ze. They
have jumped from the frying-pan into the fire.

I cannot repeat it too often: the proprietor who thinks to deserve
his income by working, and who receives wages for his labor, is a
functionary who gets paid twice; that is the only difference between an
idle proprietor and a laboring proprietor. By his labor, the proprietor
produces his wages only--not his income. And since his condition enables
him to engage in the most lucrative pursuits, it may be said that the
proprietor's labor harms society more than it helps it. Whatever the
proprietor does, the consumption of his income is an actual loss, which
his salaried functions neither repair nor justify; and which would
annihilate property, were it not continually replenished by outside
production.

II. Then, the proprietor who consumes annihilates the product: he does
much worse if he lays it up. The things which he lays by pass into
another world; nothing more is seen of them, not even the _caput
mortuum_,--the smoke. If we had some means of transportation by which
to travel to the moon, and if the proprietors should be seized with a
sudden fancy to carry their savings thither, at the end of a certain
time our terraqueous planet would be transported by them to its
satellite!

The proprietor who lays up products will neither allow others to enjoy
them, nor enjoy them himself; for him there is neither possession nor
property. Like the miser, he broods over his treasures: he does not use
them. He may feast his eyes upon them; he may lie down with them; he
may sleep with them in his arms: all very fine, but coins do not
breed coins. No real property without enjoyment; no enjoyment without
consumption; no consumption without loss of property,--such is the
inflexible necessity to which God's judgment compels the proprietor to
bend. A curse upon property!

III. The proprietor who, instead of consuming his income, uses it as
capital, turns it against production, and thereby makes it impossible
for him to exercise his right. For the more he increases the amount of
interest to be paid upon it, the more he is compelled to diminish wages.
Now, the more he diminishes wages,--that is, the less he devotes to
the maintenance and repair of the machines,--the more he diminishes
the quantity of labor; and with the quantity of labor the quantity of
product, and with the quantity of product the very source of his income.
This is clearly shown by the following example:--

Take