The Psychology of Socialism
Book 5: The Conflict Between the Laws of Evolution, The Democratic Ideal,
and the Aspirations of the Socialists
Chapter 2: The Sources and Division of Wealth: Intelligence, Capital, and Labour
Gustave Le Bon
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I. Intelligence :-The immense part played by intelligence in the modern evolution of the world-It is the principal source of the wealth by which every worker benefits--The work of the labourer is of profit to himself alone ; the work of the inventor is of profit to all workers--The capacities of a small aristocracy of intelligence produce more wealth than the labour of all the rest of the population-The hatred of the Socialists for intelligence-The foundation, from their point of view, of this hatred. 2. Capital: -- Definition of capital-The part played by capital-The services rendered by the capitalist to the workers by lowering the cost price of merchandise-The present diffusion of capital in a large number of hands-Progressive subdivision of the public fortune What -,would be the result of the equal partition of the public fortune among all the workers-The progressive reduction of the part played by the shareholders in all industrial undertakings, and the constant enlargement of that of the workers-The revenue of the shareholder is gradually tending to disappear-Future consequences-The present condition of real fortune-Why it also is tending to disappear-Great property is no longer a source of wealth, and is steadily tending to become subdivided-The same phenomena are to be observed in France and in England. 3. Labour: -- The present relations of capital and labour -The situation of the workers has never been so prosperous as to-day -Constant rise of the wages of the workers-These wages are often greater than the salaries earned in the liberal professions-The working class is the only class whose condition is steadily bettering. 4. The relations of capital and labour:-Employers and men -- The increasing hostility of the working classes against capital-The total lack of comprehension to be observed in the relations of employers and men-The employer in modern industry-Employers and workers form to-day two always inimical classes.
From the generalities of the preceding, chapters we shall now proceed to details, inquire into the sources of wealth, and see if it could be produced and
(303) distributed conformably with the aspirations of the Socialists.
Practically the Socialists recognise but two sources of wealth-capital and labour, and all their demands are directed against the part, according to them too great, which is assumed by capital. Being unable to deny the necessity of capital in modern industry, they dream of the suppression of the capitalists.
But besides capital and labour there is a third source of wealth-intelligence, which the Socialists usually consider to be of but little value. None the less its action is predominating, and for this reason we shall commence our investigation with a consideration of its functions.
I. INTELLIGENCE.
In the dawn of civilisation intellectual capacity played a part scarcely superior to that of manual labour, but with the progress of industry and the sciences its part finally became so preponderant that its importance cannot now be exaggerated. The toil of the obscure labourer is of profit only to himself, while the works of intelligence enrich the whole of humanity. A Socialist recently assured the Chamber of Deputies that 11 there are no such men as are in human reality the human equivalent of a hundred thousand men." It is easy to reply to him that in less than a century we can cite, from Stephenson to Pasteur, a whole aristocracy of inventors, each one of which is worth far more than a hundred thousand men, not only by the theoretical value of his discoveries, but by reason of the wealth which his inventions have poured into the world, and the benefits which every worker has derived from them. If oil the last Day of judgment the works of men are weighed at their true worth, how immense will prove the weight
(304) of the works of these mighty geniuses ! It is to them, thanks to their discoveries, that is due the greater part of the capital existing in the world. The English economist Mallock has reckoned that one-third of the present revenue of England may be imputed to the capacity of a small élite, which by itself produces far more than all the rest of the population.
The Socialists of every school are loth to admit the importance of intellectual superiority. Their high priest Marx understands by the term work nothing but manual labour, and relegates the spirit of invention, capacity, and direction, which has nevertheless transformed the world, to a second place.
This hatred of intelligence on the part of the Socialists is well founded, for it is precisely this intelligence that will prove the eternal obstacle on which all their ideas of equality will shatter themselves. Let us suppose that by a measure analogous to the Edict of Nantes -- a measure which the Socialists, were they the masters, would very soon be driven to enforce-all the intellectual superiority of Europe-all the scientists, artists, great manufacturers, inventors, skilled workmen, and so forth, were expelled from civilised countries, and obliged to take refuge in a narrow territory at present almost uninhabited-Iceland, for example. Let us further suppose that they departed without a halfpenny of capital. It is nevertheless impossible to doubt that this country, barren as it is supposed to be, would soon quickly become the first country in the world for civilisation and wealth. This wealth would soon be such that the exiles would be able to maintain a powerful army of mercenaries, and would have nothing to fear from any side. I do not think that such a hypothesis is altogether impossible of realisation in the future.
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2. CAPITAL.
Capital comprises all objects-merchandise, tools, plant, houses, lands, and so forth-having any negotiable value whatever. Money is only the representative symbol, the commercial unit, which serves to evaluate and exchange objects of various kinds.
For the Socialists, work is the only source and measure of value. Capital would be merely a portion of unpaid work stolen from the worker.
It would be very foolish to waste time to-day in discussing assertions which have been so often refuted. Capital is work, either material or intellectual, accumulated. It is capital that has freed man from the slavery of the Middle Ages, and above all from the slavery of nature, and which constitutes to-day the fundamental basis of all civilisation. To persecute capital would be to oblige it to vanish or to conceal itself, and at the same blow to kill industry, which it would no longer be able to support, and also to suppress wages. These are banalities that really require no demonstration.
The utility of capital in industry is so evident that although all the Socialists speak of suppressing the capitalist they seldom speak nowadays of suppressing capital. Nevertheless, the great capitalist renders immense services to the public by reducing the cost of production and the sale price of general merchandise. A large manufacturer, importer, or tradesman can content himself with a profit of 5 per cent. or 6 per cent., and can consequently sell his wares at far lower prices than those charged by the small dealer or manufacturer, who in order to cover his expenses is obliged to make a gross profit on his goods of 40 per cent to 50 per cent.[1]
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The following figures, taken from a paper read to the Society of Statistics, and published in the Officiel of June 27, 1896, give some information which is very interesting and seems to be exact, at least if taken in general, as is the case with most of the figures of the statisticians. They show at the same time the increase of wealth and that of the number of the participators in this wealth.
The nominal capital of French incomes from property, which was £28,520,000 in 1800, was £177,040,000 in 1830 ; in 1832 it was £220,640,000, and in 1896 it was £1,040,000,000.
The number of annuitants, which in 1830 was 195,000, was 5,000,000 in 1895. The number of annuitants would be twenty-five times as great as in 1814.[2]
The increase in the number of participators in industrial enterprises is also tending to increase. In 1888 there were 22,000 shareholders in the Crédit foncier, and there are now 40,000.
We find the same increase in the number of holders of railway shares and bonds : there are now 2,900,000.
We shall see presently that it is the same with property. Nearly two-thirds of France are in the hands of 6,000,000
(307) proprietors. M. Leroy- Beaulieu arrives finally at the conclusion that " three-quarters of the accumulated fortune of France and probably nearly four-fifths of the national revenue are in the hands of workmen, peasants, people of the lower middle classes, and small proprietors." Large fortunes are becoming more and more rare. The statistics give the number of families possessing an income of £300 at 2 per cent. at most. Of 500,000 inherited incomes only 2,600 exceed the sum of £800 in capital.
Capital is thus tending more and more to diffuse itself into a large number of hands, and it is so diffusing itself because it is constantly increasing. The laws of economics are here acting in the direction desired by the Socialists, but by very different means to those in favour with the Socialists, since the effect produced is the consequence of the abundance of capital, and not its suppression.
We may, however, inquire what the equal partition between all of the general fortune of a country would produce, and if the workers would gain by it. It is easy to reply to this question.
Let us suppose that, in accordance with the wish of certain Socialists, the £8,800,000,000 which represent the fortune of France were divided equally among its 38,000,000 inhabitants. Let us also suppose that this fortune could be realised in money, a plainly impossible thing, since we have only about £300,000,000 in money, the rest being represented by houses, factories, land, and all kinds of objects. Let us suppose again that at the announcement of this partition the value of all property but real estate did not vanish in twenty-four hours. Admitting all these impossibilities, each individual would have a capital of about £220. One must know very little of human nature not to be certain that incapacity
(308) and waste on the one hand, and capacity, thrift, and energy on the other, would soon do their work. The inequality of wealth would be promptly re-established. If, in order to avoid a general partition, we limited ourselves to dividing only the large fortunes ; if, for example, we were to confiscate all incomes over £1,000 to divide them among the poorer citizens, the incomes of the latter would be increased by only 42 per cent. A man in receipt of an income of £40 would then receive £41 16s. 8d. In exchange for this insignificant increase of 42 per cent. all commerce, and numerous industries, which provide millions with the means of subsistence, would be totally ruined.[3] Indeed, the working classes generally would be ruined, and their lot would be far worse than it is to-day.
Concurrently with the observed diffusion of capital, which all sincere Socialists must bless, we also find that the interest from capital sunk in industrial enterprises is
(308) growing less, whilst, on the contrary, the gains of the workers are increasing.
M. Harzé, Inspector of Mines in Belgium, has shown that in the last thirty years, while the working expenses of the mines have oscillated round the figure of 38 per cent., the profits of the shareholders have steadily fallen to less than half, while the profits of the workers have considerably increased.
It has been calculated that if the revenue of certain enterprises were turned over to the workers, each workman would gain, on an average, £3 6s. 8d. per annum. But they would not do so for long. The enterprise would necessarily, in this hypothesis, be conducted by the workers, would soon be in straits, and the workers would finally gain far less than in the present state of affairs.
The same phenomenon of the increase of wages at the expense of the remuneration of capital is to be observed everywhere. According to M. Daniel Zolla, while the returns of landed capital fell 25 per cent. the salaries of agricultural labourers rose 11 per cent. According to M. Lavollée, the income of the working classes in England has risen 59 per cent., and the income of the leisured classes has fallen 30 per cent.
The wages of the working man will doubtless continue to rise in this manner until there is left only the minimum amount necessary to the remuneration, not of the capital sunk in an enterprise, but merely of the administrators necessary to the enterprise. This, at least, is the way matters are taking at present; it may not be the same in the future. The capital sunk in long-established enterprises cannot escape from the disappearance that threatens it, but iii future capital may better know how to defend itself.
The worker of the present day finds himself in a phase
(310) he will not see again, a phase in which he can dictate his own laws and bleed with impunity the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is certain that the trades-unions will finally arrive at demanding the whole of the profits of all railways, transport and omnibus companies, all factories, workshops, mines, &c., and will stop only at the precise moment at which the dividend of the shareholder will be reduced to zero, but while there will yet remain just enough to pay the directors and administrators. We have learned, by innumerable examples, with what admirable patience the shareholder puts up with first of all the reduction and then the total suppression of his profits on the part of States or private companies. Sheep do not stretch their necks to the butcher with greater docility.
This phenomenon of the gradual reduction, tending to total disappearance, of the profits of the shareholder, is to be observed to-day on a great scale. Through the indifference and weakness of the administrators of our large companies, all the demands of the unions are immediately satisfied ; it is hardly necessary to say that the money to satisfy them must come out of the shareholder's pocket. The demands of the union are naturally promptly repeated, and naturally, again, the administrators, who have nothing to lose, continue to satisfy them, which once more reduces the dividend, and consequently the value of the share. On account of this method of ingenious spoliation many of our large industrial enterprises will bring in absolutely nothing in a few years' time. The real proprietors of the enterprise will have been gradually and totally eliminated, which is the dream of the Collectivists. It is difficult to see how it will then be possible to find shareholders to found fresh enterprises. Already we gee a judicious distrust forming itself, and a tendency to export capital to the countries in which it runs fewer risks. The exodus of capital, and of
(311) capacity too, will be the first result of the complete triumph of the Socialists.
The double phenomenon that we have just been considering as affecting capital-the division of wealth among a larger and larger number, and the reduction of the profits of capital on account of the steady increase of the profits of the workers-will be found to exist as affecting landed property also. According to DI. E. Tisserand's report on the last decennial inquiry, there are in France 122,000,000 acres under cultivation. They are divided into 5,672,000 holdings, of which only 2 1/2 per cent. are given over to "la grande culture," that is, are of more than 100 acres in extent. But this 22 per cent. of the holdings comprises in extent 45 per cent. of the soil ; so that if there is a great preponderance in number of the small holdings, it is also the fact that nearly half the soil is comprised by 2 1/2 per cent. only of the number of holdings. Thus nearly half the soil of France is in the hands of large proprietors, but it is evident that this is a state of things that cannot long continue, simply on account of the decreasing part which is left to capital in enterprises of whatever kind. It is easy to show that large properties will very soon be a thing of the past.
The agriculture of France is exercised by about 7,000,000 individuals, or 11,000,000 counting their families and servants. Of this number nearly one-half are the proprietors of the soil they cultivate ; the others work for wages. Now if we compare the agricultural statistics for 1856 with those for 1886, the last published, we see that in 1856 there were 52 agriculturists for every 100 inhabitants, and only 47 in 1886. But this decrease, which the economists find so disquieting, is simply the result of the steady increase of small holdings. This will appear from the results of the two great decennial inquiries of 1862 and 1882.We find that
(312) although the number of day labourers and farm servants has fallen from 4,098,000 to 3,434,000, a decrease of 664,000, and the number of farmers from 1,435,000 to 1,309,000, a decrease of r 126,000, the number of proprietor-cultivators, on the contrary, has risen from 1,812,000 to 2,150,000, an increase of 338,000. There is, therefore, a very sensible increase in the number of proprietor-cultivators.
This increase in the number of proprietors is a phenomenon exactly parallel with the increase in the number of capitalists. If the number of persons cultivating the soil on their own account increases, it is evident that the number of farmers and farm servants must diminish ; and more especially the number of farm servants, since the costly labourer is being steadily replaced by agricultural machines. Again, the extent of pasture-lands has increased by one-quarter since 1862, and this increase, as pasture demands but few hands, has also contributed to the decrease in the number of labourers and servants. If the country districts have been slightly depopulated--very slightly, as we have seen-it is merely because they require fewer hands ; but they have never had too few. There are plenty of hands ; it is the heads that are a little scarce.
Small holdings, evidently, are not very productive, but at least they feed those who cultivate them. The latter, it is true, earn less than if they were working for others ; but to work for oneself is a very different thing from working for a master.
The situation of the large proprietors is most precarious in France as well as in England, and this, as I have said above, is why they are tending to disappear. Their lands are condemned to subdivision in the near future. Unable to cultivate them themselves, seeing them bring in less and less, on account of foreign competition, while
(313) at the same time the demands of their labourers are increasing, they are gradually obliged to give up exploiting their, for the expenses of cultivation are often greater than the returns,[4] so that they or their heirs will be forced to sell their lands at low prices, and in fragments, to small proprietors who will cultivate them themselves. The latter have practically no expenses, neither have they capital to remunerate, taking into account the low price of their purchases. Large property will soon be only an object of useless luxury. Already it is no longer a source, but a sign of wealth.
The facts we have just been considering are to be observed on every hand, and more especially in countries where there are many large properties, as in England. They result, as I have said, from the increasing demands of the working population, together with the fall in the value of the products of the soil, due to the competition of counrties in which the land is without value, as America, or in which labour is without value, as the Indies. This competition has in a few years brought down the price of wheat in France to 75 per cent. of its former value, in spite of a protective tariff of 2s. per bushel, a tariff which is of course paid by all the consumers of bread.
In England, the land of liberty, where there are no protective duties against foreign competition, the crisis is to be observed in all its intensity. The English ports are full of foreign corn, as well as foreign meats. Refrigerator vessels are continually making the passage between Sydney, Melbourne, and London. They carry beef and mutton ready for the shops at a penny or three halfpence a pound, to say nothing of butter, of which
(314) certain of these boats bring over as many as 600 tons in a single voyage. Although the proprietors have reduced their rents by more than 30 per cent. they make next to nothing from their property, for their tenants profit by their embarrassments to pay less and less or nothing at all. M. de Mandat-Grancy, in his remarkable work on the subject, mentions proprietors whose books he has examined, whose property brought in from £20,000 to £30,000 a few years ago, and now brings in no more than £400 or £500 ; and this on account of the non-payment of tenants. It was impossible to evict the farmers who did not pay, for the simple reason that none could be found who would be able to pay, and that even if they did not pay, they did at least perform the service of keeping the land in condition, and preventing it from going out of cultivation. The proprietors will be obliged to split up their properties and to sell them at very low prices to small cultivators, who will work on them directly, and at a profit, since the price of purchase will be insignificant.
It is perhaps a matter for regret that the large proprietors should everywhere be destined to become, in the near future, the victims of the evolution of economic laws ; but as a matter of fact I think it will be very considerably in the interests of the societies of the future that landed property should be divided to such an extent that every one should possess only as much as he could cultivate. The result of such a State of things would be a very great political stability, and in such a society Socialism would have no chance of success.
In conclusion : what we have said of the repartition of capital is also true of the repartition of the soil. Large properties are doomed to disappear by the action of economic laws. Before the Socialists have finished discussing the matter the object of their discussions will
(315) have vanished, by reason of the imperturbable progress of those natural laws that work now according to our doctrines and now in a contrary sense, but always unheeding them.
3. LABOUR.
The figures I have given show the progressive increase of the profits of labour, and the no less progressive decrease of the profits of capital. For a long time capital, on account of its incontestable necessity, has been able to enforce its demands on the workers ; but to-day their respective roles have changed. The relations of capital and labour, which were at first those of master and servant, are to-day like to become inverted. Now it is capital that is descending to the rank of a servant. The progress of humanitarian ideas, the increasing indifference on the part of directors and administrators for the interests of shareholders whom they do not know, and above all the enormous extension of trades-unions, have little by little brought about this effacement of capital.
Despite the noisy demands of the Socialists, it is evident that the situation of the working classes has never been as prosperous as it is at present, and, taking into consideration the economic necessities which rule the world, it is very probable that the workers are passing through a golden age that they will never see again. Never has such justice been done to their claims as to-day, and never has capital been as little oppressive and at the same time so little exacting.
As Mr. Mallock has justly remarked, the income of the modern -%vorking classes is far greater than the income of all classes taken together sixty years ago. They possess, in fact, at present, far more than they would have possessed if the whole of the public fortune had then
(316) passed into their hands, according to the dreams of certain Socialists.
Since 1813, according to M. de Foville, salaries in France have more than doubled, while money has only lost a third of its value.
In Paris, nearly 6o per cent. of working men earn a daily wage of 4s. 2d. to 6s. 8d., and according to the figures published by the Office die travail, the salaries of the better class of workmen are very much higher. The daily wage of a fitter varies from 6s. 3d. to 7s. id., and that of a turner from 7s. 6d. to 8s. 4d. Fine stone-cutters can earn as much as its. 6d. a day ; electricians from 5s. to 8s. 4d. ; brassfounders, from 7s. rd. to 10s. 5d. ; sheetiron workers, from 7s. 6d. to 9s. ; an ordinary foreman earns 8s. 4d. a day, and a really capable one as much as L380 per annum. These are such salaries as an officer, a magistrate, an engineer, or a Government clerk will often serve for years and years to obtain, if he does attain them at all. We may say with M. Leroy-Beaulieu
The manual worker is the great beneficiary of our civilisation.[5] All situations around him are falling, and his is rising."4. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOUR: EMPLOYERS AND MEN.
Notwithstanding the very satisfying position of the
(317) modern workman, we may say that the relations between masters and men, that is to say, between capital and labour, have never been more strained. The workman is becoming more and more exacting in proportion as his desires are more fully satisfied. The more he obtains from his employer the greater grows his hostility towards him. He accustoms himself to see in his master only an enemy, and the master, not unnaturally, tends to regard his men as adversaries, whom it is his duty to mistrust, and finally he no longer dissimulates his antipathy for them.
But although we admit the wants and the evident wrongs of the workers, we must not deny those of the masters. The direction of a staff of working men is a matter of subtle and delicate psychology, demanding a conscientious study of men. The modern employer, who controls an anonymous crowd from a distance, knows nothing or nest to nothing about his men. With a little skill he could often succeed in re-establishing an understanding with them, as is proved by the prosperity of certain co-operative workshops, in which the employers and men form a veritable happy family.
But at present the master does not know ]its men, and controls them by intermediaries, and yet he is always astonished at meeting with nothing but hostility and antipathy, notwithstanding all the aid societies, savings banks,[6] and so forth, to say nothing of the elevation of wages. The fact is that the personal relations of the past have been replaced by an anonymous and strictly rigid
(318) discipline. The employer will often make himself feared, but he no longer makes himself liked or respected, and he has lost all his prestige. Mistrustful of his men, he allows them no initiative, and is always wanting to interfere in their affairs (of course I am speaking for the Latin nations). He will found co-operative societies or providential societies, but he will never suffer them to be managed by the men themselves, so that the latter regard them as speculations, or instruments of bondage, or at the best as a disdainful charity. They imagine they are being exploited or humiliated, and the result is irritation. For the rest, it argues a poor understanding of the psychology of crowds to believe that benefits of a collective kind are received with gratitude. More often than not they merely provoke irritation, ingratitude, and contempt for the weakness of those who yield so readily to all their exactions.[7] In this case the manner of giving is truly of greater importance than the gift. The trades-
319) unions, which, on account of their anonymity are able to exercise, and do exercise, a tyranny far more severe than that of the most inflexible employer, are religiously respected. They have prestige, and the workman always obeys them, even when he loses his wages by his obedience.
Again, the employer himself, in our great modern concerns, is tending steadily to become a mere subaltern in the pay of a company, and consequently has no motive in interesting himself in his staff. He does not know how to speak to a workman. A small employer who has himself been a workman will very often be a much harder master, but he will understand perfectly how to manage his men, rate them at their true worth, and save their amour-propre. At the present time the managers of workshops are more often than not young engineers from one of our great colleges, with any amount of theoretical instruction, and a profound ignorance of life and of men. They could not possibly know less than they do about their profession, and they will not admit that any customs of men or things can be superior to their abstract science. They are all the more unsuited to their duties in that they profess the deepest scorn for the class from which the greater number of them are sprung.[8]
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No one despises the peasant like the son of a peasant, nor the workman like the son of a workman, when he has succeeded in raising himself a little above his caste. Here again is one of those psychological verities which, like the greater number of psychological verities, for that matter, are disagreeable to state, but which must none the less be submitted to. Far more instructed than truly intelligent, the young engineer is totally unable to represent to himself-for that matter he does not try-the ideas and trains of reasoning of the ,men he is called upon to direct. Moreover, he does not preoccupy himself with the true means of influencing them. These matters are not taught in the schools, and therefore do not exist for him. His entire knowledge of psychology is confined to two or three ready-made ideas, which he has heard repeated by those about him, concerning the grossness and drunkenness of the artisan, and the necessity of keeping a tight rein on him, and so on. He catches only distorted glimpses of the ideas and conceptions of the workman. He will touch the delicate wheels of the human machine wrongly and clumsily. He will be weak or unreasonably despotic, according to his temperament, but in any case he will have no prestige and no real authority.
More than all else it is the insurmountable lack of comprehension which exists between the masters and the men that renders their present relations so strained.
The conceptions which the masters and men form respectively of their respective ideas and sentiments possess one thing in common. Each party being unable to assimilate the thoughts, cravings, and tastes of the other party, they interpret what they know nothing about according to then- respective mentalities. The idea that the proletariat has of the bourgeois, that is to say, of the man who does not work with
(321) his hand, is simple in the extreme ; he is a hard and rapacious being who makes the workman work only to get money out of him, who eats and drinks a great deal, and amuses himself with all kinds of excesses. His luxuries-however modest they may be, though they consist only of decent clothes and a fairly tidy house-are only a monstrous waste. His literary or scientific labours are sheer foolery, the whims of an idler. He has so much money that he does not know what to do with it, while the workman has none. Nothing would be easier than to remedy this injustice, since a few wholesome laws would suffice to reconstitute society between nightfall and sunrise. Force the rich to give the people what belongs to them ; it would merely be to repair a crying injustice. If the proletariat were able to doubt his own logic there would be no lack of orators, more servile before him than the courtiers of an Oriental despot before their master, ready to remind him incessantly of his imaginary rights. Unless, as I have already shown, certain notions had been firmly implanted in the popular subconsciousness by heredity, the Socialists must have triumphed long ago.
The conception which the bourgeois forms of the working man is quite as inexact. For the master, the man is a rude, drunken boor. Incapable of thrift, he squanders his wages, without counting them, at the wineshop, instead of spending the evening soberly in his room. Ought he not to be thankful for his lot, and does he not earn far more than he deserves ? He is given libraries, he is allowed conferences, and cheap dwellings are built for him. What more can he want ? Is he not incapable of looking after his own affairs ? He must be controlled by a grip of iron, and if anything is done for his benefit it must alwavs be done without his interference ; he must he treated somewhat as a dog to which one throws a bone from
(322) time to time when it growls a little too loudly. Can we attempt to perfect such an imperfectible being ? Besides, has not the world long ago assumed its final form, as regards political economy, morality, and even religion ? What is the use of all this hankering after change ?
To sum up : among the Latin peoples at least, masters and men form to-day two absolutely inimical classes, and as both classes feel themselves to be absolutely incapable of overcoming the difficulties of their daily relations by themselves, they invariably appeal to the State, thus once again to prove the irresistible need of the French people to be governed, and its inability to conceive of society otherwise than as a hierarchy of castes under the all-powerful control of a master. Free competition, spontaneous association, and personal initiative are conceptions which are inaccessible to our national spirit. Its ideal is always the salaried functionary in his every manifestation, under the laws of a chief. This ideal no doubt reduces the cost of the individual to the lowest level, but it also demands a minimum of character and action. The workman who cries out against his master could not do without him. " Where should we get our bread then ? " one of them asked me one day. And thus we return once more to this fundamental fact-that the destinies of a nation are controlled by its character, not by its institutions.
