of this volume, were not expected by their author to outlast the fallacies which they sought to overthrow. But these fallacies have lived longer and have spread over more of the earth's surface than any one _a priori_ could have believed possible. It is sometimes useful, in opposing doctrines which people have been taught to believe are peculiar to their own country and time, to show that the same doctrines have been maintained in other countries and times, and have been exploded in other languages.

By what misuse of words the doctrine of Protection came to be denominated the "American System," I could never understand. It prevailed in England nearly two hundred years before our separation from the mother country. Adam Smith directed the first formidable attack against it in the very year that our independence was declared. It held its ground in England until it had starved and ruined almost every branch of industry--agriculture, manufactures, and commerce alike.[4] It was not wholly overthrown until 1846, the same year that witnessed its discomfiture in the United States, as already shown. It still exists in a subdued and declining way in France, despite the powerful and brilliant attacks of Say, Bastiat, and Chevalier, but its end cannot be far distant in that country. The Cobden-Chevalier treaty with England has been attended by consequences so totally at variance with the theories and prophecies of the protectionists that it must soon succ.u.mb.

[Footnote 4: It is so often affirmed by protectionists that the superiority of Great Britain in manufactures was attained by means of protection, that it is worth while to dispel that illusion. The facts are precisely the reverse. Protection had brought Great Britain in the year 1842 to the last stages of penury and decay, and it wanted but a year or two more of the same regimen to have precipitated the country into a b.l.o.o.d.y revolution. I quote a paragraph from Miss Martineau's "History of England from 1816 to 1854," Book VI, Chapter 5:

"Serious as was the task of the Minister (Sir R. Peel) in every view, the most immediate sympathy was felt for him on account of the fearful state of the people. The distress had now so deepened in the manufacturing districts as to render it clearly inevitable that many must die, and a mult.i.tude be lowered to a state of sickness and irritability from want of food; while there seemed no chance of any member of the manufacturing cla.s.ses coming out of the struggle at last with a vestige of property wherewith to begin the world again.

The pressure had long extended beyond the interests first affected, and when the new Ministry came into power, there seemed to be no cla.s.s that was not threatened with ruin. In Carlisle, the Committee of Inquiry reported that a fourth of the population was in a state bordering on starvation--actually certain to die of famine, unless relieved by extraordinary exertions. In the woollen districts of Wilts.h.i.+re, the allowance to the independent laborer was not two-thirds of the minimum in the workhouse, and the large existing population consumed only a fourth of the bread and meat required by the much smaller population of 1820. In Stockport, more than half the master spinners had failed before the close of 1842; dwelling houses to the number of 3,000, were shut up; and the occupiers of many hundreds more were unable to pay rates at all. Five thousand persons were walking the streets in compulsory idleness, and the Burnley guardians wrote to the Secretary of State that the distress was far beyond their management; so that a government commissioner and government funds were sent down without delay. At a meeting in Manchester, where humble shopkeepers were the speakers, anecdotes were related which told more than declamation. Rent collectors were afraid to meet their princ.i.p.als, as no money could be collected.

Provision dealers were subject to incursions from a wolfish man prowling for food for his children, or from a half frantic woman, with her dying baby at her breast; or from parties of ten or a dozen desperate wretches who were levying contributions along the street.

The linen draper told how new clothes had become out of the question with his customers, and they bought only remnants and patches, to mend the old ones. The baker was more and more surprised at the number of people who bought half-pennyworths of bread. A provision dealer used to throw away outside sc.r.a.ps; but now respectable customers of twenty years' standing bought them in pennyworths to moisten their potatoes. These shopkeepers contemplated nothing but ruin from the impoverished condition of their customers. While poor-rates were increasing beyond all precedent, their trade was only one-half, or one-third, or even one-tenth what it had been three years before. In that neighborhood, a gentleman, who had retired from business in 1833, leaving a property worth 60,000 to his sons, and who had, early in the distress, become security for them, was showing the works for the benefit of the creditors, at a salary of 1 a week.

In families where the father had hitherto earned 2 per week, and laid by a portion weekly, and where all was now gone but the sacks of shavings they slept on, exertions were made to get 'blue milk' for children to moisten their oatmeal with; but soon they could have it only on alternate days; and soon water must do. At Leeds the pauper stone-heap amounted to 150,000 tons; and the guardians offered the paupers 6s. per week for doing nothing, rather than 7s. 6d. per week for stone-breaking. The millwrights and other trades were offering a premium on emigration, to induce their hands to go away. At Hinckley, one-third of the inhabitants were paupers; more than a fifth of the houses stood empty; and there was not work enough in the place to employ properly one-third of the weavers. In Dorsets.h.i.+re a man and his wife had for wages 2s. 6d. per week, and three loaves; and the ablest laborer had 6s. or 7s. In Wilts.h.i.+re, the poor peasants held open-air meetings after work--which was necessarily after dark.

There, by the light of one or two flaring tallow candles, the man or the woman who had a story to tell stood on a chair, and related how their children were fed and clothed in old times--poorly enough, but so as to keep body and soul together; and now, how they could nohow manage to do it. The bare details of the ages of their children, and what the little things could do, and the prices of bacon and bread, and calico and coals, had more pathos in them than any oratory heard elsewhere."

"But all this came from the Corn Laws," is the ready reply of the American protectionist. The Corn Laws were the doctrine of protection applied to breadstuffs, farm products, "raw materials." But it was not only protection for corn that vexed England in 1842, but protection for every thing and every body, from the landlord and the mill-owner to the kelp gatherer. Every species of manufacturing industry had asked and obtained protection. The nation had put in force, logically and thoroughly, the principle of denying themselves any share in the advantages which nature or art had conferred upon other climates and peoples, (which is the principle of protection), and with the results so pathetically described by Miss Martineau. The prosperity of British manufactures dates from the year 1846. That they maintained any kind of existence prior to that time is a most striking proof of the vitality of human industry under the persecution of bad laws.]

As these pages are going through the press, a telegram announces that the French Government has abolished the discriminating duties levied upon goods imported in foreign bottoms, and has asked our government to abolish the like discrimination which our laws have created. Commercial freedom is making rapid progress in Prussia, Austria, Italy, and even in Spain. The United States alone, among civilized nations, hold to the opposite principle. Our anomalous position in this respect is due, as I think, to our anomalous condition during the past eight or nine years, already adverted to--a condition in which the protected cla.s.ses have been restrained by no public opinion--public opinion being too intensely preoccupied with the means of preserving the national existence to notice what was doing with the tariff. But evidences of a reawakening are not wanting.

There is scarcely an argument current among the protectionists of the United States that was not current in France at the time Bastiat wrote the _Sophismes Economiques_. Nor was there one current in his time that is not performing its bad office among us. Hence his demonstrations of their absurdity and falsity are equally applicable to our time and country as to his. They may have even greater force among us if they thoroughly dispel the notion that Protection is an "American system."

Surely they cannot do less than this.

There are one or two arguments current among the protectionists of the United States that were not rife in France when Bastiat wrote his _Sophismes_. It is said, for instance, that protection has failed to achieve all the good results expected from it, because the policy of the government has been variable. If we could have a steady course of protection for a sufficient period of time (n.o.body being bold enough to say what time would be sufficient), and could be _a.s.sured_ of having it, we should see wonderful progress. But, inasmuch as the policy of the government is uncertain, protection has never yet had a fair trial. This is like saying, "if the stone which I threw in the air had staid there, my head would not have been broken by its fall." It would not stay there. The law of gravitation is committed against its staying there.

Its only resting-place is on the earth. They begin by violating natural laws and natural rights--the right to exchange services for services--and then complain because these natural laws war against them and finally overcome them. But it is not true that protection has not had a fair trial in the United States. The protection has been greater at some times than at others, that is all. Prior to the late war, all our revenue was raised from customs; and while the tariffs of 1846 and 1857 were designated "free trade tariffs," to distinguish them from those existing before and since, they were necessarily protective to a certain extent.

Again, it is said that there is need of diversifying our industry--- as though industry would not diversify itself sufficiently through the diverse tastes and predilections of individuals--as though it were necessary to supplement the work of the Creator in this behalf, by human enactments founded upon reciprocal rapine. The only rational object of diversifying industry is to make people better and happier. Do men and women become better and happier by being huddled together in mills and factories, in a stifling atmosphere, on scanty wages, ten hours each day and 313 days each year, than when cultivating our free and fertile lands? Do they have equal opportunities for mental and moral improvement? The trades-unions tell us, No. Whatever may be the experience of other countries where the land is either owned by absentee lords, who take all the product except what is necessary to give the tenant a bare subsistence, or where it is cut up in parcels not larger than an American garden patch, it is an undeniable fact that no other cla.s.s of American workingmen are so independent, so intelligent, so well provided with comforts and leisure, or so rapidly advancing in prosperity, as our agriculturists; and this notwithstanding they are enormously overtaxed to maintain other branches of industry, which, according to the protective theory, cannot support themselves. The natural tendency of our people to flock to the cities, where their eyes and ears are gratified at the expense of their other senses, physical and moral, is sufficiently marked not to need the influence of legislation to stimulate it.

It is not the purpose of this preface to antic.i.p.ate the admirable arguments of M. Bastiat; but there is another theory in vogue which deserves a moment's consideration. Mr. H.C. Carey tells us, that a country which exports its food, in reality exports its soil, the foreign consumers not giving back to the land the fertilizing elements abstracted from it. Mr. Mill has answered this argument, upon philosophical principles, at some length, showing that whenever it ceases to be advantageous to America to export breadstuffs, she will cease to do so; also, that when it becomes necessary to manure her lands, she will either import manure or make it at home.[5] A shorter answer is, that the lands are no better manured by having the bread consumed in Lowell, or Pittsburgh, or even in Chicago, than in Birmingham or Lyons. But it seems to me that Mr. Carey does not take into account the fact that the total amount of breadstuffs exported from any country must be an exceedingly small fraction of the whole amount taken from the soil, and scarcely appreciable as a source of manure, even if it were practically utilized in that way. Thus, our exportation of flour and meal, wheat and Indian corn, for the year 1860, as compared with the total crop produced, was as follows:

TOTAL CROP.[6]

Flour and Meal, bbls. Wheat, bu. Corn, bu.

55,217,800 173,104,924 838,792,740

_Exportation._ Flour and Meal, bbls. Wheat, bu. Corn, bu.

2,845,305 4,155,153 1,314,155

_Percentage of Exportation to Total Crop._ 5.15 2.40 .39

This was the result for the year preceding the enactment of the Morrill tariff. It is true that our exports of wheat and Indian corn rose in the three years following the enactment of the Morrill tariff, from an average of eight million bushels to an average of forty-six million bushels, but this is contrary to the theory that high tariffs tend to keep breadstuffs at home, and low ones to send them abroad. There is need of great caution in making generalizations as to the influence of tariffs on the movement of breadstuffs. Good or bad harvests in various countries exercise an uncontrollable influence upon their movement, far beyond the reach of any legislation short of prohibition. The market for breadstuffs in the world is as the number of consumers; that is, of population. It is sometimes said in the way of reproach, (and it is a curious travesty of Mr. Carey's manure argument,) that foreign nations _will not_ take our breadstuffs. It is not true; but if it were, that would not be a good reason for our pa.s.sing laws to prevent them from doing so; that is, to deprive them of the means to pay for them. Every country must pay for its imports with its exports. It must pay for the services which it receives with the services which it renders. If foreign nations are not allowed to render services to us, how shall we render them the service of bread?

[Footnote 5: Principles of Political Economy (People's Ed.), London, 1865, page 557.]

[Footnote 6: These figures are taken from the census report for the year 1860. In this report the total production of flour and meal is given, not in barrels, but in value. The quant.i.ty is ascertained by dividing the total value by the average price per barrel in New York during the year, the fluctuations then being very slight. Flour being a manufactured article, is it not a little curious that we exported under the "free trade tariff" twice as large a percentage of breadstuffs in that form as we did of the "raw material," wheat?]

The first series of Bastiat's _Sophismes_ were published in 1845, and the second series in 1848. The first series were translated in 1848, by Mrs. D.J. McCord, and published the same year by G.P. Putnam, New York.

Mrs. McCord's excellent translation has been followed (by permission of her publisher, who holds the copyright,) in this volume, having been first compared with the original, in the Paris edition of 1863. A very few verbal alterations have been made, which, however, have no bearing on the accuracy and faithfulness of her work. The translation of the essay on "Capital and Interest" is from a duodecimo volume published in London a year or two ago, the name of the translator being unknown to me. The second series of the _Sophismes_, and the essay ent.i.tled "Spoliation and Law," are, I believe, presented in English for the first time in these pages.

H.W.

CHICAGO, August 1, 1869.

PART I.