at will become of the wood cutters, pork
dealers, and cattle drivers? They cannot do without protection.

_The People._. Hurrah for PROTECTION!

_Jacques._ Protection! But do they protect you, workmen? Do not you
compete with one another? Let the wood dealers then suffer competition
in their turn. They have no right to raise the price of their wood by
law, unless they, also, by law, raise wages. Do you not still love
equality?

_The People._ Hurrah for EQUALITY!

_Pierre._ Do not listen to this factious fellow. We have raised the
price of wood, meat, and butter, it is true; but it is in order that we
may give good wages to the workmen. We are moved by charity.

_The People._ Hurrah for CHARITY!

_Jacques._ Use the _octroi_, if you can, to raise wages, or do not use
it to raise the price of commodities. The Parisians do not ask for
charity, but justice.

_The People._ Hurrah for JUSTICE!

_Pierre._ It is precisely the dearness of products which will, by reflex
action, raise wages.

_The People._ Hurrah for DEARNESS!

_Jacques._ If butter is dear, it is not because you pay workmen well; it
is not even that you may make great profits; it is only because Paris is
ill situated for this business, and because you desired that they
should do in the city what ought to be done in the country, and in the
country what was done in the city. The people have no _more_ labor, only
they labor at something else. They get no _more_ wages, but they do not
buy things as cheaply.

_The People._ Hurrah for CHEAPNESS!

_Pierre._ This person seduces you with his fine words. Let us state the
question plainly. Is it not true that if we admit butter, wood, and
meat, we shall be inundated with them, and die of a plethora? There is,
then, no other way in which we can preserve ourselves from this new
inundation, than to shut the door, and we can keep up the price of
things only by causing scarcity artificially.

_A Very Few Voices._ Hurrah for SCARCITY!

_Jacques._ Let us state the question as it is. Among all the Parisians
we can divide only what is in Paris; the less wood, butter and meat
there is, the smaller each one's share will be. There will be less if we
exclude than if we admit. Parisians, individual abundance can exist only
where there is general abundance.

_The People._ Hurrah for ABUNDANCE!

_Pierre._ No matter what this man says, he cannot prove to you that it
is to your interest to submit to unbridled competition.