The Conquest of Bread | Page 7

human riches, owes its being to
the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel
of this immense whole and say--This is mine, not yours?
III
It has come about, however, in the course of the ages traversed by the
human race, that all that enables man to produce and to increase his
power of production has been seized by the few. Some time, perhaps,
we will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to
state the fact and analyze its consequences.
To-day the soil, which actually owes its value to the needs of an
ever-increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the
people from cultivating it--or do not allow them to cultivate it
according to modern methods.
The mines, though they represent the labour of several generations, and
derive their sole value from the requirements of the industry of a nation
and the density of the population--the mines also belong to the few; and
these few restrict the output of coal, or prevent it entirely, if they find
more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery, too, has
become the exclusive property of the few, and even when a machine
incontestably represents the improvements added to the original rough
invention by three or four generations of workers, it none the less

belongs to a few owners. And if the descendants of the very inventor
who constructed the first machine for lace-making, a century ago, were
to present themselves to-day in a lace factory at Bâle or Nottingham,
and claim their rights, they would be told: "Hands off! this machine is
not yours," and they would be shot down if they attempted to take
possession of it.
The railways, which would be useless as so much old iron without the
teeming population of Europe, its industry, its commerce, and its marts,
belong to a few shareholders, ignorant perhaps of the whereabouts of
the lines of rails which yield them revenues greater 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 nations. In the East, in Africa, everywhere, in
Egypt, Tonkin or the Congo, the European is thus bound to promote the
growth of serfdom. And so he