Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/107

 ever accomplish." (T. Sadler, "The Law of Population," London, 1830.)

To return to M. Proudhon. The surplus of labor, he says, explains itself by society personified. The life of this personal society follows laws opposed to the laws by which man acts as an individual, as he will prove by "facts."

"The discovery of an economic process can never be worth to the inventor the profit which it yields to society. It has been remarked that railway undertakings have been much less a source of riches to the owners than to the State. The average price for the transport of commodities by road is eighteen centimes per ton per kilometre, goods called for and delivered. It has been calculated that at this rate, an ordinary railway undertaking would not clear ten per cent. net profit, a return nearly equal to that of road cartage. But, admitting that the speed of railway transport is to road transport as four to one, as in society time is money, the railway would show an advantage over the road of four hundred per cent. This enormous advantage, however, very real for society, is far from being realised in the same proportion by the railway proprietor, who, while he enables society to enjoy an additional value of four hundred per cent. does not draw, himself, even ten per cent. Let us suppose, to make the matter clearer, that the railway increases its tariff to twenty-five centimes, that of road transport remaining at eighteen, it would immediately lose all its consignments. Traders and their consignees, everybody, in fact, would return to the old road waggons [sic]. The locomotive would be deserted. A social advantage of four hundred per cent. would be sacrified [sic] to a loss of thirty-five per cent. The reason is easy to comprehend: the advantage arising from