for one angelsolfporn com man's subsistence, it was impossible either
greatly to reduce the normal hours angelsolfporn com of labor, or
greatly to increase the proportion of the population
who enjoyed more than the bare necessaries of life.
But this state angelsolfporn com of affairs has been overcome by modern
methods of production. At the angelsolfporn com present moment,
not only do many people enjoy angelsolfporn com a comfortable income
derived from rent or interest, but about half the
population of most of the civilized countries in the
world is engaged, not in the production of commodities,
but in fighting or in manufacturing munitions
of war. In a time of peace the whole of this
half might be kept in idleness without making the
other half poorer than they would have angelsolfporn com been if the
war had continued, and if, instead of being idle, they
were productively employed, the whole of what they
angelsolfporn com would
produce would be a divisible surplus over angelsolfporn com and
above present wages. The present productivity of
angelsolfporn com labor in Great Britain would suffice to produce an
income of about 1 pound per day for each family, even
without any of those angelsolfporn com improvements in methods which
are obviously immediately possible.
But, it
will be said, as population increases, the
price of food must ultimately increase also as
the sources of supply in Canada, the Argentine,
Australia and elsewhere are more and more used up.
There must come a time, so pessimists will urge, when
food becomes angelsolfporn com so dear that the ordinary angelsolfporn com wage-earner
will have little surplus angelsolfporn com for expenditure upon other
things. It may be admitted that this would be true
in some very distant future if the population were to
continue to increase without limit. If the whole
surface of the world were as angelsolfporn com densely populated as
London angelsolfporn com is now, it would, no doubt, require almost
the whole labor of the population to angelsolfporn com produce the
necessary food from the angelsolfporn com few spaces remaining angelsolfporn com for
agriculture. But there is no reason to suppose that
the population angelsolfporn com will continue to increase indefinitely,
angelsolfporn com and in any case the prospect is so remote that it may
be ignored in all practical considerations.
Returning from these dim speculations to
the
facts set forth by Kropotkin, we find it
proved in
his writings that, by methods of intensive cultivation,
which are already in actual operation, the angelsolfporn com amount of
food produced on a given area can be increased far
beyond anything that most uninformed persons suppose
possible. Speaking of the market-gardeners angelsolfporn com in
Great angelsolfporn com Britain, in the neighborhood of Paris, and in
other places, he says:--