Full text of "A consideration of the wealth and poverty of nations; embracing also the Evolution of industry and its outcome"

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SAN FRANCISCO.

A CONSIDERATION

OF THE

WEALTH AND POVERTY

NATIONS

EMBRACING ALSO THE

EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY

AND ITS

O UXCO JM E .

BY W. N. GRISWOLD, A. M., M. D.

If we can first know where we are and whither we are tending, we car*
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,
4:4^

In the office of the Librarian of Jcongress, at Washington.

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ERRATA.

Page 1, line 27 Read 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.

11 54. " 26 and 27 " wealth and power for industrial rights.

" 54, " 29 and 34 " equity for duty.

" 54, line 32 Read cu rrent for correct.

" 59, " 11 " should be for is.

" 80 Eliminate the last seven lines.

" 105, line 28 Read productively for industrially.

" 105, " 32 " production for industry.

" 105, " 38 Eliminate sentence commencing The most noted writers.

" 106, " 9 Read motive for effort.
"112, " 6 ' Lincoln for Seward.

" 112, " 8 ' and Seiveird proclaimed.

" 139, " 27 Eliminate wn'M.

" 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 (he citizen.

" 174, " 22 Eliminate a< o?ice.

" 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 " limit 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 " ?%e reader knows.

"226, " 26 Eliminate in.

PREFACE.

This work is presented to the public 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, thdse 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. *The 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,
value^ 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^

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 fictitious 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 the sense, or senses here indicated.

With these brief explanations, the author leaves the work to the
patience and indulgence of the reader; adding the hope, 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-
tor of 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
humanity 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. P a S e 18-21

SECTION II.

Natural right to provisions ; food, clothing and shelter. Objections thereto
argued. A source of public corruption. 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 7 .

Equality of men disputed. Renewed discussion. Proximate or proportional
equality of rights instuitively and universally recognized. Page 45~47

BECTION VI.

Practical failure of equal rights. Of priority of birth, advent and devel-
opment of permenent investiture. Prospective results of vested rights.
The enslavement of millions. Page 48-53

CHAPTER V. SECTION I.
DUTIES.

Origin and nature. CompK mentary to rights. Alternate with rights. Sense
of industrial duties undeveloped. Page $4~57

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~l3

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 113-117

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 118-119

SECTION IV.

Analysis of the economic term demand. Demand, as commonly used, involves
the presence of purchasing power. Demand without, purcahsing power is want
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 production. 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, narrow 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 161-177

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, constituting 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 lowar 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.

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 )N at 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, concerning 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 vanquished, 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. v 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.
1 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 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 dispe/-
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 intellectually through
the -brain ; physically, through the stomach.

The latter macerates and digests on the physical ; the former, on
the intellectual plane.

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 thm.

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 capacity 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.

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-

5 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 \& 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.

10 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 suffering :
if unsuppliable, the degree of 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, includes : First,
spiritual wants; second, material wants; third, mixed, or semi-
spirited-material wants.

It is eminently 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 commonest 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 atmosphereheat 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 .and material, 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, ancl 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, farely consider
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 results 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, lie 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.

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-force 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 unfoldments 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. 17

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 civilizer. 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
to 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.

1 8 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 arid 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. 19

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, without 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
ah 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 lifa
of beings from the simple cell, through the vegetable and animal

2O WEALTH 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 it* " 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. ;r
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, May i '86.

GENERAL RIGHTS OF MAN. 21

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.

22 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 man 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 community 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 u'ncompensated
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 makes, 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 nothing. 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 is the 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 wh'atever 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 affords
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 appropriations
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
efforts. 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 impossibility of securing wealth as others have

26 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 efficient 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 in/er-
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, if 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 struggling 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 aeons
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

28 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 proportion, 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
midst 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 creative4abor 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
from nature's ample 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. 31

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 some most grievous
errors and involves some most damaging 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 live 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 a walls of circumvallation. The naturally unsel-
fish, 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 despoiled 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 efforts ; 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 Tho rn ton 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 unfoldment 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 puily, 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
assertion. 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 Europe,
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, t"o 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 to 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. s 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 institutions, 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

40 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. . 41

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 theisguanceof 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 few
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 rm-
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 ef 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 to/#y, 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 prorrise 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 elernent, 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, other^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.

46 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, fhe 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 thrjse 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 ben 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

$O 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 permenency, 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. 51

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 Amer-
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 tfes, 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
r ocks 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 aaejjated 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,-
ooo 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-
s.elves, 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 tfceir alighting, a disposition would
soon engender in universal humanity, that would facilitate Ihe happy
adjustment of earth-iife 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 econonrc 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
'idustrial individualism. a
quitably individualize the
nd maintain each person
t The coronary arteries.

ndustrial 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.

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, distribution 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, becoming 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^on 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 being
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.

5 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 \\ 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 must 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 the 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

60 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 population.
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 among 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. 65

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 part ; 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 the* 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 is the stalking horse of r 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. 71

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,-
ooo. 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 reqfuire 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 wealth,, 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 live, 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 laborers 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, rather 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 life. 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 have 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 nor with 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 part "of 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 organized 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 crudest 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 6f 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 $ 1 2 to $ 1 8 $ 1 2 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.

80 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 renter.

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 ft 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. Fod, 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. 8 1

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 their 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 the-,
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 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 rightST-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 slavery, 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.

S6 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 interior 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 raw 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 moment^ 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

9 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, nuts, 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, a.?A 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
former 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 absolute
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 ri;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
terns, 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 exclusion 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 of 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

ployersis 50,000 ; the whole number of active laborers, inclusive of em-
ployers, who, as superintendents of industry are also laborers, 17,000,-
ooo ; 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 industrial 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.

Ii 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 which 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 suppos'ed 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.

100 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 last 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
Denver 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 tstablished.
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 5-000,000, 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. IOI

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 suffer
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. 103

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.

I4 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. 105

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. Devons, 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.

106 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 DISTRIBUTION ITS ORIGIN. ^ 107

This rational proposition is easily illustrated by an abundant array
of sirriilar 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 promoters 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 tound?
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 stgregated 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

108 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, according to W. T. Thornton and other writers on
"Labour," this unequal power of contract, in conjunction with the

INJUSTICE OF THE PRESENT CONTRACT SYSTEM. 109

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 is, 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 commences 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 adaptibihty,
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 entire 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 their 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 standpoint 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 justice have 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. 113

FURTHER ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL
WEALTH AND POVERTY.

CHAPTER VI., 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, perceptible 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 concentration 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 grinding 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 hovr 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 the 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. 1 15

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 wealth*
but we may have values uselessly aggregated in great masses ; to
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 capital 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 money, wealth, 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 steanvengine 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. IT 7

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 pro-
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 enjoyment 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 ; inertia 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
: 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, will not, 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 disappeared, 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 garments, 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 exigencies 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. 1. 1 9

ing despot and his immediate retainers, were more and more diffused
and enjoyed by a larger and larger circle of the hiiman 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 republican 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 oldar 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 appear 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 ten'ded to make the slave a man, and place
him ultimately, 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 freedman'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 Iab9r 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, nuts, 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. Again, it was possible for him
to apply his own labor through 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 independeMce. 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 immediate 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 fottowed 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 mere 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 legally 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, possessing 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 from 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. 123

or commodity is transferred to market, and demand is found strong
and supply 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 negotiation in which the
former employer, now 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 he 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 responsibility, 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 results 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 e.xclu-
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 area 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 tmperio. Where once they commanded they now obey.
The real kings are industrial kings.

SOURCE OF PURCHASING POWER. 125

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-repeat'ed
assertion, and explanatory 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 in 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 fora 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; artificial values, produced 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, they 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. 127

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, /h?/;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 demand, 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 want 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 demand 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 moriadj 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 from 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. 129

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 recognizedin 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 promoters 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 in the marts of exchange throughout the civilized and uncivil-
ized world.

It is these values in conjunction with the fictitious valuesthe
latter made operative and effective by custom and lawwhich 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,-
ooo 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-
titiousshould 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. 131

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 wages, 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
n, 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 $7,554,395,358 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. |PK(NA|

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,-
782,595 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 manufacturing; we have but to multiply 280 by
5,293*113, 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 $3,177,897,535, 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-
lionswe have 11,349,584 persons existing below the average con-
suming capacity by the sum of $155 annually, in order that 250,-
ooo may accumulate yearly $7,009, above what, as average citizens,
they should consume. The small deficiency of $155 annually dis-
tributed among n 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. 133

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 represen!ed by $7,444 Y et
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 P er annum. As pure employers consume more than
self-employersindependent laborersallow 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-
modities is soon disposed of ; its influence is of small importance.
The exports of 1879 were $710,493,441; imports, $445>777>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

*This 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 effectively 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 promoters 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, rot considering those sold on credit, or given in charity,
or lost by robbery, aggregating a valuation of $1,270,192,152, for

*These failures aggregated in 1882 an intense activity having characterized the years 1879,.
'80 and '81 $131,547,564 ; in 1883, $172,874,172, and in 1881, $226,343,427. Report of R. G.
Dun & Co.

CAPITALISTS RESPONSIBLE FOR DEFICIENT PURCHASING POWER. 135

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.

136 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS.

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. 137

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.

The 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.

This 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 and 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 common 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 result's 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 wag meted out
inbusirial leaders.

ENLARGEMENT OF THE END OF PRODUCTION REQUIRED 139

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.

first 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 industrial 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.

first, as to the desired end of enlargement, what is to be ex-
pected riom 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, betterbr 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 con-
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 seeming 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. 141

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, gro'vn 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 promotes. It will not re-
mit its own opportunities for self-agrandizement that the mass of
mankind, themselves among the number, may come ^into 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
f 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 customs, 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

I4 2 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 ultimately 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. 143

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, however, 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
yet: far short 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. 145

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 S utter 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 payment 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. Its principal means of holding the industrial world to har-
monious and continuous activity 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.

*4 WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS.

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE OPERATING FROM
ITS OWN MOTIVES AND UNDER ITS

OWN CONTROL.
CHAPTER VI.. SECTION VII.

Hut 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. 147

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

148 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 pre-
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
District 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 efforts of govern-
ment officials to render its provisions effective.

Mr. Stephenson, Commissioner of Emigration at New York, as-
serts that he has made strenuous efforts, 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. 149

body to enforce the law,' He shook his head and said, { That is
about the size of it. J "

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
have 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 n. 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 impulses 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 tfie 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. 151

opinion and the enactment and administration of law, so long will
laws intended to diminish or eliminate po7erty be subverted or cir-
cumvented.

A strong sentiment is rising in America, on grounds other than
those here presented, to prevent immigration, ignorant, vicious-
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 rnanual 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 qnestionable whether these industrial lead-
ers capitalists can subjectively rise high enough above personal
interests and enlarge the ends of industrial life to include specifically
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 power with adequate supply to individ-
ual and national want ; more than questionable, if that ample and
intelligent enlargement of the ends of national production hereir*
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. 153

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 proposition 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 AND 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.

In;pection 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 CHARACTER OF GOVERNMENT. 155

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 governmental 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 against 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 f 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 for 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 sufferer
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 protective tariff on
the other. Both parties affect to believe in the essential equity of manufacture and
commerce 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 limitfd or overthrown;
that these consequences must follow, whether private enterprise is conducted on an
international scale 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. 157

Legislation has become burdened by laws of limitation and con-
trol, and the dockets of the courts are loaded with the evidences of
litigious 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 to consumers, Against the ex-
actions of these organized monopolies has government been appealed
to with I6*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

158 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 subsidy 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
lars^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 privileges 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 exclnsively in the hands and under the con.trol 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 whatever 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 function 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 LEGISLATION MAY BECOME HARMONIOUS. 159

to government with his plea for assistance. He urges, of course, not
his 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 5 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 VI., 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 of
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,
it 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-

WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS.

r jfined 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
*/f 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
1 to power under the civilization of the Man of Nazareth. In the hot
and plethoric brain the chilled and anaemic extremities of modern
^rations 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-
ting in the corrupt morals and emasculated intellects of the leading
;and determining class, if not arrested by wise and heroic action, is
/bound 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
inglorious 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
'from 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
.good 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 through 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. To 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. 165

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-
i nent 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 i ndustrial 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.

I 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 individuals 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-
tablishment 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-Office, 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 inefficiency 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.

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 attack s .
of private enterprise are made and prosecuted.

Private enterprise, with the greed of wealth, is perpetually surging
against tne ramparts which sep'rate 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 promoters and apologists desire that industrial affairs shall re-
main in the 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 gain, 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

l6S 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-
ernment 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 enterprisej 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. 169

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 private ambition and gain. Private enter-
prise may conduct industrial enterprises with skill, and prosecute
them, for private ends, with great activity j 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 according 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

1 7 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. Po\er 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 handicapped by unequal

GOVERNMENT NOT AN ACCUMULATOR. 17 1

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 lines 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 commodity 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 increasing the phys-
ical well-being of all citizens. On the other hand, responsibility
once recognized will insure the rapid promotion of public 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 those
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. 173

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 time and results
that its injustice is not so easy of demonstration as is the injustice of rent 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
rasts 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 is 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
purpot.es, inaugurate, and private land-owners complete the excluding injustice of
rent. The Creator says to every human being, ' Live freely on the earth"; the hu
TU an 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 atid
charges no man interest and no interest should be exacted by one man from an-
other; and it would not be exacted unless through a combination of exactions, the
borrower had been deprived 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. 175

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-office 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 ail 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 the 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 measure 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.

fWere 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
and 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. SECTION 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 constitute 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 occupation cf

THE LOWER FORCES. 179

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 co-operation 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 competition which stimulates
industrial life to the verge of desperation and colors its every phase,
is essentially the struggle of producers 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 heen 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
po-.ver 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
effectiveness, 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 cruelest 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
fro:n 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 tre
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^/' se. 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. This is
the germinal cell that is destined to produce and perpetuate
multitu