Even Collectivists suspect that a man of forty, the father of three children, has greater needs than a youth of twenty. They suspect that a woman who is suckling her child and spends sleepless nights by its cot, cannot get through so much work as a man who has enjoyed tranquil slumber.
They seem to understand that a man or woman worn out by having, perhaps, worked over hard for society in general may find themselves incapable of performing so many "deeds" as those who take their hours of labor quietly and pocket their "notes" in the privileged offices of State statisticians.
And they hasten to temper their principle. Oh, certainly, they say, society will feed and bring up its children. Oh, certainly it will assist the old and infirm. Oh, certainly needs not deeds will be the measure of the cost which society will impose on itself to temper the principle of deeds.
What, Charity? Yes, our old friend, "Christian Charity," organised by the State.
Improve the foundling hospital, organise insurance against age and sickness, and the principle of deeds will be "tempered." "Wound that they may heal," they can get no further.
Thus, then, after having. forsworn Communism, after having sneered at their ease at the formula, "To each according to his needs," is it not obvious that they, the great economists, also perceive that they have forgotten something, i.e., the needs of the producers? And thereupon they hasten to recognise these needs. Only it is to be the State by which they are to be estimated; it is to be the State which will undertake to find out if needs are disproportionate to deeds.
It is to be the State that will give alms to him who is willing to recognise his inferiority. From thence to the Poor Law and the Workhouse is but a stone's throw.
There is but a stone's throw, for even this step-mother of a society, against which we are in revolt, has found it necessary to temper its individualistic principle. It too has had to make concessions in a Communistic sense, and in this same form of charity.
It also distributes halfpenny dinners to prevent the pillage of its shops. It also builds hospitals, often bad enough, but sometimes splendid, to prevent the ravages of contagious disease. It also, after having paid for nothing but the hours of labor, receives the children of those whom it has itself reduced to the extremity of distress. It also takes account of needs—as a charity.
Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches. This it was which created the earliest capitalist. For, before the
