Suppose now all these difficulties overcome; suppose the laborers
made available by the railroad adequate to the increase of
service demanded for the support of the locomotive,--compensation
being effected without pain, nobody will suffer; on the contrary,
the well-being of each will be increased by a fraction of the
profit realized by the substitution of the railway for the
stage-coach. What then, I shall be asked, prevents these things
from taking place with such regularity and precision? And what
is easier than for an intelligent government to so manage all
industrial transitions?
I have pushed the hypothesis as far as it could go in order to
show, on the one hand, the end to which humanity is tending, and,
on the other, the difficulties which it must overcome in order to
attain it. Surely the providential order is that progress should
be effected, in so far as machinery is concerned, in the way that
I have just spoken of: but what embarrasses society's march and
makes it go from Charybdis to Scylla is precisely the fact that
it is not organized.
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