422 H^lman Physiology. 



property is accumulated by means as dishonourable as most 

 kinds of stealing. 



As society is now constituted, we go on robbing and being 

 robbed, with more or less wear and tear of conscience, because 

 we see no other way. With society constituted as it really 

 might be, instead of tfye truck shop, and tally shop, and credit 

 shop getting working men in their power and stripping them of 

 their earnings, every large employer of labour might easily 

 arrange to have all his workmen supplied with everything they 

 need of the best quality and the lowest price, which would be 

 equivalent to a large advance of wages. And when a system 

 of exchanges is fully organised, we shall have free trade in its 

 reality the exchange of all Jommodities, labour for labour, at 

 equitable prices, to be fixed by mutual agreement, neither party 

 taking the slightest advantage of the other. 



To the saving of useless labour, or the idle lives of shop- 

 keepers,, waiting, as Fourier said, like so many spiders in their 

 holes for flies to come to the glittering webs spread out to 

 catch them, we must add the utter abandonment of the idle- 

 less of fashion or gentility. It is the disgrace of England that 

 honest work is considered disreputable. A lady or a gentleman 

 will not be seen carrying a package in the street. The shop- 

 man must send it home. Thus every idler enforces useless 

 labour. And the less assured the position of persons, the more 

 scrupulous they are not to soil their fingers with any ungenteel 

 employment. A nobleman will carry a basket or wheel a 

 barrow if he likes it will not compromise his dignity ; but a 

 clerk or a governess will not touch a paper parcel, for fear they 

 should be mistaken for menials. There are thousands of able- 

 bodied men and women living in wretched "genteel" depend- 

 ence, who, but for this absurd notion of the disgrace of work, 

 or ungentility of industry, might be useful members of society, 

 contributing their share to supply the common needs of huma- 

 nity It is time that men and women of rank and dignity 



