k 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 starving 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.

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 expropriation 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 reality when it comes. Man will accomplish greater
things, and accomplish them better and by simpler methods than those
dictated to him beforehand. Thus we shall merely indicate the manner by
which expropriation _might_ be accomplished without 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 expropriation _could_ be
effected by popular initiative, and _could not_ be effected by any other
means whatever.

It seems very likely that, as soon as expropriation is fairly started,
groups of volunteers will spring up in every district, street, and block
of houses, and undertake to inquire into the number of flats 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, all the rooms and suites of rooms, healthy and
unhealthy, small and large, foetid dens and homes of luxury.

Freely communicating with each other, these