If, then, only a part of society consumes, sooner or later a part of society will be idle.

Now, idleness is death, as well for the laborer as for the proprietor.
This conclusion is inevitable.
The most distressing spectacle imaginable is the sight of producers resisting and struggling against this mathematical necessity, this power of figures to which their prejudices blind them.
If one hundred thousand printers can furnish reading-matter enough for thirty-four millions of men, and if the price of books is so high that only one-third of that number can afford to buy them, it is clear that these one hundred thousand printers will produce three times as much as the booksellers can sell.

That the products of the laborers may never exceed the demands of the consumers, the laborers must either rest two days out of three, or, separating into three groups, relieve each other three times a week, month, or quarter; that is, during two-thirds of their life they must not live.

But industry, under the influence of property, does not proceed with such regularity.

It endeavors to produce a great deal in a short time, because the greater the amount of products, and the shorter the time of production, the less each product costs.