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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: loss which in forty-two years amounts to six hundred million francs.
But she not only loses six hundred millions, she fails to create with
that money manufacturing or agricultural products, which represent a
loss of twelve hundred millions; for, if the manufactured product were
not double in value to its cost price, commerce could not exist. The
proletariat actually deprives itself of six hundred millions in wages.
These six hundred millions of dead loss (representing to a stern
economist a loss of twelve hundred millions, through lack of the
benefits of circulation) explain the condition of inferiority in which
our commerce, our merchant service, and our agriculture stand, as
compared with England. In spite of the difference of the two
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