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 unadulterated Sisyphism?
That there may be nothing equivocal, these gentlemen carry their idea still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard them call the intensity of labor _riches_, we will find them calling the abundant results of labor and the plenty of everything proper to the satisfying of our wants, _poverty_.

"Everywhere," they remark, "machinery has pushed aside manual labor; everywhere production is superabundant; everywhere the equilibrium is destroyed between the power of production and that of consumption." Here then we see that, according to these gentlemen, if the United States was in a critical situation it was because her productions were too abundant; there was too much intelligence, too much efficiency in her national labor.

We were too well fed, too well clothed, too well supplied with everything; the rapid production was more than sufficient for our wants.