cieties,
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
interests be not diametrically opposed, agree without the intervention
of authority, we do not ignore the objections that will be put forth.

All such examples have their defective side, because it is impossible
to quote a single organization exempt from the exploitation of the weak
by the strong, the poor by the rich. This is why the Statists will 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
creating proletarians and delivering them up to exploiters. They forget
to prove us that it is possible 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.

When we speak of the accord established among the railway companies, we
expect them, the worshippers of the bourgeois State, to say to us: "Do
you not see how the railway companies oppress and ill-use their
employees and the travellers! The only way is, that the State should
intervene to protect the workers and the public!"

But have we not said and repeated over and over again, that as long as
there are capitalists, these abuses of power will be perpetuated? It is
precisely the State, the would-be benefactor, that has given to the
companies that monopoly and those rights upon us 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
(quite lately we saw it still in Russia), has it not extended the
privilege of the railway magnates as far as to forbid the Press to
mention 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 our days"?

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
management, nor even an ideal of technical organization. It is to show
t