El 
 
 iqo(o 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Gift in memory of 
 
 MARY STEPHENS SHERMAN, '13 
 
 from 
 
 JOHN H. SHERMAN, '11 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HX915.K93 E7 1906 
 
 The conquest o^f bread. 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 030 360 717 
 
 DUE 
 
 I PftlNTCO IN \. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://archive.org/cletails/cu31924030360717 
 
THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 In Russian and French Prisons. (Ward and 
 Downey.) Out of Print. 
 
 Memoirs of a Revolutionist. (Smith, Elder.) i2j. 6d. 
 Popular Edition. (Swan Sonnenschein.) 6^. 
 
 Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. (W. Heine- 
 mann.) Cheap Edition, ^s, 6d, 
 
 Fields, Factories, and Workshops. Popular 
 Edition. (Swan Sonnenschein.) 6d. and is. 
 
THE 
 
 CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 BY 
 
 V 
 
 P. KROPOTKIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS * 
 "THE MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST," ETC, 
 
 LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. 
 
 1906 
 
Hi 
 
 9/S- 
 
 £.1 
 
 <?0 / 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OUR RICHES . I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 WELL-BEING FOR ALL 1 6 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 3 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 EXPROPRIATION 47 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 FOOD 66 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 DWELLINGS IO3 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 CLOTHING 1X8 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 WAYS AND MEANS 123 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE NEED FOR LUXURY . . . . . I34 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAGB 
 
 AGREEABLE WORK 155 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 FREE AGREEMENT 1 67 
 
 CHAPTER Xn 
 OBJECTIONS 188 
 
 CHAPTER Xni 
 THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM . . 213 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION . . . 236 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 246 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY . .251 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 AGRICULTURE . . 266 
 
 NOTES 
 
 297 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ONE of the current objections to Communism, 
 and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is 
 so old, and yet it could never be realized. Schemes 
 of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient 
 Greece ; later on, the early Christians joined in 
 communist groups ; centuries later, large com- 
 munist brotherhoods came into existence during 
 the Reform movement. Then, the same ideals 
 were revived during the great English and French 
 Revolutions ; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a 
 revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist 
 ideals, took place in France. " And yet, you see," 
 we are told, " how far away is still the realization 
 of your schemes. Don't you think that there is 
 some fundamental error in your understanding of 
 human nature and its needs ? " 
 
 At first sight this objection seems very serious. 
 However, the moment we consider human history 
 more attentively, it loses its strength. We see, 
 first, that hundreds of millions of men have suc- 
 ceeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in 
 their village communities, for many hundreds of 
 years, one of the main elements of Socialism — the 
 common ownership of the chief instrument of pro- 
 duction, the land, and the apportionment of the 
 same according to the labour capacities of the 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 different families ; and we learn that if the com- 
 munal possession of the land has been destroyed 
 in Western Europe, it was not from within, but 
 from without, by the governments which created 
 a land monopoly in favour of the nobility and the 
 middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the 
 mediaeval cities succeeded in maintaining in their 
 midst for several centuries in succession a certain 
 socialized organization of production and trade ; 
 that these centuries were periods of a rapid in- 
 tellectual, industrial, and artistic progress ; and 
 that the decay of these communal institutions 
 came mainly from the incapacity of men of com- 
 bining the village with the city, the peasant with 
 the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth of 
 the military states, which destroyed the free 
 cities. 
 
 The history of mankind, thus understood, does 
 not offer, then, an argument against Communism. 
 It appears, on the contrary, as a succession of en- 
 deavours to reaUze some sort of communist organi- 
 zation, endeavours which were crowned with a 
 partial success of a certain duration ; and all we 
 are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has 
 not yet found the proper form for combining, on 
 communistic principles, agriculture with a sud- 
 denly developed industry and a rapidly growing 
 international trade. The latter appears especi- 
 ally as a disturbing element, since it is no longer 
 individuals only, or cities, that enrich themselves 
 by distant commerce and export ; but whole 
 nations grow rich at the cost of those nations 
 which lag behind in their industrial development. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 These conditions, which began to appear by the 
 end of the eighteenth century, took, however, 
 their full swing in the nineteenth century only, 
 after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And 
 modern Communism had to take them into ac- 
 count. 
 
 It is now known that the French Revolution, 
 apart from its political significance, was an at- 
 tempt made by the French people, in 1793 and 
 1794, in three different directions more or less akin 
 ■to Socialism. It was, first, the equalization of for- 
 tunes, by means of an income tax and succession 
 duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a 
 direct confiscation of the land in order to sub- 
 divide it, and by heavy war taxes levied upon the 
 rich only. The second attempt was to introduce 
 a wide national system of rationally established 
 prices of all commodities, for which the real cost of 
 production and moderate trade profits had to be 
 taken into account. The Convention worked 
 hard at this scheme, and had nearly completed its 
 work, when reaction took the overhand. And the 
 third was a sort of Municipal Communism as 
 regards the consumption of some objects of first 
 necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold 
 by them at cost price. 
 
 It was during this remarkable movement, 
 which has never yet been properly studied, that 
 modern Socialism was born — Fourierism with 
 L'Ange, at Lyons, and authoritarian Communism 
 with Buonarotti, Babeuf, and their comrades. 
 And it was immediately after the Great Revo- 
 lution that the three great theoretical founders 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of modern Socialism— Fourier, Saint Simon, and 
 Robert Owen, as well as Godwin (the No-State 
 Socialism)— came forward ; while the secret com- 
 munist societies, originated from those of Buona- 
 rotti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to militant 
 Communism for the next fifty years. 
 
 To be correct, then, we must say that modem 
 Socialism is not yet a hundred years old, and that, 
 for the first half of these hundred years, two 
 nations only, which stood at the head of the 
 industrial movement, i.e. Britain and France, 
 took part in its elaboration. Both — bleeding 
 at that time from the terrible wounds inflicted 
 upon them by fifteen years of Napoleonic wars, 
 and both enveloped in the great European re- 
 action that had come from the East. 
 
 In fact, it was only after the Revolution of 
 July, 1830, in France, and the Reform movement 
 of 1830-2, in this country, had shaken off that 
 terrible reaction, that the discussion of Sociahsm 
 became possible for the next sixteen to eighteen 
 years. And it was during those years that the 
 aspirations of Fourier, St. Simon, and Robert 
 Owen, worked out by their followers, took a 
 definite shape, and the different schools of Social- 
 ism which exist nowadays were defined. 
 
 In Britain, Robert Owen and his followers 
 worked out their schemes of communist villages, 
 agricultural and industrial at the same time ; 
 immense co-operative associations were started 
 for creating with their dividends more communist 
 colonies ; and the Great Consohdated Trades' 
 Union was founded — the forerunner of the Labour 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 Parties of our days and the International Working- 
 men's Association. 
 
 In France, the Fourierist Considerant issued 
 his remarkable manifesto, which contains, beauti- 
 fully developed, all the theoretical considerations 
 upon the growth of Capitalism, which are now 
 described as " Scientific Socialism." Proudhon 
 worked out his idea of Anarchism, and Mutualism, 
 without State interference. Louis Blanc pub- 
 lished his Organization of Labour, which became 
 later on the programme of Lassalle, in Germany. 
 Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany 
 further developed, in two remarkable works, 
 pubhshed in 1846 and 1847 respectively, the 
 theoretical conceptions of Considerant ; and finally 
 Vidal, and especially Pecqueur — the latter in a 
 very elaborate work, as also in a series of Reports 
 — developed in detail the system of Collectivism, 
 which he wanted the Assembly of 184S to vote 
 in the shape of laws. 
 
 However, there is one feature, common to all 
 Socialist schemes, of the period, which must 
 be noted. The three great founders of Socialism 
 who wrote at the dawn of the nineteenth century 
 were so entranced by the wide horizons which 
 it opened before them, that they looked upon it 
 as a new revelation, and upon themselves as upon 
 the founders of a new religion. Socialism had 
 to be a religion, and they had to regulate its 
 march, as the heads of a new church. Besides, 
 writing during the period of reaction which had 
 followed the French Revolution, and seeing more 
 its failures than its successes, they did not trust 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 the masses, and they did not appeal to them for 
 bringing about the changes which they thought 
 necessary. They put their faith, on the contrary, 
 into some great ruler. He would understand 
 the new revelation ; he would be convinced of 
 its desirability by the successful experiments of 
 their phalansteries, or associations ; and he 
 would peacefully accomplish by the means of 
 his own authority the revolution which would 
 bring well-being and happiness to mankind. A 
 military genius, Napoleon, had just been ruling 
 Europe. . . . Why should not a social genius come 
 forward and carry Europe with him and transfer 
 the new Gospel into life ? . . . That faith was rooted 
 very deep, and it stood for a long time in the way 
 of Socialism ; its traces are ever seen amongst 
 us, down to the present day. 
 
 It was only during the years 1840-48, when 
 the approach of the Revolution was felt every- 
 where, and the proletarians were beginning to 
 plant the banner of Socialism on the barricades, 
 that faith in the people began to enter once more 
 the hearts of the social schemers : faith, on the 
 one side, in Republican Democracy, and on the 
 other side in free association and the organizing 
 powers of the working-men themselves. 
 
 But then came the Revolution of February, 
 1848, the middle-class Republic, and — with it, 
 broken hopes. Four months only after the procla- 
 mation of the Republic, the June insurrection of 
 the Paris proletarians broke out, and it was crushed 
 in blood. The wholesale shooting of the working- 
 men, the mass deportations to New Guinea, and 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 finally the Napoleonian coup d'etat followed. The 
 Socialists were prosecuted with fury, and the weed- 
 ing out was so terrible and so thorough that for 
 the next twelve or fifteen years the very traces of 
 Socialism disappeared ; its literature vanished so 
 completely that even names, once so familiar be- 
 fore 1848, were entirely forgotten ; ideas which 
 were then current — the stock ideas of the Socialists 
 before 1848 — were wiped out of the memories and 
 were taken, later on, by the present generation, 
 for new discoveries. 
 
 However, when a new revival came, about 1866, 
 when Communism and Collectivism once more 
 came forward, the conception as to the means of 
 their realization had undergone a deep change. 
 The old faith in Political Democracy was gone, 
 and the first principles upon which the Paris 
 working-men agreed with the British trade-union- 
 ists and Owenites, when they met in 1866 at 
 London, was that " the emancipation of the 
 working-men must be accomplished by the work- 
 ing-men themselves." Upon another point they 
 also fell in. It was that the labour unions them- 
 selves would have to get hold of the instruments 
 of production, and organize production them- 
 selves. The French idea of the Fourierist and 
 Mutualist " Association " thus joined hands with 
 Robert Owen's idea of " The Great Consolidated 
 Trades' Union," which was extended now, so as 
 to become an International Working-men's Asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 Again this new revival of Socialism lasted but 
 a few years. Soon came the war of 1870-71, the 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 uprising of the Paris Commune — and again the 
 free development of Socialism was rendered im- 
 possible in France. But while Germany accepted 
 now from the hands of its German teachers, Marx 
 and Engels, the Socialism of the French " forty- 
 eight ers " — the Socialism of Considerant and Louis 
 Blanc, and the Collectivism of Pecqueur, — France 
 made a further step forward. 
 
 In March, 1871, Paris had proclaimed that 
 henceforward it would not wait for the retarda- 
 tory portions of France, and intended to start 
 within its Commune its own social development. 
 
 The movement was too short-lived to give any 
 positive result. It remained communalist only. 
 But the working-classes of the old International 
 saw at once its historical significance. They 
 understood that the free commune would be hence- 
 forth the medium in which the ideas of modern 
 Socialism may come to realization. The free 
 agro-industrial communes, of which so much was 
 spoken in 1848, need not be small phalansteries, 
 or small communities of 2000 persons. They 
 must be vast agglomerations, like Paris, or, still 
 better, small territories. These communes would 
 federate, even irrespectively of national frontiers 
 (like the Cinque Ports, or the Hansa) ; and large 
 labour associations might come into existence for 
 the inter-communal service of the railways, the 
 docks, and so on. Such were the ideas which be- 
 gan vaguely to circulate after 1871 amongst the 
 thinking working-men, especially in the Latin 
 countries. In some such organization, the details 
 of which Ufe itself would settle, the labour circles 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 of these countries saw the medium through which 
 SociaUst forms of hfe could find a much easier 
 reahzation than through the CoUectivist system 
 of the State Sociahsts. 
 
 These are the ideas to which I have endeavoured 
 to give a more or less definite expression in this 
 book. 
 
 Looking back now at the years that have passed 
 since this book was written, I can say in full con- 
 science that its leading ideas must have been 
 correct. The State Socialism of the collectivist 
 system has certainly made some 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 re- 
 sulted 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 now amongst the working-men, 
 especially in this country, 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 employes, 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 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 different trades internationally, and of being 
 not only an instrument for improving the con- 
 ditions of labour, but also to become an organ- 
 ization which might, at a given moment, take 
 into its hands the management of production ; 
 Co-operativism, 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 direc- 
 tions 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 Sociahsm, both of which imply the common 
 possession of the instruments of production. 
 But we certainly must look at all the just-men- 
 tioned 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, and it will be done. 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. 
 
 Bromley, Kent. 
 
 October, 1906. 
 
THE 
 
 CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 OUR RICHES 
 
 THE human race has travelled far; since 
 those bygone ages when men used to 
 fashion their rude implements of flint, and lived 
 on the precarious spoils of the chase, leaving to 
 their children for their only heritage a shelter 
 beneath the rocks, some poor utensils — and 
 Nature, vast, ununderstood, and terrific, with 
 whom they had to fight for their wretched exist- 
 ence. 
 
 During the agitated times which have elapsed 
 since, and which have lasted for many thousand 
 years, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold 
 treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the 
 marshes, pierced the forests, made roads ; it has 
 been building, inventing, observing, reasoning ; 
 it has created a complex machinery, wrested her 
 secrets from Nature, and finally it has made a 
 servant of steam. And the result is, that now 
 
2 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 the child of the civiUzed man finds ready, at 
 its birth, to his hand an immense capital accu- 
 mulated by those who have gone before him. 
 And this capital enables him to acquire, merely 
 by his own labour, combined with the labour of 
 others, riches surpassing the dreams of the Orient, 
 expressed in 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 make a jich 
 return for the skill and labour spent upon it — 
 a return more than sufficient for all the wants of 
 humanity. The methods of 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 main- 
 tain 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 sup- 
 ports 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 glass and hot water 
 
OUR RICHES 3 
 
 pipes, man renders a given space ten and fifty 
 times more productive than it was in its natural 
 state. 
 
 The prodigies accomphshed in industry are 
 still more striking. With the co-operation of 
 those intelligent beings, modern machines — them- 
 selves the fruit of three or four generations of 
 inventors, mostly unknown — a hundred men manu- 
 facture now the stuff to clothe ten thousand 
 persons for a period of two years. In well- 
 managed coal mines the labour of a hundred 
 miners furnishes each year enough fuel to warm 
 ten thousand famiUes under an inclement sky. 
 And we have lately witnessed twice the spec- 
 tacle of a wonderful city springing up in a few 
 months at Paris,* without interrupting in the 
 slightest degree the regular work of the French 
 nation. 
 
 And if in manufactures as in agriculture, and 
 as indeed through our whole social system, the 
 labour, the discoveries, and the inventions of our 
 ancestors profit chiefly the few, it is none the less 
 certain that mankind in general, aided by the 
 creatures of steel and iron which it already 
 possesses, could already procure an existence of 
 wealth and ease for every one of its members. 
 
 Truly, we are rich, far richer than we think ; 
 rich in what we already possess, richer still in the 
 possibilities of production of our actual mechanical 
 outfit ; richest of all in what we might win from 
 
 * For the International Paris Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. 
 
4 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, 
 from our technical knowledge, were they but 
 appUed to bringing about the well-being of all. 
 
 II 
 
 We, in civilized societies, are rich. Why then 
 are the many poor ? Why this painful drudgery 
 for the masses ? Why, even to the best paid 
 workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the 
 midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, 
 and in spite of the powerful means of production, 
 which could ensure comfort to all in return for 
 a few hours of daily toil ? 
 
 The SociaUsts have said it and repeated it un- 
 wearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating 
 it by arguments taken from aU the sciences. It 
 is because aU that is necessary for production — 
 the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, 
 food, shelter, education, knowledge — aU have been 
 seized by the few in the course of that long story 
 of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignor- 
 ance and oppression, which has been the Hfe of the 
 human race before it had learned to subdue the 
 forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage 
 of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few 
 appropriate to-day two-thirds of the products of 
 human labour, and then squander them in the 
 most stupid and shameful way. It is because, 
 having reduced the masses to a point at which 
 they have not the means of subsistence for a 
 
OUR RICHES 5 
 
 month, or even for a week in advance, the few 
 only allow the many to work on condition of 
 themselves receiving the Uon's share. It is be- 
 cause these few prevent the remainder of men 
 from producing the things they need, and force 
 them to produce, not the necessaries of life for 
 aU, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the 
 monopolists. In this is the substance of all 
 Socialism. 
 
 Take, indeed, a civilized country. The forests 
 which once covered it have been cleared, the 
 marshes drained, the climate improved. It has 
 been made habitable. The soil, which bore for- 
 merly only a coarse vegetation, is covered to-day 
 with rich harvests. The rock- walls in the valleys 
 are laid out in terraces and covered with vines 
 bearing golden fruit. The wild plants, which 
 yielded nought but acrid berries, or uneatable 
 roots, have been transformed by generations of 
 culture into succulent vegetables, or trees covered 
 with deUcious fruits. Thousands of highways 
 and railroads furrow the earth, and pierce the 
 mountains. The shriek of the engine is heard 
 in the wild gorges of the Alps, the Caucasus, and 
 the Himalayas. The rivers have been made 
 navigable ; the coasts, carefully surveyed, are 
 easy of access ; artificial harbours, laboriously 
 dug out and protej^ted against the fury of the 
 sea, afford shelter to the ships. Deep shafts have 
 been sunk in the rocks ; labyrinths of under- 
 ground galleries have been dug out where coal 
 
6 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 may be raised or minerals extracted. At the 
 crossings of the highways great cities have sprung 
 up, and within their borders all the treasures of 
 industry, science, and art have been accumulated. 
 
 Whole generations, that lived and died in 
 misery, oppressed and ill-treated by their masters, 
 and worn out by toil, have handed on this immense 
 inheritance to our century. 
 
 For thousands of years millions of men have 
 laboured to clear the forests, to drain the marshes, 
 and to open up highways by land and water. 
 Every rood of soil we cultivate in Europe has 
 been watered by the sweat of several races of men. 
 Every acre has its story of enforced labour, of 
 intolerable toil, of the people's sufferings. Every 
 mile of railway, every yard of tunnel, has received 
 its share of human blood. 
 
 The shafts of the mine still bear on their rocky 
 walls the marks made by the pick of the workman 
 who toiled to excavate them. The space between 
 each prop in the underground galleries might be 
 marked as a miner's grave ; and who can tell 
 what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in 
 privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the 
 family who depended on the scanty wage of the 
 worker cut off in his prime by fire-damp, rock-fall, 
 or flood ? 
 
 The cities, bound together by railroads and 
 waterways, are organisms which have lived through 
 centuries. Dig beneath them and you find, one 
 above another, the foundations of streets, of 
 
OUR RICHES 7 
 
 houses, of theatres, of public buildings. Search 
 into their history and you will see how the civiliza- 
 tion of the town, its industry, its special character- 
 istics, have slowly grown and ripened through 
 the co-operation of generations of its inhabitants 
 before it could become what it is to-day. And 
 even to-day, the value of each dwelling, factory, 
 and warehouse, which has been created by the 
 accumulated labour of the millions of workers, 
 now dead and buried, is only maintained by the 
 very presence and labour of legions of the men 
 who now inhabit that special corner of the globe. 
 Each of the atoms composing what we call the 
 Wealth of Nations owes its value to the fact that 
 it is a part of the great whole. What would a 
 London dockyard or a great Paris warehouse be 
 if they were not situated in these great centres of 
 international commerce ? What would become 
 of our mines, our factories, our workshops, and 
 our railways, without the immense quantities of 
 merchandise transported every day by sea and 
 land? 
 
 Millions of human beings have laboured to 
 create this civihzation on which we pride ourselves 
 to-day. Other millions, scattered through the 
 globe, labour to maintain it. Without them 
 nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins. 
 
 There is not even a thought, or an invention, 
 which is not common property, born of the past 
 and the present. Thousands of inventors, known 
 and unknown, who have died in poverty, have 
 
8 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 co-operated in the invention of each of these 
 machines which embody the genius of man. 
 
 Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, 
 have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate 
 error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific 
 thought, without which the marvels of our century 
 could never have appeared. And these thou- 
 sands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of 
 inventors, have themselves been supported by 
 the labour of past centuries. They have been 
 upheld and nourished through life, both physically 
 and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen 
 of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force 
 from the environment. 
 
 The genius of a Seguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has 
 certainly done more to launch industry in new 
 directions than all the capitahsts in the world. 
 But men of genius are themselves the children 
 of industry as well as of science. Not until 
 thousands of steam-engines had been working for 
 years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat 
 into dynamic force, and this force into sound, 
 Ught, and electricity, could the insight of genius 
 proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of 
 the physical forces. And if we, children of the 
 nineteenth century, have at last grasped this 
 idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again 
 because daily experience has prepared the way. 
 The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and 
 declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, 
 because the eighteenth century had not grown 
 
OUR RICHES 9 
 
 up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. 
 Imagine the decades that might have passed 
 while we remained in ignorance of this law, which 
 has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt 
 not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody 
 his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his 
 engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a 
 complete mechanism, and rendered more docile 
 than a horse, more manageable than water, 
 became at last the very soul of modern industry. 
 
 Every machine has had the same history — a 
 long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, 
 of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements 
 discovered by several generations of nameless 
 workers, who have added to the original invention 
 these little nothings, without which the most 
 fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that : 
 every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant 
 of innumerable inventions which have preceded it 
 in the vast field of mechanics and industry. 
 
 Science and industry, knowledge and apphca- 
 tion, discovery and practical reahzation leading 
 to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, 
 toil of mind and muscle — all work together. 
 Each discovery, each advance, each increase in 
 the sum of 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 ? 
 
10 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 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 suf&ce to state 
 the fact and analyse 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 pro- 
 perty of the few, and even when a machine incon- 
 testably 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 Bale or 
 Nottingham, and demand their rights, they would 
 
OUR RICHES II 
 
 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 5deld 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 grape-shot, 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 tiU, 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 
 
12 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon 
 him by the State, the capitahst, 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 5deld 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 
 call 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 obUgations. 
 For, turn where he will, he can find no better 
 conditions. Everything has become private pro- 
 perty, 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. Enter- 
 prise takes no thought for the needs of the com- 
 munity. 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, 
 
OUR RICHES 13 
 
 everywhere, in Egypt, Tonkin or the Congo, the 
 European is thus bound to promote the growth 
 of serfdom. And so he does. But soon he finds 
 everywhere similar competitors. All the nations 
 evolve on the same Hnes, and wars, perpetual wars, 
 break out for the right of precedence in the market. 
 Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the 
 empire of the sea, wars to impose duties on im- 
 ports and to dictate conditions to neighbouring 
 states ; wars against those " blacks " who revolt ! 
 The roar of the cannon never ceases in the world, 
 whole races are massacred, the states of Europe 
 spend a third of their budgets in armaments ; and we 
 know how heavily these taxes faU on the workers. 
 
 Education still remains the privilege of a small 
 minority, for it is idle to talk of education when 
 the workman's child is forced, at the age of thir- 
 teen, to go down into the mine or to help his 
 father on the farm. It is idle to talk of studies 
 to the worker, who comes home in the evening 
 crushed by excessive toil with its brutalizing 
 atmosphere. Society is thus bound to remain 
 divided into two hostile camps, and in such con- 
 ditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical 
 begins by demanding a greater extension of 
 poUtical rights, but he soon sees that the breath 
 of hberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, 
 and then he turns round, changes his opinions, 
 and reverts to repressive legislation and govern- 
 ment by the sword. 
 
 A vast array of courts, judges, executioners. 
 
14 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 policemen, and gaolers is needed to uphold these 
 privileges ; and this array gives rise in its turn 
 to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, 
 of spies, of threats and corruption. 
 
 The system under which we Hve checks in its 
 turn the growth of the social sentiment. We all 
 know that without uprightness, without self- 
 respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, 
 human kind must perish, as perish the few races 
 of animals hving by rapine, or the slave-keeping 
 ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the 
 ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole 
 system of pseudo-science to teach the contrary. 
 
 Fine sermons have been preached on the text 
 that those who have should share with those 
 who have not, but he who would act out this 
 principle is speedily informed that these beautiful 
 sentiments are all very well in poetry, but not in 
 practice. "To He is to degrade and besmirch 
 oneself," we say, and yet all civilized life becomes 
 one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our 
 children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double- 
 faced morality. And since the brain is ill at 
 ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. 
 Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second 
 nature of the civiUzed man. 
 
 But a society cannot hve thus ; it must return 
 to truth or cease to exist. 
 
 Thus the consequences which spring from the 
 original act of monopoly spread through the 
 whole of social, Ufe. Under pain of death, human 
 
OUR RICHES 15 
 
 societies are forced to return to first principles : 
 the means of production being the collective work 
 of humanity, the product should be the collective 
 property of the race. Individual appropriation 
 is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to aU. 
 All things are for all men, since all men have need 
 of them, since all men have worked in the measure 
 of their strength to produce them, and since it is 
 not possible to evaluate every one's part in the 
 production of the world's wealth. 
 
 AU things are for all. Here is an immense 
 stock of tools and implements ; here are all those 
 iron slaves which we call machines, which saw 
 and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and 
 remaking, working up raw matter to produce the 
 marvels of our time. But nobody has the right 
 to seize a single one of these machines and say : 
 "This is mine ; if you want to use it you must pay 
 me a tax on each of your products," any more 
 than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right 
 to say to the peasant : " This hill, this meadow be- 
 long to me, and you must pay me a tax on every 
 sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build." 
 
 AU is for all ! If the man and the woman bear 
 their fair share of work, they have a right to their 
 fair share of aU that is produced by aU, and that 
 share is enough to secure them weU-being. No 
 more of such vague formulas as "The Right to 
 work," or " To each the whole result of his labour." 
 What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being : 
 Well-Being for All ! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 WELL-BEING FOR ALL 
 
 WELL-BEING for all is not a dream. It is 
 possible, realizable, owing to all that our 
 ancestors have done to increase our powers of 
 production. 
 
 We know, indeed, that the producers, although 
 they constitute hardly one-third of the inhabitants 
 of civilized countries, even now produce such quan- 
 tities of goods that a certain degree of comfort 
 could be brought to every hearth. We know 
 further that if aU 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 
 
 16 
 
WELL-^BEING FOR ALL 17 
 
 production has grown, to say the least, 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 agricul- 
 ture is frequently passing, notwithstanding State 
 interference, the blood- tax (conscription), and 
 speculative commerce and finance, the production 
 of wheat in France has increased fourfold, and in- 
 dustrial production more than tenfold, in the course 
 of the last eighty years. In the United States the 
 progress is stiU more striking. In spite of immi- 
 gration, or rather precisely because of the influx 
 of surplus European labour, the United States 
 have multipUed their wealth tenfold. 
 
 However, these figures give yet 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 gradu- 
 ally concentrating itself in a few hands, so that 
 it would only be necessary for the community 
 to dispossess a few milhonaires and enter upon 
 its lawful heritage — instead of this Socialist fore- 
 cast 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 agricul- 
 tural wealth of the country is the work of less 
 than seven millions of men, and in the two great 
 
i8 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 industries, mining and the textile trade, you will 
 find that the workers number less than 2^ millions. 
 But the exploiters of labour, how many are they ? 
 — In England (exclusive of Scotland and Ireland), 
 only one million workers — men, women, and chil- 
 dren — are employed in all the textile trades, rather 
 more than half a million work the mines, rather less 
 than half a million till the ground, and the statis- 
 ticians have to exaggerate all the figures in order 
 to establish a maximum of eight million producers 
 to twenty-six million inhabitants. Strictly speak- 
 ing, 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 sum of 
 the shareholders and middlemen who levy the 
 first fruits of labour from far and near, and heap 
 up unearned gains by thrusting themselves be-' 
 tween the producer and the consumer, paying 
 the former not a fifth, nay, not a twentieth, of 
 the price they exact from the latter ? 
 
 Nor is this all. Those who withhold capital 
 constantly reduce the output by restraining pro- 
 duction. 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 wiUing to dig 
 
WELL-BEING FOR ALL 19 
 
 out coal every day, and send it to those who are 
 shivering with cold ; but too often a third, or 
 even two-thirds, 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, though their wives and children go in 
 rags, and though three-quarters of the population 
 of Europe have no clothing worthy the name. 
 
 Hundreds of blast-furnaces, thousands of fac- 
 tories 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 weU-directed toil would suffice to 
 multiply fivefold the produce of dry lands in the 
 south of France which now yield only about 
 eight bushels of wheat per acre. But these men, 
 who would be happy to become hardy pioneers 
 in so many branches of wealth-producing activity, 
 must stay their hands because the owners of the 
 soil, the mines, and the factories prefer to invest 
 their capital — stolen in the first place from the 
 community — in Turkish or Egyptian bonds, or 
 in Patagonian gold mines, and so make Egyptian 
 fellahs, Italian exiles, and Chinese cooUes their 
 wage-slaves. 
 
2t) THE CONQUEST OF feREAD 
 
 So much for the direct and deliberate limitatidh 
 of production ; but there is also a limitation 
 indirect and not of set purpose, which consists in 
 spending human toil on objects absolutely use- 
 less, or destined only to satisfy the dull vanity of 
 the rich. 
 
 It is impossible to reckon in figures the extent 
 to which wealth is restricted indirectly, the 
 extent to which energy is squandered, that might 
 have served to produce, and above all to prepare 
 the machinery necessary to production. It is 
 enough to cite the immense sums spent by Europe 
 in armaments for the sole purpose of acquiring 
 control of the markets, and so forcing her own 
 commercial standards on neighbouring territories 
 and making exploitation easier at home ; the 
 milHons paid every year to officials of all sorts, 
 whose function it is to maintain the " rights " of 
 minorities — the right, that is, of a few rich men — 
 to manipulate the economic activities of the 
 nation ; the miUions spent on judges, prisons, 
 policemen, and all the paraphernaha of so-called 
 justice — spent to no purpose, because we know 
 that every alleviation, however sHght, of the 
 wretchedness of our great cities is followed by 
 a very considerable diminution of crime ; lastly, 
 the miUions spent on propagating pernicious 
 doctrines by means of the press, and news "cooked" 
 in the interest of this or that party, of this poli- 
 tician or of that company of exploiters. 
 
 But over and above this we must take into 
 
WELL-BEING FOR ALL 21 
 
 account all the labour that goes to sheer waste, 
 in keeping up the stables, the kennels, and the 
 retinue of the rich, for instance ; in pandering to 
 the caprices of society and to the depraved tastes 
 of the fashionable mob ; in forcing the consumer 
 on the one hand to buy what he does not need, 
 or foisting an inferior article upon him by means 
 of puffery, and in producing on the other hand 
 wares which are absolutely injurious, but profit- 
 able to the manufacturer. What is squandered 
 in this manner would be enough to double our 
 real wealth, or so to plenish our mills and factories 
 with machinery that they would soon flood the 
 shops with all that is now lacking to two-thirds 
 of the nation. Under our present system a full 
 quarter of the producers in every nation are 
 forced to be idle for three or four months in 
 the year, and the labour of another quarter, 
 if not of the half, has no better results than 
 the amusement of the rich or the exploitation of 
 the pubUc. 
 
 Thus, if we consider on the one hand the 
 rapidity with which civilized nations augment 
 their powers of production, and on the other hand 
 the limits set to that production, be it directly 
 or indirectly, by existing conditions, one cannot 
 but conclude that an economic system a trifle 
 more enlightened would permit them to heap up 
 in a few years so many useful products that they 
 WOlild be ponstrained to cry — " Enough ! We 
 h^-ye enough coal i^nd bread and raiment ! Let 
 
22 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 us rest and consider how best to use our powers, 
 how best to employ our leisure." 
 
 No, plenty for all is not a dream — though it 
 was a dream indeed in those old days when man, 
 for all his pains, could hardly win a bushel of 
 wheat from an acre of land, and had to fashion by 
 hand aU the implements he used in agriculture 
 and industry. Now it is no longer a dream, 
 because man has invented a motor which, with 
 a httle iron and a few pounds of coal, gives him 
 the mastery of a creature strong and docile as a 
 horse, and capable of setting the most compUcated 
 machinery in motion. 
 
 But, if plenty for all is to become a reality, 
 this immense capital — cities, houses, pastures, 
 arable lands, factories, highways, education — 
 must cease to be regarded as private pro- 
 perty, for the monopolist to dispose of at his 
 pleasure. 
 
 This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, 
 fashioned, or invented by our ancestors, must 
 become common property, so that the collective 
 interests of men may gain from it the greatest 
 good for all. 
 
 There must be Expropriation. The well- 
 being of all — the end ; expropriation — the means. 
 
 II 
 
 Expropriation, such then is the problem 
 which History has put before the men of the 
 
WELL-BEING FOR ALL 23 
 
 twentieth century : the return to Communism 
 in all that ministers to the well-being of man. 
 
 But this problem cannot be solved by means 
 of lefgislation. No one imagines that. The poor, 
 no less than the rich, understand that neither the 
 existing Governments, nor any which might arise 
 out of possible political changes, would be capable 
 of finding a solution. We feel the necessity of a 
 social revolution • rich and poor alike recognize 
 that this revolution is imminent, that it may 
 break put in a very few years. 
 
 A gfeat change in thought has been accom- 
 plished during the last half of the nineteenth 
 century; but suppressed, as it was, by the 
 propertied classes, and denied its natural develop- 
 ment, this new spirit must break now its bonds 
 by violence and reaUze itself in a revolution. 
 
 Whence comes the revolution, and how will it 
 announce its coming ? None can answer these 
 questions. The future is hidden. But those 
 who watch and think do not misinterpret the 
 signs : workers and exploiters. Revolutionists and 
 Conservatives, thinkers and men of action, all 
 feel that the revolution is at our doors. 
 
 Well ! What are we to do when the thunder- 
 bolt has fallen ? 
 
 We have all been studying the dramatic side 
 of revolution so much, and the practical work of 
 revolution so little, that we are apt to see only 
 the stage effects, so to speak, of these great move- 
 ments ; the fight of the first days ; the barricades. 
 
24 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 But this fight, this first skirmish, is soon ended, 
 and it is only after the overthrow of the old con- 
 stitution that the real work of revolution can be 
 said to begin. 
 
 Effete and powerless, attacked on all sides, 
 the old rulers are soon swept away by the breath 
 of insurrection. In a few days the middle-class 
 monarchy of 1848 was no more, and while Louis 
 Philippe was making good his escape in a cab, 
 Paris had already forgotten her " citizen king." 
 The government of Thiers disappeared, on the iSth 
 of March, 1871, in a few hours, leaving Paris mis- 
 tress of her destinies. Yet 1848 and 1871 were 
 only insurrections. Before a popular revolution 
 the masters of " the old order " disappear with a 
 surprising rapidity. Its upholders fly the country, 
 to plot in safety elsewhere and to devise measures 
 for their return. 
 
 The former Government having disappeared, 
 the army, hesitating before the tide of popular 
 opinion, no longer obeys its commanders, who 
 have also prudently decamped. The troops stand 
 by without interfering, or join the rebels. The 
 police, standing at ease, are uncertain whether to 
 belabour the crowd or to cry : " Long live the 
 Commune ! " while some retire to their quarters 
 " to await the pleasure of the new Government." 
 Wealthy citizens pack their trunks and betake 
 themselves to places of safety. The people re- 
 main. This is how a revolution is ushered in. 
 In several large towns the Commune is proclaimed. 
 
WELL-BEING FOR ALL 25 
 
 In the streets wander thousands of men, who in 
 the evening crowd into improvised clubs asking : 
 " What shall we do ? " and ardently discuss 
 public affairs, in which all take an interest ; those 
 who yesterday were most indifferent are perhaps 
 the most zealous. Everywhere there is plenty of 
 goodwill and a keen desire to make victory certain. 
 It is a time of supreme devotion. The people are 
 ready to go forward. 
 
 All this is splendid, sublime ; but stiU, it is 
 not a revolution. Nay, it is only now that the 
 work of the revolutionist begins. 
 
 Doubtless the thirst for vengeance wiU be 
 satisfied. The Watrins and the Thomases will 
 pay the penalty of their unpopularity, but that 
 is only an incident of the struggle and not a 
 revolution. 
 
 Socialist pohticians, radicals, neglected geniuses 
 of journahsm, stump orators, middlerclass citizens, 
 and workmen hurry to the Town Hall, to the 
 Government of&ces, and take possession of the 
 vacant seats. Some rejoice their hearts with 
 galloon, admire themselves in ministerial mirrors, 
 and study to give orders with an air of importance 
 appropriate to their new position. They must 
 have a red sash, an embroidered cap, and magis- 
 terial gestures to impress their comrades of the 
 ofl&ce or the workshop ! Others bury themselves 
 in ofi&cial papers, tr5dng, with the best of wills, 
 to make head or tail of them. They indite laws 
 and issue high-flown worded decrees that nobody 
 
26 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 takes the trouble to carry out — because the 
 revolution has come. To give themselves an 
 authority which is lacking they seek the sanction 
 of old forms of Government. They lake the 
 names of " Provisional Government," " Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety," " Mayor," " Governor 
 of the Town Hall," " Commissioner of Pubhc 
 Weal," and what not. Elected or acclaimed, they 
 assemble in Boards or in Communal Councils. 
 These bodies include men of ten or twenty different 
 schools, which, if not exactly " private chapels," 
 are at least so many sects which represent as many 
 ways of regarding the scope, the bearing, and the 
 goal of the revolution. Possibilists, Collectiv- 
 ists. Radicals, Jacobins, Blanquists, are thrust 
 together, and waste time in wordy warfare. 
 Honest men come into contact with ambitious 
 ones, whose only dream is power and who spurn 
 the crowd whence they sprung. Coming together 
 with diametrically opposed views, they are forced 
 to form arbitrary alliances in order to create 
 majorities that can but last a day. Wranghng, 
 calhng each other reactionaries, authoritarians, 
 and rascals, incapable of coming to an under- 
 standing on any serious measure, dragged into 
 discussions about trifles, producing nothing better 
 than bombastic proclamations, yet taking them- 
 selves seriously, unwitting that the real strength 
 of the movement is in the streets. 
 
 All this may please those who Uke the theatre, 
 but it is not revolution. Nothing yet has been 
 
WELL-BEING FOR ALL 27 
 
 accomplished. Meanwhile the people suffer. The 
 factories are idle, the workshops closed ; industry 
 is at a standstill. The worker does not even earn 
 the meagre wage which was his before. Food 
 goes up in price. With that heroic devotion 
 which has always characterized them, and which 
 in great crises reaches the subhme, the people wait 
 patiently. " We place these three months of want 
 at the service of the Repubhc," they said in 1848, 
 while "their representatives" and the gentlemen 
 of the new Government, down to the meanest 
 Jack-in-of&ce, received their salary regularly. 
 
 The people suffer. With the childlike faith, 
 with the good humour of the masses who believe 
 in their leaders, they think that " yonder," in the 
 House, in the Town Hall, in the Committee of 
 PubUc Safety, their welfare is being considered. 
 But "yonder" they are discussing everything 
 under the sun except the welfare of the people. 
 In 1793, while famine ravaged France and crippled 
 the Revolution; whilst the people were reduced 
 to the depths of misery, whilst the Champs Elys6e 
 were hned with luxurious carriages where women 
 displayed their jewels and splendour, Robespierre 
 was urging the Jacobins to discuss his treatise 
 on the English Constitution. While the worker 
 was suffering in 1848 from the general stoppage 
 of trade, the Provisional Government and the 
 House were wrangling over military pensions and 
 prison labour, without troubling how the people 
 were to live during this crisis. And could one 
 
28 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 cast a reproach at the Paris Commvuie, which 
 was born heneath the Prussian cannon, and 
 lasted only seventy days, it woiald be for this 
 same error — this failure to understand that the 
 Revolution could not triumph unless those who 
 fought on its side were fed, that on fifteen pence 
 a day a man cannot fight on the ramparts and at 
 the same time support a family. 
 
 The people suffer and say : " How to find the 
 way out of these difficulties ? " 
 
 III 
 
 It seems to us that there is only one answer to 
 this question: We must recognize, and loudly 
 proclaim, that every one, whatever his grade in 
 the old society, whether strong or weak, capable 
 or incapable, has, before everything, the right 
 TO LIVE, and that society is bound to share amongst 
 all, without exception, the means of existence at 
 its disposal. We must acknowledge this, and 
 proclaim it aloud, and act up to it. 
 
 It must be so contrived that from the first day 
 of the revolution the worker shall know that a 
 new era is opening before him ; that henceforward 
 none need crouch under the bridges, with palaces 
 hard by, none need fast in the midst of food, 
 none need perish with cold near shops fuU of furs ; 
 that all is for all, in practice as well as in theory, 
 and that at last, for the first time in history, a 
 revolution has been accpmphshed which con- 
 
WELL-BEING tfOR ALL 29 
 
 siders the needs of the people before schooling 
 them in their duties. 
 
 This cannot be brought about by Acts of Parlia- 
 ment, but only by taking immediate and effective 
 possession of aU that is necessary to ensure the 
 well-being of all; this is the only really scientific 
 way of going to work, the only way to be under- 
 stood and desired by the mass of the people. We 
 must take possession, in the name of the people, 
 of the granaries, the shops full of clothing, and the 
 dwelUng houses. Nothing must be wasted. We 
 must organize without delay to feed the hungry, 
 to satisfy aU wants, to meet all needs, to produce, 
 not for the special benefit of this one or that one, 
 but to ensure that society as a whole will live and 
 grow. 
 
 Enough of ambiguous words like " the right 
 to work," with which the people were misled in 
 1848, and which are still used to mislead them. 
 Let us have the courage to recognize that Well- 
 being for all, henceforward possible, must be 
 reaUzed. 
 
 When the workers claimed the right to work in 
 1848, national and municipal workshops were 
 organized, and workmen were sent to drudge 
 there at the rate of is. 8d. a day ! When they 
 asked that labour should be organized, the reply 
 was : " Patience, friends, the Government will 
 see to it ; meantime here is your is. 8d. Rest 
 now, brave toiler, after your lifelong struggle 
 for food ! " Meantime the cannons were trained, 
 
30 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 the reserves called out, and the workers themselves 
 disorganized by the many methods well known 
 to the middle classes, till one fine day they were 
 told to go and colonize Africa or be shot down. 
 
 Very different will be the result if the workers 
 claim the right to well-being ! In claiming that 
 right they claim the right to possess the wealth of 
 the community — to take the houses to dwell in, 
 according to the needs of each family ; to seize 
 the stores of food and learn the meaning of "plenty, 
 after having known famine too well. They pro- 
 claim their right to all wealth — fruit of the labour 
 of past and present generations — and learn by ils 
 means to enjoy those higher pleasures of art and 
 science too long monopohzed by the middle classes. 
 
 And while asserting their right to hve in -comfort, 
 they assert, what is still more important, their 
 right to decide for themselves what this comfort 
 shall be, what must be produced to ensure it, 
 and what discarded as no longer of value. 
 
 The "right to well-being" means the possibility 
 of living like human beings, and of bringing up 
 children to be members of a society better than 
 ours, whilst the " right to work " only means the 
 right to be always a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled 
 over and exploited by the middle class of the 
 future. The right to well-being is the Social 
 Revolution, the right to work means nothing but 
 the Treadmill of Commercialism. It is high time 
 for the worker to assert his right to the common 
 inheritance and to enter into possession. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 
 
 EVERY society which has abohshed private 
 property will be forced, we maintain, to 
 organize itself on the lines of Communistic Anarchy. 
 Atiarchy leads to Communism, and Communism 
 to Anarchy, both alike being expressions of the 
 predominant tendency in modern societies, the 
 pursuit of equahty. 
 
 Time was when a peasant family could consider 
 the corn which it grew, or the woollen garments 
 woven in the cottage, as the products of its own 
 toil. But even then this way of looking at things 
 was not quite correct. There were the roads and 
 the bridges made in common, the swamps drained 
 by common toil, and the communal pastures 
 enclosed by hedges which were kept in repair by 
 each and all. If the looms for weaving or the 
 dyes for colouring fabrics were improved, all 
 profited ; so even in those days a peasant family 
 could not live alone, but was dependent in a 
 thousand ways on the village or the commune. 
 
 But nowadays, in the present state of industry, 
 when everything is interdependent, when each 
 
 31 
 
32 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 branch of production is knit up with all the rest, 
 the attempt to claim an IndividuaUst origin for 
 the products of industry is absolutely untenable. 
 The astonishing perfection attained by the textile 
 or mining industries in civihzed countries is due 
 to the simultaneous development of a thousand 
 other industries, great and small, to the extension 
 of the railroad system, to inter-oceanic navigation, 
 to the manual skill of thousands of workers, to 
 a certain standard of culture reached by the 
 working classes as a whole, to the labours, in 
 short, of men in every corner of the globe. 
 
 The Itahans who died of cholera while making 
 the Suez Canal, or of anchylosis in the St. Gothard 
 Tunnel, and the Americans mowed down by shot 
 and shell while fighting for the abolition of slavery, 
 have helped to develop the cotton industry in 
 France and England, as well as the work-girls 
 who languish in the factories of Manchester and 
 Rouen, and the inventor who (following the 
 suggestion of some worker) succeeds in improving 
 the looms. 
 
 How, then, shall we estimate the share of each 
 in the riches which all contribute to amass ? 
 
 Looking at production from this general, sjm- 
 thetic point of view, we cannot hold with the 
 Collectivists that payment proportionate to the 
 hours of labour rendered by each would be an 
 ideal arrangement, or even a step in the right 
 direction. 
 
 Without discussing whether exchange value of 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 33 
 
 goods is really measured in existing societies by 
 the amount of work necessary to produce it — 
 according to the doctrine of Smith and Ricardo, 
 in whose footsteps Marx has followed — suffice it 
 to say here, leaving ourselves free to return to the 
 subject later, that the CoUectivist ideal appears 
 to us untenable in a society which considers the 
 instruments of labour as a common inheritance. 
 Starting from this principle, such a society would 
 find itself forced from the very outset to abandon 
 all forms of wages. 
 
 The mitigated individualism of the coUectivist 
 system certainly could not maintain itself along- 
 side a partial communism — the socialization of 
 land and the instruments of production. A new 
 form of property requires a new form of remunera- 
 tion. A new method of production cannot exist 
 side by side with the old forms of consumption, 
 any more than it can adapt itself to the old forms 
 of political organization. 
 
 The wage system arises out of the individual 
 ownership of the land and the instruments of 
 labour. It was the necessary condition for the 
 development of capitaUst production, and will 
 perish with it, in spite of the attempt to disguise 
 it as " profit-sharing." The common possession 
 of the instruments of labour must necessarily 
 bring with it the enjoyment in common of the 
 fruits of common labour. 
 
 We hold further that Communism is not only 
 desirable, but that existing societies, founded on 
 
34 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Individualism, are inevitably impelled, in the direc- 
 tion of Communism. The development of Indi- 
 vidualism during the last three centuries is ex- 
 plained by the efforts of the individual to protect 
 himself from the tyranny of Capital and of the 
 State. For a time he imagined, and those who- 
 expressed his thought for him declared, that he 
 could free himself entirely from the State and 
 from society. " By means of money," he said, 
 " I can buy all that I need." But the individual 
 was on a wrong tack, and modem history has 
 taught him to recognize that, without the help 
 of all, he can do nothing, although his strong- 
 boxes are full of gold. 
 
 In fact, alongside this current of Individualism, 
 we find in all modern history a tendency, on the 
 one hand, to retain all that remains of the partial 
 Communism of antiquity, and, on the other, to 
 establish the Communist principle in the thousand 
 developments of modern life. 
 
 As soon as the communes of the tenth, eleventh, 
 and twelfth centuries had succeeded in emanci- 
 pating themselves from their lords, ecclesiastical 
 or lay, their communal labour and communal 
 consumption began to extend and develop rapidly. 
 The township — and not private persons — freighted 
 ships and equipped expeditions, and the benefit 
 arising from the foreign trade did not accrue to 
 individuals, but was shared by all. The townships 
 also bought provisions for their citizens. Traces 
 of these institutions have lingered on into the 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 35 
 
 nineteenth century, and the folk piously cherish 
 the memory of them in their legends. 
 
 All that has disappeared. But the rural town- 
 ship still struggles to preserve the last traces of 
 this Communism, and it succeeds — except when 
 the State throws its heavy sword into the balance. 
 
 Meanwhile new organizations, based on the 
 same principle — to every man according to his 
 needs — spring up under a thousand different 
 forms ; for without a certain leaven of Communism 
 the pfesent societies could not exist. In spite of 
 the narrowly egoistic turn given to men's minds 
 by the commercial system, the tendency towards 
 Communism is constantly appearing, and in- 
 fluences our activities in a variety of ways. 
 
 The bridges, for the use of which a toll was 
 levied in the old days, are now become public 
 property and free to all ; so are the high roads, 
 except in the East, where a toll is still exacted 
 from the traveller for every mile of his journey. 
 Museums, free Ubraries, free schools, free meals 
 for children ; parks and gardens open to all ; 
 streets paved and lighted, free to all ; water 
 supplied to every house without measure or stint 
 — all such arrangements are founded on the 
 principle : " Take what you need." 
 
 The tramways and railways have aheady intro- 
 duced monthly and annual season tickets, without 
 limiting the number of journeys taken ; and two 
 nations, Hungary and Russia, have introduced 
 on their railways the zone system, which permits 
 
36 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 the holder to travel five hundred or a thousand 
 miles for the same price. It is but a short step 
 from that to a uniform charge, such as already 
 prevails in the postal service. In all these inno- 
 vations, and a thousand others, the tendency is 
 not to measure the individual consumption. 
 One man wants to travel a thousand miles, another 
 five hundred. These are personal requirements. 
 There is no sufficient reason why one should pay 
 twice as much as the other because his need is 
 twice as great. Such are the signs which appear 
 even now in our individuaUst societies. 
 
 Moreover, there is a tendency, though still a 
 feeble one, to consider the needs of the individual, 
 irrespective of his past or possible services to the 
 community. We are beginning to think of society 
 as a whole, each part of which is so intimately 
 bound up with the others that a service rendered 
 to one is a service rendered to all. 
 
 When you go into a pubhc library — not in- 
 deed the National Library of Paris, but, say, into 
 the British Museum or the BerKn Library — 
 the hbrarian does not ask what services you 
 have rendered to society before giving you the 
 book, or the fifty books, which you require, 
 and he comes to your assistance if you do not 
 know how to manage the catalogue. By means 
 of uniform credentials — and very often a contri- 
 bution of work is preferred — the scientific society 
 opens its museums, its gardens, its library, its 
 laboratories, and its annual conversaziones to 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 37 
 
 each of its members, whether he be a Darwin, or 
 a simple amateur. 
 
 At St. Petersburg, if you are pursuing an inven- 
 tion, you go into a special laboratory or a work- 
 shop, where you are given a place, a carpenter's 
 bench, a turning lathe, all the necessary tools 
 and scientific instruments, provided only you 
 know how to use them ; and you are allowed to 
 work there as long as you please. There are the 
 tools ; interest others in your idea, join with fellow 
 workers skilled in various crafts, or work alone 
 if you prefer it. Invent a flying machine, or 
 invent nothing — that is your own affair. You 
 are pursuing an idea — that is enough. 
 
 In the same way, those who man the lifeboat 
 do not ask credentials from the crew of a sinking 
 ship ; they launch their boat, risk their lives in 
 the raging waves, and sometimes perish, all to 
 save men whom they do not even know. And 
 what need to know them ? " They are human 
 beings, and they need our aid — that is enough, 
 that establishes their right To the rescue ! " 
 
 Thus we find a tendency, eminently commun- 
 istic, springing up on all sides, and in various 
 guises, in the very heart of theoretically indi- 
 vidualist societies. 
 
 Suppose that one of our great cities, so egotistic 
 in ordinary times, were visited to-morrow by 
 some calamity — a siege, for instance — that same 
 selfish city would decide that the first needs to 
 satisfy were those of the children and the aged. 
 
38 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Without asking what services they had rendered, 
 or were hkely to render to society, it would first 
 of all feed them. Then the combatants would 
 be cared for, irrespective of the courage or the 
 intelligence which each has displayed, and thou- 
 sands of men and women would outvie each other 
 in unselfish devotion to the wounded. 
 
 This tendency exists and is felt as soon as the 
 most pressing needs of each are satisfied, and in 
 proportion as the productive power of the race 
 increases. It becomes an active force every time 
 a great idea comes to oust the mean preoccupa- 
 tions of everyday hfe. 
 
 How can we doubt, then, that when the instru- 
 ments of production are placed at the service of 
 all, when business is conducted on Communist 
 principles, when labour, having recovered its 
 place of honour in society, produces much more 
 than is necessary to all — how can we doubt but 
 that this force (already so powerful) will enlarge 
 its sphere of action till it becomes the ruling 
 principle of social life ? 
 
 Following these indications, and considering 
 further the practical side of expropriation, of 
 which we shall speak in the following chapters, 
 we are convinced that our first obligation, when 
 the revolution shall have broken the power up- 
 holding the present system, will be to realize 
 Communism without delay. 
 
 But ours is neither the Communism of Fourier 
 and the Phalansteriens, nor of the German State- 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 39 
 
 Socialists. It is Anarchist Communism, Com- 
 munism without government — the Communism 
 of the Free. It is the synthesis of the two ideals 
 pursued by humanity throughout the ages — 
 Economic and Political Liberty. 
 
 II 
 
 In taking " Anarchy " for our ideal of political 
 organization we are only giving expression to 
 another marked tendency of human progress. 
 Whenever European societies have developed up 
 to a certain point they have shaken off the yoke 
 of authority and substituted a system founded 
 . roughly more or less on the principles of individual 
 liberty. And history shows us that these periods 
 of partial or general revolution, when the govern- 
 ments were overthrown, were also periods of 
 sudden progress both in the economic and the 
 intellectual field. Now it is the enfranchisement 
 of the communes, whose monuments, produced 
 by the free labour of the guilds, have never been 
 surpassed ; now it is the peasant rising which 
 brought about the Reformation and imperilled 
 the papacy ; and then again it is the society, 
 free for a brief space, which was created at the 
 other side of the Atlantic by the malcontents 
 from the Old world. 
 
 Further, if we observe the present development 
 of civilized peoples we see, most unmistakably, 
 a movement ever more and more marked to limit 
 
40 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 the sphere of action of the Government, and to 
 allow more and more Uberty to the individual. 
 This evolution is going on before our eyes, though 
 cumbered by the ruins and rubbish of old institu- 
 tions and old superstitions. Like all evolutions, 
 it only waits a revolution to overthrow the old 
 obstacles which block the way, that it may find 
 free scope in a regenerated society. 
 
 After having striven long in vain to solve the 
 insoluble problem — the problem of constructing 
 a government " which will constrain the indi- 
 vidual to obedience without itself ceasing to be 
 the servant of society," men at last attempt to 
 free themselves from every form of government 
 and to satisfy their need for organization by a 
 free contract between individuals and groups 
 pursuing the same aim. The independence of 
 each small territorial unit becomes a pressing 
 need ; mutual agreement replaces law, and every- 
 where regulates individual interests in view of 
 a common object. 
 
 All that was once looked on as a function of the 
 Government is to-day called in question. Things 
 are arranged more easily and more satisfactorily 
 without the intervention of the State. And in 
 studying the progress made in this direction, we are 
 led to conclude that the tendency of the human 
 race is to reduce Government interference to 
 zero ; in fact, to abolish the State, the personifica- 
 tion of injustice, oppression, and monopoly. 
 
 We can already catch ghmpses of a world in 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 41 
 
 which the bonds which bind the individual are 
 no longer laws, but social habits — the result of 
 the need felt by each one of us to seek the support, 
 the co-operation, the sympathy of his neighbours. 
 
 Assuredly the idea of a society without a State 
 wiU give rise to at least as many objections as 
 the political economy of a society without private 
 capital. We have all been brought up from our 
 childhood to regard the State as a sort of Provi- 
 dence ; all our education, the Roman history we 
 learned at school, the Byzantine code which we 
 studied later under the name of Roman law, and 
 the various sciences taught at the universities, 
 accustom us to believe in Government and in the 
 virtues of the State providential. 
 
 To maintain this superstition whole systems of 
 philosophy have been elaborated and taught ; 
 all politics are based on this principle ; and each 
 politician, whatever his colours, comes forward 
 and says to the people, " Give me the power, and 
 I both can and will free you from the miseries 
 which press so heavily upon you." 
 
 From the cradle to the grave all our actions are 
 guided by this principle. Open any book on 
 sociology or jurisprudence, and you will find there 
 the Government, its organization, its acts, filling 
 so large a place that we come to believe that there 
 is nothing outside the Government and the world 
 of statesmen. 
 
 The Press teaches us the same in every con- 
 ceivable way. Whole columns are devoted to 
 
42 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 parliamentary debates and to political intrigues. 
 The vast everyday life of a nation is barely 
 mentioned in a few lines when dealing with 
 economic subjects, law, or in " divers facts " 
 relating to police cases. And when you read 
 these newspapers, you hardly think of the incal- 
 culable number of beings — all humanity, so to say 
 — who grow up and die, who know sorrow, who 
 work and consume, think and create outside the 
 few encumbering personages who have been so 
 magnified that humanity is hidden by their 
 shadows enlarged by our ignorance. 
 
 And yet as soon as we pass from printed matter 
 to life itself, as soon as we throw a glance at 
 society, we are struck by the infinitesimal part 
 played by the Government. Balzac already re- 
 marked how millions of peasants spend the whole 
 of their lives without knowing anything about 
 the State, save the heavy taxes they are com- 
 pelled to pay. Every day millions of transactions 
 are made without Government intervention, and 
 the greatest of them — those of commerce and of 
 the Exchange — are carried on in such a way that 
 the Government could not be appealed to if one 
 of the contracting parties had the intention of 
 not fulfilling his agreement. Should you speak 
 to a man who understands commerce he will 
 tell you that the everyday business transacted 
 by merchants would be absolutely impossible 
 were it not based on mutual confidence. The 
 habit of keeping his word, the desire not to lose 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 43 
 
 his credit, amply suffice to maintain this relative 
 honesty. The man who does not feel the slightest 
 remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious 
 drugs covered with pompous labels thinks he is 
 in honour bound to keep his engagements. Now, 
 if this relative morality has developed under 
 present conditions, when enrichment is the only 
 incentive and the only aim, can we doubt its 
 rapid progress when appropriation of the fruits 
 of others' labour will no longer be the basis of 
 society ? 
 
 Another striking fact, which especially charac- 
 terizes our generation, speaks stiU more in favour 
 of our ideas. It is the continual extension of the 
 field of enterprise due to private initiative, and 
 the prodigious development of free groups of aU 
 kinds. We shall discuss this more at length in 
 the chapter devoted to Free Agreement. Suf&ce 
 it to mention that the facts are so numerous and 
 so customary that they are the essence of the 
 second half of the nineteenth century, even though 
 political and socialist writers ignore them, always 
 preferring to talk to us about the functions of 
 Government. 
 
 These organizations, free and infinitely varied, 
 are so natural an outcome of our civihzation; 
 they expand so rapidly and group themselves 
 with so much ease ; they are so necessary a result 
 of the continual growth of the needs of civilized 
 man; and lastly, they so advantageously replace 
 governmental interference that we must recognize 
 
44 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 in them a factor of growing importance in the 
 life of societies. If they do not yet spread over 
 the whole of the manifestations of life, it is 
 that they find an insurmountable obstacle in the 
 poverty of the worker, in the casts of present 
 society, in the private appropriation of capital, 
 and in the State. Abolish these obstacles and 
 you will see them covering the immense field of 
 civilized man's activity. 
 
 The history of the last fifty years furnishes a 
 living proof that Representative Government is 
 impotent to discharge the functions we have 
 sought to assign to it. In days to come the 
 nineteenth century will be quoted as having 
 witnessed the failure of parliamentarianism. 
 
 But this impotence is becoming evident to aU ; 
 the faults of parliamentarianism, apd the inherent 
 vices of the representative principle, are self- 
 evident, and the few thinkers who have made 
 a critical study of them (J. S. Mill and Lever days) 
 did but give Uterary form to the popular dis- 
 satisfaction. It is not difficult, indeed, to see the 
 absurdity of naming a few men and saying to 
 them, " Make laws regulating all our spheres of 
 activity, although not one of you knows anything 
 about them ! " 
 
 We are beginning to see that government by 
 majorities means abandoning all the affairs of 
 the country to the tide-waiters who make up the 
 majorities in the House and in election com- 
 mittees ; to those, in a word, who have no opinion 
 
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 45 
 
 of their own. But mankind is seeking and 
 already finding new issues. 
 
 The International Postal Union, the railway 
 unions, and the learned societies give us examples 
 of solutions based on free agreement in place and 
 stead of law. 
 
 To-day, when groups scattered far and wide 
 wish to organize themselves for some object or 
 other, they no longer elect an international par- 
 liament of J acks-of -all- trades. No, where it is 
 not possible to meet directly or come to an agree- 
 ment by correspondence, delegates versed in the 
 question at issue are sent to treat, with the instruc- 
 tions : " Endeavour to come to an agreement on 
 such or such a question, and then return, not 
 with a law in your pocket, but with a proposition 
 of agreement which we may or may not accept." 
 
 Such is the method of the great industrial com- 
 paniesi the learned societies, and the associations 
 of every description, which already cover Europe 
 and the United States. And such should be the 
 method of an emancipated society. While bring- 
 ing about expropriation, society cannot continue 
 to organize itself on the principle of parliamentary 
 representation. A society founded on serfdom 
 is in keeping with absolute monarchy ; a society 
 based on the wage system and the exploitation 
 of the masses by the capitahsts finds its political 
 expression in parliamentarianism. But a free 
 society, regaining possession of the common 
 inheritance, must seek, in free groups and free 
 
46 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 federations of groups, a new organization, in 
 harmony with the new economic phase of history. 
 Every economic phase has a pohtical phase 
 corresponding to it, and it would be impossible 
 to touch property without finding at the same 
 time a new modegof pohtical life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EXPROPRIATION 
 
 I 
 
 IT is told of Rothschild that, seeing his fortune 
 threatened by the Revolution of 1848, he 
 hit upon the following stratagem : "I am quite 
 willing to admit," said he, " that my fortune has 
 been accumulated at the expense of others, but 
 if it were divided to-morrow among the millions 
 of Europe, the share of each would only amount to 
 five shillings. Very well, then, I undertake to ren- 
 der to each his five shillings if he asks me for it." 
 
 Having given due pubUcity to his promise, 
 our millionaire proceeded as usual to stroll quietly 
 through the streets of Frankfort. Three or four 
 passers-by asked for their five shillings, which he 
 disbursed with a sardonic smile. His stratagem 
 succeeded, and the family of the millionaire is 
 still in possession of its wealth. 
 
 It is in much the same fashion that the shrewd 
 heads among the middle classes reason when they 
 say, " Ah, Expropriation ! I know what that 
 means. You take all the overcoats and lay them 
 in a heap, and every one is free to help himself 
 and fight for the best." 
 
 47 
 
48 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 But such jests are irrelevant as well as flippant. 
 What we want is not a redistribution of over- 
 coats, although it must be said that even in such 
 a case, the shivering folk would see advantage 
 in it. Nor do we want to divide up the wealth 
 of the Rothschilds. What we do want is so to 
 arrange things that every human being born into 
 the world shall be ensured the opportunity in the 
 first instance of learning some useful occupation, 
 and of becoming skilled in it ; next, that he shall 
 be free to work at his trade without asking leave 
 of master or owner, and without handing over to 
 landlord or capitahst the hon's share of what he 
 produces. As to the wealth held by the Roth- 
 schilds or the Vanderbilts, it will serve us to 
 organize our system of communal production. 
 
 The day when the labourer may till the ground 
 without paying away half of what he produces, 
 the day when the machines necessary to prepare 
 the soil for rich harvests are at the free disposal 
 of the cultivators, the day when the worker in 
 the factory produces for the community and not 
 the monopolist — that day will see the workers 
 clothed and fed, and there wiU be no more Roth- 
 schilds or other exploiters. 
 
 No one will then have to sell his working power 
 for a wage that only represents a fraction of what 
 he produces. 
 
 " So far so good," say our critics, " but you will 
 have Rothschilds coming in from outside. How 
 are you to prevent a person from amassing 
 
EXPROPRIATION 49 
 
 millions in China and then setthng amongst you ? 
 How are you going to prevent such a one from 
 surrounding himself with lackeys and wage- 
 slaves — from exploiting them and enriching him- 
 self at their expense ? 
 
 " You cannot bring about a revolution all over 
 the world at the same time. Well, then, are you 
 going to establish custom-houses on your frontiers 
 to search all who enter your country and con- 
 fiscate the money they bring with them ? — 
 Anarchist policemen firing on travellers would be 
 a fine spectacle ! " 
 
 But at the root of this argument there is a great 
 error. Those who propound it have never paused 
 to inquire whence come the fortunes of the rich. 
 A Uttle thought would, however, suffice to show 
 them that these fortunes have their beginnings in 
 the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer 
 any destitute there will no longer be any rich to 
 exploit them. 
 
 Let us glance for a moment at the Middle Ages, 
 when great fortunes began to spring up. 
 
 A feudal baron seizes on a fertile valley. But 
 as long as the fertile valley is empty of folk our 
 baron is not rich. His land brings him in nothing ; 
 he might as well possess a property in the moon. 
 
 What does our baron do to enrich himself ? 
 He looks out for peasants — for poor peasants ! 
 
 If every peasant-farmer had a piece of land, 
 free from rent and taxes, if he had in addition the 
 tools and the stock necessary for farm labour. 
 
50 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 who would plough the lands of the baron ? 
 Everyone would look after his own. But there 
 are thousands of destitute persons ruined by wars, 
 or drought, or pestilence. They have neither 
 horse nor plough. (Iron was costly in the Middle 
 Ages, and a draught-horse still more so.) 
 
 All these destitute creatures are trying to better 
 their condition. One day they see on the road 
 at the confines of our baron's estate a notice- 
 board indicating by certain signs adapted to their 
 comprehension that the labourer who is willing 
 to settle on this estate will receive the tools and 
 materials to build his cottage and sow his fields, 
 and a portion of land rent free for a certain number 
 of years. The number of years is represented by 
 so many crosses on the sign-board, and the 
 peasant understands the meaning of these crosses. 
 
 So the poor wretches swarm over the baron's 
 lands, making roads, draining marshes, building 
 villages. In nine years he begins to tax them. 
 Five years later he increases the rent. Then he 
 doubles it. The peasant accepts these new condi- 
 tions because he cannot find better ones elsewhere ; 
 and little by little, with the aid of laws made by 
 the barons, the poverty of the peasant becomes 
 the source of the landlord's wealth. And it is not 
 only the lord of the manor who preys upon him. 
 A whole host of usurers swoop down upon the 
 villages, multiplying as the wretchedness of the 
 peasants increases. That is how things went in 
 the Middle Ages. And to-day is it not still the 
 
EXPROPRIATION 51 
 
 same thing ? If there were free lands which the 
 peasant could cultivate if he pleased, would he 
 pay £50 to some " shabble of a Duke " * for con- 
 descending to sell him a scrap ? Would he burden 
 himself with a lease which absorbed a third of the 
 produce ? Would he — on the metayer system — 
 consent to give the half of his harvest to the land- 
 owner ? 
 
 But he has nothing. So he wiU accept any 
 conditions, if only he can keep body and soul 
 together, while he tills the soil and enriches the 
 landlord. 
 
 So in the nineteenth century, just as in the 
 Middle Ages, the poverty of the peasant is a 
 source of wealth to the landed proprietor. 
 
 II 
 
 The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of 
 the peasants, and the wealth of the capitahst 
 comes from the same source. 
 
 Take the case of a citizen of the middle class, 
 who somehow or other finds himself in possession 
 of £20,000. He could, of course, spend his money 
 at the rate of £2,000 a year, a mere bagatelle in 
 these days of fantastic, senseless luxury. But 
 then he would have nothing left at the end of 
 ten years. So, being a " practical person," he 
 
 * "Shabble of a Duke" is an expression coined by Carlyle ; 
 it is a somewhat free rendering of Kropotkine's "Monsieur le 
 Vicomte,'' but I think it expresses his meaning. — Trans. 
 
52 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 prefers to keep his fortune intact, and win for 
 himself a snug httle annual income as well. 
 
 This is very easy in our society, for the good 
 reason that the towns and villages swarm with 
 workers who have not the wherewithal to Uve 
 for a month, or even a fortnight. So our worthy 
 citizen starts a factory. The banks hasten to lend 
 him another £20,000, especially if he has a reputa- 
 tion for " business ability " ; and with this round 
 sum he can command the labour of five hundred 
 hands. 
 
 If all the men and women in the country-side 
 had their daily bread sure and their daily needs 
 already satisfied, who would work for our capitalist 
 at a wage of half a crown a day, while the com- 
 modities one produces in a day sell in the market 
 for a crown or more ? 
 
 Unhappily — we know it all too well — the poor 
 quarters of our towns and the neighbouring 
 villages are full of needy wretches, whose children 
 clamour for bread. So, before the factory is well 
 finished, the workers hasten to offer themselves. 
 Where a hundred are required three hundred besiege 
 the doors, and from the time his mill is started 
 the owner, if he only has average business capa- 
 cities, will clear £40 a year out of each mill-hand 
 he employs. 
 
 He is thus able to lay by a snug httle fortune ; 
 and if he chooses a lucrative trade and has 
 " business talents " he will soon increase his income 
 by doubhng the number of the men he exploits. 
 
EXPROPRIATION 53 
 
 So he becomes a personage of importance. He 
 can afford to give dinners to other personages — to 
 the local magnates, the civic, legal, and political 
 dignitaries. With his money he can " marry 
 money " ; by and by he may pick and choose 
 places for his children, and later on perhaps get 
 something good from the Government — a con- 
 tract for the army or for the poUce. His gold 
 breeds gold ; tiU at last a war, or even a rumour 
 of war, or a speculation on the Stock Exchange, 
 gives him his great opportunity. 
 
 Nine-tenths of the great fortunes made in the 
 United States are (as Henry George has shown in 
 his " Social Problems ") the result of knavery on 
 a large scale, assisted by the State. In Europe, 
 nine-tenths of the fortunes made in our monarchies 
 and republics have the same origin. There are 
 not two ways of becoming a millionaire. 
 
 This is the secret of wealth ; find the starving 
 and destitute, pay them half a crown, and make 
 them produce five shiUings worth in the day, 
 amass a fortune by these means, and then increase 
 it by some lucky hit, made with the help of the 
 State. 
 
 Need we go on to speak of small fortunes attri- 
 buted by the economists to forethought and 
 frugahty, when we know that mere saving in 
 itself brings in nothing, so long as the pence saved 
 are not used to exploit the famishing ? 
 
 Take a shoemaker, for instance. Grant that 
 his work is well paid, that he has plenty of custom, 
 
54 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 and that by dint of strict frugality he contrives 
 to lay by from eighteen pence to two shillings 
 a day, perhaps two pounds a month. 
 
 Grant that our shoemaker is never ill, that he 
 does not half starve himself, in spite of his passion 
 for economy ; that he does not marry or that he 
 has no children ; that he does not die of con- 
 sumption ; suppose anything and everything you 
 please ! 
 
 Well, at the age of fifty he will not have scraped 
 together £800 ; and he will not have enough to 
 live on during his old age, when he is past work. 
 Assuredly this is not how great fortunes are 
 made. But suppose our shoemaker, as soon as 
 he has laid by a few pence, thriftily conveys them 
 to the savings bank, and that the savings bank 
 lends them to the capitalist who is just about to 
 " employ labour," i.e. to exploit the poor. Then 
 our shoemaker takes an apprentice, the child of 
 some poor wretch, who will think himself lucky 
 if in five years time his son has learned the trade 
 and is able to learn his living. 
 
 Meanwhile our shoemaker does not lose by 
 him, and if trade is brisk he soon takes a second, 
 and then a third apprentice. By and by he will 
 take two or three working men — poor wretches, 
 thankful to receive half a crown a day for work 
 that is worth five shillings, and if our shoemaker 
 is "in luck," that is to say, if he is keen enough 
 and mean enough, his working men and apprentices 
 will bring him in nearly one pound a day, over 
 
EXPROPRIATION 55 
 
 and above the product of his own toil. He can 
 then enlarge his business. He will gradually 
 become rich, and no longer have any need to 
 stint himself in the necessaries of hfe. He will 
 leave a snug little fortune to his son. 
 
 That is what people call " being economical and 
 having frugal, temperate habits." At bottom it 
 is nothing more nor less than grinding the face of 
 the poor. 
 
 Commerce seems an exception to this rule. 
 " Such a man," we are told, " buys tea in China, 
 brings it to France, and realizes a profit of thirty 
 per cent on his original outlay. He has exploited 
 nobody." 
 
 Nevertheless the case is analogous. If our 
 merchant had carried his bales on his back, well 
 and good ! In early medieval times that was 
 exactly how foreign trade was conducted, and 
 so no one reached such giddy heights of fortune 
 as in our days. Very few and very hardly earned 
 were the gold coins which the medieval merchant 
 gained from a long and dangerous voyage. It 
 was less the love of money than the thirst of travel 
 and adventure that inspired his undertakings. 
 
 Nowadays the method is simpler. A merchant 
 who has some capital need not stir from his desk 
 to become wealthy. He telegraphs to an agent 
 telling him to buy a hundred tons of tea; he 
 freights a ship, and in a few weeks, in three months 
 if it is a sailing ship, the vessel brings him his 
 cargo. He does not even take the risks of the 
 
56 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 voyage, for his tea and his vessel are insured, and 
 if he has expended four thousand pounds he 
 will receive more than five thousand ; that is to 
 say, if he has not attempted to speculate in some 
 novel commodities, in which case he runs a chance 
 of either doubling his fortune or losing it alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Now, how could he find men willing to cross the 
 sea, to travel to China and back, to endure hard- 
 ship and slavish toil and to risk their lives for 
 a miserable pittance ? How could he find dock 
 labourers willing to load and unload his ships 
 for " starvation wages " ? How ? Because they 
 are needy and starving. Go to the seaports, visit 
 the cook-shops and taverns on the quays, and 
 look at these men who have come to hire them- 
 selves, crowding round the dock-gates, which they 
 besiege from early dawn, hoping to be allowed to 
 work on the vessels. Look at these sailors, happy 
 to be hired for a long voyage, after weeks and 
 months of waiting. All their lives long they 
 have gone to the sea in ships, and they will sail 
 in others still, until they have perished in the 
 waves. 
 
 Enter their homes, look at their wives and 
 children in rags, living one knows not how till the 
 father's return, and you will have the answer to 
 the question. Multiply examples, choose them 
 where you will, consider the origin of all fortunes, 
 large or small, whether arising out of commerce, 
 finance, manufactures, or the land. Everywhere 
 
EXPROPRIATION 57 
 
 you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs 
 from the poverty of the poor. This is why 
 an anarchist society need not fear the advent 
 of a Rothschild who would settle in its midst. 
 If every member of the community knows that 
 after a few hours of productive toil he will have 
 a right to all the pleasures that civilization pro- 
 cures, and to those deeper sources of enjoyment 
 which art and science offer to all who seek them, 
 he will not sell his strength for a starvation wage. 
 No one will volunteer to work for the enrichment 
 of your Rothschild. His golden guineas will be 
 only so many pieces of metal — useful for various 
 purposes, but incapable of breeding more. 
 
 In answering the above objection we have at 
 the same time indicated the scope of Expropria- 
 tion. It must apply to everything that enables 
 any man — ^be he financier, mill-owner, or land- 
 lord — to appropriate the product of others' toil. 
 Our formula is simple and comprehensive. 
 
 We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but 
 we wish to give to the workers all those things 
 the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey 
 to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that 
 none shall lack aught, that not a single man shall 
 be forced to sell the strength of his right arm 
 to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his 
 babes. This is what we mean when we talk of 
 Expropriation ; this will be our duty during 
 the Revolution, for whose coming we look, not 
 two hundred years hence, but soon, very soon. 
 
58 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 III 
 
 The ideas of Anarchism in general and of Ex- 
 propriation in particular find much more sym- 
 pathy than we are apt to imagine among men of 
 independent character, and those for whom idle- 
 ness is not the supreme ideal. " StiU," our 
 friends often warn us, " take care you do not go 
 too far ! Humanity cannot be changed in a 
 day, so do not be in too great a hurry with your 
 schemes of Expropriation and Anarchy, or you 
 will be in danger of achieving no permanent 
 result." 
 
 Now, what we fear with regard to Expropriation 
 is exactly the contrary. We are afraid of not 
 going far enough, of carrying out Expropriation 
 on too small a scale to be lasting. We would not 
 have the revolutionary impulse arrested in mid- 
 career, to exhaust itself in half measures, which 
 would content no one, and while producing 
 a tremendous confusion in society, and stopping 
 its customary activities, would have no vital 
 power — ^would merely spread general discon- 
 tent and inevitably prepare the way for the 
 triumph of reaction. 
 
 There are, in fact, in a modern State established 
 relations which it is practically impossible to 
 modify if one attacks them only in detail. There 
 are wheels within wheels in our economic organi- 
 zation — the machinery is so complex and inter- 
 dependent that no one part can be modified 
 
EXPROPRIATION 59 
 
 without disturbing the whole. This becomes 
 clear as soon as an attempt is made to expropriate 
 anything. 
 
 Let us suppose that in a certain country a 
 limited form of expropriation is effected. For 
 example, that, as it has been suggested more 
 than once, only the property of the great land- 
 lords is socialized, whilst the factories are left 
 untouched ; or that, in a certain city, house pro- 
 perty is taken over by the Commune, but every- 
 thing else is left in private ownership ; or that, 
 in some manufacturing centre, the factories are 
 communalized, but the land is not interfered 
 with. 
 
 The same result would foUow in each case — 
 a terrible shattering of the industrial system, 
 without the means of reorganizing it on new 
 lines. Industry and finance would be at a dead- 
 lock, yet a return to the first principles of justice 
 would not have been achieved, and society would 
 find itself powerless to construct a harmonious 
 whole. 
 
 If agriculture could free itself from great land- 
 owners, while industry still remained the bond- 
 slave of the capitahst, the merchant, and the- 
 banker, nothing would be accomplished. The 
 peasant suffers to-day not only in having to pay 
 rent to the landlord ; he is oppressed on all hands 
 by existing conditions. He is exploited by the 
 tradesman, who makes him pay half a crown 
 for a spade which, measured by the labour spent 
 
6o THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 on it, is not worth more than sixpence. He is 
 taxed by the State, which cannot do without its 
 formidable hierarchy of officials, and finds it 
 necessary to maintain an expensive army, because 
 the traders of all nations are perpetually fighting 
 for the markets, and any day a little quarrel 
 arising from the exploitation of some part of 
 Asia or Africa may result in war. 
 
 Then again the peasant suffers from the depopu- 
 lation of country places : the young people are 
 attracted to the large manufacturing towns by 
 the bait of high wages paid temporarily by the 
 producers of articles of luxury, or by the attrac- 
 tions of a more stirring life. The artificial pro- 
 tection of industry, the industrial exploitation 
 of foreign countries, the prevalence of stock- 
 jobbing, the difficulty of improving the soil and 
 the machinery of production — all these agencies 
 combine nowadays to Work against agricul- 
 ture, which is burdened not only by rent, 
 but by the whole complex of conditions in a 
 society based on exploitation. Thus, even if the 
 expropriation of land were accomplished, and 
 every one were free to till the soil and cultivatp 
 it to the best advantage, without pajdng rent, 
 agriculture, even though it should enjoy — which 
 can by no means be taken for granted — a momen- 
 tary prosperity, would soon faU back into the 
 slough in which it finds itself to-day. The whole 
 thing would have to be begun over again, with 
 increased difficulties. 
 
EXPROPRIATION 6i 
 
 The same holds true of industry. Take the 
 converse case : instead of turning the agricultural 
 labourers into peasant-proprietors, make over 
 the factories to those who work in them. Abolish 
 the master-manufacturers, but leave the landlord 
 his land, the banker his money, the merchant his 
 Exchange, maintain the swarm of idlers who live 
 on the toil of the workmen, the thousand and one 
 middlemen, the State with its numberless officials, 
 and industry would come to a standstill. Finding 
 no purchasers in the mass of peasants who would 
 remain poor; not possessing the raw material, 
 and unable to export their produce, partly on 
 account of the stoppage of trade, and still more so 
 because industries spread all over the world, the 
 manufacturers would feel unable to struggle, and 
 thousands of workers would be thrown upon the 
 streets. These starving crowds would be ready 
 and willing to submit to the first schemer who 
 came to exploit them ; they would even consent to 
 return to the old slavery, if only under promise of 
 work. 
 
 Or, finally, suppose you oust the landowners, 
 and hand over the mills and factories to the 
 worker, without interfering with the swarm of 
 middlemen who drain the product of our manu- 
 facturers, and speculate in corn and flour, meat 
 and groceries, in our great centres of commerce. 
 Then, as soon as exchange is arrested, the great 
 cities are left without bread, and others find no 
 buyers for their articles of luxury, a terrible 
 
62 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 counter-revolution will take place — a counter- 
 revolution treading upon the slain^ sweeping the 
 towns and villages with shot and shell ; there 
 would be proscriptions, panic, flight, and all the 
 terrors of the guillotine, as it was in France in 
 1815, 1848, and 1871. 
 
 All is interdependent in a civilized society ; it 
 is impossible to reform any one thing without 
 altering the whole. Therefore, on the day we Strike 
 at private property, under any one of its forms, 
 territorial or industrial, we shall be obliged to 
 attack them all. The very success of the Revolu- 
 tion wiU demand it. 
 
 Besides, we could not, if we would, confide our- 
 selves to a partial expropriation. Oncfe the 
 principle of the " Divine Right of Property " is 
 shaken, no amount of theorizing wiU prevent its 
 overthrow, here by the slaves of the toil, there 
 by the slaves of the machine. 
 
 If a great town, Paris for example, were to confine 
 itself to taking possession of the dwelling houses 
 or the factories, it would be forced also to deny 
 the right of the bankers to levy upon the Com- 
 mune a tax amounting to £2,000,000, in the form 
 of interest for former loans. The great city 
 would be obhged to put itself in touch with the 
 rural districts, and its influence would inevitably 
 urge the peasants to free themselves from the 
 landowner. It would be necessary to communahze 
 the railways, that the citizens might get food and 
 work, and lastly, to prevent the waste of supplies. 
 
EXPROPRIATION 63 
 
 and to guard against the trusts of corn-specu- 
 lators, like those to whom the Commune of 1793 
 feU a prey, it would have to place in the hands of 
 the City the work of stocking its warehouses 
 with commodities, and apportioning the produce. 
 
 Nevertheless, some Sociahsts still seek to estab- 
 hsh a distinction. " Of course," they say, " the 
 soil, the mines, the mills, and manufactures must 
 be expropriated, these are the instruments of 
 production, and it is right we should consider 
 them pubhc property. But articles of con- 
 sumption — food, clothes, and dwellings — should 
 remain private property." 
 
 Popular common sense has got the better of 
 this subtle distinction. We are not savages who 
 can Uve in the woods, without other shelter than 
 the branches. The civiUzed man needs a roof, 
 a roopi, a hearth, and a bed. It is true that the 
 bed, the room, and the house is a home of idleness 
 foF the non-producer. But for the worker, a room, 
 properly heated and Hghted, is as much an instru- 
 ment of production as the tool or the machine. 
 It is the place where the nerves and sinews gather 
 strength for the work of the morrow. The rest 
 of the workman is the daily repairing of the 
 machine. 
 
 The same argument applies even more obviously 
 to food. The so-called economists of whom we 
 speak would hardly deny that the coal burnt in 
 a machine is as necessary to production as the 
 raw material itself. How then can, food, without 
 
64 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 which the human machine could do no work, be 
 excluded from the hst of things indispensable to 
 the producer ? Can this be a rehc of rehgious 
 metaphysics ? The rich man's feast is indeed 
 a matter of luxury, but the food of the worker 
 is just as much a part of production as the fuel 
 burnt by the steam-engine. 
 
 The same with clothing. If the economists 
 who draw this distinction between articles of 
 production and of consumption dressed themselves 
 in the fashion of New Guinea, we could under- 
 stand their objection. But men who could not 
 write a word without a shirt on their back are 
 not in a position to draw such a hard and fast 
 line between their shirt and their pen. And 
 though the dainty gowns of their dames must 
 certainly rank as objects of luxury, there is 
 nevertheless a certain quantity of linen, cotton, 
 and woollen stuff which is a necessity of life to 
 the producer. The shirt and shoes in which he 
 goes to his work, his cap and the jacket he sHps 
 on after the day's toil is over, these are as neces- 
 sary to him as the hammer to the anvil. 
 
 Whether we like it or not, this is what the 
 people mean by a revolution. As soon as they 
 have made a clean sweep of the Government, 
 they will seek first of all to ensure to themselves 
 decent dwelUngs and sufficient food and clothes 
 — free of capitalist rent. 
 
 And the people will be right. The methods of 
 the people will be much more in accordance with 
 
EXPROPRIATION 65 
 
 science than those of the economists who draw so 
 many distinctions between instruments of pro- 
 duction and articles of consumption. The people 
 understand that this is just the point where the 
 Revolution ought to begin ; and they wiU lay 
 the foundations of the only economic science 
 worthy the name — a science which might be 
 called : " The Study of the Needs of Humanity, 
 and of the Economic Means to satisfy them." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 FOOD 
 
 IF the coming Revolution is to be a Social 
 Revolution it will be distinguished from all 
 former uprisings not only by its aim, but also by 
 its methods. To attain a new end, new means 
 are required. 
 
 The three great popular movements which we 
 have seen in France during the last hundred years 
 differ from each other in many ways, but they 
 have one common feature. 
 
 In each case the people strove to overturn the 
 old regime, and spent their heart's blood for the 
 cause. Then, after having borne the brunt of 
 the battle, they sank again into obscurity. A 
 Government, composed of men more or less honest, 
 was formed and undertook to organize — the 
 RepubHc in 1793, Labour in 1848, and the Free 
 Commune in 1871. Imbued with Jacobin ideas, 
 this Government occupied itself first of all with 
 political questions, such as the reorganization 
 of the machinery of government, the purifying 
 of the administration, the separation of Church 
 and State, civic liberty, and such matters. It 
 
 66 
 
FOOD 67 
 
 is true the workmen's clubs kept an eye on the 
 members of the new Government, and often 
 imposed their ideas on them. But even in these 
 clubs, whether the leaders belonged to the middle 
 or to the working classes, it was always middle-class 
 ideas which prevailed. They discussed various 
 poKtical questions at great length, but forgot to 
 discuss the question of bread. 
 
 Great ideas sprang up at such times, ideas that 
 have moved the world ; words were spoken which 
 stiU stir our hearts, at the interval of a century. 
 But the people were starving in the slums. 
 
 From the very commencement of the Revolu- 
 tion industry inevitably came to a stop — the 
 circulation of produce was checked, and capital 
 concealed itself. The master — the employer — 
 had nothing to fear at such times, he battened on 
 his dividends, if indeed he did not speculate on 
 the wretchedness around ; but the wage-earner 
 was reduced to hve from hand to mouth. Want 
 knocked at the door. 
 
 Famine was abroad in the land — such famine 
 as had hardly been seen under the old regime. 
 
 " The Girondists are starving us ! " was the 
 cry in the workmen's quarters in 1793, and there- 
 upon the Girondists were guillotined, and full 
 powers were given to " the Mountain " and to the 
 Commune. The Commune indeed concerned itself 
 with the question of bread, and made heroic efforts 
 to feed Paris. At Lyons, Fouche and CoUot 
 d'Herbois established city granaries, but the 
 
68 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 sums spent on filling them were woefully in- 
 sufficient. The town councils made great efforts 
 to procure corn ; the bakers who hoarded flour 
 were hanged — and still the people lacked bread. 
 
 Then they turned on the royaUst conspirators 
 and laid the blame at their door. They guillotined 
 a dozen or fifteen a day — servants and duchesses 
 alike, especially servants, for the duchesses had 
 gone to Coblentz. But if they had guillotined a 
 hundred dukes and viscounts every day, it would 
 have been equally hopeless. 
 
 The want only grew. For the wage-earner 
 cannot Uve without his wage, and the wage was 
 not forthcoming. What difference could a thou- 
 sand corpses more or less make to him ? 
 
 Then the people began to grow weary. " So 
 much for your vaunted Revolution I You are 
 more wretched than ever before," whispered the 
 reactionary in the ears of the worker. And little 
 by Httle the rich took courage, emerged from their 
 hiding-places, and flaunted their luxury in the 
 face of the starving multitude. They dressed up 
 like scented fops and said to the workers : " Come, 
 enough of this foolery ! What have you gained 
 by rebeUion ? " 
 
 Sick at heart, his patience at an end, the 
 revolutionary had at last to admit to himself that 
 the cause was lost once more. He retreated into 
 his hovel and awaited the worst. 
 
 Then reaction proudly asserted itself, and 
 accomphshed a pohtic stroke. The Revolution 
 
FOOD 69 
 
 deadj nothing remained but to trample its corpse 
 under foot. 
 
 The White Terror began. Blood flowed like 
 water, the guillotine was never idle, the prisons 
 were crowded, while the pageant of rank and 
 fashion resumed its old course, and went on 
 as merrily as before. 
 
 This picture is typical of all our revolutions. 
 In 1848 the workers of Paris placed " three 
 months of starvation " at the service of the 
 Republic, and then, having reached the hmit of 
 their powers, they made one last desperate effort 
 — an effort which was drowned in blood. In 1871 
 the Commune perished for lack of combatants. 
 It had taken measures for the separation of Church 
 and State, but it neglected, alas, until too late, 
 to take measures for providing the people with 
 bread. And so it came to pass in Paris that 
 iligantes and fine gentlemen could spurn the 
 confederates, and bid them go sell their Uves for 
 a miserable pittance, and leave their " betters " 
 to feast at their ease in fashionable restaurants. 
 
 At last the Commune saw its mistake, and 
 opened communal kitchens. But it was too late. 
 Its days were already numbered, and the troops 
 of Versailles were on the ramparts. 
 
 "Bread, it is bread that the Revolution 
 needs ! " 
 
 Let others spend their time in issuing pompous 
 proclamations, in decorating themselves lavishly 
 
70 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 with official gold lace, and in talking about 
 political liberty ! . . . 
 
 Be it ours to see, from the first day of the 
 Revolution to the last, in all the provinces fighting 
 for freedom, that there is not a single man who 
 lacks bread, not a single woman compelled to 
 stand with the weariful crowd outside the bake- 
 house-door, that haply a coarse loaf may be 
 thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining 
 for want of food. 
 
 It has always been the middle-class idea to 
 harangue about " great principles " — great lies 
 rather ! 
 
 The idea of the people will be to provide bread 
 for all. And while middle-class citizens, and 
 workmen infested with middle-class ideas admire 
 their own rhetoric in the " Talking Shops," and 
 " practical people " are engaged in endless dis- 
 cussions on forms of government, we, the " Uto- 
 pian dreamers " — we shall have to consider the 
 question of daily bread. 
 
 We have the temerity to declare that all have 
 a right to bread, that there is bread enough for all, 
 and that with this watchword of Bread for All 
 the Revolution will triumph. 
 
 II 
 
 That we are Utopians is well known. So 
 Utopian are we that we go the length of beheving 
 that the Revolution can and ought to assure 
 
FOOD 71 
 
 shelter, food, and clothes to all— an idea ex- 
 tremely displeasing to middle-class citizens, what- 
 ever their party colour, for they are quite alive 
 to the fact that it is not easy to keep the upper 
 hand of a people whose hunger is satisfied. 
 
 All the same, we maintain our contention : 
 bread must be found for the people of the Revolu- 
 tion, and the question of bread must take pre- 
 cedence of all other questions. If it is settled in 
 the interests of the people, the Revolution wiU be 
 on the right road ; for in solving the question of 
 Bread we must accept the principle of equaUty, 
 which will force itself upon us to the exclusion 
 of every other solution. 
 
 It is certain that the coming Revolution — like 
 in that respect to the Revolution of 1848 — will 
 burst upon us in the middle of a great industrial 
 crisis. Things have been seething for half a 
 century now, and can only go from bad to 
 worse. Everything tends that way — new nations 
 entering the lists of international trade and fight- 
 ing for possession of the world's markets, wars, 
 taxes ever increasing. National debts, the in- 
 security of the morrow, and huge colonial 
 undertakings in every corner of the globe. 
 
 There are millions of unemployed workers in 
 Europe at this moment. It wiU be still worse 
 when Revolution has burst upon us and spread 
 like fire laid to a train of gunpowder. The number 
 of the out-of-works will be doubled as soon as 
 barricades are erected in Europe and the United 
 
72 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 States. What is to be done to provide these 
 multitudes with bread ? 
 
 We do not know whether the folk who call 
 themselves " practical people " have ever asked 
 themselves this question in all its nakedness. 
 But we do know that they wish to maintain the 
 wage system, and we must therefore expect to have 
 "national workshops" and "pubhc works" vaunted 
 as a means of giving food to the unemployed. 
 
 Because national workshops were opened in 1789 
 and in 1793 ; because the same means were resorted 
 to in 1848 ; because Napoleon III succeeded in 
 contenting the Parisian proletariat for eighteen 
 years by giving them public works — which cost 
 Paris to-day its debt of £80,000,000 — and its 
 municipal tax of three or four pounds a-head ; * 
 because this excellent method of " taming the 
 beast " was customary in Rome, and even in 
 Egypt four thousand years ago ; and lastly, 
 because despots, kings, and emperors have always 
 employed the ruse of throwing a scrap of food 
 to the people to gain time to snatch up the whip 
 — it is natural that " practical " men should extol 
 this method of perpetuating the wage system. 
 What need to rack our brains when we have the 
 time-honoured method of the Pharaohs at our 
 disposal ? 
 
 Yet should the Revolution be so misguided 
 as to start on this path, it would be lost. 
 
 * The mnnicipal debt of Paris amounted 101904 to2,266,S79,ioo 
 francs, and the charges for it were 121,000,000 francs. 
 
FOOD 73 
 
 In 1848, when the national workshops were 
 opened on February 27, the unemployed of Paris 
 numbered only 8000 ; a fortnight later they 
 had already increased to 49,000. They would 
 soon have been 100,000, without counting those 
 who crowded in from the provinces. 
 
 Yet at that time trade and manufacturers in 
 France only employed half as many hands as 
 to-day. And we know that in time of Revolution 
 exchange and industry suffer most from the 
 general upheaval. 
 
 To reahze this we have only to think for a 
 moment of the number of workmen whose labour 
 depends directly or indirectly upon export trade, 
 or of the number of hands employed in producing 
 luxuries, whose consumers are the middle-class 
 minority. 
 
 A revolution in Europe means the unavoidable 
 stoppage of at least half the factories and work- 
 shops. It means milHons of workers and their 
 families thrown on the streets. 
 
 And our " practical men " would seek to 
 avert this truly terrible situation by means of 
 national reUef works ; that is to say, by means of 
 new industries created on the spot to give work 
 to the unemployed ! 
 
 It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed 
 out, that the smallest attack upon property wiU 
 bring in its train the complete disorganization of 
 the system based upon private enterprise and 
 wage labour. Society itself will be forced to take 
 
74 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 production in hand, in its entirety, and to re- 
 organize it to meet the needs of the whole people. 
 But this cannot be accomplished in a day or a 
 month ; it must take a certain time thus to 
 reorganize the system of production, and during 
 this time milHons of men will be deprived of the 
 means of subsistence. What then is to be done ? 
 
 There is only one really practical solution of the 
 problem — ^boldly to face the great task which 
 awaits us, and instead of trying to patch up a 
 situation which we ourselves have made unten- 
 able, to proceed to reorganize production on a 
 new basis. 
 
 Thus the really practical course of action, in 
 our view, would be that the people should take 
 immediate possession of all the food of the insur- 
 gent districts, keeping strict account of it all, 
 that none might be wasted, and that by the aid 
 of these accumulated resources every one might 
 be able to tide over the crisis. During that time 
 an agreement would have to be made with the 
 factory workers, the necessary raw material given 
 them and the means of subsistence assured to 
 them while they worked to supply the needs of 
 the agricultural population. For we must not 
 forget that while France weaves silks and satins 
 to deck the wives of German financiers, the 
 Empress of Russia, and the Queen of the Sandwich 
 Islands, and while Paris fashions wonderful trin- 
 kets and playthings for rich folk all the world over, 
 two-thirds of the French peasantry have not 
 
FOOD 75 
 
 proper lamps to give them light, or the implements 
 necessary for modern agriculture. Lastly, un- 
 productive land, of which there is plenty, would 
 have to be turned to the best advantage, poor 
 soils enriched, and rich soils, which yet, under 
 the present system, do not yield a quarter, no, 
 nor a tenth of what they might produce, submitted 
 to intensive culture and tilled with as much care 
 as a market garden or a flower plot. It is im- 
 possible to imagine any other practical solution 
 of the problem ; and, whether we like it or not, 
 sheer force of circumstances will bring it to pass. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The most prominent characteristic of capitaUsm 
 is the wage system, which in brief amounts to 
 this : — 
 
 A man, or a group of men, possessing the 
 necessary capital, starts some industrial enter- 
 prise ; he undertakes to supply the factory or 
 workshops with raw material, to organize pro- 
 duction, to pay the employes a fixed wage, and 
 lastly, to pocket the surplus value or profits, 
 under pretext of recouping himself for managing 
 the concern, for running the risks it may involve, 
 and for the fluctuations of price in the market 
 value of the wares. 
 
 To preserve this system, those who now mono- 
 pohze capital would be ready to make certain 
 concessions ; to share, for example, a part of the 
 
76 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 profits with the workers, or rather to establish 
 a " sUding scale/' which would obhge them to 
 raise wages when prices were high ; in brief, they 
 would consent to certain sacrifices on condition 
 that they were still allowed to direct industry 
 and to take its first fruits. 
 
 Collectivism, as we know, does not abolish 
 wages, though it introduces considerable modifi- 
 cations into the existing order of things. It only 
 substitutes the State, that is to say. Representa- 
 tive Government, national or local, for the 
 individual employer of labour. Under Collec- 
 tivism it is the representatives of the nation, or 
 of the district, and their deputies and ofiicials 
 who are to have the control of industry. It is 
 they who reserve to themselves the right *of 
 employing the surplus of production — ^in the 
 interests of all. Moreover, Collectivism draws 
 a very subtle but very far-reaching distinction 
 between the work of the labourer and of the man 
 who has learned a craft. Unskilled labour in the 
 eyes of the coUectivist is simple labour, while the 
 work of the craftsman, the mechanic, the engineer, 
 the man of science, etc., is what Marx calls complex 
 labour, and is entitled to a higher wage. But 
 labourers and craftsmen, weavers and men of 
 science, are all wage-servants of the State — "all 
 officials," as was said lately, to gild the pill. 
 
 The coming Revolution can render no greater 
 service to humanity than to make the wage 
 system, in all its forms, an impossibility, and to 
 
FOOD 77 
 
 render Communism, which is the negation of 
 wage-slavery, the only possible solution. 
 
 For even admitting that the CoUectivist modifi- 
 cation of the present system is possible, if intro- 
 duced gradually during a period of prosperity 
 and peace — though for my part I question its 
 practicabihty even under such conditions — it 
 would become impossible in a period of Revolu- 
 tion, when the need of feeding hungry millions 
 springs up with the first call to arms. A political 
 revolution can be accomplished without shaking 
 the foundations of industry, but a revolution 
 where the people lay hands upon property will 
 inevitably paralyse exchange and production. 
 Minions of public money would not suffice for 
 wages to the millions of out-of-works. 
 
 This point cannot be too much insisted upon ; 
 the reorganization of industry on a new basis 
 (and we shall presently show how tremendous 
 this problem is) cannot be accomplished in a few 
 days, nor, on the other hand, will the people 
 submit to be half starved for years in order to 
 obUge the theorists who uphold the wage system. 
 To tide over the period of stress they will demand 
 what they have always demanded in such cases — 
 communization of supplies — the giving of rations. 
 
 It will be in vain to preach patience. The 
 people will be patient no longer, and if food is not 
 put in common they wiU plunder the bakeries. 
 
 If the people are not strong enough to carry 
 all before them, they will be shot down to give 
 
78 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Collectivism a fair field for experiment. To this 
 end " order " must be maintained at any price — 
 order, discipline, obedience ! And as the capital- 
 ists will soon reaUze that when the people are 
 shot down by those who call themselves Revolu- 
 tionists, the Revolution itself will become hateful 
 in the eyes of the masses ; they will certainly lend 
 their support to the champions of order — even 
 though they are coUectivists. In such a line of 
 conduct, the capitaUsts will see a means of here- 
 after crushing the coUectivists in their turn. If 
 " order is established " in this fashion, the con- 
 sequences are easy to foresee. Not content with 
 shooting down the " marauders," the faction of 
 " order " will search out the " ringleaders of the 
 mob." They will set up again the law courts 
 and reinstate the hangman. The most ardent 
 revolutionists will be sent to the scaffold. It will 
 be 1793 over again. 
 
 Do not let us forget how reaction triumphed in 
 the last century. First the " Hebertists," " the 
 madmen," were guillotined — those whom Mignet, 
 with the memory of the struggle fresh upon him, 
 still called " Anarchists." The Dantonists soon 
 followed them ; and when the party of Robes- 
 pierre had guillotined these revolutionaries, they 
 in their turn had to mount the scaffold ; where- 
 upon the people, sick of bloodshed, and seeing the 
 revolution lost, threw up the sponge, and let the 
 reactionaries do their worst. 
 
 If " order is restored," we say, the social 
 
FOOD 79 
 
 democrats will hang the anarchists ; the Fabians 
 will hang the social democrats, and will in their 
 turn be hanged by the reactionaries ; and the 
 Revolution will come to an end. 
 
 But everything confirms us in the belief that the 
 energy of the people will carry them far enough, 
 and that, when the Revolution takes place, the 
 idea of anarchist Communism will have gained 
 ground. It is not an artificial idea. The people 
 themselves have breathed it in our ear, and the 
 number of communists is ever increasing, as the 
 impossibility of any other solution becomes more 
 and more evident. 
 
 And if the impetus of the people is strong 
 enough, affairs will take a very different turn. 
 Instead of plundering the bakers' shops one day, 
 and starving the next, the people of the insurgent 
 cities will take possession of the warehouses, the 
 cattle markets, — in fact of all the provision stores 
 and of aU the food to be had. The well-inten- 
 tioned citizens, men and women both, wiU form 
 themselves into bands of volunteers and address 
 themselves to the task of making a rough general 
 inventory of the contents of each shop and ware- 
 house. In twenty-four hours the revolted town 
 or district will know what Paris has not found out 
 yet, in spite of its statistical committees, and 
 what it never did find out during the siege — the 
 quantity of provisions it contains. In forty- 
 eight hours milhons of copies wiU be printed of 
 the tables giving a sufficiently exact account of 
 
8o THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 the available food, the places where it is stored, 
 and the means of distribution. 
 
 In every block of houses, in every street, in 
 every town ward, bands of volunteers will have 
 been organized. These commissariat volunteers 
 will work in unison and keep in touch with each 
 other. If only the Jacobin bayonets do not get 
 in the way ; if only the self-styled " scientific *' 
 theorists do not thrust themselves in to darken 
 counsel ! Or rather let them expound their 
 muddle-headed theories as much as they like, 
 provided they have no authority, no power ! 
 And that admirable spirit of organization inherent 
 in the people, above all in every social grade of 
 the French nation,* but which they have so 
 seldom been allowed to exercise, will initiate, 
 even in so huge a city as Paris, and in the midst of 
 a Revolution, an immense guild of free workers, 
 ready to furnish to each and aU the necessary 
 food. 
 
 Give the people a free hand, and in ten days the 
 food service will be conducted with admirable 
 regularity. Only those who have never seen the 
 people hard at work, only those who have passed 
 their lives buried among documents, can doubt it. 
 Speak of the organizing genius of the " Great 
 Misunderstood," the people, to those who have 
 seen it in Paris in the days of the barricades, or in 
 London during the great dockers strike, when half 
 
 * Kropotkine is here supposing the Revolution to break out 
 first in France. — Trans. 
 
FOOD 8i 
 
 a million of starving folk had to be fed, and they 
 will tell you how superior it is to the official 
 ineptness of Bumbledom. 
 
 And even supposing we had to endure a certain 
 amount of discomfort and confusion for a fort- 
 night or a month, surely that would not matter 
 very much. For the mass of the people it would 
 stul be an improvement on their former con- 
 dition; and, besides, in times of Revolution one 
 can dine contentedly enough on a bit of bread and 
 cheese while eagerly discussing events. 
 
 In any case, a system which springs up spon- 
 taneously, under stress of immediate need, will 
 be infinitely preferable to anything invented 
 between four walls by hide-bound theorists sitting 
 on any number of committees. 
 
 IV 
 
 The people of the great towns will be driven by 
 force of circumstances to take possession of all 
 the provisions, beginning with the barest neces- 
 saries, and gradually extending Communism to 
 other things, in order to satisfy the needs of all 
 the citizens. 
 
 The sooner it is done the better ; the sooner it 
 is done the less misery there wiU be and the less 
 strife. 
 
 But upon what basis must society be organized 
 in order that all may share and share alike ? 
 This is the question that meets us at the outset. 
 
82 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 We answer that there are no two ways of it. 
 There is only one way in which Communism can 
 be estabhshed equitably, only one way which 
 satisfies our instincts of justice and is at the same 
 time practical, namely, the system already adopted 
 by the agrarian communes of Europe. 
 
 Take for example a peasant commune, no 
 matter where, even in France, where the Jacobins 
 have done their best to destroy all communal 
 usage. If the commune possesses woods and 
 copses, then, so long as there is plenty of wood 
 for all, every one can take as much as he 
 wants, without other let or hindrance than the 
 public opinion of his neighbours. As to the 
 timber-trees, which are always scarce, they, have 
 to be carefully apportioned. 
 
 The same with the communal pasture land ; 
 while there is enough and to spare, no hmit is 
 put to what the cattle of each homestead may 
 consume, nor to the number of beasts gazing 
 upon the pastures. Grazing grounds are not 
 divided, nor is fodder doled out, unless there is 
 scarcity. All the Swiss communes, and many 
 of those in France and Germany too, wherever 
 there is communal pasture land, practice this 
 system. 
 
 And in the countries of Eastern Europe, where 
 there are great forests and no scarcity of land, 
 you find the peasants feUing the trees as they 
 need them, and cultivating as much of the soil 
 as they require, without any thought of limiting 
 
FOOD 83 
 
 each man's share of timber or of land. But the 
 timber will be divided, and the land parcelled 
 out, to each household according to its needs, 
 as soon as either becomes scarce, as is already the 
 case in Russia. 
 
 In a word, the system is this : no stint or 
 limit to what the community possesses in abun- 
 dance, but equal sharing and dividing of those 
 commodities which are scarce or apt to run 
 short. Of the 350 millions who inhabit Europe, 
 200 millions stiU follow this system of natural 
 Communism. 
 
 It is a fact worth remarking that the same 
 system prevails in the great towns in the dis- 
 tribution of one commodity at least, which is 
 found in abundance, the water supplied to each 
 house. 
 
 As long as there is no fear of the supply running 
 short, no water company thinks of checking the 
 consumption of water in each house. Take what 
 you please ! But during the great droughts, 
 if there is any fear of supply failing, the water 
 companies know that all they have to do is to 
 make known the fact, by means of a short adver- 
 tisement in the papers, and the citizens wiU reduce 
 their consumption of water and not let it run to 
 waste. 
 
 But if water were actually scarce, what would 
 be done ? Recourse would be had to a system of 
 rations. Such a measure is so natural, so inherent 
 in common sense, that Paris twice asked to be 
 
84 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 put on rations during the two sieges which it 
 underwent in 1871. 
 
 Is it necessary to go into details, to prepare 
 tables, showing how the distribution of rations 
 may work, to prove that it is just and equitable, 
 infinitely more just and equitable than the existing 
 state of things ? All these tables and details 
 will not serve to convince those of the middle 
 classes, nor, alas, those of the workers tainted 
 with middle-class prejudices, who regard the 
 people as a mob of savages ready to fall upon and 
 devour each other, directly the Government ceases 
 to direct affairs. But those only who have never 
 seen the people resolve and act on their own in- 
 itiative could doubt for a moment that if the 
 masses were masters of the situation, they would 
 distribute rations to each and all in strictest 
 accordance with justice and equity. 
 
 If you were to give utterance, in any gathering 
 of people, to the opinion that delicacies — game 
 and such -like — should be reserved for the fas- 
 tidious palates of aristocratic idlers, and black bread 
 given to the sick in the hospitals, you would be 
 hissed. But say at the same gathering, preach 
 at the street corners and in the market places, 
 that the most tempting delicacies ought to be 
 kept for the sick and feeble — especially for the 
 sick. Say that if there are only five brace of 
 partridge in the entire city, and only one case 
 of sherry wine, they should go to sick people and 
 convalescents. Say that after the sick come the 
 
FOOD 85 
 
 children. For them the milk of the cows and 
 goats should be reserved if there is not enough 
 for all. To the children and the aged the last 
 piece of meat, and to the strong man dry bread, 
 if the community be reduced to that extremity. 
 
 Say, in a word, that if this or that article of 
 consumption runs short, and has to be doled out, 
 to those who have most need most should be 
 given. Say that and see if you do not meet with 
 universal agreement. 
 
 The man who is full-fed does not understand 
 this, but the people do understand, have always 
 understood it ; and even the child of luxury, if 
 he is thrown on the street and comes into contact 
 with the masses, even he will learn to understand. 
 
 The theorists — for whom the soldier's uniform 
 and the barrack mess table are civilization's last 
 word — would hke no doubt to start a regime of 
 National Kitchens and " Spartan Broth." They 
 would point out the advantages thereby gained, 
 the economy in fuel and food, if such huge kitchens 
 were established, where every one could come for 
 their rations of soup and bread and vegetables. 
 
 We do not question these advantages. We 
 are well aware that important economies have 
 already been achieved in this direction — as, for 
 instance, when the handmill, or quern, and the 
 baker's oven attached to each house were aban- 
 doned. We can see perfectly weU that it would 
 be more economical to cook broth for a hundred 
 families at once, instead of hghting a hundred 
 
86 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 separate fires. We know, besides, that there are 
 a thousand ways of doing up potatoes, but that 
 cooked in one huge pot for a hundred families 
 they would be just as good. 
 
 We know, in fact, that variety in cooking being 
 a matter of the seasoning introduced by each cook 
 or housewife, the cooking together of a hundred- 
 weight of potatoes would not prevent each cook 
 or housewife from dressing and serving them in 
 any way she pleased. And we know that stock 
 made from meat can be converted into a hundred 
 different soups to suit a hundred different tastes. 
 
 But though we are quite aware of all these facts, 
 we still maintain that no one has a right to fdrce 
 the housewife to take her potatoes from the 
 communal kitchen ready cooked if she prefers to 
 cook them herself in her own pot on her own fire. 
 And, above all, we should wish each one to be 
 free to take his meals with his family, or with 
 his friends, or even in a restaurant, if so it seemed 
 good to him. 
 
 Naturally large pubUc kitchens wiU spring up 
 to take the place of the restaurants, where people 
 are poisoned nowadays. Already the Parisian 
 housewife gets the stock for her soup from the 
 butcher and transforms it into whatever soup 
 she likes, and London housekeepers know that 
 they can have a joint roasted, or an apple or 
 rhubarb tart baked at the baker's for a trifling 
 sum, thus economizing time and fuel. And when 
 the communal kitchen — the common bakehouse 
 
FOOD 87 
 
 of the future — is established, and people can get 
 their food cooked without the risk of being cheated 
 or poisoned, the custom will no doubt become 
 general of going to the communal kitchen for the 
 fundamental parts of the meal, leaving the last 
 touches to be added as individual taste shall 
 suggest. 
 
 But to make a hard and fast rule of this, to 
 make a duty of taking home our food ready cooked, 
 that would be as repugnant to our modern minds 
 as the ideas of the convent or the barrack — morbid 
 ideas born in brains warped by tyranny or super- 
 stition. 
 
 Who will have a right to the food of the com- 
 mune ? will assuredly be the first question which 
 we shall have to ask ourselves. Every township 
 wiU answer for itself, and we are convinced that 
 the answers will all be dictated by the sentiment 
 of justice. Until labour is reorganized, as long 
 as the disturbed period lasts, and while it is im- 
 possible to distinguish between inveterate idlers and 
 genuine workers thrown out of work, the available 
 food ought to be shared by all without exception. 
 Those who have been enemies to the new order 
 will hasten of their own accord to rid the commune 
 of their presence. But it seems to us that the 
 masses of the people, which have always been 
 magnanimous, and have nothing of vindictiveness 
 in their disposition, will be ready to share their 
 bread with all who remain with them, conquered 
 and conquerors alike. It will be no loss to the 
 
88 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Revolution to be inspired by such an idea, and, 
 when work is set agoing again, the antagonists 
 of yesterday will stand side by side in the same 
 workshops. A society where work is free will 
 have nothing to fear from idlers. 
 
 " But provisions will run short in a month ! " 
 our critics at once exclaim. 
 
 " So much the better," say we. It will prove 
 that for the first time on record the people have 
 had enough to eat. As to the question of obtain- 
 ing fresh suppUes, we shall discuss the means in 
 our next chapter. 
 
 By what means could a city in a state of revolu- 
 tion be supphed with food ? We shall answer 
 this question, but it is obvious that the means 
 resorted to will depend on the character of the 
 Revolution in the provinces, and in neighbouring 
 countries. If the entire nation, or, better still, 
 if all Europe should accomplish the Social Revolu- 
 tion simultaneously, and start with thorough- 
 going Communism, our procedure would be sim- 
 phfied ; but if only a few communities in Europe 
 make the attempt, other means wiU have to be 
 chosen. The circumstances wiU dictate the 
 measures. 
 
 We are thus led, before we proceed further, 
 to glance at the state of Europe, and, without 
 pretending to prophesy, we may try to foresee 
 
FOOD 89 
 
 what course the Revolution will take, or at least 
 what will be its essential features. 
 
 Certainly it would be very desirable that aU 
 Europe should rise at once, that expropriation 
 should be general, and that communistic prin- 
 ciples should inspire aU and sundry. Such a 
 universal rising would do much to simplify the 
 task of our century. 
 
 But all the signs lead us to believe that it will 
 not take place. That the Revolution will embrace 
 Europe we do not doubt. If one of the four 
 great continental capitals — Paris, Vienna, Brussels, 
 or Berlin — arises in revolution and overturns its 
 Government, it is almost certain that the three 
 others will follow its example within a few weeks' 
 time. It is, moreover, highly probable that the 
 Peninsulas and even London and St. Petersburg 
 would not be long in following suit. But whether 
 the Revolution would everywhere exhibit the 
 same characteristics is doubtful. 
 
 Though it is more than probable that expro- 
 priation will be everywhere carried into effect on 
 a larger or smaller scale, and that this poUcy 
 carried out by any one of the great nations of 
 Europe will influence all the rest ; yet the be- 
 ginnings of the Revolution will exhibit great local 
 differences, and its course wiU vary in different 
 countries. In 1789-93, the French peasantry 
 took four years to finally rid themselves of the 
 redemption of feudal rights, and the bourgeois to 
 overthrow royalty. Let us keep that in mind. 
 
go THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 therefore, and be prepared to see the Revolution 
 develop itself somewhat gradually. Let us not 
 be disheartened if here and there its steps should 
 move less rapidly. Whether it would take an 
 avowedly socialist character in all European 
 nations, at any rate at the beginning, is doubtful. 
 Germany, be it remembered, is still realizing its 
 dream of a United Empire. Its advanced parties 
 see visions of a Jacobin Republic like that of 1848, 
 and of the organization of labour according to 
 Louis Blanc ; while the French people, on the 
 other hand, want above all things a free Com- 
 mune, whether it be a communist Commune or 
 not. 
 
 There is every reason to beheve that, when the 
 coming Revolution takes place, Germany will 
 go further than France went in 1793. The 
 eighteenth-century Revolution in France was an 
 advance on the English Revolution of the seven- 
 teenth, abolishing as it did at one stroke the 
 power of the throne and the landed aristocracy, 
 whose influence still survives in England. But, 
 if Germany goes further and does greater things 
 than France did in 1793, there can be no doubt 
 that the ideas which will foster the birth of her 
 Revolution will be those of 1848, as the ideas 
 which will inspire the Revolution in Russia will 
 be those of 1789, modified somewhat by the 
 intellectual movements of our own century. 
 
 Without, however, attaching to these forecasts 
 a greater importance than they merit, we may 
 
FOOD 91 
 
 safely conclude this much : the Revolution will 
 take a different character in each of the different 
 European nations ; the point attained in the 
 socialization of wealth will not be everywhere the 
 same. 
 
 Will it therefore be necessary, as is sometimes 
 suggested, that the nations in the vanguard of 
 the movement should adapt their pace to those 
 who lag behind ? Must we wait tiU the Com- 
 munist Revolution is ripe in all civiUzed coun- 
 tries ? Clearly not ! Even if it were a thing to 
 be desired it is not possible. History does not 
 wait for the laggards. 
 
 Besides, we do not beheve that in any one 
 country the Revolution wiU be accomplished at 
 a stroke, in the twinkling of an eye, as some 
 socialists dream. It is highly probable that if 
 one of the five or six large towns of France — 
 Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Lille, Saint -Etienne, 
 Bordeaux — were to proclaim the Commune, the 
 others would follow its example, and that many 
 smaller towns would do the same. Probably also 
 various mining districts and industrial centres 
 would hasten to rid themselves of " owners " and 
 " masters," and form themselves into free groups. 
 
 But many country places have not advanced 
 to that point. Side by side with the revolution- 
 ized communes such places would remain in an 
 expectant attitude, and would go on hving on 
 the Individualist system. Undisturbed by visits 
 of the baihff or the tax-collector, the peasants 
 
92 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 would not be hostile to the revolutionaries, and 
 thus, while profiting by the new state of affairs, 
 they would defer the settlement of accounts with 
 the local exploiters. But with that practical 
 enthusiasm which always characterizes agrarian 
 uprisings (witness the passionate toil of 1792) 
 they would throw themselves into the task of 
 cultivating the land, which, freed from taxes and 
 mortgages, would become so much dearer to them. 
 As to abroad, revolution would break out 
 ever5Avhere, but revolution under divers aspects ; 
 in one country State Socialism, in another Federa- 
 tion ; everywhere more or less Sociahsm, not 
 conforming to any particular rule. 
 
 VI 
 
 Let us now return to our city in revolt, and 
 consider how its citizens can provide foodstuffs 
 for themselves. How are the necessary pro- 
 visions to be obtained if the nation as a whole 
 has not accepted Communism ? This is the 
 question to be solved. Take, for example, one of 
 the large French towns — take the capital itself, 
 for that matter. Paris consumes every year 
 thousands of tons of grain, 350,000 head of oxen, 
 200,000 calves, 300,000 swine, and more than 
 two milUons of sheep, besides great quantities of 
 game. This huge city devours, besides, 18 miUion 
 pounds of butter, 172 million eggs, and other 
 produce in like proportion. 
 
FOOD 93 
 
 It imports flour and grain from the United 
 States and from Russia, Hungary, Italy, Egypt, 
 and the Indies ; live stock from Germany, Italy, 
 Spain — even Roumania and Russia ; and as for 
 groceries, there is not a country in the world 
 that it does not lay under contribution. Now, 
 let us see how Paris or any other great town could 
 be revictualled by home-grown produce, supplies 
 of which could be readily and willingly sent in 
 from the provinces. 
 
 To those who put their trust in " authority " 
 the question will appear quite simple. They 
 would begin by estabhshing a strongly centralized 
 Government, furnished with all the machinery of 
 coercion — the police, the array, the guillotine. 
 This Government would draw up a statement of 
 all the produce contained in France. It would 
 divide the country into districts of supply, and 
 then command that a prescribed quantity of some 
 particular foodstuff be sent to such a place on 
 such a day, and dehvered at such a station, to be 
 there received on a given day by a specified official 
 and stored in particular warehouses. 
 
 Now, we declare with the fullest conviction, 
 not merely that such a solution is undesirable, 
 but that it never could by any possibility be 
 put into practice. It is wildly Utopian ! 
 
 Pen in hand, one may dream such a dream in 
 the study, but in contact with reahty it comes 
 to nothing ; for, like all such theories, it leaves 
 out of account the spirit of independence that 
 
94 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 is in man. The attempt would lead to a universal 
 uprising, to three or four Vendees, to the villages 
 rising against the towns, all the country up in 
 arms defying the city for its arrogance in attempt- 
 ing to impose such a system upon the country. 
 
 We have already had too much of Jacobin 
 Utopias ! Let us see if some other form of or- 
 ganization wiU meet the case. 
 
 It 1793 the provinces starved the large towns, 
 and killed the Revolution. And yet it is a known 
 fact that the production of grain in France during 
 1792-3 had not diminished; indeed, the evidence 
 goes to show that it had increased. But after 
 having taken possession of the manorial lands, 
 after having reaped a harvest from them, the 
 peasants would not part with their grain for 
 paper-money. They withheld their produce, wait- 
 ing for a rise in the price, or the introduction of 
 gold. The most rigorous measures of the National 
 Convention were without avail, and even the 
 fear of death failed to break up the ring, or force 
 its members to sell their corn. For it is matter 
 of history that the commissaries of the Conven- 
 tion did not scruple to guillotine those who 
 withheld their grain from the market, and 
 pitilessly executed those who speculated in food- 
 stuffs. All the same, the corn was not forth- 
 coming, and the townsfolk suffered from famine. 
 
 But what was offered to the husbandman in 
 exchange for his hard toil ? Assignats, scraps 
 of paper decreasing in value every^ day, promises 
 
FOOD 95 
 
 of payment J which could not be kept. A forty- 
 pound note would not purchase a pair of boots, 
 and the peasant, very naturally, was not anxious 
 to barter a year's toil for a piece of paper with 
 which he could not even buy a shirt. 
 
 As long as worthless paper-money — whether 
 called assignats or labour notes — is offered to the 
 peasant-producer it will always be the same. 
 The country will withhold its produce, and the 
 towns will suffer want, even if the recalcitrant 
 peasants are guillotined as before. 
 
 We must offer to the peasant in exchange for 
 his toil not worthless paper-money, but the 
 manufactured articles of which he stands in 
 immediate need. He lacks the proper implements 
 to till the land, clothes to protect him properly 
 from the inclemencies of the weather, lamps and 
 oil to replace his miserable rushhght or tallow 
 dip, spades, rakes, ploughs. All these things, 
 under present conditions, the peasant is forced 
 to do without, not because he does not feel the 
 need of them, but because, in his Ufe of struggle 
 and privation, a thousand useful things are beyond 
 his reach ; because he has no money to buy them. 
 
 Let the town apply itself, without loss of time, 
 to manufacturing all that the peasant needs, 
 instead of fashioning gewgaws for the wives of 
 rich citizens. Let the sewing machines of Paris 
 be set to work on clothes for the country-folk : 
 workaday clothes and clothes for Sunday too, 
 instead of costly evening dresses. Let the 
 
96 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 factories and foundries turn out agricultural 
 implements, spades, rakes, and such-like, instead 
 of waiting till the English send them to France, 
 in exchange for French wines ! 
 
 Let the towns send no more inspectors to the 
 villages, wearing red, blue, or rainbow-coloured 
 scarves, to convey to the peasant orders to take 
 his produce to this place or that, but let them send 
 friendly embassies to the country-folk and bid 
 them in brotherly fashion : " Bring us your 
 produce, and take from our stores and shops all 
 the manufactured articles you please." Then 
 provisions would pour in on every side. The 
 peasant would only withhold what he needed for 
 his own use, and would send the rest into the 
 cities, feehng for the first time in the course of 
 history that these toiling townsfolk were his 
 comrades — his brethren, and not his exploiters. 
 
 We shall be told, perhaps, that this would 
 necessitate a complete transformation of industry. 
 WeU, yes, that is true of certain departments ; 
 but there are other branches which could be 
 rapidly modified in such a way as to furnish the 
 peasant with clothes, watches, furniture, and 
 the simple implements for which the towns make 
 him pay such exorbitant prices at the present 
 time. Weavers, tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths, 
 cabinet-makers, and many other trades and crafts 
 could easily direct their energies to the manufac- 
 ture of useful and necessary articles, and abstain 
 from producing mere luxuries. All that is needed 
 
FOOD 97 
 
 is that the pubUc mind should be thoroughly 
 convinced of the necessity of this transformation, 
 and should come to look upon it as an act of 
 justice and of progress, and that it should no 
 longer allow itself to be cheated by that dream, 
 so dear to the theorists — the dream of a revolution 
 which confines itself to taking possession of the 
 profits of industry, and leaves production and 
 commerce just as they are now. 
 
 This, then, is our view of the whole question. 
 Cheat the peasant no longer with scraps of paper — 
 be the sums inscribed upon them ever so large ; 
 but offer him in exchange for his produce the very 
 things of which he, the tiller of the soil, stands in 
 need. Then the fruits of the land will be poured 
 into the towns. If this is not done there will be 
 famine in our cities, and reaction and despair 
 will follow in its train. 
 
 VII 
 
 All the great towns, we have said, buy their 
 grain, their flour, and their meat, not only from 
 the provinces, but also from abroad. Foreign 
 countries send Paris spices, fish, and various 
 dainties, besides immense quantities of corn and 
 meat. 
 
 But when the Revolution comes we must 
 depend on foreign countries as little as possible. 
 If Russian wheat, Italian or Indian rice, and 
 Spanish or Hungarian wines abound in the 
 
 H 
 
98 THE CONQUEST OP BREAD 
 
 markets of western Europe, it is not that the 
 countries which export them have a super- 
 abundance, or that such a produce grows there 
 of itself, like the dandelion in the meadows. In 
 Russia, for instance, the peasant works sixteen 
 hours a day, and half starves from three to six 
 months every year, in order to export the grain 
 with which he pays the landlord and the State. 
 To-day the police appears in the Russian village 
 as soon as the harvest is gathered in, and sells the 
 peasant's last horse and last cow for arrears of 
 taxes and rent due to the landlord, unless the 
 victim immolates himself of his own accord by 
 selling the grain to the exporters. Usually, rather 
 than part with his live stock at a disadvantage, 
 he keeps only a nine months' supply of grain, and 
 sells the rest. Then, in order to sustain Hfe until 
 the next harvest, he mixes birch-bark and tares 
 with his flour for three months, if it has been a 
 good year, and for six if it has been bad, while in 
 London they are eating biscuits made of his wheat. 
 But as soon as the Revolution comes, the 
 Russian peasant will keep bread enough for him- 
 self and his children ; the Italian and Hungarian 
 peasants will do the same ; and the Hindoo, let 
 us hope, will profit by these good examples ; and 
 the farmers of America will hardly be able to 
 cover all the deficit in grain which Europe will 
 experience. So it will not do to count on their 
 contributions of wheat and maize satisfying all 
 the wants. 
 
FOOD 99 
 
 Since all our middle-class civilization is based 
 on the exploitation of inferior races and countries 
 with less advanced industrial systems, the Revolu- 
 tion will confer a boon at the very outset, by 
 menacing that "civilization," and allowing the 
 so-called inferior races to free themselves. 
 
 But this great benefit will manifest itself by a 
 steady and marked diminution of the food supphes 
 pouring into the great cities of western Europe. 
 
 It is difficult to predict the course of affairs in 
 the provinces. On the one hand the slave of the 
 soil will take advantage of the Revolution to 
 straighten his bowed back. Instead of working 
 fourteen or fifteen hours a day, as he does at 
 present, he will be at hberty to work only half 
 that time, which of course would have the effect 
 of decreasing the production of the principal 
 articles, of consumption — grain and meat. 
 . But, on the other hand, there will be an increase 
 of production as soon as the peasant reahzes that 
 he is no longer forced to support the idle rich 
 by his toil. New tracts of land will be cleared, 
 new and unproved machines set a-going. 
 
 " Never was the land so energetically cultivated 
 £is in 1792, when the peasant had taken back from 
 the landlord the soil which he had coveted so 
 long," Michelet tells us, speaking of the Great 
 Revolution. 
 
 Before long, intensive culture would be within 
 the reach of all. Improved machinery, chemical 
 manures, and all such matters would be common 
 
100 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 property. But everything tends to indicate that 
 at the outset there would be a falling off in agri- 
 cultural products, in France as elsewhere. 
 
 In any case it would be wisest to count upon 
 such a falling off of contributions from the pro- 
 vinces as well as from abroad. 
 
 And how is this falling off to be made good ? 
 Why, in heaven's name, by setting to work our- 
 selves ! No need to rack our brains for far-fetched 
 panaceas when the remedy lies close at hand ! 
 
 The large towns must undertake to till the soil, 
 like the country districts. We must return to 
 what biology calls " the integration of functions " 
 — after the division of labour the taking up of it 
 as a whole — this is the course followed through- 
 out Nature. 
 
 Besides, philosophy apart, the force of circum- 
 stances would bring about this result. Let Paris 
 see that at the end of eight months it will be 
 running short of bread, and Paris will set to work 
 to grow wheat. 
 
 "What about land?" It will not be wanting, 
 for it is round the great towns, and round Paris 
 especially, that the parks and pleasure grounds 
 of the landed gentry are to be found. These 
 thousands of acres only await the skilled labour 
 of the husbandman to surround Paris with fields 
 infinitely more fertile and productive than the 
 steppes of southern Russia, where the soil is 
 dried up by the sun. Nor wiU labour be lacking. 
 To what should the two million citizens of 
 
FOOD loi 
 
 Paris turn their attention when they would be 
 no longer catering for the luxurious fads and 
 amusements of Russian princes, Roumanian gran- 
 dees, and wives of BerUn financiers ? 
 
 With all the mechanical inventions of the 
 century ; with all the intelligence and technical 
 skill of the worker accustomed to deal with com- 
 plicated machinery; with inventors, chemists, 
 professors of botany, practical botanists like the 
 market gardeners of Gennevilliers ; with all the 
 plant that they could use for multiplying and 
 improving machinery; and, finally, with the 
 organizing spirit of the Parisian people, their pluck 
 and energy — with all these at its command, the 
 agriculture of the anarchist Commune of Paris 
 woiild be a very different thing from the rude 
 husbandry of the Ardennes. 
 
 Steam, electricity, the heat of the sun, and 
 the breath of the wind, will ere long be pressed 
 into service. The steam harrow and the steam 
 plough will quickly do the rough work of prepara- 
 tion, and the soil, thus cleaned and enriched, will 
 only need the intelUgent care of man, and of 
 woman even more than man, to be clothed with 
 luxuriant vegetation — not once but three or four 
 times in the year. 
 
 Thus, learning the art of horticulture from 
 experts, and trying experiments in different 
 methods on small patches of soil reserved for the 
 purpose, vying with each other to obtain the 
 best returns, finding in physical exercise, without 
 
102 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 exhaustion or overwork, the health and strength 
 which so often flags in cities, — men, women, and 
 children will gladly turn to the labour of the fields, 
 when it is no longer a slavish drudgery, but has 
 become a pleasure, a festival, a renewal of health 
 and joy. 
 
 " There are no barren lands ; the earth is 
 worth what man is worth " — that is the last 
 word of modern agriculture. Ask of the earth 
 and she will give you bread, provided that you 
 ask aright. 
 
 A district, though it were as small as the depart- 
 ments of the Seine and the Seine-et-Oise, and 
 with so great a city as Paris to feed, would be 
 practically sufficient to grow upon it all the food- 
 supplies, which otherwise might fail to reach it. 
 
 The combination of agriculture and industry, 
 the husbandman and the mechanic in the same 
 individual — this is what anarchist communism 
 will inevitably lead us to, if it starts fair with 
 expropriation. 
 
 Let the Revolution only get so far, and famine 
 is not the enemy it will have to fear. No, the 
 danger which will menace it hes in timidity, 
 prejudice, and half -measures. The danger is 
 where Danton saw it when he cried to France : 
 " Dare, dare, and yet again, dare ! " The bold 
 thought first, and the bold deed wiU not fail 
 to follow. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 DWELLINGS 
 
 THOSE who have closely watched the growth 
 of certain ideas among the workers must 
 have noticed that on one momentous ques- 
 tion — the housing of the people, namely — a 
 definite conclusion is being imperceptibly 
 arrived at. It is a known fact that in the large 
 towns of France, and in many of the smaller ones 
 also, the workers are coming gradually to the 
 conclusion that dwelling-houses are in no sense 
 the property of those whom the State recognizes 
 as their owners. 
 
 This idea has evolved naturally in the minds 
 of the people, and nothing will ever convince them 
 again that the " rights of property " ought to 
 extend to houses. 
 
 The house was not built by its owner. It was 
 erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable 
 workers — in the timber yard, the brick field, and 
 the workshop, toiling for dear Hfe at a minimum 
 wage. 
 
 The money spent by the owner was not the 
 product of his own toil. It was amassed, like 
 
 103 
 
104 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds 
 or only a half of what was their due. 
 
 Moreover — and it is here that the enormity of 
 the whole proceeding becomes most glaring — the 
 house owes its actual value to the profit which 
 the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit 
 results from the fact that his house is built in 
 a town possessing bridges, quays, and fine public 
 buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a 
 thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in 
 villages ; a town well paved, lighted with gas, 
 in regular communication with other towns, and 
 itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, 
 and art ; a town which the work of twenty or 
 thirty generations has gone to render habitable, 
 healthy, and beautiful. 
 
 A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued 
 at thousands of pounds sterling, not because 
 thousands of pounds' worth of labour have been 
 expended on that particular house, but because 
 it is in Paris ; because for centuries workmen, 
 artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters 
 have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day — 
 a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and 
 science ; because Paris has a past ; because, 
 thanks to hterature, the names of its streets are 
 household words in foreign countries as well as 
 at home ; because it is the fruit of eighteen 
 centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of 
 the whole French nation. 
 
 Who, then, can appropriate to himself the 
 
DWELLINGS 105 
 
 tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, 
 without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, 
 then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest 
 portion of the common heritage ? 
 
 On that point, as we have said, the workers are 
 agreed. The idea of free dwelUngs showed its 
 existence very plainly during the siege of Paris, 
 when the cry was for an abatement pure and 
 simple of the terms demanded by the landlords. 
 It appeared again during the Commune of 1871, 
 when the Paris workmen expected the Communal 
 Council to decide boldly on the abohtion of rent. 
 And when the New Revolution comes, it will be 
 the first question with which the poor will concern 
 themselves. 
 
 Whether in time of revolution or in time of 
 peace, the worker must be housed somehow or 
 other ; he must have some sort of roof over his 
 head. But, however tumble-down and squallid 
 your dwelling may be, there is always a landlord 
 who can evict you. True, during the Revolution 
 he cannot find bailiffs and pohce-serjeants to 
 throw your rags and chattels into the street, but 
 who knows what the new Government will do 
 to-morrow ? Who can say that it will not call 
 in the aid of force again, and set the police pack 
 upon you to hound you out of your hovels ? 
 We have seen the Commune proclaim the re- 
 mission of rents due up to the first of April only ! * 
 
 * The decree of the 30 March : by this decree rents due up to 
 the terms of October, 1870, and January and April, 1871, were 
 annulled. 
 
io6 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 After that rent had to be paid, though Paris was 
 in a state of chaos, and industry at a standstill ; 
 so that the revolutionist had' absolutely nothing 
 to depend upon but his allowance of fifteen pence 
 a day ! 
 
 Now the worker must be made to see clearly 
 that in refusing to pay rent to a landlord or 
 owner he is not simply profiting by the disorgani- 
 zation of authority. He must understand that 
 the abohtion of rent is a recognized principle, 
 sanctioned, so to speak, by popular assent ; that 
 to be housed rent-free is a right proclaimed aloud 
 by the people. 
 
 Are we going to wait till this measure, which 
 is in harmony with every honest man's sense of 
 justice, is taken up by the few socialists scattered 
 among the middle-class elements, of which the 
 Provisionary Government wiU be composed ? We 
 should have to wait long — till the return of re- 
 action, in fact ! 
 
 This is why, refusing uniforms and badges — 
 those outward signs of authority and servitude — 
 and remaining people among the people, the 
 earnest revolutionists wiU work side by side with 
 the masses, that the abolition of rent, the expro- 
 priation of houses, may become an accomphshed 
 fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage 
 ideas to grow in this direction ; and when the fruit 
 of their labours is ripe, the people will proceed to 
 expropriate the houses without giving heed to the 
 theories which will certainly be thrust in their 
 
DWELLINGS 107 
 
 way — theories about paying compensation to land- 
 lords, and finding first the necessary funds. 
 
 On the day that the expropriation of houses 
 takes place, on that day, the exploited workers will 
 have realized that the new times have come, 
 that Labour wiU no longer have to bear the yoke 
 of the rich and powerful, that Equality has been 
 openly proclaimed, that this Revolution is a real 
 fact, and not a theatrical make-beheve, like so 
 many others preceding it. 
 
 II 
 
 If the idea of expropriation be adopted by the 
 people it will be carried into effect in spite of all 
 the " insurmountable " obstacles with which we 
 are menaced. 
 
 Of course, the good folk in new uniforms, seated 
 in the official arm-chairs of the Hotel de Ville, will 
 be sure to busy themselves in heaping up obstacles. 
 They will talk of giving compensation to the 
 landlords, of preparing statistics, and drawing up 
 long reports. Yes, they would be capable of 
 drawing up reports long enough to outlast the 
 hopes of the people, who, after waiting and starv- 
 ing in enforced idleness, and seeing nothing come 
 of all these official researches, would lose heart 
 and faith in the Revolution and abandon the 
 field to the reactionaries. The new bureaucracy 
 would end by making expropriation hateful in 
 the eyes of all. 
 
io8 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Here, indeed, is a rock which might shipwreck 
 our hopes. But if the people turn a deaf ear to 
 the specious arguments used to dazzle them, and 
 realize that new life needs new conditions, and if 
 they undertake the task themselves, then expropria- 
 tion can be effected without any great difficulty. 
 
 " But how ? How can it be done ? " you ask 
 us. We shall try to reply to this question, but 
 with a reservation. We have no intention of 
 tracing out the plans of expropriation in their 
 smallest details. We know beforehand that all 
 that any man, or group of men, could suggest 
 to-day would be far surpassed by the reahty when 
 it comes. Man will accomphsh greater things, 
 and accomplish them better and by simpler 
 methods than those dictated to him beforehand. 
 Thus we are content to indicate the manner by 
 which expropriation might be accomphshed with- 
 out the intervention of Government. We do not 
 propose to go out of our way to answer those who 
 declare that the thing is impossible. We confine 
 ourselves to replying that we are not the upholders 
 of any particular method of organization. We 
 are only concerned to demonstrate that expro- 
 priation could be effected by popular initiative, 
 and could not be effected by any other means 
 whatever. 
 
 It seems very likely that, as soon as expropria- 
 tion is fairly started, groups of volunteers will 
 spring up in every district, street, and block of 
 houses, and undertake to inquire into the number 
 
DWELLINGS 109 
 
 of fiats and houses which are empty and of those 
 which are overcrowded, the unwholesome slums 
 and the houses which are too spacious for their 
 occupants and might well be used to house those 
 who are stifled in swarming tenements. In a 
 few days these volunteers would have drawn up 
 complete lists for the street and the district of all 
 the flats, tenements, family mansions and villa 
 residences, aU the rooms and suites of rooms, 
 healthy and unhealthy, small and large, foetid 
 dens and homes of luxury. 
 
 Freely communicating with each other, these 
 volunteers would soon have their statistics com- 
 plete. False statistics can be manufactured in 
 board rooms and offices, but true and exact 
 statistics must begin with the individual and 
 mount up from the simple to the complex. 
 
 Then, without waiting for any one's leave, 
 those citizens will probably go and find their 
 comrades who were living in miserable garrets and 
 hovels and will say to them simply : " It is a real 
 Revolution this time, comrades, and no mistake 
 about it. Come to such a place this evening ; 
 all the neighbourhood will be there ; we are going 
 to redistribute the dwelling-houses. If you are 
 tired of your slum-garret, come and choose one of 
 the flats of five rooms that are to be disposed of, 
 and when you have once moved in you shall stay, 
 never fear. The people are up in arms, and he 
 who would venture to evict you will have to 
 answer to them." 
 
no THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 " But every one will want a fine house or a 
 spacious flat ! " we are told. No, you are mis- 
 taken. It is not the people's way to clamour for 
 the moon. On the contrary, every time we have 
 seen them set about repairing a wrong we have 
 been struck by the good sense and instinct for 
 justice which animates the masses. Have we 
 ever known them demand the impossible ? Have 
 we ever seen the people of Paris fighting among 
 themselves while waiting for their rations of bread 
 or firewood during the two sieges ? The patience 
 and resignation which prevailed among them was 
 constantly held up to admiration by the foreign 
 Press correspondents ; and yet these patient 
 waiters knew full well that the last comers would 
 have to pass the day without food or fire. 
 
 We do not deny that there are plenty of egotistic ' 
 instincts in isolated individuals in our societies. 
 We are quite aware of it. But we contend that 
 the very way to revive and nourish these instincts 
 would be to confine such questions as the housing 
 of the people to any board or committee, in fact, 
 to the tender mercies of officialism in any shape 
 or form. Then indeed all the evil passions spring 
 up, and it becomes a case of who is the most 
 influential person on the board. The least in- 
 equality causes wranghngs and recriminations. 
 If the smallest advantage is given to any one, a 
 tremendous hue and cry is raised — and not with- 
 out reason. 
 
 But if the people themselves, organized by 
 
DWELLINGS iii 
 
 streets, districts, and parishes, undertake to move 
 the inhabitants of the slums into the half-empty 
 dwellings of the middle classes, the trifling incon- 
 veniences, the little inequalities will be easily 
 tided over. Rarely has appeal been made to 
 the good instincts of the masses — only as a last 
 resort, to save the sinking ship in times of revolu- 
 tion — ^but never has such an appeal been made in 
 vain ; the heroism, the self-devotion of the toiler 
 has never failed to respond to it. And thus it will 
 be in the coming Revolution. 
 
 But, when all is said and done, some inequalities, 
 some inevitable injustices, will remain. There 
 are individuals in our societies whom no great 
 crisis can Uft out of the deep ruts of egoism in 
 which they are sunk. The question, however, is 
 not whether there wUl be injustices or no, but 
 rather how to limit the number of them. 
 'Now all history, all the experience of the human 
 race, and all social psychology, unite in showing 
 that the best and fairest way is to trust the 
 decision to those whom it concerns most nearly. 
 It is they alone who can consider and allow for 
 the hundred and one details which must neces- 
 sarily be overlooked in any merely official re- 
 distribution. 
 
 Ill 
 Moreover, it is by no means necessary to make 
 straightway an absolutely equal redistribution of 
 aU the dwellings.. There will no doubt be some 
 
112 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 inconveniences at first, but matters will soon be 
 righted in a society which has adopted expropria- 
 tion. 
 
 When the masons, and carpenters, and all who 
 are concerned in house building, know that their 
 daily bread is secured to them, they will ask 
 nothing better than to work at their old trades 
 a few hours a day. They will adapt the fine 
 houses which absorbed the time of a whole staff 
 of servants, and in a few months homes will have 
 sprung up, infinitely healthier and more con- 
 veniently arranged than those of to-day. And 
 to those who are not yet comfortably housed the 
 anarchist Commune wiU be able to say : " Patience, 
 comrades ! Palaces fairer and finer than any the 
 capitalists built for themselves will spring from 
 the ground of our enfranchised city. They will 
 belong to those who have most need of them. 
 The anarchist Commune does not build with an 
 eye to revenues. These monuments erected to 
 its citizens, products of the collective spirit, will 
 serve as models to all humanity; they wiU be 
 yours." 
 
 If the people of the Revolution expropriate the 
 houses and proclaim free lodgings — the communal- 
 izing of houses and the right of each family to a 
 decent dwelHng — then the Revolution will have 
 assumed a communistic character from the first, 
 and started on a course from which it will be by 
 no means easy to turn it. It will have struck 
 a fatal blow at individual property. 
 
DWELLINGS 113 
 
 For the expropriation of dwellings contains in 
 germ the whole social revolution. On the manner 
 of its accomphshment depends the character of 
 all that follows. Either we shall start on a good 
 road leading straight to anarchist communism, or 
 we shall remain sticking in the mud of despotic 
 individualism. 
 
 It is easy to see the numerous objections — 
 theoretic on the one hand, practical on the other 
 — with which we are sure to be met. As it will 
 be a question of maintaining iniquity at any 
 price, our opponents will of course protest " in 
 the name of justice." " Is it not a crying shame," 
 they will exclaim, "that the people of Paris 
 should take possession of all these fine houses, 
 while the peasants in the country have only 
 tumble-down huts to live in ? " But do not let 
 us make a mistake. These enthusiasts for justice 
 forget, by a lapse of memory to which they are 
 subject, the " crying shame " which they them- 
 selves are tacitly defending. They forget that 
 in this same city the worker, with his wife and 
 children, suffocates in a noisome garret, while 
 from his window he sees the rich man's palace. 
 They forget that whole generations perish in 
 crowded slums, starving for air and sunhght, and 
 that to redress this injustice ought to be the first 
 task of the Revolution. 
 
 Do not let these disingenuous protests hold us 
 back. We know that any inequality which may 
 exist between town and country in the early days 
 
114 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 of the Revolution will be transitory and of a 
 nature to right itself from day to day ; for the 
 village will not fail to improve its dweUings as 
 soon as the peasant has ceased to be the beast of 
 burden of the farmer, the merchant, the money- 
 lender, and the State. In order to avoid an 
 accidental and transitory inequality, shall we 
 stay our hand from righting an ancient wrong ? 
 
 The so-called practical objections are not very 
 formidable either. We are bidden to consider 
 the hard case of some poor fellow who by dint of 
 privation has contrived to buy a house just large 
 enough to hold his family. And we are going to 
 deprive him of his hard-earned happiness, to 
 turn him into the street ! Certainly not. If his 
 house is only just large enough for his family, by 
 all means let him stay there. Let him work in 
 his little garden too ; our " boys " will not hinder 
 him — nay, they will lend him a helping hand if 
 need be. But suppose he lets lodgings, suppose 
 he has empty rooms in his house ; then the people 
 will make the lodger understand that he need not 
 pay his former landlord any more rent. Stay 
 where you are, but rent free. No more duns and 
 collectors ; Socialism has abolished all that ! 
 
 Or again, suppose that the landlord has a score 
 of rooms all to himself, and some poor woman 
 lives near by with five children in one room. In 
 that case the people would see whether, with some 
 alterations, these empty rooms could not be con- 
 verted into a suitable home for the poor woman 
 
DWELLINGS 115 
 
 and her five children. Would not that be more 
 just and fair than to leave the mother and her five 
 little ones languishing in a garret, while Sir 
 Gorgeous Midas sat at his ease in an empty man- 
 sion ? Besides, good Sir Gorgeous would pro- 
 bably hasten to do it of his own accord ; his wife 
 will be delighted to be freed from half her big, 
 unwieldy house when there is no longer a staff of 
 servants to keep it in order. 
 
 " So you are going to turn everything upside 
 down," say the defenders of law and order. 
 " There will be no end to the evictions and re- 
 movals. Would it not be better to start fresh by 
 turning everybody out of doors and redistributing 
 the houses by lot ? " Thus our critics ; but 
 we are firmly persuaded that if no Government 
 interferes in the matter, if all the changes are 
 entrusted to those free groups which have sprung 
 up to undertake the work, the evictions and re- 
 movals will be less numerous than those which 
 take place in one year under the present system, 
 owing to the rapacity of landlords. 
 
 In the first place, there are in all large towns 
 almost enough empty houses and flats to lodge all 
 the inhabitants of the slums. As to the palaces 
 and suites of fine apartments, many working 
 people would not live in them if they could. One 
 could not " keep up " such houses without a large 
 staff of servants. Their occupants would soon 
 find themselves forced to seek less luxurious 
 dwellings. The fine ladies would find that palaces 
 
ii6 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 were not well adapted to self-help in the kitchen. 
 Gradually people would shake down. There would 
 be no need to conduct Dives to a garret at the 
 bayonet's point, or install Lazarus in Dives's 
 palace by the help of an armed escort. People 
 would shake down amicably into the available 
 dwellings with the least possible friction and 
 disturbance. Have we not the example of the 
 village communes redistributing fields and dis- 
 turbing the owners of the allotments so little 
 that one can only praise the intelligence and 
 good sense of the methods they employ. Fewer 
 fields change hands under the management of 
 the Russian Commune than where personal pro- 
 perty holds sway, and is for ever carrying its 
 quarrels into courts of law. And are we to believe 
 that the inhabitants of a great European city 
 would be less intelligent and less capable of 
 organization than Russian or Hindoo peasants ? 
 
 Moreover, we must not bUnk the fact that 
 every revolution means a certain disturbance to 
 everyday life, and those who expect this tremen- 
 dous lift out of the old grooves to be accomplished 
 without so much as jarring the dishes on their 
 dinner tables will find themselves mistaken. It 
 is true that Governments can change without dis- 
 turbing worthy citizens at dinner, but the crimes 
 of society towards those who have nourished and 
 supported it are not to be redressed by any such 
 political sleight of parties. 
 
 Undoubtedly there will be a disturbance, but 
 
DWELLINGS 117 
 
 it must not be of pure destruction; it must be 
 minimized* And again — ^it is impossible to lay 
 too much stress on this maxim — ^it wUl be by 
 addressing ourselves to the interested parties, and 
 not to boards and committees, that we shall best 
 succeed in reducing the sum of inconveniences for 
 everybody. 
 
 The people commit blunder on blunder when 
 they have to choose by ballot some hare-brained 
 candidate who sohcits the honour of representing 
 them, and takes upon himself to know aU, to do 
 all, and to organize all. But when they take 
 upon themselves to organize what they know, 
 what touches them directly, they do it better 
 than all the " talking-shops " put together. Is 
 not the Paris Commune an instance in point ? and 
 the great dockers' strike ? and have we not constant 
 evidence of this fact in every village commune ? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 CLOTHING 
 
 WHEN the houses have become the common 
 heritage of the citizens, and when each 
 man has his daily supply of food, another forward 
 step will have to be taken. The question of 
 clothing will of course demand consideration next, 
 and again the only possible solution will be to 
 take possession, in the name of the people, of aU 
 the shops and warehouses where clothing is sold 
 or stored, and to throw open the doors to all, so 
 that each can take what he needs. The com- 
 munalization of clothing — the right of each to 
 take what he needs from the communal stores, or 
 to have it made for him at the tailors and out- 
 fitters — is a necessary coroUary of the communali- 
 zation of houses and food. 
 
 Obviously we shaU not need for that to despoil 
 all citizens of their coats, to put all the garments 
 in a heap and draw lots for them, as our critics, 
 with equal wit and ingenuity, suggest. Let him 
 who has a coat keep it still — nay, if he have ten 
 coats it is highly improbable that any one will 
 want to deprive him of them, for most folk would 
 prefer a new coat to one that has already graced 
 
 ii8 
 
CLOTHING 119 
 
 the shoulders of some fat bourgeois ; and there 
 will be enough new garments, and to spare, with- 
 out having recourse to second-hand wardrobes. 
 
 If we were to take an inventory of all the clothes 
 and stuff for clothing accumulated in the shops 
 and stores of the large towns, we should find 
 probably that in Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and 
 Marseilles, there was enough to enable the com- 
 mune to offer garments to all the citizens, of both 
 sexes ; and if aU were not suited at once, the 
 communal outfitters would soon make good these 
 shortcomings. We know how rapidly our great 
 tailoring and dressmaking establishments work 
 nowadays, provided as they are with machinery 
 specially adapted for production on a large scale. 
 
 " But every one will want a sable-lined coat or 
 a velvet gown ! " exclaim our adversaries. 
 
 Frankly, we do not believe it. Every woman 
 does not dote on velvet, nor does every man 
 dream of sable linings. Even now, if we were to 
 ask each woman to choose her gown, we should 
 find some to prefer a simple, practical garment 
 to all the fantastic trimmings the fashionable world 
 affects. 
 
 Tastes change with the times, and the fashion 
 in vogue at the time of the Revolution will cer- 
 tainly make for simpUcity. Societies, like indi- 
 viduals, have their hours of cowardice, but also 
 their heroic moments ; and though the society 
 of to-day cuts a very poor figure sunk in the. 
 pursuit of narrow personal interests and second- 
 
120 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 rate ideas, it wears a different air when great 
 crises come. It has its moments of greatness 
 and enthusiasm. Men of generous nature will 
 gain the power which to-day is in the hand of 
 jobbers. Self-devotion will spring up, and noble 
 deeds beget their hke ; even the egotists will be 
 ashamed of hanging back, and will be drawn in 
 spite of themselves to admire, if not to imitate, 
 the generous and brave. 
 
 The great Revolution of 1793 abounds, in 
 examples of this kind, and it is ever during such 
 times of spiritual revival — as natural to societies 
 as to individuals — that the spring-tide of enthu- 
 siasm sweeps humanity onwards. 
 
 We do not wish to exaggerate the part played 
 by such noble passions, nor is it upon them that 
 we would found our ideal of society. But we are 
 not asking too much if we expect their aid in 
 tiding over the first and most difficult moments. 
 We cannot hope that our daily life will be con- 
 tinuously inspired by such exalted enthusiasm:s, 
 but we may expect their aid at the first, and that 
 is all we need. 
 
 It is just to wash the earth clean, to sweep away 
 the shards and refuse, accumulated by centuries 
 of slavery and oppression, that the new anarchist 
 society will have need of this wave of brotherly 
 love. Later on it can exist without appeaUng to 
 the spirit of self-sacrifice, because it will have 
 eliminated oppression, and thus created a new 
 world instinct with all the feelings of solidarity. 
 
CLOTHING 121 
 
 Besides, should the character of the Revolution 
 be such as we have sketched here, the free initiative 
 of individuals would find an extensive field of 
 action in thwarting the efforts of the egotists. 
 Groups would spring up in every street and 
 quarter to undertake the charge of the clothing. 
 They would make inventories of all that the city 
 possessed, and would find out approximately 
 what were the resources at their disposal. It is 
 more than hkely that in the matter of clothing 
 the citizens would adopt the same principle as in 
 the matter of provisions — that is to say, they 
 would offer freely from the common store every- 
 thing which was to be found in abundance, and 
 dole out whatever was limited in quantity. 
 
 Not being able to offer to each man a sable- 
 hned coat, and to every woman a velvet gown, 
 society would probably distinguish between the 
 superfluous and the necessary, and, provisionally, 
 at least, class sable and velvet among the super- 
 -fluities of life, ready to let time prove whether 
 what is a luxury to-day may not become common 
 to aU to-morrow. While the necessary clothing 
 would be guaranteed to each inhabitant of the 
 anarchist city, it would be left to private activity 
 to provide for the sick and feeble those things, 
 provisionally considered as luxuries, and to pro- 
 cure for the less robust such special articles, as 
 would not enter into the daily consumption of 
 ordinary citizens. 
 
 " But," it may be urged, " this grey uniformity 
 
122 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 means the end of everything beautiful in life 
 and art." 
 
 " Certainly not ! " we reply ; and we still base 
 our opinion on what already exists. We propose 
 to show presently how an Anarchist society could 
 satisfy the most artistic tastes of its citizens 
 without allowing them to amass the fortunes of 
 millionaires. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 WAYS AND MEANS 
 
 IF a society, a city, or a territory, were to 
 guarantee the necessaries of life to its inhabi- 
 tants (and we shall see how the conception of the 
 necessaries of life can be so extended as to include 
 luxuries), it would be compelled to take possession 
 of what is absolutely needed for production ; that 
 is to say — land, machinery, factories, means of 
 transport, etc. Capital in the hands of private 
 owners would be expropriated and returned to 
 the community. 
 
 The great harm done by bourgeois society, as 
 we have already mentioned, is not only that 
 capitaUsts seize a large share of the profits of 
 each industrial and commercial enterprise, thus 
 enabling them to Uve without working, but that 
 all production has taken a wrong direction, as it 
 is not carried on with a view to securing well-being 
 to all. For this reason we condemn it. 
 
 Moreover, it is impossible to carry on mercantile 
 production in everybody's interest. To wish it 
 would be to expect the capitalist to go beyond 
 his province and to fulfil duties that he cannot 
 
 123 
 
124 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 fulfil without ceasing to be what he is — a private 
 manufacturer seeking his own enrichment. Capi- 
 talist organization, based on the personal interest 
 of each individual trader, has given all that could 
 be expected of it to society — it has increased the 
 productive force of work. The capitaUst, profiting 
 by the revolution effected in industry by steam, 
 by the sudden development of chemistry and 
 machinery, and by other inventions of our century, 
 has endeavoured in his own interest to increase 
 the yield of work, and in a great measure he has 
 succeeded. But to attribute other duties to him 
 would be unreasonable. For example, to expect 
 that he should use this superior yield of work in 
 the interest of society as a whole, would be to ask 
 philanthropy and charity of him, and a capitahst 
 enterprise cannot be based on charity. 
 
 It now remains for society to extend this 
 greater productivity, which is Umited to certain 
 industries, and to apply it to the general good. 
 But it is evident that to guarantee well-being to 
 all, society must take back possession of all means 
 of production. 
 
 Economists, as is their wont, will not fail to 
 remind us of the comparative well-being of a 
 certain category of young robust workmen, skilled 
 in certain special branches of industry. It is 
 always this minority that is pointed out to us 
 with pride. But is this well-being, which is the 
 exclusive right of a few, secure ? To-morrow, 
 maybe, negUgence, improvidence, or the greed of 
 
WAYS AND MEANS 125 
 
 their employerSj will deprive these privileged men 
 of their work, and they will pay for the period of 
 comfort they have enjoyed with months and 
 years of poverty or destitution. How many 
 important industries — woven goods, iron, sugar, 
 etc. — without mentioning short-lived trades, have 
 we not seen decline or come to a standstill alter- 
 nately on account of speculations, or in conse- 
 quence of natural displacement of work, and 
 lastly from the effects of competition due to 
 capitalists themselves ! If the chief weaving and 
 mechanical industries had to pass through such 
 a crisis as they have passed through in 1886, we 
 hardly need mention the smaU trades, all of which 
 come periodically to a standstill. 
 
 What, too, shall we say to the price which 
 IS paid for the relative well-being of certain 
 categories of workmen ? Unfortunately, it is paid 
 for by the ruin of agriculture, the shameless 
 exploitation of the peasants, the misery of the 
 masses. In comparison with the feeble minority 
 of workers who enjoy a certain comfort, how many 
 millions of human beings live from hand to mouth, 
 without a secure wage, ready to go wherever they 
 are wanted ; how many peasants work fourteen 
 hours a day for a poor pittance ! Capital depopu- 
 lates the country, exploits the colonies and the 
 countries where industries are but httle developed, 
 dooms the immense majority of workmen to 
 remain without technical education, to remain 
 mediocre even in their own trade. 
 
126 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 This is not merely accidental, it is a necessity of 
 the capitalist system. In order to remunerate 
 certain classes of workmen, peasants must become 
 the beasts of burden of society ; the country 
 must be deserted for the town ; small trades must 
 agglomerate in the foul suburbs of large cities, 
 and manufacture a thousand things of httle value 
 for next to nothing, so as to bring the goods of 
 the greater industries within reach of buyers with 
 small salaries. That bad cloth may seU, garments 
 are made for ill-paid workers by tailors who are 
 satisfied with a starvation wage ! Eastern lands 
 in a backward state are exploited by the West, 
 in order that, under the capitahst system, workers 
 in a few privileged industries may obtain certain 
 limited comforts of life. 
 
 The evil of the present system is therefore not 
 that the " surplus-value " of production goes to 
 the capitalist, as Rodbertus and Marx said, thus 
 narrowing the Socialist conception and the general 
 view of the capitalist system ; the surplus-value 
 itself is but a consequence of deeper causes. 
 The evil lies in the possibility of a surplus-value 
 existing, instead of a simple surplus not consumed 
 by each generation; for, that a surplus- value should 
 exist, means that men, women, and children are 
 compelled by hunger to sell their labour for a 
 small part of what this labour produces, and, 
 above all, of what their labour is capable of pro- 
 ducing. But this evil will last as long as the 
 instruments of production belong to a few. As 
 
WAYS AND MEANS 127 
 
 long as men are compelled to pay tribute to 
 property holders for the right of cultivating 
 land or putting machinery into action, and the 
 property holder is free to produce what bids fair 
 to bring him in the largest profits, rather than 
 the greatest amount of useful commodities— well- 
 being can only be temporarily guaranteed to a 
 very few, and is only to be bought by the poverty 
 of a section of society. It is not sufficient to 
 distribute the profits realized by a trade in equal 
 parts, if at the same time thousands of other 
 workers are exploited. It is a case of producing 
 
 THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF GOODS NECESSARY TO 
 THE WELL-BEING OF ALL, WITH THE LEAST POSSIBLE 
 WASTE OF HU'mAN ENERGY. 
 
 This cannot be the aim of a private owner ; 
 and this is why society as a whole, taking this 
 view of production as its ideal, will be compelled 
 to expropriate all that enhances well-being while 
 producing wealth. It will have to take possession 
 of land, factories, mines, means of communication, 
 etc., and besides, it will have to study what 
 products will promote general well-being, as well 
 as the ways and means of production. 
 
 II 
 
 How many hours a day will man have to work 
 to produce nourishing food, a comfortable home, 
 and necessary clothing for his family ? This 
 question has often preoccupied Socialists, and 
 
128 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 they generally came to the conclusion that four 
 or five hours a day would suffice, on condition, be 
 it well understood, that all men work. At the 
 end of last century, Benjamin Franklin fixed the 
 limit at five hours ; and if the need of comfort is 
 greater now, the power of production has aug- 
 mented too, and far more rapidly. 
 
 In speaking of agriculture further on, we shall 
 see what the earth can be made to yield to man 
 when he cultivates it scientifically, instead of 
 throwing seed haphazard in a badly ploughed soil 
 as he mostly does to-day. In the great farms of 
 Western America, some of which cover 30 square 
 miles, but have a poorer soil than the manured 
 soil of civilized countries, only 10 to 15 English 
 bushels per English acre are obtained ; that 
 is to say, half the yield of European farms or of 
 American farms in Eastern States. And never-- 
 theless, thanks to machines which enable 2 men 
 to plough 4 English acres a day, 100 men can 
 produce in a year all that is necessary to deUver 
 the bread of 10,000 people at their homes during 
 a whole year. 
 
 Thus it would suffice for a man to work under 
 the same conditions for 30 hours, say 6 half-days 
 of five hours each, to have bread for a whole year ; 
 and to work 30 half-days to guarantee the same 
 to a family of 5 people. 
 
 We shall also prove by results obtained now- 
 adays that if we had recourse to intensive agricul- 
 ture, less than 6 half-days' work could procure 
 
WAYS AND MEANS 129 
 
 bread, meat, vegetables, and even luxurious fruit 
 for a whole family. 
 
 And again, if we study the cost of workmen's 
 dwellings, built in large towns to-day, we can 
 ascertain that to obtain, in a large English city, 
 a detached little house, as they are built for 
 workmen, from 1400 to 1800 half-days' work of 
 5 hours would be sufficient. As a house of that 
 kind lasts 50 years at least, it follows that 28 to 
 36 half-days' work a year would provide well- 
 furnished, healthy quarters, with all necessary 
 comfort for a family. Whereas when hiring the 
 same apartment from an employer, a workman 
 pays 75 to 100 days' work per year. 
 
 Mark that these figures represent the maximum 
 of what a house costs in England to-day, being 
 given the defective organization of our societies. 
 In Belgium, workmen's cities have been built far 
 cheaper. Taking everything into consideration, 
 we are justified in affirming that in a well-organ- 
 ized society 30 or 40 half-days' work a year will 
 suffice to guarantee a perfectly comfortable home. 
 
 There now remains clothing, the exact value 
 of which is almost impossible to fix, because the 
 profits realized by a swarm of middlemen cannot 
 be estimated. Let us take cloth, for example, 
 and add up all the deductions made by landowners, 
 sheep owners, wool merchants, and all their inter- 
 mediate agents, then by railway companies, mill- 
 owners, weavers, dealers in ready-made clothes, 
 sellers and commission agents, and you will get 
 
130 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 an idea of what is paid to a whole swarm of 
 capitalists for each article of clothing. That is 
 why it is perfectly impossible to say how many 
 days' work an overcoat that you pay £3 or £4 in 
 a large London shop represents. 
 
 What is certain is that with present machinery 
 they no doubt manage to manufacture an incred- 
 ible amount of goods. 
 
 A few examples will suffice. Thus in the 
 United States, in 751 cotton mills (for spinning 
 and weaving), 175,000 men and women produce 
 2,033,000,000 yards of cotton goods, besides a 
 great quantity of thread. On the average, more 
 than 12,000 yards of cotton goods alone are 
 obtained by a 300 days' work of g| hours each, 
 say 40 yards of cotton in 10 hours. Admitting 
 that a family needs 200 yards a year at piost, 
 this would be equivalent to 50 hours' work, say 
 10 half-days of 5 hours each. And we should 
 have thread besides ; that is to say, cotton to sew 
 with, and thread to weave cloth with, so as to 
 manufacture woollen stuffs mixed with cotton. 
 
 As to the results obtained by weaving alone, 
 the official statistics of the United States teach 
 us that in 1870 if workmen worked 13 to 14 hours 
 a day, they made 10,000 yards of white cotton 
 goods in a year ; thirteen years later (1886) they 
 wove 30,000 yards by working only 55 hours 
 a week. 
 
 Even in printed cotton goods they obtained, 
 weaving and printing included, 32,000 yards in 
 
WAYS AND MEANS 131 
 
 2670 hours of work a year — say about 12 yards 
 an hour. Thus to have your 200 yards of white 
 and printed cotton goods ly hours' work a year 
 would suffice. It is necessary to remark that 
 raw material reaches these factories in about the 
 sarrie state as it comes from the fields, and that 
 the transformations gone through by the piece 
 before it is converted into goods are completed 
 in the course of these 17 hours. But to buy 
 these 200 yards from the tradesman, a well-paid 
 workman must give at the very least 10 to 15 
 days' work of 10 hours each, say 100 to 150 
 hours. And as to the English peasant, he would 
 have to toil for a month, or a httle more, to 
 obtain this luxury. 
 
 By this example we already see that by working 
 $6 half-days fer year in a well-organized society 
 we could dress better than the lower middle classes 
 do to-day. 
 
 'But with aU this we have only required 60 
 half-days' work of 5 hours each to obtain the 
 fruits of the earth, 40 for housing, and 50 for 
 clothing, which only makes half a year's work, 
 as the year consists of 300 working-days if we 
 deduct hohdays. 
 
 There remain still 150 half-days' work which 
 could be made use of for other necessaries of fife 
 — wine, sugar, coffee, tea, furniture, transport, 
 etc. etc. 
 
 It is evident that these calculations are only 
 approximative, but they can also be proved in 
 
132 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 another way. When we take into account how 
 many, in the so-called civilized nations, produce 
 nothing, how many work at harmful trades, 
 doomed to disappear, and lastly, how many 
 are only useless middlemen, we see that in 
 each nation the number of real producers 
 could be doubled. And if, instead of every 
 10 men, 20 were occupied in producing useful 
 commodities, and if society took the trouble to 
 economize human energy, those 20 people would 
 only have to work 5 hours a day without 
 production decreasing. And it would suffice to 
 reduce the waste of human energy at the service 
 of wealthy famihes, or of those administrations 
 that have one official to every ten inhabitants, 
 and to utilize those forces, to augment the pro- 
 ductivity of the nation, to limit work to four or 
 even to three hours, on condition that we should 
 be satisfied with present production. 
 
 After stud5dng all these facts together, we 
 may arrive, then, at the following conclusion : 
 Imagine a society, comprising a few million 
 inhabitants, engaged in agriculture and a great 
 variety of industries — Paris, for example, with 
 the Department of Seine-et-Oise. Suppose that 
 in this society all children learn to work with 
 their hands as well as with their brains. Admit 
 that all adults, save women, engaged in the 
 education of their children, bind themselves to 
 work 5 hours a day from the age of twenty 
 or twenty-two to forty-five or fifty, and that 
 
WAYS AND MEANS 133 
 
 they follow occupations they have chosen in 
 any one branch of human work considered 
 necessary. Such a society could in return guaran- 
 tee well-being to all its raembers ; that is to say, 
 a more substantial well-being than that enjoyed 
 to-day by the middle classes. And, moreover, 
 each worker belonging to this society would have 
 at his disposal at least 5 hours a day which he 
 could devote to science, art, and individual needs 
 which do not come under the category of necessi- 
 ties, but will probably do so later on, when man's 
 productivity will have augmented, and those 
 objects will no longer appear luxurious or in- 
 accessible. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE NEED FOR LUXURY 
 
 MAN, however, is not a being whose exclu- 
 sive purpose in life is eating, drinking, 
 and providing a shelter for himself. As soon as 
 his material wants are satisfied, other needs, 
 of an artistic character, wiU thrust themselves 
 forward the more ardently. Aims of life vary 
 with each and every individual ; and the more 
 society is civilized, the more will individuality 
 be developed, and the more will desires be varied. 
 
 Even to-day we see men and women denying 
 themselves necessaries to acquire mere trifles, 
 to obtain some particular gratification, or some 
 intellectual or material enjoyment. A Christian 
 or an ascetic may disapprove of these desires for 
 luxury ; but it is precisely these trifles that 
 break the monotony of existence and make it 
 agreeable. Would Hfe, with all its inevitable 
 sorrows, be worth living, if besides daily work 
 man could never obtain a single pleasure according 
 to his individual tastes ? 
 
 If we wish for a Social Revolution, it is no doubt 
 
 134 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 135 
 
 in the first place to give bread to all ; to trans- 
 form this execrable society^ in which we can 
 every day see robust workmen danghng their 
 arms for want of an employer who will exploit 
 them ; women and children wandering shelterless 
 at night ; whole families reduced to dry bread ; 
 men, women, and children djdng for want of care 
 and even for want of food. It is to put an end 
 to these iniquities that we rebel. 
 
 But we expect more from the Revolution. 
 We see that the worker, compelled to struggle 
 painfully for bare existence, is reduced to ignor- 
 ance of these higher delights, the highest within 
 man's reach, of science, and especially of scientific 
 discovery ; of art, and especially of artistic creation. 
 It is in order to obtain these joys for aU, which are 
 now reserved to a few ; in order to give leisure and 
 the possibility of developing intellectual capa- 
 cities, that the social revolution must guarantee 
 daily bread to aU. After bread has been secured, 
 leisure is the supreme aim. 
 
 No doubt, nowadays, when hundreds and 
 thousands of human beings are in need of bread, 
 coal, clothing, and shelter, luxury is a crime ; to 
 satisfy it the worker's child must go without 
 bread ! But in a society in which all can eat 
 sufficiently, the needs which we consider luxuries 
 to-day will be the more keenly felt. And as all 
 men do not and cannot resemble one another 
 (the variety of tastes and needs is the chief 
 guarantee of human progress) there will always 
 
136 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 be, and it is desirable that there should always be, 
 men and women whose desire wiU go beyond those 
 of ordinary individuals in some particular direction. 
 Everybody does not need a telescope, because, 
 even if learning were general, there are people 
 who prefer to examine things through a micro- 
 scope to studying the starry heavens. Some hke 
 statues, some pictures. A particular individual 
 has no other ambition than to possess an excellent 
 piano, while another is pleased with an accordion. 
 The tastes vary, but the artistic needs exist in all. 
 In our present, poor capitaUstic society, the man 
 who has artistic needs cannot satisfy them unless 
 he is heir to a large fortune, or by dint of hard 
 work appropriates to himself an intellectual capital 
 which will enable him to take up a liberal pro- 
 fession. Still he cherishes the hope of some day 
 satisf5dng his tastes more or less, and for this 
 reason he reproaches the idealist Communist 
 societies with having the material life of each 
 individual as their sole aim. — " In your com- 
 munal stores you may perhaps, have bread for 
 all," he says to us, " but you will not have 
 beautiful pictures, optical instruments, luxurious 
 furniture, artistic jewelry — in short, the many 
 things that minister to the infinite variety of 
 human tastes. And in this way you suppress 
 the possibility of obtaining anything besides the 
 bread and meat which the commune can offer to 
 all, and the grey hnen in which all your lady 
 citizens will be dressed." 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 137 
 
 These are the objections which all com- 
 munist systems have to consider, and which 
 the founders of new societies, estabhshed in 
 American deserts, never understood. They be- 
 lieved that if the community could procure 
 sufficient cloth to dress all its members, a music 
 haU in which the " brothers " could strum a piece 
 of music, or act a play from time to time, it was 
 enough. They forgot that the feeling for art 
 existed in the agriculturist as well as in the 
 burgher, and, notwithstanding that the expression 
 of artistic feeling varies according to the difference 
 in culture, in the main it remains the same. In 
 vain did the community guarantee the common 
 necessaries of hfe, in vain did it suppress all 
 education that would tend to develop individu- 
 ahty, in vain did it eliminate all reading save 
 the Bible. Individual tastes broke forth, and 
 caused general discontent; quarrels arose when 
 somebody proposed to buy a piano or scientific 
 instruments; and the elements of progress flagged. 
 The society could only exist on condition that it 
 crushed all individual feehng, all artistic ten- 
 dency, and all development. 
 
 WiU the anarchist Commune be impelled by 
 the same direction ? Evidently not, if it under- 
 stands that while it produces all that is necessary 
 to material life, it must also strive to satisfy all 
 manifestations of the human mind. 
 
138 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 II 
 
 We frankly confess that when we think of the 
 abyss of poverty and suffering that surrounds us, 
 when we hear the heartrending cry of the worker 
 walking the streets begging for work, we are loth 
 to discuss the question : How wiU men act in a 
 society, whose members are properly fed, to 
 satisfy certain individuals desirous of possessing 
 a piece of Sevres china or a velvet dress ? 
 
 We are tempted to answer : Let us make sure 
 of bread to begin with, we shall see to china and 
 velvet later on. 
 
 But as we must recognize that man has other 
 needs besides food, and as the strength of Anarchy 
 Hes precisely in that it understands all human 
 faculties and all passions, and ignores none, we 
 shaU, in a few words, explain how man can con- 
 trive to satisfy all his intellectual and artistic 
 needs. 
 
 We have already mentioned that by working 
 4 or 5 hours a day till the age of forty-five or 
 fifty, man could easily produce all that is neces- 
 sary to guarantee comfort to society. 
 
 But the day's work of a man accustomed to 
 toil does not consist of 5 hours ; it is a 10 hours' 
 day for 300 days a year, and lasts aU his hfe. Of 
 course, when a man is harnessed to a machine, his 
 health is soon undermined and his intelligence is 
 blunted; but when man has the possibility of var5dng 
 occupations, and especially of alternating manual 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 139 
 
 with intellectual work, he can remain occupied 
 without fatigue, and even with pleasure, for 
 10 or 12 hours a day. Consequently, the man 
 who will have done 4 or 5 hours of manual work 
 necessary for his existence, will have before him 
 5 or 6 hours which he will seek to employ accord- 
 ing to his tastes. And these 5 or 6 hours a day 
 will fully enable him to procure for himself, if 
 he associates with others, all he wishes for, in 
 addition to the necessaries guaranteed to all. 
 
 He will discharge first his task in the field, the 
 factory, and so on, which he owes to society as his 
 contribution to the general production. And he 
 will employ the second half of his day, his week, 
 or his year, to satisfy his artistic or scientific 
 needs, or his hobbies. 
 
 Thousands of societies will spring up to gratify 
 every taste and every possible fancy. 
 
 Some, for example, will give their hours of 
 leisure to literature. They will then form groups 
 comprising authors, compositors, printers, engra- 
 vers, draughtsmen, all pursuing a common aim — 
 the propagation of ideas that are dear to them. 
 
 Nowadays an author knows that there is a 
 beast of burden, the worker, to whom, for the 
 sum of a few shilUngs a day, he can entrust the 
 printing of his books ; but he hardly cares to 
 know what a printing office is like. If the com- 
 positor suffers from lead-poisoning, and if the 
 child who sees to the machine dies of anaemia, are 
 there not other poor wretches to replace them ? 
 
140 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 But when there will be no more starvelings 
 ready to sell their work for a pittance, when the 
 exploited worker of to-day will be educated, and 
 will have his own ideas to put down in black and 
 white and to communicate to others, then the 
 authors and scientific men will be compelled to 
 combine among themselves and with the printers, 
 in order to bring out their prose and their poetry. 
 
 So long as men consider fustian and manual 
 labour a mark of inferiority, it will appear amaz- 
 ing to them to see an author setting up his own 
 book in type, for has he not a gymnasium or 
 games by way of diversion ? But when the 
 opprobrium connected with manual labour has 
 disappeared, when all will have to work with 
 their hands, there being no one to do it for them, 
 then the authors as well as their admirers will soon 
 learn the art of handling composing-sticks and 
 type ; they will know the pleasure of coming 
 together — all admirers of the work to be printed — 
 to set up the type, to shape it into pages, to take 
 it in its virginal purity from the press. These 
 beautiful machines, instruments of torture to the 
 child who attends on them from morn till night, 
 will be a source of enjoyment for those who wiU 
 make use of them in order to give voice to the 
 thoughts of their favourite author. 
 
 Will literature lose by it ? Will the poet be 
 less a poet after having worked out of doors or 
 helped with his hands to multiply his work ? 
 Will the noveHst lose his knowledge of human 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 141 
 
 nature after having nibbed shoulders with other 
 men in the forest or the factory, in the laying out 
 of a road or on a railway hne ? Can there be two 
 answers to these questions ? 
 
 Maybe some books wiU be less voluminous ; 
 but then, more will be said on fewer pages. 
 Maybe fewer waste-sheets will be pubhshed ; but 
 the matter printed will be more attentively read 
 and more appreciated. The book wiU appeal 
 to a larger circle of better educated readers, who 
 will be more competent to judge. 
 
 Moreover, the art of printing, that has so httle 
 progressed since Gutenberg, is still in its infancy. 
 It takes two hours to compose in type what is 
 written in ten minutes, but more expeditious 
 methods of multiplying thought are being sought 
 after and will be discovered. 
 
 What a pity every author does not have to take 
 his share in the printing of his works ! What 
 progress printing would have already made ! We 
 should no longer be using the movable letters, as 
 in the seventeenth century. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Is it a dream to conceive a society in which — aU 
 having become producers, all having received an 
 education that enables them to cultivate science 
 or art, and aU having leisure to do so — men would 
 combine to pubhsh the works of their choice, by 
 contributing each his share of manual work ? We 
 have already hundreds of learned, literary, and other 
 
142 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 societies ; and these societies are nothing but volun- 
 tary groups of men, interested in certain branches 
 of learning, and associated for the purpose of pub- 
 lishing their works. The authors who write for the 
 periodicals of these societies are not paid, and the 
 periodicals are not for sale ; they are sent gratis to 
 all quarters of the globe, to other societies, cultivat- 
 ing the same branches of learning. This member 
 of the Society may insert in its review a one-page 
 note summarizing his observations ; another may 
 publish therein an extensive work, the results of 
 long years of study ; while others will confine 
 themselves to consulting the review as a starting- 
 point for further research. It does not matter : 
 all these authors and readers are associated for the 
 production of works in which all of them take an 
 interest. '* 
 
 It is true that a learned society, like the indi- 
 vidual author, goes to a printing of&ce where work-* 
 men are engaged to do the printing. Nowadays, 
 those who belong to the learned societies despise 
 manual labour, which indeed is carried on under 
 very bad conditions ; but a community which 
 would give a generous philosophic and scientific 
 education to all its members, would know how to 
 organize manual labour in such a way that it 
 would be the pride of humanity. Its learned socie- 
 ties would become associations of explorers, lovers 
 of science, and workers — all knowing a manual 
 trade and all interested in science. 
 
 If, for example, the Society is studying geology, 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 143 
 
 all will contribute to the exploration of the earth's 
 strata; each member will take his share in research, 
 and ten thousand observers, where we have now 
 only a hundred, will do more in a year than we 
 can do in twenty years. And when their works 
 are to be pubUshed, ten thousand men and women, 
 skilled in different trades, will be ready to draw 
 maps, engrave designs, compose, and print the 
 books. With gladness will they give their leisure 
 — in summer to exploration, in winter to indoor 
 work. And when their works appear, they will 
 find not only a hundred, but ten thousand readers 
 interested in their common work. 
 
 This is the direction in which progress is already 
 moving. Even to-day, when England felt the need 
 of a complete dictionary of the Enghsh language, 
 the birth of a Littre, who would devote his life to 
 th^s -work, was not waited for. Volunteers were 
 appealed to, and a thousand men offered their 
 services, spontaneously and gratuitously, to ran- 
 sack the libraries, to take notes, and to accom- 
 plish in a few years a work which one man could 
 not complete in his hfetime. In all branches of 
 human inteUigence the same spirit is breaking 
 forth, and we should have a very limited know- 
 ledge of humanity could we not guess that the 
 future is announcing itself in such tentative co- 
 operation, which is gradually taking the place 
 of individual work. 
 
 For this dictionary to be a really collective 
 work, it would have required that many volunteer 
 
144 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 authors, printers, and printers' readers should have 
 worked in common ; but something in this direc- 
 tion is done already in the Socialist Press, which 
 offers us examples of manual and intellectual work 
 combined. It happens in our newspapers that 
 a Socialist author composes in lead his own 
 article. True, such attempts are rare, but they 
 indicate in which direction evolution is going. 
 
 They show the road of liberty. In future, when 
 a man will have something useful to say — a word 
 that goes beyond the thoughts of his century, he 
 will not have to look for an editor who might 
 advance the necessary capital. He wiU look for 
 collaborators among those who know the printing 
 trade, and who approve the idea of his new 
 work. Together they will publish the new book 
 or journal. 
 
 Literature and journahsm will cease to be a means 
 of money-making and hving at the cost of others. 
 But is there any one who knows Uterature and 
 journalism from within, and who does not ardently 
 desire that literature should at last be able to free 
 itself from those who formerly protected it, and 
 who now exploit it, and from the multitude which, 
 with rare exceptions, pays it in proportion to 
 its mediocrity, or to the ease with which it 
 adapts itself to the bad taste of the greater 
 number ? 
 
 Letters and science will only take their proper 
 place in the work of human development when, 
 freed from all mercenary bondage, they will be 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 145 
 
 exclusively cultivated by those that love them, 
 and for those that love them. 
 
 IV 
 
 Literature, science, and art must be cultivated 
 by free men. Only on this condition will they 
 succeed in emancipating themselves from the 
 yoke of the State, of Capital, and of the bourgeois 
 mediocrity which stifles them. 
 
 What means has the scientist of to-day to make 
 researches that interest him ? Should he ask 
 help of the State, which can only be given to one 
 candidate in a hundred, and which none may obtain 
 who does not ostensibly promise to keep to the 
 beaten track ? Let us remember how the Institute 
 of France censured Darwin, how the Academy of 
 St. Petersburg treated Mendeleeff with contempt, 
 and how the Royal Society of London refused 
 to pubUsh Joule's paper, in which he determined 
 the mechanical equivalent of heat, finding it 
 " unscientific." * 
 
 It is why all great researches, all discoveries 
 revolutionizing science, have been made outside 
 academies and universities, either by men rich 
 enough to remain independent, like Darwin and 
 Lyell, or by men who undermined their health by 
 working in poverty, and often in great straits, 
 losing no end of time for want of a laboratory, 
 
 * We know this from Playfair, who mentioned it at Joule's 
 death. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 and unable to procure the instruments or books 
 necessary to continue their researches^ but perse- 
 vering against hope and often dying before they 
 had reached the end in view. Their name is legion. 
 
 Altogether, the system of help granted by the 
 State is so bad that science has always endeavoured 
 to emancipate itself from it. For this very reason 
 there are thousands of learned societies organized 
 and maintained by volunteers in Europe and 
 America, — some having developed to such a degree 
 that all the resources of subventioned societies, 
 and the wealth of millionaires, would not buy 
 their treasures. No governmental institution is 
 as rich as the Zoological Society of London, which 
 is supported by voluntary contributions. 
 
 It does not buy the animals which in thousands 
 people its gardens : they are sent by other 
 societies and by collectors of the entire world. 
 The Zoological Society of Bombay will send an 
 elephant as a gift ; another time a hippopotamus 
 or a rhinoceros is offered by Egyptian naturaUsts. 
 And these magnificent presents are pouring in 
 every day, arriving from all quarters of the 
 globe — birds, reptiles, collections of insects, etc. 
 These consignments often comprise animals that 
 could not be bought for aU the gold in the world ; 
 thus, a traveller who has captured an animal 
 at life's peril, and now loves it as he would 
 love a child, will give it to the Society because 
 he is sure it will be cared for. The entrance 
 fee paid by visitors, and they are numberless. 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 147 
 
 suffices for the maintenance of that immense 
 institution. 
 
 What is defective in the Zoological Society of 
 London, and in other kindred societies, is that 
 the member's fee cannot be paid in work : that 
 the keepers and numerous employes of this 
 large institution are not recognized as members 
 of the Society, while many have no other incentive 
 to joining the society than to put the cabalistic 
 letters F.Z.S. (Fellow of the Zoological Society) 
 on their cards. In a word, what is needed is a 
 more perfect co-operation. 
 
 We may say the same about inventors that we 
 have said of scientists. Who does not know what 
 sufferings nearly aU great inventions that have 
 come to light have cost ? Sleepless nights, families 
 deprived of bread, want of tools and materials for 
 experiments, is the history of nearly all those who 
 have enriched industry with inventions which are 
 the truly legitimate pride of our civilization. 
 
 But what are we to do to alter conditions that 
 everybody is convinced are bad ? Patents have 
 been tried, and we know with what results. The 
 inventor sells his patent for a few shillings, and 
 the man who has only lent the capital pockets the 
 often enormous profits resulting from the inven- 
 tion. Besides, patents isolate the inventor. They 
 compel him to keep secret his researches which 
 therefore end in failure ;. whereas the simplest sug- 
 gestion, coming from a brain less absorbed in the 
 fundamental idea, sometimes suffices to fertihze 
 
148 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 the invention and make it practical. Like all 
 State control, patents hamper the progress of 
 industry. Thought being incapable of being 
 patented, patents are a crying injustice in theory, 
 and in practice they result in one of the great 
 obstacles to the rapid development of invention. 
 f What is needed to promote the spirit of inven- 
 tion is, first of all, the awakening of thought, the 
 boldness of conception, which our entire education 
 causes to languish ; it is the spreading of a scien- 
 tific education, which would increase the number 
 of inquirers a hundred-fold; it is faith that 
 humanity is going to take a step forward, 
 because it is enthusiasm, the hope of doing good, 
 that has inspired aU the great inventors. The 
 Social Revolution alone can give this impulse to 
 thought, this boldness, this knowledge, this con- 
 viction of working for all. 
 
 Then we shall have vast institutes supplied with 
 motor-power and tools of aU sorts, immense indus- 
 trial laboratories open to aU inquirers, where men 
 will be able to work out their dreams, after having 
 acquitted themselves of their duty towards society; 
 where they wiU spend their five or six hours of 
 leisure ; where they will make their experiments ; 
 where they wiU find other comrades, experts in 
 other branches of industry, hkewise coming to 
 study some difficult problem, and therefore able 
 to help and enlighten each other, — the encounter 
 of their ideas andl^experience causing the longed- 
 for solution to be found. And yet again, this is 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 149 
 
 no dream. Solanoy Gorodok, in Petersburg, has 
 already partially realized it as regards technical 
 matters. It is a factory well furnished with tools 
 and free to all ; tools and motor-power are sup- 
 plied gratis, only metals and wood are charged for 
 at cost price. Unfortunately workmen only go 
 there at night when worn out by ten hours' labour 
 in the workshop. Moreover, they carefully hide 
 their inventions from each other, as they are 
 hampered by patents and CapitaHsm, that bane 
 of present society, that stumbling-block in the 
 path of intellectual and moral progress. 
 
 V 
 
 And what about art ? From all sides we hear 
 lamentations about the decadence of art. We 
 are, indeed, far behind the great masters of the 
 Renaissance. The technicalities of art have re- 
 cently made great progress ; thousands of people 
 gifted with a certain amount of talent cultivate 
 every branch, but art seems to fly from civiliza- 
 tion ! Technicahties make headway, but inspira- 
 tion frequents artists' studios less than ever. 
 
 Where, indeed, should it come from ? Only a 
 grand idea can inspire art. Art is in our ideal 
 synonymous with creation, it must look ahead ; 
 but save a few rare, very rare exceptions, the 
 professional artist remains too philistine to per- 
 ceive new horizons. 
 
 Moreover, this inspiration cannot come from 
 
150 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 books ; it must be drawn from life, and present 
 society cannot arouse it. 
 
 Raphael and Murillo painted at a time when 
 the search of a new ideal could adapt itself to 
 old religious traditions. They painted to decorate 
 great churches which represented the pious work 
 of several generations. The basihc with its 
 mysterious aspect, its grandeur, was connected 
 with the hfe itself of the city and could inspire 
 a painter. He worked for a popular monument ; 
 he spoke to his fellow-citizens, and in return he 
 received inspiration ; he appealed to the multi- 
 tude in the same way as did the nave, the pillars, 
 the stained windows, the statues, and the carved 
 doors. Nowadays the greatest honour a painter 
 can aspire to is to see his canvas, framed in gilded 
 wood, hung in a museum, a sort of old curiosity 
 shop, where you see, as in the Prado, Murillo's 
 Ascension next to a beggar of Velasquez and the 
 dogs of Philip n. Poor Velasquez and poor 
 Murillo! Poor Greek statues which lived in the 
 Acropohs of their cities, and are now stifled 
 beneath the red cloth hangings of the Louvre ! 
 
 When a Greek sculptor chiselled his marble he 
 endeavoured to express the spirit and heart of the 
 city. All its passions, all its traditions of glory, 
 were to live again in the work. But to-day the 
 united city has ceased to exist ; there is no more 
 communion of ideas. The town is a chance 
 agglomeration of people who do not know one 
 another, who have no common interest, save that 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 151 
 
 of enriching themselves at the expense of one 
 another. The fatherland does not exist. . . . 
 What fatherland can the international banker 
 and the rag-picker have in common ? Only when 
 cities, territories, nations, or groups of nations, 
 wiU have renewed their harmonious hfe, will art 
 be able to draw its inspiration from ideals held 
 in common. Then will the architect conceive 
 the city's monument which will no longer be a 
 temple, a prison, or a fortress ; then wiU the 
 painter, the sculptor, the carver, the ornament- 
 worker know where to put their canvases, their 
 statues, and their decorations ; deriving their 
 power of execution from the same vital source, 
 and gloriously marching all together towards the 
 future. 
 
 But till then art can only vegetate. The best 
 canvases of modern artists are those that represent 
 nature, villages, valleys, the sea with its dangers, 
 the mountain with its splendours. But how can 
 the painter express the poetry of work in the fields 
 if he has only contemplated it, imagined it, if he has 
 never dehghted in it himself ? If he only knows 
 it as a bird of passage knows the country he soars 
 over on his migrations ? If, in the vigour of early 
 youth, he has not followed the plough at dawn and 
 enjoyed mowing grass with a large swathe of the 
 scythe next to hardy haymakers vying in energy 
 with Uvely young girls who fiU the air with their 
 songs ? The love of the soil and of what grows 
 on it is not acquired by sketching with a paint- 
 
152 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 brush — it is only in its service ; and without 
 loving it, how paint it ? This is why all that 
 the best painters have produced in this direction is 
 still so imperfect, not true to Ufe, nearly always 
 merely sentimental. There is no strength in it. 
 
 You must have seen a sunset when return- 
 ing from work. You must have been a peasant 
 among peasants to keep the splendour of it in 
 your eye. You must have been at sea with fisher- 
 men at all hours of the day and night, have 
 fished yourself, struggled with the waves, faced 
 the storm, and after rough work experienced the 
 joy of hauling a heavy net, or the disappointment 
 of seeing it empty, to understand the poetry of 
 fishing. You must have spent time in a factory, 
 known the fatigues and the joys of creative work, 
 forged metals by the vivid Ught of a blast furnacij 
 have felt the life in a machine, to understand the 
 power of man and to express it in a work of art. 
 You must, in fact, be permeated with popular 
 feelings, to describe them. Besides, the works 
 of future artists who will have lived the life of 
 the people, Uke the great artists of the past, 
 will not be destined for sale. They will be an 
 integrant part of a living whole that would not 
 be complete without them, any more than they 
 would be complete without it. Men will go to 
 the artist's own city to gaze at his work, and the 
 spirited and serene beauty of such creations will 
 produce its beneficial effect on heart and mind. 
 
 Art, in order to develop, must be bound up 
 
THE NEED FOR LUXURY 153 
 
 with industry by a thousand intermediate degrees, 
 blended, so to say, as Ruskin and the great Socialist 
 poet Morris have proved so often and so well. 
 Everything that surrounds man, in the street, in 
 the interior and exterior of public monuments, 
 must be of a pure artistic form. 
 
 But this will only be capable of realization in 
 a 'society in which all enjoy comfort and leisure. 
 Then, we shall see art associations, in which each can 
 find room for his capacity, for art cannot dispense 
 with an infinity of purely manual and technical 
 supplementary works. These artistic associations 
 will undertake to embeUish the houses of their 
 members, as those kind volunteers, the young 
 painters of Edinburgh, did in decorating the walls 
 and ceilings of the great hospital for the poor in 
 ^m.v city. 
 
 A painter or sculptor who has produced a work 
 of personal feeling will offer it to the woman he 
 loves, or to a friend. Executed for love's sake, 
 wiU his work, inspired by love, be inferior to the 
 art that to-day satisfies the vanity of the phiUs- 
 tine, because it has cost much money ? 
 
 The same will be done as regards all pleasures 
 not comprised in the necessaries of life. He who 
 wishes for a grand piano will enter the association 
 of musical instrument makers. And by giving 
 the association part of his half-days' leisure, he 
 wiU soon possess the piano of his dreams. If he 
 is passionately fond of astronomical studies he 
 will join the association of astronomers, with its 
 
154 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 philosophers, its observers, its calculators, with 
 its artists in astronomical instruments, its scien- 
 tists and amateurs, and he will have the tele- 
 scope he desires by taking his share of the associated 
 work, for it is especially the rough work that is 
 needed in an astronomical observatory — brick- 
 layer's, carpenter's, founder's, mechanic's work, 
 the last touch being given to the instrument of 
 precision by the artist. 
 
 In short, the five or seven hours a day which 
 each will have at his disposal, after having conse- 
 crated several hours to the production of necessi- 
 ties, will amply suffice to satisfy all longings for 
 luxury, however varied. Thousands of associa- 
 tions would undertake to supply them. What is 
 now the privilege of an insignificant minority 
 would be accessible to aU. Luxury, ceasing to 
 be a foolish and ostentatious display of the bour- 
 geois class, would become an artistic pleasure. 
 
 Every one would be the happier for it. In 
 collective work, performed with a light heart to 
 attain a desired end, a book, a work of art, or an 
 object of luxury, each will find an incentive, and 
 the necessary relaxation that makes life pleasant. 
 
 In working to put an end to the division be- 
 tween master and slave, we work for the happiness 
 of both, for the happiness of humanity. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 AGREEABLE WORK 
 
 WHEN Socialists declare that a society, 
 emancipated from Capital, would make 
 work agreeable, and would suppress all repugnant 
 and unhealthy drudgery, they get laughed at. 
 And yet even to-day we can see the striking 
 progress made in this direction ; and wherever 
 this progress has been achieved, employers con- 
 gratulate themselves on the economy of energy 
 obtained thereby. 
 
 It is evident that a factory could be made as 
 healthy and pleasant as a scientific laboratory. 
 And it is no less evident that it would be ad- 
 vantageous to make it so. In a spacious and 
 weU-ventilated factory work is better ; it is easy 
 to introduce small ameliorations, of which each 
 represents an economy of time or of manual 
 labour. And if most of the workshops we know 
 are foul and unhealthy, it is because the workers 
 are of no account in the organization of factories, 
 and because the most absurd waste of human 
 energy is its distinctive feature. 
 
 Nevertheless, now and again, we already find 
 
 155 
 
156 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 some factories 'so well managed that it would 
 be a real pleasure to work in them, if the work, 
 be it well understood, were not to last more 
 than four or five hours a day, and if every one 
 had the possibility of varying it according to his 
 tastes. 
 
 Look at this factory, unfortunately consecrated 
 to engines of war. It is perfect as far as regards 
 sanitary and inteUigent organization. It occupies 
 fifty EngUsh acres of land, fifteen of which are 
 roofed with glass. The pavement of fire-proof 
 bricks is as clean as that of a miner's cottage, 
 and the glass roof is carefully cleaned by a gang 
 of workmen who do nothing else. In this factory 
 are forged steel ingots or blooms weighing as 
 much as twenty tons ; and when you stand thirty 
 feet from the immense furnace, whose flames have 
 a temperature of more than a thousand degrees, 
 you do not guess its presence save when its great 
 jaws open to let out a steel monster. And the 
 monster is handled by only three or four workmen, 
 who now here, now there, open a tap, causing 
 immense cranes to move by pressure of water in 
 the pipes. 
 
 You enter expecting to hear the deafening 
 noise of stampers, and you find that there are no 
 stampers. The immense hundred-ton guns and 
 the crank-shafts of transatlantic steamers are 
 forged by hydraulic pressure, and instead of 
 forging steel, the worker has but to turn a tap to 
 give it shape, which makes a far more homo- 
 
AGREEABLE WORK 157 
 
 geneous metal, without crack or flaw, of the 
 blooms, whatever be their thickness. 
 
 We expect an infernal grating, and we find 
 machines which cut blocks of steel thirty feet long 
 with no more noise than is needed to cut cheese. 
 And when we expressed our admiration to the 
 engineer who showed us round, he answered — 
 
 "It is a mere question of economy ! This 
 machine, that planes steel, has been in use for 
 forty-two years. It would not have lasted ten 
 years if its component parts, badly adjusted, 
 lacking in cohesive strength, ' interfered ' and 
 creaked at each movement of the plane ! 
 
 " And the blast-furnaces ? It would be a 
 waste to let heat escape instead of utilizing 
 it. Why roast the founders, when heat lost by 
 radiation represents tons of coal ? 
 
 " The stampers that made buildings shake five 
 leagues off were also waste ! It is better to forge 
 by pressure than by impact, and it costs less — 
 there is less loss. 
 
 " In a factory, Ught, cleanliness, the space 
 allotted to each bench, is but a simple question 
 of economy. Work is better done when you can 
 see and you have elbow-room. 
 
 " It is true," he said, " we were very cramped 
 before coming here. Land is so expensive in the 
 vicinity of large towns — landlords are so grasp- 
 ing ! " 
 
 It is even so in mines. We know what mines 
 are like nowadays from Zola's descriptions and 
 
158 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 from newspaper reports. But the mine of the 
 future will be well ventilated, with a temperature 
 as easily regulated as that of a hbrary ; there will 
 be no horses doomed to die below the earth: 
 underground traction wiU be carried on by means 
 of an automatic cable put in motion at the pit's 
 mouth. Ventilators will be always working, and 
 there wiU never be explosions. This is no dream. 
 Such a mine is already to be seen in England ; 
 we went down it. Here again this organization 
 is simply a question of economy. The mine of 
 which we speak, in spite of its immense depth (466 
 yards), has an output of a thousand tons of coal 
 a day, with only two hundred miners — five 
 tons a day per each worker, whereas the average 
 for the two thousand pits in England is hardly 
 three hundred tons a year per man. 
 
 If necessary, we could multiply examples prov- 
 ing that Fourier's dream regarding material 
 organization was not a Utopia. 
 
 This question has, however, been so frequently 
 discussed in Socialist newspapers that public 
 opinion might have been educated. Factory, 
 forge, andj mine can be as healthy and mag- 
 nificent as the finest laboratories in modern 
 universities, and the better the organization the 
 more will man's labour produce. 
 
 If it be so, can we doubt that work will become 
 a pleasure and a relaxation in a society of equals, 
 in which " hands " will not be compelled to sell 
 themselves to toil, and to accept work under any 
 
AGREEABLE WORK 159 
 
 conditions ? Repugnant tasks will disappear, 
 because it is evident that these unhealthy con- 
 ditions are harmful to society as a whole. Slaves 
 can submit to them, but free men will create new 
 conditions, and their work will be pleasant and 
 infinitely more productive. The exceptions of 
 to-day will be the rule of to-morrow. 
 
 The same will come to pass as regards domestic 
 work, which to-day society lays on the shoulders 
 of that drudge of humanity — woman. 
 
 II 
 
 A society regenerated by the Revolution will 
 make domestic slavery disappear — this last form 
 of slavery, perhaps the most tenacious, because it 
 is also the most ancient. Only it will not come 
 about in the way dreamt of by Phalansterians, 
 nor in the manner often imagined by authoritarian 
 Communists. 
 
 Phalansteries are repugnant to millions of 
 human beings. The most reserved man certainly 
 feels the necessity of meeting his fellows for the 
 purpose of common work, which becomes the 
 more attractive the more he feels himself a part 
 of an immense whole. But it is not so for the 
 hours of leisure, reserved for rest and intimacy. 
 The phalanstery and the familystery do not 
 take this into account, or else they endeavour to 
 supply this need by artificial groupings. 
 , A phalanstery, which is in fact nothing but 
 
i6o THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 an immense hotel, can please some, and even all 
 at a certain period of their life, but the great mass 
 prefers family life (family life of the future, be it 
 understood). They prefer isolated apartments, 
 Normands and Anglo-Saxons even going as far 
 as to prefer houses of from six to eight rooms, in 
 which the family, or an agglomeration of friends, 
 can live apart. Sometimes a phalanstery is a ne- 
 cessity, but it would be hateful, were it the general 
 rule. Isolation, alternating with time spent in 
 society, is the normal desire of human nature. 
 This is why one of the greatest tortures in prison 
 is the impossibility of isolation, much as solitary 
 confinement becomes torture in its turn, when 
 not alternated with hours of social life. 
 
 As to considerations of economy, which are 
 sometimes laid stress on in favour of phalansteries, 
 they are those of a petty tradesman. The most 
 important economy, the only reasonable one, is 
 to make life pleasant for all, because the man 
 who is satisfied with his life produces infinitely 
 more than the man who curses his surroundings.* 
 
 * It seems that the Communists of Young Icaria had under- 
 stood the importance of a free choice in their daily relations apart 
 from work. The ideal of religious Communists has always been 
 to have meals in common ; it is by meals in common that early 
 Christians manifested their adhesion to Christianity. Com- 
 munion is still a vestige of it. Young Icarians had given up 
 this rehgious tradition. They dined in a common dining-room, 
 but at small separate tables, at which they sat according to the 
 attractions of the moment. The Communists of Anama have 
 each their house and dine at home, while taking their provisions 
 at will at the communal stores. 
 
AGREEABLE WORK i6i 
 
 Other Socialists reject the phalanstery. But 
 when you ask them how domestic work can be 
 organized, they answer : " Each can do ' his own 
 work.' My wife manages the house ; the wives of 
 bourgeois will do as much." And if it is a bour- 
 geois playing at Socialism who speaks, he will add, 
 with a gracious smile to his wife : " Is it not 
 true, darling, that you would do without a servant 
 in a Socialist society ? You would work like the 
 wife of our good comrade Paul or the wife of John 
 the carpenter ? " 
 
 Servant or wife, man always reckons on woman 
 to do the house-work. 
 
 But woman, too, at last claims her share in the 
 emancipation of humanity. She no longer wants 
 to be the beast of burden of the house. She con- 
 siders it sufficient work to give many years of her 
 life to the rearing of her children. She no longer 
 wants to be the cook, the. mender, the sweeper 
 of the house ! And, owing to American women 
 taking the lead in obtaining their claims, there 
 is a general complaint of the dearth of women who 
 will condescend to domestic work in the United 
 States. My lady prefers art, politics, literature, 
 or the gaming tables ; as to the work-girls, they 
 are few, those who consent to submit to apron- 
 slavery, and servants are only found with diffi- 
 culty in the States. Consequently, the solution, 
 a very simple one, is pointed out by hfe itself. 
 Machinery undertakes three-quarters of the house- 
 hold cares. 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 You black your boots, and you know how 
 ridiculous this work is. What can be more stupid 
 than rubbing a boot twenty or thirty times with 
 a brush ? A tenth of the European population 
 must be compelled to sell itself in exchange for a 
 miserable shelter and insufl&cient food, and woman 
 must consider herself a slave, in order that miUions 
 of her sex should go through this performance 
 every morning. 
 
 But hairdressers have already machines for 
 brushing glossy or woolly heads of hair. Why 
 should we not apply, then, the same principle to 
 the other extremity ? So it has been done, and 
 nowadays the machine for blacking boots is in 
 general use in big American and European hotels. 
 Its use is spreading outside hotels. In large 
 English schools, where the pupils are boarding 
 in the houses of the teachers, it has been found 
 easier to have one single establishment which 
 undertakes to brush a thousand pairs of boots 
 every morning. 
 
 As to washing up ! Where can we find a house- 
 wife who has not a horror of this long and dirty 
 work, that is usually done by hand, solely because 
 the work of the domestic slave is of no account. 
 
 In America they do better. There are already 
 a number of cities in which hot water is conveyed 
 to the houses as cold water is in Europe. Under 
 these conditions the problem was a simple one, 
 and a woman — Mrs. Cochrane — solved it. Her 
 machine washes twelve dozen plates or dishes, 
 
AGREEABLE WORK 163 
 
 wipes them and dries them, in less than three 
 minutes. A factory in Illinois manufactures these 
 machines and sells them at a price within reach 
 of the average middle-class purse. And why 
 should not small households send their crockery 
 to an estabhshment as well as their boots ? It 
 is even probable that the two functions, brushing 
 and washing up, will be undertaken by the same 
 association. 
 
 Cleaning, rubbing the skin off your hands when 
 washing and wringing linen ; sweeping floors and 
 brushing carpets, thereby raising clouds of dust 
 which afterwards occasion much trouble to dis- 
 lodge from the places where they have settled 
 down, all this work is still done because woman 
 remains a slave, but it tends to disappear as it can 
 be infinitely better done by machinery. Machines 
 of all kinds wiU be introduced into households, 
 and the distribution of motor-power in private 
 houses will enable people to work them without 
 muscular effort. 
 
 Such machines cost little to manufacture. If we 
 stiU pay very much for them, it is because they 
 are not in general use, and chiefly because an 
 exorbitant tax is levied upon every machine by 
 the gentlemen who wish to Uve in grand style 
 and who have speculated on land, raw material, 
 manufacture, sale, patents, and duties. 
 
 But emancipation from domestic toil will not 
 be brought about by small machines only. House- 
 holds are emerging from their present state of 
 
i64 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 isolation ; they begin to associate with other 
 households to do in common what they did sepa- 
 rately. 
 
 In fact, in the future we shall not have a brush- 
 ing machine, a machine for washing up plates, 
 a third for washing linen, and so on, in each house. 
 To the future, on the contrary, belongs the com- 
 mon heating apparatus that sends heat into each 
 room of a whole district and spares the lighting 
 of fires. It is already so in a few American cities. 
 A great central furnace supplies all houses and all 
 rooms with hot water, which circulates in pipes ; 
 and to regulate the temperature you need only 
 turn a tap. And should you care to have a 
 blazing fire in any particular room you can light 
 the gas specially supplied for heating purposes 
 from a central reservoir. All the immense work 
 of cleaning chimneys and keeping up fires — and 
 woman knows what time it takes — is disappearing. 
 
 Candles, lamps, and even gas have had their 
 day. There are entire cities in which it is sufficient 
 to press a button for light to burst forth, and, 
 indeed, it is a simple question of economy and of 
 knowledge to give yourself the luxury of electric 
 hght. And lastly, also in America, they speak of 
 forming societies for the almost complete sup- 
 pression of household work. It would only be 
 necessary to create a department for every block 
 of houses. A cart would come to each door and 
 take the boots to be blacked, the crockery to be 
 washed up, the Unen to be washed, the small 
 
AGREEABLE WORK 165 
 
 things to be mended (if it were worth while), the 
 carpets to be brushed, and the next morning 
 would bring back the things entrusted to it all 
 well cleaned. A few hours later your hot coffee 
 and your eggs done to a nicety would appear 
 on your table. It is a fact that between twelve 
 and two o'clock there are more than twenty 
 milhon Americans and as many Enghshmen who 
 eat roast beef or mutton, boiled pork, potatoes, 
 and a seasonable vegetable. And at the lowest 
 figure eight million fires burn during two or three 
 hours to roast this meat and cook these vegetables ; 
 eight million women spend their time to prepare 
 this meal, that perhaps consists at most of ten 
 different dishes. 
 
 " Fifty fires burn," wrote an American woman 
 the other day, " where one would suffice ! " 
 Dine at home, at your own table, with your chil- 
 dren, if you like ; but think only yourself, why 
 should these fifty women waste their whole morn- 
 ing to prepare a few cups of coffee and a simple 
 meal ! Why fifty fires, when two people and one 
 single fire would sufi&ce to cook all these pieces of 
 meat and all these vegetables ? Choose your own 
 beef or mutton to be roasted if you are particular. 
 Season the vegetables to your taste if you prefer 
 a particular sauce ! But have a single kitchen 
 with a single fire, and organize it as beautifully 
 as you are able to. 
 
 Why has woman's work never been of any 
 account ? Why in every family are the mother and 
 
i66 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 three or four servants obliged to spend so much 
 time at what pertains to cooking ? Because those 
 who want to emancipate mankind have not 
 included woman in their dream of emancipation, 
 and consider it beneath their superior masculine 
 dignity to think " of those kitchen arrangements/' 
 which they have layed on the shoulders of that 
 drudge — woman . 
 
 To emancipate woman is not only to open the 
 gates of the university, the law courts, or the parlia- 
 ments, for her, for the " emancipated " woman will 
 always throw domestic toil on to another woman. 
 To emancipate woman is to free her from the 
 brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse ; it is to 
 organize your household in such a way as to 
 enable her to rear her children, if she be so minded, 
 while still retaining sufficient leisure to take her 
 share of social life. 
 
 It will come to pass. As we have said, things 
 are already improving. Only let us fully under- 
 stand that a revolution, intoxicated with the 
 beautiful words Liberty, Equality, SoUdarity 
 would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery 
 at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery 
 of the hearth would still have to rebel against the 
 other half. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 FREE AGREEMENT 
 
 ACCUSTOMED as we are by hereditary pre- 
 . judices and absolutely unsound education 
 and training to see Government, legislation and 
 magistracy everywhere around, we have come to 
 believe that man would tear his fellow-man to 
 pieces like a wild beast the day the police took 
 his eye off him ; that chaos would come about 
 if authority were overthrown during a revolution. 
 And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and 
 thousands of human groupings which form them- 
 selves freely, without any intervention of the 
 law, and attain results infinitely superior to those 
 achieved under governmental tutelage. 
 
 If you open a daily paper you find its pages are 
 entirely devoted to Government transactions and 
 to political jobbery. A Chinaman reading it 
 would beheve that in Europe nothing gets done 
 save by order of some master. You find nothing 
 in them about institutions that spring up, grow 
 up, and develop without ministerial prescription. 
 Nothing — or hardly nothing ! Even when there is 
 a heading — "Sundry Events" — it is because they 
 
 167 
 
i68 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 are connected with the pohce. A family drama, 
 an act of rebellion, will only be mentioned if the 
 police have appeared on the scene. 
 
 Three hundred and fifty million Europeans love 
 or hate one another, work, or live on their incomes ; 
 but, apart from hterature, theatre, or sport, their 
 lives remain ignored by newspapers if Governments 
 have not intervened in some way or other. It is 
 even so with history. We know the least details 
 of the life of a king or of a parliament ; all good 
 and bad speeches pronounced by the poUticians 
 have been preserved. " Speeches that have never 
 had the least influence on the vote of a single 
 member," as an old parliamentarian said. Royal 
 visits, good or bad humour of poHticians, jokes 
 or intrigues, are all carefuUy recorded for pos- 
 terity. But we have the greatest difficulty to 
 reconstitute a city of the Middle Ages, to under- 
 stand the mechanism of that immense commerce 
 that was carried on between Hanseatic cities, or 
 to know how the city of Rouen built its cathedral. 
 If a scholar spends his life in studying these ques- 
 tions, his works remain unknown, and parliamen- 
 tary histories — that is to say, the defective ones, as 
 they only treat of one side of social life — multiply, 
 are circulated, are taught in schools. 
 
 And we do not even perceive the prodigious 
 work accompUshed every day by spontaneous 
 groups of men, which constitutes the chief work 
 of our century. 
 
 We therefore propose to point out some of these 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 169 
 
 most striking manifestations, and to prove that 
 men, as soon as their interests do not absolutely 
 clash, act in concert, harmoniously, and perform 
 collective work of a very complex nature. 
 
 It is evident that in present society, based on 
 individual property — that is to say, on plunder, 
 and on a narrow-minded, and therefore foolish 
 individuahsm — facts of this kind are necessarily 
 few in number; agreements are not always per- 
 fectly free, and often have a mean, if not execrable 
 aim. 
 
 But what concerns us is not to give examples 
 which we could bhndly follow, and which, moreover, 
 present society could not possibly give us. What 
 we have to do is to prove that, in spite of the 
 authoritarian individualism which stifles us, there 
 remains in our life, taken as a whole, a great 
 part in which we only act by free agreement, and 
 that it would be much easier than we think to 
 dispense with Government. 
 
 In support of our view we have already men- 
 tioned railways, and we are about to return to 
 them. 
 
 We know that Europe has a system of railways, 
 175,000 miles long, and that on this network you 
 can nowadays travel from north to south, from 
 east to west, from Madrid to Petersburg, and 
 from Calais to Constantinople, without stoppages, 
 without even changing carriages (when you travel 
 by express). More than that: a parcel thrown 
 into a station will find its addressee anywhere, in 
 
170 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Turkey or in Central Asia, without more formality 
 needed for sending it than writing its destination 
 on a bit of paper. 
 
 This result might have been obtained in two 
 ways. A Napoleon, a Bismarck, or some potentate 
 having conquered Europe, would from Paris, 
 Berlin, or Rome, draw a railway map and regulate 
 the hours of the trains. The Russian Tsar 
 Nicholas I dreamt of taking such action. When 
 he was shown rough drafts of railways between 
 Moscow and Petersburg, he seized a ruler and 
 drew on the map of Russia a straight line between 
 these two capitals, saying, " Here is the plan," 
 And the road was built in a straight line, filling 
 in deep ravines, building bridges of a giddy height, 
 which had to be abandoned a few years later, at 
 a cost of about £120,000 to ;^i5o,ooo per English 
 mile. 
 
 This is one way, but happily things were 
 managed differently. Railways were constructed 
 piece by piece, the pieces were joined together, 
 and the hundred divers companies, to whom these 
 pieces belonged, came to an understanding con- 
 cerning the arrival and departure of their trains, 
 and the running of carriages on their rails, from 
 all countries, without unloading merchandize 
 as it passes from one network to another. 
 
 All this was done by free agreement, by ex- 
 change of letters and proposals, by congresses at 
 which delegates met to discuss certain special 
 subjects, but not to make laws ; after the con- 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 171 
 
 gress, the delegates returned to their companies, 
 not with a law, but with the draft of a contract to 
 be accepted or rejected. 
 
 There were certainly obstinate men who would 
 not be convinced. But a common interest com- 
 pelled them to agree without invoking the help 
 of armies against the refractory members. 
 
 This immense network of railways connected 
 together, and the enormous traffic it has given 
 rise to, no doubt constitutes the most striking 
 trait of our century ; and it is the result of free 
 agreement. If a man had foreseen or predicted 
 it fifty years ago, our grandfathers would have 
 thought him idiotic or mad. They would have 
 said : " Never will you be able to make the share- 
 holders of a hundred companies listen to reason ! 
 It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Govern- 
 ment, with an 'iron' director, can alone en- 
 force it." 
 
 And the most interesting thing in this organiza- 
 tion is, that there is no European Central Govern- 
 ment of Railways ! Nothing ! No minister of 
 railways, no dictator, not even a continental 
 parliament, not even a directing committee ! 
 Everything is done by contract. 
 
 So we ask the believers in the State, who pre- 
 tend that "we can never do without a central 
 Government, were it only for regulating the 
 traffic," we ask them : " But how do European 
 railways manage without them ? How do they 
 continue to convey millions of travellers and 
 
172 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 mountains of luggage across a continent ? If 
 companies owning railways have been able to 
 agree, why should railway workers, who would take 
 possession of railways, not agree hkewise ? And 
 if the Petersburg- Warsaw Company and that of 
 Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving 
 themselves the luxury of a common commander, 
 why, in the midst of our societies, consisting 
 of groups of free workers, should we need a 
 Government ? " 
 
 II 
 
 When we endeavour to prove by examples that 
 even to-day, in spite of the iniquitous organization 
 of society as a whole, men, provided their instincts 
 be not diametrically opposed, agree without the 
 intervention of authority, we do not ignore the 
 objections that will be put forth. 
 
 These examples have their defective side, be- 
 cause it is impossible to quote a single organization 
 exempt from the exploitation of the weak by the 
 strong, the poor by the rich. That is why Statists 
 wiU not fail to tell us with their wonted logic : 
 " You see that the intervention of the State is 
 necessary to put an end to this exploitation ! " 
 
 Only they forget the lessons of history ; they 
 do not tell us to what extent the State itself has 
 contributed towards the existing order by creat- 
 ing proletarians and dehvering them up to ex- 
 ploiters. They also forget to tell us if it is possible 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 173 
 
 to put an end to exploitation while the primal 
 causes — private capital and poverty, two-thirds 
 of which are artificially created by the State — 
 continue to exist. 
 
 As regards the complete harmony among railway 
 companies, we expect them to say : " Do you not 
 see railway companies oppress and ill-use their 
 employers and their travellers ! The State must 
 intervene to protect the public ! " 
 
 But have we not often repeated that as long as 
 there are capitalists, this abuse of power will be 
 perpetuated. It is precisely the State, the would- 
 be benefactor, that has given to the companies 
 that monopoly which they possess to-day. Has 
 it not created concessions, guarantees ? Has it 
 not sent its soldiers against railwaymen on strike ? 
 And during the first trials (we see it in Russia), 
 has it not extended the privilege to forbidding the 
 Press mentioning railway accidents, so as not to 
 depreciate the shares it guaranteed ? Has it not 
 favoured the monopoly which has anointed the 
 Vanderbilts and the Polyakoffs, the directors of 
 the P.L.M., the C.P.R., the St. Gothard, " the kings 
 of the times " ? 
 
 Therefore, if we give as an example the tacit 
 agreement come to between railway companies, 
 it is by no means as an ideal of economical manage- 
 ment, nor even an ideal of technical organization. 
 It is to show that if capitaHsts, without any other 
 aim than that of augmenting their dividends at 
 other people's expense, can exploit railways 
 
174 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 successfully without establishing an International 
 Department, societies of working men will be able 
 to do it just as well, and even better, without 
 nominating a Ministry of European railways. 
 
 Another objection is raised that is more serious 
 at first sight. We may be told that the agreement 
 we speak of is not perfectly free, that the large 
 companies lay down the law to the small ones. 
 They might, for example, quote a certain rich 
 company compelling travellers who go from 
 Berlin to Bale to pass via Cologne and Frankfort, 
 instead of taking the Leipzig route; a ?econd, 
 carr5ring goods sixty or a hundred and thirty miles 
 in a roundabout way (on long distances) to favour 
 influential shareholders ; a third, ruining secondary 
 lines. In the United States travellers and goods 
 are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly 
 circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into 
 the pocket of a Vanderbilt. 
 
 Our answer will be the same : As long as 
 Capital exists, the greater Capital wiU oppress the 
 lesser. But oppression does not result from 
 Capital only. It is also owing to the support 
 given them by the State, to monopoly created by 
 the State in their favour, that certain large com- 
 panies oppress the little ones. 
 
 The early Socialists have shown how English 
 legislation did all in its powers to ruin small indus- 
 tries, drive the peasant to poverty, and deliver 
 over to wealthy industrial employers battahons 
 of men, compelled to work for no matter what 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 175 
 
 salary. Railway legislation did exactly the same. 
 Strategic lines, subsidized lines, companies which 
 received the International Mail monopoly, every- 
 thing was brought into play to forward wealthy 
 financiers' interests. When Rothschild, creditor 
 to all European States, puts capital in a railway, 
 his faithful subjects, the ministers, wiU do their 
 best to make him earn more. 
 
 In the United States, in the Democracy that 
 authoritarians hold up to us as an ideal, the most 
 scandalous fraudulency has crept into everything 
 that concerns railroads. Thus, if a company ruins 
 its competitors by cheap fares, it is often enabled 
 to do so because it is reimbursed by land given to 
 it by the State for a gratuity. Documents recently 
 published concerning the American wheat trade 
 have fully shown up the part played by the State 
 in the exploitation of the weak by the strong. 
 Here, too, the power of accumulated capital 
 has grown tenfold and a hundredfold by State 
 help. So that, when we see syndicates of railway 
 companies (a product of free agreement) succeed- 
 ing in protecting their small companies against 
 big ones, we are astonished at the intrinsic force 
 of free agreement that can hold its own against 
 aU-powerful Capital favoured by the State. 
 
 It is a fact that httle companies exist, in spite 
 of the State's partiaUty. If in France, land of 
 centralization, we only see five or six large com- 
 panies, there are more than a hundred and ten in 
 Great Britain who agree remarkably weU, and 
 
176 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 who are certainly better organized for the rapid 
 transit of travellers and goods than the French 
 and German companies. 
 
 Moreover, that is not the question. Large 
 Capital, favoured by the State, can always, if it 
 he to its advantage, crush the lesser one. What is 
 of importance to us is this : The agreement be- 
 tween hundreds of companies to whom the rail- 
 ways of Europe belong, was established without 
 intervention of a central government laying down 
 the law to the divers societies ; it has subsisted 
 by means of congresses composed of delegates, 
 who discuss among themselves, and submit pro- 
 posals, not laws, to their constituents. It is a 
 new principle that differs completely from all 
 governmental principle, monarchical or republican, 
 absolute or parliamentarian. It is an innovation 
 that has been timidly introduced into the customs 
 of Europe, but has come to stay. 
 
 Ill 
 
 How often have we not read in the writings 
 of State - loving Socialists : " Who, then, wiU 
 undertake the regulation of canal traf&c in future 
 society ? Should it enter the mind of one of 
 your Anarchist ' comrades ' to put his barge 
 across a canal and obstruct thousands of boats, 
 who will force him to yield to reason ? " 
 
 Let us confess the supposition to be somewhat 
 fanciful, yet it might be said, for instance: 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 177 
 
 " Should a certain commune, or a group of 
 communes, want to make their barges pass be- 
 fore others, they might perhaps block the canal 
 in order to carry stones, while wheat, needed in 
 another commune, would have to stand by. 
 Who, then, would regulate the barge traffic if not 
 the Government ? " 
 
 But real Ufe has again demonstrated that 
 Government can be very well dispensed with here 
 as elsewhere. Free agreement, free organization, 
 replace that noxious and costly system, and do 
 better. 
 
 We know what canals mean to Holland. They 
 are its highways. We also know how much traf&c 
 there is on the canals. What is carried along 
 our highroads and railroads is transported on 
 canal-boats in Holland. There you could find 
 cause to fight, to make your boats pass before 
 others. There the Government might really inter- 
 fere to keep the traf&c in order. 
 
 Yet it is not so. The Dutch settled matters in 
 a more practical way, long ago, by founding a kind 
 of guilds, or syndicates of boatmen. These were 
 free associations sprung from the very needs of 
 navigation. The right of way for the boats was 
 adjusted by a certain registered order ; they 
 followed one another in turn. None were allowed 
 to get ahead of the others under pain of being 
 excluded from the guild. None could station more 
 than a certain number of days along the qnay, 
 and if the owner found no goods to carry during 
 
178 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 that timej so much the worse for him ; he had to 
 depart with his empty barge to leave room for 
 newcomers. Obstruction was thus avoided, even 
 though the competition between the private 
 owners of the boats continued to exist. Were 
 the latter suppressed, the agreement would have 
 been only the more cordial. It is unnecessary to 
 add that the shipowners could adhere or not to 
 the syndicate. That was their business, but most 
 of them elected to join it. Moreover, these 
 syndicates offered such great advantages that 
 they spread also along the Rhine, the Weser, 
 the Oder, and as far as Berlin. The boatmen did 
 not wait for a great Bismarck to annex Holland 
 to Germany, and to appoint an Ober Haupt 
 General Staats Canal Navigations Rath (Supreme 
 Head Councillor of the General States Canal 
 Navigation), with a number of stripes correspond- 
 ing to the length of the title. They preferred com- 
 ing to an international understanding. Besides, a 
 number of shipowners, whose sailing-vessels ply 
 between Germany and Scandinavia, as weU as 
 Russia, have also joined these syndicates, in 
 order to regulate traffic in the Baltic and to bring 
 about a certain harmony in the chasse-crois^ of 
 vessels. These associations have sprung up freely, 
 recruiting volunteer adherents, and have nought 
 in common with governments. 
 
 It is, however, more than probable that here 
 too greater capital oppresses lesser. Maybe the 
 syndicate has also a tendency to become a mono- 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 179 
 
 poly, especially where it receives the precious 
 patronage of the State that will not fail to inter- 
 fere with it. Let us not forget either that these 
 S5nidicates represent associations whose members 
 have only private interests at stake, and that if 
 at the same time each shipowner were compelled 
 — by the socializing of production, consumption, 
 and exchange — to belong to a hundred other 
 associations for the satisfying of his needs, things 
 would have a different aspect. A group of ship- 
 owners, powerful on sea, would feel weak on land, 
 and they would be obhged to lessen their claims 
 in order to come to terms with railways, factories, 
 and other groups. 
 
 At any rate, without discussing the future, here 
 is another spontaneous association that has dis- 
 pensed with Government. Let us quote more 
 examples. 
 
 As we are talking of ships and boats, let us 
 mention one of the most splendid organizations 
 that our century has brought forth, one of those 
 we may with right be proud of — the English 
 Lifeboat Association. 
 
 It is known that every year more than a 
 thousand ships are wrecked on the shores of 
 England. At sea a good ship seldom fears a 
 storm. It is near the coasts that danger threatens 
 — rough seas that shatter her stern-post, squalls 
 that carry off her masts and sails, currents that 
 render her unmanageable, reefs and sand banks 
 on which she runs aground. 
 
i8o THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Even in olden times, when it was a custom 
 among inhabitants of the coasts to Hght fires 
 in order to attract vessels on to reefs, and to 
 seize their cargoes, they always strove to save 
 the crew. Seeing a ship in distress, they launched 
 their nutshells and went to the rescue of ship- 
 wrecked sailors, only too often finding a watery 
 grave themselves. Every hamlet along the sea- 
 shore has its legends of heroism, displayed by 
 woman as well as by man, to save crews in 
 distress. 
 
 No doubt the State and men of science have done 
 something to diminish the number of casualties. 
 Lighthouses, signals, charts, meteorological warn- 
 ings have diminished them greatly, but there 
 remain a thousand ships and several thousand 
 human hves to be saved every year. 
 
 To this end a few men of goodwill put their 
 shoulders to the wheel. Being good sailors and 
 navigators themselves, they invented a lifeboat 
 that could weather a storm without being torn 
 to pieces or capsizing, and they set to work to 
 interest the public in their venture, to collect the 
 necessary funds for constructing boats, and for 
 stationing them along the coasts, wherever they 
 could be of use. 
 
 These men, not being Jacobins, did not turn 
 to the Government. They understood that to 
 bring their enterprise to a successful issue they 
 must have the co-operation, the enthusiasm, the 
 local knowledge, and especially the self-sacrifice 
 
FREE AGREEMENT i8i 
 
 of sailors. They also understood that to find 
 men who at the first signal would launch their 
 boat at night, in a chaos of waves, not suffering 
 themselves to be deterred by darkness or breakers, 
 and struggling five, six, ten hours against the 
 tide before reaching a vessel in distress — men 
 ready to risk their lives to save those of others, 
 there must be a feeling of solidarity, a spirit of 
 sacrifice not to be bought with galloon. It was 
 therefore a perfectly spontaneous movement, 
 sprung from agreement and individual initiative. 
 Hundreds of local groups arose along the coasts. 
 The initiators had the common sense not to pose 
 as masters. They looked for sagacity in the 
 fishermen's hamlets, and when a lord sent ;£iooo 
 to a village on the coast to erect a lifeboat station, 
 and his offer was accepted, he left the choice of 
 a site to the local fishermen and sailors. 
 , Models of new boats were not submitted to the 
 Admiralty. We read in a Report of the Associa- 
 tion : " As it is of importance that hfeboatmen 
 should have full confidence in the vessel they 
 man, the Committee will make a point of con- 
 structing and equipping the boats according to 
 the hfeboatmen's expressed wish." In conse- 
 quence every year brings with it new improve- 
 ments. 
 
 The work is wholly conducted by volunteers 
 organizing in committees and local groups ; by 
 mutual aid and agreement ! — Oh, Anarchists ! — 
 Moreover, they ask nothing of ratepayers, and 
 
i82 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 in a year they may receive £40,000 in spontaneous 
 subscriptions. 
 
 As to the results, here they are : In 1891 the 
 Association possessed 293 hfeboats. The same 
 year it saved 601 shipwrecked sailors and 33 
 vessels. Since its foundation it has saved 32,671 
 human beings. 
 
 In 1886, three lifeboats with all their men having 
 perished at sea, hundreds of new volunteers 
 entered their names, organized themselves into 
 local groups, and the agitation resulted in the 
 construction of twenty additional boats. As we 
 proceed, let us note that every year the Associa- 
 tion sends to the fishermen and sailors excellent 
 barometers, at a price three times less than their 
 sale price. It propagates meteorological know- 
 ledge, and warns the parties concerned of the 
 sudden changes predicted by men of science. 
 
 Let us repeat that these hundreds of committees 
 and local groups are not organized hierarchically, 
 and are composed exclusively of volunteers, hfe- 
 boatmen, and people interested in the work. 
 The Central Committee, which is more of a centre 
 for correspondence, in no wise interferes. 
 
 It is true that when voting on a question of 
 education or local taxation takes place in a 
 district, these committees do not, as such, take 
 part in the deliberations, a modesty, which unfor- 
 tunately the members of elected bodies do not 
 imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave 
 men do not allow those who have never faced 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 183 
 
 a storm to legislate for them about saving life. 
 At the first signal of distress they rush forth, 
 concert, and go ahea,d. There are no galloons, 
 but much goodwill. 
 
 Let us take another society of the same kind, 
 that of the Red Cross. The name matters little ; 
 let us examine it. 
 
 Imagine somebody saying twenty -five years 
 ago : " The State, capable as it is of massacring 
 twenty thousand men in a day, and of wounding 
 fifty thousand more, is incapable of helping its 
 own victims ; as long as war exists private initia- 
 tive must intervene, and men of goodwill must 
 organize internationally for this humane work ! " 
 What mockery would not have met the man 
 who would have dared thus to speak ! To begin 
 with he would have been called Utopian, and if 
 that did not silence him he would have been told : 
 " Volunteers will be found wanting precisely 
 where they are most needed, your hospitals will 
 be centraUzed in a safe place, while what is indis- 
 pensable will be wanting in the ambulances. 
 National rivalry will cause poor soldiers to die 
 without help." Disheartening remarks are only 
 equalled by the number of speakers. Who of us 
 has not heard men hold forth in this strain ? 
 
 Now we know what happened. Red Cross 
 societies organized themselves freely, everywhere, 
 in all countries, in thousands of localities; and 
 when the war of 1870-1 broke out, the volunteers 
 set to work. Men and women offered their 
 
i84 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 services. Thousands of hospitals and ambu- 
 lances were organized ; trains were started carry- 
 ing ambulances, provisions, linen, and medica- 
 ments for the wounded. The English committees 
 sent entire convoys of food, clothing, tools, grain 
 to sow, beasts of draught, even steam-ploughs 
 with their attendants to help in the tillage of 
 departments devastated by the war! Only consult 
 La Croix Rouge, by Gustave Moynier, and you 
 will be really struck by the immensity of the work 
 performed. 
 
 As to the prophets ever ready to deny other 
 men's courage, good sense, and intelligence, and 
 believing themselves to be the only ones capable 
 of ruling the world with a rod, none of their pre- 
 dictions were realized. The devotion of the Red 
 Cross volunteers was beyond all praise. They 
 were only too glad to occupy the most dangerous 
 posts ; and whereas the salaried doctors of the 
 State fled with their staff when the Prussians 
 approached, the Red Cross volunteers continued 
 their work under fire, enduring the brutalities of 
 Bismarck's and Napoleon's officers, lavishing their 
 care on the wounded of all nationahties. Dutch, 
 Italians, Swedes, Belgians, even Japanese and 
 Chinese agreed remarkably well. They distributed 
 their hospitals and their ambulances according 
 to the needs of the occasion. They vied with 
 one another especially in the hygiene of their 
 hospitals. And there is many a Frenchman 
 who still speaks with deep gratitude of the tender 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 185 
 
 care he received from a Dutch or German volun- 
 teer in the Red Cross ambulances. But what is 
 this to an authoritarian ? His ideal is the regi- 
 ment doctor, salaried by the State. What does he 
 care for the Red Cross and its hygienic hospitals, 
 if the nurses be not functionaries ? 
 
 Here is then an organization, sprung up but 
 yesterday, and which reckons its members by 
 hundreds of thousands; possesses ambulances, 
 hospital trains, elaborates new processes for 
 treating wounds, and so on, and is due to the 
 spontaneous initiative of a few devoted men. 
 
 Perhaps we shall be told that the State has 
 something to do with this organization. Yes, 
 States^ iiave laid hands on it to seize it. The 
 directing committees are presided over by those 
 whom flunkeys call princes of the blood. Emperors 
 and queens lavishly patronize the national com- 
 mittees. But it is not to this patronage that the 
 success of the organization is due. It is to the 
 thousand local committees of each nation ; to 
 the activity of individuals, to the devotion of all 
 those who try to help the victims of war. And 
 this devotion would be far greater if the State did 
 not meddle with it. 
 
 In any case, it was not by the order of an Inter- 
 national Directing Committee that Englishmen 
 and Japanese, Swedes and Chinamen, bestirred 
 themselves to send help to the wounded in 1871. 
 It was not by order of an international ministry 
 that hospitals rose on the invaded territory and 
 
i86 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 that ambulances were carried on to the battle- 
 field. It was by the initiative of volunteers 
 from each country. Once on the spot, they did 
 not get hold of one another by the hair as foreseen 
 by Jacobins; they all set to work without dis- 
 tinction of nationality. 
 
 We may regret that such great efforts should 
 be put to the service of so bad. a cause, and ask 
 ourselves hke the poet's child : " Why inflict 
 wounds if you are to heal them afterwards ? " 
 In striving to destroy the power of capital and 
 bourgeois authority, we work to put an end to 
 massacres, and we would far rather see the Red 
 Cross volunteers put forth their activity to 
 bring about (with us) the suppression of war; 
 but we had to mention this immense organiza- 
 tion as another illustration of results produced by 
 free agreement and free aid. 
 
 If we wished to multiply examples taken from 
 the art of exterminating men we should never 
 end. Suffice to quote the numerous societies to 
 which the German army owes its force, that does 
 not only depend on discipline, as is generally 
 believed. I mean the societies whose aim is to 
 propagate military knowledge. 
 
 At one of the last congresses of the Military 
 AUiance (Kriegerbund), delegates from 2452 feder- 
 ated societies, comprising 151,712 members, were 
 present. But there are besides very numerous 
 Shooting, Military Games, Strategical Games, 
 Topographical Studies Societies — these are the 
 
FREE AGREEMENT 187 
 
 workshops in which the technical knowledge of 
 the German army is developed, not in regimental 
 schools. It is a formidable network of all kinds 
 of societies, including military men and civilians, 
 geographers and gymnasts, sportsmen and tech- 
 nologists, which rise up spontaneously, organize, 
 federate, discuss, and explore the country. It is 
 these voluntary and free associations that make 
 up the real backbone of the German army. 
 
 Their aim is execrable. It is the maintenance 
 of the Empire. But what concerns us, is to point 
 out that, in spite of military organization being 
 the " Great mission " of the State, success in this 
 branch is the more certain the more it is left 
 to the free agreement of groups and to the free 
 initiative of individuals. 
 
 Even in matters pertaining to war, free agree- 
 ment is thus appealed to; and to further prove 
 our assertion let us mention the three hundred 
 thousand British volunteers, the British National 
 Artillery Association, and the Society, now in 
 course of organization, for the defence of England's 
 coasts, as well as the appeals made to the commer- 
 cial fleet, the BicycHsts' Corps, and the new organ- 
 izations of private motor-cars and steam launches. 
 
 The State is abdicating and appeahng in its holy 
 functions to private individuals. Everywhere free 
 organization trespasses on its domain. And yet, 
 the facts we have quoted let us catch only a 
 glimpse of what free agreement has in store for us 
 in the future, when there will be no more State. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 OBJECTIONS 
 
 LET us now examine the principal objections 
 -/ put forth against Communism. Most of 
 them are evidently caused by a simple misunder- 
 standing, yet they raise important questions and 
 merit our attention. 
 
 It is not for us to answer the objections raised 
 by authoritarian Communism — we ourselves hold 
 with them. Civilized nations have suffered too 
 much in the long, hard struggle for the emanci- 
 pation of the individual, to disown their past work 
 and to tolerate a Government that would make 
 itself felt in the smallest details of a citizen's 
 life, even if that Government had no other aim 
 than the good of the community. Should an 
 authoritarian Socialist society ever succeed in 
 estabhshing itself, it could not last ; general dis- 
 content would soon force it to break up, or to 
 reorganize itself on principles of liberty. 
 
 It is of an Anarchist-Communist society we 
 are about to speak, a society that recognizes the 
 absolute liberty of the individual, that does not 
 admit of any authority, and makes use of no 
 
 i88 
 
OBJECTIONS 189 
 
 compulsion to drive men to work. Limiting our 
 studies to the economic side of the question, let 
 us see if such a society, composed of men as they 
 are to-day, neither better nor worse, neither more 
 nor less industrious, would have a chance of 
 successful development. 
 
 The objection is known. " If the existence 
 of each is guaranteed, and if the necessity of 
 earning wages does not compel men to work, 
 nobody will work. Every man will lay the burden 
 of his work on another if he is not forced to do 
 it himself," Let us first remark the incredible 
 levity with which this objection is raised, without 
 taking into consideration that the question is in 
 reaUty merely to know, on the one hand, whether 
 you effectively obtain by wage-work the results 
 you aim at ; and, on the other hand, whether 
 voluntary work is not already more productive 
 to-day than work stimulated by wages. A 
 question which would require profound study. 
 But whereas in exact sciences men give their 
 opinion on subjects infinitely less important and 
 less complicated after serious research, after care- 
 fully collecting and analysing facts, on this ques- 
 tion they will pronounce judgment without appeal, 
 resting satisfied with any one particular event, 
 such as, for example, the want of success of a 
 communist association in America. They act 
 hke the barrister, who does not see in the council 
 for the opposite side a representative of a cause, 
 or an opinion contrary to his own, but a simple 
 
igo THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 adversary in an oratorical debate; and if he be 
 lucky enough to find a repartee, does not other- 
 wise care to justify his cause. Therefore the 
 study of this essential basis of all Political 
 Economy, the study of the most favourable con- 
 ditions for giving society the greatest amount of 
 useful products with the least waste of human 
 energy, does not advance. They limit themselves 
 to repeating commonplace assertions, or else they 
 pretend ignorance of our assertions. 
 
 What is most striking in this levity is that even 
 in capitalist Political Economy you already find 
 a few writers compelled by facts to doubt the 
 axiom put forth by the founders of their science, 
 that the threat of hunger is man's best stimulant 
 for productive work. They begin to perceive 
 that in production a certain collective element is 
 introduced which has been too much neglected up 
 till now, and which might be more important than 
 personal gain. The inferior quahty of wage- work, 
 the terrible waste of human energy in modern 
 agricultural and industrial labour, the ever grow- 
 ing quantity of pleasure-seekers, who to-day load 
 their burden on others' shoulders, the absence of 
 a certain animation in production that is becom- 
 ing more and more apparent ; all this begins to 
 preoccupy the economists of the " classical " 
 school. Some of them ask themselves if they 
 have not got on the wrong track : if the imaginary 
 evil being, that was supposed to be tempted ex- 
 clusively by a bait of lucre or wages, reaUy exists. 
 
OBJECTIONS 191 
 
 This heresy penetrates even into universities ; it 
 is found in books of orthodox economy. 
 
 This does not hinder a great many Socialist 
 reformers to remain partisans of individual re- 
 muneration, and defending the old citadel of 
 wagedom, notwithstanding that it is being de- 
 livered over stone by stone to the assailants by 
 its former defenders. 
 
 They fear that without compulsion the masses 
 will not work. 
 
 But during our own lifetime have we not heard 
 the same fears expressed twice ? By the anti- 
 abolitionists in America before Negro emancipation^ 
 and by the Russian nobility before the liberation 
 of the serfs ? " Without the whip the Negro will 
 not work," said the anti-abolitionist. " Free from 
 their master's supervision the serfs will leave 
 the fields uncultivated," said the Russian serf- 
 owners. It was the refrain of the French noble- 
 men in 1789, the refrain of the Middle Ages, a 
 refrain as old as the world, and we shall hear it 
 every time there is a question of sweeping away 
 an injustice. And each time actual facts give it 
 the lie. The liberated peasant of 1792 ploughed 
 with a wild energy unknown to his ancestors, the 
 emancipated Negro works more than his fathers, 
 and the Russian peasant, after having honoured 
 the honeymoon of his emancipation by celebrating 
 Fridays as well as Sundays, has taken up work 
 with as much eagerness as his liberation was the 
 more complete. There, where the soil is his, 
 
192 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 he works desperately ; that is the exact word for 
 it. The anti-aboKtionist refrain can be of value 
 to slave-owners ; as to the slaves themselves, 
 they know what it is worth, as they know its 
 motive. 
 
 Moreover, Who but economists taught us that 
 if a wage-earner's work is but indifferent, an 
 intense and productive work is only obtained 
 from a man who sees his wealth increase in pro- 
 portion to his efforts ? All hymns sung in honour 
 of private property can be reduced to this axiom. 
 
 For it is remarkable that when economists, 
 wishing to celebrate the blessings of property, 
 show us how an unproductive, marshy, or stony soil 
 is clothed with rich harvests when cultivated by 
 the peasant proprietor, they in nowise prove their 
 thesis in favour of private property. By admitting 
 that the only guarantee not to be robbed of the 
 fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments 
 of labour — which is true — the economists only 
 prove that man really produces most when he works 
 in freedom, when he has a certain choice in his 
 occupations, when he has no overseer to impede 
 him, and lastly, when he sees his work bringing 
 in a profit to him and to others who work Uke 
 him, but bringing in nothing to idlers. This is all 
 we can deduct from their argumentation, and we 
 maintain the same ourselves. 
 
 As to the form of possession of the instruments 
 of labour, they only mention it indirectly in their 
 demonstration, as a guarantee to the cultivator 
 
OBJECTIONS 193 
 
 that he shall not be robbed of the profits of his 
 yield nor of his improvements. Besides, in support 
 of their thesis in favour of private property against 
 all other forms of possession, should not the econo- 
 mists demonstrate that under the form of com- 
 munal property land never produces such rich 
 harvests as when the possession is private ? But 
 it is not so ; in fact, the contrary has been ob- 
 served. 
 
 Take for example a commune in the canton of 
 Vaud, in the winter time, when all the men of the 
 village go to fell wood in the forest, which belongs 
 to them all. It is precisely during these festivals 
 of toil that the greatest ardour for work and the 
 most considerable display of human energy are 
 apparent. No salaried labour, no effort of a 
 private owner can bear comparison with it. 
 
 Or let us take a Russian village, when all its 
 inhabitants mow a field belonging to the com- 
 mune, or farmed by it. There you will see what 
 man can produce when he works in common for 
 communal production. Comrades vie with one 
 another in cutting the widest swath ; women 
 bestir themselves in their wake so as not to be 
 distanced by the mowers. It is a festival of 
 labour, in which a hundred people do work in a 
 few hours that would not have been finished in 
 a few days had they worked separately. What a 
 sad contrast compared to the work of the isolated 
 owner ! 
 
 In fact, we might quote scores of examples 
 
194 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 among the pioneers of America, in Swiss, German, 
 Russian, and in certain French villages ; or the 
 work done in Russia by gangs {artels) of masons, 
 carpenters, boatmen, fishermen, etc., who undertake 
 a task and divide the produce or the remunera- 
 tion among themselves, without it passing through 
 the intermediary of middlemen. We could also 
 mention the great communal hunts of nomadic 
 tribes, and an infinite number of successful collec- 
 tive enterprises. And in every case we could show 
 the unquestionable superiority of communal work 
 compared to that of the wage-earner or the isolated 
 private owner. 
 
 Well-being, that is to say, the satisfaction of 
 physical, artistic, and moral needs, has always 
 been the most powerful stimulant to work. And 
 when a hireling produces bare necessities with 
 difficulty, a free worker, who sees ease and luxury 
 increasing for him and for others in proportion 
 to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy 
 and intelligence, and obtains first-class products 
 in far greater abundance. The one feels riveted 
 to misery, the other hopes for ease and luxury 
 in the future. In this lies the whole secret. 
 Therefore a society aiming at the well-being of all, 
 and at the possibiHty of all enjo5ang fife in all 
 its manifestations, will supply voluntary work 
 which will be infinitely superior and yield far 
 more than work has produced up till now under 
 the goad of slavery, serfdom, or wagedom. 
 
OBJECTIONS 195 
 
 II 
 
 Nowadays, whoever can load on others his 
 share of labour indispensable to existence, does 
 so, and it is admitted that it will always be so. 
 
 Now work indispensable to existence is essen- 
 tially manual. We may be artists or scientists; 
 but none of us can do without things obtained by 
 manual work — bread, clothes, roads, ships, light, 
 heat, etc. And, moreover, however highly artistic 
 or however subtly metaphysical are our pleasures, 
 they aU depend on manual labour. And it is 
 precisely this labour — basis of life — that every one 
 tries to avoid. 
 
 We understand perfectly well that it must be 
 so nowadays. 
 
 Because, to do manual work now, means in reaUty 
 to shut yourself up for ten or twelve hours a day 
 in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain riveted 
 to the same task for twenty or thirty years, and 
 maybe for your whole life. 
 
 It means to be doomed to a paltry wage, to 
 the uncertainty of the morrow, to want of work, 
 often to destitution, more often than not to death 
 in a hospital, after having worked forty years 
 to feed, clothe, amuse, and instruct others than 
 yourself and your children. 
 
 It means to bear the stamp of inferiority all 
 your Ufe, because, whatever the pohticians tell 
 us, the manual worker is always considered in- 
 ferior to the brain worker, and the one who has 
 
196 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 toiled ten hours in a workshop has not the time, 
 and still less the means, to give himself the high 
 delights of science and art, nor even to prepare 
 himself to appreciate them ; he must be content 
 with the crumbs from the table of privileged 
 persons. 
 
 We understand that under these conditions 
 manual labour is considered a curse of fate. 
 
 We understand that all men have but one 
 dream — that of emerging from, or enabling their 
 children to emerge from this inferior state ; to 
 create for themselves an " independent " position, 
 which means what ? — To also hve by other men's 
 work ! 
 
 As long as there will be a class of manual workers 
 and a class of " brain " workers, black hands and 
 white hands, it will be thus. 
 
 What interest, in fact, can this depressing 
 work have for the worker, when he knows that 
 the fate awaiting him from the cradle to the grave 
 will be to live in mediocrity, poverty, and in- 
 security of the morrow ? Therefore, when we see 
 the immense majority of men take up their 
 wretched task every morning, we are surprised 
 at their perseverance, at their zeal for work, at 
 the habit that enables them, hke machines blindly 
 obeying an impetus given, to lead this hfe of 
 misery without hope for the morrow; without 
 foreseeing ever so vaguely that some day they, 
 or at least their children, will be part of a humanity 
 rich in all the treasures of a bountiful nature. 
 
OBJECTIONS 197 
 
 in all the enjoyments of knowledge, scientific and 
 artistic creation, reserved to-day to a few privi- 
 leged favourites. 
 
 It is precisely to put an end to this separation 
 between manual and brain work that we want to 
 abolish wagedom, that we want the Social Revolu- 
 tion. Then work will no longer appear a curse 
 of fate : it will become what it should be — the 
 free exercise of all the faculties of man. 
 
 Moreover, it is time to submit to a serious 
 analysis this legend about superior work, supposed 
 to be obtained under the lash of wagedom. 
 
 It is enough to visit, not the model factory and 
 workshop that we find now and again, but ordinary 
 factories, to conceive the immense waste of human 
 energy that characterizes modern industry. For 
 one factory more or less rationally organized, 
 there are a hundred or more which waste man's 
 labour, without a more substantial motive than 
 that of perhaps bringing in a few pounds more 
 per day to the employer. 
 
 Here you see youths from twenty to twenty- 
 five years of age, sitting all day long on a bench, 
 their chests sunken in, feverishly shaking their 
 heads and bodies to tie, with the speed of con- 
 jurers, the two ends of worthless scraps of cotton, 
 the refuse of the lace-looms. What progeny wiU 
 these trembhng and rickety bodies bequeath to 
 their country ? " But they occupy so little room 
 in the factory, and each of them brings me in six- 
 pence a day," will say the employer. 
 
igS THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 In an immense London factory you could see 
 girls, bald at seventeen from carrying trays of 
 matches on their heads from one room to another, 
 when the simplest machine could wheel the 
 matches to their tables. But ... it costs so 
 little, the work of women who have no special 
 trade ! What is the use of a machine ? When 
 these can do no more, they will be easily replaced 
 . . . there are so many in the street. 
 
 On the steps of a mansion on an icy night you 
 will find a bare-footed child asleep, with its bundle 
 of papers in its arms . . . child-labour costs so 
 little that it may well be employed, every evening, 
 to sell tenpenny-worth of papers, of which the 
 poor boy will receive a penny, or a penny half- 
 penny. And lastly, you may see a robust man 
 tramping, dangling his arms ; he has been out 
 of work for months. Meanwhile his daughter 
 grows pale in the overheated vapours of the work- 
 shop for dressing stuffs, and his son fills blacking 
 pots by hand, or waits hours at the corner of a 
 street till a passer-by enables him to earn a penny. 
 
 And so it is everywhere, from San Francisco to 
 Moscow, and from Naples to Stockholm. The 
 waste of human energy is the distinguishing and 
 predominant trait of industry, not to mention 
 trade where it attains still more collossal pro- 
 portions. 
 
 What a sad satire is that name, Pohtical 
 Economy, given to the science of waste of energy 
 under the system of wagedom ! 
 
OBJECTIONS 199 
 
 This is not all. If you speak to the director of 
 a well-organized factory, he will naively explain 
 to you that it is difficult nowadays to find a skilful, 
 vigorous, and energetic workman, who works 
 with a will. " Should such a man present himself 
 among the twenty or thirty who call every Monday 
 asking us for work, he is sure to be received, even 
 if we are reducing the number of our hands. We 
 recognize him at the first glance, and he is always 
 accepted, even though we have to get rid of an 
 older and less active worker the next day." And 
 the one who has just received notice to quit, and 
 aU those who receive it to-morrow, go to reinforce 
 that immense reserve army of capital — workmen 
 out of work — who are only called to the loom or 
 the bench when there is pressure of work, or to 
 oppose strikers. And those others, the average 
 workers that are the refuse of the better-class 
 factories ? they join the equally formidable army 
 of aged and indifferent workers that continually 
 circulates between the second-class factories— those 
 which barely cover their expenses and make their 
 way in the world by trickery and snares laid for 
 the buyer, and especially for the consumer in 
 distant countries. 
 
 And if you talk to the workmen themselves, 
 you will soon learn that the rule in such factories 
 is — never to do entirely what you are capable of. 
 " Shoddy pay — shoddy work ! " this is the advice 
 which the working man receives from his comrades 
 upon entering such a factory. 
 
200 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 For the workers know that if in a moment of 
 generosity they give way to the entreaties of an 
 employer and consent to intensify the work in 
 order to carry out a pressing order, this nervous 
 work will be exacted in the future as a rule in 
 the scale of wages. Therefore in all such fac- 
 tories they prefer never to produce as much as 
 they can. In certain industries production is 
 limited so as to keep up high prices, and some- 
 times the password, " Go-canny," is given, which 
 signifies, " Bad work for bad pay ! " 
 
 Wage-work is serf-work ; it cannot, it must not, 
 produce all that it could produce. And it is high 
 time to disbelieve the legend which represents 
 wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. 
 If industry nowadays brings in a hundred times 
 more than it did in the days of our grandfathers, 
 it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and 
 chemical sciences towards the end of last century ; 
 not to the capitalist organization of wagedom, but 
 in spite of that organization. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Those who have seriously studied the question 
 do not deny any of the advantages of Communism, 
 on condition, be it well understood, that Com- 
 munism be perfectly free, that is to say. Anarchist. 
 They recognize that work paid with money, even 
 disguised under the name of " labour notes," to 
 Workers' associations governed by the State, 
 
OBJECTIONS 201 
 
 would keep up the characteristics of wagedom 
 and would retain its disadvantages. They agree 
 that the whole system would soon suffer from it, 
 even if society came into possession of the instru- 
 ments of production. And they admit that, 
 thanks to integral education given to all children, 
 to the laborious habits of civilized societies, with 
 the liberty of choosing and varying their occupa- 
 tions and the attractions of work done by equals 
 for the well-being of all, a Communist society 
 would not be wanting in producers who would 
 soon make the fertility of the soil triple and ten- 
 fold, and give a new impulse to industry. 
 
 This our opponents agree to. "But the danger," 
 they say, " will come from that minority of loafers 
 who wiU not work, and will not have regular 
 habits in spite of excellent conditions that make 
 work pleasant. To-day the prospect of hunger 
 compels the most refractory to move along with 
 the others. The one who does not arrive in time 
 is dismissed. But a black sheep suffices to con- 
 taminate the whole flock, and two or three sluggish 
 or refractory workmen lead the others astray and 
 bring a spirit of disorder and rebellion into the 
 workshop that makes work impossible ; so that 
 in the end we shall have to return to a system of 
 compulsion that forces the ringleaders back into 
 the ranks. And is not the system of wages paid 
 in proportion to work performed, the only one 
 that enables compulsion to be employed, without 
 hurting the feelings of the worker ? Because all 
 
202 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 other means would imply the continual inter- 
 vention of an authority that would be repugnant 
 to free men." This, we beUeve, is the objection 
 fairly stated. 
 
 It belongs to the category of arguments which 
 try to justify the State, the Penal Law, the Judge, 
 and the Gaoler. 
 
 "As there are people, a feeble minority, who 
 will not submit to social customs," the authori- 
 tarians say, " we must maintain magistrates, 
 tribunals and prisons, although these institutions 
 become a source of new evils of all kinds." 
 
 Therefore we can only repeat what we have 
 so often said concerning authority in general : 
 " To avoid a possible evil you have recourse to 
 means which in themselves are a greater evil, and 
 become the source of those same abuses that 
 you wish to remedy. For do not forget that it is 
 wagedom, the impossibility of living otherwise 
 than by selling your labour, which has created the 
 present Capitalist system, whose vices you begin 
 to recognize." Let us also remark that this 
 authoritarian way of reasoning is but a justifica- 
 tion of what is wrong in the present system. 
 Wagedom was not instituted to remove the dis- 
 advantages of Communism; its origin, like that 
 of the State and private ownership, is to be found 
 elsewhere. It is born of slavery and serfdom 
 imposed by force, and only wears a more modern 
 garb. Thus the argument in favour of wage- 
 dom is as valueless as those by which they 
 
OBJECTIONS 203 
 
 seek to apologize for private property and the 
 State. 
 
 We are, nevertheless, going to examine the 
 objection, and see if there is any truth in it. 
 
 To begin with, Is it not evident that if a society, 
 founded on the principle of free work, were really 
 menaced by loafers, it could protect itself without 
 an authoritarian organization and without having 
 recourse to wagedom ? 
 
 Let us take a group of volunteers, combining 
 for some particular enterprise. Having its success 
 at heart, they all work with a will, save one of the 
 associates, who is frequently absent from his post. 
 Must they on his account dissolve the group, 
 elect a president to impose fines, or maybe dis- 
 tribute markers for work done, as is customary 
 in the Academy ? It is evident that neither the 
 one nor the other will be done, but that some day 
 the comrade who imperils their enterprise will be 
 told : " Friend, we should like to work with you ; 
 but as you are often absent from your post, and 
 you do your work negligently, we must part. Go 
 and find other comrades who will put up with 
 your indifference ! " 
 
 This way is so natural that it is practised 
 everywhere nowadays, in all industries, in com- 
 petition with all possible systems of fines, docking 
 of wages, supervision, etc. ; a workman may 
 enter the factory at the appointed time, but 
 if he does his work badly, if he hinders his com- 
 rades by his laziness or other defects, and they 
 
204 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 quarrel with him on that account, there is an 
 end of it ; he is compelled to leave the workshop. 
 
 Authoritarians pretend that it is the almighty 
 employer and his overseers who maintain regu- 
 larity and quality of work in factories. In fact, 
 in a somewhat complicated enterprise, in which 
 the wares produced pass through many hands 
 before being finished, it is the factory itself, the 
 workmen as a unity, who see to the good quahty 
 of the work. Therefore the best factories of 
 British private industry have few overseers, far 
 less on an average than the French factories, and 
 less than the British State factories. 
 
 A certain standard of public morals is main- 
 tained in the same way. Authoritarians say 
 it is due to rural guards, judges, and policemen, 
 whereas in reality it is maintained in spite of 
 judges, policemen, and rural guards. " Many 
 are the laws producing criminals ! " has been said 
 long ago. 
 
 Not only in industrial workshops do things go 
 on in this way ; it happens everywhere, every day, 
 on a scale that only bookworms have as yet no 
 notion of. When a railway company, federated 
 with other companies, fails to fulfil its engage- 
 ments, when its trains are late and goods he 
 neglected at the stations, the other companies 
 threaten to cancel the contract, and that threat 
 usually suffices. 
 
 It is generally believed, at any rate it is taught, 
 that commerce only keeps to its engagements 
 
OBJECTIONS 205 
 
 from fear of lawsuits. Nothing of the sort ; nine 
 times in ten the trader who has not kept his word 
 will not appear before a judge. There, where 
 trade is very great, as in London, the sole fact 
 of having driven a creditor to bring a lawsuit 
 suffices for the immense majority of merchants 
 to refuse for good to have any deahngs with a man 
 who has compelled one of them to go to law. 
 
 Then, why should means that are used to-day 
 among mates in the workshop, traders, and rail- 
 way companies, not be made use of in a society 
 based on voluntary work ? 
 
 Take, for example, an association stipulating that 
 each of its members should carry out the follow- 
 ing contract : " We undertake to give you the use 
 of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, 
 schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from 
 twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you 
 consecrate four or five hours a day to some work 
 recognized as necessary to existence. Choose 
 yourself the producing groups which you wish 
 to join, or organize a new group, provided that 
 it wiU undertake to produce necessaries. And as 
 for the remainder of your time, combine together 
 with those you hke for recreation, art, or science, 
 according to the bent of your taste. 
 
 " Twelve or fifteen hundred hours of work a 
 year, in a group producing food, clothes, or houses, 
 or employed in public health, transport, etc., is 
 all we ask of you. For this work we guarantee 
 to you all that these groups produce or will pro- 
 
2o6 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 duce. But if not one, of the thousands of groups 
 of our federation, will receive you, whatever be 
 their motive ; if you are absolutely incapable of 
 producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, 
 then live like an isolated man or like an invalid. 
 If we are rich enough to give you the necessaries 
 of life we shall be dehghted to give them to you. 
 You are a man, and you have the right to live. 
 But as you wish to live under special conditions, 
 and leave the ranks, it is more than probable that 
 you will suffer for it in your daily relations with 
 other citizens. You will be looked upon as a 
 ghost of bourgeois society, unless some friends of 
 yours, discovering you to be a talent, kindly free 
 you from aU moral obligation towards society 
 by doing necessary work for you. 
 
 " And lastly, if it does not please you, go and 
 look for other conditions elsewhere in the wide 
 world, or else seek adherents and organize with 
 them on novel principles. We prefer our own." 
 
 That is what could be done in a communal society 
 in order to turn away sluggards if they became 
 too numerous. 
 
 IV 
 
 We very much doubt that we need fear this 
 contingency in a society really based on the 
 entire freedom of the individual. 
 
 In fact, in spite of the premium on idleness 
 offered by private ownership of capital, the really 
 lazy man, unless he is iU, is comparatively rare. 
 
OBJECTIONS 207 
 
 Among workmen it is often said that bourgeois 
 are idlers. There are certainly enough of them, 
 but they, too, are the exception. On the con- 
 trary, in every industrial enterprise, you are sure 
 to find one or more bourgeois who work very 
 hard. It is true that the majority of bourgeois 
 profit by their privileged position to award them- 
 selves the least unpleasant tasks, and that they 
 work under hygienic conditions of air, food, etc., 
 which permit them to do their business without 
 too much fatigue. But these are precisely the con- 
 ditions which we claim for aU workers, without ex- 
 ception. We must also say that if, thanks to their 
 privileged position, rich people often make abso- 
 lutely useless or even harmful work in society, 
 nevertheless the Ministers, Heads of Departments, 
 factory owners, traders, bankers, etc., subject 
 themselves for a few hours a day to work which 
 they find more or less tiresome, aU preferring their 
 hours of leisure to this obhgatory work. And if 
 in nine cases out of ten this work is fateful, they 
 find it none the less tiring for that. But it is pre- 
 cisely because the middle class put forth a great 
 energy, even in doing harm (knowingly or not) and 
 defending their privileged position, that they have 
 succeeded in defeating the landed nobility, and 
 that they continue to rule the masses. If they were 
 idlers they would long since have ceased to exist, 
 and would have disappeared like the aristocrats. 
 In a society that would expect only four or five 
 hours a day of useful, pleasant, and hygienic 
 
2o8 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 work, they would perform their task perfectly, 
 and they certainly would not put up with the 
 horrible conditions in which men toil nowadays 
 without reforming them. If a Huxley spent only 
 five hours in the sewers of London, rest assured 
 that he would have found the means of making 
 them as sanitary as his physiological laboratory. 
 
 As to the laziness of the great majority of 
 workers, only philistine economists and philan- 
 thropists say such nonsense. 
 
 If you ask an intelligent manufacturer, he will 
 tell you that if workmen only put it into their 
 heads to be lazy, all factories would have to be 
 closed, for no measure of severity, no system of 
 spying would be of any use. You should have 
 seen the terror caused in 1887 among British em- 
 ployers when a few agitators started preaching 
 the "go-canny " theory — " for bad pay bad work " ; 
 "take it easy, do not overwork yourselves, and 
 waste all you can." — " They demoralize the worker, 
 they want to kiU industry ! " cried those who 
 formerly inveighed against the immorahty of 
 the worker and the bad quality of his work. 
 But if the worker were what he is represented 
 to be — namely, the idler whom you have con- 
 tinually to threaten with dismissal from the 
 workshop — what would the word " demoraliza- 
 tion " signify ? 
 
 So when we speak of a possible idleness, we 
 must well understand that it is a question of a 
 small minority in society ; and before legislating 
 
OBJECTIONS 209 
 
 for that minority, would it not be wise to study its 
 origin ? Whoever observes with an intelligent eye 
 sees well enough that the child reputed lazy at 
 school is often the one which does not understand 
 what he is badly taught. Very often, too, it is 
 suffering from cerebral anaemia, caused by poverty 
 and an anti-hygienic education. A boy who is 
 lazy at Greek or Latin would work admirably 
 were he taught in science, especially if taught by 
 the medium of manual labour. A girl reputed 
 nought at mathematics becomes the first mathe- 
 matician of her class if she by chance meets some- 
 body who can explain to her the elements of 
 arithmetic she did not understand. And a work- 
 man, lazy in the workshop, cultivates his garden 
 at dawn, while gazing at the rising sun, and will be 
 at work again at nightfall, when all nature goes 
 to its rest. 
 
 Somebody said that dust is matter in the wrong 
 place. The same definition applies to nine-tenths 
 of those called lazy. They are people gone astray 
 in a direction that does not answer to their tem- 
 perament nor to their capacities. In reading the 
 biography of great men, we are struck with the 
 number of " idlers " among them. They were 
 lazy as long as they had not found the right path, 
 and afterwards laborious to excess. Darwin, 
 Stephenson, and many others belonged to this 
 category of idlers. 
 
 Very often the idler is but a man to whom it is 
 repugnant to make all his life the eighteenth part 
 
210 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 of a pin, or the hundredth part of a watch, while 
 he feels he has exuberant energy which he would 
 like to expend elsewhere. Often, too, he is a 
 rebel who cannot submit to being fixed all his Hfe 
 to a work-bench in order to procure a thousand 
 pleasures for his employer, while knowing himself 
 to be far the less stupid of the two, and knowing 
 his only fault to be that of having been born in a 
 hovel instead of coming into the world in a castle. 
 
 Lastly, a good many " idlers " do not know 
 the trade by which they are compelled to earn 
 their living. Seeing the imperfect thing made 
 by their own hands, striving vainly to do better, 
 and perceiving that they never will succeed on 
 account of the bad habits of work already acquired, 
 they begin to hate their trade, and, not knowing 
 any other, hate work in general. Thousands of 
 workmen and artists who are failures suffer from 
 this cause. 
 
 On the other hand, he who since his youth has 
 learned to play the piano well, to handle the plane 
 well, the chisel, the brush, or the file, so that he 
 feels that what he does is beautiful, will never 
 give up the piano, the chisel, or the file. He will 
 find pleasure in his work which does not tire 
 him, as long as he is not overdriven. 
 
 Under the one name, idleness, a series of results 
 due to different causes have been grouped, of 
 which each one could be a source of good, instead 
 of being a source of evil to society. Like all 
 questions concerning criminality and related to 
 
OBJECTIONS 211 
 
 human faculties, facts have been collected having 
 nothing in common with one another. They say 
 laziness or crime, without giving themselves the 
 trouble to analyse their cause. They are in haste 
 to punish them, without inquiring if the punish- 
 ment itself does not contain a premium on " lazi- 
 ness " or " crime." * 
 
 This is why a free society, seeing the number 
 of idlers increasing in its midst, would no doubt 
 think of looking for the cause of laziness, in order 
 to suppress it, before having recourse to punish- 
 ment. When it is a case, as we have already 
 mentioned, of simple bloodlessness, then, before 
 stufi&ng the brain of a child with science,^nourish 
 his system so as to produce blood, strengthen him, 
 and, that he shall not waste his time, take him to the 
 country or to the seaside ; there, teach him in the 
 open air, not in books — geometry, by measuring 
 the distance to a spire, or the height of a tree; 
 natural sciences, while picking flowers and fishing 
 in the sea; physical science, while building the 
 boat he will go to fish in. But for mercy's sake 
 do not fill his brain with sentences and dead 
 languages. Do not make an idler of him ! . . . 
 
 Such a child has neither order nor regular habits. 
 Let first the children inculcate order among them- 
 selves, and later on, the laboratory, the workshop, 
 work done in a limited space, with many tools 
 about, will teach them method. But do not make 
 disorderly beings out of them by your school, 
 
 * See my book, " In Russian and French Prisons." London, 1887. 
 
212 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 whose only order is the symmetry of its benches, 
 and which — true image of the chaos in its teach- 
 ings — will never inspire anybody with the love of 
 harmony, of consistency, and method in work. 
 
 Do not you see that by your methods of teaching, 
 framed by a Ministry for eight million scholars, 
 who represent eight million different capacities, 
 you only impose a system good for mediocrities, 
 conceived by an average of mediocrities ? Your 
 school becomes a University of laziness, as your 
 prison is a University of crime. Make the school 
 free, abolish your University grades, appeal to the 
 volunteers of teaching ; begin that way, instead 
 of making laws against laziness which only serve 
 to increase it. 
 
 Give the workman who is compelled to make 
 a minute particle of some object, who is stifled 
 at his little tapping machine, which he ends by 
 loathing, give him the chance of tilling the soil, 
 felling trees in the forest, sailing the seas in the 
 teeth of a storm, dashing through space on an 
 engine, but do not make an idler of him by forcing 
 him all his hfe to attend to a small machine, to 
 plough the head of a screw, or to drill the eye of 
 a needle. 
 
 Suppress the cause of idleness, and you may 
 take it for granted that few individuals will really 
 hate work, especially voluntary work, and that 
 there wiU be no need to manufacture a code of 
 laws on their account. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 
 
 IT is our opinion that coUectivists commit a 
 twofold error in their plans for the recon- 
 struction of society. While speaking of abolishing 
 capitahst rule, they intend nevertheless to retain 
 two institutions which are the very basis of this 
 rule — Representative Government and the Wages 
 System. 
 
 As regards so-called representative government, 
 we have often spoken about it. It is abso- 
 lutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent 
 men — and such are not wanting in the coUec- 
 tivist party — can remain partisans of national 
 or municipal parliaments after all the lessons 
 history has given them — in France, in England, 
 in Germany, or in the United States. 
 
 While we see parliamentary rule breaking up, 
 and from all sides criticism of this rule growing 
 louder — not only of its results, but also of its 
 principles — how is it that revolutionary socialists 
 defend a system already condemned to die ? 
 
 Built up by the middle classes to hold their 
 own against royalty, sanctioning, and at the 
 
 213 
 
214 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 same time strengthening, their sway over the 
 workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a 
 middle-class rule. The upholders of this system 
 have never seriously affirmed that a parliament 
 or a municipal council represent a nation or a 
 city. The most intelligent among them know 
 that this is impossible. The middle class has 
 simply used the parliamentary system to raise 
 a barrier between itself and royalty, without 
 giving the people liberty. But gradually, as the 
 people become conscious of their interests and 
 the variety of their interests multiply, the system 
 can no longer work. Therefore democrats of all 
 countries vainly imagine divers palliatives. The 
 Referendum is tried and found to be a failure ; 
 proportional representation is spoken of, so is 
 representation of minorities, and other parliamen- 
 tary Utopias. In a word, they strive to find 
 what is not to be found, and they are compelled 
 to recognize that they are in a wrong way, and 
 confidence in a Representative Government dis- 
 appears. 
 
 It is the same with the wages system ; for after 
 having proclaimed the abolition of private pro- 
 perty, and the possession in common of all means 
 of production, how can they uphold the wages 
 system in any form ? It is, nevertheless, what 
 collectivists are doing when they recommend 
 labour-cheques. 
 
 It is easy to understand why the early English 
 sociahsts came to the system of labour-cheques. 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 215 
 
 They simply tried to make Capital and Labour 
 agree. They repudiated the idea of violently 
 laying hands on capitalist property. 
 
 It is also easily understood why Proudhon took 
 up the idea later on. In his Mutualist system 
 he tried to make Capital less offensive, notwith- 
 standing the retaining of private property, which 
 he detested from the bottom of his heart, but 
 which he believed to be necessary to guarantee 
 individuals against the State. 
 
 Neither is it astonishing that certain economists, 
 more or less bourgeois, admit labour-cheques. 
 They care httle whether the worker is paid in 
 labour-notes or in coin stamped with the effigy 
 of the RepubUc or the Empire. They only care 
 to save from destruction individual ownership of 
 dweUing-houses, of land, of factories ; in any 
 case that of dwelling-houses and the capital that 
 is necessary for manufacturing. And labour- 
 notes would just answer the purpose of upholding 
 this private property. 
 
 As long as labour-notes can be exchanged for 
 jewels or carriages, the owner of the house will 
 willingly accept them for rent. And as long as 
 dweUing - houses, fields, and factories belong to 
 isolated owners, men will have to pay them, 
 in one way or another, for being allowed to work 
 in the fields or factories, or for living ^^in the 
 houses. The owners wiU accept to be paid 
 by the workers in gold, in paper -money, or in 
 cheques exchangeable for all sorts of commodities. 
 
2i6 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 But how can we defend labour-notes^ this new 
 form of wagedom, when we admit that houses, 
 fields, and factories will no longer be private 
 property, and that they will belong to the com- 
 mune or the nation ? 
 
 II 
 
 Let us closely examine this system of remunera- 
 tion for work done, preached by French, German, 
 English, and Italian coUectivists (Spanish anar- 
 chists, who still call themselves coUectivists, 
 imply by Collectivism the possession in common 
 of all instruments of production, and the " liberty 
 of each group to divide the produce, as they 
 think fit, according to communist or any other 
 principles "). 
 
 It amounts to this : Everybody works in field, 
 factory, school, hospital, etc. The working-day 
 is fixed by the State, which owns land, factories, 
 roads, etc. Every work-day is paid for with a 
 labour-note, which is inscribed with these words : 
 Eight hows work. With this cheque the worker 
 can procure all sorts of merchandize in the stores 
 owned by the State or by divers corporations. 
 The cheque is divisible, so that you can buy an 
 hour's-work worth of meat, ten minutes worth 
 of matches, or half an hour of tobacco. After the 
 CoUectivist Revolution, instead of saying "two- 
 pence worth of soap," we shall say " five minutes 
 worth of soap." 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 217 
 
 Most collectivists, true to the distinction laid 
 down by middle-class economists (and by Marx) 
 between qualified work and simple work, tell us, 
 moreover, that qualified or professional work must 
 be paid a certain quantity more than simple 
 work. Thus an hour's work of a doctor will have 
 to be considered as equivalent to two or three 
 hours' work of a hospital nurse, or to three hours' 
 work of a navvy. " Professional, or qualified work, 
 will be a multiple of simple work," says the 
 collectivist Gronlund, "because this kind of work 
 needs a more or less long apprenticeship." 
 
 Other collectivists, such as the French Marxists, 
 do not make this distinction. They proclaim 
 '■' Equality of Wages." The doctor, the school- 
 ♦ master, and the professor will be paid (in labour- 
 cheques) at the same rate as the navvy. Eight 
 hours visiting the sick in a hospital will be worth 
 the same as eight hours spent in earthworks or 
 else in mines or factories. 
 
 Some make a greater concession ; they admit 
 that disagreeable or unhealthy work — such as 
 sewerage — could be paid for at a higher rate than 
 agreeable work. One hour's work of a sewer- 
 man would be worth, they say, two hours of a 
 professor's work. 
 
 Let us add that certain collectivists admit of 
 corporations paying a lump sum for work done. 
 Thus a corporation would say : " Here are a 
 hundred tons of steel. A hundred workmen 
 were required to produce them, and it took them 
 
2i8 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 ten days. Their work-day being an eight-hours 
 day, it has taken them eight thousand working 
 hours to produce a hundred tons of steel — eight 
 hours a ton." For this the State would pay them 
 eight thousand labour-notes of one hour each, 
 and these eight thousand cheques would be divided 
 among the members of the iron-works as they 
 themselves thought proper. 
 
 On the other hand, a hundred miners having 
 taken twenty days to extract eight thousand 
 tons of coal, coal would be worth two hours a ton, 
 and the sixteen thousand cheques of one hour 
 each, received by the Guild of Miners, would be 
 divided among their members according to their 
 own appreciation. 
 
 If the miners protested, and said that a ton 
 of steel should only cost six hours' work instead 
 of eight ; if the professor wished to have his day 
 paid twice more than the nurse, then the State 
 would interfere and would settle their differences. 
 
 Such is, in a few words, the organization 
 collectivists wish to see arise out of the Social 
 Revolution. As we see, their principles are : 
 Collective property of the instruments of pro- 
 duction, and remuneration to each according to 
 the time spent in producing, while taking into 
 account the productivity of his labour. As to the 
 political system, it would be Parliamentarianism 
 modified by positive instructions given to those 
 elected, by the Referendum — a vote, taken by 
 noes or ayes by the nation. 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 219 
 
 Let us own that this system appears to us un- 
 realizable. 
 
 CoUectivists begin by proclaiming a revolu- 
 tionary principle — the abolition of private pro- 
 perty — then they deny it no sooner than proclaimed 
 by upholding an organization of production and 
 consumption that originated in private property. 
 
 They proclaim a revolutionary principle, and 
 ignore the consequences that this principle will 
 inevitably bring about. They forget that the 
 very fact of abolishing individual property in the 
 instruments of work — land, factories, road, capital, 
 — must launch society into absolutely new chan- 
 nels ; must completely overthrow the present 
 system of production, both in its aim as well 
 as in its means ; must modify daily relations 
 between individuals, as soon as land, machinery, 
 and all other instruments of production are con- 
 sidered common property. 
 
 They say, "No private property," and imme- 
 diately after strive to maintain private property 
 in its daUy manifestations. " You shall be a 
 Commune as far as regards production : fields, 
 tools, machinery, all that has been invented up 
 till now — factories, railways, harbours, mines, 
 etc., all are yours. Not the slightest distinction 
 will be made concerning the share of each in this 
 collective property. 
 
 " But from to-morrow you will minutely debate 
 the share you are going to take in the creation of 
 new machinery, in the digging of new mines. 
 
220 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 You will carefully weigh what part of the new 
 produce belongs to you. You will count your 
 minutes of work, and you will take care that a 
 minute of your neighbours cannot buy more than 
 yours. 
 
 " And as an hour measures nothing, as in some 
 factories a worker can see to six power-looms 
 at a time, while in another he only tends two, you 
 will weigh the muscular force, the brain energy, 
 and the nervous energy you have expended. 
 You will accurately calculate the years of appren- 
 ticeship in order to appraise the amount each 
 will contribute to future production. And this — 
 after having declared that you do not take into 
 account his share in past production." 
 
 Well, for us it is evident that a society cannot 
 be based on two absolutely opposed principles, 
 two principles that contradict one another con- 
 tinually. And a nation or a commune that would 
 have such an organization would be compelled 
 to revert to private property in the instruments 
 of production, or to transform itself immediately 
 into a communist society. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We have said that certain coUectivist writers 
 desire that a distinction should be made between 
 qualified or professional work and simple work. 
 They pretend that an hour's work of an engineer, 
 an architect, or a doctor, must be considered as 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 221 
 
 two or three hours' work of a blacksmith, a mason, 
 or a hospital nurse. And the same distinction 
 must be made between aU sorts of trades necessi- 
 tating a more or less long apprenticeship and the 
 simple toil of day labourers. 
 
 Well, to establish this distinction would be to 
 maintain all the inequalities of present society. 
 It would mean fixing a dividing line, from the 
 beginning, between the workers and those who 
 pretend to govern them. It would mean dividing 
 society into two very distinct classes — the aris- 
 tocracy of knowledge above the horny-handed 
 lower orders — the one doomed to serve the other ; 
 the one working with its hands to feed and clothe 
 those who, profiting by their leisure, study how 
 to govern their fosterers. 
 
 It would mean reviving one of the distinct 
 pecuharities of present society and giving it the 
 sanction of the Social Revolution. It would 
 mean setting up as a principle an abuse already 
 condemned in our ancient crumbling society. 
 
 We know the answer we shall get. They will 
 speak of " Scientific Socialism " ; they will quote 
 bourgeois economists, and Marx too, to prove 
 that a scale of wages has its raison d'itre, as 
 " the labour-force " of the engineer will have 
 cost more to society than the " labour-force " 
 of the navvy. In fact, — have not economists 
 tried to prove to us that if an engineer is 
 paid twenty times more than a navvy it is 
 because the " necessary " outlay to make an 
 
222 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 engineer is greater than that necessary to make 
 a navvy ? And has not Marx asserted that the 
 same distinction is equally logical between two 
 branches of manual labour ? He could not con- 
 clude otherwise, having on his own account taken 
 up Ricardo's theory of value, and upheld that 
 goods are exchanged in proportion to the quan- 
 tity of work socially necessary for their pro- 
 duction. 
 
 But we know what to think of this. We know 
 that if engineers, scientists, or doctors are paid 
 ten or a hundred times more than a labourer, 
 and that a weaver earns three times more than 
 an agricultural labourer, and ten times more than 
 a girl in a match factory, it is not by reason 
 of their " cost of production," but by reason of 
 a monopoly of education, or a monopoly of 
 industry. Engineers, scientists, and doctors 
 merely exploit their capital — their diplomas — as 
 middle-class employers exploit a factory, or as 
 nobles used to exploit their titles of nobility. 
 
 As to the employer who pays an engineer 
 twenty times more than a labourer, it is simply 
 due to personal interest ; if the engineer can 
 economize £4000 a year on the cost of produc- 
 tion, the employer pays him £800. And if the 
 employer has a foreman who saves £400 on the 
 work by cleverly sweating workmen, he gladly' 
 gives him £80 or £120 a year. He parts with an 
 extra £40 when he expects to gain £400 by it; 
 and this is the essence of the CapitaUst system. 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 223 
 
 The same differences obtain among divers manual 
 trades. 
 
 Let them, therefore, not talk to us of "the 
 cost on production" which raises the cost of 
 skilled labour, and tell us that a student who 
 has gaily spent his youth in a university has a 
 right to a wage ten times greater than the son of 
 a miner who has grown pale in a mine since the 
 age of eleven ; or that a weaver has a right to a 
 wage three or four times greater than that of an 
 agricultural labourer. The cost of teaching a 
 weaver his work is not four times greater than 
 the cost of teaching a peasant his. The weaver 
 simply benefits by the advantages his industry 
 reaps in Europe, in comparison with countries 
 that have as yet no industries. 
 
 Nobody has ever calculated the cost of produc- 
 tion ; and if a loafer costs far more to society than 
 a worker, it remains to be seen whether a robust 
 day-labourer does not cost more to society than 
 a skilled artisan, when we have taken into 
 account infant - mortality among the poor, the 
 ravages of anaemia, and premature deaths. 
 
 Could they, for example, make us believe that 
 the IS. 3d. paid to a Paris workwoman, the 3d. 
 paid to an Auvergne peasant girl who grows 
 bUnd at lace-making, or the is, 8d. paid to the 
 peasant represent their " cost of production." 
 We know full well that people work for less, but 
 we also know that they do so exclusively because, 
 thanks to our wonderful organization, they would 
 
224 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 die of hunger did they not accept these mock 
 wages. 
 
 For us the scale of remuneration is a complex 
 result of taxes, of governmental tutelage, of 
 Capitalist monopoly. In a word, of State and 
 Capital. Therefore, we say that all wages theories 
 have been invented after the event to justify 
 injustices at present existing, and that we need 
 not take them into consideration. 
 
 Neither will they fail to tell us that the Col- 
 lectivist scale of wages would be an improvement. 
 " It would be better," so they say, " to see certain 
 artisans receiving a wage two or three times higher 
 than common labourers, than to see a minister 
 receiving in a day what a workmen cannot earn 
 in a year. It would be a great step towards 
 equality." 
 
 For us this step would be the reverse of pro- 
 gress. To make a distinction between simple 
 and professional work in a new society would 
 result in the Revolution sanctioning and recog- 
 nizing as a principle a brutal fact we submit to 
 nowadays, but that we nevertheless find unjust. 
 It would mean imitating those gentlemen of the 
 French Assembly who proclaimed August 4th, 
 1789, the abohtion of feudal rights, but who on 
 August 8th sanctioned these same rights by im- 
 posing dues on the peasants to compensate the 
 noblemen, placing these dues under the protection 
 of the Revolution. It would mean imitating the 
 Russian Government, which proclaimed, at the 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 225 
 
 time of the emancipation of the serfs, that the 
 land should henceforth belong to the nobiUty, 
 while formerly the lands were considered belong- 
 ing to the serfs. 
 
 Or else, to take a better known example, when 
 the Commune of 1871 decided to pay members 
 of the Commune Council 12s. 6d. a day, while the 
 Federates on the ramparts received only is. 3d., 
 this decision was hailed as an act of superior 
 democratic equality. In reality, the Commune 
 only ratified the former inequality between func- 
 tionary and soldier. Government and governed. 
 Coming from an Opportunist Chamber of Depu- 
 ties, such a decision would have appeared admir- 
 able, but the Commune doomed her revolutionary 
 principles because she failed to put them into 
 practice. 
 
 Under our existing social system, when a 
 minister gets paid ;f 4000 a year, while a workman 
 must content himself with £40 or less ; when a 
 foreman is paid two or three times more than 
 a workman, and among workmen there is every 
 gradation, from 8s. a day down to the peasant 
 girl's 3d. ; we disapprove of the high salary of 
 the minister as well as of the difference between 
 the 8s. of the workman and the 3d. of the poor 
 woman. And we say, " Down with the privileges 
 of education, as well as with those of birth ! " 
 We are anarchists precisely because these privi- 
 leges revolt us. 
 
 They revolt us already in this authoritarian 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 society. Could we endure them in a society that 
 began by proclaiming equality ? 
 
 That is why some collectivists, understanding 
 the impossibility of maintaining a scale of wages 
 in a society inspired by the breath of the Revolu- 
 tion, hasten to proclaim equality of wage. But 
 they meet with new difficulties, and their equality 
 of wages becomes the same unrealizable Utopia 
 as the scale of wages of other collectivists. 
 
 A society having taken possession of all social 
 wealth, having boldly proclaimed the right of all 
 to this wealth — whatever share they may have 
 taken in producing it — will be compelled to aban- 
 don any system of wages, whether in currency or 
 labour-notes. 
 
 IV 
 
 The collectivists say, " To each according to 
 his deeds " ; or, in other terms, according to 
 his share of services rendered to society. They 
 think it expedient to put this principle into 
 practice as soon as the Social Revolution wiU have 
 made all instruments of production common 
 property. But we think that if the Social Revolu- 
 tion had the misfortune of proclaiming such a 
 principle, it would mean its necessary failure; 
 it would mean leaving the social problem, which 
 past centuries have burdened us with, unsolved. 
 In fact, in a society like ours, in which the more a 
 man works the less he is remunerated, this prin- 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 227 
 
 ciple, at first sight, may appear to be a yearning 
 for justice. But it is really only the perpetuation 
 of past injustice. It was by virtue of this principle 
 that wagedom began, to end in the glaring in- 
 equalities and aU the abominations of present 
 society ; because, from the moment work done 
 was appraised in currency or in any other form of 
 wage, the day it was agreed upon that man would 
 only receive the wage he could secure to himself, 
 the whole history of State-aided Capitalist Society 
 was as good as written ; it germinated in this 
 principle. 
 
 Shall we, then, return to our starting-point and 
 go through the same evolution again ? Our 
 theorists desire it, but fortunately it is impossible. 
 The Revolution will be communist ; if not, it 
 will be drowned in blood, and have to be begun 
 over again. 
 
 Services rendered to society, be they work in fac- 
 tory or field, or mental services, cannot be valued 
 in money. There can be no exact measure of 
 value (of what has been wrongly termed exchange 
 value), nor of use value, with regard to production. 
 If two individuals work for the community five 
 hours a day, year in year out, at different work 
 which is equally agreeable to them, we may say 
 that on the whole their labour is equivalent. 
 But we cannot divide their work, and say that 
 the result of any particular day, hour, or minute 
 of work of the one is worth the result of a minute 
 or hour of the other. 
 
228 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 We may roughly say that the man who during 
 his Hfetime has deprived himself of leisure during 
 ten hours a day has given far more to society than 
 the one who has only deprived himself of leisure 
 during five hours a day, or who has not deprived 
 himself at all. But we cannot take what he has 
 done during two hours and say that the yield is 
 worth twice as much as the yield of another indi- 
 vidual, working only one hour, and remunerate him 
 in proportion. It would be disregarding all that is 
 complex in industry, in agriculture, in the whole 
 life of present society ; it would be ignoring to 
 what extent all individual work is the result of 
 past and present labour of society as a whole. 
 It would mean beheving ourselves to be living in 
 the Stone Age, whereas we are Hving in an age of 
 steel. 
 
 If you enter a coal-mine you will see a man in 
 charge of a huge machine that raises and lowers a 
 cage. In his hand he holds a lever that stops and 
 reverses the course of the machine ; he lowers it 
 and the cage turns back in the twinkling of an 
 eye ; he raises it, he lowers it again with a giddy 
 swiftness. All attention, he follows with his eyes 
 fixed on the waU an indicator that shows him, 
 on a small scale, at which point of the shaft the 
 cage is at each second of its progress ; as soon as 
 the indicator has reached a certain level he 
 suddenly stops the course of the cage, not a yard 
 higher nor lower than the required spot. And no 
 sooner have the colliers unloaded their coal- 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 229 
 
 wagons, and pushed empty ones instead, than he 
 reverses the lever and again sends the cage back 
 into space. 
 
 During eight or ten consecutive hours he must 
 pay the closest attention. Should his brain relax 
 for a moment, the cage would inevitably strike 
 against the gear, break its wheels, snap the rope, 
 crush men, and obstruct work in the mine. Should 
 he waste three seconds at each touch of the lever, 
 in our modern perfected mines, the extraction 
 would be reduced from twenty to fifty tons a day. 
 
 Is it he who is of greatest use in the mine ? 
 Or, is it perhaps the boy who signals to him from 
 below to raise the cage ? Is it the miner at the 
 bottom of the shaft, who risks his life every instant, 
 and who will some day be killed by fire-damp ? Or 
 is it the engineer, who would lose the layer of coal, 
 and would cause the miners to dig on rock by a 
 simple mistake in his calculations ? And lastly, 
 is it the mine owner who has put all his capital 
 into the mine, and who has perhaps, contrary to 
 expert advice, asserted that excellent coal would be 
 found there ? 
 
 All the miners engaged in this mine contribute 
 to the extraction of coal in proportion to their 
 strength, their energy, their knowledge, their 
 intelligence, and their skiU. And we may say 
 that all have the right to live, to satisfy their 
 needs, and even their whims, when the necessaries 
 of hfe have been secured for all. But how can we 
 appraise their work ? 
 
230 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 And, moreover, Is the coal they have extracted 
 their work ? Is it not also the work of men who 
 have built the railway leading to the mine and 
 the roads that radiate from all its stations ? Is 
 it not also the work of those that have tilled and 
 sown the fields, extracted iron, cut wood in the 
 forests, built the machines that burn coal, and 
 so on ? 
 
 No distinction can be drawn between the work 
 of each man. Measuring the work by its results 
 leads us to absurdity ; dividing and measuring 
 them by hours spent on the work also leads us to 
 absurdity. One thing remains : put the needs 
 above the works, and first of all recognize the right 
 to live, and later on, to the comforts of life, for 
 all those who take their share in production. 
 
 But take any other branch of human activity 
 — take the manifestations of life as a whole. 
 Which one of us can claim the higher remuneration 
 for his work ? Is it the doctor who has found out 
 the illness, or the nurse who has brought about 
 recovery by her hygienic care ? Is it the inventor 
 of the first steam-engine, or the boy, who, one 
 day getting tired of pulling the rope that formerly 
 opened the valve to let steam enter under the 
 piston, tied the rope to the lever of the machine, 
 without suspecting that he had invented the 
 essential mechanical part of all modern machinery 
 — the automatic valve. 
 
 Is it the inventor of the locomotive, or the 
 workman of Newcastle, who suggested replacing 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 231 
 
 the stones formerly laid under the rails by 
 wooden sleepers, as the stones, for want of elas- 
 ticity, caused the trains to derail ? Is it the 
 engineer on the locomotive ? The signalman who 
 can stop trains ? The switchman who transfers 
 a train from one line to another ? — ^To whom do 
 we owe the transatlantic cable ? Is it to the 
 engineer who obstinately affirmed that the cable 
 would transmit messages when learned electri- 
 tians declared it to be impossible ? Is it to Maury, 
 the scientist, who advised that thick cables should 
 be set aside for others as thin as canes ? Or else 
 to those volunteers, come from nobody knows 
 where, who spent their days and nights on deck 
 minutely examining every yard of the cable, 
 and removed the nails that the stockholders of 
 steamship companies stupidly caused to be driven 
 into the non-conducting wrapper of the cable, so 
 as to make it unserviceable. 
 
 And in a wider sphere, the true sphere of life, 
 with its joys, its sufferings, and its accidents, 
 cannot each one of us recall some one who has 
 rendered him so great a service that we should 
 be indignant if its equivalent in coin were men- 
 tioned ? The service may have been but a word, 
 nothing but a word spoken at the right time, or 
 else it may have been months and years of devo- 
 tion, and are we going to appraise these " incalcu- 
 lable" services in "labour-notes" ? 
 
 " The works of each ! " But human society 
 would not exist for more than two consecutive 
 
232 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 generations if every one did not give infinitely 
 more than that for which he is paid in coin, in 
 " cheques," or in civic rewards. The race would 
 soon become extinct if mothers did not sacrifice 
 their lives to take care of their children, if men did 
 not give all the time, without demanding an equiva- 
 lent, if men did not give just to those from whom 
 they expect no reward. 
 
 If middle-class society is decaying, if we have 
 got into a blind alley from which we cannot emerge 
 without attacking past institutions with torch 
 and hatchet, it is precisely because we have cal- 
 culated too much. It is because we have let our- 
 selves be influenced into giving only to receive. 
 It is because we have aimed at turning society 
 into a commercial company based on debit and 
 credit. 
 
 CoUectivists know this. They vaguely under- 
 stand that a society could not exist if it carried out 
 the principle of " Each according to his deeds." 
 They have a notion that necessaries — we do not 
 speak of whims — the needs of the individual, do 
 not always correspond to his works. Thus De 
 Paepe tells us : " The principle — the eminently 
 Individualist principle — would, however, be tem- 
 pered by social intervention, for the education of 
 children and young persons (including mainten- 
 ance and lodging), and by the social organization 
 for assisting the infirm and the sick, for retreats 
 for aged workers, etc." They understand that 
 a man of forty, father of three children, has other 
 
THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 233 
 
 needs than a young man of twenty. They know 
 that the woman who suckles her infant and 
 spends sleepless nights at its bedside, cannot do 
 as much work as the man who has slept peace- 
 fully. They seem to take in that men and women, 
 worn out maybe by dint of overwork for society, 
 may be incapable of doing as much work as those 
 who have spent their time leisurely and pocketed 
 their " labour-notes " in the privileged career of 
 State functionaries. 
 
 They are eager to temper their principle. They 
 say : " Society will not fail to maintain and bring 
 up its children ; to help both aged and infirm. 
 Without doubt needs will be the measure of the 
 cost that society will burden itself with, to temper 
 the principle of deeds." 
 
 Charity, charity, always Christian charity, or- 
 ganized by the State this time. They believe in 
 improving asylums for foundlings, in effecting 
 old-age and sick insurances — so as to temper their 
 principle. But they cannot yet throw aside 
 the idea of "wounding first and heaUng after- 
 wards " ! 
 
 Thus, after having denied Communism, after 
 having laughed at their ease at the formula — 
 " To each according to his needs " — these great 
 economists discover that they have forgotten 
 something, the needs of the producers, which they 
 now admit. Only it is for the State to estimate 
 them, for the State to verify if the needs are 
 not disproportionate to the work. 
 
234 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 The State will dole out charity. Thence to the 
 English poor-law and the workhouse is but a 
 step. 
 
 There is but a degree, because even this step- 
 mother of a society against whom we are in 
 revolt has also been compelled to temper her 
 individualist principles ; she, too, has had to make 
 concessions in a communist direction and under 
 the same form of charity. 
 
 She, too, distributes halfpenny dinners to pre- 
 vent the pillaging of her shops ; builds hospitals 
 — often very bad ones, though sometimes splendid 
 ones — to prevent the ravages of contagious dis- 
 eases. She, too, after having paid the hours of 
 labour, shelters the children of those she has 
 wrecked. She takes their needs into considera- 
 tion and doles out charity. 
 
 Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the 
 primary cause of wealth. It was poverty that 
 created the first capitahst ; because, before accu- 
 mulating " surplus value," of which we hear so 
 much, men had to be sufficiently destitute to con- 
 sent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger. 
 It was poverty that made capitalists. And if 
 the number of poor rapidly increased during the 
 Middle Ages, it was due to the invasions and wars 
 that followed the founding of States, and to the 
 increase of riches resulting from the exploitation 
 of the East, that tore the bonds asunder which 
 once united agrarian and urban communities, and 
 taught them to proclaim the principle of wages, 
 
THE COLT.ECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 235 
 
 so doar ti> cxploitcM-s, instoad of tho solidarity they 
 lornuMly |>r;vo(isiHl. 
 
 Ami it is this pnnoiplo that is to spring from 
 11 rovolution which niou dare to call by (ho \v,\mv 
 of Social I'JoN'ohition, a name so dear to thostarvcil, 
 tho opi>rossod, nnd tho sniTorors ? 
 
 It can novor bo. For tho day on winch old in- 
 stitutions will {;ill under tho proletarian axo, 
 voices will cry out : " Broail, shelter, ease for all I " 
 Anil those voices will bo listened to ; tho pin^ple will 
 say : " Let ua begin by allaying our thirst for life, 
 tor happiness, for liberty, that we have never 
 (piouched. Anil when wo shall ha\c lastoil of 
 (his joy W(^ will sot to work to donu)lish tho last 
 vestiges of nuddlo-class rule, i(s nu>rali(y diawn 
 fnun acconnf-books, i(s ' dobi( and crodi( ' philo- 
 si>phy, i(s 'mine and yom-s ' ins(i(n(ions. 'In 
 dtMuolishing we shall build,' as TrondluMi said ; 
 and wo shall build in (he name of Communism 
 and Anarch\'." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 
 
 LOOKING at society and its political organi- 
 -/ zation from a different standpoint than that 
 of authoritarian schools — for we start from a free 
 individual to reach a free society, instead of 
 beginning by the State to come down to the indi- 
 vidual — we follow the same method in economic 
 questions. We study the needs of individuals, 
 and the means by which they satisfy them, be- 
 fore discussing Production, Exchange, Taxation, 
 Government, etc. 
 
 To begin with, the difference may appear trifling, 
 but in reality it upsets official Political Economy. 
 
 If you open the works of any economist you wiU 
 find that he begins with production, the analysis 
 of means employed nowadays for the creation of 
 wealth; division of labour, manufacture, machinery, 
 accumulation of capital. From Adam Smith to 
 Marx, all have proceeded along these hues. Only 
 in the latter parts of their books do they treat of 
 CONSUMPTION, that is to say, of the means neces- 
 sary to satisfy the needs of individuals; and, 
 moreover, they confine themselves to explaining 
 
 236 
 
CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 237 
 
 how riches are divided among those who vie with 
 one another for their possession. 
 
 Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before 
 satisfying needs you must create the wherewithal 
 to satisfy them. But before producing anything, 
 must you not feel the need of it ? Is it not neces- 
 sity that first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, 
 to cultivate land, to make implements, and later 
 on to invent machinery ? Is it not the study of 
 needs that should govern production ? It would 
 therefore be quite as logical to begin by consider- 
 ing needs and afterwards to discuss the means of 
 production in order to satisfy these needs. 
 
 This is precisely what we mean to do. 
 
 But as soon as we look at it from this point of 
 view,Pohtical Economy entirely changes its aspect. 
 It ceases to be a simple description of facts, and 
 becomes a science. We can define it as : The 
 study of the needs of humanity, and the means of 
 satisfying them with the least possible waste of human 
 energy. Its true name should be, Physiology of 
 Society. It constitutes a parallel science to the 
 physiology of plants and animals, which also is 
 the study of the needs of plants and animals, and 
 the most advantageous ways of satisfying them. 
 In the series of social sciences, the economy of 
 human societies takes the place, occupied in the 
 series of biological sciences by the physiology of 
 organic bodies. 
 
 We say, here are human beings, united in a 
 society. All feel the need of hving in healthy 
 
238 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 houses. The savage's hut no longer satisfies them ; 
 they require a more or less comfortable solid 
 shelter. The question is, then : whether, man's 
 capacity for production being given, every man 
 can have a house of his own ? and what is hinder- 
 ing him from having it ? 
 
 And we are soon convinced that every family 
 in Europe could perfectly well have a comfortable 
 house, such as are built in England, in Belgium, 
 or in Pullman City, or else an equivalent set of 
 rooms. A certain number of days' work would 
 suf&ce to build a pretty little airy house, well 
 fitted up and lighted by gas. 
 
 But nine-tenths of Europeans have never 
 possessed a healthy house, because at all times 
 common people have had to work day after day 
 to satisfy the needs of their rulers, and have never 
 had the necessary leisure or money to build, or 
 to have built, the home of their dreams. And 
 they can have no houses, and will inhabit 
 hovels as long as present conditions remain un- 
 changed. 
 
 As you see, we proceed contrary to economists, 
 who immortalize these so-called laws of production, 
 and reckoning up the number of houses built 
 every year, demonstrate by statistics, that the 
 new built houses not sufficing to meet all demands, 
 nine-tenths of Europeans must live in hovels. 
 
 Let us pass on to food. After having enumer- 
 ated the benefits accruing from the division of 
 labour, economists tell us the division of labour 
 
CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 239 
 
 requires that some men should work at agricul- 
 ture and others at manufacture. Farmers pro- 
 ducing so much, factories so much, exchange 
 being carried on in such a way, they analyse the 
 sale, the profit, the net gain or the surplus value, 
 the wages, the taxes, banking, and so on. 
 
 But after having followed them so far, we are 
 none the wiser, and if we ask them : " How is it 
 that millions of human beings are in want of bread, 
 when every family could grow sufficient wheat to 
 feed ten, twenty, and even a hundred people 
 annually ? " they answer us by droning the same 
 anthem — division of labour, wages, surplus value, 
 capital, etc. — arriving at the same conclusion, that 
 production is insufficient to satisfy all needs ; a 
 conclusion which, if true, does not answer the 
 question : " Can or cannot man by his labour 
 produce the bread he needs ? And if he cannot, 
 what is hindering him ? " 
 
 Here are 350 miUion Europeans. They need so 
 much bread, so much meat, wine, milk, eggs, and 
 butter every year. They need so many houses, 
 so much clothing. This is the minimum of their 
 needs. Can they produce all this ? and if they 
 can, will there then be left sufficient leisure for 
 art, science, and amusement ? — in a word, for 
 everything that is not comprised in the category 
 of absolute necessities ? If the answer is in the 
 affirmative, — What hinders them going ahead ? 
 What must they do to remove obstacles ? Is 
 time needed ? Let them take it ! But let us not 
 
240 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 lose sight of the aim of production — the satisfac- 
 tion of needs. 
 
 If the most imperious needs of man remain un- 
 satisfied, what must he do to increase the produc- 
 tivity of his work ? And is there no other cause ? 
 Might it not be that production, having lost sight 
 of the needs of man, has strayed in an absolutely 
 wrong direction, and that its organization is at 
 fault ? And as we can prove that such is the 
 case, let us see how to reorganize production so 
 as to really satisfy all needs. 
 
 This seems to us the only right way of facing 
 things. The only way that would allow of 
 Political Economy becoming a science — the Science 
 of Social Physiology. 
 
 It is evident that when this science will treat 
 of production, as it is at present carried on by 
 civilized nations, by Hindoo communes, or by 
 savages, it will hardly state facts otherwise than 
 the economists state them now ; that is to say, 
 as a simple descriptive chapter, analogous to 
 descriptive chapters of Zoology and Botany. 
 But if this chapter were written to throw light on 
 the economy of energy, necessary to satisfy human 
 needs, the chapter would gain in precision, as well 
 as in descriptive value. It would clearly prove 
 the frightful waste of human energy under the 
 present system, and would admit, as we do, 
 that as long as this system exists, the needs of 
 humanity will never be satisfied. 
 
 The point of view, we see, would be entirely 
 
CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 241 
 
 changed. Behind the loom that weaves so many 
 yards of cloth, behind the steel-plate perforator, 
 and behind the safe in which dividends are hoarded, 
 we should see man, the artisan of production, 
 more often than not excluded from the feast he 
 has prepared for others. We should also under- 
 stand that the standpoint being wrong, so-called 
 laws of value and exchange are but a very false 
 explanation of events, as they happen nowadays ; 
 and that things will come to pass very differently 
 when production is organized in such a manner 
 as to meet aU needs of society. 
 
 II 
 
 There is not one single principle of Political 
 Economy that does not change its aspect if you 
 look at it from our point of view. 
 
 Take, for instance, over-production, a word which 
 every day re-echoes in our ears. Is there a single 
 economist, academician, or candidate for academ- 
 ical honours, who has not supported arguments, 
 proving that economic crises are due to over- 
 production — that at a given moment more cotton, 
 more cloth, more watches are produced than are 
 needed ! Have not men accused of " rapacity " 
 the capitalists who are obstinately bent on pro- 
 ducing more than can possibly be consumed ! But 
 on careful examination all these reasonings prove 
 unsound. In fact, Is there a commodity among 
 those in universal use which is produced in greater 
 
242 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 quantity than need be. Examine one by one all 
 commodities sent out by countries exporting on 
 a large scale, and you vvdll see that nearly all are 
 produced in insu-fficient quantities for the inhabit- 
 ants of the countries exporting them. 
 
 It is not a surplus of wheat that the Russian 
 peasant sends to Europe. The most plentiful har- 
 vests of wheat and rye in European Russia only 
 yield enough for the population. And as a rule the 
 peasant deprives himself of what he actually needs 
 when he sells his wheat or rye to pay rent and 
 taxes. 
 
 It is not a surplus of coal that England sends to 
 the four corners of the globe, because only three- 
 quarters of a ton, per head of population, annu- 
 ally, remain for home domestic consumption, and 
 millions of Englishmen are deprived of fire in the 
 winter, or have only just enough to boil a "few 
 vegetables. In fact, setting aside useless luxuries, 
 there is in England, which exports more than 
 any other country, but a single commodity in 
 universal use — cottons — whose production is suffi- 
 ciently great to perhaps exceed the needs of the 
 community. Yet when we look upon the rags 
 that pass for wearing apparel worn by over a 
 third of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, 
 we are led to ask ourselves whether the cottons 
 exported would not, within a trifle, suit the real 
 needs of the population ? 
 
 As a rule it is not a surplus that is exported, 
 though it may have been so originally. The fable 
 
CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 243 
 
 of the barefooted shoemaker is as true of nations 
 as it was formerly of artisans. We export the 
 necessary commodities. And we do so, because 
 the workmen cannot buy with their wages what 
 they have produced, and pay besides the rent and 
 interest to the capitahst and the banker. 
 
 Not only does the ever-growing need of comfort 
 remain unsatisfied, but strict necessaries are often 
 wanting. "Surplus production" does, therefore, 
 not exist, at least not in the sense which is given 
 to it by the theorists of Political Economy. 
 
 Taking another point — aU economists tell us 
 that there is a weU-proved law : " Man produces 
 more than he consumes." After he has lived on 
 the proceeds of his toil, there remains a surplus. 
 Thus, a family of cultivators produces enough to 
 feed several famiUes, and so forth. 
 ■' For us, this oft-repeated sentence has no sense. 
 If it meant that each generation leaves something 
 to future generations, it would be true ; thus, for 
 example, a farmer plants a tree that will live, 
 maybe, for thirty, forty, or a hundred years, and 
 whose fruits will still be gathered by the farmer's 
 grandchildren. Or he clears a few acres of virgin 
 soil, and we say that the heritage of future 
 generations has been increased by that much. 
 Roads, bridges, canals, his house and his furni- 
 ture are so much wealth bequeathed to succeeding 
 generations. 
 
 But this is not what is meant. We are told that 
 the cultivator produces more than he need con- 
 
244 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 sume. Rather should they say that, the State 
 having always taken from him a large share of 
 his produce for taxes, the priest for tithe, and the 
 landlord for rent, a whole class of men has been 
 created, who formerly consumed what they pro- 
 duced — save what was set aside for unforeseen 
 accidents, or expenses incurred in afforestation, 
 roads, etc. — but who to-day are compelled to live 
 very poorly, from hand to mouth, the remainder 
 having been taken from them by the State, the 
 landlord, the priest, and the usurer. 
 
 Let us also observe that if the needs of the indi- 
 vidual are our starting-point, we cannot fail to 
 reach Communism, an organization which enables 
 us to satisfy all needs in the most thorough and 
 economical way. While if we start from our 
 present method of production, and aim at gain 
 and surplus value, without taking into account 
 if production corresponds to the satisfaction of 
 needs, we necessarily arrive at Capitalism, or at 
 most at Collectivism — both being but divers forms 
 of our wages' system. 
 
 In fact, when we consider the needs of the indi- 
 vidual and of society, and the means which man 
 has resorted to in order to satisfy them during 
 his varied phases of development, we are convinced 
 of the necessity of systematizing our efforts, instead 
 of producing haphazard as we do nowadays. It 
 grows evident that the appropriation by a few of 
 all riches not consumed, and transmitted from one 
 generation to another, is not in the^general interest. 
 
CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 245 
 
 We can state as a fact that owing to these methods 
 the needs of three-quarters of society are not 
 satisfied, and that the present waste of human 
 strength is the more useless and the more criminal. 
 
 We discover, moreover, that the most advan- 
 tageous use of all commodities would be, for each 
 of them, to go, first, for satisfjring those needs 
 which are the most pressing : that, in other words, 
 the so-called " value in use " of a commodity does 
 not depend on a simple whim, as has often been 
 af&rmed, but on the satisfaction it brings to real 
 needs. 
 
 Communism — that is to say, an organization 
 which would correspond to a view of Consumption, 
 Production, and Exchange, taken as a whole — 
 therefore becomes the logical consequence of the 
 comprehension of things, the only one, in our 
 opinion, that is really scientific. 
 
 A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and 
 which will know how to organize production, will 
 also have to make a clean sweep of several pre- 
 judices concerning industry, and first of all of the 
 theory often preached by economists — The Division 
 of Labour theory — which we are going to discuss 
 in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 
 
 I 
 
 POLITICAL Economy has always confined 
 itself to stating facts occurring in society, 
 and justif5dng them in the interest of the dominant 
 class. Thus it is in favour of the division of labour 
 created by industry. Having found it profitable 
 to capitalists, it has set it up as a principle. 
 
 Look at the village smith, said Adam Smith, 
 the father of modern Political Economy. If he has 
 never been accustomed to making nails he will 
 only succeed by hard toil in forging two to three 
 hundred a day, and even then they wiU be bad. 
 But if this same smith has never done anything 
 but nails, he will easily supply as many as two 
 thousand three hundred in the course of a day. 
 And Smith hastened to the conclusion — "Divide 
 labour, speciahze, go on speciahzing ; let us have 
 smiths who only know how to make heads or 
 points of nails, and by this means we shall produce 
 more. We shall grow rich." 
 
 That a smith sentenced for hfe to the making 
 of heads of nails would lose all interest in his work, 
 would be entirely at the mercy of his employer 
 
 246 
 
THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 247 
 
 with his limited handicraft, would be out of work 
 four months out of twelve, and that his wages would 
 decrease when he could be easily replaced by an 
 apprentice, Smith did not think of it when he 
 exclaimed — " Long hve the division of labour. 
 This is the real gold-mine that will enrich the 
 nation ! " And aU joined in the cry. 
 
 And later on, when a Sismondi or a J. B. Say 
 began to understand that the division of labour, 
 instead of enriching the whole nation, only enriches 
 the rich, and that the worker, who for life is doomed 
 to making the eighteenth part of a pin, grows 
 stupid and sinks into poverty — what did official 
 economists propose ? Nothing ! They did not 
 say to themselves that by a lifelong grind at one 
 and the same mechanical toil the worker would 
 lose his inteUigence and his spirit of invention, 
 and that, on the contrary, a variety of occupa- 
 tions would result in considerably augmenting the 
 productivity of a nation. But this is the very 
 issue now before us. 
 
 If, however, only economists preached the per- 
 manent and often hereditary division of labour, 
 we might aUow them to preach it as much as 
 they pleased. But ideas taught by doctors of 
 science filter into men's minds and pervert them ; 
 and from repeatedly hearing the division of labour, 
 profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken of as problems 
 long since solved, men, and workers too, end by 
 arguing like economists, and by venerating the 
 san^e fetishes. 
 
248 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Thus we see a number of socialists, even those 
 who have not feared to point out the mistakes of 
 science, justif3dng the division of labour. Talk 
 to them about the organization of work during 
 the Revolution, and they answer that the division 
 of labour must be maintained ; that if you 
 sharpened pins before the Revolution you must go 
 on sharpening them after. True, you will not 
 have to work more than five hours a day, but you 
 will have to sharpen pins all your life, while others 
 will make designs for machines that will enable 
 you to sharpen hundreds of millions of pins during 
 your lifetime ; and others again will be specialists 
 in the higher branches of literature, science, and 
 art, etc. You were born to sharpen pins while 
 Pasteur was born to invent the inoculation against 
 anthrax, and the Revolution will leave you both 
 to your respective employments. Well, it is this 
 horrible principle, so noxious to society, so brutal- 
 izing to the individual, source of so much harm, 
 that we propose to discuss in its divers mani- 
 festations. 
 
 We know the consequences of the division of 
 labour full well. It is evident that we are divided 
 into two classes: on the one hand, producers, 
 who consume very little and are exempt from 
 thinking because they only do physical work, 
 and who work badly because their brains remain 
 inactive ; and on the other hand, the consumers, 
 who, producing Kttle or hardly anything, have the 
 privilege of thinking for the others, and who 
 
THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 249 
 
 think badly because the whole world of those 
 who toil with their hands is unknown to them. 
 The labourers of the soil know nothing of machin- 
 ery ; those who work at machinery ignore every- 
 thing about agriculture. The ideal of modern 
 industry is a child tending a machine that he can- 
 not and must not understand, and a foreman who 
 fines him if his attention flags for a moment. 
 The ideal of industrial agriculture is to do away 
 with the agricultural labourer altogether and 
 to set a man who does odd jobs to tend a steam- 
 plough or a threshing-machine. The division of 
 labour means labelhng and stamping men for 
 life — some to splice ropes in factories, some to be 
 foremen in a business, others to shove huge coal- 
 baskets in a particular part of a mine ; but none 
 of them to have any idea of machinery as a whole, 
 nor of business, nor of mines. And thereby they 
 destroy the love of work and the capacity for 
 invention that, at the beginning of modern in- 
 dustry, created the machinery on which we pride 
 ourselves so much. 
 
 What they have done for individuals, they also 
 wanted to do for nations. Humanity was to be 
 divided into national workshops, having each its 
 speciahty. Russia, we were taught, was destined 
 by nature to grow corn ; England to spin cotton ; 
 Belgium to weave cloth ; while Switzerland was 
 to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each 
 separate city was to establish a speciality. Lyons 
 was to weave silk, Auvergne to make lace, and 
 
250 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Paris fancy articles. Economists believed that 
 specialization opened an immense field for pro- 
 duction and consumption, and that an era of limit- 
 less wealth for mankind was at hand. 
 
 But these great hopes vanished as fast as tech- 
 nical knowledge spread abroad. As long as 
 England stood alone as a weaver of cotton, and 
 as a metal-worker on a large scale ; as long as only 
 Paris made artistic fancy articles, etc., all went 
 well, economists could preach so-called division 
 of labour without being refuted. 
 
 But a new current of thought induced all civil- 
 ized nations to manufacture for themselves. They 
 found it advantageous to produce what they for- 
 merly received from other countries, or from their 
 colonies, which in their turn aimed at emancipating 
 themselves from the mother-country. Scientific 
 discoveries universalized the methods of produc- 
 tion, and henceforth it was useless to pay an exorbi- 
 tant price abroad for what could easily be pro- 
 duced at home. Does not then this industrial 
 revolution strike a crushing blow at the theory 
 of the division of labour which was supposed to 
 be so sound ? 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 
 
 AFTER the Napoleonic wars Britain all but 
 - succeeded in ruining the main industries 
 which had sprung up in France at the end of the 
 preceding century. She became also mistress 
 of the seas and had no rivals of importance. 
 She took in the situation, and knew how to turn 
 its privileges and advantages to account. She 
 established an industrial monopoly, and, imposing 
 upon her neighbours her prices for the goods she 
 alone could manufacture, accumulated riches upon 
 riches. 
 
 But as the middle -class Revolution of the 
 eighteenth century abolished serfdom and created 
 a proletariat in France, industry, hampered for 
 a time in its flight, soared again, and from the 
 second half of the nineteenth century France 
 ceased to be a tributary of England for manufac- 
 tured goods. To-day she too has grown into a 
 nation with an export trade. She sells far more 
 than sixty million pounds' worth of manufactured 
 goods, and two-thirds of these goods are fabrics. 
 The number of Frenchmen working for export 
 
 asi 
 
252 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 or living by their foreign trade, is estimated at 
 three miUions. 
 
 France is therefore no longer England's tribu- 
 tary. In her turn she has striven to monopolize 
 certain branches of foreign industry, such as silks 
 and ready-made clothes, and has reaped immense 
 profits therefrom ; but she is on the point of losing 
 this monopoly for ever, as England is on the point 
 of losing the monopoly of cotton goods. 
 
 Travelling eastwards, industry has reached 
 Germany. Fifty years ago Germany was a tribu- 
 tary of England and France for most manufactured 
 commodities in the higher branches of industry. 
 It is no longer so. In the course of the last 
 forty-five years, and especially since the Franco- 
 German war, Germany has completely reorganized 
 her industry. The new factories are stocked with 
 the best machinery ; the latest creations of in- 
 dustrial art in cotton goods from Manchester, 
 or in silks from Lyons, etc., are now reaUzed in 
 recent German factories. It took two or three 
 generations of workers, at Lyons and Man- 
 chester, to construct the modern machinery ; but 
 Germany adopted it in its perfected state. Tech- 
 nical schools, adapted to the needs of industry, 
 supply the factories with an army of inteUigent 
 workmen — practical engineers, who can work with 
 hand and brain. German industry starts at the 
 point which was only reached by Manchester and 
 Lyons after fifty years of groping in the dark, of 
 exertion and experiments. 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 253 
 
 It follows that as Germany manufactures as well 
 at home, she diminishes her imports from France 
 and England year by year. She has not only 
 become their rival in manufactured goods in Asia 
 and in Africa, but also in London and in Paris. 
 Shortsighted people may cry out against the 
 Frankfort Treaty, they may explain German com- 
 petition by little differences in railway tariffs; 
 they may Unger on the petty side of questions and 
 neglect great historical facts. But it is none the 
 less certain that the main industries, formerly in 
 the hands of England and France, have progressed 
 eastward, and in Germany they found a country, 
 young, full of energy, possessing an intelligent 
 middle class, and eager in its turn to enrich itself 
 by foreign trade. 
 
 While Germany freed itself from subjection to 
 France and England, manufactured her own 
 cotton-cloth, constructed her own machines — ^in 
 fact, manufactured all commodities — the main 
 industries took also root in Russia, where the de- 
 velopment of manufacture is the more surprising 
 as it sprang up but yesterday. 
 
 At the time of the abolition of serfdom in 1861, 
 Russia hardly had any factories. Everything 
 they needed — machines, rails, railway-engines, 
 rich materials — came from the West. Twenty 
 years later she possessed already 85,000 factories, 
 and the goods from these factories had increased 
 fourfold in value. 
 
 The old machinery was superseded, and now 
 
254 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 nearly all the steel in use in Russia, three-quarters 
 of the iron, two-thirds of the coal, all railway- 
 engines, railway-carriages, rails, nearly all steamers, 
 are made in Russia. 
 
 Russia, destined — 'SO wrote economists — to re- 
 main an agricultural territory, has rapidly de- 
 veloped into a manufacturing country. She orders 
 hardly anything from England, and very little 
 from Germany. 
 
 Economists hold the customs responsible for 
 these facts, and yet cottons manufactured in 
 Russia are sold at the same price as in London. 
 Capital taking no cognizance of fatherland, German 
 and English capitalists, accompanied by engineers 
 and foremen of their own nationalities, have intro- 
 duced in Russia and in Poland manufactories, 
 the excellence of whose goods compete with the 
 best from England. If customs were abolished 
 to-morrow, manufacture would only gain by it. 
 Not long ago the British manufacturers delivered 
 another hard blow to the imports of cloth and 
 woollens from the West. They set up in southern 
 and middle Russia immense wool factories, stocked 
 with the most perfect machinery from Bradford, 
 and already now Russia hardly imports more than 
 a few pieces of English cloth and French woollen 
 fabrics as samples. 
 
 The main industries not only move eastward, 
 they are spreading to the southern peninsulas. 
 The Turin Exhibition of 1884 has already shown 
 the progress made in ItaUan manufactured pro- 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 255 
 
 duce ; and, let us not make any mistake about it, 
 the mutual hatred of the French and Itahan 
 middle classes has no other origin than their 
 industrial rivalry. Spain is also becoming an 
 industrial country; while in the East, Bohemia 
 has suddenly sprung up to importance as a new 
 centre of manufactures, provided with perfected 
 machinery and applying the best scientific 
 methods. 
 
 We might also mention Hungary's rapid pro- 
 gress in the main industries, but let us rather take 
 Brazil as an example. Economists sentenced 
 Brazil to cultivate cotton for ever, to export it in 
 its raw state, and to receive cotton-cloth from 
 Europe in exchange. In fact, forty years ago 
 Brazil had only nine wretched little cotton factories 
 with 385 spindles. To-day there are 108 cotton- 
 mills, possessing 715,000 spindles and 26,050 
 looms, which throw 234 miUion yards of textiles 
 on the market annually. 
 
 Even Mexico is setting about manufacturing 
 cotton-cloth, instead of importing it from Europe. 
 As to the United States they have quite freed 
 themselves from European tutelage, and have tri- 
 umphally developed their manufacturing powers. 
 
 But it was India which gave the most striking 
 proof against the specialization of national in- 
 dustry. 
 
 We all know the theory : the great European 
 nations need colonies, for colonies send raw 
 material — cotton fibre, unwashed wool, spices. 
 
256 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 etc., to the mother-land. And the mother-land, 
 under pretence of sending them manufactured 
 wares, gets rid of her burnt stuffs, her machine 
 scrap-iron and everything which she no longer has 
 use for. It costs her little or nothing, and none 
 the less the articles are sold at exorbitant prices. 
 
 Such was the theory — such was the practice 
 for a long time. In London and Manchester 
 fortunes were made while India was being ruined. 
 In the India Museum in London unheard-of 
 riches, collected in Calcutta and Bombay by 
 English merchants, are to be seen. 
 
 But other English merchants and capitalists 
 conceived the very simple idea that it would be 
 more expedient to exploit the natives of India 
 by making cotton-cloth in India itself, than to 
 import from twenty to twenty-four milUon pounds' 
 worth of goods annually. 
 
 At first a series of experiments ended in failure. 
 Indian weavers — artists and experts in their own 
 craft^could not inure themselves to factory life ; 
 the machinery sent from Liverpool was bad ; the 
 climate had to be taken into account ; and 
 merchants had to adapt themselves to new con- 
 ditions, now fully observed, before British India 
 could become the menacing rival of the Mother- 
 land she is to-day. 
 
 She now possesses 200 cotton factories which 
 employ about 196,400 workmen, and contain 
 5,231,000 spindles and 48,400 looms, and 38 jute- 
 mills, with 409,000 spindles. She exports annually 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 257 
 
 to China, to the Dutch Indies, and to Africa, 
 nearly eight million pounds' worth of the same 
 white cotton-cloth, said to be England's speciality. 
 And while English workmen are unemployed and 
 in great want, Indian women weave cotton by 
 machinery for the Far East at the rate of sixpence 
 a day. In short, intelligent manufacturers are 
 fully aware that the day is not far off when 
 they will not know what to do with the " factory 
 hands " who formerly weaved cotton-cloth ex- 
 ported from England. Besides which it is becom- 
 ing more and more evident that India will not im- 
 port a single ton of iron from England. The 
 initial difficulties in using the coal and the iron- 
 ore obtained in India have been overcome ; and 
 foundries, rivalling those in England, have been 
 built on the shores of the Indian Ocean. 
 
 Colonies competing with the mother -land in 
 its production of manufactured goods, such is 
 the factor which will regulate economy in the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 And why should India not manufacture ? 
 What should be the hindrance ? Capital ? — But 
 capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough 
 to be exploited. Knowledge ? — But knowledge 
 recognizes no national barriers. Technical skill 
 of the worker? — No. Are, then, Hindoo work- 
 men inferior to the 237,000 boys and girls, not 
 eighteen years old, at present working in the 
 English textile factories ? 
 
258 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 II 
 
 After having glanced at national industries it 
 would be very interesting to turn to special in- 
 dustries. 
 
 Let us take silkj for example, an eminently 
 French produce in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. We all know how Lyons became the 
 emporium of the silk trade. At first raw silk 
 was gathered in southern France, till little by 
 little they ordered it from Italy, from Spain, 
 from Austria, from the Caucasus, and from Japan, 
 for the manufacture of their silk fabrics. In 1875, 
 out of five million kilos of raw silk converted 
 into stuffs in the vicinity of Lyons, there were only 
 four hundred thousand kilos of French silk. But 
 if Lyons manufactured imported silk, why should 
 not Switzerland, Germany, Russia, do as much ? 
 Silk weaving developed indeed in the villages 
 round Zurich. Bale became a great centre of the 
 silk trade. The Caucasian Administration engaged 
 women from Marseilles and workmen from Lyons 
 to teach Georgians the perfected rearing of silk- 
 worms, and the art of converting silk into fabrics 
 to the Caucasian peasants. Austria followed. 
 Then Germany, with the help of Lyons workmen, 
 built great silk factories. The United States did 
 likewise in Paterson. 
 
 And to-day the silk trade is no longer a French 
 monopoly. Silks are made in Germany, in Austria, 
 in the United States, and in England. In winter, 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 259 
 
 Caucasian peasants weave silk handkerchiefs at 
 a wage that would mean starvation to the silk- 
 weavers of Lyons. Italy sends silks to France; 
 and Lyons, which in 1870-4 exported 460 million 
 francs' worth of silk fabrics, exports now only 
 one-half of that amount. In fact, the time is not 
 far off when Lyons will only send higher class 
 goods and a few novelties as patterns to Germany, 
 Russia, and Japan. 
 
 And so it is in all industries. Belgium has no 
 longer the cloth monopoly ; cloth is made in Ger- 
 many, in Russia, in Austria, in the United States. 
 Switzerland and the French Jura have no longer 
 a clockwork monopoly : watches are made every- 
 where. Scotland no longer refines sugar for 
 Russia : Russian sugar is imported into England. 
 Italy, although neither possessing coal nor iron, 
 makes its own ironclads and engines for her 
 steamers. Chemical industry is no longer an 
 English monopoly ; sulphuric acid and soda are 
 made even in the Urals. Steam-engines, made 
 at Winterthur, have acquired everywhere a wide 
 reputation, and at the present moment, Switzer- 
 land, that has neither coal nor iron — nothing but 
 excellent technical schools — makes machinery 
 better and cheaper than England. So ends the 
 theory of Exchange. 
 
 The tendency of trade, as for all else, is toward 
 decentralization. 
 
 Every nation finds it advantageous to combine 
 agriculture with the greatest possible variety of 
 
26o THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 foundries and manufactories. The specialization, 
 of which economists spoke so highly, enriched a 
 number of capitaUsts but is now of no use. 
 On the contrary, it is to the advantage of 
 every region, every nation, to grow their own 
 wheat, their own vegetables, and to manufacture 
 all produce they consume at home. This diver- 
 sity is the surest pledge of the complete develop- 
 ment of production by mutual co-operation, and 
 the moving cause of progress, while speciaUzation 
 is a hindrance to progress. 
 
 Agriculture can only prosper in proximity to 
 factories. And no sooner does a single factory 
 appear than an infinite variety of other factories 
 must spring up around, so that, mutually sup- 
 porting and stimulating one another by their 
 inventions, they increase their productivity. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is foolish indeed to export wheat and import 
 flour, to export wool and import cloth, to export 
 iron and import machinery ; not only because 
 transportation is a waste of time and money, but, 
 above all, because a country with no developed 
 industry inevitably remains behind the times in 
 agriculture ; because a country with no large 
 factories to bring steel to a finished condition is 
 also backward in aU other industries ; and lastly, 
 because the industrial and technical capacities of 
 the nation remain undeveloped. 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 261 
 
 In the world of production everything holds 
 together nowadays. Cultivation of the soil is 
 no longer possible without machinery, without 
 great irrigation works, without railways, without 
 manure factories. And to adapt this machinery, 
 these railways, these irrigation engines, etc., to 
 local conditions, a certain spirit of invention, a 
 certain amount of technical skill, that lie dormant 
 as long as spades and ploughshares are the only 
 implements of cultivation, must be developed. 
 
 If fields are to be properly cultivated, and are 
 to 3H.eld the abundant harvests man has the right 
 to expect, it is essential that workshops, foun- 
 dries, and factories develop within the reach of 
 the field^. A variety of occupations, a variety of 
 skill arising therefrom and working together for a 
 common aim — these are the genuine forces of 
 progress. 
 
 And now let us imagine the inhabitants of a 
 city or a territory — whether vast or small — step- 
 ping for the first time on to the path of the Social 
 Revolution. 
 
 We are sometimes told that " nothing will 
 have changed": that the mines, the factories, etc., 
 will be expropriated, and proclaimed national or 
 communal property, that every man will go back 
 to his usual work, and that the Revolution will 
 then be accomplished. 
 
 But this is a dream : the Social Revolution can- 
 not take place so simply. 
 
 We have already mentioned that should the 
 
262 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Revolution break out to-morrow in Paris, Lyons, 
 or any other city — should the workers lay hands 
 on factories, houses, and banks, present produc- 
 tion would be completely revolutionized by this 
 simple fact. 
 
 International commerce will come to a stand- 
 still ; so also will the importation of foreign 
 bread-stuffs ; the circulation of commodities and 
 of provisions will be paralysed. And then, the 
 city or territory in revolt wiU be compelled to pro- 
 vide for itself, and to reorganize production. If it 
 fails to do so, it is death. If it succeeds, it will 
 revolutionize the economic life of the country. 
 
 The quantity of imported provisions having 
 decreased, consumption having increased, one 
 million Parisians working for exportation purposes 
 having been thrown out of work, a great number 
 of things imported to-day from distant or neigh- 
 bouring countries not reaching their destination, 
 fancy-trade being temporarily at a standstill. 
 What will the inhabitants have to eat six months 
 after the Revolution ? 
 
 We think that when the stores are empty, the 
 masses will seek to obtain their food from the land. 
 They will be compelled to cultivate the soil, to 
 combine agricultural production with industrial 
 production in Paris and its environs. They will 
 have to abandon the merely ornamental trades 
 and consider the most urgent need — bread. 
 
 Citizens will be obliged to become agriculturists. 
 Not in the same manner as peasants who wear 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 263 
 
 themselves out, ploughing for a wage that barely 
 provides them with sufficient food for the year, but 
 by following the principles of market-gardeners' 
 intensive agriculture, applied on a large scale by 
 means of the best machinery that man has in- 
 vented or can invent. They will till the land — 
 not, however, like the country beast of burden : 
 a Paris jeweller would object to that. They will 
 reorganize cultivation ; not in ten years time, but 
 at once, during the revolutionary struggles, from 
 fear of being worsted by the enemy. 
 
 Agriculture will have to be carried on by in- 
 telligent beings, availing themselves of their 
 knowledge, organizing themselves in joyous gangs 
 for pleasant work, like the men who, a hundred 
 yearsago, worked in the Champ de Mars for the 
 Feast of the Federation — a work of delight, when 
 not carried to excess, when scientifically organ- 
 ized, when man invents and improves his tools 
 and is conscious of being a useful member of the 
 community. 
 
 Of course, they will not only cultivate, they wiU 
 also produce those things which they formerly 
 used to order from foreign parts. And let us not 
 forget that for the inhabitants of a revolted terri- 
 tory, "foreign parts" may include all districts 
 that have not joined in the revolutionary move- 
 ment. During the Revolutions of 1793 and 1871 
 Paris was made to feel that " foreign parts " 
 meant even the couhtry district at her very gates. 
 The speculator in grains at Troyes starved the 
 
264 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 sansculottes of Paris more effectually than the 
 German armies brought on French soil by the 
 Versailles conspirators. The revolted city will 
 be compelled to do without " foreigners," and 
 why not ? France invented beet - root sugar 
 when sugar-cane ran short during the continental 
 blockade. Parisians discovered saltpetre in their 
 cellars when they no longer received any from 
 abroad. Shall we be inferior to our grandfathers, 
 who with difficulty lisped the first words of science? 
 
 A revolution is more than the destruction of a 
 political system. It implies the awakening of 
 human intelligence, the increasing of the inventive 
 spirit tenfold, a hundredfold ; it is the dawn of 
 a new science — the science of men like Laplace, 
 Lamarck, Lavoisier. It is a revolution in the 
 minds of men, more than in their institutions. 
 
 And economists tell us to return to our work- 
 shops, as if passing through a revolution were 
 going home after a walk in the Epping forest ! 
 
 To begin with, the sole fact of having laid hands 
 on middle-class property implies the necessity of 
 completely reorganizing the whole of economic 
 life in workshops, in dockyards, and in factories. 
 
 And the revolution will not fail to act in this 
 direction. Should Paris, during the social revo- 
 lution, be cut off from the world for a year or 
 two by the supporters of middle-class rule, its 
 millions of intellects, not yet depressed by factory 
 Ufe — that City of little trades which stimulate the 
 spirit of invention — will show the world what 
 
DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 265 
 
 man's brain can accomplish without asking any 
 help from without, but the motor force of the sun 
 that gives light, the power of the wind that sweeps 
 away impurities, and the silent life-forces at work 
 in the earth we tread on. 
 
 We shall see then what a variety of trades, 
 mutually co-operating on a spot of the globe and 
 animated by the social revolution, can do to 
 feed, clothe, house, and supply with all manner 
 of luxuries millions of intelligent men. 
 
 We need write no fiction to prove this. What 
 we are sure of, what has already been experi- 
 mented upon, and recognized as practical, would 
 suffice to carry it into effect, if the attempt were 
 fertilized, vivified by the daring inspiration of 
 the Revolution and the spontaneous impulse of 
 the masses. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 AGRICULTURE 
 
 POLITICAL Economy has often been re- 
 proached with drawing all its deductions 
 from the decidedly false principle, that the only 
 incentive capable of forcing a man to augment 
 his power of production is personal interest in 
 its narrowest sense. 
 
 The reproach is perfectly true ; so true that 
 epochs of great industrial discoveries and true 
 progress in industry are precisely those in which 
 the happiness of all was the aim pursued, and in 
 which personal enrichment was least thought of. 
 Great investigators and great inventors aimed, 
 without doubt, at the emancipation of mankind. 
 And if Watt, Stephenson, Jacquard, etc., could 
 have only foreseen what a state of misery their 
 sleepless nights would bring to the workers, they 
 would probably have burned their designs and 
 broken their models. 
 
 Another principle that pervades Political Econ- 
 omy is just as false. It is the tacit admission, 
 common to aU economists, that if there is often 
 over-production in certain branches, a society 
 
 266 
 
AGRICULTURE 267 
 
 will nevertheless never have sufficient products 
 to satisfy the wants of all, and that consequently 
 the day will never come when nobody will be forced 
 to sell his labour in exchange for wages. This 
 tacit admission is found at the basis of all theories 
 and the so-called " laws " taught by economists. 
 
 And yet it is certain that the day when any 
 civiUzed association of individuals would ask 
 itself, what are the needs of all, and the means of 
 satisfying them, it would see that, in industry 
 as in agriculture, it already possesses sufficient 
 to provide abundantly for all needs, on condition 
 that it knows how to apply these means to satisfy 
 real needs. 
 
 That this is true as regards industry no one can 
 contest. Indeed, it suffices to study the processes 
 already in use to extract coals and ore, to obtain 
 steel and work it, to manufacture what is used 
 for clothing, etc., in large industrial establish- 
 ments, in order to perceive that we could already 
 increase our production fourfold and yet economize 
 work. 
 
 We go further. We assert that agriculture is 
 in the same position : the labourer, like the manu- 
 facturer, already possesses the means to increase 
 his production, not only fourfold but tenfold, 
 and he will be able to put it into practice as soon 
 as he feels the need of it, as soon as the sociahst 
 organization of work will be established instead 
 of the present capitahstic one. 
 
 Each time agriculture is spoken of, men imagine 
 
268 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 a peasant bending over the plough, throwing badly 
 sorted corn haphazard into the ground and wait- 
 ing anxiously for what the good or bad season 
 will bring forth ; or a family working from morn 
 to night and reaping as reward a rude bed, dry 
 bread, and coarse beverage. In a word, they 
 picture " the wild beast " of La Bruyere. 
 
 And for this man, thus subjected to misery, 
 the utmost relief society proposes is to reduce 
 his taxes or his rent. But they do not even dare 
 to imagine a cultivator standing erect, taking 
 leisure, and producing by a few hours' work per 
 day sufficient food to nourish, not only his own 
 family, but a hundred men more at the least. 
 In their most glowing dreams of the future 
 Socialists do not go beyond American extensive 
 culture, which, after all, is but the infancy of 
 agricultural art. 
 
 The agriculturist has broader ideas to-day — 
 his conceptions are on a far grander scale. He 
 only asks for a fraction of an acre in order to 
 produce sufficient vegetables for a family ; and 
 to feed twenty-five horned beasts he needs no 
 more space than he formerly required to feed 
 one ; his aim is to make his own soil, to defy 
 seasons and chmate, to warm both air and earth 
 around the young plant ; to produce, in a word, 
 on one acre what he used to crop on fifty acres, 
 and that without any excessive fatigue — by greatly 
 reducing, on the contrary, the total of former 
 labour. He knows that we will be able to feed 
 
AGRICULTURE 269 
 
 everybody by giving to the culture of the fields 
 no more time than what each can give with 
 pleasure and joy. 
 
 This is the present tendency of agriculture. 
 
 While scientific men, led by Liebig, the creator 
 of the chemical theory of agriculture, often got 
 on the wrong tack in their love of mere theories, 
 unlettered agriculturists opened up new roads to 
 prosperity. Market-gardeners of Paris, Troyes, 
 Rouen, Scotch and English gardeners, Flemish 
 farmers, peasants of Jersey, Guernsey, and farmers 
 on the SciUy Isles have opened up such large 
 horizons that the mind hesitates to grasp them. 
 While up till lately a family of peasants needed 
 at least seventeen to twenty acres to live on the 
 produce of the soil — and we know how peasants 
 hve — we can no longer say what is the mini- 
 mum area on which aU that is necessary to a 
 family can be grown, even including articles of 
 luxury, if the soil is worked by means of intensive 
 culture. 
 
 Ten years ago it could already be asserted that 
 a population of thirty million individuals could 
 hve very well, without importing anything, on 
 what could be grown in Great Britain. But now, 
 when we see the progress recently made in France 
 as well as in England, and when we contemplate 
 the new horizons which open before us, we can say 
 that in cultivating the earth as it is already 
 cultivated in many places, even on poor soils, 
 fifty or sixty million inhabitants to the territory 
 
270 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 of Great Britain would still be a very feeble pro- 
 portion to what man could exact from the soil. 
 
 In any case (as we are about to demonstrate) 
 we may consider it as absolutely proved that 
 if to-morrow Paris and the two departments of 
 Seine and of Seine-et-Oise organized themselves 
 as an Anarchist commune, in which all worked 
 with their hands, and if the entire universe re- 
 fused to send them a single bushel of wheat, a 
 single head of cattle, a single basket of fruit, and 
 left them only the territory of the two depart- 
 ments, they could not only produce corn, meat, 
 and vegetables necessary for themselves, but also 
 articles of luxury in sufficient quantities for all. 
 
 And, in addition, we af&rm that the sum total 
 of this labour would be far less than that expended 
 at present to feed these people with corn harvested 
 in Auvergne and Russia, with vegetables pro- 
 duced a little everywhere by extensive agriculture, 
 and with fruit grown in the South. 
 
 It is self-evident that we in nowise desire ' all ' 
 exchange to be suppressed, nor that each region 
 should strive to produce that which will only grow 
 in its climate by a more or less artificial culture. 
 But we care to draw attention to the fact that the 
 theory of exchange, such as is understood to-day, 
 is strangely exaggerated — that exchange is often 
 useless and even harmful. We assert, moreover, 
 that people have never had a right conception 
 of the immense labour of Southern wine growers, 
 nor of that of Russian and Hungarian corn growers. 
 
AGRICULTURE 271 
 
 whose excessive labour could also be very much 
 reduced if they adopted intensive culture, instead 
 of their present system of extensive agriculture. 
 
 II 
 
 It would be impossible to quote here the mass 
 of facts on which we base our assertions. We are 
 therefore obliged to refer our readers who want 
 further information to another book, " Fields, Fac- 
 tories, and Workshops." Above aU we earnestly 
 invite those who are interested in the question to 
 read several excellent works published in France 
 and elsewhere, and of which we give a list at the 
 close of this book (i). As to the inhabitants of 
 large towns, who have as yet no real notion of 
 what agriculture can be, we advise them to explore 
 the surrounding market-gardens and study the 
 cultivation. They need but observe and question 
 market-gardeners, and a new world will be open 
 to them. They will thus be able to see what 
 European agriculture may be in the twentieth cen- 
 tury ; and they will understand with what force 
 the social revolution wiU be armed when we know 
 the secret of taking everything we need from the 
 soil. 
 
 A few facts will suffice to show that our asser- 
 tions are in no way exaggerated. We only wish 
 them to be preceded by a few general remarks. 
 
 We know in what a wretched condition Euro- 
 pean agriculture is. If the cultivator of the soil 
 
272 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 is not plundered by the landowner, he is robbed 
 by the State. If the State taxes him moderately, 
 the money-lender enslaves him by means of pro- 
 missory notes, and soon turns him into the simple 
 tenant of a soil belonging in reality to a financial 
 company. The landlord, the State, and the 
 banker thus plunder the cultivator by means of 
 rent, taxes, and interest. The sum varies in 
 each country, but it never falls below the quarter, 
 very often the half of the raw produce. In 
 France agriculturists paid the State quite recently 
 as much as 44 per cent of the gross produce. 
 
 Moreover, the share of the owner and the State 
 always goes on increasing. As soon as the culti- 
 vator has obtained more plentiful crops by 
 prodigies of labour, invention, or initiative, the 
 tribute he will owe to the landowner, the State, 
 and the banker will augment in proportion. If 
 he doubles the number of bushels reaped per 
 acre, rent will be doubled and taxes too, and the 
 State will take care to raise them still more if 
 the prices go up. And so on. In short, every- 
 where the cultivator of the soil works twelve to 
 sixteen hours a day ; these three vultures take 
 from him everything he might lay by ; they rob 
 him everywhere of what would enable him to 
 improve his culture. This is why agriculture 
 progresses so slowly. 
 
 The cultivator can only occasionally make 
 some progress, in some exceptional regions, under 
 quite exceptional circumstances, following upon 
 
AGRICULTURE 273 
 
 a quarrel between the three vampires. And 
 yet we have said nothing about the tribute every 
 cultivator pays to the manufacturer. Every 
 machine, every spade, every barrel of chemical 
 manure, is sold to him at three or four times its 
 real cost. Nor let us forget the middleman, who 
 levies the lion's share of the earth's produce. 
 
 This is why, during all this century of invention 
 and progress, agriculture has only improved from 
 time to time on very limited areas. 
 
 Happily there have always been small oasises, 
 neglected for some time by the vultures; and 
 here we learn what intensive agriculture can 
 produce for mankind. Let us mention a few 
 examples. 
 
 In the American prairies (which, however, only 
 yield meagre spring wheat crops, from 7 to 15 
 bushels an acre, and even these are often marred by 
 periodical droughts), 500 men, working only during 
 eight months, produce the annual food of 50,000 
 people. With all the improvements of the last 
 few years, one man's yearly labour (300 days) 
 yields, delivered in Chicago as flour, the yearly 
 food of 250 men. Here the result is obtained by 
 a great economy in manual labour: on those 
 vast plains, which the eye cannot encompass, 
 ploughing, harvesting, thrashing, are organized 
 in almost military fashion. There is no useless 
 running to and fro, no loss of time — all is done 
 with parade-like precision. 
 
 This is agriculture on a large scale — extensive 
 
 T 
 
274 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 agriculture, which takes the soil from nature 
 without seeking to improve it. When the earth 
 has yielded all it can, they leave it; they seek 
 elsewhere for a virgin soil, to be exhausted in its 
 turn. But there is also " intensive " agriculture, 
 which is already worked, and will be more and 
 more so, by machinery. Its object is to cultivate 
 a limited space well, to manure, to improve, to 
 concentrate work, and to obtain the largest crop 
 possible. This kind of culture spreads every year, 
 and whereas agriculturists in the south of France 
 and on the fertile plains of Western America are 
 content with an average crop of ii to 15 bushels 
 per acre by extensive culture, they reap regu- 
 larly 39, even 55, and sometimes 60 bushels per 
 acre in the north of France. The annual con- 
 sumption of a man is thus obtained from less 
 than a quarter of an acre. 
 
 And the more intense the culture is, the less 
 work is expended to obtain a bushel of wheat. 
 Machinery replaces man at the preliminary work 
 and for the improvements needed by the land — 
 such as draining, clearing of stones — which will 
 double the crops in future, once and for ever. 
 Sometimes nothing but keeping the soil free of 
 weeds, without manuring, allows an average soil 
 to yield excellent crops from year to year. It 
 has been done for twenty years in succession at 
 Rothamstead, in Hertfordshire. 
 
 Let us not write an agricultural romance, but 
 be satisfied with a crop of 44 bushels per acre. 
 
AGRICULTURE 375 
 
 That needs no exceptional soil, but merely a 
 rational culture ; and let us see what it means. 
 
 The 3,600,000 individuals who inhabit the two 
 departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise consume 
 yearly for their food a little less than 22 million 
 bushels of cereals, chiefly wheat ; and in our hypo- 
 thesis they would have to cultivate, in order to 
 obtain this crop, 494,200 acres out of the 1,507,300 
 acres which they possess. It is evident they would 
 not cultivate them with spades. That would need 
 too much time — 96 work-days of 5 hours per 
 acre. It would be preferable to improve the 
 soil once for all — to drain what needed to be 
 drained, to level what needed levelling, to clear 
 the soil of stones, were it even necessary to 
 spend 5 million days of 5 hours in this prepara- 
 tory work — an average of 10 work-days to each 
 acre. 
 
 Then they would plough with the steam-digger, 
 which would take one and three-fifths of a day 
 per acre, and they would give another one and 
 three-fifths of a day for working with the double 
 plough. Seeds would be sorted by steam instead 
 of taken haphazard, and they would be carefully 
 sown in rows instead of being thrown to the four 
 winds. Now all this work would not take 10 
 days of 5 hours per acre if the work were done 
 under good conditions. But if 10 million work- 
 days are given to good culture during 3 or 4 years, 
 the result will be later on crops of 44 to 55 bushels 
 per acre by only working half the time. 
 
276 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Fifteen million work-days will have thus been 
 spent to give bread to a population of 3,600,000 
 inhabitants. And the work would be such that 
 each could do it without having muscles of steel, 
 or without having even worked the ground be- 
 fore. The initiative and the general distribution 
 of work would come from those who know the 
 soil. As to the work itself, there is no townsman 
 of either sex so enfeebled as to be incapable of 
 looking after machines and of contributing his 
 share to agrarian work after a few hours' appren- 
 ticeship. 
 
 Well, when we consider that in the present 
 chaos there are, in a city like Paris, without count- 
 ing the unemployed of the upper classes, about 
 100,000 men out of work in their several trades, 
 we see that the power lost in our present organiza- 
 tion would alone suffice to give, with a rational 
 culture, bread necessary to the three or four million 
 inhabitants of the two departments. 
 
 We repeat, this is no fancy dream, and we have 
 not spoken of the truly intensive agriculture. 
 We have not depended upon the wheat (obtained 
 in three years by Mr. Hallett) of which one grain, 
 replanted, produced 5000 or 6000, and occasion- 
 ally 10,000 grains, which would give the wheat 
 necessary for a family of five individuals on an 
 area of 120 square yards. On the contrary, we 
 have only mentioned what has been already 
 achieved by numerous farmers in France, England, 
 Belgium, etc., and what might be done to-morrow 
 
AGRICULTURE 277 
 
 with the experience and knowledge acquired al- 
 ready by practice on a large scale. 
 
 But without a revolution, neither to-morrow, 
 nor after to-morrow will see it done, because it is 
 not to the interest of landowners and capitalists ; 
 and because peasants who would find their profit 
 in it have neither the knowledge nor the money, 
 nor the time to obtain what is necessary to go 
 ahead. 
 
 The present society has not yet reached this 
 stage. But let Parisians proclaim an Anarchist 
 Commune, and they will of necessity come to it, 
 because they will not be foolish enough to continue 
 making luxurious toys (which Vienna, Warsaw, 
 and Berlin make as well already) and to run the 
 risk of being left without bread. 
 
 Moreover, agricultural work, by the help of 
 machinery, would soon become the most attrac- 
 tive and the most joyful of all occupations. 
 
 " We have had enough jewellery and enough 
 dolls' clothes," they would say; "it is high time 
 for the workers to recruit their strength in agricul- 
 ture, to go in search of vigour, of impressions of 
 nature, of the joy of life, that they have forgotten 
 in the dark factories of the suburbs." 
 
 In the Middle Ages it was Alpine pasture lands, 
 rather than guns, which allowed the Swiss to shake 
 off lords and kings. Modern agriculture will 
 allow a city in revolt to free itself from the com- 
 bined bourgeois forces. 
 
278 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 III 
 
 We have seen how the 3| million inhabitants 
 of the two departments round Paris could find 
 ample bread by cultivating only a third of their 
 territory. Let us now pass on to cattle. 
 
 Englishmen, who eat much meat, consume on 
 an average a little less than 220 lb. a year per 
 adult. Supposing all meats consumed were oxen, 
 that makes a little less than the third of an ox. 
 An ox a year for 5 individuals (including children) 
 is already a sufficient ration. For 3|- million 
 inhabitants this would make an annual consump- 
 tion of 700,000 head of cattle. 
 
 To-day, with the pasture system, we need at 
 least 5 million acres to nourish 660,000 head of 
 cattle. This makes 9 acres per each head of horned 
 cattle. Nevertheless, with prairies moderately 
 watered by spring water (as recently done on 
 thousands of acres in the south-west of France), 
 I J million acres already sufl&ce. But if intensive 
 culture is practised, and beetroot is grown for 
 fodder, you only need a quarter of that area, that 
 is to say, about 310,000 acres. And if we have 
 recourse to maize and practise ensilage (the com- 
 pression of fodder while green) like Arabs, we 
 obtain fodder on an area of 217,500 acres. 
 
 In the environs of Milan, where sewer water is 
 used to irrigate the fields, fodder for 2 to 3 horned 
 cattle per each acre is obtained on an area of 
 22,000 acres ; and on a few favoured fields, up to 
 
AGRICULTURE 279 
 
 177 tons of hay to the 10 acres have been cropped, 
 the yearly provender of 36 milch cows. Nearly 
 nine acres per head of cattle are needed under 
 the pasture system, and only 2J acres for 9 oxen or 
 cows under the new system. These are the oppo- 
 site extremes in modern agriculture. 
 
 In Guernsey, on a total of 9884 acres utilized, 
 nearly half (4695 acres) are covered with cereals 
 and kitchen-gardens ; only 5189 acres remain as 
 meadows. On these 5189 acres, 1480 horses, 
 7260 head of cattle, 900 sheep, and 4200 pigs are 
 fed, which makes more than 3 head of cattle per 
 2 acres, without reckoning the sheep or the pigs. 
 It is needless to add that the fertility of the soil 
 is made by seaweed and chemical manures. 
 
 Returning to our 3J million inhabitants belong- 
 ing to Paris and its environs, we see that the land 
 necessary for the rearing of cattle comes down 
 from 5 million acres to 197,000. Well, then, let 
 us not stop at the lowest figures, let us take those 
 of ordinary intensive culture ; let us Uberally add 
 to the land necessary for smaller cattle which 
 must replace some of the horned beasts and 
 allow 395,000 acres for the rearing of cattle — 
 494,000 if you hke, on the 1,013,000 acres re- 
 maining after bread has been provided for the 
 people. 
 
 Let us be generous and give 5 million work-days 
 to put this land into a productive state. 
 
 After having therefore employed in the course 
 of a year 20 million work-days, half of which are 
 
28o THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 for permanent improvements, we shall have bread 
 and meat assured to us, without including all the 
 extra meat obtainable in the shape of fowls, pigs, 
 rabbits, etc. ; without taking into consideration 
 that a population provided with excellent vege- 
 tables and fruit consumes less meat than English- 
 men, who supplement their poor supply of vege- 
 tables by animal food. Now, how much do 
 20 million work-days of 5 hours make per inhabi- 
 tant ? Very little indeed. A population of 3J 
 millions must have at least 1,200,000 adult men, 
 and as many women capable of work. Well, 
 then, to give bread and meat to all, it would need 
 only 17 half-days of work a year per man. Add 
 3 million work-days, or double that number 
 if you like, in order to obtain milk. That will 
 make 25 work-days of 5 hours in all — nothing 
 more than a little pleasurable country exercise — 
 to obtain the three principal products : bread, 
 meat, and milk. The three products which, 
 after housing, cause daily anxiety to nine-tenths 
 of mankind. 
 
 And yet — let us not tire of repeating — these are 
 not fancy dreams. We have only told what is, 
 what has been, obtained by experience on a large 
 scale. Agriculture could be reorganized in this 
 way to-morrow if property laws and general 
 ignorance did not offer opposition. 
 
 The day Paris has understood that to know 
 what you eat and how it is produced, is a question 
 of pubhc interest ; the day when everybody will 
 
AGRICULTURE 281 
 
 have understood that this question is infinitely 
 more important than all the parliamentary debates 
 of the present times — on that day the Revolution 
 will be an accomplished fact. Paris will take 
 possession of the two departments and cultivate 
 them. And then the Parisian worker, after 
 having laboured a third of his existence in order 
 to buy bad and insufficient food, will produce it 
 himself, under his walls, within the enclosure of 
 his forts (if they still exist), in a few hours of 
 healthy and attractive work. 
 
 And now we pass on to fruit and vegetables. 
 Let us go outside Paris and visit the establishment 
 of a market-gardener who accomplishes wonders 
 (ignored by learned economists) at a few miles 
 from the academies. 
 
 Let us visit, suppose, M. Ponce, the author of a 
 work on market-gardening, who makes no secret 
 of what the earth yields him, and who has pub- 
 lished it aU along. 
 
 M. Ponce, and especially his workmen, work 
 like niggers. It takes eight men to cultivate a 
 plot a httle less than 3 acres (2-1^). They work 
 12, and even 15 hours a day, that is to say, 
 three times more that is needed. Twenty-four 
 of them would not be too many. To which 
 M. Ponce will probably answer that as he pays 
 the terrible sum of £100 rent a year for his 
 2^ acres of land, and £100 for manure bought in 
 the barracks, he is obliged to exploit. He would 
 no doubt answer, " Being exploited, I exploit in 
 
282 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 my turn." His installation has also cost him 
 ii20o, of which certainly more than half went as 
 tribute to the idle barons of industry. In reality, 
 this estabhshment represents at most 3000 work- 
 days, probably much less. 
 
 But let us examine his crops : nearly 10 tons of 
 carrots, nearly 10 tons of onions, radishes, and small 
 vegetables, 6000 heads of cabbage, 3000 heads of 
 cauKflower, 5000 baskets of tomatoes, 5000 dozen 
 of choice fruit, 154,000 salads ; in short, a total 
 of 123 tons of vegetables and fruit to 2xV acres — 
 120 yards long by 109 yards broad, which makes 
 more than 44 tons of vegetables to the acre. 
 
 But a man does not eat more than 660 lb. of 
 vegetables and fruit a year, and 2|- acres of a 
 market-garden yield enough vegetables and fruit 
 to richly supply the table of 350 adults during 
 the year. Thus 24 persons employed a whole 
 year in cultivating 2xV acres of land, and only 
 working 5 hours a day, would produce sufficient 
 vegetables and fruit for 350 adults, which is 
 equivalent at least to 500 individuals. 
 
 To put it in another way : in cultivating Uke 
 M. Ponce — and his results have already been 
 surpassed — 350 adults should each give a httle 
 more than 100 hours a year (103) to produce 
 vegetables and fruit necessary for 500 people. 
 
 Let us mention that such a production is not 
 the exception. It takes place, under the walls 
 of Paris, on an area of 2220 acres, by 5000 market 
 gardeners. Only these market-gardeners are re- 
 
AGRICULTURE 283 
 
 duced nowadays to a state of beasts of burden, 
 in order to pay an average rent of ^'^7, per acre. 
 
 But do not these facts, which can be verified by 
 every one, prove that 17,300 acres (of the 519,000 
 remaining to us) would suffice to give all necessary 
 vegetables, as well as a liberal amount of fruit to 
 the 3|- milUons inhabitants of our two depart- 
 ments ? 
 
 As to the quantity of work necessary to produce 
 these fruits and vegetables, it would amount to 
 50 million work-days of 5 hours (50 days per adult 
 male), if we measure by the market-gardeners' 
 standard of work. But we could reduce this 
 quantity if we had recourse to the process in vogue 
 in Jersey and Guernsey. We must also remember 
 that the Paris market-gardener is forced to work 
 so hard because he mostly produces early season 
 fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for 
 fabulous rents, and that this system of culture 
 entails more work than is really necessary. The 
 market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means 
 to make a great outlay on their gardens, and 
 being obliged to pay heavily for glass, wood, 
 iron, and coal, obtain their artificial heat out of 
 manure, while it can be had at much less cost in 
 hothouses. 
 
 IV 
 
 The market-gardeners, we say, are forced to 
 become machines and to renounce all joys of life 
 to obtain their marvellous crops. But these hard 
 
284 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 grinders have rendered a great service to humanity 
 in teaching us that the soil can be " made." 
 They make it with old hotbeds of manure, which 
 have already served to give the necessary warmth 
 to young plants and to early fruit ; and they make 
 it in such great quantity that they are compelled 
 to sell it in part, otherwise it would raise the level 
 of their gardens by one inch every year. They 
 do it so well (so Barral teaches us, in his " Dic- 
 tionary of Agriculture," in an article on market- 
 gardeners) that in recent contracts, the market- 
 gardener stipulates that he will carry away his 
 soil with him when he leaves the bit of ground he 
 is cultivating. Loam carried away on carts, with 
 furniture and glass frames — that is the answer of 
 practical cultivators to the learned treatises of 
 a Ricardo, who represented rent as a means of 
 equalizing the natural advantages of the soil. 
 " The soil is worth what man is worth," that is 
 the gardeners' motto. 
 
 And yet the market-gardeners of Paris and 
 Rouen labour three times as hard to obtain the 
 same results as their feUow-workers in Guernsey 
 or in England. Applying industry to agriculture, 
 these last make their climate in addition to their 
 soil, by means of the greenhouse. 
 
 Fifty years ago the greenhouse was the luxury 
 of the rich. It was kept to grow exotic plants for 
 pleasure. But nowadays its use begins to be 
 generalized. A tremendous industry has grown 
 up lately in Guernsey and Jersey, where hundre ds 
 
AGRICULTURE 285 
 
 of acres are already covered with glass — to say 
 nothing of the countless small greenhouses kept in 
 every little farm garden. Acres and acres of 
 greenhouses have lately been built also at Worth- 
 ing, in the suburbs of London, and in several other 
 parts of England and Scotland. 
 
 They are built of all qualities, beginning with 
 those which have granite walls, down to those 
 which represent mere shelters made in planks and 
 glass frames, which cost, even now, with all the 
 tribute paid to capitalists and middlemen, less 
 than 3s. 6d. per square yard under glass. Most of 
 them are heated for at least three or four months 
 every year ; but even the cool greenhouses, which 
 are not heated at all, give excellent results — of 
 course, not for growing grapes and tropical plants, 
 but for potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, and so on. 
 
 In this way man emancipates himself from 
 chmate, and at the same time he avoids also the 
 heavy work with the hot-beds, and he saves both 
 in buying much less manure and in work. Three 
 men to the acre, each of them working less than 
 sixty hours a week, grow on very small spaces 
 what formerly required acres and acres of land. 
 
 The result of all these recent conquests of cul- 
 ture is, that if one half only of the adults of a 
 city gave each about fifty half-days for the culture 
 of the finest fruit and vegetables out of season, they 
 would have all the year round an unlimited supply 
 of that sort of fruit and vegetables for the whole 
 population. 
 
286 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 But there is a still more important fact to notice. 
 The greenhouse has nowadays a tendency to be- 
 come a mere kitchen garden under glass. And when 
 it is used to such a purpose, the simplest plank- 
 and-glass unheated shelters already give fabulous 
 crops — such as, for instance, 500 bushels of potatoes 
 per acre as a first crop, ready by the end of April ; 
 after which a second and a third crop are obtained 
 in the extremely high temperature which prevails 
 in the summer under glass. 
 
 I gave in my "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," 
 most striking facts in this direction. Sufficient to 
 say here, that at Jersey, 34 men, with one trained 
 gardener only, cultivate 13 acres under glass, from 
 which they obtain 143 tons of fruit and early 
 vegetables, using for this extraordinary culture 
 less than 1000 tons of coal. 
 
 And this is done now in Guernsey and Jersey on 
 a very large scale, quite a number of steamers 
 constantly plying between Guernsey and London, 
 only to export the crops of the greenhouses. 
 
 Nowadays, in order to obtain that same crop of 
 500 bushels of potatoes, we must plough every year 
 a surface of 4 acres, plant it, cultivate it, weed it, 
 and so on ; whereas with the glass, even if we 
 shall have to give perhaps, to start with, half a 
 day's work per square yard in order to build the 
 greenhouse — we shaU save afterwards at least one- 
 half, and probably three-quarters of the formerly 
 required yearly labour. 
 
 These are facts, results which every one can 
 
AGRICULTURE 287 
 
 verify himself. And these facts are already a hint 
 as to what man could obtain from the earth if he 
 treated it with intelligence. 
 
 V 
 
 In all the above we have reasoned upon what 
 already withstood the test of experience. Inten- 
 sive culture of the fields, irrigated meadows, the 
 hothouse, and finally the kitchen garden under 
 glass are realities. Moreover, the tendency is to 
 extend and to generalize these methods of culture, 
 because they aUow of obtaining more produce 
 with less work and with more certainty. 
 
 In fact, after having studied the most simple 
 glass shelters of Guernsey, we affirm that, taking 
 all in all, far less work is expended for obtaining 
 potatoes under glass in April, than in growing 
 them in the open air, which requires digging a 
 space four times as large, watering it, weeding 
 it, etc. Work is likewise economized in employ- 
 ing a perfected tool or machine, even when an 
 initial expense had to be incurred to buy the tool. 
 
 Complete figures concerning the culture of 
 common vegetables under glass are still wanting. 
 This culture is of recent origin, and is only carried 
 out on small areas. But we have already figures 
 concerning the fifty years old culture of early 
 season grapes, and these figures are conclusive. 
 
 In the north of England, on the Scotch frontier, 
 where coal only costs 3s. a ton at the pit's mouth. 
 
288 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 they have long since taken to growing hothouse 
 grapes. Thirty years ago these grapes, ripe in 
 January, were sold by the grower at 20s. per lb. 
 and resold at 40s. per lb. for Napoleon Ill's table. 
 To-day the same grower sells them at only 2s. 6d. 
 per lb. He tells us so himself in a horticultural 
 journal. The fall is caused by tons and tons of 
 grapes arriving in January to London and Paris. 
 
 Thanks to the cheapness of coal and an intelli- 
 gent culture, grapes from the north travel now 
 southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary 
 fruit. They cost so little that in May, English 
 and Jersey grapes are sold at is. 8d. per lb. by 
 the gardeners, and yet this price, like that of 40s. 
 thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack pro- 
 duction. 
 
 In March, Belgium grapes are sold at from 
 6d. to 8d., while in October, grapes cultivated in 
 immense quantities — under glass, and with a httle 
 artificial heating in the environs of London — 
 are sold at the same price as grapes bought by 
 the pound in the vineyards of Switzerland and the 
 Rhine, that is to say, for a few halfpence. Yet 
 they still cost two-thirds too much, by reason of 
 the excessive rent of the soil and the cost of in- 
 stallation and heating, on which the gardener pays 
 a formidable tribute to the manufacturer and 
 middleman. This being understood, we may say 
 that it costs " next to nothing " to have delicious 
 grapes under the latitude of, and in our misty 
 London in autumn. In one of the suburbs, for 
 
AGRICULTURE 289 
 
 instance, a wretched glass and plaster shelter, 
 9 ft. 10 in. long by 6^ ft. wide, resting against 
 our cottage, gave us about fifty pounds of 
 grapes of an exquisite taste in October, for nine 
 consecutive years. The crop came frora a Hamburg 
 vine-stalk, six years old. And the shelter was so 
 bad that the rain came through. At night the 
 temperature was always that of outside. It was 
 evidently not heated, for that would be as useless 
 as to heat the street ! And the cares to be given 
 were : pruning the vine half an hour every year ; 
 and bringing a wheelbarrowful of manure, which is 
 thrown over the stalk of the vine, planted in 
 red clay outside the shelter. 
 
 On the other hand, if we estimate the amount of 
 care given to the vine on the borders of the Rhine 
 or Lake Leman, the terraces constructed stone 
 upon stone on the slopes of the hills, the transport 
 of manure and also of earth to a height of two or 
 three hundred feet, we come to the conclusion 
 that on the whole the expenditure of work neces- 
 sary to cultivate vines is more considerable in 
 Switzerland or on the banks of the Rhine than it 
 is under glass in London suburbs. 
 
 This may seem paradoxical, because it is gener- 
 ally beheved that vines grow of themselves in 
 the south of Europe, and that the vinegrower's 
 work costs nothing. But gardeners and horti- 
 culturists, far from contradicting us, confirm our 
 assertions. " The most advantageous culture 
 in England is vine culture," wrote a practical 
 
 u 
 
290 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 gardener, editor of the "English Journal of 
 Horticulture." Prices speak eloquently for them- 
 selves, as we know. 
 
 Translating these facts into communist lan- 
 guage, we may assert that the man or woman 
 who takes twenty hours a year from his leisure 
 time to give some httle care — very pleasant in 
 the main — to two or three vine-stalks sheltered 
 by simple glass under any European cUmate, 
 will gather as many grapes as their family and 
 friends can eat. And that apphes not only to 
 vines, but to aU fruit trees. 
 
 The Commune that will put the processes of 
 intensive culture into practice on a large scale 
 will have all possible vegetables, indigenous or 
 exotic, and all desirable fruits, without employing 
 miore than about ten hours a year per inhabitant. 
 
 In fact, nothing would be easier than to verify 
 the above statements by direct experiment. Sup- 
 pose 100 acres of a light loam (such as we have at 
 Worthing) are transformed into a number of 
 market gardens, each one with its glass houses for 
 the rearing of the seedlings and young plants. 
 Suppose also that 50 more acres are covered with 
 glass houses, and the organization of the whole is 
 left to practical experienced French maraichers, 
 and Guernsey or Worthing greenhouse gardeners. 
 
 In basing the maintenance of these 150 acres on 
 the Jersey average, requiring the work of three 
 men per acre under glass — which makes less than 
 8,600 hours of work a year — it would need about 
 
AGRICULTURE 291 
 
 1,300,000 hours for the 150 acres. Fifty com- 
 petent gardeners could give five hours a day to 
 this work, and the rest would be simply done 
 by people who, without being gardeners by pro- 
 fession, would soon learn how to use a spade, and 
 to handle the plants. But this work would yield 
 at least — we have seen it in a preceding chapter — 
 all necessaries and articles of luxury in the way 
 of fruit and vegetables for at least 40,000 or 
 50,000 people. Let us admit that among this 
 number there are 13,500 adults, wiUing to work at 
 the kitchen-garden ; then, each one would have to 
 give 100 hours a year distributed over the whole 
 year. These hours of work would become hours 
 of recreation spent among friends and children 
 in beautiful gardens, more beautiful probably 
 than those of the legendary Semiramis. 
 
 This is the balance sheet of the labour to be 
 spent in order to be able to eat to satiety fruit 
 which we are deprived of to-day, and to have vege- 
 tables in abundance, now so scrupulously rationed 
 out by the housewife, when she has to reckon 
 each halfpenny which must go to enrich capitalists 
 and landowners (2). 
 
 If only humanity had the consciousness of what 
 it CAN, and if that consciousness only gave it the 
 power to WILL ! 
 
 If it only knew that cowardice of the spirit is 
 the rock on which all revolutions have stranded 
 until now. 
 
292 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 VI 
 
 We can easily perceive the new horizons opening 
 before the social revolution. 
 
 Each time we speak of revolution, the worker 
 who has seen children wanting food lowers his 
 orow and repeats obstinately — " What of bread ? 
 WiU there be sufficient if everyone eats according 
 to his appetite ? What if the peasants, ignorant 
 tools of reaction, starve our towns as the black 
 bands did in France in 1793 — what shall we do ? " 
 
 Let them do their worst ! The large cities will 
 have to do without them. 
 
 At what, then, should the hundreds of thousands 
 of workers, who are asphyxiated to-day in small 
 workshops and factories, be employed on the day 
 they regain their liberty ? Will they continue 
 locking themselves up in factories after the Revo- 
 lution ? Will they continue to make luxurious 
 toys for export when they see their stock of corn 
 getting exhausted, meat becoming scarce, and 
 vegetables disappearing without being replaced ? 
 
 Evidently not ! They will leave the town and 
 go into the fields ! Aided by a machinery which 
 will enable the weakest of us to put a shoulder to 
 the wheel, they will carry revolution into pre- 
 viously enslaved culture as they will have carried 
 it into institutions and ideas. 
 
 Hundreds of acres will be covered with glass, and 
 men, and women with dehcate fingers, will foster 
 
AGRICULTURE 293 
 
 the growth of young plants. Hundreds of other 
 acres will be ploughed by steam, improved by 
 manures, or enriched by artificial soil obtained by 
 the pulverization of rocks. Happy crowds of 
 occasional labourers will cover these acres with 
 crops, guided in the work and experiments partly 
 by those who know agriculture, but especially by 
 the great and practical spirit of a people roused 
 from long slumber and illumined by that bright 
 beacon — the happiness of all. 
 
 And in two or three months the early crops 
 will relieve the most pressing wants, and provide 
 food for a people who, after so many centuries of 
 expectation, will at least be able to appease their 
 hunger and eat according to their appetite. 
 
 In the meanwhile, popular genius, the genius of 
 a nation which revolts and knows its wants, will 
 work at experimenting with new processes of 
 culture that we already catch a glimpse of, and that 
 only need the baptism of experience to become 
 universal. Light will be experimented with — that 
 unknown agent of culture which makes barley ripen 
 in forty-five days under the latitude of Yakutsk ; 
 Hght, concentrated or artificial, will rival heat in 
 hastening the growth of plants. A Mouchot of 
 the future will invent a machine to guide the rays 
 of the sun and make them work, so that we shall 
 no longer seek sun-heat stored in coal in the depths 
 of the earth. They will experiment the watering 
 of the soil with cultures of micro-organisms — a 
 rational idea, conceived but yesterday, which will 
 
294 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 permit us to give to the soil those httle Hving 
 beings, necessary to feed the rootlets, to decompose 
 and assimilate the component parts of the soil. 
 
 They will experiment . . . But let us stop here, 
 or we shall enter into the realm of fancy. Let 
 us remain in the reality of acquired facts. With 
 the processes of culture in use, applied on a large 
 scale, and already victorious in the struggle 
 against industrial competition, we can give our- 
 selves ease and luxury in return for agreeable 
 work. The near future will show what is practical 
 in the processes that recent scientific discoveries 
 give us a glimpse of. Let us hmit ourselves at 
 present to opening up the new path that consists 
 in the study of the needs of man, and the means of 
 satisfying them. 
 
 The only thing that may be wanting to the 
 Revolution is the boldness of initiative. 
 
 With our minds already narrowed in our youth, 
 enslaved by the past in our mature age and tiU 
 the grave, we hardly dare to think. If a new idea 
 is mentioned — before venturing on an opinion of 
 our own, we consult musty books a hundred years 
 old, to know what ancient masters thought on the 
 subject. 
 
 It is not food that will fail, if boldness of 
 thought and initiative are not wanting to the 
 revolution. 
 
 Of all the great days of the French Revolution, 
 the most beautiful, the greatest, was the one on 
 which delegates who had come from all parts of 
 
AGRICULTURE 295 
 
 France to Paris, worked all with the spade to 
 plane the ground of the Champ de Mars, preparing 
 it for the fete of the Federation. 
 
 That day France was united : animated by the 
 new spirit, she had a vision of the future in the 
 working in common of the soil. 
 
 And it will again be by the working in common 
 of the soil that the enfranchized societies will find 
 their unity and wiU obhterate hatred and oppres- 
 sion which had divided them. 
 
 Henceforth, able to conceive solidarity — that 
 immense power which increases man's energy and 
 creative forces a hundredfold— the new society 
 wiU march to the conquest of the future with all 
 the vigour of youth. 
 
 Leaving off production for unknown buyers, 
 and looking in its midst for needs and tastes to 
 be satisfied, society will liberally assure the life 
 and ease of each of its members, as well as that 
 moral satisfaction which work gives when freely 
 chosen and freely accomplished, and the joy of 
 living without encroaching on the life of others. 
 
 Inspired by a new daring — thanks to the senti- 
 ment of sohdarity — all will march together to 
 the conquest of the high joys of knowledge and 
 artistic creation. 
 
 A society thus inspired will fear neither dissen- 
 sions within nor enemies without. To the coali- 
 tions of the past it will oppose a new harmony, the 
 initiative of each and all, the daring which springs 
 from the awakening of a people's genius. 
 
296 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Before such an irresistible force " conspiring 
 kings" will be powerless. Nothing will remain 
 for them but to bow before it, and to harness 
 themselves to the chariot of humanity, rolling 
 towards new horizons opened up by the Social 
 Revolution. 
 
NOTES 
 
 (i) Consult "La Repartition metrique des imp6ts," by 
 A. Toubeau, two vols., published by GuiUaumin in 1880. 
 (We do not in the least agree with Toubeau's conclu- 
 sions, but it is a real encyclopaedia, indicating the sources 
 which prove what can be obtained from the soil.) " La 
 Culture maraichere," by M. Ponce, Paris, 1869. " Le 
 Potager Gressent," Paris, 1885, an excellent practical 
 work. " Physiologie et culture du ble," by Risler, Paris, 
 1881. " Le ble, sa culture intensive et extensive," by 
 Lecouteux, Paris, 1883. "La Cite Chinoise," by Eugene 
 Simon. " Le dictionnaire d'agriculture," by Barral 
 (Hachette, editor). " The Rothamstead Experiments," 
 by Wm. Fream, London, 1888 — culture without manure, 
 etc. (the "Field" office, editor). "Fields, Factories, 
 and Workshops," by the author. London (Swan Sonnen- 
 schein) ; cheap editions at 6d. and is. 
 
 (2) Summing up the figures given on agriculture, figures 
 proving that the inhabitants of the two departements 
 of Seine and Seine-et-Oise can perfectly weU live on their 
 own territory by employing very Httle time annually 
 to obtain food, we have : — 
 
 Departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise 
 
 Number of inhabitants in 1889 3,900,000 
 
 Area in acres 1,507,300 
 
 Average number of inhabitants per acre . . 2-6 
 
 297 
 
298 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD 
 
 Areas to be cultivated to feed the inhabitants (in 
 acres) : — 
 
 Corn and cereals 494,000 
 
 Natural and artificial meadows 494,000 
 
 Vegetables and fruit from 17,300 to 25,000 
 
 Leaving a balance for houses, roads, parks, 
 forests 494,000 
 
 Quantity of annual work necessary to improve and 
 cultivate the above surfaces in five-hour work-days : — 
 
 Cereals (culture and crop) 15,000,000 
 
 Meadows, milk, rearing of cattle 10,000,000 
 
 Market-gardening culture, high-class fruit 33,000,000 
 Extras 12,000,000 
 
 Total 70,000,000 
 
 If we suppose that half only of the able-bodied adults 
 (men and women) are willing to work at agriculture, we 
 see that 70 million work-days must be divided among 
 1,200,000 individuals, which gives us 58 work-days of 
 5 hours for each of these workers. With that the 
 population of the two departments would have aU neces- 
 sary bread, meat, milk, vegetables, and fruit, both ordi- 
 nary and luxury. To-day a workman spends for the 
 necessary food of his family (generally less than what is 
 necessary) at least one-third of his 300 work-days a year, 
 about 1000 hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus 
 gives about 700 hours too much to fatten the idle and 
 the would-be administrators, because he does not produce 
 
NOTES 299 
 
 his ovm food, but buys it of middlemen, who in their 
 turn buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves by 
 working with bad tools, because, being robbed by the 
 landowners and the State, they cannot procure better 
 ones. 
 
 PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LIMITED 
 PRINTERS 
 
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