Ouvriers sans Travail.
The industrial development of both countries has led to a state of things in which the producing power surpasses the actual wants. To keep the working populations in full employment it would be necessary to do over again all that has been done; but the works accomplished remain as impediments to future labour. Paris does not need to be reconstructed every twenty years; a network of railways has not to be made in every century. Thus industrialism produces both riches and poverty. First, it creates an army with appliances too elaborate and too efficient for any permanent need, and then it fails to pay its own soldiers. The present condition of England and France is discouraging, for the reason that it is the skilled workman who is so often without employment. The evil has attracted more public attention in England, but the roads of France are covered with miserable tramps and vagabonds, many of whom are well-trained “ouvriers sans travail.”
Success in Industry.
Success in industry is proved by the attainment of wealth, so that it becomes, in an industrial age, the evidence of something greater than itself. It is taken as the proof of ability, of the kind of talent most valued, and so it comes to pass that people of the most simple habits, who have really no need for riches, often desire to make a fortune as a proof of their own energy, and from a dread of being classed amongst the unsuccessful. This is one of the strongest reasons for money-getting when the genuine instinct of avarice is absent.
The Necessity for Wealth.
Title and Wealth.
The Passion for Style.
There is a most important difference between England and France in the necessity for wealth in certain positions, quite independently of the desire for money as a possession. The expression “a large income is a necessary of life” is an English expression, and is true in the country and classes in which it originated. What it means is not that the Englishman cares much for personal self-indulgence, but that if his income is not large he finds himself exposed to vexatious or humiliating consequences, unless his position is otherwise so insignificant as to escape attention. It is entirely understood that all titled persons in England ought to be rich, and not only all titled persons but all who belong to the upper classes. On inquiring into the causes of this belief we do not find them in the love of money for itself, as a miser loves it, but in the English passion for style and state, and in the contempt which is felt for those who cannot afford to maintain an expensive standard of living.
England agreeable for the Ambitious Rich.
Wealth is not only more necessary in England than in France, it is also more valuable socially; it does more to elevate its possessor, to give him rank and station. In England the condition of things is, for the present, singularly agreeable to the rich man who is also ambitious. It is not like a country without an upper class, and it is not like a country with a closed and exclusive upper class. England has a brilliant and attractive upper class that the rich man may aspire to enter, and which receives him with encouraging cordiality. He has something to desire, which is at the same time well worth desiring and not beyond his reach. A true aristocracy would keep him at a distance; in a genuine democracy he could never become more than a wealthy citizen; in the present very peculiar condition of English society there is still an aristocracy for him to enter, and it receives him to be one of its own.