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.

In the meantime let us examine if _injustice_ is not done to you by
the legislative limitation of the number of persons from whom you are
allowed to buy those things which you need; as iron, coal, cotton and
woollen cloths, &c.; thus artificially fixing (so to express myself)
the price which these articles must bear.

Is it true that protection, which avowedly raises prices, and thus
injures you, proportionably raises the rate of wages?

On what does the rate of wages depend?

One of your own class has energetically said: "When two workmen run
after a boss, wages fall; when two bosses run after a workman, wages
rise."

Allow me, in similar laconic phrase, to employ a more scientific,
though perhaps a less striking expression: "The rate of wages depends
upon the proportion which the supply of labor bears to the demand."

On what depends the _demand_ for labor?

On the quantity of disposable capital seeking investment. And the law
which says, "Such or such an article shall be limited to home
production and no longer imported from foreign countries," can it in