From this it necessarily results that trade, aiming chiefly at satisfying the demands of the rich, and of the richest of the rich (that is, the Government) directs its chief powers, not to improving the means of tilling the soil, but to making it possible by the aid of machines to somehow till large tracts of land (of which the people have been deprived), to manufacturing finery for women, building luxurious palaces, producing sweetmeats, toys, motor-cars, tobacco, wines, delicacies, medicines, enormous quantities of printed matter, guns, rifles, powder, unnecessary railways, and so forth.
And as there is no end to the caprices of men when they are met not by their own labour but by that of others, industry is more and more diverted to the production of the most unnecessary, stupid, depraving products, and draws people more and more from reasonable work; and no end can be foreseen to these inventions and preparations for the amusement of idle people, especially as the stupider and more depraving an invention is—such as the use of motors in place of animals or of one's own legs, railways to go up mountains, or armoured automobiles armed with quick-firing guns—the more pleased and proud of them are both their inventors and their possessors.
VII.
The longer representative Government lasted and the more it extended, the more did the Western nations abandon agriculture and devote their mental and physical powers to manufacturing and trading in order to supply luxuries to the wealthy classes, to enable the nations to fight one another, and to deprave the udepraved. Thus, in England, which has had representative Government longest, less than one-seventh of the adult male population are now employed in agriculture, in Germany 0.45 of the population, in France one-half, and a similar number in other States. So that at the present time the position of these States is such, that even if they could free themselves from the calamity of proletarian-
