Pagina 363 van 2651

The statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of

labour from one employment to another, even in the same place.

The exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one

place to another, even in the same employment.

It frequently happens, that while high wages are given to the

workmen in one manufacture, those in another are obliged to

content themselves with bare subsistence. The one is in an

advancing state, and has therefore a continual demand for new

hands; the other is in a declining state, and the superabundance

of hands is continually increasing. Those two manufactures may

sometimes be in the same town, and sometimes in the same

neighbourhood, without being able to lend the least assistance to

one another. The statute of apprenticeship may oppose it in the

one case, and both that and an exclusive corporation in the

other. In many different manufactures, however, the operations

are so much alike, that the workmen could easily change trades

with one another, if those absurd laws did not hinder them. The

arts of weaving plain linen and plain silk, for example, are

almost entirely the same.