9 6 



the workers in his factory or his field. The 

 death or the illness of the worker can, in fact, 

 bring no diminution of his patrimony, and 

 he can always have recourse to the inexhaus- 

 tible crowd of proletarians which the slack 

 season offers him in the market. 



This is why not because the present em- 

 ployers are more wicked than those of the 

 past, but because even the moral sentiments 

 are a product of the economic condition the 

 landowner, or the steward of his estate, will 

 hasten to call a veterinary surgeon if the ox 

 in his stall is taken ill, so that he may avoid 

 the loss of so much capital, while he shows no 

 eagerness in having a doctor called if it is his 

 drover's son who is attacked. 



Certainly there may be (and there are 

 exceptions more or less frequent) a landowner 

 who is a contradiction to this rule, especially 

 when he lives in daily contact with his 

 workers. It cannot be denied further that the 

 rich classes are sometimes troubled with the 

 spirit of beneficence even without the "charity 

 fad,' 1 and that they thus sooth the inward voice 

 of moral uneasiness which troubles them, but 

 the inexorable rule is still this : with the 

 modern form of industry the worker has con- 

 quered political freedom, the right of a vote, 

 of association, etc. (which he is allowed to 

 exercise as long as he does not unite to form a 

 class party which holds an intelligent con- 

 ception of the essential point of the social 

 question) but he has lost the security of his 

 daily bread and his home. 



Socialism wishes to give this security to all 



