Des rapports qui existent entre l'accroissement des propriétés, et l'accroissement des diverses clas

CHAP. 46: On the relationships that exist between the growth of properties and the growth of the diverse classes of the population.

SEVERAL writers, having observed that, in all countries, there is always a certain number of persons who are carried off by misery or by the evils it produces, have thought that everywhere the population rises to the level of its means of existence, and that it even tends to go beyond.

Others have contested the truth of this observation; they have claimed that the growth of the means of existence, far from being behind the growth of the population, was, on the contrary, more rapid and tended to surpass it; they have based this on the fact that the number of affluent families increases unceasingly in all nations that prosper.

It is rare that the general propositions one makes about a numerous population are perfectly exact, because a civilized nation always divides itself into a certain number of classes, and what is true for some is almost never so for others. The average term of life, on which so many calculations have been made, is not, for example, the same in all ranks of society; it is infinitely shorter for the classes that are unceasingly besieged by need than for those who enjoy all the comforts of life.

The same expressions do not even always designate the same things: a family, born in opulence, understands by its means of existence something other than what a family of workers understands who makes use of the same terms. If each of the two believes it has reached the limits of its resources when it can no longer grow without losing its social standing, it will be agreed that, to conserve its rank, each does not need the same sum of wealth.

Thus, one can well admit that in every country the population rises to the level of its means of existence, and that the least provident and least rich classes even often surpass them; but it must be well understood that there is always in a civilized nation a more or less considerable number of families who can arrive there, not only without lacking any of the objects necessary for life, but even while enjoying many things whose need is not even felt in other classes of society.

Between the beggar who needs only bread and rags to exist, and the prince who consumes each day a capital sufficient to support a modest family in comfort and in perpetuity, there exists a great number of intermediate classes; each of these classes has particular habits and needs, and considers as necessary for its conservation all the things from which it would be impossible for it to abstain without descending to an inferior rank.

This manner of judging or feeling is not at all particular to a nation or a race; one observes it among all peoples who have made some progress; this sentiment even seems to strengthen as civilization develops more and more. There is more shame in falling from one's rank in a nation that prospers and enjoys all social guarantees than in a nation that retrogrades toward barbarism.

It follows from this that in general, the growth of the population, which takes place in each of the classes of society, is in proportion to the increase of the means of existence required by its particular habits and needs. If, for example, certain families can conserve their rank or their position only by annually spending a value of 6,000 francs, it will be necessary, for this class of the population to grow by one family, that a sufficient revenue be formed to support it.

It is only by thus taking into consideration the needs, the habits, and even the prejudices of each of the classes of society that one can say, like Montesquieu, that wherever a family can live in comfort, a marriage is formed.

There is almost no kind of industry that can produce somewhat considerable revenues without the help of a more or less large number of persons. To make a land fertile, the cooperation of several workers who devote themselves directly to the labors of agriculture is necessary; it is necessary, moreover, that other workers devote themselves to the fabrication of the instruments that the former need. The proprietor of the most fertile land who was reduced to cultivating it with his own hands, and who had no other instruments than those he had himself fabricated, would draw almost no revenue from it.

A manufacturer could also draw almost no advantage from his machines or his capitals if he had, to put them to work, only his individual forces; he can draw from his properties and his industry a sufficient revenue to support his family only by employing a certain number of workers.

A merchant can likewise conduct his commerce only by means of a certain number of persons who are employed, either in the transport of his merchandise or in acting as clerks.

It results from this that one cannot form, in the elevated classes of society, means of existence for a new family, without creating at the same time means of existence for a more or less considerable number of other families whose needs are less extensive.If, to establish one of his children, a rich cultivator, for example, converts a vast marsh into a farm, it is evident that he creates means of existence for a family of farmers, and for a certain number of workers and servants.

It is equally evident that the manufacturer who founds a new factory, the merchant who founds a new commercial house, create means of existence for the workers or clerks who will be necessary for these new establishments.

Whenever, therefore, new means of existence are formed within a nation, the classes of the population who live by the labor of their hands grow in a much more rapid manner than those who live from the revenues of their lands or their capitals; the establishment of a new manufactory, which will increase the class of manufacturers by only one family, will perhaps increase by twenty or thirty families the class that furnishes it with workers or servants.

The more the families who live from the revenues of their lands, their capitals, or the exercise of a great industry, take on habits of comfort and luxury, the less they can multiply; the less, consequently, they are numerous, compared to the families who belong to the working class. England, for example, is the country in which one finds the most great fortunes, but also there is none in which the class of workers or servants is so numerous, compared to that of the masters. The latter cannot grow by a single one, unless the former increases by twenty or thirty, more or less.

When an industrial establishment is formed, the share of revenue it gives to all the men to whom it procures labor is, in general, more considerable than the share that goes to the capitalist or to the industrial entrepreneur. The proprietor of the best-cultivated land barely draws a quarter of the gross products it yields; the other three-quarters are consumed by the persons employed directly or indirectly in the cultivation. Likewise, the sums paid by a manufacturer to his workers or his clerks generally far exceed the profits he draws from his manufactories, and which he can devote to his own consumptions.

The growth of properties, whatever their nature, therefore exercises on the classes that live by the labor of their hands a more extensive influence than that which it exercises on the classes that live from the revenues of their lands or their capitals; it furnishes them a greater sum of the means of existence, and acts, consequently, with more force on their multiplication.

A person's enjoyments cannot grow in the same proportions as his fortune; the simplest and most natural ones, those that pertain to moral affections, are as vivid and as durable in a man without ambition, who enjoys a mediocre fortune, as in one who enjoys immense riches; it is the same for those that result from a good constitution, good health, the possession of certain talents, the exercise of certain faculties; the sum of well-being that the growth of properties produces in a prospering nation for the laboring classes therefore exceeds the sum that results from it for the other classes of society.

If the classes of the population who live by the labor of their hands multiply more rapidly than the others, as a result of the growth of properties, and if they draw more considerable advantages from it, they suffer from greater evils, and disappear more rapidly, when the infringements made on properties push a country toward its decadence.

Whenever excessive taxes take from the inhabitants of a country the most considerable part of their revenues, or when properties are threatened, either by internal troubles, or by the invasion of an enemy army, a great distress manifests itself in all the classes of the population who have only the products of their daily labor to live on; this fact has been ascertained by so many experiences that one cannot doubt it with any appearance of reason.

The causes of this phenomenon are easy to perceive. The affluent classes of society can make certain retrenchments on their consumptions, or impose certain privations on themselves, without lacking any of the things indispensable to life. It is not the same for the classes that are habitually reduced to the absolute necessary; the event that imposes on the former only a simple privation of enjoyment, condemns the latter to excessive misery, and dooms them to destruction.

There is, for the classes that live only from the products of their labor, a cause of misery that does not exist for the classes that live from the revenues of their lands or their capitals. Individual prudence exercises a very great influence on the fate of families who draw their means of existence from their properties. As properties are not common, each has the faculty of abstaining from marriage, when he believes he does not have the means to raise a family, and thus to conserve the means to live. If, in this class, imprudent marriages are formed, these marriages have almost no influence outside the families to which they have given birth. The children who are born from them, however numerous they may be, do not go and despoil their neighbors of a part of their properties.

The classes that live by the labor of their hands are in a more unfortunate position. Their wealth is composed of the labor that is to be executed in society, or to put it better, of the wages that can be granted annually to this labor. These wages are more or less high, according to whether the number of persons among whom they must be distributed is more or less large. It is evident that the more workers there are to execute a determined work, the lower the wages are; competition produces on labor the same effects that it produces on any other thing. The most laborious classes can enjoy some comfort only when there is in society less labor offered than labor demanded.

But individual prudence, in the marriages of persons who live only on wages, has little influence on the particular destiny of each family. A marriage that gives birth to numerous children condemns to misery the families formed with the most prudence; these children, if they can live, will come, in effect, into competition with all the others to take part in the labor, and to dispute their subsistence with them. What advantage could a worker who married only in the prime of life, and who had only two or three children, assure to his own over the others? The sharing of labor produces, relative to the working classes, the effect that the sharing of properties in equal portions, operated at each generation, would produce relative to the capitalists and possessors of lands. It brings down to the same level all the persons who belong to the same class.

It follows from this that these classes of persons always touch the limits of their means of existence, and that, in society, there is none that has more to suffer from the infringements made on the diverse species of properties. One is mistaken, therefore, when one imagines that the great possessors of lands, the merchants, the manufacturers, are more interested in the conservation of public order than the other classes of the population. An event that imposes on them, for a short time, some slight privations, is enough to plunge into the most profound distress thousands of families of workers, and to condemn their children to destruction.

In saying that the classes of society who live on wages are more interested than the others in the conservation of properties, and in the existence of a good government, I do not mean to affirm that, in all circumstances, they perfectly understand their interests; they would need for that a knowledge that it is rarely possible for them to acquire.

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