第64章

According to the testimony of M.Vee, mayor of the fifth arrondissement of Paris, "the number of needy families inscribed upon the registers of the charity bureaus is 30,000, -- which is equivalent to 65,000 individuals."

The census taken at the beginning of 1846 gave 88,474.And poor families not inscribed, -- how many are there of those? As many.Say, then, 180,000

people whose poverty is not doubtful, although not official.And all those who live in straitened circumstances, though keeping up the appearance of comfort, -- how many are there of those? Twice as many, -- a total of 360,000 persons, in Paris, who are somewhat embarrassed for means.

"They talk of wheat," cries another economist, M.Louis Leclerc, "but are there not immense populations which go without bread? Without leaving our own country, are there not populations which live exclusively on maize, buckwheat, chestnuts?"

M.Leclerc denounces the fact: let us interpret it.If, as there is no doubt, the increase of population is felt principally in the large cities, -- that is, at those points where the most wheat is consumed, -- it is clear that the average per head may have increased without any improvement in the general condition.There is no such liar as an average.

"They talk," continues the same writer, "of the increase of indirect consumption.Vain would be the attempt to acquit Parisian adulteration:

it exists; it has its masters, its adepts, its literature, its didactic and classic treatises....France possessed exquisite wines; what has been done with them? What has become of this splendid wealth? Where are the treasures created since Probus by the national genius? And yet, when one considers the excesses to which wine gives rise wherever it is dear, wherever it does not form a part of the regular life of the people; when in Paris, capital of the kingdom of good wines, one sees the people gorging themselves with I know not what, -- stuff that is adulterated, sophisticated, sickening, and sometimes execrable, -- and well-to-do persons drinking at home or accepting without a word, in famous restaurants, so-called wines, thick, violet-colored, and insipid, flat, and miserable enough to make the poorest Burgundian peasant shudder, -- can one honestly doubt that alcoholic liquids are one of the most imperative needs of our nature?

I quote this passage at length, because it sums up in relation to a special case all that could be said upon the inconveniences of machinery.

To the people it is with wine as with fabrics, and generally with all goods and merchandise created for the consumption of the poor.It is always the same deduction: to reduce by some process or other the cost of manufacture, in order, first, to maintain advantageously competition with more fortunate or richer rivals; second, to serve the vast numbers of plundered persons who cannot disregard price simply because the quality is good.Produced in the ordinary ways, wine is too expensive for the mass of consumers;

it is in danger of remaining in the cellars of the retailers.The manufacturer of wines gets around the difficulty: unable to introduce machinery into the cultivation of the vine, he finds a means, with the aid of some accompaniments, of placing the precious liquid within the reach of all.Certain savages, in their periods of scarcity, eat earth; the civilized workman drinks water.

Malthus was a great genius.

As far as the increase of the average duration of life is concerned, I recognize the fact, but at the same time I declare the observation incorrect.

Let us explain that.Suppose a population of ten million souls: if, from whatever cause you will, the average life should increase five years for a million individuals, mortality continuing its ravages at the same rate as before among the nine other millions, it would be found, on distributing this increase among the whole, that on an average six months had been added to the life of each individual.It is with the average length of life, the so-called indicator of average comfort, as with average learning: the level of knowledge does not cease to rise, which by no means alters the fact that there are today in France quite as many barbarians as in the days of Francois I.The charlatans who had railroad speculation in view made a great noise about the importance of the locomotive in the circulation of ideas; and the economists, always on the lookout for civilized stupidities, have not failed to echo this nonsense.As if ideas, in order to spread, needed locomotives! What, then, prevents ideas from circulating from the Institute to the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, in the narrow and wretched streets of Old Paris and the Temple Quarter, everywhere, in short, where dwells this multitude even more destitute of ideas than of bread? How happens it that between a Parisian and a Parisian, in spite of the omnibus and the letter- carrier, the distance is three times greater today than in the fourteenth century?

The ruinous influence of machinery on social economy and the condition of the laborers is exercised in a thousand ways, all of which are bound together and reciprocally labelled: cessation of labor, reduction of wages, over- production, obstruction of the market, alteration and adulteration of products, failures, displacement of laborers, degeneration of the race, and, finally, diseases and death.

M.Théodore Fix has remarked himself that in the last fifty years the average stature of man, in France, has diminished by a considerable fraction of an inch.This observation is worth his previous one: upon whom does this diminution take effect?

In a report read to the Academy of Moral Sciences on the results of the law of March 22, 1841, M.Leon Faucher expressed himself thus: