58

THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

described  by  Lassalle,  following  in  the  footsteps  of  Ricardo,
Smith,  and  Turgot.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  clearly  true  that
the  rate  of  wages  cannot  long  remain  below  what  is  indispensable ­
  to  enable  the  labourers  to  live  and  rear  children,
otherwise  their  numbers  would  be  rapidly  diminished.  It  is
not  that  we  see  them  die  of  starvation,  as  in  the  famines  of
the  Middle  Ages,  and  even  under  Louis  XIV.  ;  but,  as  Friederich
Lange  says,  they  die  of  the  same  causes  as  in  ordinary  times,
only  they  disappear  more  rapidly.*  Now  it  is  a  woman  in
childbirth  who  succumbs  to  the  cold,  and  now  an  infant  who
perishes  because  the  milk  it  takes  is  not  sufficiently  nourishing.
Diseases  become  rapidly  fatal,  since  they  fasten  on  constitutions ­
  already  enfeebled  ;  and  thus  the  mortality  increases
without  being  noticed.  This  is  precisely  what  occurred  during
the  siege  of  Paris.  Scarcely  any  one  literally  died  of  hunger,
because  charity  increased  in  proportion  to  the  suffering,
and  yet  the  number  of  deaths  considerably  increased,  while
that  of  the  births  diminished.  Prolonged  industrial  crises,
and  displacements  or  transformations  in  any  particular
trade,  act  in  the  same  manner,  when  they  bring  about  a
reduction  of  wages.  From  this  side,  then,  “  the  iron  law  ”  is
a  stern  reality.
But,  on  the  other  hand,  is  it  true  that  wages  can  never  rise
above  the  minimum  indispensable  for  existence,  and  that,  in
consequence,  all  the  efforts  of  philanthropists  to-  better  the
condition  of  the  great  masses  are,  as  Lassalle  asserts,  a  delusion
or  a  sham  ?
Mill  was  so  convinced  of  the  truth  of  this  principle,  that
he  did  not  wish  agricultural  labourers  to  be  given  even  a  strip
of  land  where  they  might  grow  a  few  vegetables  by  working  in
their  spare  hours.  The  only  result,  he  maintains,  would  be
that,  after  his  day’s  work  was  over,  the  labourer  would  dig
in  his  own  garden  in  the  evening,  by  moonlight,  and  on
holidays,  and  that  by  thus  obtaining  some  increase  of  food
he  would  be  able  to  sell  his  labour  all  the  cheaper.  Hence
increase  of  work  and  lower  wages  would  be  the  effect  of  a
*  Friederich-Albert  Lange,  Die  Arbeiterfrage  (The  Labour  Question),
third  edition,  Winterthur,  1875,  p.  164.