The PROTECTIONIST: "But all its _value_ is in the labor it has cost. I admit that Nature has assisted in the material formation of wheat. I admit even that it may be exclusively her work; but confess that I have controlled it by my labor; and when I sell you some wheat, observe this well: that it is not the work of _Nature_ for which I make you pay, but _my own_; and, on your supposition, manufactured articles would be no more the product of labor than agricultural ones. Does not the manufacturer, too, rely upon Nature to second him? Does he not avail himself of the weight of the atmosphere in aid of the steam-engine, as I avail myself of its humidity in aid of the plough? Did he create the laws of gravitation, of correlation of forces, of affinities?" The RAW-MATERIALIST: "Come, let the wool go too. But coal is assuredly the work, and the exclusive work, of Nature, _unaided by any human labor_." The PROTECTIONIST: "Yes, Nature made coal, but _labor_ makes its value. Coal had no _value_ during the thousands of years during which it was hidden, unknown, a hundred feet below the soil. It was necessary to look for it there--that is a _labor_: it was necessary to transport it to market; that is another _labor_: and once more, the price which you pay for it in the market is nothing else than the remuneration for these labors of digging and transportation." We see that thus far the protectionist has all the advantage on his side; that the value of raw material, as well as that of manufactured material, represents the expense of production, that is to say, of _labor_; that it is impossible to conceive of a material possessed of value while totally unindebted to human labor; that the distinction which the raw-materialists make is wholly futile, in theory; that, as a basis for an unequal division of _favors_, it would be iniquitous in practice; because the result would be that one-third of the people, engaged in manufactures, would obtain the sweets of monopoly, for the reason that they produced _by labor_, while the other two-thirds, that is to say the agriculturists, would be abandoned to competition, under pretext that they produced without labor. It will be urged that it is of more advantage to a nation to import the materials called raw, whether they are or are not the product of labor, and to export manufactured articles. This is a strongly accredited opinion. "The more abundant raw materials are," said the petition from Bordeaux, "the more manufactories are multiplied and extended." It said again, that "raw material opens an unlimited field of labor to the inhabitants of the country from which it is imported."