7 2 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is answerable for the cheap imitations which eventually in 

 many cases thrust the genuine articles out of the market ; it leads 

 to the use of short weights and false measures ; it introduces 

 bribery, which vitiates most trading relations, from those of the 

 manufacturer and buyer down to those of the shopkeeper and 

 servant ; it encourages deception to such an extent that an assist- 

 ant who can not tell a falsehood with a good face is blamed ; and 

 often it gives the conscientious trader the choice between adopt- 

 ing the malpractices of his competitors, or greatly injuring his 

 creditors by bankruptcy. Moreover, the extensive frauds, com- 

 mon throughout the commercial world and daily exposed in law- 

 courts and newspapers, are largely due to the pressure under 

 which competition places the higher industrial classes; and are 

 otherwise due to that lavish expenditure which, as implying suc- 

 cess in the commercial struggle, brings honor. With these minor 

 evils must be joined the major one, that the distribution achieved 

 by the system, gives to those who regulate and superintend, a 

 share of the total produce which bears too large a ratio to the 

 share it gives to the actual workers. Let it not be thought, then, 

 that in saying what I have said above, I under-estimate those 

 vices of our competitive system which, thirty years ago, I de- 

 scribed and denounced.* But it is not a question of absolute 

 evils ; it is a question of relative evils whether the evils at pres- 

 ent suffered are or are not less than the evils which would be suf- 

 fered under another system whether efforts for mitigation along 

 the lines thus far followed are not more likely to succeed than 

 efforts along utterly different lines. 



This is the question here to be considered. I must be excused 

 for first of all setting forth sundry truths which are, to some at 

 any rate, tolerably familiar, before proceeding to draw inferences 

 which are not so familiar. 



Speaking broadly, every man works that he may avoid suffer- 

 ing. Here, remembrance of the pangs of hunger prompts him ; 

 and there, he is prompted by the sight of the slave-driver's lash. 

 His immediate dread may be the punishment which physical cir- 

 cumstances will inflict, or may be punishment inflicted by human 

 agency. He must have a master ; but the master may be Nature 

 or may be a fellow-man. When he is under the impersonal coer- 

 cion of Nature, we say that he is free ; and when he is under the 

 personal coercion of some one above him, we call him, according 

 to the degree of his dependence, a slave, a serf, or a vassal. Of 

 course I omit the small minority who inherit means: an inci- 

 dental, and not a necessary, social element. I speak only of the 

 vast majority, both cultured and uncultured, who maintain them- 



* See essay on The Morals of Trade. 



