of profit,--all of which contradict the economic law, and make
exchange impossible? A contractor pays one hundred thousand francs
for raw material, fifty thousand francs in wages, and then expects to
receive a product of two hundred thousand francs,--that is, expects to
make a profit on the material and on the labor of his employees; but
if the laborers and the purveyor of the material cannot, with their
combined wages, repurchase that which they have produced for the
contractor, how can they live? I will develop my question. Here details
become necessary.

If the workingman receives for his labor an average of three francs per
day, his employer (in order to gain any thing beyond his own salary, if
only interest on his capital) must sell the day's labor of his employee,
in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman
cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master.
It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the
cabinet-maker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller,
the printer, the clerk, &c., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot
repurchase their products; since, producing for a master who in one form
or another makes a profit, they are obliged to pay more for their own
labor than they get for it.

In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of
science, art, and industry, produce every thing which is useful to man.
Their annual wages amount, it is estimated to twenty thousand millions;
but, in consequence of the right of property, and the multifarious forms
of increase, premiums, tithes, interests, fines, profits, farm-rents,
house-rents, revenues, emoluments of every nature and description, their
products are estimated by the proprietors and employers at twenty-five
thousand millions. What does that signify? That the laborers, who are
obliged to repurchase these products in order to live, must either pay
five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five.

If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is
false, I summon him to appear; and I promise to retract all that I have
wrongfully and wickedly uttered in my attacks upon property.

Let us now look at the results of this profit.

If the wages of the workingmen were the same in all pursuits, the
deficit caused by the proprietor's tax would be felt equally everywhere;
but also the cause of the evil would be so apparent,