obscure tillers of the soil, from whose hands greedy States, land lords and middlemen snatch the fruit of their labour even before it is ripe; by obscure teachers who only too often fall crushed under the weight of Church, State, commercial competition, inertia of mind and prejudice.
And now, in the presence of all these conquests — what is the reality of things?
Nine-tenths of the whole population of grain-exporting countries like Russia, one-half of it in countries like France which live on home grown food, work upon the land-most of them in the same way as the slaves of antiquity did, only to obtain a meagre crop from a soil, and with a machinery which they cannot improve, because taxation, rent and usury keep them a]ways as near as possible to the margin of starvation. In this twentieth century, whole populations still plough with the same plough as their medaeval ancestors, live in the same incertitude of the morrow, and are as carefully denied education as their ancestors; and they have, in claiming their portion of bread, to march with their children and wives against their own sons’ bayonets, as their grandfathers did hundreds of years ago.
In industrially devloped countries, a couple of months’ work, or even much less than that, would be sufficient to produce for a family a rich and varied vegetable and animal food. But the researches of Engel (at Berlin) and his many followers tell us that the workman’s family has to spend one full half of its yearly earnings — that is, to give six months of labour, and often more — to provide its food. And what food! Is not bread and dripping the staple food of more than one-half of English children ?
One month of work every year would be quite sufficient to provide the worker with a healthy dwelling. But it is from 25 to 40 per cent. of his yearly earnings — that is, from three to five months of his working time