WHITE SLAVERY 233 



Abundance of evidence on this point, from competent 

 authorities, is forthcoming. 



In his * Relevement de 1'Agriculture,' Lafargue wrote : 



The condition of agriculture brought about by our subdivision 

 of land, and the distance from each other of the morsels belonging 

 to one owner, condemn a man to work such as animals and machines 

 ought to execute, and not only reduce him to the level of a beast, 

 but curse the soil with sterility. 



Le*once de Lavergne says in * L'Economie rurale 

 de 1'Angleterre, d'Ecosse et de 1'Irlande ': 



Although the French labourer is frequently proprietor of the 

 land, and thus adds a little profit to his wages, he does not live as 

 well as the English farm-labourer. He is not so well fed, not so 

 well clothed, and is less comfortably lodged. He eats more bread, 

 but it is generally made of rye with the addition of maize, buck- 

 wheat, and even chestnuts. . . . He rarely eats meat. I am 

 acquainted with parts of France where people live on 70 centimes 

 (/d.) a day. 



Michelet, in describing the life of the French peasant, 

 says: 



Follow him before daylight, you will find your man at work, 

 with his children and his wife, who has recently been confined, 

 who drags herself along on the wet earth. At mid-day, when the 

 heat is sufficient to split the very rocks, when the slave-owner would 

 permit his slave to rest, the voluntary slave must keep on working. 

 Look at the food he eats, and compare it with that of the artisan. 

 Why, the artisan fares better every day than the peasant does on 

 Sundays. Do you wonder, now, if this Frenchman, this laugher, 

 this former singer, laughs no more ? Is it surprising that, when 

 you meet him on the land that devours him, he appears so gloomy ? 

 . . . Isolating himself as he does, and becoming more and still 

 more bitter, there is too much sadness in his heart for him to open 

 it to any sentiment of benevolence. Alone on this miserable 

 property, as on a desert island, he becomes a savage. His un- 

 sociability, born of the feeling of his misery, prevents him from 

 being on good terms with those who should be his colleagues and 

 friends the other peasants. He hates the rich, he hates his 

 neighbour, and he hates the world. 



Of Balzac's ' Les Paysans ' Lady Verney writes in 



