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labourers, the mechanics, the farm hands, are they the property of the capitalist? Are they his slaves?
As things stand to-day, they are! Might is right, and by the title of such right the slaveowner considers the fruit of the work of his slaves his property; by this right, in former times, the feudal landowner made his serfs work for his employment and benefit. Slavery is injustice; serfdom is injustice; so the right which capital claims to the work of the worker is injustice. I would not like to be misunderstood here. As far as anything is the personal property of a person he may enjoy it as he chooses; nobody has a right to interfere. But as soon as he tries to use this property to enslave other people, he steps over his domain and must be checked. For I think it is acknowledged among civilised people that nobody has a wright of ownership over his fellowmen. Slavery has been abolished, serfdom has been abolished, so the power which capital exercises now will be abolished: its place will be occupied by the natural and sacred right of the worker to the proceeds of his work.
But—is not capital as necessary as labour? Can labour produce anything without capital? There must be raw material, there must be tools, there must be machines, there must be workshops, warehouses, and so forth; there must be soil to be tilled, &c. What can mere labour do without all these? But labour existed before capital, and made the tools, workshops, &c. Is it necessary that capital, now the foundation of successful labour, which has been produced by labour, should be owned by a few individuals? Has this minority a right to continue to take the best part of what labour produces?
The Socialists take the side of Labour. They maintain that it is everybody's duty to work, unless he be sick or crippled. They maintain that whoever is able to work and is not willing to do it, has no right to enjoy the fruits of the industry and labour of others.
If capitalists attempt to justify their way of making profit by saying that they have to run risks sometimes, that a part of their property might occasionally be lost, we answer that labour has nothing to do with that. The real cause of it is the competition among the employers, the custom to produce at random without investigating whether what is produced is really wanted. For the class of capitalists there is no risk, because its wealth increases every day. But there is a great risk for the working-class. When business is slack, when wages go down, when many workers are out of employment—when, in consequence of this, mechanics, grocers, and even farmers suffer, the condition of the working part of the people is pitiable, and many suffer. The newspapers tell about that. Have they not had startling accounts of people starving to death in our great cities? Look at the local columns of the daily papers, and it is exceptional if there is no account of some family or other being poverty-stricken, of people driven to despair, driven to commit suicide by want. And all this in cities that have stores and warehouses crowded with goods. Is this no risk?
But how could this state of things be changed?
This, certainly, cannot be done of a sudden. There is a natural
