Part 2

The fundamental question is, of course, whether before serious harm has been done, the differences in men's fortunes which, as said at the outset, largely mean differences in men's powers, can be sufficiently decreased to leave room for little conflict.

One answer is that the equalization is already taking place at a rate that few people realize. Amid the poor, the impression that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, is quite general, and of course is fostered by the demagogues who make their living out of the discontent--out of the justifiable discontent less perhaps than out of the unjustifiable. Worse still, perhaps, the educated whose sympathies lead them to instruct the ignorant, are to a shameful degree ignorant of the truth in this regard, and, it must be feared, of the facts of the economic situation generally: somehow the softness of heart which actuates many such well-meaning people seems often to accompany a softness of head which recoils from all hard facts that would narrow the field where they delight to exercise their sympathies.

Nobody will question the progress of the average man from status to contract--from slavery, serfdom, feudal dependence, to wage-earning; but since the time of Marx, the claim of rich richer, and poor poorer has been general--among the ignorant rich as well as the ignorant poor. Nevertheless abundant authorities prove the exact contrary.

In the "poor poorer" part of the assertion, there was undeniably much truth during the early part of the nineteenth century, especially before industry became adjusted to the new machinery, and before the rise of the trades unions and the overthrow of the _laissez-faire_ policy in legislation. But after those changes, there was a rapid advance in wages, shortening of hours, and reduction in the price of commodities. So great was the change that even Marx himself, who had done more than any other man to spread the "increasing misery" theory, abandoned it in an address delivered in 1864. Yet he so little understood the force of admissions that he then made, that he let the elaborate _a priori_ demonstration of the theory which he had already built up, stand in his "Capital," which he did not publish till 1867.[1] But the admissions of 1864 did not end in theory. Facts began to accumulate to confirm it. Early in the twentieth century the changed conditions had attracted attention, and there were gathered many data which proved that rapid betterment had taken place in the condition of wage-earners.

[Footnote 1: See Simkhovitch: _Marxism versus Socialism_, pp. 122f.]

We have space for but a few of the facts, and they are not all up to date. Of the results of the Census of 1910 which bear on this subject, very few are yet published. Most of those of the Census of 1900 were not published till 1907, and it is only up to about that time that many data are at the moment available. But we hope before long to present a careful study of the conditions up to the present time. Meanwhile, it is pleasant to note the following:

In the United States wages in manufacturing industries averaged $247 in 1850, $427 in 1899, and $519 in 1909. And of course other industries could not fall very far below manufactures.

The cost of living did not begin to show any such advance. Dun's tables show that the yearly cost of living per capita in 1860, before the civil war, was $16.87 _more_ than in 1905. For the sixteen years 1880 to 1895, inclusive, the average yearly cost was $101.65. For the ten years 1896 to 1905, inclusive, the average was $81.52, $20.13 _less_ than for the earlier period. There has been a sharp advance since 1905, but taking the whole period from 1850 to the present time, nothing to compare with the advance in wages.

Although the recent class legislation in favor of the labor trusts also included any possible farmer trust, the farmer appears to have progressed with the wage-earner. His products have lately materially advanced in price, and the abstract of the Census of 1910 says (p. 295):

The total value of the land and buildings of the 1,006,511 farms shown for 1910 was $6,330,000,000, and the amount of debt was $1,726,000,000, or 27.3 per cent. of the value. The corresponding proportion in 1890, as shown in the reports, was 35.5 per cent., and to make this figure strictly comparable it would presumably have to be increased slightly. There was thus during the 20 years a marked diminution in the relative importance of mortgage debt ... but the average owner's equity per farm increased from $2,220 to $4,574, or more than doubled.

Wholesale clothing dealers report a great increase in average size and quality of clothes demanded, which shows that the people are better fed and exercised and better off. Over all highly civilized countries the consumption of food has been increasing faster than population. This cannot mean that the rich eat and drink more; for they ate and drank all they wanted before: so it must prove that the proportion of those who can eat and drink freely is increasing.

Moreover, hours of labor have been decreasing without any diminution of production. The United States Labor Bureau reports for 1913 show that the average wage-earner is working shorter hours than ever before, that he is receiving more pay for the short-hour week than he formerly received for the long-hour week, and that the increase in his average wage in most industries has been so great that its purchasing power has risen, notwithstanding the increase in prices of many commodities.

As to the "rich richer" fallacy: in Massachusetts for the period 1829-31 the probated estates under $5,000 were 85.6 per cent. of the whole, in the period 1889-91 they had fallen to 69.5 of the whole. It is nevertheless true that a few of the rich are richer than men have been before, and in the case of an increasing proportion of them, it has been for the good of all of us.

In Great Britain from 1840 to 1890, the number of estates subject to succession tax increased twice as fast as population, while the average amount per estate had not increased at all.

In France from 1853 to 1883 wages advanced some sixty per cent., and in the principal occupations of women (outside of domestic service), they nearly doubled.

Mr. W. H. Mallock, after an elaborate investigation in the British Census reports, the details of which are given in his "Classes and Masses," states the following conclusions: "The poor" (except those who have nothing at all) "are getting richer; the rich, on an average, getting poorer ... and of all classes in the community, the middle class is growing the fastest." Since 1830 the population has increased "in the proportion of 27 to 35; the increase of the section in question [the middle class] was in the proportion of 27 to 84." "The middle class has increased numerically in the proportion of 3 to 10; the rich class has increased only in the proportion of 3 to 8." In 1881, there were seven thousand windowless cabins occupied by families in Scotland; by 1891, these had "almost disappeared; the one-roomed dwellings with windows have decreased 25 per cent.; the two-roomed dwellings have _increased_ by 8 per cent., and the three-roomed and four-roomed dwellings by 17 per cent."

In 1815 there were 100,000 paupers in London. At the rate of increase of population in 1875, there should have been 300,000. There actually were less than 100,000, while from 1871 to 1908 the percentage of population "relieved" fell from 31 to 22.

In Germany, income-tax statistics prove the same thing. In Prussia, from 1876 to 1888, Dr. Soetbeer (quoted by Professor Mayo-Smith) finds that the proportion of income-tax payers with their families, to the whole population, had increased about 22 per cent., that is from 2.3 per cent. of the population to 2.8 per cent., and that the classes which had increased at the most rapid rate were those with incomes of over $500. And although the most rapid increase of all had been in the class with incomes of over $25,000, the average incomes of that class had decreased.

We regret that more recent figures than some we have given cannot be had in time for the present article, but as already said, we hope before long to present the results of a special study backed by the forthcoming census bulletin, and attempting to weigh judicially the confusing factor introduced into the situation by that part of the rise in prices due to the unprecedented increase in the supply of gold. Were it not for that extraneous circumstance, the showing for the wage-earner's advance would be even greater.

The very recent and probably temporary rise in prices is principally attributed to the unprecedented production of gold, the rush away from the farms to the cities, the rise in wages, and certain wastes in labor. In some trades wages have been forced to a height which, acting on the prices of products, has in many particulars nullified the advance in wages. All raising of wages by limiting labor instead of increasing product, by increasing friction instead of efficiency, by getting more than one's own instead of making one's own larger, must raise prices. So, to put it more in detail, must all such adventitious tricks as limiting apprentices; limiting each laborer's speed to that of the slowest; limiting the kinds of things a man can reasonably do--in short, all limiting of labor below its best efficiency by men or masters, masters remembering of course that to best efficiency reasonable rest, food and other good conditions are essential. So must all making of work by putting onto a job more labor than can accomplish it economically, as by calling a painter, a carpenter and a plumber to do a little job that any one of them could complete alone, and destroying good old product to make a call for new. Under ordinary conditions there will always be work enough for everybody without these efforts to create work artificially, and the extraordinary conditions where there is not enough, are only multiplied and intensified by such efforts.

But despite these influences contributory to the rise of prices in recent years, the improvements in the wage-earner's lot that had been noted for over half a century, have on the whole continued to the present time.

* * * * *

All the forms of industrial conflict are but manifestations of Nature's striving for equilibration--the goal of all evolution; and only with a nearer equilibration of men's fortunes will there be peace. How can it be brought about?

Will a victory of the socialists bring it? Yes, if, by premature action, you make a desert and call it peace, or if you wait until the civic virtues are so far developed that selections at the polls will be as unbiassed and discriminating as those of Nature. But if that time is approaching, it is with leaden feet; and to act as if it had arrived would only delay it. Our steps must be cautious and tentative. That the frightful wastes of both competition and monopoly should be avoided by state management of all industries or even to any great extent by state control, is a far-off ideal--so far-off that men wise enough to be successful are slow to express opinions about it. Beside this ideal, as beside the ideal of the land directly providing the government revenue, stalks, as the extreme fallacy generally stalks beside the truth, the false ideal of the government management or the land tax producing enough revenue to take care of everybody, and doing it, leaving to no one the saving duty of taking care of himself.

The steps already taken toward that ideal, it may perhaps be worth while to glance at. Outside of government's fundamental functions--the maintenance of order and justice--it has also managed the post-office, the coast and geological surveys, the currency, the census, the public schools, the streets, and the care of the sick and incapable. Some highly centralized and highly civilized governments have added the railways, but the privately owned ones, with all their shortcomings, are better; government telegraph service has been cheapened at the expense of the taxpayers, and government telephone service has been abominable. All this has been non-competitive work. There is not yet any sign that government could make a success of competitive industries. All the indications are the other way. Governments have so far been too slow to invent or even adopt improvements, especially where they involve scrapping old plant; and so far, government has generally been an extravagant and wasteful employer.

* * * * *

Unlike many other conflicts, the new Irrepressible Conflict can never be settled by violence: for violence cannot remove that difference in the capacities of men from which the conflict arises. Violence, even violence disguised under votes, may spasmodically lessen the natural differences in property, but they will reappear as long as there are differences in productive capacity, and society secures to the individual a reasonable share of his production. In this and all cases, advantageous exchange of course is productive of additional value; and there is a less frequent exchange which tends not to mutual increase of fortune, but to increased difference in fortune. Should society ever go so far as to take from the inventor, the capital-saver, the work-finder, the work-manager and the exchanger their share of the products which, without them, would not exist, and which are shared in by all, production would fall off, probably below the starvation point.

If, then, the conflict cannot be fought out, how is peace to be attained, even the limited degree of peace enjoyed before the modern unrest? Simply by reducing to a negligible point the difference in the productive powers of men--in their intelligence, energy and reliability; and this by leveling up, not by leveling down, as some of the trades unions, from noble but mistaken motives, attempt.

"Simply!" The general proposition is simple enough, but there are many perplexities of detail. One inheres in the definition of "productive powers." Probably it will serve to call them the _capacities of furnishing satisfactions_; and to include in satisfactions those produced for oneself as well as those exchanged. In this sense the impecunious philosopher has high productive powers--often so high that he would not exchange them for those of the captain of industry, and he does not often feel discontent enough to make him a very active factor in the Irrepressible Conflict. He does sometimes, though, especially when he feels the pinch of his narrow financial income compared with that of the producer of more material satisfactions. As he is usually a man of gentle make-up, the effect of his narrow income is increased by sympathy with the unfortunate, and sometimes these combined influences send out mighty queer doctrine from professorial chairs. Such phenomena, however, do not controvert the general proposition that the satisfactions of the spirit are to be included among those upon whose more equal production depends the disappearance of the conflict that must be till then irrepressible.

There is no way to peace, then, other than increasing the productive power of the less productive man. Sharing with him material goods, except to tide over emergencies that his powers cannot meet, won't do the trick at all, as has been abundantly proved, from the English poor laws down, and as is going to be proved again before some of our recent "progressive" legislation has run its course.

This is far from saying, however, that legislation really progressive in this direction is impossible. We for our part, however, do not see as much hope in legislation as in improvement in knowledge and understanding and disposition among people generally. That great improvement in disposition may be near at hand, seems indicated by recent experiences among the most revolutionary and suggestive in human annals. The recent meeting at Gettysburg, not to speak of the minor earlier ones at Lookout Mountain and elsewhere, indicates an advance in human nature so immense that it has not been realized. Not the least significant thing it demonstrated, is the vast decrease in the necessity of wasting thousands of lives and billions of treasure to settle differences of opinion.

As this is now so startlingly indicated regarding the Irrepressible Conflict which culminated at Gettysburg, and which _could_ be settled by force, is there not even much more reason to hope for a settlement not very remote, by methods of reason, of our new Irrepressible Conflict, which _cannot_ be settled by force?

* * * * *

But even if the outcroppings of the conflict are so soon settled, the fundamental conflict will persist as long as the difference in men is so great, and that difference is the most important thing to be dealt with by all lovers of peace and humanity. The only way to cancel it is for the men in front to help those behind, and for those behind to help themselves--to everything that does not belong to somebody else.

But those in front are entitled to have their judgments followed where they are not plainly tainted by self-interest, and it will pay them to keep self-interest out of their judgments so far as self-preservation does not demand it. But how much self-preservation can properly cover, is a difficult question, and space permits little more than the suggestion of it. Shall a man's self rightly be a wearer of but one suit of clothes, an occupant of a hut, an eater of the plainest food, and an entertainer of no guests: or shall his self rightly be clothed beautifully and suitably for all occasions, occupy a house that shall be a pleasure to gaze upon, consume the food essential to both the greatest refinement and the greatest efficiency, dispense a generous hospitality, broaden his mind and develop his taste so that he can enlighten and inspire others, encourage letters and the arts, and have leisure to devote to charities, education and the common good? There are plenty of illustrations that a man may preserve a self as large as this--as large as Goethe's or Marcus Aurelius's--and yet issue no advice unworthy of the respect of smaller men, and be of an advantage to the race beside which the cost of maintaining such a self is nothing.

If most men cannot have the things just enumerated, and if many of those who have them abuse them, is it best that none should have them? That all should have them is, in the present stage of human development, impossible. If all the wealth of the United States were divided equally among us, we would have but a little over $1,300 apiece,[2] and much of it would be wasted at once, and no conceivable laws would prevent what might be left, being in a very short time as unevenly distributed as now. The only glimpse we can see of a time of even fortunes, is of a time of even capacities; and the only rational way we can see to such a time is through helping each other: every other experiment toward it has proved illusive.

[Footnote 2: According to the State Census of 1904 as compiled in a Bulletin of the National Census issued in 1907. The corresponding data for the Census of 1910 are not yet arranged.]

The principal roots of the difficulty are generalized as ignorance and incompetence. The ignorance has already been strongly, though very blunderingly, attacked in the public schools, but not much more blunderingly perhaps than in the universities. It is a strange paradox that education, though the special care of the educated, should be among the most backward of the arts, yet so the highest-educated are the first to admit it to be. We are making hopeful progress in it, though, and are rapidly developing it to care for incompetence not only in mind but in body and disposition.

Then in the struggles of wage-earners and wage-payers, the principle of arbitration is certainly making rapid inroads on the practice of violence. The settlement of the recent great railroad controversies was by deliberative assemblies, not by mobs.

The farther lessening of the difference in material possessions by leveling down on one side as well as leveling up on the other, has lately become a very real and active question. While the inventor has seldom realized his share of production, and while the average director of industry has seldom realized more than his, undoubtedly extortionists and monopolists have rolled up fortunes out of all proportion to their deserts; and the regulation of these, though not doing much to fill up the differences, will do more to relieve the spirit of discontent.

It will be interesting to see how much of the share now going to the employer can go to the employee without stopping the employer's functions of finder, organizer and director of profitable work. We cannot intelligently foresee conditions in which these functions on his part will not be absolutely essential to the progress of society. The functions, however, are being more and more performed, even under the trusts, by men rising from the ranks; and even the men remaining in the ranks are probably performing more and more of those same functions, though some of the short-sighted policies of the unions are obstructing them.

And the unions themselves, despite policies not yet outgrown, have unquestionably done much to raise the wage-earners' fortunes, and are probably, with more experience and wider outlook, to do vastly more. But not until they get beyond the policy of holding their own best men back, will they enter on their full career, and then their least effective men will most benefit. Moreover, the wisest and most effective men are those most ready to learn from criticism, and when the unions realize it, they will have another avenue to usefulness. They will be helped to realize it, however, by more patience, candor and disinterestedness on the part of the critics. So far, everybody is bellicose, as first at Gettysburg. Cannot both sides to the present Irrepressible Conflict better anticipate a conciliatory disposition than did those heroes of fifty years ago?

When we can always carry the Irrepressible Conflict into courts and arbitrations and, as Godkin said, substitute for the shock of battle, the shock of trained intellects, peace will be in sight.

Its first essential is always a clear understanding. There are lies somewhere in every human conflict. Probably the most pitiful and pernicious of all lies is that all men are equal. The only remedy is to make it true.

THE MAJORITY JUGGERNAUT

During the past five years the agitation in favor of so modifying our governmental system as to remove all those barriers which stand between the will of the majority and its immediate execution has attained formidable dimensions. That the defects which American government has exhibited in many directions have been so serious and so persistent as to furnish great justification for this agitation no candid observer can deny. In both of the two ways upon which advocates of the initiative and referendum lay so much stress, our representative institutions have indeed sadly failed of being ideally representative. Venality of individual legislators, or the control of whole bodies of them by corrupt bosses, has resulted in innumerable instances of special legislation for the benefit of powerful private interests and contrary to the interests of the people. And it must be admitted that apart from any question of venality or corruption there has often been a degree of inertia in the enactment of enlightened and progressive legislation which cannot be ascribed to legitimate conservatism, but must be set down either to the unfitness of legislatures for their responsibilities or to obstacles which an extreme interpretation of constitutional restraints has unnecessarily put in its way.