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.
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