d by human labor. And it is only because
the peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, because
the laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makes
experiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery,
etc., that the capitalist or the landlord--though the wealth inherited
from his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise
_absenteeism_ and thus make no personal exertion--is able every year to
enjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretched
lodgings and inadequate nourishment--while the workers are, in most
cases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gas
in mines and by dust in factories--in brief, in exchange for wages which
are always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existence
worthy of human creatures.

Even under a system of absolute _metayage_ (share-farming)--which has
been called a form of practical socialism--we always have this question
left unanswered. By what miracle does the landlord, who does not work,
get his barns and houses filled with wheat and oil and wine in
sufficient quantities to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the
_metayer_ (the tenant on shares) is obliged to work every day, in order
to wrest from the earth enough to support himself and his family in
wretchedness?

And the system of _metayage_ does at least give the tenant the
tranquillizing assurance that he will reach the end of the year without
experiencing all the horrors of enforced idleness to which the ordinary
day or wage laborers are condemned in both city and country. But, in
substance, the whole problem in its entirety remains unsolved (even
under this system), and there is always one man who lives in comfort,
without working, because ten others live poorly by working.[40]

This is the way the system of private property works, and these are the
consequences it produces, without any regard to the wills or wishes of
individuals.

Therefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual is
condemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency of
Society, the objective point which must be changed, it is private
ownership which must be abolished, not by a _partition_ ("dividing up"),
which would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of private
ownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the old
individualist principle would restore the _status quo ante_, and