Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/627

Rh be judged from the fact that "a small mud tower is erected in each field, where the possessor and his retainers guard his produce." If turbulent states of society such as early histories tell of, do not show us so vividly how the habit of appropriating one another's goods interferes with social prosperity and individual comfort, yet they do not leave us in doubt respecting these results. It is an inference which few will be hardy enough to dispute, that in proportion as the time of each man, instead of being occupied in further production, is occupied in guarding that which he has produced against marauders, the total production must be diminished and the sustentation of each and all less satisfactorily achieved. And it is a manifest corollary that if each pushes beyond a certain limit the practice of trying to satisfy his needs by robbing his neighbor, the society must dissolve: solitary life will prove preferable.

A deceased friend of mine, narrating incidents in his life, told me that as a young man he sought to establish himself in Spain as a commission agent; and that, failing by expostulation or other means to obtain payment from one who had ordered goods through him, he, as a last resource, went to the man's house and presented himself before him pistol in hand—a proceeding which had the desired effect: the account was settled. Suppose now that everywhere contracts had thus to be enforced by more or less strenuous measures. Suppose that a coal-mine proprietor in Derbyshire, having sent a train-load to a London coal-merchant, had commonly to send a posse of colliers up to town, to stop the man's wagons and take out the horses until payment had been made. Suppose the farm laborer or the artisan was constantly in doubt whether, at the end of the week, the wages agreed upon would be forthcoming, or whether he would get only half, or whether he would have to wait six months. Suppose that daily in every shop there occurred scuffles between shopman and customer, the one to get the money without giving the goods, and the other to get the goods without paying the money. What in such case would happen to the society? What would become of its producing and distributing businesses? Is it a rash inference that industrial co-operation (of the voluntary kind at least) would cease?

"Why these absurd questions?" asks the impatient reader. "Surely every one knows that murder, assault, robbery, fraud, breach of contract, etc., are at variance with social welfare and must be punished when committed." My replies are several. In the first place, I am quite content to have the questions called absurd; because this implies a consciousness that the answers are so self-evident that it is absurd to assume the possibility of any other answers. My second reply is that I am not desirous of pressing the question whether we know these things, but of pressing the