“I was talking, I and my mates, about the great inequality among people. Riches are distributed in a very strange and, I say, unjust fashion. Is it not unjust that, while so many poor fellows have to work hard to gain a few pence a day, there are wealthy Nabobs who haul in gold by shovelfuls? I read in a paper the other day that the English Duke of Westminster has an income of twenty millions of francs, which brings him at least 50,000 francs a day!”
“Quite true, and he is far from being the most wealthy man you might name, I believe the Californian Mackay has about seventy millions of income. Rothschild, of Frankfort, left more than a milliard. Astor and Vanderbilt, of New York, and other millionaires on both sides the ocean, have untold wealth.”
“There, you see,” said Pierre; “and what appears to me the worst wrong of all is that these huge incomes belong to people who do next to nothing, while poverty is oftenest the lot of those who work and toil the hardest. I call this downright injustice. A chacun selon son travail. The riches ought to be with those that work. That's my way of looking at it.”
“All right, Pierre,” said I; “there is a good deal of truth in what you say. It is quite true that in regard to the distribution of wealth, as in regard to many other things, this world is far from being perfect. But do you think that if you had the re-arrangement of society, and the redistribution of riches, you could proceed on some other and better plan?”
“Certainly. I believe, without any presumption, that I could,” said Pierre. “What seems to me difficult is not to make things better, but to make them any worse than they are now!”
One of the workmen here said that nothing was simpler than to take the surplus wealth of these rich men, and divide it amongst the deserving poor.
“That plan is just a little too simple,” I remarked. “All the millions of a Rothschild would go a very little way, if divided among the population of Paris alone, and we should soon have to resort to other schemes to redress the ever-renewed inequalities. No; no; what I want Pierre to show us is some better system of society, and he thinks he has the key to the problem in his favorite motto, A chacun selon son travail. But just let me remind you that in ancient times there was a king of Spain who was a bit of an astronomer; and looking at the heavens, and wondering at the complicated movements of the stars, he said that if he had been consulted in the matter he could have made a much better and simpler arrangement. Your purpose is not so ambitious and presumptuous as his, for the heavens are the work of the Almighty, who has imposed upon Nature certain fixed laws; whereas the laws of society are the work of men, and men are liable to err. Let us then hear what improvement you can suggest in the laws and usages which regulate the distribution of wealth.”
Pierre was somewhat taken aback, for he felt that the existing arrangements of society were very complex, and it was not easy to determine where the reform should begin.
“Well,” said I, “let us suppose that a number of persons were set on shore upon an island, where none had any rights or property beyond the others. Let us suppose that there are as yet no laws, that there is no government, no past history: all are free and equal, and you have full power to organise the distribution of wealth in this new society, and to decide what is to be the share of each. Come now, you have a carte blanche, let us hear what you would do.”
“Well,” said Pierre, “I should begin by deciding that every one was to do what he would and what he could, and that every one should keep what he was able by his work and industry to obtain. A chacun selon son travail: behold my fundamental rule!”