The problem of our age is
the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of
brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious
relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been
changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In
former days there was little difference between the dwelling,
dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his
retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilized man then was.
When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It
was just like the others in external appearance, and even within
the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of
his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and
the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which
has come with civilization.
This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as
highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of
the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is
highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the
refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so.
Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without
wealth there can be no M?cenas. The "good old times" were not good
old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as
to-day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both-not
the least so to him who serves-and would sweep away civilization
with it. But whether the change be for good or ill, it is upon us,
beyond our power to alter, and there- fore to be accepted and made
the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable.
It is easy to see how the change has come. One illustration will
serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of
products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of
human industry, as stimulated and enlarged by the inventions of
this scientific age. Formerly articles were manufactured at the
domestic hearth or in small shops which formed part of the
household. The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the
latter living with the master, and there- fore subject to the same
conditions. When these apprentices rose to be masters, there was
little or no change in their mode of life, and they, in turn,
educated in the same routine succeeding apprentices. There was,
substantially, social equality, and even political equality, for
those engaged in industrial pursuits had then little or no
political voice in the State.
But the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was
crude articles at high prices. To-day the world obtains commodities
of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding
this would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar
causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited
thereby. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What
were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer
has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago.
The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more
richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures
rarer, and appointments more artistic, than the King could then
obtain.
The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great.
We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine,
and in the counting-house, of whom the employer can know little or
nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All
intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid Castes are formed,
and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each Caste
is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything
disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the
employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among
which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there
is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital
and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses
homogeneity.
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like
the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great;
but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it is to
this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which
brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be
benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the
conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot
evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law
may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race,
because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.
We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must
accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the
concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands
of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not
only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.
Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope
for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the
manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That
this talent for organization and management is rare among men is
proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor
enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions.
The experienced in affairs always rate the man whose services can
be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration, but
such as to render the question of his capital scarcely worth
considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the
special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become
interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating
only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is
inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures, and
that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground
which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or
commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its
capital soon becomes bankrupt. It must either go forward or fall
behind: to stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential
for its successful operation that it should be thus far profitable,
and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make
profit. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that
men possessed of this peculiar talent for affairs, under the free
play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of
more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves; and
this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.
Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are
not in order, because the condition of the race is better with
these than it has been with any others which have been tried. Of
the effect of any new substitutes proposed we cannot be sure. The
Socialist or Anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is
to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization
itself rests, for civilization took its start from the day that the
capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy
fellow, "If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and thus ended
primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who
studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the
conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilization itself
depends-the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the
savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his
millions. To those who propose to substitute Communism for this
intense Individualism the answer, therefore, is: The race has tried
that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has
resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the
race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability
and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a moment that
it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation,
Individualism,-that it is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not
for himself alone, but in and for a brotherhood of his fellows, and
share with them all in common, realizing Swedenborg's idea of
Heaven, where, as he says, the angels derive their happiness, not
from laboring for self, but for each other,-even admit all this,
and a sufficient answer is, This is not evolution, but revolution.
It necessitates the changing of human nature itself-a work of ?ons,
even if it were good to change it, which we cannot know. It is not
practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable
theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding
sociological stratum. Our duty is with what is practicable now;
with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is
criminal to waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all
we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal
tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the
production of good fruit under existing circumstances. We might as
well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man
because he failed to reach our ideal as to favor the destruction of
Individualism, Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth,
and the Law of Competition; for these are the highest results of
the human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced
the best fruit. Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, as these laws
sometimes operate, and imperfect as they appear to the Idealist,
they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and
most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.
REST OF THE TEXT IS AVAILABLE IN THE FULL VERSION.
