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LIBRARY 
 
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 Accession No. u^^^^ . Cla&s No. 
 
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 Hr. 9(. ^^uu^cMl, Jl. B., 
 
 122 TURK STREET, 
 
 SAN FRANCignD. 
 
 9 to 10 a. m. 
 r to S p. in. 
 7 t» 7. SO p. m. 
 
A CONSIDERATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WEALTH AND POVERTY 
 
 OF 
 
 NATIONS 
 
 EMBRACING ALSO THE 
 
 EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY 
 
 AND ITS 
 
 o uxco ]vr E . 
 
 Bv W. N. GRISWOLD, A. M., M. D. 
 
 If we can first know where we are and whither we are tending, we can 
 better judge what to do and how to do it. — Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, 
 
 THE BANCROFT COMPANY. 
 
 1887. 
 
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1887, 
 
 By WOLCOTT NOBLE GRISWOLD, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Jcongress, at Washington. 
 
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KRRAXA. 
 
 Page 1, line 27 — Kead harmony for law. 
 
 12, " 24 — " characterizing for describing. 
 
 20 — Place *, now at line 10, at line 20. 
 
 54, lines 23 and 24 — Read rights for duties. 
 
 54. " 26 and 27 — " wealth and power iox industrial rights. 
 
 54, " 29 and 34 — " equity iov duly. 
 
 54, line 32— Read curreMt for correct. 
 
 59, " 11 — " should he ior is. 
 
 80— Eliminate the last seven lines. 
 
 105, line 28— 'Read productively for industrially. 
 
 105, " 32 — " production for industry. 
 
 105, " 38— Eliminate sentence commencing 7%e most noted writers. 
 
 106, " 9— Read motive for e/or^. 
 112, " 6— '• Lincoln iov Seward. 
 112, " 8 — ' and Seioard proclaimed. 
 
 139, " 27— Eliminate will. 
 
 140, " 1— Read may for mws^. 
 142, " 42 — " employes for employers. 
 144, " 42 - " national for natural. 
 158, '' 25 — " producers for consumers. 
 158, " 30 — " exchequers for exchanges. 
 
 167, " last — " public for private. 
 
 168, " 5 — " national for natural. 
 168, " 27 — " service of the citizen. 
 174, " 22— Eliminate at once. 
 174, " 28 — Read of production for upon. 
 184, " 40 — " as for when. 
 205, " 14— '• those for that. 
 205, " 30 — " concentrate for centre. 
 207, " 29 — '* the industry concerned. 
 214, " 4 — " /2m2Y the demands of capitalists. 
 222, '• 11— " talk for prate. 
 
 222, " 1 (of note) — Read prate for talk. 
 
 223, " 44 — Read the necessary productive forces. 
 
 225. " 5 — " The reader knows. 
 
 226, " 26— Eliminate in. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This work is presented to the pub]ic with unfeigned diffidence ; 
 not that the thought which it undertakes to portray is not substan- 
 tially important and true; but that its elaboration, at some points 
 and in some regards, fails of that force and clearness, which, as 
 concerning subjects of the nature considered, is especially desirable. 
 However, as the public possesses an available weapon of defense — 
 the boycott — and as it rarely happens that any work leaves the hands 
 of its author wherein some imperfections do not appear, as it is, 
 whether for better or worse, it is hoped it may be permitted to pass. 
 
 A few explanations are due the reader. The work was com- 
 menced several months since, as a study de novo of the industrial 
 status ; it has been written at convenient times between the call of 
 other duties, and printed at once, form after form, as the manuscript 
 was prepared. The first intention of the author, after having stated 
 the fundamental principles advanced in the first four or five chapters, 
 was to review, in full, th6se topics commonly treated of in current 
 works of economic science. The chapters on Land, Capital, Labor, 
 Wealth, Exchange, &c., were sketched and partly written, when for 
 sundry reasons, of a private nature principally, the first plan was 
 abandoned, and that actually fojlowed, substituted, ^he reader will 
 therefore find in the first half-dozen chapters, references to other 
 chapters for confirmatory sentiments and demonstrations, which, in 
 fact, do not appear and cannot be found. It is believed, however, 
 the change in the plan, at a later date, has not materially broken 
 that consistent harmony which should characterize such efforts. 
 
 Furthermore, knowing the general dissatisfaction with the current 
 thought of economic science, the author has endeavored carefully to 
 sift and consider its teachings ; to retain its truths and reject its 
 errors. His investigations have satisfied him that the one term, 
 valuCy which to economics is as fundamental, as to mathematics is 
 the term, number^ has been used in too narrow a sense ; that other 
 values, of greater importance to man than those produced by human 
 labor — human labor values being the only values recognized by 
 scientific writers — exist, and are perpetually found at the point of 
 exchange in connection with those produced by human labor; values 
 which are the result of the active and passive forces operating in 
 nature's laboratories and workshops, on the mineral monad, the 
 vegetable seed and the animal ovum. 
 
 He has furthermore found at the point of exchange, in all com- 
 modities, certain values which are enforced by common consent and 
 custom which, in fact, and in themselves, being based upon no labor 
 whatever, are absolutely valueless. To the former, the term natural^ 
 
IV 
 
 to the latter the term fictitious has been applied. Instead of value 
 as adopted by current economic science, the author proposes value 
 natural^ value artifiical and value ficticious — all of which are found 
 in every commodity at the point of exchange — the first produced 
 by creative labor, the second by human labor and the third — rent, 
 profit and interest — put forth and sustained, contrary to the true genesis 
 of value, by society. These values, though unrecognized by current 
 science, all meet in commodity and are cognizable at the point of 
 exchange ; and through their recognition, the economic accountant, 
 who now recognizes but one, would be able to do that which he 
 cannot now do ; viz., balance the books and show clearly — prox- 
 imate equality of individuals being recognized — why some men 
 become rich and others remain poor. If one person goes to the 
 exchange carrying his portion of the natural, artificial and fictitious 
 values, and another goes there carrying his portion of the artificial 
 values alone — values produced by his own labor — the former will 
 become rich and the latter remain poor. The industrial rights of 
 man are associated with the natural values, and the industrial wrongs 
 are concealed in the fictitious values. The term value needs a new 
 definition or unfoldment, and whether that here proposed is correct 
 or not, must be left for further determination. In this work, how- 
 ever, it is used in ihe sense, or senses here indicated. 
 
 With these brief explanations, the author leaves the work to the 
 patience and indulgence of the reader ; adding the hoj>e, however, 
 should the latter tread the mazes of the various analyses, discussions 
 and demonstrations, he may be repaid by a fuller assurance, that 
 humanity is moving forward through effort and conflict, by lines of 
 advance already open, to better conditions and more satisfactory 
 realizations. 
 
 The timid conservative need not be disturbed by the radical de- 
 mands made — Chapters IV and V — in the interest of a common 
 humanity, nor need the daring radical be irritated by the tardy pro- 
 cesses through which — Chapters VII and VIII — the industrial rights 
 of man are likely to be reached. What the former most covets is 
 freedom from abrupt and overstraining advances ; what the latter 
 ardently cherishes, is the establishment of all men in the enjoyment 
 of their rights. The orderly evolution of industry, with its steady 
 movement through complex processes, incited by the lower and 
 upper forces, will ultimately harmonize capitalist with laborer, pro- 
 ducer with consumer, protectionist with free trader, and assure to 
 both conservative and radical, the hearts chief desire ; for in the 
 thought of each now contending factor, there is somewhat of the 
 Universal Thought, and it is destined to penetrate and permeate 
 humanity and become there unified as it i; already unified in its 
 own pure and exalted realm. W. N. G. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LAW. 
 
 A development that parallels and is indispensible to human progress. Acenserva- 
 torof civilization. Necessities and advantages of sustaining law. Page 1-4 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CAPACITY AND POWER. 
 
 A psychological study. Equality of capacity and power assumed. Page 5-6 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WANTS. 
 
 Psychological origin of want; spiritual, material, mixed; rational and unrational, 
 virtuous and vicious, just and unjust want. The universal incitor to activity. 
 The progressive unfoldment and increased scope of want, marks the move- 
 ment of civilization. Want suppliable or non-suppliable ; non-suppliable 
 by average effort, want is the parent of poverty, misery and crime ; when 
 hutiianity becomes active for the love of activity, human want must 
 diminish. ' Page 7-17 
 
 CHAPTER IV. SECTION I. 
 
 RIGHTS. 
 
 Originate in the same source as wants. Determined by the scope and character 
 of wants. The end of rights is the adequate supply of wants, through effort. 
 The mission of effort. Co-existent with the scope of human existence. 
 General rights of men to created entities. Page 18-21 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Natural right to provisions ; food, clothing and shelter. Objections thereto 
 argued. A source of puljlic corruotion. Argument continued. Primitive 
 provisions for laborers. How lost to them. Philosophy and law of saving. 
 Process of primitive accumulation. Page 35-38 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Right to the use of tools, implements and machinery. Development of effective 
 tools, implements and machinery a social growth. Right to a use of the 
 appliances of production recognized. 
 
VI. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Right to the use of money. Barter and commerce. Gold and silver the relics 
 of barter. Demand for the continued use of gold and silver, evince a want 
 of confidence, private and public. Real money, based on national wealth 
 and public confidence, is asocial growth and national product. Equal right 
 of all to use it. Difficulties in its distribution. Unsatisfactory results of 
 low interest. Page 39-44 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Equality of rpen disputed. Renewed discussion. Proximate or proportional 
 equality of rights instuitively and universally recognized. Page 45-47 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 Practical failure of equal rights. Of priority of birth, advent and devel- 
 opment — of permenent investiture. Prospective results of vested rights. 
 TTie enslavement of millions. Page 48-53 
 
 CHAPTER V. SECTION I. 
 
 DUTIES. 
 
 Origin and nature. CompLmentary to rights. Alternate with rights. Sense 
 of industrial duties undeveloped. Page 54-57 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Industrial Duties fully analyzed and explained. Their requirements. Ob- 
 structions to the acceptance of new thought. Industrial obstruction. 
 
 Page 58-63 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Relation of Charity to duties. Distinction between production and accumulation. 
 Merits, demerits and abuses of saving. Psychological relation of saving and 
 self-sacrifice. Efficacy of saving evinced by facts. Duty of the rich to^ 
 dispense. Duty of giving intuitively recognized. How employes are dispoiled.* 
 Means of dispoilment explained and illustrated. Charity and restitution. 
 Charity an industrial rebate. Indifference of employers. Their 
 power diminished by open opportunities and emigration. Organized resist- 
 ance to industrial oppression. Page 64-85 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Employment; its connection with industrial duty. Origin and nature of compe- 
 tition. It arises on the abolition of chattel slavery. A struggle for the re- 
 sults of production between employers and employes. Thornton's labor 
 ethics untenable. Employers should furnish employment for all, in 
 proportion as they absorb the means o! employment. A calculation based 
 on absorption. Page 86-96 
 
VII. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Extreme duty of Restitution. If employment is not furnished, the means of em- 
 ployment should be" surrendered and be reapportioned by society. Surrender 
 of prerogative by Japanese princes. Emulation of their action commended 
 — may be demanded. Christian civilization nearing a crisis. Page 97-103 
 
 CHAPTER VI. SECTION I. 
 NATIONAL WEALTH AND POVERTY. 
 
 Division of labor and co-operative production. Competition a phase and an 
 accessory of distribution. Production already co-operative. Origin 
 of competition. Inherent injustice of the present system of private 
 contract, . We have as yet no industrial system ; it is but a phase or con- 
 dition of development. It must become all competitive or all co-operative. 
 If competitive, justice requires an equitable distribution of the sources of 
 wealth and appliances of production. Page 104-112 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Further analysis of national wealth and poverty. Growth and dissemination of 
 wealth. Page 11 3-1 17 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Increase and equitable distribution of wealth. Forces and materials of produc- 
 tion. Maximum of wealth has never been reached. The common allegation 
 of over production, an industrial sophistry. Page 11 8- 119 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Analysis of the economic term demand. Demand, as commonly used, involves 
 the presence of purchasing power. Demand without purcahsing power is w^ant 
 unsuppliable. Character and Source of purchasing power. National purchas- 
 ing power appropriated and retained by capitalists, causes the subsid- 
 ance of demand and overproduction. Source of the cry of overproduction. 
 Credit due to capitalists. Page 120-128 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 How profit checks production and increases poverty. A mathematical demon- 
 stration concerning the disposition of American national wealth. The trans- 
 ference of national values from the hands of capitalists to consumers through 
 purchase, detailed. Wages, fee and salary, foreign commerce and the credit 
 system. The result in round numbers. Industrial leaders principally 
 responsible for deficient purchasing power, cessation of demand and check 
 of produetion. Page 129-135 
 
VIII. 
 
 . jSECTION VI. 
 
 Remedies. Co-operative distribution. Enlargement of the ends of production 
 required. Narrow ends of private enterprise. It must needs be supplement- 
 ed. Industrial continuity broken by strikes and lockouts. Page 136-145 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Private enterprise. Its ends, intrinsically, narrovir and selfish. Buttressed by 
 an army of unemployed, which it gathers and recruits without sustaining. 
 Imports laborers to depress wages. Continues to flourish only through the 
 dependence and poverty of millions. Facts. Capitalists feel driven by the 
 instinct of self-preservation to violate national laws against importation of 
 contract labor. They plead the law of necessity. Narrow ends of private 
 enterprise responsible for prevailing poverty. Page 146-152 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 Quasi-public enterprise, or private enterprise under public control. Intimate 
 relation of government with industrial affairs. Consumers protected, pro- 
 ducers assisted by government. Reason for present inconsistencies of 
 legislation to be found in the antagonisms of industry. Page 153-160 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 Public enterprise. The question to be determined. Conservation of individ- 
 ualism. Corruption of private enterprise. Expansion of public enterprise. 
 Government not an accumulator. Progressive nationalization. Public en- 
 terprise eliminates industrial extortion. Public and private enterprise con- 
 trasted. Page 1 61-177 
 
 CHAPTER VII. SECTION I. 
 
 DRIFT OF THE FORCES TOWARD CO-OPERATIVE 
 
 DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 Operxtion of the lower forces. Origin of co-operative distribution. Effects of 
 both capital and labor organization on co-operative distribution. Com- 
 bination of capitalists. Spread of co-operative distribution. Page 178-196 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Combination of laborers. Details. Progress of labor combination. Crisis of 
 the movement. Page 197-204 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Combination of consumers. Exposition of the antagonism between consumers 
 and producers. Price, its incitor. Rights and powers of consumers. 
 Consumers, constitutiug the nation, intuitively appeal for redress, to their 
 instrument, the government. Protection and free trade, consecutive periods 
 
IX. 
 
 of industrial development. The principle of free trade to be enforced by 
 consumers through domestic legislation. Principles of both protection 
 and free trade conserve.d by an orderly evolution. Free trade and free 
 travel. Industrial combinations the nurseries of co-operative distribu- 
 tion. Page 205-215 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. SECTION I. 
 
 THE OUTCOME. 
 
 PROBABILITIES AND POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 Capitalists and laborers combine. Industrial combinations have come to stay 
 and grow. Work of the Chicago Arbitration Committee. Consumers op- 
 erating through government, reassume the means and responsibility of produc- 
 tion. Final combination of capitalists, laborers and consumers, driven to- 
 gether by self-interest. Ultimate action of consumers through industrial 
 and political forces, inevitable. Co-operative distribution universally es- 
 tablished through the operation of the lovrar forces acting through con- 
 sumers. Contentious reformers and their theories harmonized. Page 216-225 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The Religio Social forces. Growing influence of the upper forces. The power of 
 human sympathy over industrial affairs. Human kindness, affection, and 
 love drifting the industrial world to better conditions. The selfish and the 
 religio-social — the lower and upper forces — driving and drawing to the 
 same result. Page 226-229 
 
WEALTH 
 
 AND 
 
 POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 LAW 
 
 So closely is law related to human development, to the advance of 
 civilization, to the harmonious action of forces and factors of indus- 
 trial life, and to the study of economic principles, that it becomes 
 necessary to consider its nature, allude to its abuses, and sanction 
 its uses. 
 
 Law, both written and unwritten, human and divine, arises from 
 the nature of God, of man and the material universe about him. It 
 encourages capacity, and checks power. It outlines, expresses and 
 defines, in intelligible terms, the channels through which force oper- 
 ates and matter is moved. Its power is exercised in limiting them 
 to those channels. Human laws are invented and enacted ; natural 
 laws, discovered. 
 
 Forces, human and divine, are pent up within nature, persons, 
 nations and civilizations. 
 
 They are something apart and distinct from law. Law is the iron 
 and steel of the engine ; force, the steam which drives. The latter 
 is limited and restrained by the former. Natural forces operate 
 through natural laws, social forces through social laws, civil forces 
 through civil laws, and industrial forces through industrial laws. 
 Civil law is a development which parallels human progress, and is 
 subject to continued perturbations — advancements and recessions — 
 to changes adapted to growing views and expanding interests. On 
 the other hand, divine laws, as discovered, are constant in their op- 
 eration. So far as development is progressing, where divine law 
 operates, only so far can inconstancy be affirmed. Such progress is 
 going on in the last of the series of creation — in man. Hence the 
 seeming absence of law in the relations between God and man. The 
 real divergence is but temporary. Harmony will be achieved. 
 
 It is the boast of law-givers and law-makers that human law, com- 
 mon and constitutional, is derived from the moral and divine law, 
 
2 WEALTH AND P.OVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 t 
 
 and it has doubtless been the intent of the most noted to bring the 
 former into juxtaposition with the latter. 
 
 It may be safely asserted, however widely human and divine law 
 may, vat marked and critical periods of national life, have diverged, 
 the one from the other, that human law, written, constitutional and 
 civil law, expressed for, and at the times during which it has been 
 in operation, constitutes the best conception of what then was believed 
 by the ruling elements of organization, to be, concernmg the inter- 
 ests involved, the divine law. 
 
 With great persistency, in spite of the groveling forces of selfish- 
 ness, men have pinned their faith strongly upon laws originating, not 
 in terrestrial, but in celestial forces. 
 
 Written law marks everywhere the line of battle where, contend- 
 ing forces, struggling for freedom and slavery, for right and wrong, 
 have done their bravest work ; where constitutional liberty has broken 
 the power of autocratic despotism, and where, in turn, despotism has 
 overthrown the work of liberty. 
 
 Along these lines of contention written law has been the peaceful 
 conservator of results gained by the respective victors ; and as these 
 results have gradually approximated the dictates of divine law, the 
 oases of peace have increased in number and size, until, by slow pro- 
 gression, peace, freedom from physical violence, is now the rule, and 
 not the exception. 
 
 Either an active poacher or a rightful sportsman can accomplish 
 more, if a game-keeper attend him, to carry the acquirements of his 
 sport. 
 
 Law is, in a sense, the game-keeper of the victor. It performs 
 the duties of that office either for the friends or the foes of liberty 
 and humanity. 
 
 If tyranny has gained a temporary victory, law assists to conserve 
 the result ; if freedom has triumphed, it is equally preservative in the 
 better interest. It is as much to the interest of the va-nquished, as 
 to the victor, that law should be regarded and obeyed. 
 
 But it is impossible until harmony between human and divine law 
 is secured, until contention has given place to peace, injustice to 
 justice, that written law shall be universally respected. 
 
 Measured by the views of opponents, no law has existed which was 
 not justly obnoxious to some. The Missouri Compromise and the 
 Fugitive Slave Law were rightly contemptible in the sight of intelli- 
 gent and principled opponents of negro slavery. , At the time, these 
 opponents were denounced as extremists, and insane. Principle 
 then sustained them ; and time and events have vindicated their san- 
 ity and insight. 
 
 John Brown's rashness and fate, caused men to think, whose 
 minds nothing less than tragedy could arouse from inaction. In the 
 
ADVANTAGE OF SUSTAINING LAW. 3 
 
 future other sacrifices may be demanded, and other heroes crowned. 
 ' Yet in a land of constitutional freedom, where the law provides 
 modes for its own amendment and repeal, violence is unnecessary. 
 
 If it be true that wrong and injustice is entrenched in law ; 
 that the griefs and miseries of mankind are engendered through 
 forces sheltered by its provisions — men must learn to reach the 
 forces without burning the entrenchments ; to drop the bombs of 
 reason and sympathy upon, and capture the garrison without de- 
 stroying accoutrements, ammunition and provisions; and ultimately, 
 to transmute by argument and kindness, captives into friends. 
 
 They should remember, victory won, that the legal entrenchments 
 captured will shelter the victors, the accoutrements and ammunition 
 stengthen their defenses, the provisions sustain their energies, and 
 that through reason alone can the victory be made permanent. 
 
 They may go farther and be assured that it is not men who stand 
 opposed to men, but principles within men which contend against 
 principles, the wrong against the right, the evil against the good ; 
 that principles are not weakened by physical violence, but, invoking 
 through self-love, physical power in their defense, take deeper root 
 and stronger growth. 
 
 Unjust and inhuman laws may be most effectually over-turned, 
 not by a direct attack on the law, but by a flank movement on evil 
 principles which call it into existence and give it support. 
 
 A principle exists in divine law, the law to whose beneficence 
 and justice the most recalcitrant instinctively bow, which is con- 
 stantly calling, as deep calls unto deep, for the surrender of vicious 
 principles ; calling insurgents to their sometime allegiance,, touching 
 them through physical interests, working upon their social natures, 
 their instincts of humanity, their apprehensions and their fears, and 
 invisibly leading up to culmination in their overthrow, their aban- 
 donment of unjust and evil endeavors, and coalescence of human 
 with divine laws. 
 
 It is to this invisible working that every man should join himself. 
 
 The uplifting of principles moves thrones, shakes dynasties, and 
 overthrows vicious systems. 
 
 If, as alleged, law embodies the evils and supports the vices, which 
 threaten the industrial world with stagnation and civilization with 
 decay, attack not law, but transform the forces which give it deadly 
 design, to principles which give beneficent life. 
 
 But, principles modified and transformed, the work is not yet done. 
 Action must follow enlightened judgement. Law arising in principles 
 must be embodied in statutes. 
 
 Political machinery must be set in motion, parties formed or con- 
 strained, legislatures elected, courts remodeled, and executives in har- 
 mony with changing conditions, placed in power. 
 
4 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Law, as a growth has kept even pace with the growth of society. 
 Until recent periods the law-giving faculties of single men, with few 
 exceptions, held society together. 
 
 Constitutional concessions marked a point of departure from the 
 one man regime. 
 
 Oligarchic law came into operation, however, under the mastery 
 of kings and emperors. The law-making power even by them was 
 diffused. 
 
 Within a century, kings and emperors are considered an unneces- 
 sary luxury and expense. 'The doctrine of rtpresentation arising from 
 the concession of kings has taken hold of leading nations. Repub- 
 licanism has come to the front, and with it, the right to make and 
 change constitutions and laws has been asserted by, and conceded 
 to all men. 
 
 The right being established, its excution is a matter of organized . 
 choice. Practically, as yet, the extension of the suffrage on the 
 well being of nations has effected but little change. An industrial 
 oligarchy has distrained the purposes, diverted the operations of 
 political equality and perverted the power inherent with every man to 
 participate in legislation. 
 
 This oligarchy yet rules. Vicious, industrial principles overslaugh 
 the power of just political principles. To point out some of those 
 vices is the work of succeeding chapters. 
 
CAPACITY AND POWER. 
 
 CAPACITY AND POWER. 
 
 Capacity and power of persons and organizations affecting greatly 
 the production and consumption of wealth, require a brief considera- 
 tion. 
 
 First ; man existing as a created being possesses an essential prop- 
 erty of receptivity ; second, an equally essential faculty of disp^- 
 sion. 
 
 Receptivity transforms to capacity ; dispersion metamorphoses 
 to power. 
 
 Capacity and power on different planes have a common organ. On 
 the intellectual plane it is the brain; on the physical plane, the 
 stomach. 
 
 The brain and the stomach have each an auricular and a ventricu- 
 lar side. 
 
 The auricular involves capacity ; the ventricular embraces power. 
 
 The capacity and power of every man play intellectlially through 
 the -brain ; physically, through the stomach. 
 
 The latter macerates and digests on the physical ; the former, on 
 the intellectual plajie. 
 
 Like an animated watering pot, what man takes in through his 
 capacity he puts out through his power. 
 
 In a state of rest and tranquillity, capacity is unfolded ; in a state of 
 activity, power is developed. 
 
 In a condition of receptivity, the boy at school learns his lessons ; 
 and in the state of dispersion he recites thsm. 
 
 In exercise of capacity the editor opens his mind to incoming 
 truth ; in the exercise of power, he arranges, composes and writes. 
 
 Through the operation of capacity the lawyer acquires his facts 
 and principles and arranges his brief ; through the operation of pow- 
 er he bombards the judge and fires the jury. 
 
 During rest the cap i city of the man of muscle is renewed ; during 
 activity, his power is evolved. 
 
 Hours of receptivity are equally important to the personal and gen- 
 eral weal, with hours of dispersion. 
 
 Rest is equally necessary with labor. An over-rested man is 
 rightly unhappy, equally, with an over-worked man. 
 
 In a well-ordered life and a full-grown person^ capacity is develop- 
 ed proportionately with power. 
 
 Capacity waits with patience and longs with aspiration, unuttera- 
 ble, for the incoming ; power effervesces with the eagerness of out- 
 going. 
 
6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Capacity fully exercised augments the compass of power; and 
 power, brought to robust action, increases the dimensions of capac- 
 ity : each alternating the other, the essence called man opens and 
 grows, and the composite entity called society expands, and becomes 
 perfect. 
 
 Equality of capacity and power embodied in persons is an impor- 
 tant factor with the production and accumulation of wealth and the 
 avoidance of poverty. 
 
 There is no standard of measurement. It is assumed that the 
 capacity and power of one man is equal to the capacity and power of 
 another. It is true, but approximately. 
 
 It is nevertheless true, that a close relation exists between the ca- 
 pacity and powers and wants of individuals, and other things being 
 equal that each person in health, of age neither infantile nor senile, 
 is endowed with capacity and power equal to the supply of his own 
 wants. 
 
 How closely the power of one person equals the power of an- 
 other, is more fully discussed in the chapter on Rights. 
 
WANTS. 
 
 WANTS. 
 
 To lay the foundation of a rational system of economic science, it 
 is necessary to consider briefly, but radically, the nature of man, the 
 nature and condition of society, the character of an invisible creative 
 power, their relations to each other and to the universe of matter or- 
 ganized and unorganized. 
 
 We must, if possible, arrive at the origin of person and things, and 
 the purpose of their existence. As the endlessness and infinity of 
 time, place, and circumstance, furnish no positive conception of 
 origin, it is necessary to assume a premise regarding it, not previously 
 established. If the assumption be true, facts and inferences will set- 
 tle around it in harmony. Its truth may then be considered as settled. 
 If facts and conditions fail to harmonize, the premise must be aban- 
 doned or modified. Other premises must be successively selected, 
 until one be found which harmonizes with facts. This, in brief, is 
 the ordinary method of scientific growth. 
 
 Different classes of thinkers, on these topics, commence from dif- 
 ferent premises ; all bringing up at the end of an infinite series, with 
 an acknowledgement of finite capacity and consequent ignorance. 
 
 But the most common assumption, and that which most fully and 
 satisfactorily explains the phenomena, is that the Universe is the crea- 
 ted result of a single creative personality. 
 
 That premise will be assumed. It is the general sense of man- 
 kind that nature, from its most simple to its most complex forms, 
 from the rock through the tree to the most perfect man, is not self 
 existent ; but with its manifold varieties of form, color, size an-d 
 consistence, and its different degrees of organization, was brought 
 into being by a self-existent creative agency, and its perpetuity has 
 been assured through provisions of the same agency. 
 
 This idea, in modified form, has prevailed in all lands and from 
 earliest times. Under the varied appellations of Ormuzd, Allah, 
 Jehovah and other names less known, similar characteristics and 
 powers have been ascribed to this invisible being. 
 
 It has been urged that every man creates his own God ; hence, no 
 God exists. If every man should accurately describe the earth as it 
 appears to him, the descriptions would vary infinitely. How false 
 would be the inference that there is no earth ! 
 
 The nature of this being has probably been always as now ; but 
 He has been described in different places, at different periods and by 
 different persons, in lights often obscured by ignorance and supersti- 
 
O WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 tion, not as He then and there was, but as He then and there was 
 seen to be through distorted vision. 
 
 By those suffering the necessary consequences of their own errors, 
 He has seemed full of hatred and vindictiveness ; by those in whom 
 personally developed evil had not dimmed the clearness of highest 
 insight, He has been described, in all ages, as.the infinite personifica- 
 tion of infinite love and wisdom. 
 
 It is further alleged on internal evidences generally accepted, that 
 man, the highest type of being, was made in the image of the Creator ; 
 that the characteristics of the one, finite as to scope and power, are 
 similar to those of the other; that the finite love, wisdom and activity 
 in one is infinitely duplicated in the other, and that the trinity of end, 
 cause and effect observable in men, is infinitely consummated in the 
 Creator. 
 
 These similarities admitted, marked dissimilarities present them- 
 selves. On the one hand the Creator is infinite, self-existent and 
 independent ; on the other hand, man is finite, created and depen- 
 dent, relying upon the former for sources of existence and activity. 
 The one is the origin of infinite commodity, the other an active re- 
 ceptacle of all wealth. The former is an illimitable and independent 
 giver, the latter a persistent and unavoidable receiver. 
 
 This invisible, omniscient and omnipotent Being, in avoidance of 
 universal stagnation within the recesses and limits of his own exist- 
 ence, in furtherance of an infinite system of output from himself and 
 income to himself, in perpetuity of his own love, wisdom and utility, 
 in supply of his own wants and maintenance of his own happiness, 
 created the earth with its values, its wealth and its inhabitants. 
 
 The Creator and man are both organized wants ; the infinite and 
 first want of the former is to give ; to get rid of His superabundant 
 and overflowing vitalities and wealth : the perpetual and paramount 
 want of the latter is \.o get; to absorb the forms of wealth which lie 
 in and about him. 
 
 But neither can be satisfied with a status ; to realize perpetual 
 and universal happiness, return currents must flow. What goes out, 
 in gift from the Creator, must find channels of return ; what comes 
 in as receipts to men, must find channels of outgo ; else, in either 
 case, stagnation, disease and desolation. 
 
 In normal condition the universe is a vast congeries of unob- 
 structed circulations : system upon system, and system within system, 
 all finding origin and source in the Infinite heart; thence, issuing by 
 arterial and capillary outflow, on elevated planes through spiritual 
 substances and realms, on lower levels through meshes and arenas 
 of the material world, making liquid music into and through 
 the psychic and physical hearts of millions; whence, having deposited 
 benefits and nutriments and gathered the raw material of new riches, 
 
ORIGIN OF WANTS. 9 
 
 returning by winding ways and through invisible and multitudinous 
 channels to points of departure, these circulations complete their 
 perpetual courses. 
 
 The human race is under the continued influence of these two 
 currents, originating in the same Source : First, the direct current, 
 touching by invisible lines, the inner and spiritual nature of man ; 
 second, the indirect current falling primarily upon bed rock of 
 material existence, and flowing upwardly through the different grada- 
 tions and advancements of unorganized and organized development. 
 
 The individual soul, which is the real, the central man, thus leads 
 a two-fold life. It is fed through the intuitions from the inner world 
 whose mysteries are but partially fathomed, through the external 
 senses and avenues from the outer world. It draws, by its ferment- 
 ing energies and its inter-constructive vitalities, upon the luxuriant 
 growth of wealth unseen, and upon streams of comfort and luxury, 
 concentrated from the cultivated fields of physical nature. It is an 
 autocratic beggar issuing its demands on the resources of two worlds — 
 demands which, though perpetually repeated, are never denied. To 
 demand and receive, are indispensable conditions of its life. 
 
 It is between the counter-influences of these diverse realms where 
 an equilibrium is possible, that man's choices are opened, power ac- 
 quired and character developed. Want and choice are indissolubly 
 bound together, the stronger want determining choice. 
 
 It is here in this possible equilibrium, that normal want deploys 
 its forces in an open, if not a free, field. 
 
 The life of man is love, and want is its most common and com- 
 prehensive expression. 
 
 Whether we interrogate the Creator, society, or the individual, the 
 response comes from every quarter, that normal want is the primitive 
 and supreme inciter to beneficent activity ; that all effort goes out 
 therefrom to supply. Among men, and through society, it acts like a 
 vacuum which nature rushes to fill. It is an ever forceful affinity 
 which draws atoms, planets, and systems around controlling points^ 
 and determines them to a common centre. 
 
 Life without want, whether it be finite or infinite, is an inconceiv- 
 able condition ; it would not be life ; it would be absolute and univer- 
 sal stagnation ; it would nullify all incentive to action. Even 
 creative activity is prompted by infinite want. 
 
 Nevertheless, want, in abnormal intensities, supported by unlimited 
 power, has been and is now the cause of all the evils which effect per- 
 sons and nations. In a sense all wants are normal — normal to the 
 persons or organizations, which they inspire — normal in the produc- 
 tion of good or in the production of evil. 
 
 In another sense, all wants, culminating in evil, are abnormal. 
 
lO WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Evil is but • inverted good — good intensified out of its natural 
 channels and distorted from its purest forms. 
 
 Though want has incited the world to activity, want operating 
 in extremis through freedom and power has filled it with need, 
 cruelty and bloodshed. When supply should be universal to all men, 
 a small class stands with frenzied greed over against a large class with 
 anguished need ; both affected by want operating in extremes ; the 
 former assisted by, the latter deprived of, power, opportunties" and 
 facilities. 
 
 The beneficence or malevolence of want turns upon the question, 
 if it be suppliable or non-suppliable ; if suppliable, how far the effort 
 required to secure supply is productive of satisfaction or suffermg : 
 if unsuppliable, thedegreeof benefit, or anguish caused by abstinence. 
 It is not want which should terrify the world ; it is the insatiate greed 
 into which it becomes perverted and the anguished need which re- 
 sults therefrom ; anguish embodied in prostrating effort and de- 
 moralizing abstinence. 
 
 Want is an established entity, the origin of all civilization, and insep- 
 arable from human life ; but it was intended as a promoter of general 
 happiness rather than misery. 
 
 Supply, satisfaction, enjoyment, could never be, if men being 
 men, were severed from want — were made absolutely independ- 
 ent. It is dependence and receptivity which makes happiness pos- 
 sible. 
 
 A universe of wealth would be useless under other conditions. 
 But, that want should culminate in plenty and comfort, supply, through 
 effort must be available. Supply exists everywhere in proportionate 
 abundance. Provision is perennial and infinite. Giving does not im- 
 poverish, nor withholding, enrich. Non-suppliability is the only hin- 
 derance. Nothing but the obstructions of individuals and classes has 
 prevented and still prevents an equitable access to supply. Such ob- 
 structions must ultimately yield to the ponderous current of progress. 
 
 Showing, made thus far in this inquiry, points to three parties who 
 are involved in the discussion of want : the Creator, society and the 
 individual. 
 
 Though the wants of the Creator, as men develop toward the stan- 
 dard of the Godlike, will become increasingly respected, economic 
 science is principally and most directly concerned with the wants of 
 society and of man. 
 
 Inquiry further shows that want must be considered from the 
 two-fold standpoint of man's spiritual and material nature. 
 
 Economic want, or demand, as it is usually named, mcludes : First, 
 spiritual wants; second, material wants; third, mixed, or semi- 
 6pirituo-?naterial wants. 
 
 It is eminentlv and universally true, and becomes more marked as 
 
WANTS SUPPLIABLE AND NON-SUPPLIABLE. II 
 
 men and society become older, wiser and better, that men do not 
 live by bread alone ; that the highest and purest culture demands in- 
 creasingly more expenditure of effort for satisfaction of spiritual than 
 of material wants. 
 
 Intellectual, aesthetic, social, moral and religious wants, personal 
 and collective, those which arise in spiritual springs, are rapidly 
 increasing ; and that, too, out of proportion with the contemporaneous 
 increase of material wants. , 
 
 Strictly speaking, wants purely material, or purely spiritual, are 
 few. 
 
 Purely material wants of man center in but two ends : First, 
 building and repairing the body ; second, sustaining its heat. To 
 these ends, food, clothing, shelter and fuel are needed. Supply of 
 these wants requires substances and textures, few and primitive. 
 
 Purely spiritual wants center in the creation and maintenance 
 of thoughts and affection pertaining to spiritual life. In the golden 
 age of man, these wants, it is alleged, were supplied as if by spon- 
 taneity. 
 
 But when material wants reach up for spiritual embellishment and 
 refinement, and spiritual wants reach down for material comfort and 
 envelopment, then comes the tug of effort in supply. Then, are the 
 sources of wealth and the powers of production taxed to their utmost 
 capabilities. 
 
 The plainest woolens of the com.monest colors and textures, serve 
 to retain animal heat, and answer the full purpose of clothing. They 
 may be cut and sewed by little labor. Nevertheless, there is no art, 
 no beauty of color, form of finish, no ornamentations, no regard to 
 the aesthetic element of soul, to the inborn longing for beauty and grace 
 of structure. If person and society are satisfied with the supply of the 
 mere physical want, effort is confined to narrow limits. But let the 
 spiritual want for grace and beauty of texture, form and color, assert 
 itself, and the whole work changes. Labor then comes into- ten-fold 
 demand. 
 
 It is possible for men to worship God in the open air, under the 
 canopy of heaven, rain, wind, cold and heat affecting ; thus 
 supplying wants purely spiritual. But the necessity of preserving an- 
 imal heat during worship, involves material wants. Shelter is requi- 
 site. Resort to caves and forest, will not answer. Structures, wood- 
 en, stone, and iron, must be erected to beat back the storm, and 
 preserve the heat of an enclosed atmosphere — heat arising from the 
 assemblage and artificial combustion. 
 
 These structures embody a purely spiritual want, the desire to 
 worship ; hence, spiritual wants engender physical effort. But, carry- 
 ing convenience, comfort, beauty, art and luxury — semi-spiritual 
 wants — into these structures, originating in a purely spiritual want, and 
 
12 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 effort is called out from every possible source. Thus, churches, cathe> 
 drals and temples demanding effort in multifarious forms, assuring 
 repose, comfort and elegance, arise in beauty and grandeur, embody- 
 ing the purely spiritual desire of worship. 
 
 The closer the nature of want is inspected, the wider seems the 
 scope of spiritual wants, and the narrower the scope of real material 
 wants. 
 
 And why not ? Pure want is ar^ emanation, an output from the 
 soul. What are termed material wants, are really spiritual wants ex- 
 tended into the material basis. It is the soul which wants bread, 
 clothing and shelter for its body ; the final want being the growth and 
 perfection of that very soul for infinite life in its native realm. 
 
 The love of music, and desire for its embodiment in melody and 
 harmony, who can conceive the altitudes of its upreaching into spirit- 
 ual spheres? 
 
 True, we get it through reed and pipe and string and bird and 
 stream ; it comes to us on the material level in manifold forms — but 
 the want, though fed through fibrous, wooden and metallic combina- 
 tions, is a spiritual want of the most intricate and refined nature. 
 
 It is only a concession to current thought, that want can be di- 
 vided into material and spiritual wants. Man being a spirit em- 
 bodied, his wants are all spiritual ; but turning to two worlds, the ma- 
 terial and spiritual, for supply, the character of the supply is naturally, 
 but loosely, applied as describing the want. 
 
 Wants are all of the soul — spiritual — supplies, both from the 
 native regions of the soul — spiritual — and from its foreign and ma- 
 terial surroundings. Having gone out like an army into a foreign 
 country, it maintains a line of supply with spiritual commodity and 
 home, and at the same time forages upon the country which it has 
 invaded. 
 
 With the understanding then that in the division of wants into 
 spiritual .2ind ffiaterial, the distinction relates to the source of supply, 
 and not to the nature of the want, we proceed : 
 
 In the matter of adornment alone — in linens and silks, in satins 
 and velvet, in wraps and head-dresses for persons, and in the adorn- 
 ments of table, furniture, equipage, homes, theatres, cathedrals, tem- 
 ples or palaces, indeed, respecting everything connected with modern 
 civilized life, the spiritual want of man is paramount. 
 
 And yet, it has long been an open question with economic writers 
 if the wants supplied by the labors of the minister, teacher, lawyer, 
 editor, journalist or author, were wants, in considering the productive 
 forces and wealth of nations, worthy of attentive regard ; and whether 
 the labor which supplied those wants be classed as productive labor. 
 
 Considering differences of time and place, and of personal organ- 
 ization, the multitude of wants outgoing to supply, is inconceivable ; 
 
SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL WANTS. 1 3 
 
 and yet, they are susceptible of further analysis and arrangement un- 
 der a few subdivisions. 
 
 Material wants range principally under the head of light, fuel, 
 food, clothing and shelter. 
 
 Spiritual wants, perhaps because not so easily designated, embrace 
 a greater variety of subdivision. 
 
 With facility they fall under three heads : 
 
 First, Affectional wants ; second, Intellectual wants ; third. Mixed, 
 •or semi-intellectuo-affectional wants 
 
 The first comprises the selfish impulsions, passions and desires, the 
 social affections and attachments, and the moral and religious ele- 
 ments of being; the second, embraces the perceptions, memory and 
 reason ; the third, includes the aptitudes of art, of rhythm, construc- 
 tion, music, sculpture and painting. 
 
 Throughout this entire domain of affect ionality and intellectuality, 
 through the respective individuals of each of these classes, the mag- 
 netic sparks of want, in perpetual career, are flashing throughout the 
 world, activity into effort. 
 
 Want, being the psychological origin of production, other distinc- 
 tions may make its nature, scope and power more intelligible. 
 
 First, its rationality or folly ; second, its virtue or vice ; third, its 
 justice or injustice ; fourth, its power, scope and growth. 
 
 The rationality or folly of a want, as well as its virtue or vice, 
 bring want into prominence, as operating upon the particular individ- 
 uals or society whom it stimulates to action. 
 
 Want, in itself, is a blind force, limited only by the reason and will 
 of person or society. If not restrained through reason, it is capable 
 of extremities which result in nothing but discomfort and distress to 
 the person or society involved. Foolish and vicious wants operate 
 most conspicuously through the appetites and the pleasures of sensa- 
 tion. Want, in search of satisfaction, intuitively limits itself at the 
 verge of pain. Disturbed function in numberless instances comes 
 long before disease is suspected or distress established. It is the 
 province of observation and experience to note disturbances which 
 precede disorganization and distress, fix the bounds toward which 
 want may go with impunity, and place the parallels inside and out- 
 side of which satisfaction remains normal ; and it is the function of 
 rationality to warn, limit and restrain, through fear of punitive con- 
 sequence, outgo of want beyond those limits. It is one thing to know, 
 another to be wise : and rationality is included in wisdom. 
 
 Unlimited and unrestrained wants of persons have developed 
 folly and vice throughout the bounds of every civilized nation. 
 Liberty and power combined, excess and immoderation have overrun 
 reason, anci dashing the cup of pleasure from the hand of the profli- 
 gate, have meted out disease to persons and disaster: to societies. 
 
14 - WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Self culture and harmony of character is established in the ration- 
 ality and virtue, and personal and social overthrow, insured in the 
 folly and vice, of want. 
 
 Justice or injustice of want, relates not to the results of want 
 upon the person, or society affected thereby, but to other persons 
 and to other societies, and rests on the relative capacity of different 
 persons to use or consume. 
 
 The capacity of use or consumption merely approximates equality. 
 The limits of the differences in capacity determine the limits of just 
 and unjust want. Though injustice may and must operate disastrous- 
 ly on its devotees, its principle force is spent upon the innocent, 
 unsuspecting and powerless. 
 
 An unjust, want, if enforced, necessarily trenches upon values or 
 commodities which right has assigned to others. 
 
 Its tendency is to deprive others, either of opportunities for satis- 
 factory exertion, or of the results of enforced labor. 
 
 Operating through individuals, it tends to disturb concord ot 
 the entire society to which they belong, through communities to 
 impair the harmony of the state or nation of which they are a part, 
 through nations to derange the amities of the civilized world. 
 
 Men, wanting desirable commodity or property, /arely corlsider 
 the question how their success, secured through current avenues of 
 achievement, is likely to affect the wants of others." Can we get it ? " 
 is the question usually asked and answered ; and once answered, the 
 struggle is undertaken with as little compunction as to reslilts upon 
 others, as the trial of strength between beasts. 
 
 The injustice lies not in determinations of the relative strength of 
 contending parties, but m the use of that strength in depriving the 
 weak of their natural rights. A want which prompts the use of 
 superior power to wrest from the weak that which is his own, is an 
 unjust and a dangerous want — dangerous to person and to society. 
 
 Few, at this stage of human development, will hesitate to denounce 
 acts which fall under the term "aggression," but how many have 
 thoughtfully .considered the full import of the term " enterprise " ? 
 The latter is supposed to cover characteristics universally praise- 
 worthy. The man of enterprise is the cynosure of industrial emula- 
 tion. He is petted and praised without stint or limit. To common 
 apprehension, enterprise is industrial virtue. And yet in this very 
 term, concealed under the commendable characteristics of activity and 
 industry; which it also embodies, is to be found that unjust and 
 inconsiderate want, that insatiate greed, which has disturbed the 
 equities and broken the harmonies of civilized life. Fully analyzed 
 enterprise means, "Go in an4 take." It regards not the wants of 
 others, present or future. It is the prevailing spirit of existing civil- 
 ization. A 
 
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF WANT. 
 
 The intensity and power of want, under the term demand, is re- 
 cognized by ecomonic writers, as governing supply and affecting value. 
 But it must not be confounded with the intensity and power of 
 forces and appliances concerned in effecting supply. It is an error 
 of current economic science to assume that the strength of want is 
 attended by adequate power, opportunity and facility of supply. 
 
 It is also a current custom in business circles to speak of demand 
 and supply, as if their relations were not interrupted by unfair and 
 unjust obstructions. 
 
 Prof. Devons has made remarkable studies of the varying intensi- 
 ties of demand, illustrating its progressive decrease under easy supply, 
 by geometrical diagrams and expressions ; studies, which, owing to un- 
 considered obstructions at present existing, depriving supply of facil- 
 ity, opportunity and power have little practical application. 
 
 When want, intense and powerful, stands per-/orce apart from supply^ 
 when the gulf of impossibility stretches its expanse between them, 
 want becomes the source of incomparable sufferings. It is just at 
 this point also where intense demand parts company with the requisite 
 power of adequate and continued supply, that the "fear of want,'^ 
 puts in most effective work. The agony of blind and ineffective want 
 outreaching to supply, is incomprehensible and indescribable. 
 
 It is to points between want and satisfaction, between demand and 
 supply, that economic studies of the future are likely to be concen- 
 trated. 
 
 The scope of want is continually enlarging. Commodities, which, a 
 quarter of a century since were scarcely known, have become things 
 of daily use and universal necessity. 
 
 With new and increased commodities, new wants equally impera- 
 ative with the simplest want of primitive times, have entered and per- 
 meated the secret sources of civilized life. It is not enough to say to 
 laborers that they live better to-day than kings lived five centuries since. 
 The question should be. How has the advancement of civilization, 
 increase of commodity and wealth and the developement of man,, 
 affected the tastes, desires and want of every unit of organized society ? 
 With the want and the willingness to labor, the supply should go 
 equally to one as to another. To tell the laborer that he lives as well 
 as former kings, is a shallow and repulsive mode of dispersing the in- 
 ferential and half confessed charge attached irresistibly to revelers in 
 more than royal wealth, that their gains are gotten through the opera- 
 tion of false and vicious principles. 
 
 Time was, when, and places are where, the foot went, and now 
 goes, bare. Even the sole was and is protected and hardened on y 
 by cuticular growth. 
 
 Time, it may be, was when men grew their own clothing like the 
 zebra and the elephant. Who shall detail the trivial steps, the im- 
 
1 6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 perceptible unfoldm ents of want, through growth extended from 
 ■earliest age? A barefooted, or even a sandaled man or woman in 
 civilized countries, at this time, would be regarded as representing 
 great poverty and suffering, or of a development, little more than 
 commenced. 
 
 Men who do not wear neat-fitting, pliable, polished foot-gear, are 
 regarded as improperly clothed, and an unexpressed judgment segre- 
 gates them from others. Those who decline from sheer indolence, 
 are regarded with pity and contempt ; but those who do not want 
 them are simply tolerated in the midst of a civilization to which they 
 are foreign. In all the departments and details of modern life, wants 
 have followed a like unfoldment. Want, with the requisite effort for 
 satisfaction, constitutes the accepted standard of civilized growth. 
 
 It develops by the ordinary laws of progress. Wants supplied and 
 satisfaction secured, new wants, as new scenes to an advancing trav- 
 eler, come into view. The rest of supply is followed by the activity 
 of new demand. The night of satisfaction just precedes the morning 
 of new want. 
 
 Want grows as grows the flower, the fruit, the graceful willow, the 
 giant pine and the wide-spreading banyan tree. 
 
 It germs and sprouts and stalks and ears ; it buds and flowers and 
 fruits. 
 
 It embodies the germs of progress — personal, social, national and 
 universal. 
 
 It involves expansion, enlargement, increase, and, in consecutive 
 periods and civilizations, what seem to be new creations. 
 
 It is the present advanced guard of an orderly movement. It flour- 
 ishes and expands through the activity and effort it inspires. 
 
 Want may, however, as easily decay as grow. 
 
 A person, family, society or nation which has secured, or begun 
 to secure supply of demand, or satisfaction of want without effort, has 
 already been touched by the blight of decay. 
 
 Effort is the born leader of the great civilizations yet to come, and 
 without its aid the present civilization of want must yield to decay. 
 
 The great endeavor of ages, the objective point of industrial evolu- 
 tion, is to place effort into that spontaneous movement of use — 
 movement without hope or desire of profit or reward, which will 
 maintain incessant and unobstructed activity throughout space and 
 time. 
 
 One has but to look back upon the lives of persons, families, na- 
 tions and civilizations, to be assured that the time of retrograde and 
 decay came, when want, with the ruling elements of organized so- 
 ciety, was supplied to them by effort of others. 
 
 One has but to look now at increasing numbers of the income 
 
THE MISSION OF WANT. 1 7 
 
 class, those who live, wholly or partly, on effort of others through 
 rent, interest and profit ; has but to contemplate vast fortunes gath- 
 ered throughout the civilized world, which insure their possessors 
 against the necessity of effort ; has but to reflect upon immense mul- 
 titudes, who are hoping and struggling to attain a position in which 
 life may be realized without effort ; has but to count the millions 
 with whom abstinence from useful effort is enforced : — to know that 
 the present civilization is rapidly approaching a trying crisis ; to know 
 that stagnation in effort has already begun — stagnation not only 
 among the opulent, but among the apes and dependents of the opu- 
 lent ; not only among the income class and the indolent, but among 
 the poverty-stricken and desperate who have lost heart, because they 
 have lost hold upon the efficient factors of productive life. One has 
 but to follow closely the shock of contending forces, and pursue the 
 logic of conflicting events, to perceive that better principles, practi- 
 calized by skillful and earnest men, can alone re-open the avenues of 
 effort, stimulate it to renewed action and avert disaster. 
 
 Want, though a hard task-master, aided by effort, and sustained 
 by the allurements of satisfaction, has been an efficient civiHzer. Its 
 decay, through the decline of effort, at this stage of human develop- 
 ment, would be a fearful calamity. 
 
 Rising at the great Source of want, there, from independent exis- 
 tence, want to give ; descending through invisible channels to the 
 souls of men, where, on the level of dependent life it becomes want 
 io receive, as tumultuous and glittering cataracts falling upon expan- 
 sive and ponderous water-wheels, set machinery in resounding mo- 
 tion, human want throughout the world has awakened and sustained 
 the industrial operations and diversified activities in which men en- 
 gage, and of which economic science treats. 
 
 Civilization cannot part with it, until its function has ended in es- 
 tablishing a reign of effort, spontaneous, hearty, humane, useful and 
 perpetual ; until human want to acquire has been transformed into 
 god-like want to impart. 
 
16 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 RIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV., SECTION I. 
 
 A claim of rights is an unconscious recognition of an invisible 
 Being, whence they are derived, by whose judgments they are defined, 
 limited and enlarged, and through whose power they are enforced. 
 Rights, primarily derived, are recognized secondarily and in the 
 person, as inherent. They flow from the same fountain as wants. 
 They constitute the material embodiment of wants. They furnish 
 wants with food, clothing and shelter. They are an outcome from the 
 same creative power. A man who has wants, by virtue of his wants, 
 has rights. Wants existing, rights, opening the avenues of satisfactory 
 supply, are consequential, indispensable, inevitable. 
 
 No need go to men for guarantee of rights ; their guarantee is one's 
 manhood. We may combine with others to secure and maintain 
 them, but in our combination, while we re-establish for others, we but 
 recover for ourselves. God having given them, society should assert 
 and maintain them. 
 
 A considerate generalization of rights involves three parties. First, 
 the Creator; second, society; third, the individual. Being parts of 
 a great whole, each may be said to have rights upon itself and the 
 others. The Creator has rights on Himself, on society and on the 
 individual. Society has rights itself on the Creator and on the indi- 
 vidual. The individual has rights on himself, on society and on the 
 Creator. 
 
 We are dealing principally with the rights of man and of society. 
 The chief end of human rights, is to assure, through effort, adequate 
 supply of want. 
 
 An assumption of rights without impulse to effort, is impertinent. 
 Effort, or desire for employment in production, is the chief and 
 necessary contingent of rights. A disposition to effort having been 
 abandoned, rights cannot be logically maintained. When effort, 
 reasonable, personal, productive, useful, self-sustaining effort is de- 
 clined, no right to subsistence, or the sources of subsistence, should 
 attach. It is to be assumed that persons or classes so declining have 
 decided to demise or determined to secure subsistence from the labor 
 of others, either by finesse or fraud, or by beggary and crime. Rights 
 secured and effort declined, turns the currents of life backward, first, 
 upon self, next upon society. Though the inspiriting force of the 
 present civilization is wants, and right to supply its objective point, 
 effort, love of useful, productive effort, is the grandest achievement 
 
THE MISSION OF EFFORT. 1 9 
 
 possible to mankind. It is end, cause and effect combined in act. 
 Instead of being the master of want, effort, not having reached its 
 destiny, is as yet its draggling servant. A civilization of effort, whose 
 object is to accomplish rather than possess, to carry and to give, rather 
 than to bring and to get, would place justice on the pinnacle of power 
 with rights and duties attendant on either hand, maintaining universal 
 and perpetual circulation of commodity and wealth. 
 
 Opposed to this ideal, the thought of industrial life is to attain the 
 means of life, or to live at some future time, v/ithout effort. Every man 
 looks forward to the. period when his revenue will enable him to live 
 and disport himself without labor. The difference between the busi- 
 ness man and the voluntary tramp is that the latter is more selfishly 
 wise ; he takes life without effort, at once, while it is going, and is 
 satisfied with slight drafts upon the common commodity, while the 
 former piles up to a time when life may have gone ; drafting, in the 
 mean time, heavily upon the general wealth. May not the strained, 
 and oft-times fraudulent industry of the former be overbalanced 
 against society, by the personal sacrifices of the latter ? Current 
 views of effort- are erroneous in that they tend to concentrate efforts 
 of a lifetime into a few years, and in this short, sharp and decisive 
 struggle of a few years, obstruct and overturn the tranquil, 
 full and rich economies primarily destined to give universal peace 
 and plenty. The ideal of effort is embodied in a life of moderate 
 labor from youth to age, free from fear of needy want on the one hand, 
 and the hardships of accumulation and burdens of anxious solicitude 
 on the other. " Give me neither poverty, nor riches.'' 
 
 But while we keep the ideal in view we must treat conditions as 
 they are ; we must take the bird as it flies, man in the movements of 
 ail orderly evolution, and concern ourselves with that with which he 
 is at present most concerned. 
 
 However unwisely we may have managed them, rights are, neverthe- 
 less, inborn and practically inalienable ; for though effort in some may 
 fall to a low minimum, yet, no man lives but is willing to make some 
 effort in supply of his own wants ; and through that effort he is en- 
 titled to rights. They are inalienable, because they are interlaced in 
 the life of want. It is inconceivable that a being, other than a demon, 
 should create wants without a corresponding avenue of supply for 
 them. It involves the possession of a nature which would kindle 
 hope to laugh at despair, create life to enjoy the torments of dissolu- 
 tion. Men were not created by a being so detestable. One has but 
 to consider the amenities and provisions of nature, follow the steps of 
 creation, and the gradations of evolution, to be disabused of an idea 
 so abhorrent. Abundant materials, adapted by nature, or adaptable 
 by effort to neutralization of want, everywhere exist. Follow the life 
 of beings from the simple cell, through the vegetable and animal 
 
20 WEAI>TH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 kingdoms, to the highest forms of animal life, and not a person or 
 thing, undisturbed by the hand of man, can be found without access- 
 ible provision for supply. Furthermore, the closest analysis and full- 
 est research shows this provision has always been completed before 
 creation was commenced ; that a pernicious credit system was not 
 set in operation by the Creator. 
 
 Originating in the Infinite, rights are unquestionably lodged in and 
 grounded with the finite. But this is not all ; they descend, settle 
 and rest upon the world of matter, organized and inorganized, and 
 establish relations between persons and things. Says a noted writer,* 
 " right is only intelligible when predicated of some person who can 
 exercise or enforce iu" Again, "right is a relation between some 
 person and external nature. There is no such thing as abstract 
 right." 
 
 Of late, an insidious and persistent attempt has been made to cer- 
 tify and insist on the rights of things. Within a quarter of a century, 
 this attempt has well-nigh succeeded in changing public sentiment. 
 But a revulsion has already set in against a conviction so abhorrent 
 to common sense and common equity. An eloquent advocate of 
 vested right recently said, " Let it be remembered that all property 
 and all personal rights are held at the will of the majority.'^ 
 If laws may be repealed by future legislatures and set aside by subse- 
 quent conventions and constitutions, the permanence of investitures 
 sought to be established by asserting the rights of property and things 
 may prove delusive. " Rights of property," as an expression, is either an 
 idiotic emanation, or a form of speech adapted and disseminated for the 
 purpose of confusing thought, and securing advantage by the mental 
 confusion so produced. When men learn to assume that things have 
 rights, they are prepared to assent to any proposition, making things 
 of equal importance in social, civil and industrial affairs with men ; 
 to any proposition which would convert men into things. 
 
 Rights to property is a widely different proposition. Men have an 
 inalienable right to things in use ; and so long and to the extent those 
 things can be wisely or justly treated by society as property, so long, 
 and to that extent, should the right of men to property, personal or 
 real, be regarded. 
 
 Man's rights are co-extensive with the scope of his existence, and 
 the possibilities of his unfoldment. Rights attach to both his material 
 and spiritual nature. 
 
 He has rights to the possession and use of created substances and 
 entities, which render existence satisfactory and development full, rich 
 and harmonious ; which enable him to nourish and cover his body, 
 shelter it from the pitiless storm and blazing sun, give it warmth and 
 rotundity, and cause its changing circulation to run with ruggedness 
 
 *F. M.Pixley, Mayi '86. 
 
GENERAL RIGHTS OF MAN. 2 1 
 
 and swell with fatness ; rights which open opportunities and facilities 
 for social, intellectual and religious growth, and which afford ample 
 development to his entire spiritual nature. 
 
 He has rights to the free use of land, air, water ; to raw material 
 in its magnificent diversities ; to the uplifting and expanding power 
 of the active principles ; to nature's provision for the human race ; to 
 the opportunities and facilities for labor and self-employment ; and 
 society, itself being a growth — equally with a forest of trees or shoal 
 of fish — to the collective and contemporaneous results of intellectual, 
 moral, social, religious and political development. 
 
WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 THE RIGHTS TO PROVISIONS ; TO FOOD, 
 RAIMENT AND SHELTER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV.. SECTION II. 
 
 It becomes necessary to present in specific form an unusual claim 
 as to the rightful belonging of every man disposed to apply his labor 
 to the production of wealth and the supply of his wants. The claim 
 to be presented is, that by virtue of his birth and manhood, he is en- 
 titled to provisions in supply of his wants ; to a proportional share of 
 whatever creative labor has produced. 
 
 It is often carelessly said that " the world owes every man a liv- 
 ing." In this utterance lies a truth and an error; and the error is 
 likely to embody a crime, or intent of crime, against society. In the 
 sense that the Creator has laid up in the storehouse of nature an 
 . abundance of wealth for the present and most necessitous wants of 
 man, and ample raw material on which his labor may be expended 
 in further supply of want, the utterance is true ; but in the sense that 
 one mdn has a right to take, use and consume what the labor of an- 
 other has gathered or produced, it is an error, and involves a criminal 
 conception. 
 
 The claim of ample provision of food, clothing and shelter for one 
 cycle of production, lies upon grounds so fundamental that it cannot 
 be brushed away by a simple denial. An imperative sentiment is ex- 
 pressed in the shock of which every com.munity is sensible when a 
 man has been starved or frozen to death. Any community knowingly 
 consenting to such privation, with result so disastrous, would be 
 thought to have advanced in civilization no farther than the beasts. 
 It is a general statement that the privation involved in want of food, 
 raiment and shelter is evidence of a social crime. Nor does this rest 
 in the public consciousness on the ground of mere sympathy, and 
 the charity likely to arise therefrom. A wide-spread, if not universal, 
 sentiment prevails in all civilizations that men have a right to the 
 means of subsistence. The national declaration of independence 
 assuring the right of every man to " life, liberty and the pursuit of 
 happiness," impliedly asserts the right of every man to the necessary 
 means, embodied in a common heritage, to maintain life, liberty 
 and happiness ; especially to feed, clothe and house himself. No 
 one will deny that the declaration expresses a rightful demand ; if 
 not, then no one can deny the legitimate inference drawn therefrom, 
 that all men are entitled, not of charity, but of right to the food, 
 
OBJECTIONS ARGUED, 23 
 
 raiment and shelter provided by nature for the entire human race, 
 whether the provision be in form of natural wealth, or raw-material 
 still subject to additions susceptible of being made by human labor. 
 
 But admit this claim can be made ohly on the ground of extreme 
 indigence, to be relieved through the interference of charitable effort. 
 It is proved *that charity is but the work of restitution; restitu- 
 tion of that which had been taken previously by and through prior 
 appropriation and subsequent inequitable, holding of natural values 
 embodied in the common heritage ; that it seems like uncompensated 
 labor, but that the absence of compensation was a mere seeming ; 
 that compensation had been previously taken by the lords of industry 
 to a large amount over and above labor performed by them, and 
 charity is an indirect work of returning to the indigent a portion of 
 the abstractions which had made them indigent. It is there shown also 
 that the real labor of benevolence embraces only those cases of destitu- 
 tion which result from sickness, disablement and unavoidable acci- 
 dents. It is further shown that all other work, seemingly benevolent, 
 falls under the limitations of productive labor, and compensation has 
 been exacted from the laborers who have become destitute, long 
 before the work of charity or restitution has begun. 
 
 Hence, though we admit the assertion that many men are entitled 
 to provisions, to food, clothing and shelter only on the ground of 
 charity, charity itself being but restitution, the foundation of an ar- 
 gument against the original proposition that all men are entitled to 
 provision for a single cycle of production, is destroyed. From what- 
 ever side the question is investigated, it appears that the industrial 
 rights of man have never been regarded by the strong, as having an 
 existence sufficiently palpable to be worthy their distinguished con- 
 sideration. 
 
 From the stand-point of an equitable capitalism, Mr. George has 
 made a forcible argument, showing conclusively that laborers in 
 active employment, first applying their labor to the raw material held 
 by the capitalist, through wages received, the equivalent value for 
 which laborers have first transferred to the capitalist, each laborer 
 supplies his own provisions, his own food, clothing and shelter, and 
 is indebted not for one moment to the capitalist ; the latter, receiving 
 beforehand even more value than the wages represent, is the party 
 under obligation. While this point is well taken, and the argument 
 places the laborer in actual service in an independent position, grant- 
 ing, rather than receiving favors, the entire aspect of the case changes 
 when it is considered with reference to the laborer out of employment. 
 Mr. George's argument makes no position, secures no provision, no 
 food, raiment or shelter for the laborer out of employment, millions of 
 whom, at the present moment, are so circumstanced. So far as 
 
 ' See Chapter on Labor. 
 
24 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 rights are concerned, they are in possession of no rights save to 
 suffer and die ; or, at best, to sell their bodies and goods, 
 their services, honorable or dishonorable, elevating or prostituting, to 
 such of their fellow-men as have secured and held from them through 
 prior appropriation, permanent investure, and buttressing law, the 
 very land, raw material, facilities of production and nature's provision 
 for supply of immediate want, which is their natural inalienable right; 
 deprivation of which make% them dependent and suppliant before 
 their equals. 
 
 Much ado, with ample reason, is made, concerning the increase of 
 corruption in politics ; the readiness with which men prostitute them- 
 selves for a small compensation, sell their vote at the polls, in the leg- 
 islature and in congress. Corruption is not confined alone to those 
 who sell. It runs even more rankly with those who bribe and buy. 
 Corruption exists in high life as well as low, and while there is no 
 adequate palliation for the former, a strong fundamental and impera- 
 tive reason exists with the latter. Current theory of economic sci- 
 ence holds that a man must have something to exchange, to sell ; 
 else he must live alone on what he himself produces or starve. If a 
 laborer is driven from the fields of production by prior appropriation 
 and permanent investure, he can produce pothing. He cannot there- 
 fore live on what he produces. He turns, then, from the objec- 
 tive to the subjective, to find something to sell. He is supposed to 
 own himself and can sell himself, or what isthe same thing, his services, 
 wherever and whenever he can find a market. If' there is no demand 
 for his virtuous services, if the markets are filled with commodities 
 which capitalists can not sell at a satisfactory profit, if stagna- 
 tion at the centres of exchange sets back and closes work-shops, 
 factories and fields of agriculture, if he is denied the right of labor as 
 an employee as well as an independent laborer, he has no other re- 
 source but to sell such services as remain, which are in demand. A 
 legislator, being compensated by the people, through taxation, has no 
 excuse whatever in necessity for swerving from principle, but the un- 
 employed voter, despoiled of his natural rights in the soil, in raw 
 material, in machinery and in provision for his necessary wants, and 
 without compensative employment, has an economic reason for selling 
 his vote at the polls. It arises from the fact that the market aff"ords 
 no demand for other services or franchises which he has to sell, and 
 he is driven by a necessity, for the existence of which he is not re- 
 sponsible, to sell his services and franchises, his management of clubs, 
 primaries and elections, his vote, to political managers who open an 
 economic market for such goods. 
 
 But the question arises, why are political managers affected in 
 their public work by corrupting influences? The answer involving 
 only the external incitements to corruption is not far to find. In 
 
THE SOURCE OF PUBLIC CORRUPTION. 25 
 
 America we claim to be a "nation of sovereigns." It is a com- 
 mon expression emphasizing the commonly accepted doctrine of 
 equality, but carries with it the idea of kingly prerogative, of life 
 without what has been recognized as productive labor, of decorative 
 displays in connection with expensive modes of living, of servants in 
 livery, studs and equipages; of royal residences, of fetes, tournments 
 and pageantry. With a wide territory open to appropriations directly 
 or indirectly, with a government confirming such approoriations 
 and holding them for the appropriators by a powerful and steady 
 hand, and besides, conceding to individuals and corporations, 
 special franchises and opportunities, on the false theory of public 
 benefits to be subserved, a few men have acquired power and 
 wealth exceeding the power and wealth held by many sovereigns, 
 and the balance of the population have flattered and yet flatter 
 themselves, that through personal effort and energetic use of the 
 means at command, their advance to similar power and prerogative 
 is of necessity assured. Unconsciously instilled also with the basal 
 principle of current economic science, that one man, however poorly 
 accoutred for the industrial conflict, is equal to another man pano- 
 plied from head to foot with all the appliances of industrial warfare, 
 they delude themselves into the belief, that the time is not far off 
 when this ideal of citizenship will be realized through their own 
 eff'orts. It is a dark and damning delusion. If the entire wealth of 
 the country were equally distributed, every person would be a sover- 
 eign to the extent that that wealth, valued at from one to two thousand 
 dollars, would make him a sovereign. And yet, under this delusion 
 and the further delusion industriously promoted by interested 
 parties that energy however exercised, and industry however applied, 
 will lead to the acquirement of wealth and power for the energetic and 
 industrious, the work of making a nation of sovereigns goes bravely 
 forward ! But in some mysterious way, not recognized by the energetic 
 and industrious, the wealth of others accumulates and their own di- 
 minishes. And yet the goal of their ambition is before them ; the 
 palaces and pageants of the successful are a never-ceasing spur to their 
 enterprise, and they go blindly forward, believing that it is their own 
 fault they do not succeed, and clutch unscrupulously at anything 
 placed within their reach which may help them forward to the destiny 
 which they feel is for them. 
 
 Not actually in need as is the poor man who sells his vote at the 
 pools, but desirous of realizing a false ideal of citizenship through 
 the possession of wealth, rather than a true ideal through intelli- 
 gence, personal industry, and virtue, he is open to the first and all 
 tenders, either of money, position or power, which will open his ca- 
 reer or promote to its advancement. A member of the legislature, 
 finally realizing the impossibiUty of securing wealth as others have 
 
2 6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 done, sells his services and his vote for a few hundred or thousand 
 dollars. A member of congress disposes of his political and social 
 belongings, as he would his horse or his cattle. Judges on the bench, 
 and executives at the centre of power, touched by the general fever 
 for accumlation, for advancement to the condition of sovereigns, se- 
 cure the advantages their positions afford them, to advance their own 
 interests regardless of the public welfare. 
 
 But, if these men sell, who buys? Demand always precedes supply. 
 Even in nature, where it is apparent that provision has been made 
 for the race before advent to material existence, the want of the 
 Creator to give,* has preceded, the creative labor of supply. So like- 
 wise want on the part of men has preceded prehensive f labor. 
 It is the rule, that men never produce, or, offer to exchange any- 
 thing until a demand has arisen from some source. The action of buy- 
 ers, always at first, precedes the action of sellers, however afterward 
 the impulse may alternate between buyers and sellers. Demand is the 
 active etlEicient primary cause of supply. It is so with the sale of votes, 
 influence, position and power. If we find men in public and private 
 life selling their suffrages and influence, it is an indisputable ir^fer- 
 ence that the buyers are primarily responsible for the selling. 
 
 Hence the corruption of the times is logically traceable directly tO' 
 that class of citizens, who have already become sovereigns, through 
 prior appropriation of the sources of wealth and manipulation of them 
 to their own advancement ; traceable to the corrupting influence 
 emanating from accumulated wealth, continually in effort to maintain 
 and increase accumulations. Of these classes, those who originate 
 and promote corrupting influences and buy ; those who sell, not for 
 necessities' sake, but for the love of more lucre to bring themselves 
 to an equality with the most powerful among a nation of sovereigns ; 
 and those at the very bottom, deprived of the means of self employ- 
 ment, and refused employment by those who hold in their possession 
 ample means of employment for all, who, willing to sell their useful 
 and honest labor for which there is no demand, are driven by neces- 
 sity to sell their political influence and votes for subsistence and com- 
 forts, to which all willing to labor, are entitled ; of these classes, the 
 most innocent is pronounced by public sentiment the most guilty,, 
 while the most guilty, the responsible originators of all corruption in 
 high and low life, from the first land grabber in Virginia § to the last 
 water grabbers in California, | are not only adjudged guiltless, but 
 are held in the highest personal and social estimation ! 
 
 *See chapter on Wants. 
 tSee chapter on Labor. 
 §Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 jThe appropriating syndicate. 
 
ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 27 
 
 What is the standard of public judgement, it it is not that the 
 wealthy man is the truly honest and good man ? One has but to 
 note the universal toadyism to wealth to become satisfied that the 
 large middle class, those who have not become, but, who are 
 assiduously straggling to become sovereigns are goaded on to activity 
 and enterprise, by a perverted ideal of what constitutes good citizen- 
 ship and a delusive belief that that ideal through personal energy 
 can be realized by all. 
 
 But let us return from this diversion, to the rights of all, and espec- 
 ially of unemployed laborers, to food, raiment and shelter. 
 
 We have seen that those under employment have the opportunity 
 of supplying their own wants — after they have by their labors supplied 
 the wants of their employers and their dependents — through wages 
 received ; that society, by its acts of charity — which is but restitu- 
 tion — recognizes the right of every man to ample subsistence, and 
 that the declaration of rights, which in asserting the inalienable right 
 of every man to " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness " asserts 
 every man's right to the natural means of supply neccessary to pro- 
 mote and enforce said rights. 
 
 But it will be shown, moreover, that these claims are based on ample 
 provision made by the Creator and stored away in nature previous to 
 the advent of man : therefore, that no man should be dependent upon 
 any other man for provisions, at least during a single cycle of produc- 
 tion. Does any intelligent person deny that without the application of 
 human labor or previous storage by men on human account, ample 
 provision of food and such raiment and shelter as was required had 
 been made by creative action ? that the want of the Creator- to give, 
 to provide for creatures incited the requisite creative labor ? If so, 
 he has but to follow up the order of creation as pointed out by tradi- 
 tion, history or science to overcome such denial. It may be asserted 
 without the possibility of successful disproof, that no order of beings, 
 and hence no single being, was ever brought into existence whose 
 food and other requisites of life and growth had not been previously 
 prepared by creative labor. 
 
 Let us briefly and in general, take cognizance of the order of cre- 
 ation and the connected fact of previous provision, and see what is 
 taught. Concurrent philosophy and science refer to the earth's condi- 
 tion in the infant days after it had parted company with the parent sun, 
 as a fluent, fluxy mass moving about the sun under the operation of 
 centripetal and centrifugal forces, in a state of magnetic upheaval and 
 unceasing and universal combustion. Fire, continuing through geons 
 immeasurable, as under like condition even now on a small scale with 
 semi-fluent substances, gradually separated the earth into solids, liquids 
 and gases ; solids which exist now as igneous rocks and land ; liquids 
 embracing the earth's oceans ; and gases, its subterraneous deposits 
 
2'8 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 and the circumfluent atmosphere. Succeeding changes led to evap- 
 orization and to subsequent establishment of water currents moving up- 
 ' wardly in mist and cloud from the surface of the ocean, and down- 
 wardly, back to the sea through the channels of brooks and rivers. 
 These water currents traversing first the air, then the land, in their 
 perpetual circulations, broke down the surface of igneous rocks and 
 originated by slow gradation the vast system of aqueous deposits 
 since upturned to geological research ; but what is more pertinent to 
 our inquiry, inaugurated in every portion of the globe the various 
 soils, which, with the ocean and atmosphere, constituted the original 
 basis of all subsequent life and growth. 
 
 Vegetable life had not yet appeared, because preparation for its 
 maintenance, still progressing, was not yet completed. We have seen 
 how water and soil, two prerequisites of vegetable existence have 
 been, through the influence of heat, wrought out of the primeval con- 
 fusion and chaos. But the atmosphere contains the mystery of vege- 
 table existence. It is briefly told in the presumption that combustion 
 in primeval periods, continuing as it did for ages, resulted then as it does 
 now in the production of carbonic acid gas, and of necessity, then, 
 heavily loaded the atmosphere therewith. The condition of the atmos- 
 phere was, and is now in small [)roportion, the characteristic and in- 
 dispensible condition of luxuriant and massive vegetable development. 
 Carbon in some assimilable combination was prerequisite. Its excess, 
 other conditions being favorable, insured such vast vegetable growths 
 as anteceded the world's coal deposits. Present science tells us that 
 ammonia and the earths of the soil, water in the oceans and streams, 
 and carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, when combined, constitute 
 the rich and ample food of vegetable organisms. These things, 
 evolved by combustion from the common flux, antedate all germs and 
 seeds, and their preparation constituted the creative provision to 
 nourish the first order of organized beings. In them we have the 
 food of the vegetable world fully provided, before vegetation, in the 
 m.idst of general combustion, could live. 
 
 But, food to the vegetable, it is death to the animal. It is 
 impossible for the latter to live in an excess of carbonic acid gas. 
 Before animals could be brought into prominent existence, carbonic 
 acid must needs be diminished and removed and» oxygen made to pre- 
 ponderate. While carbonic acid gas is the principle atmospheric ali- 
 ment of the vegetable, oxygen is the most -important aerie food of the 
 animal ; water and soil in various ways being common to both. In 
 preparing the way for animal life the atmosphere was needs cleared 
 of an excess of carbonic acid, and in its stead an excess of oxygen 
 placed. 
 
 It is not pertinent to the purpose of the argument to refer es- 
 pecially to the marvelous and compensatory skill, wisdom .and 
 
PRIMITIVE PROVISION FOR LABORERS. * 29 
 
 power, through which these changes are wrought. It may be merely 
 remarked that the atmosphere being filled with food for the vege- 
 table, the vital efficiencies in the leaves of plants decomposed the car- 
 bonic acid gas brought to them by the air, taking up the carbon with- 
 in the structure of the organism and setting the oxygen free to give 
 a new life and character to the atmosphere. During untellable peri- 
 ods this process of vegetable growth, fed by carbonic acid, proceeded ; 
 and at the same moment and through the same process, the aeriel 
 pabulum of animal life was gathering in the atmosphere. Excess of 
 the former — carbonic acid gas — entirely disappeared, and excess of 
 the latter — oxygen — accumulated with the same degree of rapidity. 
 As carbonic acid came into and filled the air with an excess, vegetable 
 growth was not only made possible but became luxuriant ; as it went 
 out of the air and oxygen took its place, vegetable growth declined 
 and animal existence became, at first possible, then luxuriant. 
 Animal life made its appearence, only after food of the animal had 
 been prepared for its origin and development, not only in and from 
 the water, but in and from the atmosphere. It was a simple and 
 gradual, but an extensive and sweeping change. Animal life of the 
 lower white blood species, came into existence on the appearance of 
 a minimum of oxygen, sufficient to give it the necessary pabulum 
 for a low vitality ; and, as the oxygen in the atmosphere thickened, 
 and the carbonic acid disappeared affording better and richer forms 
 of nourishment, better and higher forms of animals came into orderly 
 existence, surviving, and developing on food previously prepared and 
 stored up in nature's reservoirs for their sustenance. Gradually 
 advancing through an increase of oxygenized food from the white 
 corpuscular to the red corpuscular blooded animals, at last man 
 appeared on the arena of life previously provided, as were all other 
 animals with ample food, and adequate clothing, and shelter ; and, 
 unlike most animals with capacity of increased want and power of 
 supplying the same. 
 
 Thus it is abundantly evident that for" both classes of organized 
 beings, vegetable and animal, ample provision was made in nature 
 for full supply of the requisite nutriment, previous to the germina- 
 tion of their seed and ova, and it is susceptible of proof that the same 
 antecedent provision, which was made for the wants of these two 
 classes of organized beings was made not alone for each genus, and 
 for each included species, but for each and every individual of each 
 species. Not only was the prepared material of their respective or- 
 ganisms at hand to be drawn by 'the vital forces, around and into 
 their seed and ova, but the food of every animal was prepared by 
 creative labor, before it came into active existence; and not only 
 food, nutritious and ample, but such raiment as the then climatic 
 conditions required for comfort, was within full reach of all. 
 
30 ' WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 The statement is equally true regarding provision made for the 
 maintainance of man, as that made for the lower animals ; only for the 
 former it was more ample and complete, as his wants and aspirations 
 were higher and more diversified. 
 
 Thus the first phalanx of laborers, such as they were- -principally 
 prehensive* laborers, but progressively becoming laborers of increase 
 and transformation — was amply supplied with the requisites of mainte- 
 nance for the first cycle of their industrial life, and had the wants of 
 men remained stationary, probably for all succeeding time. And what 
 was provided for the first generation or phalanx of men has been provid- 
 ed also for every succeeding generation or phalanx. The ancestral pro- 
 vision through successive cycles of creative-labor has run down the stream 
 of time more enduringly and effectively than the blood of protoplas- 
 mic ancestors has promoted an unbroken line of genealogy ; because 
 creative labor, whatever man may or may not have done, is ever active 
 through unceasing cycles, making antecedent provision for all successive 
 generations. It is not important to inquire how soon cycles of produc- 
 tion in supply of new wants, crystallized into regular industrial life. It is 
 enough to know that, until the want of men advanced from the most 
 primitive form, nature supplied food, raiment and shelter ; and further- 
 more, at the very time, and during the period new wants were in 
 process of supply through variously developed forms of human labor, 
 the food, raiment and shelter supplied by creative labor, fully sus- 
 tained the life, vigor, hope and ambition of the laborers ; it is enough 
 to know that the same effort which brought primitive supplies into ex- 
 istence and to perfection has operated through all ages and is now as 
 active as at any preceding period, producing supplies for every indi- 
 vidual of the world's present population ; supplies to which every 
 man has a proportional and inalienable right irrespective of the addi- 
 tional provisions his own labor may or may not produce. 
 
 Here the question imperatively arises. What, during the lapse of 
 time, has become of the common provision of food for the human 
 family ? Why, for a single first cycle of production is that mass of 
 laborers — why is a single laborer — desirous of undertaking the inde- 
 pendence of self-employment, obliged to appeal to their fellow labor- 
 ers for provision and seed, or abandon their commendable and right- 
 ful designs ? It is because the ancestral fund of provision, of food, 
 raiment and shelter, by a gradual and seemingly equitable process 
 of appropriating raw material, — seed and ova — and the soil, — 
 the requisite matrix of birth and development — has been abstracted 
 ft-bm nature's arhple store and amassed deposits ; because collective 
 ownership and control has insensibly passed, without adequate and 
 opportune resistence through a species of spoliation, to individual 
 ownership and control. 
 
 *See chapter on Labor. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND LAW OF SAVING. 3 1 
 
 By what process ? Through a primitive saving not only of what be- 
 longed to one^s self but what belonged to many others. 
 
 Saving is the passive act whereby according to economic science, 
 capital and wealth are accumulated. It includes a characteristic 
 which is exceedingly praiseworthy, viz : that of economy^ which involves 
 a careful use of what one possesses, without waste. But it includes 
 another characteristic which is deserving of the strongest censure : 
 viz., that of hoarding for the mere love of hoarding under a real or 
 pretended fear of need. 
 
 But hoarding what belongs rightfully to one's self is one, and what 
 belongs rightfully to others, is another proposition. No maximum nor 
 minimum can effect the essential virtue of the former, nor the essen- 
 tial vice of the latter. 
 
 Saving is based on surplusages. It is possible only when some- 
 thing has been produced by human or creative labor, or both, which 
 can be saved ; when surplusages exist after use has been fully sub- 
 served ; and saving can be pronounced commendable only after the 
 saver has fully consumed what his strength, development and com- 
 fort require, and when his saving is confined alone to his own surplus- 
 ages derived from his own labor and his portion of the common 
 heritage. But the saving which has contributed to make some labor- 
 ers capitalists and employers and others employees, has included not 
 only the results of the capitalist's own labor and his own portion of 
 the common heritage, but the result of his employees' labor and their 
 portion of the common heritage ; values which belong, by natural 
 equity, inalienably to the employed laborers. It is this remarkable 
 phase of saving, saving supplemented ultimately by labor-saving ma- 
 chinery which is freely and indiscriminately commended by econ- 
 omic writers, saving without sacrifice, which has enabled capitalists 
 at one and the same time to live luxuriously and accumulate rapidly. 
 Failure of economic writers, to note the serio-comic aspect of their 
 theory, and the utter folly of their advice, has resulted from their 
 failure to recognize value except in use and exchange, and their de- 
 termination to ignore value inherent and as produced by creative 
 labor. 
 
 Saving is imputable alone to things which embody increase and 
 decrease. Its especial use is to prevent natural decay, or the unnat- 
 ural destruction of values produced by both creative and human 
 labor ; values which though distinct are not always separable. Land 
 cannot be saved because it cannot be destroyed ; nor can it in any 
 substantial sense be either increased or decreased. But raw-material, 
 —the rudiments of food, raiment and shelter — wealth, — which has 
 grown through operation of the productive agencies, from seeds and 
 eggs — are susceptible of increase and decrease. 
 
 These things constituting the source of capital and wealth, as the 
 
32 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 terms are herein used, *the current assertion that capital and wealth 
 is accumulated by saving, embodies an undeniable truth. But the truth, 
 as presented by economic writers, carries with it sonie most grievous 
 errors and involves some most damagmg results. Presented as it is, 
 the more important position that creative labor is the primary origin 
 of all values, natural and artificial, fis obscured. The equally im- 
 portant position that productive laborers, in order that they may pro- 
 duce enough to leave a margin over and above the necessities of a 
 reasonable mode of life, must have access to the facilities and oppor- 
 tunities of production, to land, raw-material, tools, implements, ma- 
 chinery and provision, and that the access must be as free as the funda- 
 mental equities can decree, is also ignored. The advice, to save and 
 thereby become capitalists — so freely offered by economic writers, and 
 insisted upon as the basis of business success — given, as it is, to 
 laborers whose daily subsistence absorbs their entire income, and 
 who can have no surplusages, savors of mockery. If men undertake 
 to save from their daily income what their daily wants require, they 
 are guilty of folly ; if they attempt to save what they cannot pre- 
 viously get, they are insane. Yet this is the position into which 
 economic science drives and leaves the large mass of unemployed 
 laborers. 
 
 Let us go by rational induction and philosophic fancy to prim- 
 itive conditions, and consider this topic of saving in connection with 
 natural provision of food, raiment and shelter ; the probable mode 
 of its origin, growth therefrom, and the present status. Saving 
 is associated with primitive and equitable prudence on the one hand 
 and primitive injustice on the other ; the latter originating in the most 
 disguised, subtle and probably innocent manner. 
 
 Adopting the premises already shown to be true and substantial, 
 that abundant provision and the natural and primitive implements of 
 constructive industry were supplied in nature for use of the first pha- 
 lanx of laborers during their first cycle of production, and the further 
 premise that all men were born equal and with certain inalienable 
 rights, — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the natural 
 means thereto — it follows that each person of the first cycle of pro- 
 duction was entitled to abundance of provision, seed, implements and 
 land, share and share, proportionally, alike. These shares being in- 
 alienable constituted the personal belonging of each and every indi- 
 vidual ; property held by each person through a tenure more per- 
 manent and defensible than any modern tenure of land. These ten- 
 ures lapsed and fell from the hands of the many into the hands of the 
 few, through the natural propensity of the latter to exercise excessive 
 forethought regarding the future, to care for existing things with a 
 
 *See definition of Capital. 
 tSee chapter on Values, 
 
• PRIMITIVE MODE OF ACCUMULATION. 33 
 
 view to provide for unseen contingencies and possible wants, and 
 through the disposition of the many to Hve in the present, without 
 that prudence which has been thought to be a paramount industrial 
 virtue. Without discussing the relative merits of different forms and 
 degrees of prudence, take the fact as it is, that the two classes, the 
 imprudent and prudent existed, and that the former were disinclined 
 to save except for present use, and the latter — a small class — were 
 determined thereto by a powerful impulsion to gather and hoard 
 beyond the requirements of present use. These two characters 
 placed side by side, each with some small quantity of surplusage, over 
 and above daily requirements, and the process which involved the 
 growth of capitalism and developed to world-wide dimensions com- 
 menced thus : 
 
 First, the savers, to the extent that commodity can be prevented 
 decay, saved their own surplusages. Natural acquisitiveness was thus 
 quickened and developed by the exercise of prudent action. Stimula- 
 ted by the small momentum of greed thus engendered, they turned 
 regretfully and covetously for the surplusages, which, nature in its 
 abundant provision had given to their neighbors, and which they, in the 
 absence of a strong acquisitiveness and presence of an intuitive trust 
 and faith, permitted to decay. The play of these two dispositions; 
 the one, careful, aggressive and selfish, the other unselfish and 
 taking no thought of the morrow ; the one representing the Marthas 
 the other the Marys of every age, was facilitated by the undefined con- 
 ditions of primitive times ; olden times, when each one's right was ad- 
 mitted without drawing around each one's inheritance closely defined 
 measurements, or, lofty walls of circumvallation. The naturally unsel- 
 fiish, had no present cause to interfere with the apparently harmless 
 encroachments and of their more acquisitive neighbors ; of those who 
 had grown and are yet growing greedy. Hence, the next step of the 
 accumulators, the primitive prototype of the modern capitalist, was 
 made in saving for themselves the surplusages of their more careless 
 trusting and unsuspicious fellows. At these points and in these acts, 
 varied and modified indefinitely commenced the growth of that in- 
 equality of wealth, which at sometime has marked the condition of 
 affairs in connection with every past and decayed civilization. 
 
 But these acts of saving did not end, nor was the real mischief 
 done here. It mattered little, that the presently undesired surplus- 
 ages of an inconsiderate mass went to the few, so long as tne former 
 had, when they choose to exercise it, free access to the origin and 
 sources of subsistence. The latter could not at once use them 
 and on their hands they were likely to go to decay. But as the 
 wants of society became diversified, as exchange, purchase and sale, 
 demand and supply became operative, these surplusages became 
 
34 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. • 
 
 available, and contributed to increase, intensify and establish the 
 power of the savers over the economic destiny of their fellows^. 
 
 Nor did the mischief end with the absorption of surplusages.' From 
 taking the fruit of a tree, it was an easy step to claim the tree, then 
 the soil it flourished in ; from taking the fish, it was easy to claim the 
 spawn, and from the spawn to claim the stream. As wants of the 
 few increased, through excess of supply to them, derived from their 
 neighbor's surplusages, the surplus provisions of the many having 
 been already absorbed by the few through an easy and imperceptible 
 gradation, step by step, little by little, not only provisions but the 
 sources of their supply, the facilities, raw material went into the 
 hands of the savers. Thus was insensibly lost to the many, their 
 primitive holdings in the earth's entire natural wealth. 
 
 But the real mischief did and does not end here. The savers, grown 
 to be capitalists, having secured by an insensible movement posses- 
 sion of the sources of wealth, gradually lost sight of the original equi- 
 ties, claimed and still claim absolute ownership, not only of provisions, 
 but of the sources whence they are derived, and the expropriated 
 were driven — are still driven — nolens volens^ into the employ of the 
 former on such terms as they could and can make with the appro- 
 priators. 
 
 •This is the status in which Mr. Thornton and other thoughtful 
 men"*^ found the army of laborers throughout the civilized world ; a 
 status from which they have assumed to assert that the only right of 
 laborers is to contract with the saving capitalistic employer for such 
 compensation of labor — having been progressively Sespoiled of all 
 natural rights to any portion of the earth whatever, except themselves 
 and their own power of labor — as employers may be inclined or 
 forced to accord them ; a status the real existence of which cannot 
 be denied, but a status which is the result of centuries of progressive 
 and persistent despoilment. 
 
 It has been thus pointed out that every man willing to apply his 
 labor to production has a natural birthright in the provisions neces- 
 sary to sustain him in his productive eff'orts ; and it has been shown 
 how that right to food, raiment and shelter has been insidiously with- 
 drawn from him, and how social and political corruption among 
 the poor is the logical result of such despoilment. It is a logical infer- 
 ence that the struggle for existence on his part must result in a dis- 
 advantage which nothing can overthrow ; in an inequality of commod- 
 ity and wealth which no effort, mental or physical, however intelli- 
 gent and energetic, can overcome ; an inequality which is the occult 
 and underlying occasion of the present contention, not between labor 
 and capital, but between labor and hoarded wealth. 
 
 *See Thornton on Labor and Chapter on Labor. 
 
TOOLS AND IMPLEMENTS A SOCIAL GROWTH. 35 
 
 THE RIGHT TO USE OF TOOLS 
 
 AND OTHER FACILITIES 
 
 OF PRODUCTION. 
 CHAPTER IV.. SECTION III. 
 
 It becomes neccessary to present another claim regarding rights 
 which has not been recognized ; rarely considered. It relates 
 to the use of tools, implements and machinery or the facilities 
 of production. Men have equal rights to the use of facilities. Let 
 us fully explain and prove how and why. Opportunities present 
 the points and surfaces, whereon labor, in supply of want is or 
 may be advantageously applied. 
 
 Facilities embrace the current aids to production, imparting to 
 a given expenditure of personal power the fullest effect. Facilities 
 increase the effectiveness of effort. Tending to maintain equalities 
 or to increase inequalities incident to production, their use is, of an 
 importance equally with the use of opportunities. 
 
 They consist of instruction, apprenticeship, appliances, tools, 
 fixtures and machinery used in the production of material wealth ; of 
 common, academic or collegiate institutions of learning; of apparatus, 
 libraries, galleries of art, conservatories of music; of educational uni- 
 versities in which the professions are taught and applied in the pro- 
 duction of intellectual »wealth. In fact, facilities equally with land 
 and raw material and the vast mass of commodity arising therefrom, 
 are the results of a form of creative labor. 
 
 As forests of trees, shoals of fish and herds of bison are results of 
 natural growth, facilities are the result of social growth. They 
 belong, therefore, to no person, class, nation, clime or age. Creative 
 labor and the labor of universal humanity have, from the most remote 
 periods, joined hands and carried forward the growth of facilities 
 from the most primitive forms, through developments as gradual as 
 the evolution of species, to their present brilliant and effective perfec- 
 tion. Whether considered in the fields of science, letters, art or phys- 
 ical industry, the achievements of the present in this regard are the 
 work of all preceding civilizations. Who can trace letters to their 
 actual origin, or follow the unfold ment of their use from earliest to 
 latest time? When and where did music, painting and sculpture 
 originate, and through what progressive evolution have they arrived 
 at their present perfection and promise? Where and when did 
 
36 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 science find early twilight, and through what consecutive augmenta- 
 tion has it approached a noonday splendor ? Who first noted the 
 power of steam, and through what multitude of experiments and 
 ratiocinations has it been harnessed in steel? How many have 
 pointed out the forces of electricity and terrestrial magnetism ; have 
 surmised and suggested their nature, analyzed their adaptabilities, 
 and combined to place them in the line of advancement to a higher 
 destiny in the arena of uses ? 
 
 Alchemy and chemistry have risen from the misty morning of 
 civilization through untraceable gradations. 
 
 The lever, commencing in the stalk of a reed, the inclined plane 
 founded upon the philosophies of a side hill, the pully, originating in 
 some unknown manipulation ; each have had an advancing develop- 
 ment to complicated uses and interminable facilities. 
 
 The present status of facilities which increase the productiveness 
 of labor on both the intellectual and physical plane, is undeniably 
 the result of slow and imperceptible growth. At one era or another, 
 at some place or another, some particular person or another has been 
 the instrument to concentrate accumulated disclosures or adaptations, 
 and embody them in forms of use. These concentrations and em- 
 bodiments have inseparably linked his name with some particular 
 current of discovery or invention. As shallows, rapids or cascades 
 are only points of interest in the ceaseless current of a river, as child- 
 hood, youth, age and resurrection are but eras in manhood develop- 
 ment, so, noted names, noted disclosures and noted contrivances are 
 but epochs of culmination along unbroken lines of discovery and in- 
 vention. Men of genius are men of receptivity, especially developed 
 for culminating periods. They catch the stray drops and concentrate 
 the meandering rivulets of knowledge distilling through the percep- 
 tion and trickling through the rationality of generations preceding 
 them. Possessing peculiar gifts they convert these into wonderful 
 and diversified utilities. The dull multitude erroneously regard men 
 of genius not as instrumentalities, but as heroes or gods. Facilities 
 being therefore the result of industrial evolution, each person, being 
 inalienably entitled to free access to opportunities, at any point of this 
 progressive enfoldment, has been, and now is, entitled to the equal use 
 of a fair proportion of the enginery of labor. This title comes prin- 
 cipally as a heritage through virtue of his manhood ; but especially 
 through the labor which he has applied, and is willing to apply, to 
 that production which has resulted, and is yet to result in vast aggre- 
 gations of tools and machinery. 
 
 This position may be thought unfounded, save in opinion and 
 iissertion. It is not so. It is entertained and practically enforced 
 by large majorities in the civilized nations of the world. Through 
 contribution, great institutions, not eleemosynary ; through taxation, 
 
RIGHTS TO FACILITIES RECOGNIZED. 37 
 
 vast establishments in free supply of some of these facilities, are 
 everywhere sustained. 
 
 Private enterprise has done much to emphasize the rectitude of this 
 claim. Scarcely a city of any note in America and Europe but has 
 its free libraries, galleries of art, schools of designs and conservatories 
 of music, inaugurated and sustained by contribution. Reaching 
 down to the lower grades* of life, and touching earliest childhood, a 
 system of kindergarten schools has sprung up, furnishing at tender 
 and determining age, free facilities for moral and intellectual devel- 
 opment. 
 
 Through taxation every nation of Europe and America is enforc- 
 ing the right of every one to free access to the facilities for accumu- 
 lation ^of intellectual, moral and religious wealth. The free school 
 system, extant in America and with some of the nations of Euro^, 
 recognizes and enforces the principle here contended. Expensive 
 buildings are erected, valuable apparatus constructed, teachers in all 
 grades and departments employed, and in some quarters free books 
 furnished to facilitate the acquirement of intellectual commodity to 
 be in turn applied to facilitation and easement of material accumula- 
 tion. For the adult population, men and women, extensive universi- 
 ties, with free engineering, law, medical and theological departments, 
 are in full operation to facilitate preparation for practical and active 
 life. Some of the nations of Europe have been conspicuous in sus- 
 taining the rights of the entire population, especially to free religious 
 and theological facilities ; they maintain at public cost, churches and 
 seminaries of state. These facilities, such as they be, are thrown 
 open under regulation of law, fo the free use of the population. It 
 matters not that these public institutions have been often used by the 
 unscrupulous and ambitious in furtherance of interests antagonistic 
 to freedom and the general good. So, indeed, have the educational 
 and political institutions of America been used. Schools and colleges 
 are to-day so used to indoctrinate the minds of those who should be 
 future leaders of thought with the delusive teachings of an incomplete 
 and misleading science of political economy. Nevertheless, the doc- 
 trine that all have equal rights to facilities developed by collective 
 growth is strongly emphasized. 
 
 The theory of the patent office is that the discoveries and inven- 
 tions of every age are of right the property of the people. After a few 
 years of exclusive use by the patentee, guarded for a time by govern- 
 ment to encourage effort, inventions and discoveries are thrown open 
 to public use. 
 
 Facilities for gaining and maintaining equal rights under existing 
 forms of self-government in form of the ballot, have been assured to 
 every voter. It sustains the control of the individual over his politi- 
 cal advantages. 
 
38 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 But while the principal of free right lo facilities has been decided- 
 ly recognized as to education, religion, art and government, it has 
 failed thus far to include by any appreciable extent the workings of 
 industrial life.' Private enterprise with individual selfishness attaches 
 to tangible things more tenaciously than to intangible things. It 
 plays its strongest card on the material plane among the physical ac- 
 tivities. Tools and machinery of wood, stone and iron, are held by 
 the strong, unyielding arm of appropriation* while facilities, product- 
 ive of religious, intellectual and artistic entities are distributed with 
 unselfish freedom. 
 
 The finest elements of greed, grovel and grind nearest the line of 
 matter and ground themselves in the materials of industrial activity. 
 
 If the appliances of production which increase the power of labor, 
 if fixtures, tools and machinery, were distributed to men with the 
 same profusion and equality as are the facilities of education, art and 
 religion, a new era would be opened to industrial life. 
 
 In the matter of facilities, time has come to begin the adoption of 
 the same rule on the material as on the intellectuo-affectional 
 plane ; to furnish to all, equal, if not free use, as well to industrial 
 facilities as to educational facilities. Selfishness of appropriation 
 can not long stand in the breech against the demand of the expropri- 
 ated for advantages which are rightfully their own. A pure and 
 equitable individualism can not be sustained without a just assign- 
 ment of each to all natural opportunities and developed facilities ; 
 and unless the assignment is made, the untiring forces will irrestibly 
 drift development into destructive concentration, or socialism. 
 
 The importance and necessity of an equal distribution of facilities 
 is emphasized by the facts, that the power of the mechanical forces 
 in America has added since 1870, the strength of 22,000,000 men ; 
 that throughout the world within twenty years machinery has dis- 
 placed, up to the present time, the labor of 180,000,000 men ; and 
 that in both cases the product of their labor, through appropriation 
 and ownership of the facilities, as well as land and raw material, has 
 fallen into the hands of an industrial oligarchy. To these facilities 
 which give effectiveness to labor, men have rights as they have rights 
 to the free exercise of choice and reason ; rights inalienable and un- 
 limited, save by the equal rights of others. 
 
TRUE MONEY ALWAYS IN FULL CIRCULATION. 39 
 
 RIGHTS TO THE USE OF MONEY. 
 CHAPTER IV., SECTION IV. 
 
 The necessity which arises at the point of exchange, the necessity 
 of a measure of value, enabling both parties to every act of exchange 
 to conduct the process upon an equitable basis and adjust balances 
 between themselves without intervention of a private financier, orig- 
 inates demand for free use of money. 
 
 Let no man start at this demand. Free use of money does not 
 involve its ownership. The right to property is not infringed ; for 
 true money is not property, nor is property true money. 
 
 Ideal or true money has not as yet come into exclusive or even 
 common use. Within a couple of centuries the exigencies of an ex- 
 panding civilization have forced it forward. Its advantages have 
 been thoroughly tested ; but owing to selfish prejudices and antago- 
 nistic influences, so soon as public exigencies have passed, it has been 
 driven from circulation, and barter-money — gold and silver — has re- 
 taken its place. 
 
 The character of a money is determined greatly by the general 
 spirit which brings it into use. When the patriotic impulses of a nation 
 arouse its citizens to a defense of their institutio'ns, liberties, homes 
 and firesides, as instanced at the time of the slaveholders' rebellion, 
 paper money carrying on its face the credit and power of the people, 
 finds a ready circulation. But after it has subserved the patriotic 
 purposes which brought it into use, and patriotic impulses have again 
 given place to the sordid life of gain-getting and accumulation, it 
 must needs give place to gain-getting gold and silver. The paper 
 money of the country was adequate and adapted to the higher im- 
 pulses of patriotism, but could not be readily handled to subserve 
 private and selfish interests. 
 
 The true money, like the true man, is good on all occasions and 
 for all purposes, and evil in none. It does not, under conditions of 
 public danger, as does gold and silver, shirk all duty and slink from 
 sight. Under political emergency or industrial disaster, it remains in 
 the field of use, sustained by the hope and faith of the people and 
 soundness of the public credit. 
 
 Barter-money — gold and silver — has never stood the test of a 
 strained credit. It has been dragged by interested parties into cran- 
 nies and caves and hid away in dark and secret places, just at a time 
 when most needed ; dragged away on the same impetus which would 
 cause a dry-goods merchant, using gold and silver yard sticks — if 
 any could be found foolish enough to use gold and silver when ash 
 
4© WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 and hickory are as useful and infinitely cheaper — in case of a raid 
 on his premises, would hide the yard-sticks and leave the woolens, 
 silks and velvets on the counter. The faith with which the national 
 currency was received, when the national credit was most strained, 
 manifests in a marked degree the shallow thought of those interested 
 croakers, who assert that money is worthless unless it be produced 
 from bullion. 
 
 The confused ideas, which yet prevail regarding the nature and 
 uses of money and essence of commercial exchange, renders an un- 
 derstanding of this demand difficult. The attempt, impossible of 
 ^achievement, to measure all commodities, continually fluctuating in 
 exchange value or price with two or three other commodities — gold, 
 silver and copper — themselves, also perpetually fluctuating under the 
 fierceness or laxity of demand, has added, and yet adds to the general 
 confusion. 
 
 If we recognize the truth that all real commercial exchange is be- 
 tween goods and goods, between the value in one commodity and 
 that in another ; and that the purpose of money, through use of an 
 idealized social unit, its fractions and multiples is to measure those 
 values ; if we consider that money in the hands of each man repre- 
 sents values which have gone out from him during the process of his 
 exchanges and records the amount of values which are due him 
 from the world of commodity about him, to be secured to him by 
 further exchange ; if we consider that money, whether paper, silver or 
 gold, merely measures, records and represents values ; that its object 
 is principally to render unnecessary the keeping of books in rec- 
 ord of daily exchanges, all thought concerning money and right to 
 its use would be simplified. It may be simplified by the further con- 
 sideration that debts are not canceled by money. In money, freed 
 from the element of commodity, lies no value. It is value which is 
 exchangeable, and value is embodied in commodity ; commodity alone 
 can fully pay or cancel debt. If I, owing a man for a coat, hand him 
 a double eagle or twenty dollar currency note, my debt has not been 
 paid. It is true I have done my part and put him in the way of pay- 
 ment. It is only when he has received food, clothing, shelter or 
 service to that amount from other members of the community, that 
 he has received his payment. So long as he holds the paper or coin, 
 it stands to him only as so much credit for commodities, which he 
 may need and procure at once or after twenty or fifty years. 
 
 When thought is simplified, it will not be many decades, before 
 the free people of every nation will arrive at the conclusion, that the 
 use of gold and silver, as paper in the work of keeping books, fixing 
 credits and arranging for the adjustment of balances, as an adjunct to 
 commercial exchange, is entirely too expensive. 
 
 It is especially to the equal use of this true money, freed from the 
 
EQUAL USE OF MONEY THE RIGHT OF ALL, . 4I 
 
 dreg of commodity, that every man is entitled. Every scrap of pa- 
 per, every piece of silver and gold issued by Government as money, 
 draws directly or indirectly upon the labor, wealth and credit of 
 every citizen ; and as an individual he has an interest in the entire 
 mass of the circulating medium. It is his industry as a laborer, his 
 integrity as a man, his patriotism and faith as a citizen, which con- 
 tributes to and furnishes the wealth, prerogative and power, upon 
 which government, in the issuance of money, basis its action. Society 
 has determined, the constitution has authorized, and government has 
 assumed to coin, print and issue money in the interests and for the 
 benefit of every citizen. Why should not this benefit accrue to every 
 citizen equally with every other citizen, as the right of every citizen 
 to protection of the law and the equal administration of justice are 
 practically guaranteed? 
 
 When any public function is assumed, the wants even of the hum- 
 blest and poorest citizen should be regarded. The governments of 
 all nations in the administration of postal affairs, find a way to place 
 every citizen in continued and unobstructed connection with the ser- 
 vice rendered, each one on equal terms with every other one. Sup- 
 pose postal cards and stamps were allowed to be concentrated at cen- 
 tral depots and there become, as money has become, the sport of 
 private speculation and management. Is not money which govern- 
 ment undertakes to supply, of equal importance, in its arena of use, 
 to the industrial process of exchange — a process in which the poorest 
 and lowliest are vitally interested — as is the administration of postal 
 facilities, or the various departments of justice? Why should Gov- 
 ernment divide its duties and powers with private individuals and 
 corporations, in connection with the creation and distribution of 
 money and not in its administration of postal aand other public af- 
 fairs ? Can any government give an adequate reason to its citizens 
 why it should have issued $500,000,000 in national currency to a fevy 
 persons combined into banking corporations at one per cent, when 
 it refuses to loan its money to other citizens at any rate whatever ? 
 Why should the security of a few citizens be taken for loans and no 
 provision made to receive, by the government the security, equally 
 good, of vast numbers of others equally entitled to the use of money? 
 
 What use that men cultivate the soil, apply their labor to raw ma- 
 terial, supply themselves with needed provisions, arm themselves with 
 machinery, put forth the most effective effort in the production of 
 useful wealth, if at the end, at the critical point of exchange, through 
 want of the requisite machinery, therefore, they are to be despoiled 
 the results of previous care and industry ? The delinquency of the 
 government whose duty it is to afford ample facilities for exchange 
 through issuance of money, for the use, not of favorites, but for all 
 alike, cannot be too strongly condemned. By a judicious handling of 
 
42 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 the national finances, uninfluenced by private financiering, 
 affording the use of money to all on terms as favorable as those 
 accorded to a few, much might be accomplished toward that distribu- 
 tion of wealth and equalization of material conditions which the 
 continued life of the nation renders imperative. 
 
 Many considerate citizens believe the financial question of para- 
 mount importance, that finances judiciously handled in the general 
 interest, the disorders which permeate national industrial life must 
 disappear. A vicious and ineffective financial system is, however, 
 but one of several influences, which, in supposed furtherance of per- 
 sonal, really in destruction of all interests, conspires to upset the 
 present civilization arid turn the dial of progress back for generations. 
 
 How can national finances be best handled to amend disorders 
 and promote the general interest ? Suppose we insist on the prop- 
 osition that all citizens be served alike in money, as in other matters ; 
 that arrangements be so made that the farmer, manufacturer, me- 
 chanic and merchant, small and great, shall receive loans from gov- 
 ernment on terms as easy as those enjoyed by the national banks; 
 say at one per cent, per annum. How many will this movement 
 materially and directly benefit ? Only so many as are able to furnish 
 the requisite security upon which money can be safely drawn from 
 the treasury. No man can be wild enough to suppose that society 
 can furnish the individual a form of money which will enable the 
 latter to draw on the commonwealth without an equivalent given in 
 labor or an equal value deposited. Although money is, in and of 
 itself, when stripped of the element of commodity, valueless, so 
 long as it carries the promise of the government \.o pay^ it is capable 
 of calling up the entire wealth of the nation. To place such money 
 in the hands of every one desirous of borrowing without security 
 other than a paper promise to repay, would be a general premium 
 on reckless note-signing and unproductive idleness. If money 
 could be issued, merely as a measure and record of value, without 
 the representative or commodity elerpent, — without the pay or the 
 promise to pay — it might be issued to every one to any amount ; but 
 it would then have lost that especial use for which it is so highly 
 prized, and would doubtless be rejected as of no more use than com- 
 mon account books which every man may carry in his pocket. It is 
 the social element, the combined promise to pay — aside from com- 
 modity value — which gives money its power. Every note or coin is 
 a draft on the general wealth, and government can not, considering 
 the interests of the whole, part with it to any one without adequate 
 security. 
 
 Therefore, abundant and cheap money could directly benefit only 
 those who already have the means to secure it from private financiers. 
 
RESULTS OF LOW INTEREST. 43 
 
 The large mass of needy and propertyless might look on then, as now, 
 without receiving a morsel of direct aid or comfort. 
 
 Nevertheless it is evident that all would be advantaged by cheap 
 money on loan by the government, to an extent it is difficult to com- 
 pute ; some directly and some indirectly. 
 
 Money loaned out by government to everyone capable of furnish- 
 ing adequate security at one per cent, would necessarily produce the 
 following results : First, the aggregation of wealth by interest, which 
 is the paramount feeder of accumulation, would cease ; second, the 
 large majority of the idle income class, who derive their revenue from 
 interest, would be compelled to change a life of luxurious laziness 
 for one of useful production ; and third, the burden of the laboring, 
 producing, middle-class population would be lifted at both ends ; 
 less of some commodities would needs be produced to satisfy the 
 luxurious habits of non-productive consumers, and more persons 
 would be added to the productive forces. But it is an open question, 
 if interest having been reduced to a minimum profit, the present in- 
 centive to production, would not be forced to so low a point, that 
 production would receive a disastrous check. Doubtless with the soil, 
 raw material and machinery remaining untouched as to tenure, use 
 and ownership, the number of unemployed would be vastly increased, 
 necessitating modification in departments of industrial life, othe^than 
 finance. Industrial life, being itself a complex system, the disorders 
 which have grown with its growth can be removed only by complex 
 remedies. Single instrumentalities will accomplish but fractional re- 
 sults. 
 
 An equal use of moneys would accomplish a vast work towards 
 removal of current evils ; an equal use of land, if enforced with dis- 
 criminate wisdom, would become a strong factor in the general move- 
 ment ; freedom of the created, growing and increasing raw material 
 for the application of human labor would exercise a paramount influ- 
 ence, and machinery and provisions, if alone withdrawn from pro- 
 duction, or equitably distributed to its aid would show their indis- 
 pensable importance among the productive factors : but he who 
 claims that a radical modification of the operation of any one of 
 these factors will remove the evils which have become engrafted on 
 modern industrial life, has not carried his reasoning sufficiently deep. 
 
 It matters not, however, whether an important change in the man- 
 agement of national finances would or would not affect the needed 
 reforms. The right of one citizen to the use of m .ney on terms 
 equally as favorable as those secured by others, cannot be disputed. 
 It emanates from the spirit of the declaration of rights which asserts 
 equal rights for all ; it is recognized by the constitution through its 
 dem nd for the establishment of justice, and in particulars and de- 
 tails, in nation and state laws, is scrupulously embodied. 
 
44 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 The industrial rights of man, differentiated from his political, civil 
 and religous rights have been presented thus far with some minute- 
 ness of detail and fullness of argument. It must not be assumed, 
 however, that the presentation here made in support of the claim of 
 every man to use the soil, raw material, provisions, machinery and 
 money comprises the only reasons assignable for the claims made. 
 History, nature and science afford other considerations, which if fol- 
 lowed and applie'd in detail, would strongly buttress and sustain them. 
 Men are parts of a complicated system of organized and animated 
 life, and derive their industrial rights from the necessary relations 
 which they sustain to the material universe about them ; each man 
 being entitled through them to his just portion of the material and 
 social growth, perfected by creative and human power, for the pur- 
 pose of maintaining those relations in their fullest vigor and amplest 
 freedom. 
 
 But it must not be assumed that industrial rights are assertable 
 without the performance or willingness to perform corresponding 
 duties ; all things are relative and conditional. Human effort, earnest, 
 honestly directed effort on the part of each person, is the perpetual 
 condition of just claim to the agencies and factors of production ; but 
 that condition being fulfilled, each man being ready and willing to 
 appl^ his labor in supply of his own wants — not the wants of 
 masters or employers, be it noted — his right to use of the soil, raw 
 material, provisions, machinery and money, on such terms as the 
 most favored have assumed or secured, is undoubted and in- 
 alienable. 
 
 With these instruments of industrial power, a man is fully equipped 
 and armed for the warfare of competitive production ; without them 
 in the conflict for existence he is but a child, and must go helplessly 
 down or fall to the rear, under the more effective and independent 
 industry of those who have them. ' With them he is fully panoplied 
 to maintain himself as an integer of an equitable individualism ; 
 without them he becomes the victim of a remorseless capitalism, 
 whose exactions and exclusions are rapidly driving the world of pro 
 duction to industrial socialism. 
 
 The right of persons to the soil, raw material and provisions is a 
 natural right; to the facilities of production, tools, implements 
 and machinery is a right, both natural and social ; to money, a 
 natural, social and civil right. The first is based especially on his 
 individual manhood ; the second on his existence as an integer of a 
 social growth ; the third on his citizenship ; each and all on his relations 
 with natural, social and civil growths, which have been inaugurated 
 and carried forward to the present, unfinished, but promising status by 
 wise and just human effort and creative power. 
 
THE ATTACK ON EQUAL RIGHTS. 45 
 
 EQUALITY OF RIGHT— RENEWED 
 DISCUSSION. 
 
 CHAPTER IV., SECTION V. 
 
 Equality of right has come up after a century for renewed consid- 
 eration. ^ 
 
 What men think, where the ballot is in universal use, is of momen- 
 tous interest. 
 
 Shifting of doctrine to confuse thought of the masses on questions 
 relating to their natural rights is of increasing importance to an art- 
 ful oligarchy. Resort to physical coercion is inadmissible. To per- 
 vert thought and misdirect action is the open resort. It is no new 
 artifice. To encourage, cement and vest oligarchic appropriations of 
 common heritage to an interested few is an adequate end. Any argu- 
 ment to sustain acquirements is advanced with cool assurance. To 
 such use of superior intelligence economic writers in both Europe 
 and America have not hesitated to descend*. 
 
 So long as the doctrine of equality asserted in the declaration of 
 American independence interposed no difficulty in the way of appro- 
 priators, so long as under its protecting aegis, the enterprising and 
 adventurous could pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, absorbing 
 territory, bagging raw material and vesting points of vantage, so long 
 the doctrine was left untouched ; but when men became disturbed 
 and alarmed at the rapid disappearance of industrial opportunities 
 and pointed to the doctrine of equal rights, as furnishing ground 
 for action against unequal appropriations, then it was discovered by 
 teachers of political economy that the doctrine was false. Infer- 
 entially it was assumed that big men with big brains, big bellies, big 
 enterprise and big greed were entitled to all they could get and all 
 the law could hold for them ; franchises, raw material and land ; that 
 concentration of the sources of wealth and the rapid formation of an 
 industrial oligarchy, was in accordance with the natural law of unequal 
 birth, unequal wants and unequal rights. 
 
 The force of the new doctrine, emanating from intelligent and 
 influential sources, carrying an atom of truth, and handled for its 
 full cash value, is already felt to a mischievous extent. It is better 
 that it be thoroughly understood. The real truth lies between the 
 extremes. No two persons are or can be exactly equal ; either men- 
 
 'Prof. Sumner, Yale College, and others. 
 
4^ WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 tally or physically, either as to quality or quantity, or as to activity, 
 endurance or power. 
 
 It is asserted that nature never made any two things alike. But while 
 absolute equality in person or thing is impossible, proportional equal- 
 ity among men is as fixed as the stars of the zodiac. That is, within 
 narrow limits, above which personal capacity cannot rise, and below 
 which it cannot fall, within this restricted range, the inequalities of 
 men at birth and through subsequent growth are circumscribed. 
 
 The comparative equality of man as to capacity and power, as to 
 wants, rights and duties, is recognized everywhere in a multitude of 
 facts. Throughout the industrial world, compensation and wages 
 are paid upon the recognized basis of equal powers. Thousands of 
 men, each absolutely unequal in ability to every other, receive the 
 same sum of money for the same number of hours dedicated to labor ; 
 and these same laborers, settling for a week's or month's subsistence, 
 each pays the same as every other, though the consuming capacity 
 of each differs from that of every other. 
 
 Most of the hotels and appliances for travel and transportation are 
 managed under the same recognition. A little man with his little 
 wife and family, at a hotel, for a suite of rooms with table-de-hote^ 
 bathing appliances, firing and light ; on a steamer, for staterooms and 
 meals ; on a railway train for seats and sleeping berths, pays exactly 
 the same sum that a big man with his big wife and family has pre- 
 viously, or will subsequently, pay under the same conditions, for the 
 same accommodations, for the same number of days. 
 
 Even if the laborer, or the big or little man, proposing to pay ac- 
 cording to capacity rather than to proportional equality, goes to the 
 restaurant where justice is meted out with more particularity, he will 
 be confronted with the same recognition of equality. He will find 
 a large plate of beans for one person, measured on the same scale of 
 bounty or parsimony as for another ; the individual bean capacity of 
 any number of persons being recognized as equal to the individual 
 bean capacity of any other number of persons. And so, through the 
 bill of fare. So in the street cars. A man weighing two hundred 
 pounds is carried for the same price as another man weighing one 
 hundred pounds. 
 
 At school, in church, at the theater, or wherever men assemble, a 
 proportionally equal accommodation is provided for all. A small 
 man occupies the same space and receives the same attention and 
 entertainment as a large man, and pays as much for what he does 
 not require, as the large man pays for what he does require. In 
 clothing, the same recognition of equality maintains. A man with a 
 thirty inch chest, pays as much for a suit of clothes of a given style 
 and quality, as a man with a chest measure of forty inches. One 
 may buy his own cloth and trimmings, but, the tailor, recognizing the 
 
• DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY SUSTAINED. 47 
 
 doctrine of equality will demand as much for making a suit for a 
 small man as for a large man. 
 
 In the management of schools, seminaries and universities, the 
 capacity of one scholar for the acquirement of knowledge is assured to 
 be equal to the capacity of every other scholar. Xhe same reality is 
 observed in the handling of large armies and navies. Every able- 
 bodied soldier on march carries arms accoutrement of equal weight 
 and power with every other soldier, and in bivouac or camp, equal 
 rations are served and equal services are required. Even those who 
 in conducting industrial production, insist on the recognition of pro- 
 portional equality instead of absolute, equality, and pay by the price 
 for work actually done, are careful that a small foot pays to them as 
 much as a large foot for a given quality of boot. The injustice in- 
 volved in practicalizing absolute equality is one thing, when their bull 
 is gored, and another, when the neighbor's ox is the victim. Recog- 
 nition of proportional or average equality is as nearly universal as 
 possible. One cannot escape the practical results of its operations 
 unless he attends in detail to his own wants, and supplies them entire- 
 ly by his own labor. No people on the face of the earth, many of 
 them drawing their first breath in the atmosphere and amidst the 
 trappings and pageantry of royalty are so deeply impressed with and 
 fully inclined to assent to, and assert the equal rights of every man as 
 are the American people. Hence, however strongly the desire may 
 be to overthrow the doctrine of equal rights in defense of growing 
 inequality as to position, power and wealth, it will be impossible of 
 accomplishment. Equality of persons within narrow limits of varia- 
 tion is substantially and permanently established. 
 
48 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS.. 
 
 FAILURE OF EQUAL RIGHTS— WHY 
 AND HOW. 
 
 CHAPTER IV., SECTION VI. 
 
 The failure of the doctrine of equal rights to produce equality of 
 condition or possessions cannot therefore be traced largely to in- 
 equality as to personal want,- capacity or power. Other causes 
 which have resulted in marked inequalities, everywhere notable — 
 massed wealth on the one hand, galling poverty on the other — exist 
 and must be assiduously and conscientiously sought. 
 
 The rights of persons descend of necessity to the material things 
 about them ; rights to use, or ownership, or both combined. The 
 causes of marked inequalities referred to, are to be sought in an un- 
 equal distribution of the objects of these rights, in the failure of each 
 person to secure use or ownership in the opportunities, franchises and 
 facilities of industrial life ; failure engendered by an erroneous and 
 vicious system of appropriation and investiture. 
 
 The real source of the present system is priority of appropriation, 
 and the real vice is permanent investiture. Priority embodies an 
 equity, which has been made to cover a multitude of appropriative 
 sins. To a first-comer first choice may well be accorded ; but per- 
 manent investiture, precludes the operation of justice towards later 
 comers. It involves neglect of many through over-provision for one. 
 
 If a man go into a new and unoccupied country with its natural 
 values, the land or raw material ready for the application of labor, 
 and its natural wealth ready for consumption, to place them in use, 
 is both reasonable and just. Taking into consideration his wants, 
 the relation a profusion of wealth around him holds to those wants, 
 and the absence of another claimant, what else could he reasonably do? 
 The natural wealth is applicable at once to supply of pressing wants, 
 and the land and raw material, open to the application of labor, can 
 be made to supply increased want. Futhermore, what principle 
 of justice could be transgressed were he to spread himself with his 
 family, flocks and herds, over an entire principality ; and without, 
 other than prehensive labor, appropriate the entire natural wealth 
 brought into the existence by creative power ? 
 
 But the nature of the case changes at once on the appearance of 
 a human peer. He ceases then to be monarch of all he surveys, 
 sole lord of the fowl, fish and brute. When alone, constituting the 
 only living representative of the Creator, and the entire society then 
 
RECTITUDE OF PRIORITY AND INVESTED RIGHTS. 49 
 
 existing, his personal will forms the unwritten law of the land. On 
 the coming of his peer, another equal factor enters into the constitu- 
 tion of society — the enactment of law and enforcement of rights. 
 He must make room for the next man. His previous appropriation, 
 then defensible and just, at once ceases to be defensible or just. 
 Priority of advent opens a pretext for conceding to him first choice 
 of places and things. But, in deference to the equal rights of 
 another, he must voluntarily limit himself or be involuntarily limited. 
 
 Or if, on first coming,- instead of appropriating the entire country, 
 impressed by the probability that others would come, and determin- 
 ing for himself the exact number who, in his judgment, could be 
 accommodated, he had selected his portion of the common heritage 
 and confined himself thereto, then, on the advent of others up to the 
 full number for whom his judgment and care had provided, he could 
 not in justice be disturbed as to the appropriation made by him. 
 But when the country had been completely filled, according to the 
 subdivision made by himself and subsequently accepted and legalized 
 by society, on the appearance of another man from the invisible 
 source of population, sent and assigned to this country by the Crea- 
 tor and Arbiter of men, things, planets and systems, justice and 
 natural law necessitate a new adjustment of appropriation. 
 
 If investitures had been made " forever," if personal claims by 
 himself and by society, through law, had been made permanent, then 
 is precipitated the conflict between civil and. divine law — civil law 
 sustaining the alleged rights of previous appropriators ; divine law 
 sustaining the rights of the last and new-comer. Into this conflict 
 enter the same equities and forces as that precipitated upon the first 
 man by the advent of the second. At an advanced stage it is the 
 same contention ; priority of appropriation, permanence of investi- 
 ture, appearing on one side, and necessity, natural and social rights 
 and divine fiat on the other. While physical power is on the side of 
 the primitive appropriators, spiritual power, which gives even phys- 
 ical power its existence and energy, is with the la^t-comer. Majority 
 is apparently with the former, but real, permanent majority is with 
 the one man in the right. 
 
 In actual life, conflicts between priority of appropriation and per- 
 manent investiture, have been brought to many cruel but practical 
 crises. Never have the equities been fully conceded, nor have mat- 
 ters been brought to final trial. Population has increased and 
 pressed upon appropriations and investitures. New-comers have 
 been taken in and despoiled. Some have been made dependent,, 
 some slaves; and when the pressure has become too great, wars 
 have originated between struggling interests. Famines have been 
 engendered through the agency of appropriators, and pestilence has 
 
50 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 assisted in depopulation. The Creator, in attempting to raise or 
 resurrect humanity, organize lasting society and give it expansive 
 mobilization, has been driven perpetually to attack priority of 
 appropriation and permanence of investment. Dynasty after dynasty, 
 civilization after civilization, originating in the upper atmosphere of 
 inspiration, love and duty, have floundeied, foundered, and disap- 
 peared in the mists and quagmires engendered through a vicious 
 system of appropriation. If a child cannot grow to manhood and 
 perfection with its back firmly glued to a rock, neither can society 
 come to a perfect maturity plastered to permanent investiture. Earth- 
 life is not a permanency, and permanent investiture violates its spirit. 
 But the end is not yet. At the present moment, on the grandest 
 scale of contention yet organized, new spiritual forces from the invis- 
 ible army of the coming Victor are entering the industrial fields of 
 the world, panoplied with the enginery of success. The outcome is 
 not difficult to predict nor far to find. Priority of appropriation and 
 permanent investment by individuals are destined to modification 
 or extinction. 
 
 If it be admitted that tenure of ownership has been required, it 
 was not necessary that it be prolonged beyond a lifetime into an 
 unknown eternity. The same agency that provided for the first man, 
 the father, will provide for the son. Nature has been as kindly — 
 more kindly — to later than to former generations. The sons and 
 daughters of the next generation will be better fed, clothed and 
 housed than ourselves. Perpetual tenure is not necessary for the 
 protection of posterity. On the contrary, it is the greatest danger 
 which threatens their peace and prosperity and the happiness of their 
 individual lives. Nor can distribution of the common heritage be 
 safely left to the principle of heredity. It brings no just equalization 
 of natural interests. One man, with an appropriation of territory, 
 may have a dozen heirs ; while another, with a like amount for trans- 
 mission, may have but one. Distribution of the common heritage, 
 through testament of father to child, places the entire matter in the 
 domain of chance, and robs thousands of opportunity. 
 
 Some form of tenure — a tenure of use — easily adjusted to changing 
 demands on the sources of wealth, should be made to prevent probable 
 pressure of population, not upon subsistence, as it is alleged to have 
 done, but upon permanent investiture. The American colonies were 
 settled upon entire ignorance or disregard of the future. The result 
 is that before one hundred years are fully gone, and before three- 
 fourths of the available land of the continent is placed under owner- 
 ship, the pressure of want incident to increased appropriations and 
 decreasing opportunities is making itself felt in no uncertain cones. 
 From the beginning, sales of land to be held forever have been made 
 
PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF VESTED RIGHTS. 5 1 
 
 by the Government irrespective of its right to sell, and regardless of 
 the wants and rights of coming millions. Appropriation of land and 
 raw material in Europe, buttressed by civil law and the entire power 
 of society, have so pressed for generations upon increasing popula- 
 tion, that the people of every nation have been virtually driven to 
 America for subsistence ; not because of insufficient land and raw 
 material capable of affording abundance to all, but because of vast 
 appropriations made and held in the interest of oligarchies. 
 
 In America a condition, not unlike that which in Europe preceded 
 successive periods of exodus, has already come. At intervals increas- 
 ing pressure of population on appropriation has urged masses from 
 the Eastern to the Western States. Now there is no West. Appro- 
 priation has moved steadily from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; and at 
 each advance, at each successive sale of land and disposition of 
 franchises and raw material, opportunities have decreased, until, at a 
 very late period, revision of the United States land laws is seen to 
 be imperative. The nature of the revision proposed, involving no 
 change in the character of the tenure, is a makeshift, and tends 
 merely to delay catastrophe. 
 
 Nor have these appropriations been determined with method or 
 consideration other than the private fancy, shrewdness and selfish- 
 ness of appropriators. Accessible points of vantage, adapted to the 
 control of manufacture, commerce and finance, exist in all countries. 
 Debouchure of mountain passes, heads of lakes and inland seas, 
 banks of small and large rivers, and seacoast harbors have, in Ame»-- 
 ica, been seized upon and appropriated by the adventurous ; points 
 from whence they can give direction to currents of business, and 
 where the present and future wealth of the nation can be levied on 
 through exchange. These points of vantage give appropriators oppor- 
 tunities of accumulation impossible, at this late day, to be secured 
 by others less favored by conditions, and less bolstered by the power 
 of custom and wealth. For the mass of the population destined to 
 crowd the valleys and plains of America natural opportunities are 
 gone, and the attendant advantages are forever assured to the origi- 
 nal appropriators, their heirs or assigns. 
 
 How, with population increasing by pressing against previous 
 appropriation, can equality of right be maintained? It is a moral 
 impossibility. It is mathematically and absolutely true, that, with 
 each addition to the population, and each new appropriation, oppor 
 tunity h^s, by the involved amount, decreased to all subsequent 
 comers, and by that amount all subsequent comers are deprived 
 assignment to their natural heritage. Thus, the boasted equality of 
 right in republican America, by a slow, insidious and unobserved 
 process — by the glacier of increasing population grinding upon the 
 rOcks of unyielding appropriation — is being gradually crushed out of 
 
52 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 form. None but the flippant and inconsiderate will undertake to 
 deny these affirmations. With a present population of 50,000,000, 
 the points of vantage, as centers of manufacture, commerce and 
 finance, and the better three-fourths of the land, franchises and raw 
 material appropriated, when the last of the opportunities are absorbed, 
 population may reach, let us suppose, 100,000,000. The territory 
 of the United States is capable of supporting a population of 400,- 
 000,000. At present, with a population of 50,000,000, not more 
 than one-fifth have access to the sources of wealth ; the balance — ' 
 40,000,000 — overborne by social attachments, ignorant of the neces- 
 sity of access to the soil and its concomitant advantages, accustomed, 
 under habits ingrained with their natures, to> centuries of oppressive 
 and personal service, have thoughtlessly yielded to the attractions of 
 the place and hour, and, too late, find themselves a'jiejjated from the 
 land and raw material. ' .' 
 
 But what is the difference? Suppose they had acted wisely and 
 fixed themselves upon the soil, as have the more prudent appropria- 
 tors, and each acquired from Government opportunities in proportion 
 to the past appropriations of their more astute fellow-citizens, on the 
 scale adopted, less than 20,000,000 people could be assigned directly 
 to the sources of wealth, in a country capable of supporting 400,- 
 000,000. 
 
 America is sparsely populated. Foreigners are due here from 
 every part of the crowded portions of Europe, Asia, and from the 
 invisible sources of population. From what source will the lands 
 and raw material in apportionment of the natural rights of 380,000,- 
 000 be derived? But they should not be discouraged. They will 
 have the right, each one to himself ! They may be driven to give 
 personal service to others, but, according to doctrines announced 
 and supported by thoughtful men, in the absence of anything more 
 substantial, they will have their labor to sell — if that is not displaced 
 by the competition of machinery — and can sell what they choose and 
 keep the balance ! 
 
 An equitable condition of affairs, indeed ! Three hundred and 
 eighty million persons, possessing a right to themselves, and a natural 
 and proportional interest in the common soil, to keep or sell them- 
 selves, body or soul, by installments, through labor, service, or pros- 
 titution, and twenty million persons, possessing not only an equal 
 light to themselves, an equal right to sell their labor, but a legal and 
 absolute right to hold or sell the entire land, franchise, raw material 
 and wealth of the nation ! 
 
 Here society has duties, and will be compelled, by the instinct of 
 self-preservation, to make distinctions between the right of men to 
 use and the right of men to ownership ; or so modify the scope and 
 hardship of ownership as to render it less subversive of the equal 
 
DUTIES OF SOCIETY. 53 
 
 rights of man. In fact, the people of America, and Europe as well, 
 will be driven at no distant day to reconsider and revolutionize the 
 entire principle of appropriation, and determine if tenure shall remain 
 th at of ownership or become that of use. 
 
 If men could realize that the earth is an immense omnibus, making 
 its annual rounds; that its inhabitants are but way passengers, getting 
 on and taking seats left by others, without assignment, and riding 
 divers periods and distances ; getting off and yielding their places 
 to others, without having acquired permanent rights in the equipage ; 
 if they could realize that the stars of heaven smile at them when they 
 come aboard, and watch the futures of their earthly destiny, and the 
 angels of heaven await and attend tljeir alighting, a disposition would 
 soon engender in universal humanity, that would facilitate the happy 
 adjustment of earth-life and fill it with unbounded felicity. 
 
 As it has been said that from those to whom much has been given 
 much will be required, it is possible rights may be recovered to the 
 depoiled, through duties performed by the despoiler's. 
 
54 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 DUTIES— ORIGIN AND NATURE. 
 CHAPTER v., SECTION I. 
 
 The term duty^ connected with economic science or industrial life, 
 may be regarded as misplaced. *It is introduced, however, as part 
 of a whole, which, in the mixed and turbulent current of industrial 
 affairs, and in dissertations concerning principles therein involved, 
 has been absolutely neglected. In the arena of religion, morals and 
 distributive charity, it has been a common theme for centuries. 
 Though of paramount importance on these high levels of human life, 
 properly understood, it is none the less important in art, nature, and 
 he broad arena of industrial activity.* 
 
 In a general sense, it has a field of operation in the wide scope of 
 nature, as well as where human life makes the world resound with 
 effort. Perhaps no expression embodies the law of duty better than 
 "from him to whom much has been given much will be required." 
 If my cup is large and full, I must give to an extent correspondingly 
 large and full. If nature has loaded me with power, intellectual or 
 physical, duty calls me, first having nourished myself, to exert it pro- 
 portionally for the benefit of others. But how moderately I should 
 consider myself is evinced by what nature does throughout all its 
 active circulations. 
 
 Through common instrumentalities the left side of my heart be- 
 comes filled with blood. Does the heart follow the promptings of eco- 
 nomic greed, and retain for itself all the blood which comes to it? 
 By no means ; but it provides first for itself, as every man must first 
 provide for himself. As in the line of duty, it closes down with 
 power on the volume of nutrition gathered within it, two little arte- 
 ries f open their mouths to first receive a portion of the red current 
 and convey to every muscular fiber of the millions which consti- 
 tute its structure and give it power, enough nutriment to preserve the 
 heart in full life and vigor; then the current, in a broad volume, 
 goes on to other parts and other organs. It keeps and accumulates 
 
 *The entire doctrine of rights and duties here presented is advanced in the interests of a true 
 industrial individualism. If men desire the establishment of pure individualism, they must 
 equitably individualize the natural sources of wealth and the social appliances of production, 
 and maintain each person in his right to the use thereof. 
 
 t The coronary arteries. 
 
DUTIES ALTERNATE WITH RIGHTS. 55 
 
 nothing for future contingencies, knowing that nature always provides 
 previously the power for every intended effort, and that each diastole 
 will bring new blood, fresh and vigorous, for each succeeding 
 systole. There is nothing greedy about the physical human heart, 
 operating, as it does, freely and independently of the spiritual heart 
 and greedy will. 
 
 As each animal heart is the center of a blood circulation, so is 
 each human being also the center of an economic circulation. As 
 the physical heart takes in and puts out, so the spiritual and physical 
 human was constituted for similar processes. Every man is the heart 
 of a living circulation. From intellectual and material surroundings 
 incessant currents, conveying spirit and matter in assimilable condi- 
 tions, are flowing to him, and streams, equally continuous, of broken 
 and disintegrating matter and spirit should be flowing from him. He 
 is an epitome of the universe, and all things concentrate to and in 
 him ; and the same entities, having deposited their benefits and 
 nutriments, are, or should be, dispersed with equal freedom from him. 
 Without this alternation of income and outgo, without organs and 
 faculties adapted to its successful accomplishment, organized bodies, 
 vegetable or animal, individual or social, cannot attain maturity, or 
 maintain health and energy. The material world coming to me, two 
 pounds daily, with its wealth of bone, muscle and brain, through 
 digestion, assimilation and nutrition, must have rapid outgo through 
 absorbents, secretions and excretions, or I become rapidly a physical 
 monster ; a burden to myself, a heavy draft upon, and a loathsome 
 incubus to, those about me. Somewhat of what I take I must use 
 and the balance give ; what comes to me of matter and spirit must 
 go away from me, and, by the coming and going, leave me a devel- 
 oped soul. He who only absorbs, draws around and into himself 
 disease and death ; who merely read and learn, become stuffed 
 mummies of literature and science. To continue animated and 
 active, men must also think and impart. Whatever the plane of life, 
 outgo must follow income. Income is accumulative ; outgo distrib- 
 utive. One process must succeed the other with safe dispatch. In 
 the manifold realms of organized activity, distribucion must trip the 
 heels of accumulation. 
 
 But what, says the reader, has this to do with industrial duty? It 
 points to the general truth that Nature, in her manifold modes of 
 organized expression, has given us a universal and an unyielding law 
 of life ; a law of activity, power and perpetuity ; a law which, while 
 it involves ample care and consideration for self, puts forth an inex- 
 orable demand that the interests of others must also be abundantly 
 subserved and promoted. It points the truth that nothing in organ- 
 ized life can continually take to itself and remain undamaged by 
 over-sufficient supply; that the law of the lower and mediate nature, 
 
56 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 where industrial activities operate with paramount vigor and impor- 
 tance, involves the principle that where much comes in much must 
 go out; that this law, from the primordial cell, through a long suc- 
 cession of organizations, becomingj more and more complex, expressed 
 in rights and duties, transmuted from the spiritual to the material 
 plane of life, inseparably attaches to every individual, species and 
 genus ; and that every man owes an imperative duty to nature and 
 to society, which is payable, not only at the termination of his career, 
 but from the first spark of his existence through all successive periods. 
 
 In the multitudinous circulations of organized and organizing life, 
 that portion of the circle which brings to the central organ is the arc 
 of rights ^ and that which carries from the central organ is the arc of 
 duties. In the animal economy these arcs are of equal capacity and 
 function. On the varied planes of personal and social organization, 
 rights are the first half of the circle of activities; duties, the subsequent 
 and second half. Man's rights are observable in what comes to him 
 from the surrounding universe; and duties, when performed, are 
 recognized in what goes from him to the surrounding world. What 
 my rights bring to me, through effort, from myself, from society, from 
 nature, my duties take from me to myself, to society, to nature. Thus 
 the two principles and forces of the circulation, through a natural and 
 simple law, are given ample and unobstructed scope for action. 
 
 On the plane of industry, whether industry be intellectual, phys- 
 ical or mixed, this principle should come into retroactive and retrib- 
 utive operation. Duty unperformed, whether it be the duty of per- 
 son or society, whether it be to self or country, transforms rights into 
 calamities. Observation of rights alone results in obstruction, stag- 
 na^'ion and distress; while duty opens the channels and insures free- 
 dom, development and content. Duty neglected, causes pestilential 
 backwater, impairs freedom and activity, and suspends that use 
 which derives value and efficiency from rights. Rights secured in 
 excess, concentrated, vested and exercised with force — duties bein^ 
 ignored — slowly but surely bring even rights to destruction. For 
 ages men have claimed and contended for rights ; duties have been 
 avoided, resulting in an uninterrupted succession of failures. Accu- 
 mulation and permanent investitures, getting and preserving rights 
 alone, have constituted a dam to the broad currents of swelling civil- 
 izations. 
 
 Organized society — to which has been delegated the interest of 
 mankind, ignorant and refractory, undeveloped and unrestrained, 
 through a succession of civilizations — has never yet performed intel- 
 ligent and conscientious duty towards its constituent individual, nor 
 to itself; nor have individuals brought themselves to a performance 
 of duties, either on their own behalf or in the interests of others. The 
 
INDUSTRIAL DUTY YET TO BE DEVELOPED. 57 
 
 day of a'true sense of industrial duty has as yet hardly dawned upon 
 the civilized world ; but the fresh breezes of love and humanity and 
 the quivering rays of light and thought are breaking in upon hearts 
 and intellects. There is hope, prospect, and ground of prophecy. 
 
58 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 DUTIES FURTHER ANALYZED AND 
 EXPLAINED. 
 
 CHAPTER v.. SECTION II. 
 
 It is to be presumed the propositions here advanced will be accepted 
 or rejected according to their bearing upon the private interests of 
 those who may consider them. They will be entirely rejected by 
 some, but partially and coldly accepted by others, and by many 
 regarded as theoretical and chimerical to a degree too marked for 
 practical consideration. But common thought — such thought as is 
 daily engaged in the common struggle for daily subsistence, such 
 mentality as is occupied in acquiring, absorbing and assenting to 
 current doctrines and popular maxims concerning industrial mat- 
 ters — is not always to be relied upon. It is too hasty and superficial to 
 reach at once, and too effeminate and indolent too penetrate later, 
 by severe study, those fundamental principles which underlie and 
 permeate the labor, the struggle, the pain of an overpowered humanity 
 seeking to sustain equality of comfort in the midst of a plutocracy 
 of plenty and luxury. Because certain important things have been 
 done in the world in a certain way for a certain defined period of 
 time, it is flippantly assumed, in a superficial way, that the same 
 things must of necessity be always done in the same w ay. Too many 
 men once royalists are always royalists ; once democrats are always 
 democrats; once republicans are always republicans; and the scope 
 of individual life is usually so narrowed by the tendency to run in 
 ruts, it is a wonder men do not sooner exhaust the sources of enjoy- 
 m ent and the fields of usefulness, and call suicide to their relief. It is 
 usually against such waves of mental indolence that a new thought 
 spends its force; and possibly the idea of " industrial duties" will 
 meet the usual reception. 
 
 The opposition to an unusual proposition is, however, both useless 
 and unwarranted by reason. The new and changeable is, of late, at 
 least, the order of the times. Through the steady flow of events the 
 tendency — and not only the tendency but the actual movement — 
 has been characterized by elements of change and progress. The 
 affairs of men — though at some periods the movement has been slow, 
 even imperceptible — has never remained in a stationary condition. 
 Continuously some improvements have been made and some advances 
 marked ; and it is folly — yes, crime ! — to interpose against a thought 
 whose realization might hasten the complete emancipation of man 
 from industrial slavery. 
 
 But, besides the common tendency of thought to " run in a rut," 
 among the crowded ranks of laborers embittered by toil, and too 
 
HINDRANCES TO THE ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THOUGHTS. 59 
 
 often made desperate by hunger and privation, not only ignorance 
 of the underlying causes of their own condition, but intellectual 
 incapacity to comprehend the principles which underlie the causes, 
 renders it a thankless, almost hopeless, task to enlighten their minds 
 and arouse them to temperate and effective action and the patient 
 waiting of an enduring faith and resolution. They strike instinctively, 
 and too often impotently, at the first barrier which seems to obstruct 
 their way to supply of want, little thinking that behind every barrier 
 stands an active, upholding cause, and behind the cause lie the self- 
 ish purpose of those who, through supply of employment or traffic, 
 are likely to appear in the minds of wage-laborers as the greatest 
 benefactors of the latter, and the necessary support of their lives. 
 
 But in addition to the ignorance of laborers, and overtopping it in 
 effectiveness, rises the thorough and unblushing self-interest of the 
 small but intelligent minority who hold the industrial forces and ma- 
 terials in their selfish hands, and who with jealous and watchful eye 
 stand ready, not only to discern at a distance whatever may menace 
 their holdings, but ready to inaugurate ruthless and cruel warfare 
 against whatever idea or action tends to loosen their tenure of super- 
 ior advantages. They know intuitively that their own success or ad- 
 vancement is built up on the wreck, woe and misery of others ; know 
 that so soon as others come to their own through the practicalization 
 of advanced thoughts, themselves rnust abandon the surplusage on 
 which their sensual lives are fed, on which their equipages are sup- 
 ported, their palaces are built and their social distinction is sustained. 
 Their selfish and ambitious impulses rise in imperious rebellion to 
 the higher but fainter demands of human justice. Barriers so high 
 and impenetrable — the tendency of thought to " run in a rut," stup- 
 idity of the many and greed of the few — standing in the way to ac- 
 ceptance of propositions advanced, it becomes necessary to make 
 their truth so plain that rejection be impossible. 
 
 For the sake of convenience in presenting the thought concerning 
 industrial duty in a clear and intelligible form, duties may be 
 assumed to be attributable to three distinct and interested parties — 
 first, the Creator ; second, society ; and third, the individual. Each 
 owes duties to itself and both the others. The Creator owes duties 
 to himself, to society, and to the individual — duties which have been 
 early and promptly discharged. Society owes duties to itself, to the 
 Creator and to thfe individual. The individual owes duties to the 
 Creator and to society ; society and the individual have made some 
 progress, but for ages have left undone most that should have been 
 done. 
 
 The theory of duty, as presented in the previous section, and sus- 
 tained by universal life — it becomes necessary to inquire how, on the 
 plane of industrial life, it can be practical ized; how it can be made 
 
6o WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 operative in revolutionizing, not only the motives and maxims, but 
 the modes of the industrial world. 
 
 Its mission in ^he industrial arena, after use has been subserved, 
 is to remand back to the common fund, for the use of others, any 
 surplusages which, through ignorance or intelligent purpose, have 
 been taken therefrom, either by the individual or by a class ; and to 
 return to others what their labor has created, and which has been 
 habitually taken from them, directly or indirectly, through industrial 
 processes. 
 
 That a common fund exists, a fund whence the entire human race 
 should draw the fullness and flush of life, a fund created and pro- 
 duced for the' ample use of every human being, according to his 
 capacity for enjoyment and his power to do, no reasonable man will 
 undertake to deny. Of what this common fund consists may be 
 easily determined by an intelligent answer to a simple consideration. 
 Let one but cast his eye over the universe, and tell by whom this, 
 that and the other thing was created and brought into conditions of 
 use and beauty adapted to satisfy the wants and gratify the desires 
 of men, he will closely define and limit what constitutes the common 
 heritage. He may not be able to tell to the satisfaction of every one, 
 who made them, or by what agencies they were brought into e ist- 
 ence; but he can certainly determine in the world about him what 
 was produced by human act, and what has been produced by other 
 forces. If the creative or productive act has been performed by the 
 invisible, the intelligent-beneficent Forces, by creative power, the 
 product — be it land, raw material, or natural wealth in provision for 
 the current wants of man — is a part of the common fund, a portion 
 of the common heritage. If, on the other hand, the result has been 
 achieved by human labor — whether isolated or conjoined — it belongs 
 not to the common fund, but to the party or parties who have per- 
 formed the labor that terminated in the result. 
 
 That every man, according to his capacity of enjoyment or power 
 of use, of consumption and production, should be entitled to free 
 use, during his entire earthly existence, of his proportion of the com- 
 mon fund, is inferentially asserted by the American declaration of 
 rights, and sustained by the considerate judgment of mankind. It is 
 equally true that whatever values a man has added to his portion of 
 the common heritage he is justly entitled to, as the result of his own 
 labor. They are his property, of which no one-^not even society, 
 nor government, nor any principle of priority — can justly deprive him. 
 
 If, therefore, any party to the complex mundane existence — whether 
 it be organized society or the individual — acting individually or col- 
 lectively, has taken from the common heritage more than his just 
 proportion of the values produced by creative power, and holds them, 
 by any tenure whatever, from the use of those entitled to them, an 
 
SOME REQUIREMENTS OF INDUSTRIAL DUTIES. 6 1 
 
 inexorable duty rests upon him, either alone or in conjunction with 
 others similarly circumstanced, to restore to the common fund all 
 but his equitable portion thereof. If any party to the social and 
 industrial organization — to the complex mundane existence — individ- 
 ual or collective, has taken or is habitually taking, from any man, or 
 number or class of men, any portion of the results of their labor, and 
 accumulating that portion, be it small or large, to other than the 
 laborer, duty demands that he discontinue such exactions. If it be 
 that he is held to unjust exactions by a general system of exactions, 
 then his duty lies in the most vigorous effort, through education and 
 spread of special intelligence bearing upon the current injustice, to 
 eliminate from the said system its unjust and obnoxious elements ; 
 or, finding elimination impossible of accomplishment, it then becomes 
 his duty to strive, peaceably and through appeals to reason and the 
 better elements of human nature, to modify and transform the said 
 System. All this is to be observed and performed to the end that 
 every man — be he bright or stupid, be he strong or weak, be he over- 
 flowing with vivacity and energy or depressed by laggard languor — 
 shall remain in possession, actual or potential, of equal opportunities 
 for the supply of his own wants, through drafts upon the common 
 heritage and application of his own labor thereto ; to the end that 
 industrial justice may become operative throughout the productive 
 world. 
 
 Substantially, it will be noted, there are two independent but al- 
 lied divisions to this demonstration, and they rest on the individual- 
 ity and distinctive effort of the beneficent-intelligent Forces on one 
 hand, and the individuality and distinctiveness of human existence 
 and human effort on the other. It is true, though not taught by 
 current economic science, that men derive the objects upon which 
 they subsist from two distinct, though allied, forces; viz., from na- 
 ture and from art. The commodities and the various forms of 
 wealth which gratify human desire, give effectiveness to human effort 
 and assist human development, are derived primarily from the reser- 
 voirs of nature where they have been produced by creative act and 
 creative labor ; and, secondarily, from the depositories of art, where 
 they have been finished and adapted to use by human labor. 
 
 What men derive from nature is a free gift to them by the benefi- 
 cent Force which brought both into being ; what men derive from 
 art is the result of their own labor which was designed and made ad- 
 equate, each man for the supply of his own wants. If men are cut 
 off, through accidental or volitional causes, from these sources of sup- 
 ply, partially or wholly, to the extent and degree of their exclusion, 
 their lives, comforts and developments are placed in jeopardy. 
 Whatever the causes, or whoever the instruments of exclusion, those 
 
62 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 causes or those instruments, be they several or individual, are wholly 
 responsible for the failure of men to receive their full and ample 
 dues. If any parties, individual or social, stand in the way or vol- 
 untarily obstruct the current of dues whose natural tendencies and 
 forces carry it into and through each and every human being, and 
 are responsible for the deprivating obstruction, the least they can do 
 to relieve the distress which their acts, individual or collective, have 
 caused, is to remove the obstruction for which their acts are respon- 
 sible, and permit the current of dues, in accordance with the natural 
 laws of circulation, to pass unobstructedly to the proper and equita- 
 ble recipients thereof. 
 
 Does this proposition need further demonstration? Not to any 
 rational mind. 
 
 But it may be inquired, What evidence exists that wrongful obstruc- 
 tions to passage of the world's wealth, or sources of wealth, have been 
 placed by individuals or by society in the current of an equitable 
 movement towards the millions who have natural rights thereon? 
 The answer is, the facts as they exist to-day in every civilized nation. 
 It matters not by what customs, usages, laws or constitutions, the 
 sources of the world's wealth, or the wealth itself, is held both i n old 
 and new societies by a comparatively few of the existing popuUfion. 
 Whatever those processes, customs, laws and constitutions have been 
 or now are, they are grimed and befouled with the varied forms of 
 injustice, which have attached to the marches and counter-marches 
 of humanity in its movement to the present status. The land of En- 
 gland is owned by one-thirteenth of its population ; the land of 
 France by one-tenth of its inhabitants ; and the settled portions of 
 America by not to exceed one-sixth of the people within its borders. 
 A young city of three hundred thousand inhabitants pays land rent 
 to less than six thousand land owners, and older cities of America 
 afford graver instances of the unequal distribution of the natural 
 values prepared by the creative hand for the use of a total humanity. 
 
 The morning's paper reports that the decorations of the four pros- 
 cenium boxes of a well-known New York Opera House are place d 
 thereby those whose wealth is estimated at $790,500,000; it re- 
 ports also, that a few packing firms- in Chicago are dictating not only 
 the wages, but the right of association, to 25,000 free American citi- 
 zens. 
 
 Everywhere facts like these stare the investigator in the face, prov- 
 ing conclusively that obstruction to the free and equitable play of 
 justice, obstruction to the current of values, which, received, would 
 
EVIDENCES OF INDUSTRIAL OBSTRUCTION. 63 
 
 tend to maintain some modicum of equality 9,mong the inhabitants 
 of the Christian world, is everywhere the rule and everywhere sus- 
 tained by business processes, laws and constitutions. 
 
64 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 » 
 
 RELATIONS OF CHARITY TO DUTIES. 
 CHAPTER v., SECTION III. 
 
 But the demonstration as to what constitutes the industrial duties 
 of those who control the world's industries can not end here. It 
 must be carried through other and particular lines of thought. And» 
 first, let us clear away some of the underbrush of error which has 
 grown insidiously and imperceptibly, but which everywhere, thicket- 
 like, intercepts the common view into and upon industrial affairs. 
 
 Economic science has taught, and yet teaches, that every commod- 
 ity of value has been produced alone by human labor. This propo- 
 sition is absolutely untrue. Creative labor, the work of the intelli- 
 gent-beneficent Forces, has produced a vast majority of the values 
 which daily and yearly appear in the form of commodities at the vari- 
 ous points of exchange throughout the world. Human labor has 
 been merely superadded, in application of superadded values, bring- 
 ing some commodities made by nature and left in the rough to a fuller 
 finish of adaptation to the supply of want. Both these values so 
 produced are indispensable ; but neither is exclusive of the other. 
 
 Again, economic science would teach every man that upon his 
 own productive efforts alone his prosperity must and does depend ; 
 and inferentially that what he has accumulated through business pro- 
 cesses, under the sanction of law, he has produced. This is again 
 false ; for the man who secures the immense percentage of the nat- 
 ural values, secures an advantage over and above the man who does 
 not secure them, positively immeasurable. 
 
 From these two false propositions, and their corollaries, has arisen 
 the common conception, inextricably interwoven with the ideas and 
 theories of personal and property rights, that production and accu- 
 mulation are one and the same process, and it is usually assumed 
 that what a man has accumulated he has produced. In extreme in- 
 stances, where one man has possessed himself of the soil of an entire 
 county or state, or the timber of miles of forest, or the coal fields of 
 an entire district, the truth that what a man has accumulated he has 
 not necessarily produced becomes apparent. Hence, accumulative 
 processes^ aside from their necessary connection with real produc- 
 tion, receives the almost universal sanction of mankind. The values 
 produced by nature are taken without regard to the right of others 
 to them, and stored away with the belongings which have rightly 
 been produced by and accumulated from the results of labor put 
 forth by the same parties. 
 
 If I, by my care and labor, produce a barrel of apples, and you 
 
DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND ACCUMULATION, 6^ 
 
 through the various movements of exchange, the exactions common 
 to business operations, come into possession of the apples without 
 productive labor, I am a producer and you are an accumlator. I 
 may receive in other products, or money which brings me other pro- 
 ducts, values which equal those with which I pait ; but, if behind you 
 a line of exchanges exists, which nets you profit above the labor act- 
 ually expended, or, if you are exacting rent on land or interest on 
 money, and buy my apples from me, with values so gained, you are 
 to that extent at least, an accumulator and not a producer.* Briefly 
 your income to the extent designated is the result of drafts upon the 
 common fund, through the exactions of profit, rent and interest. It 
 matters not that customs, usages, laws and constitutions permit you 
 to take through these means, that for which you have given no 
 equivalent in labor ; that which has gone to you directly or indirectly 
 by unwarranted drafts on the common fund, on values produced by 
 other men's labor. The case is clear, that a wide distinction exists 
 between your mode of getting what you have, and my mode of secur- 
 ing the fruit I have produced. I am a producer and to the extent 
 of my production an equitable accumulator ; you are a pure accumu- 
 lator, and to the extent of your accumulation through profit, rent and 
 interest, unjustly so. 
 
 Let us then station ourselves on the platform that accumulations 
 may be just or unjust ; that th^ accumulations of the productive 
 laborer are just and equitable to the extent of the values which his 
 labor has produced, and the accumulations of the pure accumulator, 
 irrespective of labor applied by himself in production, are unjust and 
 inequitable. It does not impair the truth of these observations that 
 society as a whole, or in small minority even, does not see the truth 
 as stated. Individuals generally •embody faults which themselves do 
 not at once recognize ; and society, being but a collective individual, 
 with intelligence, affections, impulses and prejudices like the single 
 individual, recognizes its own faults with reluctance, and repudiates 
 imputations against its perfect constitution with indignation. 
 
 If the business world could be brought to the wise conclusion, 
 that that alone which a man actually produces by his own labor, 
 added to his portion of the common stock, fund or heritage, justly 
 belongs to him, duty in the premises would be made clear ; but so 
 long as ideas of production and accumulation remain in the public 
 mind entirely undiscriminated, so long as men feel that what they can 
 get and what they can compel society through law to hold for them, - 
 belongs justly to them, a distinct conception of industrial duties will 
 be difficult, nearly impossible, of attainment. And it may be that the 
 full conception will not crystallize until they are compelled by the 
 swelling forces of civilization, by the gathering intelligence of the 
 
 *See chapters on Land, on Capital, on Wealth. 
 
66 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 impoverished masses, to recognize the truth that large fortunes are 
 the result of an insidious form of despoilment ; until the reality has 
 dawned on their minds that they disport themselves in wealth, com- 
 fort and luxury over a slumbering volcano of prostituted, vitiated and 
 outraged humanity. It is undoubted that the accumulative, rather 
 than the productive, is the leading idea of those who conduct indus- 
 trial operations. 
 
 Men labor to secure profit and aggregation rather than use and 
 distribution. Production is made contingent to accumulation, 
 whereas accumulation should be recognized as the contingent ; the 
 spirit of business is the spirit of aggressiveness, exaction and despoil- 
 ment ; and if one man has not encroached on the industrial rights 
 of others, it is because the contending forces have defeated him and 
 given victory to others. Nor is this fault solely an individual fault ; 
 it is a social fault ; one which permeates society through and through, 
 and operates actively and reactively from one to many and from 
 many to one ; a fault which can be eradicated only by educating the 
 thought and arousing the action of community to and against its es- 
 sential vice. 
 
 The common thought regarding the habit of "saving," needs recon- 
 sideration. Saving has been put forth by learned and illustrious men 
 as a panacea for the economic evils of the times. Political science is full 
 of the idea. It isthe stalking horse of;capitalism. It has been crammed 
 down the mental throats of the civilized world until they are blind 
 from its choking. It has been taught from the cradle to the grave; to~ 
 the slave and his master, to the starveling and the glutton ; to the 
 shivering, hungry and impoverished, and the warm, finely fed and 
 magnificently housed ; in the family and in the pulpit, in the work- 
 shop and counting house, in schools and universities, on the platform 
 and in lofty halls of dignified legislation. It has become the Allah 
 of the industrial dervish, and the slogan of scientific champions of 
 the competitive system. 
 
 Must we, therefore, bow the knee to this industrial Baal ; this 
 false god ; this delusion and snare : bandied about by the hosts of 
 capitalism, to hide away and cover the real sources of industrial 
 prosperity and the real causes of widespread poverty, misery and 
 degradation ; this buttress of a civilization which is fast becoming 
 detestable in the eyes of man and God ? 
 
 No ; but let us give it a fair hearing and a just judgment. It 
 embraces a real element of beneficence to mankind ' on one 
 hand, but involves evils of the most monstrous proportions on the 
 other. 
 
 Saving, as a pure act of substantial economy, as distinguished from 
 waste, is a virtue to be cultivated and emulated. by all reasonable 
 men. An unnecessary expenditure of power and material is useless, 
 
MERITS AND ABUSES OF SAVING. 67 
 
 and therefore senseless. Nature in her vast domains of productive 
 operation, accomplishes its results with the least possible waste of 
 power and material, and men may well accept and adopt the lesson so 
 taught. But nature always demands and takes enough. There is 
 no scantiness or want in its provisions. Vines and trees, fish, birds 
 and animals are amply provided with their requisite food and en- 
 vironments. Even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed as are the 
 lilies. Bounty everywhere, abundance is closely allied with economy ; 
 but with economy no lack, niggardliness or beggary. There is 
 enough and to spare, but nothing is duplicated, wasted or thrown 
 away. A vegetable capillary, designed to carry an ounce of fluid, is 
 not allowed to load itself with two or a dozen ounces, nor need it 
 lack a drop short of the ounce. Nature's operations follow the laws 
 •of use, while human art is subsidized and overloaded by the hungry 
 demand of useless and vicious greed ; greed, which is but saving, 
 carried to a pernicious extreme. 
 
 While the term "saving," if operative within sensible limits, is 
 worthy of adoption in the economic vocabulary, the abuses to which 
 it is put, the evils which it subserves and the industrial crimes 
 which it covers, merit unflinching condemnation. If men of moder- 
 ate means, self-employers, are burdened by the demands of a reason- 
 able condition of life, they are told that saving will bridge over the 
 losses, and bring comfort and prosperity. If the lowly and poverty- 
 stricken, the world's wage-workers, are driven to extremities of hun- 
 ger and cold, and peltings of pitiless storms, they are reminded of 
 this panacea of all human ills ; told that the fault is all their own ; 
 that if they had saved as they should have done, they would have 
 been in comfortable and prosperous conditions, and are commended 
 to apply the remedy for the future. All classes of men who are suffer- 
 ing from the results of poverty are treated by the same black-bottle 
 prescription ; treated by those, who, holding the sources of wealth in 
 their hands, know^ or should know, that the means of comfort, pros- 
 perity and manhood development can be derived alone through 
 access to the common heritage. If " saving " had the saving effi- 
 cacy which is ascribed to it, if wealth and prosperity could be se- 
 cured through it, every man's fortune would be in his own hand ; for 
 the act of saving is a passive or negative act, and requires for its 
 enforcement but the slightest exertion. Indeed, it requires no exer- 
 tion except that of the will ; will exerted in suppressing the rising ap- 
 petite for food, the desire for warmth, shelter and the concomitants 
 of civilized life. It involves self-sacrifice only — the slaying of self — 
 which partial, if not complete, elimination of life, it is alleged, is 
 an ennobling employment, tending to develop men to their most 
 expansive growths. 
 
68 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Let US pause and consider, at this point, the correspondent ele- 
 ment of self-sacrifice : its vaunted merits, and demerits. 
 
 Eulogies upon the uses of self-sacrifice come principally from the 
 teachers of morals and religion ; they are worthy of consideration. 
 The doctrine of self-sacrifice, as widely taught, corresponds in the 
 region of morals and religion to the doctrine of saving, emanating 
 from the industrial arena, and taught by economic science. 
 
 As saving has its commendable phases, so also has self-sacrifice ; 
 but the term has been abused. It has been employed to shrink and 
 impair the efficiency of some of the best elements of human nature. 
 The individual will, prompted by exterior influences of a mischievous 
 nature, by the selfish demands of hierarchies, priesthoods, aristoc- 
 racies, has been driven, under fear of heavy penalties, to whip its 
 component impulses and affections, as a master whips his hounds, into 
 silent and compulsory abnegation. The self that should have been 
 expanded and quickened, should have gone out through abundant 
 nourishment to a rich development, to enlarge and sweeten the lives 
 of a common humanity, has been shriveled and atrophied. 
 
 The true self cannot be sacrificed without stunting and destroying 
 character ; without aborting its complete and rounded development. 
 It would transform the world into a useless cloister ; nunneries and 
 monasteries would aptly image societies built on the cold and shriveling 
 principle of self-abnegation. I want no hamper put upon my faculties ; 
 I want no check placed upon their useful development to the fullest 
 capacity, intensest power and highest use. 
 
 But there is a line where self sacrifice — the term is misleading — 
 is advisable. It is where what I employ is employed irrespective of 
 a use to be subserved to myself or to others ; in gratifying myself with 
 my own sensations. No useful action, but is followed by a gratifi- 
 cation ; a gratification which may well be enjoyed. But the end of 
 action should be use, and not gratification. When the purpose of 
 action or life in its multifarious forms passes from the domain of use 
 to the domain of sensual gratification — it can pass into no other 
 domain — then self-sacrifice, sacrifice of results and not of ends, of 
 enjoyments disconnected with uses, is demanded. If I eat, I must 
 eat for the use of it, — eat to live and not live to eat — and not for its 
 pleasure. When I commence to live for pleasure — I cannot avoid a 
 fair share of pleasure if I live for use — then and there I need to sup- 
 press myself; but up to the point where the end of use changes to the 
 end of pleasure, I need no sacrifice. If use having been subserved, 
 I stimulate or titillate for pleasure irrespective of the use, I com- 
 mence to harm myself 
 
 The purely sensual elements of personal life do not constitute the 
 life ; they mark the point when and where life through the incipiency 
 of abnormal action, of disease, begins to wane. That undercurrent of 
 
RELATIONS OF SAVING AND SELF-SECRIFICE. 69 
 
 heredity on which rests all chronic diseases incident to civilized life, is 
 the result of pure sensualism. On this arena, self-sacrifice, if the term 
 is appropriate, should have a free and favorable action. But even 
 here, it is merely a preventer of evil, not a promoter of good. 
 When aptly introduced, it prevents the abuse of self in all those 
 faculties which are capable of subserving use and being prostituted to 
 sensuality. 
 
 With this limitation of the domain of use on one side, and the 
 real domain of sensuality on the other, it is clear that self-sacrifice, 
 or abstention has a narrow scope of negative action. It is further 
 clear that manhood and womanhood development cannot be reached 
 by abstention. To promote development, spiritual or material, 
 nutriment, ample, rich and adapted, must be accessible. There 
 should be no stint or deprivation. It is only through the use, not 
 abuse, of abundance and variety, that the possibilities are open to 
 individual and national development. 
 
 Self control with abundance at hand, is one matter, and self- 
 sacrifice with parsimony and scanty supply, another. The one ad- 
 vances development to its fullest and richest possibilities, the other 
 shrivels it to its meanest and most sterile proportions. Self control is 
 to self-sacrifice or abstinence, in morals and religion, what use is to 
 saving and niggardliness in operative, practical economics. 
 
 The broad, unqualified injunction to save and be wealthy, is an in- 
 junction to keep what one possesses. It is an insidious but far-see- 
 ing and masterly support to vested rights. Through it the capitalist 
 and landlord say to the laborer, " Keep what you have ; be content 
 with your possessions ; make the most of yours, and we will do the 
 same with ours ; it is true, but it matters not, that you have but little 
 of the common heritage ; but you have your ability to labor ; save, 
 scrimp, shrivel and sacrifice your lives on the wages we concede to 
 you, and you will be wealthy, wise, strong and happy ; thus harmony 
 will prevail and serenity encompass the land." Such advice embodies 
 the most shameless selfishness of the age ; shameless, because it ap- 
 peals to false teaching and persistent deception to sustain cruel, and 
 conscienceless exactions upon those defrauded of their interests in the 
 common heritage, and plundered of the increase effected by their 
 labor. 
 
 With this unjustifiable doctrine of self-sacrifice as a means of 
 human development, as taught by moralists and theologians, and the 
 corresponding doctrine of economic writers, that wealth is attained 
 by the equally negative act of saving, there is a suspicion of col- 
 lusion between the parties, to deceive the productive masses regarding 
 the real sources of development and the real sources of wealth and 
 power. As the teachers of morals and religion open the avenues of 
 development, through abstinence and self-sacrifice, through a letting- 
 
7P WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 alone process, the teachers of economic science and supporters of 
 current capitalism, assert that wealth is to be attained by saving and 
 hoarding. While neither of these propositions are true, except as 
 specified, they dove-tail one to the other with extraordinary harmony, 
 and are justly chargeable with disseminating economic thought 
 which promotes the industrial interests not of humanity as a whole 
 but of a small class. Suspicion of collusion is strengthened by extra- 
 ordinary inconsistency of the reasoning and advice put forth by 
 moralists and theologians. They play into the hands of capitalism 
 and its despoiling tendencies by support of the doctrine of saving. 
 At the same time they are assured that through saving alone, wealth is 
 to be accumulated, and the possession of wealth conduces by no 
 means according to their own position to that self-sacrifice, which 
 they allege is the source and means of true human development. 
 They inculcate as follows : They advise self-sacrifice and abstinence 
 as a means of human ennoblement, assert that the less wealth men 
 have, the better, purer and fuller their development, knowing that 
 capitalism teaches that, that same self-sacrifice, saving, abstinence 
 from use, is the source and means'of large accumulations of wealth. 
 Now, why should moralists and theologic doctrinarians, seeking to 
 secure through self-sacrifice the fullest life and most perfect develop- 
 ment, advise a course of economy, which will result in the accumulation 
 of wealth, which wealth when secured, according to their theory, tends 
 to prevent and obstruct the fairest forms and richest phases of human 
 development ? Why, if their reasoning is not somewhere erroneous 
 or their motives impeachable? 
 
 The substantial truth, that which* should be known to the entire 
 world, is that neither saving in its relation to the accumulations of 
 wealth, nor self-sacrifice, nor abstinence in its relation to the develop- 
 ment of human character, result as is alleged by economic writers 
 on the one hand, and teachers of morals and religion on the other. 
 Statistics, sustained by common observation, show that those classes 
 of men who are driven to self-sacrifice, to abstinence — and the more 
 extreme the abstinence the more prominently the fact appears — de- 
 velop characters of the most embruted nature ; and as these very 
 same classes arise from the necessities of self-sacrifice and abstinence, 
 and obtain the means of education and refinement, their character 
 undergoes a corresponding development and elevation. 
 
 Statistics, sustained by common observation, show, also, that those 
 who attain wealth, attain it principally by acquiring, through peaca- 
 ble or warlike means, through priority or conquest, access to and es- 
 tablished ownership of the sources of wealth ; that they attain it not 
 by saving, but by producing through their own effort and through the 
 pinched and scantily paid labor of their fellows; that of those who 
 
EFFICACY OF SAVING ILLUSTRATED BY FACTS. 7 I 
 
 become wealthy, the smallest possible .proportion become so through 
 saving. 
 
 Nothing can show the absurdity of this economic proposition 
 more conclusively than a few facts. 
 
 During the past fifty years Commodore Vanderbilt and his son 
 acquired wealth to an amount rated at $200,000,000; that is, during 
 that period, these men saved $4,000,000 per annum. If they gained 
 $4,000,000 per annum through saving, which is a passive, abstemious 
 operation, how soon would the country from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, from Maine to Texas, be crowded with armies of savers, 
 many of whom would risk the hardships of actual hunger and ex- 
 posure to the verge of starvation or death ; whereas it is well known 
 that the Vanderbilts were living like princes during this fifty years of 
 their abstentive accumulation, and the army of savers does not exist. 
 
 It is a little over one hundred years since John Jacob Astor com- 
 menced trading in furs at Astoria, Oregon, and in New York. To- 
 day the wealth of his successors, after supporting in princely style 
 several families for a large part of a century, is estimated at $100,000,- 
 000. Now every one can know that neither John Jacob Astor, nor his 
 successors, at any time, went but scantily fed, meagrely dressed, or 
 plainly sheltered ; that in the ordinary sense of saving, which has 
 been thoroughly realized by millions who have accumulated nothing, 
 they have never saved, and know little, or nothing, of what it means 
 to sacrifice the real self; and yet accumulations have come to them 
 one hundred million strong, or $1,000,000 per annum. If one 
 should save $25,000 per annum, it would req'uire 4,000 years to 
 save the fortune which the late Vanderbilt left to his heirs. At 
 $10,000 per year it would require 20,000 years ; at $5,000 per 
 annum it would require 40,000 years to accumulate so large a for- 
 tune. 
 
 How many men are in possession of sufficient income to permit a 
 saving of $5,000 or $10,000, much less $25,000 per annum ; and 
 yet this proof of saving is held out soberly or sincerely by economic 
 writers as the open road to ready wealth and prosperity ! 
 
 A few of another and opposing class of facts will point out and 
 demonstrate more clearly the uselessness of" saving " as a panancea 
 for the ills of progress, connected closely as it is everywhere with in- 
 creased and increasing poverty among those born too late, arrived 
 too late, or developed too late. In the State of Georgia, recently, 
 men having families to support, have been paid for their labor 
 the munificent sum of 80 cents per day. In a country where 
 food, clothing and the common et ceteras of life are above the average 
 price, livelihood upon these wages is barely possible. Twelve of 
 these men struck for higher wages because it was impossible to sup- 
 port themselves in decency or comfort thereby. Employers combined 
 
72 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS, 
 
 and threatened if these twelve men did not return to work at 80 
 cents per day, the mills would be closed, and 6000 others would be 
 debarred that labor — employment through which alone they were able 
 to eke out a miserable existence. The men exercising the limited 
 rights of American freedmen, refused to return at the wages offered. 
 The threat was executed, and 6000 men and women were turned 
 away from their daily bread. After four months of struggle and hard- 
 ships they were driven to return to work at the offered wages. 
 
 Will any man show how these employees, at 80 cents per day, are 
 to be benefited by this wonderful economic panacea of saving? 
 How is comfort and competence, discarding all thought of wealthy to 
 be secured through saving the residue which remains, after such a liveli- 
 hood as will sustain the laborers in a working condition ? To make 
 saving even a possibility, men must have surplusages. Whence are 
 the surplusages to be derived with incomes so inconsiderable and 
 scanty? If men liv^ at all well, the commodities to be secured by 
 less than $5 per week in support of self and family, will little more 
 than hold soul and body together. 
 
 While persons so circumstanced are driven to economize in all 
 possible modes to make " both ends meet," to commend such men 
 to save, with a reasonable view of securing the comforts and bless- 
 ings of modern civilized life, of reaching the status of competency, is 
 little less than affrontive mockery. 
 
 But how much worse conditioned are these Georgia operatives 
 than the vast mass of wage, salary and free workers of the world ? In 
 America, by the census of 1880, the average income of those who were 
 dependent for advancement and affluence on wages, salaries and fees 
 was about $340 per annum. This estimate includes those occupied 
 by the learned professions and those engaged in personal service ; of 
 whom, thousands of the former are in receipt of salaries and incomes 
 varying from $1000 to $25,000 per annum. If these were eliminated 
 from the whole number dependent on fixed incomes, the average 
 income of the laborors of America would not exceed $300 per 
 annum. While under exceptional circumstances a few single men 
 may be and have been capable of laying aside in a few years a small 
 stock of money with which further advances towards self employment 
 may be made, in the vast majority of cases, through inadvertance, 
 incidents and accidents, sickness and misfortunes, and unexpected 
 responsibilities, the entire sum of $300 is not only fully consumed, 
 but large numbers are unable to meet the most common obligations. 
 
 But how does saving effect those already rich, and through them 
 the entire community ? Having surplusages, which under interest 
 are continually increasing in volume, they are all able to save and 
 to increase their savings from year to year. With them, saving 
 makes accumulations : thousand upon thousand, million upon mil- 
 
THE RICH MUST EXPEND, NOT SAVE 73 
 
 lion ; obstructing more and more the equable circulation of those 
 values which in uniform and unhindered flow, give life and vigor, 
 not only to organized society as a whole, but satisfactory existence to 
 each individual unit thereof. 
 
 Saving with those who have already accumulated, but aggravates 
 the difficulties which have begun to settle down upon this present 
 civilization. It increases those already cumulative obstructions, 
 which of all things, by a wholesale dispersion, need most to be de- 
 creased. The rich need the rather to expend than save ; not to 
 expend in order that more and greater wealth may come back to 
 them ; not to invest for renewed and increased profits, but that it 
 may not come back to them in any quantity whatever ; that it may 
 go out through an uninterested process of industrial duty to those 
 from whom, through the assertion of industrial right in excess, it has 
 previously been taken. 
 
 Let the rich sell what they have ; see that the poor receive what 
 they have lost through despoilments, touching natural values in land 
 and raw material and through the monstrous exactions of modern 
 industrial life. ' Let the poor use without waste ; economize. The 
 industrial machinery of the nation altered and so operated, will 
 gradually restore confidence in the beneficence of civil and political 
 freedom, and every man may congratulate himself and thank God 
 that he lives in a day of true progress and enjoys the beneficence of 
 industrial institutions, as well as religious, political and civil, both 
 humane and wise. 
 
 Saving entered upon as a virtue often becomes a vice, and follow- 
 ing the channels of subjective development, terminates in senseless 
 and miserly niggardliness with the person, and wealth "piled Alps 
 on Alps " in the graneries arid counting houses of those who never 
 use, but employ it only for further increase or gratification of the 
 most base sensuality. Saving is but one-half of the circle of life. It 
 embodies alone the get, the hold, the accumulative element of in- 
 dustrial life, — a principle which, operated alone, has worked the des- 
 truction of previous civilizations, and constitutes the most dangerous 
 element incorporated within that which is now undergoing a crucial 
 ordeal. 
 
 Another of these underbrush saplings calculated to interrupt a clear 
 view of industrial duties as connected with economic life, is the 
 common utterance, "Laissez faire." 
 
 Nothing is more deceptive or delusive than the idea embodied in 
 this phrase. It arises in part from the apparent impotence of the 
 individual in effecting social changes ; in part from the natural indo- 
 lence which inheres in all persons, and in part from selfish motives 
 of those interested in the present status. It is one of the conserva- 
 
74 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 tive slogans of those who hold the earth and its wealth' in their 
 power, and who are determined to retain it. 
 
 It emanates from the same subjective source as did that famous 
 reply of the seceding States to the demands of the Union, " We 
 want to be let alone." They held a few million blacks in hopeless 
 slavery, and wanted to.be let alone in their favorite phase of oppres- 
 sion. To-day, in every civilized nation a small minority hold a large 
 majority in a form of slavery, so commingled with the simplest forms 
 of freedom and so buttressed by the deceitful phases of equity that it 
 has escaped notice of current intelligence ; and this minority in re- 
 sponse to the restless activity and world-wide demands for reform, 
 cry out, "Laissez faire, laissez faire." 
 
 While it becomes every person to consider with modesty his power 
 either upon his own country, or upon the erratic and perverted modes 
 of national and social development, he is not warranted in with-hold- 
 ing his power — whatever it may be — from increasing the momentum 
 of progress in its many-phased movements. No man exists whose 
 influence for or against the betterment of human conditions cannot 
 be weighed. Even though possessed of a lofty faith, which rests 
 hopefully upon a superior wisdom and power to direct the move- 
 ments of nations and the evolutions of humanity, no man is to be 
 excused from participating, so far as he is capable, in the magnificent 
 movements of his own times, and among his own countrymen. A 
 good citizen can do no less than thoroughly inform himself of the 
 designs of the Master Workman and the avenues through which 
 humanity is moving to final perfection and triumph, and so adapt 
 himself to the marching and countermarching, that his influence 
 may parallel and support, not resist, the general advance. It is to 
 the individual interest to move with, ratYier than against the currents 
 of Omnipotent blessing and power. No rational man can afford to 
 resist the stately steppings of human evolution, or to oppose the far- 
 reaching and imposing changes in progress, for the betterment of 
 human conditions. No man who cares the least particle for the 
 interest of his fellows can afford to settle down under the obstructive 
 banners of "laissez faire." 
 
 A better conception of the scope and value of the terms produc-' 
 tion, accumulation, saving, self-sacrifice, and laissez faire^ and their 
 relation to thought, old and new, opens to clearer conception and 
 easier acceptance the doctrine of industrial duties and its just rela- 
 tion to industrial rights. Let us now proceed. 
 
 The common conception of duty scarcely touches the practical 
 details of industrial Hfe. Business is said to be business ; and if one 
 fulfills his contracts and discharges debts which accrue in the changes 
 and interchanges of industry, he is likely to infer that nothing further 
 is due from him to the balance of mankind ; nor, is there, if we 
 
DUTY TO GIVE RECOGNIZED INTUITIVELY. 75 
 
 accept the present status with its systemic movements, as a social 
 and national finality. 
 
 And yet, when even the exact and unalterable man of business, 
 turns his attention to the personal and social distress incident to the 
 past existence of civilized communities, a still small voice rises from 
 the depth of his nature, and enters an imperative demand for action ; 
 such action as will convey values, which he has accumulated through 
 industrial principles, from himself, to feed, clothe, and give shelter to 
 those who need and ha^^e not. This demand comes to him intuitively, 
 with a power which he is unable to resist. He recognizes in it a neces- 
 sity for action ; a duty differing from his ordinary business obliga- 
 tions in the fact that the former, unlike the latter, is, to all appear- 
 ances, at least, devoid of the nature of a contract, specifying as the 
 latter specifies names and amounts ; but nevertheless a duty which 
 must be regarded with such output of his wealth as his personal gen- 
 erosity and judgment may dictate. This duty has to his mind a 
 certain indefinite connection with the production and distribution of 
 wealth — a connection which he has not traced,' and does not care to 
 trace with particularity of detail. He does not know and does not 
 care to know that the cause of the need and distress which he thinks 
 himself obliged to assist in relieving, can be traced by covered path- 
 ways, through industrial processes to his own door and to the door 
 of others actively pushing the movements of the industrial world. 
 
 This duty which is performed with more alacrity as it is stimulated 
 by sentiment and sympathy, is to be regarded as the industrial duty 
 of charity. It is none the less a duty because it is not enforced by 
 implied or expressed contract between the recipient and the giver. 
 But there is an implied contract ; a contract which has been expressed 
 in all ages and all climes with as much clearness as circumstances 
 have permitted ; a contract between the creative forces and the 
 created entities, that the latter shall have, through reasonable labor 
 ample supply of want. The operation of that contract between 
 creator and creature has been obstructed through industrial processes 
 whose end is superabundant, royal supply to the few, and whose 
 result is scarcity, need and impoverishment of the masses. 
 
 Whether the givers of alms are intellectually cognizant of a respon- 
 sibility for industrial obstructions, is questionable ; but that they are 
 responsible, not individually alone but collectively, is intellectually 
 demonstrable ; not with the precision which attends mathematical 
 demonstrations norwith the particularity with which the responsibility 
 of a particular crime is fixed by process of law on a particular crim- 
 inal ; but with a clearness which cannot be reasonably resisted. 
 
 The duty of charity, connected like production with supply of 
 want, which is to be recognized as a duty on the partW the wealthy, 
 rests then on the proposition that the leaders of industry, through an 
 
7 6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 industrial system which has been fixed by them and by the concur- 
 rence of Others upon org;anized society, are responsible for the des- 
 titution which renders the work of charity necessary. In other words, 
 they should give because they have taken. They have interposed, it 
 may be ignorantly, to prevent the execution of an implied contract 
 existing in the very nature of things between creature and creator : a 
 contract which has been fully executed to all other creatures, but 
 to man has been cut off by "man's inhumanity to man." 
 
 What animal or class of animals has ever been compelled systemat- 
 ically to pay tribute to other animals of the same species for the right 
 to move about or domesticate on the earth ? It has been left to the 
 " intelligent selfishness " of man to organize a species of obstruction 
 against the life and happiness of other men, the cruelty of which out- 
 animalizes the cruelties of the cruelest and meanest of animals. 
 
 What are the terms of this implied contract between creative forces 
 and created entities, the execution of which has been thwarted by or- 
 ganized society under the dominion of privileged classes? They are 
 that every individual shall have free foot-hold on the globe; shall have 
 a proportionately equal share of the natural wealth, and raw material, 
 susceptible of being transformed by labor into artificial wealth ; shall 
 have access to and use of those natural provisions made for all men 
 to support their lives in comfort and power, and shall have the abso- 
 lute and only right, each man to the results of his own labor. 
 
 These are the provisions of the contract, entered into with the 
 human race by the creative forces, and which have been, and are 
 now being interrupted, through their natural avenues of execution ; 
 their violation, resulting in the mountains of wealth in a few places, 
 squalid poverty, touching the down-trodden of all nations, and the 
 middle productive masses, heavily laden with the buFden of support. 
 Let us consider some specifications, and enter with more detail 
 into the industrial processes through which these results flow. 
 
 No man demands and receives rent who does not hold more land 
 than he uses ; no man demands and receives interest who does not 
 possess more wealth than he uses ; no man demands and receives 
 profit who does not receive values to a larger amount than he gives. 
 
 And yet rent, which is unjust compensation for the use of land, 
 interest which is unjust compensation for the use of wealth — or what 
 is commutable, money — and profit, which is unjust compensation on 
 acts of exchange, are the approved instrumentalities, whereby wealth 
 is accumulated in the hands of industrial leaders, and slips from the 
 hands of the followers, leaving the latter despoiled and lean. Few 
 care or dare to question the justice of these current processes of de- 
 spoilment, or trace the modes through which they operate in bringing 
 wealth to accumulators, and depleting the exchecquers of producers. 
 But it becomes our duty to lay open these common processes of 
 
HOW THE EMPLOYEE CLASS IS DESPOILED. 77 
 
 industrial life, and expose them in their true nature to all concerned. 
 
 Let us turn the light upon the facts of a single case, and show 
 how, irrespective of his own qualities of thrift, a given person may 
 become the object of charitable work. We will exclude from con- 
 sideration those natural calamities which may befall any man, through 
 sickness, accident and circumstances unforseen ; those spiritual and 
 physical elements of personal weakness, which through finite limita- 
 tions, are deemed unavoidable. It matters little if the person be 
 selected from the ranks of skilled or unskilled labor — from the trades 
 or the learned professions, for all are under the too often unrecog- 
 nized pressure and crowding of the competitive struggle for the 
 prizes of life — prizes attainable principally, not through productive 
 labor, but through rent, interest and profit. 
 
 Let our illustration be personified in a carpenter ; and suppose 
 him to be a man of average faculty, of probity, temperance and in- 
 dustry. He has a small family looking to him for support, education 
 and culture. Let him enter an established or new and growing con- 
 dition of organized society. 
 
 He arrives in a* city where demand for his labor is continuous and 
 wages average, but where the land has been owned for an indefinite 
 period ; where its accessible portions are already occupied by build- 
 ings or held at high prices on speculation, and where manufacture is 
 in a condition Of growing thrift, or full and successful operation ; 
 and commerce and finance are playing through established channels. 
 
 The imperative wants of this man center about propositions for 
 shelter, raiment and food. Questions concerning education, social 
 and religious wants, fall in subsequently. 
 
 For shelter he must occupy a house ; it must stand upon land 
 which some other man owns, but for himself does not use ; and for 
 which either the present owner or some other predecessor paid noth- 
 ing — nothing, from the simple, if no other, fact, that being prior, no 
 one existed to whom payment could be made. 
 
 The antecedent or first owner may have been organized society, or 
 a person ; in either case, assuming to own what neither had ex- 
 pended labor in producing. The land, as an indispensable value 
 was produced indeed before either society or the person had an ex- 
 istence. 
 
 The first owner became an owner only on his own motion ; came 
 to it, claimed it, and put it under dominion through law enacted alone 
 by himself, and established his right by might. 
 
 Let us bear in mind, this is land which the owner is not using. 
 It is land which he holds for the pure and only purpose of exacting 
 from some other man, later born, later arrived, later developed — our 
 carpenter, for instance — a portion of his labor, or the result of it. 
 He holds it for the presumed purpose of his own use, but actually 
 
78 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 for the purpose of exaction ; exaction which is formulated and made 
 respectable through sale in a money price, or through letting, in a 
 money rent. But we are not now considering the justice or injustice 
 of this holding, only its tendency to impoverish our carpenter who has 
 come with his family and his labor to the city where all land is held 
 by a like tenure. 
 
 Let us suppose that he can secure employment and receive wages 
 to average $75 per month. He must first deduct from this amount 
 $24 per month for shelter. Rent is constructed of two factors : ground 
 rent and rent of improvement. Payment of the latter is, doubtless, 
 just, for it represents the labor of other men; but for the rent of 
 land he should not pay, as neither the primitive owner nor his 
 assigns have any right to demand compensation for what their 
 labor did not produce. If he pays $24 per month rent, he pays land 
 rent to the estimated amount of $12 or $144 annually. Here is the 
 first exaction enforced by present customs and laws, the accumulating 
 results of which are enjoyed by the non-producer ; an exaction 
 which, to the extent estimated, tends unjustly to render our carpen- 
 ter sooner or later a subject of charitable labor. 
 
 It is wealth going out from him daily, monthly, to the landlord, 
 without return to him from the landlord of any extent or kind. It 
 tends to support the latter in idleness, thus promoting another evil 
 in society of no inconsiderable magnitude and portentous import. 
 
 But let us scan this matter with a closer analysis. What consti- 
 tutes the value in the sum of improvements for the use of which $12 
 is monthly demanded and paid ? We have seen that rent for land 
 alone is unjust and tends to beggar the party from whom it is ex- 
 acted ; now concerning the improvements : 
 
 Is not some degree of exaction covered up in the additional $12 
 which are demanded for the use of improvements ? There is ; the 
 landlord consults with himself according to the unfortunate customs 
 of the times and business methods, as follows : "I have put into these 
 improvements $1000. I must, beside sustaining these structures in 
 their originally valuable condition, have a standard interest on my 
 money. I will assign for wear and tear and insurance $4, and for 
 taxes $2 per month; the balance $6 per month is my legal and right- 
 ful interest." 
 
 It has been demonstrated elsewhere* that interest is the purest and 
 most barefaced exaction ; a compensation demanded for a fictitious 
 value and enforced by society for the support of an income class, 
 retired from active labor not alone on their wealth, but on what their 
 wealth is imaginatively, and erroneously supposed to produce ; en- 
 forced also through the necessities of an enterprising, active, and 
 industrious portion of the community, already deprived use of their 
 
 ^See chapter on Wealth and Interest. 
 
ANALYSIS OF MODES OF DESPOILMENT CONTINUED. 79 
 
 portion of the common heritage, and intent on winning their way 
 back, through established avenues, to their natural rights in the 
 sources of wealth. 
 
 Monthly, $6 is added by the landlord and paid by our carpenter 
 as interest on money, which money in itself can and does produce 
 nothing and is entitled, therefore, to no compensation. This 
 increases the monthly sum, which — taken from him and return- 
 ing nothing — tends through the matter of shelter alone to place 
 him in the ranks of the destitute from $12 to $i 8 — $12 being exacted 
 unjustly for land rental and $6 for interest on money advanced for 
 improvements. 
 
 But there is another step to this analysis, which on the single item 
 of shelter increases the burden and sends our hero on the down 
 grade towards destitution. 
 
 The buildings and fixtures involve the purchase in open market 
 of a long line of commodities which have been produced by pro- 
 moters and exploiters of industrial operations, among which are 
 lumber, shingles, plumbing materials, glass, brick, marble, nails, and 
 door and window fixtures. The landlord is a fair-minded, honest 
 man of business ; gets as much as possible for what he gives, and 
 pays out as little as possible for what he gets. But he finds himself 
 dealing with lumbermen, brickmakers, marble workers, dealers in 
 nails, glass, plumbing material — many of whom are paying to other 
 parties rents, interest and profit — all of whom are intent on drawing 
 from him as much more than cost as is possible ; intent on taking 
 the indeterminate percentage known as profit.* 
 
 Under the operation of this exaction, which is sustained in the 
 industrial world not by justice, but by power, the present end of 
 production being profit, and every man exacting all he can collect, 
 it is presumed that the $1,000 of the landlord brings him values 
 really worth but $800. In other words, the improvements measured 
 by their cost, their actual value instead of drawing from him $1,000, 
 should have drawn from him $800. But as $1,000 in money went 
 out from him, he figures his interest account on $1,000 and in 
 charging up rent to our carpenter, compels him to pay in rent for 
 improvements, an excess of interest on $200; which, had he himself 
 not been the victim of a system of exaction, under the name of profits, 
 could have been remitted. 
 
 Interest on $1,000 being $6 monthly, interest on $800 would be 
 $4.80. Hence, another monthly exaction of $1.20, supported and 
 warranted to the landlord by the exactions of profit indulged in by 
 manufacturers and merchants from whom he has purchased his mate- 
 rials, is saddled upon our carpenter^ engaged thus far in securing but 
 the one item of shelter for himself and his family ; being a total of 
 
 *See chapter on Capital-nature of profit. • 
 
8o WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 $19.20 monthly exaction for which he is not, or ought not to be, justly 
 chargeable. The landlord having submitted to the exaction of profit, 
 placed on commodites, which he has purchased by manufacturers 
 and tradesmen, throws the burden at once upon the rentor. 
 
 Thus far, the single item of shelter. 
 
 As to the items of raiment and food, if investigation be carried 
 through similar steps, it will be found he is the victim of like exac- 
 tions imposed upon him by all dealers ; a system of exactions, which 
 has been engrafted on industrial processes, and which, not being firmly 
 established in the enjoyment of his industrial rights, he can not avoid. 
 
 If he is followed through his outlays for the common appliances of 
 health, education and moral and religious culture, to say nothing of 
 art, music and travel, before the month has passed, from one-fourth to 
 one-half his income has gone out in enforced payment for values which 
 he has not received, and in the custom and current of industrial 
 efforts, cannot lay hold of ; and to that extent he has been advanced 
 on the downward road to poverty and ultimate dependence on char- 
 itable labor. 
 
 But the money he has paid, over and above what clean-cut justice 
 would have demanded from him, for what he has received, where 
 has it gone ? In land-rent to the landlord, and through him in inter- 
 est and profit to him or others, in excessive payment for raiment, 
 which is interlaced as to its every fibre with the insidious penetralia 
 of rent, profit and interest, in superfluous disbursement for food, every 
 mouthful of which carries the triple burdens of rent, a interest and 
 profit, and in exactive expenditures for the indispensable et ceteras of 
 modern life ; gone into the coffers of those, who through unusual skill 
 and unscrupulousness, by means of opportunities taken and distrain- 
 ed from the common heritage, have gathered about them in royal 
 munificence the wealth of the community; gone to one, to several, 
 to many engaged in various occupations of industrial life. 
 
 But a day of enforced idleness comes ; possibly accident, sickness, 
 misfortune or death ; surplusages, which in the absence of the exac- 
 tions alluded to, would have been laid by for a "rainy day," are 
 wanting. Hunger and.cold stare him in the face, and storm marshalls 
 its embattling winds and waves. Food, raiment and shelter must be 
 found. Needy and unable to provide, our carpenter falls necessarily 
 under the notice of organized charity, private or public. 
 
 The inquiry may be reasonably raised, as our carpenter is the 
 object of a system of successive despoilments, through rent, interest 
 and profit, is he not so situated as a unit of a social system, and 
 does he not hold the power, whereby, from other members of the 
 same society, he may recover the actual losses which, through the 
 exactions of rent, profit and interest, he has been compelled to suffer? 
 
 The answer to this query is, emphatically, no. Assuming men to 
 
HOW CHARITABLE LABOR ACHIEVES RESTITUTION. 61 
 
 What has been taken from this man through profit, rent and inter- 
 est, must be given back to him. The values which he has pro- 
 duced and which should have been in his hands are somewhere cur- 
 rent, and especially among the rich in the community ; they must be 
 collected and returned to him. To do this, to supply wants, which, 
 had he not, like other thousands, been the victim of industrial 
 exactions, he could have supplied himself, the labor of the charity- 
 corps is brought into requisition. Its true province is that of restitu- 
 tion. The charitable themselves, scarcely recognizing the nature of 
 their labor, unconscious that they are the agents of compensatory 
 justice, go intuitively to the wealthy of the community for the values 
 wherewith to supply the wants of the needy carpenter ; values, which 
 produced by him,* but transferred to others through rent, profit and 
 interest, have made them superabundantly rich, and him sufferingly 
 poor. 
 
 Few, if any of those who have practiced and prospered upon 
 this insidious method of despoilment, are aware of its real tendencies 
 and results ; of what is justly due from themselves to the needy and 
 destitute ; but through kindly sympathy, on appeal from the laborer 
 in charity, they donate some small proportion of thfeir surplusages so 
 secured, to charitable persons or institutions, and through these 
 avenues their wealth goes back to supply the want of them whom they 
 have unconsciously despoiled and disabled. 
 
 That giving large sums to supply the wants of the impoverished 
 and despoiled, under the present system of business, with its enrich- 
 ments on the one hand, and its impoverishments on the other, is an 
 industrial duty of paramount authority, cannot be denied. It is the 
 principle, if not the only method by which an even and healthy cur- 
 rent of wealth can be maintained and the fatal results of preponder- 
 ating accumulations be obviated. So long as industrial warfare — 
 competition — is the supported principle of industrial enterprise, so 
 long as to the prior and strong, mentally and physically, through the 
 exercise of might, the prizes of wealth and fortune fall, so long may 
 it be assumed, and logically demonstrated, that an obligation of 
 duty rests with the rich to provide for the wants of the impoverished 
 and needy. It is not asserted that direct giving to any one is thfr 
 best that can be done for him ; but while the opulent and wealthy 
 support a system which must needs result in abundance with a few,, 
 and lack and poverty with the many, so long must the rich, in the 
 prosecution of industrial duty, supply the wants of the industrious 
 poor. In other words, if the world will support and perpetuate an 
 industrial warfare, the world must, either through private or public 
 charity, in duty, take care of the wounded, disabled, and dying, and 
 
 'He is but one of many so exploited. 
 
82 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 the funds should come by private donation or public taxation, prin- 
 cipally from the wealthy and fortunate. 
 
 The inquiry may be reasonably raised, as our carpenter is the 
 object of a system of successive despoilments, through rent, interest 
 and profit, is he not so situated as a unit of a social system, and 
 does he not hold the power, whereby, from other members of the 
 same society, he may recover the actual losses which, through the 
 exactions of rent, profit and interest, he has been compelled to suffer ? 
 
 The answer to this query is, emphatically, no. Assuming men to 
 be proximately equal in capacity and power, no one can, for a pro- 
 tracted period, continue to draw from the personal resources, the 
 labor power of another, unless he has secured over him superior ad- 
 vantages ; unless he has planted himself on the soil, secured the 
 raw material upon which all labor must needs be applied, appropri- 
 ated the natural fraction of provisions and excluded the other by law 
 and permanent investiture therefrom. Our carpenter, and like him 
 many, if not most other employees, hold no such grounds of vantage. 
 He and they are the under dogs of the industrial contention, until, 
 through chance, change or the opening of new opportunities, he is 
 enabled to plant himself squarely and firmly on his natural rights in 
 the common heritage. Nor is it possible for him to recover from 
 others by retaliatory exaction any sensible amounts, until he has not 
 only secured that footing on the land and in the natural values 
 which places him in that just and equal position which he should, as a 
 man, occupy, but secured some portions of the natural values in the 
 soil, raw material and primitive possessions, which of right belongs 
 to others. As situated in the hypothetical case, he is in ownership of 
 neither land nor the other bases of exaction ; he is in the position 
 alone of a free American citizen, in the enjoyment of what is known 
 as personal freedom, but conditioned industrially, and thence polit- 
 ically and civilly, to be plucked of a large percentage of those values 
 which should of right come to him by heritage and by his own labor. 
 
 What an employee receives as wages is merely a residue of values 
 which he should receive, and which the employer doles out to him to 
 enable him to keep himself in vigorous condition for further labor ; 
 the surplus results of which, except under extraordinary circum- 
 stances, must continue to go to the employer. 
 
 Never, in the history of our civilization, has the cruel injustice of 
 proletarian production ; with the employer and the wage worker ; been 
 put to its most complete and logical trial. Experience has but inti- 
 mated under elastic conditions, the barbarous injustice of its nature, 
 it would seem that Providence, cognizant of the inhumanity which it 
 embodies, had kindly arranged that it should never be pushed to its 
 most intense and extreme results. A change of industrial conditions 
 from chattel slavery of centuries gone, to better industrial conditions, 
 
CRUELTY OF EMPLOYERS HOW IT HAS BEEN FORESTALLED. 83 
 
 yet to be reached, must needs have been made through the slavery in- 
 cident to employeeism — the latter to give way to a general system 
 of employment, whereby every man employs and is employed by 
 every other man. But in this gradual transition from the worse to 
 the better — a transition, which, commencing in the self employment 
 of the middle ages, has reached its present status only after several 
 centuries of slow progress, the extreme, grinding cruelties ingrained 
 in the nature of the transitional system of wage slavery, 'has been 
 made avoidable by events affecting the industrial, and especially the 
 commercial status of the entire world. Long before proletarianism 
 had shown its tendency and power to enslave the laboring, employed 
 population of European nations, Columbus had made his voyage of 
 discovery, and opened the islands and continents of America to the 
 down-trodden and oppressed of every land. Independent of relig- 
 ious, political and civil causes of discontent among European 
 people, through the crushing force of the then new slavery — a slavery 
 whose cruel characteristics are as yet scarcely understood — its vic- 
 tims, those employees, whom Mr. Thornton asserts have no natural 
 rights, save to contract for the sale of their labor, who could or 
 would no longer "bear the ills "they had "rather than fly to others " 
 they "knew not of," in numbers gradually increasing, soughfto regain 
 their real rights^-Mr. Thornton, to the contrary, notwithstanding — 
 on the soil and in the raw material and natural wealth, not only of the 
 unenclosed commons of the various nations of Europe, but of the 
 vast and comparatively unoccupied regions of the new continent. As 
 the new and increasing power of wage slaver)^ by every turn of the 
 screw, rendered possible by increasing population and greater num- 
 bers of the unemployed, ground the employee class, laboring from 
 twelve to sixteen hours per day, to the verge of desperation, through 
 various means, secured by various influences, they made their way to 
 the open lands and free natural wealth of America, and there re- 
 gained their industrial, and established their political and civil liber- 
 ties. 
 
 It is but little understood how powerfully the industrial condi- 
 tions of Europe, the pressure of employer upon employee, influenced 
 the exodus of their various peoples to America. The common im- 
 pression is that civil, political and religious causes promoted the 
 European hegira ; but if the matter is closely scanned, it will be found 
 that industrial causes were paramount. 
 
 This open vent of the unenclosed commons and the broad unoccu- 
 pied domain of the new continent and its clusters of rich and fruitful 
 islands has saved — prevented — the nations of Europe from realizing 
 the galling cruelties inherent in the present proletarian competitive sys- 
 tem of industry. From ocean to ocean America has been overrun 
 by the immigrating hordes of Europe. Three centuries have sufficed 
 
84 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 for the wave of population to swell from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific. Thirty years since the wave began to roll eastward from 
 the Pacific, and at this moment the points of vantage and the 
 best portions of the soil have been enslaved, and conditions are rap- 
 idly approximating those existent in the thickly populated portions 
 of Europe. Australia and the islands of the Pacific are opened, and, 
 from the same industrial causes, the migrating hordes of Asia in defi- 
 ance of laws, are entering those sparsely settled territories. 
 
 In general, the result is that the vent which has been open to re- 
 lieve the crowding and pressure of the employer class upon their 
 expropriated employees, is rapidly disappearing ; and the further 
 result, and that most important to this discussion, is manifest in 
 the growing complaints and mutterings of discontent, which, coming 
 from the proletarian slaves, encircle the globe ; complaints and mut- 
 terings which demand, and will have, satisfactory and remedial 
 answer. With these millions of expropriated, enslaved and despoiled 
 — enslaved not by touching; their person, but by excluding them from 
 what, in nature, the persons must have or die ; despoiled, not by wild, 
 tumultuous and violent plunder, but by exactions executed under en- 
 forced contracts, through scanty wages — with these millions it is the 
 same stofy variously detailed which has been rehearsed concerning 
 our carpenter. 
 
 To sagacious capitalistic employers and their financiering co-adju- 
 tors, the present system of wage-slavery is more economical, brings 
 greater profits, than it is possible to attain from the management 
 of chattel slaves. The care of the latter under all vicissitudes of 
 their precarious health and life, so absorbed the profits of the south- 
 ern planters, that few of them with abundant access to the sources of 
 prosperity, attained great wealth. The large majority of them merely 
 held their own against the demands of their creditors, and not a few, 
 never knew what it was to be balanced with the world. In place of 
 paying wages, the entire wants of the negro workers, in infancy or age, 
 in sickness or health, were supplied from the resources of the masters, 
 and with few exceptions, barring the indulgence of luxury, art and 
 refinement, the laborers lived with little anxiety or trouble on the 
 "fat of the land." The emphatic truth well understood by the most 
 sagacious industrial leaders was expressed by a London banker, 
 *in 1862, thus ; "Slavery is likely to be abolished by the new power, 
 and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends 
 are in favor of ; for slavery is but the ownership of labor, and carries 
 with it the care for the laborer ; while the European plan, led on by 
 England, is capital's control of labor by controling wages and the 
 price of property, which can be done by controling money." 
 
 ■Hazzard : extract taken from " Western Rural." 
 
ORGANIZED RESISTANCE IMPERATIVE. 85 
 
 And, this power is gathering grasp and resistless momentum as 
 time elapses, and the avenues of exit to other countries are closed by 
 their settlement, or by laws of exclusion. Organized resistance to its 
 exactions and cruelties seem to be the only avenue left, whereby 
 the wage-workers may be saved the most vicious and heartless form 
 of slavery, which has disgraced the annals of time. 
 
86 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 EMPLOYMENT, ITS CONNECTION WITH 
 INDUSTRIAL DUTY. 
 
 CHAPTEk v., SECTION III. 
 
 In addressing the term duty, in its industrial sense, to a person or 
 class of community, it is to be assumed that the person or class ad- 
 dressed have been recipients of values, which, if they hold by any 
 admissible tenure, they hold first for their own use, and second 
 from, or for the use of others ; that they are the executors, probably, 
 the self constituted executors of an implied contract existing either 
 between themselves and another party, or, between two other parties ; 
 and that the values in their possession after use has been secured to 
 themselves, ought, in justice, through execution of fiduciary trusts, 
 be passed to others. 
 
 Most that is to be said concerning industrial duties is of necessity, 
 addressed to those who through priority, power or purchase *have 
 secured exclusive ownership or control of the natural and created 
 sources of those commodities which are required to supply the wants 
 and give effectiveness to the efforts of the human race. Being in 
 possession of that which has been created, either through natural or 
 social development, for the benefit of mankind, it is due from them, 
 in some forms and adequate quantities to their fellow men. 
 
 The consideration that such dues are not recognized as of binding 
 force ; that, of nature's resources, what men get, they imagine them- 
 selves entitled to keep, whether they are to them of utility or not, and 
 whether they would or would not be of utility to others, renders it the 
 more necessary that the truth should be repeatedly emphasized. 
 
 To be impressed with the idea of industrial duty, is of the more 
 imperative importance, inasmuch as those who now conduct the in- 
 dustrial enterprises of the world, are inheritors of a system of pro- 
 duction and distribution, which they did not personally originate, 
 and for the misery and unfortunate phases of which they are not per- 
 sonally responsible ; but which it becomes their duty to modify, di- 
 minish and eliminate. 
 
 The term employment in its most common acceptation implies oc- 
 cupation under the direction and pay of a second party. Self em- 
 ployment is especially connected with primitive and isolated phrases 
 of life. It constitutes what may be termed industrial individualism, 
 and is made possible only to those who have access to the earth's sur- 
 
 *Purchase is but a mode of transmitting the seizures of priority and power. 
 
ORIGIN AND NATURE OF COMPETITION. 87 
 
 face, its soil, raw-material, temporary provisions, and the current 
 facilities for production. It may be conducted with or without exchange 
 of the products brought into existence through applied labor ; if with- 
 out exchange, it constitutes what may be termed pure industrial in- 
 dividualism ; if with exchange, it is appropriately termed, modified 
 industrial individualism. 
 
 But employment, as it is intended here to consider it, is not self- 
 employment ; it involves the division of the industrial forces into two 
 classes, known on the one hand as employers and on the other as 
 employees ; classes whose interests at one and the same time are 
 identical and yet antagonistic ; identical as to the processes of pro- 
 duction, but antagonistic as to the pre-eminent interesting matter of 
 distribution. It is at this point where the struggle of competition 
 makes itself felt. For centuries socialistic production has marked 
 the activity of the industrial world. In those times and portions of 
 the world where patriarchal or chattel slavery held the laborers of 
 different nations in bondage, no struggle was maintained over the 
 distribution of commodities produced. The master through a right 
 assumed by himself and assented to by the slave, took the product 
 and cared for the slave. But as patriarchal and chattel slavery yielded 
 little by little, over the face of the globe, and proletarian or' wage 
 employment took its place here and there, as modes and appli- 
 ances of production attained increasing variety, and the division of 
 labor and concentration of the sources of wealth forced the laborers 
 of the world out of the individualistic production prevalent in the 
 middle ages, and entered them in the lists of social, or co-operative 
 production now maintained throughout Europe and America, then 
 commenced the conflict between employer and employee for a distri- 
 bution of the combined results of their joint production; a desirable 
 distribution ; distribution satisfactory to both parties. 
 
 The advance of.those principles of freedom which have marked 
 national and race movements for eighteen centuries, has got no far- 
 ther on the industrial plane than to permit the employer and employee 
 to contract and fight, and fight and contract over the distribution of 
 wealth produced by their joint industry. It is a humiliating confes- 
 sion, but in accordance with facts. Questions of right on one side 
 and duty on the other ; the application of justice, where of all points 
 it needs most to be applied, have scarcely been heeded. On either 
 side, in practicalizing adjustments, has been a question of might; and 
 while the right has been principally on the side of employees, neither 
 party has, until recently, become cognizant of the equities and phi- 
 losophies which have underlaid and still underlie the prolonged strug- 
 gle. On the part of employees the complaint has been to employ- 
 ers, " You are getting too much of the produce, we want and must 
 have higher wages ; " and the general reply has been, " We are pay- 
 
88 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 ing you all we can afford ; if we pay more we shall have no profit." 
 Even Mr. Thornton assumes that no equities lie between the con- 
 tending forces ; that it is principally a question on either side of de- 
 sire for more wealth ; a desire which finds expression in the power 
 and endurance of forces, marshaled to secure and maintain their re- 
 spective demands. He maintains that no obligation exists on the 
 part of the employer to engage in productive industry ; none to 
 furnish employment to laborers ; no obligation, indeed, except when 
 he chooses to engage in productive enterprise, elects to employ oth- 
 ers and enters into a contract, expressed or implied, to pay current 
 or specific wages, he is bound by his contract. On the other hand 
 he- maintains that the laborer is under no obligation ; may refuse to 
 work as long as he so chooses ; but when he accepts employment he 
 also is bound by his expressed or implied contract of so many hours 
 labor for so much money. He maintains, however, that the right 
 attaches with either party, to^finesse, strategize, combine and contend 
 for better contracts. Indeed, he assumes the position recognized 
 throughout the civilized world that the right of individuals to con- 
 tract is the true basis of organized society, and the substantial, under- 
 lying element of industrial harmony ; but in this assumption which 
 is sustained by the past and current, and it must be asserted the 
 narrow and shallow thought of the busy world, he practically ignores 
 that essence of contract, which is deliberate, intelligent and uncon- 
 strained consent. 
 
 No person can be said to have made a binding contract, who has 
 been ignorant of the premises ; ignorant of the tendencies of his pro- 
 posed action and the results thereof to himself and others, or who 
 has undertaken it under duress of mterior impulse, predjudice or 
 passion, or the restraining power of exterior conditions operating up- 
 on him with immovable resistance. It must be admitted, under these 
 conditions, which must commend themselves to the considerate 
 judgment of the thoughtful, as indispensable to a binding consent, 
 valid, durable contracts have rarely been made. If, in industrial life 
 between employers and employees, either or both parties are war- 
 ranted at any time — except compensation and time or result be directly 
 and explicitly stipulated — in combining for better contracts, the ele- 
 ments of permanency is eleminated and consent — if it can be so 
 named — is or may be of so short duration, that consent may be said 
 never to have been gained or given. 
 
 A condition of society, or of the relations between employer and 
 employee, which, without special stipulation, leaves every contract 
 liable to be changed by the admitted right of both parties, the 
 moment after it is consented to, indicates a radical wrong, an irre- 
 pressible injustice, which surges, and will continue to surge against 
 the peace and stability of social and industrial conditions until the 
 
' MR. Thornton's position untenable. 89 
 
 wrong is righted and the injustice eliminated. There is that in the 
 very soul of persons and substance of things, which, irrespective of 
 the conflict engendered by greed between individuals and classes, 
 between nation and nation, intuitively accepts as settled and unas- 
 sailable, those private or public opinions or acts, which rest upon 
 private or public justice. In other words, when justice is estab- 
 lished between employer and employee, it will be intuitively recognized 
 by each party ; encroachment will disappear and conflict cease to 
 constitute, as it does now, both the spirit of the times and the indus- 
 trial order of the day. 
 
 In the light of well-known facts and philosophies, the position of 
 Mr. Thornton is positively untenable. He ignores conditions and 
 necessities on both sides, which, in determining the obligations and 
 responsibilities of employers and their relations to employees, are 
 of vital, essential importance. He first ignores the fundamental fact 
 that labor, occupation or employment is dependent on conditions 
 which have been brought into existence alone, not by human labor, 
 but by the intelligent, beneficent forces ; by creative power ; and that 
 no man can employ himself, much less employ others, unless he has 
 access to, and control of those conditions. 
 
 How can one labor unless . he has a footing on the 
 soil? how can he employ himself unless he has access to 
 and control not only of himself, but of land, of the raw 
 material of his particular form of labor, of the natural supply, of 
 food and clothing, of the tools and implements and machinery, 
 — through whose effectiveness ra^ material may be brought into com- 
 modious forms, at a cost not exceeding the cost of similar commodi- 
 ties, reaching points of exchange from the hands of other laborers — 
 and of the current facilities of transportion and exchange. 
 
 Whatever may be said of the necessity of money, machinery and 
 provisions, as conditions of successful self-employment, two indis- 
 pensable requisites of production — of employment — exist, which 
 embrace values brought into existence only by a common pro- 
 vider. No man can create or produce land or raw material ; no man 
 can produce other commodities unless he has these prerequisites of 
 productive self-employment, and no man has an equitable right to 
 more than his fair proportion of these constituent sections of the com- 
 mon heritage. Furthermore, if by any means whatever, priority, 
 heredity, purchase or royal bequest, any man holds more than his 
 just proportion of this common heritage, and thereby excludes an- 
 other from enjoyment of that portion to which the latter is entitled, 
 from that 7?ioment, an obligation, personal or social, attaches against 
 the appropriator and in favor of the expropriated, first for support, 
 second for employment and wages which will include the full 
 value of the labor applied by the wage worker, in addition to his 
 
90 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 rightful interest as a common inheritor in the raw material that 
 goes in wealth to the market, upon which the labor of the latter has 
 been applied ; fourth, for such restitution as will place the expropriated 
 in the full enjoyment of his natural rights. 
 
 Nor is Mr. Thornton's position regarding the rights and possibili- 
 ties connected with the life of employed laborers, more tenable than 
 those assumed regarding employers. He assumes that a laborer may 
 work or refuse to work ; that in this respect his choice is free, and 
 he is placed thereby in a position and with a power equal to that 
 held by the employer ; that the latter has no material advantage over 
 him ; that it is an even stand-up between the parties to a privileged 
 conflict. 
 
 . In this he errs. The laborer has no choice ; he must work or 
 starve, become a criminal or pauper, dependent or delinquent. A 
 few days may elapse, but sooner or later he must work. From him 
 are taken access to even the natural food of the primitive man — 
 wild berries, niits, fruit, fish and flesh. These means of the poor- 
 est sustenance are obliterated by an advanced civilization — a civiliza- 
 tion which makes every man a unit of itself. If he lives at all, he 
 must live from food produced as is produced the food of the em- 
 ployer. There is no alternative; he must go to work, and if he 
 works he must stand on the land held by the employer, apply his 
 labor to raw material, azid latterly, through tools, machinery and fix- 
 tures owned by the employer. He cannot do a stroke of productive 
 work in supply of his wants without the consent of the owner. 
 Though as to his personality, the handling of his limbs, the evolution 
 and utterance of his thoughts, the choice of his employer he may be 
 a free man, yet to some one of the class of employers, he must show 
 his weakness and dependence. 
 
 No chains are about him ; but through the necessary relation be- 
 tween his imperative wants and the material essences and existence 
 around him, and the absolute fetterment of the latter, by law, to the 
 entire class of employers, he is their slave, or the slave of enforced 
 starvation. He is compelled to enter their service at their terms 
 through legalized exclusion, which, for services rendered, the employer, 
 may personally mitigate. That the terms are less harsh than those 
 of chattel slavery — if they are, all things considered, is a question — 
 does not modify the absolute helplessness and consequent depend- 
 ence of the laborer so situated, on the employer, so circumstanced. 
 The latter, having secured the exclusion of the former, is fully armed 
 for resistless exaction ; and if he does not exercise it to the full extent, 
 as under the regime of chattel slavery, it is not because the laborer is 
 not absolutely in his power. 
 
 The principle escape from the logic and the realities of this system 
 of industry, of these relations between employer and employee, has 
 
DUTY OF EMPLOYERS DISCHARGED BY FURNISHING EMPLOYMENT. 9 1 
 
 been and is, that some remnants — the poorest portions usually — of 
 the common heritage, of the land, raw material, natural food and 
 elements of shelter, especially in Great Britain and some parts of 
 Europe, have been left open to the joint and partial use of laborers. 
 When the exactions of employers have been carried to an unbearable 
 extremity, the laborers could relieve the tension upon them by re- 
 sorting to the commons. Another vent, and that which up to a 
 recent period, has prevented employees from the extreme exactions 
 which their positions, if fully maintained, would enable them to in- 
 dulge in, has been that of emigration. As the common lands were 
 gradually appropriated and fenced in, discoveries opened new coun- 
 tries for settlement. The Americas and Islands of the Ocean have 
 afforded such avenues of escape to the oppressions which employers 
 were inclined to impose upon their employees, that the power of the 
 tormer over the latter has never been carried to the extreme, which 
 the real nature of their respective relations, without some safety valve, 
 would warrant and enable the former to enforce. Place the 
 machinery thus : Employers in possession of land, raw material, 
 provisions, machinery and the means of exchange, and the 
 employees with the latent labor of their bodies and brains, and 
 no avenues of escape from the conditions ; let the machinery be set 
 in operation, and the'- result would show that employers are abso)ute 
 masters of the situation ; that by control of the price of wages and 
 the price of commodity and property, employees would be held in an 
 industrial limitation so narrow that no form of slavery could be made 
 to exceed the injustice and cruelty. 
 
 But let us return to the status described as existing between em- 
 ployees on one side and employers on the other. What man claiming 
 and exercising the faculty of reason and sense of justice, will assert 
 that no obligation or duty exists between the parties of the first and 
 second part ; between employers and employees ? Aside from the 
 stated conditions the one circumstance of a contest continuing 
 through decades and centuries is prima facie evidence that injustice 
 exists, and it is injustice that rankles and rouses 'to resistance. 
 
 But the conditions need only to be stated ; the more closely the 
 relations are examined, the more clearly and broadly the obligation 
 of the employer to the employee, aside from private contract, becomes 
 manifest. 
 
 It is to be assumed that all men being created to live, should have 
 been and were provided with the means of livelihood necessary to 
 the production of commodities adapted to continue life, and confer 
 comfort and luxury ; that the necessity to labor, inheres with every 
 human being, and with the necessity, goes the riq;ht to natural op- 
 portunities, means and appliances of labor : and that every man who 
 has, by any means whatever, long or short, direct or indirect, 
 
92 ^ WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 taken these opportunities and appliances from any other man or 
 class of men, owes the latter an obligation which cannot be ignored 
 or set aside. 
 
 How may, how should this obligation be disharged? 
 
 It can be proximately discharged through one of several avenues. 
 First, through charity, as has been pointed out ; second, through 
 employment, as will be next shown ; and third, by turning over to 
 every man his just portion of the opportunities and appliances of pro- 
 duction and placing him in an independent position of self-employ- 
 ment, with consequent possession and enjoyment of the fruits of his 
 own toil. 
 
 The term employment is already one of wide scope and is distined 
 to maintain an importance second to none in the industrial vocabu- 
 lary. It signifies occupation, implies labor, and through its common 
 acceptation, separates the industrial forces into two classes : the em- 
 ployer and the employee. As may be inferred from the conditions 
 which make it possible for one man to be an employer, from the ex- 
 clusive possession and ownership of the sources of wealth, the position 
 is one to which exaction — from the employee — most readily attaches. 
 Except in isolated and rare instances, no man employs another unless 
 the former presumes he will be able to reap a profit from the labor 
 of the latter. In words more definitely expressed, under other sys 
 tems, the patriarch or master, took the entire product without remon- 
 strance, as both laborer and product belonged to him ; but under 
 the present system, which rests upon a pretense of personal freedom 
 and equality and on the false presumption that justice, through con- 
 tract, is operative between the employer and employee, the employer 
 demands and takes from the employee, not only his portion of the 
 common heritage — natural values — which attach to, or inhere with 
 every article of commodity that labor constructs and completes, but 
 he exacts a percentage, greater or less, of those values which, to the 
 same commodities, have been added by the effort and skill of the 
 employee ; he takes in the goods, more units of value from the em- 
 ployee, than he pays back to him in money ; and he would not, 
 under present business principles, offer employment unless sustained 
 in his efforts to accumulate the most possible through this double or 
 compound exaction. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that the exaction which the employer 
 habitually enforces upon his employee, and which the former rarely 
 if ever recognizes as such, consists of two distinct and separable, if 
 not separated elements ; viz., Fiist, that portion of the natural values * 
 of the common heritage, adduced and produced by creative labor, 
 which of right as a human being and a unit of society, belongs to 
 the employee, and of which, through processes of slow growth and 
 
 See chapter on values. 
 
EXTENT OF THE DUTY OF EMPLOYERS TO FURNISH EMPLOYMENT. 93 
 
 long Standing he has been despoiled ; and second, of those values 
 attached to commodities and produced by the direct labor of the 
 employee himself. It matters not that these distinct values, the for- 
 mer produced by creative labor, the latter by human labor, are not 
 easily segregated, measured or weighed ; nor that they cannot re- 
 spectively be easily differentiated in dollars or pounds. In their 
 totality they become distinctly and palpably manifest in the disparity 
 which exists in the respective modes of life and substantial material 
 surroundings enjoyed by the small class of employers on the one 
 hand, and the meagre appointments of the large class of employees 
 on the other : in the comparative comfort and luxury enjoyed by the 
 former and the antithetical poverty, distress and misery suffered by 
 the latter. 
 
 It is the sum of these moieties, these distinct factors, which, in ex- 
 act justice, should go back to every employee from the employer; 
 and it is the present duty of every employer to see that this ideal 
 of wage payment is lived to as closely as the varying circumstances, 
 and especially the unfortunate and crushing forces of competition 
 will permit. 
 
 It cannot in justice be forgotten, that owing to the industrial war- 
 fare being waged among employers, to place in the market, goods, at 
 a cost less than those manufactured by competitors, the lot of an em- 
 ployer is not always a happy lot. On the other hand he should bear 
 in mind that it is himself, his competitive peers and the miserable 
 characteristics of a system which makes them competitive, and throws 
 the industrial world into contending armies with their numberless 
 squads and detachments, each struggling under business customs to 
 secure most of the plunder of profit, which place him in danger and 
 overthrow his plans ; should remember that he is making use of his 
 employees — it may be, feels driven to — to secure his own ends and 
 advance his own interests against his competitors, and that his em- 
 ployees are despoiled and impoverished as a logical result of his am- 
 bition and greed ; that when they demand in wages, even to the 
 fullness of the ideal above outlined, they are demanding no more 
 than in natural justice and under a peaceable and equitable system 
 of industry, they are entitled to. 
 
 But the duty of employers extends beyond the questions as to how 
 much wages they shall pay and on what ideal or principle they shall 
 be paid. Mr. Thornton and his followers and admirers to the contrary, 
 employers are under conditional obligation to furnish enployment to 
 the world's wage-workers. The conditions alluded to, involve the 
 holding by them of those natural and social opportunities and facili- 
 ties which enable them to be employers, and which place the latter in 
 the generally irretrievable position of employees. 
 
 Of the natural opportunities and means for employment, land and 
 
94 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 raw material and provisions, a somewhat definite quantity exists, and 
 is available therefor. The possession of no one of these factors for 
 successful self-employment is adequate. Every man to stand an 
 equal chance with every other man must be in the equal, and easy 
 use, not only of the common opportunities, but they must also hold the 
 best facilities for manufacture and exchange, machinery and transpor- 
 tation, as well as money. Those who hold these factors of production 
 in due proportion may become and be their own employees ; but 
 those who hold, to the exclusion of others, the means of self-employ- 
 ment, are in duty bound to furnish employment to those who are so 
 excluded. 
 
 The duty of employers then in giving employment to employees is 
 to be determined by how much greater interest the former hold in 
 the land, raw material, provisions, machinery, transportation, and 
 money, than, as individuals, is their just proportion of the common 
 heritage in these natural and social elements of successful production. 
 It matters not, so far as this duty is concerned, through what pro- 
 gressive measures, laden here and there with exaction and despoil- 
 ment, originating, perhaps, in fraud or force, the means of employment, 
 belonging to the entire human family, came into their hands. The 
 simple fact that they hold them to the exclusmi of others^ is evidence 
 of the despoilment, which underlies the holding and the exaction which 
 is made possible and usually follows the holding, despoilment and 
 exaction, for which, if the living are not primarily and personally 
 responsible they are, the profiting inheritors. 
 
 The exact status in this regard is not known in any civilized land. 
 The precise number of employers in America is not known; but it 
 has been estimated at 50,000 and includes those, who not only em- 
 ploy themselves, but besides employ from one to several thousand 
 men. 
 
 The possibility of escape from the exacting operations of employ- 
 ers in a country not entirely settled and occupied are large; but to 
 elucidate and illustrate this proposition, let us suppose them closed; 
 that the land and raw material is held entirely by the 50,000 employ- 
 ers of the country, and that the means of employment is equal to the 
 self-employment of the entire number of laborers ; the number accord- 
 ing to census, being about 17,000,000 o^ active producers ; employers 
 and employees. 
 
 If 50,000 persons hold in their hands the means of employment, 
 which nature has designed for the employment of 17,000,000 people, 
 then 50,000 promoters of American industry, are in duty bound to 
 furnish adequate employment, with fair compensation for 16,950,000 
 persons; in other words, all the means of employment being in their 
 hand, they should open occupation to all. 
 
 But let us suppose it to be thus ; that the constituent army of em- 
 
' HOW MANY EMPLOYEES SHOULD BE EMPLOYED. 95 
 
 ployers is 50,000 ; the whole number of active laborers, inclusive of em- 
 ployers, who, as superintendents of industry are also laborers, 17,000,- 
 000 ; that exclusive of that part of the means of employment, the em- 
 ployers hold in their possession and ownership, enough of the common 
 heritage is still open to use, to furnish employment to 5,000,000 per- 
 sons. The employers of the country having left to the use of those 
 who desire to employ themselves enough land, raw-material and the 
 products of social developement, machinery, transportation and money 
 for the self employment of 5,000,000 persons, are relieved from the 
 obligation of furnishing employment for these 5,000,000 per- 
 sons, but are in duty bound to so conduct the industries of the com 
 munity that they can furnish employment to 11,950,000 persons. 
 
 But let us place this proposition in another light. The productive 
 population of the country is 17,000,000 persons, embracing both 
 employers and employees. If the latter comprising 50,000 persons, 
 hold the industrial reins over the balance, owing to their ownership 
 a-nd possession of nine tenths of the means, whereupon and through 
 which successful productive labor may be applied, they must in duty 
 afford employment to nine-tenths of the laborers of the country. Of 
 the 16,950,000 laborers dependent for existence on employment 
 from spme source, 15,255,000 will look to the employing class for 
 occupation, and one tenth of them, or 1,695,000 will justly apply their 
 labor to the natural and unappropriated means of employment, and 
 thus secure the subsistence to which, through labor, they are entitled. 
 If, on the other hand, the employers have appropriated in any 
 way, by heredity, purchase or otherwise, but four-tenths of the natural 
 means of employment — the sources and appliances for the production 
 of wealth — and the balance six-tenths is left open to the use of others, 
 then the employers, according to the provisions of this proposition, 
 are bound to find work for 6,780,000 persons. The balance having 
 free or equal access to the unappropriated means of self-employment, 
 could hold the employing class to no obligation for occupation and 
 wages. 
 
 These figures are introduced merely to elucidate in a plain but de- 
 cisive manner the proportional extent of the obligation which em- 
 ployers owe to the unemployed of their respective communities : the 
 equity of the demand on employers, being based on the fact that 
 as employers they have taken from others, through current methods, 
 the natural means of employment, land, raw material, provisions 
 and the social means of production, — tools, implements, machinery, 
 transportation and money — to some amount over and above what 
 self-employment alone would necessitate ; that that over-amount, 
 whether it be large or small, is necessarily taken from others who 
 have, in the said raw material and the social means of productive ef- 
 fort, also a right to apply their own labor for their own sustenance 
 
96 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 where it can be made reasonably effective and productive. Denial 
 of these obligations and refusal to act thereon has resulted in far-reach- 
 ing and wide-spread poverty and misery. Denial of employment 
 seems proper and reasonable only because employers know but little 
 of the rationale and less of the equities which attach to the responsi- 
 ble position which, in every nation, they have assumed to occupy. 
 Men in the most civilized communities have denied the simplest dic- 
 tates of natural justice and natural law, and may possibly continue 
 to do so, until justice in its own way, and good time comes to judg- 
 ment and awards to each and every man his inalienable interests in 
 the means of employment, in sources of the world's wealth, or in the 
 wealth brought to the finish and perfection of use through labor. A 
 clear and enlarged view of the scope of these functions as the domi- 
 native element of industrial life, and of their obligations to the nation 
 which gives them patronage and support, should be acquired by the 
 employers of every land. 
 
 It is one avenue out of the industrtal disturbances of the times ; 
 and the only one compatible with the preservation of private enter- 
 prise on one hand, and the establishment of industrial justice on the 
 other. 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF THE MEANS OF EMPLOYMENT. 97 
 
 DUTY OF RESTITUTION. 
 CHAPTER v., SECTION V. 
 
 Ic is in evidence through accessible statistics that the sources oY 
 wealth and appliances of production, or what is tantamount, the means 
 and avenues for employment, individual or social, are held by a 
 small portion of the population, occupying the territory of every 
 civilized nation. 
 
 As respects the several nations which fall under this designation, it 
 is but a simple matter of varying proportion; of entire or fractional 
 appropriation. In America the means of employment are as yet but 
 partially seggregated. The best portions, the points of vantage which 
 dominate and probably will continue to dominate manufacturing and 
 commercial interests are gone; but much outlying land in tributary 
 districts is yet accessible to those who would afford themselves self- 
 employment and thereby escape the exactions of employers. In 
 France the means of employment are fully absorbed ; but the lands 
 were distributed under the first Napoleon, placing some 7,000,000 
 people with direct access to the earth, and in close contact with the 
 other means and appliances of self-employment. In England and por- 
 tions of Europe the natural sources of wealth and means of employ- 
 ment have been acquired by the class of employers, — agricult- 
 uralists, manufacturers and merchants, — and concentrated into re- 
 markably few hands. 
 
 What the exact ratio, in these countries, which the number of em- 
 ployers bear to the number of employees and the ratio of means of 
 ployment appropriated by the former, and the quantity of means 
 left to the latter unappropriated, can be definitely determined 
 only by a collection and arrangement of facts not easily accessible; 
 but it is clear that the former hold in their hands the power to afford 
 the latter, through wages, ample means of comfortable life ; Malthus, 
 to the contrary notwithstanding ; freedom from conditions of abject 
 and degrading poverty, it is clear that the latter, debarred from the 
 means of self-employment, are as completely dependent upon the 
 former for food, clothing and shelter, as was the chattel slave upon 
 his owner, or the hound upon his master. 
 
 Under these conditions what shall be done by the party in power — 
 the small class of employers ? What is their duty to the large masses 
 unnaturally, immoderately and unjustly dependent upon them for 
 the means of existence? 
 
 They must take one of three courses ; adopt one of three methods 
 to discharge the imperative duty which rests upon them. First, they 
 
98 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 must feed, clothe and shelter those out of employment and im- 
 poverished and suffering from that cause. Second, if they do not 
 willingly and cheerfully put out the means to support without labor 
 as one supports his horse or hound, those deprived of sustenance, be- 
 cause excluded from the sources of wealth, the duty rests with them 
 to furnish ample employment with adequate wages through which the 
 employee may provide for his own want. Third, if they perform one 
 or both of these debts with hesitation, reluctance, or but partially, it 
 becomes their duty to re-deliver into the hands of society the entire 
 sources of national wealth and means of national employment for 
 such subsequent disposition, in the interest of each individual, as 
 may then be deemed adequate to secure the end sought ; viz., the 
 physical and intellectual comfort and prosperity of every citizen. 
 
 It will be borne in mind, as claimed at the commencement of this 
 and the preceding chapter, that three parties exist, interested in the 
 acquirement of rights, and in the performance of duties. First, the 
 beneficent intelligent forces or the creative God-element. Second, 
 society, with its varied phases of organization from the most primitive 
 to the most complex. Third, the individual, with different degrees of 
 perfection which mark his origin and development. 
 
 The primitive purpose inheres in the creative element ; creation hav- 
 ing been effected for the equal benefit of every member of the hu- 
 man family. 
 
 But these beneficent, intelligent forces, this creative agency, oper- 
 ating only through organized matter, of necessity makes organized 
 society the agent of its purposes. Society is destined to exercise 
 paramount control over the development and destiny of the individ- 
 ual ; but, under principles which it does not originate, it is to be gov- 
 erned by a Power higher than itself, in those operations which it un- 
 dertakes towards its own advancement, and the prosperity and per- 
 fection of the individual. Society is the visible agent of an adminis- 
 tration of even-handed justice, and the maintainance of proportional 
 equality; an agency which it cannot escape, and which it cannot 
 perform with partiality without bringing injury or destruction to itself. 
 
 To this society, moving forward from age to age, along the line of 
 a true progress that it may have renewed opportunity for each gener- 
 ation to adjust the relations of individuals to each other and modify 
 the asperities of class attritions, must the employing classes, having 
 failed in the just performance of their trusts, yield the sources of 
 wealth and means of employment. 
 
 This may seem a bold and unwarranted proposition ; and yet what 
 other course can be taken with a dominating class, controling the 
 governmental machinery of organized society, and handling the 
 means of employment, originally destined to afford occupation and 
 sustenance to all, for their own narrow and selfish ends ? What 
 
SELF ABNEGATION OF JAPANESE PRINCES. 99 
 
 can be done with such a class, and for the entire community, except 
 to point out the duty which, from the responsible position occupied 
 by them, and which themselves, as the prior and primitively devel- 
 oped units of society have assumed, they owe to every individual, 
 and demand in the name of justice that the duty, so assumed, be 
 rigidly and fully performed ? and what next is to be done in case the 
 duty so pointed out is ignored and neglected, but to demand that they 
 yield to the proper authorities which represent organized society, — 
 viz. the government — the trust w^hich they have been permitted to 
 administer, and which they have failed to maintain with careful and 
 scrupulous regard to the material interests of all concerned. What 
 other step in the name of the beneficent intelligent forces, of justice, 
 of the responsible Creator of men and things, can be taken to estab- 
 lish and ensure permanently prosperous conditions, in the midst 
 of which manhood development may reach its most luxuriant, fullest 
 and maturest growths ? If any man will show what other fair, honor- 
 able or just course can be taken, then he is reasonably entitled to 
 oppose and overthrow the proposition here advanced ; a proposi- 
 tion which has been reached without undue haste, or prejudice for 
 or against the supposed interests of either of the parties, employers 
 and employees, especially involved. 
 
 But it may be inquired, will those who have so long held posses- 
 sion and control of the sources of wealth and means of employment, 
 yield them without resistance ? It is not here intended to determine 
 whether they will or will not respond to this last and extreme call of 
 duty. It is intended mainly to point out the duty of the individ- 
 ual, of different classes of society, and of society itself to its constitu- 
 ent element, each to the other and all to each. 
 
 What may be done by the controlling and managing elements of 
 industrial life, those who profit and prosper upon the common her- 
 itage, and the labor of their fellows, is instanced by what was done 
 some years since by the dominant and hereditary classes of the Em- 
 pire of Japan. 
 
 A movement which was inaugurated in that country in 1868 is thus 
 described :* 
 
 The commander in chief of the men at arms, known as the Shiogoon, which 
 has been corrupted into Tycoon by foreigners, was the right arm of the Emperor 
 in governing the country^ At first he was a person who had distinguished 
 himself for ability, and he only carried out the orders of his superiors. Grad- 
 ually these military chiefs assumed more and more authority, till they became the 
 real power, and the Emperors only the shadow of power. There was never any 
 repudiation of the authority of the Emperors, but they were so surrounded with 
 the creatures of the Tycoon that they were helpless. The chief military office 
 at last became hereditary in the family of the Tycoon. There were several of 
 
 *This extract was written by H. Latham, for eight years Secretary of the American Legation in. 
 Japan, and published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 1886. 
 
lOO WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 the great feudal families that held this position. As a matter of policy they 
 established their courts and capitals at some point remote from the Emperor's 
 capital. Under one of these families the Tycoonate was established at Osaka, 
 under another at Kamakura, and under the tast of these families at Yeddo, now 
 Tokio. These conditions of government existed down to 1868, when several of 
 the most powerful of the feudal princes rose against the Tycoon and a civil war 
 was waged. To stop this and pacify the princes, the Tycoon was deposed and 
 the Emperor resumed the reins of government, and then occurred one of the most 
 remarkable revolutions of history. These feudal princes, numbering two hundred 
 and sixty, having control of all the lands and revenues of the empire, with the 
 exception of the five central provinces, at the head of one million men at arms, 
 intrenched at two hundred and sixty fortified castles, voluntarily resigned their 
 J)ower and property and retired to private life. 
 
 THE NEW ORDER OF THINGS. 
 
 This was followed by a complete reorganization of government and society. 
 The Emperor suscribed to an oath of office, which was in fact a constitution. 
 Departments corresponding to those of our Federal Government were established. 
 Governors of provinces were appointed, new codes were formulated in which 
 slavery and imprisonment for debt were abolished, and cruel punishments were 
 prohibited. Courts were established which guarded the rights of all and to 
 which the poorest person could go without cost. Liberal exemption laws were 
 made, whereby the homes, household furniture, clothing, tools, implements, books 
 of trades and professions, were exempted from seizure by judgment creditors. The 
 land which had always been held and worked under lease was given in fee simple 
 to the farmers. The discriminating class system was abolished, and all persons 
 made equal before the law. The 1,000,000 men at arms took their families, in 
 all 5--ooo,ooo, were pensioned, and their pensions capitalized and bonds issued, 
 the interest on which is only $12,000,000 annually. By this means alone the 
 people were relieved of a burden of $200,000,000 per year. These 5,000,000 
 costly consumers were, the majority of them, made producers and self-supporting. 
 Schools were established in all parts of the empire, railroads were built, telegraph 
 lines were constructed, an army and navy with military and naval schools were 
 organized, ship yards and docks were built, a steam merchant marine put on the 
 seas and a powerful public press was established. 
 
 A PEACEFUL REVOLUTION. 
 
 Never before in the history of the human race has there been such a complete 
 revolution, so completely and rapidly made. All these changes were supported 
 by public sentiment, and were justified by the beneficent results they bore. A 
 national Assembly is promised the people in 1890, and as paving the way from 
 an absolute and irresponsible monarchy to a limited and constitutional one, in 
 1878 local elective and representative provincial assemblies were established. 
 These assemblies correspond to our State Legislatures. _ They have control of all 
 provincial matters, taxation, roads, canals, dykes, schools and hospitals. All 
 male citizens 21 years of age, and paying $10 land or other real estate tax, are 
 qualified electors. These local assemblies have now been working harmoniously 
 for eight years. There is no record of any other elective and representative 
 bodies in Asia, where the human race was cradled, and where more than one- 
 half of the world's population dwells. This representative movement may spread 
 and be the means of liberating 800,000,000 people from foreign and home op- 
 pression. 
 
 What the dominant classes of Japan have done in the interests of 
 of their dependent millions, the dominant industrial classes of every 
 
EMULATION OF JAPANESE PRINCES REQUIRED. lOI 
 
 nation can do to better the material condition of their dependents. 
 
 The precise cause which led to the action of the feudal princes 
 of Japan is not specified, nor is it stated what motive inspired the 
 subsequent active and radical changes which were undertaken by or- 
 ganized society under the auspices of the emperor; but it is a fact 
 well-known the wide world over, that no nation, ancient or modern 
 occidental or oriental, has strided on so rapidly in all phases of 
 material development as did Japan after the rebellion of the feudal 
 princes, and the resignation of their rights in the lands and revenues 
 of their several provinces. Judging from the measures specified in this 
 graphic statement, Japan is likely to develop occasion for a new ad- 
 justment of industrial affairs within another century ; but if its lead- 
 ing classes act then with the unselfish resignation evinced by those who 
 have recently turned over to the organized society of that empire 
 their acquired rights, no serious strain between the favored and 
 dependent classes of the future need be apprehended. 
 
 It is the tenacity of those who have acquired rights through 
 heredity or purchase — the latter pregnant of seeming but delusive 
 equity — which leads to the strain and ultimate violence and bloodshed, 
 which a conflict for real right on the one hand, and supposed right on 
 the other engenders ; it is the unyielding permanence of investiture 
 against which the progressive forces are continually embattling. 
 The example of the Japanese Princes, standing as they were with 
 their hereditary and purchased rights against the pressure of advanc- 
 ing civilization, is worthy of emulation with the employing, wealthy 
 and aristrocratic classes of that galaxy of nations moving forward 
 through an active development under the inspiriting forces of the 
 western civilization. 
 
 But what will society do with, how will it readjust to the growing 
 wants of the age, the sources of wealth and means of employment, 
 which may be replaced in its hands for new assignment? 
 
 Two general propositions are open for consideration and action ; 
 propositions through either of which the natural rights of every unit 
 of the social organization shall have assigned to him his proportionate 
 interest in the common heritage and the entire results of his own labor, 
 applied thereto. First, an assignment, as equitable and prompt as 
 circumstances will admit, to each person, of his portion of the com- 
 mon heritage — of the means of employment — which he may manage 
 according to his own intelligence and capacity, either alone or in co- 
 operation with others, for the supply of his own wants, the increased 
 effectiveness of his own efforts, and the development of his own indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 Second, a national or co-operative management of the sources of 
 wealth and means of employment, affording to every unit of the social 
 whole, a proportionate amount of employment and a correspondent 
 
102 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 proportion of the commodities produced by the aggregate labor. The 
 duty of society in making readjustments will turn of necessity to the 
 establishment either of an equitable individualism, leaving every man 
 with the means of successful steady employment in his hand, and 
 making him entirely and absolutely responsible for his own prosperity; 
 or of an equally equitable industrial socialism, affording occupation 
 to all, and distributing to each according to his interest in the com- 
 mon heritage, and the quantity of labor bestowed on the aggregate 
 wealth, his equal proportion of the general mass of productive results. 
 A pure industrial individualism involves an equal distribution of the 
 sources of wealth and means of employment to every person ; a pure 
 industrial socialism demands that society shall find employment for 
 every unit of the common integer, and distribute the wealth produced, 
 proportionately with his labor, to every individual. 
 
 Justice may be achieved, and the duty ot society to the individual 
 be fully discharged through either of these channels of industrial oper- 
 ation. Which of these should be followed is therefore to 
 be determined by an answer to the question, which is the most 
 practicable and feasible ? That course which can be most easily and 
 effectively pursued in conjunction with the creative and providing 
 forces, and which will result most favorably upon the evolution of 
 humanity as a totality, will be determined by following those lines of 
 duty and instincts of love, which, arising in the creative agency, 
 pass through society to the individual, and from the individual, back- 
 wards to the infinite source of all value. 
 
 The present civilization in its forward movement, has reached a 
 point where, in the interests of justice, peace, and freedom, new and 
 progressive adjustments are imperative. Freedom must be given a 
 wider scope than that which pertains merely to the movements of the 
 person. It is not enough that men should be absolved from enforced 
 personal servitude. It is in a manner, and approximately, useless 
 freedom, which takes the chain from my mind and my muscle, and 
 binds me to the enforced service of another through conditions 
 which exclude me from the sources of self-sustenance. 
 
 The very conditions of my existence demand that I shall 
 have some things which may be properly called my own, and 
 which I may adapt to the necessary uses and specialties of my own 
 life — that I should have such reasonable abundance as my own labor 
 will create and my portion of the common heritage will supply to 
 me. It demands also that other units of society shall not suff"er 
 from the prostrating congestions of superabundance. No organized 
 body can long stand the strain of excessive congestions without 
 rupture and dissolution; nor can organized society continue to exist 
 under the increasing accumulations of nutritive wealth in its brain 
 without approaching the verge of a critical overflow. There must 
 
THE PRESENT CIVILIZATION NEARING A CRISIS. I03 
 
 be more freedom everywhere ; from an over supply of stowaway, 
 useless wealth on one hand, and freedom on the other hand, from 
 the prostituting and disabling influences of poverty. 
 
I04 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 NATIONAL WEALTH AND POVERTY. 
 CHAPTER VI., SECTION I. 
 
 The writings of Adam Smith through their clearness and vigor 
 made a lasting impress on the economic thought of the world. Noth- 
 ing reflects so thoroughly upon the want of discrimination exercised 
 by those who have followed him and given unquestioned adherence 
 to his teachings, as this permanent impress. As regards this servi- 
 tude of the current thought of the times, two topics require a brief 
 and especial consideration. 
 
 As evinced by the propositions announced in his famous work 
 entitled " The Wealth of Nations," two prominent thoughts in- 
 spired-the effort of Adam Smith; viz., first, that the desire for ex- 
 change led to the division of labor; and second, that the division of la- 
 bor constituted the active and effective agency of the wealth of 
 nations. 
 
 The difficulty of dealing with these propositions consists in the fact 
 that the first is pregnant with seeming truth, and the second embodies 
 but a small and indefinite part of the truth it was designed to express. 
 It is an impossible proposition and one contrary to the order of 
 nature, to affirm that men were impelled to a division of labor promp- 
 ted by the desire to exchange. The first impulse of a man is to do 
 something, and always that which best suits his tastes and adaptabil- 
 ities, provided that what he does, will, according to his judg- 
 ment or intuitions, tend to gratify his desire or supply his want. A 
 man must have arrived at a condition of rationality requiring time 
 and experience before he is likely to consider the advantages and de- 
 sirability of exchange. Intuitively he first produces, and subsequently 
 exchanges. This position is furthermore, more than proved by a 
 general fact which is easily recognized by actual perception, viz., 
 that while at this moment the processes and modes of production 
 have arrived at a point of perfection scarcely to be excelled, that of 
 distribution or exchange, on any just or equitable basis, is but in its 
 infancy. 
 
 Adam Smith in the statement of this proposition, overlooked en- 
 tirely the order of nature. Instead of placing human and creative 
 effort at the bottom of his economic superstructure, he placed ex- 
 change in its stead. The result today is, that the science to which he 
 in other ways gave form and consistency, rests on an unsubstantial ba- 
 sis ; rests as it were, not upon its feet, but upon its head. 
 
 Exchange was assumed as the origin of that effective production 
 which tended then, and now in its proper place tends, to the develop- 
 
THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND COMPETITION. I05 
 
 ment of national wealth ; whereas, exchange is but the last of a series 
 of industrial processes which originated in the active and passive forces, 
 operating upon the seed, egg and mineral monad, and passed upward 
 through agriculture and manufacture to the world's commercial 
 transactions. It is the last and not the beginning of a series. 
 
 It is evident from a close examination of the facts, that the division 
 of labor did not originate in the desire to exchange, but in the natu- 
 ral inherent disposition of each man to select some form of occupa- 
 tion most harmonious with his inclination and most conducive to the 
 supply of his wants with the least expenditure of his effort ; that ex- 
 change followed as an absolute necessity from the fact that selection 
 and prosecution of a single congenial occupation by one person 
 could supply but a small portion of the varied wants of the per- 
 son. After perfecting his own productions he possessed a basis for 
 exchange not before existing. 
 
 But the second proposition, viz., that the division of labor has led to 
 the productive energy which has resulted in national wealth has 
 encouraged a widespread misconception of the nature and charac- 
 teristics of what is termed the present or competitive system of in- 
 dustry. 
 
 The idea connected with the division of labor is that of individual 
 effort, as distinct in purpose as it is possible to be made. It is ex- 
 pressed, as it is commonly understood, in another form by the term 
 industrial individualism and involves in current thought the principle 
 of competition. The current conception involves the laborer in an 
 isolated productive individuality, contrary to the real truth. It in- 
 volves also in the common consciousness the idea that one man is 
 continually pitted industrially against another and plies his powers 
 toward a separate phase of production in which himself personally 
 is directly interested and in which the next man possesses no inter- 
 est whatever. Out of these forces and conditions has grown the com- 
 mon idea of competitive industry: a thorough and unquestioned be- 
 lief that the world's productions are brought into being and matured 
 to the point of commodity and use through the industrial contention 
 of one man against another ; of one class of men and interests 
 against other classes of men and interests. 
 
 This thought has taken full possession of and is claimed to under- 
 lie the rationality of economic science. The most noted writers, 
 among them JohnS. Mill and Prof. Uevons, maintain that the correct- 
 ness of their theories and the deductions derived therefrom are con- 
 sistent, only with the universal and continued activity of the princi- 
 ple of competition. 
 
 The problem to be solved is whether this widely accepted belief is 
 true or untrue ; if true, whether true in total, or in part ; if true in 
 part, what is true and what part is untrue. 
 
I06 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 It is evident to common observation that competition is a pre- 
 vailing element of industrial life. W e do find men struggling like 
 Titans in all portions of the civilized world and in many phases of 
 effort ; we find one man striving to excel every other man in his line 
 of industry and feeling that he is pitting, as to his productive efforts, 
 his best powers against the best powers of others : that the struggle 
 which centres about rapidity of work, quality of design and execu- 
 tion and cheapness of commodities brought into exchange, is 
 prompted by productive effort. 
 
 So patent are the facts in all portions of the civilized globe, in sup- 
 port of the proposition that a struggle which heats and colors and 
 characterizes the phases of industrial life is in continued existence, 
 that it cannot be denied. But what is all this competitive effort 
 about ? What is its objective point ? Are men in fierce competition 
 with each other over the process of production ? Does the division 
 of labor set men against each other productively and result in giving 
 growth to the element of competition which everywhere impresses it- 
 self upon the observant thought? It does not. 
 
 Here is where lies a mistake of economic thought. The real 
 truth of this matter, a truth which has been either concealed or 
 touched but lightly, is that the division of labor leads not to competi- 
 tion but to co-operative production. The employment of several men 
 upon the production of a given commodity, differentiates or divides 
 the labor, but combines the men into a co-operative community just 
 so long as they are engaged in the specified enterprise. Nor in this 
 regard does i; matter if the labor be performed at the same time and 
 place or not. The construction of a pin involves from first to last a 
 large number of manipulations, each manipulation requiring the 
 labor of one man. If one man performs the labor of each manipu- 
 lation in a succession of intervals and completes the pin from head 
 to point, there is no division of labor, and there is no co-operative 
 production. Competitive production is possible only when the labor 
 is undivided; when it is performed by one person. Just so soon as 
 two men are engaged in the construction of a given article, whether 
 they work together or not, just so soon competitive production ceases 
 and co-operative production begins. 
 
 A pair of shoes from the time the raw material reaches the factory 
 to the moment it passes into the hands of the wholesale merchants 
 passes through the hands of twenty-five operatives. When, in the 
 good old time gone by, a single shoemaker with his kit of tools took 
 the leather, and turned out a pair of boots, he was engaged so far as 
 himself was concerned in individual competitive production ; but the 
 twenty five men, who now operate in producing a similar pair of 
 boots, are bound together by raw material of the commodity, into 
 joint, co-operative or social production. 
 
COMPETITION RELATED TO DISTRIBUTEON — ITS ORIGIN. ^ I07 
 
 This rational proposition is easily illustrated by an abundant array 
 of siriiilar facts to be gathered from any source where enterprise is* in 
 active progress. In the construction and operation of thousands of 
 miles of railway, the graders, track-layers, locomotive, manufacturers, 
 conductors, brakesmen, surveyors, financiers or promotors are en- 
 gaged in co-operative production. This is true, whether all are en- 
 gaged in labor at one or a hundred different places or occasions. 
 
 It is not difficult to convince one's self that the vast bulk of pro- 
 duction effected through the impress of human labor, is carried for- 
 ward throughout the civilized world, not under the principle of com- 
 petiton, but under the governing force of co-operation. 
 
 It will then be inquired, where, if not in the process of production, 
 is the competition everywhere so palpable to perception to be found? 
 Where does it originate ? What is this struggle which is testing ^the 
 powers of humanity to their utmost, bringing wealth to a few, moder- 
 ate means and poverty to others all about .^ Around what motive 
 does it center and spend its force ? 
 
 The true answer is that it is connected entirely and exclusively 
 with the distribution and consumption of wealth and not its produc- 
 t on. As concerns the process of production, general activity, with 
 peace and harmony prevails, but the struggle, contention, competi- 
 tion of industrial life, begins at the point where the results of pro- 
 duction are to be segregated and assigned. 
 
 What has been inaptly termed the competitive system of industry, 
 more accurately proletarianism, — has gradually arisen throughout the 
 world on the equally gradual disappearance of chattel slavery. To the 
 present time the industrial life of the world may be aptly divided 
 into three successive periods ; neither type in its purity prevailing ex- 
 clusively at one time, but each overlapping and commingling with the 
 other in varying proportion and changing degree ; the first passing 
 to the second and the second to the third by easy and in some in- 
 stances almost imperceptible gradations. The first period is that of 
 patriarchal slavery ; the second that of chattel slavery, and the third, 
 that which is now generally prevailing, proletarianism or what is 
 known as the wage and too often denominated the competitive sys- 
 tem. During those periods when both forms of slavery, patriarchal 
 and chattel, prevailed, no dispute or contention existed regarding 
 commodities produced then as now by co-operative labor. The pa- 
 triarch in one case and the master or owner in the other, took the en- 
 tire product without protest, and fulfilled his duties to then existing 
 society, by caring and providing for the slaves who labored under his 
 management. 
 
 The interest of both were best subserved by this course. One form 
 of property in commodity was applied to the existence and protection 
 of the other form of property in slaves, whose comfort and health 
 
Io8 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 were needful to the master to carry forward further production. 
 
 But as chattel slavery gradually disappeared, as the slave was liber 
 ated from the direct dictation of the master, he came,through a change 
 of circumstances, under indirect control and disposal. Manu- 
 mission relieved the master from all obligations and the former slave 
 from the right to subsistence, which before had been his. Each was 
 personally free to do as he liked ; but the master retained ownership 
 of all he previously owned ; which included the land, raw material on 
 which slaves labored and wrought, provisions which alone sus- 
 tained their existence and implements and machinery by which la- 
 bor had been made more effective, while the slaves went out stiipped 
 of the entire natural sources of wealth and social means of self em- 
 ployment and sustenance. 
 
 In this condition the master could, if he chose, live by his own la- 
 bor, while the slave was deprived of all the opportunities and facil- 
 ities of labor ; hence of livlihood. But the master, indisposed to do 
 the labor, formerly performed by the quondam slav e, and attracted by 
 the profits of commerce, found it, not necessary to his own existence, 
 but convenient and profitable to afford the former slave employment 
 as a free laborer on and through the only means of employment ac- 
 cessible to the latter, and from which he had been excluded by the 
 accepted terms of his manumission, and he was so employed. 
 
 Hence, following the order of nature and the history of productive 
 labor, commenced that system of industrial contracts which binds the 
 world into co-operative production ; but, wherein the contracting parties, 
 contrary to the commonly accepted and promulgated belief, stand on 
 extremely unequal ground. The former master, now the employer, 
 being in posession of all the materials of production, and being able 
 to apply his own labor in self-support, or to live in primitive style 
 from nature's own products, is prompted to his contracts by no per- 
 sonal necessity, while the former slave — now an employee — being 
 driven from the sources of his existence by ownerships of the employer, 
 is forced through the imperative necessity of his own existence, to 
 accept any contract offered. 
 
 The contract of the employer under these conditions, is voluntarily 
 made, while the contract of the employee is involuntary and lacks the 
 essential of an equitable and binding contract, viz, consent. A fair 
 statement of the equity of all contracts between employers and employ- 
 ees is,that voluntary action or real consent is possible, and usually act- 
 ive and efficient on one side, and impossible and usually absent on 
 the other. At this point is to be found the pith and marrow of the 
 universal absence of justice, which attaches to the distribution 
 of wealth. At this point the struggle for wealth begins. 
 
 Moreover, accorcing to W. T. Thornton and other writers on 
 "Labour," this unequal power of contract, in conjunction with the 
 
iNJUSnCE OF THE P.^ESE-VT CDXTRA-Cr SYSTEM. I09 
 
 right tc protection of person or property, * are the only rights pos- 
 sessed by a majority of the world's workers, the employees ; while to 
 the balance, the employers, go the entire means of employment and 
 sources of wealth ! Such sentiments applied to the natural right of 
 man, are worthy only of minds blinded by the dust and evil of 
 what />, and what has come up through the centuries^ rather than in- 
 spired by the faith and justice of what ought to be. 
 
 However, in connection with this bastard, unequal, unjust system 
 of contract, rankly originated the competition which seems to many to 
 be, alone, the inspiring genius of industrial life. In this contention 
 for better, contracts, or what is virtually the same, in this contention 
 over the result of labor, which has from the earliest times been co-op- 
 erative, arises the competitive struggle and contest that has given 
 false name to a system of production, in nature actually social or co 
 operative. It is none other than if a dozen boys had combined under 
 the direction of one of their number to manufacture a lot of marbles, 
 whistles and tops and then inaugurate a "set to " to determine who 
 should retain and use the larger part of the results of their joint labor. 
 
 This contention, among the boys, would aptly epitomize that 
 phase of proletarianism which, regulated by laws against fraud and 
 violence and sustained by custom, prejudice and ignorance, is com- 
 monly known as competition. It commenees in civil and industrial 
 life, in implied or expressed contracts with a stronger, more cap- 
 able, more favorably conditional party of one part, and a weaker 
 more ignorant, despoiled-of-his-interest-in-the-common-heritage party 
 of the other part. 
 
 And yet this unequal basis for the making of contracts is regarded 
 by legal writers and by economic writers like Thornton, as just and 
 equitable; just and equitable that a small proportion of the world's 
 population should appropriate the natural sources of wealth and the 
 social appliances of production and hedge themselves about and forti- 
 fy their holdings by laws and enactments of their own making; 
 scrupulously just that contracts so made, should be regarded as sa- 
 cred and binding on the weaker party to them, as on the stronger par- 
 ty thereto ! 
 
 Thus far in this discussion, it has been pointed out that the di 
 vision of labor leads of necessity to a co-operative production ; and 
 the legal ownership and control of the natural sources of wealth and 
 social appliances of production, and of consequence, the legal owner- 
 ship and control of the products by a small party, originates the strug- 
 gle throughout the industrial world, which is known as competition. 
 It is natural inherent, inalienable rights struggling with statute rights. 
 
 If every man, possessed the means of self employment and pro- 
 
 *Thornton, on Labor, Page 106. 
 
I I O WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 duced by, and for himself, then the struggle for the results would be 
 abridged or nullified. Competition might then be placed on an easy 
 and equitable basis. It would assume the more friendly, form of em- 
 ulation, without involving a question of ownership or distribution of 
 the products. Every man would do his best work, in order to effect the 
 exchanges which his wants demanded ; but there would of necessity 
 be absent, the struggle for ownership — ownership following as a re- 
 sult of production — which constitutes at the present day, the under- 
 lying motive for the fierce struggle, which everywhere prevails. But 
 such individulism is as fully, even more, a Utopia, than the alleged 
 Utopia of a social system of which much has been alleged and pre- 
 dicted ; for, as has been pointed out, and can be fully shown, all forms 
 and phases of production have drifted, after lingering a moment in 
 the arena of competition or individual operation, into the co-operative 
 or social. So long as one man from an innate desire and adaptibility, 
 selects to do a certain form of labor, so long will division of 
 labor remain an absolute necessity ; and so long as a division of la- 
 bor exists, no form of production other than co-operative or social, is 
 or can be. 
 
 The most favorable points from which to study the principal of the 
 several sources of the competitive phase of the industrial system, — 
 which however, is competitive only as regards consumption and 
 distribution — are those where a large body of chattel slaves have 
 been set free at one time ; where the relations between master and 
 slave have ceased, and that of employer and employee have followed. 
 The manumission of the slaves of West India by the British govern- 
 ment after the agitation by Wilberforce against the existence of chattel 
 slavery within British dominions, affords perhaps, the best opportu- 
 nity ; and on a larger scale, though affected by the perturbing influence 
 of war, the next most feasible point from which to make the study, is- 
 the occasion of the manumission of the slaves of the Southern States 
 by President Lincoln. The student of economic science who is desi- 
 rous of verifying or disproving the position here taken regarding that 
 phase of competition involved in the relation of employer and 
 employee, will find in these instances ample field for his consideration. 
 
 It is not contended that all competition originated in this new 
 relation between former master and slave. It would only overlook 
 another important source of competition, in which however, the 
 animus — the struggle for the result of production — remains the 
 same. Competition impregnates the tniue personelle of the system as 
 it now exists. We find competition of employers with each other to 
 secure the profits which have arisen and continually arise from com- 
 merce. Undoubtedly, discovery, travel and the rise of commerce 
 have been the historical occasions of the origin of competition among 
 employers. Long before chattel slavery had given place to the wage 
 
WE HAVE NO INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. Ill 
 
 system, slave owners were engaged to some small extent in the com- 
 petitive strife among themselves for the results of production, through 
 such meager marts of exchange as could be sustained where the larger 
 mass of producers were chattels. It is easy to see, however, that ex- 
 changes of no great extent or variety could be — have not been — sus- 
 tained, where nine tenths of the population, possessing no purchasing 
 power, were incapable of becoming purchasers, and it is furthermore 
 a warrantable inference as well as a matter of fact, that before the 
 manumission of slaves, competition among masters was inactive 
 and unimportant. The American slave owners were among the last 
 of the class and enjoyed the benefits of exchange originated by other 
 sections of the country and other nations, and conducted under the 
 auspices of personal or direct freedom ; but even among them, com- 
 petition was of a low degree of intensify. Most of the exchanges en- 
 tered into were conducted for the benefit of their slaves. Few of the 
 masters ever became rich, as contrasted with the rich of twenty-five 
 years thereafter, because the products of cheir social production in 
 connection with their slaves were more equitably distributed than 
 since then, and because the end of their production was rather use, 
 as applied to the support of those dependent upon them, than profit 
 and material grandeur for themselves. Industrial competition, from 
 whatever standpomt observed, and whether considered as to its origin 
 or growth, has been closely connected with, and to a manifest extent, 
 was and is the result of the change from chattel slavery to proletari- 
 anism ; and everywhere its essence has been to secure with the least 
 possible labor, the largest amount of those commodities produced by 
 previous or concurrent cooperative labor. A friendly and efficient 
 emulation resulting in the betterment of the production, is a concom- 
 itant of and attaches to co-operative production with an affinity and 
 strength more than equal to its attachment to the spirit and progress 
 of competitive distribution. Emulation establishes a better product ; 
 competition determines its ownership. 
 
 But the prominent thought desired to be impressed on the mind of 
 the reader is that competition among individual employers, competi- 
 tion between employers and employees, and competition among indi- 
 vidual employees is everywhere a struggle among men, the mass of 
 them freed from direct slavery, for the products of a production which 
 is now, and ever has been co-operative or social. 
 
 We talk and write of our competitive system ; but all methodical 
 writers evince a consciousness more or less distinct, in their vaguely 
 expressed thoughts^ that it is an uncertain element. They have 
 rarely analyzed the conception to ascertain its exact truth. The real 
 truth is the industrial world has no system ; it is in a transition stage, 
 and is hesitating between the acceptance of co-operation in dstribu- 
 tion, or a return to competition in production. It is straddling the 
 
112 WEALTH, AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 fence, with the leg of co-operative production firmly fixed on the oth- 
 er and progressive side, and the leg of competitive distribution, or the 
 conservative leg, in the rear. It stands as political principles stood 
 in the early part of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon said that 
 Europe must become all cossack or all republican ; it hangs back in 
 the march of progress as when Seward, before the War of the Amer- 
 ican Rebellion, uttered the prophetic statement that labor in the 
 United States must become all slave or all free, and proclaimed the 
 *' irrepressible conflict." 
 
 It requires no prophetic vision to see that co-opeartive production 
 must cease, or co-operative distribution must be harnessed to the 
 chariot of progress with it ; and that the ineradicable instincts of even- 
 handed justicehave already inaugurated another irrepressible conflic ; 
 that before we can have an industrial system worthy to be so termed, 
 both production and distribution must become either competitive and 
 individual, or co-operative and social. 
 
DEFINITION OF WEALTH, II3 
 
 FURTHER ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL 
 WEALTH AND POVERTY. 
 
 CHAPTER VL, SECTION II. 
 
 The previous section was devoted to establishing the truth that 
 production has become wholly co-operative, and that distribution yet 
 remains principally competitive ; and to announcing the proposition 
 that before we may boast of an industrial system worthy the name, 
 production must again take on primitive conditions and become all 
 individual and competitive, or distribution must advance and be- 
 come all co-operative, carrying with its advance that satisfying equity 
 which underlies and sustains the movements of co-operation. Acts 
 of production scarcely touch questions of equity, but the processes of 
 distribution introduce them at once, and the struggle for its univer- 
 sal establishment is the essence of that more palpable struggle which 
 now agitates the industrial world. 
 
 Let us pass the topics just mentioned and enter more particu- 
 larly upon that general topic which now demands our attention ; viz., 
 national wealth and poverty. Let us inquire what is wealth ; how 
 it is differentiated and defined ; how produced and increased, and 
 through what causes, and the operation of what measures, poverty 
 spreads its dark cloud over lands prolific in all the essential elements 
 of wealth. 
 
 Wealth is a positive, percepj:ible and tangible entity, and its pro- 
 duction and increase rest upon the effective use of positive and act- 
 ive agencies. It consists essentially of certain values found in na- 
 ture and brought into existence by natural agencies, to which, often, 
 are added other values produced by human effort ; values embody- 
 ing certain inherent or applied qualities adapted to supply of human 
 want, to increase the effectiveness of human effort, and to contribute 
 to the development of human character. 
 
 Poverty is a negative proposition. It is but pure, intangible, de- 
 ficiency, and rests upon the decreased action or cessation of produc- 
 tive agencies, natural and human. 
 
 The production of wealth, considered broadly and deeply, is effect- 
 ed by the efficient operation of active and passive forces, on raw mat- 
 erial. It will be noted that in all fields of production, active 
 and passive agencies are universally associated in the achievement of 
 results, and that these operations are concentrated around and upon 
 some form of matter undergoing adaptive changes. This principle 
 of ccncentration^two upon one — is notable in the domains of both 
 nature and art. In the construction of a horse-shoe by the black- 
 smith the passive force lies in the anvil, which supports the raw iron 
 
114 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 and resists the blows which fall upon it. The active force is in the 
 blacksmith's arm, and the raw material is the heated iron, to be trans- 
 formed into a horseshoe. In the grindinji of wheat the passive force 
 lies in the lower millstone, the active force in the upper millstone, 
 and the wheat constitutes the raw material which is to be transformed 
 into bran, middlings and flour. The production of a ton of wheat 
 involves the same factors. The passive force thereto is the land — 
 including moisture and air; the active force embraces heat, light, 
 electricity, terrestrial magnetism, chemical affinity and cohesion, 
 and the raw material is the seed upon which these forces act and re- 
 act. Birds and other oviparous animals come into being through 
 operation of the same forces, acting and re-acting on the previously 
 impregnated egg ; impregnation falling under the same generalization. 
 The passive force is the nest or womb, and the active force the heat 
 and magnetism of the mother. In diversified forms and multitu- 
 dinous phases, animal wealth, like natural wealth in the mineral and 
 vegetable kingdoms, is the result of a play of forces, the active 
 against the passive, and on matter. One needs but to reflect mo- 
 mentarily to understand that all production centers about raw mater- 
 ial, embodied in the animal egg, the vegetable seed and the mineral 
 atom, and that the increase and decrease of corresponding forms of 
 wealth — riches or poverty — are achieved by increased or decreased 
 action and re-action of these forces. Nor does it matter how com- 
 plicated become the processes, nor hov/ human labor, mental and 
 manual, supported by tools, implements and machinery of intermin- 
 able variety, becomes commingled with the intricate and complex 
 processes of nature; the principle here adduced is traceable through it 
 all. In a single utterance, production of wealth, spiritual or mater- 
 ial, natural or artificial, is the result of incessant action and re-action 
 of the forces upon raw material, through which the raw becomes 
 ripened and adapted to use. 
 
 This teaching is somewhat apart, if not antagonistic, to the cur- 
 rent teachings of economic writers, who recognize that only as wealth 
 which has been produced by human labor ; whether economic writers 
 are in error in this regard is determinable by reference to facts and 
 definitions. The commonly accepted definition — viz., that wealth is 
 whatever gratifies human desire — at once demonstrates the error ; for 
 nature, unassisted by human labor, through ihe operation of the 
 forces on matter, produces many things which not only gratify but 
 fully satisfy human desire. Fruits, berries, grains, nuts, and vegeta- 
 bles in vast varieties and immense quantities are found in nature's 
 granaries, fully adapted, through the natural development of exquisite 
 qualities, to the gratification of human desire and the supply of hu- 
 man want. Animals for service and food, game that crowds the for- 
 ests and fish which fill the streams and school the ocean coasts, are 
 
WEALTH NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL. II5 
 
 fully adapted by nature to gratify gastronomic desires and fastidious, 
 tastes. They need but be taken, reduced to convenient forms and 
 used. What form of food is or can be made more perfect than pure 
 milk? It is natural wealth. Nothing slakes human thirst more 
 completely than pure water, and nothing but oxygen of the circum- 
 ambient air can satisfy the desire for fresh, decarbonized blood. It 
 is especially near the equator, and within the vegetable kingdom, 
 where nature performs and completes her most perfect work of 
 adaptation, and where natural wealth abounds in such varieties and 
 amounts that human labor is but little required to secure existence. 
 Do not these things, produced without the interference or assistance 
 of human labor, come clearly within the bounds of the best defini- 
 tions of wealth ? Hence, another departure from the teachings of 
 most economic writers is unavoidable. Wealth must be placed 
 under two subdivisions ; viz., natural and artificial — the former 
 produced by efforts of the natural forces, the latter by the efforts of 
 man ; or, on one hand, by creative labor, on the other, by human 
 labor. 
 
 Another condition connected with the definition of wealth it is 
 well to regard ; viz., that through whatever evolution and aggrega- 
 tion of values, and to whatever point of perfection short of complete 
 adaptation to the supply of want, the productive process may have 
 advanced, the values so aggregated and harmonized cannot be re- 
 garded as wealth. Short of the line of maximum adaptation, values 
 so aggregated will remain as material, more or less raw, more or lers 
 ripe. Not until the clear line of finish, outlined in the purpose for 
 which the product or commodity was designed, has been reached, 
 can any accumulation or aggregation of values, however nearly they 
 may approximate completion, be termed wealth. Commodities, 
 or products, must be finished to the point of utility. There may be 
 values but no utility. There must be values in what we term wealthy.^ 
 but We may have values uselessly aggregated in great masses ; ta ^ 
 constitute wealth they must be gathered in an orderly arrangement 
 around some distinct end of use, and must have reached the fullness 
 of adaption which utility requires. 
 
 Below this line of finish, from the first effort to the last, labor can 
 have produced, not wealth, but various grades and degrees of raw 
 material. 
 
 Here we draw the line between wealth and capital. It is clear, , 
 guided to the truth by these definitions, that much which is common- 
 ly embraced under the term capVal by economic writers is wealth,, 
 and, being wealth, cannot logically be termed capital; such, for in- 
 stance, as tools, implements, machinery, fixtures, buildings, provisions 
 and other products, commodities and structures, which have been 
 completed by labor, creative or human, to the line of finish, adapted 
 
Il6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 to the supply of human want, increased effectiveness of human ef- 
 fort, and development of human character. 
 
 The ordinary use of the term capital is confused and involved ; 
 nor is the use by economic writers much more lucid or logical. 
 The definition of each author differs from the definition of every other 
 author. It is used indiscriminately with 7noney, wealthy education, 
 industry and labor. Even the later definition — viz., " wealth used 
 for the production of more wealth" — involves rapid and ridiculous 
 transformations in things which do not and cannot rapidly change. 
 By it, a horse used to plow in the morning is capital ; used in the 
 afternoon to transport the family to the park, is wealth. A coat used 
 in business during the day is capital, because it is wealth used in the 
 further production of wealth — in other words, it is then both wealth 
 and capital — in the evening, at a game of billiards, it is wealth alone. 
 To-day, a building used by a company of coopers in the manufacture 
 of barrels is capital ; to-morrow, used as a dance-house, it is wealth. 
 A steara-engine used in my lumber sloop is capital ; if I transport it 
 to my yacht and use ir to propel myself and friends on an excursion 
 of pleasure, it becomes wealth. It is clear that even this definition is 
 crude and inapt ; it follows not the thing itself, but its use ; it draws 
 no exclusive or inclusive lines, and points out no unvarying charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 From an extensive comparison of the definitions given by different 
 authors, and from the definition of wealth and its intimate relations 
 with capital and capitalists, it is suggested that capital is raw material, 
 and raw material alone. This definition, in connection with that of 
 wealth, will bring the use of the terms capital and wealth into har- 
 mony, and explain the complicated facts and rapid transformations 
 which now seem to bewilder the closest observers and the clearest 
 reasoners. The capitalist is a pioneer, an enterprising, industrial 
 leader, who, having secured ownership of raw material, originating in 
 monad, seed and egg, carries it through the processes of labor — his 
 own and that of others — to the complete adaptability, finish and 
 ripeness of wealth. All wealth being derived through labor — crea- 
 tive and human — applied to raw material, the capitalist becomes, 
 through business sequences, the owner of wealth, which he uses — 
 without naming it capital — to supply his wants, to render his labor 
 more satisfactory and effective, produce more wealth easily and 
 rapidly, or to develop his character. The real field of wealth 
 is not enlarged, nor the true function of capital is not narrowed, by 
 these definitions. 
 
 In connection with propositions already advanced concerning the 
 division of human labor and its relation to co-operation and compe- 
 tition, the instrumentalities whereby and processes through which 
 national wealth is produced and increased are made clear. Produc- 
 
WEALTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC. I 17 
 
 tion and increase involve the unrestricted and vigorous application 
 of all the forces, creative and human, to the amplest abundance of 
 raw material ; and when one surveys and analyzes the entire field of 
 operations, he is amazed at the economic egotism which inspires the 
 claim that human labor is the only or principal active producer of 
 national wealth: 
 
 It has been assumed by economic writers that national wealth is 
 the aggregate wealth of all citizens. In a more accurate, strict, but 
 limited sense, however, national wealth is what the nation as a cor- 
 porated organization alone owns — its armaments, harbors, public 
 buildings, parks and other property, which in no sense is or can be 
 claimed by individuals ; but, as through taxation the wealth of in- 
 dividuals may be drawn into the national treasury^ or appropriated 
 to public use, to the full amount of its value, if required by public 
 emergencies,* the wealth of the individual may be considered as 
 constituting a portion of the national wealth. Whether held by the 
 individual or by the government, it is held for use or consumption ; 
 and what the former holds may be taken to preserve the power and 
 efficiency of the government, and what the latter holds is held — always 
 theoretically, generally practically — for the use and advantage of the 
 individual citizen. 
 
 Are not the already intimate relations between the individual and 
 the nation, of which the former is a constituent unit, forcibly pro- 
 phetic that the undoubted care of the nation for the citizen in polit- 
 ical and civil affairs may be extended more fully to assert and jDro- 
 tect the industrial rights of the latter ? 
 
 As regards national poverty or deficiency, which expresses itself to- 
 tally in connection with the condition of the individual, it is com- 
 monly asserted that, as a condition, it has always existed, and that it 
 must always continue to impair the full activity and erijoyment of 
 large masses of the human race. It is true that poverty has enjoyed 
 a long reign on the earth, but it is equally true that its reign has not 
 been forced on humanity through lack of creative effort in the 
 domain of nature. It is human inertia, coupled with human exac- 
 tion and greed, which has led to the deficiencies of wealth, which we 
 term poverty; />z^r//« of comprehensive and effective thought, plan, 
 undertaking and enterprise; inertia, not alone of the vast and slug- 
 gish body of manual laborers, but coupled with overweening self- 
 ishness, of those who have taken the lead and directed the industrial 
 movements of the world; inertia of men and women who, already 
 )rovided with the means of comfort, culture and refinement, might 
 rather turn their energies to the substantial and permanent better- 
 lent of the conditions of their fellows than to lives of ease and lux- 
 
 * Chief-Justice Marshall says, "The power to tax involves the power to destroy"; again, "If 
 Ihe right to tax exists, it is a right which, in its nature, acknowledges no limit." 
 
Il8 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 ury. What has been, need not, 7c>iU rwt, always be. The potential 
 energies of man are increasing, and the powers of nature are rapid- 
 ly advanced to supplement and give effectiveness to human effort ; 
 and that paramount obstruction to the equitable distribution of wealth 
 and its corresponding increase, human greed, must gradually yield 
 to the elevating and softening influences of reason and good-will. 
 
 In the earlier periods of the several civilizations that have success- 
 ively appeared and disa])peared, wealth was not only scarce, but it 
 was enjoyed by the smallest possible minority. Only the sovereign 
 and a small number of his retainers could nourish their bodies with 
 the choicest and most strengthening forms of food ; could array 
 themselves in comfortable, tasteful and rich j^jarments, and shelter 
 themselves in tenements which embodied comfort, luxury and the 
 highest forms of current art. Wealth of the earlier periods was en- 
 joyed, as now, only by those who held the assumed or delegated pow- 
 er to retain control of the sources of wealth and the appliances of 
 production ; or, what was more to their mind, to divert to themselves 
 and their own use, through enforced contribution and taxation, the 
 entire surplus wealth of the lands which they occupied and governed. 
 The requisite power was usually held by a military despot, or his 
 established successors and their dependents. 
 
 But as the power of the autocrat was subsequently and gradually 
 "shared with his dependents, as the plutocracy attained prestige and 
 position, derived peaceably or wrested violently from the theretofore 
 irresponsible sovereign, the sources of wealth and the existing appli- 
 ances of production fell slowly and insensibly into the control of a 
 much larger proportion of the population, which thereby came into 
 possession of the wealth derived therefrom. The proportion, how- 
 ever, even with the later civilizations, was always small; for in Rome, 
 during its wealthiest periods, scarcely more than five hundred, of the 
 many millions who populated Italy and the outlying provinces, could 
 be said to rank among the opulent. 
 
 But when the unrestricted will of military chieftains and hereditary 
 despots began to be limited by constitutional law ; when the noblesse 
 had established their rights in the statute; when chattel slavery had 
 melted away before the rising sun of individual liberty, and the man- 
 hood of slave as well as master began to be recognized ; when the 
 struggle for individual existence had been stimulated by the uncared- 
 for CA-igencies and unsupplied wants of the former slave, through the 
 vigor ous operation of varied influences and progressive forces, a 
 gradual and more complete dissemination of the natural sources of 
 wealth and social appliances of production, of land, raw material, 
 provisions, implements and mechanisms of manufacture, and means 
 of exchange — was manifested, and the advantages, comforts and 
 insignia of opulence which attached at first and alone to the conquer- 
 
NZW INDUSTRIAL REGIME. II9 
 
 ing despot and his immediate retainers, were more and more diffused 
 and enjoyed by a larger and larger circle of the hliman race. 
 
 Even under these conditions, which were proximately realized in 
 Europe during portions of what have been termed the Middle Ages, 
 the quantity of wealth as contrasted with the exuberance of the pres- 
 ent, though more evenly distributed, was small. Subsequently, under 
 the auspices of repul)lican institutions, and of those monarchies the 
 power of whose sovereigns was progressively limited by constitu- 
 tional concessions, under the stimulus of individual liberty and the 
 development of general intelligence in such countries as Switzerland 
 with its social polity, France with its divided lands, America with its 
 new and unappropriated territory, and England through her world- 
 wide commercial interests, through discovery and utilization of nat- 
 ural laws and unleashing of natural forces, through the division of 
 opportunities incident to rapid development and unrestricted per- 
 sonal freedom, distribution of the sources of wealth in some instances, 
 and of produced wealth in others, was not only tendered to larger 
 numbers, but the bulk of wealth was vastly increased. 
 
 In the midst of these remarkable developments, these progressive 
 distributions of the sources of wealth and the appliances and results 
 of production, these onward movements of the industrial masses from 
 industrial tyranny and exactions, of political and civil despotism, the 
 seed of a new industrial regime was planted — a regime inaugurated 
 on the abolition of chattel slavery and the establishment of the rela- 
 tion between employer and employee, which has developed a ten- 
 dency and controling power antagonistic to the present material well- 
 being of the world's dependent workers, as, in earlier days was the 
 despotism of autocratic rulers. 
 
 While chattel slavery, permitted and sustained by the old^r mil- 
 itary and civil despotisms, held its subjects by fetter and thong, and 
 drove them to labor by whip and goad, it was responsible for food, 
 raiment, shelter and general care. On the other hand, the new in- 
 dustrial regime withdrew not only fetter and goad on one hand, but 
 responsibility for food, raiment, shelter and general care on the 
 other ; and at the same time excluded the freedman from the means 
 of self-employment and sources of subsistence. An old form of de- 
 pendence was broken and a new form enforced. In the former the 
 man was driven to rely on his master, in the latter on the land owner 
 and employer. Personal freedom was accorded, but the slavery of 
 conditions — exclusion from the only sources of supply and means of 
 ' existence — was substituted. The former incited to toil through fear 
 of bodily pain, the latter through fear of misery and death by starva- 
 tion. The slave lost the legal right to subsistence at the hands of 
 his master, and gained the legal right to command his own body 
 and enter on a struggle for his natural interest in the common heri- 
 
120 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 tage, and his natural right to retain and live on the results of his 
 own labor ; but, being absolved fro n direct servitude to the person, 
 he ,was re-inslaved by conditions, and driven back to the former mas- 
 ter, who held him again, not through fear of bodily injury, but through 
 fear of physical misery and starvation. 
 
 Who will assert that emancipation was of great advantage to the 
 slave? The gain certainly does not at once apjiear in betterment of 
 material conditions. On'the contrary, in that direction, much was 
 at first lost ; but the change was an initiatory step to a broader and 
 deeper movement, which tended to make the slave a man, and place 
 him ultimatelv, through an industrial unfoldment not yet completed, 
 on a soil and in an atmosphere where freedom from dependence and 
 the fullest liberty is attainable. To become a man he must first 
 cease to look to another man for subsistence, and must turn first to 
 himself and second to nature, in self supply of his own wants. The 
 new conditions, while overburdened with objective evils and circum- 
 stantial difficulties, abounded in the subjective germs of present good 
 and future advancement. They embodied and stimulated to life the 
 sum of those interior principles and exterior forces, through whose 
 interactive energies the some-time industiial system of the world is 
 destined to unfold and expand. Differing from the subjective and 
 objective conditions of chattel slavery, from the ashes of which they 
 sprung, they stimulated the choices of the individual will, incited to 
 the acquirement of individual knowledge, and encouraged individual, 
 self-segregating and independent action. Like other men, crowded 
 with the burden ot a great desire, and seeing in its consummation 
 the sum of all happiness, the freedman did not at first realize that 
 his efforts were handicapped by want of free opportunities through 
 which he could provide for his wants. He did not recognize that 
 he was fettered by social conditions ; that he was launching into a 
 new life, despoiled by statute law of his equitable interest in the nec- 
 essary means of existence; but, joyed with the, to him, great fact of 
 personal liberty, went, because irresistibly driven, cheerfully because 
 remonstrance, with existing institutions and laws was useless, to his 
 former master for the means of subsistence. He found the food for 
 the germ of this new and independent manhood must be fought for 
 with an energy born of desperation. His old master was yet his 
 master. 
 
 In one sense, however, they met on equal terms ; each — the freed- 
 man within very narrow limits — could command his own choices and 
 his own actions, and they found a narrow arena where their present 
 and future interests determined them to certain agreements which 
 would save the freedman from starvation and give the master the 
 benefit of the freed man's labor as before. The mutuality of these 
 common interests is to be judged by their character, the former 
 
LOSSES AND GAINS OF FREEDMEN. 121 
 
 and subsequent relations between the parties, and the ultimate re- 
 sults to both. 
 
 Through this necessity of subsistence on part of the freedman, and 
 the desire to live with as little labor as possible on part of the 6wner 
 of subsistence, for the old relations of master and slave, were substi- 
 tuted three new and possible relations between the same parties ; 
 first employer and employee, second lessor and lessee, and third sel- 
 ler and purchaser. 
 
 It was possible for either party to escape these new relations 
 through one of two or three avenues of exit — avenues always open to 
 the master, rarely open to the freedman. As to the master, he 
 could live in a primitive fashion from the results of creative labor; 
 from the natural wealth which he could gather in the form of berries, 
 fruits, nut's, vegetables and grains, or catch in the form of fish, fowl 
 and land animals from the territorial domains which he had previ- 
 ously cultivated through slave labor. Agam, it was possible for him 
 to apply his own labor througrh existing appliances of production in 
 agriculture and manufacture, and thus supply his wants without re- 
 sort to new relations with the freedman. In either of these condi- 
 tions he was the personification of pure industrial individualism and 
 isolated independcMce. He produces what he consumes, and con- 
 sumes alone what he produces. 
 
 As regards the freedman, his escape from one of these three new rela- 
 tions, irrespective of charity and the violation of statute law and es- 
 tablished custom, is attainable only through settlement on the com- 
 mon land in his inimediate neighborhood — if there be any — or emi- 
 gration to locations, domestic or foreign, where land may be obtained 
 for the smallest possible compensation of toil or struggle, peaceful 
 or warlike. Since the discovery and opening of new countries, whose 
 inhabitants dedicated their efforts to the chase or to herding, t is 
 escape from the condition of social slavery — the slavery of circum- 
 stance — has been opened wide, and millions of Europeans have 
 availed themselves of the new opportunities to relieve themselves from 
 dependence on those oppressive conditions which everywhere, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, sooner or later, have followed chattel emancipa- 
 tion. 
 
 We assume, however, that neither the master nor the slave, former 
 relations having been dissolved by emancipation, desire to escape th ) 
 new relations or their logical sequences. These relations, as already 
 noted, are that of employer and employee^ of lessor and lessee^ of sell- 
 er and purchaser^ and it is interesting to note, in passing, how the 
 avoidance or acceptance of individual responsibility, and hence the 
 decline or increase of individual growth, is associated with each one 
 of these new relations. The life of the slave was without responsi- 
 bility ; the life of an employee involves provision for self from wages 
 
122 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 received, without further interest in the product. In this relation, 
 the responsibility of employer is less than that of master, of employee, 
 is by the same weight greater, than that of slave. 
 
 But. th s discussion concerns the increase and distribution of 
 wealth more than the development of human character. Let us con- 
 sider the relation of employer and employee, and how it affects, econ- 
 omically, both parties to the preliminary compact, and its ultimate 
 results. This compact involves what is lesjally termed a contract^ and 
 implies equality and freedom, and therefore consent to the stipulat- 
 ed terms. The inequality of the parties is in this ; that the employer 
 is absolutely independent, through ownership of the entire natural and 
 social means of employment, while the employee is absolutely de- 
 pendent, pos5;essing only his own person. As a last resort, the em- 
 ployee, so situated, must accept the terms of the employer. But, 
 from this unequal standpoint, the relation of employer and employee 
 is established, and it is reasonable to suppose the employer will not 
 only hold but increase his advantages from cycle to cycle of produc- 
 tion. In fact, he does, through accumulations, which are derived 
 largely from that which, under natural or divine law, belongs in equity 
 to the employee. The employer's interests are conserved by statute 
 law ; the interests of the employee await the establishment of natur- 
 al or divine law. In the meantime he must expect despoilment, and 
 it comes through the following means. The entire products of this 
 compact are embraced in the natural values produced by creative 
 labor and the artificial values produced by human labor. The 
 means of employment being owned by the employer, the results of 
 e nployment fall entirely into his hands. To the employee he pays 
 wages which represent a small portion of the values produced through 
 this co-operative effort. In equity — not in law — wages should rep- 
 resent a proximately equal interest in the total values produced, 
 because of the equal interest of each in the common heritage and 
 values derived therefrom, and the equal labor bestowed by each 
 thereon and the values produced thereby. Whatever is retained by 
 the employer more than his portion of the total values so produced is 
 retained by virtue of his legalized ownership — an ownership opposed 
 by equity and natural law — of all the common heritage and his cur- 
 rent exclusion of the employee therefrom. 
 
 This percentage taken from the employee by the employer, over 
 and above what the latter has produced and inherited, is termed 
 profit, and the phase of production that admits this exaction is termed 
 production for profit, to distinguish it ivom production for use, in which 
 equity is regarded. It is through this exaction of profit that the em- 
 ployer becomes rich and the employee remains poor. 
 
 But, there is another percentage of profit which the employer takes 
 not from the employee but from the consumer. When the product 
 
NEW RESPONSIBILITY OF FREEDMEN. 1 23 
 
 or commodity is transferred to market, and demand is found strong 
 and supi)ly small, he takes in gold a new percentage of values over 
 and above the real values embodied in his commodity. This is the 
 temporary price of the goods, and is pure, unadulterated exaction. 
 
 Let us next consider the new relation of lessor and lessee. The 
 entire difficulty under which the new freedman labors is legal exclu- 
 sion from the means of employment, from his equitable interests in 
 the common heritage, natural and social. Observing the rapidity of 
 accumulation by his employer, the employee pursuades himself that 
 through the management of his own labor he may advance his own 
 interests more rapidly. 
 
 Unwilling to risk the purchase of land and assume entire responsi- 
 bility of production, he determines to become a self-employee through 
 lease of land and tools, implements and machinery, and purchase of 
 provisions. Here commences another net^otiation in which the 
 former employer, rfow lessor, holds all the points of advantage. 
 Compensation for the use of land is at once demanded, and to the 
 demand forced consent is given. A contract, written or verbal, is 
 closed, and the former slave, now lessee, is confronted with the pay- 
 ment of rent. According to natural equity, the land required to fur- 
 nish him employment is his own ; and the natural values produced 
 thereon by creative labor are also justly his, as well as the values 
 produced by his own labor. In this case, no confusion of thought is 
 possible, as might easily be with the former relation. Rent is a clear 
 exaction on the part of the lessor, in which he is sustained by statute 
 law against the equities of natural or divine law ; an exaction in 
 which no equity of labor applied can be introduced by the lessor, 
 and, unless products have been in great demand and prices high, 
 the lessee finds that the exaction of rent leaves him ultimately with- 
 out greater progress toward hib emancipation from the new slavery 
 than if, with less responsibility, he had remained an employee. Prof- 
 it and rent have played the same game with his prospects. In the 
 meantime, without labor and with less responsibilitv, the accumula- 
 tions of the former master, now lessor, have constantly increased, 
 taken, as are both, from the laborer's equitable interest in the com- 
 mon heritage and from the res ilts of his labor. 
 
 The other new and possible relation — third and last — between the 
 two parties is that of seller and purchaser. The same legal exclu- 
 sion from his interest in the common heritage moves him to make 
 this last attempt and accept the extreme responsibility. He deter- 
 mines to purchase access to his interest in the common heritage, the 
 natural and social means of self-employment ; to ransom his inherit- 
 ance from the possession of those who, through statute law, have 
 robbed him of it. He is also incited to this new relation by the 
 possible high prices of products, and the probable advance in the 
 
124 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 • 
 
 price of land. He hopes to secure these advantages, as he has occa- 
 sionally seen the employer and lessor do. He enters into a contract 
 to pay a given sum for a given areg. of land ; but he is at once met 
 with the inquiry, " Where is my purchasing power? " He has none. 
 He is a poor freedman. But the matter is arranged by another de- 
 vice of this regime, prolific in financial devices. The credit system is 
 inaugurated. He buys the land, but owes for it, and on his debt a per- 
 centage of interest is annually taken, large enough to draw from him the 
 net results of his new enterprise, increased responsibility and ardu- 
 ous labor. Or, he may borrow the money, pay the vendor for his 
 land, and interest to a third party. It is all the same. Exclusion 
 from his equities in the common heritage, natural and social, is the 
 prime and principal cause of interest, as it is of rent. The result, ex- 
 traordinaries excepted, is the same to him as purchaser, and to the 
 other party as vendor, as to him as lessee or employee, and the 
 other party as lessor or employer He obtains subsistence as he did 
 when slave, employee or lessee, and remains poor as then, while the 
 other party lives from labor not his own, and accumulates wealth as 
 he did when he was master, employer or lessor. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that the economic games of profit, rent or 
 interest are the same game, under different names and disguises, and 
 bring the same results to those who willingly or unwillingly play at 
 them. Modern governments have assumed to. own land, raw mate- 
 rial and the natural appliances of production, the real ownership of 
 which is vested in Almighty God, have sold it to Tom, Dick and 
 Harry, and excluded the other heirs, of a common Father, from 
 their heritage. 
 
 This diversion was undertaken to portray the subtle elements of 
 that industrial regime which has succeeded the regime of chattel 
 slavery, to show through what causes and methods, wealth, the dis- 
 tribution of which had escaped the domination of military and civil 
 despots, has again fallen under the new concentrating forces and 
 processes of modern private enterprise. The amount of wealth, as 
 contrasted with former times, is enormous ; and its concentration 
 has so much more than kept pace with production that, though the 
 sum of wealth has been vastly increased, relatively, the poor are 
 poorer and the rich richer than at any other period of national or 
 social growth. 
 
 Kings and potentates, who formerly held national wealth subject 
 to their despoiling caprices, are now the subjects of this industrial 
 imperium in imperio. Where once they commanded they now obey. 
 The real kings are industrial kings. 
 
SOURCE OF PURCHASING POWER. 1 25 
 
 DEMAND AND THE RESULTS OF PROFIT. 
 CHAPTER VI., SECTION IV. 
 
 An erroneous impression prevails in most communities, that the 
 production of wealth reaches, in every cycle, the highest possible 
 maximum. This impression is sustained by the frequent assertion 
 that, at one time and another, at one place or another, demand for 
 various commodities has ceased. On the heels of this oft-repeafed 
 assertion, and explanator)^ thereof, arises the well-known cry of over- 
 production^ and, as a logical sequence, general activity, through 
 which the aggregate of national wealth is created, is systematically 
 suppressed, and production is cruelly arrested. 
 
 Let us consider these impressions, assertions and events in their 
 order, and separate the truth from the error ; and, first, as to the 
 nature and power of the term demand. It is distinctly assumed 
 that the absence of demand is the first of a series of facts, which, at 
 once, obstructs, and subsequently arrests production. 
 
 Psychologically and subjectively considered, demand, want and con- 
 suming capacity are convertible or closely related terms. One de- 
 mands what he wants, and wants what he demands ; he wants up to 
 the fullness of his consuming capacity, and when consuming capac- 
 ity is filled to the line of satiety wants no more. Demand is the 
 prerogative of consumers, as supply is the function of producers. 
 
 An occult element is embodied in the term demand which is ab- 
 sent m the term want. That element is purchasing power. I de- 
 mand only when I have purchasing power. I want even when I 
 have no purchasing power. Economically and objectively consid- 
 ered, demand must always be, want may or may not be, buttressed 
 and sustained by ample purchasing power. Want, or subjective, un- 
 supplied consuming capacity, maintains an even movement, or under- 
 goes a constant and steady national increase, while the presence or 
 absence of purchasing power depends on the will of those who con- 
 trol its origin, manage the details of its development and distribute 
 'the sums of money that represent, support and make it efficient. 
 
 The importance of purchasing power can hardly be over-estimated. 
 What is usually termed exchange — the instrumentality through which 
 products pass from producers to consumers — is nothing more or less 
 than the current process of sale and purchase. A seller on one side, 
 a purchaser on the other — both by common consent evading the de- 
 mands of equity — the former disposes of his commodities at the 
 highest possible price, and the latter gets them by purchase at the 
 lowest possible price. At this simple process, the line is distinctly 
 drawn between the two essential factors of industrial economics, 
 
126 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 producers and consumers ; and when one fully comprehends the 
 truth, that the consumers of a given commodity practically consti- 
 tute the entire nation, and that the entire want of the nation is sup- 
 pliable only through purchase, he will then realize the paramount 
 necessity of ample purchasing power. Demand, to be effective, 
 must be sustained by adequate purchasing power, without which it is 
 want unsupplied — poverty with possible beggary, theft or prostitution. 
 
 What is purchasing power, and what is its source? 
 
 The most common conception of purchasing power is embodied 
 in money, and practically the conception is correct. Nevertheless, 
 this conception does not touch its true or substantial source. The 
 reason why money, paper or bullion, is available to the purchaser, 
 constitutes an effective purchasing power, is because it draws upon 
 any and all those values which are included in the sum total of na- 
 tional wealth. It is not money which satisfies want; it is product, 
 commodity wealth that feeds, clothes, and shelters ; and it is certain 
 qualities in products and commodities, calculated to feed, clothe and 
 shelter, and which give them value and make them wantable and 
 therefore exchangeable. It is these fundamental values, evolved by 
 creative labor on one hand, and human labor on the other, that are 
 the objects of want, the basis of exchange and the source of purchas- 
 ing power. Possession of purchasing power involves the possession 
 of values — values in land, water, air, in raw material, and in the 
 active forces — values natural and values artificial. With values in 
 hand, whatever their nature, I have purchasing power; purchasing 
 power which comes into action just so soon as another, also having 
 values, is, with me, desirous of exchange. Demand does not in- 
 crease value or purchasing power ; it increases price only. The pow- 
 er is present in values, whether utilized or not. On the contrary, 
 however great demand and however monstrous the price offered, if I 
 have no values I have no purchasing power. A kingdom may be 
 offered for a horse, or a birthright for a mess of pottage; if I have no 
 values in a horse I cannot purchase the kingdom ; if I have no values 
 in pottage I can buy no birthright.* 
 
 Thus, if I go into the marts of exchange, carrying available light, 
 heat, electricity, chemical power, human labor, land, and, under some 
 
 * The position regarding values, assumed in this work — not consonant with teachings of cur- 
 rent economic science — is, that values are inherent, and applied; natural values, produced in nat- 
 ure by creative labor, are inherent; artifici?.l values, proauced by human labor, are applied. 
 Values are also current, semi-current and deposited; current in the active forces, as heat, light, 
 electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, human and animal labor; semi-current in the passive 
 forces, as in air, water and land; deposited, in raw material and wealth, as in iron, silver, gold, 
 fruit, vegetables, grains, wood and all forms of natural and manufactured commodity. All these 
 forces, organisms and things embody and embrace value, and contribute, under the operation of 
 demand, to utility. The arguments and proof in support of these propositions are too volum- 
 inous, for introduction here; but, as close adherence to the facts of nature and art, and reason 
 supported thereby show, thej^ are conclusive. Fictitious values referred to in the preface are il- 
 logical, an erroneous conception, a myth. Rent, profit and interest are merely the means of 
 drawing real values from laborer and consumer. 
 
OVERPRODUCTION. 1 27 
 
 conditions, water or air, commodity in any one of the thousand de- 
 grees of adaptability to the supply of human want, increase of human 
 effectiveness or development of human character, I go there with 
 values, which, at some ratio, I can exchange for other values. I go 
 with purchasing power commensurate with the sum of values. Hence, 
 purchasing power is derived, primarily and substantially, /r^;;z nature, 
 through creative labor, and from art, through human labor ; and 
 each man's equitable purchasing power is, first, his portion of those 
 values derived from the common heritage — determined by the natural 
 law of proximate equality ; and, second, the entire results of his own 
 labor. Do we find it so" distributed? By no means. An immense 
 purchasing power is held by a small class of prior men, and a small 
 purchasing po'ver by a large class of later men. Concentrated 
 through prior appropriation, it has been maintained .through laws of 
 permanent investiture, by the power of exclusion and the subsequent 
 ability to exact profit, rent and interest from the excluded. The 
 major part of all values — natural and artificial — were gathered 
 into the garners of, and are retained by, a few industrial leaders. 
 To the exhaustion of purchasing power, which they control, and 
 not to the cessation of de?nand, therefore, they should ascribe the 
 alleged necessity for suspending the vast engineries of national pro- 
 duction ; for retiring and impoverishing a large army of dependent 
 laborers, and for arresting the normal- increase of national wealth. 
 The cry of overproduction also is misleading. It is raised usually 
 when national consuming capacity calls loudest for products, and 
 commodities to supply ivant — want stimulated by underconsumption, 
 enforced, not by overproduction. but by limitation or exhaustion of 
 purchasing power. The cries of overproduction and cessation of de- 
 mand rise from the same throats, and are raised by the parties — cap- 
 italists — who alone control the purchasing power which would in- 
 crease derpand and exhaust surplus product. 
 
 Unlike the animal heart, whose function in national economic life 
 within the national organism capitalists were destined to represent 
 and regulate, having gathered the current of national values to them- 
 selves, they retain the rich elements of national comfort and develop- 
 ment within the charmed circle of their own existence ; they have 
 learned the receptive or diastolic function of the circulation, but 
 know, as yet, but little of the distributive or systolic action, or its 
 necessary relation to national prosperity. It must be admitted, how- 
 ever, that the situation of an industrial leader, moved by the spirit of 
 humanity and equity, is not devoid of perplexity. He is one of con- 
 tending thousands, and to save himself from industrial overthrow he 
 feels driven to current exactions on others, that antagonize his better 
 impulses.* Thus far we have traced the production of national wealth 
 
 •This situation is discussed under "Private Enterprise," page 140 and following. 
 
128 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 from its origin in the mineral monad, vegetable seed and animal 
 egg, through activities incited and sustained by the active and pas- 
 sive forces; have noted how the division of labor has induced co-op- 
 erative production ; have traced the present industrial condition 
 from its rise in the new relations between former master and slave, 
 after chattel emancipation ; have pointed out how the right of ex- 
 clusion fro?fi means of employment gave rise to profit through employ- 
 ment, to rent through lease and to interest through purchase ; shown 
 the origin of purchasing power, its necessity to the general welfare, 
 and demonstrated the truth, that the incessant exaction of profit, 
 rent and interest, concentrates it among capitalistic producers, and 
 limits and exhausts it among consumers ; and that, thereby, national 
 industry and the production of national wealth is uselessly and crim- 
 inally arrested. Let us follow demonstration into the next section, 
 premising that the profit there alluded to embraces both rent and 
 interest. 
 
SOURCE OF NATIONAL PURCHASING POWER. 1 29 
 
 HOW PROFIT CHECKS PRODUCTION— A 
 
 MATHEMATICAL DEMONSTRATION. 
 CHAPTER VI, SECTION V. 
 
 But cavilers and critics will urge that the conclusions here reached 
 are but the result of an occult rationality, unsustained by facts ; that 
 assertion is one thing, and truth often another. 
 
 On the contrary, these conclusions are sustained by authenticated 
 facts and figures ; facts and figures which show that commodities 
 gathered through operations in agriculture, manufacture and com- 
 merce, into the ownership of industrial leaders, and padded at every 
 step by the fictitious values of profit, rent and interest, can and do> 
 find nowhere outside the holdings of capitalists, that purchasing power 
 which sustains the consuming capacity of the nation ; a purchasing 
 power capable of clearing the markets, preventing glut, consequent 
 cessation of production, decrease of wealth and increase of poverty. 
 
 Every intelligent man knows that all commodities previous to that 
 moment when they are ready for the consumer, belong absolutely 
 and wholly to the employer, and must go from him to the consumer 
 through sale on his part, and purchase on the part of the consumer. 
 How is he, how has he become primarily, how does he remain sole 
 owner and possessor of the entire wealth of the world ? 
 
 Before we go to the more comprehensive facts and figures, a few 
 words in answer to this question. The position of current economic 
 science, touches value, and hence ownership— for ownership follows 
 only where value is recognized—in a remarkably small spot ; viz.,. it 
 assumes that wealth produced by human labor, alone is possessed of 
 value and is exchangable. This position is false, both as to theory 
 and fact. 
 
 The truth is, that values of the most paramount importance existed 
 long before human labor came into operation; values produced by 
 that Power that brought men into existence, the energies of which 
 are in perpetual effort to renew and reproduce them and perfect their 
 adaptability to the supply of human want. These values* are called 
 natural values^ to distinguish them from those produced by human 
 labor, the values of art, or artificial values ; and from those fictitious 
 values, invented by the brain of men for mutual despoilment and en- 
 slavement, commonly known as profit, rent and interest. 
 
 These natural values are the common heritage of men ; of employ-^ 
 ers and promotors of production, as well as their followers and assist- 
 
 *In this work. 
 
130 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 ant employes ; and they constitute an unmeasured but vast proportion 
 of the total values which make the purchasing power of every nation. 
 These natural values, through one channel or another, through 
 priority of birth, advent or development, or priority embracing these 
 three characteristics ; through conquest, seizure or heredity ; through 
 forms of ownership whose origin can not bear a humane and en- 
 lightened analysis; these values, which constitute the primitive ele- 
 ments of all wealth, are appropriated and held everywhere through 
 unjust and exclusive laws by the leaders and promotors of industrial 
 enterprise. 
 
 And contrary to the teachings of economic science, these values — 
 values in timber, iron, coal, granite, marble, natural oil and gas, in 
 the flesh of fowl, fish and brute; in peltry, feathers and bone; in the 
 salts of the ocean, subterranean spring, inland lake; in myriads of 
 things and structures here, for want of space, unmentionable — equally 
 with those produced by human labor and invented by human wit, are 
 found tn the marts of exchange throughout the civilized and uncivil- 
 ized world. 
 
 It is these values in conjunction with the fictitious values— the 
 latter made operative and effective by custom and law—which give 
 power, financial and purchasing power in the world's exchanges, 
 compared with which, the values produced by the "hard and true 
 work " of human labor, are almost valueless. It is these values in the 
 United States, which first appear in the hands of 250,000 employers; 
 values, the larger portion of which were destined for the present use 
 and benefit of 50,000,000, and the future use of 500,000,000 people. 
 It is these values which should annually pass from the hands of 250,- 
 000 original owners, to the souls and bodies of 50,000,000 consu- 
 mers, through the legitimate eyelets of sale and purchase. Following 
 a true equation of exchange, these values— natural, artificial and fic- 
 titious—should go back, through equable industrial circulation, to the 
 masses, from whose labor and from whose portion of the common 
 heritage they were taken, in the form of fee, salary and wages, and 
 constitute to the latter a purchasing power ample to give every 
 man an equitable portion of the common wealth. 
 
 The following figures show that values do not follow an 
 equable circulation, or undergo an equitable distribution. They 
 show furthermore, that an equitable distribution of national wealth 
 is impossible, unless national authorities are invoked to consider, 
 inspect, limit and control the exactions which, under private enter- 
 prise, in the name of interest, rent and profit — everywhere coun- 
 tenanced — are continually taxing and impoverishing the employed 
 and producing masses. 
 
 The price at which the commodities of the United States were 
 
HOW VALUES PASS FROM CAPITALISTS TO CONSUMERS. I3T 
 
 held for the year 1879* was $7,554,395,358. Price includes all 
 values — the pure stuffing of fictitious values, as well as the real worth 
 of natural and artificial values. 
 
 At the moment when selling begins, or the moment previous, the 
 entire value here represented in money, is in the hands of employing 
 producers; leaders of industry, capitalists. They constitute the entire 
 purchasing power of the country for a single cycle of production, and 
 are in the power of one party, the employer. Employed labor has 
 done its work and left the goods in the hands of industrial leaders, 
 but stands with open hands ready to receive compensation in wages, 
 salary and fee. 
 
 The problem is, how is this mass of values held by employing 
 producers to pass legitimately into the hands of consumers ? 
 
 They must go out either through compensation for labor in form 
 of wages, salary and fee ; through foreign commerce and foreign 
 purchasing power; through an extension of credit with dangers of 
 loss to the seller and financial ruin to the buyer ; through private or 
 public charity, which draws a purchasing power of the entire commu- 
 nity either through donation or taxation, or through the various 
 forms of illegal robbery. 
 
 Let us first consider the power of compensation for labor, to draw 
 these values, through the purchasing power of wa^es, fee and salary, 
 to those who can consume them, and whose wants if supplied at all, 
 must be supplied by the commodities which embody them. The 
 complete facts are not given in acceptable reports, but some factors 
 are known and by a fair use of those given, the others may be proxi- 
 mately reached. 
 
 The productive force of the country in 1879, is given at 17,382,- 
 099 persons, of whom 250,000 are estimated as pure employers, and 
 II, 349,584, as pure employees, leaving 5,782,515, mixed employers 
 and employes, or those who employ themselves. 
 
 Segregating to each one of this industrial army his average pro- 
 portion of the purchasing power of the total purchasing power of the 
 country — his portion of $7> 5 5 4, 395, 35 8 — gives each person $435 
 and a fraction. 
 
 Leaving to the self-employers, constituting a class whose earnings 
 are most likely to represent an average, $435 to each person, and 
 the 5,782,515 will take the sum of $2,515,394,025 from the total 
 purchasing power of the country, and absorb commodities of that 
 price. 
 
 By separating the number of pure employers from the pure em 
 
 *See census report of 1880. 
 
132 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 ployes, we arrive at further facts and figures. The employers num- 
 ber 250,000 persons,* the employes, 11,349,584. pi|^ii|| 
 
 Statistics show that the wages or purchasing power of 6,056,471 
 persons, including agricultural and manufacturing employes, is 
 $1,695,825,895; agricultural laborers numbering 3,323,876 persons, 
 receiving $747,872*100, and manufacturing laborers numbering 2,- 
 732,595 persons, receiving $947,953,795. The balance of the em- 
 ployes are distributed to the occupations of trade, transportation, 
 mining and mechanical pursuits and professional and personal ser- 
 vices. A few of these persons receive large compensation ; but it is 
 reasonable to presume their income does not exceed the average in- 
 come of the agricultural and manufacturing employee, which is about 
 $280 per annum. If we allow that sum to each employee other 
 than agricultural and manufacturings we have but to multiply 280 by 
 5,293'! 13, the number of persons engaged in trade, transportation, 
 mechanical pursuits, mining, professional and personal service, 
 to ascertain how much they draw from the sum of national purchas- 
 ing power. The multiplication gives $1,482,071,640, which, added 
 to $1,695,825,895, received by agricultural and manufacturing la- 
 borers, aggregates $3,i77.897>535> which is paid to 11,349,284 em- 
 ployees, and constitutes their purchasing pOwer. 
 
 Of the total values represented by $7,554,395,358, constituting 
 the entire purchasing power of the United States for 1879, the self- 
 employers take the sum of $2,515,394025, and the employes the 
 sum of $3,177,897,535, leaving for the 250,000 employers $1,861,- 
 103,798. 
 
 Stating the matter another way, each pure employe secures 
 through compensation of wages, a- purchasing power amounting to 
 $280 per annum; each self-employer draws a purchasing power of 
 $435 per year,, and each pure employer reserves for himself com- 
 modities, a large portion of which he can not consume except 
 through resort to a luxurious and vicious life, which it would re- 
 quire, for the year, a purchasing power of $7,444 to draw from him. 
 
 It is reasonable to assume that the average consuming capacity, 
 irrespective of luxuries and rich or royal appointment, is about the 
 average purchasing power; viz., $455 per annum, including the sup- 
 port of two dependants by each producer— the producing force being 
 17,382,099, and the consuming population between 50 and 60 mil- 
 lions—we have 11,349,584 persons existing below the average con- 
 suming capacity by the sum of $155 annually, in order that 250,- 
 000 may accumulate yearly $7,009, above what, as average citizens, 
 they should consume. The small deficiency of $155 annually dis- 
 tributed among 11 or 12 millions, and the large excess of $7,009 
 
 ♦Estimated by Hon. S. S. Cox; speech in the House of Representatives, March 20, 
 1884, 
 
(FOREIGN MARKET AND CREDIT SYSTEM DIMINISHES HOLDINGS. 1 33 
 
 among 250,000, expresses in numbers, the poor condition of the 
 many and the opulent condition of the few. 
 
 Through the one channel, compensation for labor, through wages, 
 fee and salary, the mass of commodities held by industrial leaders at 
 the close of 1879, represented by the sum of $7,554,395,358, is 
 vastly reduced. But an immense product represenled by $7,444 Y^t 
 remains for disposal by them down to the line of an average con- 
 sumption. Put in figures, the average consumption has been shown 
 to be $435 per annum. As pure employers consume more than 
 self-employers— independent laborers— allow for them a triple con- 
 sumption, $1,305 per annum.* That gives $326,250,000, which, 
 subtracted from the commodities left them after wages and salaries 
 are paid, valued at $1,861,103,798, leaves commodities priced at 
 $1,534,853,798 in their hands, without a dollar of purchasing power 
 to take them up. To dispose of them — for they must be disposed 
 of, and be turned into real estate, which bears rent, or securities 
 which bear interest, or into new enterprise for profit — resort is 
 had to foreign commerce, through which another quota disap- 
 pears. The power of foreign commerce to absorb these com- 
 ijiodities is soon disposed of ; its influence is of small importance. 
 The exports of 1879 were $710,493,441; imports, $445j777)775> 
 leaving a balance of exports amounting to $264,661,666 ; repre- 
 senting commodities which find purchasing power in foreign lands, 
 and relieve productive capitalists, industrial leaders, to that extent. 
 Taking the export balance of $264,661,666 from what remained in 
 hands of employers, leaves yet in their possession commodities with 
 a price set on them of $1,270,192,132. For these goods no direct 
 purchasing power remains, and yet, perishable as they are, they must 
 be sold. 
 
 Industrial leaders, have then, another resort, which is really a sub- 
 tifuge, blunder, or crime against society; viz: the credit system. 
 Without a space on earth where a purchasing power exists capable 
 of buying their goods and giving them an equivalent in return, they 
 resort to time for assistance. 
 
 It will be noted that we are considering the values involved in a 
 single cycle of production. But other values exist which have been 
 
 *Th)s may seem a small allowance for the consumption of a capitalist, but the real 
 consuming power of a capitalist does not exceed that of a laborer; again, capitalists 
 are usually prompted by the animus of saving. Indeed, according to economic 
 science, men become capitalists by saving; if they possess no greater consuming 
 capacity than a laborer, and are more intensely prompted by the economic motive, 
 it is reasonable to suppose they really consume no more than an independent laborer. 
 They do consume more; but mark you, not until they have accumulated enough to 
 enable them to live on the labor of other men, through the fictitious values, the ex- 
 actions of rent and interest, which through their purchasing power, enforced by 
 •custom and law, draws eflfectively on the mass of constructed commodities. So long 
 as an industrial leader is concerned in accumulation, through saving, that he may 
 at a subsequent time live without labor, he is likely to consume less than a laborer 
 who expends his wages freely. Hence, the estimate of $1,S05 per annum for an av- 
 <erage industrial leader is superabundant 
 
134 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 laid by, in land, houses, fixtures, machinery, furniture, plate and 
 Other long-lived products which have a purchasing power of un- 
 doubted merit, and if those values — call them fixed values to 
 designate them — can be drawn into the market by liens on them for 
 goods bought on time, more of that excess of commodities held by 
 industrial leaders, can be sold for what is equivalent to cash ; better 
 than cash, as goods sold on credit draw interest in one way or an- 
 other. Men with a purchasing power of $280 or $435 per annum 
 readily take the gilded bait which credit holds out ; mortgage or sell 
 their previous accumulations with the belief that personal success in 
 the future, will repay both principal and interest, that excess of 
 purchasing power above their annual income, derived by them from 
 credit extended by capitalists. 
 
 It is impossible to state to what extent, resort to the credit system 
 relieves industrial leaders of that load of commodities, for which no 
 ample purchasing power of real value exists ; but the result to all 
 parties concerned — sometimes creditors, oftentimes debtors — is at- 
 tested by the reports of failures made through various commercial 
 agencies.* 
 
 The credit system does not actually increase the annual purchas- 
 ing power ; it draws, when successful, fully or in part, on values 
 which constitute a residue from the purchasing power of former 
 years ; when unsuccessful in touching reserved values, it is of no ad- 
 vantage whatever to those promoters of industry who commence 
 their distribution of purchasing power valued at $7,554,395,358. 
 
 The extension of credit to increase the, purchasing power of those 
 whose consuming capacity is rarely filled, is the last business resort 
 of industrial leaders and capitalistic employers to dispose of their 
 goods. 
 
 Incidentally charity, public and private, through gift and taxation, 
 tend to diminish the large mass which they hold under their deliber- 
 ate control. Theft and robbery also operate to increase the pur- 
 chasing power of the criminal element of the community, but neither 
 charity nor robbery tend greatly to relieve the glut which industrial 
 leaders impose upon themselves and on society, by their accumu- 
 lative exactions. 
 
 We have been considering the operations of a single year — 1879 
 — and find that promotors of industrial enterprise, so selfishly man- 
 age the entire purchasing power of the nation, that many of their 
 goods produced in the one cycle, must remain in their hands un- 
 sold ; goods, pot considering those sold on credit, or given in charity, 
 or lost by robbery, aggregating a valuation of $1,270,192,152, for 
 
 *These failures aggreg:ated in 1882— an intense activity having characterized the years 1879,. 
 '80 and '81— $131,547,564 ; in 1S83, $172,874,172, and in 1881, $226,343,427. Report of R. G. 
 Dun & Co. 
 
CAPITALISTS RESPONSIBLE FOR DEFICIENT PURCHASING POWER. 1 35 
 
 which consuming capacity is ample, but for which no purchasing 
 power exists. 
 
 We have seen that the absence of ample purchasing power is at- 
 tributable to their own selfish and shortsighted greed ; we know that 
 other years — 1880, 1881 — must increase, did increase this excess of 
 commodities ; we know that to sustain this senseless and un- 
 justifiable rapacity, affording a few, through extraordinary exigencies, 
 the opportunities of accumulating vast fortunes, a rigid adherence 
 to the principle of sale for profit is maintained ; and we know that 
 when goods cannot, to secure selfish and greedy ends, be sold for 
 what is recognized as profit, production is brought to a disastrous 
 standstill^ and increase of wealth which should be constant, is 
 arrested, and poverty wide spread, extends its gloomy and unsatis- 
 factory pall over the life of the nation. 
 
 It is thus conclusively demonstrated by theory, fact and figure, that 
 the onus of blame for this condition of national industrial affairs, that 
 for continued limitation and periodical cessation of wealth — pro- 
 duction, and its miserable and baleful results upon the masses of 
 population, industrial leaders, capitalists, are responsible. 
 
13^ WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIOKS. 
 
 REMEDIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI., SECTION VI. 
 
 It may not be logical to consider remedies unless there be a 
 disease. 
 
 In one sense, the largest, grandest sense conceivable, industrial 
 life is an organizing movement ; an evolution through and upon the 
 materials of which, the forces are playing to bring order out of chaos, 
 perfection out of imperfection, maturity out of immaturity. As a 
 whole, it is not a disease. But as these forces press, now here, now 
 there, with disastrous results upon large surfaces of the growing body — 
 the composite social organization — causing misery and degredation 
 to those who suffer the friction incident to the general advance, dis- 
 ease is affirmed and remedies are logically sought. 
 
 As regards the remedies or modes of proceedure to be under- 
 taken in the premises, it has been shown that all production is co- 
 operative, and all distribution is competitive ; in other words, that 
 capitalists and laborers, peacefully combine while producing the 
 world's wealth, and fiercely struggle — capitalist against capitalist and 
 laborer against laborer, capitalist against laborer, and laborer 
 against capitalist — each to secure for himself and his class, the larg- 
 est possible results of production for the least possible expenditure 
 of effort or value. It has been shown that the present industrial system, 
 in its orderly evolution, is straddling the fence of the present with 
 the foot of co-operation, progressive, in advance, and competition, 
 conservative, retarding a rapid and complete evolution ; that before 
 the industrial factors can properly reach the perfection of a system^ 
 industrial operations must become all co-operative or competittve ; 
 that if production remains co-operative, distribution and consumption 
 must also gradually advance to the co-operative stage, and on the 
 other hand, if distribution remains colored and characterized by the 
 struggles of competition, then to secure harmonious action of the 
 underlying forces, production must return 'to its primitive and com- 
 petitive phase. 
 
 It may be asserted at once, without fear of successful contradic- 
 tion, that the present momentum of an orderly evolution, unless so- 
 ciety through some inconceivable catastrophy be relegated to its 
 original chaotic conditions, precludes the possibility of return to 
 primitive methods and results. Forward movement is alone at- 
 tainable. The distribution of the world's commodities, equally and 
 unreservedly with their production, must come under the ameliorat- 
 ing influence of the co-operative principle. The boys of the in- 
 
CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION A NECESSARY OUTCOME. I37 
 
 dustrial world who have so long co-operated in the construction of 
 tops, marbles and tin whistles, and struggled through the productive 
 forces and appliances of exchange, to determine by industrial forces 
 who shall own the products of joint labor, must make a new de- 
 parture in distributing their commodities ; must co-operatively assign 
 to each according to his natural interest in the common heritage 
 and according to the results of his labor. 
 
 'I'he comprehensive remedy to be applied to evolve harmony 
 from anarchy, justice from injustice involves some acceptable method 
 of introducing and perfecting co-operative distribution. 
 
 What is co-operative distribution ? 
 
 If ten men, having secured equal values from the common herit- 
 age, place those values into a common pool, and co-operate in pro- 
 ducing commodities estimated at one thousand dollars, and the re- 
 sult of each man's labor equals the result of every other man's labor, 
 co-operative distribution would assign to each man commodities of 
 the pure or market value of one hundred dollars. This statement 
 modified indefinitely by the real values taken from the common 
 heritage, and the real results achieved by each man's labor will con- 
 stitute an equitable formula to be used in working out and practi- 
 calizing the problems of co-operative distribution. 
 
 I'his formula involves the elimination of all false or fictitious val- 
 ues ; of rent, interest and profit, and an equitable distribution of all 
 real values ; values produced by labor creative and human. 
 
 A similar conclusion is reached, in part, by inference from the po- 
 sition reached in a previous section ; viz : that whereas accumula- 
 tions through profit, interest and rent, tend to aggregate the purchas- 
 ing power of a nation into the possession of a few persons, and thus 
 impair or destroy the purchasing power of millions, the elimination 
 of profit, rent and interest, would result in effecting its comparative- 
 ly equitable distribution ; the increase of wealth and elimination of 
 poverty. From whatever standpoint we consider efficient remedies, they 
 lead, of necessity, to the simple proposition of a co-operative and 
 equitable distribution of the world's wealth to the world's workers. 
 
 But the acquirement of this trinity of fictitious values, which, ac- 
 cumulated in quantities sufficient, and embodied in money, bonds 
 and mortgages, enable men to live, as it has become the ambition 
 of most men to live, without labor, on the labor or from the heritage 
 of other men, constitutes the end and motive of modern industrial 
 life ; an end intimately associated with, perhaps inseperable from, 
 private individual enterprise. 
 
 Private enterprise, which, in the main dominates the indus- 
 trial world, risen on the downfall of chattle slavery, and emanated 
 from the new life of the former slave, regards directly only the well- 
 being and prosperity of the individual. The other, or next man, 
 
138 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 whether he be employee, patron or competitor, is used in one way 
 or another to subserve the interests and enterprises of the individ- 
 ual. 
 
 The result has been that the prior and the powerful, disregarding 
 fundamental equities, have continually advanced themselves through 
 exactions upon those born or developed later and feebler, have at- 
 tained, through the mature intellectual faculties with which they 
 were endowed, and through siezure of the sources of wealth and ap- 
 pliances of production, exclusive and controling leadership of the 
 worlds industrial affairs. They have begun a nd prosecuted their 
 undertakings as individuals ; the entire end of their enterprises hav- 
 ing been the fullest supply of their own wants and satisfaction of 
 their own desires, caprices and passions. Their own wants of the 
 most common order having been satisfied, production has not been 
 enlarged and extended over the similar wants of others, but to the 
 establishment of luxurious indulgence, rich and expensive dress, 
 costly furnishings and extravagant equippage. The earth and its 
 natural wealth, society and its organized developments, have been 
 appropriated for all time, as if created only for the satisfaction and 
 prosperity of a prior and favored few. The end of production has 
 been too limited. Labor of the masses, through exclusion from the 
 sources of wealth and means of production, has been forced from 
 them for mere subsistence.* The wants of manuel laborers have 
 received but incidental consideration. Supposed to hold the power of 
 private contract, which, through the violent operation of previous ex- 
 clusion from their interest in the commoi? heritage, rarely embodies 
 or ensures to them a modicum of substantial justice, they have been 
 left to shift for and content themselves with the possibilities, rather 
 than the equities. 
 
 To secure amenity from the disastrious results which are falling 
 upon impoverished millions, through the prevalence of individual 
 enterprise, the end and scope of production must be so enlarged as to 
 include directly ^ distinctly and definitely^ the rational and equitable 
 wants of every citizen. 
 
 Keeping in view this broad generalization, better results in every 
 way may be reached, not only for the individual untis, but for the 
 nation as an organizing body. Through enlargement of the end 
 and scope of production, national wealth may be increased indefi- 
 nately, and poverty greatly diminished or eliminated. 
 
 To foil the force of this proposition, it may be asserted that al- 
 ready it is the object of private enterprise to supply all want; that 
 employers and leaders of industry undertake and prosecute their 
 enterprises for the benefit of employes and the patronizing community. 
 
 *The econimic law of wages is subsistence— suppose the same compensation was meted out 
 inbusirial leaders. 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF THE END OF PRODLXTION REQUIRED 1 39 
 
 On first blush this assertion seems to be true ; in rare instances, 
 may be true. That every thought and artifice is put under contri- 
 bution to adopt commodities to the wants of consumers, cannot be 
 doubted ; but usually the extreme efforts made to adapt products 
 with exactitude to the details of want, are made for the subjective 
 purpose of displacing competitors and securing their patronage and 
 profit ; supply of want and patronage being sought and prosecuted 
 only so long as profit is attainable. When purchasing power of pat- 
 ron is exhausted, though his wants are imperative, production for his 
 interest is declined; the poorer the consumer becomes the more in- 
 tensely he wants, the more absolutely are his wants neglected. At 
 all times they are merely contingent, secondary, accessory to the 
 prime motive of private enterprise, which is individual gain. 
 
 Co-operative distribution to be inaugurated, the end and scope 
 of production must be so enlarged and utilized, as not only to in- 
 clude the wants, but to impress the labor of all responsible citizens. 
 It matters not how long the movement to this ideal may require — it 
 must come. 
 
 This status is achievable through one of three distinct and suc- 
 cessive modes or processes ; or more probably it may be realized to 
 the nation through their combined, mutually supportive operation, 
 or through a gradual industrial evolution from the first through the 
 second to the third. 
 
 Jiirst — Industrial leaders, by common consent and concerted 
 action, may abandon narrow and selfish ends, and irrespective of 
 gain to themselves, holding control of the only means of employ- 
 ment, will furnish permanent occupation to each laborer, with pur- 
 chasing power adequate to supply the wants of every citizen. In 
 their hands, utility, not only to themselves, but to others, may dis- 
 tinctly impress their purposes and displace as a motive the present 
 exclusive selfishness. 
 
 Second — The exactions of capitalists, in forms of interest, rent 
 and profit, may be limited or eliminated by the power of society, 
 operating along the line of control, through the machinery of gov- 
 ernment. The tendency of such measures is to limit' the extent and 
 scope of those exactions which the complete license of private en 
 terprise permits. It is merely palliative as it cannot touch or deter- 
 mine the motive of industrial leaders ; cannot enlarge the scope of 
 their purposes. 
 
 Third — Whatever is not achievable through the first and second 
 plans, devices or instrumentalities, will needs be undertaken by the 
 third; viz., displacement of present in(Justrial leaders from positions, 
 powers and responsibilities which they have ignorantly, carelessly 
 or viciously subverted from their better uses, and prostituted to pri- 
 vate and selfish ends. In other words private enterprise, through a 
 
140 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 considerate and progressive movement, must give a place to public 
 enterprise, whose end, theoretically and practically, includes and em- 
 bodies the welfare and equal advantage of every citizen. 
 
 These three devices or instrumentalities for affecting an ample en- 
 largement of the ends and scope of productive activity, a scope 
 which will include the economic — and indirectly, the moral, political 
 and civil — welfare of the entire population, will be cursorily dis- 
 cussed in detail. 
 
 Pirst, as to the desired end of enlargement, what is to be ex- 
 pected nom the industrial forces disposed and operated throughout 
 the civilized world, as they are at present? Can, will private enter- 
 prise, conducted by a small minority of the people for their own 
 direct advantage, give that fullness of scope to their operations which 
 the wants of all demand ? 
 
 The requisite change in the attitude of industrial leaders regard- 
 ing the interests of their fellows, involves a marked change of dis- 
 position and character ; a change from exclusive selfishness to in- 
 clusive selfishness. No man or class of men can become oblivious 
 of self. The highest ideal maintains self-care but includes all others 
 in the same privileges and enjoyments. Desire to supply the wants 
 of mankind with the various commodities, which through an ad- 
 vanced civilization are requisite to comfort and development, should 
 supercede that excessive desire of personal gain which excludes 
 others from like uses and commodities. Attainment to this high 
 ideal of industrial motive may be facilitated by recognizing the 
 truth — that no man made himself before, better br stronger than other 
 men ; that his superior faculties, if he possess them, are but endow- 
 ments from a higher Source, and no right inheres to exericse them 
 in exclusion of fellows from enjoyment of their natural rights. The 
 further truths, that all men alike are equitable inheritors of the nat- 
 ural values brought into existence by creative labor, and that each 
 man, irrespective of the existing inequitable system of private ci»n- 
 tracts, is justly entitled to the further values created by his own labor, 
 should also tend to inspire capitalisrs with a noble and tender re- 
 gard for the rights and interests of their fellows. 
 
 But surrounded and engulfed in the surging tides of the compet- 
 itive struggle for the results of production, now tossing the industrial 
 world, are industrial leaders likely to, can they forget their moment- 
 ary interests and consider a proposition calculated for the benefit of 
 others, and real or seemmg disadvantage to themselves ? 
 
 Are they likely to, is it possible for them to believe that their su- 
 perior endowments were given them for the purposes of a leader- 
 ship involving sacrifice of their most intense hopes and fascinating 
 ambitions? History furnishes few or no affirmative illustrations 
 wherein those occupying positions of vantage and power, have vol- 
 
NARROW ENDS OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISF. I4I 
 
 untarily placed others on the seat of vantage and power beside 
 them. The strong individuality of human nature is opposed to such 
 a movement. Power is drawn from the hands of the selfish and 
 tyrannical only by application of opposing power, grown powerful 
 through stimulus of unredressed wrongs. 
 
 •As motive precedes all thought and action, consideration as to 
 the voluntary acts of capitalists toward an enlargement of the end 
 and scope of production, might be at once dropped. It may be 
 assumed, at once, that private enterprise will do little or nothing 
 through the activities of industrial life toward the ameliorations 
 needed. Indirectly, through public and private charities, through 
 taxation and donation, it will contribute liberally to soften and 
 ameliorate the severest phases of hard existence produced by its own 
 exactions ; but little or nothing to remove or abate the causes, the 
 most important of which it controls and prom.otes. It will not re- 
 mit its own opportunities for self-agrandizement that the mass of 
 mankind, themselves among the number, may come jjinto unasked 
 and independent enjoyment of the nutritive instrumentalities of 
 of civilized life. This proposition is asserted, of private enterprise 
 as a whole ; because, though it may number among its leaders men 
 , of the widest sympathies with, and highest asperations for the welfare 
 of the race as a race, the principle drift of its motive leaves every 
 man, regardless of conditions, to struggle out his own life unaided 
 and alone. This is the cruel logic of its existence, and the relent- 
 less determination of its activity ; logic and determination, the in- 
 humane results of which are modified or assuaged, alone by the 
 warm pulses of a growing human sympathy. 
 
 Suppose, however, the motive of the vast majority of industrial 
 leaders, operating through dominant laws and cusroms, to be ex- 
 panded to include the welfare of every citizen ; what, in the nature 
 and conditions of private enterprise, must be modified or overcome? 
 If capitalists were to make the end of productive operation, 
 adequate supply to the reasonable wants of all, the majority must 
 be able to control the action of the minority. Unanimity of action 
 voluntary or enforced would be found to be indispensible. Indus- 
 trial combinations must not only operate in harmony, but in the 
 midst of competitive distribution, must include all pure employers, 
 individual and corporate. A small minority of those who promote 
 and manage industrial affairs, operating on an independent basis and 
 antagonizing the co-operative efforts of the majority, would impair 
 or destroy the more beneficent purposes and achievements of the 
 majority. 
 
 A general belief exists in the effectiveness of isolated schemes of 
 co-operative industry ; industry combining both production and dis- 
 tribution. It is a mistaken belief. Such enterprises affect favorably 
 
142 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 only those included within the scope of their operations ; while they 
 tend, like isolated individuals competing against each other, in pro- 
 portion to the power and scope of the co-operative combination, to 
 make the competitive struggle more fierce and destructive. 
 
 The co-operative societies of England, including but a portion of 
 the workers in a given commodity, have grown within a half century 
 to enormous proportions, benefitting, it is alleged, the immediate par- 
 ticipants, but carrying the non-participants to lower levels of poverty 
 and degredation. The struggle of isolated co-operative organizations 
 against each other for the patronage of the public, is like the struggle 
 of Titan against Titan. It is only competition, concentrated, deep- 
 ened, intensified. The number of units is diminished, but the 
 power is increased. 
 
 If the hatters of America disassociated from capitalists, were 
 combined in a dozen organizations, each competing against all others 
 for patronage, the competitive struggle would be more intense than 
 now, conducted as is the hat business, by isolated individuals and 
 co-partnerships. Prices of labor and goods would be lower; but 
 if all hatters were combined under one organization, and secured 
 against foreign competition by a protective tariff, prices could be ad- 
 vanced to the satisfaction of all hatters. So long as a single hatter 
 struggles against the balance, or a single combination competes with ' 
 all other hatters combined, the majority are at the mercy of the 
 small minority. The same principle governs the competition and 
 co-operation of capitalists in their own sphere of action. 
 
 Industrial leaders — capitalists — must be able to include all com- 
 petitors under a single combination, or they can accomplish little 
 toward raising the price of given commodities and the wages of the 
 labor through the efficiency of which they are produced ; otherwise 
 they must fail to inaugurate co-operative distribution, and supply 
 to the wants of every citizen, by dispensing an adequate purchasing 
 power. 
 
 But let us carry this query a little further. Let us suppose, not 
 only the disposition but the ability of capitalists to combine all pro- 
 ducers of a given commodity — ultim.ately of all commodities — in a 
 vast national-co-operative scheme. Provided the end of production 
 remains as now, what beneficent results may ensue, and who will 
 reap them ? What results of disaster will follow, and who will suffer ? 
 
 On one hand cessation of competition among employers and leaders 
 of industry, advance of prices to consumers, freedom from fear of loss, 
 and certainty of increased gain to members of the guild, and in- 
 creased purchasing power to employers. Second, possibly, increased 
 wages and enlarged purchasing powers to employees. These two 
 active classes may realize satisfactory benefits. 
 
 On the other hand, consumers must needs, through the- co-opera- 
 
PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MUST BE SUPPLEMENTAL. 1 43 
 
 live success of employers and employes become the victims of 
 a nationalized monopoly. Increase of price to consumers, who 
 constitute the vast majority of the population; impairment or des- 
 truction of their purchasing power. 
 
 It appears then — to sum up this point on the foregoing hypothesis 
 — that while a full and efficient combination of the forces engaged 
 in producing a given commodity — for instance, hats or boots — will 
 tend to advance the purchasing power of previously competitive 
 employers and employes, it will tend to decrease the purchasing 
 power of a vast mass of consumers ; and that too, regardless of the 
 former purchasing power of any of these parties^employers, em- 
 ployes and consumers — in interest, or the previous relations of that 
 purchasing power to its consuming capacity. 
 
 Hence, private enterprise, combined to its fullest productive ca- 
 pacity, does not meet the requirement of the times ; for while it 
 builds up and gives larger purchasing power — in cases too, where it 
 was inequitably large — to those embraced in the productive com- 
 bination it brings disaster to, and impairs or destroys purchasing 
 power — in cases too where purchasing power is already exhausted — 
 of a vast mass of consumers. It is evident that current reliance on 
 the real or possible beneficence of private enterprise is unjustified 
 by the facts and the operation of the forces. 
 
 Leaving the motive of private enterprise — ^viz., production for 
 gain rather than use — unmolested, it may be assumed that a com- 
 plete combination on the part of employers engaged in the produc- 
 tion of a given commodity — such combinations as are in continued 
 process of formation — would result disastrously to other social fac- 
 tions. Not only would consuaiers be fleeced to the utmost of their 
 purchasing power, but generally employes and the producers of raw 
 material and machinery would be compensated only to the line of 
 possible existence. Increased knowledge and renewed activity of 
 employes to secure higher wages, and the jealousy of consumers to 
 secure lower prices, are the only warrant that serious catastrophies 
 of the like referred to, would be averted. 
 
 But private enterprise, to promote effectually the economic well 
 being of every citizen, must advance to and assume another power 
 or prerogative which its very nature antagonizes ; it must acquire the 
 authority and power to hold the prroductive factors to harmonious 
 and increasing production, without at the same time, perpetuating un- 
 supplied want, unworthy dependence and poverty. 
 
 A complete organization of industrial leaders under the provisions 
 of private enterprise and an enlightened public sentiment, leaves all 
 employes ostensibly in full personal freedom. It is, ho -a- ever, more 
 apparent than real. It is the common sentiment and expression of 
 the times, that free men may labor or not labor, as they choose. It 
 
144 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 is a generally believed and promulgated fact, that employers should 
 and do assert no right to force employes to expend their labor on 
 productive enterprises which the former are conducting. It is fur- 
 ther generally believed that employers should and do exercise no 
 such power over the so-called laboring portion of the community. 
 If it were generally known that they do so, the generous and liberal 
 sentiment of the age would be shocked. ' * 
 
 To both of these general beliefs a denial must be entered. 
 That a right and power should somewhere exist to compel indolent, 
 poor or rich, to perform a reasonable amount of labor, the indepen- 
 dence and freedom of the individual, and the interests of society 
 demand. That, in private enterprise, it does not exist in ample 
 efficiency, is evidence that society is not yet organized ; that it comes 
 yek far sh6rt of that evolutionized perfection which is its destiny. 
 While law prevents — as it should do — the exercise of physical force by 
 one individual over another, by one class over another, its own existence 
 and operation is evidence of the truth that society justly claims and 
 should maintain the right to determine the movement of the indi- 
 vidual and the limits of his freedom. It is evident that ample 
 power to control the industrial movements of the individual lies only 
 in organized society. First, openly and directly, the individual does 
 not attempt to control the labor of another ; second, but covertly 
 and indirectly he makes perpetual attempt, and with limited success. 
 
 Neither law nor public sentiment sanctions an interference with 
 personal freedom, fraught with the semblance of chattel slavery. 
 
 Private enterprise, even though it be fully organized as to the em- 
 ploying class, is compelled to permit every man and all masses of 
 men, regardless of the interests of the community to be accommo- 
 dated by the joint labor of employers and employes ; to work or 
 not to work, according to the individual choice. Under present 
 conditions an employer may close his works at any time ; an em- 
 ploye may quit his work at any time ; both disregarding the wants 
 of the community, whose wants it is their self-chosen duty jointly to 
 supply. 
 
 Through this loose-jointed, half organized condition, of which the 
 present generation is too universally proud, patrons of all forms of 
 commodity are continually subjected to various degrees and phases 
 of inconvenience. 
 
 Solutions of industrial continuity which manifest themselves in 
 the form of strikes and boycotts on one part, lockouts and black- 
 listing on another, and losses of accommodation and supply on the 
 third, perpetually fret the peaceful ongoings of natural life. Disagree- 
 ments of employers and employes, the unbearable tyranny of rings 
 and combinations on the one side, and unconsidered demands and 
 badly managed strikes on the other continually baffle the calcula- 
 
INDUSTRIAL CONTINUITY BROKEN BY STRIKES LOCKOUTS. I45 
 
 tions, destroy the continuity and mar the symmetrical life and com- 
 fort of the body of consumers. 
 
 Private enterprise has no conceded right or adequate power of 
 interference or control to protect the interests of a consuming com- 
 munity against the withdrawal of either party to industrial effort ; 
 it cannot assure uninterrupted continuity of supply to average pur- 
 chasing power. Strikes and lockouts result in want, loss and des- 
 truction, not only to employers and employes, but great inconven- 
 ience and distress to thousands, yes, millions of irresponsible and 
 dependent patrons and consumers. 
 
 The strike of the Brooklyn horse-car employes, on Christmas day 
 1886, threatened to disturb the calculations and convenience of 
 two or three hundred thousand people, a part of whose daily life it 
 was to rely upon that private corporation for transportation. 
 
 For weeks, the refusal of the Geary and Sutter street railway com- 
 panies, of San Francisco, to pay a small advance on previous wages, 
 discommoded, in various ways and degrees, more than fifty thou- 
 thousand people. No power lay in the hands of these private 
 corporations to compel competent men to perform the necessary 
 labor at the wages offered, and the employes who were competent, 
 and who deemed themselves insufficiently remunerated, held no 
 power to compel the paym'ent of these demands. A struggle en- 
 sued which broke the continuity of the joint industry and disturbed 
 for weeks, the usual tranquil life of the entire city. 
 
 Another strike on the Atlantic coast, commencing with a demon- 
 stration on the part of coal companies, to reduce the wages of em- 
 ployes to starvation point, disturbed the peaceful industries, uses and 
 accommodations of an immense population. 
 
 It passed from organization to organization until 50,000 men had 
 quit work. The manufacturing and commercial operations of 20,- 
 000,000 people were interrupted. Indirectly the industries of two 
 continents were affected. These solutions of industrial continuity, 
 incident to private enterprise, are likely at any moment, through the 
 inherent antagonism of industrial factors, to be precipitated upon 
 the peaceful and regular life of all nations ; solutions and disturb- 
 ances, the baneful effects of which, it possesses no adequate power to 
 avert. Jts principal means of holding the industrial world to har- 
 monious and continuous activi|y — i. e., private contract — it impairs 
 and perverts through its habitual disregard for the rights and inter- 
 ests of others. Conducted to the end of personal greed, reckless of 
 even-handed justice, and rigidly administered to its logical results, 
 through incessant conflicts for the results of production — through 
 strikes and lockouts — it is destined, so long as it dominates indus- 
 trial life, frequently to perturb and distress the society it serves, to its 
 extremest confines* 
 
146 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 PRIVATE ENTERPRISE OPERATING FROxM 
 ITS OWN" MOTIVES AND UNDER ITS 
 OWN CONTROL. , 
 
 CHAPTER VI., SECTION VII. 
 
 l^ut while private enterprise possesses no recognized right to con- 
 trol the employee, or coerce him into involuntary labor, it covertly 
 and indirectly surrounds him by environments and conditions which 
 constitute a cordon of painful and irresistible impressment. 
 
 It attempts to maintain its power and prestige through measures 
 whose pernicious results on human society, as contrasted with the 
 results of perpetual conflicts between employer and employee, are 
 replete with disaster and misery to the civilized world; more disas- 
 trous than the difficulties to be remedied thereby. Industrial man- 
 agers recognize the desirability of conducting industrial affairs with- 
 out solution of their continuity, and warrant themselves in the ex- 
 ecution of any measures which will make production continuous. 
 
 The measure they find most effective is the promotion of 
 -want, poverty or starvation, or the fear of that misery which comes 
 therefrom. Poverty, or fear of poverty and its attendant misery is 
 promoted and enforced by maintaining without sustaining a large 
 maigin of unemployed men and women, who, hungry and naked, 
 'hanging on the ragged verge of want, are ready, under the force of 
 perpetuated necessities, at a moment's notice, and at any compensa- 
 tion offered, to step forward and perform, as best they may, the labor 
 voluntarily dropped by others ; dropped because too meagerly com- 
 pensated for services to satisfy either their wants or their sense of 
 justice. This unemployed force, including all not actively engaged in 
 production — on one hand the pampered pioteges of wealth, on the 
 other, vast masses too poor to employ themselves, dependent on odd 
 jobs of work here and there and then, on charity, public or private, 
 ■ on the commission of crime to secure food and shelter from public 
 funds, on tramping, beggary, theft and robbery, which always bring 
 ; but the most meager and precarious subsistance — is the efficient and 
 indispensable buttress of private enterprise; a buttress, without which, 
 in its unremitting contest with organized and organizing labor for the 
 lion's share of the results of production, it could maintain its ground 
 of vantage but a few years. It is through the indirect power of this 
 -array of unemployed which is maintained with reckless disregard of 
 
PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MAINTAINED BY THE UNEMPLOYED, 1 47 
 
 the better interests of all communities, that men under private em- 
 ployment through fear of losing their opportunities for existence are 
 driven to a continuity of service often both slavish and degrading ; 
 are forced continually to accept such a minimum of wages as the 
 greed and ambition of employers may dictate. 
 
 This army of unemployed is the reserved power, which when 
 wielded with persistency and skill by industrial leaders, as emergen- 
 cies demand, exceeds and overcomes the active forces of combined 
 labor; and it is the quiet, farseeing, settled, unscrupulous and cruel, 
 but indispensible policy of employers, to " keep on hand " — as the 
 wielders of machinery wisely provide extra cogs, nuts, cylinders, 
 wheels, shafts and beams, to take the place of those broken ; as 
 those who produce and transport, using beasts of labor and burden, 
 maintain others to take the place of the lame and disabled — a »u- 
 merous and effective margin of unemployed to be dropped into the 
 places of those driven by injustice to frequent revolt. 
 
 To maintain, without sustaining^ an effective minimum of thor- 
 oughly pauperized laborers in America, immigration for a half century 
 or more, has been sedulously and vigorously encouraged and pro- 
 moted. To get rid of a dangerous maximum of unemployed and 
 impoverished during the same period, has been the policy of Euro- 
 pean employers. In both cases, in Europe and America, these subtle 
 operations, and the paramount interests of capitalists, have been 
 promoted by leading statesmen of the respective nations concerned. 
 Laws have been passed, and private and public funds used to trans- 
 port the pauper and dangerous elements of Europe, driven to poverty 
 and desperation, not so fully by oppressive political, as by despoiling 
 industrial influences, to the unappropriated opportunities of the new 
 continent. Private and public influences and forces in America, 
 have been persistently invoked under the guise and name of liberty 
 and humanity, to secure the surplus laborers of Europe in numbers 
 sufficient to hold the demand of native laborers for ample wages in 
 satisfactory check. It has been the policy of American employers — 
 those who determine the industrial policy of government — for more 
 than a generation, to make special arrangements to secure the cheap 
 labor of Europe to advance their own enterprises, and crowd out at 
 the same time, the cheap goods produced by similar cheap labor This 
 has been done with the assistance and connivance of Government, 
 under those refuges of subtle schemers, humanity and patriotism. 
 
 Too many unemployed endangers the peace and permanency of 
 organized society. Too few unemployed threatens the security and 
 effectiveness of private enterprise. In other words, to maintain pri- 
 vate enterprise in the fullness of its vigor — widespread poverty must 
 be also maintained. 
 
 Though the United States government has enforced a tariff which 
 
I4S WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 protected products belonging to domestic employers against the 
 competition of foreign goods — presuming thereby to protect Amer- 
 ican laborers against foreign laborers — prompted by private influences^ 
 until within a few years it has systematically permitted and encouraged 
 the coming of large numbers of foreign laborers under contract ; and 
 these foreign laborers encouraged to immigrate under pretense of 
 affording them refuge and freedom from political tyranny, have ])re- 
 served intact that reserve force of unemployed, which, in the hands 
 of capitalists engaged in conflicts with organizing labor, have en- 
 abled them to maintain control of industrial affairs ; to become the 
 industrial soverigns of the country, and levy their private taxes with- 
 out obstruction on all consumers. 
 
 Within a few years public sentiment has undergone some 
 change. Discussion of the tariff" conducted during political cam- 
 paigns has exposed the fact, that protection to goods is not practi- 
 cally protection to labor. 
 
 In 1884 Congress passed a law in the following language : "That 
 from and after the passage of this act, it shall be unlawful for any 
 person, company, partnership or corporation, in any manner what- 
 soever, to prepay the transportation, or in any way assist or encour- 
 age the importation or imigration of any alien or aliens, or any for- 
 eigner or foreigners into the United States, its territories, or the 
 l^istrict of Columbia, under contract or agreement, parole or special 
 express or implied, made previous to the importation or immigration 
 of such alien or aliens, foreigner or foreigners, to perform a service 
 of any kind in the United States, its territories or the District of 
 Columbia." The law also provided that for every violation of its 
 provisions, the offender shall be fined $1,000; that suit maybe 
 brought for every alien imported under contract, and that the ex- 
 pense of prosecution be defrayed by the United States. 
 
 This law is distinct and mandatory as possible, and yet it is openly 
 violated by those, who of all others, claim to be law abiding ; violated 
 because it impairs the power of private enterprise and threatens its 
 efficient existence; violated in opposition to the eff"orts of govern- 
 ment officials to render its provisions effective. 
 
 Mr. Stephenson, Commissioner of Emigration at New York, as- 
 serts that he has made strenuous eff'orts, all in vain, to induce the 
 federal District Attorney to act upon palpable violations of the law. 
 Said the Commissioner; "There are numberless cases of imported 
 contract labor here at Castle Garden," and went on to give a list of 
 them. " Recently when in Washington in company with Superin- 
 tendent Jackson, I called on Acting Secretary of the Treasury 
 Fairchild, with relation to the continued violations of this statute. 
 I said, ' Mr. Secretary, the trouble is in the fact, that there is no- 
 
IMPORTATION CF LABORERS TO SUSTAIN PRIVATE ENTERPRISE. 1 49 
 
 body to enforce the law,' He shook his head and said, ' That is 
 about the size of it.' " 
 
 Superintendent Jackson, of the Labor Bureau at Castle Garden, 
 affirms that crowds of contract laborers arrive there whose pas- 
 sage has been paid by the agents of American employers. He says : 
 ** I am positive that droves of cheap contract laborers have been 
 brought over here within the past three years by employers who want 
 to prepare for the anticipated labor troubles, growing out of the de- 
 mand of American workmen for shorter hours of work. I name 
 the case of the Clearfield mining operators, who sent their agents 
 into the middle of Europe, with promises of plenty of work, and by 
 paying the passage of men, sent over a number of Poles and Hun- 
 garians. These men with their families, went through the Garden 
 and on to Pennsylvania, where they soon raised a bigger row than 
 the men whose places they took. The U. S. District Attorney' has 
 had his attention called to several instances of the violation of this 
 law, but he did not do anything." 
 
 The Italian slave markets of New York, are constantly receiving 
 drafts from Europe, and there is no concealment of this traffic, 
 which is enriching, not only the padrone^ but officials of the Italian 
 government in that city. An Italian Labor Company openly in- 
 forms contractors, builders, railroad superintendents and engineers, 
 that it is prepared " to supply laborers in large or small numbers at 
 figures that will repay inquiry." According to the best estimates the 
 number of immigrants imported in coffle gangs to this country, 
 under contract with corporations, and bound to labor service within 
 the last ten years, has approximated a quarter of a million. They 
 liave been scraped up from Italy, Hungary, Poland, Germany and 
 Great Britian, wherever cheap laborers could be induced by the 
 false promises of agents, to bind themselves by contract, under the 
 conditions to which they have been subjected ; and have been used 
 to depress wages, take the place of strikers, and by keeping a glut 
 in the labor market, prevent the possibility of strikes."* 
 
 That the policy of sustaining private enterprise by keeping at 
 hand a large surplus of labor — a surplus which constitutes the bulk of 
 the impoverished and criminal class, is a profoundly planned, well- 
 settled and active policy is attested by the movements of employers, 
 since what is known as the coal and freight handlers strike, of the 
 present year — 1887. Their movements, usually conducted covertly 
 and quietly, are made known through such press items as the follow- 
 ing telegram: "New York, March 11. — The Central labor Union 
 are in trouble about the just now rapidly increasing immigration of 
 Italians at Castle Garden. No fewer than 1,100 arrived yesterday. 
 The Knights of Labor claim that many of them are coming here 
 
 *New York paper. 
 
150 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 under contract, in violation of a federal prohibitory statute ; and 
 contracts have been made by some of the trunk railroads for their 
 service. It is reported at the Castle Garden Labor Bureau, that all 
 the Fiench steamers, for six weeks ahead, will be loaded with im- 
 migrants of the same class." A more recent telegram also an- 
 nounces the destruction of a European steamer, and describes the 
 sufferings of 800 Italian laborers on board ; laborers whose immi- 
 gration is interdicted by Federal law, the provisions of which are 
 persistently, even openly, violated by the industrial leaders of the 
 country. 
 
 And what do American employers, or their apologists say in justi- 
 fication of acts notoriously defiant and high-handed? 
 
 They say, and with truth, that they cannot maintain the industries 
 of the country on the current principles of private enterprise, with- 
 out continually drawing from the surplus population of Europe, men 
 and women who will accept without protest, such wages as the em- 
 ployers are able or willing to give. It is not, they will tell you truly, 
 what their better irr pulses would prompt them to do. To live and 
 succeed in a turbulent sea of competition, each employer must 
 secure consumption of his goods by striving to put them into mar- 
 ket either of better quality or at lower price, or more opportune 
 moments than his competitors. 
 
 Each employer is compelled to seek for himself, and drive com- 
 petitive employers to seek for themselves material and labor at all 
 hazards of moral delinquency or legal punishment, at tne lowest 
 possible rates ; labor also which will not interrupt industrial opera- 
 tions by going on strikes for higher wages. Their undertaking they 
 will tell you, is to supply the wants of the public ; and the public in- 
 spired by the current spirit of the age, to get as much and as per- 
 fect a product as is possible for what is paid, demands cheap goods 
 and continued supply, and the demand must be met ; that every 
 employer is pressed to the utmost by all other employers, and to 
 maintain his position is forced to obtain cheap and good material, 
 cheap and effective labor, and to obtain patronage, sell his goods at 
 the lowest possible price. If wages are raised upon him, the mar- 
 gin of profit is likely to be eliminated, and he is in imminent danger 
 of that failure, which will cast him to the bottom of the industrial 
 pyramid to bewail lost opportunities and become an employee of 
 some more powerful or fortunate rival. 
 
 Hence employers, pleading the law of necessity, refuse to obey 
 statute laws which threaten to undermine that form of industrial 
 enterprise to which they have been reared, and which alone feeds 
 their industrial hopes and ambitions, and gives them prospects of 
 accumulated wealth. So long as private enterprise, based on indi- 
 vidual profit rather than social use, exists and dominates public 
 
PRIVATE ENTERPRISE RESPONSIBLE FOR PREVAILING POVERTY. I5I 
 
 Opinion and the enactment and administration of law, so long will 
 laws intended to diminish or eliminate poverty be subverted or cir- 
 cumvented. 
 
 A strong sentiment is rising in America, on grounds other than 
 those here presented, to prevent immigration, ignorant, viciousi 
 and pauperized, from foreign countries. If it assumes the form of 
 federal law, the tendency will be to place the issue between Ameri- 
 can employers and employees, squarely before the American people- 
 for a just settlement. If the law is executed, organized labor will 
 reorganize with better prospects of success ; the buttress of private 
 enterprise, with industrial leaders vieing with each other as to which 
 shall accumulate most of that wealth of which they produce but little^ 
 will be withdrawn, and co-operative distribution, with more ample 
 purchasing power to n?anual laborers, will advance rapidly along the 
 chosen lines of industrial evolution. 
 
 It appears then — there is no escape from the logic of the deduc- 
 tion — that private enterprise, conducted as it is, to the end of per- 
 sonal profit, by a small proportion and detached sections of the pop- 
 ulation into whose hands, by priority, heredity and purchase have 
 been accumulated the natural sources of wealth and social appliances- 
 of production, lives and fattens upon,and is responsible for the exist- 
 ence and continuance of that widespread and disastrous poverty 
 which overshaows every civilized nation ; and that employers, leaders, 
 and promoters of industrial enterprise, stimulated by the allurement 
 of individual wealth) are its willing, ardent, active and responsible 
 defendants, advocates and agents. 
 
 It furthermore appears questionable whether these industrial lead- 
 ers — capitalists — can subjectively rise high enough above personal 
 interests and enlarge the ends of industrial life to include si)ecifically 
 and directly the wants of every citizen ; questionable if the subjec- 
 tive disposition rises to the high tide of general utility, whether in- 
 dustrial operations can, by them, be combined and co-ordinated to- 
 that harmony and comprehensive efficiency required to give employ- 
 ment and ample purchasing po';7er with adequate supply to individ- 
 ual and national want ; more than questionable, if that ample and 
 intelligent enlargement of the ends of national production herein 
 suggested and prompted, will be given, by industrial leaders, even* 
 that full and thoughtful consideration which the topic deserves. 
 
 So long have men been incited to action principally by self-consider- 
 ation, that that regard for the "other" which it was the mission of the 
 Man of Nazareth to impress on developing humanity, has scarcely- 
 gained entrance, much less recognition, among the motive forces of 
 the race. It appears, furthermore, that amendments to present in- 
 dustrial conditions and processes must be principally planned and 
 
152 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 enforced through organization and action of the excluded, despoiled 
 and interested. 
 
POLITICAL PARTIES LOOKED TO FOR RELIEF. I53 
 
 QUASI-PUBLIC ENTERPRISE ; OR, PRIVATE 
 
 ENTERPRISE UNDER PUBLIC CONTROL. 
 
 CHAPTER VI, SECTION VIII. 
 
 The considerations presented in the preceeding sections will open 
 the minds of thoughtful men to the pro})Osition that some things 
 radically wrong exist in the present status of industrial evolution, 
 which, in the interests of common humanity need radical, if not 
 abruptly operating remedies ; in other words that the materials and 
 factors involved with an industrial evolution, need some new and 
 efficient adjustments, and the forces some beneficent and intelligent 
 directions. 
 
 In connection with aggressors and aggrieved, the question serious- 
 ly arises whether private enterprise, conducted with the direct pur- 
 pose of supplying the wants, satisfying the aspirations and gratifying 
 the ambitions of a few, and promoting the maintenance of a large 
 mass of helpless laborers in dependence and poverty, can be relied 
 upon to achieve that harmonious condition of economic affairs in the 
 social body, which perfect organization presupposes; 
 
 That continued dissatisfaction prevails, now here, now there, 
 touching at one time one industry, at another place another; touch- 
 ing the narrow, reckless, irresponsible, often cruel, dishonest and 
 vindictive outcome, is only too manifest. Scarcely a day passes in 
 which some patron of private enterprise does not lift up blind, 
 hopeless and usually helpless prayer to some higher and stronger 
 power for relief from its oppressions and exactions. 
 
 The irreverent masses usually look to organized, or organizing 
 society, to government, to statute law for ample relief. The burden 
 of their hopes and prayers often becomes the incentive and stimulus to 
 political movements. It is the manifest function of political organiza- 
 tion to respond to such demands. Political parties are saddled with 
 the responsibility of relieving the people — patrons — from the over- 
 weening power and relentless exactions of private enterprise, con- 
 ducted as it is throughout Christendom for private purposes, and 
 not for the general good.. Everywhere and unceasingly the cry arises 
 for protection — in city, county, state and nation — from the results of 
 a ceaseless industrial controversy, the elimination of whose customs, 
 maxims and mandates would, however, incite, probably through ig- 
 norance of the economic conditions surrounding, loud protests of 
 the impossible. While the successful few — successful principally on 
 
154 WEALTH AKD poverty OF NATIONS. 
 
 account of privileges, opportunities and advantages secured by priority, 
 heredity or purchase, and not enjoyed by others — are satisfied with 
 current conditions, the bulk of society to secure, not a change of 
 conditions and purposes which might bring permanent relief, but 
 temporary easement from the strain of forces, are continually demand- 
 ing the interference of society through government with the industrial 
 operations of private individuals and corporations. 
 
 The reverent few, for the desired relief from industrial exactions, 
 turn their thoughts toward that invisible Source of power which it is 
 alleged and believed holds the reins of government over all material 
 organizations. 
 
 Indeed communities in their one function of patron and con- 
 sumer, ever and anon bitterly protest against the cruel oppressions of 
 private enterprise ; protest to organized society on one hand and 
 Creative and Provident forces on the other. 
 
 Industrial oppression, within a few years has increased and in- 
 tensified to that extent, that government, in all its phases of opera- 
 tion, has been called upon to check the plundering of industrial 
 leaders ; indeed, public sentiment is rapidly crystalizing, has mark- 
 edly crystalized into the belief and demand that enterprise must be 
 placed under the strong and repressing arm of government surveil- 
 lance and restraint; and not a few are of the belief that the 
 reckless disregard of the public good by private enterprise, will ulti- 
 mately force the public into ownership and control of those industries 
 through which the wants of the nation are supplied. 
 
 Already, scarcely an industry, in whose results the public is inter- 
 ested — and as patron, in what is it not — but has so frequently and 
 oppressively transgressed upon the maxims and laws of justice, and 
 the intuitions of inter-individual good-will,that government, in defense 
 of public interests has interfered with its operations, through means 
 of surveillance and limitation. 
 
 Government inspection of the operations of private enterprise is 
 :ommon everywhere, and so unscrupulous and seductive are the 
 means used by industrial leaders — capitalists — to avert the benifi- 
 cent results of inspection to the public, that special inspectors are 
 often appointed to watch and report upon the action of regular in- 
 spectors. 
 
 Inspection is, usually premonitory of, and preparatory to more 
 decisive action on the part of society ; viz,, direction, limitation and 
 control. To that extent has private enterprise, in its greed of gain, 
 imposed on helpless communities, that government, local and 
 national, in defense of the public good, has placed under strict sur- 
 veillance, among phases of business too numerous to mention, bank- 
 ing houses, insurance companies, water, gas and electric light com- 
 panies. It has turned the light of public intelligence on private 
 
THE PRESENT PARENTAL CHARACrER OF GOVERNMENT. 1 55 
 
 operations in oleomargerine ; in whisky distilling ; in tobacco culture 
 and manufacture ; in beer brewing and wine making ; in the prepara- 
 tion and sale of meats, and in telegraph, express and railway in- 
 dustries. 
 
 The more closely one observes the accepted and established 
 relations between industry and government, the function of the lat- 
 ter seems to be that of a parental umpire to a lot of reckless, ruth- 
 less, quarreling progeny. The continued tendency of the latter has 
 been to infringe on the industrial rights and compensations of other 
 industries, or other individuals and corporations engaged in the same 
 industry, and govern niental function and power is taxed to the ex- 
 treme, to maintain the rights and privileges of the weaker and more 
 helpless, against the strong and unscrupulous. Those who protest 
 strongly as;ainst the parental element of government, will do well to 
 ask and determine for themselves, whether what we now have, is 
 other than a parental organization whose time and power is mostlv 
 expended, not in undertaking and promoting, but in watching, di- 
 recting and regulating the industrial operations of the numerous 
 factors — individual and corporate — which have grown up under 
 its fostering care ; an organized social parent, engaged in watching^ 
 scolding, whiping and punishing its erratic and recalcitrant progeny. 
 They might also inquire and determine if society, through govern- 
 ment, would not accomplish more for its component individuals in 
 every way, by assuming directly and absolutely, the functions of 
 production and distribution, rather than by placing certain individ- 
 uals in positions o^" industrial power, and standing guard over their 
 licensed operations. 
 
 It must be admitted that much of what society stands guard over 
 and limits through law, is the result of its own primitive, inconsider- 
 ate disreregard for the fundamental principles of equity ; disregard 
 in that it has assigned and confirmed to a few of its earliest born and 
 earliest developed individuals, a major portion of the sources of wealth 
 and appliances of production. It is the struggle tor the results of 
 production which incites fraud, over-reaching and exclusion, against 
 the injustice of which, organized society, through law, is ever con- 
 tending. 
 
 It seems almost impossible, that those who inaugurate and pro- 
 mote private enterprise influenced by the fierce conflicts of compet- 
 itive distribution, should successfully conduct their affairs along, or 
 close to the lines of strict honesty. It is war; war for bread, clothes 
 and roofs ; and who ever knew of war being conducted except through 
 the instrumentality of violence or strategy ? Violence being interdict- 
 ed by all the power of organizing society, what remains as a means 
 of warfare but strategy — but the secretive element of attack and self 
 defense ? 
 
156 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Under influence of this element of human nature, it is self-praise, 
 imposture, evasive and delusive promises with professional men ; it is 
 shirking, direct deceit and pretense with those engaged in personal 
 service ; it is short measure, light weight, misrepresented quality and 
 false statements regarding cost, loss and profit with trade and trans- 
 portation ; it is counterfeiting and adulteration with manufacturers 
 and the petty forms of deceit regarding quality and quantity, which 
 mark the transactions of agriculture. 
 
 Pure exchange wherein value moves from person to person with 
 exact equation is rarely thought of; advantage — somewhat more to 
 be got than given — is the present inciting motive of commerce, as 
 well as of the other phases of industrial life. A line of falsification in 
 some of its more or less delicate manifestations, by common consent, 
 marks most acts of exchange and is recognized and admitted by the 
 parties thereto. Every one is on the lookout lest he is the suff"erer 
 through the operation of deception and fraud.* 
 
 But organized society, as to its interference with the despoiling op- 
 erations of private enterprise, goes, in defense of the interests of the 
 people, much farther than mere inspection and surveillance. It is 
 against vast and aggressive influences and their outward, combined and 
 overpowering expression in current incidents of business, that gov- 
 ernment enters the arena of limitation and control. 
 
 Intuitively, under unendurable or unjustifiable exaction, the public 
 appeals to government, as the best exponent and executioner of 
 that justice which should underlie all law, for effective relief ; and 
 under the plastic touch of public opinion these appeals have met a 
 willing, but, too often, a tardy response. 
 
 *In the operation of this fearful truth and the more fearful phases of competition 
 lies the argument for and defense of free trade on one hand and proteciive tarifiFon 
 the other. Both parties affect to believe in the essential equity of manufacture and 
 commerca— in the intent of all parties to industrial life, to observe a true equation 
 of exchange. Each party ignores the existence of industrial combinations, which, 
 following the plundering instincts of private enterprise renders the beneficent the- 
 ories of both inoperative and abortive; the advocate of free trade ignores the possi- 
 ble, yes, probable operations of industrial combinations, in breaking down the in- 
 dustries of one country, where industry is but partly organized, diminishing em- 
 ployment and destroying purchasing power. Its entire purpose is the reduction of 
 prices to consumers. It takes but a one-sided view of the whole field, The adyo- 
 c ite of a protective tariff notes these objections to tree trade; but in the competitive 
 struggle at b( me for the results of production— between employees and employer, 
 between employee and employee, between producers and consumers— does not see 
 that his protection really protects only a combination of employers; that the high 
 rate of prices he is enabled to maintain by protection is drawn from the pockets of 
 consumers not to increase the purchasing power of employees, but to make a few 
 millionaires, Both forget that private enterprise must of necessity involve a com- 
 petitive struggle for the results of production; that competition combines to com- 
 pete and in these Titanic contests the expected beneficent results of grand measures 
 like protection on one hand and free trade on the other, are limited or overthrown; 
 that these consequences must follow, whether private enterprise is conducted on an 
 international ^cale with free trade or a national scale with protection. The tariff 
 protects the nation as producers, and free trade cares for it as consumers. There is 
 an individualism in private enterprise which has defeated and will continue to de- 
 feat the beneficeut prognostications of the adherents of free trade and protection 
 alike. It is the ingrained inequity of commerce itself, whether it be foreign or do- 
 mestic commerce which is responsible for the pernicious results of free trade on 
 one hand and protection on the other. 
 
ALSO PRODUCERS ARE ASSISTED BY GOVERNMENT. 1 57 
 
 Legislation has become burdened by laws of limitation and con- 
 trol, and the dockets of the courts are loaded with the evidences of 
 liiigious discontent. Limitation and control, as a rule, is placed on 
 those individuals, corporations and combinations, the character and 
 extent of whose operations most acutely affect the supply of impera- 
 tive want ; and those which, having beaten down all competition, have 
 arrived at or near the status of monopoly. 
 
 For these private enterprises, definite lines of procedure have been 
 marked out beyond which it is unlawful to go. Each employer is 
 constrained to limit his industrial liberty within fixed bounds- -bounds 
 which give also liberty to his peers. This restraint is often regarded 
 as an interference with their industrial rights by those who are ready 
 and anxious to over-ride the equal rights of others to the means of 
 life and success. But where all do not have liberty none have it ; it 
 is license on the one part and oppression and servitude on the other. 
 If I trespass on the industrial rights of my neighbor, I have opened 
 the way to further trespass, which may be extended to the entire 
 community; and government is performing a necessary function if it 
 limits me and gives others also their equal right. Limitation and 
 control by government tends to the development of limited, and 
 therefore truer industrial liberty. 
 
 Government in protection of the public from private enterprise, 
 has undertaken to reduce the prices of commodity and service. 
 Principally, since the growth of corporations, the organization of 
 combinations and the development of machinery, has competition 
 through overthrow of the weaker factors and combination of the 
 strongest, developed the industrial detachments to the monopolistic 
 status; a status which results in no good io consumers. Against the ex- 
 actions of these organized monopolies has government been appealed 
 to with Ic^ud complaint, and it has responded by passing laws to lim- 
 it prices of commodities and services. It has cut the rates of gas 
 and water and transportation companies, and its course of inspection 
 limitation and control has been sustained by courts of last appeal. 
 
 The principle that society, acting as a totality, is bound by the 
 highest sanctions of duty to protect its component individuals and 
 detachments from the bandit instincts of other individuals and de- 
 tachments, has crystalized into a national policy — a policy which is 
 sustained by the wisest and loftiest authority and stimulates the pub- 
 lic hope that in due course of events a true industrial freedom may be 
 evolved. 
 
 But another and equally important phase of the relations of gov- 
 ernment to private enterprise presents. The public, in its economic 
 life as consumers, have appealed to government for protection and 
 government has wisely responded by inspection, limitation and con- 
 trol. But the public as producers^ have not forgotten that a parental 
 
15^ WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 power — or somewhat analogous — stands behind them and have ap- 
 pealed to that power for assistance. Whether wisely or not, a func- 
 tion of government has been evolved which consists in assisting and 
 promoting private enterprise by subsi(fy of special privileges, franchises, 
 lands and money. It has been done on the presumption that no 
 private enterprise can be carried forward in which the people as a 
 whole are not, or may not be interested as consumers or patrons. 
 To say nothing of patents of land, which from the first to last, on 
 larg;e or small scale, are little else than special subsidies to special in- 
 dividuals, to the absolute exclusion of others, English and American 
 history is replete with instances wherein private enterprise has been 
 encouraged and sustained by the goods and money of the public. 
 Such subsidial assistance has oftenest been conferred on private enter- 
 prise engaged in trade and transportation and the communication of 
 intelligence. In the domain of mechanics and manufacture, govern- 
 ment has granted special [»rivileges to those who have made new dis- 
 coveries in nature or compassed new inventions in art or mechanical 
 manipulation. It has granted a monopoly to the inventor or his as- 
 signees for a definite and ample term of years. In agriculture it has 
 offered and paid premiums to promote the various forms and phases 
 of animal and vegetable growth. The agricultural bureau is in con- 
 tinual correspondence with different portions of the country conveying 
 gratis to planters large varieties of seed. The culture of fish is al- 
 most exclusively in the hands and under the control of government. 
 Game laws everywhere exist to protect the interests of consumers. 
 The tariff has been sustained, principally, to protect private enter- 
 prise in its productive department against low prices of material, la- 
 bor and goods from foreign countries ; protection which really con- 
 stitutes a subsidy taken indirectly from consumers and transferred 
 to the exchanges of producers. Through this indirect taxation, a 
 vast majority of the productive movements of private enterprise are 
 especially promoted and financially sustained through the efficient 
 instrumentality and aid of government. 
 
 Most of -Ahatever is now urged by public men — who too often 
 give but little thought to public affairs — against the interference of 
 government with industrial affairs as promoted and managed by 
 private enterprise, is tardy and inopportune. The fact already ob- 
 tains that government, in all forms and phases of its operation and 
 instrumentality, is inextricably intertwined with industrial affairs ; that 
 it has already assumed and exercised responsibilities pertaining there- 
 to, which by intelligent men cannot be ignored or set aside. Gov- 
 ernment at all times and in every civilized nation is held by the 
 people in their functlbn as consumers or producers, responsible for 
 the satisfactory ongoing of industrial affairs. If the producer is 
 ■short of funds to manage enterprises of "pith and moment," he goes 
 
WHEN LEGIsr.ATION MAY BECOME HARMONIOUS. 1 59 
 
 to government with his plea for assistance. He urges, of course, not 
 hif: own interests, but the interests of the people as consumers of his 
 services or commodities. In this plea, which is both true and false, 
 he has been sustained by a consenting public sentiment which ad- 
 mits the principle that government may and should assist and sustain 
 the productive enterprises of the nation. If the consumer is oppress- 
 ed by the exaction of producers, he knows no higher or more appro- 
 priate source of appeal than through the government to organized 
 society. 
 
 With an inconsistency however, which might seem strange, did 
 not private enterprise develop and stimulate individual interests, 
 appeal is usually met by protest. When the producer calls on gov- 
 ernment for assistance, consumers protest that the function of govern- 
 ment is not to promote or sustain private industrial enterprise. When 
 the consumer appeals for protection from the producer, the latter 
 enters protest in like manner and on similar grounds. Each prompt- 
 ed by the greedy spirit of private enterprise, assumes that the funct- 
 ion of government is to assist himself but not the other man. 
 
 And government, in the enactment and execution of laws cuts a 
 sorry, and often absurd figure. Why? Simply because that which 
 it undertakes to inspect, control and govern, viz., private enterprise, 
 co-operatimg everywhere to produce, and competing everywhere to 
 distribute and consume, has reached that necessary point of its evo- 
 lution where inconsistencies and absurdities are the rule rather than 
 the exception. 
 
 Thus, every citizen embodies in his every-day life elements which 
 should not be, but which are made antagonistic to every other citizen 
 through the competitive struggle for the results of production. Ad- 
 vancement of the interest of one capitalist draws from the prosperity 
 of another. The interests of capitalists, as a class, are antagonistic 
 to those of laborers. In the present status, the interests of laborers 
 are antagonistic to those of capitalists; the interests of boht an! ag- 
 onize those of consumers, and the interests of consumers are best 
 subserved by drawing from the purchasing power of the capitalist de- 
 siring large profits, and the laborer high wages. If government by 
 law subsidizes one capitalist and fails to assist another, the interests 
 of the latter are impaired in degree corresponding to the advanced in- 
 terests of the former. If legislation is enacted which gives large 
 profits to the capitalist, it reduces the wages of the laborer and in- 
 creases the cost to consumers. If laws are enacted which diminish 
 the prices of commodities to consumers, then the profits of capitalists 
 are diminished, and wages of the laborer decline. If laws are exe- 
 cuted which advance the rate of wages, then capitalists and consumers 
 suffer ; the former, by decline of profits, the latter by advance of 
 prices. 
 
l6o WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 From this jumble of antagonistic interests, is it wonderful that all 
 laws bearing upon industrial life are but a mass of compromises with 
 sectional interests — a mass of comparative inconsistencies? Never- 
 theless, commnuity would embody an industrial pandemonium were 
 not the conflicting industrial forces kept under surveillance and held 
 in check by legislation. 
 
 When industrial life becomes consistent, when the interests of one 
 are the concern of all and the interests of all the concern of one, 
 when unity of end — general utility instead of individual profit and 
 personal greed — animates the industrial life of the nation, then can 
 legislation thereon become simple and consistent ; then may law 
 cease to be a tissue of incongruous compromises ; then may legisla- 
 tion and litigation, necessity therefor having been dismissed, be re- 
 duced to a minimum. Simple regulation and superintendence will 
 then accomplish more for the well-being of all, than laws piled vol- 
 ume on volume and adjudicated and executed by the most expensive 
 systems of courts and executive appliances. Antagonized by a 
 systematic industrial warfare, itself inspired by personal greed, 
 the world's cruelest war time is not yet passed. Meantime in 
 the Jmodes and under conditions before referred to, the province 
 of government will be to inspect, regulate, control and limit 
 the conflicting interests of private enterprise and hold it firmly and 
 steadily to that ultimate outcome of development which the intelli- 
 gent beneficent forces are slowly and wisely evolving. 
 
PROPHECY OF BETTER CONDITIONS. l6l 
 
 PUBLIC ENTERPRISE. 
 CHAPTER VL, SECTION IX. 
 
 Amid all this conflict, with much friction, much poverty and misery, 
 but with silver streaks of prospect breaking through the cloud and 
 gloom, industrial evolution is advancing with hopeful and vigorous 
 strides. 
 
 To suppose that industrial forces will come to a status in present 
 conditions would be equivalent to supposing that the planetary system 
 will cease to circle through space. To suppose that the full capacity 
 of production has been reached and that distribution has come 
 squarely under the law of equity, is to assume that the large mass cf 
 men are predestined and perpetually doomed to suffer and labor, that 
 a small minority may consume and enjoy ; is to assume that a good 
 and wise Creator had foreordained " from the foundation of the world" 
 organized poverty, misery and distress and planted it on the earth for 
 his glory and satisfaction. A wise, kindly and benificent man will 
 bring into being only what, in its operation and manifestation corres- 
 ponds to the wisdom, kindness and benificence of his own nature. If 
 he builds a machine, constructs a steamship or paints a landscape, 
 iu will accord, as to its forms, uses and satisfactions to the stronger 
 and better elements of his own nature ; it will be something upon 
 which he can look without pity or pain. To suppose the Creative 
 Force, evidently intelligent and beneficent as to its character, will act 
 less intelligently or beneficent than man, is an absurdity. Hence, 
 the human individual has not arrived to that finish and perfection, 
 which is his destiny, nor has society achieved the fullness and har- 
 mony of its possibilities. 
 
 Men will tell you that industrial matters have always been as they 
 are, that the many have labored and the few consumed and enjoyed. 
 What has been will be, and always will be. 
 
 You admit the proximate truth of the statement but deny the con- 
 clusions; for you see evidences of a general law of progress and evo- 
 lution and know, through your rationality, that betterments are sure 
 to come to all departments of life, as they have already come to 
 some. It is probable the average individual has kept pace with the 
 social development of each successive civilization ; but it is a matter 
 of history that the organization of every civilization has aborted at 
 some promising point of its development. Egypt was swept away 
 under the oppressions of the Ptolemies. Greece fell under the fierce 
 onslaughts of surrounding nations. Rome succumbed to the inroads 
 of the Goths and Vandals and the Christian civilization which is con- 
 
4[62 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS, 
 
 lEined to no single nation, continent or clime, is now arriving at the 
 .point of the greatest strain. 
 
 But none of those civilizations which have gone into the catalogue 
 •of the by-gone, yielded to outside influences until they were mellow 
 and rotten within — until the constituted leaders had lost their virility 
 by indulgence in luxuries which were supplied, not by their own 
 labor, but by exactions, enforced through violence or law, upon the 
 ^productions of the toilers. It was concentrated wealth, used first 
 for the comfort and luxury and subsequently for the debauchment of 
 the few, that caused the poverty of all preceding civilizations and 
 ■which has cast its cloud over those modern nations which have risen 
 to power under the civilization of the Man of Nazareth. In the hot 
 • and plethoric brain the chilled and anaemic extremities of modern 
 Nations — the few rich and the many poor — lies the danger which 
 may yet cause the present civilization, with its masterly activities 
 and its redundant exuberance of production, to lapse into some new 
 aspect of barbaric chaos. 
 
 It is not for us to say that with all past civilizations the masses 
 "have been poor and the few rich and comfortable and that what has 
 been, must be ; but it is for us to recognize in the growing irregu- 
 larities of physical life, symptoms of that decadence, which, origina- 
 rting in the corrupt morals and emasculated intellects of the leading 
 and determining class, if not arrested by wise and heroic action, is 
 abound sooner or later, to result disastrously. 
 
 It is not alone that the poor are poor and miserable and inces- 
 santly suffer the tortures of hunger and cold, and the prostitution of 
 body, and degradation of soul which poveity induces, but it 
 is that society, having passed through centuries of reformation and 
 ■reorganization, and having arrived at an epoch full of hope and 
 prophecy, may, by disregarding the causes of decadence which 
 brought the civilizations of Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome to an 
 vinglorious end, again abort that perfect evolution which is its ul- 
 timate destiny. 
 
 That men must come up from the depths by effort through suffer- 
 ing as they have gone down to the depths by slothfulness through 
 sensual gratification, is probable. The history of human growth, in- 
 dividual and social, attest this truth. But the evolutionary forces, 
 -Interior and exterior, will surely and rapidly carry the masses upward 
 ifrom the miserable and squalid life which has marked their existence 
 for ages. It is not true that what has been will always be. 
 
 It has been shown that concentrated wealth is the result of indus- 
 trial processes developed and conducted by private enterprise for the 
 .^ood of the individual ; that the strong and prior as to birth, advent 
 or development, through its customs and laws, through its narrow 
 processes and principles, secure natural and developed advantages 
 
THE QUESTION TO BS DETERMINED. 163 
 
 which enable them to concentrate the world's wealth to their posses- 
 sion and control. 
 
 It has been pointed out to what extent private enterprise, in defense 
 of the public welfare, has been placed under the determinations of 
 society through government inspection, limitation and control ; that 
 the powerful arm of the law and complex factors of government are 
 engaged at vast expenditure of intelligence, power and money, in 
 holding the irrepressible forces of private enterprise, stimulated by in- 
 dividual greed, within such limits that endurable individual and social 
 existence is possible ; that in defiance of legislative tetherings and 
 irrespective of the crying wants of the masses, its exactions on con- 
 sumers and the failure to transmit through wages, fee and salary an 
 adequate purchasing power to the laboring population, has conduced 
 and yet conduces to produce those extremes of physical condition 
 that stimulate widespread dissatisfaction, incite bitter discontent and 
 promote intense and devastating industrial warfare among the eco- 
 nomic factors. 
 
 The complex question which now presses for solution is, can the 
 industrial forces be more successfully managed ? managed to result 
 in a better distribution of the present results of production ? man- 
 aged to increase the sum total of national wealth, and throujih in- 
 crease of wealth bring comfort, even luxury, to every intelligent and 
 industrious home within the national domain ? managed to develop 
 and augment the individuality of all individuals, while it concentrates 
 and establishes the national power and the perfect social organism ? 
 
 To negative this question is to deny the capacity of man and the 
 power of God. With a low and narrow purpose, a low and narrow 
 result must be expected. The end of all enterprise actively engaging 
 the productive forces of every civilized nation, is the individual wel- 
 fare of those who incite, promote and lead industry. It is a narrow 
 end, and narrow results must be expected. No one will qilestion the 
 assertion that they are realized. 
 
 While it cannot be doubted that private enterprise has 
 been and is an indispensable phase of industrial evolution, it is 
 not clear that it has done the best, if all it can do, towards the de- 
 sired result ; viz., a perfected industrial system. 
 
 It has been shown that private enterprise, though it inaugurates 
 and promotes industrial activity, when its purpose, is achieved — sup- 
 ply to the wants of industrial leaders — stands in the way of farther 
 production required by the unsupplied wants of the laboring rank 
 and file. Resting on the process of purchase and sale for exchange, 
 bent on the gathering of profit, refusing to transfer ample purchasing 
 power to needy consumers that the latter may purchase all com- 
 modities produced up to their consuming power, it arrests produc- 
 tion in the face of a hungry and naked people. The plow and 
 
164 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 reaper are housed, fires put out and factories closed and materials 
 and implements of building relegated to comparative disuse. Charity, 
 public and private, bridges over a long suspension of activities by 
 niggardly feeding and clothing of starving and freezing, while the 
 desperate find shelter in jail, prison or insane asylum. 
 
 It has been pointed out that private enterprise is not likely, for 
 various reasons, to conduct industrial affairs to a wider scope or 
 better end through its own narrow interests. Hence, the end of 
 industry must be changed from the individual to the public welfare ; 
 and it becomes imperative, furthermore, to look to another instru- 
 mentality for industrial management, to supplement, if it does not 
 displace, the leadership of private enterprise; some being, already 
 existing, or to be brought into existence, which has for the end of 
 its existence and operation, the public good. 
 
 Government established according to the best theory, " by the 
 people and for the people," acting as the instrument of organized or 
 organizing society, most nearly approximates the ideal being de- 
 manded by the exigencies of the present industrial condition. 
 
 The end of governmental existence in the protection of life and 
 property and other less pronounced purposes, is the good of every 
 citizen, in the line and plane on which it operates. It is the theory 
 and the practice of good government that every citizen shall share 
 equally in the beneficent results of its intelligence, care, power and 
 protection. Whatever it undertakes it undertakes for all on similar 
 and equal conditions. It endeavors to express the will of the entire 
 people and in so doing, subserves the interests of the entire people. 
 
 No other organized being visibly exists, the end of whose existence 
 and operation so fully compasses the welfare of the entire popula- 
 tion ; and it is doubtful if such a being in any form or phase, could 
 be created by society, to execute the trusts imposed on the latter by 
 the invisible Forces. I'o organized government then, we are more 
 likely to look with success for the inauguration of that public enter- 
 prise which, unlike private enterprise, subserves and promotes in all 
 its operations, the general welfare ; the public good. 
 
 But we are told that the purpose of government is but to protect life 
 and property. To which assertion the reply is offered, that it is the 
 function of government to perform, in the public interest any function 
 whatever that organized society, through the expressed will of the people, 
 may impose upon it. Government is a servant and trustee of So- 
 ciety as society is the trustee and servant of an intelligent, beneficent 
 Creator. The functions of government are the subject of continued 
 change and addition. What was not recognized as the function of 
 government centuries since is now considered as of indispensable im- 
 portance. Addition to and subtraction from the functions of gov- 
 ernment will probably keep pace with industrial and social develop- 
 
CONSERVATION OF INDIVIDUALISM. 1 65 
 
 ment. Objectors to government management of industrial affairs, 
 have always come, will always come from that minority of the popula- 
 tion, whose selfish and ambitious interests and whose correspondent 
 encroachment on the natural and private rights of their fellows, 
 would be endangered and limited by governmental operations. 
 
 Reasons advanced by this class are manifold, but they cluster around 
 two principal thoughts, viz.: The rights of the individual and the de- 
 velopment of individual character, and the dangers of political influ- 
 ence and public corruption. They do not mention, however, in their 
 learned discussions on the benefit of individualism, that the particu- 
 lar class of individuals to which they refer is the privileged class to 
 which they themselves beloug. They ignore the fact that an immense 
 class from whom natural opportunities and good advantages are cut 
 off, could the more fully develop individuality of character, and 
 attain individual rights, were government to take charge of 
 those industries — conducting; them without profit, rent or interest — 
 which, returning immense revenues to private managers, deprive, 
 through that very revenue, the laboring and consuming masses of 
 the opportunities of individual culture and the enjoyment of individ- 
 vidual rights. It is their own individualism and not that of their 
 fellows about which they are intensely concerned. 
 
 A rank individualism connected with the development of a few 
 which must rise and flourish on the impaired or suppressed individual- 
 ism of a large population is not to be conserved ; though for temporary 
 purposes of social development, it may have been tolerated. Indi- 
 vidualism of so partial and limited operation can be only the step- 
 ping-stone to that more universal individualism, which is also com- 
 patible and consonant with the most complete social organization. 
 
 When it comes to pass that a person may reach his fullest develop- 
 1 iient by cultivation of his individual nature alone, then it may happen 
 that a nation may come to its perfected status through culture alone 
 of the individual characteristics of its personnel. Culture of individual 
 characteristics is best performed in the midst of the highest social 
 development; culture of social characteristics are achieved where in- 
 dividuality is matured. What is true as to the development of a 
 person, s correspondingly true as regards a nation. 
 
 Another large class argue against public enterprise from the mis- 
 taken belief that individual effort and single handed production have 
 characterized and yet characterize industrial operations; that indi- 
 vidualism in production is not only possible but is fully established. 
 It has already been pointed out* that production, at the present 
 moment, is completely social or co-operative and that individual life 
 on the industrial plane is but the initiatory and transitory phase of 
 industrial evolution. To return to pure individualism in industrial 
 
 *Chapter VI. Section I. 
 
1 66 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 affairs, would be to return to the most primitive and simplest forms 
 of human life. The proposition is scarcely to be considered. 
 
 The other thought which the opponents of public enterprise utter 
 and reiterate, is that the undertaking of industrial enterprise by gov- 
 ernment would result in pernicious political influence and public 
 corruption. They do not seem to recognize the fact that by these 
 statements they leave their flanks fully exposed. Such a charge is 
 an admission of the counter charge that political, civil and industrial 
 corruption have their origin in private enterprise. Whether admitted 
 or not, it is true ; true from and through cause to effect. The end 
 of private enterprise promoted by irxdividuals is profit ; the acquire- 
 ment of much for little, the accumulation of wealth whether produced 
 by others — through business processes peculiarly obnoxious to a high 
 sense of humanity — or produced by accumulators. The end of pub- 
 lic enterprise is the public welfare ; the protection of life and property ; 
 the suppression of crime ; the promotion of tranquility and the es- 
 tabhshment of justice. From which of these two ends or purposes 
 would one expect corruption to flow? 
 
 The facts show clearly that corruption in political and civil life, as 
 with industrial life, flows from the greed — love of money — of private 
 enterprise. The judicial and executive departments of government 
 are rarely tainted by corrupting influences. The records of the 
 United States Treasury show that less percentages of loss occur in the 
 financial operations of government, than with the doings of private 
 enterprise. During the presidency of Martin Van Buren, the losses 
 through peculation, by those handling immense sums of money for 
 the nation, were $11.71 on $1,000; James Buchanan, $3.81; Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, 76 cents; U. S. Grant, 24 cents; R. B. Hayes, 3 
 mills, and C. A. Arthur, i cent and 3 mills. 
 
 Government management of enterprise in any of its extensive de- 
 partments — Treasury, Post-Ofhce, War, Interior — except where it 
 comes in contact with the contaminating influences of private enter- 
 prise, is comparatively honest and pure. Its management of the 
 three phases of post-office work — transmission of letters, of exchange, 
 of goods in small parcels — is a marvel of efficiency and honesty. 
 Nevertheless, from the first successful struggle, made by Benjamin 
 Franklin, to wrest this enterprise from the express companies and 
 place it in the hands of government, until the recent attempts made 
 by New York news companies to displace the government in that 
 city, the pretexts of ineflficiency and corruption have been advanced 
 by those desiring to reduce the service to the exacting despoilments 
 of private enterprise. 
 
 The corrupting influence of private enterprise — the greed of gain, 
 the love of money — finds the most accessible point of inroad upon 
 the honorable purposes of government in the arena of legislation — 
 
CORRUPTION OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.. 16^ 
 
 through the inflnences of t'le lobby — and in those executive depart .. 
 ments whose functions are prosecuted through contract with private 
 enterprise. Legislators are especially assailable from the fact tha t 
 their action is not clearly outlined by law; that their public work is 
 performed for the people through the exercise of private judgment or 
 in consonance with loosely drawn political platforms which admit of 
 varied construction and easy virtue. Upon these tenuous and vul 
 nerable points by bribery in varied form, and threats which through 
 an artful lobby, touch hope and ambition, the insidious attacks, 
 of private enterprise are made and prosecuted. 
 
 Private enterprise, with the greed of wealth, is perpetually surging 
 against tne ramparts which separate and defend the lofty purposes, 
 ot government from private contamination. A public avenue for 
 the' entrance of corruption lies in the contract system, and it is 
 through this avenue that the public work of executive departments 
 are assailed. It is rare that peculation affects the public service 
 when and where the public is served by its own elected or appointed 
 officials; but the atmosphere is rife with suspicion, and ever and 
 anon the proof is open and abundant that government officials, legally 
 prosecuting their work through private contract, have connived with, 
 or yielded to the coercing influences of enterprising contractors^ 
 buying or buccaneering their way into the public treasury. The 
 Army, Navy and Indian departments have been frequently vampired 
 by private 3 nterprise, and the Post-Office department has suffered 
 at least one impeachment of its usually virtuous career. 
 
 The attempt of those objecting to the substitution of public enter^ 
 prise for private enterprise, on ground that public affairs are likely to. 
 become corrupted thereby, is an unconscious and involuntary ad- 
 mission that private enterprise breeds defilement; and further, that 
 its promotors and apologists desire that industrial affairs shall re- 
 main in tiie must and ruck of corruption that they themselves may 
 grow rich through its polluting customs, maxims and processes.. 
 The elevation of industrial affairs to the plane of public enterprise 
 would lift them out of that contaminating pool of secret, strategical^ 
 gormandizing industrial putrescence, engendereo and stimulated by ana 
 exaggerated love of gai", and place them in the sunlight of public 
 observation and criticism and in an atmosphere where they would 
 draw character, life and vigor from that el vated end of industrial 
 effort — the public welfare. It is not too much to charge that the 
 mass of opponents to increased assumption, by government, of indus- 
 trial ownership and control, are those alone, who have private axes of 
 ambition and greed to grind ; axes which are more effectively ground, 
 where the corruptive elements of private enterprise hold the strongest 
 s way. 
 
 Another objection raised by the opponents of private enterprise 
 
l68 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 under charge of public officials, is that private enterprise assures 
 greater efficiency of management — a greater executive ability and 
 more prompt service or more perfect commodity. To which ob- 
 jection the first reply is that citizens of every nation conduct 
 the productive enterprises which result in natural wealth ; 
 that all citizens are at the service of the government and may become 
 public officials, and usually at compensation below that exceptionally 
 secured from private sources. Everywhere, the disposition prevails 
 on the part of men of talent and ability, not only to accept, but to 
 seek public employment and to be satisfied with the compensation. 
 
 The second reply is a test of the results of public enterpri e. 
 Whether in peace or war, the work of government sustained by the 
 power and wealth of the nation, compares favorably with the similar 
 work of private individuals or corporations; and there is no ground 
 for questioning, if public enterprise should enter new fields and gov- 
 t-rnment undertake new duties, that the "same economy, promptitude 
 and efficiency would mark the administration of the new as of the old. 
 
 Having considered objections to the extension of public enterprise 
 and pointed out their interested source and their selfish sophistry, 
 some considerations in favor of the proposition are in order. 
 
 The foremost consideration which should lead to extension of gov- 
 ernmental action with reference to industrial affairs, beyond the in- 
 spection, limitation, regulation and control of private enterprise^ is 
 that the end of public enterprise is the public good — good which in- 
 cludes supply to the diversified wants of every citizen. 
 
 The purposes of good government and public enterprise are har- 
 monious. In a broad sense, public service of the is the purpose of 
 government. The government which undertakes to define and sap- 
 press crime, is engaged in public enterprise undertaken for the public 
 good. It is the need of every citizen to receive at the hand of gov- 
 ernment, protection from the wiles and violence of the outlaw and 
 criminal, and over the head of every citizen the power behind the 
 law is extended, through public enterprise. 
 
 Public enterprise has been invoked and it has become an undisputed 
 function of government to protect every citizen in the possession and 
 enjoyment of his property. Governmental enterprise or undertaking 
 is theoretically, and practically to the extent that theory becomes 
 practicalized, public enterprise ; and the forms of governmental un- 
 dertaking have advanced from the simple to the complex, as civiliza- 
 tion has moved forward from primitive conditions to the colossal and 
 complicated interactions of the present. Public enterprise originated 
 with the origin of government. Its purpose, at initiatory stages, 
 -embodied the selfishness of the despot; but gradually the end cf 
 government, through the limitation of individual power and the es- 
 tablishment of constitutional forms and activities, has risen from in- 
 
EXPANSION OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISE. 1 69 
 
 dividual selfishness and ambition, through untraceable advances, to 
 the highest possible aim — the public good. Under the impetus of 
 progressive forces, the public enterprise of government has rapidly 
 expanded beyond the narrow purposes of former times. The fields 
 of charily, benevolence and support have been brought to realize the 
 activities of public enterprise. Hospitals have been established for the 
 sick and lame, asylums for the blind, deaf, dumb and insane, and 
 alms-houses for the poor and aged, through public institutions directed 
 by public enterprise. Schools of all grades, from the primary to the 
 university are the result of public enterprise, undertaken, pro- 
 moted and supported by public funds under the management of 
 public officials. In all these instances and to the extent that their 
 operations reach the public and affect the individual, the paramount 
 motive is the public welfare. While it is to be admitted that public 
 enterprise, in many instances, falls short of compassing the ideal which 
 is the end of its activities, it is certain that much better results are 
 achieved than could be under a lower and more limited purpose. 
 If'one aims at the sun he .is sure to reach higher altitudes than if he 
 aims at the horizon ; and it cannot be successfully controverted that 
 any enterprise conducted by public authorities, will accomplish more 
 general good to each and every citizen than if conducted by private 
 enterprise to the end of pHvate ambition and gain. Private enter- 
 prise may conduct industrial enterprises with skill, and prosecute 
 them, for private ends, with great activity \ but sooner or later — and 
 the more active the operations, the sooner — the consuming masses 
 must chew the cud of bitter discontent incident to a rapidly exhausted 
 purchasing power. 
 
 Another consideration in favor of an extension of public enterprise 
 is connected with the authority which stands behind it and the power 
 which may be called to its support. The suggestion of authority as 
 connected with industrial matters savors of severity and tyranny. It is 
 unpalatable to the tastes of men who have been licensed to act con- 
 cerning industrial affairs accordini^ to their own sweet will and to the 
 extent of their industrial power. Concerning authority in the arena of 
 industrial life, public thought has but lightly touched. 
 
 License prevails to an extent and with disastrous results hardly 
 credible; license resulting in industrial over-reaching and violence, 
 and the impairment of industrial liberty. The world has 
 resounded with the clash of arms wielded in favor of re- 
 ligious, political and civil freedom, the freedom of personal thought 
 and action on these highest planes of action ; but what arm, what 
 concentrated power has yet flung the banner of industrial freedom to 
 the breeze and sworn to conquer or die in its behalf? And yet, 
 owing to fundamental errors connected with the establishment of all 
 civilized governments, regarding the legal disposition of the sources 
 
I 'JO WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 of wealrh, a large portion of the population are the industrial de- 
 pendents or slaves of the privileged class ; privileged in that to them 
 have been given exclusive control of the natural sources of wealth 
 and the consequent means of securing exclusive use of the socially 
 created appliances of production. 
 
 Licensed to exclusive ownership and control of these privileges, 
 by authority of goverement — privileges which have been used to op- 
 press and enslave their fellow men — it is necessary that governmental 
 authority should step forward to amend the errors of its primitive dis- 
 positions ; to equalize, by that authority which, in other matters, is 
 recognized as paramount and universal, either the holding of the 
 means of production or the enjoyment of resultant wealth. Hence, 
 legal authority, embodied in more just laws inspired not only by that 
 high motive " the greatest good to the greatest number," but by that 
 higher end the greatest good to all^ is likely to be, as it should be, 
 welcomed to the industrial arena as it has been to the religious, po- 
 litical and civil ; is likely to be forced by the will of the people to 
 rectify or eliminate the industrial wrongs, for whose presence and 
 power it is greatly responsible. 
 
 To hold industrial evolution to its most beneficient courses, to give 
 it that wide and profound scope of action inspired by the broad im- 
 pulses of human wants, authority, governmental authority, requires a 
 new and effective extension into and through the industrial arena. 
 
 Thousands of men, under varying conditions, prompted by their 
 priva e interests stand ready, at all times, to obstruct movements 
 whose end is the public good. For the public welfare these ob- 
 structionists must be overcome or removed, and the power to do so 
 exists alone in that instrumentality of the public — government. 
 
 Government organized and sustained in the general interest, alone 
 can effect directly the wants of every citizen ; and through its au- 
 thority, the industrial effort of every citizen can be brought to bear 
 not only on his own particular but the general good. 
 
 Co-ordinate with authority goes responsibility. As regards important 
 phases of industrial life, responsibility, like authority, knows but a 
 partial operation, PoAcr has increasingly asserted itself over the 
 action of individuals, and, in the civil arena, responsibility has main- 
 tained a corresponding movement ; but responsibility for the indus- 
 trial conditions of a nation have affected the public conscience and 
 sense of honor too little. 
 
 It has been tacitly assumed that as regards provision of food, 
 clothing and shelter, every citizen, no matter what the conditions 
 which have marked the opening of his industrial career, is competent 
 to secure ample provision for his physical wants ; and society, in its, 
 as yet, but partially organized condition, has le ft each person to work 
 out success not only alone and unaided, but h o- ndicapped by unequal 
 
GOVERNMENT NOT AN ACCUMULATOR. 171 
 
 conditions. Unequal results that have followed, the public have 
 wantonly left without ample and thorough consideration. It has 
 striven for no knowledge of the outfit which awaits the advent of 
 each individual to his struggle for subsistence, and assumed no re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 That society, according to the extent and perfection of its organ- 
 ization is responsible for the condition of the individual no room is 
 left for reasonable doubt. Down to the line of industrial action it 
 has assumed and maintained responsibilit) . It has exercised restrain- 
 ing power below that line, but its assumption of responsibility to sustain 
 has been fragmentary and transitory. And on this failure to aid, sus- 
 tain and regulate a proper division of the common heritage, securing 
 to each person an equitable use of the sources of subsistence and the 
 implements for their transformation into commodity, depends largely 
 the existence of that " empire of misery that lies at the bottom of our 
 boasted civilization." Individual intelligence and effort are indispen- 
 sable; but it is false to assert that, exclusive of conditions, individ- 
 uals can achieve a competent subsistence by intelligence and effort. 
 Some must come, as up to this period many have come to hunger, 
 nakedness and distress and be sustained by charity. For the preva- 
 lent conditions of miserable millions, society is responsible ; respon- 
 sible for the want of requisite education and art ; responsible for the 
 application of intelligence in effective efiort and absolutely responsi- 
 ble for the unequal distribution of opportunities. The distribution 
 of opportunities is the work of society alone ; and without opportunity 
 no man can bbor, and without equal opportunities and facilities one 
 must be surpassed and beaten back by those who possess them. 
 
 Every government maintains its own scheme of distribution of 
 land, raw material and the quota of provisions which nature supplies ; 
 its own system of industrial appliances and the measures whereby 
 they may be acquired, and its methods and means of exchange; and 
 everywhere these indispensable means of self-employment and inde- 
 pendent subsistence have been parceled out to favorites or to those 
 who have come or been born or arrived at maturity first, leaving all 
 subsequent distribution to follow certain fortuitous fines of heredity — 
 lines which naturally lead to further concentration rather than to an 
 equitable distribution. Society violates the law of an ample equity 
 in that it leaves the distribution of the sources of wealth and means 
 of employment to variable and fortuitous circumstances; and is fully 
 responsible to all sufferers through its failure to maintain an adjust- 
 able system of distribution either of the sources of wealth and appli- 
 ance of production, or of the results of their conjoint use. 
 
 When society fully recognizes the false position it occupies with 
 relation to the trust imposed upon it by the intelligent beneficent 
 Force and the responsibility devolved upon it to assure the well-being 
 
172 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 of every person within the limits of its sway, then it will either go 
 back to first principles, place all individuals on an equal footing as 
 to sources of wealth, or go forward by way of public enterprise and 
 insure an equitable distribution of commodiiy to all consumers. It 
 will, it must go forward ; the days of isolated, independent industrial 
 individualism are passed. 
 
 In that it stimulates the recognition of social responsibility, the 
 gradual introduction of public enterprise will involve an economic 
 advance, carrying forward a host of equities and increasmg the phys- 
 ical well-being of all citizens. On the other hand, responsibility 
 once recognized will insure the rapid promotion of publie enterprise. 
 Public enterprise will lead to that desirable result, a more equitable 
 distribution of wealth. Government does not subsist for the 
 gathering of wealth which it cannot use ; it exists that it may at once 
 impart all it gathers for the immediate benefit of all citizens ; and 
 whatever measures, antagonistic to this idea, may be adopted by these 
 in power, to that extent do they subvert the better ends of govern- 
 ment. On the contrary, it is the specific end of piivate enterprise 
 to pile up commodities without limit and in the accumulation, it 
 comes about that an equitable distribution of wealth is rendered 
 impossible. 
 
 It has been shown that all pernicious accumulations, those which 
 determine the relative conditions of wealth and poverty are effected 
 by processes which draw the results of other men's labors to the gar- 
 ners of the accumulators. No man secures large wealth by his own 
 labor. The landlord secures large wealth by excluding other men 
 from the use of land on their own account and compelling them to 
 turn over to him in the form of rent, a portion of the results of their 
 labor. 
 
 The industrial leader, the promoter of active enterprise, secures 
 large accumulations by excluding, through certain complex measures 
 — involving the ownership of land, raw material, machinery, pro- 
 visions and money — other men from the means of successful self- 
 employment and forces them to a private contract for their services, 
 which leaves in his hands the results of their labor, minus subsistence. 
 
 The industrial leader who has made large accumulations by ab- 
 sorbing the profit of other men's labor, and desire to secure further 
 accumulation not only from the manual labor but from the risks and 
 management of others, exchanges his goods for money and puts the 
 money at interest. 
 
 Borrowed money furnishes a precarious opportunity to the bor- 
 rower to reach the natural and social means of self-advancement. 
 A large portion of the result of his labor — in some instances all, in 
 others losses of values secured by previous labor — goes, through in- 
 terest, into the hands of the capitalistic money-lender. 
 
PROGRESSIVE NATIONALIZATION. I 73 
 
 All accumulations secured without labor through rent, profit and 
 interest, are pernicious accumulations. It must be admitted that 
 these industrial elements have become so intimately associated with 
 labor; that close analysis and clear conception alone enables one to 
 recognize the lines of demarcation ; but it is a truth that rent, profit 
 and interest, distinguished and separated from labor are pure ex- 
 actions which can find no harmonious ground whatever in strict 
 justice*. 
 
 It has been demonstrated that vast accumulations of wealth in the 
 hands of a few result in widespread misery and poverty to many ; it 
 has been shown that vast accumulations come to the pessessors not 
 by their own labor alone, but through drafts upon the labor of other 
 men ; through fundamental exclusions from the sources of wealth and 
 means of employment ; by means of rent of land, profits on production 
 and interest on money ; it is an indisputable inference that the equit- 
 able distribution of wealth, that phase of industrial life which yet re- 
 sists the advancing principle of co-operation, is defeated through the 
 accumulative processes involved in the exaction of rent, profit and 
 interest, and that the true measure of distribution — a measure which 
 prevent vast accumulations of wealth and eliminate extensive 
 and distressing poverty — labor, receives no adequate recognition. 
 
 The theory of compensation to labor as a distributive measure, is 
 dimly outlined and scantily practicalized by industrial leaders and 
 writers upon economic philosophy ; but so much more regard is paid 
 to payment of rent, profit and interest, or the so-called compensation 
 of land, capital and enterprise, that the labor factor, which is the only 
 real and just measure of distribution, is practically neglected. It is 
 in the line of private enterprise to prolong the clamor of compensa- 
 tion for land, capital and wealth ; it is the very essence of public en- 
 terprise conducted by government after having equally distributed or 
 socialized the common heritage in land, raw material, provisions, 
 
 *Profit is commonly so interlaced with compensation for labor— lime and results 
 —that Its injustice is not so easy of demonstration as is the injustice of reut and iu- 
 terest. Profit which involves only an average compensation for time and services 
 is just ; but beyond that point exaction and injustice begins. The injustice of rent 
 r<ists on the self-evident proposition that land was created for the use of all who 
 have been invited to a residence on the earth by the Creator. Every man iai entitled 
 to its free use; his use being limited by the equal right of other men to use. Laws 
 which give exclusive use of the earth s surface either for productive or residence 
 purposes, inaugurate, and private land-owners complete the excluding injustice of 
 rent. The Creator says to every human being, ' Live freely on the earth' ; the lin 
 man says, "Not unless you labor a portion of your time for me." The injustice of 
 interest arises from a similar exclusion of men from the use of money which is a 
 social production, as land is a natural production. Society produces money and 
 charges no man interest and no interest should be exacted by one man from an- 
 other; audit would not be exacted unless through a combination of exactions, the 
 borrower had been deprivea of the use of his portion of the common heritage in 
 money. Society and government, its authorized agent, stand in the same relation 
 with money as the invisible Force stands with relation to land. Both are creators, 
 and free use of the products of creation is a common heritage. It has been the work 
 of private enterprise to iay aside principles of justice regarding rent, profit and in- 
 terest, and it is the future work of society, through public enterprise, to re-establish 
 that. justice which the individual, through private enterprise, has overthrown. 
 
174 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 machinery and money — so that compensation for their use cannot 
 be enforced — to eliminate the elements of rent, profit and interest, 
 and to leave labor as the sole and just measure of distribution. 
 
 That public enterprise tends to eliminate rent, profit and interest 
 and to establish labor as a measure of distribution is to be demon- 
 strated by reference to the facts. It involves the slow, gradual and pro- 
 gressive nationalization of the requisite land, of the requisite raw mate- 
 rial, of the requisite provisions, of the requisite forms and quantities of 
 tools, implements and machinery, of the appliances of exchange, and 
 the appropriate labor, in its different degrees of skill and phases of 
 application. To secure required results, the nationalization of land is 
 no more imperative than the nationalization of raw material, provisions, 
 machinery, money and labor. Each of these are indispensable factors 
 of successful production. Nor iri the nationalization of these factors 
 does it become necessary that all land, all raw material, all provis- 
 ions, all machinery, all money or all labor shall be at once national- 
 tzed. The change from private to public enterprise can be under- 
 taken and successfully accomplished — accomplished without pro- 
 ducing industrial convulsions dangerous to the peace and prosperity 
 of society — only step by step. 
 
 Nor from this point of vision does it appear requisite that all in- 
 dustry, should be at once nationalized. From some future distant 
 standpoint ultimate and complete nationalization may be seen to be 
 compatible with the highest development and the widest liberty of 
 the individual. 
 
 But what we of this period must bear in mind is that private en- 
 terprise must — and it may be predicted will — be displaced only at 
 those points and along those' lines upon which, and just so rapidly as, 
 the public good demands. It is not advisable, however sweeping 
 and far-reaching may be the projected plan of operations — it may be 
 assumed to be impossible, considering the counter-balancing interests 
 — to force the evolution of industry into a pace the rapidity of which 
 will disrupt the present organization of society. 
 
 But if public enterprise, to any extent whatever, displaces private 
 enterprise, to that extent it must involve the fractional nationalization 
 of the indispensable factors of production and distribution. Thus, 
 if transportation passes by the mandate of the people from private 
 to public enterprise, the land requisite for stations, depots, roadways, 
 sidetracks, will, through purchase, pass into national domain ; the 
 raw or finished material of fuel, of rails, of ties, of locomotives, cars 
 — passenger and freight — and all requisite forms and phases of tools, 
 implements and machinery would, by maunfacture or purchase, be- 
 come nationalized ; nationalization might pass to the provisions re- 
 quired to feed and clothe the nationalized labor, or it might not ; that 
 portion of money which now floats here and there, through the arenas 
 
PUBLIC ENTERPRISE ELIMINATES EXACTION. 1 75 
 
 •of industrial life, must needs come into and flow out of the national 
 treasury. Labor, intellectual or manual, managerial or performing, 
 from superintendent to fireman, from the chief of bureau to trades- 
 man, would be nationalized through public employment. The 
 nationalization of the factors of transportation does not, however, 
 touch other land, other material — raw or ripe — other provisions, 
 other money or other labor engaged in other enterprises. Public en- 
 erprise is as yet in its infancy, but so far as its operation reaches, it 
 repudiates and practically eliminates the exactions of rent, profit and 
 interest ; exactions which are the chief stimulus of private enterprise 
 conducted as it is for private advantage and greed. It also places men 
 and their labor in that important industrial position which they should 
 occupy and makes their effort the measure of distribution — distribu- 
 tion not only of the results of labor but of each laborer's interest in 
 the common heritage,* which, through public enterprise and the pro- 
 cess of nation alization is again made common. This is proved by 
 reference to the facts of public enterprise so far as it has taken pos- 
 session of the industrial world. 
 
 We know most of that phase of public enterprise comprised in the 
 Post-ofiice Department and managed by government. It is as yet 
 but in its infancy, working under difficulties and surrounded by all 
 the greedy and exacting influences of private enterprise. Operating 
 in an open sea of private influences, customs and laws, government, 
 though it pays profit and interest indirectly to private parties through 
 contracts made for materials and services, though it pays rent for 
 post-offices, it demands for itself no rent, no profit, no interest. 
 Whatever rent, profit or interest it pays^f to private parties is charged 
 up in cost. The service, as is the service of all public enterprise, 
 is rendered at cost. By ownership of its own fixtures it would be freer 
 from the exactions of private enterprise ; its expenditures would ex- 
 clude all rent, profit and interest and include compensation for hu- 
 man labor, which it cannot own ; and, affected by such current equi- 
 ties of compensation for labor as now obtain, human labor 
 would become, as it is now proximately, the true measure of distri- 
 bution. 
 
 Government stands before the world with reference to these stand- 
 ard exactions — this trinity of vampires upon the economic body — as 
 
 *The principle of distribution adopted by tbe most advanced economic writers is 
 that the laborer is entitled to the results of his own labor. This principle is want- 
 ing and erratic in that no disposition is made of the common heritage in land, raw 
 material, natural provisions and primitive appliances of production and exchange. 
 That the result of a man's labor should be the measiLre of his interest in the nation- 
 al, wealth is the result of creative as well as human labor; the former active day 
 and night, winter and summer, while human labor operates in production about 
 half the day and not all the year. This error arises from the concurrent fundament- 
 al economic error that all values are produced by human labor. 
 
 f Were this public enterprise organized as it might be, it would own its own fix- 
 tures, materials and appliances, and pay only its employed labor. 
 
176 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 a single individual might stand in a community given up totally to 
 the principles and practices of private enterprise. Let us suppose 
 him to be engaged in the manufacture of wagon-hubs, spokes and 
 felloes. If this votary of private enterprise owned his own land, 
 buildings and fixtures he would have no rent to pay ; if he was sup- 
 plied with abundance of machinery and money, or better, could create 
 it, he would have no interest to pay ; if he owned his own forests of 
 raw material, he would pay no profit on the material which came to 
 his hand for transformation. He would then have but labor to com- 
 pensate, and could turn out his commodity to wagon-makers at pr,im- 
 itive cost, and labor, his own included — the economic myths of land 
 a^nd capital excluded — would equitably divide the proceeds of this 
 adventure, conducted not for the accumulative purposes of private 
 enterprise, but for the sake of his own subsistence, the subsistence of 
 his employes and the general economic good of the community. 
 Such a man, in the greedy money-getting period of this advancing 
 civilization would be adjudged as insane. His sanity would be 
 trumpeted to his fellows were he to add to his sum of costs, current 
 rates of rent for his land, buildings and fixtures, current interest for 
 the money used, and current profits not only on the raw material 
 cut, sawed and hauled, but on the timber finished and turned out to 
 his customers ; and he would be deemed wise and sagacious did he 
 control the production of hubs, spokes and felloes, were he to ad- 
 vance the price beyond cost, to the highest figures the traffic would 
 bear ; sane, wise and sagacious that he crowded down the wages of 
 his employes to values, which, of no present use to him in the sup- 
 ply of his wants, might at some future time — all future time being an 
 unknown factor — supply the wants of his indolent improvident 
 and debauched descendants. In this day insanity stands adjudged 
 as sanity ! 
 
 Thus, private and public enterprise stand face to face over a con- 
 tention which is destined to shake existing institutions to their found- 
 ations ; the one championing the cause of human greed, the right of 
 exclusion from common heritage, the exaction of rent, profit and 
 interest, as compensation to industrial leadership, the accumulation 
 of vast wealth into the possession of the few, and poverty and nig- 
 gardly existence for the many ; the other battling for the public good 
 and the general welfare, against exclusion to even the weakest and 
 humblest, for the elimination of rent, profit and interest, and for the 
 fullestrecognition of labor in all forms and phases as the best title to 
 an equitable portion of the nation's wealth. Private enterprise proposes 
 in theory, to equitably individualize all the industrial factors ; but it 
 equitably individualizes nothing ; it favors and promotes a plutocracy as 
 in the ownership of the sources of wealth and appliance of production ; 
 it socializes and combines production into a complete co-operation, and 
 
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ENTERPRISE CONTRASTED. 177 
 
 manages distribution to the establishment of a plutocracy of wealth. 
 Public enterprise socializes the sources of wealth and appliances of 
 production, manages production under the principle of equitable 
 co-operation and distribution, and individualizes all wealth produced 
 according to labor applied to each and every citizen. Private enter- 
 prise which appears to be individual in its operation, gives no con- 
 sideration whatever to the large mass of individuals whereas public 
 enterprise, which seems to stimulate and promote social industry, 
 results in full and direct consideration and supply of the wants of 
 the individual. 
 
 Piivate enterprise makes a few rich and crowds down the mass of 
 laborers to mere subsistence ; and maintaining without supporting, a 
 vast army of unemployed as a menace to the employed, abandons mill- 
 ions to the degradation of alms and the tender mercies of charity. 
 
 Public enterprise equalizes the wealth of the nation and promotes 
 no vast accumulations ; duly compensates all laborers and tends as, 
 it is extended, to remove the degradation and misery of pauperism. 
 
 \ 
 
 <^:->* 
 
178 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 DRIFT OF THE FORCES TOWARD CO- 
 OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION. 
 CHAPTER VII. SEC HON I. 
 
 But in the presence of the uplifting forces the earnest procession 
 of events, guided by unerring wisdom and incited by unbounded 
 love, the argument of mortal man, his surmises, deductions and 
 generalization, are of small moment. 
 
 Let us look to the overhanging skies and to the ever restless ocean, 
 and mark the swaying of the winds and the drifting of the tides ; 
 let us consider the invisible promotings and gather knowledge not 
 only of what is, but, if possible, infer what is to be. 
 
 To those who think of the earth as a theater of events inaugurated 
 and directed by an invisible Power, the enterprises and purposes and 
 plans of men, in the regulation even of their own destiny, individual 
 or collective, hold but secondary consideration. Men may purpose, 
 plan and execute in furtherance of cherished results, but their limited 
 power not only takes on the semblance of impotence, but their most 
 strenuous exertions often coAstitute the most powerful influence 
 which results, through unrecognized forces and devices, human and 
 divine, in their sudden defeat and their destructive overthrow. A no- 
 table illustration of this truth is the slave-holder's rebellion in the 
 Southern States of America. They inaugurated a war in defense of 
 negro slavery, which, through the execution of a mere determination 
 on the part of the administration to save the Union, overthrew their 
 cherished institution. 
 
 Similar forces are now operating in every civilized nation of the 
 globe to overthrow, another form of industrial oppression. The 
 pernicious influence which built up and sustains another violation of 
 human liberty, is destined, unless it curbs its love of weal.h and 
 power, to become the most active factor for its own overthrow. 
 
 That form of industrial oppression is embodied in private enter- 
 prise; and while it is within the possibilities that private enterprise 
 may shake oft the incubus which is making its reign a reign of indus- 
 trial plunder and misery, the more reasonable presumption is that it 
 will go down with the load of injustice on its back and both perish 
 together. 
 
 The question that we now consider is, does the drift of events — 
 the facts and forces, the growths and movements of industrial life — 
 indicate the decadence of private enterprise and the occupatior. of 
 
THE LOWER FORCES. I 79 
 
 its fields and administration of its functions by something better? It 
 will be attempted to show briefly that it does. 
 
 Attention hai been directed to the fact that industrial individualism 
 is of short life ; that when two men become neighbors, the social 
 element asserts itself and cooperation begins its industrial career 
 through the division of labor and perpetuates itself through exchange ; 
 and that it has gradually become and is now the controlling principle 
 of all productive processes. The details of this gradual evolution it is 
 not necessary, even if it were possible, here to outline. Attention 
 has been further drawn to the truth that comT)etition which stimulates 
 industrial life to the verge of desperation and colors its every phase, 
 is essentially the struggle of }>roducers one with the other, for the 
 wealth produced ; it involves the matter of distribution. 
 
 It has been noted that capitalism, or industrial leadership in mod- 
 ern enterprise, is based upon, secured and established through ac- 
 quirement of the sources of wealth and appliances of production by 
 a few laborers, favored by nature and circumstance over their fellows; 
 and it has been remarked that, while competition affects the interests 
 of employes, to a degree disastrous to the weak and ignorant, 
 the center of its life lies in the struggle of employers, one with and all' 
 with one, for the prizes of industry. The herculean effort which incites 
 the industrial world and gives character to its operations is the com- 
 petitive conflict, carried to the extreme of individual and corporate 
 power that everywhere rages between employers. Through the 
 perpetual competitive struggle of employers who have inaugurated 
 and brought co-operative production to its present high standard of 
 CiTectiveness, competition has been forced upon employers, and con- 
 sumers are taught to contend for the lowest prices. Justice and 
 peace are of secondary importance ; war everywhere prevails for 
 subsistence, comfort or luxury ; war for ease, position, power and 
 personal sovereignty. 
 
 But in the midst and out of this vast tempest of industrial war have 
 emerged, are emerging the benign forces and intelligences which in- 
 spire the growing love of humanity and justice; forces and intelli- 
 gence which, deriving origin in the Divine Love, permeate even the 
 lowest and crudest phases of industrial contention and give prospect 
 of a better day ; forces and intelligences, which, embodied in human 
 form are destined to curb, restrain, direct and transform, even the 
 contentions and industrial violence of employers, employees and con- 
 sumers into a permanent disposition to regulate industrial affairs to a 
 just and humane standard. 
 
 These humanitarian forces overhang, surround, flow into and per- 
 meate the grosser principles and elements of business contentions 
 giving unconscious touch and. determination, when and where the 
 least supposed. There are ever busy, watchful, penetrative and in- 
 
l8o WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 fluential. Sympathy, tenderness, love, humanity, justice, belong 
 exclusively to no one class of the industrial factors. They emanate 
 from the personnel of all factors of industrial life. They well up 
 from the affections and thoughts' of the successful and wealthy as 
 froB those of the anxious, defeated, oppressed and miserable. 
 Through the noise and smoke of battle, over the fierce struggle of 
 narrow and selfish interests, upon a universal system of industrial 
 vampirism, they wave olive branches of peace, and point out av- 
 enues to universal prosperity and satisfaction. They entice the soul 
 from its sordid seductions and arouse humanity to aspirations for 
 industrial conditions more equitable and merciful. 
 
 To the direction and energy of these two forces with their corres- 
 ponding intelligences — the purely and cruely business, the truly and 
 tenderly beneficent — those who would presage the course of indus- 
 trial evolution, must give careful and disinterested attention. 
 
 The reader is invited first and principally to considerations of the 
 former. Civilized humanity is yet full of the spirit of conflict. It 
 takes on the industrial plane the name and form of competition. It 
 is industrial force against industrial force, and the person or corpo- 
 ration which succeeds in concentrating the largest force agiinst in- 
 dustrial antagonists, takes the industrial prize. 
 
 Concentration of industrial forces under private enterprise, involves 
 the aggregation of land, material, men, machinery and money to be 
 used for a single purpose and under one management. The prerequis- 
 ites of industrial enterprise, it will be noted, bear marked resemblance 
 to the prerequisites of military enterprise. The civilized world im- 
 agines, and prides itself, that it has passed from conditions of war to 
 peace; it is not so, war has been merely transferred from the military 
 to the industrial plane. 
 
 So long as the economic interests of an entire nation are left to a 
 thousand centres of interest and management, so long as private en- 
 terprise with individual ambition and greed as the purpose of its ex- 
 istence, holds economic sway, so long will industrial war with its con- 
 comitants of cruelty, suffering, poverty and crime, continue to 
 devastate, in the very arena where it creates and constructs. 
 
 But this war of industrial competition is moving forward, step by 
 step, incited by its own pernicious and selfish ends, to that harmony, 
 peace and justice for which it is said all wars are waged. Beginning 
 with the single individual and stimulated ever by the wants and 
 greeds'^ of the individual, and fighting singly every other person, it 
 has rapidly advanced through successive grades of combination ; and 
 at each step it has introduced more largely that element of co-oper- 
 ative distribution which is the goal of industrial development. Where 
 
 ♦Greed is want carried to the stimulated degree and intensity of modified insanity. 
 Want is a healthy phase of industrial purpose; greed a diseased condition of the 
 
ORIGIN OF CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION. l8l 
 
 two mechanics or merchants have individually competed, one with tl e 
 other, they have later combined on a harmonious agreement to work 
 together, and divide equitably the results of their combined enterprise. 
 
 Where among the industrial forces enterprise originated, there in 
 the partnership also originated this germ of co-operative distribution. 
 But do not suppose these men are prompted to unite by an especial 
 love of equity /^r j^. Few men love equity itself; nevertheless, at 
 this point originates distribution of results of combined production — 
 work on the basis of equity; equity, not because its operation is 
 worthy of extension to all, but because it is selfishly good for the two 
 parties to the transaction. Here begins that co-operative distribution 
 for the result of which the world is in evident expectancy, rhis is 
 the germinal cell that is destined to produce and perpetuate 
 multitudinous, efficient and beneficent posterity. 
 
 When two or more peers enter into a negotiation and combine for 
 a given industry, being peers, equity and justice between themselves 
 must always be a consideration. Absolute justice may not be 
 reached, but the soil in which it grows, viz. : agreement, co-operation 
 or combination, is prepared, and the growth of the tree is a matter 
 of care and culture. 
 
 But while there is peace within there is war without ; while indus- 
 trial equity asserts itself within, industrial force plays with violence 
 all around. And this very combination increases the activity and 
 force of competition, to meet and overcome which, other men 
 must combine. But in their combination another move is made 
 toward an equitable division of products or spoils, and co-oporative 
 distribution makes another stride forward and expands its growing 
 influence correspondingly over individual operations. Thus, step 
 by step, in place after place, partnership after partnership of two or 
 more industrial leaders or capitalists, embracing all forms of pro- 
 duction — agricultural, manufacturing, commercial and financial — 
 have entered the industrial arena ; through combination, introducing 
 everywhere the beneficent principle of equity and increasing the number 
 of industrial units committed to its establishment ; while it decreases 
 the number of competitive units, it increases the force of competitive 
 energy. 
 
 But the partnership has not afforded sufficient instrumentality nor 
 ample field for the promotion of private interests, or for the evolution 
 of co-operative combination ; for the introduction of co-operative 
 equity and the establishment of co-operative distribution. 
 
 To meet the requirements, private corporations were schemed and 
 introduced. Corporations not only admit the combinations of a larger 
 number of individuals in a single enterprise, but the theory of their 
 existence and administration of industrial affairs places distribution 
 
I02 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 on a more exact if not more equitable basis*. According to the ex- 
 act interest of each share-holder, measured by the current measure of 
 value or price, exactly in proportion to the amount of effort expended 
 by one person in promoting and establishing the enterprise for vvhich 
 the corporation was endowed with existence, does that person draw 
 from the net results of production. That many corporations have 
 become, through the management of their trustees, sink-holes of in- 
 dustrial corruption and dishonesty, is. true. On the contrary, those 
 which have been managed according to the intent of the theory and 
 the purpose of the organizing law, have illustrated and verified the 
 truth that they contribute to the growth and extension of co operative 
 distribution. Even those corporations which have fleeced the 
 major portion of their smaller stockholders, embody a managing ring, 
 the individuals of which must and do observe a just and equitable dis- 
 tribution of their joint plunderings between themselves. These 
 corporations following the lead of copartnerships and stimulated 
 into existence by the necessity of larger and more compact combina- 
 tions to meet the strengthening competition of strong partnerships, 
 have entered the industrial arena, absorbed all forms of production 
 and proximately displaced the individual and the partnership. 
 
 Following the natural law which involves the survival of the' fittest' 
 and the preponderance of might rather than sympathy and right, the 
 large have swallowed and absorbed the small. And yet; while this 
 process has been advancing, so also has the principle of co-operative 
 distribution been carried to a broader arena and higher tide. 
 
 But combination does not rest at this point. As regards most 
 forms of industry, either one corporation has absorbed individuals, 
 partnerships and smaller corporations engaged in a given industry, 
 or a number of the larger corporations have organized themselves 
 into a gigantic ring or pool, embracing a large territory or the entire 
 domain of the nation. To this advanced movement of combination 
 also, they have been stimulated by the force and fierceness of the 
 competition which the industrial struggle of composite corporations 
 strengthened. Each corporation has brought to bear upon its rivals, to 
 the fullest extent, the appliances of industrial force, and received return 
 attacks with its defensive ability, until each and all were glad to 
 enter combinations which favored recognition of their claimed in- 
 dustrial rights, and gave warrant through compromise, of an equit- 
 able distribution of productive results. 
 
 Through these movements, co-operative distribution — voluntary 
 co-operation practically established according" to existing equities 
 — gains ground. Harmony is the only soil in which it can grow. 
 
 n'he reader will understand that the practices of corporate managers has, in some 
 instances, nearly inverted the fundamental theory of their structures. Men are 
 usually forced (at first) to deal justly, so long have they freely excused industrial 
 violence. Trustees of corporations are no exception. 
 
EFFECTS OF LABOR ORGANIZATION ON DISTRIBUTION. 1 83 
 
 Within all voluntary established combinations, industrial harmony 
 or co-operation can exist; without them, industrial war or competi- 
 tion must continue. 
 
 As regards the evolution of co-operative distribution, to this point, 
 we have considered but one of the several human industrial factors, 
 viz.: the industrial leader or capitalistic class"*. 
 
 It will not be supposed however, that the equity which they deal 
 out to themselves by common consent they deal out to the other in- 
 dustrial factors. On the contrary, they apply industrial force without 
 reluctance or scruple ; in one direction to employed laborers and to 
 patrons or consumers in another. The equity which they concede 
 one to another, they concede because their subjective greed impels 
 them to take all they can get ; and how much they can get is limited 
 by the struggles going on about them ; in other words, they deal out 
 equity one to another because in their judgment they can secure 
 more of the results of production thereby, than through the contin- 
 uance of an all-around, rough and tumble competition. • 
 
 But what, under the impulse of self-interest, subjective and ob- 
 jective, is the other grand division of the productive force accom- 
 plishing towards the introduction and establishment of co-operative 
 distribution ? What are laborers achieving for themselves and how 
 are they affecting the general result ? 
 
 Organization and combination of the leaders of industry — capital- 
 ists — has been progressing for two or three centuries ; organization 
 of laborers has assumed important proportions only within the half 
 century past. Organization of the former, intent alone on advancing 
 self-interest, has driven loborers to organize and combine in self- 
 defense. Most universally beginning life, devoid of their propor- 
 tionate and natural interest in the means of self-employment, they 
 enter their manhood career dependent on the selfish enterprise and 
 {activity of those who hold the sources of wealth and appliances of 
 production. Ground between the upper and active millstone of 
 industrial leaders and the lower millstone of patronizing consumers, 
 the one demanding high prices, the other low, their lot has been one 
 calculated to arouse the energy of despair. 
 
 Considering the usual meagerness of opportunity and absence of 
 industrial facilities, their struggle to emancipate themselves from the 
 thraldom of proletarianism and secure a footing on the soil, and ac- 
 cess to the sources of wealth, has been prolonged, brave and noble. 
 As capitalists have achieved their power over the industrial world 
 through combined action, laborers are compelled to assert themselves 
 through the same appliance. 
 
 *The personnel of industrial economy is included in two classes, viz.: producers 
 and consumers. Producers are divided into capitalists or industrial leaders and 
 laborers, or industrial rank and file. Consumers, with reference to any one or all 
 cr-mmodities, embrace the entire population. 
 
184 WFALIH AND FOVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 Distribution, owing to the fact that commodities, at the point of 
 ccmpletion, are legally owned by employers, can scarcely be said to 
 be within the function assigned to the operations of laborers. Never- 
 theless distribution — equitable distiibution of commodities produced 
 by the joint effort of creative and human labor, to enforce the right 
 to sit in council with all co-laborers and assist in determining the 
 portion of wealth which each productive unit should possess and en- 
 joy ; to extend co-operative distribution to both divisions of the pro- 
 ductive force and to the entire result of productive effort — is the ob- 
 je:tive ppint and end of all organizations originated and maintained 
 by laborers. 
 
 Their proposal is to extend an equitable distribution to all pro- 
 ducers and not permit the major portion of national wealth to be 
 distributed equitably only between a small number of capitalists. To 
 these colossal combinations laborers have been driven and are yet to 
 be driven by a necessary self-consideration and the fierce gr^ed of in- 
 dustrial leaders on one hand and consumers on the other. Through 
 these combinations, national and international, thus incited to being, 
 is co-operative distribution carried forward to more nice and precise 
 phases of equitable efficiency ; division of the common heritage and 
 compensation to man — and not to the inanimate things, capital and 
 land — being the keynote of their demands. 
 
 It is especially to the lasting credit of these organizations ttiat 
 they have awakened a momentum which promises ultimately to elim- 
 inate the vicious elements of rent, profit and interest from all dis- 
 tributive apportionments, and place, in conjunction with an equitable 
 division of the common heritage, human labor, measured by time or 
 result," as the ultimate standard of distribution ; that in this momen- 
 tum they practically recognized a principle of human equality 
 which issues from that deeper and more significant principle involved 
 in the " fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man"; that they 
 bid fair to establish among the nations of earth that industrial 
 democracy — the democracy of wealth— the nonexistence of which 
 renders all other phases of democracy — religious, social, political 
 and civil — the masquerading paraphernalia of a real, vicious and ig- 
 noble aristocrrcy. But to these movements, also, laborers are driven 
 primarily and most powerfully by the baser force — self-aggrandize> 
 ment. 
 
 In this relation, the influence of consumers is of importance only 
 when the consum.ers and the producers of given commodities con- 
 stitute a distinct aggregation of the community. When the person- 
 ality of consumers differ from the personality of producers, consumers 
 are intensely interested in low prices. All producers are consumers 
 of some, if not all of the commodities. As the influence of uncom- 
 bined competition, so long known as the regulator of prices, is fast 
 
INFLUENCE OF CONSUMERS ON DISTRIBUTION. 1 85 
 
 disappearing from the industrial arena, the interested influence of 
 combined consumers, operating through the instrument of organized 
 society — government — is as rapidly assuming its ])lace and exercising 
 its power. If the water company, having a monopoly of supply, main- 
 tains prices at an exacting altitude, consumers, through political and 
 civil action, swoop down upon the company and demands lower prices. 
 If the elevator companies of Wisconsin combine to fleece ihe farmers 
 on handling and storing wheat, consumers, constituting the entire 
 community, appeal to the law for redress and are sustained in their 
 appeal by legislatures and courts of highest jurisdiction. 
 
 If the transportation companies holding the highways of the 
 country, engage in wholesale robbery, consumers combine in state 
 and nation, and pass and execute laws which tend to bring freights 
 and fares to the baris of a fair and even-handed compensation. If 
 foiled, they persevere, and even though it becomes necessary that 
 private enterprise be displaced, '^ill ultimately succeed. 
 
 Organization of the industrial sections, under industrial leadership, 
 detachments or principalities of the various industries, is in the 
 midst of a rapid and expansive movement. Organization of laborers 
 connected with the various industries is following the processes cf a 
 rapid development and has assumed extensive and powerful propor- 
 tions. Organization of consumers who constitute the bulk of the 
 people, through occasional and under pressure of, industrial abuses 
 perpetrated by private enterprise and industrial leadership, has as- 
 sumed, through political action, national proportions, and exists by 
 an intuitive national consent. These three active factors of economic 
 life are moving forward to the assumption of national proportions, 
 each intent on securing the establishment of self-interest; each through 
 respective combinations committed to an equitable distribution of 
 industrial results, to the section and units of its own composition, 
 and each fiercely, blindly at times, opposed to, but' unwittingly con- 
 cerned in the evolution and establishment of permanent national co- 
 operative distribution. 
 
 The selfish force stands out therefore, as the paramount force, 
 which, directed by an invisible Intelligence, is carrying industrial 
 affairs irresistibly to a better, higher and more just plane of principle 
 and of life. The conflicts which it engenders and stimulates grow 
 more virulent, stupendous and destructive as combination pro- 
 gresses; and the more fiercely competition rages and the wider range 
 it covers, the more apparent becomes its senseless inutility ; and 
 more necessary to the physical well-being of mankind becomes a 
 distribution of the world's wealth through a concurrent co-operative 
 consent and the use of a measure of distribution based upon the 
 rights and efforts of each individual. A general and concurrent co- 
 operative consent is best and more surely reached through public en- 
 
1 86 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 terprise conducted by a representative or republican form of govern- 
 ment ; a government wherein the consent of the government is the 
 basis of the civil fabric. 
 
 If a man produces for himself alone, no occasion arises why he 
 should quarrel with himself regarding distribution. He must have 
 and give ample nutrition and protectian to every tissue, structure 
 and function of his system and there the matter terminates. 
 
 If a given community produces, as aco?nmu?iity^^\\2X it consume?, 
 and consumes what it pioduces, no cause arises for contention as to 
 the distribution ; each portion and unit of the community will receive 
 by virtue of his atomic relation to the whole, his portion of the com- 
 mon commodity. 
 
 If a State or nation as a State or nation^ undertakes to conduct 
 one or many forms of industry for the benefit of its consumers, each 
 citizen under similar and equal conditions with all other citizens, 
 receives his quota of the common or natural product. Whatever the 
 product be, protection of life and property from domestic or foreign 
 interference, postage, exchange, transportation or educational facilities, 
 it is the concurrent consent that what is produced through the co-op- 
 erative principle, shall be distributed through operation of the same 
 principle. No contention or competition arises to exclude one cit- 
 izen from the uses which others enjoy on similar terms. A common 
 concurrent consent prevails and each citizen is concerned only to 
 secure means for compliance with the conditions which are open 
 alike to all. 
 
 On the contrary, it is , the continued end of private enterprise to 
 c6rner and exclude, exact and plunder so many as, and to the ex- 
 tremest extent, possible, and to distribute to the few, much, and to 
 the many, little. Industry, to be. organized, must have its leadership, 
 its followers and assistants, and its mass of dependent consumers. 
 Private enterprise secures leadership from the individual, its fol- 
 lowing and support from the mass of employes, and its consumers 
 from the entire population of the nation. 
 
 Public enterprise finds leadership in organized society, through 
 the functions of government, its support and following from officers 
 and employes of government an(? its consumers from the nation 
 en masse. The former labors directly for selfish interests, and indi- 
 rectly for the satisfaction of others. The latter performs its services 
 directly to increase both private and public welfare. 
 
 It IS the tendency of the lower and selfish forces, working through 
 the industrial economies, to drive industrial operations out and from 
 under control of private enterprise with its individual leadership, its 
 narrow ends and its competitive and iniquitous distribution, to pub- 
 lic enterprise with its national leadership, its broad purposes, hu- 
 mane considerations and its co-operative and equitable distribution. 
 
COMBINATIONS OF CAPITALISTS. 1 87 
 
 How far and to what extent the leaders of private enterprise — 
 in their own interests — have already advanced toward that general 
 and massive combination which organized industry seems to be ap- 
 proaching, is to be determined by the facts. 
 
 For a half century or more, industrial leaders, prompted princi- 
 pally by individual interests, thereby best subserved, have promoted 
 organization into combinations of less or greater extent and power. 
 The facts here narrated, are gathered* from the report of proceed- 
 ings of the conventions of innumerable manufacturers, dealers and 
 producers. These combinations of industrial leaders were made to 
 avoid competition between themselves and by depressing wages and 
 prices of raw material, and raising prices of commodity to consumers, 
 enable them to reap a richer reward than could be other wise, reaped. 
 
 We will consider some of them to the stature of their growth in 
 1884, and leave the intelligent reader to follow their further aggrega- 
 tions, through public reports of their subsequent operations. As 
 they have risen through no uniform succession, we will observe no 
 method in presenting them. 
 
 Two years ago it was found there was too much milk in New 
 York and Boston. The farmers of Orange county, who supply New 
 York with two-thirds of its milk, declared a milk war. After a des- 
 perate and unscrupulous struggle against the New York dealers, 
 against those -farmers reluctant to join the combination, against the 
 Lehigh and Hudson railroad, against sheriffs and dej)Uty-sheriffs who 
 were deputed to protect individual shippers — the streets of Warwick 
 having been barricaded by ropes, and men with guns, pistols and 
 clubs protecting those collecting milk — peace was declared March 
 24, 1883. 
 
 A committee of the farmers and a committee of milkmen repre- 
 senting eight hundred dealers in New York, Brooklyn and Jersey 
 City, agreed upon a fixed price for each month until April, 1884, 
 ranging from two and one-half to four cents a quart, according to 
 the time of the year. The organization spread until it covered Del- 
 aware, Orange and Sullivan counties in New York, and Hunterdon 
 and Sussex counties in New Jersey. 
 
 March 22, 1884, the farmers' cnmmittee and that of the milk 
 dealers' organization, known as the " Pump-handle Association," 
 met again and agreed on prices for another twelve months. The 
 trade in miljc at the point of largest consumption in the United 
 States, now rests in the hands of these same combinations. The 
 same process is going on at other places. The New England Milk 
 Producer's Association met in Boston for the purpose of thoroughly 
 organizing the milk farmers. Representatives from New York who 
 
 *I am indebted to Henry D. Uoyd— North American Review— tor most of the facts 
 here presented, partly in his language. 
 
lS8 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 had led the movement there, were present to point out the way. One 
 gentleman sent a check for one hundred dollars to pay for milk to 
 pour on the ground, to help the success of the producer's cause. 
 The membership was increased from 86 to 291. All farmers were 
 called on to join the association and do all in their power to solve 
 the "milk problem." On March 22, 1884, the day of a similar meet- 
 ing in New York, the association met again in Boston, conferred 
 with the representatives of the milk dealers, fixed the price of milk 
 from April to October and adjourned. 
 
 The principle of competition was abandoned as detrimental to 
 the interests of competitors ; and while in this instance the wages of 
 employes does not figure, consumers were deprived the coveted 
 benefits of competitive prices. 
 
 Cattle kings have combinations to defend themselves from cattle 
 thieves, state legislatures and other enemies to their interests, and 
 propose to extend the list to include middlemen at the stock yards ; 
 the latter having formed combinations to deprive beef producers the 
 advantage of competitive purchasers. The Stock-growers Association 
 of Wyoming have $100,000,000 in cattle. It was unanimously 
 decided that its business had been seriously injured by the pooling 
 arrangements prevailing among buyers at the Chicago stock yards, 
 and the executive committee was invited to obtain the fullest possible 
 information as to the means by which cattle might be shipped directly 
 to the European customer. 
 
 Other combinations more or less success^'ul have been made by 
 ice men and fish dealers of New York, Boston, San Francisco and 
 other large cities. The millers of the western states have taken steps 
 to combine. 
 
 Sugar has become the centre of two vast combinations, one con- 
 troling prices and dictating wages east of the Rocky mountains, the 
 other having subjected employes and consumers from the Rockies 
 to the Pacific. It requires but another step, viz., the combination of 
 these two immense pools, to nationalize the sui^ar industry and place 
 consumers fully within their power. In these combinations neither 
 employes nor consumers are concerned, both being objects of plun- 
 der by industrial leaders ; the former through low wages, the latter 
 by high prices. 
 
 In the matter of stoves, matches and fuel, operators have not failed 
 to drop the principle of competition, and in their own interests, lay 
 the groundwork among themselves, of co-operative distribution. 
 Since 1872, there has been a national combination of the manufac- 
 turers of stoves, and its effect, said the founder, in his speech at the 
 annual banquet in Cleveland last February (1884), had been to 
 carry the balance from the wrong to the right side of the ledger. 
 
 The combination of match manufacturers was perfected by the ex- 
 
COMBINATIONS OF CAPITALISTS 1 89 
 
 perience of sixteen years of fusion. It is now at war with the new 
 companies which have gone into the manufacture since the repeal of 
 the internal revenue tax. It is attempting to conquer these by un- 
 derselling them ; tactics which have hitherto rarely failed. The 
 government of the United States, before whom all men are equal*, 
 helped this combination to kill off its competitors, shielding it from 
 foreign competition by a tax of thirt)'-five per cent, on the importa- 
 tion of matches from abroad, and shielding it from domestic compe- 
 tition by administering the internal revenue tax so as to make its 
 small competitors pay ten per cent, more tax. This drove them 
 into bankruptcy, or combination with the ring at the rate of one or 
 two per month. The railroads, like tne government, helped to trans- 
 fer this business from the many to the few by carrying the combina- 
 tion's matches at lower rates than were given to its little competitors. 
 
 Among the greatest combinations of the age are those connected 
 with the production and extraction of fuel and light ; coke, coal and 
 kerosene. The operations of capitalists in connection therewith, 
 and the connivance of the government in their cruel manipulations, 
 viewed from a humanitarian standpoint, is astounding and disgrace- 
 ful to the verge of criminality. 
 
 Combination which controls the amount and price of coal con- 
 sumed in the United States, operates substantially from Pennsylvania 
 as a centre. The total amount of anthracite coal land is estimated 
 at 270,000 acres. This is held principally by six companies, viz.: 
 the Reading Coal and Iron Co., 110,000; Lehigh Valley Co., 25,- 
 000 ; Delaware, Lackawana and Western Co., 20,000 ; I>elaware 
 and Hudson Co., 20,000; Pennsylvania Coal Co., 10,000 and the 
 Pennsylvania Railroad Co., 1 0,000. The other 75,000 acres are 
 held by individuals, firms and corjiorations, which are necessarily 
 tributary to the railroad lines of the companies above named, involving 
 the dependent conditions which that implies. The capitalization of 
 these companies with that of their satellites, is upward of $500,000,- 
 000 The price of coal along a large portion of the Atlantic coast 
 and interior so far as Buffalo and Pittsburg, is regulated directly by 
 these companies. Prices of coal west of Buffalo and Pittsburg, and 
 in Canada, are ostensibly regulated by the Western Anthracite Coal 
 Association, but really by the large railroad and mine owners of 
 Pennsylvania. Our annual consumption of anthracite is about 32,- 
 000,000 tons, of which the West takes about 6,000,000 tons. The 
 companies which comprise the combination and are under its con- 
 trol, mine, sell 'and transport their own coal. They are gradually ob- 
 literating other mine owners by absorbing their holdings. Dealers 
 
 ♦This is a single instance of the inconsistent legislation which the conflicting in- 
 terests of private enterprise engenders. 
 
190 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 are sinking into mere agents of the combination, with as little free- 
 dom as the employee and the consumer. 
 
 The combination limits the supply and thereby creates a demand 
 that will pay any price they choose to make. Its entire object is to 
 force consumers to pay high prices ; but it can be maintained only 
 by making an equitable distribution of the results to those compris- 
 ing the combination; by inaugurating unconsciously, among employ- 
 ers, that co-operative distribution which is destined to become 
 general. 
 
 In those districts where soft coal must go to a competitive market, 
 combinations are at work to inaugurate — they do not know it — 
 co-operative distribution. A pool has just been formed (1884) cov- 
 ering the annual product of 6,000,000 tons of the mines of Ohio. 
 Indiana and Illinois are to be brought in, and it is proposed to extend 
 the combination to all the bituminous coal districts that compete with 
 each other. 
 
 Powerful syndicates are at work to control the coke interests of 
 Pennsylvania. It was stated March 23, 1884, that the efforts of a 
 year or more to consolidate the large and small coke makers had 
 succeeded. Nearly 8,000 ovens joined the pool which was placed 
 under the command of the four largest firms ; the smaller men agree- 
 ing to shut their ovens whenever the heads of the pool ordered. It 
 was soon announced from headquarters that one oven out of every 
 seven had been closed until further orders, that the price of 
 coke had been advanced from ninety-five cents to one dollar and fifteen 
 cents per ton, and that further advances would be made until the 
 price reached one dollar and a half. 
 
 In March 1883, a combination was made of all the large pro- 
 duction of coke iron furnaces — with one exception — in Tennessee, 
 Alabama and Georgia to fix uniform prices and prevent indiscrim- 
 inate competition. 
 
 Of course, the small companies and smaller operators, whose active 
 competition tended to keep prices at a reasonable figure, will be 
 f jrced to enter the pool ; then will eome the period of low wages to 
 employes and high prices to consumers ; then the combination of em- 
 ployes to oppose low wages, then the combination of consumers to 
 oppose high prices, and ultimately the combination of employers, 
 employes and consumers in one grand pool, where co-operative dis- 
 tribution may work beneficence to each and all concerned. 
 
 Until then, until industrial evolution shall have brought indus- 
 trial affairs to this ideal desideratum^ the matches of combined match 
 employers will light the coal of combined coal employers in the 
 stoves of combined stove employers, and employes and consumers 
 barred from use of the sources of these commodities and the appli- 
 
COMBINATIONS OF CAPITALISTS. I9I 
 
 ances through which they are produced, will make the best' terms 
 possible with the industrial lords of the nation. 
 
 The progressive aggregation of individuals, firms and corporations, 
 which have finally resulted in the Standard Oil Company, are mat- 
 ters of industrial history accessible to every one. If one industry 
 more than another has approximated the point of nationalization, the 
 palm of development belongs to this monopoly. Few, if any, or- 
 ganizations engaged in the coal oil business, make any pretention to 
 oppose the expressed demands of the Standard Oil Comyany. It 
 dictates the price of oil lands, of raw material taken out by a few 
 isolated firms or companies, of wages paid to laborers, and of prices 
 paid by consumers. In its own field of operations it is a veritable 
 industrial autocrat. 
 
 A peer of this gigantic monopoly, as regards the extent and thor> 
 oughness of its organization, is that which embodies the rubber in- 
 dustry of America. A recent account of its operations* states that 
 the scheme embraces " the plan of doing away with the business of 
 two hundred importers, and concentrates the buying power in the 
 hands of one brokerage house. It also fixes the price of In<Jia rub- 
 ber and likewise the returns to the rubber cutter and revenue to the 
 owner of rubber lands. It compels the jobber to pay the combina- 
 tion what its managers consider a fair return, but does not altogether 
 shut him out from the trade; leaving him free to retrench himself 
 from the retailer and the latter from the " dear public " and thousands 
 of wage earners. " At a meeting of representatives to-day, the trust 
 was formed like the celebrated cotton oil trust, by the absolute 
 surrender of every mill in the country to the control of the })ool 
 trustees. A large capital was subscribed, Messrs. Benaigan, Alden 
 and Meyer were chosen directors. They are to be the autocrats of 
 the pool at a combined salary of $40,000 per annum. The industry 
 to-day represents an investment of nearly $50,000,000, and an an- 
 nual trade nearly twice that amount." 
 
 On the 3d of April 1884, the largest and most influential meeting 
 of cotton manufacturers ever held in the South, came together at 
 Augusta, Georgia, to take measures to cure the devastating plague of 
 too much cotton cloth. -A plan was unanimously adopted for the 
 organization of a Southern Manufacturer's Association. 
 
 Four years ago (1880) the Chicago Lumbermen's Exchange 
 adopted a resolution declaring it to be dishonorable for any dealer 
 to make lower prices than those published by it for control of one of 
 the greatest lumber markets of the world. Monthly reports are re- 
 quired from dealers by this exchange and price lists are made honest 
 by monthly banquets. 
 
 New York Times, June 2, 1887. 
 
192 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 A delegation of dealers from the Mississippi river district, expressed 
 their willingness that Chicago should make prices for them. A 
 secret meeting of lumbermen from all parts of the West was held in 
 Chicago March 8, 1883, to discuss means for advancing prices, re- 
 stricting production at least thirty-five per cent., and, in the language 
 of one of them, putting themselves in a position to dictate prices for 
 the entire country. In May, 1883, the National Association of lum- 
 ber-dealers met in Chicago. It represented over five hundred and 
 fifty retail dealers in the West, and the principal purpose of its meet- 
 ing was to prevent wholesale dealers at Chicago, St. Lou's and other 
 c'lies from retailing lumber to carpenters, farmers and scalpers living 
 a id operating in the territory of the retailers. It was provided that 
 any wholesaler who persisted in competing in this way with local 
 dealers, should, when found guihy, be named to all retailers, and 
 punished by the boycott. 
 
 On the Pacific coast, it is alleged that there are too many mills 
 and too much lumber. The lumber market of the coast is ruled by 
 the California Lumber Exchange, and that, in turn, is controled by 
 a few pcfwerful firms. 
 
 The American Wall-paper Association has established a wall- 
 paper monarchy in the United States, and when the cook takes the 
 paper from off" the express package, the hardware, ham, groceries, 
 candy and dry-goods which have been sent home, he handles an 
 article the price of which is fixed by the private enactments of the 
 Western Wrapping-paper Association — an organization which, since 
 1880, has been struggling to keep down the deluge of too much 
 wrapping-paper, and fix the prices of all kinds ; from the paper un- 
 der the carpet to that whicn is used in roofing. At a recent reor- 
 ganization it was placed on a firmer footing than before. The mills 
 are now allowed to turn out but one-half as much as they are capa- 
 ble of producing. Through this cutting process the organization is 
 placed in a position to " lay off " employes, place wages at the lowest 
 possible point and hold goods at the highest possible price. The 
 wood-pulp and straw paper industries have also been amalgamated. 
 The American Paper Association aims to control the production and 
 prices of paper for newspapers, books and writing. 
 
 The dealers in old rags and old paper are not satisfied to leave 
 competition a run of freedom. The trade met at Rochester in Jan. 
 1883, formed two national associations and solemnly agreed upon 
 the prices to be paid for mixed rags and for brown paper and rag 
 carpet. " No change of price for rags or paper " runs the decree of 
 the old-rag barons; "is to be made without consulting every mem- 
 ber of the executive committee." Thus is solved the "old rag" prob- 
 lem of how to cut down the enormous profits the women of Amer- 
 ica are making from the contents of their rag-bags. 
 
CAPITALISTIC COMBINATIONS COMBINED. 1 93 
 
 The members of the Western Wooden-ware Association long since 
 gave up the alleged advantages of competitive distribution. It met 
 last December (1883) and finding that pails, tubs and tools were in- 
 creasing at a ratio too rapid to suit current economic views, ordered 
 its numbers to manufacture but one-fifth of their capacity. In Feb- 
 ruary, 1884, it gave them permission to increase this to one-half. 
 
 The Western Cracker Bakers Association met in Chicago February 
 1884, to consider among other things "the reprehensible system of 
 cutting prices." They proposed at once to decline competition and 
 before they adjourned their price-lists were perfected. 
 
 The men who make our Shrouds and Cofifins have formed a close 
 corporation known as the National Burial-case Association, and held 
 their national convention in Chicago last year. Lest mortality 
 should be discouraged their action to keep up prices and keep down 
 the number of coffins and the number of employes was kept secret. 
 
 A pool of the seventeen Quinine manufacturers of the world was 
 formed July, 1883. It included the manufacturers of America, 
 Great Britain and the continent of Europe. A combination of drug- 
 gists and drug manufacturers have mutually agreed to divide the 
 United States into districts, each of which shall be under a superin- 
 tendent, who is to watch the druggists and report all those cutting 
 prices. The latter are to be boycotted. 
 
 Iron Manufacturers and Dealers are forced into combinations to 
 avert the destructive influence of competition; to limit the quantity 
 of iron, the number of employes, the quantity of wages paid and to 
 advance prices to a point, short of that which might induce the in- 
 come of new iron enterprises, or force consumers to appeal to polit- 
 ical and civil influence for protection from the exactions of pro- 
 ducers. 
 
 Beginning with pig iron, the Age of Steel startled the country in 
 January, 1884, by the statement that a monster pool was to be 
 formed of all our pig-iron manufacturers. The country was to be 
 divided into six districts, and as many furnaces were to be put out 
 of blast as were hecessary to prevent us from having too much iron. 
 The idle furnaces were to share the profits of those that ran. In 
 June, 1884, this scheme had not been put into operation. It de- 
 monstrated, however, the universal tendency of all industrial leaders 
 to avoid the destructive results of competitive distribution. 
 
 The thirty-million-dollar Steel Combination, did not keep the price 
 of rails from declining from $166 per ton in 1867, to $32 per ton 
 in 1884, but during this decline it has kept the price of rails higher 
 in America than anywhere else. Chairman Morrison, of the Com- 
 mittee of Ways and Means, is a witness to the fact that the chimneys 
 of the Vulcan Mill, at St. Louis, stood smokeless for years, and 
 meanwhile its owners received a subsidy, reported at $400,000 a 
 
194 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 year, from the other mills of the combination for not making rails. 
 The human machines connected with the establishment — self-feeders 
 — were not paid for doing nothing. Competition is good enough 
 for them. The steel-rail makers of England, France, Belgium and 
 Germany are negotiating for an international combination to keep up 
 prices.* 
 
 The Nail Association; November, 1884, ordered a suspension of 
 the nail mills, for five weeks. Said the nail men — December, 1882 
 — "we hope to control production, unanimously, and at the very 
 time when nails are not wanted." April 9th, 1884, the nail-makers 
 of the West met again at Pittsburgh and adopted the most modern 
 form of pool, with managers having full power to restrict production, 
 regulate prices and establish the rale of wages. Every mill is in the 
 pool. Nail buyers are not allowed to converse with nail makers. 
 All business must be done through the Board of Control. 
 
 Competitive distribution — the reader will remember that produc- 
 tion is everywhere co-operative — is too tough a rule for the capitalists 
 — industrial leaders — engaged in the manufacture of barbed wire; 
 and a pool under the entire control of eleven directors has within a 
 few weeks been formed, in which are enrolled all the chief man- 
 ufacturers. They met in St. Louis, March, 1884, and advanced 
 prices — and in Chicago, April, 1884 — and repeated the same, to 
 themselves, agreeable operation. 
 
 This combination cuts off competition at both ends. It confed- 
 erates the makers so that they shall not sell in competition with each 
 other, and it buys all its raw material through one purchasing agent, 
 so that its members do not buy in competition. If it would make 
 two steps more; viz., take all the barbed-wire workers and all the 
 consumers of barbed-wire into the pool, it would have established, 
 in its own arena at least, the groundwork of a complete system of 
 co-operative distribution. 
 
 The production of wrought iron is controled by the Empire Iron 
 Company. One feature of this pool is that it proposed to put men 
 on guard at each mill to keep account of the pipe made and shipped, 
 and these superintendents are to be moved around from one mill 
 to another, at least once every eight weeks. 
 
 The whisky distiller's pool regulates production, prices and ex- 
 ports north of the Ohio river to the Pacific ocean. A large number 
 of distillers are kept idle drawing pensions from the combination. 
 
 The publishers of school books dt) not like competition; and they 
 are equally opposed to a combination of the consumers under State 
 control, to manufacture their own books. They virtually advocate 
 co-operation for themselves, but not for the consumers, whom they 
 
 *1 am yet drawing from the a:t clc of H, G, Llojd, Norih American Review, 
 June 1884. 
 
SPREAD OF CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION. 1 95 
 
 deem it their right, as it is the admitted right of all other producers, 
 to fleece ad libitum. Nineteea of the leading firms of the country 
 have formed a combination by which they are bound, under heavy 
 penalty, to obey the orders of an executive committee as to prices 
 and other matters. 
 
 The competition of the Fire Insurance companies which broke out 
 in 1875 upon the collapse of their pool, cost them in New York 
 city about $17,500,000, in seven years. In 1882 they formed a new 
 combination which covered the entire country, and which, in point 
 of wealth and cohesiveness, is one of the most powerful and success- 
 ful in the country. 
 
 To these extents and to the dates mentioned, the industrialleiders 
 — 3apitaUsts — of the nation have expressed their preference ui 
 against competition and have placed themselves wit'i relation to each 
 other, in a position where they are driven to observe among themselves 
 at least, an equitable distribution of the wealth which comes into their 
 hands. The observance of the dictates of an equitable or co-opera- 
 tive distribution within their own narrow arena is thus forced upon 
 them by self-interest alone ; narrow arena in one sense and broad in 
 another ; narrow in that the be- efits of co-operative distribution are 
 restricted to a few capitalists ; broad, in that, at the fountain head of 
 industrial evolution, it involves nearly all the special industries of the 
 country. 
 
 The thoughtful reader will recognize three considerations which 
 are continually operating to introduce among capitalists and ulti- 
 mately every wnere cooperative distribution; considerations which 
 cannot be avoided or scaped. First, the disposition to escape the 
 impoverishing results of strong competition ; second, the necessity 
 to that end, of introducing the principle of combination or co-opera- 
 tion ; and third, the not-to-be escaped necessit) of adopting and en- 
 forcing among themselves the principle of equitable distribution , 
 which should be an inseparable attendant of co-operative productioi . 
 
 He will also realize the fact that every step is taken by the in- 
 dividuals involved, in furtherance of self-interest. The writer has 
 discussed with friends the betterments which should and must come 
 tJ mankind in the field of economies; has usually been confronted 
 with the proposition that nothing can be accompHshed until first the 
 selfish nature of man has come to be eliminated. He did not then 
 see as clearly as he does now, that the very storm of self-interest 
 which crowds and batters tempest-tossed humanity, is bearing it 
 into a harbor of mutual regard and care ; and that that excess of human 
 selfishness which disgraces and debases the human race, will disap- 
 pear concurrently with, or subsequently to, a change of material co: - 
 ditions that furnish the soil and atmosphere for better and nobler 
 growths. 
 
196 WEALTH AND POVERIY OF NATIONS. 
 
 In a soil and an atmosphere of perpetual ccnflict, military, po- 
 litical or industrial, it is impossible for humanity to reah it highest 
 and noblest development. 
 
COMBINATION OF LABORERS OR EMPLOYES. 1 97 
 
 COMBINATION OF LABORERS OR EM- 
 PLOYES. 
 CHAPTER VII., SECTION II. 
 
 In the previous section the writer has endeavored to portray, in 
 detail, the present stage through which co-operative distribution 
 among capitalists, forced by the destructive tendencies of competi- 
 tion, is progressively advancing. He has pointed out the silver 
 lining to the industrial cloud that hovers menacingly over the liber- 
 ties and the economic prospects of humanity. 
 
 But the cloud is there ; and against all outsiders, against employes 
 and consumer^, the co-operative capitalistic rings, possessing vantage 
 ground not possessed by laborers or consumers — in that through 
 priority, heredity or purchase, they hold the natural sources of wealth 
 and the social appliances of production under a control which ex- 
 cludes laborers from their independent use — crush and grind with 
 increased cruelty. Humanity or justice to employes and consumers 
 is not part or parcel of their policy. Following the law of co-oper- 
 ation, they CO operate alone with those units included within their 
 compact and compete all the more powerfully, as they are power- 
 fully combined, against those excluded from its advantages. 
 
 But the inextinguishable force of self-interest lives and sings in 
 manly breasts, other than those of capitalistic employers and in 
 wider fields springs into defensive activity. The co operations of 
 capitalists have necessitated and yet necessitate corresponding com- 
 binations of laborers and consumers. While the advantage of em- 
 ployers lies in their superior intelligence and control of the sources of 
 wealth and appliances of production, the advantage of employes and 
 consumers lies in their necessities, their overpowering numbers and 
 the promptings of outraged justice, and, especially, that they have all 
 to gain and but little to lose. 
 
 Combinations of capitalists going on for a century or more have 
 aroused into desperate activity the laborers of the nation. -Organ- 
 ization has been advancing for a half century or more and within 
 these organizations the seed of an equitable distribution of the world's 
 wealth has sprung into a broad, deep and expanding life. Incited 
 to action by prolonged periods of soulless exactions on the pait of 
 employers, who, through law, hold exclusively the entire means of 
 employment from the masses about them ; incited to action by nat- 
 ural justice overbourn and outraged, it is not remarkable that com- 
 
I9S WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 binations of employes should at once adopt, with reference' to their 
 individual constituents, proximately equitable laws of distribution ; 
 that they should distribute what of wages as a whole, they receive 
 for what labor as a whole, they could sell ; that they should accord 
 to each man as much compensation as to any other man, according 
 to his needs and according to the time expended in labor. But. ir- 
 respective of the higher motive for the establishment of an equitable 
 distribution, the self-interest of the component units has enforced its 
 adoption. A better care for one's self and one's dependents is the 
 inciting motive of all industrial combinations, and the promoting or- 
 ganizers are compelled to establish and maintain the principle of 
 justice among members or endanger the permanence of the combi- 
 nations. 
 
 Thus, the self-interest of employers, constituting the primary and 
 inciting force of industrial evolution, drives employes also, into im- 
 mense combinations ; and, as the interior binding power of these 
 combinations, without which they could not be organized or main- 
 tained, the principle of co-operative distribution is established and 
 vastly extended. 
 
 It is next in order to know to what extent the combination of la- 
 borers has advanced. Laborers have combined, first, for social and 
 benevolent and educational pu'poses; second, to secure from em- 
 ployers ample w^ages ; third, to shorten the hours of labor. 
 
 The combinations here considered, are made to secure an equit- 
 able portion of the results of production within the present competi- 
 tive wage system ; an object which, if not fully, is proximately 
 attainable. Combinations of laborers for the purpose of undertak- 
 ing productive enterprises on their own account are not here con- 
 sidered. Such projects belong to another and more advanced stage 
 of industrial evolution. Independent co-operative organizations 
 embody the sporadic attempts of those concerned, to escape the cruel 
 and disastrous influences of competition. They constitute the germs 
 of that system of indusfrial life which is yet to come, and toward 
 which the present industrial contention and tempest is carrying all 
 nations. 
 
 These combinations of laborers purpose only to soften the asper- 
 ities and modify the WTongs imposed upon employes by employers, 
 under the prevailing maxims and methods of private enterprise. 
 
 Reference to them will be biief Their existence and activity 
 following and keeping relative pace with the orojanization of em- 
 ployers, constitutes a necessary part of that evolution which is to 
 bring industrial affairs into perfect form. As the world will yet ac- 
 knowledge itself vastly indebted, for its sometime condition, to the 
 early organization of capitalists, so it will yet recognize in these later 
 labor organizations an equally important an indispensable service. 
 
DETAILS OF LABOR COMBINATION. 1 99 
 
 The independent organization of labor has followed the disappear- 
 ance of chattel slavery and has everywhere been stimulated ahd ad- 
 vanced by the alleged exactions of the employing class. In the 
 Northern States of America where chattel slavery did not exist, or- 
 ganization commenced early ; in the Southern States the combination 
 of laborers, chattel slavery having been abolished but recently, has 
 but just begun. 
 
 We confine ourselves to the organizations of America*. What is 
 being done there is being done elsewhere. Tailors were the first 
 to establish a trades-union in the year 1806. Hatters organized in 
 1 8 19, and shipwrights and calkers between 1825 and 1950. Local 
 unions of printers are traced back to 1831. 
 
 Between 1825 and 185 1 was a period of especial interest, wherein 
 labor organization was active. While its purpose was multiform, it 
 was incited by a demand for higher wages and the establishment of 
 the ten-hour labor day. 
 
 Ship carpenters and calkers were the first to commence ag- 
 itation for the ten-hour work day at New York, and it spread along 
 the Atlantic coast wherever ships were being built. The ten-hour 
 movement affected also other trades and other localities. 
 
 The leaders of the movement saw the necessity of more complete 
 organization. Efforts to this end culminated in a meeting at Boston 
 January 8, 1834. A general trades union of the mechanics of Bos- 
 ton and vicinity consisting of sixteen local unions was formed and a 
 constitution was adopted the first Tuesday in March of that year. 
 
 This was the first organization of the kind and may be regarded 
 as the parent trade assembly, or central trade and labor union. The 
 movement was attended by strikes in New York and other places. A 
 general strike for ten hours was begun at Philadelphia in the latter 
 part of May, 1835. Strikes were the battles of the war for a better 
 subsistence, and were rendered all the more violent and obstinate by 
 action of the merchants and ship-owners of Boston and other places, 
 who combined to oppose the purposes of their employes, and break 
 down their organizations. They denied the right of workingmen to 
 organize, to regulate the hours and price of labor, and to coerce in- 
 dividuals of their craft into united action. In all these matters, the 
 merchants, in that section of the country at least, were overruled by 
 the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, through Chief Justice Shaw. 
 
 On the other hand, the strikes were not successful. The battles 
 were drawn, but the labor forces, better organized, remained in the 
 field and gathered in larger numbers. In the courts they were 
 usually successful, and in the political field, joining hands with farm- 
 ers and ether laborers, they gained important advantages. Though 
 
 *To "The Labor Movement," by Geo. F, McNeill, we are indebted for fact?. 
 
200 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 often overthrown in their strikes, the battle for ten hours was not 
 yielded. 
 
 In 1840 President Van Buren proclaimed that "all public estab- 
 lishments will hereafter be regulated, as to working hours, by the ten- 
 hour system." Under various auspices and with varied success the 
 contention was maintained. At length, about the year 1844, ten 
 hours became generally recognized as a work day for the building 
 trades. Throughout other parts of the country the ten-hour system 
 was actively promoted, not only by laborers, but by humanitarians. 
 
 But we cannot trace the details* of organization. About the year 
 i860 the t€n-hour system, having been largely adopted, the agitation 
 for eight hours was commenced. Vast numbers of surplus employes 
 had gathered in America through immigration and importation of 
 laborers, and poverty was rapidly increasing. Machinery, also, had 
 become a new and powerful factor, operating toward the displace- 
 ment of employes. Except a radicaP change in the system of pro- 
 duction, no means of giving these pauperized laborers employment 
 was discoverable, except through shorter hours. Resisrance to dimin- 
 ished, sometimes demand for higher wages, characterized this 
 new crusade on the part of laborers for the eight hour day. On the 
 other hand, it was firmly held by the capitalistic combinations, that 
 wages must go lower, and to that end, a large surplus must be forced 
 to remain unemployed to take the place of those out on strike. 
 
 Whatever the merits of these respective arguments, both parties 
 entered the conflict for or against the eight hour day with vigor. For 
 twenty-flve years have the opposing forces been engaged \ and though 
 Congress and several of the States have passed laws enforcing the de- 
 mand of employes on public works, employers, continually rein- 
 forced by new and effective labor-saving machinery, by importations 
 of contract labor from Europe and Asia, and by drafts on vast 
 bodies of voluntary immigrants, have measurably maintained their 
 position. On the other hand some of the trade unions, noticeably those 
 connected with building, have gained a well-earned victory. In the 
 meantime the drift of public sentiment, especially the humanitarian 
 portion of it, have favored the movement of employes for shorter 
 hours, and at present, among all classes, ten hours is regarded as a 
 work day too long for ordinary conditions. The entire drift of pub- 
 lic sentiment is towards shorter hours, employment for all and few 
 or no paupers. 
 
 Trade unions have always been impatient of socialism and com- 
 munity movement, but have adhered to their demand for shorter 
 hours and greater wages, knowing that an equitable distribution of 
 wealth may be secured through wage payments. Around these pur- 
 
 ♦The reader is referred to " The Labor Movement," by McNeiL 
 
PROGRRSS OF LABOR COMBINATION. 20I 
 
 % 
 
 poses labor combinations have massed their forces, and organization 
 has rapidly advanced; but whether operating on the lines of existing 
 modes and industrial conditions, or striking out for the independent 
 or co-operative method, they have been met and opposed by the self- 
 interest of employers. 
 
 During and after the war of the rebellion, prices advanced rapidly, 
 and to secure a corresponding advance in wages, organization re- 
 ceived a new impetus. 
 
 After disbanding the national armies in 1886, a grand revival 
 occurred. Isolated unions and associations saw more and more the 
 necessity of amalgamation. From thirty to forty national and inter- 
 national trades-unions and amalgamated societies were brought into 
 existence, some of these numbering tens of thousands of men. These 
 national combinations comprised some of the following occupations : 
 Barbers, hair-dressers, hostlers, clerks, commercial travelers, railroad 
 employes, telegraphers, packers, sailors, blacksmiths, blind, door ar.d 
 sash makers, bookbinders, boot and shoe makers, brass founders, 
 boiler makers, brush makers, cabinet makers, carpenters and joiners, 
 carpet workers, cigar makers, clock and watch makers, coopers, cot- 
 ton-mill operatives, flax dressers, gilders, glass work operatives, gar- 
 ment cutters, gold and silversmiths and jewelers, harness and saddle 
 makers, hat and cap makers, iron and steel workers, leather curriers, 
 dressers, finishers and tanners, machinists, marble and stone cutters, 
 masons, miners, nail makers, organ makers, painters, paper hangers, 
 piano-forte makers, plasterers, plumbers, printers, pump makers, 
 quarrymen, carpenters, calkers and riggers, silk-mill operatives, tail- 
 ors, trunk makers, upholsters and woolen-mill operatives. 
 
 For years they had met the ordinary vicessitudes of a long and 
 obstinate war ; failure and success, defeat and victory; but on the 
 whole, in the teeth of fearful odds, their opponents entrenched in 
 commanding positions — in the soil, raw materials, machinery, money, 
 intelligence and organization — they had made steady advances. Vic- 
 tory renewed their hopes ; defeat prompted to more thorough and 
 effective combinations. They had little to lose and much to gain, 
 and through seasons of sunshine and darker periods of shadow, 
 organization and effort advanced, and as they advanced, wisdom in- 
 creased, and the prospects of industrial freedom grew brighter. 
 
 It was found, at last and by many, that an open struggle placed 
 them at a disadvantage, which rendered violent and destructive 
 strikes the more imperative. Their purposes, plans of campaign 
 and numbers were known to their opponents. Their power was 
 easily gauged; resistance was more violent and determined, the subr.le 
 agencies of diplomacy and arbitration, of argument and appeal, 
 found but a limited sphere of activity. 
 
 At this important juncture the Knights cf Labor came into exist- 
 
2C2 WEALTH AKD POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 h 
 
 ence, introducing secrecy, strategy, suasion and arbitration, and re- 
 serving the strike and boycott as last resorts. Local Assembly, No. 
 I, was organized in Philadelphia, December i8, 1869, within sound 
 of the old " Liberty Bell," and from it went forth a new declaration 
 of war against the monarchal system of labor and the proclamation 
 of a new era of liberty, peace and plenty. 
 
 They adopted a ritual, and the name of the order was kept secret 
 for many months. After the organization of some twenty local 
 assemblies, principally in Pennsylvania, delegates w^ere sent to organ- 
 a District Assembly. It was accomplished December 25, 1873. 
 
 Local Assemblies, and their respective memberships, under the 
 protection of secrecy, increased so rapidly that before the end of 
 1877, fifteen District Assemblies had been formed. As before the 
 organization of District Assemblies, Local Assembly, No. i, had been 
 considered as the head of the Order, so, District Assembly, No. i, 
 was for a time, and by common assent, considered as the central au- 
 thority. 
 
 In 1877, the officers of District Assembly, No. i, "issued a call 
 for a convention of delegates from the several District Assemblies." 
 The convention was held at Reading, Pennsylvania, January i, 1878, 
 and a General Assembly of the Order was formed. Uriah S. Stephens, 
 to whom has been ascribed the honor of originating the Order, was 
 elected its first Grand Master Workman. 
 
 The growth of the Knights of Labor has been both steady and 
 rapid. It embraces some entire callings, and a million of men. It 
 proposes to secure desired results of shorter hours and better wages 
 by suasion, conciliation and arbitration ; and to introduce the strike 
 and boycott only as extreme, final and indispensible measures. In 
 the meantime it inculcates the principles of co-operation, with the 
 ultimate hope and intention to overthrow the present wage condition 
 and establish in its place an industrial system free from perpetual 
 antagonisms. 
 
 Recognizing the existence of industrial war for the results of 
 production, and that physical violence is absolutely interdicted by 
 civil law, it has seized the other and only weapon of w^arfare — 
 strategy — and clothed its plans and operations with a discreet and 
 necessary secrecy. The local assemblies of the Knights of Labor, 
 counted by the thousands, furnish the wage workers of the conti- 
 nent with opportunities of association and advancement never before 
 enjoyed. 
 
 And yet with all the progress and success which has characterized 
 the combination of labor, it is easy to see that it is yet in the form- 
 ative stage. The Federated Trades, with the advantages of priority 
 wield a powerful influence, The Knights of Labor appear on the 
 field with advanced methods and advantages which cannot be 
 
CRISIS OF THE STRUGGLE. 203 
 
 ignored. Both cover much the same ground, and necessarily tend 
 in their exercise of prerogative and power, to conflict. 
 
 It is part of the strategy of employers to promote by all means 
 this division of forces among employes. But the time is near when 
 the wage earners of Americn will select the elements of power em- 
 bodied in these two forms of organization, unite in one Grand Army 
 of Labor and rally around a single flag. When such a union is 
 achieved the results of the industrial war will turn on a single point. 
 Capitalists will struggle to maintain 7vithout sustaining large detach- 
 ments of surplus and unemployed labor. Laborers will strain every 
 nerve to bring every possible employee into their combinations. 
 
 Whichever party is able and willing to draw to themselves and 
 care for surplus and unemployed laborers will win the day. Cap- 
 italists may be able but not willing ; laborers may be willing but not 
 able. 
 
 Will it devolve on the third party — the party of consumers — to 
 rescue the unemployed and poverty-stricken from that miserable 
 estate which makes them unwillingly the buttress of the employer 
 and the millstone of the employee? 
 
 But we must close this section by calling attention to its purpose. 
 
 We have observed the growth of- labor combinations ; the mar- 
 shalling of employed hosts, intent on regaining, in the f:rm of wages, 
 their birthright in the natural sources of wealth, and the social ap- 
 pliances of production, and in asserting their admitted rights to the 
 resuks of their labor; birthright and rights, unjustly withheld from 
 them by capitalists, through customs, constitutions and laws. They 
 do not ask that lands, raw material, provisions, machinery or money, 
 severally or singly, undergo an equitable redistribution to them ; 
 but they ask that their rightful interest in these values be assigned to 
 them in wages. They propose no innovations ; but justice, if pos- 
 sible, under present conditions, they demand ; and for that they 
 have organized, for that they will contend. 
 
 But it is of most moment to this demonstration that the Supreme 
 Intelligence working through the self-interest concerned in these 
 imposing combinations, in conflict with other powerful combinations, 
 is extending the growth and influence of an equitable co-operative 
 distribution. When men are bound together for a given purpose, a 
 just treatment of each other, an equitable distribution of what is 
 gained by the combination becomes imperative. As regards the 
 distribution of wages insisted on and assented to by all labor com- 
 binations, the principle of equity, if not of equality, is practically 
 enforced between the different units of each combination, as the 
 same principle is enforced between the units of capitalistic combi- 
 nations. Disregarding the differences as to capacity and power be- 
 tween different men, in the same calling, the wages of one man — 
 
2 04 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 Other things being equal — is made the same as the wages of every 
 other man. This rule is proximately enforced in every one of the 
 thousands of local, district and national combinations now in ex- 
 istence, and must of necessity be enforced in other and vaster com- 
 binations yet to be made. While it is competition of divided factors 
 which, from without, crowds laborers together — competition of 
 employers, employes or consumers — it is the ethical satisfaction of 
 an equitable distribution, that binds them, within, to harmonious 1 fe 
 and orderly action. While it is the expressed purpose of labor com- 
 binations to wrest from those who have inconsiderately vested it in 
 themselves, a fair proportion of the world's wealth, and distribute it 
 equitably among all members, it is the unconscious Miission of these 
 combinations to play an important role in the establishment of 
 universal justice in the economic domain. 
 
EXPLANATION OF ANTAGONISM. 205 
 
 COMBINATIONS OF CONSUMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. SECTION III. 
 
 In the two sections just preceeding, the combinations of producers 
 embracing employers or capitalists on one hand, and employes or 
 laborers on the other, each endeavoring to escape the losses 
 of competition between individuals and corporations, but continually 
 strengthening competition between larger combinations, and inci- 
 dentally inaugurating, promoting and extending — within their re- 
 spective combinations, co-operative distribution — have been portrayed. 
 We now proceed to consider another factor, more numerous and 
 in one direction more powerful than the productive forces combined; 
 a factor which, driven to activity by self-intsrest — the desire of en- 
 joyment and avoidance of pain — is exercising a notable influence in 
 the direction of co-operative distribution. I "refer to consumers. 
 
 It may be inquired wherein the interests of consumers differ from 
 that of producers. Their interests may seem to be, but are not, 
 identical. If every producer consumed what he produced, and pro- 
 duced only what he consumed, no antagonism would exist. Such a 
 state of affairs would involve an industrial independence, compatible 
 alone with existence of the most primitive or the most perfect forms 
 of industrial life ; the former has long been lost sight of and aban- 
 doned, and to the latter, we have not yet attained. An explanation 
 of the peculiarity and extent of the antagonism between producers 
 and consumers is in order. 
 
 Industry originated in the unit and its advancement from the mo- 
 ment when each person isolatedly produced and consumed alone 
 what he produced has been one of progressive aggregation and in- 
 creasing inter-dependence. At present the productive forces do not 
 constitute more than one-third of the population, but consumers com- 
 prise the entire people. While large numbers escape productive labor, 
 the real productive forces are still further broken up into small detach- 
 ments, each of whose interests and opeiations centre around a single 
 product. On the other hand, consumers of a single product embrace 
 the entire community or nation. This statement is theoretically true 
 with all products, and practically true with many. While those who 
 produce matches constitute numerically but an insignificant portion 
 of the population, the consumers of matches comprise the entire 
 nation. The producers of cotton are confined to a portion of four or 
 five States, but the consumers of cotton fill every city, county and 
 State.^ Sugar is produced by a small detachment of the national in- 
 dustrial force, but not a man, woman or child can be excluded from 
 
2o6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 among its consumers. The production of oranges is confined, not 
 only to a few localities, but to a few persons ; hut all classes of the 
 population, at one time or another, determined by activity of want 
 and ease of purchasing power, consume oranges. The producers of 
 leal pencils are scarcely recognized in a population of 60,000,000, 
 bu": there is no one of a suilable age who does not use pencils. Not 
 over 500,000 persons are engaged in railroad transportation in its 
 manifold details, and yet not a person lives, in countries where 
 railroads have become a necessity, who does not directly or indirectly 
 patronize them ; or, in economic phase, consume the services ren- 
 dered by them. 
 
 A small detachment of men engage in the production of fuel, 
 light and water ; but entire communities are consumers of the pro- 
 ducts and services rendered by the producers of these necessities of 
 life. As regards all forms of food, clothing, furniture, places of 
 shelter, the same proposition holds good. 
 
 In a single sentence ; as producers, the nation is divided into 
 many small detachments, each detachment gathered about a single 
 industry and separated into two general divisions, laborers and 
 capitalists : as consumers, the entire population is a unit inspired 
 by a single purpose — abundance of commodity for the least expen- 
 diture of effort. 
 
 It has become the function of each one of these detachments, 
 having been permitted by the nation — consumers — to appropriate 
 the natural sources of a particular commodity and the social means 
 of its production, to supply the entire community therewith ; but 
 through the supply and under its cover it assumes a right to exact 
 and draw from consumers, regardless of equity, such sums of money, 
 as, by means of the industrial power at command, it can extract. It 
 happens thus, that the country is dotted over by the bustling camps 
 of these isolated and organized detachments of the productive army 
 — competition among themselves having been tabooed — ready to do 
 duty in supply of the wants of consumers, but even more ready — in 
 fact straining every nerve — to dispossess consumers of their pur- 
 chasing power They embody and enforce the principle of robbery, 
 freed from physical violence, on the industrial plane. 
 
 On the other hand, consumers maintain a broad, homogeneous, 
 nationalized solidarity, incessantly defending themselves from the 
 persistent exactions of isolated detachments of producers. 
 
 The struggle between them involves the price of commodities ; 
 producers demanding high prices^ consumers contending for loiv 
 prices. 
 
 But why this conflict ? Have not those who produce, the exclu- 
 sive right to determine price ? What, if any ground of right or 
 power exists, from which consumers may demand a voice in the 
 
RIGHTS AND POWERS OF CONSUMERS. 207 
 
 establishment of price? Consumers possess, in the important prem- 
 ise, both fundamental right and indisputable might. 
 
 In that, as the nation, they possess a sovereign control over the 
 sources of wealth and means of production, and in the exercise of 
 that control have conceded to producers that indispensible portion of 
 the common heritage required by the latter for effective production, 
 it is but right that consumers should have, in the interests of all, a 
 voice in the establishment of prices. Consumers, as a body, owe it 
 to all consumers — the sources of wealth and means of production, 
 having been assigned to different detachments of producers — ^thatsaid 
 producers shall use them to the interests of all concerned. Con- 
 sumers are, in an unmistakable sense, silent and interested partners 
 with producers, and so long as the latter carry on business to the 
 best interests of all concerned, consumers need not interfere. But 
 producers have misunderstood their relations to society, which in- 
 volve a trust, and consumers have found it necessary to insist upon 
 their rights as regards the establishment of prices. 
 
 Consumei 3 have not only the right to assist in determintng price, 
 but they possess the power ; a power, however, which they exercise 
 usually, with reluctance. The boycott, or a refusal to consume at 
 any j)rice is a weapon of no mean significance. The every-day re- 
 fusal to buy and pay a given price for a given product is too common 
 to be alluded to. It is a personal and social privilege never denied ; 
 but it tends to wither the life of any industry. It becomes the boy- 
 cott only when consumers combine and enter into an expressed or 
 tacit agreement to consume no more the goods produced by a given 
 industry, or one of the firms or corporations engaged thereon. It is 
 a powerful pursuader and when entered upon by all consumers must 
 necessarily paralyze the industry. But while it punishes the producer for 
 his exactions — shown in low wages or high prices — it brings a cruel 
 and needless sacrifice to the consumer. It is destructive of com- 
 mon interests to check production, and folly to submit to the ex- 
 actions of a small productive detachment of community. A final 
 and effective means, in the hands of consumers, of eliminating the 
 oppressive demands of producers, is to relieve them of the respon- 
 sibilities and deprive them of the advantages of production which they 
 incline constantly to abuse. The power so to do is involved in the 
 conceded power of any nation to amend its constitution and alter 
 its laws. Consumers — who constitute the nation — can limit or 
 annul privileges and rights previously granted ; can purchase, con- 
 demn, and in aggravated cases, confiscate properties claimed by in- 
 dividuals; and having recovered what they had previously dispensed, 
 may, through that instrument of consumers, government, continue 
 production and dispose distribution according to the dictates of 
 equity. The active productive force, mental ^nd manual, may find 
 
2oS WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 employment as before, and adequate compensation from govern- 
 ment for their labor ; at the same time they would be deprived of their 
 power of exaction. 
 
 In this conflict between producers and consumers for high prices 
 on one side and low prices on the other, the former stand upon their 
 legal rights and the latter upon the higher law of justice and good 
 will to — all, not a few — men; upon their natural and conceded 
 rights to amend constitutions and repeal laws. 
 
 Since the disappearance of chattel slavery, since production has 
 come to be prosecuted for purposes of accumulation — for profit 
 rather than use — it has assumed herculean proportions. 
 
 Up to within a late period a single circumstance : viz., competition 
 among capitalists, has contributed to limit the exactions of producers 
 upon consumers ; but the declination of competition among capital- 
 ists and the rapid growth of combination is fast removing that safe- 
 guard of consumers. Let us suppose, yet further, that producers of 
 a given commodity — both capitalists and laborers — combine, as they 
 are not unlikely to do in the near future, and absorb, through pur- 
 chase, the sources of a given commodity and the appliances for its 
 production, the possibility of competition and its value to consumers 
 at once disappears. In such a status, the nation of consumers are 
 at the absolute mercy of a small detachment of enterprising pro- 
 ducers as regards that commodity; a situation from which they can 
 extricate themselves only by the boycott, or the more radical measue 
 of destroying the power of producers by acquiring their materials 
 and plant. 
 
 But price depends as yet, principally on combinations of capital- 
 ists, irrespective of their association with laborers. They, increas- 
 ingly, refuse to compete ; combination of interests is rapidly ad- 
 vancing, and though consumers let in foreign competition by repeal 
 of tariff laws, producers will extend their combinations to other na- 
 tions, as capitalists and laborers have already attempted to do. Re- 
 liance on the competitive instincts of producers will become in- 
 creasingly more futile. 
 
 Consumers already feel the withering power of various detach- 
 ments of producers. One industry after another is taken in hand 
 either by capitalists engaged in actual production, or by outside 
 combinations which corner the bulk of marketable stock, and con- 
 sumers are continually pressed to close quarters by exactions from 
 one quarter or another. Some of these raids on the purchasing 
 power of consumers are of national and inter-national significance. 
 One pool has for months shaken the wheat market of the world, ad- 
 vancing the pi ice of wheat products to unnatural figures, and draw- 
 ing directly or indirectly from the purchasing power of every family 
 in Christendom. It matters not that the pool prematurely failed ; 
 
APPEAL OF CONSUMERS TO GOVERNMENT. , 209 
 
 it will gather again under other auspices, and with stronger forces 
 unless prevented by the political and civil action of consumers. When 
 it is not wheat, it is pork, or fuel, or hops, or coal oil, or rubber, or 
 sugar ; the segregated detachments of the great productive force con- 
 secutively plan and execute constant raids on, and make wild havoc 
 with the body of consumers. Once in a few years — the years 1837, 
 1847, 1857, (the war of the rebellion broke the continuity for one 
 decade,) 1 87 7, mark these movements with sufficient accuracy — these 
 combinations conspire, operate in unison and advance prices along 
 the entire line of their fortified positions. These united advances 
 have been prolonged for two or three years, and are referred to as 
 periods of " good times," and have been followed by seasons of less 
 activity which are charitably denominated as "hard times"; the real 
 fact being that they have been "good times " to those alone who 
 have succeeded in turning their goods into money at high prices, and 
 " hard times " to those who have parted with their money for prop- 
 erty at high prices. 
 
 Against these predatory raids of the buccaneers of production, 
 consumers have been driven also to combine ; and, operating through 
 municipal corporations, force the government to relieve them from 
 the exacting burdens placed upon them by the productive hosts. 
 Appeal to government is apt and proper because consumers consti- 
 tute the nation, and government is the constant instrument of the 
 national will. When the nation seeks defense from internal or ex- 
 ternal assaults of domestic or foreign despotism, whether they be of 
 a military, political or industrial nature, it is meet that the nation 
 empower government, to interfere in any manner or to any extent 
 necessary to attain the desired result. Consequently, it has been 
 made the duty of Representatives of the people,in municipal councils, 
 in legislatures, in congresses and in parliaments to interpose 
 stringent laws against the permanent exactions and desultory levies 
 made on consumers. 
 
 Indeed, the platforms of political parties and the details of po- 
 litical and civil life are, of late, interspersed and tinged with the con- 
 flict of consumers against the oppressive exactions of producers. 
 
 Water, gas, telegraph, telephone, transportation and other 
 companies or persons, whose functions are the performance of a 
 public service or supply of a public need, are incessantly pressed by 
 the general body of consumers, through political combinations, for 
 lower prices. In the progressive decline of competition among cor- 
 porations and individuals, appeal of consumers to government is the 
 only effective means of substantial relief; and it is probable these 
 appeals of consumers for an equitable distribution, will become 
 more imperative, frequent and permanent. 
 
 The influence of consumers upon political and civil action is in 
 
2IO WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 the main defensive. Producers have not only grounded themselves 
 in the natural sources of wealth and the appliances of production, 
 but antecedently and concurrently have dictated political and civil 
 action to their own especial advantage. Producers of gold and 
 silver have, until recently, maintained control of financial legislation, 
 demanding that the value they embody shall constitute the exclusive 
 measure and basis of national circulation. Some producers 
 have appealed successfully to government for subsidial aid, 
 while most of the productive detachments have demanded 
 protection from foreign competition, and in the main have secured 
 the requisite legislation. A protective tariff is maintained purely in 
 the interests of producers ; it involves, at the same time, the pro- 
 motion and establishment of national industries and maintenance of 
 high prices. On the other hand, free trade legislation is in the in- 
 terests of consumers ; involves low prices of commodities and neglects 
 the establishment of national industries. Protectionists and free 
 traders are at unnecessary loggerheads, however, because the factor of 
 national growth is not taken into their reasonings, nor does it appear 
 in their conclusions. Laws that support protection and free trade, 
 respectively, mark two successive stages of industrial evolution ; the 
 former being primary, the latter secondary. The necessity of protection 
 in infancy and youth is undoubted ; but the necessity decreases as one 
 moves on to manhood, and the law of manhood development out- 
 lines the law of national development and modifiedly that of indus- 
 trial evojution. The organization of industry — chattel slavery being 
 abolished — begins with the organization of capitalism or industrial 
 leadership ; the establishment of the relation of employer and em- 
 ployee. ,The industrial undertakings of capitalists, are of paramount 
 importance to a young and growing nation, and laws to support and 
 protect them are, in the process of industrial evolution, at first as in- 
 dispensible, as are subsequent laws to protect and support the army 
 of employes and the vast body of consumers. At any cost to con- 
 sumers, the development of national — home — industry is imperative ; 
 and to that end it has transpired, that producers, in protecting in- 
 fant industries, have up to this time, usually carried the vole and 
 dictated the tariff legislation of the country in maintenance of high 
 prices. But a time is coming for a turn of the tide to low prices 
 and increased purchasing power. 
 
 The growth of the human body commences in the brain and moves 
 out and down to other organs and structures. Religious, political, 
 social and industrial growth, has followed, and must continue to fol- 
 low the same general course. \ The protective legislation of America 
 in support of a healthy and permanent national growth of the in- 
 dustries, having nurtured the brain of the industrial organism — cap- 
 
FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 211 
 
 italisin — * must pass on to the bodily organs and extremities. The 
 interests of laborers and consumers can no longer be set aside with 
 impunity. The brain of the industrial organism is already too fully 
 congested and fat to remain active and virtuous ; and employes — 
 consumers — especially unemployed consumers — approach a con- 
 dition of inanition which bodes no good to national permanence. 
 Industrial leaders — capitalists — have had their necessary and some- 
 what exclusive day at the common protoplasm, and must quietly and 
 humanely yield to the inevitable, or be taught by the superior num- 
 bers, growing intelligence and crowding wants of employes, and 
 consumers, that the later development of other economic elements, 
 is likewise of indispensible importance. 
 
 The condition of the United States Treasury, shows that the 
 policy of protection, has, in the interest of producers, been amply- 
 maintained. The surplus there gathered is gathered at the exclusive 
 expense and to the economic detriment of consumers. These vast 
 aggregations, excluding the influence of internal taxation, show by how 
 much less the consumers of the country could have supplied their 
 wants, and how much the establishment of national industry has cost. 
 Though the growth of national industry, is worth to national devel- 
 opment what it has cost, a change in the tide of growth is imperative. 
 
 Free traders and the demands of their constituent consumers have 
 Hitherto been overborne by the prior necessities of industrial evolu- 
 tion ; but, if not through free trade, in some way the demands they 
 have made for low prices will yet be recognized. They should be sat- 
 isfied by. legislation which shall compel employers to distribute em- 
 ployment to all — through short hours — and yield to employes^ 
 — through wages — ^^from the aggregate national purchasing power held 
 by employing capitalists* enough to absorb, at home, the entire an- 
 nual products of the land. It is now time that the national indus- 
 tries, which have become established at the expense of consumers, 
 should begin to repay in full to consumers all items of outlay and 
 recoup a half century of sacrifice. For various and ample reasons 
 continued protection of producers may remain a salutary public 
 policy ; it may be best to preserve the industrial autonomy of Amer- 
 ica. But the desirable results of free trade — lower prices and steady 
 or increased purchasing power — are attainable most effectively by 
 domestic legislation; which, by reducing the profits of capitalists to 
 the measure of an average compensation, will distribute purchasing 
 power among the body of producers, and by reducing the hours of 
 labor gives employment to all able and willing to labor, and money 
 enough to supply their reasonable wants. 
 
 *Caput, capitalis. 
 
 *3ee concerning the source of purchasing power — contents. 
 
2 12 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 It is probable the sincere free-trader, the man who believes in and 
 advocates free trade, for the ease of circumstance which it will bring 
 to all citizens, will find the key to his future- humanitarian efforts in 
 the new lines of legislation about to be opened up under the aus- 
 pices of the so-called labor politics. The demands of the Knights 
 of Labor and Federated Trades, higher wages and shorter hours 
 present in a more practical manner — a manner consistent also with 
 industrial growth and permanence of national greatness and inde- 
 pendence — the real demands of the advocates of free trade. If 
 these demands be supported by public sentiment and law and pro- 
 posed results are realized, the patriotism of free trade will have been 
 realized ; and except, with mere theoreticians, free trade, in politics 
 or economies, will cease to be discussed. In this connection, in the 
 increased demands and combinations of consumers, in the fact that 
 laborers demands for higher wages and shorter hours, to be drawn 
 from capitalists, tally with the demands of consumers for lower 
 prices— higher '^ages to laborers is the same — in the decadence of 
 urgency, by public men for free trade, and increased activity among 
 the hosts of laborers for lower prices to consumers — higher wages is 
 the same — is to be recognized the commencement of a new and 
 powerful crusade in the interests of consumers ; a crusade which will 
 promote the principle of free trade in another form. The con- 
 sumers of America are now beginning to say to the producers — a^ 
 an orchardist, personifying his apple tree might say to it; 'I have 
 spent money, labor and time on you for years without return, and 
 now I want fruit ; " we, the consumers of the country, having 
 given you access to the national domain, encouraged your enter- 
 prises by subsidies and protected them by tariff, having sacrificed 
 ourselves and paid high prices for your goods that you might estab- 
 lish the industries of the nation for the national good, now demand 
 the benefits of our gifts and sacrifices." 
 
 The movement of consumers, for the most part, parallels the 
 movement of employes ; especially, first, as employes constitute the 
 bulk of those consumers who also produce ; paramountly, second, 
 as they have a common grievance to be settled, with combinaticns 
 of industrial leaders — capitalists — whose leadership has been nar- 
 rowed and prostituted to private ends, and whose undertakings, 
 based upon the common heritage and supported by common con- 
 cessions and sacrifices, have been regarded solely as their own. La- 
 borers and consumers have an inalienable right to the common her- 
 itage—to the natural sources of wealth and social appliances of 
 production, to the immense values which have been produced by 
 powers — God and society — compared with whose efficiency, the 
 power of the individual is as a grain of sand in a desert ; an inalien- 
 able right also to those values which are the result of their own 
 
FREE TRADE YIELDS TO FREE TRAVEL. 213 
 
 labor. These values constituting the nation's purchasing power, 
 through the origin and successive stages of industrial evolution, have 
 — perhaps necessarily at first — been held back from consumers 
 and employes by industrial leaders ; held back from employes through 
 payment of low wages for long hours; held back from consumers in 
 the enforced demand of high prices. Recovery of these values, or 
 reinstatement in their use and enjoyment, is the unseen cordon 
 which is likely to bind employes and consumers together in common 
 political action ; action that will tend to draw full employment for 
 all laborers from those who hold back the only means of employment, 
 and ample purchasing power from those who have massed and retain 
 the nation's purchasing power about themselves. 
 
 Low prices demanded by consumers and high wages demanded 
 by employes, both drawing from the accumulated resources of cap- 
 italists, place them both in a common category, with a common purpose, 
 and make them, within the nation and without breaking the tariff 
 defense against industrial inroads of other nations, the executors of 
 demand for low prices which free traders have continued to urge. 
 Free trade involves the labor of "long hauls "across ocean and con- 
 tinent ; a waste of labor which the principles of true economy do 
 not sustain.^^ The better national policy is to make each nation on 
 the same lines of latitude, self-sustaining. What one nation can pro- 
 duce, another in a similar climate can produce. The German Em- 
 pire in some of its recent exclusive acts is emphasizing this policy of 
 national independence. If "long hauls" there must be, they should 
 be on lines of longitude ; from the tropics to the poles, and from the 
 frigid to the torrid zone. As civilization advances, a true economy 
 of power as of material, is likely to mark its progress, and with the 
 adoption of just principles of exchange, free trade and useless- toting 
 of products from one country to another, will give place to freer and 
 more extensive travel. 
 
 Let us return from this general view to the specific combinations 
 of consumers and their influence upon the ultimate establishment of 
 co-operative distribution. 
 
 Consumers, imitating the policy observed by combinations of cap- 
 italists and laborers, have confined their operations to the maxim 
 of "first things first." Though they hold the power through the bal- 
 lot, to overturn existing institutions, and at once introduce a better 
 order of industry, for various reasons they have confined their oper- 
 ations to modifying the asperities of the existing industrial mechan- 
 ism ; they have forced government, through which they must neces- 
 sarily operate, to inspect the quality and quantity of commodities 
 and to limit prices demanded of consumers. Corporations, companies 
 and persons engaged in performance of public uses, authorized by pub- 
 lic franchises and aided by public funds are especially amenable to 
 
2 14 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 the restrictive policy hitherto adopted by consumers. Political plat- 
 forms are padded with their demands. Laws are enacted by mu- 
 nicipal councils, legislatures, congresses and parliaments, the prime 
 intent of which is to suppress the exactions, limit demands and re- 
 duce prices. Prices of gas, rates of water, sums demanded for car- 
 ying passengers and freights, fares of city railway and hack companies, 
 transmission of telegraphic and telephonic messages, elevator charges 
 for wheat storage, cost of public school books, tolls upon private 
 roads and expenditures for all public work and public services, have 
 each and all pasjed under the demand of consumers, expressed 
 through public sentiment, political action and statute law, for low 
 prices ; and these demands, deemed Ici^al and reasonable, have 
 been supported and enforced by courts of final jurisdiction; state 
 and nation. 
 
 What consumers have done toward the reduction of prices, espec- 
 ially as capitalists contrive to combine for higher prices and large 
 profits they will continue to do ; they will continue, in furtherance of 
 that self-interest which stimulates production and consumption, to 
 press for lower prices, even to a line below cost; an extreme, which 
 of necessity prostrates production. Unreasonable demands of con- 
 sumers may sometimes surpass those of producers ; but, like some 
 detachments of producers, prompted by the sentiment that nothing 
 is gained until all is gained, and forced by the law of self-preserva- 
 tion and self-interest, they may have felt bound, in complete self- 
 defence, to pursue and push oppressive producers to the verge of 
 destruction. 
 
 However, in this incessant contention against the cohorts of pro- 
 du:tion, as a necessary motive to their organization, consumers are 
 driven to extend, among themselves, the operation of equitable dis- 
 tribution. As they co-operate, in vast armies, to secure lower prices, 
 their unwritten intention is to supply every citizen with commodities 
 and services, on conditions similar to the best conditions enjoyed 
 by any citizen. If they secure lower prices in water, gas, transpor- 
 tation, books, tuitions and services, each citizen, by common co- 
 operative consent among the combined consumers, is entitled to as 
 low rates as the most favored citizen ; each labors and distributes for 
 all, and all for each. 
 
 Here let us pause. Our investigations concerning the nature 
 and results of combination, first, among capitalists or employers, 
 second, among laborers or employes, and third, among con- 
 sumers, who constitute the entire people, convince us that 
 these combinations, organized primarily for competitive purposes, 
 and to subserve the ends of self-interest, have become the nurseries 
 of co-operative disti ibution. While they contend with all opposing 
 nterests exterior to them, within the periphery of their operations 
 
NURSERIES OF CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION. 215 
 
 they amicably adjust and equitably distribute the results of these 
 efforts. Thus in the midst of the fierce competition between com- 
 bined interests, struggling for the results of co-operative production^ 
 the principle of co-operative distribution grows apace and becomes 
 rapidly practicalized and permanently realized. 
 
2l6 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 THE OUTCOME. 
 PROBABILITIES AND POSSIBILITIES. 
 CHAPTER VIII, SECTION I. 
 
 In the last three sections has been outlined the growth and pur 
 poses of the two economic factors — producers, comprising capitalists 
 and laborers on one hand, and consumers, comprising the nation 
 on the other. 
 
 We have noted, while they have been driven together by self- 
 interest, that they might contend more powerfully for the results of 
 production, they have been compelled to nourish and extend within 
 their organizations the very principle which it has been the purpose of 
 their combinations to shun and destroy; viz.; equitable or co-opera- 
 tive distribution ; that capitalists, following the natural law of evo- 
 lution have taken the lead in these movements ; that laborers have 
 been driven by capitalistic exactions and oppressions to combine 
 later, and that consumers have endeavored to defend themselves 
 against the exaction of high prices, by political combination through 
 civil administration. 
 
 It will be understood that these combinations have come to stay ; 
 or if temporarily broken or shattered, by internal faction or extreme 
 conflict, that as they bear in their unconscious bosoms the living 
 principle of industrial regeneration — co-operative distribution — they 
 will come again, in greater power, greater numbers and better or- 
 ganized ; that, until they fully recognize the higher law of their 
 brigin and career, and adapt themselves to its madates, the industrial 
 conflicts which they wage, will intensify and extend. 
 
 For the purposes of stronger attack and more efficient defense 
 these combinations, in the natural order of industrial evolution will 
 continue to grow and increase, until every employing capitalist con- 
 nected with a given industry has pooled with every other employer 
 of the same industry, and until every employed laborer connected 
 with a given industry is gathered into the folds of the correspond- 
 ing combination of laborers. 
 
 The two camps, then fully armed and equipped — capitalists, few 
 in number, but buttressed in the natural sources of wealth and 
 social appliances of production, laborers, by the thousands, with the 
 indespensible factor of production which they embody and control 
 — will stand over against each other, and fight, cripple and destroy ; 
 until they reflect and realize that each holds points of vantage inde- 
 spensible to the prosperity of the other, and that without a union of 
 
FALSE ECONOMIC INFLUENCES. 21 7 
 
 these advantages, both capitalist and laborer must fail of achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 How long these conflicts may continue before they bring the wis- 
 dom and spirit of concession and humanity, which, sooner or later, 
 must and will appear, it is beyond the ken of man to predict. Too 
 few, of the producers of wealth, capitalists and laborers, understand 
 the origin and development of wealth. Economic science has per- 
 mitted the capitalist to believe that he rightfully possesses exclusive 
 advantages in the soil, raw material and the means of production 
 and exchange, and teaches the laborer that wealth is produced alone 
 by his labor. At the same time the average capitalist falsely be- 
 lieves, and will tell you, that his success is due to his own efforts 
 alone ; that other men, by the exercise of the same personal ability, 
 may achieve the same results. 
 
 Neither of these propositions can stand the test of equal rights 
 on one hand, or reason on the other. Nevertheless they fill the in- 
 dustrial mind, determine the industrial action of both capitalist and 
 laborer and exclude a rational consideration of principles and facts 
 which should bring them at once, on common ground. But both 
 capitalist and laborer can and do see something of the failure and 
 destruction which their conflicts bring upon each other and the na- 
 tion. They will as these conflicts enlarge, see more ; and as they 
 see and reflect, they will be constrained, in furtherance of self-inter- 
 est, to take such action as will mass them into larger and more com- 
 prehensive combinations, embracing in their membership doth cap- 
 italist and laborer. 
 
 CAPITALIST AND LABORER COMBINED. 
 
 The union of capitalist and laborer in production is not a new 
 thought ; but aside from the impulse , which has prompted experi- 
 mental enterprise, involving the | participation of laborers in the 
 profits secured by joint action, aside from the limited,, but satisfac- 
 tory results — business and humanitarian — attained by such experi- 
 ments,* a resistless power — the power of self-interest — is driving in 
 an orderly manner the produc ive forces — employer and employe — 
 to a comprehensive and practical union. To fight each other is be- 
 coming destructive and expensive. No one can predict the pro- 
 gressive details of such a union ; but seeing the gathering forces he 
 knows there must be fierce, desperate conflicts; and knowing that 
 capitalists and laborers are parts of one ijreat army, that they are 
 already engaged, throughout the civilized world, in co-operative pro- 
 duction, which is disturbed only by conflicts concerning distribution, 
 knowing that after each battle, humanity, reason and justice obtain a 
 
 *See "The Labor Movement," McMill, page 524 and following. 
 
2l8 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 new momentum and establish material results and better and more 
 harmonious relations between combatants, the ultimate result, through 
 whatever vicissitudes, reverses and advantages, defeats and victories, 
 it may come, can not be doubtful. We may well regret the ignor- 
 ance and selfishness which incites these industrial conflicts ; but as 
 ignorance and selfishness are displaced by intelligence and good- 
 will only through struggle and suffering, it is useless to deprecate 
 them. We can look with ardent hope for the good which must 
 follow. 
 
 A notable event in this connection has just transpired. On the 
 opening of building operations in Chicago for the season of 1887, 
 one of these conflicts between employers and employes was precipi- 
 tated. It bid fair to disturb building operations throughout the 
 Middle and Western States. But after much blustering and many 
 threats on both sides, reason and mutual consideration gained com- 
 mand and arranged for discussion and arbitration. Thereby one of 
 the biggest strikes and lockouts that ever occurred in the United 
 States was brought to a satisfactory end, and a permanent combina- 
 tion made between the capitaUsts and laborers concerned. 
 
 A Committee of Arbitration, five for each party, and an umpire 
 having no personal interest in either — Judge M. F. Tuley — were ap- 
 pointed. The decision which was reached after several days of in- 
 quiry and discussion, and was unanimously adopted, is a remarkable 
 document. The terms of settlement and combination are shown in 
 the following extract therefrom : 
 
 " We recognized the fact that the two organizations, between which there 
 should be bonds of good feeling, were carrying on bitter war with each other, by 
 which many thousands of men were deprived of work, much suffering and pri- 
 vation brought upon innocent parties, and immense pecuniary loss daily sustain- 
 ed; and we determined, if possible, to reconcile the differences and place the 
 relations of the two organizaticHis upon a basis by which strikes, lockouts and 
 other like disturbances might in future be avoided. 
 
 " We found that the main cause of trouble was in the separate organizations 
 endeavoring to lay down arbitrary rules for the regulution of matters which were 
 of joint interest and concern, and which should be regulated only by both organ- 
 izations by some species of joint action. We therefore determined upon and 
 submit herewith a project for the institution of a joint standing committee for 
 that purpose. The article providing for such a standing committee, elected an- 
 nually in January, and defining its powers and duties, shall be incorporated into 
 the constitution of each association. 
 
 " This joint committee will be constituted of an arbitration committee of five 
 members from each organization (the president of each being one of the five) and 
 an umpire who is neither a working mechanic nor an employer of mechanics, to 
 be chosen by the two committees. This joint committee is given power to hear 
 and determine all grievances of the members of one orgmization against members 
 ► of the other; to determine and fix all working rules covering employer and em- 
 ployes, such as: 
 
 " I. Minimum rate of wages per hour. 
 
 "2. Number of hours of work per day. 
 
 "3. Uniform pay day. 
 
CAPITALISTS AND LABORERS COMBINED. 219 
 
 ** 4. Time of starting and quitting work. 
 
 "6. Rate paid for night and Sunday work, and questions of like nature. 
 
 " And it is given power to determine what number of apprentices shall be en- 
 ToUed, so as to afford all boys desiring to learn the trade an opportunity to do so, 
 without overcrowding. 
 
 " The officer known as the walking delegate is to be known hereafter as the 
 collector, and all the objectionable duties and powers of the office have been 
 done away with. The steward will remaiarn guardian of the men's interests and 
 mediator lor them; his arbitrary powers are taken away. The interests of the 
 members of the union are protected by the foreman being required to be a mem- 
 ber of the union, but he is restored to his position as the employe of the con- 
 tractor, and while so employed is not subject to the rules of the union. The 
 eight-hour day has been conceded to the workmen. It is in accordance with the 
 State law, and we believe in accord with the spirit and progress of the age. 
 
 " The question of pay-day, whether Saturday or Tuesday, was not considered 
 a question of vital importance, but it being one of the questions left to the um- 
 pire to decide, he names Tuesday as the regular pay-day until the same shall, if 
 desired hereafter, be changed by the joint committee on arbitration. 
 
 " We have settled the differences between the two organizations. While every 
 inch of the ground has been fought over, we in good faith determined to do 
 everything that was fair, just and honorable to accomplish our object. We feel 
 we have succeeded without compromising the honor, the rights or the dignity of 
 either organization, and hope that we have succeeded in establishing a basis 
 upon which all future trouble may be settled or prevented. 
 
 A. E. VORKELLER, , ThEO. DREIBUSH, 
 
 P.J.Minster, " Chas. J. Lindgren, 
 
 John Pearson. 
 Arbitration Committee of the U. O. A. B. and S. M. Association 
 Geo. C. Prussing, Wm. O'Brien, 
 
 Jos. Downey, Chas. W. Guidele, 
 
 George Tapper, 
 Arbitration Committee for Master Masons' and Builders' Association. 
 
 Umpire, M. F. TuLEY." 
 The contractors have struck out of the title of their association the word 
 "master," as being unsavory.* 
 
 What has been done here will be done elsewhere. Capitalists 
 and laborers will be drawn together by self-interest, and the interests 
 of one will gradually become the interest of the other. Through 
 such comprehensive combinations, the parties thereto becoming 
 more intimate as time goes, circumstances change and civilization 
 advances, the combined units will contribute to the further estab- 
 lishment of an equitable distribution of the wealth which they co- 
 operatively produce. Gradually all self-employers will be driven 
 into the ranks of employers or employes. Employers will absorb 
 those self-employers, capable of entering their organizations, and em- 
 ployes will absorb those, who, having parted with the means of self- 
 employment, through choice or compulsion, become employes. 
 
 Each and every industry — capitalists seeking their own interests, 
 having fully combined ; laborers seeking their own interests, having 
 fully combined — will become the arena of severe conflicts, until, 
 
 ♦Taken from John Swinton's Paper, July 24, '87. 
 
2 20 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS 
 
 after the manner of the Chicago employers and employes, they be- 
 come wise and tractable enough to pool their issues and make an 
 equitable co-operative distribution of the products, perquisites and 
 pay accumulated by joint effort. Conflicts between laborers com- 
 bined, and capitalists combined, which lead up to the final conflict 
 and terminate in their union, are unavoidable except through the ex- 
 ercise of that knowledge and probity which as yet neither party pos- 
 sesses. They are, however, in the direct line of an orderly evolu- 
 lution, as are the ultimate combinations to which they inevitably lead. 
 Were all consumers producers, or were the producers connected 
 with the different industries, co-ordinated and harmonized under a 
 single purpose and a common control, industrial conflict and further 
 combinations, would necessarily end with the union of capitalists 
 and laborers. But under the promptings and machineries of pri- 
 vate enterprise, each industry is interested in its own promotion, and 
 each regards the nation of consumers as its lawful and appropriate 
 victim of predation. Each industry on its own account presses 
 consumers for the highest prices, and consumers are placed in a 
 constant state of defense against the exactions of the several detach- 
 ments of producers. The reader will easily understand also, how 
 much more powerful and effective are likely to be the demands of 
 producers, when capitalists and laboiers are combined, than when 
 they are wasting their strength in contentions with each other. In 
 one sentence, when the capitalists and laborers, engaged in producing 
 a given commodity, are fully combined, nationally or internationally, 
 consumers must deal with a complete monopoly ; must pay prices 
 demanded, cease to consume, or contend for lower prices through 
 the most effective measures. 
 
 CAPITALIST, LABORER AND CONSUMER COMBINED. 
 
 At this stage of combination, consumers of a given commodity 
 nationalized, and producers, few in number but well entrenched and 
 provisioned, the industrial conflict for the results of production, will 
 assume massive and final proportions. No grander scene, in the 
 progress of industrial evolution can be conceived. 
 
 Producers having brought commodities to the perfection of use 
 from the soil, through manufacture, by labor — mental and manual — 
 are in legal possession, and make their demands for compensa- 
 tion with a declaration of economic power and a consciousness of 
 legal rectitude. 
 
 On the other hand, consumers — constituting the entire people — 
 make and unmake constitutions and enact and repeal the laws 
 which have given economic opportunity and legal standing and pro- 
 tection to producers. Once incited to action, their power through 
 the ballot, is irresistible. Exclusive opportunities of self-employment 
 
FINAL RESOURCES OF CONSUMARS. 22 1 
 
 and emi)loyment of large masses of men — unlimited access to the 
 sources of wealth and appliances of production — to land, raw ma- 
 terial, provisions furnished by nature, and tools, machinery and 
 money created by society — have been derived, by detachments of 
 producers, through concessions made to them by consumers ; con- 
 cessions revokable by the same powe^ that made them. Can any 
 one doubt the result of a decisive conflict between a single detach- 
 ment of producers on one hand, and a nation of consumers on the 
 other? the former entrenched in constitutions and laws which the 
 latter are able to overthrow when they will, by a simple use of the 
 ballot? 
 
 No such decisive action has hitherto been recorded, because, as 
 yet, the combination of producers — of capitalists and laborers — is 
 incomplete and inefficient. They have not, as yet, brought that force 
 to bear, which, when combined, they will be able, and without 
 doubt, only too willing to concentrate on consumers. Nevertheless, the 
 capitalistic branch of producers alone through their intelligence and 
 power of rapid concentration, maintain even now, an efficient and 
 continuous guerilla warfare on consumers ; a warfare which incites 
 them to incessant remonstrance and constant counter-attack and de- 
 fense. This scattered fusilade, while it goes on to no magnificent 
 proportions, tends to induce by slower processes, results similar to 
 those that must inevitably follow a massed and decisive conflict be- 
 tween forces so combined ; such conflicts as, on a smaller scale, are 
 of frequent occurrence between capitalists and laborers. By degrees 
 consumers, who proverbially suff"er the exactions of producers with 
 the patience of an ass, will, nevertheless, be repeatedly aroused 
 thereby to renewed, effective and extreme action, in defense of the 
 right to consume at moderate prices. 
 
 Three or four modes of action are open to them ; first, personal 
 protest and public opinion ; second, the boycott or declination to 
 buy ; third, inspection and limitation of prices attainable through 
 political action and enforced by statute law, and fourth, reassump- 
 tion, through purchase or condemnation, of the material and means 
 of production and the establishment of public enterprise for the com- 
 mon good. With the fourth and final measure we have here to do. 
 
 The proposition to take away from producers materials and means 
 of production which they have used without regard to the interests 
 of consumers and the establishment thereon of public enterprise for 
 the common good, is a proposition of the most effective nature; ef- 
 fective as a continued menace to producers that they must moderate 
 their demands or lose their privileges and rights ; effective, if exe- 
 cuted, in carrying prices through public management, to the equit- 
 able line of cost^ and especially eff'ective, that it must bring producers 
 and consumers into one common combination where their respect ive 
 
22 2 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 interests are fully conserved, and in which co-operative distribution 
 is placed side by side with co-operative production. It is the final 
 resort of conservative slow-going consumers ; but when undertaken, 
 it strikes the leaders of production from the responsible management 
 of industry, and permanently eliminates their power to advance 
 prices upon defenseless masses. Consumers, by assuming the dis- 
 tinct responsibility of providing for themselves, advance into a con- 
 dition of industrial liberty realized by the single individual — person- 
 ification of complete liberty — who isolatedly produces what he 
 consumes, and consumes only what he produces. 
 
 Men prate of industrial liberty,* and millions long for it as they 
 long for peace, rest, heaven. It is possible for all only under two 
 conditions ; first, before society has taken the first step toward or- 
 ganization ; and second, when and after, society being completely 
 organized, industrial affairs have passed from individual or private 
 control, to collective or public management. In the first condition 
 it is independent liberty ; in the second, it is interdependent liberty. 
 When each citizen, having secured, with all other citizens, a propor- 
 tional interest in all production, becomes, through society — like the 
 primitive, isolated individual — a producer of what he consumes and 
 consumes only what he produces, he becomes industrially as free, as 
 if, in some isolated portion of the globe, he produced alone what he 
 consumed and consumed only what he produced. Society, thoroughly 
 and justly organized, can alone guarantee permanent liberty to the 
 individual ; but, to that end, what it guarantees to one, it must 
 guarantee to all. Through an orderly evolution, liberty of each con- 
 sumer is attainable ; liberty and social interdependence, richer and 
 more complete than is liberty and isolated independence, as organized 
 society is richer and more potent than the individual. 
 
 The power of consumers, when brought into action is equal to 
 the achievement of results so desirable, but the too general igno- 
 rance and inertia of consumers leaves them to the freebooting ten- 
 dency of producers. When a majority of the people become, as 
 regards industrial affairs, more intelligent and active, and less indiffer- 
 ent to the abuses continually put upon them, consumption being 
 already, production will become rapidly, nationalized. As the prim- 
 itive points of ossification in growing bone, approximate each other 
 and finally coalesce, separate detachments of producers may yet 
 follow a similar process. 
 
 *And some talk of industrial independence : It is a pure myth, maintainable ia 
 no stage or condition of society. Place a man alone in the Oarden of Eden, he 
 may then become independent of other men, but not of nature, the planet, the solar 
 system, God. Place a man so far above other men that he may ride on their heads 
 and live freely from their labor, and he becomes proximately independent— but his 
 independence is acheived by destroying the liberty of others. This proximate in- 
 dependence is what a few of the citizens of America now exercise,— what all are 
 selfishly striving to attain but never will attain— while the balance are proportion, 
 ally enslaved. A just inter-dependent liberty is the highest attainable form of 
 liberty in any phase or stage of national growth. 
 
CAPITALISTS, LABORERS AND CONSUMERS COMBINED. 223 
 
 The absorption of productive detachments through the political 
 action of consumers involves the union of capitalists, laborers and 
 consumers in a single — national — combination under the elected — 
 government — control. It is to this final combination that the lower 
 forces are carrying the evolution of industry ; with what rapidity is 
 to be determined by capitalistic leaders of the productive forces. 
 The rapid organization and incessant aggressions of producers con- 
 stitute the effective stimulus which is calculated to arouse consumers 
 to defensive activity and the application of the most effective meas- 
 ures of protection. Withholding the goad, will lure them into secur- 
 ity and delay their action. 
 
 On the contrary, as to the cost of commodities and services, con- 
 sumers are becoming more intelligent, and the success of experi- 
 ments already undertaken, tending to relieve them of exhorbitant 
 prices will give additional momentum to final action for permanent 
 relief. These experiments, combining industrial leaders, laborers 
 and consumers in a national pool, with its measures of relief out- 
 lined and enforced by law*, are embodied in the term public enter- 
 prise. In all civilized nations a number of industries have been 
 originated, owned and controled by consumers, or having originated 
 in private enterprise, have been taken from the hands of private pro- 
 ducers and managed by government in the interests of consumers. 
 Consumers in Australia at first pooled the interest of capitalists, 
 laborers and consumers, in telegraph and railway facilities, and 
 though the cost of construction may have exceeded the necessary 
 cost, the disbursements have gone to the general community, and 
 transportation and transmission come to all consumers at cost. The 
 profits are not building up a monied aristocracy, as is the case in 
 America ; a public consideration in itself of great moment. 
 
 The German Empire, in addition to purchase and management of 
 telegraphs and railways, has entered the arena of insurance, with the 
 satisfaction that the price of insurance comes to patrons at cost, and 
 the business does not make a few men rich at expense of com- 
 munity. 
 
 English patrons of the telegraph lines induced government to 
 acquire and take charge of the system; and telegraphic facilities there 
 are rendered at exceedingly low prices. 
 
 In America, owing to the opportunities yet open for settlement on 
 the soil, and easy escape from exactions of producing capitalists and 
 laborers, consumers have not yet been goaded to assume the respon- 
 sibility of production to the extent noted in other countries; but 
 here transportation of letters, magazines and books, and in a smal 1 
 way, of all kinds of goods, as well as exchange, have been under - 
 taken by government. The productive forces of the nation are full y 
 employed in these enterprises, but without the managerial exaction s 
 
2 24 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 which, anterior to establishment of the Post-Office Department, were 
 extortionate. What these services cost, the people pay ; but to the 
 government, no profit, interest or rent. The education of children 
 and youth in its various forms and phases, is largely the work of 
 public enterprise, undertaken, among other reasons, to increase the 
 efificiency and decrease the price of educational facilities. As large 
 profits on educational enterprise would tend to promote and extend 
 ignorance and vice, the work could not be left to the money-getting 
 genius of private enterprise. Here and there in the important mat- 
 ters of water and light, producers have so crowded consumers for 
 high prices and large profits, that the latter have been forced in self- 
 defense, to take on themselves, through municipal corporations, the 
 responsibility and cost of supply to their own wants*. In many 
 communities consumers are pondering the proposition of bringing 
 themselves relief from the extortions of producers. While inspection 
 and limitation promises much and has done something towards 
 forcing productive detachments to moderate prices, so expert are the 
 latter in evading laws of limitation, that consumers, for their ne- 
 glected interests, are rapidly crystalizing to the thought that steps 
 must be taken, sooner or later, to place important industries under 
 government ownership and control. New consolidations of produ- 
 cers, increasing avoidance of competitive prices and unscrupulous 
 evasion of laws of inspection and limitation are inciting stimuli to 
 decisive, radical and sweeping action. To this end in the United 
 States and other civilized countries, a new political partyf is spring- 
 ing into life and power ; a party which makes an open and unqual- 
 ified demand, as regards important industries, for the final combi- 
 nation of producers and consumers through public enterprise under 
 government control ; ultimate combinations, especially on telegraphic 
 facilities and railway transportation. Inasmuch as the net profit of 
 these two industries draws from consumers in high prices, an annual 
 sum, equal to the gross revenue of the government, the abatement 
 of this monstrous taxation to that extent, will be recognized as con- 
 stituting no inconsiderable boon to consumers. 
 
 Thus under the continued pressure for large profits and high 
 prices by capitalists, for high wages and short hours by laborers and 
 for cost and low prices by consumers, the final combination of both 
 
 ♦Supply of one's wants by one's own enterprise and labor, brings commodity to 
 him at cost and industrial liberty. So with a community or nation. 
 
 f Labor party combinaitons are in every way an uncertain factor ; first, as regards 
 their power;" second, as regards the results on consumers. Following self-interest, 
 if they combine with capitalists and demand high wages in addition to ihe profits 
 of capitalists, they increase price to consumess. But as yet, for the most part, cap- 
 italists and laborers maintain a strong antagonism— the influence of laborers— 
 especially political influence— goes with consumers for low prices. The Labor 
 party of the United States is therefore a party which all consumers of telegraphic 
 and transportation services (and who is not) will, if thej respond to the impulse of 
 intelligent self-interest, encourage and support. 
 
VIEWS OF HUMANITARIANS REALIZED. 225 
 
 producers and consumers, under the national pool, is taking form 
 and moving forward ; and with this advance, it is hardly necessary 
 to assure the reader, equitable co-operative distribution is assuming 
 place and power in the economic temple, side by side with produc- 
 tion, which has so long been co-operative. He knows that under 
 equitable conditions, so established, every citizen, regardless of 
 station or condition, must receive for his dollar the same amount of 
 commodity or service, that every other citizen, under the same terms 
 receives; that government — producers and consumers combined — 
 carries his letter, or package of goods, or bill of exchange, supplies 
 his children with tuition and books, furnishes him with water and 
 gas, and would if it were empowered, transmit his telegrams and 
 transport himself and his goods, not only at the lowest prices possi- 
 ble, but at the same price that similar services are performed for, and 
 similar commodities supplied to, other citizens ; he knows by means 
 of a final combination of producers and consumers, through public 
 enterprise, conducted for the public good by the instrument of public 
 affairs — government — his industrial liberty and equality as a man with 
 other men, must receive a full recognition and an effective enforc- 
 ment ; and that, freed from the vampirism of private enterprise, he 
 must acquire the liberty of interdependence — industrial, civil, polit- 
 ical and religious, one in all and all in one — to which, hitherto, he 
 has been a stranger. 
 
 That noble and illustrious cohort of humanitarians, and the ad- 
 vanced guards who have pioneered the economic thought of the 
 world, will, also in this massive and co-operative combination of pro- 
 ducers and consumers secure the results of their labors, and realize 
 their well-supported theories. Mill, Wallace and George will see the 
 pernicious consequences of land ownership — speculation and rent — 
 gradually melt away as snow-banks in the sun ; Proudhon will find 
 the robbery of profit practically eliminated ; the lon^ line of 
 prophets and sages who, for aeons, have denounced interest and 
 usury as an economic atrocity, will note the close of its covetous 
 career, and the beginning of that better time when the Brotherhood 
 of man and the Fatherhood of God shall become established, may 
 be descried in the near and looming future. 
 
 
2 26 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 THE RELIGIO-SOCIAL FORCES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. SECTION 11. 
 
 What the individual, lower and selfish forces, acting within man 
 and under the restraint of law, will accomplish toward his elevation 
 and the betterment of his physical conditions is the difficult problem 
 of industrial evolution. 
 
 Have we not seen, however, that they are drifting the nation into 
 industrial organizations whose working must moderate or eliminate 
 many of the current miseries of humanity, and make life to all 
 worth the living ? Is it not clear that self-interest will demand the 
 more or less complete combination of capitalists on one hand, and 
 of laborers on the other, and that consumers, in self-defense, will be 
 forced to combine for the sake of moderating or destroying the mis- 
 used powers of producers ? Is it not clear, providing capitalists and 
 laborers, constituting the productive force, pool their issues and press 
 with grievous power, as combination will enable them to do, on the 
 rights of consumers, that the latter will be driven to demand the final, 
 most beneficent and resultful combination, including, under collective 
 control, capitalists, laborers and consumers, in a single national poo? 
 Is it not clear that through these successive and accumulative com- 
 binations, commencing with the partnership of two and terminat- 
 ing in the partnership of a nation, equitable, co-operative distribu- 
 tion, the final economic desideratum, derives origin and attains 
 national development ? 
 
 ~ Nor does it matter if far-seeing men of the productive class, to 
 check the drift of industrial affairs from private to public enterprise, 
 shall progressively mitigate extortionate charges for commodities 
 and services upon the body of consumers ; in the moderation of prices 
 toward, or to the level of cost, will, nevertheless mark the im- 
 perceptible but gradual establishment of co-operative distribution. 
 
 But all organic growths are effected through joint action of the lower 
 and upper forces ; and human structures, individual or social, can 
 constitute no exception to the universal law. 
 
 While in the human mind, the end sought to be secured through 
 operation of the lower forces — disregarding corresponding interests of 
 others — is individual gain, the end sought to be promoted through 
 the upper or religio-social forces, is the benefit of all, irrespective of 
 birth or condition. 
 
 The lower forces, deriving origin from the individual, confine 
 their operations partially and to the particular; while the upper forces, 
 emanating from the expanding entity called society and the infinite 
 
EQUALIZING POWER OF HUMAN SYMPATHY. 227 
 
 entity called God, operate in the general, and through the general, 
 descend impartially upon the particular. The former would draw 
 all to the single individual; the latter, when in unobstructed operation, 
 would distribute to each and all alike. God pours heat, sunshine 
 and rain on the just and on the unjust, and society, as it develops from 
 the characteristics of the individual from which it originated, and 
 moves forward to become the embodied expression of Infinite Love 
 — vox popnli vox del — will confer the powers and benefits it com- 
 mands, in an equally impartial manner. 
 
 However, it is in the nature of vast engineries, to operate with 
 impartiality on infinitesmal bodies. How could the earth be 
 flooded with rain unless it fell impartially on just and unjust, contig- 
 uously inhabiting a given surface? The appliances for discriminating 
 apportionment are evidently wanting on the infinite plane ; and as 
 society advances to its fullest and noblest development, discrimina- 
 tion and privilege will progressively give way to the strictest impar- 
 tiality and the most lational equality. 
 
 Injustice is a concomitant of individualism ; justice both a neces- 
 sity and result of organization and collective action. If we continue 
 to grow, the sense and power of justice will increase. 
 
 It is this impartial equity — equal distribution to all men of the 
 sources of wealth and appliances of production, enabling every man 
 separately, to produce what he consumes — or, what is equivalent or 
 better, co-operative distribution of useful wealth which has been 
 co-operatively produced, to the introduction of which, on the in- 
 dustrial plane, the religio-social forces, by virtue of their vastness and 
 extension, are irrevocably committed ; the same equity, it will be 
 noted, to which the lower, narrow and individual forces are also car- 
 rying, unconsciously to the principal actors, industrial evolution. 
 
 But in another finer, nobler sense, the upper forces are co-oper- 
 ating with the lower to aid and hasten the culminating development. 
 In all souls — in the soul of individual man. in the Soul of aggregated 
 society, in the Soul of the Universe — perennially moves and billows a 
 sea of sympathy warmly pulsating with affection and love, and ten- 
 derly bearing on its bosom the sorrows and miseries of the distressed. 
 In some souls it is an occasional ghastly glimmer ; in others a per- 
 petually burning ember ; in all susceptible of being lighted to an in- 
 stantaneous glow, carrying gladness where but glooms sit in moody 
 silence. It assumes as to the affections, a relation similar to that 
 which imagination maintains to the intellect ; as imagination wings 
 its flights in advance of philosophy and science, sympathy is the avant 
 coureur of kindness and love. It is an extempore substitute for slow- 
 footed justice ; it distributes impromptu^ perhaps indiscreetly, goods 
 and benefits which considerate justice would distribute impar- 
 tially. It is a power which compels men,sometimes, to do through kind- 
 
2 28 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS. 
 
 ly impulse, somewhat of those things which they ought always to have 
 done, through principle and law. It incites the disinterested to in- 
 terest themselves in the plaint and woes of the despoiled, and it 
 prompts others, interested in extending and enforcing the cruel ten- 
 dencies of present industrial conditions, to pause in their career of 
 extortion, modify their demands and give vent to their benevolence 
 and distribution to their wealth. It suffers with the suffering, joys 
 with the joyous and fuses humanity into one man, with common in- 
 terests, hopes and fears. 
 
 Toward that mutual regard and kindly consideration, enjoined by 
 the Man of Nazareth, sympathy incessantly contributes. The rigid 
 demands of custom, the cruel exactitudes of business maxims and 
 the inflexible arbitraments of law, it softens and bends to the capaci- 
 ties and powers of man. It triumphs through mitigations of demand 
 and contributions of courage and coin. Like love, it laughs at lock- 
 smiths and the obdurate obstructions which separate man from man, 
 class from class and nation from nation. It buoys the hopes of 
 classes oppressed ; it stimulates the courage and energies of nations 
 down-trodden. To the peoples of Europe, struggling for political, 
 civil and industrial rights, it has carried from America a power and 
 l)restige of indispensible import. 
 
 The operation of human laws, which have never reached, but have 
 contmued to approximate the standard of inflexible justice, it has 
 tenderly blended and temporarily adjusted to the operations of higher 
 ideal laws. Had we justice we would need but little sympathy or 
 mitigation ; but in the movements of humanity to better conditions, 
 the demands of human law have so chasmed the march with cruelty 
 and injustice, that human sympathy alone, could bridge and render 
 it passable. 
 
 Directly or indirectly this imponderable but substantial principle, 
 intermingling its incessant operations with kindness, afl"ection and 
 love, imparts direction and force to all movements, rapidly culmi- 
 nating in a more equitable distribution of the world's wealth to the 
 world's workers. It has inspired the world-wide, indispensable 
 operations of organized charity — which returns to the poor somewhat 
 of whathas, by indirect m.ethods, been taken from them ; and has con- 
 tributed to the introduction and enactment of bankrupt laws — which 
 constitute an open and recorded admission that frequent failure, in 
 an industrial arena where power rather than justice bears rule, is not 
 only unavoidable but equitable. 
 
 It is these upper forces, which, untrammeled by human institu- 
 tions and human laws, operating from heart to heart, from hand to 
 hand, disregarding the sordid calculations of self-interest, overthrow- 
 ing distinctions pf color, class and caste, carry rest, peace and com- 
 fort to the destraught and despoiled; it is these forces, which, during 
 
CO-OPERATION OF ALL FORCES. 229 
 
 intervals of fierce industrial contention and on fields of conflict, 
 move men to consideration of the rights and interests of their fellows 
 and advance those principles that tend to establish industrial justice 
 among both producers and consumers ; it is these forces which 
 soften the greed-stricken heart of the capitalist, and cause him to 
 concede to the call for higher wages by laborers, and lower prices by 
 consumers, which inspire the laborer to consider the nights of toil 
 and days of anxiety spent by the employer in bringing success to 
 his enterprises against all odds of competition and contingency ; 
 which prompt consumers to pay without reluctance such prices as 
 will give both capitalist and laborer a fair remuneration for a fair 
 commodity ; it is these forces which suspend and suppress the self- 
 interest of capitalists, laborers and consumers, and bring them to- 
 gether, around that common center, that just equilibrium of price 
 toward which mutual consideration moves the whole community : 
 viz. cost of commodity with equitable compensation for labor. 
 
 To the same status or condition then, the lower forces guided by 
 a selfish intelligence, and the upper forces determined by benevo- 
 lent impulse and intuition, are bearing on their swelling tides, the 
 evolution of industry ; bearing it to the displacement of competitive 
 and the progressive establishment, instead, of co-operative distribu- 
 tion, as an indispensible principle, side by side with co-operative 
 production. 
 
 With the determining forces bearing to the same point, and 
 toward similar conditions, can the resultant be doubtful? 
 
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