De la création et de la distribution des propriétés mobilières.

CHAP. 27: On the creation and distribution of movable properties.

HAVING explained how properties that consist in lands or buildings are formed, and how the territory of a nation is distributed, it will be easy for me to make understood how properties that consist in movable objects are formed: it will be seen that they all derive from the same principle, and that they are created by analogous processes.

The principal object of the appropriation of a piece of land is to draw from it the things that are necessary for the satisfaction of our needs; it is to employ the soil as an instrument endowed with the power to produce grains, vegetables, fruits, fodder, wood, in a word, all sorts of plants; it is to delve into it to extract the various materials it conceals.

The proprietor of a piece of land therefore has the property of all that it produces, and even of all that it contains. If he did not have it, the land would be of no utility to him; it would never have been put into cultivation. It would not have become an individual property.

The earth contains a multitude of elements that, in their primitive state, would be of no use to us, if we did not have the means to put them into a form that makes them fit to satisfy our needs, or that at least allows us to convert them to our use. A fruit does not come from nothing; it is formed of a part of the elements that are found in the soil, or that are spread in the air. The art of the farmer consists in cultivating the plant that has the property of gathering and combining these elements.

Among the objects that the earth produces or develops, there are several, such as fruits, that can be immediately employed to satisfy some of our needs; there are others that can serve us only after having undergone more or less numerous modifications. The leaves that grow on the mulberry tree, for example, cannot immediately satisfy any of our needs. If they are delivered to certain insects, they will be converted into cocoons. After having undergone this first transformation, they will undergo a second; they will be converted into silk thread.

The thread will be converted into a piece of fabric, and the fabric will be transformed into furniture or clothing.

When one wishes to observe the manner in which movable properties were formed and multiplied, one is stopped by a similar difficulty to that which presented itself in the examination of the formation of properties that consist in lands. One perceives that, to create them, it was necessary to possess a certain quantity of them; capital is, in effect, considered by the men who have written on political economy as one of the essential conditions for the exercise of any industry; but capital is only accumulated wealth; and without industry there can be no wealth.

It was doubtless necessary, to exercise an industry and derive a profit from it, to have sustenance to live at least until the moment a product was obtained. It was necessary, moreover, to possess some instruments to engage in labor, and some material to give it a value; that cannot be contested. But what is no less incontestable is that there exists a multitude of industries in which one can engage with extremely limited capital. It is not a matter, moreover, of giving here the history of the formation and growth of movable properties: it is only a matter of observing the processes by means of which they are created.

We have admitted in principle that one of the essential elements of all property is the utility that resides in the things we designate by this name, that is to say, the power that is in them to satisfy some of our needs. We have recognized that as utility becomes greater, property increases, and that as utility diminishes, property decreases. We have admitted, on the other hand, that a man is never the property of anyone; that all his faculties are his, and that all utility that he creates is likewise his. These truths being recognized, it will be easy to observe how movable properties are formed.

Whenever a man exercises his industry on any material, his object is to increase its value or utility. If the material has been entrusted to him by another person who has the property of it, and who is to take it back, he is paid for the value he adds to it, by the wage he receives. It is possible that the value he consumes during the labor, to feed, clothe, and house himself, is equal to that which he produces by his industry. It is also possible that his profits exceed his expenses, and that he puts something aside every day.

In this latter case, one says, in political economy, that he forms a capital; we say that he increases his properties. We can get an idea of the manner in which each thus increases his properties, by following the various transformations that certain objects have undergone, before being applied to the satisfaction of our needs.

A man buys a coat for a sum of one hundred francs that he pays to his tailor. This entire sum is not a profit for him who receives it; for the cloth, the lining, the thread, were not delivered to him for nothing; the workers he employed did not work for free. Let us suppose that the merchandise he used cost him sixty francs: in this supposition, only forty francs will remain to him for the workmanship. This latter sum will not be a profit; a part will be given to the workers who contributed to making the coat; another part will perhaps serve to pay the interest on the advances that the tailor will have made; another part will pay for his own labor.

The sixty francs paid to the merchant who furnished the merchandise with which the coat was made are not a profit for him: he obtained them from the manufacturer only by paying him their value. The sum that the merchant receives beyond what he paid to the manufacturer does not remain entirely in his hands. A part is paid to his clerks, another to the carrier who transported the merchandise from the factory to the store; another sometimes serves to pay the commission agent who made the purchase; another the interest on a part of the capital employed in the trade.

The sum received by the manufacturer who furnished the cloth is also far from being a profit for him: a part is given to the dyer who shares it between himself, his workers, and the merchants who furnished him with dyeing drugs; another part is distributed to the numerous workers employed in his factory; another pays a part of the interest on his capital; another, finally, is paid to the farmer who sold him the wool from which the cloth was made.The farmer is not enriched by all that the manufacturer pays him; he gives a part of it to the man who sheared his sheep, another to his workers or his servants, another to the proprietor of the land; with another, he pays the interest on the capital devoted to cultivation; another, finally, serves to pay taxes, and is distributed among a multitude of public officials.

If one were to observe the value of the various materials of which a coat is formed at the moment they pass from the hands of the cultivator into those of the manufacturer, one would find that it is at most two or three francs; but if one were to calculate, on the other hand, the number of persons among whom the total value of the coat is distributed, one would find several hundred.

It is in much the same way that the value of each of the objects we use every day is distributed. The value of a book that sells for only three francs is distributed among the author, the bookseller and his clerks; the binder and his workers; the tanner and the leather merchant who furnished the cover; the printer and his workers; the merchant and the manufacturer of paper and their clerks; there is not even the unfortunate who gathers rags in the street who does not have a small share of it.

Whenever any object can be employed to satisfy our needs only after having passed through the hands of several industrialists, each of them reimburses the one who immediately preceded him for all the expenses he has made, and moreover, the value that he himself has added to it by his labor. Thus, the cloth manufacturer reimburses the farmer who produces the wool for all that, to obtain it, the latter has paid to each of the workers whose service he employed, and to the proprietor of the soil whose exploitation he has undertaken; he pays him, furthermore, the value of his own labor. The cloth merchant reimburses the manufacturer for the price of the wool, and, moreover, he pays him for the increase in utility that he has given it by himself or by the hand of his workers. The tailor reimburses the merchant for all that the latter has paid to the manufacturer, and the expenses he has incurred to have the cloth transported from the factory to his stores.

Finally, the person who buys the coat reimburses the tailor for the price of the cloth, and the value that he has added to it by his workmanship.

One sees, by this series of transmissions, that each of the possessors, at the moment he is about to alienate his merchandise, is its proprietor by two titles: he has the property of a part of the value, as having acquired it from those who created it, and the other part as being himself its creator.

It often happens that a thing of little value becomes a considerable property through the industry or talent of a single person. A painter can make a painting of great price with materials he has obtained for very little. Likewise, with a block of marble of little considerable value, a skilled sculptor can create a property of great value. In such cases, it is solely the talent of the artist that creates almost the entire property. It is quite evident that he who enriches himself by such means diminishes no one's fortune in any way.

It is easy to see how, by modifying certain materials, one increases their utility, and how it is possible, consequently, to increase one's properties, without causing anyone to lose anything; but what one does not at first perceive so clearly is the manner in which properties are formed by commerce. A simple merchant, properly speaking, subjects the things he buys to resell to no kind of modification; he limits himself to taking them in one place and transporting them to another. How can a simple displacement have for its result an increase in the sum of fortunes? It has been previously demonstrated that one of the principal elements of a property is the utility found in the thing designated by this name, that is to say, the faculty of satisfying certain needs.

Now, two circumstances are necessary for a thing to satisfy the needs of one or several persons: first, it must have in itself qualities proper to make it desired; second, it must be within reach of the persons who lack it. The object of commerce is to effect this bringing together; it is to put, in a way, into contact the things to which industry has given certain qualities, with the needs they are destined to satisfy.

There is a multitude of things whose entire value results from the sole fact of this bringing together. On the banks of the Seine, the flowing water has no value; but if one takes a part of it, and transports it to a point where the need for it is felt, one immediately finds people who buy it if they have the means to pay for it. On the flanks of a vast mountain, stone is a material fit to build houses, just as it is in the middle of a city: to give it a value, one need only transport it into a prosperous city. In the forests of America, wood is no less fit to make constructions than in a shipyard; to make it a precious property, one need only put it within the reach of people who need it. Commerce does not have the power to create matter, and, in this respect, it does not differ from other kinds of industry; but it increases the utility of certain materials; in this respect also, it resembles all industries.

To multiply properties by way of commerce requires no less knowledge, no less activity, no less capital, than to multiply them by means of agriculture or manufactures. To bring to Paris the tea that grows in China, the cotton that is gathered in Brazil, the sugar or saltpeter that is prepared in India, the fruits that are harvested in Africa, requires more labor and genius than to cultivate a field or weave a piece of cloth. I must add that commerce is the indispensable complement of all other branches of industry, and renders the same services as they do.

A man who produces by his labors more than he consumes, and who thus multiplies his properties, therefore causes no one to lose anything; he enriches his family, without any of his fellow men suffering from it. He does better, he prepares means of existence for a great number of other persons; he produces a good analogous to that which a man does when he transforms sterile lands into a smiling countryside.

When a man has, in effect, succeeded in accumulating, by his savings, a certain quantity of movable wealth, he cannot preserve it and draw a revenue from it without engaging it in some kind of industry; he must deliver it to agriculture, to manufacturing industry, or to commerce. He could well, it is true, employ it in the acquisition of a house or a piece of land; but that would only be a substitution of persons. The individual whose place he would take would put himself in his, and could not draw a revenue from the capital he would receive in exchange for his land or his house, except by delivering it to industry.

If the saved values were employed to put an unproductive land into cultivation, the proprietor would render to humanity the kind of services I have previously described, that is to say, he would create means of existence for a certain number of families. If he employed them to establish a manufactory, he would render analogous services: he would open an outlet for the labor of a certain number of workers; he would give them the means to exchange their services for things that are necessary for them to live.

His benefits are not confined to that; they spread to all those who furnish him with raw materials, or who sell sustenance, either to himself or to his workers. Agricultural products sell well, and lands have a great value, only in countries where manufacturing industry and commerce have made great progress. It is the manufacturers and merchants of Great Britain who have given the lands of that country a considerable value, and increased the fortune of those to whom they belong. If the former were to disappear with their capitals, the latter would lose, by that fact alone, a great part of their wealth: the lands would have no more value among them than they have in Poland.

Movable properties give to those who possess them a great part of the advantages that result from immovable properties. The merchants and manufacturers whose fortune generally consists in movable objects are as well clothed, as well housed, as well fed as the cultivators. It is not even rare to see the inhabitants of the countrysides envy the inhabitants of the cities. The principal difference that exists between the properties of the former and those of the latter consists in that the latter are subject to more accidents.

For a long time, a great preeminence was given to one kind of property over the other: the proprietors of landed property have almost always claimed to be superior to the proprietors of movable objects. These ideas of superiority were born of slavery and the feudal regime; they weaken as peoples move away from the causes that gave them birth. They will disappear almost entirely when all properties are equally well guaranteed, and when the enjoyment of political rights has ceased to be a privilege in the hands of a particular class of proprietors.

Properties that consist in landed property are useful to us only because they are the source from which all movable properties issue; if the latter were not guaranteed to us, the former would be good for nothing to us. What advantage would a proprietor derive from his fields if, from the moment the harvest is done, the wheat he had reaped ceased to be respected? Of what good would his meadows be, if, when they are mown, everyone could seize the fodder, or carry off the animals he put there to graze?

One falls into an error that is no less grave when one believes one elevates the industry that is exercised immediately on landed property by depreciating all other kinds of industry. A proprietor of land would derive no advantage from most of his products if there were no one to make them fit for our uses. What would he do with his mines, if the numerous industries that are exercised on metals were to disappear? What would he do with his quarries, if no one worked the stone? with the trees of his forests, if no one transformed them into furniture, or made them enter into various constructions? with his wool, if no one converted it into cloth? The proprietor of land furnishes, it is true, raw materials to all industries; but he would be as destitute of everything as a savage if industrious men did not put these materials to work. He can cultivate his fields, exploit his mines or his quarries, make use of the trees of his forests, only by means of the instruments that industrious people have furnished him. He can consume his products only by exchanging them for those that industry and commerce present to him.

The indigenous peoples of North America and those of New Holland possessed lands of an immense extent before the arrival of the Europeans; and yet they had only a few animal skins to cover themselves, they had for dwellings only wretched huts made of tree branches, and often they were reduced to feeding on earth, tree bark, worms, or rotten fish.

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