A Letter to Grover Cleveland: On His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude Of The PeopleSpooner, Lysander
Philosophy
A Letter to Grover Cleveland: On His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude Of The People
Spooner, Lysander
Cleveland, Grover, 1837-1908; United States -- Politics and government
And if a man, in our own country--either from motives of profit to
himself, or from motives of pity towards the pauper laborers of other
countries--_chooses_ to buy the products of the foreign pauper labor,
rather than the products of the laborers of his own country, he has a
perfect legal right to do so. And for any government to forbid him to do
so, or to obstruct his doing so, or to punish him for doing so, is a
violation of his natural right of purchasing property of whom he
pleases, and from such motives as he pleases.
2. To forbid our own people to buy in the best markets, is equivalent to
forbidding them to sell the products of their own labor in the best
markets; for they can buy the products of foreign labor, only by giving
the products of their own labor in exchange. Therefore to deny our right
to buy in foreign markets, is to forbid us to sell in foreign markets.
And this is a plain violation of men's natural rights.
If, when a producer of cotton, tobacco, grain, beef, pork, butter,
cheese, or any other commodity, in our own country, has carried it
abroad, and exchanged it for iron or woolen goods, and has brought these
latter home, the government seizes one-half of them, because they were
manufactured abroad, the robbery committed upon the owner is the same as
if the government had seized one-half of his cotton, tobacco, or other
commodity, before he exported it; because the iron or woolen goods,
which he purchased abroad with the products of his own home labor, are
as much his own property, as was the commodity with which he purchased
them.
Therefore the tax laid upon foreign commodities, that have been bought
with the products of our home labor, is as much a robbery of the home
laborer, as the same tax would have been, if laid directly upon the
products of our home labor. It is, at best, only a robbery of one home
laborer--the producer of cotton, tobacco, grain, beef, pork, butter, or
cheese--for the benefit of another home laborer--the producer of iron or
woolen goods.
3. But this whole argument is a false one, for the further reason that
our home laborers do not have to compete with "_the pauper labor_" of
any country on earth; since the _actual paupers_ of no country on earth
are engaged in producing commodities for export to any other country.
They produce few, or no, other commodities than those they themselves
consume; and ordinarily not even those.
There are a great many millions of _actual paupers_ in the world. In
some of the large provinces of British India, for example, it is said
that nearly half the population are paupers. But I think that the
commodities they are producing for export to other countries than their
own, have never been heard of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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