SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 47 



tion is possible, it has not as yet been satisfactorily rendered. But 

 assuming the most dreaded answer to be the true one, we may still 

 work on just the same, content to know that the greater legacy of bet- 

 terment we leave them, the longer our children will be able to put off 

 their hard fate. And besides, even in this day, we, too, find ourselves 

 crowded out of work, or out of the market, by our needy fellow-beings, 

 and thus hindered in trying to make our living. 



But in other ways our fellow-beings hinder and shorten our suste- 

 nance. Thev rob us on the highway, break and plunder our inclosures, 

 steal our purses. These are the simpler and ruder ways. They defraud 

 us in a thousand ways. They embezzle and default. They organize 

 gigantic schemes of plunder. And all these things necessitate laws, 

 and governments to make and execute them, which cost immense sums 

 of money. The Government of the United States alone costs nearly 

 or quite as much as the annual savings of the people ; though from 

 this must be deducted the school, post-office, and other similar expenses, 

 which would have to be paid privately if they were not paid publicly. 

 Still, allowing one half for these purposes, the cost of government 

 alone, to say nothing of the quarrels and crime which make it neces- 

 sary, would, if saved, constitute a third of our annual savings. 



But not only do (1) the existence in excess, and (2) the consciously 

 perverse conduct of our fellow-beings hinder us in making a living ; 

 even when they do their best, the (3) awkwardness of those to whom 

 we must delegate work which we can not do, costs us dearly every 

 day. They bungle and blunder and delay us in an unlistable variety 

 of ways. Our awkwardness works them the same hindrance. In this 

 branch of the subject it would be tedious to enumerate, but fruitful 

 to sit and think. 



On the whole it is hard to say whether in our sustenance of the full 

 measure of the life of our day we suffer most from the existence, or 

 from the wickedness, or from the awkwardness of the other human 

 beings who are trying to sustain life in the same planet, and have the 

 same right to it as we. 



Fortunately, they also help us, marvelously help us, and it remains 

 to study how they help us. A more or less minute study of the ways 

 in which our fellow-beings help us in making a living or achieving a 

 sustenance, constitutes the main body of the science of political econ- 

 omy. Before entering on that study, it is well enough to inquire what 

 we wish the result of their help to be. It needs not to be said that we 

 are to help them as truly and if possible as fully as they do us. Keep- 

 ing this tacitly in mind, what kind of a sustenance do we wish them 

 to help us get ? We think at once of two features which must char- 

 acterize it : 1. We want it ample. 2. We want it easy. 



In other words, we want as plenty as possible, and with as little 

 work as possible. It is not merely plenty to eat and wear that we 

 want, but in every other respect an ample living. Our tastes differ, 



