Economic Sophisms
By Frédéric Bastiat
Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He was the leader of the free-trade movement in France from its inception in 1840 until his untimely death in 1850. The first 45 years of his life were spent in preparation for five tremendously productive years writing in favor of freedom. Bastiat was the founder of the weekly newspaper
Le Libre Échange, a contributor to numerous periodicals, and the author of sundry pamphlets and speeches dealing with the pressing issues of his day. Most of his writing was done in the years directly before and after the Revolution of 1848—a time when France was rapidly embracing socialism. As a deputy in the Legislative Assembly, Bastiat fought valiantly for the private property order, but unfortunately the majority of his colleagues chose to ignore him. Frédéric Bastiat remains one of the great champions of freedom whose writings retain their relevance as we continue to confront the old adversary.
Translator/Editor
Arthur Goddard, trans., trans.
First Pub. Date
1845
Publisher
Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.
Pub. Date
1996
Comments
Introduction by Henry Hazlitt
Copyright
The text of this edition is under copyright
- About the Author
- Preface to the English-Language Edition, by Arthur Goddard
- Introduction, by Henry Hazlitt
- S.1, Author's Introduction to the French Edition
- S.1, Ch.1, Abundance and Scarcity
- S.1, Ch.2, Obstacle and Cause
- S.1, Ch.3, Effort and Result
- S.1, Ch.4, Equalizing the Conditions of Production
- S.1, Ch.5, Our Products Are Burdened with Taxes
- S.1, Ch.6, The Balance of Trade
- S.1, Ch.7, A Petition
- S.1, Ch.8, Differential Tariffs
- S.1, Ch.9, An Immense Discovery
- S.1, Ch.10, Reciprocity
- S.1, Ch.11, Money Prices
- S.1, Ch.12, Does Protectionism Raise Wage Rates
- S.1, Ch.13, Theory and Practice
- S.1, Ch.14, Conflict of Principles
- S.1, Ch.15, Reciprocity Again
- S.1, Ch.16, Obstructed Rivers as Advocates for the Protectionists
- S.1, Ch.17, A Negative Railroad
- S.1, Ch.18, There Are No Absolute Principles
- S.1, Ch.19, National Independence
- S.1, Ch.20, Human vs. Mechanical Labor and Domestic vs. Foreign Labor
- S.1, Ch.21, Raw Materials
- S.1, Ch.22, Metaphors
- S.1, Ch.23, Conclusion
- S.2, Ch.1, The Physiology of Plunder
- S.2, Ch.2, Two Systems of Ethics
- S.2, Ch.3, The Two Hatchets
- S.2, Ch.4, Subordinate Labor Council
- S.2, Ch.5, High Prices and Low Prices
- S.2, Ch.6, To Artisans and Laborers
- S.2, Ch.7, A Chinese Tale
- S.2, Ch.8, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
- S.2, Ch.9, Robbery by Subsidy
- S.2, Ch.10, The Tax Collector
- S.2, Ch.11, The Utopian
- S.2, Ch.12, Salt, the Postal Service, and the Tariff
- S.2, Ch.13, Protectionism, or the Three Aldermen
- S.2, Ch.14, Something Else
- S.2, Ch.15, The Little Arsenal of the Freetrader
- S.2, Ch.16, The Right Hand and the Left
- S.2, Ch.17, Domination through Industrial Superiority
14* Carpenter,
to M. Cunin-Gridaine,
15* Minister of Commerce
The Two Hatchets
Second Series, Chapter 3
Mr. Manufacturer and Cabinet Minister:
I am a carpenter, as Jesus was; I wield the hatchet and the adze to serve you.
Now, while I was chopping and hewing from dawn to dusk on the states of our lord the king, it occurred to me that my labor is as much a part of our
domestic industry as yours.
And ever since, I have been unable to see any reason why protection should not come to the aid of my woodyard as well as your factory.
For after all, if you make cloth, I make roofs. We both, in different ways, shelter our customers from the cold and the rain.
Yet I have to run after my customers, whereas yours run after you. You have found a way of forcing them to do so by preventing them from supplying themselves elsewhere, while my customers are free to turn to whomever they like.
What is so astonishing about this? M. Cunin, the cabinet minister, has not forgotten M. Cunin, the textile manufacturer: that is only natural. But, alas, my humble craft has given no cabinet minister to France, although it did give a God to the world.
And in the immortal code this God bequeathed to man, there is not the slightest expression that could be interpreted as authorizing carpenters to enrich themselves at the expense of others, as you do.
Consider my position, then. I earn thirty sous a day, except Sundays and holidays. If I offer you my services at the same time as a Flemish carpenter offers you his, and if he is prepared to work for a sou less than I, you will prefer him.
But suppose I want to buy myself a suit of clothes? If a Belgian textile manufacturer offers his cloth on the market in competition with yours, you drive both him and his cloth out of the country.
Thus, forced to enter your shop, although it is the more expensive, my poor thirty sous are really worth only twenty-eight.
What am I saying! They are not worth more than twenty-six, for instead of expelling the Belgian manufacturer
at your expense (which would be the very least you could do), you make me pay for the people whom, in your interest, you set at his heels.
And since a great number of your fellow legislators, with whom you have a perfect understanding, each takes from me a sou or two—one under the pretext of protecting iron; another, coal; this one, oil; and that one, wheat—I find, when everything is taken into account, that of my thirty sous I have been able to save only fifteen from being plundered.
You will doubtless tell me that these little sous, which pass in this way, without compensation, from my pocket to yours, provide a livelihood for the people around your castle and enable you to live in grand style. May I point out to you in reply that if you left the money in my hands, it would have provided a livelihood for the people around me.
Be that as it may, Mr. Cabinet Minister and Manufacturer, knowing that I should be ill-received, I do not come to you and demand, as I have a full right to do, that you withdraw the
restriction you are imposing on your customers; I prefer to follow the prevailing fashion and claim a little
protection for myself.
At this point, you will raise a difficulty for me: “My friend,” you will tell me, “I should really like to protect you and others of your craft; but how are we to go about conferring tariff benefits upon the work of carpenters? Are we to forbid the importation of houses by land or by sea?”
This would quite obviously be absurd; but, by dint of much reflection on the matter, I have discovered another means of benefiting the sons of St. Joseph; and you will welcome it all the more readily, I hope, as it in no way differs from the means you employed in maintaining the privilege that you vote for yourself every year.
The wonderful means I have in mind consists in forbidding the use of sharp hatchets in France.
I maintain that this
restriction would be no more illogical or more arbitrary than the one to which you subject us in the case of your cloth.
Why do you drive out the Belgians? Because they undersell you. And why do they undersell you? Because they are in some respect superior to you as textile manufacturers.
Between you and a Belgian, consequently, there is exactly the same difference as between a dull hatchet and a sharp hatchet.
And you are forcing me—me, a carpenter—to buy from you the product of a dull hatchet.
Look upon France as a workman who is trying, by his labor, to obtain everything he needs, including cloth.
There are two possible ways of doing this:
The first is to spin and weave the wool himself.
The second is to produce other commodities—for instance, clocks, wallpaper, or wine—and to exchange them with the Belgians for the cloth.
Of these two procedures the one that gives the better result may be represented by the sharp hatchet; the other, by the dull hatchet.
You do not deny that at present, in France, it requires
more labor to obtain a piece of cloth directly from our looms (the dull hatchet) than indirectly by way of our vines (the sharp hatchet). You are so far from denying this that it is precisely because of this
additional toil (which, according to you, is what wealth consists in) that you request, nay more, you
impose, the use of the poorer of the two hatchets.
Now, at least be consistent; be impartial; and if you mean to be just, give us poor carpenters the same treatment you give yourself.
Enact a law to this effect:
“No one shall use beams or joists save those produced by dull hatchets.”
Consider what the immediate consequences will be.
Where we now strike a hundred blows with the hatchet, we shall then strike three hundred. What we now do in one hour will take three hours. What a mighty stimulus to employment! Apprentices, journeymen, and masters, there will no longer be enough of us. We shall be in demand, and therefore well paid. Whoever wants to have a roof made will be henceforth obliged to accept our demands, just as whoever wants cloth today is obliged to submit to yours.
And if the
free-trade theorists ever dare to call into question the utility of this measure, we shall know perfectly well where to find a crushing retort. It is in your parliamentary report of 1834. We shall beat them over the head with it, for in it you have made a wonderful plea on behalf of protectionism and of dull hatchets, which are simply two names for one and the same thing.
Economic Sophisms, several chapters of which had been published in the
Journal des économistes and the newspaper,
Le Libre échange, appeared at the end of January 1848.—EDITOR.]
Second Series, Chapter 1
(Economic Harmonies, chap. 18) affecting the harmony of natural laws.—EDITOR.]
Discourse on Inequality by J. J. Rousseau (1712-1778), a French philosopher. Bastiat was so impressed it that he referred to it five times in his
Economic Harmonies.—TRANSLATOR.]
Selected Essays on Political Economy, chap. 5, “The State,” and chap. 2, “The Law,” and
Economic Harmonies, chap. 17, “Private and Public Services.”—EDITOR.]
Economic Harmonies, chap. 5, note 2, accompanying the analysis of Adam Smith’s theory of value.—EDITOR.]
Selected Essays on Political Economy, chap. 5, “The State”; Vol. II (of the French edition), “Disastrous Illusions,” and Vol. VI (of the French edition), the final pages of chap. 4.—EDITOR.]
Second Series, Chapter 2
Familiar Quotations has it: “Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.”—TRANSLATOR.]
Tartuffe, or the Impostor, Tartuffe is the scheming hypocrite, and Orgon his well-meaning dupe.—TRANSLATOR.]
Second Series, Chapter 3
Second Series, Chapter 4
Second Series, Chapter 5
Le Libre échange, issue of July 25, 1847.—EDITOR.]
Considérations d’économie politique sur la bienfaisance (1836). He collaborated with Pierre Leroux and others in editing
Le Globe, a political and literary review, served as a cabinet minister under the July monarchy, and was one of the promoters of the tariff reform of 1834.—TRANSLATOR.]
infra,p. 167) was established in the rue Hauteville.—TRANSLATOR.]
Le Libre échange of August 1, 1847, the author presented an exposition of this topic that we deem worthy of reprinting here.—EDITOR.]
Second Series, Chapter 6