A TALK IN A PARISIAN WORKSHOP ABOUT THE UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

“A chacun selon son travail, To each man according to his work, that's my way of looking at it. Go by that motto and things will soon come right.”

I heard this said, with great emphasis, by Pierre Nigaud to some of his mates as I entered the workshop. I went there every month to collect the contributions to a Provident Insurance Club, to which several of the men belonged. Pierre was on the whole an industrious as well as clever workman, and had joined the club readily, as he thought it right to save something for his wife and children, and to provide for a rainy day, as the saying is.

I had observed, however, that Pierre on the last occasion when I saw him was less frank than he used to be, and did not hand over his money with the same cheerful goodwill as formerly. What was the cause I did not know, but he soon made it plain. He had been listening to some plausible people, or reading some shallow treatises that made him discontented with his lot.

“I was just saying when you came in,” he began, “A chacun selon son travail, To each man according to his work. Don't you think that a good motto?”

“Well, it sounds good, but it depends how you apply it, and what you are talking about.”

“I was talking, I and my mates, about the great inequality among people. Riches are distributed in a very strange and, I say, unjust fashion. Is it not unjust that, while so many poor fellows have to work hard to gain a few pence a day, there are wealthy Nabobs who haul in gold by shovelfuls? I read in a paper the other day that the English Duke of Westminster has an income of twenty millions of francs, which brings him at least 50,000 francs a day!”

“Quite true, and he is far from being the most wealthy man you might name, I believe the Californian Mackay has about seventy millions of income. Rothschild, of Frankfort, left more than a milliard. Astor and Vanderbilt, of New York, and other millionaires on both sides the ocean, have untold wealth.”

“There, you see,” said Pierre; “and what appears to me the worst wrong of all is that these huge incomes belong to people who do next to nothing, while poverty is oftenest the lot of those who work and toil the hardest. I call this downright injustice. A chacun selon son travail. The riches ought to be with those that work. That's my way of looking at it.”

“All right, Pierre,” said I; “there is a good deal of truth in what you say. It is quite true that in regard to the distribution of wealth, as in regard to many other things, this world is far from being perfect. But do you think that if you had the re-arrangement of society, and the redistribution of riches, you could proceed on some other and better plan?”

“Certainly. I believe, without any presumption, that I could,” said Pierre. “What seems to me difficult is not to make things better, but to make them any worse than they are now!”

One of the workmen here said that nothing was simpler than to take the surplus wealth of these rich men, and divide it amongst the deserving poor.

“That plan is just a little too simple,” I remarked. “All the millions of a Rothschild would go a very little way, if divided among the population of Paris alone, and we should soon have to resort to other schemes to redress the ever-renewed inequalities. No; no; what I want Pierre to show us is some better system of society, and he thinks he has the key to the problem in his favorite motto, A chacun selon son travail. But just let me remind you that in ancient times there was a king of Spain who was a bit of an astronomer; and looking at the heavens, and wondering at the complicated movements of the stars, he said that if he had been consulted in the matter he could have made a much better and simpler arrangement. Your purpose is not so ambitious and presumptuous as his, for the heavens are the work of the Almighty, who has imposed upon Nature certain fixed laws; whereas the laws of society are the work of men, and men are liable to err. Let us then hear what improvement you can suggest in the laws and usages which regulate the distribution of wealth.”

Pierre was somewhat taken aback, for he felt that the existing arrangements of society were very complex, and it was not easy to determine where the reform should begin.

“Well,” said I, “let us suppose that a number of persons were set on shore upon an island, where none had any rights or property beyond the others. Let us suppose that there are as yet no laws, that there is no government, no past history: all are free and equal, and you have full power to organise the distribution of wealth in this new society, and to decide what is to be the share of each. Come now, you have a carte blanche, let us hear what you would do.”

“Well,” said Pierre, “I should begin by deciding that every one was to do what he would and what he could, and that every one should keep what he was able by his work and industry to obtain. A chacun selon son travail: behold my fundamental rule!”

“It is an excellent rule,” I said, “and I do not think any one could find a better. It appears to me to be just, and also eminently practical, for it would stimulate every one to produce by his industry as much as he could. I see by this that you are no advocate of Communism.”

“Certainly not,” said Pierre. “Communism is a very good thing in a family, where every one exerts himself to work for those he loves, and accepts without murmur his share of work, certain that the mother, or whoever is housekeeper, manages the common purse with thrift, and in the interest of all. But in a large society, I do not think that men are equally willing to exert themselves for those whom they have no knowledge of and no special attachment to. Besides, in Communism under the State, the manager holding the purse strings would be no other than the Government, and I would not have confidence in its management being wise and economical.”

“I quite agree with you. But let us return to your plan. After establishing your principle, “to each one the produce of his labor,” what would you do then?”

“Nothing at all; every one would then stand on his own bottom. He that works well would have sufficient, and he who did no work would have nothing.”

“You do not imagine,” I observed, “that you would obtain equality by these conditions? Since every one has to take his part in the work, it is evident that these parts will be small or great, according as each is industrious or not. You would soon come to have in your new society the rich and the poor.”

“Well, perhaps; but at all events there would be none too rich or too poor.”

“How do you know that? Here are two families: in one the habits of work, of order, of economy, are hereditary; the other is given, from father to son, to idleness, improvidence, and dissipation. The distance that separates these families, small at first, must go on increasing, till in the natural course of things, sooner or later, there would come to be the same inequality as between Rothschild and a beggar. It would only be a question of time.”

Pierre's companions, who were listening attentively to the discussion, here murmured assent, or what would correspond to the “Hear, hear!” of more formal debates. Pierre, however, merely remarked that this result might seem opposed to his views, but that he nevertheless accepted it; “because,” said he, “in this case the inequality of riches would at least be the result of work and of the efforts of each worker. There would be no injustice.”

“Pardon me, Pierre, but I think that your motto is still causing you to cherish some illusions. Let me show you my way of looking at it. A chacun selon son travail, you say, To every one the product of his own industry. But what is the proprietor to do with the product of his labor? He will no doubt sell all that is over and above what he needs for his own use, and the price of what is sold will form his income. But the price of things depends on a variety of conditions independent of our personal labor and our own will; such for instance, as the vicissitudes of seasons and the variations of the markets. Out of a difference of ten francs in the price of wine may result the fortune or the ruin of a proprietor, and that proves nothing as to his having himself labored well or ill. The revenue or net profit is rarely in exact proportion to the labor bestowed, in farming or vine-growing or any other industry. What we call chance will always play its part in the affairs of this world, and in the new world which you are planning you cannot hinder Fortune from dispensing her favors in an unequal fashion; it is not without reason that she is represented with a bandage over her eyes!”

“Ah, bah!” exclaimed Pierre; “you disconcert me with your suppositions. What do you want? I firmly believe that in my colony, as everywhere, there will be good and bad luck, but while the chances are equal for all, and there is no place for wrong-doing or trickery, I console myself. At least you will admit that my principle, A chacun le produit de son travail, will have this good result, that it will render impossible the existence of rich idle people who pass their life in doing nothing.”

“Are you quite sure of that, Pierre? If any one after working ten or twenty years has produced enough property to suffice for his wants during the remainder of his days, do you pretend to hinder him from spending in his own way, in idleness if he pleases, what he had amassed by his labors?”

“Certainly not, because such a one would be living on the product of his own toil. Let a man rest in the evening after having worked hard in the morning, and let him live in ease in his old age after having produced enough by the toil of his youth; I see no harm in that. I have no wish to condemn the members of my colony to forced labor in perpetuity. The only idlers that I wish to exclude are those who live without ever having worked at all or produced anything—the rentiers, as they call them, or idle people, who live on their income, or the interest of their money.”

“Stop now, Pierre; do you admit that a man who has obtained anything by his labor has the right to do what he pleases with it?”

“Assuredly.”

“Here is a man who has made a loaf of bread. You admit his right to eat it all if he is hungry, or to set part of it aside if he has not appetite at the time for all of it, or even to throw some of it away, as he pleases.”

“Yes, it is a consequence of my principle, A chacun le produit de son travail. He who creates wealth has the right to dispose of it as he pleases. But what has that to do with your argument?”

“Just this. If he who produces a thing can do what he pleases with it, he can surely give it where he pleases. If, then, it suits me to make every day a loaf for you, and to give it to you; still more, if it pleases me to give to you out of my property or to bequeath to you after my death enough bread, or, what comes to the same thing, enough money to support you during your life, you will have acquired the means of walking about with your hands in your pockets like an idle gentleman. You will, in fact, have become a rentier.”

Never,” said Pierre, “never. If I allowed such parasites to exist in my new society it would be no better than the old.”

“Then don't talk any more about your motto, A chacun le produit de son travail. If you adopt this principle you must adopt also its consequences, whether you like them or not. If, according to your system, you admit to every one the right of disposing of the fruit of his labor, you must admit the right to receive as well as to give. Where the worker is master of his own property it depends on him whether he will create a rentier, and you cannot prevent him except by decreeing that he is incapable of disposing of what belongs to him. Beware of what must happen otherwise. If in your new society you prevented parents from giving or leaving to their children the property they have amassed, there would be risk of their amassing far less or of dissipating what they had already been able to accumulate by their industry and thrift, which would be a great loss for all. We must allow, in fact, and it is to the honor of human nature, that there are very many in this world who work more and save more for their children and for others rather than for themselves.”

“Well, sir, if in my new society there must eventually be rich and poor, workers and non-workers: if the portion of each is not necessarily proportioned to their labor then how, I wish to know, would this new society which I have taken such trouble to plan and organise, how would it differ from the society in which we now live?”

“In nothing at all, my good friend, and this it just what I wished to demonstrate to you. You see that the world in which we live is, after all, not so badly organised, seeing that the new one which you have tried to create on better principles, as you imagined, turns out, at the end of the account, to be an exact reproduction of the existing system.”—Leisure Hour.