214 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE v 



about the matter. It is social stability. Society 

 is stable, when the wants of its members obtain 

 as much satisfaction as, life being what it is, com- 

 mon sense and experience show may be reason- 

 ably expected. Mankind, in general, care very 

 little for forms of government or ideal consider- 

 ations of any sort; and nothing really stirs the 

 great multitude to break with custom and incur 

 the manifest perils of revolt except the belief that 

 misery in this world, or damnation in the next, 

 or both, are threatened by the continuance 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 dyna- 

 mite, and a very small matter will produce the 

 explosion which sends it back to the chaos of 

 savagery. 



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 Eng- 

 lish 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 



