"Who with any good-will and reflection will not see how much the
want of coherence--the disorder, the want of combination, the
parcelling out of labor and leaving it wholly to individual
action without any organization, without any large or general
views--are causes which limit the possibilities of production,
and destroy, or at least waste, our means of action? Does not
disorder give birth to poverty, as order and good management
give birth to riches? Is not want of combination a source of
weakness, as combination is a source of strength? And who can
say that industry, whether agricultural, domestic,
manufacturing, scientific, artistic, or commercial, is organized
at the present day either in the state or in municipalities? Who
can say that all the work which is carried on in any of these
departments is executed in subordination to any general views,
or with foresight, economy, and order? Or, again, who can say
that it is possible in our present state of society to develop,
by a good education, all the faculties bestowed by nature on
each of its members; to employ each one in functions which he
would like, which he would be the most capable of, and which,
therefore, he could carry on with the greatest advantage to
himself and to others? Has it even been so much as attempted to
solve the problems presented by varieties of character so as to
regulate and harmonize the varieties of employments in
accordance with natural aptitudes? Alas! The Utopia of the most
ardent philanthropists is to teach reading and writing to
twenty-five millions of the French people! And in the present
state of things we may defy them to succeed even in that!
"And is it not a strange spectacle, too, and one which cries out
in condemnation of us, to see this state of society where the
soil is badly cultivated, and sometimes not cultivated at all;
where man is ill lodged, ill clothed, and yet where whole masses
are continually in need of work and pining in misery because
they cannot find it? Of a truth we are forced to acknowledge
that if the nations are poor and starving it is not because
nature has denied the means of producing wealth, but because of
the anarchy and disorder in our employment of those means; in
other words, it is because society is wretchedly constituted and
labor unorganized.