The Arcades Project - Operi

friends and acquaintances . ... He managed the money himself and was the actual
proprietor of the factory or business establishment. But railroads had need of
such massive amounts of capital that it could no longer be concentrated in the
hands of only a few individuals. And so a great many bourgeois were forced to
entrust their precious funds, which had never before been allowed out of their
sight, to people whose names they hardly knew . ... Once the money was given
over, they would lose all control over its investment and could not expect to claim
any proprietary rights over terminals, cars, locomotives, and the like . ... They
were entitled only to a share of the profits; in place of an object, . .. they were
given . .. a mere piece of paper that represented the fiction of an infinitely small
and ungraspable piece of the real property, whose name was printed at the bottom
in large letters . ... This procedure . .. stood in such violent contrast to what the
hourgeoisie was used to . .. that its defense could be undertaken only by people
who . .. were suspected of wanting to overthrow the order of society-socialists, in
short. First Fourier and then Saint-Simon extolled this mobilization of property in
the form of paper securities." Paul Lafargue, ·'Marx' historischer Materialismus,"
Die neue Zeit, 22, no. 1 (Stuttgart, 1904), p. 831. [U3a,2]
r.'Every day, there is a riot. The students, all sons of the bourgeoisie, are fraternizing
here with the workers, and the workers believe the time has come. They are
also seriously counting on the pupils from the Eeole Polyteehnique." Nadal',
Quaml j'etais photographe (Paris < 1900» , p. 287. [U3a,3]
''"It is not in proletarian circles, not even in democratic circles, that the initial
impetus . .. for the establishment of labor exchanges is to be found. The idea was
first advanced in 1842 by M. de Molinari, editor-in-chief of Le Journal des economistes.
It was Molinari himself who developed this idea in an article he . .. wrote
entitled 'L'Avenir des chemins de fer' . In order to
indicate just how much times had changed, he referred to Adam Smith, who had
said, in effect, that labor was the commodity most difficult to transport. Against
this, he affirmed that labor power had now become mohile. Europe and the whole
world now stands open to it as a market. ... The main point of the conclusion
whi{h Molinari drew in '"L'Avenir des chemins de fer,' in favor of the institutions
that were to serve as labor exchanges, was the following: the principal cause for
the low rate of wages is the frequently recurring disproportion hetween the numher
of workers and the demand for work; contributing further to the problem is
the high concentration of workers population in certain centers of production . ...
Give to workers the means . .. by which they can change their plaee of residence at
low cost; give them, too, the possibility of knowing where they will be able to find
work in the most favorable circumstances . ... If workers begin traveling quickly
and, ahove all, cheaply, labor exchanges will soon arise." On the proposal to
create a labor report: (''"This proposal, which was published in Le Coun'ier
fraru;ais, edited by Xavier Durdeu, turned matters directly to the workers . .. :
'We would like ... to render a service to workers by publishing in our columns,
next to the stock market quotations, a list of work available . . . . What is the