They do not notice that if the convents gave alms they lived on alms, so that the people had to give them more than they could receive back. Thus, workmen, a monopoly imperceptibly puts taxes on your shoulders, and then furnishes you work with the proceeds. Your false friends say to you: If there was no monopoly, who would furnish you work? You answer: This is true, this is true. The labor which the monopolists procure us is certain. The promises of liberty are uncertain. For you do not see that they first take money from you, and then give you back a _part_ of it for your labor. Do you ask who will furnish you work? Why, you will give each other work. With the money which will no longer be taken from you, the shoemaker will dress better, and will make work for the tailor. The tailor will have new shoes oftener, and keep the shoemaker employed. So it will be with all occupations. They say that with freedom there will be fewer workmen in the mines and the mills. I do not believe it. But if this does happen, it is _necessarily_ because there will be more labor freely in the open air. For if, as they say, these mines and spinning mills can be sustained only by the aid of taxes imposed on _everybody_ for their benefit, these taxes once abolished, _everybody_ will be more comfortably off, and it is the comfort of all which feeds the labor of each one. Excuse me if I linger at this demonstration. I have so great a desire to see you on the side of liberty. In France, capital invested in manufactures yields, I suppose, five per cent. profit. But here is Mondor, who has one hundred thousand francs invested in a manufactory, on which he loses five per cent. The difference between the loss and gain is ten thousand francs. What do they do? They assess upon you a little tax of ten thousand francs, which is given to Mondor, and you do not notice it, for it is very skillfully disguised. It is not the tax gatherer who comes to ask you your part of the tax, but you pay it to Mondor, the manufacturer, every time you buy your hatchets, your trowels, and your planes. Then they say to you: If you do not pay this tax, Mondor can work no longer, and his employes, John and James, will be without labor. If this tax was remitted, would you not get work yourselves, and on your own account too? And, then, be easy, when Mondor has no longer this soft method of obtaining his profit by a tax, he will use his wits to turn his loss into a gain, and John and James will not be dismissed. Then all will be profit _for all_. You will persist, perhaps, saying: "We understand that after the reform there will be in general more work than before, but in the meanwhile John and James will be on the street." To which I answer: First. When employment changes its place only to increase, the man who has two arms and a heart is not long on the street.