ded with instruments
and provisions sufficient to work and to live themselves until harvest
time, as well as to remunerate the services of eighty labourers. The
inevitable result will be the death of nine hundred human beings. It is
clear, then, that since 990 men, urged by want, will crowd upon the
supports which would only maintain a hundred, the ten capitalists will
be masters of the market. They will obtain labour on the hardest
conditions, for they will put it up to auction, or the highest bidder.
And observe this,--if these capitalists entertain such pious sentiments
as would induce them to impose personal privations on themselves, in
order to diminish the sufferings of some of their brethren, this
generosity, which attaches to morality, will be as noble in its
principle as useful in its effects. But if, duped by that false
philosophy which persons wish so inconsiderately to mingle with economic
laws, they take to remunerating labour largely, far from doing good,
they will do harm. They will give double wages, it may be. But then,
forty-five men will be better provided for, whilst forty-five others
will come to augment the number of those who are sinking into the grave.
Upon this supposition, it is not the lowering of wages which is the
mischief, it is the scarcity of capital. Low wages are not the cause,
but the effect of the evil. I may add, that they are to a certain extent
the remedy. It acts in this way: it distributes the burden of suffering
as much as it can, and saves as many lives as a limited quantity of
sustenance permits.

Suppose now, that instead of ten capitalists, there should be a hundred,
two hundred, five hundred,--is it not evident that the condition of the
whole population, and, above all, that of the "proletaires,"[3] will be
more and more improved? Is it not evident that, apart from every
consideration of generosity, they would obtain more work and better pay
for it?--that they themselves will be in a better condition, to form
capitals, without being able to fix the limits to this ever-increasing
facility of realising equality and well-being? Would it not be madness
in them to admit such doctrines, and to act in a way which would drain
the source of wages, and paralyse the activity and stimulus of saving?
Let them learn this lesson, then; doubtless, capitals are good for those
who possess them: who denies it? But they are also useful to those who
have not yet been able to form them; and it i