previous century or generation.

I was obliged to make this slight digression, Gentlemen, even if it is
somewhat remote from my essential purpose, because this slight
improvement in the course of centuries and generations is always the
point to which those go back, who, after Bastiat's example, wish to
throw dust in your eyes by declamation that is as easy as it is
meaningless.

Consider exactly my words, Gentlemen. I say it may, for the above
reasons, occur that the minimum of the necessities of life has risen,
and accordingly the situation of the working class when compared with
that of former generations is somewhat improved. Whether this is
really so, whether the whole situation of the working class has
constantly improved in different centuries is a very difficult and
involved problem--a problem for scholars that cannot be treated at all
by those who incessantly fill your ears with statements of how
expensive cotton was in the last century and how much cotton clothing
is used now, and similar commonplaces which anybody may copy from any
reference book.

It is not my purpose to enter upon a consideration of this problem
here. For at this time I must confine myself to giving you not only
what is absolutely accepted, but what is also easy to prove. Let us
assume, then, that such an improvement of the minimum of the
necessities of life, and therefore of the situation of the working
class, goes on constantly in different generations and different
centuries.

But I must show you, Gentlemen, that with these commonplaces the real
question is taken out of your hands and perverted into a totally
different question.

If you speak of the situation of the workingman and its improvement,
you mean your situation compared with that of your fellow
citizens--that is, compared with contemporary standards of living.

And they amuse you with alleged comparisons of your condition with the
condition of workingmen in previous centuries! But what value has the
question for you, and what satisfaction can it give you, if, in case
the minimum of the accepted standard has risen, you are better off
today than the workingmen of eighty, two hundred, three hundred years
ago? No more than the fully proved fact that you are better off today
than Hottentots and cannibals.

Every satisfaction of human needs depends merely on the relation of
the means of satisfaction to the necessities of life demanded by the
standard of living of the time,