Every satisfaction of human needs depends merely on the relation of the means of satisfaction to the necessities of life demanded by the standard of living of the time, or, what amounts to the same thing, upon the surplus of the means over the minimum amount of such necessities.  An increased minimum of the absolute necessities of life brings also sufferings and deprivations which former times never knew.  What deprivation is it to the Hottentot that he cannot buy soap?  What deprivation is it to the cannibal if he cannot wear a decent coat?  What deprivation was it to the workingman, if before the discovery of America, he had no tobacco to smoke, or if, before the invention of printing, he could not get a useful book?  All human suffering and deprivation depend only on the proportion of the means of satisfaction to the needs and customs of living at a given time.  All human suffering and deprivation, and all human satisfactions, accordingly every human condition, is, therefore, to be measured only by comparison with the situation of other men of the same period and their customary necessities of life.  The condition of any class is, therefore, to be measured only by its relation to the condition of other classes at the same period.

If it were ever so well established, then, that the standard of the necessaries of life has risen through different periods, that satisfactions previously unknown have become daily necessities, and for this reason deprivations and sufferings not before known have appeared, your social situation has remained at these different periods always the same, always this—­that you are standing on the verge of the usual minimum necessities of life, sometimes a little above it, sometimes a little below.  Your social position, therefore, has remained the same, for this social position is reckoned not by its relation to the position of the beast in primeval forests, or negroes in Africa, or of the serf in the Middle Ages, or the workingmen of eighty years ago, but only by the relation of this position to the position of your fellowmen—­to the position of other classes in the same time.

And instead of taking account of this, instead of considering how this position can be improved, and how this cruel law, which constantly keeps you at the lowest verge of the necessities of life, can be changed, these people amuse themselves by changing the question under your nose without your perceiving it, and by entertaining you with very dubious historical retrospects as to the situation of the working class in previous periods—­retrospects which are all the more questionable because manufactured products, becoming constantly cheaper, are far less consumed by the working class than the food products which are their chief articles of consumption, and are in no way subject to any similar tendency of constantly increasing cheapness!  These are retrospects, finally, which could have value only if they undertook investigations from every point of view into the general position of workingmen at different ages—­investigations of the most difficult nature and to be carried on only with the utmost circumspection, investigations for which those who talk to you about them have not even the material at hand, and which they, therefore, should all the more leave to special scholars.