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“There always have been and there must always be class
divisions and other differences in external conditions. It is a
law of nature,” interpolated the doctor.
“In the face of such an awful chronic dearth in a land of
such immense resources as ours, inactivity is unpardonable, and
it is frivolous to talk of such a state of things as necessary and
natural. Nothing can be more unnatural! But the remedies
we propose are considered so new-fangled that they bring
suspicion on both themselves and us.
“The famine now raging is not of yesterday; for many years
its causes have been at work, and the bad weather was only the
occasion for revealing the chronic misery and the constantly
decreasing working power of the labourer, deprived of all
mental culture, oppressed by violence, with his whole life
distorted.
“They object that this calamity is only incidental and local;
that a couple of good years will set all right; that this year
there has been a good harvest in Caucasia, and in other parts of
Russia, in Europe and in America there is corn. I reply that
there certainly may come good harvests, but they will not
remove the evil. The sudden leaping of the flame is no good
sign. Not much discernment and honesty is needed to see
that, if the present conditions continue, the life of the people is
like an expiring candle flame: it still burns and sometimes
flares, but it is nearly gone out.
“Occasional revivals of prosperity cannot remove the distress.
They say there is much corn in Caucasia, but they have not
been many years there at the process of exhausting the land, so
that they still get large supplies. The same is true of Central
and Southern Russia and America, but in Western Europe does
not a large part of the population already depend on foreign
bread, and perish with those who feed them? This present
distress has had a bad effect on Western Europe, which
to a great extent lives by the production of articles of
luxury, all kinds of trash, which they force on the rest of the
world.
“If the present division of labour, or rather sundering of
mankind into two parts, is to continue, it must lead to a not
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