It is not true that this injustice is profitable to you. Give me your attention for a few moments longer, and then judge for yourselves.
What is it that we protect in France? Things which are produced on a great scale by rich capitalists and in large establishments, as iron, coal, cloth, and textile fabrics; and they tell you that this is done, not in the interest of employers, but in yours, and in order to secure you employment.
And yet whenever _foreign labour_ presents itself in our markets, in such a shape that it may be injurious to you, but advantageous for your employers, it is allowed to enter without any restriction being imposed.
Are there not in Paris thirty thousand Germans who make clothes and shoes? Why are they permitted to establish themselves alongside of you while the importation of cloth is restricted? Because cloth is manufactured in grand establishments which belong to manufacturing legislators. But clothes are made by workmen in their own houses. In converting wool into cloth, these gentlemen desire to have no competition, because that is their trade; but in converting cloth into coats, they allow it, because that is your trade.
In making our railways, an embargo was laid on English rails, but English workmen were brought over. Why was this? Simply because English rails came into competition with the iron produced in our great establishments, while the English labourers were only your rivals.
We have no wish that German tailors and English navvies should be kept out of France. What we ask is, that the entry of cloth and rails should be left free. We simply demand justice and equality before the law, for all.
It is a mockery to tell us that customs restrictions are imposed for your benefit. Tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, grocers, watchmakers, butchers, bakers, dressmakers! I defy you all to point out a single way in which restriction is profitable to you, and I shall point out, whenever you desire it, four ways in which it is hurtful to you.
And, after all, see how little foundation your journalists have for attributing self-abnegation to the monopolists.
I may venture to denominate the rate of wages which settles and establishes itself naturally under a regime of freedom, the _natural rate of wages_. When you affirm, therefore, that restriction is profitable to you, it is tantamount to affirming that it adds an _overplus to your natural_ wages. Now, a surplus of wages beyond the natural rate must come from some quarter or other; it does not fall from the skies, but comes from those who pay it.