ABSTRACT
At the moment when the sons of workers choose a trade, the owner of a manufacture is always certain, by the offer of a higher wage, to draw to himself all those he can employ. Quite to the contrary, the interest of society in the increase of production and commercial wealth ought to be tempered by considerations which do not concern each individual producer. Society demands that a new income call forth new work; it is sufficient for the individual producer that an old income leaves its old course and come to him; that it leave his rivals whom it has sustained, and give life to his own workshop. Government, far from pushing production indiscriminately, then seems to have the duty to alertly moderate a blind zealousness, one which turns most often against fellow citizens, at the very least against other people. In the first instance, this is against the common interest,6 in the second, it works against humanity.
