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PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS —SECTION F. ite | 
satisfactions falling to the lot of each consumer of the poorer 
classes. But this tendency of se//cnterested producers striving to 
produce wader the necessary requirement is just the very condition 
for involving the poor in the continual battle with poverty and 
want ; and all that can be said in favour of self-interest is, that 
hitherto there has been no better method devised which would so 
effectually serve the majority of human beings. Is it to be 
wondered, then, that the /ess #¢ (happily a minority) in the struggle 
for existence should at times cruelly feel pinching want, when 
upon them must fall the evil of the barely-sufficing aggregate 
scarcity, the ideal creation which the self-interested producers 
strive for. It has been shown that the supply of wants is 
at present alone roughly predetermined by the self-interested 
calculations of producers, and that their aim is to extend the field 
of production as far as they can in safety to themselves—and 
that means as near an approach to a full supply as will ensure 
good prices, involving a tight market, or scarcity. Consumers, 
who desire abundance, do not determine the forthcoming supplies. 
Producers’ interests, therefore, are antagonistic to any social ideal 
which would bring the highest quota of necessary satisfactions 
easily within the reach of all men. Therefore, so long as 
producers’ self-interest rules supreme in the creation of necessary 
products, so long must we expect the periodic suffering and 
pinching of the lower stratum of the working classes. Bastiat 
even is forced to admit that “antagonistic desires cannot at one 
and the same time coincide with the general good.” “ As a 
purchaser he desires abundance ; as a seller he desires scarcity.” 
“The wishes and desires of the consumers are those which are in 
harmony with the public interest.” Food, clothing, houses, 
railways, steamboats, and the various machines of production are 
almost wholly regulated in the interests of producers, compe- 
tition alone preventing this interest from working in too great 
antagonism to the interests of consumers. Nearly all bread- 
winners, therefore, in detail defeat, to some extent, their own 
ultimate interests as general consumers by regulating the produc- 
tion of supplies upon a principle which is inimical to their 
interests as consumers. Nor is this the only evil. All wages- 
breadwinners must produce, or serve to produce, before they can 
earn the right to share or consume the fruits of production. But 
the xumbers of the employed depend almost wholly upon the se/f 
interest of the large capitalist producers. It is not the interest of 
large capitalist producers to provide the full quota of wage- 
earning employment to a// breadwinners. The larger the number 
of fully employed labourers the keener is the demand for products, 
and indirectly this may have some influence upon certain 
producers. But this indirect consideration is too feeble to interest 
producers in any scheme for the general good which might be 
directed to ensuring full employment to a// breadwinners. It is 
