The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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FERDINAND LASSALLE. 6l thus lead to the solution of the problem. Observed facts in France would lead to this conclusion. In fact, France, along with Switzerland and Norway, is the country in which property is distributed amongst the greatest number of holders, and well-being is most equally divided, and It is also the country in which population increases most slowly. During the last twenty years, notwithstanding the most terrible convulsions, wealth has increased there more than anywhere else, while the population has remained almost stationary. In Germany there is much less comfort among the people; the labourer, especially in the rural parts, is far worse paid. Not withstanding the great progress of industry and of agriculture, which have had to struggle against a naturally sterile soil, the country is still poor ; and yet the population is doubled every fifty-four years. It increases at the same rate in England, where the number of landowners is small and that of the labourers very large. When Arthur Young travelled in France, and saw the soil divided amongst a vast number of holders, he predicted the country would be transformed into a rabbit-warren. The very reverse has occurred. The population increases so slowly that now and again there come cries of alarm. M. Léonce de Lavergne was himself startled at it. Nevertheless, he who had so well analyzed the writings of the eighteenth century econo mists, should not have forgotten Quesnay’s profound maxim, which sums up the whole question in two words : “ Be less anxious for the increase of population than for the increase of incomes.” That Napoleon should reply to Madame de Staël, when she asked what woman he most admired, “ The one who has most children,” is perfectly comprehensible ; for what a conqueror needs is plenty of food for powder; but what an Economist should have in view is the happiness of men, and not their number. Far better there should be a few families, thinly peopling a district, and living in abundance, than com pact masses swarming in squalor. France fulfils in a wonderful way the hopes of Malthus, of Mill, and of Joseph Gamier, and she offers the most striking refutation of the “iron law” of Lassalle.

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