In 1848, when the national workshops were opened on February 27, the unemployed of Paris numbered only 8000; a fortnight later they had already increased to 49,000. They would soon have been 100,000, without counting those who crowded in from the provinces.
Yet at that time trade and manufacturers in France only employed half as many hands as to-day. And we know that in time of Revolution exchange and industry suffer most from the general upheaval.
To realize this we have only to think for a moment of the number of workmen whose labour depends directly or indirectly upon export trade, or of the number of hands employed in producing luxuries, whose consumers are the middle-class minority.
A revolution in Europe means the unavoidable stoppage of at least half the factories and work- shops. It means millions of workers and their families thrown on the streets.
And our "practical men" would seek to avert this truly terrible situation by means of national relief works; that is to say, by means of new industries created on the spot to give work to the unemployed!
It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed out, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labour. Society itself will be forced to take
