I have only spoken of the case in which a population restrains its wants. Many other causes can bring about the same effect: overproduction by other citizens, foreign competition...
The industrial class that serves the well-being of others so powerfully is then more exposed than others to sudden and irremediable misfortune. In the great fabric of human societies, I consider the industrial class as having received from God the special and dangerous mission of catering to the material happiness of everyone else through risk and peril. But the natural and inevitable movement of civilization unceasingly tens to increase the proportion of those in it. Each year, needs multiply and diversify, and with them grows the number of individuals who hope to create greater comfort in working to satisfy these new needs rather than staying in agriculture: a great subject for the statesmen of today to meditate on!
This is the principal cause of what is happening in wealthy societies, where comfort and indigence are to be found in greater numbers than before. The industrial class, which provides for the pleasures of the majority, has exposed itself to miseries that would be all but unknown if this class did not exist.
Nevertheless, additional causes contribute to the gradual development of pauperism.
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