Let it not be objected that our aim, the abolition of misery, is materialistic. “The most exalted spiritualism reposes on the suppression of misery. Who does not know it? Misery restrains the intelligence of man in darkness, in confining education within shameful limits. Misery counsels always the sacrifice of personal dignity and almost always demands it. Misery places him whose character is independent in a position of dependence, so as to conceal a new torment in a virtue and to change into gall what there is of nobility in his blood. If misery creates long-suffering, it engenders also crime.... It makes slaves; it makes the greater part of thieves, assassins and prostitutes.”[106] The work before us is then eminently moral. It is the work which God would have us do. In Louis Blanc’s own words: “In demanding that the right to live should be regulated, should be guaranteed, one does much more than demand that millions of unhappy beings should be rescued from the oppression of force or of chance; one embraces, in its highest generalization and in its most profound signification, the cause of humanity; one greets the Creator in his labor. Whenever the certainty of being able to live by one’s labor does not result from the essence of social institutions, iniquity reigns.” The first step then is the contrivance of means which shall guarantee to every one the certainty of finding work _i.e._, the _droit au travail_. This must be accomplished by the erection on the part of the state of social workshops, _ateliers sociaux_, “destined to replace gradually and without shocks individual _ateliers_.”[107] Violence of every kind is deprecated as injurious, as productive of ruin.[108] The poor cannot now combine and produce for themselves without the intervention of capitalists, because they lack the instruments of labor. It is the function of the state to furnish these and thus become the banker of the poor. It must found the _ateliers sociaux_, pass laws for their government, watch over the administration of these laws as of other laws, and do this for the profit of all.[109] For the first year only the state regulates the “hierarchy of functions,” that is to say, assigns to each one his place in accordance with his ability, his faculties. After the expiration of the first year the laborers will soon become acquainted with each other, and will then elect their own chiefs.[110] This all requires funds. Whence are they to come? The state is to grant its credit in aid of the _ateliers_, and for this credit no interest is to be charged; it is to be gratuitous. The state will repay the loans by general taxation and by the revenues derived from the management of railways, which must become public property, and from other public undertakings, as mines, insurances, and banking.[111]