ht to be
protected. You agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our
market, without destroying an equal quantity of our national labor. But
you contend that there are numerous articles of merchandise possessing
_value_, for they are sold, and which are nevertheless _untouched by
human labor_. Among these you name corn, flour, meat, cattle, bacon,
salt, iron, copper, lead, coal, wool, skins, seeds, etc.

If you can prove to me, that the _value_ of these things is not
dependent upon labor, I will agree that it is useless to protect them.

But if I can prove to you that there is as much labor put upon a hundred
francs worth of wool, as upon a hundred francs worth of cloth, you ought
to acknowledge that protection is the right as much of the one, as of
the other.

I ask you then why this bag of wool is worth a hundred francs? Is it not
because this is its price of production? And what is the price of
production, but the sum which has been distributed in wages for labor,
payment of skill, and interest on money, among the various laborers and
capitalists, who have assisted in the production of the article?

_The Petitioners._--It is true that with regard to wool you may be
right; but a bag of corn, a bar of iron, a hundred weight of coal, are
these the produce of labor? Is it not nature which _creates_ them?

_Mr. de St. Cricq._--Without doubt, nature _creates_ these substances,
but it is labor which gives them their _value_. I have myself, in saying
that labor _creates_ material objects, used a false expression, which
has led me into many farther errors. No man can _create_. No man can
bring any thing from nothing; and if _production_ is used as a synonym
for _creation_, then indeed our labor must all be useless.

The agriculturist does not pretend that he has _created_ the corn; but
he has given it its _value_. He has by his own labor, and by that of his
servants, his laborers, and his reapers, transformed into corn
substances which were entirely dissimilar from it. What more is effected
by the miller who converts it into flour, or by the baker who makes it
into bread?

In order that a man may be dressed in cloth, numerous operations are
first necessary. Before the intervention of any human labor, the real
_primary materials_ of this article are air, water, heat, gas, light,
and the various salts which enter into its composition. These are indeed
_untouched by human labor_, for they have no _value_, and I