THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. 19 



derstand the situation as an entirety; and that effort is likely to 

 be rendered ineffectual and disturbance intensified by all discus- 

 sions and actions that start from any other basis. In fact, one of 

 the remarkable features of the situation has been the tendency 

 of many of the best of men in all countries to rush, as it were, 

 to the front, and, appalled by some of the revelations which eco- 

 nomic investigations everywhere reveal, and with the emotional 

 largely predominating over their perceptive and reasoning facul- 

 ties, to proclaim that civilization is a failure, or that something 

 ought immediately to be done, and more especially by the state, 

 without any very clear or definite idea of what can be done, or 

 with any well-considered and practical method of doing. The 

 position of the Russian novelist Tolstoi, before noticed, is a case 

 in point. The distressing picture of what the world has come 

 to during the fifty years of the reign of Queen Victoria, as drawn 

 by the poet Tennyson in his new " Locksley Hall," and which 

 Mr. Gladstone has so impressively reviewed and effectually dis- 

 proved, is another. On the other hand, it may be confidently 

 asserted that a comprehensive view of the situation will show 

 that not an evil referable to recent economic changes or disturb- 

 ances can be cited, which has not been attended with much in 

 the way of alleviation or compensation, the comparison being 

 between individuals and classes and society as a whole. Thus, 

 the facts in relation to the wages earned by the poor men and 

 women who work for the sellers of cheap clothing, and who 

 seem to be unable to find any more remunerative occupations, 

 are indeed pitiful ; but, if clothes were not thus made cheap, 

 many would be clothed far more poorly than they now are, or 

 possibly not at all. It is not the rich man who buys " slop " 

 coats and shirts, but the man who, if he could not be thus sup- 

 plied, would go ragged or without them. If the decline in the 

 price of cereals and in the value of arable land has forced many 

 who follow agricultural pursuits out of emffloyment, there 

 never was a time in the history of the world when the mass of 

 mankind was fed so abundantly and so cheaply as at present. 

 If the decline in the rates of interest on capital has been a sore 

 grievance to the small capitalists, a reduction in the rate of in- 

 come from invested property means in the final analysis that 

 the world pays less than it has before for the use of its ma- 

 chinery, and that labor is obtaining a "larger" and capital a 

 " smaller " share of the compensation paid for production. 



Inequality in the distribution of wealth seems to many to 

 constitute the greatest of all social evils. But, great as may be 

 the evils that are attendant on such a condition of things, the 

 evils resulting from an equality of wealth would undoubtedly 

 be much greater. Dissatisfaction with one's condition is the 



