CHAPTER XII. DOES PROTECTION RAISE THE RATE OF WAGES? When we hear our beardless scribblers, romancers, reformers, our perfumed magazine writers, stuffed with ices and champagne, as they carefully place in their portfolios the sentimental scissorings which fill the current literature of the day, or cause to be decorated with gilded ornaments their tirades against the egotism and the individualism of the age; when we hear them declaiming against social abuses, and groaning over deficient wages and needy families; when we see them raising their eyes to heaven and weeping over the wretchedness of the laboring classes, while they never visit this wretchedness unless it be to draw lucrative sketches of its scenes of misery, we are tempted to say to them: The sight of you is enough to make me sicken of attempting to teach the truth. Affectation! Affectation! It is the nauseating disease of the day! If a thinking man, a sincere philanthropist, takes into consideration the condition of the working classes and endeavors to lay bare their necessities, scarcely has his work made an impression before it is greedily seized upon by the crowd of reformers, who turn, twist, examine, quote, exaggerate it, until it becomes ridiculous; and then, as sole compensation, you are overwhelmed with such big words as: Organization, Association; you are flattered and fawned upon until you become ashamed of publicly defending the cause of the working man; for how can it be possible to introduce sensible ideas in the midst of these sickening affectations? But we must put aside this cowardly indifference, which the affectation that provokes it is not enough to justify. Working men, your situation is singular! You are robbed, as I will presently prove to you. But no: I retract the word; we must avoid an expression which is violent; perhaps, indeed, incorrect; inasmuch as this spoliation, wrapped in the sophisms which disguise it, is practised, we must believe, without the intention of the spoiler, and with the consent of the spoiled. But it is nevertheless true that you are deprived of the just remuneration of your labor, while no one thinks of causing _justice_ to be rendered to you. If you could be consoled by the noisy appeals of your champions to philanthropy, to powerless charity, to degrading almsgiving, or if the high-sounding words of Voice of the People, Rights of Labor, &c., would relieve you--these indeed you can have in abundance. But _justice_, simple _justice_--this nobody thinks of rendering you. For would it not be _just_ that after a long day's labor, when you have received your wages, you should be permitted to exchange them for the largest possible sum of comforts you can obtain voluntarily from any man upon the face of the earth? I too, perhaps, may some day speak to you of the Voice of the People, the Rights of Labor, &c., and may perhaps be able to show you what you have to expect from the chimeras by which you allow yourselves to be led astray.