If the workingman can travel on the railway, instead of walking, still that same railway has burned down his forest, has carried off his grain under his very nose, and has brought his condition very near to slavery--to the capitalist. If, thanks to steam-engines and machines, the workingman can purchase inferior calico at a cheap rate, on the other hand these engines and machines have deprived him of work at home, and have brought him into a state of abject slavery to the manufacturer. If there are telephones and telescopes, poems, romances, theatres, ballets, symphonies, operas, picture-galleries, and so forth, on the other hand the life of the workingman has not been bettered by all this; for all of them, by the same unlucky chance, are inaccessible to him. So that, on the whole (and even men of science admit this), up to the present time, all these remarkable discoveries and products of science and art have certainly not ameliorated the condition of the workingman, if, indeed, they have not made it worse. So that, if we set against the question as to the reality of the progress attained by the arts and sciences, not our own rapture, but that standard upon the basis of which the division of labor is defended,--the good of the laboring man,--we shall see that we have no firm foundations for that self-satisfaction in which we are so fond of indulging. The peasant travels on the railway, the woman buys calico, in the _isba_ (cottage) there will be a lamp instead of a pine-knot, and the peasant will light his pipe with a match,--this is convenient; but what right have I to say that the railway and the factory have proved advantageous to the people? If the peasant rides on the railway, and buys calico, a lamp, and matches, it is only because it is impossible to forbid the peasant's buying them; but surely we are all aware that the construction of railways and factories has never been carried out for the benefit of the lower classes: so why should a casual convenience which the workingman enjoys lead to a proof of the utility of all these institutions for the people? There is something useful in every injurious thing. After a conflagration, one can warm one's self, and light one's pipe with a firebrand; but why declare that the conflagration is beneficial?