CHAP. 12: II. Obstacles that still oppose liberty in the industrial regime, or inevitable limits that it appears to encounter in the nature of things.

§ 1. However favorable industry may be to liberty, when the universality of men should live thus by means exempt from violence, there would be in this way of life limits to the liberty of the human race, because there are very probably limits to the progress of which the human species is susceptible; and moreover, all men would not be equally free therein, because it is not possible that they should all give the same degree of development and rectitude to their faculties.

We must, if we wish to avoid illusions and disappointments, impress one thing well upon our minds: it is that there is no social state where everyone can enjoy the same sum of liberty, because there is none where everyone can possess to an equal degree that which makes men free, to wit: industry, ease, enlightenment, good private and social habits.

§ 2. Doubtless one would not see in the industrial regime inequalities comparable to those that develop in the violent systems I have previously described. One would not see there above all, to the same degree, the inequality of fortunes, which brings so many others in its train. The revolting differences that are produced in this regard, in domination, by the continual levying of enormous taxes; the distribution of the product of these taxes to favored classes; the ruinous contracts made at the expense of the public with lenders, tax farmers, suppliers; the premiums, privileges, monopolies granted to certain classes of producers to the detriment of others; the obstacles of every kind, placed on the laborious activity of the least fortunate classes; the laws, finally, destined to violently retain in a few hands the fortunes that are accumulated there by all these brigandages; the crying inequalities of wealth, I say, that all these excesses of domination engender, would not exist in industry. There would surely not be from the profits of the most miserable worker to those of the most opulent entrepreneur the same distance as, in certain dominations, from the profits of the chief of the dominators to those of the last of his instruments, and, with all the more reason, of the last of his victims; the same distance, for example, as from the profits of a certain king of Europe to those of the last foot soldier of his army, or of the poorest artisan of his kingdom[^313] .

§ 3. However, whether a people turns its faculties toward the exercise of the violent arts, or whether it applies them to the culture of the peaceful arts, there will be established among its members, there is no doubt, very great inequalities.

The effect of the industrial regime is to destroy artificial inequalities; but it is to better bring out the natural inequalities. Now these inequalities, by their sole influence, and without violence contributing to it in any way, will have the virtue of giving birth to many others, and of thus producing great differences in the degree of liberty that each can enjoy.

Let men associate on the principle of the most perfect equality; let them, establishing themselves together in an unoccupied country, divide its territory equally among themselves; let the principles of their association leave to each the same latitude for labor; let them all have the full disposition of their fortune; let, in the transmission that will be made of it to their successors, it be divided with the most perfect equity; let there exist between them, in a word, no other differences than those that cannot be effaced, those that nature has placed between their organs, and this sole inequality will suffice to produce them in all the rest, in wealth, in enlightenment, in morality, in liberty.

I can well suppose, strictly speaking, that these men will have, in beginning, the same material resources; but I cannot admit that they will all be equally capable of drawing profit from them. They will not have the same degree of activity and intelligence, the same spirit of order and economy; their fortune will therefore soon begin to become unequal. They will not have the same number of children; it may happen that the least laborious and least well-off have the most numerous families: this will be a new cause of inequality. These inequalities, little noticeable in a first generation, will be much more so in a second, a third. Soon there will exist men who, no longer having a sufficient fund to occupy themselves and procure the means to live, will be obliged to hire out their services. The causes that will have given birth to this class of workers will naturally tend to increase it; the workers, in multiplying, will necessarily lower the price of labor. However, although their resources diminish, they will continue to proliferate; for one of the inseparable misfortunes of their condition will be to lack the prudence and the virtue they would need to use with circumspection the pleasures of marriage, not to throw too many workers onto the market, and not to work themselves to make themselves more and more unhappy. Finally, it is probable that they will multiply enough for the last to arrive to have difficulty subsisting, and for a certain number of them to habitually perish from misery.

[^312]: See above, book III, chap. 11, § 7. [^313]: See above, book III, chap. 9.This will doubtless happen later in the social state that I am pleased to suppose than in a less happy mode of existence; but, in the happiest mode of existence, this will always end up happening. The absence of all illegitimate constraint, the certainty of reaping the fruit of one’s labor will probably give to production, in the industrial regime, a very keen impulse, which will multiply resources as the population increases; but it will be much to be feared that the population will grow even more rapidly than the resources; a much greater number of men will be seen to prosper: but there will be some in the end whose faculties will lack employment; and however much one may have done, in the beginning, to make an equal division of the territory and other resources, and to leave to each the free and full disposition of his faculties, the sole difference of these faculties will bring about with time, and by an inevitable chain of events, a state where society will be composed of a small number of very rich people, a very large number who will be less so, and a still larger number who will be comparatively to be pitied, and among whom there may even be found some who are very miserable, absolutely speaking.

Not only will the social state I have supposed not prevent misery from being born, but it would be in vain that by assisting it one would flatter oneself with extirpating it. All the sacrifices that could be made for that, while at first procuring the relief of some particular misfortunes, would have for their permanent result to extend the evil that one wished to efface. Wherever regular modes of assistance have been established, wherever the poor have been able to count on certain aid, the number of the poor has been seen to grow; this has never failed to happen [^314] . One knows what a populace of beggars monastic charity is skilled at making hatch around convents. The Poor Laws raised, in the space of one hundred and fifteen years, the destitute population of England from a tenth to a fifth of its total population. The funds allocated to the maintenance of this population, in 1815, were to those that had been consecrated to the same object, in 1776, as 81 is to 17. The contributions for the poor have been seen to quadruple in the space of forty years, and to double in that of twenty [^315] . The institution of hospitals has produced analogous effects in France: the administration of the hospitals of Paris, for example, had to assist, in 1822, nearly seven thousand more indigents than it had assisted in 1786 [^316] . There are innumerable proofs of this tendency of systematic aid to multiply the number of the unfortunate.

One thing alone could reduce it: it would be for the procreators of this misery to know how to contain the passion that pushes them to propagate it; it would be for the poor to be more capable of regulating the inclination that leads man to reproduce himself [^317] . Now, I have already said that one of their misfortunes is to be even less capable of this prudence than the classes who would have less need of it. However, if there is a state where they must feel its necessity, it will surely be that of which I speak, and at which I suppose we have arrived. In this state, in effect, the indigent, like other men, will be able to count, to provide for his needs, only on the legitimate exercise of his forces. He will be subjected to no unjust rigor; but neither will he enjoy any privilege; the other classes will not be obliged to contribute to support him; no one will be permitted to speculate on public charity; there will be aid only for undeserved misfortunes; I even suppose that for these it will be but an object of hope, as Malthus judiciously demands: every man will be certain to suffer the penalty of his laziness or his improvidence..... Well! this certainty will not prevent there being lazy, improvident men, and consequently unhappy men, or at the very least men who are very unequally happy.

§ 4. There is one of the most essential truths that can be stated about man and society. This truth may seem sad; but it is unfortunately incontestable, and one could not disregard it without great dangers. When Rousseau presents, in an absolute manner, social inequalities, and, for example, inequalities of fortune, as a thing of pure convention, as the effect of a privilege granted to some to the detriment of others [^318] , he gives a false idea of things; he advances an absurd and anarchic proposition. It is quite possible, doubtless, that the inequality of fortunes is the effect of violence; it is even only too ordinary that it should be so, and if I were asked to explain the differences that exist in this regard in the world, I would surely be obliged to say that a multitude of private iniquities and especially of public brigandages have powerfully contributed to their birth. But if it is true that the inequality of fortunes can be the effect of violence, it is not true that it can only be the effect of violence; it is certain, on the contrary, that it results, to a high degree, from the nature of things, and that it would be necessary to commit horrible violences to prevent it from establishing itself, to efface it when it is established, and, if one succeeded for a moment in effacing it, to prevent it from reproducing itself.

§ 5. If one cannot avoid men being unequally rich, one can no more avoid their being unequally industrious, enlightened, moral. It is first the difference of industry, of activity, of good conduct that introduces inequality into fortunes [^319] . Then, the inequality of fortune and well-being is the cause that all men cannot possess the same degree of instruction, capacity, virtue. There is a continual action of each of these causes on all the others; inequalities of every kind must thus necessarily coexist; and just as fortunes, according to the expression of an economist [^320] , descend, by imperceptible gradations, from the greatest, which is unique, to the smallest, which are the most multiplied, so too must knowledge, skill, virtue go on decreasing from the most skillful, the most learned, the most virtuous men, who are unique each in his kind, down to the least virtuous, the least learned, and the least skillful, who are everywhere the most numerous.

§ 6. It must be added that these inequalities, once established, tend naturally to perpetuate themselves; that is to say, that misery, ignorance, and vice are very strong reasons for remaining poor, ignorant, and vicious, and that it is all the more difficult to attain a certain degree of instruction, morality, and well-being, as one takes one's flight from lower down to rise to that state.

Is it a question, for example, of acquiring wealth? The less one has, the more difficult the thing is. One can begin to get rich only when it becomes possible to economize; and how can one think of making savings, when one does not even have enough to satisfy primary needs? In the most prosperous societies, there is always a certain number of men whose faculties absolutely lack employment. There are many others who, by working to excess, barely earn enough to live. Even those whose profits begin to rise above ordinary needs have difficulty deciding to make savings; they regard it as impossible to rise to a better condition; they rarely have enough strength of mind and will to dare to conceive the thought and pursue the resolution of attaining a certain ease. What difficulties for them, in effect, in such an enterprise! How many disadvantages in their situation! The slightest accident can overturn the edifice of their small fortune, and make them lose in an instant the fruit of several years of fatigues and privations. A progress in industry, the introduction of a machine, the abandonment of a fashion, will suddenly render their arms useless and leave them for a more or less long time without work.

Add that the worker, having a less extensive market than the entrepreneur, always has some disadvantage in the transactions he makes with him. The worker works only for the entrepreneur, whereas the entrepreneur works for the public. A watchmaking worker, for example, can offer his services only to watchmakers, whereas the watchmaker can sell his watches to everyone. One feels how much better the position of the latter is. It is surely easier for watchmakers to agree to reduce the wages of their workers than for the public to concert to lower the price of watches.

Add further that, at the time when his market is more restricted, his necessities are more urgent, and that this gives the entrepreneur a new means of laying down the law to him.

“The master and the worker,” observes M. Say, “have an equal need of one another, since the one can make no profit without the help of the other; but the master’s need is less immediate, less pressing. There are few masters who could not live for several months, even several years, without having a single worker work; whereas there are few workers who could, without being reduced to the last extremities, go several weeks without work. It is very difficult for this difference of position not to influence the regulation of wages[^321] .”

Does the worker become, in his turn, the head of an enterprise? With an industrial fund inferior to his, the possessor of a large material capital will have considerable advantages over him. By itself, doubtless, such a capital can do nothing; but it adds much to the powers of the industrious man who possesses it. It is known that the more wealth a man has, the easier it is for him to amass more. The rich entrepreneur can work on a larger scale, and introduce a better division into his labors; it is easier for him to make the advances required by the use of expeditious and economical means of execution; he can buy more cheaply, because he has the facility of paying in cash; the resources he has before him permit him to profit from the good opportunities that present themselves, and to make his procurements at the right time. He has, finally, a thousand means of reducing his costs of production that the small entrepreneur lacks, and which can put the latter in the impossibility of sustaining his competition.

In truth, small entrepreneurs could find in the faculty of associating and uniting their forces a means of diminishing the disadvantage of their position; but, besides the fact that it is rarely easy to merge several small enterprises into one large one, those in which there would be unity of view, of interest, and of will, would still have a great advantage over those where different interests could introduce divergent views and wills.

Is it a question of acquiring instruction? The man of the lowest ranks of society is not in a less disadvantageous situation. Everything contributes to preventing the development of his faculties: the nature of his relations, the simplicity of his needs, the coarseness and uniformity of his labors, the little leisure they leave him, the weakness of the resources they procure for him. Also, whatever difficulty he has in getting rich, he has still more in becoming enlightened. Uniquely occupied with the care of increasing his means of existence, he makes little progress, even when he has attained a certain well-being, except in the ideas relative to his art; he remains a stranger to other knowledge; he acquires few general ideas, and when he has become rich, a great deal of time still passes before he has brought his mind to the level of his fortune.

If it is so difficult, starting from the lowest ranks of society, to attain wealth and enlightenment, it is no less difficult to rise to a high degree of morality. Good private and social habits are the fruit of a certain well-being that the poor man does not enjoy, and of a certain education that he is hardly in a position to receive. The privations he endures make his appetites more vehement, and his reason, still uncultivated, warns him less of the danger there is in satisfying them to excess: it is therefore more difficult for him to conduct himself well with regard to himself. On the other hand, he is more embittered by the difficulty of living; all his malevolent passions are more violently excited, and his reason is less strong to contain them: it is therefore more difficult for him to conduct himself well with regard to others. In his private morals, he is more subject to intemperance, to drunkenness, to incontinence; in his relations with other individuals, he is more inclined to theft, to murder, to insult; in his relations with society, he is more disposed to riots, to rebellions, to pillage. He is therefore, in all respects, more drawn to evil, and, in all respects also, reflection warns him less of the danger there is in doing evil; a double reason for him to succumb more easily to temptations and to have more difficulty in acquiring good moral habits.

§ 7. Thus, in the social state most exempt from violences, it would be very difficult for inequalities not to be established in conditions; and when these inequalities are once established, it is still more difficult for them to be effaced; one attains from an inferior condition to a somewhat elevated state only with extreme pains, and families fallen into a certain debasement are exposed to remaining there for the sole reason that they find themselves there. I do not say that it is impossible to rise from this state; but this, I say, is very difficult, and the number of men who emerge from it is always small in comparison with those who remain in it. Besides, if there are continually families that are rising, there are continually some that are declining; if a constant movement of ascent is operating, a no less constant movement of decline is taking place; while labor and good morals draw some from abjection, vice and idleness make others fall into it; the same degrees are no longer occupied by the same persons, but there are always gradations, and society continues to present the spectacle of an aggregation of individuals very unequally endowed with fortune, capacity, morals, instruction, with all that gives influence.

All these inequalities are therefore, to a certain degree, things essential to our nature; they are a law of the human species; they are as necessary in the moral order as the inequalities of the soil in the physical order; it is no more strange to see unequal men in society than unequal trees in a forest; or else to see men different in fortune, knowledge, morality, than men different in face, height, proportions of the body, faculties of the soul.

In a word, although the industrial regime tends to render social inequalities infinitely less perceptible, the effect of this regime is not so much to make inequality disappear from among men as to classify them otherwise. It tends to make the most industrious, the most active, the wisest, the most honest, also the happiest, the richest, the freest, and not to make them all equally happy, equally rich, equally free, because that is not possible [^322] .

§ 8. Not only is that not possible, but that is not desirable. One might wish that men were better classified, but not that they were confounded. It is surely very afflicting that stupidity, violence, hypocrisy, still have among us so many means of leading to fortune and consideration; but not that there should be degrees in consideration and fortune. The superiorities that are due only to a more moral and more enlightened use of our natural faculties, far from being an evil, are a true good; they are the source of all that is done that is great and useful; it is in the greater prosperity that accompanies a greater effort that lies the principle of our development; make all conditions alike, and no one will be interested in doing better than another; reduce everything to equality, and you will have reduced everything to inaction; you will have destroyed every principle of activity, of honesty, of virtue.

Finally, the industrial regime is so far from excluding social inequalities that it implies, on the contrary, their existence, and that any development of industry would, it seems, be impossible if men were all equally happy. The action of industry embraces, as political economy teaches, three distinct orders of labors: the study of the laws of nature, the application of these laws to determined objects, the execution of the works conceived. Industrial society therefore needs three distinct classes of persons: scientists, entrepreneurs, workers. Now, make all conditions equal, suppose for an instant that everyone enjoys the same fortune and the same education, and the last of these classes will be wanting; everyone will naturally want to do the work of the scientist or the entrepreneur; no one will want to lower himself to the role of laborer; or else each will be obliged to fulfill the functions of scientist, entrepreneur, and worker, which will render all progress impossible.

Doubtless the advantage of industry would not suffice to legitimize the violent division of society into entrepreneurs and workers, into rich and poor; but take care that this is not what I am saying either: what I am saying is that this division, which operates of its own accord, which would operate whatever one did to prevent it, appears necessary for industry to be able to easily perform all its functions; and I add that when it is not the work of violence, when it proceeds solely from the difference of activity, of capacity, of good conduct, it has nothing in it that is not in conformity with justice and favorable to the good of individuals and of society.

[^314]: See the works of Malthus, Townsend, etc. [^315]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 450. [^316]: Recherches statistiques sur la ville de Paris, by M. le comte de Chabrol, t. I. [^317]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 450. [^318]: Discours sur l'inégalité des conditions. [^319]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 450. [^320]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 450. [^321]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 450. [^322]: See above, book III, chap. 11.It must not be believed that the equal division of wealth among all the inhabitants, in a country like France, for example, would appreciably improve the lot of the lower classes. The property of the latter, by the spoliation of the rich, would be scarcely increased: it has been calculated that we would each have from two hundred to two hundred and fifty francs to spend per year. And even for that, it would be necessary for the industrial establishments currently producing to continue to subsist, and it is not very clear how that would be possible; for, with an income of two hundred and fifty francs, what would be the products that each could consume, and what would become of the establishments that produce all those we could no longer afford? Who could buy, for example, clothes that are a little refined, books, passable furniture? and what would become of the capital invested in the enterprises destined to produce these objects and a multitude of others? The national capital would thus be diminished by the value of all the establishments that produce the things that could no longer be consumed, and consequently the income of each would fall far below the rate at which we first fixed it. Then, what stimulus would remain in the midst of a population where each would have the same income, whatever his conduct might be besides? and what effort could one obtain from men whose position, whatever efforts they made, would be no better than that of the last citizens? Visibly, the project of improving the lot of the great number, by making conditions equal, would be an insane enterprise, a pure dementia.

Besides, the question here is not precisely to know if the division of the population into several classes is a useful thing; what I wanted above all to establish is that it is inevitable; that, in industry, men are classified otherwise than under the empire of force, but that there are always gradations between them; that the inequalities are less perceptible, but that they are always very real, and that men are still very unequally rich, instructed, enlightened, virtuous, etc.

§ 9. They are therefore very unequally free, the conclusion is forced. There is a very great number of things, impossible for men of the inferior conditions, which are easy for men of higher and better-raised classes. The former are not free to satisfy as many needs as the latter, to procure for themselves as many enjoyments. There is a multitude of sentiments that they are not susceptible of experiencing, of conceptions that their mind cannot attain, of labors and enterprises of common interest to which they are obliged to remain strangers. And in the state that I suppose, it is not the violence of institutions that deprives them of all these liberties, it is their own impotence; they are all that they can be; they do all that they can do; were institutions to extend their rights indefinitely, they would take nothing from their weakness, they would add nothing to their capacity. They are less free, because it is not possible for them to exercise as extensive an action; they are less free also because they are not capable of acting in as well-understood a manner: their vices make them more slaves of themselves; malevolent inclinations make them more slaves of others, expose them to more private vengeances or public punishments. In a word, as much difference as there is between the wealth, the enlightenment, the capacity, the morality of the classes and of the individuals, so much is there precisely between their liberty.

I only repeat that in the industrial regime these differences must be much less perceptible than in the social states where they are favored by violent institutions. It is not doubtful, in effect, that a regime that leaves things to their natural course, that protects all men equally in the inoffensive use of their forces, that represses only excesses, that proscribes all monopolies, all privileges, that defends the weak against the collusion of the powerful, as well as the powerful against the conspiracies of the weak; that, finally, opposes no obstacle to the progress and diffusion of wealth and enlightenment; it is not doubtful, I say, that such a regime must cause enlightenment, wealth, good private and public habits to spread with less inequality, and that consequently the diverse classes of men should be less unequally free. There is less disproportion between the lowest and the highest classes: the former are less miserable, the latter have less colossal fortunes. At the same time the intermediate ranks contain a much more considerable number of persons who are well-off, instructed, moral, and consequently free. There is this, finally, that everyone is in his place: no obstacle thwarts in his movement of ascent he who has the means to rise; no artificial support retains in a superior condition he who is not in a state to maintain himself there; and while the species can attain all the liberty of which it is susceptible, each man enjoys, with regard to the condition in which he was born, all that of which he is worthy.

§ 10. I must not finish without saying that I have been addressed, from several sides, with very lively, very eloquent, very philanthropic claims against these conclusions.

On the one hand, it is agreed to recognize with me that there must still remain, in the final social state I have just described, great inequalities; but it is added that these inequalities are due to the very vices of this system, to the principle of universal competition, to the isolation of labors, to the parcelling of industry, etc. On the other hand, the very truth of the results I state is denied; it is not wished to agree that, in the industrial regime, such as I describe it, there should still remain between men inequalities as perceptible as I claim.

“You prove for the best,” one of these honorable contradictors writes to me, “that the peoples who have the most forces, and who dispose best of their forces, are those who honor labor, who create the most wealth, who acquire the most instruction, who most perfect their moral habits. But, in the end, you avow that the classification into entrepreneurs and workers, a classification always held to be indefectible, would bring a good number of the inconveniences of the classification into masters and slaves, into privileged and non-privileged, into people with places and people without places. In effect, the industrial regime could well end only by substituting for military, nobiliary, administrative feudality, a pure mercantile feudality [^323] . To be sure, if the lot of the workers of Manchester, London, or Rouen is, absolutely speaking, less intolerable than that of the helots of Sparta, of the slaves of the Romans, of those of the Turks or of our colonists, our day-laborers or piece-workers, our domestics, always so numerous, and for whom you do not indicate the means of doing without, are, relatively, almost as unhappy, when, with less subjection doubtless, they have more instruction and elevation of soul. Imagination, illusion, count for much, you know, in matters of human happiness and unhappiness. Now, these faculties, which are scarcely awakened in the savage and in the slave, are excited, in our perfected societies, by a multitude of causes, by reading, by spectacles, by our luxury, by our morals. In short, one sees more industrious men than slaves or savages driven by despair to kill themselves.”

The person who has done me the honor of addressing these remarks to me thinks that it would be possible and even easy to remedy these evils by some changes, quite simple according to him, in the social mechanism. I avow that I have but a very weak faith in the efficacy of the means that are indicated to me. However, as I do not wish to condemn what I am not assured of understanding well, I refer the reader whom this debate might interest to the very work that this person addresses to me; it is entitled: des Vices de nos procédés industriels, ou Aperçus démontrant l'urgence d'introduire le procédé sociétaire [^324] . This work is by M. J. Muiron, the very author of the letter from which I have just cited a fragment, and which was inspired by the most honorable sentiments.

On the other hand, without seeking to efface social inequalities by artifices of organization, it is denied, quite simply, that, in the industrial regime, these inequalities would remain as perceptible, and would be as durable as I think. It is not believed that there must always be at the bottom of society a certain mass of unhappy people. Here, as everywhere else, it is observed, the most severe reason finds itself in accord with the most expansive benevolence. It is very possible that all men, in the industrial life, could not become equally happy, equally rich, equally free; but it is very permissible to believe that the least happy would yet be in a condition very superior to that of the classes we now call miserable. It is in the nature of man to improve everything, not only in himself, but around him. He begins by fixing the good where he is, then he extends it here and there until everything feels its effect. We see, on all sides, labor better directed, sound doctrines more widespread, wealth more considerable and better distributed. Civilization does not concentrate its benefits on a single class, it extends them to all; there is no kind of improvement whose effects are not felt even in the last ranks of society, etc. [^325] .

Let us try to reach an understanding. I am surely not saying that it is impossible for the lot of the lower classes to become better, that the hope of seeing them emerge from their state implies a contradiction with the nature of things, that the extinction of beggary is an insoluble problem, that the poor man is chained by bonds of iron to his sad situation, that he is condemned to eternal pains, to an indestructible misery. I would regard such a judgment not only as an error, but almost as a crime. There are only dominators without conscience and without pity who can preach a certain resignation to the miserable, and, for example, exhort them to regard their misery as a definitive state, as a state in which the author of things has willed that they be born and that they die, they and all their posterity, until the end of time. Also, thank God, I have said or thought nothing of the sort.

There are for the most unhappy classes natural and legitimate means of rising to a better state. And it must be so; for how would one explain, without that, the elevation of so many families who have grown rich without despoiling anyone? These means are known: it is labor, it is foresight, it is a constant practice of economy; it would be above all the adoption, relative to marriage, of a more sensible morality; it would be a severe attention on the part of working-class families not to multiply too much the number of workers; consequently, the rise in the price of labor; consequently of this rise, the perfection of machines; consequently of this perfection, the extension of a multitude of labors; consequently of this extension, a more considerable demand for work, higher wages, the application of man's forces to less repellent and less painful labors, etc. I could enumerate a whole series of means proper to elevate the unhappy classes, and to gradually extinguish beggary.

But, whether these means have yet been but very imperfectly analyzed, or whether it were very difficult, even if one wished, to make knowledge of them descend into the last classes of society, or whether it were more difficult still to determine these classes to put them into practice, it is certain that the destruction of misery is the least easy thing in the world; and the proof is that, in the midst of the progress of social wealth, the number of the miserable has prodigiously increased. One knows the extension that poverty has taken in Ireland, in England, and even, although to a lesser degree, in our country. There are more rich people, doubtless; but there are above all more poor people, and the needy population has followed an infinitely more rapid progression than the well-off population. One has not forgotten this fact, published not long ago, that in the number of persons who die annually in Paris, there are more than four-fifths who do not leave enough to pay for their funerals, and who are buried at the expense of the city or of the hospitals [^326] . An intelligent traveler, who recently visited the manufactory of Lyon, observes that, although production there has prodigiously increased, the working population is neither happier nor richer than before.

“These precious men,” he says, speaking of the silk workers, “are almost all dressed in rags. Crowded into disgusting dwellings, they sleep pell-mell on pallets, and subsist only on a paltry nourishment [^327] .”

One can object to me, it is true, that all the misery that exists today has developed under the influence of an order of things very different from that which I have described in my last chapter. I myself have recognized elsewhere [^328] , that the currently existing misery has had its principal causes in the way things began, in the unequal division that was first made of wealth, in the original expropriation of the most numerous classes of society, in the state of servitude in which they have been retained for centuries and in which they still find themselves in many countries, in the taxes with which they are crushed elsewhere, in the obstacles of every kind placed on the progress of their ease and their instruction, in the laws that prevent them from drawing the best possible advantage from their labor, in those that favor to their detriment masters to whom their position already gives so much advantage over them, in religious precepts that banish all prudence from marriage, in political measures that provoke them to population, in charitable institutions that dispense them from all foresight, in gambling houses, lotteries and other corrupting establishments that divert them from saving, and excite them directly to debauchery and dissipation, in systems of penalty and correctional regimes that are fit only to finish corrupting them, in a whole ensemble of things that one would say is combined to keep them in a permanent state of ignorance, misery, and degradation.....

But the state of these classes is not due only to the wrongs that the superior part of society may have had toward them; it also has its root in the vices that are proper to them, in their apathy, their improvidence, their lack of economy, in their ignorance of the causes that make the price of labor rise or fall, in the abuse that their coarseness leads them to make of marriage, in the ever-growing number of competitors that they raise up for themselves, and who cause wages to fall as the progress of industry and the ever-greater demand for labor would naturally tend to raise them. I am persuaded that their distress is for the least as much their own work as that of the classes one can accuse of having oppressed them; and when society had originally established itself on more equitable bases, when the strong had abstained toward the weak from all spirit of domination, I do not doubt that there would have developed at the bottom of society a more or less numerous class of the miserable.

[^323]: Letter from M. J. Muiron. [^324]: By M. J. Muiron, 1 vol. in-8, Paris, Bossange, 1828. [^325]: Letter from M. Guizot. [^326]: Recherches statistiques sur la ville de Paris, by M. le comte de Chabrol, t. I. [^327]: Voyage dans le midi de la France, by M. A. J. D. [^328]: See above, book III, chap. 9.Moreover, whatever the causes that have produced this whole needy population, it is now a fact that it exists, and the question is not to know if the industrial regime could prevent it from being born, but if it would manage, under this regime, to reach a good condition; the question is to know if, in an order of things where nothing would favor its laziness, and where nothing either would chain or discourage its activity, it would be in its power to pull itself out of the sad state in which it finds itself. I have said that theory indicates means for that; but I have added, and I repeat, that these means are, in application, of an extreme difficulty. We have seen, in the course of this chapter, how much, with the best will, and by the sole force of things, the men placed at the last degree of the social scale must have trouble in rising to a certain state of ease and instruction. One thing above all contributes to turning them away from the efforts that such an attempt requires, it is the idea that these efforts would be vain; and it is certain that many causes can contribute to rendering them useless. What good would it do, for example, for a family of workers who wished to pull themselves out of misery to use marriage only with the greatest circumspection, if, alongside it, a multitude of miserable people continued to populate without measure, and in this way constantly kept labor at a vile price? What good would it even do for all the poor of a country to put the same wisdom into their conduct, if the same were not done in the surrounding countries? Have we not seen, in these recent years, the working classes of certain English cities threatened with losing all the fruit of their good habits by the appearance of those bands of famished poor that Ireland threw into their midst, and who came to offer their labor for almost nothing? In a situation as discouraging as that in which the men of the last classes find themselves, it is only the most happily endowed individuals who can have enough energy to conceive the thought of attaining a certain well-being. The rest often lose in misery even the desire to escape it. Have we not seen serfs regard liberty as onerous, and ask as a favor that they be kept in servitude? Does it not happen every day that workers refuse a supplement of salary, on the condition of doing a little more work? Is it very rare to see them, even when their task is of the most moderate, work a little less as soon as they can earn a little more? It must not be believed that emulation, that activity, that the desire to conquer an honest ease by labor, are sentiments that it is so easy to make arise in the last ranks of society [^329] .

Conclusion:

A state of perfect equality between men is an impossible situation.

A state where one would see grow at once the number of opulent families, that of well-off families, and especially that of miserable families, is a situation not only possible, but real: it is the state in which we find ourselves.

A state where misery would be contained, where the needy population would grow less, where well-being would spread more, is a realizable situation, but not yet realized: it is the state toward which we must tend, it is that which can be reached under the industrial regime, in proportion as a better direction is given to the exercise of one's forces, in proportion above all as the working classes are better instructed in the causes that can make them descend or rise.

Finally, a state where, without men being equal, one would no longer see any miserable people at all, is a situation that offers nothing absolutely impossible, nothing contradictory with the nature of things, but which it appears singularly difficult to attain, and which the most philanthropic publicist can perceive, when he does not seek to deceive himself, only in the most remote future.

END OF VOLUME ONE.

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Volume II

Notes

[^314]: Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Pop., books 3 and 4. [^315]: V., in the Rev. brit., issue of Dec. 1826, a table relating to the maintenance of the poor, published by order of parliament. [^316]: Moral and administrative accounts of the hospices and hospitals of Paris for 1822, pp. 24 and 25, and table B. [^317]: Malthus, book 4, ch. 3. [^318]: "I conceive," he says, "of two kinds of inequality in the human species: one, which I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and which consists in the difference of age, health...; the other, which may be called moral or political, because it depends on a kind of convention... This latter consists in the different privileges which some enjoy to the prejudice of others, such as being richer, etc." (Disc. on Inequality.) [^319]: And that is why, to say it in passing, in the social state I am describing, wealth is a title to esteem. That among a people devoted to brigandage, men should be considered for the riches they possess, ought doubtless to be shocking; but it should not be the same where wealth can be acquired only through a useful and generous industry. Here, wealth honors him who possesses it, and poverty brings disgrace upon him whom it strikes; and it is with reason that one esteems a man because he is rich, and despises another because he is a wretch. There is reason to presume, in effect, that the rich man possesses the commendable qualities that, in industry, are necessary to attain wealth, or at the very least that he belongs to a family that possessed these qualities; whereas the sight of a miserable person justly gives rise to the contrary suppositions. Thus, I would have some difficulty approving the reproach made against the Americans for speaking with a sort of disdain of men without fortune. It is certain that there is something shameful in lacking the means of existence in countries where labor is subject to no constraint and where its fruits are fully assured. The indigent man or his family may there be justly suspected of incapacity, laziness, or improvidence. [^320]: M. Say, Trait. d'écon. polit., vol. II, p. 11, fourth ed. [^321]: Traité d'écon. polit., vol. II, p. 113, fourth ed.—It sometimes happens that workers seek to balance the disadvantage of their situation by forming coalitions to obtain better wages. These enterprises, which are criminal when they employ violence to make them succeed, are harmful to them even when they are innocent, if their labor is at the price to which competition can naturally bring it. The workers are justified in complaining whenever they cannot dispose of their activity without constraint, hire out their services to the highest bidder, and seek the best condition. But, from the moment that nothing hinders the use of their forces, and their labor is at the price to which a free market can bring it, there are only two legitimate means left for them to raise the price of labor: to see that it is less offered, or that it is more demanded. The latter of these means is hardly at their disposal; but they have complete disposal of the other: if they cannot increase the demand for work, they can at least diminish the number of workers; as it is they who supply their place, it is always up to them to prevent their multiplication. There is no situation where it is not important for them to use this resource. One might well leave them complete freedom for labor, the demand for work might well grow; if, as they earned more, they always created a greater number of workers, it is clear that their situation could not become better. They are to be pitied only because they multiply too much: it is their extreme increase which, by lowering the price of labor, is the cause that their share in the profits of production is sometimes so little proportioned to the trouble they take; it is by the effect of their great number that they experience so much disadvantage in the bargains they make with entrepreneurs. [^322]: From the fact that there are inevitable inequalities, certain people would be quite disposed to conclude that there must necessarily be masters and subjects, dominators and tributaries. "The law," they say proudly, "can neither create nor annihilate aristocracy; force always places itself at the head of society: destroy one class of dominators, and others will be born: the third estate, after having believed it had overthrown the old nobility, suddenly saw another nobility emerge from its own bosom, which was immediately vested with the indestructible superiorities of the old." (Journal des Débats of December 9, 1820.) This is indeed the language of all dominations: the sacerdotal ones say that the gates of hell shall not prevail against them; the military ones call themselves indestructible superiorities. Fortunately, time, which has made a pact with none, is destroying them all with a soft murmur; it is imperceptibly erasing the inequalities born of violence and imposture, and it will end by allowing only the natural and legitimate differences of which I speak to be perceived among men, the only ones that it is neither possible nor desirable to annihilate. [^323]: V. above. p. 442 et seq. [^324]: 8vo vol. In Paris, at Mme. Huzard, bookseller, rue de l'Éperon. [^325]: Those who are unaware of how much the education of all classes has progressed among us will perhaps not learn without some surprise that these excellent observations were addressed to me by a simple provincial notary. [^326]: Out of 23,399 persons, the average number deceased annually in Paris during the three years 1821, 1822, and 1823, there were, on average per year, only 4,290 who left enough to provide for the costs of their burial; another 12,663, deceased at home, were buried at the city's expense, upon a certificate of indigence; the rest, more miserable still, died in the hospitals. (Rech. stat. sur la ville de Paris, pub. by the prefect of the Seine, tables 27, 37, 42 and 58. Paris, 1826.) [^327]: V. the Rev. encyclop., issue of Nov. 1828, p. 312. [^328]: In the Rev. encyclop., issue of June 1827, p. 617. [^329]: There is enough proof of this. I could cite a certain establishment whose owners vainly tried to make considerable sacrifices to improve the lot of their workers. In the important manufactory of which I wish to speak here, five hundred workers were employed to do a certain job at the rate of 13 sous per square foot. Each worker did about two feet per day, which brought the price of his day's work to barely 26 sous. The owners, by a spontaneous movement of generosity, decided to raise the price from 13 sous to 16: it was a sacrifice of fifty écus per day, and of forty-five thousand francs per year. The laziness and misconduct of the workers rendered this sacrifice useless: as they earned a little more money, they did a little less work, and the leisure that this supplement of wages procured for them, they employed in going to the tavern. Their work suffered for it; at the same time that they did less, it was more poorly done. The owners were forced to put things back on the old footing.