xxvi REOCCUPATION OF THE LAND 481 



modern (Edipus to solve, is nevertheless perfectly easy. 

 To put it in its simplest form it is as follows: 

 Unemployment exists, and must increase, because, under 

 the conditions of modern society, production of every kind is 

 carried on, nut at all for the purpose of supplying the wants 

 of the producers, but solely with the object of creating wealth 

 for the capitalist employer. 



Now, I believe that this statement contains the 

 absolute root of the whole matter, and indicates the true 

 and only lines of the complete remedy. But to many it 

 will be a hard saying ; let us therefore examine it a little 

 in detail. 



The capitalist cotton-spinner, cloth or boot-manu- 

 facturer, colliery-owner, or iron-master, care not the least 

 ivho buys their goods or loho uses them, so long as they can 

 get a good price for them. The cotton, the boots, the 

 coals, or the iron, may be exported to India or Australia, 

 to America or to Timbuctoo, while millions are in- 

 sufficiently clad or warmed in the very places where all 

 these things are made. Even the very people who make 

 them may thus suffer, through insufficient wages or 

 irregular employment ; yet the upholders of the present 

 system will not admit that anything is fundamentally 

 wrong.' The lowness of wages and irregularity of 

 employment, are, they tell us, due to general causes over 

 which they have no control such as foreign competition, 

 insufficient markets, &c., which injure the capitalists as 

 well as the workers. The unemployed exist, they say, on 

 account of the improvements in machinery and in 

 mechanical processes in all civilised countries, which 

 economise labour and thus render production cheaper. 

 The surplus labour, therefore, is not wanted ; and that 

 portion of it which cannot be absorbed in administering 

 to the luxury of the rich must be supported by charity or 

 starve. That is the last word of the capitalists and of the 

 majority of the politicians. But though capitalists and 

 politicians are satisfied to let things go on as they are, 

 with ever-increasing wealth and luxury on the one hand, 

 ever-increasing misery and discontent on the other, 

 thinking men and women all over the world are not 



VOL. II. I I 



