Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/261

Rh industries in our civilization, is nothing more than a mad chase growing wilder and fiercer every day, in which each participant is at the same time hunter and hunted, driving the soul out of the body and ending in a sudden collapse with lolling tongue and breath entirely spent.

Longer, harder toil for the producer, frenzied, criminal extravagance in the consumer—these are the direct results of the development of manufacturing industries, which tends constantly towards increased production and lower prices. Let us assume that all finished products were four times as dear as they are now, while provisions remained the same—this is easily conceivable if the development of the agricultural industries should overtake or pass beyond that of the manufacturing industries. Where would be the harm? 1 see none, but on the contrary, enormous benefits to mankind. Each individual would renew his clothing once instead of four times a year, and his household goods once in twenty years, instead of once in five. The factory employé would receive four times the wages at present paid him; that is, if he is now obliged to toil twelve hours to earn sufficient to support life, he would obtain the same result with three hours' labor. The expenses of the individual consumer would amount to the same sum total as before, at the close of the year. But one enormous result would be gained; the laboring-man would cease to be a galley-slave and become a man. That highest of all luxuries, of which he is now completely deprived: leisure, would conic within his reach. This means that he could have his share of the higher pleasures of civilized life, that he could visit museums and theatres, read, converse, meditate, that he would cease to be a machine and could assume the rank of a man among other men. We must