that it would soon
be discovered and suppressed. But, as there is the same inequality of
wages (from that of the scavenger up to that of the minister of state)
as of property, robbery continually rebounds from the stronger to the
weaker; so that, since the laborer finds his hardships increase as he
descends in the social scale, the lowest class of people are literally
stripped naked and eaten alive by the others.

The laboring people can buy neither the cloth which they weave, nor the
furniture which they manufacture, nor the metal which they forge, nor
the jewels which they cut, nor the prints which they engrave. They can
procure neither the wheat which they plant, nor the wine which they
grow, nor the flesh of the animals which they raise. They are allowed
neither to dwell in the houses which they build, nor to attend the
plays which their labor supports, nor to enjoy the rest which their body
requires. And why? Because the right of increase does not permit these
things to be sold at the cost-price, which is all that laborers can
afford to pay. On the signs of those magnificent warehouses which he in
his poverty admires, the laborer reads in large letters: "This is thy
work, and thou shalt not have it." _Sic vos non vobis_!

Every manufacturer who employs one thousand laborers, and gains from
them daily one sou each, is slowly pushing them into a state of misery.
Every man who makes a profit has entered into a conspiracy with famine.
But the whole nation has not even this labor, by means of which property
starves it. And why? Because the workers are forced by the insufficiency
of their wages to monopolize labor; and because, before being destroyed
by dearth, they destroy each other by competition. Let us pursue this
truth no further.

If the laborer's wages will not purchase his product, it follows
that the product is not made for the producer. For whom, then, is it
intended? For the richer consumer; that is, for only a fraction of
society. But when the whole society labors, it produces for the whole
society. If, then, only a part of society consumes, sooner or later a
part of society will be idle. Now, idleness is death, as well for the
laborer as for the proprietor.

This conclusion is inevitable.

The most distressing spectacle imaginable is the sight of producers
resisting and struggling against this mathematical necessity, this power
of figures to which their prejudices blind them.

If one hundred thousan