71 



to work daily in order to wrest from the land 

 that which enables him and his family to live 

 miserably. 



And small farming gives him at least the 

 tranquilising assurance that he will reach 

 the end of the year without experiencing all 

 the terrors of the enforced slack season to 

 which the workers not properly belonging to 

 the country and the workers of the town are 

 condemned. 



But at the bottom the problem remains in 

 its entirety, and there is always a man who 

 lives in comfort without working, because ten 

 others live miserably whilst working.* 



Such is the working of private property and 

 such are its effects without any intervention 

 of the will of individuals. 



Also, every attempt made against such or 

 such individual is condemned to remain 

 sterile : it is the basis of society that must 

 be changed, it is individual property that must 

 be abolished, not by a division which would 

 lead to the most acute and paltry form of 

 private property, because a year afterwards 

 the persistence of the 'individualist aspect 

 would lead us to the status quo ante, to the 

 exclusive benefit of the most crafty and least 

 scrupulous. 



* Certain persons still imbued with political artificial- 

 ism think that to solve the social question the system of 

 small farming must be generalised. They imagine with- 

 out putting it into words, a royal or presidential decree : 

 Clause i. All men shall become farmers ! 



And they do not think that if small farming, which 

 was the rule, is become the more and more rare excep- 

 tion, it must be~the necessary effect of natural causes. 



The cause of the change lies in the fact that small 



