26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion of product the share at present apportioned to the workers, 

 or, what is the same thing, the existing rates of wages could be 

 maintained, seems utterly preposterous. It is not even too 

 much to say that the very existence of multitudes would be en- 

 dangered if the present energy of production were diminished 

 twenty per cent. And in this connection how full of meaning 

 is the following deduction which Mr, Atkinson finds warranted 

 by investigation, namely: "That over a thousand millions' 

 worth of product must be added every year and prices be main- 

 tained where they now are, in order that each person in the 

 United States may have five cents more than he now does, or in 

 order that each person engaged in any kind of gainful occupa- 

 tion may be able to obtain an increase in the rate of wages of 

 fifteen cents a day. Great and undoubted, therefore, as have 

 been the benefits accruing from machinery and labor-saving in- 

 ventions, the margin that would needs be traversed in order to 

 completely neutralize them by rendering human labor less effi- 

 cient, is obviously a very narrow one," To which may be added 

 that there is ]3robably no country at the present time where the 

 entire accumulated property would sell for enough to subsist 

 its population in a frugal manner for a longer space than three 

 years, 



■ The greatest of the gains that have accrued to the masses 

 through recent material progress has been in the saving of their 

 time ; not so much in the sense of diminishing their hours of 

 labor, as in affording them a greater opportunity for individual 

 self -advancement than has ever before been possible. To clearly 

 comprehend this proposition, it is necessary to keep in view the 

 fact that all men, with the exception of the comjjaratively few 

 who inherit a competence, are born, as it were, into a condition 

 of natural bondage or servitude. Bondage and servitude to 

 what ? To the necessity of earning their living by hard and con- 

 tinuous toil. " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," 

 has been recorded as a divine injunction, and experience shows 

 that a great majority of mankind, as the result of long years of 

 toil, have never hitherto been able to command much more than 

 a bare subsistence. In countries of even the highest civiliza- 

 tion, where the accumulation of wealth is greatest and most 

 equably divided, investigation has also led to the conclusion 

 that ninety per cent at least of the population are never pos- 

 sessed of sufficient property at the time of their demise to require 

 the services of an administrator. 



Now if, in the course of events, it has become possible, through 

 a greater knowledge and control of the forces of Nature, to gain 

 an average subsistence with much less of physical effort than ever 

 before, what is the prospect thereby held out to the multitude. 



