Does any
one believe that, if the merchants interested in the course of
the navigable way had been charged with the enterprise at their
own risk and peril, they would have had to do their work twice?
One could fill a book with masterpieces of the same sort achieved
by young men learned in roads and bridges, who, scarcely out of
school and given life positions, are no longer stimulated by
competition.
In proof of the industrial capacity of the State, and
consequently of the possibility of abolishing competition
altogether, they cite the administration of the tobacco industry.
There, they say, is no adulteration, no litigation, no
bankruptcy, no misery. The condition of the workmen, adequately
paid, instructed, sermonized, moralized, and assured of a
retiring pension accumulated by their savings, is incomparably
superior to that of the immense majority of workmen engaged in
free industry.
All this may be true: for my part, I am ignorant on the subject.
I know nothing of what goes on in the administration of the
tobacco factories; I have procured no information either from the
directors or the workmen, and I have no need of any.
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