stages of increasing discomfort to actual starvation. There would
certainly be much ground for this apprehension if Communism provided no
motives to restraint, equivalent to those which it would take away. But
Communism is precisely the state of things in which opinion might be
expected to declare itself with greatest intensity against this kind of
selfish intemperance. Any augmentation of numbers which diminished the
comfort or increased the toil of the mass would then cause (which now it
does not) immediate and unmistakable inconvenience to every individual
in the association--inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the
avarice of employers or the unjust privileges of the rich. In such
altered circumstances opinion could not fail to reprobate, and if
reprobation did not suffice, to repress by penalties of some
description, this or any other culpable self-indulgence at the expense
of the community. The communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly
open to the objection drawn from danger of over-population, has the
recommendation of tending in an especial degree to the prevention of
that evil."

It will be seen in the following pages that means have been found to
meet these and other difficulties; in one society even the prudential
restraint upon marriage has been adopted.

Finally, I wished to see what the successful Communists had made of
their lives; what was the effect of communal living upon the character
of the individual man and woman; whether the life had broadened or
narrowed them; and whether assured fortune and pecuniary independence
had brought to them a desire for beauty of surroundings and broader
intelligence: whether, in brief, the Communist had any where become
something more than a comfortable and independent day-laborer, and
aspired to something higher than a mere bread-and-butter existence.