PENDING PBOBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 59 



may measure the intellectual and social relations that an indi- 

 vidual bears to the community in which he lives. 



We may freely admit the statement of the socialist that " the 

 rich are growing richer," but it does not follow as a corollary that 

 the poor are growing poorer. It is true that capital through 

 combination has vastly increased its power to organize and prose- 

 cute industrial pursuits on a scale of unprecedented magnitude, 

 and that, especially as the result of energetic exploitation of new 

 inventions, large rewards have been gained by bold investors ; 

 but I claim that, in the aggregate, labor has gained a much 

 larger share of these benefits without incurring any of the risks. 



The rich pecuniary rewards which have been reaped by Sir 

 Henry Bessemer, and by other manufacturers who were far-seeing 

 and courageous enough to develop his cheap process of steel-mak- 

 ing and its later modifications, make but a small item when com- 

 pared to the countless millions paid to labor during the past thirty 

 years as the result of the development of these discoveries through 

 the aid of capital. The Bessemer process of steel-making did more 

 than this for labor : it sounded the death knell of the most exhaust- 

 ing form of toil known to man, that inferno of labor, the pud- 

 dling of boiling iron by human hands. Many similar illustrations 

 could be given. 



I claim that modern mechanical inventions have in all cases 

 proved to be distinctively beneficial to the wage- earner: he is, 

 through their aid, better housed, better fed, better clothed, better 

 educated, has more numerous and better amusements, and is thus 

 approaching more nearly to the condition of the employer. Indeed, 

 the wage-earner to-day enjoys many advantages of civilization 

 which were unknown to employers of former generations. 



Herr Liebknecht, the leader of the Social Democrats in the 

 Reichstag, presented to American readers The Programme of Ger- 

 man Socialism in The Forum. I carefully studied his paper with 

 the view of discovering, if possible, some rational explanation of 

 the problem, " How is socialism going to benefit the condition of 

 the working class in America ? " but the question remains unan- 

 swered. It is true that figures are given showing the marvelous 

 growth of social democracy in the German Empire since 1890, and 

 the author glories in the title which he gives to German Social- 

 Democracy, viz., " the party of the discontented " ; he also per- 

 ceives signs of " an impending social crisis " ; he likens the struggle 

 between socialism and the Government to the fable of the Goblin 

 and the Peasant ; but the introduction of such a movement into 

 this country could, I think, be more appropriately likened to the 

 fable of the killing of the goose that laid the golden Qg^. 



The recent presence in this country of more than one agitator 

 from abroad, and the industrious dissemination of socialistic lit- 



