Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/223

Rh for the sake of possible wealth, is comparatively small, and he has, for a while, a free field of operations. But the undisturbed possession of such a profitable trade does not last very long, as the dangers and difficulties decrease in proportion as the country becomes better known, and the opening of other countries, formerly inaccessible to foreign trade, brings them under the laws which govern general competition. In twenty or thirty years this source of great wealth would be sealed up. Central Africa, Asia and China will be reached as easily and safely as any European or American country; the merchants will be obliged to pay as dearly there and sell to consumers as cheaply as is possible without actual loss. The trade in Congo ivory and Chinese cotton will then realize profits no more abundant than those we are accustomed to at home.

Enormous profits can also be made by a single dealer, or close combination of dealers, if they are able to control some indispensable article, to monopolize its sale, so that the purchaser can only receive it from their hands. He must resign himself to the alternative of doing without it, or paying the price charged for it by the robber band. But this proceeding does not come within the limits of legitimate trade; it is an act of violence which the laws of certain countries (France, for instance), regard and punish as a crime. It brings us to the second source of enormous fortunes, speculation.

Speculation is one of the most intolerable and revolting manifestations of disease in the economic organism. Those profound sages who maintain that everything that exists, is, have also attempted to defend speculation, to justify it, to assert its necessity even to enthusiasm. I will immediately prove to the what the principle is, whose cause they are espousing. The speculator plays in the economic world