of the working classes demands, by reason of its nature, application
and toil, as does every natural life; but that, in consequence of the
sharp practices which take from these people what is indispensable,
and place them in such oppressive conditions, this life becomes more
difficult every year, and more filled with deprivations; but our
life, the life of the non-laboring classes, thanks to the co-
operation of the arts and sciences which are directed to this object,
becomes more filled with superfluities, more attractive and careful,
with every year. I see, that, in our day, the life of the working-
man, and, in particular, the life of old men, of women, and of
children of the working population, is perishing directly from their
food, which is utterly inadequate to their fatiguing labor; and that
this life of theirs is not free from care as to its very first
requirements; and that, alongside of this, the life of the non-
laboring classes, to which I belong, is filled more and more, every
year, with superfluities and luxury, and becomes more and more free
from anxiety, and has finally reached such a point of freedom from
care, in the case of its fortunate members, of whom I am one, as was
only dreamed of in olden times in fairy-tales,--the state of the
owner of the purse with the inexhaustible ruble, that is, a condition
in which a man is not only utterly released from the law of labor,
but in which he possesses the possibility of enjoying, without toil,
all the blessings of life, and of transferring to his children, or to
any one whom he may see fit, this purse with the inexhaustible ruble.

I see that the products of the people's toil are more and more
transformed from the mass of the working classes to those who do not
work; that the pyramid of the social edifice seems to be
reconstructed in such fashion that the foundation stones are carried
to the apex, and the swiftness of this transfer is increasing in a