5 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Many light heads are still eager to. come to the relief of suffering 

 workmen by modifying legislation and opening mines. If these coun- 

 selors would take the trouble to reflect, they would see that all inter- 

 vention of the state in the economical domain is essentially disturbing. 

 It is an element of instability, disorder, and waste. With their cus- 

 toms laws which they are constantly making and unmaking ; with the 

 changes with which they threaten mining property, sometimes funded 

 property ; the free exercise of industries and the freedom of contracts, 

 with the inconsiderate public works they undertake ; the loans they 

 contract ; the new places they create, and the parasitism they develop, 

 governments, while they are no more useful than flies on a carriage- 

 wheel, count for a great deal in the existing economical crisis. They 

 contributed to bring it about, and they are contributing to prolong it. 

 For a permanent cheapening of the cost of production a third fac- 

 tor should be reckoned upon improvement in workmanship. It would 

 be puerile to ignore the fact that the workmen of Western countries, 

 well endowed as they are in other respects, have become infatuated 

 with the new conditions of their life. A too rapid increase of wages, 

 superficial instruction, the sudden possession of political and civil 

 rights which their fathers had not, concentration in cities with a cor- 

 responding withdrawal of workmen from the country, all together have 

 contributed to exalt the conceit of a great number of workmen, and 

 especially of their leaders. The results are a seeking for extravagant 

 wages, habits of partial idleness, and a general looseness in the matter 

 of days' works. It would no doubt be a most desirable consummation 

 if the general condition of mankind were such that we could pay even 

 unskilled laborers such wages as they are sometimes able to command 

 in the great cities. But it is not the case. In the world at large nine 

 tenths of the industrious classes are at a long distance from such con- 

 ditions. Western workmen, especially in the United States, England, 

 and France, forget that by reason of exceptional circumstances they 

 constitute a kind of aristocracy of labor. Like all aristocracies, they 

 have at last given way under their exaltations to the point of losing 

 the taste for labor and the practice of doing their work conscien- 

 tiously ; and their leaders are trying to draw them still further away 

 from the feelings and habits which enter into the make-up of the good 

 and solid workman. Western civilization is incurring a great peril 

 from this source. When China is fairly opened to the world and has 

 become a country of railroads and factories, it will become necessary to 

 make a new adjustment of wages and holidays all over the world, as 

 has already been done with the prices of goods. The exceptional 

 wages of the day, and the two or three " off days " a week, can not 

 survive the approaching competition of the extreme East. The reform 

 that it is desirable to make should not await the coming of this immi- 

 nent event, or the conversion may be too late. As capitalists have 

 been obliged to accept the situation and resign themselves to a gradual 



