gradually comes about that all wealth, in running the gauntlet of
labor, falls wholly into the hands of him who creates it, and
that nothing, or almost nothing, is left for the possessor of the
original material.

Such, then, is the path of economic progress: at first,
appropriation of the land and natural values; then, association
and distribution through labor until complete equality is
attained. Chasms are scattered along our road, the sword is
suspended over our heads; but, to avert all dangers, we have
reason, and reason is omnipotence.

It results from the relation of useful value to exchangeable
value that if, by accident or from malice, exchange should be
forbidden to a single producer, or if the utility of his product
should suddenly cease, though his storehouses were full, he would
possess nothing. The more sacrifices he had made and the more
courage he had displayed in producing, the greater would be his
misery. If the utility of the product, instead of wholly
disappearing, should only diminish,--a thing which may happen in
a hundred ways,--the laborer, instead of being struck down and
ruined by a sudden catastrophe, would be impoverished only;
obliged to give a large quantity of his own value for a small
quantity of the values of others, his means of subsistence would
be reduced by an amount equal to the deficit in his sale: which
would lead by degrees from competency to want. If, finally, the
utility of the product should increase, or else if its production
should become less costly, the balance of exchange would turn to
the advantage of the producer, whose condition would thus be
raised from fatiguing mediocrity to idle opulence. This