on, Hamburg, and New Orleans,
are with relation to the towns situated at the sources of the Seine, the
Loire, the Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the
Mississippi; for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to
descend a river. [_A Voice_--'Towns at the _embouchures_ of rivers
prosper more than towns at their source.'] This is impossible. [_Same
Voice_--'But it is so.'] Well, if it be so, they have prospered
_contrary to rules_."

Reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly, and the orator followed
up his victory by talking largely of national independence, national
honor, national dignity, national labor, inundation of products,
tributes, murderous competition. In short, he carried the vote in favor
of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at all curious on the
subject, I can point out to you countries, where you will see with your
own eyes Roadmakers and Obstructives working together on the most
friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative
assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set
endeavoring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to
render it impassable.

INAPPLICABLE TERMS

From 'Economic Sophisms'

Let us give up ... the puerility of applying to industrial competition
phrases applicable to war,--a way of speaking which is only specious
when applied to competition between two rival trades. The moment we come
to take into account the effect produced on the general prosperity, the
analogy disappears.

In a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much the strength
of the army. In industry, a workshop is shut up only when what it
produced is obtained by the public from another source and in _greater
abundance_. Figure a state of things where for one man killed on the
spot two should rise up full of life and vigor. Were such a state of
things possible, war would no longer merit its name.

This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so absurdly
called _industrial war_.

Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of their iron ever so
much; let them, if they will, send it to us for nothing: this might
extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but immediately, and as a
_necessary_ consequence of this very cheapness, there would rise up a
thousand other branches of industry more profitable than the one which
had been superseded.

We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labor is
impossib