722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the very poor would be bridged. Human powers, no longer the slaves 

 of material needs, would have room to grow ; human life, relieved of 

 want and the fear of want, could expand indefinitely in grace and 

 beauty. With time, however, this faith, if not shattered, has been 

 weakened. Improvement has followed improvement, but it has not be- 

 come easier to make a living ; the difficulty rather increases. Wealth 

 has shown no tendency to become diffused, but rather one to aggre- 

 gate into comparatively few hands. In spite of all this wonderful ad- 

 vance, wages tend steadily to a minimum ; arid to the lowest class of 

 society — the class that is just able to live — there is little promise of 

 better things. 



With the growth of industrial organization in complexity and 

 variety, the increasing strife between employei'S and employed, the 

 frequent recurrence of periods of business depression, which exhibit in 

 an exaggerated form simply the ordinary conditions of industrial life, 

 the question of the right relation of labor and capital to each other 

 and to the industrial fabric presses with increasing strength for an 

 answer. Employer and employed alike feel that there must be some- 

 thing amiss in an industrial system in which, with want unsatisfied, 

 labor can find no employment and production no market ; in which, 

 with increase of productive power, poverty finds no abatement. And 

 the imjDortance of the question is in proportion to its persistence. 

 Beside it all other questions sink into comparative insignificance. 

 For all other progress is inextricably bound up Avith that of material 

 welfare. It is idle to expect the growth of better conduct or of higher 

 feelings in the man whom want stares in the face. Purer surround- 

 ings, better food, greater comforts, some relief from unremitting toil — 

 these are the essential conditions of an improved life. Why poverty 

 persists is the fundamental social question of our time, and must be 

 of all times, until it receives a complete and satisfactory answer. 



A thorough consideration has recently been made of this question, 

 and a remarkable answer returned — an answer that finds the solution 

 of the problem in a direction where most people would least expect to 

 find it. In " Progress and Poverty " Mr. Henry George has made a 

 careful and systematic inquiry into the conditions of the production 

 and distribution of wealth, the relations of labor and capital, and has 

 traced out the action of what he considers the cause of the continued 

 association of poverty with advancing wealth. However unpalatable 

 its conclusions to certain large classes of the community, this book 

 must, from its clearness of statement, ingenuity of argument, its large 

 human sympathy, and the broad and philosophic spirit with which the 

 question is treated, claim the attention of all who realize the paramount 

 importance of the subject and the value of a thoughtful contribution 

 toward its elucidation. 



Mr. George holds that the causes which determine the persistence 

 of poverty are a part of those which produce progress, and not extra- 



