eater than those of
medieval kings. And if the children of those who perished by thousands
while excavating the railway cuttings and tunnels were to assemble one
day, crowding in their rags and hunger, to demand bread from the
shareholders, they would be met with bayonets and grapeshot, to disperse
them and safeguard "vested interests."

In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering
life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no
mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of
what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant
and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain
this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to
the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they
give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage.
If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of
surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter
to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by
the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is
always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system
of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work--though not
always even that--only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds
of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the
machine.

We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod
of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We
called those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the
relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the
name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he
will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private
property, and he must accept, or die of hunger.

The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a
wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the
community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator.
Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial
crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the
streets.

The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which
they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied
classes of other na