. But,
suppose he contrive a machine that will easily do the work of fifty men,
with only one man to watch it. This sounds like a great advance in
civilization. The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off the
fifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and now he can
keep half of the produce of his estate, which formerly went to feed
them, all to himself. That is the essential and constant operation of
machinery among us at this moment.

Nay, it is at first answered; no man can in reality keep half the
produce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end keep more than
his own human share of anything; his riches must diffuse themselves at
some time; he must maintain somebody else with them, however he spends
them. That is mainly true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are in
ordinary circumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantities
which would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, for instance,
is candlelight--and I probably burn, for myself alone, as many candles
during the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, or spare the young
ones, of a whole rushlighted country village. Still, it is mainly true,
that it is not by their personal waste that rich people prevent the
lives of the poor. This is the way they do it. Let me go back to my
farmer. He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, screaming, and
occasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned off his
fifty men to starve. Now, at some distance from his own farm, there is
another on which the laborers were working for their bread in the same
way, by tilling the land. The machinist sends over to these, saying--"I
have got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing any more.
I can maintain you in other occupations instead of ploughing that land;
if you rake in its gravel you will find some hard stones--you shall
grind those on mills till they glitter; then, my wife shall wear a
necklace of them. Also, if you turn up the meadows below you will find
some fine white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service for
me: and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for my
carriage--and you shall groom them, and some of you ride behind the
carriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep you much fatter for
doing that than you can keep yourselves by digging."

Well--but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, nor china, nor
pictures, nor footmen, then--but all to be farmers?