And here are two women carrying a basket with clean clothes; they have washed the linen for the gentry and for the English and French teachers. In that house two women hardly manage to wash up all the crockery for the gentlefolk who have just had a meal, and two peasants in dress coats are running up and down stairs serving coffee, tea, wine, and seltzer water. Upstairs a table is spread: they have just finished eating and will soon eat again till midnight, till three o’clock, often till cock-crow.
Some of them sit smoking and playing cards, others sit and smoke talking liberalism; others move about from place to place, eat, smoke, and not knowing what to do decide to go out for a drive. There are some fifteen healthy men and women there and some thirty able-bodied men and women servants working for them.
And this is happening where every hour and every boy is precious. And it will continue in July when the peasants, going short of sleep, will mow the oats by night not to let them shack, and the women will rise while it is still dark to thrash straw for sheaf-bands, and when that old woman by then quite worn out with the harvest work, and the woman with child, and the young lads, overstrain themselves and get ill from drinking too much water; and when there is a shortage of bands and horses and carts to carry to the stacks the corn which feeds everyone, and of which millions of puds1 are needed every day in Russia that people may not die; and all this time the gentlefolk will continue the same way of life there will be theatricals, picnics, hunts, drinking, eating, piano-playing, singing, dancing, in an unceasing orgy.
Here it is no longer possible to make the excuse that such is the order of things; none of it was prearranged. We ourselves carefully arrange this way of life, taking grain and labour away from the overburdened peasant folk. We live as though we had no connexion with the dying washerwoman, the fifteen-year-old prostitute, the woman fagged out by cigarette-making, and the strained, excessive labour of the old women and children around us who lack a sufficiency of food; we live-enjoying ourselves in luxury-as if there were no connexion between those things and our life; we do not wish to see that were it not for our idle, luxurious and depraved way of life, there would also not be this excessive toil, and that without this excessive toil such lives as ours would be impossible.
We imagine that their sufferings are one thing and our life another, and that we, living as we do, are as innocent and pure as doves.
We read descriptions of the lives of the Romans and marvel at the inhumanity of the soulless Luculli glutting themselves on delicacies and costly drinks while people died of
1 The pud is about 36 lbs. avoirdupois.-A. M.
hunger; we shake our heads and marvel at the savagery of our grandfathers, the serf-owners who organized domestic orchestras and theatres and allotted whole villages for the upkeep of their gardens, and from the height of our humanitarianism we wonder at them.
We read the words of Isaiah, Chapter V:
‘8. Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.
‘11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!
‘12. And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands.
‘18. Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:
‘20. Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
‘21. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!
‘22. Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink:
‘23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!’
We read these words, and it seems to us that it does not refer to us. We read in the Gospels: Matthew iii. 10:
‘And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’
And we are fully convinced that we are just the good tree that brings forth fruit, and that these words are not addressed to us, but to some others, to bad people.
We read the words of Isaiah, vi:
‘10. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert and be healed.
‘11. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate.’
We read this and are fully persuaded that this wonderful thing is not done to us, but to some other people. But the reason why we see nothing is just because this wonderful work is being done to us: we do not hear, nor see, nor understand with our hearts. How did this come about?
CHAPTER XXVI
How can one who considers himself, I will not say a Christian or even a cultured or humane man, but simply a man with some traces of reason and conscience, live in such a way so that, without taking part in the struggle of all humanity for life, he devours the labour of those who do struggle and increases by his demands the burden of the strug-glers and the number of those who perish in that struggle? Yet our so-called Christian and cultured world is full of such people. Not only is our world full of such, but the ideal of people of our Christian and cultured world is to acquire the greatest possible fortune-that is, riches affording comfort and idleness: in other words, liberation from the struggle for life and opportunity to avail oneself fully of the labour of one’s brethren, who are perishing in that struggle. How could people fall into such an amazing error?
How could they come to the pass of not seeing, nor hearing, nor understanding with their hearts, what is so clear, obvious, and indubitable?
One need but reflect for a moment, to be horrified at the amazing contradiction between our life and what we-I will not say Christian, but humane and cultured people-profess.
Whether well or ill arranged by the God, or the law of nature, by which the world and mankind exist-the position of man in the world from the time we first know it, has been and is, that men are naked, without wool on their bodies, without burrows in which to shelter, without food they can find in the fields like Robinson Crusoe on his island, and they are all so placed as to have constantly and ceaselessly to struggle with nature in order to cover their bodies, make themselves clothes, fence themselves in, have a roof over their heads, and produce their food, so as two or three times’ a day to satisfy their hunger and that of their children and old folk who cannot work.
Wherever, at whatever period and in whatever number, we observe the life of men, in Europe, China, America, or Russia, and whether we observe the whole of humanity or only some small part of it, in ancient times in the nomad state or in our times with steam-engines, sewing machines, electric lights, and improved agricultural methods, we see one and the same thing: that people, working incessantly and intensely, are unable to secure sufficient food, clothing, and shelter for themselves and their children and old people, and that a considerable number, now as in earlier ages, perish from lack of sufficient means of life and from excessive labour to obtain those means.
Live where we may, if we draw a circle around us of a hundred thousand, of a thousand, of ten miles, or of one mile, and observe the lives of those whom our circle encloses, we shall see in it starveling children, old men and old women, women in confinement, the sick and the weak, who have not sufficient food or rest and who therefore die prematurely, and we shall see men in their prime who are simply killed by dangerous and harmful work.
Since the world began we see that men have struggled with their common need and despite terrible efforts, deprivations, and sufferings, have not been able to vanquish it. We also know that each of us, wherever he may be and however he may live, every day and every hour, voluntarily or not, consumes part of the produce the labour of humanity has produced.
Wherever and however he lives, the house and the roof over his head did not grow of their own accord. The wood in his stove did not walk in of itself, nor did the water; neither did the baked bread, the dinner, the clothes, and his boots, fall from the sky; but it has all been made not by men of the past alone, who are already dead, but has been, and is being, made for him now by
