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 UC-NRLF 
 
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Progress 
 or Revolution ? 
 
 A Letter to a. Labour 
 Friend 
 
 BY 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 William Tyrrell & Company 
 1906 
 

 
 . 
 
 
Progress or Revolution? 
 
Progress 
 or Revolution? 
 
 A Letter to -a. Labour 
 Friend 
 
 BY 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 WILLIAM TYRRELL & COMPANY 
 1906 
 
6 
 
Entered according to the Act of Parliament of Canada in the year one 
 
 thousand nine hundred and six by GOLDWIN SMITH at the 
 
 Department of Agriculture. 
 
 M235313 
 
 S 
 
Progress or Revolution? 
 
 MY LABOUR FRIEND, 
 
 All round the industrial horizon there are signs of 
 continuing storm; and with industrial strife a good 
 deal of social bitterness and class hatred is evidently 
 mingled. If anything can be done by amicable dis- 
 cussion to conjure the storm, now apparently is the 
 time. 
 
 Old age is proverbially conservative, though its in- 
 terest in the present state of things is reduced. But I 
 do not think my opinions or feelings have been greatly 
 changed since in England I defended with my pen the 
 unions, under the fire drawn on them by the Sheffield 
 outrages, and stood on the platform of the National 
 Agricultural Union by the side of Joseph Arch. If a 
 good Labour candidate has presented himself at an 
 election, I have voted for him, mindful of Pym's say- 
 ing, "the best form of government is that which doth 
 actuate and inspire every part and member of a state 
 to the common good. ' ' With Louis Blanc, when he was 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 in exile, I cultivated a friendship and heard with sym- 
 pathy, though not with agreement, his advocacy of 
 national workshops. Were my old friend Jacob Holy- 
 oake, whom I lost the other day, still alive, to his testi- 
 mony also I might appeal. 
 
 I address you as my "Labour" Friend, but with a 
 caution that the title, now happily honoured, almost 
 privileged, belongs as much to those who labour with 
 the brain as to those who labour with the hand. La- 
 bourers with the brain as well as labourers with the 
 hand have their sufferings and their grievances, feel 
 weariness, would like shorter hours and are liable to 
 being underpaid. 
 
 Besides the natural forces, there are two factors in 
 production : Capital and Labour. All that is not labour 
 is capital. The labourer's outfit is capital. The fruits 
 of money laid out in preparation for any skilled call- 
 ing, as in training for a profession, are capital and 
 entitled to share under that head. Capital specialized 
 and spelled with a large letter has been erected into 
 an industrial tyrant the mortal enemy of labour. If 
 capital could be killed or scared away, in what con- 
 dition can we suppose that labour would be left? Karl 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 Marx, borrowing his theory from William Thompson, 
 maintains that all production is the fruit and the right- 
 ful property of labour alone. Let him put labour with- 
 out any capital, with nothing but its bare sinews, on 
 the most fertile land or amidst the richest mines and 
 see what would be the result. The union of the two 
 elements in production is as necessary as that of 
 oxyge.n and hydrogen in the composition of water. 
 Without capital we should be living in caves and grub- 
 bing up roots with our nails. Such m fact was the 
 state of primitive man. The man who first stored up 
 some roots was the first capitalist; and the man who 
 first loaned some of his roots on condition of future 
 repayment with addition was the first investor. 
 
 Labour, we are told, adds value to the raw material. 
 Undoubtedly it does, and it receives the price of the 
 value added in the form of wages. 
 
 It is not between capital and labour generally that 
 the present war has broken out, but between the capi- 
 talist employing a body of workmen, and those whose 
 wages he is supposed to determine. The capitalist, be- 
 sides the money which he risks, contributes labour of 
 
10 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 an indispensable kind as organizer and director, and 
 is entitled to payment for that labour as well as to the 
 interest on his capital. Labour is entitled to such wage 
 as the capitalist, allowing for his risk, can afford to 
 give. A strike is a legitimate engine for enforcing the 
 concession of such a wage, though not for any exaction 
 beyond. Further exaction must break the trade. It 
 has been questioned whether, if the employer increases 
 his profit by adding to his risk of capital or by an im- 
 proved policy, the fruit of his own brain, the wage- 
 earner becomes thereby entitled to an increase of wage, 
 supposing his part in the production to remain the 
 same; though wise policy as well as good feeling would 
 lead the employer to give his men an interest, as some 
 employers do, in the prosperity of the concern. 
 
 The labour contributed by the employer in the shape 
 of direction is indispensable. Lack of direction appears 
 to have been the cause of the ill-success of co-operative 
 works fully as much as the lack of funds for their sup- 
 port while they are waiting on the market. Nor does 
 the admission of the men to the councils of the firm 
 appear to have been generally a success. There is too 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 11 
 
 little identity of interest as well as disparity of ac- 
 quaintance with the market. 
 
 It is urged that capital is a monopoly and as such con- 
 trols wages. I fail to see how capital is a monopoly as 
 a general fact, or otherwise than as skilled labour may 
 be called a monopoly. At all events I do not under- 
 stand how the argument bears on the question of wages. 
 Corners, which are seldom successful, can hardly affect 
 that question. We do not hear that the wages of the 
 Standard Oil Company are particularly low. 
 
 There is nothing strange or invidious in treating 
 labour as a commodity the value, and consequently the 
 wages, of which must be regulated by the market. This 
 is the case with all labour, that of the statesman, the 
 man of science, the writer, as well as that of the artisan ; 
 though the statesman, the man of science, and the 
 writer may draw their wages in a different form. The 
 right of an artisan to a living wage cannot be asserted 
 unless value in labour is given for the wage. Nor can 
 the right to employment be asserted, when no employ- 
 ment offers, in the case of an artisan any more than in 
 that of a lawyer for whom there are no clients or a 
 
12 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 physician for whom there are no patients. Another 
 market must be sought. This is the common lot. 
 
 The capitalist, it is important to observe, though the 
 organizer, director and paymaster, is not the real em- 
 ployer. The real employer is rather the purchaser of 
 the goods, who cannot be forced by any strike or press- 
 ure to give more for the goods than he chooses and can 
 afford. Carried beyond a certain point, therefore, 
 pressure for an increased wage must either fail or 
 break the trade. 
 
 That capital can be rapacious and unjust to those in 
 its employ is too certain. It can be worse than rapaci- 
 ous and unjust, it can be terribly heartless and cruel. 
 Proof of this may be read in the reports recording the 
 treatment of children in factories and of men, women 
 and children in coal mines which horrified the British 
 people and compelled the interference of the British 
 Parliament. The men who are guilty of such things 
 may have been humane and even amiable in other 
 walks of life. The lust of gain hardened their hearts. 
 One of the great mine-owners was a wealthy peer who 
 deserved to be sent to work in his own mines. 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 13 
 
 The masters are naturally combined in the, effort to 
 keep down wages. In England the men were forbidden 
 by law to combine. They had to negotiate singly with 
 the employer who had breakfasted, while they had not. 
 Seven Dorsetshire labourers were sentenced to trans- 
 portation for administering a combination oath. Liber- 
 alism coming into power in England repealed the Com- 
 bination Laws. The Unions were formed and took the 
 field for the rights of the employed. Manufacturing 
 districts, where the employed were gathered in masses, 
 were the chief field of Unionist effort. But the Na- 
 tional Agricultural Union was formed and wisely 
 guide.d to a peaceful victory by Joseph Arch whose 
 practical motto was, as it ought to be that of us all, 
 Peace with Justice. 
 
 Unquestionably a large measure of justice in the way 
 of rectification of wages has been won by Unionist 
 effort, though at a terrible sacrifice of peace as well as 
 of money and of the products of labour. Yet a dispute 
 about wages threatens this continent for the second 
 time with a deprivation of coal which would stop the 
 wheels of manufacturing industry, besides bringing 
 privation and suffering into our homes. 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION ? 
 
 Organizations formed for an aggressive purpose are 
 naturally apt to fall into the hands of the most aggres- 
 sive and least responsible section. There would per- 
 haps be fewer strikes if the votes were taken by ballot 
 and every married man had two. There is also a 
 danger of falling into the hands of aspiring leaders 
 whose field is industrial war ; and this danger increases 
 with the extension of the field. 
 
 Power newly-won and flushed with victory seldom 
 stops exactly at the line of right. From enabling the 
 wage-owner to treat on fair terms with the employer, 
 the Unions seem now to be going on to create for them- 
 selves a monopoly of labour. To this the community 
 never has submitted and never can submit Freedom 
 of labour is the rightful inheritance of every man and 
 the vital interest of all. The defensive forces of the 
 community are slow in gathering to resist usurpation. 
 But they will gather at last, and when they do the end 
 is certain. I see it announced, with apparent com- 
 placency, that a man has lost his trade because he 
 sold goods without the Union label. A Union is a self- 
 constituted power. If a man could be ruined by the 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 15 
 
 edict of self-constituted power for doing that which the 
 law sanctions him in doing, where would commercial 
 liberty or the general principle of liberty be? No com- 
 munity can permit a self-constituted authority to arro- 
 gate to itself powers beyond the law. 
 
 That age has made me conservative, I have owned. 
 But apart from conservatism or liberalism, there are 
 principles of natural and civil right to which I should 
 be utterly disloyal if I failed heartily to deprecate the 
 use of violence, insult, persecution or annoyance of any 
 kind for the purpose of deterring any man from mak- 
 ing his bread and that of his family by such honest 
 calling as he may think fit, and under any employer 
 that he may choose, or from making for that purpose 
 a perfectly free use of all his powers. Persuasion 
 is, in all its forms, of course, open to the promoters of 
 Unionism, and it surely has a good text in the advant- 
 ages of union, which are by no means confined to the 
 mere question of wages. Refusal to work with non- 
 union men is lawful, though far from kind. 
 
 Strikers should remember that they are consumers as 
 well as producers, buyers as well as makers. A striker 
 in extorting increased wages makes the article dear to 
 
16 PROGRESS OB REVOLUTION? 
 
 his own class as well as to the other classes. He may 
 raise the price of his own product to himself. The long 
 strike of the building trade raised the price of artisan 
 dwellings. 
 
 Society is rebelling against trusts and combines. Use 
 of political power to enforce a great monopoly of 
 labour is surely what we cannot be expected to bear. 
 
 Labour, if it is tempted to be unmeasured in its de- 
 mands, will do well to bear it in mind that formidable 
 competition may be coming on the scene. In China 
 there is a highly industrial population reckoned at four 
 hundred millions to which these troubles apparently 
 are unknown. The influence may not be directly felt, 
 but it is likely to work round. Besides, Capital has 
 wings. 
 
 Desire of shorter hours of work is natural on the 
 part of the artisan and would not be less natural in 
 other callings, which also feel fatigue. Nor is it un- 
 likely that in callings which tax the strength, the work 
 of eight hours may be worth as much as that of ten. 
 Improvement in this line has been already made. Every 
 man may shorten his hours of work if he thinks fit; 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 17 
 
 but no man can expect or in the end will have power 
 to draw pay for work which is not done. In lands 
 where socialism prevails Unions seem inclined to vote 
 themselves more and more freedom from work and 
 leisure for sport at the expense of what is called "the 
 State," that is practically the tax-payer or the class 
 of tax-payers which has most money and fewest votes. 
 It is impossible that to progress in this direction there 
 should not be an end. 
 
 The State is constantly invoked as a sort of Supreme 
 Being with paternal duties and a fund of its own for 
 their fulfilment, while in reality it is either a mere 
 abstraction or nothing but the Government of the day, 
 without any fund for its paternal bounty but that 
 which it draws by taxation from the community and 
 on which no class can have a special claim. 
 
 We were told to look for the cure of industrial war 
 and the end of strikes in judicial arbitration. The 
 result appears to have been disappointing. It seems 
 impossible for a court to forecast the changes of the 
 market on which the value of labour and the just rate 
 of payment for it must depend. While the market is 
 
18 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 rising and the court has only to register the fair de- 
 mand for a proportionate rise in wages, to which the 
 employer readily consents, all goes well. But when a 
 fall in the market calls for a reduction of wages, 
 trouble, it would seem, is sure to begin. Can any court 
 by its award compel the employer to carry on business 
 at a loss, or the artisan to go on working for less wages 
 than he could get elsewhere? Has there been any clear 
 case of practical enforcement of such an award? 
 Mediation may, of course, be useful in bringing dis- 
 putants together and inducing reflection on both sides. 
 The famous agreement between the coal-owners and 
 the men appears not to have been a case of arbitration 
 properly speaking, but of mediation, though brought 
 about and morally enforced by public authority. It 
 was not the award of a court of law. 
 
 There has seemed to me sometimes to be a needless 
 air of peremptoriness in the demands for increase of 
 wages or other terms, and generally a needless air of 
 mistrust and hostility towards employers which must 
 enhance the difficulty of concession. The best of 
 tempers can hardly fail to be tried by the intrusion of 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 19 
 
 a walking delegate. Why aggravate by discourtesy the 
 perils of the industrial situation? Capital and Labour 
 must settle down in harmony at last, or both must be 
 ruined. 
 
 Still more to be deprecated is the habit of giving the 
 question between employer and employed the aspect of 
 a war between classes and representing the artisan 
 as ' ' a slave ' ' ground down by the tyranny of the class 
 above him. No one in his cooler moments can believe 
 that a man who is perfectly at liberty to dispose of 
 his own labour and has full political rights is a slave. 
 Let just claims be asserted and redress sought for real 
 wrongs; but no good can be done by malignant ex- 
 aggeration. 
 
 It would be hard to require the employer to live in the 
 smoke and din of his works. But the complete separa- 
 tion of dwellings and the absence of personal inter- 
 course between the owner of the works and the men 
 has probably contributed to estrangement. The fac- 
 tory-hand takes his Sunday stroll to the suburbs and 
 sees, perhaps not with the most pleasant feeling, the 
 mansion of the wealth which Karl Marx or a disciple 
 
20 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 of Karl Marx has told him ought to be his own. Often 
 the master is a corporation. There is no help for this, 
 but perhaps something might be done to soften per- 
 sonal relations. Artisan villages under paternal care 
 and regulation, such as Saltaire and Pullman, do not 
 seem to have been successes. I can answer for it that 
 Saltaire was not, though all that benevolence could do 
 was done. The people feel that they are not free. 
 
 It ill becomes those who are themselves living in the 
 enjoyment of opulence to preach prudence and self- 
 denial to those who are not. The grinding monotony 
 of factory work, making of the worker a human ham- 
 mer or spindle, with its unlovely surroundings, inevi- 
 tably disposes to expenditure on sensual pleasures and 
 excitements. But there is probably little doubt that 
 wages might be practically increased by judicious ex- 
 penditure. 
 
 Class feeling, as I have said, blends its bitterness 
 with that of industrial war. This is a manifestly im- 
 perfect world. No man of sensibility can have failed 
 to reflect with sadness on the terrible inequalities of 
 the human lot. Why is the life of one man a life of 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION ? 21 
 
 opulence, ease, and refinement, that of another man 
 so sadly the reverse? Why are the gifts of nature, 
 health, strength, brain power, good looks, long life, 
 so unequally bestowed? Why is one man born in a 
 civilize.d and happy, another in a barbarous and un- 
 happy age? There is not only ''something," but a 
 great deal, in the world that is ' ' amiss, ' ' and may, and 
 we hope will, be "unriddled by and by." Meantime, 
 the cottage, so long as it has bread and domestic 
 affection, might, if it could look into the mansion, see 
 that which would help to reconcile it to its lot. 
 
 Progress surely there has been, and its pace has been 
 greatly quickened during the last three generations, 
 notably in all that concerns the position and welfare 
 of the wage-earning class. Wages have risen, while 
 improvements in production and increased facilities of 
 traffic have added greatly to their purchasing range 
 and power. Education has been made free to the peo- 
 ple in England and elsewhere. Class legislation, such 
 as the Combination Law, has been swept away; with 
 it has gone the class iniquity of the old penal code. 
 Factory laws, mining laws, and other laws for the pro- 
 tection of the labourer's life, health, and interest, have 
 
22 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 been passed. Philanthropy has been active in provid- 
 ing means of health and enjoyment, such as public 
 parks, and the facilities for innocent pleasure have 
 largely increased. The political franchise has been 
 extended to the artisan, who is no longer a ward of 
 the State, suing to it for paternal care and protection, 
 but is a part of the State himself. ''Labour" has be- 
 come a title of distinction. Unionism has had its share 
 in this, but so assuredly have good feeling and the sense 
 of duty in other quarters. Greater way would have 
 been made but for wars and protective tariffs, of 
 neither of which can the artisan say that he has him- 
 self been entirely guiltless. Artisans, not a few in 
 England, voted for the Boer war; and the Alien 
 Labour Laws and the Manufacturing Clause of the 
 American Copyright Act are due to the pressure of 
 the same class. 
 
 The author of "Progress and Poverty" assumes that 
 poverty has increased with progress. He wrote in the 
 country in which the progress has been the greatest 
 and the poverty least. 
 
 In estimating the rate of progress, we have to allow 
 for an immense, in some cases reckless, increase of 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 population as well as for the retarding influence of 
 faults and vices which have not been confined to the 
 moneyed class. 
 
 There can be no use in venomous exaggeration. 
 There can be no use in applying to a whole class 
 epithets of abuse which only the worst members of it 
 can deserve. There can be no use in saying that an> 
 set of men have been "stealing from another set their 
 right to health, home, and happiness." This is not 
 the road to reform, it is the road to class-hatred, which 
 indeed some of the most violent Socialists do not 
 shrink from avowing; it is the road to social strife; 
 it is the road, if an attempt is made to despoil and 
 destroy a powerful class, to civil war. 
 
 For opposition on the part of the class which he 
 hates and seeks to despoil, the leveller must be pre- 
 pared. Nor would the opposition be merely that of 
 class-interest. Levelling, so far as we can see, would 
 be the end of progress. It would be at once the end 
 of all trades which supply the wants and tastes of the 
 moneyed class and of the livelihoods of the artisans 
 of those trades. 
 
24 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION ? 
 
 Still we cannot help feeling that this is a very im- 
 perfect world. Even changes happy in their perman- 
 ent effects often bring temporary evil in their train. 
 Machinery kills the cottage loom and introduces the 
 drawbacks, physical and social, of factory life. Depart- 
 mental stores, the offspring of the changed conditions 
 of distribution, while they increase cheapness and con- 
 venience, must bring ruin to many ordinary trades- 
 men. Consequences of the same kind attend most of 
 the improvements on a large scale. 
 
 All the time, too, there is the sight, galling to the 
 poor and weary, of idle wealth, revelling, as they think, 
 in the products of their toil, while the hope of com- 
 pensation in a future life which religion held out is 
 growing faint. The heirs of wealth, if they tender 
 their own safety in these troublous times, will try to 
 make their privilege less invidious, at the same time 
 elevating themselves and enhancing their enjoyment, 
 by mingling with the cup of pleasure some drops at 
 least of social duty. Let the owner of wealth which he 
 has not earned count it wages for service due from 
 him to the community. 
 
PROGRESS OB REVOLUTION? 25 
 
 Socialism is a natural growth; and, so far as it has 
 abstained from revolutionary methods or incitements 
 to violence, may have been not only deserving of sym- 
 pathy but useful as a lesson to us all. There has been 
 a succession of Utopian visions from Plato to Sir 
 Thomas More, and from Sir Thomas More to Bulwer 
 and Bellamy. We have had socialistic experiments. 
 Those set on foot or originated by the excellent Robert 
 Owen failed mainly, it seems, through the disintegrat- 
 ing action of the family on the community. Celibate 
 communities under a religious dictator, such as the 
 Oneida Community, had a transitory success, but 
 taught us nothing. There has been a variety of socialist 
 organizations; Saint-Simonians, Fourierists, Icarians, 
 differing from each other in their plans of universal 
 regeneration, holding together in themselves for the 
 destructive process, but when it came to the construc- 
 tive, splitting and passing away. The last-born of the 
 series, Nihilism, by its name proclaims itself destruc- 
 tive and has been presenting impressive proof of its 
 character to the world. 
 
 The French Revolution, however volcanic, was not 
 so much socialistic or communistic as political, saving 
 
26 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 the frantic episode of Babeuf. Its political object has 
 been gained, though at a price which should warn us 
 against hasty resort to violent revolution. The other 
 element showed its character in the terrible Days of 
 June and the more terrible war of the Commune. The 
 relations between the capitalist and the wage-earner in 
 France do not seem to have been much improved. 
 There has just been another shock of industrial earth- 
 quake, happily far milder than the last. 
 
 Human society in its general structure and features 
 appears to be an ordinance of Nature, and while it is 
 capable of gradual improvement and is being greatly 
 improved, not to be capable of sudden and violent 
 transformation. 
 
 The term Socialism is very loosely used. It is applied 
 to the assumption by the public of the railways, tele- 
 phones, and street cars, hitherto in the hands of private 
 companies. That policy would be evidently good where 
 the public administration is honest. This, however, is 
 merely a matter of particular policy involving no gen- 
 eral change of fundamental principle or of the consti- 
 tution of society. But when the services have been 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 27 
 
 left to private enterprise and private capital has been 
 embarked, confiscation, to which some extreme reform- 
 ers seem disposed, would be like robbery of any other 
 kind, worse indeed than robbery of any other kind, 
 since it would make the Legislature a robber. 
 
 We have had some more limited schemes of universal 
 beatification. One reformer proposed to turn all 
 private holders of land, even those who have recently 
 purchased from the State, out of their holdings and 
 restore the title of nature; a rather alarming under- 
 taking, considering the chance of resistance, to say 
 nothing of the injustice; while it does not appear by 
 whom the land is thenceforth to be tilled. Other 
 reformers have proposed to make us all rich by the 
 issue of an unlimited amount of paper currency, which 
 they take for money. They fail to see that a paper 
 dollar is not money but a promissory note, payable by 
 the bank of issue, at which, when the note changes 
 hands, gold passes from the credit of the giver to that 
 of the taker. But both nationalization of land and 
 paper currency have fallen probably into a long sleep. 
 
 Socialism has never told us distinctly, if it has tried 
 to tell us at all, what its form of government is to be. 
 
28 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 Can it devise a government which shall hold all the 
 instruments of production, distribute our industrial 
 parts, regulate our remuneration, yet leave us free? 
 Without freedom and personal choice of callings, how 
 could there be progress, how could there be invention, 
 how could there be dedication to intellectual pursuits? 
 Can the Government pick out inventors, scientific dis- 
 coverers, philosophers, men of letters, artists, set them 
 to work and assign them their rewards? By what 
 standard will it measure remuneration? The products 
 of manual labour it might conceivably measure; but 
 apparently those alone. 
 
 Competition, of which the ardent Communist hopes 
 to get rid, has no doubt its harsh aspect ; and we should 
 be glad to change it for universal co-operation. But 
 it has been hitherto and so far as we can see is likely 
 to remain the indispensable spur. After all, there is 
 more of co-operation already than we commonly sup- 
 pose. Let the Communist take any manufactured 
 article and trace out, as far as thought will go, the 
 industries which, in various ways, and in different 
 parts of the world, have contributed to its production, 
 
PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 29 
 
 including the making of machinery, shipbuilding, and 
 all the employments and branches of trade ancillary 
 to these; let him consider how, by the operation of 
 economic law, under the system of industrial liberty, 
 the price, it may be a single penny, is distributed justly 
 among all these industries, and then let him ask him- 
 self whether his government or his group of govern- 
 ments is likely to do better than nature. 
 
 Co-operative stores in England have been a splendid 
 success, and a success unalloyed by strife or antagonism 
 of any kind, so that they form an exceptionally pleas- 
 ant incident in the chequered course of industrial evo- 
 lution. But they are founded on no new principle, so 
 far as economical laws are concerned. They buy goods 
 and hire service in the cheapest and best market, rec- 
 ognizing thereby the ordinary principle of competition. 
 
 It would seem, then, that there is something to be 
 said for acquiescing provisionally at least in our in- 
 dustrial system, based as it is on the general relation 
 between capital and labour, and trying to continue the 
 improvement of that relation in a peaceful way, with- 
 out class war and havoc. Progress, in a word, seems 
 
30 PROGRESS OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 more hopeful than revolution. When the Socialist 
 ideal, perfect brotherhood, is realized, there will be 
 social happiness compared with which the highest 
 pleasure attainable in this world of inequality, strife, 
 and self-interest would be mean; but all the attempts 
 to rush into that state have proved failures, some of 
 them much worse. It is conceivable, let us hope 
 not unlikely, that all who contribute to progress may 
 be destined in some way to share its ultimate fruits; 
 but there is no leaping into the millennium. 
 
 4 
 
 Toronto, May 12th, 1906. 
 

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