Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/20

 most distinguished of the Court ladies had one day waylaid the aforesaid Law (who at that time was the most courted and also the busiest man in France, and whom consequently it was very difficult to lay hold of) in the court of some building, in order to induce him to give them some shares in a company he had established, after which all France was running at that time, and whose value on the Exchange was six or eight times as high as the nominal price at which they had been issued by Law. The pressure exercised by these ladies with this object proceeded to a degree which a regard to decency will not allow me to particularise.

If you ask me again what causes had rendered possible this development of industry, and of the wealth of the Bourgeoisie thereby called into existence, I could not give a complete answer to the question without largely overstepping the limits of the time allotted to me. I will therefore only briefly enumerate the most essential of these causes; namely, the discovery of America and the enormous impulse thereby exercised on production; the discovery of the sea route to the East Indies by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, whereas formerly all trade with India and the East was forced to take the overland route by Suez; the discovery of the magnetic needle and the compass, and the greater security thus given to all trade by sea, as well as greater speed and diminution of the cost of insurance; the canals and paved roads constructed in the interior of countries, which, by diminishing the cost of transport, first made it possible to sell at a distance