"I have been doing nothing else for fourteen years," said the woman.
"Is it hard?"
"Yes: it pains my chest, and makes my breathing hard."It was not necessary for her to add this, however. A look at the girl sufficed. She had worked at this for three years, but any one who had not seen her at this occupation would have said that here was a strong organism which was beginning to break down.
My friend, a kind and liberal man, hires these women to fill his cigarettes at two rubles fifty kopeks the thousand. He has money, and he spends it for work. What harm is there in that? My friend rises at twelve o'clock. He passes the evening, from six until two, at cards, or at the piano. He eats and drinks savory things; others do all his work for him. He has devised a new source of pleasure,--smoking. He has taken up smoking within my memory.
Here is a woman, and here is a girl, who can barely support themselves by turning themselves into machines, and they pass their whole lives inhaling tobacco, and thereby running their health. He has money which he never earned, and he prefers to play at whist to making his own cigarettes. He gives these women money on condition that they shall continue to live in the same wretched manner in which they are now living, that is to say, by making his cigarettes.
I love cleanliness, and I give money only on the condition that the laundress shall wash the shirt which I change twice a day; and that shirt has destroyed the laundress's last remaining strength, and she has died. What is there wrong about that? People who buy and hire will continue to force other people to make velvet and confections, and will purchase them, without me; and no matter what I may do, they will hire cigarettes made and shirts washed. Then why should Ideprive myself of velvet and confections and cigarettes and clean shirts, if things are definitively settled thus? This is the argument which I often, almost always, hear. This is the very argument which makes the mob which is destroying something, lose its senses. This is the very argument by which dogs are guided when one of them has flung himself on another dog, and overthrown him, and the rest of the pack rush up also, and tear their comrade in pieces.
Other people have begun it, and have wrought mischief; then why should not I take advantage of it? Well, what will happen if I wear a soiled shirt, and make my own cigarettes? Will that make it easier for anybody else? ask people who would like to justify their course.
If it were not so far from the truth, it would be a shame to answer such a question, but we have become so entangled that this question seems very natural to us; and hence, although it is a shame, it is necessary to reply to it.
What difference will it make if I wear one shirt a week, and make may own cigarettes, or do not smoke at all? This difference, that some laundress and some cigarette-maker will exert their strength less, and that what I have spent for washing and for the making of cigarettes I can give to that very laundress, or even to other laundresses and toilers who are worn out with their labor, and who, instead of laboring beyond their strength, will then be able to rest, and drink tea. But to this I hear an objection. (It is so mortifying to rich and luxurious people to understand their position.) To this they say: "If I go about in a dirty shirt, and give up smoking, and hand over this money to the poor, the poor will still be deprived of every thing, and that drop in the sea of yours will help not at all."Such an objection it is a shame to answer. It is such a common retort.
If I had gone among savages, and they had regaled me with cutlets which struck me as savory, and if I should learn on the following day that these savory cutlets had been made from a prisoner whom they had slain for the sake of the savory cutlets, if I do not admit that it is a good thing to eat men, then, no matter how dainty the cutlets, no matter how universal the practice of eating men may be among my fellows, however insignificant the advantage to prisoners, prepared for consumption, may be my refusal to eat of the cutlets, I will not and I can not eat any more of them. I may, possibly, eat human flesh, when hunger compels me to it; but I will not make a feast, and I will not take part in feasts, of human flesh, and I will not seek out such feasts, and pride myself on my share in them.
LIFE IN THE COUNTRY.
But what is to be done? Surely it is not we who have done this? And if not we, who then?
We say: "We have not done this, this has done itself;" as the children say, when they break any thing, that it broke itself. We say, that, so long as there is a city already in existence, we, by living in it, support the people, by purchasing their labor and services. But this is not so. And this is why. We only need to look ourselves, at the way we have in the country, and at the manner in which we support people there.
The winter passes in town. Easter Week passes. On the boulevards, in the gardens in the parks, on the river, there is music. There are theatres, water-trips, walks, all sorts of illuminations and fireworks. But in the country there is something even better,--there are better air, trees and meadows, and the flowers are fresher. One should go thither where all these things have unfolded and blossomed forth. And the majority of wealthy people do go to the country to breathe the superior air, to survey these superior forests and meadows. And there the wealthy settle down in the country, and the gray peasants, who nourish themselves on bread and onions, who toil eighteen hours a day, who get no sound sleep by night, and who are clad in blouses. Here no one has led these people astray. There have been no factories nor industrial establishments, and there are none of those idle hands, of which there are so many in the city.
