pieces of metal--useful for various purposes, but incapable of breeding
more.

In answering the above objection we have at the same time indicated the
scope of Expropriation. It must apply to everything that enables any
man--be he financier, mill-owner, or landlord--to appropriate the
product of others' toil. Our formula is simple and comprehensive.

We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give to the
workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey
to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none shall lack aught,
that not a single man shall be forced to sell the strength of his right
arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his babes. This is what
we mean when we talk of Expropriation; this will be our duty during the
Revolution, for whose coming we look, not two hundred years hence, but
soon, very soon.

III

The ideas of Anarchism in general and of Expropriation in particular
find much more sympathy than we are apt to imagine among men of
independent character, and those for whom idleness is not the supreme
ideal. "Still," our friends often warn us, "take care you do not go too
far! Humanity cannot be changed in a day, so do not be in to great a
hurry with your schemes of Expropriation and Anarchy, or you will be in
danger of achieving no permanent result."

Now, what we fear with regard to Expropriation is exactly the contrary.
We are afraid of not going far enough, of carrying out Expropriation on
too small a scale to be lasting. We would not have the revolutionary
impulse arrested in mid-career, to exhaust itself in half measures,
which would content no one, and while producing a tremendous confusion
in society, and stopping its customary activities, would have no vital
power--would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare the
way for the triumph of reaction.

There are, in fact, in a modern State established relations which it is
practically impossible to modify if one attacks them only in detail.
There are wheels within wheels in our economic organization--the
machinery is so complex and interdependent that no one part can be
modified without disturbing the whole. This becomes clear as soon as an
attempt is made to expropriate anything.

Let us suppose that in a certain country a limited form of expropriation
is effected. For example, that, as it has been suggested more than once,
only the property of the great landlords is socialize