IN an age which has carried economy even into the minutest details, substituting chickory for coffee, and making other savings which serve only to favor the impositions of tradesmen and to annoy consumers, who can hardly obtain pure and good articles at any price,—in an age so mean and parsimonious, how is it that no one has remarked that the chief economy should be economy of hands, economy of intermediate agents, who might be dispensed with, but who are so abundant in unproductive departments like that of commerce?

  I have already observed that it is frequently our custom to employ a hundred persons in functions which, in Association, would require but two or three, and that after the seventh social Period, twenty men will suffice the markets of a city to which we now send a thousand. In respect to industrial organization, we are as unenlightened as nations ignorant of the use of the mill, and which employ fifty laborers to crush the grain which is ground among us by a single machine. Everywhere the superfluity of agents is frightful; in all commercial operations the number is at least four times larger than is requisite. Since the reign of free competition, we see tradesmen swarming even in our villages. Peasants renounce agriculture to become peddlers; if they have only a calf to sell, they go and spend days in town, idling about markets and public houses.

  In cities like Paris, there are as many as three thousand grocers, where three hundred would amply suffice. The profusion of agents is the same in the smallest towns; those which are visited now in course of the year by a hundred commercial travelers and a hundred peddlers were not visited, perhaps, in 1788 by more than ten; yet at that period there was no lack of either provisions or clothing, and at very moderate prices, though tradesmen were less numerous by a third than at the present day.

  This multiplicity of rival tradesmen drives them constantly to the adoption of measures the most foolish, and the most ruinous to the community; for superfluous agents, like monks, being consumers and not producers, are spoliators of the social body. It is now admitted that the monks of Spain, the number of whom is estimated at five hundred thousand, might produce enough, if they were employed in agriculture, for the subsistence of two million persons. It is the same with the superfluous tradesmen, the number of whom is incalculable; and when we come to explain the commercial method of the sixth Period, Collective Competition, we shall be convinced that Commerce might be carried on with a fourth as many agents as it now employs, and that there are, in France alone, a million of inhabitants withdrawn from agriculture and manufactures by the superabundance of agents created by free competition. France alone, then, in consequence of the error of the Economists, suffers an annual loss of products sufficient for the subsistence of four million inhabitants.

  Besides the waste of human labor, the present Order causes also a waste of capital and of products. I shall cite as an illustration of this, one of the most common abuses of the present day, namely, the breaking down of commercial rivals.

  Since the Revolution we hear of nothing in the commercial world but the breaking down of rival tradesmen. Become too numerous, they compete furiously with each other for sales, which, owing to the excess of competition, are more and more difficult every day. A city which consumed a thousand tons of sugar when it had but ten tradesmen, still consumes but a thousand tons when the number is increased to forty; this is seen all over the world. Now we hear these swarms of merchants complaining of the dullness of trade, when they ought rather to complain of the superabundance of tradesmen. They exhaust themselves in making useless displays to attract customers, and run into the most foolish extravagance for the purpose of crushing their rivals.

  It is an error to suppose that the merchant is a slave to interest alone; he is equally a slave to jealousy and pride. Some of them ruin themselves for the sterile honor of “doing a big business,” others from a desire to break down a rival whose success enrages them. Commercial ambition, however low it may be, is still violent, and if the achievements of Miltiades disturbed the sleep of Themistocles, it may also be said that the sales of one tradesman disturb the sleep of another. Hence comes this insane competition by which so many merchants ruin each other, and exhaust themselves in expenses the burden of which falls ultimately upon the consumer; for, in the last analysis, all loss is supported by the community at large. Now if the new commercial order (Collective Competition) would reduce by three-fourths the number of commercial agents and the amount of commercial expenses, the price of products would be diminished in a like proportion; then we should see production increase in proportion to the demand occasioned by the reduction in price, and to the amount of labor and capital restored to agriculture by the diminution in the number of commercial agents.

  One abuse leads to another; this is as true in Commerce as in Government. For example, multiplicity of commercial agents leads to speculation and bankruptcy. We see a striking proof of this in the rivalry of stage-coach companies, which for the sake of ruining each other would often be willing to carry travelers gratis. In seeing them lower their prices, in order to break each other down, people say: “Soon they will pay us a premium to go in their conveyances.”

  It is important to dwell on these details, in order to prove that the Economists, in assuming gain to be the only motive of tradesmen, have grossly deceived themselves. What sensible man would have conceived the idea of carrying passengers from Paris to Rennes for eighteen francs? Yet such are the follies produced by the mania for breaking down rivals. The result of these industrial conflicts, so agreeable to travelers, is the bankruptcy of the various parties engaged in them, who, at some months apart, are ruined by each other. The loss occasioned by their bankruptcy is borne, in the end, by the public who always take an interest in the most foolish enterprises which, notwithstanding their nonsuccess, yield a profit to the bankrupts by the spoliation of their co-associates whose funds are never reimbursed. Hence it is that the merchants, certain to save themselves, in case of reverses, by a bankruptcy, hazard everything in order to ruin a rival and rejoice over the downfall of a neighbor, like those Japanese who put out one eye at the door of an enemy that they may cause him, according to their law, to lose both. The old established commercial houses, disconcerted by these destructive rivalries, renounce a profession become so hazardous and corrupt through the intrigues of the newcomers, who, in order to obtain the vogue, commence by selling at a loss. The old houses not caring to lose in this way, find themselves deserted, deprived of custom, and unable to meet their engagements. Soon the two parties fall into difficulties and are obliged to recur to the money lender, whose usurious aid increases their embarrassment and hastens the fall of both.

  It is thus that Free Competition, by engendering bankruptcies, encourages the system of usury, and gives to it the colossal importance it now possesses. At the present day, usurers are found in our smallest towns; everywhere we see men who, under the name of bankers and brokers, have no other trade than that of lending on usury, and thus stimulating the strife of competition. By their advances they encourage a host of superfluous tradesmen, who plunge into the most absurd speculations and who, when they are in difficulties, have recourse to the bankers by whom they are “shaved.” The latter, from their favorable position in the commercial arena, aggravate the evil, and resemble those hordes of Arabs who hover about an army, waiting to despoil the vanquished, whether enemies or friends.

  In view of so many rapines and absurdities engendered by Commerce, can it be doubted that the Ancients were right in treating it with contempt? As for the philosophers, who in their theories of Political Economy extol and defend it, are they not a set of shameless charlatans? And can we hope to see the reign of truth, of justice, or of order in industrial relations till we have condemned the present commercial system, and invented a method for the Exchange of Products, less degrading to the social body?