214 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE v 



is stable, when the wants of its members obtain 

 as much satisfaction as, Hfe being what it is, 

 common sense and experience show may be 

 reasonably expected. Mankind, in general, care 

 very little for forms of government or ideal 

 considerations of an}^ sort; and nothing really 

 stirs the great multitude to break with custom 

 and incur the manifest perils of revolt excejDt the 

 belief that misery in this world, or damnation in 

 the next, or both, are threatened by the continu- 

 ance of the state of things in which they have 

 been brought up. But when they do attain that 

 conviction, society becomes as unstable as a 

 package of dynamite, and a very small matter 

 will produce the explosion which sends it back to 

 the chaos of savager}^ 



It needs no argument to prove that when the 

 price of labour sinks below a certain point, 

 the worker infallibly falls into that condition 

 which the French emphatically call la misere — a 

 word for which I do not think there is any exact 

 EngHsh equivalent. It is a condition in which 

 the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary 

 for the mere maintenance of the functions of the 

 body in their normal state cannot be obtained ; 

 in which men, women, and children are forced to 

 crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished and 

 the most ordinary conditions of healthful exist- 

 ence are impossible of attainment ; in which the 

 pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality 



