"Everywhere," they remark,
"machinery has pushed aside manual labor; everywhere production is
superabundant; everywhere the equilibrium is destroyed between the
power of production and that of consumption." Here then we see that,
according to these gentlemen, if the United States was in a critical
situation it was because her productions were too abundant; there was
too much intelligence, too much efficiency in her national labor. We
were too well fed, too well clothed, too well supplied with
everything; the rapid production was more than sufficient for our
wants. It was necessary to put an end to this calamity, and therefore
it became needful to force us, by restrictions, to work more in order
to produce less.
All that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human
intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists,
it cannot but seek continually to increase the _proportion of the end
to the means; of the product to the labor_. Indeed it is in this
continuous effort, and in this alone, that intellect consists.
Sisyphism has been the doctrine of all those who have been intrusted
with the regulation of the industry of our country.
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