6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a dual personality as a worker, and thus double his pay check. In the 

 matter of market opportunity the opportunity is with capital, not with 

 labor. Extra income due to special advantages is capitalized in money, 

 not in labor power. 



" Fair " interest and " fair " profits may be manipulated through 

 capitalization of special privileges ; but " fair " wages can not be so 

 acted upon. The man stands out in the open. Fair wages are kept 

 down because fair interest and fair profits are so elusive; and because 

 rents are concealed under the guise of interest upon concrete capital, 

 or of profits due to skilful management. If the capital of the country 

 were expressed only in terms of concrete tangible goods, as is proposed 

 by the Wisconsin law, the disproportion between fair wages and fair 

 profits and interest would be evident. The enormous gains of monopoly 

 would then inevitably attract such attention that they would be cut off 

 to some extent at least, and the long distance, impersonal and indirect 

 form of tribute taking would be reduced ; although a scientific basis for 

 determining fair wages, interest and profits may not be found. 



But there are other tangible bits of evidence which bring to the 

 nostrils of the investigator the musty smell of medievalism. A corpora- 

 tion furnishing a municipality with water which is supposed to be taken 

 from artesian wells, finds it feasible and perhaps cheaper to introduce, 

 into the water mains, without notice to the consumers of the city, pol- 

 luted water from a river. As a consequence, sickness and death invade 

 many happy homes in the little city. Another company producing a 

 food product uses a deleterious preservative to enable it to foist a par- 

 tially spoiled article upon an ignorant and unsuspecting public. Sick- 

 ness, ill-health, reduced efficiency and even death follow unnoticed in 

 the wake of the packages sent broadcast over the land. A railway 

 company neglects to guard its street crossings or to protect its trainmen 

 because of the additional expense connected with such improvements. 

 Again, dead and maimed men, women and children are the direct 

 results of the policy of the heads of the company. This disregard for 

 employees and consumers which is by no means confined to a few 

 isolated cases, is not unlike the nonchalance with which the knight and 

 baron of the middle ages directed the destruction of the homes and the 

 crops of his adversaries and competitors. The toll of the monopolist 

 collected in prices made arbitrarily high is not very different from the 

 toll exacted at the point of the sword by the robber baron. 



In the medieval period, a multitude of evils resulted from the inter- 

 ference of the church in secular affairs. To-day political chicanery and 

 corruption are the fruits of the interference of big business interests 

 in legislative affairs. The trust has replaced the church as a dangerous 

 meddler in political affairs. And the alliance between capital and the 

 state is as dangerous, as reactionary and as intolerant as was the 

 medieval alliance of church and state. Economic heresy is now almost 

 as bitterly condemned as was religious heresy in earlier centuries. 



