The most effective way to prevent pauperism among the agricultural classes is assuredly the division of land. This division exists for us in France, one does not have to fear that that great or permanent misery will ever establish itself here. But one can still improve the quality of life of these classes and make individual misfortunes less cruel and more rare. The duty of the government and of the upper classes is to work on it.
It is outside my present subject to look for these means.
If in France the agricultural class is not as exposed to inevitable reverses of fortune as those elsewhere, the industrial classes is scarcely any less exposed. The remedy that we have with success applied to the misery of the farmer never has been, and it is doubtful that it could ever be, helpful against the misfortunes of the worker.
One has not yet discovered a way to divide industrial property without rendering it unproductive, as one has with landed property; industry has conserved the aristocratic format in modern nations, while everywhere one sees institutions and customs that have their origin in the aristocracy disappearing.
The experience, until the present, has shown that in order to entrust oneself with some hope of success into most commercial enterprises, it is necessary to concentrate large amounts of capital into a few hands. One encounters some individuals who have great wealth and who employ multitudes of workers who possess nothing. Such is the spectacle that French industry presents today. It is exactly what happened in France in the Middle Ages and one is seeing it happen in the agricultural sector of large parts of Europe
The results are similar. The modern worker, like the medieval farmer, having no property that belongs to him, seeing no way to assure a tranquil future for himself and to elevate himself gradually towards wealth, becomes indifferent to anything that is not present enjoyment. His carelessness delivers him, defenseless, to all probability of misery. But there exists a great and important difference between the agricultural and the industrial proletarian: the latter, independently of the habitual misery to which his improvidence can lead, is still exposed constantly to accidental misfortune that he cannot foresee and that does not menace the former. And his chances of misfortune are infinitely greater in industry than in agriculture because industry, as we will explain later, is subject to sudden crises that are unknown in agriculture.
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