d printers can furnish reading-matter enough for
thirty-four millions of men, and if the price of books is so high that
only one-third of that number can afford to buy them, it is clear that
these one hundred thousand printers will produce three times as much as
the booksellers can sell. That the products of the laborers may never
exceed the demands of the consumers, the laborers must either rest two
days out of three, or, separating into three groups, relieve each other
three times a week, month, or quarter; that is, during two-thirds of
their life they must not live. But industry, under the influence of
property, does not proceed with such regularity. It endeavors to
produce a great deal in a short time, because the greater the amount of
products, and the shorter the time of production, the less each product
costs. As soon as a demand begins to be felt, the factories fill up, and
everybody goes to work. Then business is lively, and both governors and
governed rejoice. But the more they work to-day, the more idle will they
be hereafter; the more they laugh, the more they shall weep. Under
the rule of property, the flowers of industry are woven into none but
funeral wreaths. The laborer digs his own grave.

If the factory stops running, the manufacturer has to pay interest on
his capital the same as before. He naturally tries, then, to continue
production by lessening expenses. Then comes the lowering of wages; the
introduction of machinery; the employment of women and children to do
the work of men; bad workmen, and wretched work. They still produce,
because the decreased cost creates a larger market; but they do not
produce long, because, the cheapness being due to the quantity and
rapidity of production, the productive power tends more than ever to
outstrip consumption. It is when laborers, whose wages are scarcely
sufficient to support them from one day to another, are thrown out of
work, that the consequences of the principle of property become most
frightful. They have not been able to economize, they have made no
savings, they have accumulated no capital whatever to support them even
one day more. Today the factory is closed. To-morrow the people starve
in the streets. Day after tomorrow they will either die in the hospital,
or eat in the jail.

And still new misfortunes come to complicate this terrible situation. In
consequence of the cessation of business, and the extreme cheapness of
merchandise, the manufact