The Conquest of Bread | Page 4

book was
written, I can say in full conscience that its leading ideas must have
been correct. State Socialism has certainly made considerable progress.
State railways, State banking, and State trade in spirits have been
introduced here and there. But every step made in this direction, even
though it resulted in the cheapening of a given commodity, was found
to be a new obstacle in the struggle of the working-men for their
emancipation. So that we find growing amongst the working-men,
especially in Western Europe, the idea that even the working of such a
vast national property as a railway-net could be much better handled by
a Federated Union of railway employés, than by a State organization.
On the other side, we see that countless attempts have been made all
over Europe and America, the leading idea of which is, on the one side,
to get into the hands of the working-men themselves wide branches of
production, and, on the other side, to always widen in the cities the

circles of the functions which the city performs in the interest of its
inhabitants. Trade-unionism, with a growing tendency towards
organizing the different trades internationally, and of being not only an
instrument for the improvement of the conditions of labour, but also of
becoming an organization which might, at a given moment, take into its
hands the management of production; Co-operation, both for
production and for distribution, both in industry and agriculture, and
attempts at combining both sorts of co-operation in experimental
colonies; and finally, the immensely varied field of the so-called
Municipal Socialism--these are the three directions in which the
greatest amount of creative power has been developed lately.
Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute for
Communism, or even for Socialism, both of which imply the common
possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look
at all these attempts as upon experiments--like those which Owen,
Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies--experiments which
prepare human thought to conceive some of the practical forms in
which a communist society might find its expression. The synthesis of
all these partial experiments will have to be made some day by the
constructive genius of some one of the civilized nations. But samples of
the bricks out of which the great synthetic building will have to be built,
and even samples of some of its rooms, are being prepared by the
immense effort of the constructive genius of man.
BRIGHTON.
January, 1913.

THE CONQUEST OF BREAD
CHAPTER I
OUR RICHES
I

The human race has travelled a long way, since those remote ages when
men fashioned their rude implements of flint and lived on the
precarious spoils of hunting, leaving to their children for their only
heritage a shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils--and Nature,
vast, unknown, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their
wretched existence.
During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since,
mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the
land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced
mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has
created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and
finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service. And the result is,
that now the child of the civilized man finds at its birth, ready for its
use, an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before
him. And this capital enables man to acquire, merely by his own labour
combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the
fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best
seeds, ready to give a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon
it--a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The
methods of rational cultivation are known.
On the wide prairies of America each hundred men, with the aid of
powerful machinery, can produce in a few months enough wheat to
maintain ten thousand people for a whole year. And where man wishes
to double his produce, to treble it, to multiply it a hundred-fold, he
makes the soil, gives to each plant the requisite care, and thus obtains
enormous returns. While the hunter of old had to scour fifty or sixty
square miles to find food for his family, the civilized man supports his
household, with far less pains, and far more certainty, on a thousandth
part of that space. Climate is no longer an obstacle. When the sun fails,
man replaces it by artificial heat; and we see the coming of a time when
artificial light also will be used to stimulate vegetation. Meanwhile, by
the use of