Note 622 — Chapter V · : PROUDHON AND THE SOCIALISM OF 1848

“Do you happen to know, madam, what my father was? Well, he was just an honest brewer whom you could never persuade to make money by selling above cost price. Such gains, he thought, were immoral. ‘My beer,’ he would always remark, ‘costs me so much, including my salary. I cannot sell it for more.’ What was the result? My dear father always lived in poverty and died a poor man, leaving poor children behind him.” (Letter to Madame d’Agoult, Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 239.)