IV. Des conditions auxquelles toute industrie peut être libre.

CHAP. 14: IV. On the conditions under which all industry can be free.

§ 1. If, as we have just seen in the preceding chapter, economists have not succeeded in determining the part that certain classes of producers take in production, and the right they have to figure in industrial society; if they have not sufficiently shown what is the ensemble of professions and functions that enter into the economy of this society and that contribute to the development of its forces, they have also not sufficiently shown, at least I think so, by what means the various professions produce, and to what ensemble of causes the power of their action is linked. M. J.-B. Say, that one of these writers, to my knowledge, who has made the most detailed and extensive analysis of the general means of industry, seems to me far, nevertheless, from having made a complete description of them, and even, in several respects, an exact one.

§ 2. First, and before entering into the examination of this analysis, I will regret, with some economists, that M. Say assigned to production several original causes, and wished that man be indebted for the acquisitions he has made, not only to his efforts—without which, however, all the forces spread throughout nature, beginning with his own faculties, would have been null for him—but at once to his efforts and to the concurrence of nature and of capital, which, from the origin, according to M. Say, would have worked toward his progress conjointly with himself.

“There exists something other than human labor in the work of production,” he says... “Industry, abandoned to itself, could not give value to things; it must possess already existing products, without which, however skillful one may suppose it, it would remain in inaction; it is necessary, moreover, that nature enter into a community of labor with it and with its instruments.”

Industry, according to M. Say, never figures but as a third party in the act of production; in every product there is a part of the effect obtained that comes from nature, and another that comes from capital.

I fear, as I have already said elsewhere [^361], that in thus assigning several primitive causes to production, M. Say has brought some confusion where he wished to introduce a greater order, and that he has obscured, instead of clarifying, the primitive source of all our progress. I believe, with Adam Smith, and particularly with M. de Tracy, who, on this, was even clearer than Smith, that labor has been its sole generative cause.

Without doubt, human activity is not the only force that exists in nature. Outside of that one, there exists a multitude of others that man has not created, that he could not destroy, whose existence is entirely distinct and independent of his own. There are dead forces, and there are living ones. The hardness, the resistance, the ductility of certain metals, are inert forces. The sun, water, fire, wind, gravitation, magnetism, the vital force of animals, the vegetative force of the soil, are active forces. But if these forces exist, nothing in them announces that they exist for man: left to themselves, they show themselves perfectly indifferent to his happiness; for them to serve him, he must bend them to his service; for them to produce, he must force them to produce. Man does not create them, without doubt; but he creates the utility they are to him; he creates them as agents of production, as productive forces. It is also true that he has more or less trouble in doing so: not every kind of steel is equally proper for making a file; not every kind of soil allows itself to be rendered equally apt for the work of vegetation; but he must put his hand to all things, and naturally nothing is arranged to serve him. Of what use for production would the qualities of iron have been, if industry had not impressed upon this metal the forms proper to rendering its qualities useful? Of what use would the wind have been to turn the millstone without the sails of the windmill? Of what use was the magnetic fluid for directing navigators, before the invention of the compass? Of what use would the rain and the sun be for making plants germinate, without the prior labor that presents to the dew of heaven and to the heat of the solar rays the breast of a plowed and sown earth? Once again, the forces of nature exist independently of all human labor; but, relative to man, and as agents of production, they exist only in human industry and in the instruments by means of which industry has taken possession of them. It is industry that has created these instruments, it is industry that directs their use. It is the sole source from which have come, not things, nor the properties of things, but all the utility that it draws from things and their properties.

M. Say is therefore wrong, I believe, when he says that wealth came originally from the combination of three forces: industry, capital, and natural agents, among which he has landed property play a particular role. Industry, he says, would have remained in inaction without the help of a pre-existing capital. But, if this is so, one can no longer conceive how it could have begun to act; for it is quite evident that the existence of capital could not have preceded the labor that gave it birth. To appropriate things to his use, man at first had only his intelligence and his arms. Soon, with the aid of these levers, he procured others for himself; he put tools at the end of his fingers; he replaced these tools with machines; he added to his forces those of animals, those of metals, those of water, fire, and wind. Little by little, all the powers of nature, subjugated under his direction one by another, entered without confusion into his service, and set to work for him. Capital, which is composed of the ensemble of forces he has thus added to the little he had on leaving the hands of nature, including the successive developments of his own faculties—capital is of human creation. The earth, in its turn, is but a capital. A landed property, as M. de Tracy observes very well [^362], is, like a block of marble, like a mass of ore, but a certain portion of matter, endowed with certain properties, and which man can arrange, like a multitude of other things, in such a way as to render its properties useful. Man does not create this matter, nor the properties it has, any more than he creates the matter, nor the properties of the matter, of which a hundred other species of capital are formed; but he creates the power to take advantage of the ones and the others; he creates them as instruments of production; and these forces, which M. Say has acting from the origin, conjointly with human industry, are themselves creations of industry, and must be included among the number of means it has given itself and of agents it has made for itself as it has developed its own forces.

Thus man has created all his powers, beginning with those he possesses in himself. He has not created, without doubt, either his own faculties, or the forces spread throughout nature; but all the power he has to take advantage of the ones and the others, it is he, once again, who has given it to himself.

§ 3. Next, and after having thus rejected, as was fitting to do, the forces that M. Say has acting from the origin, conjointly with man, from among the general means of production that man has created for himself, I will repeat that he does not seem to me to have made a sufficiently complete, nor even a sufficiently exact, analysis of these means.

I observe, in the first place, that the author of the Treatise on Political Economy excludes from the mass of our productive funds, as had the author of The Wealth of Nations, that entire part of the general fund of society which is employed to satisfy needs, public or private, particular or general [^363]. Thus that entire part of this fund, which individuals employ to maintain their physical forces, to extend their intellectual faculties, to perfect their moral habits, to raise the children who will one day second them, does not form part of their means of production. Thus again that entire part of the same fund which is employed to satisfy public needs, and, for example, to maintain order in the community, to give birth among its members to habits of respect for property and for persons, to procure some instruction for the classes who naturally would receive none, does not form part of the productive fund of society either. All this serves to satisfy needs, without doubt, and even very imperious needs; all this is productive of utility, of pleasure, but not of wealth: the use one makes of it adds nothing to the resources and forces of society [^364].

I confess that this strikes me as one of the most evident errors. It is absolutely impossible for me to admit that the part of his means that a manufacturer employs for the maintenance of his factory forms part of his productive capital, and that the part he employs to maintain himself, he who is the head of the factory and the first agent of manufacturing production, does not form part of it; it is impossible for me to admit that the buildings, the fodder, that an agronomist employs for the conservation of his draft animals form part of his productive capital, and that his dwelling house, his furniture, his clothing, his foodstuffs and that entire portion of his wealth which is employed to conserve him, him, the head and first agent of agricultural production, does not form part of it. There are probably in society a certain number of absolutely null men; there are some who, without being null, are idlers, and who can be considered as a capital that is idle and that will always be idle. There are some who consecrate the little activity they have solely to keeping themselves alive, to making themselves enjoy, to procuring for themselves agreeable sensations. That one should subtract from the productive capital of society that entire part of its general fund which is employed to maintain such beings, I am willing to grant. But if there are, in the world, many people who live only to enjoy, there are fortunately many others who live to act, who place their happiness in making some good use of their forces, and who in effect make of their forces the most useful usage for humanity. Now, I cannot understand, once again, how one can subtract from the productive capital of society the part of its fund that it employs to suitably maintain these men, they who are assuredly of all its products the most precious, the most noble, the most fecund, that without which no other would exist. All that a null man expends for the satisfaction of his needs is lost; nothing results from it but the maintenance of a useless man. All that a useful man gives to his pleasures without profit for the conservation or the increase of his faculties is equally lost; nothing remains of this expenditure. But what the same individual consecrates to the maintenance or extension of his forces, provided that the forces conserved or acquired are worth more than the expense made to acquire or conserve them, is reproductively employed and forms part of his means of production, that is incontestable [^365].

In this mass of means of every kind of which the general productive fund of society is composed, Smith had already discerned a great number of means and forces: he had seen in it raw materials more or less crude, more or less worked; tools and machines of every kind destined to facilitate and abridge labor; buildings consecrated to every kind of labor; lands put in the state most proper for cultivation and tillage; a multitude of useful talents and knowledge acquired by the members of society; a certain ensemble of currencies destined to facilitate exchanges, etc.; and, of all these means, he had formed two classes of capital, fixed capital and circulating capital, destined both to maintain that consumption fund from which men draw all the means to conserve and perfect their existence.

M. Say has gone further than Smith and has done better in some respects. He first divides the productive fund of society into two great parts, one of which is composed of the industrial faculties of the workers, and the other of their instruments. Then he distinguishes, among the industrial faculties, those of scholars, those of entrepreneurs, those of workers; and, among the instruments, the unappropriated natural agents, such as the sea, the atmosphere, the heat of the sun and all the laws of physical nature; the appropriated natural agents, such as cultivable lands, watercourses, mines, etc.; and capital, among which he distinguishes unproductive capital, capital productive of utility or pleasure, and truly productive capital; dividing these last again into fixed capital and circulating capital, and giving particular attention to that which exists in the form of machines and that which exists in the form of money, whereas Smith described only the functions of money, and did not speak of the influence of machines.

Such is the analysis of M. Say.

It is surely to have made a progress in the decomposition of this vast heap of levers and forces of which the general fund of society is composed, to have distinguished from the instruments of industry the industrial faculties themselves. But while maintaining this essential distinction between industry and its instruments, or rather while forming two well-separated classes of the forces that man possesses in himself, and of those that he draws from things, I believe that there is a new analysis to be made of both.

Let us speak first of those that exist in man himself.

M. Say here remarks only a fund of industrial faculties. We will soon see that there is, and that, in the interest of production, it was important to see there something other than industry. But let us first occupy ourselves only with the industrial fund. M. Say distinguishes, in the industrial fund, only the three capacities of the scholar, the entrepreneur, and the worker, or else of theory, of application, and of execution. I observe that he here confounds two very distinct orders of faculties, which it was most essential to distinguish: those related to business, and those related to the art.

The spirit of business is composed of several kinds of faculties that M. Say has not described, nor even designated.

The order that he assigns to science in the faculties related to the art is not, I believe, the true one: things, in this world, did not begin with theory; a certain practical knowledge of the craft preceded scientific instruction. One began by acting empirically; then came theoretical knowledge; then the talent for applications, which M. Say places among the attributions of the man of business, and which is much more in the domain of the people of the art; finally, execution followed the thought, and was more or less skillful according as the thought itself was more or less enlightened.

In all this, as one sees, it is only a question of adroitness, skill, science, capacity.

[^361]: As I have already said elsewhere. [^362]: As M. de Tracy observes very well. [^363]: Wealth of Nations, book II, chap. 3. [^364]: Treatise on Political Economy, book III, chap. 4 and 6. [^365]: Treatise on Political Economy, book I, chap. 11.But what? Is there only that in man, and does he not need, in order to produce, any other order of faculties? Do there not exist in him virtues as well as science, and is it not essential that know-how be a little aided by good conduct? Is a fund of good moral habits any less necessary than a fund of industrial faculties for the work of production? I point out here, it seems to me, in the analysis of M. Say, a great and very unfortunate lacuna.

One can already perceive how much this analysis leaves to be desired with regard to the first part of the social fund, that is to say, that which is composed of all the forces that the workers possess in themselves.

Let us pass to the description of the forces that workers draw from things.

I have said that M. Say here distinguishes unappropriated natural agents, appropriated natural agents, and capital.

I observe first that the forces he designates by the name of unappropriated natural agents, such as all the laws of physical nature, could not be considered as instruments of industry, so long as man has not taken possession of their power. These agents do not really exist for him except in the works, in the machines by which he has subjugated them. I believe I have made this truth palpable above.

From the moment that there are for man no natural agents but those of which he has taken possession, those of which he disposes with the aid of his machines, it is clear that there is no distinction to be made between unappropriated agents and appropriated agents. There really exist for industry only appropriated agents.

In the number of appropriated agents, I can discover absolutely no reason to make two separate classes of capital and landed property. Nothing, in effect, seems to me to distinguish vegetable or mineral earth from the other objects of nature of which man has taken possession and which he has bent to his service. The distinction between land and capital should therefore also be discarded.

In the mass of capital, M. Say distinguishes that which is unproductive, that which is productive of utility and pleasure, and that which is productive of wealth, or simply productive.

Unproductive capital (and by this M. Say means any buried treasure and any capital that is idle), unproductive capital, I say, hardly deserves to figure in an analysis of the instruments of production.

That entire part of capital productive of utility and pleasure which is employed for frivolous or pernicious expenses deserves even less to be included in the mass of the instruments of industry. That part, on the contrary, which serves to raise useful men, to conserve, to extend, to perfect their faculties, is eminently productive, as I have shown above, and asks to be ranked among the instruments of production.

There remain, therefore, simply the productive capitals, in which M. Say includes neither natural agents, nor landed property, nor mines, nor watercourses; in which he includes neither the material of public administration, nor the dwelling houses of private individuals, nor their furniture, nor their clothing, nor their books, nor anything that serves for the education and conservation of the species, and in which I would on the contrary unite all the instruments of industry, all the external forces of which it has taken possession, all the means of action that it draws from outside itself, whether it wishes to act upon men, or whether it works upon things.

I observe only that, even in thus including under the name of capital all the instruments of industry, I would still give it too restricted a meaning; that it is fitting to unite under this word all forces whatsoever that man has amassed and that he can employ to acquire new ones; that the capital of a nation is composed of the forces it possesses in itself, as well as of those it draws from things; that one can say a capital of knowledge or of good habits, just as one says a capital of money, and that M. Say should be all the less reluctant to use this language, as he calls man an accumulated capital, and as he gives the name of accumulated capital to the talent of a worker, an administrator, a public functionary.

§ 4. Here now, according to all these remarks, is how the general productive fund of society appears to me to be broken down, what are the diverse orders of means that I discover in it, and what is the ensemble of causes to which, in my view, the power and liberty of all the arts are linked.

First, the social fund or capital is divided, in my eyes, into two great classes of forces: those that labor has developed in men, and those that it has realized in things. The power of all labors is composed of the union of the ones and the others.

In the number of those that exist in men, the first that strikes me, the one that I see at the head of all others, the one that appears to me the most indispensable to the success of every kind of enterprise and to the free action of all the arts, is the genius for business, a genius in which I discern several very distinct faculties, such as—the capacity to judge the state of demand or to know the needs of society, that of judging the state of supply or of appreciating the means one has to satisfy these needs,—that of skillfully administering wisely conceived enterprises,—that, finally, of verifying, by regular and intelligently kept accounts, the forecasts of speculation.

After this series of faculties relative to the conception and conduct of enterprises, and of which the genius for business is composed, come those that are necessary for execution, and of which the genius for the arts is formed. Such are the practical knowledge of the craft,—theoretical notions,—the talent for applications,—skill in workmanship.

All these faculties are industrial; but I also remark in the workers moral qualities.—I distinguish in them a whole order of habits that direct them in their conduct with regard to themselves, and which in a way concern only the individual.—I also distinguish in them habits of another order, which preside over their mutual relations, and which more particularly concern society.—The power and free exercise of all professions depend, to the highest degree, on the perfection of both. I take the greatest care to note them.

Finally, outside of these diverse orders of faculties that labor has brought forth in men, and which form in a way the personal capital of society, I perceive a multitude of utilities, forces, powers, that it has managed to fix in things, and which form, if you will, its real capital.

In this part of its general fund, I see roads, canals, watercourses, tilled lands, enclosures, constructions, buildings, machines, tools, raw materials, commodities, currencies, etc.

All this, variously agglomerated, forms multitudes of establishments, of workshops; and, in observing these workshops very attentively, I remark that, for them to be truly proper for their destination, it is essential that they be—well-situated,—well-organized, that labor be well-distributed in them, and that they be provided with a good choice and a sufficient quantity of utensils and provisions of diverse sorts.

Such are the decompositions of which this general fund of society, where all our faculties and all our resources are deposited, appears to me susceptible. These are the diverse elements of power that I perceive in it. I will devote the rest of this chapter to showing how these elements act, how each of them contributes to the liberty of industry in general. There are some, in the number, whose influence has often been expounded, and of which I will speak very briefly. There are others whose role has not been described, and on which I will dwell a little more. Then, in the chapters that will follow this one, I will seek how all these means of action apply in particular to each order of labors. My task, which has sometimes been new, will be more so then, and it will become so especially when I have to show how the diverse agents of production are put to work by the arts that act directly on man.

§ 5. Let us speak first of the means that labor has developed in the workers, and, above all, let us see what forces it draws from the faculties that I have united under the name of talent for business.

Necessity of knowing the state of demand. The first thing that every industrious man needs in order to act fruitfully is to know what it is possible to do with advantage, and to know the needs of the society for which he undertakes to work. I know that this is difficult, that the needs of society are subject to variation, that he who knows them best would often have great trouble in knowing the number and means of the competitors who work with him to satisfy them, and that, consequently, it is very rare that he can know exactly in what direction he should expand and within what limit it is fitting for him to confine himself. But this kind of instruction, though difficult to acquire, is for that no less indispensable. Whether one be a farmer, a manufacturer, a statesman, a man of letters; whether one wishes to produce wheat, cloth, paintings, books; whether one thinks of issuing political doctrines or of bringing forth some work of poetry, he who wishes to produce is obliged, before all things, to examine attentively if the product he wishes to make corresponds to some need, if there is a chance that it will sell, and in what proportion it can be sold.

Without that, all the talents and all the imaginable means could not turn to his profit: he would work usefully neither for himself, nor for others; for there is this remarkable fact that enterprises which are not of a nature to profit those who make them, cannot serve much more the society for which they are made. When the public does not consent to buy a product, it is because it feels the need for it weakly. Were one to give it for nothing what it does not desire, it would derive but a mediocre advantage from it, and the most philanthropic enterprise is not worth as much to it as one that is in the order of its needs, and for which it consents to pay generously the costs: that which brings in the most is in general that from which it profits the best; in other words, there are hardly any labors useful to their authors that are truly useful to society, just as there are only those that correspond to the needs of society that are truly profitable to those who undertake them.

It is therefore indispensable, in order to be able to produce, to know first what society demands, what it is in a state and disposition to buy. There is, in each country, at each epoch, only a certain nature and a certain quantity of merchandise that can be sold. All that is made there, outside these limits, is made uselessly, and can be considered as lost. Go publish books of science among savage peoples; create enough to clothe several million men in a world of a few thousand inhabitants, you will be sure, in both cases, to have wasted a part of your resources, to have made useless things, and to have diminished the mass of wealth, instead of having increased it.

In truth, from the fact that one must accommodate oneself to the needs of society, it does not follow that one must make oneself its slave. If one had wished to blindly enslave oneself to its tastes, one would never have offered it new products, one would have brought forth in it no new need; it would have remained with its poverty, its coarseness, and its vices. The first interest of all industries is to lead it to renounce limited, or vulgar, or dangerous pleasures, and to inspire in it the taste for more varied, more extensive, nobler, and more judicious enjoyments. But I say that one must start from its current tastes to lead it to better tastes; that the ideas one presents to it must enter into the ideas it has, and that any production that strays too far from its needs, or that exceeds their sum, is a destruction of wealth rather than a creation of utilities.

I do not know if this rule, that production, to be real, must be in relation to needs, is generally understood; but how little it is observed! How few persons there are who, in the choice of their profession, of the place where they will exercise it, of the nature and quantity of the products they undertake to make, take the trouble to inform themselves of the needs of the public, and to study the nature and extent of the outlets! Here one obeys routine; there one is carried away by the fury of innovations. There are times when certain subjects of speculation suddenly become fashionable, when certain kinds of enterprises suddenly degenerate into a mania. Does it happen that someone successfully does a new thing? Everyone hastens to imitate him, and the new thing is not let go until a folly has been committed. When they had begun to dig canals in England, says an English writer, the fashion for them became such that in a few years the country was crisscrossed with them in every direction, and they were opened even in districts where there was nothing to transport [^366]. One remembers that rage for building which had recently seized the inhabitants of the capital. Paris had the air of a city taken by assault by architects and masons. The old quarries were being exhausted; a multitude of new ones were being opened; one had the air of fearing that space would run out for constructions: people fought over plots of land; they were bought at prices ten times their true value [^370]. Several streets were undertaken at once, not only several streets, but several quarters, several cities: a city was being raised in the plain of Sablons, another in that of Grenelle...

In the midst of this feverish ardor for certain kinds of enterprises, by which a multitude of men is sometimes seized, as in many other speculations where the mania is less general, society is more or less lost from view. But if the speculators are subject to forgetting it, it knows well how to force them to remember it, its needs, its resources, its true situation. In the end, only what suits it succeeds, only what it needs does it accept. Speculators may well drive up the price of certain things among themselves, the price is ultimately settled according to the quantity that exists and the demands it makes. Certain products may well be multiplied, only what it can buy of them finds a sale. While one devotes oneself with the greatest ardor to certain fabrications, to that of houses, for example, a moment will arrive when one will begin to perceive that needs are surpassed, that tenants are not arriving, that the new constructions remain unsold. The entrepreneurs, having counted on returns that are lacking, will be obliged to fail: enormous capitals will be lost; the works will be abandoned, and thousands of workers will suddenly be left without work.

The history of these last times is full of examples of the false direction that industry can give to its means and of the frightening losses it can make, for want of having taken into sufficient consideration the real needs of society. Of the eighty canal companies that exist in England, there were twenty-three, in 1825, that had already spent over 91 million, and had not yet given a shilling of dividend to their shareholders [^368]. Such was, in 1825, the mass of cottons that English speculators had brought into their country, on the supposition that this commodity would be lacking that year, whereas it existed in superabundant quantity, that, on this article alone, there were losses for more than 62 million. When the recognition of the new States of South America had permitted England to trade directly with Brazil, the single city of Manchester sent to Rio de Janeiro, in the space of a few months, more merchandise than the whole of Brazil had consumed in the course of the twenty preceding years [^369]. A letter from Sydney, received in London at the beginning of 1826, announced that there had been shipped from England to that colony Epsom purgative salts in sufficient quantity to purge the colony for fifty years, were an ordinary dose to be administered to each inhabitant per week [^370]. In its session of 1824-1825, the English parliament, in less than six months, authorized two hundred and seventy different companies, which had together issued more than four billion in shares; but such was the wisdom of several of these enterprises and of a multitude of others for which the authorization of parliament had not been needed, that, in the course of the year 1825, according to the journal The Star, there were three thousand two hundred bankruptcies, one hundred thirty-seven thousand arrest warrants for debt were issued, seventy-five thousand were executed, and the legal costs that preceded, accompanied, or followed these bankruptcies rose to the enormous sum of 960,000 pounds sterling (24 million francs) [^371].And one must not believe, as is commonly said, that every enterprise, whatever its object, and whatever its result may be, is useful at least in the sense that it has the good effect of procuring work for the working classes; for the working classes are precisely those who suffer the most from lightly formed enterprises. If the solidity and duration of any establishment matter to all classes of persons attached to it, they matter above all to those who have the fewest advances and who live from day to day. The greatest wrong that can be done to poor workers is to attract them into enterprises destined to perish. An absence of aid would in some ways be better for them than precarious aid subject to failing them. On the faith of the means of existence presented to them by the enterprises in which they have been rashly engaged, they contract marriages, they raise troops of children; and then, when the catastrophes arrive, they find themselves, with numerous families, in the presence of establishments whose doors have been closed, and which have neither work to give them nor aid to offer them. Also, although the collapse of the master ordinarily causes them to lose no advance, and results for them only in a cessation of work, they are, I repeat, the class that suffers the most from this sort of disaster. Extremely fatal to the entrepreneur and the capitalist, an enterprise that falls is murderous for the workers [^372] .

One cannot therefore say enough how important it is, before undertaking anything, to inform oneself exactly of the tastes, needs, and resources of society.

However, being enlightened on the state of demand, it is no less essential to know the state of supply, that is to say, to know the means one already has to satisfy the needs that are felt.

It is possible that such a product as I might wish to make would be of a nature to be liked by the public. But is there not already someone who makes it? Is it in my power to make it better than those who create it? How many establishments exist that are consecrated to this kind of enterprise? What are the processes they employ? What is their expense? At what cost do their products arrive in the country where I would like to establish myself, and within a radius of so many leagues around the point where I am obliged to found my factory? At what price will mine arrive, having reached the extremity of the radius to which I am obliged to spread them to find a sufficient number of consumers? What kind of advantage will I have over the existing producers? Will I pay a lower interest on my capital? Will my enterprise be better conceived, better set up, better administered? Will I gain something on the raw material? Will I have more powerful power sources, more expeditious machines, more intelligent or cheaper workers? Will I dispose of more economical means of transport? In what is there better to be done than what is being done? Let us gather all the elements of my account; let us verify them scrupulously; let us ensure that I have provided for all the necessary costs; then let us make ample allowance for the chapter of possible errors and unforeseen setbacks. If, all calculations made and remade, it is well demonstrated to me that the public is not served as it ought to be, if I see clearly how it could be better served, if I possess my business well, if I feel my head firm enough and active enough to direct it suitably.... I can undertake it; I have the acquired conscience that I am going to do a thing good for others and for myself, a truly useful thing, even a moral thing, even though it must harm my competitors, since I am going to free the public from the illegitimate tribute levied upon it by negligent or unskilled producers who make it pay for the product they make above its true value, that is to say, above the price at which it can be made.

But it is only after having thus well assured myself of what is being done, and of the better that there would be to do, that I can act with honor and surety; for if I have not taken sufficient precautions, if I have undertaken lightly, if I have put myself in the necessity of selling at a loss, if I serve the public only by destroying my fortune and by harming that of the producers established before me, it is clear that it would have been wiser and more moral at once not to undertake.

In general, what must above all be recommended to entrepreneurs is to study the state of supply, and to see if they can really introduce some improvement into it. There are in effect far fewer people who ruin themselves for having badly chosen the product to make, than for not having made a just enough calculation of the price at which it would be possible for them to deliver it. There are few products that are not good to undertake, when one can furnish them at such a price that it is almost impossible that they do not find buyers. But it is this price at which one can produce that one does not take enough trouble to study. If, in many cases, one puts little care into informing oneself of the state of needs, one puts still less into seeking the good means to satisfy them, and nothing is comparable to the frivolity with which the least reasonable plans are frequently adopted. It is principally to this lack of attention brought to the study and choice of the means of execution that one must attribute the fall of so many enterprises, in the course of which there is such a great waste of forces, and whose final ruin is accompanied by so much suffering for society [^373] .

After the two kinds of capacity necessary to appreciate suitably the object and the means of an enterprise, the art of directing it is another talent also forming part of the genius for business, and which is no less indispensable than the other two to the success of every kind of industry.

This means is perfectly distinct from those I have just described. It is quite possible, in effect, that a man little capable of judging the opportuneness of creating a certain product, or of drawing up the account of the costs at which it is possible to produce it, may be otherwise in a state to administer with intelligence and with wisdom an establishment set up to obtain it. But if this latter faculty must not be confused with the preceding ones, it cannot, in another respect, be separated from them: it must concur with them, and no one is truly a man of business, if he is not at the same time an administrator. This talent of the administrator is of such great consequence that nothing can take its place; and the most excellent enterprise, that in which one would obtain by the best processes the products most susceptible of being sold, would have no chance of sustaining itself if, moreover, it were not suitably managed, if little order reigned there, if the hours of work were badly regulated, the expenses badly made, the resources squandered, etc.

The small number of economists whose works I have read are far, it seems to me, from according to this element of force the attention it would be worthy of. I do not remember Smith saying a single word about it. The author of the Treatise on Political Economy barely stops there. It is just to recognize, however, that he spoke of it more expressly in his lectures at the Conservatoire, and that he took more care to signal its importance than he had done in his Treatise.

"In the trip I have just made to England," he said at the end of 1825 in opening his course, "I had principally in view to observe the causes that in general make industrial enterprises succeed in a country renowned for its successes in this genre, and I was confirmed in the persuasion that the manner of administering these enterprises contributes to their success much more still than technical knowledge and the processes of execution for which, however, the English are praised with reason."

One can judge, by this single remark, to what point administrative talents deserve to figure in an exact analysis of the general causes to which the power of labor is linked [^374] .

Finally, to this talent of well conducting an enterprise that is well conceived and well set up, it is indispensable that the man of business, to be completely worthy of this name, unite a final faculty: that of to keep proper books; that of knowing how to demand an account from each part of his enterprise and from the whole of his establishment for all the advances they receive, for all the reimbursements they effect, and of being able, so to speak, to compel them to depose for or against him, to bear witness to the justness of his calculations, or else to warn him of the errors he has committed. Without this continual verification of what he had promised himself by the ever-present account and the ever-easy balance of what he has spent and what he has obtained, he would not know where he stood, he would be ignorant of whether he is at a profit or a loss, he would be out of a state to say where he gains and where he loses, what is good and what is bad in his enterprise, and he would not see, consequently, what deserves to be maintained and what asks to be reformed. This is again one of those general means of labor that has been little considered in the books of theory, although it ought to play a considerable role in practice. I will have occasion to show with more detail how powerful this means is, when I show how it can be applied to certain classes of labors in which one is not yet accustomed to submitting one's speculations to the test of a regular accounting.

Thus, to know the needs, to know if they are satisfied, to be in a state to appreciate the means one employs to satisfy them, to have the talent to judge if these means can be replaced by better ones, to be capable of conducting the establishments that one has been capable of conceiving and setting up for that, to know how to assure oneself finally, by a good accounting, if the results come to realize the promises that speculation had made, that is what constitutes the genius for business, and such is the first order of faculties on which is founded the power and liberty of all industry.

§ 6. However, it would be little to know what it is fitting to undertake, if one were not in a state to execute it, and if to the talent of speculation one did not unite technical knowledge. One cannot even conceive how it would be possible to form good speculations without this knowledge, since one would be incapable of appreciating the means that are commonly employed to create the product one intended to make, and one could not judge if it is possible to substitute better processes for these means. It is therefore necessary that to the intelligence of business be joined the talents that relate to the art.

The first of these talents, the one that it seems to me essential to acquire before any other, is the practical knowledge of the craft. I know that here I deviate greatly from the ideas that are current in the most well-off and most instructed classes of society. When, in these classes, one wishes to prepare a young man for a high and enlightened practice of the arts, one begins by giving him a literary education. In Europe, in France especially, rhetoric is the fundamental basis of all professions. It is therefore by becoming a rhetorician that every young man begins who wishes to exercise any art whatsoever in a somewhat distinguished manner; then his scientific education is done; he passes after into the schools of application, and finally he arrives at practice. A small number of good minds think on the contrary that one should begin with practice; that theory and its applications should come after, and that there would always be time to arrive at rhetoric.

One has reasons, however, for proceeding as one does. It remains to be known if these reasons are good. One believes that man first reasoned, and that then he acted; one thinks that the human race proceeds only by principle and by demonstrative reason; one supposes that our species remained for a more or less long time without doing things, without clothing itself, without lodging itself, without making love, without uniting in society, and that it bethought itself of all that only later, as reflection came to warn it that it could find some pleasure or some advantage in it. It has therefore appeared conformable to the nature of the human mind to make theory march before practice, and to teach the reason of things before learning to execute them.

I believe that in proceeding in this way one has completely misrecognized this nature of the human mind, upon which one had the very laudable desire to regulate one's march. What is, in effect, in the nature of man, is to act first and to reflect after. Reflection enlightens, rectifies, perfects the exercise of our forces; but man does everything naturally, and there is nothing that instinct has not begun. It is by instinct that man chooses his first foods, it is by instinct that he lives in society, it is by instinct that he began to clothe himself and to construct dwellings for himself. Reason has served only to teach him afterward to do better what he had first done without reasoning and by the simple impulse of need. To proceed conformably to the indications of nature, one should therefore begin by doing things and seek afterward the reason for what one does.

The truth is that all the arts began in an empirical manner. Most of their discoveries were made empirically, and the sciences, which are placed at their head, have come to explain, most of the time, only what they had found without them. In principle, that is the good way to go: one must learn the art before the science and the practice before the theory. One profits well from science only when it comes to give the reason for the processes of the art in which one is already versed. The scholar who is only a scholar does not know what to do with his science; it can serve him for nothing. There are the strangest examples of the inexperience of scholars, of their clumsiness, of their powerlessness for all that pertains to action. Such a man, profoundly versed in the theories of mechanics, would often not know how to go about doing things that the coarsest laborer easily accomplishes. To make oneself fit for the exercise of an art, to become a man of action, one must therefore begin by acting, and occupy oneself with theory only to ask it to enlighten and fortify practice.

It would appear that this has been understood on the other side of the Channel better than on this side. The men who are destined for the practice of an art in England, and who aspire to obtain a high rank in it, begin by instructing themselves in its most technical details, and by first putting their hand to the work. This is the observation that one of the most distinguished professors of the Conservatoire des arts et métiers of Paris, M. Clément, made one day.

"The greatest engineers of England," he said, "were at first simple workers. Watt was a clockmaker worker; Woolf, a carpenter; Telford, a mason; John and Philip Taylor, chemical manufacturers; finally Maudslay, a simple blacksmith. All the officers of the mines," added the professor, "began by being miners; all have broken the rock and rolled the wheelbarrow: they are true officers of fortune who know the details of their art to the core, who know all its difficulties. Conversations with a few skilled men, a few books, a few lessons in physics and chemistry given by itinerant professors and dearly paid for, that is what all their means of scientific instruction were at first."

I do not wish to finish without adding that these remarks apply indistinctly to all professions. The craft in everything would be the first thing to learn, and whatever the art to which one is destined, it is with the art itself that one should begin [^375] .However, while recognizing that it is important to begin with practice, let us hasten to say that its march becomes sure and its action truly powerful only when theory follows it and lends it the aid of its enlightenment. Without the intervention of the sciences, industry, given over to empiricism and routine, would make only a blind and limited use of the forces of nature. The property of the sciences is to teach it to use them with discernment and with breadth. I have already said that nature left to itself does not work preferentially for man: the sciences, by discovering to him how it acts, offer him the means to steal its forces from it and to bend them to his use. They unveil to him the properties of bodies, their physical action, their chemical action, and they deliver to him a multitude of secrets and levers from which he can then draw the greatest aid. Who can say all that the arts have borrowed of fecund truths from chemistry, from physics, from astronomy, from natural history? Sometimes a single one of the facts observed by these sciences has sufficed to make them make immense progress. What advantage, for example, has not been drawn from the knowledge of the properties of the magnet and that of the elasticity of fluids? The compass, to use the beautiful expression of Montesquieu, has opened the universe to commerce. It has been calculated that the steam engine, which is but a means of using alternately the expansive force of water vapor and the pressure of the atmosphere, has increased the products of industry in England enough to cover the interest on the debt, amounting annually to more than a billion. The power of industry is therefore closely linked to that of the sciences. The more progress the sciences have made, the more means industry has, the freer it is.

It must be said, however, that liberty, in this respect, would seem to depend less on the advancement of the sciences than on their diffusion. "Experience," said the enlightened professor I cited just now, "experience proves to me every day that the simplest elements of the sciences can suffice for the greatest developments of industry." Surely one must not infer from this that industry is not interested in the very high progress of the sciences. From the fact that one does not see what use certain truths might be to it, it would be quite reckless to claim that they will never be of any use to it. How many discoveries, which at first seemed only curious, have ended by leading to important applications. "When the Dutchman Otto-Guericke drew the first electric sparks, would one have foreseen," asks M. Say, "that they would put Franklin on the path to directing lightning and diverting it from our buildings, an enterprise that seemed so far to exceed the power of man?" I am therefore far from condemning any kind of research; I say only that what makes the power of the arts is not so much the existence of a small number of very learned men as that of a very great number of men passably instructed; and the facts bear witness with brilliance to the truth of this remark. Thus, for example, industry is incomparably more powerful in England than in France, although the first scientific body in Europe is in France, and the only advantage of England, with regard to the sciences, is to count a more considerable number of men who possess its elements. Not only has there been formed in England, for the direction of all industrial enterprises, a numerous class of private engineers that we do not have; but it must be remarked in addition that in that country many workshop heads, foremen, and even simple workers, possess elementary notions of physics, chemistry, and mechanics that are generally lacking among us in this class of laborers.

If the power of the arts depends on the advancement and diffusion of the sciences, it is above all linked to the progress of their application. The application of a science is a particular science, more difficult perhaps than the science itself, and whose object is to put it to use. It is possible, one conceives, that certain sciences, sufficiently advanced, sufficiently widespread, have still been little utilized. In this state, they are fit, if you will, to satisfy curiosity, to maintain the activity of the mind, to furnish it with a subject and to become for it the occasion of a favorable exercise; but it is evident that they add nothing to the powers of labor. Relative to industry, the sciences exist only when the talent for applications has come to make it profit from the truths they have found. It is this talent that realizes for it the benefit of their discoveries; it is to this talent that it owes all that they can procure for it of power and liberty.

Finally, the liberty of the man who exercises an industry depends not only on the knowledge he has of the processes of his art, on the scientific notions he possesses, on his talent for applications; it depends also on his skill in execution and workmanship. The discoveries of science, utilized by the genius of applications, are realized, take on a body, produce a useful result only by the labor of the worker. Without this labor, the most beautiful conceptions would be in vain and all industry powerless. It is from workmanship, properly speaking, that they receive being and life. The liberty of industry therefore depends again essentially on the talent that the artist, already distinguished as a scholar and as an engineer, possesses also as a worker. The better he conceives what is to be done, the more adroit he is at executing it, the more care he can bring to his work, the more capable he is of giving it precision and perfection, the more he is master, in a word, of this last part of his art as of those that I have already described, and the freer he is to exercise it.

I insist little on these last means, whose influence has often been expounded, and on which, moreover, I will have more than one occasion to return when I arrive, in the chapters that will follow, at the application of the principles stated in this one.

I have spoken of the elements of power that I have just analyzed in the two preceding paragraphs, as if they were all united in a single person, although they are necessarily distributed, if an enterprise has any importance, among a rather large number of hands. It always happens, in effect, that the founder of such an enterprise has under him, for what pertains to the management of his business, an administrator, a steward, a cashier, one or several bookkeepers; and, on the other hand, for what pertains more particularly to the art, an engineer, workshop heads, foremen, workers. However, it is of the highest interest that the head of the enterprise have a perfect intelligence of the diverse tasks that all his subordinates fulfill; that his thought preside over everything; that he can everywhere put his hand to the work, approve or blame with knowledge of the cause, give the most enlightened orders. And not only is it good that the entrepreneur unite in himself all the kinds of capacity that contribute to the success of his enterprise; but it would be happy, if the thing were possible, that these diverse kinds of capacity were common to all his agents; for it is clear that each would do his task all the better as he would be more in a state to understand what is the general object of the establishment, in what manner each contributes to the goal of the enterprise, and what is precisely the particular task assigned to him in this common labor. Finally, although it is rather rare to find united in a single individual all the industrial faculties that I have described in the two preceding paragraphs, it is certain that all these faculties are necessary for the success of all professions, and that a man exercises his profession with all the more power as he better unites in his person all that constitutes the skillful artist and the intelligent man of business.

§ 7. After that, let us hasten to say that the highest development of these faculties, in a country, could not ensure the free exercise of any profession if this progress were not accompanied by that of morals, and if the population, as it formed its genius for the arts and for business, did not also work to perfect itself, as much in that portion of its habits whose effect is to conserve and increase the faculties of each individual, as in those that tend to render the relations of men among themselves more sure, more peaceful, and easier.

Such is the influence that good moral habits exercise on the liberty of all industry, that I am at a loss to understand how economists could have forgotten to take account of such a considerable element of power; how Smith, for example, after having included acquired talents in his inventory of the means of labor, did not also include acquired good habits; how M. Say, after having entered into his nomenclature of the general fund of society the industrial faculties of the workers, could have neglected to enter therein what the workers possess of good moral habits. Does there exist, I ask, in the ensemble of the means that industry employs, any element of force whose influence on its liberty is more decisive? I know all the power it can draw from the talent for business, from technical knowledge, from the aid of theory, from the genius of applications, from skill in workmanship; but are activity, prudence, order, economy, temperance, simplicity of tastes, a certain continence; but are the spirit of justice that leads workers to abstain from all spirit of monopoly, and the civil courage that does not permit them to tolerate such a spirit in anyone, of less effective help to it? How, in the enumeration of the means that it brings to concur in the work of production, has one not signaled good personal morality and good relational morality as two of the most powerful and most indispensable? [^376] .

§ 8. And first, to speak of that part of morality that relates to our conduct with regard to ourselves, is it not certain that a vicious man would be nearly as incapable as an ignorant man of successfully exercising any profession whatsoever? Vice, it is true, would not act upon him in the same way as inexperience or natural incapacity; but it would produce nearly the same effects; and, with all the intellectual and manual means to act, this man could very well not have the power to do so, enslaved as he would be to bad inclinations.

What need have I, for example, to say that laziness is an obstacle to the free exercise of all industry? Is it not evident that activity is the first condition of all liberty, and that, to be able to use one's forces, one must first be capable of overcoming the natural indolence that would prevent us from using them? As long as man remains inactive, he develops none of his organs; the passion for work is the first virtue he needs to draw some advantage from his faculties, and it is visible that, with equality of resources and natural capacity, the most laborious people must soon be the most industrious, that whose industry will be the most powerful and the most free.

If laziness is an obstacle to the liberty of industry, one can say as much of avarice, of prodigality, of ostentation, and in general of all vices. Avarice, less fatal to industry than idleness, is nonetheless still contrary to it. A producer who, out of stinginess, would not want to make the necessary advances for production, who would rather miss gaining 6 francs than risk one écu, who, instead of joining his savings to his capital and extending his speculations more and more, would bury his profits to be sure not to lose them, such a man, I say, could become neither very powerful in his art, nor very rich. It could well be that his industry would not decline, but neither would he make any progress; it would necessarily remain stationary. The less, therefore, an industrious man is a slave to this narrow spirit, to this sordid instinct, which leads the miser to bury his treasures; the less he leaves capital inactive, the better he knows how to spend it, whenever he can do so with advantage, and the more capable he is of extending the powers of his industry, the stronger and freer it becomes.

If avarice restricts the power of industry, all the more so does prodigality. The miser subtracts capital from reproduction, but he does not destroy it; the prodigal, on the contrary, dissipates it: the one can prevent wealth from growing, but the other makes it decline. The prodigal spends on superfluities, on follies, on debaucheries, the accumulations of his predecessors; he ceaselessly removes from labor some portion of the capital that makes its power, and each day he thus takes away something of its liberty. The less, therefore, a people has of that puerile pride, of that foolish vanity that leads men to dissipate their riches in pompous prodigalities, the more it knows how to spend them wisely and usefully, and the more its means of production increase, the more its industry acquires power and liberty.

In countries where pomp reigns, there are almost no intermediaries between the arts indispensable to life and those that furnish the refinements of voluptuousness; this is a thing easy to remark among most of the Oriental nations.

"Manufactures, among these nations," observes an English writer, "are in a pitiful state; things favorable to the development of the mind are absolutely unknown there. They possess skill only for jewelry, goldsmithing, the fabrication of cloths of gold, of rich silks, of luxury arms, and for the construction of pagodas and palaces. In Europe, on the contrary, we fabricate, independently of luxury objects, comfortable clothing and furniture for everyone, books and timepieces for scholars [^377] ."

This difference is due above all to that of morals. If we are better provided than the Asiatics with all the things necessary for life, with all that can render it sweet, agreeable, and noble all at once, it is because, spending less for the satisfaction of factitious needs, more remains to us for the satisfaction of real needs; it is because simpler tastes, by making savings possible, have permitted us to make those accumulations of means of every kind, from which have come the developments of industry and all the means of enjoyment it procures for us.

The superiority of English industry over ours is due in part to the same cause. We fabricate, in general, all that the English fabricate, and there are few articles that we are not capable of making as well as they; but there are a certain number of them that we cannot produce in the same quantity and at the same price. Why is that? because the producers, among us, have fewer means to produce, because fewer consumers have the means to buy, because one is in general less rich, and one is less rich for this reason, among many others, that expenses are perhaps less judicious. We are more inclined to luxury than our neighbors; we have less attraction for what is useful and comfortable; we have more for what is sumptuous or brilliant; we love palaces, pompous monuments, refined dishes and clothing more. What this disposition adds uselessly to our public and private consumption, what it takes away from our ease, what it causes our industry to lose in resources and means, what, consequently, it opposes of obstacles to its progress and its liberty is assuredly very considerable.

Were I to successively review all our bad private habits, I would find them all more or less contrary to the free exercise of all the arts. If avarice opposes the growth of our capital, if prodigality makes it decrease, intemperance wears out our health, debauchery dulls our intelligence, envy, by irritating us against our rivals, only makes us more incapable of reaching or surpassing them. There is no vice that does not have for its effect to diminish our power, to reduce our means of action. One ruins our bodily forces, another our mental faculties, this one our fortune, that one our consideration, most several of these goods together, some all our faculties at once.

As much, therefore, as it is necessary, to freely exercise any industry whatsoever, that we have the habit of business and much acquired in the matter of the art, so much is it necessary that we know how to make, relative to ourselves, a moral use of our faculties. The liberty of the industrious man depends on this means at least as much as on any other; and, if his power is greatly increased by adroitness, intelligence, skill, science, it is no less so by activity, zeal, application, economy, regularity, and by all the individual virtues favorable to the conservation and growth of his forces.

Of all the private virtues, the one that I would regard as the most necessary to the industrious man, the one that successively gives him all the others, is the passion for well-being, it is a violent desire to pull oneself out of misery and abjection, it is that emulation and that dignity at once which do not permit him to be content with an inferior situation, whenever, by honorable work, he sees the possibility of rising to a better state.

[^376]: I do not know if I am mistaken, but it seems to me that the science of political economy would be singularly clarified and simplified, if one were to consider it as having for its object the analysis of all the means that man employs to increase his forces, and if one were to give the name of capital to the ensemble of forces he has amassed. [^377]: Historical View of Plans for the Government of British India.This sentiment, which seems so natural, is unfortunately much less common than one thinks. There are few reproaches that the very great generality of men deserve less than that which ascetic moralists address to them of being too fond of their comforts, of taking too much care to increase their means of enjoyment and happiness. One could address the contrary reproach to them with infinitely more justice. They are in effect only too disposed to be content with little, to accustom themselves to a meager existence, to wallow, to grow old in ignorance, filth, destitution, and in general in states very ill-suited to that dignity of the human race of which the same moralists never cease to speak to them. There is even this very remarkable thing in the nature of men, that the less enlightenment and resources they have, the less they feel the desire to acquire them. Savages, the most miserable and least enlightened of men, are precisely those in whom it is most difficult to create needs, those in whom one inspires with the most difficulty the desire to leave their state; so that man must have already procured for himself by labor a certain well-being, before he feels with any vivacity this need to improve his condition, to perfect his existence, which I call the love of well-being.

However, so long as he is not animated by this passion, it is impossible for his industry to make rapid progress. He conducts his labors without zeal, without affection, without intelligence, without any of the moral dispositions that are indispensable for executing them well. He also uses his resources rather badly. If he consents to spend his life in a state of misery and mediocrity, it is on his part neither moderation, nor simplicity of morals: it is coarseness, laziness, carelessness, absence of dignity, of taste, of delicacy. Far from having moderate inclinations, he would willingly be dissolute; he is very inclined to intemperance, to lust, to luxury; he has a taste for all disorderly pleasures; he does not have the love of well-being.

Suppose him, on the contrary, animated by a keen desire to improve his condition, and from this sentiment, as from their source, will be born the private habits most favorable to the progress of the art he exercises, as to the good use of the goods he possesses. Activity will succeed laziness; emulation, indifference; order and saving, waste; he will spend little for ostentation; he will do much for true happiness; he will want to see his dwelling become each day healthier, more convenient, more cheerful; he will want to be better clothed, better fed, more instructed, better governed; he will neglect no part of his happiness, and the better his condition becomes, the more he will feel the desire and the more he will have the means to make it better still.

It is to this love of well-being, a passion of very cultivated peoples, that one must attribute the beautiful developments that industry has taken among some peoples; it is to the absence of this sentiment that one must hold accountable the delays it experiences in other countries. I do not doubt that the distance at which it may still be among us from the point it has reached in a rival nation, is due in large part to the difference in the energy with which this sentiment acts in the two nations. No people appears more possessed than the English people by the need to increase its ease, its conveniences, to procure for themselves, as they say, a comfortable existence, that is to say a gentle and fortifying existence. This passion dominates the laboring men of all classes among them; it is what presides over all their labors, what accelerates more and more their movement and activity, what directs them constantly toward a useful goal; it is the soul of their industry and the principal cause of the immense progress it has made.

It is not without reason, therefore, that I place the passion for well-being among the first private virtues of the industrious man.

There is one, however, that would seem to me still more necessary for his progress, especially in the lower classes: it is that sort of prudence, of restraint, of continence that he needs, not to forbid himself marriage, for I do not think that, in any class, one is obliged to abstain from marrying, but to use marriage with circumspection, to prevent it from becoming fatal by becoming too fecund.

I dismiss the idea that a man should not marry until he has, as they say, the means to raise a family. I do not know, first of all, what is meant by these words. A family is not the forced consequence of marriage, although it is its ordinary consequence: he who wishes does not always have children. Then, not everyone has the same number: it is possible to have only one, just as it is possible to have ten, to have twelve, to have fifteen: does one want a man to wait to marry until he has enough to raise fifteen children, enough to raise the most numerous family possible? I would like to know at what point one stops, and what fortune one requires a man to acquire before he can think of marrying. Finally, I hold that the conjugal union is the first association that a young man and a young woman, honest and hardworking, each having a trade and the desire to get ahead, need to form, even when they lack a fortune. Such an association is for both a source of numerous advantages; it calms their imagination, it fixes their ideas, it diverts them from vice, the expense of each becomes less, they serve each other as help and support: it is the best league they can form against misfortune.

But, for this league to have good effects, they must have formed it with good intentions, and above all they must watch attentively over its consequences; for if they did not take care to regulate, to master its consequences, it could become for them a cause of discouragement and ruin, just as much as it is, when it is well understood and wisely conducted, a very fecund principle of strength and prosperity.

Let us understand this well: the essential thing is not to defer marriage until one has enough to raise an indefinite number of children; the essential thing is to have children, even in marriage, only when one is in a position to raise them, when one can believe that in calling them to life one is not going to do a fatal thing, either for them or for oneself: the essential thing is not to make one's marriage more prolific than one's industry. This need to limit its fecundity, this care to always proportion the size of one's family to the greatness of one's fortune, is a care from which no one can sanely dispense, and from which fortunately few people dispense, at least in the somewhat elevated ranks of society. In this regard, as in several others, the morality of the instructed portion of society is better than that of the casuists. It is only in the indigent and unenlightened classes that one continues to use marriage without discretion, without restraint, without imposing any constraint, without wanting to submit in the least to the kind of moral constraint that is necessary to regulate its effects. Of all the disorders of society, this one is perhaps the most fatal. There is no true improvement to be expected for the lower classes as long as these classes continue, not to marry, but to make such a deplorable abuse of marriage, as long as each new increase in wealth is rendered vain by a new increase in population, as long as the number of workers continues to grow, and capital and labors can multiply without any resulting increase in wages. I lack the space here to show in how many ways the abuse of the conjugal union harms the progress of society and the development of the powers of labor. I will limit myself to saying that nothing enervates a man more, takes away his activity, emulation, courage more, renders him more incapable of thinking of perfecting his art and extending its power, than to see himself surrounded by more children than he is in a state to raise, than to feel that misery is gaining on him, overwhelming him, and that he is making vain efforts to ward it off from himself and his own. Let us recognize, therefore, that there are few virtues of which the industrious man has more need, especially in the lower conditions, than that which is necessary to wisely regulate the principle of population.

§ 9. If the liberty of the arts depends essentially on the progress of individual morals, it is linked in a no less narrow manner to the development of good civil habits. To be able to freely exercise any art whatsoever, it is not enough that we make a prudent use of our faculties, that we be good economists of our forces; it is also necessary that we know how to use them without prejudice to others; it is necessary that we have learned to keep their use within the limits of justice.

We can go beyond these limits in a multitude of ways. There are in effect a thousand ways to attack each other, to do each other violence. We can attack each other in our persons by defamation, insults, injuries, murders; we can attack each other in our fortunes by fraud, swindling, theft, extortion, pillage; we can attack each other in the exercise of our faculties by exclusive pretensions, unjust prohibitions, hoarding, monopolies, usurpations of privileges, etc.

Now, in whatever manner we may encroach upon one another; whether we attack each other in our persons, in our fortunes, in the exercise of our faculties, the attacks we deliver have for their inevitable effect to restrict our power to act; and they restrict it all the more, as the excesses to which we are carried toward one another are more serious and more multiplied.

It is quite superfluous to say, for example, that we diminish the powers of industry by attacking each other in our persons. Not only, by violences of this sort, can we reduce ourselves more or less to the physical impossibility of acting, but we take away from ourselves the moral faculty for it; we spread alarm in society, we destroy that security without which it is impossible to devote oneself with zeal and with fruit to any labor. It is no more necessary to add that we destroy the powers of industry by attacking each other in our fortunes. To be able to exercise industry, in effect, the goods we possess are no less necessary to us than the faculties with whose help we make them valuable, and attacks on property take away from us the physical power to act, just as well as enterprises against persons. Add that these attacks, like the preceding ones, not only take away from us the physical power, but also the moral power to work; they paralyze our activity at the same time as they take away our resources. No one wants to take a pain for which he is not assured of reaping the fruit; far from thinking of getting rich, one barely takes care of what one possesses; one abandons oneself to idleness; one falls into ignorance and misery, or, if one tended to leave this state, one makes fewer efforts to get out of it.

Finally, it is just as useless to say that we destroy the liberty of industry by attacking each other in the exercise of our faculties, by seeking to place limits on each other's activity, by wanting to hoard, each on our own side, some kind of fabrication, some branch of commerce or some other mode of activity. The necessary consequence of these mutual usurpations is that, on all sides, we are more circumscribed and more constrained in the use of our forces, that we use them with infinitely less intelligence and emulation, that we expend a considerable portion of them fruitlessly, that we generally draw less profit from them.

To exercise the arts with facility and with power, we therefore have no less need to respect one another, than to know how to make, with regard to ourselves, a good use of our faculties. This progress, different from the preceding ones, is just as indispensable; and, just as industry grows with the capacity for labor and business, with the perfection of private habits, so it grows with the perfection of social justice, and becomes all the freer as we know better how to respect each other mutually in our persons, in the exercise of our faculties, in the products of our faculties.

I have an important remark left to make: it is that it is not enough that we know how to respect each other as individuals, and that it is necessary still, above all, that we know how to abstain from all violence as citizens. It is quite possible in effect that we do or let be done politically things of which we would blush, and from which we know very well how to defend ourselves when we act as individuals. Not only is this possible, but it is very ordinary, and nothing is less difficult to find than societies, bodies of a nation whose members, in their political capacity, commit or tolerate many things that they most assuredly disapprove of, and from which in general they abstain in their quality as private men.

Although the conduct of men, in their particular relations, even among the best-policed peoples of Europe, is not always, by a long shot, exempt from iniquity and violence, it is nevertheless true to say that there are few excesses that they do not condemn in principle, and that in practice there are many from which they commonly know how to abstain. With regard to the mass of men that has developed on the earth we inhabit, for example, there are surely few individuals who, in their individual conduct, habitually attack property, or do violence to persons; there are still fewer who take it into their heads, as individuals, to want to determine the use that others may make of their faculties; I do not know that I have ever seen any who, by their private authority, dared to arrogate privileges to themselves and to attribute to themselves the exclusive right to do what is naturally permitted to all.

But, if such is our reserve when we act as individuals, it is far from being the case that, politically, we are so timid. As soon as we act as members of the body politic, or as charged with any portion of its powers, we are no longer the same men; we no longer know any bounds to our will; one would say that actions change their nature, because we have changed our role, and that what would be a crime on the part of individuals is a laudable thing, or at the very least a permitted one, on the part of authority. Our conscience, which just now was fearful, scrupulous, delicate, circumspect, suddenly becomes enterprising and bold. We attack in a thousand ways the person and the fortune of private individuals: we despoil some to enrich others; we grant to these privileges that we refuse to those; we hinder them all, and especially the weak, in the legitimate exercise of their forces.

In truth, as society never acts collectively and in mass, one could not say that we simultaneously take an active part in these excesses; but a very great number of men make themselves guilty of them each in their turn, as the course of events calls them to the exercise of social power; and, although among us, as in other countries, all political parties do not lack to the same degree in enlightenment and moderation, we have yet to know one that, once invested with the powers of the community, has wanted, or been able, or known how to keep the use of them within the limits of reason and justice.

Furthermore, although the whole of society does not participate actively in the excesses that are committed in its name, one can say that it concurs in them in an indirect manner, by the sole fact that it does not prevent them. It would suffice in effect that it had the will to prevent them for it to have the power to do so; and one feels well enough that the depositaries of its forces and its resources would not have the means to misuse them, if it did not consent to lend them for bad uses. The men invested with power exercise no sort of magic; they have no more than others the gift of miracles; and when, in a society of thirty million men, it happens that a small number of individuals can encroach upon the faculties of most of the others, and hinder the exercise of all professions, one can affirm boldly that these individuals have the great number for an accomplice, and that the excesses they permit themselves have their true reason in the state of the political ideas and morals that prevail in the society.Now, with political ideas and morals that allow for such excesses, no true liberty is possible for any order of labors. What good is it, in effect, to abstain individually from attacking property, from doing violence to persons, from disturbing them in the innocent use of their faculties, if we politically commit such violences, or if we suffer the depositaries of social power to commit them in our name? Do not political attacks oppose as great obstacles to the free action of labor as private offenses? They oppose far more serious ones. Private offenses affect only individuals; public crimes attack the masses. The former, committed by isolated men, can be easily repressed; the latter, committed by constituted bodies, strong in the ignorance, depravity, or weakness of the great number, must necessarily remain unpunished. One can see an end to them only when the great number, having become enlightened enough to condemn them, is at the same time courageous enough to no longer suffer their renewal.

If, therefore, for industry to be free, we must guard ourselves, as individuals, from all violence, it is even more necessary that we maintain the same conduct as citizens. The final and most essential condition is that we know how to condemn as public men all that we condemn as private men; that we recognize no more rights for society over the natural or acquired faculties of private individuals than we recognize for private individuals themselves over the faculties of one another; that, far from recognizing for society or its representatives, true or false, any power over the person or faculties of any individual, we regard it as the first interest of society and the first duty of its mandataries to place the person and faculties of every man beyond the reach of all excess; that, finally, each of us feel that the good sense, honesty, and courage of the public truly protect him in the possession of all his goods, and that it would not be in anyone's power to rob him, in whole or in part, of their legitimate use. This is a final progress that must have been made for industry to enjoy true liberty. I do not say that this progress is easy; but I say that it is indispensable, and that a people is not truly industrious or its industry is not completely free until it has reached that point.

§ 10. It is doubtless a great deal, for the free exercise of all the professions that society embraces, to suppose developed in the men of whom it is composed the diverse orders of faculties I have just analyzed. However, all this capital of strength, intelligence, and good habits, even if it were possible for men to have developed it in themselves without at the same time exercising a great action upon nature, would still not suffice for the liberty of industry. For industry to be free, in effect, man must, at the same time as he has made himself fit to exercise it, have also appropriated the external world for its exercise. He must have known how to discern the most favorable places for each kind of establishment, he must have subjected these places to a certain number of preliminary modifications, he must have raised constructions there, he must have gathered there a certain collection of objects, proper for a certain number of uses, and which he cannot do without in order to act. Every industry necessarily requires a workshop, and I have said that, for this workshop to be proper for its destination, it must be suitably situated, it must have been constructed and set up in a logical manner, labor must be well-divided therein, and, finally, it must be provided with a certain collection of machines, raw materials, currencies, and foodstuffs.

The necessity of all these conditions is easy to understand. There are several, moreover, whose effects have often been described. Nevertheless, I will expound, in a few words, how each of them contributes to the liberty of labor, how each is necessary.

There must be, I say, in every workshop, a certain quantity of provisions, of foodstuffs, of fungible things. There exists, in effect, a certain number of agents—men, livestock, or machines—for whose maintenance it is necessary to provide, and it is by providing for the conservation of these indispensable agents that the portion of real capital of which I speak here contributes to production.

There must be a certain quantity of currencies. There are, in effect, in every industrial establishment, a certain number of purchases to be made every day, every month, every year, and currency contributes to the goal of the enterprise by facilitating all these indispensable exchanges, which it would be nearly impossible to execute without its help. Currency thus places itself among the agents of production; however, as it seconds production only indirectly, and by serving as an instrument for the multiplied exchanges that all production necessitates, it will be more suitable to speak of its function and of the conditions by which it succeeds in fulfilling it well only when it is a question of the exchanges that play such a great role in the whole economy of society, and of which it is the true agent.

There must be raw materials. In effect, the very object of any industrial establishment being to subject certain beings to certain modifications, whether organic or inorganic, animate or inanimate, men or things, it is clear that one cannot do without these beings which are the very matter of the product one proposes to effect. A hospital needs sick people, a school needs pupils, a penitentiary needs criminals to be cured of their penchant for crime; just as a cotton mill needs cotton, a forge needs ore, a stud farm needs stallions, mares, fodder, etc. I could remark that sometimes the industrious man seeks out the raw material and then sells it along with the processing he has given it, while at other times the raw material comes to him and pays him to receive certain kinds of processing; but this remark, though just, would lead to nothing useful. I will content myself with observing that the raw material, of whatever nature it may be, contributes to production by furnishing its properties to the thing that is to be produced, and I add that it fulfills its function all the better, the better it has been previously appropriated for the processing it is destined to receive.

The labor that an art proposes to execute upon men or upon things, to make them pass from the state in which it takes them to that in which it must render them, is not composed of a simple and indivisible act; it is almost always composed, on the contrary, of a certain series of acts, distinct enough from one another to require different tools, a particular workmanship. It is essential, for the workshop to be truly proper for its object, to subject the labor executed therein to all those cuts, all those divisions of which it is naturally susceptible, and to entrust the execution of these elementary acts of the composite labor from which production results, to as many separate agents who constantly have the same thing to do, and who are never obliged to disturb themselves to change occupation. Such are the advantages that result from this isolation of functions and from the permanent consecration of each agent to a special function, that it would be very difficult to say to what point the power of labor is thereby increased. One knows well that there is a certain kind of factory where, by the effect of this division of labor, the power of each worker is increased several hundredfold; but it would be impossible to say in general what this happy artifice allows to be saved in time, what it causes to be acquired in precision and rapidity in the execution of a multitude of works, what it has caused to be discovered in ingenious processes and invented in new machines [^379] .

It is one of the happiest effects of the extreme division of labor that operates within each workshop to simplify its operations enough that it often becomes easy to substitute inanimate power sources for the human being who executes them. The power sources and the machines are another of the agents whose concurrence is indispensable to the good constitution of the workshop. Without machines, man disposes only of his own forces; with machines, he disposes of those of nature. It is through the intermediary of machines that he takes possession of these forces, that he appropriates them to himself, that he animates them in a way with his intelligence, and constrains them, while he rests or limits himself to supervising their work, to execute with docility, with energy, with skill, all the designs that his intelligence has conceived. What machines give him of power, what they can do for the multiplication, for the beauty, for the low price of his products, is not susceptible of any estimation, even an approximate one.

One has often risen up against machines, and one should not be surprised. The most immediate effect of their intervention is to put someone out of service, and to deprive, it seems, of work the laborers they are called to replace. But they despoil them only in appearance, and the only real wrong they do them is to oblige them momentarily to change occupation; and even this wrong is redeemed by immense advantages.

In effect, independently of the service they render them, as to everyone, of lowering the price of the products they are employed to create, they have for them the triple advantage, 1° of multiplying the demand for labor, 2° of raising its price, 3° of making their task less arduous and less subordinate.

They increase the demand for labor, by extending in a sometimes immense proportion the diverse fabrications in which they are employed, as well as the accessory fabrications, and by almost always giving birth to new industries. They raise the price of labor by the very fact that they increase the demand for it. Finally, they alleviate and ennoble the worker's task by freeing him more or less from manual labor, by raising him from the condition of a machine to that of a supervisor of machines. If, therefore, they suppress certain occupations, they amply repair this damage they seem to cause the workers, by replacing these limited, coarse, and ill-paid tasks with functions that are more numerous, better remunerated, and nobler.

Thus, although they improve the lot of all classes of workers, it is perhaps true to say that they are, all proportion kept, more useful to the working class than to any other. Such is the good that it is in their power to do for this class, that if it did not abuse, as it does, the prosperity they procure for it, they would be capable, by themselves, of operating a revolution in its state, and of causing it to have in the division of products a share much better proportioned to the importance of its task.

Suppose, in effect, that, at the time when machines lower the price of products, extend production, and multiply the demand for work, the working class, for its part, prudently avoided multiplying too much the number of workers: is it not evident to you that, from the concurrence of these two circumstances, there ought to result a great increase in the price of its services, and a notable improvement in its state?

M. Say observes, in his last work [^380] , that in the ten years that followed, in England, the introduction of Arkwright's machine, from 1777 to 1787, the number of workers employed in the spinning and weaving of cotton rose from seven thousand nine hundred to three hundred and fifty-two thousand, and that, at the time when the number of workers employed in this labor took this singular extension, the price of their labor became one and a half times more considerable, that it rose by one hundred and fifty percent. Comparing then the quantity of cotton worked today in England to that which was fabricated there in 1787, M. Say adds that the number of persons now occupied in the same work must be more than two million. He agrees, it is true, that wages have declined, because of the very great development that the working class has taken. But suppose that this class, instead of abusing, as it has done, the principle of population, had had enough foresight and self-control to regulate its effects suitably; suppose that, at the time when the use of more perfected methods was multiplying in an almost infinite manner the occupations and the demand for work, it had known how to put some limit on the multiplication of workers, and you will easily conceive what, in this supposition, machines would have done for the growth of its well-being.

If the perfection of the workshop depends to a very high degree on the power of the instruments with which it is provided, it also depends a great deal on the plan on which it is constructed and the manner in which it is organized. The good organization of the workshop is one of the general means of labor of which economists have as yet taken very little account, although this element of force was perhaps not much less worthy of their attention than several others, and perhaps than machines and the division of labor. The better the workshops are constructed on good plans, the better the machines are placed therein, the better the workers are distributed therein, the more, in a word, everything is disposed therein in the order according to which the work must be executed, and the more freely the work must be done there. I will cite, when we arrive at the application, some examples of what power a good disposition of buildings and machines can give to labor.

Finally, the liberty of industry depends not only on a good distribution of things within each workshop, it is equally linked to the manner in which the workshops are placed and distributed in the world. In the immense laboratory that human society presents, as in each particular establishment, the more one knows how to avoid false movements, detours, and useless stations, the more industry acquires power and liberty. It is rather rare that a product undergoes in a single workshop all the transformations through which it must pass before arriving at the form under which it will finally serve the needs of man. Ordinarily that cannot be done; but what is possible is that it pass more or less rapidly from the workshop where it has received a first processing into that where it must receive a second, from this one into a third, and so on. Now, the more this circulation can operate with rapidity, the less time and trouble industry loses; the fewer costs it incurs, the freer it is.

Suppose that after having harvested cotton in Brazil, one wished to spin it in Europe, weave it in Africa, print it in Asia, and from Asia carry it back to America to distribute it from there into all the quarters of the globe it had already traversed: is it not evident that industry would lose without fruit, in all these journeys, a great part of its means and its forces, and that it would be less free to fabricate the cotton than if it could spin it, weave it, print it in the very places where it had gathered it, and distribute it from there wherever the demand for it was made? If, therefore, for its movements not to be encumbered, for it to lose none of its forces, it is important that its agents and its tools be suitably placed within each workshop; it is even more important that its workshops be suitably placed and distributed in the world; for the greater the scale on which its movements are executed, the more its action is slowed by false maneuvers.

Thus the powers of labor extend as man better accommodates external objects to its exercise, just as they extend as he develops more in himself the faculties he needs to work.

[^379]: Treatise on Political Economy, by M. Say, book I, chap. 8. [^380]: M. Say, Complete Course on Political Economy, vol. I, p. 217.§ 11. I must add, in finishing, that its liberty is all the greater not only as its powers are already more developed, but as they have grown with greater harmony. Although the progress of each of them influences the development of the others, it is extremely rare that they all march in step. There is always one of our faculties that remains behind. Certain means of action are more developed in certain countries, others in others. “At the time of the renaissance of letters in Italy,” observes M. Say, “the sciences were in Bologna, riches in Florence, Genoa, and Venice.” The population of Geneva, distinguished in many respects, excels above all in the spirit of speculation and the talent for business: twenty of the principal commercial houses of Paris have Genevans as their heads. We shine less by the genius for applications than by that for the sciences: we are not enough men of business for science to turn to our profit. The English, on the contrary, understand above all how to make science a useful instrument. It is therefore possible that the diverse powers of labor may be very unequally developed in each country. Now, this is surely a regrettable thing. It almost always happens that when certain faculties are lacking in us, a part of those we possess finds itself annulled. It is thus that in certain places the lack of capital paralyzes industry, just as in other places the lack of industry debases capital; or, to speak another language, it is thus that a people is powerless with a great real capital, when it does not have a sufficient capital of personal faculties, or that it is still powerless with a great capital of personal faculties, when it does not have a considerable enough capital of real objects. A people that aspires to advance must therefore apply itself above all to perfecting those agents of production that are least developed within it: not only, by thus directing its efforts, does it procure new faculties for itself, but it gives life and value to those it already possessed [^381] .

§ 12. There, as far as I can understand it, is the ensemble of causes on which the liberty of labor depends. Although this analysis of its powers is surely still very imperfect, I sincerely believe that it is more exact, and, in its entirety, much more complete than those that had been made of it until now.

It remains for me to seek how and to what extent the principles it contains apply to the diverse orders of labors and functions that enter into the economy of the social body. This will be the subject of the chapters that will follow.

One easily foresees that, in this work, several means whose influence I could only indicate in a general exposition will receive a part of the developments they lack. This exposition will thus become less imperfect.

I add that in showing how the principles of liberty apply to the principal branches of social activity, I will take care to say in what each of these branches of activity consists, and how it influences all the rest. Thus I will begin by saying, on each of the orders of labors and functions of which I propose to speak, what is properly its nature. I will then enter into some details on its effects. I will always finish by analyzing its means. This last part, which is the essential object of the work, will ordinarily also be that on which I will insist the most.

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Notes

[^361]: Rev. encyclop., April 1827, p. 76. [^362]: Commentary on the Spirit of the Laws, book 13, p. 261, of the in-18 ed. [^363]: *Unlike Smith, who simply regards this part of the social stock as unproductive, M. Say declares it productive of pleasure, productive of utility, but not productive of wealth. [^364]: V. the Traité d'écon. pol., notably in book 1, ch. 11 and 13, and in book 3, ch. 5 and 6. [^365]: A dwelling house, provided with the furniture, clothing, foodstuffs, books, and all the instruments necessary to properly raise a family of useful men, can be considered as a factory where the first, the noblest, and the most important of all products is formed. [^366]: Rev. brit., first issue, vol. I, p. 15. [^367]: It is to the knowledge of the author of this book that, in the plain of Grenelle, a farm that did not bring in 7,000 francs in rent was sold for one million two hundred thousand francs; and this deal is not the most extraordinary that was made. One finds even more curious examples in the journals and writings of the time. V. notably the Mémoires d'Ouvrard, third part, p. 96. [^368]: Rev. brit., third issue, vol. II, p. 34. [^369]: Id., vol. VII, p. 197 et seq. [^370]: Rev. brit., vol. VI, pp. 188 and 189. [^371]: Id., ib. [^372]: Judge, after that, of the wisdom and good sense in phrases like these, which I borrow from an English Review: "All that can be asked of speculators is that their passion be directed in such a way that the laboring classes have work; for then, whatever the results of the speculations, they have always contributed to the public good." (Article from the Quarterly Rev., transl. by the Rev. brit., vol. I, pp. 12 and 13.) [^373]: The two faculties I have just described, that of judging the needs of society, and that of appreciating the means that already exist to satisfy the needs it feels, faculties so important that without them an entrepreneur knows absolutely not what he is doing, these two faculties, I say, had not hitherto been sufficiently taken into consideration by economists; not enough effort had been made to put speculators on guard against the facility of undertaking; they had not been told enough what, before undertaking, they were reasonably and honorably obliged to examine. Far from it, certain principles, among the most widespread and most recommended in political economy, could have contributed to further exalting the already too adventurous spirit of entrepreneurs. Such could have been, notably, the effect of the principle that production opens outlets for products: a very just principle, no doubt, but one that needs to be well understood so as not to lead to many extravagances. M. de Sismondi was the first to point out the abuse that could be made of the powers of labor, and it must be admitted that the facts all too well justified a part of his complaints. It was impossible, in the presence of the multiplied disasters brought about, in recent times, by a series of speculations each more hazardous than the last, not to understand that the talent for speculating was the first thing needed in order to produce; and it is this teaching of experience that suggested to me the idea of placing the genius for business at the head of the powers of industry.In the midst of the commercial crises that the absence of this genius helped to bring about a few years ago, and whose effects are still being felt, two famous publicists, M. Say and M. de Sismondi, were long in discussion on the question of whether it was possible to produce too much. I dare believe that this question, rather poorly posed, has been suitably resolved in the analysis I have made of the works of the two authors. See the Rev. encyclop., issue of April 1827, p. 79 et seq., and issue of June 1827, pp. 606 to 622. [^374]: M. Say, in his Traité, had spoken of this means, and in general of the qualities necessary for the entrepreneur, only very incidentally and out of the place where it should most naturally have been discussed. This means is considered with more care and more in its proper place in the Cours complet, etc. See vol. I, p. 191 et seq., and vol. II, p. 199 et seq. [^375]: “Nature or objects,” observes Cabanis, “are our true masters; their lessons, unlike those of men or books, are always proportioned to our faculties: they are the only ones that are almost never fruitless, the only ones that never lead us astray. It is therefore necessary, in general, to familiarize oneself early with the images that must subsequently furnish the materials for all judgments; and, with respect to each art in particular, the man destined for it cannot place himself too early in the midst of the objects of his studies, and from the viewpoint suitable to the genre, character, and goal of his observations.” (Révolutions de la Médecine; vol. I, p. 62, of the author’s Complete Works.) [^376]: Smith, M. Say and most economists, speak indeed of the action of government and the influence it exercises on all professions; but they do not speak of the conduct of individuals; they do not show how their labors are helped or hindered by the use they make of their faculties relative to themselves and in their mutual relations; they do not see that the conduct of government is itself but a consequence of that of individuals, and that the acts of public power are but the expression of the habits that govern society. In short, after having very judiciously ranged talents and sciences among the powers of labor, they omit to include morals., private, civil, and political morals, which are, as we shall see, one of its most important elements of power. [^377]: See, in the Edinb. Rev., issue of Oct. 1819, an article on the comparative industries of France and England. [^378]: See what Smith and M. Say say about the influence that the regulatory regime, in its full extent, exerts on production; it is one of the finest and best portions of their works. I only regret that instead of attacking this regime in the government, they did not attack it at its base, that is, in the morals of society. [^379]: If the division of labor has great effects within each establishment, it probably has even more considerable ones in the vast workshop where an entire nation labors. Who could say what power the separation of professions provides to society, and how much more powerful the professions themselves become as they are subdivided, as occupations become more specialized, and as each class of workers concentrates its forces on less complicated objects? [^380]: Cours complet d'écon. polit. prat., vol. I, p. 414 et seq. [^381]: It is clear, for example, that, in our country and elsewhere, it is industry above all that should be increased. One need only see the price of money, and the rate of public funds, in all the markets of Europe, to sense to what extent the stock of personal faculties must be inferior to the stock of real objects. Indeed, industry must be very powerless and very risky for so many people to put their money in public funds, and thus consent to become creditors, at a rate of three or four percent, and for enterprises that have almost all been condemnable, of governments that have almost all been bankrupt several times over.