CHAPTER IV.

SECOND PERIOD.--MACHINERY.

"I have witnessed with profound regret the CONTINUANCE OF

DISTRESS in the manufacturing districts of the country."

Words of Queen Victoria on the reassembling of parliament.

If there is anything of a nature to cause sovereigns to reflect,

it is that, more or less impassible spectators of human

calamities, they are, by the very constitution of society and the

nature of their power, absolutely powerless to cure the

sufferings of their subjects; they are even prohibited from

paying any attention to them. Every question of labor and wages,

say with one accord the economic and representative theorists,

must remain outside of the attributes of power. From the height

of the glorious sphere where religion has placed them, thrones,

dominations, principalities, powers, and all the heavenly host

view the torment of society, beyond the reach of its stress; but

their power does not extend over the winds and floods. Kings can

do nothing for the salvation of mortals. And, in truth, these

theorists are right: the prince is established to maintain, not

to revolutionize; to protect reality, not to bring about utopia.

He represents one of the antagonistic principles: hence, if he

were to establish harmony, he would eliminate himself, which

on his part would be sovereignly unconstitutional and absurd.

But as, in spite of theories, the progress of ideas is

incessantly changing the external form of institutions in such a

way as to render continually necessary exactly that which the

legislator neither desires nor foresees,--so that, for instance,

questions of taxation become questions of distribution; those of

public utility, questions of national labor and industrial

organization; those of finance, operations of credit; and those

of international law, questions of customs duties and

markets,--it stands as demonstrated that the prince, who,

according to theory, should never interfere with things which

nevertheless, without theory's foreknowledge, are daily and

irresistibly becoming matters of government, is and can be

henceforth, like Divinity from which he emanates, whatever may be

said, only an hypothesis, a fiction.

And finally, as it is impossible that the prince and the

interests which it is his mission to defend should consent to

diminish and disappear before emergent principles and new rights

posited, it follows that progress, after being accomplished in

the mind insensibly, is realized in society by leaps, and that

force, in spite of the calumny of which it is the object, is the

necessary condition of reforms. Every society in which the power

of insurrection is suppressed is a society dead to progress:

there is no truth of history better proven.

And what I say of constitutional monarchies is equally true of

representative democracies: everywhere the social compact has

united power and conspired against life, it being impossible for

the legislator either to see that he was working against his own

ends or to proceed otherwise.

Monarchs and representatives, pitiable actors in

parliamentary comedies, this in the last analysis is what

you are: talismans against the future! Every year brings you the

grievances of the people; and when you are asked for the remedy,

your wisdom covers its face! Is it necessary to support

privilege,--that is, that consecration of the right of the

strongest which created you and which is changing every day?

Promptly, at the slightest nod of your head, a numerous army

starts up, runs to arms, and forms in line of battle. And when

the people complain that, in spite of their labor and precisely

because of their labor, misery devours them, when society asks

you for life, you recite acts of mercy! All your energy is

expended for conservatism, all your virtue vanishes in

aspirations! Like the Pharisee, instead of feeding your father,

you pray for him! Ah! I tell you, we possess the secret of your

mission: you exist only to prevent us from living. Nolite ergo

imperare, get you gone!

As for us, who view the mission of power from quite another

standpoint, and who wish the special work of government to be

precisely that of exploring the future, searching for progress,

and securing for all liberty, equality, health, and wealth, we

continue our task of criticism courageously, entirely sure that,

when we have laid bare the cause of the evils of society, the

principle of its fevers, the motive of its disturbances, we shall

not lack the power to apply the remedy.

% 1.--Of the function of machinery in its relations to liberty.

The introduction of machinery into industry is accomplished in

opposition to the law of division, and as if to reestablish the

equilibrium profoundly compromised by that law. To truly

appreciate the significance of this movement and grasp its

spirit, a few general considerations become necessary.

Modern philosophers, after collecting and classifying their

annals, have been led by the nature of their labors to deal also

with history: then it was that they saw, not without surprise,

that the HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY was the same thing at bottom as

the PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY; further, that these two branches of

speculation, so different in appearance, the history of

philosophy and the philosophy of history, were also only the

stage representation of the concepts of metaphysics, which is

philosophy entire.

Now, dividing the material of universal history among a certain

number of frames, such as mathematics, natural history, social

economy, etc., it will be found that each of these divisions

contains also metaphysics. And it will be the same down to the

last subdivision of the totality of history: so that entire

philosophy lies at the bottom of every natural or industrial

manifestation; that it is no respecter of degrees or qualities;

that, to rise to its sublimest conceptions, all prototypes may be

employed equally well; and, finally, that, all the postulates of

reason meeting in the most modest industry as well as in the most

general sciences, to make every artisan a philosopher,--that is,

a generalizing and highly synthetic mind,--it would be enough to

teach him--what? his profession.

Hitherto, it is true, philosophy, like wealth, has been reserved

for certain classes: we have the philosophy of history, the

philosophy of law, and some other philosophies also; this is a

sort of appropriation which, like many others of equally noble

origin, must disappear. But, to consummate this immense

equation, it is necessary to begin with the philosophy of labor,

after which each laborer will be able to attempt in his turn the

philosophy of his trade.

Thus every product of art and industry, every political and

religious constitution, like every creature organized or

unorganized, being only a realization, a natural or practical

application, of philosophy, the identity of the laws of nature

and reason, of being and idea, is demonstrated; and when, for our

own purpose, we establish the constant conformity of economic

phenomena to the pure laws of thought, the equivalence of the

real and the ideal in human facts, we only repeat in a particular

case this eternal demonstration.

What do we say, in fact?

To determine value,--in other words, to organize within itself

the production and distribution of wealth,--society proceeds

exactly as the mind does in the generation of concepts. First it

posits a primary fact, acts upon a primary hypothesis, the

division of labor, a veritable antinomy, the antagonistic results

of which are evolved in social economy, just as the consequences

might have been deduced in the mind: so that the industrial

movement, following in all respects the deduction of ideas, is

divided into a double current, one of useful effects, the other

of subversive results, all equally necessary and legitimate

products of the same law. To harmonically establish this

two-faced principle and solve this antinomy, society evokes a

second, soon to be followed by a third; and such will be the

progress of the social genius until, having exhausted all its

contradictions,--supposing, though it is not proved, that there

is an end to contradiction in humanity,--it shall cover with one

backward leap all its previous positions and in a single formula

solve all problems. In following in our exposition this

method of the parallel development of the reality and the idea,

we find a double advantage: first, that of escaping the reproach

of materialism, so often applied to economists, to whom facts are

truth simply because they are facts, and material facts. To us,

on the contrary, facts are not matter,--for we do not know what

the word matter means,--but visible manifestations of invisible

ideas. So viewed, the value of facts is measured by the idea

which they represent; and that is why we have rejected as

illegitimate and non-conclusive useful value and value in

exchange, and later the division of labor itself, although to the

economists all these have an absolute authority.

On the other hand, it is as impossible to accuse us of

spiritualism, idealism, or mysticism: for, admitting as a point

of departure only the external manifestation of the idea,--the

idea which we do not know, which does not exist, as long as it is

not reflected, like light, which would be nothing if the sun

existed by itself in an infinite void,--and brushing aside all a

priori reasoning upon theogony and cosmogony, all inquiry into

substance, cause, the me and the not-me, we confine ourselves to

searching for the LAWS of being and to following the order of

their appearance as far as reason can reach.

Doubtless all knowledge brings up at last against a mystery:

such, for instance, as matter and mind, both of which we admit as

two unknown essences, upon which all phenomena rest. But this is

not to say that mystery is the point of departure of knowledge,

or that mysticism is the necessary condition of logic: quite the

contrary, the spontaneity of our reason tends to the perpetual

rejection of mysticism; it makes an a priori protest against all

mystery, because it has no use for mystery except to deny it, and

because the negation of mysticism is the only thing for which

reason has no need of experience.

In short, human facts are the incarnation of human ideas:

therefore, to study the laws of social economy is to

constitute the theory of the laws of reason and create

philosophy. We may now pursue the course of our investigation.

At the end of the preceding chapter we left the laborer at

loggerheads with the law of division: how will this indefatigable

Oedipus manage to solve this enigma?

In society the incessant appearance of machinery is the

antithesis, the inverse formula, of the division of labor; it is

the protest of the industrial genius against parcellaire and

homicidal labor. What is a machine, in fact? A method of

reuniting divers particles of labor which division had separated.

Every machine may be defined as a summary of several operations,

a simplification of powers, a condensation of labor, a reduction

of costs. In all these respects machinery is the counterpart of

division. Therefore through machinery will come a restoration of

the parcellaire laborer, a decrease of toil for the workman, a

fall in the price of his product, a movement in the relation of

values, progress towards new discoveries, advancement of the

general welfare.

As the discovery of a formula gives a new power to the geometer,

so the invention of a machine is an abridgment of manual labor

which multiplies the power of the producer, from which it may be

inferred that the antinomy of the division of labor, if not

entirely destroyed, will be balanced and neutralized. No one

should fail to read the lectures of M. Chevalier setting forth

the innumerable advantages resulting to society from the

intervention of machinery; they make a striking picture to which

I take pleasure in referring my reader.

Machinery, positing itself in political economy in opposition to

the division of labor, represents synthesis opposing itself in

the human mind to analysis; and just as in the division of labor

and in machinery, as we shall soon see, political economy

entire is contained, so with analysis and synthesis goes the

possession of logic entire, of philosophy. The man who labors

proceeds necessarily and by turns by division and the aid of

tools; likewise, he who reasons performs necessarily and by turns

the operations of synthesis and analysis, nothing more,

absolutely nothing. And labor and reason will never get beyond

this: Prometheus, like Neptune, attains in three strides the

confines of the world.

From these principles, as simple and as luminous as axioms,

immense consequences follow.

As in the operation of the mind analysis and synthesis are

essentially inseparable, and as, looking at the matter from

another point, theory becomes legitimate only on condition of

following experience foot by foot, it follows that labor, uniting

analysis and synthesis, theory and experience, in a continuous

action,--labor, the external form of logic and consequently a

summary of reality and idea,--appears again as a universal method

of instruction. Fit fabricando faber: of all systems of

education the most absurd is that which separates intelligence

from activity, and divides man into two impossible entities,

theorizer and automaton. That is why we applaud the just

complaints of M. Chevalier, M. Dunoyer, and all those who demand

reform in university education; on that also rests the hope of

the results that we have promised ourselves from such reform. If

education were first of all experimental and practical, reserving

speech only to explain, summarize, and coordinate work; if those

who cannot learn with imagination and memory were permitted to

learn with their eyes and hands,--soon we should witness a

multiplication, not only of the forms of labor, but of

capacities; everybody, knowing the theory of something, would

thereby possess the language of philosophy; on occasion he

could, were it only for once in his life, create, modify,

perfect, give proof of intelligence and comprehension, produce

his master-piece, in a word, show himself a man. The inequality

in the acquisitions of memory would not affect the equivalence of

faculties, and genius would no longer seem to us other than what

it really is,--mental health.

The fine minds of the eighteenth century went into extended

disputations about what constitutes GENIUS, wherein it differs

from TALENT, what we should understand by MIND, etc. They had

transported into the intellectual sphere the same distinctions

that, in society, separate persons. To them there were kings and

rulers of genius, princes of genius, ministers of genius; and

then there were also noble minds and bourgeois minds, city

talents and country talents. Clear at the foot of the ladder lay

the gross industrial population, souls imperfectly outlined,

excluded from the glory of the elect. All rhetorics are still

filled with these impertinences, which monarchical interests,

literary vanity, and socialistic hypocrisy strain themselves to

sanction, for the perpetual slavery of nations and the

maintenance of the existing order.

But, if it is demonstrated that all the operations of the mind

are reducible to two, analysis and synthesis, which are

necessarily inseparable, although distinct; if, by a forced

consequence, in spite of the infinite variety of tasks and

studies, the mind never does more than begin the same canvas over

again,--the man of genius is simply a man with a good

constitution, who has worked a great deal, thought a great deal,

analyzed, compared, classified, summarized, and concluded a great

deal; while the limited being, who stagnates in an endemic

routine, instead of developing his faculties, has killed his

intelligence through inertia and automatism. It is absurd

to distinguish as differing in nature that which really differs

only in age, and then to convert into privilege and exclusion the

various degrees of a development or the fortunes of a spontaneity

which must gradually disappear through labor and education.

The psychological rhetoricians who have classified human souls

into dynasties, noble races, bourgeois families, and the

proletariat observed nevertheless that genius was not universal,

and that it had its specialty; consequently Homer, Plato,

Phidias, Archimedes, Caesar, etc., all of whom seemed to them

first in their sort, were declared by them equals and sovereigns

of distinct realms. How irrational! As if the specialty of

genius did not itself reveal the law of the equality of minds!

As if, looking at it in another light, the steadiness of success

in the product of genius were not a proof that it works according

to principles outside of itself, which are the guarantee of the

perfection of its work, as long as it follows them with fidelity

and certainty! This apotheosis of genius, dreamed of with open

eyes by men whose chatter will remain forever barren, would

warrant a belief in the innate stupidity of the majority of

mortals, if it were not a striking proof of their perfectibility.

Labor, then, after having distinguished capacities and arranged

their equilibrium by the division of industries, completes the

armament of intelligence, if I may venture to say so, by

machinery. According to the testimony of history as well as

according to analysis, and notwithstanding the anomalies caused

by the antagonism of economic principles, intelligence differs in

men, not by power, clearness, or reach, but, in the first place,

by specialty, or, in the language of the schools, by qualitative

determination, and, in the second place, by exercise and

education. Hence, in the individual as in the collective

man, intelligence is much more a faculty which comes, forms, and

develops, qu{ae} fit, than an entity or entelechy which exists,

wholly formed, prior to apprenticeship. Reason, by whatever name

we call it,--genius, talent, industry,--is at the start a naked

and inert potentiality, which gradually grows in size and

strength, takes on color and form, and shades itself in an

infinite variety of ways. By the importance of its acquirements,

by its capital, in a word, the intelligence of one individual

differs and will always differ from that of another; but, being a

power equal in all at the beginning, social progress must consist

in rendering it, by an ever increasing perfection of methods,

again equal in all at the end. Otherwise labor would remain a

privilege for some and a punishment for others.

But the equilibrium of capacities, the prelude of which we have

seen in the division of labor, does not fulfil the entire destiny

of machinery, and the views of Providence extend far beyond.

With the introduction of machinery into economy, wings are given

to LIBERTY.

The machine is the symbol of human liberty, the sign of our

domination over nature, the attribute of our power, the

expression of our right, the emblem of our personality. Liberty,

intelligence,--those constitute the whole of man: for, if we

brush aside as mystical and unintelligible all speculation

concerning the human being considered from the point of view of

substance (mind or matter), we have left only two categories of

manifestations,--the first including all that we call sensations,

volitions, passions, attractions, instincts, sentiments; the

other, all phenomena classed under the heads of attention,

perception, memory, imagination, comparison, judgment, reasoning,

etc. As for the organic apparatus, very far from being the

principle or base of these two orders of faculties, it must be

considered as their synthetic and positive realization, their

living and harmonious expression. For just as from the

long-continued issue by humanity of its antagonistic principles

must some day result social organization, so man must be

conceived as the result of two series of potentialities.

Thus, after having posited itself as logic, social economy,

pursuing its work, posits itself as psychology. The education of

intelligence and liberty,--in a word, the welfare of man,--all

perfectly synonymous expressions,--such is the common object of

political economy and philosophy. To determine the laws of the

production and distribution of wealth will be to demonstrate, by

an objective and concrete exposition, the laws of reason and

liberty; it will be to create philosophy and right a posteriori:

whichever way we turn, we are in complete metaphysics.

Let us try, now, with the joint data of psychology and political

economy, to define liberty.

If it is allowable to conceive of human reason, in its origin, as

a lucid and reflecting atom, capable of some day representing the

universe, but at first giving no image at all, we may likewise

consider liberty, at the birth of conscience, as a living point,

punctum saliens, a vague, blind, or, rather, indifferent

spontaneity, capable of receiving all possible impressions,

dispositions, and inclinations. Liberty is the faculty of acting

and of not acting, which, through any choice or determination

whatever (I use the word determination here both passively and

actively), abandons its indifference and becomes WILL.

I say, then, that liberty, like intelligence, is naturally an

undetermined, unformed faculty, which gets its value and

character later from external impressions,--a faculty, therefore,

which is negative at the beginning, but which gradually defines

and outlines itself by exercise,--I mean, by education.

The etymology of the word liberty, at least as I understand it,

will serve still better to explain my thought. The root is

lib-et, he pleases (German, lieben, to love); whence have been

constructed lib-eri, children, those dear to us, a name reserved

for the children of the father of a family; lib-ertas, the

condition, character, or inclination of children of a noble race;

lib-ido, the passion of a slave, who knows neither God nor law

nor country, synonymous with licentia, evil conduct. When

spontaneity takes a useful, generous, or beneficent direction, it

is called libertas; when, on the contrary, it takes a harmful,

vicious, base, or evil direction, it is called libido.

A learned economist, M. Dunoyer, has given a definition of

liberty which, by its likeness to our own, will complete the

demonstration of its exactness.

I call liberty that power which man acquires of using his forces

more easily in PROPORTION AS HE FREES HIMSELF from the obstacles

which originally hindered the exercise thereof. I say that he is

the FREER the more thoroughly DELIVERED he is from the causes

which prevented him from making use of his forces, the farther

from him he has driven these causes, the more he has extended and

cleared the sphere of his action . . . . Thus it is said that a

man has a free mind, that he enjoys great liberty of mind, not

only when his intelligence is not disturbed by any external

violence, but also when it is neither obscured by intoxication,

nor changed by disease, nor kept in impotence by lack of

exercise.

M. Dunoyer has here viewed liberty only on its negative

side,--that is, as if it were simply synonymous with FREEDOM

FROM OBSTACLES. At that rate liberty would not be a faculty of

man; it would be nothing. But immediately M. Dunoyer, though

persisting in his incomplete definition, seizes the true side of

the matter: then it is that it occurs to him to say that man, in

inventing a machine, serves his liberty, not, as we express

ourselves, because he determines it, but, in M. Dunoyer's style,

because he removes a difficulty from its path.

Thus articulate language is a better instrument than language by

sign; therefore one is freer to express his thought and impress

it upon the mind of another by speech than by gesture. The

written word is a more potent instrument than the spoken word;

therefore one is freer to act on the mind of his fellows when he

knows how to picture the word to their eyes than when he simply

knows how to speak it. The press is an instrument two or three

hundred times more potent than the pen; therefore one is two or

three hundred times freer to enter into relation with other men

when he can spread his ideas by printing than when he can publish

them only by writing.

I will not point out all that is inexact and illogical in this

fashion of representing liberty. Since Destutt de Tracy, the

last representative of the philosophy of Condillac, the

philosophical spirit has been obscured among economists of the

French school; the fear of ideology has perverted their language,

and one perceives, in reading them, that adoration of fact has

caused them to lose even the perception of theory. I prefer to

establish the fact that M. Dunoyer, and political economy with

him, is not mistaken concerning the essence of liberty, a force,

energy, or spontaneity indifferent in itself to every action, and

consequently equally susceptible of any determination, good or

bad, useful or harmful. M. Dunoyer has had so strong a suspicion

of the truth that he writes himself:

Instead of considering liberty as a dogma, I shall present it as

a RESULT; instead of making it the attribute of man, I shall

make it the ATTRIBUTE OF CIVILIZATION; instead of imagining

forms of government calculated to establish it, I shall do my

best to explain how it is BORN OF EVERY STEP OF OUR PROGRESS.

Then he adds, with no less reason:

It will be noticed how much this method differs from that of

those dogmatic philosophers who talk only of rights and duties;

of what it is the duty of governments to do and the right of

nations to demand, etc. I do not say sententiously: men have a

right to be free; I confine myself to asking: how does it happen

that they are so?

In accordance with this exposition one may sum up in four lines

the work that M. Dunoyer has tried to do: A REVIEW of the

obstacles that IMPEDE liberty and the means (instruments,

methods, ideas, customs, religions, governments, etc.) that

FAVOR it. But for its omissions, the work of M. Dunoyer would

have been the very philosophy of political economy.

After having raised the problem of liberty, political economy

furnishes us, then, with a definition conforming in every point

to that given by psychology and suggested by the analogies of

language: and thus we see how, little by little, the study of man

gets transported from the contemplation of the me to the

observation of realities.

Now, just as the determinations of man's reason have received the

name of IDEAS (abstract, supposed a priori ideas, or principles,

conceptions, categories; and secondary ideas, or those more

especially acquired and empirical), so the determinations of

liberty have received the name of VOLITIONS, sentiments, habits,

customs. Then, language, figurative in its nature, continuing to

furnish the elements of primary psychology, the habit has been

formed of assigning to ideas, as the place or capacity where they

reside, the INTELLIGENCE, and to volitions, sentiments, etc.,

the CONSCIENCE. All these abstractions have been long taken for

realities by the philosophers, not one of whom has seen that all

distribution of the faculties of the soul is necessarily a work

of caprice, and that their psychology is but an illusion.

However that may be, if we now conceive these two orders of

determinations, reason and liberty, as united and blended by

organization in a living, reasonable, and free PERSON, we shall

understand immediately that they must lend each other mutual

assistance and influence each other reciprocally. If, through an

error or oversight of the reason, liberty, blind by nature,

acquires a false and fatal habit, the reason itself will not be

slow to feel the effects; instead of true ideas, conforming to

the natural relations of things, it will retain only prejudices,

as much more difficult to root out of the intelligence

afterwards, as they have become dearer to the conscience through

age. In this state of things reason and liberty are impaired;

the first is disturbed in its development, the second restricted

in its scope, and man is led astray, becomes, that is, wicked and

unhappy at once.

Thus, when, in consequence of a contradictory perception and an

incomplete experience, reason had pronounced through the lips of

the economists that there was no regulating principle of value

and that the law of commerce was supply and demand, liberty

abandoned itself to the passion of ambition, egoism, and

gambling; commerce was thereafter but a wager subjected to

certain police regulations; misery developed from the sources of

wealth; socialism, itself a slave of routine, could only protest

against effects instead of rising against causes; and reason was

obliged, by the sight of so many evils, to recognize that it had

taken a wrong road.

Man can attain welfare only in proportion as his reason and his

liberty not only progress in harmony, but never halt in their

development. Now, as the progress of liberty, like that of

reason, is indefinite, and as, moreover, these two powers are

closely connected and solidary, it must be concluded that

liberty is the more perfect the more closely it defines itself in

conformity with the laws of reason, which are those of things,

and that, if this reason were infinite, liberty itself would

become infinite. In other words, the fullness of liberty lies in

the fullness of reason: summa lex summa libertas.

These preliminaries were indispensable in order to clearly

appreciate the role of machinery and to make plain the series of

economic evolutions. And just here I will remind the reader that

we are not constructing a history in accordance with the order of

events, but in accordance with the succession of ideas. The

economic phases or categories are now contemporary, now inverted,

in their manifestation; hence the extreme difficulty always felt

by the economists in systematizing their ideas; hence the chaos

of their works, even those most to be commended in every other

respect, such as Adam Smith's, Ricardo's, and J. B. Say's. But

economic theories none the less have their logical succession and

their series in the mind: it is this order which we flatter

ourselves that we have discovered, and which will make this work

at once a philosophy and a history.

% 2.--Machinery's contradiction.--Origin of capital and wages.

From the very fact that machinery diminishes the workman's toil,

it abridges and diminishes labor, the supply of which thus grows

greater from day to day and the demand less. Little by little,

it is true, the reduction in prices causing an increase in

consumption, the proportion is restored and the laborer set at

work again: but as industrial improvements steadily succeed each

other and continually tend to substitute mechanical operations

for the labor of man, it follows that there is a constant

tendency to cut off a portion of the service and consequently to

eliminate laborers from production. Now, it is with the economic

order as with the spiritual order: outside of the church there is

no salvation; outside of labor there is no subsistence. Society

and nature, equally pitiless, are in accord in the execution of

this new decree.

"When a new machine, or, in general, any process whatever that

expedites matters," says J. B. Say, "replaces any human labor

already employed, some of the industrious arms, whose services

are usefully supplanted, are left without work. A new machine,

therefore, replaces the labor of a portion of the laborers, but

does not diminish the amount of production, for, if it did, it

would not be adopted; IT DISPLACES REVENUE. But the ultimate

advantage is wholly on the side of machinery, for, if abundance

of product and lessening of cost lower the venal value, the

consumer--that is, everybody--will benefit thereby."

Say's optimism is infidelity to logic and to facts. The question

here is not simply one of a small number of accidents which have

happened during thirty centuries through the introduction of one,

two, or three machines; it is a question of a regular, constant,

and general phenomenon. After revenue has been DISPLACED as Say

says, by one machine, it is then displaced by another, and again

by another, and always by another, as long as any labor remains

to be done and any exchanges remain to be effected. That is the

light in which the phenomenon must be presented and considered:

but thus, it must be admitted, its aspect changes singularly.

The displacement of revenue, the suppression of labor and wages,

is a chronic, permanent, indelible plague, a sort of cholera

which now appears wearing the features of Gutenberg, now

assumes those of Arkwright; here is called Jacquard, there James

Watt or Marquis de Jouffroy. After carrying on its ravages for a

longer or shorter time under one form, the monster takes another,

and the economists, who think that he has gone, cry out: "It was

nothing!" Tranquil and satisfied, provided they insist with all

the weight of their dialectics on the positive side of the

question, they close their eyes to its subversive side,

notwithstanding which, when they are spoken to of poverty, they

again begin their sermons upon the improvidence and drunkenness

of laborers.

In 1750,--M. Dunoyer makes the observation, and it may serve as a

measure of all lucubrations of the same sort,--"in 1750 the

population of the duchy of Lancaster was 300,000 souls. In 1801,

thanks to the development of spinning machines, this population

was 672,000 souls. In 1831 it was 1,336,000 souls. Instead of

the 40,000 workmen whom the cotton industry formerly employed, it

now employs, since the invention of machinery, 1,500,000."

M. Dunoyer adds that at the time when the number of workmen

employed in this industry increased in so remarkable a manner,

the price of labor rose one hundred and fifty per cent.

Population, then, having simply followed industrial progress, its

increase has been a normal and irreproachable fact,--what do I

say?--a happy fact, since it is cited to the honor and glory of

the development of machinery. But suddenly M. Dunoyer executes

an about-face: this multitude of spinning-machines soon being out

of work, wages necessarily declined; the population which the

machines had called forth found itself abandoned by the machines,

at which M. Dunoyer declares: Abuse of marriage is the cause of

poverty.

English commerce, in obedience to the demand of the immense body

of its patrons, summons workmen from all directions, and

encourages marriage; as long as labor is abundant, marriage is an

excellent thing, the effects of which they are fond of quoting in

the interest of machinery; but, the patronage fluctuating, as

soon as work and wages are not to be had, they denounce the abuse

of marriage, and accuse laborers of improvidence. Political

economy--that is, proprietary despotism--can never be in the

wrong: it must be the proletariat.

The example of printing has been cited many a time, always to

sustain the optimistic view. The number of persons supported

today by the manufacture of books is perhaps a thousand times

larger than was that of the copyists and illuminators prior to

Gutenberg's time; therefore, they conclude with a satisfied air,

printing has injured nobody. An infinite number of similar facts

might be cited, all of them indisputable, but not one of which

would advance the question a step. Once more, no one denies that

machines have contributed to the general welfare; but I affirm,

in regard to this incontestable fact, that the economists fall

short of the truth when they advance the absolute statement that

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF PROCESSES HAS NOWHERE RESULTED IN A

DIMINUTION OF THE NUMBER OF HANDS EMPLOYED IN ANY INDUSTRY

WHATEVER. What the economists ought to say is that machinery,

like the division of labor, in the present system of social

economy is at once a source of wealth and a permanent and fatal

cause of misery.

In 1836, in a Manchester mill, nine frames, each having three

hundred and twenty-four spindles, were tended by four spinners.

Afterwards the mules were doubled in length, which gave each of

the nine six hundred and eighty spindles and enabled two men to

tend them.

There we have the naked fact of the elimination of the workman by

the machine. By a simple device three workmen out of four are

evicted; what matters it that fifty years later, the population

of the globe having doubled and the trade of England having

quadrupled, new machines will be constructed and the English

manufacturers will reemploy their workmen? Do the economists

mean to point to the increase of population as one of the

benefits of machinery? Let them renounce, then, the theory of

Malthus, and stop declaiming against the excessive fecundity

of marriage.

They did not stop there: soon a new mechanical improvement

enabled a single worker to do the work that formerly occupied

four.

A new three-fourths reduction of manual work: in all, a reduction

of human labor by fifteen-sixteenths.

A Bolton manufacturer writes: "The elongation of the mules of

our frames permits us to employ but twenty-six spinners where we

employed thirty-five in 1837."

Another decimation of laborers: one out of four is a victim.

These facts are taken from the "Revue Economique" of 1842; and

there is nobody who cannot point to similar ones. I have

witnessed the introduction of printing machines, and I can say

that I have seen with my own eyes the evil which printers have

suffered thereby. During the fifteen or twenty years that the

machines have been in use a portion of the workmen have gone back

to composition, others have abandoned their trade, and some have

died of misery: thus laborers are continually crowded back in

consequence of industrial innovations. Twenty years ago eighty

canal-boats furnished the navigation service between Beaucaire

and Lyons; a score of steam-packets has displaced them all.

Certainly commerce is the gainer; but what has become of the

boating-population? Has it been transferred from the boats to

the packets? No: it has gone where all superseded industries

go,--it has vanished.

For the rest, the following documents, which I take from the same

source, will give a more positive idea of the influence of

industrial improvements upon the condition of the workers.

The average weekly wages, at Manchester, is ten shillings. Out

of four hundred and fifty workers there are not forty who earn

twenty shillings.

The author of the article is careful to remark that an Englishman

consumes five times as much as a Frenchman; this, then, is as if

a French workingman had to live on two francs and a half a week.

"Edinburgh Review," 1835: "To a combination of workmen (who did

not want to see their wages reduced) we owe the mule of Sharpe

and Roberts of Manchester; and this invention has severely

punished the imprudent unionists."

PUNISHED should merit punishment. The invention of Sharpe and

Roberts of Manchester was bound to result from the situation; the

refusal of the workmen to submit to the reduction asked of them

was only its determining occasion. Might not one infer, from the

air of vengeance affected by the "Edinburgh Review," that

machines have a retroactive effect?

An English manufacturer: "The insubordination of our workmen has

given us the idea of DISPENSING WITH THEM. We have made and

stimulated every imaginable effort of the mind to replace the

service of men by tools more docile, and we have achieved our

object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of

labor. Wherever we still employ a man, we do so only

temporarily, pending the invention for us of some means of

accomplishing his work without him."

What a system is that which leads a business man to think with

delight that society will soon be able to dispense with men!

MACHINERY HAS DELIVERED CAPITAL FROM THE OPPRESSION OF LABOR!

That is exactly as if the cabinet should undertake to deliver the

treasury from the oppression of the taxpayers. Fool! though the

workmen cost you something, they are your customers: what will

you do with your products, when, driven away by you, they shall

consume them no longer? Thus machinery, after crushing the

workmen, is not slow in dealing employers a counter-blow; for, if

production excludes consumption, it is soon obliged to stop

itself.

During the fourth quarter of 1841 four great failures, happening

in an English manufacturing city, threw seventeen hundred and

twenty people on the street.

These failures were caused by over-production,--that is, by an

inadequate market, or the distress of the people. What a pity

that machinery cannot also deliver capital from the oppression of

consumers! What a misfortune that machines do not buy the

fabrics which they weave! The ideal society will be reached when

commerce, agriculture, and manufactures can proceed without a man

upon earth!

In a Yorkshire parish for nine months the operatives have been

working but two days a week.

Machines!

At Geston two factories valued at sixty thousand pounds sterling

have been sold for twenty-six thousand. They produced more than

they could sell.

Machines!

In 1841 the number of children UNDER thirteen years of age

engaged in manufactures diminishes, because children OVER

thirteen take their place.

Machines! The adult workman becomes an apprentice, a child,

again: this result was foreseen from the phase of the division of

labor, during which we saw the quality of the workman degenerate

in the ratio in which industry was perfected.

In his conclusion the journalist makes this reflection: "Since

1836 there has been a retrograde movement in the cotton

industry";--that is, it no longer keeps up its relation with

other industries: another result foreseen from the theory of the

proportionality of values.

Today workmen's coalitions and strikes seem to have stopped

throughout England, and the economists rightly rejoice over this

return to order,-- let us say even to common sense. But because

laborers henceforth--at least I cherish the hope--will not add

the misery of their voluntary periods of idleness to the misery

which machines force upon them, does it follow that the situation

is changed? And if there is no change in the situation, will not

the future always be a deplorable copy of the past?

The economists love to rest their minds on pictures of public

felicity: it is by this sign principally that they are to be

recognized, and that they estimate each other. Nevertheless

there are not lacking among them, on the other hand, moody and

sickly imaginations, ever ready to offset accounts of growing

prosperity with proofs of persistent poverty.

M. Theodore Fix thus summed up the general situation in December,

1844:

The food supply of nations is no longer exposed to those terrible

disturbances caused by scarcities and famines, so frequent up to

the beginning of the nineteenth century. The variety of

agricultural growths and improvements has abolished this double

scourge almost absolutely. The total wheat crop in France in

1791 was estimated at about 133,000,000 bushels, which gave,

after deducting seed, 2.855 bushels to each inhabitant. In 1840

the same crop was estimated at 198,590,000 bushels, or 2.860

bushels to each individual, the area of cultivated surface being

almost the same as before the Revolution. . . . The rate of

increase of manufactured goods has been at least as high as

that of food products; and we are justified in saying that the

mass of textile fabrics has more than doubled and perhaps tripled

within fifty years. The perfecting of technical processes has

led to this result. . . .

Since the beginning of the century the average duration of life

has increased by two or three years,--an undeniable sign of

greater comfort, or, if you will, a diminution of poverty.

Within twenty years the amount of indirect revenue, without any

burdensome change in legislation, has risen from $40,000,000

francs to 720,000,000,--a symptom of economic, much more than of

fiscal, progress.

On January 1, 1844, the deposit and consignment office owed the

savings banks 351,500,000 francs, and Paris figured in this sum

for 105,000,000. Nevertheless the development of the institution

has taken place almost wholly within twelve years, and it should

be noticed that the 351,500,000 francs now due to the savings

banks do not constitute the entire mass of economies effected,

since at a given time the capital accumulated is disposed of

otherwise. . . . In 1843, out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000

house-servants living in the capital, 90,000 workmen have

deposited in the savings banks 2,547,000 francs, and 34,000

house-servants 1,268,000 francs.

All these facts are entirely true, and the inference to be drawn

from them in favor of machines is of the exactest,--namely, that

they have indeed given a powerful impetus to the general welfare.

But the facts with which we shall supplement them are no less

authentic, and the inference to be drawn from these against

machines will be no less accurate,--to wit, that they are a

continual cause of pauperism. I appeal to the figures of M. Fix

himself.

Out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants residing in

Paris, there are 230,000 of the former and 46,000 of the

latter--a total of 276,000--who do not deposit in the savings

banks. No one would dare pretend that these are 276,000

spendthrifts and ne'er-do-weels who expose themselves to misery

voluntarily. Now, as among the very ones who make the savings

there are to be found poor and inferior persons for whom the

savings bank is but a respite from debauchery and misery, we may

conclude that, out of all the individuals living by their labor,

nearly three-fourths either are imprudent, lazy, and depraved,

since they do not deposit in the savings banks, or are too poor

to lay up anything. There is no other alternative. But common

sense, to say nothing of charity, permits no wholesale accusation

of the laboring class: it is necessary, therefore, to throw the

blame back upon our economic system. How is it that M. Fix did

not see that his figures accused themselves?

They hope that, in time, all, or almost all, laborers will

deposit in the savings banks. Without awaiting the testimony of

the future, we may test the foundations of this hope immediately.

According to the testimony of M. Vee, mayor of the fifth

arrondissement of Paris, "the number of needy families inscribed

upon the registers of the charity bureaus is 30,000,-- which is

equivalent to 65,000 individuals." The census taken at the

beginning of 1846 gave 88,474. And poor families not

inscribed,--how many are there of those? As many. Say, then,

180,000 people whose poverty is not doubtful, although not

official. And all those who live in straitened circumstances,

though keeping up the appearance of comfort,--how many are there

of those? Twice as many,--a total of 360,000 persons, in Paris,

who are somewhat embarrassed for means.

"They talk of wheat," cries another economist, M. Louis Leclerc,

"but are there not immense populations which go without bread?

Without leaving our own country, are there not populations which

live exclusively on maize, buckwheat, chestnuts?"

M. Leclerc denounces the fact: let us interpret it. If, as there

is no doubt, the increase of population is felt principally

in the large cities,--that is, at those points where the most

wheat is consumed,--it is clear that the average per head may

have increased without any improvement in the general condition.

There is no such liar as an average.

"They talk," continues the same writer, "of the increase of

indirect consumption. Vain would be the attempt to acquit

Parisian adulteration: it exists; it has its masters, its adepts,

its literature, its didactic and classic treatises. . . . France

possessed exquisite wines; what has been done with them? What

has become of this splendid wealth? Where are the treasures

created since Probus by the national genius? And yet, when one

considers the excesses to which wine gives rise wherever it is

dear, wherever it does not form a part of the regular life of the

people; when in Paris, capital of the kingdom of good wines, one

sees the people gorging themselves with I know not what,--stuff

that is adulterated, sophisticated, sickening, and sometimes

execrable,--and well-to-do persons drinking at home or accepting

without a word, in famous restaurants, so-called wines, thick,

violet-colored, and insipid, flat, and miserable enough to make

the poorest Burgundian peasant shudder,--can one honestly doubt

that alcoholic liquids are one of the most imperative needs of

our nature?

I quote this passage at length, because it sums up in relation to

a special case all that could be said upon the INCONVENIENCES of

machinery. To the people it is with wine as with fabrics, and

generally with all goods and merchandise created for the

consumption of the poor. It is always the same deduction: to

reduce by some process or other the cost of manufacture, in

order, first, to maintain advantageously competition with more

fortunate or richer rivals; second, to serve the vast numbers of

plundered persons who cannot disregard price simply because the

quality is good. Produced in the ordinary ways, wine is too

expensive for the mass of consumers; it is in danger of remaining

in the cellars of the retailers. The manufacturer of wines gets

around the difficulty: unable to introduce machinery into the

cultivation of the vine, he finds a means, with the aid of

some accompaniments, of placing the precious liquid within the

reach of all. Certain savages, in their periods of scarcity, eat

earth; the civilized workman drinks water. Malthus was a great

genius.

As far as the increase of the average duration of life is

concerned, I recognize the fact, but at the same time I declare

the observation incorrect. Let us explain that. Suppose a

population of ten million souls: if, from whatever cause you

will, the average life should increase five years for a million

individuals, mortality continuing its ravages at the same rate as

before among the nine other millions, it would be found, on

distributing this increase among the whole, that on an average

six months had been added to the life of each individual. It is

with the average length of life, the so-called indicator of

average comfort, as with average learning: the level of knowledge

does not cease to rise, which by no means alters the fact that

there are today in France quite as many barbarians as in the days

of Francois I. The charlatans who had railroad speculation in

view made a great noise about the importance of the locomotive in

the circulation of ideas; and the economists, always on the

lookout for civilized stupidities, have not failed to echo this

nonsense. As if ideas, in order to spread, needed locomotives!

What, then, prevents ideas from circulating from the Institute to

the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, in the narrow and

wretched streets of Old Paris and the Temple Quarter, everywhere,

in short, where dwells this multitude even more destitute of

ideas than of bread? How happens it that between a Parisian and

a Parisian, in spite of the omnibus and the letter-carrier, the

distance is three times greater today than in the fourteenth

century?

The ruinous influence of machinery on social economy and the

condition of the laborers is exercised in a thousand ways, all of

which are bound together and reciprocally labelled: cessation of

labor, reduction of wages, over-production, obstruction of the

market, alteration and adulteration of products, failures,

displacement of laborers, degeneration of the race, and, finally,

diseases and death.

M. Theodore Fix has remarked himself that in the last fifty years

the average stature of man, in France, has diminished by a

considerable fraction of an inch. This observation is worth his

previous one: upon whom does this diminution take effect?

In a report read to the Academy of Moral Sciences on the results

of the law of March 22, 1841, M. Leon Faucher expressed himself

thus:

Young workmen are pale, weak, short in stature, and slow to think

as well as to move. At fourteen or fifteen years they seem no

more developed than children of nine or ten years in the normal

state. As for their intellectual and moral development, there

are some to be found who, at the age of thirteen, have no notion

of God, who have never heard of their duties, and whose first

school of morality was a prison.

That is what M. Leon Faucher has seen, to the great displeasure

of M. Charles Dupin, and this state of things he declares that

the law of March 22 is powerless to remedy. And let us not get

angry over this impotence of the legislator: the evil arises from

a cause as necessary for us as the sun; and in the path upon

which we have entered, anger of any kind, like palliatives of any

kind, could only make our situation worse. Yes, while science

and industry are making such marvellous progress, it is a

necessity, unless civilization's centre of gravity should

suddenly change, that the intelligence and comfort of the

proletariat be diminished; while the lives of the well-to-do

classes grow longer and easier, it is inevitable that those of

the needy should grow harder and shorter. This is established in

the writings of the best--I mean, the most optimistic--thinkers.

According to M. de Morogues, 7,500,000 men in France have only

ninety- one francs a year to spend, 25 centimes a day. Cinq

sous! cinq sous! (Five cents! five cents!). There is something

prophetic, then, in this odious refrain.

In England (not including Scotland and Ireland) the poor-rate

was:

1801.--L

4,078,891 for a population of. . . . .8,872,980

1818.--L

7,870,801 " " " " . . . .11,978,875

1833.--L

8,000,000 " " " " . . . .14,000,000

The progress of poverty, then, has been more rapid than that of

population; in face of this fact, what becomes of the hypotheses

of Malthus? And yet it is indisputable that during the same

period the average comfort increased: what, then, do statistics

signify?

The death-rate for the first arrondissement of Paris is one to

every fifty-two inhabitants, and for the twelfth one to every

twenty-six. Now, the latter contains one needy person to every

seven inhabitants, while the former has only one to every

twenty-eight. That does not prevent the average duration of

life, even in Paris, from increasing, as M. Fix has very

correctly observed.

At Mulhouse the probabilities of average life are twenty-nine

years for children of the well-to-do class and TWO years for

those of the workers; in 1812 the average life in the same

locality was twenty-five years, nine months, and twelve days,

while in 1827 it was not over twenty-one years and nine months.

And yet throughout France the average life is longer. What does

this mean?

M. Blanqui, unable to explain so much prosperity and so much

poverty at once, cries somewhere: "Increased production does not

mean additional wealth. . . . Poverty, on the contrary, becomes

the wider spread in proportion to the concentration of

industries. There must be some radical vice in a system which

guarantees no security either to capital or labor, and which

seems to multiply the embarrassments of producers at the same

time that it forces them to multiply their products."

There is no radical vice here. What astonishes M. Blanqui is

simply that of which the Academy to which he belongs has asked a

determination,--namely, the oscillations of the economic

pendulum, VALUE, beating alternately and in regular time good and

evil, until the hour of the universal equation shall strike. If

I may be permitted another comparison, humanity in its march is

like a column of soldiers, who, starting in the same step and at

the same moment to the measured beating of the drum, gradually

lose their distances. The whole body advances, but the distance

from head to tail grows ever longer; and it is a necessary effect

of the movement that there should be some laggards and

stragglers.

But it is necessary to penetrate still farther into the antinomy.

Machines promised us an increase of wealth; they have kept their

word, but at the same time endowing us with an increase of

poverty. They promised us liberty; I am going to prove that they

have brought us slavery.

I have stated that the determination of value, and with it the

tribulations of society, began with the division of industries,

without which there could be no exchange, or wealth, or progress.

The period through which we are now passing--that of

machinery--is distinguished by a special characteristic,--WAGES.

Wages issued in a direct line from the employment of

machinery,--that is, to give my thought the entire generality of

expression which it calls for, from the economic fiction by which

capital becomes an agent of production. Wages, in short, coming

after the division of labor and exchange, is the necessary

correlative of the theory of the reduction of costs, in whatever

way this reduction may be accomplished. This genealogy is too

interesting to be passed by without a few words of explanation.

The first, the simplest, the most powerful of machines is the

WORKSHOP.

Division simply separates the various parts of labor, leaving

each to devote himself to the specialty best suited to his

tastes: the workshop groups the laborers according to the

relation of each part to the whole. It is the most elementary

form of the balance of values, undiscoverable though the

economists suppose this to be. Now, through the workshop,

production is going to increase, and at the same time the

deficit.

Somebody discovered that, by dividing production into its various

parts and causing each to be executed by a separate workman, he

would obtain a multiplication of power, the product of which

would be far superior to the amount of labor given by the same

number of workmen when labor is not divided.

Grasping the thread of this idea, he said to himself that, by

forming a permanent group of laborers assorted with a view to his

special purpose, he would produce more steadily, more abundantly,

and at less cost. It is not indispensable, however, that the

workmen should be gathered into one place: the existence of the

workshop does not depend essentially upon such contact. It

results from the relation and proportion of the different tasks

and from the common thought directing them. In a word,

concentration at one point may offer its advantages, which are

not to be neglected; but that is not what constitutes the

workshop.

This, then, is the proposition which the speculator makes to

those whose collaboration he desires: I guarantee you a perpetual

market for your products, if you will accept me as purchaser or

middle-man. The bargain is so clearly advantageous that the

proposition cannot fail of acceptance. The laborer finds in it

steady work, a fixed price, and security; the employer, on the

other hand, will find a readier sale for his goods, since,

producing more advantageously, he can lower the price; in short,

his profits will be larger because of the mass of his

investments. All, even to the public and the magistrate, will

congratulate the employer on having added to the social wealth by

his combinations, and will vote him a reward.

But, in the first place, whoever says reduction of expenses says

reduction of services, not, it is true, in the new shop, but for

the workers at the same trade who are left outside, as well as

for many others whose accessory services will be less needed in

future. Therefore every establishment of a workshop corresponds

to an eviction of workers: this assertion, utterly contradictory

though it may appear, is as true of the workshop as of a machine.

The economists admit it: but here they repeat their eternal

refrain that, after a lapse of time, the demand for the product

having increased in proportion to the reduction of price, labor

in turn will come finally to be in greater demand than ever.

Undoubtedly, WITH TIME, the equilibrium will be restored; but, I

must add again, the equilibrium will be no sooner restored at

this point than it will be disturbed at another, because the

spirit of invention never stops, any more than labor. Now, what

theory could justify these perpetual hecatombs?" When we have

reduced the number of toilers," wrote Sismondi, "to a fourth or a

fifth of what it is at present, we shall need only a fourth or a

fifth as many priests, physicians, etc. When we have cut them

off altogether, we shall be in a position to dispense with the

human race." And that is what really would happen if, in order

to put the labor of each machine in proportion to the needs of

consumption,--that is, to restore the balance of values

continually destroyed,--it were not necessary to continually

create new machines, open other markets, and consequently

multiply services and displace other arms. So that on the one

hand industry and wealth, on the other population and misery,

advance, so to speak, in procession, one always dragging the

other after it.

I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry,

negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since

become HIS WORKMEN. It is plain, in fact, that this original

equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position

of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers. In vain

does the law assure to each the right of enterprise, as well as

the faculty to labor alone and sell one's products directly.

According to the hypothesis, this last resource is impracticable,

since it was the object of the workshop to annihilate isolated

labor. And as for the right to take the plough, as they say, and

go at speed, it is the same in manufactures as in agriculture; to

know how to work is nothing, it is necessary to arrive at the

right time; the shop, as well as the land, is to the first comer.

When an establishment has had the leisure to develop itself,

enlarge its foundations, ballast itself with capital, and assure

itself a body of patrons, what can the workman who has only

his arms do against a power so superior? Hence it was not by an

arbitrary act of sovereign power or by fortuitous and brutal

usurpation that the guilds and masterships were established in

the Middle Ages: the force of events had created them long before

the edicts of kings could have given them legal consecration;

and, in spite of the reform of '89, we see them reestablishing

themselves under our eyes with an energy a hundred times more

formidable. Abandon labor to its own tendencies, and the

subjection of three-fourths of the human race is assured.

But this is not all. The machine, or the workshop, after having

degraded the laborer by giving him a master, completes his

degeneracy by reducing him from the rank of artisan to that of

common workman.

Formerly the population on the banks of the Saone and Rhone was

largely made up of watermen, thoroughly fitted for the conduct of

canal-boats or row-boats. Now that the steam-tug is to be found

almost everywhere, most of the boatmen, finding it impossible to

get a living at their trade, either pass three-fourths of their

life in idleness, or else become stokers.

If not misery, then degradation: such is the last alternative

which machinery offers to the workman. For it is with a machine

as with a piece of artillery: the captain excepted, those whom it

occupies are servants, slaves.

Since the establishment of large factories, a multitude of little

industries have disappeared from the domestic hearth: does any

one believe that the girls who work for ten and fifteen cents

have as much intelligence as their ancestors?

"After the establishment of the railway from Paris to Saint

Germain," M. Dunoyer tells us, "there were established between

Pecq and a multitude of places in the more or less immediate

vicinity such a number of omnibus and stage lines that this

establishment, contrary to all expectation, has considerably

increased the employment of horses."

CONTRARY TO ALL EXPECTATION! It takes an economist not to

expect these things. Multiply machinery, and you increase the

amount of arduous and disagreeable labor to be done: this

apothegm is as certain as any of those which date from the

deluge. Accuse me, if you choose, of ill-will towards the most

precious invention of our century,--nothing shall prevent me from

saying that the principal result of railways, after the

subjection of petty industry, will be the creation of a

population of degraded laborers,--signalmen, sweepers, loaders,

lumpers, draymen, watchmen, porters, weighers, greasers,

cleaners, stokers, firemen, etc. Two thousand miles of railway

will give France an additional fifty thousand serfs: it is not

for such people, certainly, that M. Chevalier asks professional

schools.

Perhaps it will be said that, the mass of transportation having

increased in much greater proportion than the number of

day-laborers, the difference is to the advantage of the railway,

and that, all things considered, there is progress. The

observation may even be generalized and the same argument applied

to all industries.

But it is precisely out of this generality of the phenomenon that

springs the subjection of laborers. Machinery plays the leading

role in industry, man is secondary: all the genius displayed by

labor tends to the degradation of the proletariat. What a

glorious nation will be ours when, among forty millions of

inhabitants, it shall count thirty-five millions of drudges,

paper-scratchers, and flunkies!

With machinery and the workshop, divine right--that is, the

principle of authority--makes its entrance into political

economy. Capital, Mastership, Privilege, Monopoly, Loaning,

Credit, Property, etc.,--such are, in economic language, the

various names of I know not what, but which is otherwise called

Power, Authority, Sovereignty, Written Law, Revelation, Religion,

God in short, cause and principle of all our miseries and all our

crimes, and who, the more we try to define him, the more eludes

us.

Is it, then, impossible that, in the present condition of

society, the workshop with its hierarchical organization, and

machinery, instead of serving exclusively the interests of the

least numerous, the least industrious, and the wealthiest class,

should be employed for the benefit of all?

That is what we are going to examine.

% 3.--Of preservatives against the disastrous influence of

machinery.

Reduction of manual labor is synonymous with lowering of price,

and, consequently, with increase of exchange, since, if the

consumer pays less, he will buy more.

But reduction of manual labor is synonymous also with restriction

of market, since, if the producer earns less, he will buy less.

And this is the course that things actually take. The

concentration of forces in the workshop and the intervention of

capital in production, under the name of machinery, engender at

the same time overproduction and destitution; and everybody has

witnessed these two scourges, more to be feared than incendiarism

and plague, develop in our day on the vastest scale and with

devouring intensity. Nevertheless it is impossible for us to

retreat: it is necessary to produce, produce always, produce

cheaply; otherwise, the existence of society is compromised. The

laborer, who, to escape the degradation with which the principle

of division threatened him, had created so many marvellous

machines, now finds himself either prohibited or subjugated by

his own works. Against this alternative what means are proposed?

M. de Sismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the

division of labor, with machinery and manufactures, to be

abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive

indivision,--that is, to EACH ONE BY HIMSELF, EACH ONE FOR

HIMSELF, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be

to retrograde; it is impossible.

M. Blanqui returns to the charge with his plan of participation

by the workman, and of consolidation of all industries in a

joint-stock company for the benefit of the collective laborer. I

have shown that this plan would impair public welfare without

appreciably improving the condition of the laborers; and M.

Blanqui himself seems to share this sentiment. How reconcile, in

fact, this participation of the workman in the profits with the

rights of inventors, contractors, and capitalists, of whom the

first have to reimburse themselves for large outlays, as well as

for their long and patient efforts; the second continually

endanger the wealth they have acquired, and take upon themselves

alone the chances of their enterprises, which are often very

hazardous; and the third could sustain no reduction of their

dividends without in some way losing their savings? How

harmonize, in a word, the equality desirable to establish between

laborers and employers with the preponderance which cannot be

taken from heads of establishments, from loaners of capital, and

from inventors, and which involves so clearly their exclusive

appropriation of the profits? To decree by a law the admission

of all workmen to a share of the profits would be to pronounce

the dissolution of society: all the economists have seen

this so clearly that they have finally changed into an

exhortation to employers what had first occurred to them as a

project. Now, as long as the wage-worker gets no profit save

what may be allowed him by the contractor, it is perfectly safe

to assume that eternal poverty will be his lot: it is not in the

power of the holders of labor to make it otherwise.

For the rest, the idea, otherwise very laudable, of associating

workmen with employers tends to this communistic conclusion,

evidently false in its premises: The last word of machinery is to

make man rich and happy without the necessity of labor on his

part. Since, then, natural agencies must do everything for us,

machinery ought to belong to the State, and the goal of progress

is communism.

I shall examine the communistic theory in its place.

But I believe that I ought to immediately warn the partisans of

this utopia that the hope with which they flatter themselves in

relation to machinery is only an illusion of the economists,

something like perpetual motion, which is always sought and never

found, because asked of a power which cannot give it. Machines

do not go all alone: to keep them in motion it is necessary to

organize an immense service around them; so that in the end, man

creating for himself an amount of work proportional to the number

of instruments with which he surrounds himself, the principal

consideration in the matter of machinery is much less to divide

its products than to see that it is fed,--that is, to continually

renew the motive power. Now, this motive power is not air,

water, steam, electricity; it is labor,--that is, the market.

A railroad suppresses all along its line conveyances, stages,

harness- makers, saddlers, wheelwrights, inn-keepers: I take

facts as they are just after the establishment of the road.

Suppose the State, as a measure of preservation or in obedience

to the principle of indemnity, should make the laborers displaced

by the railroad its proprietors or operators: the transportation

rates, let us suppose, being reduced by twenty-five per cent.

(otherwise of what use is the railroad?), the income of all these

laborers united will be diminished by a like amount,--which is to

say that a fourth of the persons formerly living by conveyances

will find themselves literally without resources, in spite of the

munificence of the State. To meet their deficit they have but

one hope,--that the mass of transportation effected over the line

may be increased by twenty-five per cent., or else that they may

find employment in other lines of industry,--which seems at first

impossible, since, by the hypothesis and in fact, places are

everywhere filled, proportion is maintained everywhere, and the

supply is sufficient for the demand.

Moreover it is very necessary, if it be desired to increase the

mass of transportation, that a fresh impetus be given to labor in

other industries. Now, admitting that the laborers displaced by

this over- production find employment, and that their

distribution among the various kinds of labor proves as easy in

practice as in theory, the difficulty is still far from settled.

For the number of those engaged in circulation being to the

number of those engaged in production as one hundred to one

thousand, in order to obtain, with a circulation one- fourth less

expensive,--in other words, one-fourth more powerful,--the same

revenue as before, it will be necessary to strengthen production

also by one-fourth,--that is, to add to the agricultural and

industrial army, not twenty-five,--the figure which indicates the

proportionality of the carrying industry,--but two hundred and

fifty. But, to arrive at this result, it will be necessary

to create machines,--what is worse, to create men: which

continually brings the question back to the same point. Thus

contradiction upon contradiction: now not only is labor, in

consequence of machinery, lacking to men, but also men, in

consequence of their numerical weakness and the insufficiency of

their consumption, are lacking to machinery: so that, pending the

establishment of equilibrium, there is at once a lack of work and

a lack of arms, a lack of products and a lack of markets. And

what we say of the railroad is true of all industries: always the

man and the machine pursue each other, the former never attaining

rest, the latter never attaining satisfaction.

Whatever the pace of mechanical progress; though machines should

be invented a hundred times more marvellous than the mule-jenny,

the knitting-machine, or the cylinder press; though forces should

be discovered a hundred times more powerful than steam,--very far

from freeing humanity, securing its leisure, and making the

production of everything gratuitous, these things would have no

other effect than to multiply labor, induce an increase of

population, make the chains of serfdom heavier, render life more

and more expensive, and deepen the abyss which separates the

class that commands and enjoys from the class that obeys and

suffers.

Suppose now all these difficulties overcome; suppose the laborers

made available by the railroad adequate to the increase of

service demanded for the support of the locomotive,--compensation

being effected without pain, nobody will suffer; on the contrary,

the well-being of each will be increased by a fraction of the

profit realized by the substitution of the railway for the

stage-coach. What then, I shall be asked, prevents these things

from taking place with such regularity and precision? And what

is easier than for an intelligent government to so manage all

industrial transitions?

I have pushed the hypothesis as far as it could go in order to

show, on the one hand, the end to which humanity is tending, and,

on the other, the difficulties which it must overcome in order to

attain it. Surely the providential order is that progress should

be effected, in so far as machinery is concerned, in the way that

I have just spoken of: but what embarrasses society's march and

makes it go from Charybdis to Scylla is precisely the fact that

it is not organized. We have reached as yet only the second

phase of its evolution, and already we have met upon our road two

chasms which seem insuperable,--division of labor and machinery.

How save the parcellaire workman, if he is a man of intelligence,

from degradation, or, if he is degraded already, lift him to

intellectual life? How, in the second place, give birth among

laborers to that solidarity of interest without which industrial

progress counts its steps by its catastrophes, when these same

laborers are radically divided by labor, wages, intelligence, and

liberty,--that is, by egoism? How, in short, reconcile what the

progress already accomplished has had the effect of rendering

irreconcilable? To appeal to communism and fraternity would be

to anticipate dates: there is nothing in common, there can exist

no fraternity, between such creatures as the division of labor

and the service of machinery have made. It is not in that

direction--at least for the present--that we must seek a

solution.

Well! it will be said, since the evil lies still more in the

minds than in the system, let us come back to instruction, let us

labor for the education of the people.

In order that instruction may be useful, in order that it may

even be received, it is necessary, first of all, that the pupil

should be free, just as, before planting a piece of ground, we

clear it of thorns and dog-grass. Moreover, the best system

of education, even so far as philosophy and morality are

concerned, would be that of professional education: once more,

how reconcile such education with parcellaire division and the

service of machinery? How shall the man who, by the effect of

his labor, has become a slave,--that is, a chattel, a thing,--

again become a person by the same labor, or in continuing the

same exercise? Why is it not seen that these ideas are mutually

repellent, and that, if, by some impossibility, the proletaire

could reach a certain degree of intelligence, he would make use

of it in the first place to revolutionize society and change all

civil and industrial relations? And what I say is no vain

exaggeration. The working class, in Paris and the large cities,

is vastly superior in point of ideas to what it was twenty-five

years ago; now, let them tell me if this class is not decidedly,

energetically revolutionary! And it will become more and more so

in proportion as it shall acquire the ideas of justice and order,

in proportion especially as it shall reach an understanding of

the mechanism of property.

Language,--I ask permission to recur once more to

etymology,--language seems to me to have clearly expressed the

moral condition of the laborer, after he has been, if I may so

speak, depersonalized by industry. In the Latin the idea of

servitude implies that of subordination of man to things; and

when later feudal law declared the serf ATTACHED TO THE GLEBE, it

only periphrased the literal meaning of the word servus.[16]

Spontaneous reason, oracle of fate itself, had therefore

condemned the subaltern workman, before science had established

his debasement. Such being the case, what can the efforts of

philanthropy do for beings whom Providence has rejected?

[16] In spite of the most approved authorities, I cannot accept

the idea that serf, in Latin servus, was so called from servare,

to keep, because the slave was a prisoner of war who was kept for

labor. Servitude, or at least domesticity, is certainly prior to

war, although war may have noticeably strengthened it. Why,

moreover, if such was the origin of the idea as well as of the

thing, should they not have said, instead of serv-us, serv-atus,

in conformity with grammatical deduction? To me the real

etymology is revealed in the opposition of serv-are and serv-ire,

the primitive theme of which is ser-o, in-sero, to join, to

press,whence ser-ies, joint, continuity, ser-a, lock, sertir,

insert, etc. All these words imply the idea of a principal

thing, to which is joined an accessory, as an object of special

usefulness. Thence serv-ire, to be an object of usefulness, a

thing secondary to another; serv-are, as we say to press, to put

aside, to assign a thing its utility; serv-us, a man at hand, a

utility, a chattel, in short, a man of service. The opposite of

servus is dom-inus (dom-us, dom-anium, and dom-are); that is, the

head of the household, the master of the house, he who utilizes

men, servat, animals, domat, and things, possidet. That

consequently prisoners of war should have been reserved for

slavery, servati ad servitium, or rather serti ad glebam, is

perfectly conceivable; their destiny being known, they have

simply taken their name from it.

Labor is the education of our liberty. The ancients had a

profound perception of this truth when they distinguished the

servile arts from the liberal arts. For, like profession, like

ideas; like ideas, like morals. Everything in slavery takes on

the character of degradation,-- habits, tastes, inclinations,

sentiments, pleasures: it involves universal subversion. Occupy

one's self with the education of the poor! But that would create

the most cruel antagonism in these degenerate souls; that would

inspire them with ideas which labor would render intolerable to

them, affections incompatible with the brutishness of their

condition, pleasures of which the perception is dulled in them.

If such a project could succeed, instead of making a man of the

laborer, it would make a demon of him. Just study those faces

which people the prisons and the galleys, and tell me if most of

them do not belong to subjects whom the revelation of the

beautiful, of elegance, of wealth, of comfort, of honor, and of

science, of all that makes the dignity of man, has found too

weak, and so has demoralized and killed.

At least wages should be fixed, say the less audacious; schedules

of rates should be prepared in all industries, to be accepted by

employers and workmen.

This hypothesis of salvation is cited by M. Fix. And he answers

victoriously:

Such schedules have been made in England and elsewhere; their

value is known; everywhere they have been violated as soon as

accepted, both by employers and by workmen.

The causes of the violation of the schedules are easy to fathom:

they are to be found in machinery, in the incessant processes and

combinations of industry. A schedule is agreed upon at a given

moment: but suddenly there comes a new invention which gives its

author the power to lower the price of merchandise. What will

the other employers do? They will cease to manufacture and will

discharge their workmen, or else they will propose to them a

reduction. It is the only course open to them, pending a

discovery by them in turn of some process by means of which,

without lowering the rate of wages, they will be able to produce

more cheaply than their competitors: which will be equivalent

again to a suppression of workmen.

M. Leon Faucher seems inclined to favor a system of indemnity.

He says:

We readily conceive that, in some interest or other, the State,

representing the general desire, should command the sacrifice of

an industry.

It is always supposed to command it, from the moment that it

grants to each the liberty to produce, and protects and defends

this liberty against all encroachment.

But this is an extreme measure, an experiment which is always

perilous, and which should be accompanied by all possible

consideration for individuals. The State has no right to take

from a class of citizens the labor by which they live, before

otherwise providing for their subsistence or assuring itself that

they will find in some new industry employment for their minds

and arms. It is a principle in civilized countries that the

government cannot seize a piece of private property, even on

grounds of public utility, without first buying out the

proprietor by a just indemnity paid in advance. Now, labor seems

to us property quite as legitimate, quite as sacred, as a field

or a house, and we do not understand why it should be

expropriated without any sort of compensation. . . .

As chimerical as we consider the doctrines which represent

government as the universal purveyor of labor in society, to the

same extent does it seem to us just and necessary that every

displacement of labor in the name of public utility should be

effected only by means of a compensation or a transition, and

that neither individuals nor classes should be sacrificed to

State considerations. Power, in well- constituted nations, has

always time and money to give for the mitigation of these partial

sufferings. And it is precisely because industry does not

emanate from it, because it is born and developed under the free

and individual initiative of citizens, that the government is

bound, when it disturbs its course, to offer it a sort of

reparation or indemnity.

There's sense for you: whatever M. Leon Faucher may say, he calls

for the organization of labor. For government to see to it that

EVERY DISPLACEMENT OF LABOR IS EFFECTED ONLY BY MEANS OF A

COMPENSATION OR A TRANSITION, AND THAT INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES

ARE NEVER SACRIFICED TO STATE CONSIDERATIONS,--that is, to the

progress of industry and the liberty of enterprise, the supreme

law of the State,--is without any doubt to constitute itself, in

some way that the future shall determine, the PURVEYOR OF LABOR

IN SOCIETY and the guardian of wages. And, as we have many times

repeated, inasmuch as industrial progress and consequently the

work of disarranging and rearranging classes in society is

continual, it is not a special transition for each innovation

that needs to be discovered, but rather a general principle, an

organic law of transition, applicable to all possible cases and

producing its effect itself. Is M. Leon Faucher in a position to

formulate this law and reconcile the various antagonisms which we

have described? No, since he prefers to stop at the idea of an

indemnity. POWER, he says, IN WELL-ORGANIZED NATIONS, HAS ALWAYS

TIME AND MONEY TO GIVE FOR THE MITIGATION OF THESE PARTIAL

SUFFERINGS. I am sorry for M. Faucher's generous intentions, but

they seem to me radically impracticable.

Power has no time and money save what it takes from the

taxpayers. To indemnify by taxation laborers thrown out of work

would be to visit ostracism upon new inventions and establish

communism by means of the bayonet; that is no solution of the

difficulty. It is useless to insist further on indemnification

by the State. Indemnity, applied according to M. Faucher's

views, would either end in industrial despotism, in something

like the government of Mohammed-Ali, or else would degenerate

into a poor-tax,--that is, into a vain hypocrisy. For the good

of humanity it were better not to indemnify, and to let labor

seek its own eternal constitution.

There are some who say: Let government carry laborers thrown out

of work to points where private industry is not established,

where individual enterprise cannot reach. We have mountains to

plant again with trees, ten or twelve million acres of land to

clear, canals to dig, in short, a thousand things of immediate

and general utility to undertake.

"We certainly ask our readers' pardon for it," answers M. Fix;

"but here again we are obliged to call for the intervention of

capital. These surfaces, certain communal lands excepted, are

fallow, because, if cultivated, they would yield no net product,

and very likely not even the costs of cultivation. These lands

are possessed by proprietors who either have or have not the

capital necessary to cultivate them. In the former case, the

proprietor would very probably content himself, if he cultivated

these lands, with a very small profit, and perhaps would forego

what is called the rent of the land: but he has found that,

in undertaking such cultivation, he would lose his original

capital, and his other calculations have shown him that the sale

of the products would not cover the costs of cultivation. . . .

All things considered, therefore, this land will remain fallow,

because capital that should be put into it would yield no profit

and would be lost. If it were otherwise, all these lands would

be immediately put in cultivation; the savings now disposed of in

another direction would necessarily gravitate in a certain

proportion to the cultivation of land; for capital has no

affections: it has interests, and always seeks that employment

which is surest and most lucrative."

This argument, very well reasoned, amounts to saying that the

time to cultivate its waste lands has not arrived for France,

just as the time for railroads has not arrived for the Kaffres

and the Hottentots. For, as has been said in the second chapter,

society begins by working those sources which yield most easily

and surely the most necessary and least expensive products: it is

only gradually that it arrives at the utilization of things

relatively less productive. Since the human race has been

tossing about on the face of its globe, it has struggled with no

other task; for it the same care is ever recurrent,--that of

assuring its subsistence while going forward in the path of

discovery. In order that such clearing of land may not become a

ruinous speculation, a cause of misery, in other words, in order

that it may be possible, it is necessary, therefore, to multiply

still further our capital and machinery, discover new processes,

and more thoroughly divide labor. Now, to solicit the government

to take such an initiative is to imitate the peasants who, on

seeing the approach of a storm, begin to pray to God and to

invoke their saint. Governments--today it cannot be too often

repeated--are the representatives of Divinity,--I had almost said

executors of celestial vengeance: they can do nothing for us.

Does the English government, for instance, know any way of

giving labor to the unfortunates who take refuge in its

workhouses? And if it knew, would it dare? AID YOURSELF, AND

HEAVEN WILL AID YOU! This note of popular distrust of Divinity

tells us also what we must expect of power,--nothing.

Arrived at the second station of our Calvary, instead of

abandoning ourselves to sterile contemplations, let us be more

and more attentive to the teachings of destiny. The guarantee of

our liberty lies in the progress of our torture.