The Conquest of Bread | Page 9

the producers, although they constitute hardly
one-third of the inhabitants of civilized countries, even now produce
such quantities of goods that a certain degree of comfort could be
brought to every hearth. We know further that if all those who squander
to-day the fruits of others' toil were forced to employ their leisure in
useful work, our wealth would increase in proportion to the number of
producers, and more. Finally, we know that contrary to the theory
enunciated by Malthus--that Oracle of middle-class Economics--the
productive powers of the human race increase at a much more rapid
ratio than its powers of reproduction. The more thickly men are
crowded on the soil, the more rapid is the growth of their
wealth-creating power.
Thus, although the population of England has only increased from 1844
to 1890 by 62 per cent., its production has grown, even at the lowest

estimate, at double that rate--to wit, by 130 per cent. In France, where
the population has grown more slowly, the increase in production is
nevertheless very rapid. Notwithstanding the crises through which
agriculture is frequently passing, notwithstanding State interference,
the blood-tax (conscription), and speculative commerce and finance,
the production of wheat in France has increased four-fold, and
industrial production more than tenfold, in the course of the last eighty
years. In the United States this progress is still more striking. In spite of
immigration, or rather precisely because of the influx of surplus
European labour, the United States have multiplied their wealth
tenfold.
However, these figures give but a very faint idea of what our wealth
might become under better conditions. For alongside of the rapid
development of our wealth-producing powers we have an
overwhelming increase in the ranks of the idlers and middlemen.
Instead of capital gradually concentrating itself in a few hands, so that
it would only be necessary for the community to dispossess a few
millionaires and enter upon its lawful heritage--instead of this Socialist
forecast proving true, the exact reverse is coming to pass: the swarm of
parasites is ever increasing.
In France there are not ten actual producers to every thirty inhabitants.
The whole agricultural wealth of the country is the work of less than
seven millions of men, and in the two great industries, mining and the
textile trades, you will find that the workers number less than two and
one-half millions. But the exploiters of labour, how many are they? In
the United Kingdom a little over one million workers--men, women,
and children, are employed in all the textile trades; less than nine
hundred thousand work the mines; much less than two million till the
ground, and it appeared from the last industrial census that only a little
over four million men, women and children were employed in all the
industries.[1] So that the statisticians have to exaggerate all the figures
in order to establish a maximum of eight million producers to forty-five
million inhabitants. Strictly speaking the creators of the goods exported
from Britain to all the ends of the earth comprise only from six to seven
million workers. And what is the number of the shareholders and

middlemen who levy the first fruits of labour from far and near, and
heap up unearned gains by thrusting themselves between the producer
and the consumer?
Nor is this all. The owners of capital constantly reduce the output by
restraining production. We need not speak of the cartloads of oysters
thrown into the sea to prevent a dainty, hitherto reserved for the rich,
from becoming a food for the people. We need not speak of the
thousand and one luxuries--stuffs, foods, etc., etc.--treated after the
same fashion as the oysters. It is enough to remember the way in which
the production of the most necessary things is limited. Legions of
miners are ready and willing to dig out coal every day, and send it to
those who are shivering with cold; but too often a third, or even
one-half, of their number are forbidden to work more than three days a
week, because, forsooth, the price of coal must be kept up! Thousands
of weavers are forbidden to work the looms, although their wives and
children go in rags, and although three-quarters of the population of
Europe have no clothing worthy the name.
Hundreds of blast-furnaces, thousands of factories periodically stand
idle, others only work half-time--and in every civilized nation there is a
permanent population of about two million individuals who ask only
for work, but to whom work is denied.
How gladly would these millions of men set to work to reclaim waste
lands, or to transform ill-cultivated land into fertile fields, rich in
harvests! A year of well-directed toil would suffice to multiply fivefold
the produce of those millions of acres in this country which lie idle now