it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an
object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. But railways
can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles of
transportation; this they can only do by transporting more cheaply;
and they can only transport more cheaply, by _diminishing the
proportion of the effort employed to the result obtained_--for it is
in this that cheapness consists. When, therefore, these men lament the
suppression of labor in attaining a given result, they maintain the
doctrine of Sisyphism. Logically, if they prefer the vessel to the
railway, they should also prefer the wagon to the vessel, the
pack-saddle to the wagon, and the sack to the pack-saddle: for this
is, of all known means of transportation, the one which requires the
greatest amount of labor, in proportion to the result obtained.

"Labor constitutes the riches of the people," say some theorists. This
was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor
constitute the riches of the people." No; these theorists intended to
say, that it is the _intensity_ of labor which measures riches; and
the proof of this is that from step to step, from restriction to
restriction, they forced on the United States (and in so doing
believed that they were doing well) to give to the procuring of, for
instance, a certain quantity of iron, double the necessary labor. In
England, iron was then at $20; in the United States it cost $40.
Supposing the day's work to be worth $2.50, it is evident that the
United States could, by barter, procure a ton of iron by eight days'
labor taken from the labor of the nation. Thanks to the restrictive
measures of these gentlemen, sixteen days' work were necessary to
procure it, by direct production. Here then we have double labor for
an identical result; therefore double riches; and riches, measured not
by the result, but by the intensity of labor. Is not this pure and