When the workingmen of Lyons arose, saying, give us bread or kill us . . . [a]s it seemed too difficult to support them, we strangled them.

By this means order was reestablished. . . .

I ask, who really is interested in the maintenance of the economic conditions of today? No one at all. . . .

To every poor person who is pale from hunger there is a rich one who grows pale from fear. . . .

If a thing is true philosophically is it any less true economically? . . . [F]or society there is neither a partial progress nor a partial decline. The whole society rises, or falls. When justice is exercised, all have the advantage, when right is obscured, the whole suffers. A people in which one class is suppressed resembles a man who has a wounded leg. The injured leg prevents him from using the good one. This sounds paradoxical, [but] the oppressor and the oppressed gain equally by the removal of oppression; they lose equally by its maintenance. . . . The bourgeoisie has built its sovereignty upon free competition--the basis of tyranny . . . !

. . . [F]rom individualism springs competition; from competition, fluctuation of wages and their insufficiency. Having reached this point, we come upon . . . the breaking of the family ties. Every marriage creates increasing expense. . . . Children are born to the poor, how shall they be fed? . . . [W]e find so many of these unfortunate little creatures dead in dark corners, on the stairs of lonely churches, even in the vestibules of the buildings where laws are made. . . . The greatest evil is always found where industry has chosen its field of action. Ought not the state step forth and tell the poor mother: --I will take care of your children. . . . No, it ought to go further, it ought to take away the reason. . . .

To arrive at a social revolution it is necessary to takes its starting point in the conditions of present society. In other words, that which is important for us to find, is not so much a mathematical formula, as a practical solution.

Robert Owen was not a practical reformer, because he wanted to base the distribution of the products of labor on the needs of a society and not upon the services rendered.

The Saint-Simonists have not had any practical reformers because they have demanded the abolition of the family and the consequent destruction of the principle of inheritance.

Charles Fourier was not a practical reformer, because he laid the distribution of all labor, industrial or agricultural, at the mercy of the individual preference and because he has taken up everything in his social organization, except the idea of efficiency.

But what mighty ideas stir in all these works, especially in those of Fourier. . . .

The government ought to be considered as the supreme regulator of production and endowed for this duty with great power.

This task would consist of fighting competition and of finally overcoming it.

The government ought to float a loan with the proceeds of which it should erect social workshops in the most important branches of national industry. . . .

As the false and anti-social education given to the present generation does not allow them to look farther for . . . recompense than a motive of emulation and encouragement, the difference in wages ought to be based on the scale of work done; an entirely new form of education in this respect would completely change the [current] ideas and customs. . . . [W]ages, in all cases, must be sufficient for the subsistence of the workman.

. . . [A]]fter having killed competition among individuals, it would be absurd to let it subsist among corporations. Therefore, in each sphere of work, a central workshop must be established, to which all others would be in the position of supplementary workshops. . . .

In a system where every sphere of industry would gather together a certain number of men animated by the same spirit, acting under the same impulse, having common hopes, common interests, where would be the place, I ask you, for these adulterations of products, these cowardly subterfuges, these daily lies, these subtle frauds which to-day compel each producer, every merchant, cost what it may, to take away from his neighbor his customers and his fortune? Industrial reform would . . . mean a profound moral revolution and would bring about in one day more . . . than all sermons of preachers and all speeches of moralists could in a century. . . .

An economic revolution must be attempted:

1- Because the present social conditions are too full of misery, inequity and turpitude, to last much longer.
2- Because everybody, irrespective of position, rank or fortune, is interested in the creation of a new social order.
3- Finally because it is possible, even easy, to produce this necessary revolution in a peaceful way.

In the new world into which we could enter, some things, perhaps, must be accomplished for the complete realization of the principle of fraternity. But at least all would be prepared for this realization, which would be the work of education. Humanity has been too far separated from its goal to reach it in one day. The corrupt civilization, under the yoke of which we still groan, has disturbed all interests, but at the same time it has lost all reason and has poisoned all springs of human intelligence. Iniquity has taken the place of justice, falsehood has become truth and men tear each other to pieces under the protection of darkness.

Many false ideas must be destroyed; doubtlessly we can count upon their disappearing. The day will come, when we will acknowledge that he, whom God has endowed with more strength, or greater intelligence, must do more for his fellow men. Then let genius, and it is fully worthy of it, exercise its legitimate power, not by the means of the tribute which it levies upon society, but by the grandeur of the services which it will render to society. For the inequality of capabilities has for its goal, not the inequalities of rights, but the inequalities of duties.