754 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which we procure in exchange for the domestic products is an in- 

 dustrial war upon domestic industry. 



This leads me back to the thesis which gives the title to this 

 paper. We are now exporting goods and wares of every type, from 

 the crudest product of the field to the highest finished product of the 

 metal works. Our supremacy over nearly every other nation, if not 

 all, in the low cost of production of the crude materials which enter 

 into these exports, our very low rate of national taxation, and our 

 other advantages are conducive to this power of service which we 

 render to other nations. Yet in this service the highest rates of 

 wages are earned by our own workmen that are secured in any part 

 of the world, ranging from twenty-five per cent to one hundred per 

 cent above the rates of wages in the manufacturing countries with 

 which we compete, and even tenfold the earnings in the nonmachine- 

 using nations from which we procure the larger part of our imports. 

 If the rate of wages governed our cost of production by the unit of 

 product, not one dollar's worth of any of these goods would be sent 

 out from our harbors. In this friendly contest to serve other nations 

 for mutual benefit, the survival of the fittest will fall to that nation 

 which maintains peace, order, and industry, and which removes all 

 legal or artificial obstructions to commerce such as now exist in the 

 fines that we impose on foreign goods under the name of protection, 

 and in the obstructive provisions of our navigation laws whereby we 

 are deprived of the jDaramount position upon the sea to which we are 

 entitled. 



It may have seemed as if I had been led wholly away from the 

 subject which is the title of this paper in this somewhat presumptuous 

 suggestion that the theory of evolution as represented by Darwin 

 and his followers is totally inadequate in its application to the meta- 

 physics of production and consumption or of trade and commerce. 

 If the dogma of Malthus had been true in its aj)plication to the pres- 

 ent century, and if the survival of the fittest based by Darwin upon 

 the theory of a purely physical natural selection had been complete, 

 the retrogression of the century would have been marked by de- 

 ficiency of product, higher prices, lessening wages, larger relative 

 profits, and increasing want. The trial balance of the more important 

 countries and states of the world which are to be found in their statis- 

 tical abstracts prove the reverse of all these necessary conclusions 

 which must be derived from the erroneous or incomplete observations 

 of the great investigators whom I have named. I trust, therefore, 

 that the conclusions to which I have brought you may justify the title 

 of my essay. 



The real wage which is the incentive to work is the enjoyment 

 of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life — food, fuel, shelter. 



