ease of the sun-spots are phenomena
co-incident with the periodical agricultural crises and have a direct
influence on the destinies of millions of men.

This magnificent scientific conception of the "unity of physical
forces," to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarity
is far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes of
human phenomena in the free wills of individuals.

If a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, to
establish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if he
were to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was no
general demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of his
philanthropic intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economic
laws.

Or, again, if a socialist should give the laborers in his establishment
wages two or three times as high as the current rate of wages, he would
evidently have the same fate, since he would be dominated by the same
economic laws, and he would have to sell his commodities at a loss or
keep them unsold in his warehouses, because his prices for the same
qualities of goods would be above the market price.

He would be declared a bankrupt and the only consolation the world would
offer him would be to call him an _honest man_ (_brave homme_); and in
the present phase of "mercantile ethics" we know what this expression
means.[39]

Therefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or less
cordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economic
situations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial)
organization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabled
Marx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is able
to accumulate wealth without working,--because the laborer produces in
his day's work an amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage he
receives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned)
profit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits his
pay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearned
surplus-product still remains.

Land, abandoned to the sun and the rain, does not, of itself, produce
either wheat or wine. Minerals do not come forth, unaided, from the
bowels of the earth. A bag of dollars shut up in a safe does not produce
dollars, as a cow produces calves.

The production of wealth results only from a transformation of
(Nature-given) materials effecte