aron's estate a
notice-board indicating by certain signs adapted to their comprehension
that the labourer who is willing to settle on his estate will receive
the tools and materials to build his cottage and sow his fields, and a
portion of land rent free for a certain number of years. The number of
years is represented by so many crosses on the sign-board, and the
peasant understands the meaning of these crosses.

So the poor wretches come to settle on the baron's lands. They make
roads, drain the marshes, build villages. In nine or ten years the baron
begins to tax them. Five years later he increases the rent. Then he
doubles it, and the peasant accepts these new conditions because he
cannot find better ones elsewhere. Little by little, with the aid of
laws made by the barons, the poverty of the peasant becomes the source
of the landlord's wealth. And it is not only the lord of the manor who
preys upon him. A whole host of usurers swoop down upon the villages,
multiplying as the wretchedness of the peasants increases. That is how
these things happened in the Middle Ages. And to-day is it not still the
same thing? If there were free lands which the peasant could cultivate
if he pleased, would he pay L50 to some "shabble of a Duke"[2] for
condescending to sell him a scrap? Would he burden himself with a lease
which absorbed a third of the produce? Would he--on the _metayer_
system--consent to give half of his harvest to the landowner?

But he has nothing. So he will accept any conditions, if only he can
keep body and soul together, while he tills the soil and enriches the
landlord.

So in the nineteenth century, just as in the Middle Ages, the poverty of
the peasant is a source of wealth to the landed proprietor.

II

The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the
wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source.

Take the case of a citizen of the middle class, who somehow or other
finds himself in possession of L20,000. He could, of course, spend his
money at the rate of L2,000 a year, a mere bagatelle in these days of
fantastic, senseless luxury. But then he would have nothing left at the
end of ten years. So, being a "practical person," he prefers to keep his
fortune intact, and win for himself a snug little annual income as well.

This is very easy in our society, for the good reason that the towns and
villages swarm with workers who have not the wherewithal to live for a
month, or