Further, if a workman retains his connection, both with a
distant village and with a town, he can keep himself and his
family fat and prosperous by ceasing to be a workman, and,
instead, traveling on the buffers or the roof of a railway
wagon, and bringing back with him sacks of flour and
potatoes for sale in the town at fantastic prices. Thereby he
is lost to productive labor, and his uncomfortable but
adventurous life becomes directly harmful, tending to
increase the strain on transport, since it is obviously
more economical to transport a thousand sacks than to transport a
thousand sacks with an idle workman attached to each sack.
Further, his activities actually make it more difficult for the
town population to get food. By keeping open for the
village the possibility of selling at fantastic prices, he lessens
the readiness of the peasants to part with their
flour at the lower prices of the Government. Nor is it as if
his activities benefited the working population. The food he
brings in goes for the most part to those who have plenty of
money or have things to exchange for it. And honest men in
Russia to-day have not much money, and those who have
things to exchange are not as a rule workmen. The theory
of this man's harmfulness is, I know, open to argument, but
the practice at least is exactly as I have stated it, and is
obviously attractive to the individual who prefers adventure
on a full stomach to useful work on an empty. Setting aside
the theory with its latent quarrel between Free Trade and
State control, we can still recognize that each workman
engaged in these pursuits has become an unproductive
middleman, one of that very parasitic species which the