58o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dorf, the standard of living and of comfort among the masses is far 

 higher than at any former period. Writing from Mayence under date 

 of January, 1887, United States Commercial Agent J. H. Smith reports 

 that, " although business is in an unsatisfactory state, it does not seem 

 to affect the workingman greatly. Wages remain pretty much the 

 same, and few discharges of hands take place. The stagnant state of 

 the market only serves to make the necessaries of life cheaper, and to 

 enhance the purchasing power of the laborer's money." United Statee 

 Consul-General Raine, at Berlin, during the same month, also reported 

 that "wages in Germany show a rising tendency" ; that workingmen 

 with permanent work, and wages unchanged, are deriving marked 

 advantages from the low prices of provisions ; and that, although the 

 population of Germany has experienced an increase of three millions 

 since 1879, " no lack of w^ork was noticeable." 



The readiness with which society comprehends the suffering con- 

 tingent on the relentless displacement of labor by more economical 

 and effective methods of production and distribution, and the over- 

 mastering feelings of sympathy for individual distress thereby occa- 

 sioned, causes it to generally overlook another exceedingly interesting 

 and important involved factor, and that is the relentless impartiality 

 with which the destructive influences of material progress coincident- 

 ly affect capital (property) as well as labor. It seems to be in the 

 nature of a natural law that no advanced stage of civilization can be 

 reached except at the expense of destroying in a greater or less degree 

 the value of the instrumentalities by which all previous attainments 

 have been effected. Society proffers its highest honors and rewards to 

 its inventors and discoverers ; but, as a matter of fact, what each in- 

 ventor or discoverer is unconsciously trying to do is to destroy prop- 

 erty, and his measure of success and reward is always proportioned to 

 the degree to which he effects such destruction. If to-morrow it should 

 be announced that some one had so improved the machinery of cotton- 

 manufacture that ten per cent more of fiber could be spun and woven 

 in a given time with no greater, or a less expenditure of labor and 

 capital than heretofore, all the existing machinery in all the cotton- 

 mills of the world, representing an investment of millions upon mill- 

 ions of dollars, would be worth little more than so much old iron, steel, 

 and copper ; and the man who should endeavor to resist that change 

 would, in face of the fierce competition of the world, soon find himself 

 bankrupt and without capital. In short, all material progress is effect- 

 ed by a displacement of capital equally with that of labor ; and noth- 

 ing marks the rate of such progress more clearly than the rapidity 

 with which such displacements occur. There is, however, this differ- 

 ence between the two factors involved. Labor displaced, as a condi- 

 tion of progi'css, will be eventually absorbed in other occupations ; but 

 capital displaced, in the sense of substituting the new for what is old, 

 is practically destroyed. 



