last industrial census that only a
little over four million men, women and children were employed in all
the industries.[1] So that the statisticians have to exaggerate all the
figures in order to establish a maximum of eight million producers to
forty-five million inhabitants. Strictly speaking the creators of the
goods exported from Britain to all the ends of the earth comprise only
from six to seven million workers. And what is the number of the
shareholders and middlemen who levy the first fruits of labour from far
and near, and heap up unearned gains by thrusting themselves between
the producer and the consumer?

Nor is this all. The owners of capital constantly reduce the output by
restraining production. We need not speak of the cartloads of oysters
thrown into the sea to prevent a dainty, hitherto reserved for the rich,
from becoming a food for the people. We need not speak of the thousand
and one luxuries--stuffs, foods, etc., etc.--treated after the same
fashion as the oysters. It is enough to remember the way in which the
production of the most necessary things is limited. Legions of miners
are ready and willing to dig out coal every day, and send it to those
who are shivering with cold; but too often a third, or even one-half, of
their number are forbidden to work more than three days a week, because,
forsooth, the price of coal must be kept up! Thousands of weavers are
forbidden to work the looms, although their wives and children go in
rags, and although three-quarters of the population of Europe have no
clothing worthy the name.

Hundreds of blast-furnaces, thousands of factories periodically stand
idle, others only work half-time--and in every civilized nation there is
a permanent population of about two million individuals who ask only for
work, but to whom work is denied.

How gladly would these millions of men set to work to reclaim waste
lands, or to transform ill-cultivated land into fertile fields, rich in
harvests! A year of well-directed toil would suffice to multiply
fivefold the produce of those millions of acres in this country which
lie idle now as "permanent pasture," or of those dry lands in the south
of France which now yield only about eight bushels of wheat per acre.
But men, who would be happy to become hardy pioneers in so many branches
of wealth-producing activity, must remain idle because the owners of the
soil, the mines and the factories prefer to invest their capital--taken
in