8 BOOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



attained if the maximum quota of satisfactions for each 



individual was created. Of course the absence of a perfect 



scheme of combined prevision among producing competitors, 



and the unforeseen variable effects springing from natural 



causes year by year, often produce abundance, or superfluity, 



or over-production, as it is termed ; but this is a result not 



premeditated, and although favourable to consumers for the 



time being, it is a mere accident causing a fall in prices, and is 



likely to be followed by purposeful under-production during 



the succeeding period, in order to produce a straitened 



market with a corresponding rise in prices, and results in 



a certain reduction of the ideal quantity of satisfactions, 



falling to the lot of each consumer of the poorer classes. 



But this tendency of self-interested producers, striving to 



produce under 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 lees fit -happily a 

 minority— m the struggle for existence should at times 

 cruelly feel pinching want, when upon them must fall the evil 

 of the barely sufficing aggregate or scarcity, the ideal 

 creation which the self -interested producer strives 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 fall 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. 



Food, clothing, houses, railways, steamboats, and the various 

 machines of production, are almost wholly regulated in the 

 interests of producers; competition alone preventing this 

 interest from working in too great antagonism to the interests 

 of consumers. Nearly all breadwinners, therefore in detail 

 defeat to some extent their own ultimate interests as o-eneral 



*Bastiat even is forced to admit that " antagonistic desires cannot at one and H,» 

 same time coincide with the general good." .... « As a purchaser °hi AaJ 

 abundance ; as a seller scarcity . . the wishes and desires of the (mumw..™ 

 those which are in harmony with public interest." consume-* * are 





