2i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



All these developments and more may be summed up as illus- 

 trations of collectivity an ideal which has its advocates and pro- 

 fessors, and which looks in the future for regulated civic and 

 national monopolies instead of unrestricted freedom of individual 

 activity and for the supervision and control of those industries 

 which may remain unabsorbed by state or town. In pursuit of 

 this last conception there have been put forward not only require- 

 ments as to hours and conditions of labor, but a demand also for 

 a living wage or a minimum below which no workman shall be 

 paid ; and this principle has been already adopted by some muni- 

 cipalities in respect of their monopolized industries. The state 

 itself indeed has through the popular branch of the legislature 

 declared more or less clearly in favor of the same principle in re- 

 spect of the industries which are conducted in its service. We 

 have not only to acknowledge the continued slowness of poli- 

 ticians to adopt and enforce the teaching of economists such as 

 Jevons contemplated, but also the rise of another school of eco- 

 nomic thought which competes for and in some measure success- 

 fully obtains the attention of the makers of laws. We must 

 therefore inquire whether the failure of former teaching has not 

 been due to errors in itself rather than to the indocility of those 

 who have neglected it. The greatest difficulty which the teachers 

 of the past have to overcome when put upon their self-defense 

 lies in the suspicion, or more than suspicion, of an occupied mul- 

 titude that their promises have failed. It is thought of them, if 

 it is not openly said, that they had the ear of legislators for a 

 generation, that the course and conduct of successive administra- 

 tions were governed by their principles ; and yet society, as we 

 know it, presents much the same features, and the lifting up of 

 the poor out of the mire is as much as ever a promise of the 

 future. Some quicker method of introducing a new order is 

 called for, and any scheme offering an assurance of it is welcomed. 

 A ready answer can be given to much of the suspicion of failure 

 that is entertained. That freedom of industrial action which is 

 the first postulate of the economists has never been secured. The 

 limitations and restrictions necessarily consequent upon the sys- 

 tem of land laws established among us are not commonly under- 

 stood, but although much has been done to liberate agriculture 

 from their fetters its perfect freedom has not been attained. 

 There may be free trade in the United Kingdom and free land in 

 the United States, but the country is yet to be fouud in which 

 both are realized, and even if both these requisites were attained 

 the sores of social life would not be removed unless the spirit of 

 self-reliance were fully developed. And how little has been done 

 to secure this essential condition of progress! Nay, how much 

 has been done by law and still more by usage to weaken and de- 



