view, is to combat a vulgar, widely spread, and
dangerous prejudice. I want to prove that a new machine only causes the
discharge of a certain number of hands, when the remuneration which pays
them is abstracted by force. These hands and this remuneration would
combine to produce what it was impossible to produce before the
invention; whence it follows, that the final result is _an increase of
advantages for equal labour_.

Who is the gainer by these additional advantages?

First, it is true, the capitalist, the inventor; the first who succeeds
in using the machine; and this is the reward of his genius and courage.
In this case, as we have just seen, he effects a saving upon the expense
of production, which, in whatever way it may be spent (and it always is
spent), employs exactly as many hands as the machine caused to be
dismissed.

But soon competition obliges him to lower his prices in proportion to
the saving itself; and then it is no longer the inventor who reaps the
benefit of the invention--it is the purchaser of what is produced, the
consumer, the public, including the workman; in a word, mankind.

And _that which is not seen_ is, that the saving thus procured for all
consumers creates a fund whence wages may be supplied, and which
replaces that which the machine has exhausted.

Thus, to recur to the forementioned example, James B. obtains a profit
by spending two francs in wages. Thanks to his invention, the hand
labour costs him only one franc. So long as he sells the thing produced
at the same price, he employs one workman less in producing this
particular thing, and that is _what is seen_; but there is an additional
workman employed by the franc which James B. has saved. This is _that
which is not seen_.

When, by the natural progress of things, James B. is obliged to lower
the price of the thing produced by one franc, then he no longer realises
a saving; then he has no longer a franc to dispose of to procure for the
national labour a new production. But then another gainer takes his
place, and this gainer is mankind. Whoever buys the thing he has
produced, pays a franc less, and necessarily adds this saving to the
fund of wages; and this, again, is _what is not seen_.

Another solution, founded upon facts, has been given of this problem of
machinery.

It was said, machinery reduces the expense of production, and lowers the
price of the thing produced. The reduction of the profit causes an
increase