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arms, and pours into our laps her gifts without stint, she impoverishes us, and we hardly know whether to dread the more an excess of niggardliness or an excess of generosity on her part. So full of contradictions is our present economic order, that men must go without coats because too much clothing has been produced, and chil dren must go hungry because the production of grain has been over-abundant. As the socialists have said, with some measure of truth, "In civilization poverty is born of plenty."

As socialism proposes that production should be carried on to satisfy wants directly, the present machinery for exchange of commodities would almost disappear, and trade and commerce, in their existing form, would be practically abolished. The plan of socialism is that products should be gathered into large central stores, and then distributed among the various members of the community according to their claims upon the income of society; in other words, in accordance with their own individual income. It is estimated by Mr. Bellamy that one-eightieth of the population would be sufficient to bring the goods from the producer to the consumer, whereas, he says, that one-eighth of the population is now required for this service. This would then mean a saving of nine-tenths. Whether the saving would be so great as this or not, it is undoubted that socialism, if it could be made to work, would require a far smaller proportion of the population to bring goods from the producer to the consumer than present society.

If we view production of wealth from the standpoint of an employer, we find that socialism is not without its strong features. Surely the employing class cannot find its present relation to the employed altogether agreeable.

It is not pleasant to be engaged in perpetual struggle, and to be viewed with suspicion, and even positive hostility. Many an employer, weary of turmoil, would assuredly welcome a system which promises social peace, although it might effect a reduction in his own income, could he feel convinced that this new system was able to keep its promises in this respect. Working men may say what they please, but the lot of the employer is too frequently anything but an agreeable one, and that he should at times become embittered, when he sees himself perpetually misunderstood, misinterpreted, and antagonized, is not strange. A far stronger plea for socialism, from the standpoint of the employer engaged in production, might be made than one would be inclined to believe at first blush.1

The promises which socialism holds out to the em

1 "In the present stage of human progress, when ideas of equality are daily spreading more widely among the poorer classes, and can no longer be checked by anything short of the entire suppression of printed discussion, and even of freedom of speech, it is not to be expected that the division of the human race into two hereditary classes, employers and employed, can be permanently maintained. The relation is nearly as unsatisfactory to the payer of wages as to the receiver. If the rich regard the poor as, by a kind of natural law, their servants and dependents, the rich in their turn are regarded as a mere prey and pasture for the poor; the subject of demands and expectations wholly indefinite, increasing in extent with every concession made to them. The total absence of regard for justice or fairness in the relations between the two is as marked on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain among the working classes in general for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages: for the most part, their sole endeavor is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of service, as possible. It will sooner or later become insupportable to the employing classes to live in close and hourly contact with persons whose interests and feelings are in hostility to them." (John Stuart Mill's "Principles of Political Economy," Book IV. chap. vii. § 4.)

ployed are, indeed, alluring. It proposes that they should constitute a fraternity, govern themselves in industry, and work together for the common good. "No masters, no servants," must have a welcome sound to many, and especially to those who now occupy the subordinate positions.

CHAPTER III.

THE STRENGTH OF SOCIALISM AS A SCHEME FOR THE DISTRIBUTION AND CONSUMPTION OF WEALTH.

ARISTOTLE defended slavery as an institution necessary to social progress, maintaining that, unless there were a class of inferiors who were engaged in the production of material wealth, for the satisfaction of the needs of a superior class, there could be no art, no literature, no statesmanship; in fact, none of those features of a high civilization upon which, ultimately, the general welfare must depend. It is generally admitted that in his day there was a relative truth, at least, in his plea for slavery. One passage in his "Politics" has a prophetic ring. He remarked that if the time should ever come when the plectra of themselves should strike the lyre, and the shuttle should move of itself, then all men might be free; but since his day invention has made many industrial operations well-nigh automatic, and the power of man in production has been increased many-fold. The question suggests itself, cannot the office of slavery, as a foundation of a high and worthy civilization for a few, be performed by modern machinery for all? The larger the production of wealth, the stronger the argument for socialism in distribution. If enough could actually be produced to satisfy all the rational wants of all human. beings, many serious objections against socialism as a scheme of distribution would disappear.

It is well known that in certain branches of industry,

the power of man in production has been increased ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, and sometimes even a thousand-fold. Calico printing, for example, illustrates an increase of capacity which is a hundred-fold; and in the making of books, it would be difficult to say how many thousand-fold has been the increase in human power, if we compare present methods with the days of the copyists, when everything had to be written by hand. When we come to estimates of the total gain in man's productive power, the uncertainty is great and estimates vary widely. A report of the Department of Labor of the United States for 1886, states that the physical power of engines employed in the mechanical industries is over five times that of the men so employed, and that it would require twenty-one millions of men to turn out the product which, as a matter of fact, four millions turn out. Robert Owen claimed that in New Lanark, Scotland, early in this century, the working portion of the population of twenty-five hundred produced as much wealth as, one-half a century before, a population of six hundred thousand could have produced. Another author estimates that the machinery of the civilized world performs a service in production as great as could have been rendered in earlier times by sixty slaves for each family of five. It is probable that both of these latter estimates are far too large, but there can be no question that the socialists make a strong point when they bring forward the increased production of wealth as an argument for the social control of its distribution.

We cannot fail to commend the aim of socialism to substitute an orderly and rational distribution of the social dividend, for that based on a struggle of private interests. This distribution, based upon the struggle of

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