122 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
The last two form the population difficulty ; in itself the chief 
cause of human trouble. 
Is tHe Poverty or THE Masses A NECESSARY CONCOMITANT OF 
INCREASED ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH IN THE AGGREGATE ? 
All observers are nearly agreed that the accumulation of 
wealth and wealth-producing power have prodigiously increased 
within the present century. Of this there can be little doubt. 
Modern discoveries—as regards the properties of matter, the 
discovery and development of new lands, the uses of steam, 
electricity, and labour-saving inventions in every department of 
social and industrial life—have enormously increased man’s 
power over the forces of nature. With this immense gain of 
power, vast continents of virgin forest and barren swamp 
have become gardens of plenty. Rivers, mountains, and other 
formidable obstacles to communication or distribution of products 
have been bridged or pierced by railways, roads, and other 
superior means of distribution ; and the wide ocean, connecting 
far distant lands, now forms the easy and open highway of 
magnificent steamers, which vie in regularity and speed with the 
railway train in bringing to local markets daily supplies of the 
fresh meat, fish, fruit, and cereals of lands many thousand miles 
away. As a natural consequence, famines such as are known 
to have been so common and so terrible in England in the 
immediately preceding centuries are rendered an impossibility. 
How is it, then, that we are again brought face to face with 
the old terrible problems: ‘The Misery of the Masses,” ‘The 
Labourer’s Struggle for Existence,” “The Growth of Poverty,” 
‘The Increase of Pauperism and Crime?” If we can judge by 
the popular literature of the day, the state of the masses in 
Europe seems to be verging into as hopeless a condition as that 
which existed prior to the introduction of our vaunted discoveries. 
Indeed, one writer, who recently has been heard above all 
other claimants for reform, confidently affirms that “it is true 
wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of 
comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised—but these gains 
are not general. Jn them the lowest class do not share.” He 
broadly insists that increase in poverty is the constant con- 
comitant of increase in aggregate wealth, and that this constant 
“association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our 
times.” Is it true, as this writer confidently affirms, that with 
all the advantages which man has gained in his increased and 
increasing command over the forces of nature, our present: 
civilisation has by its customs and provisions barred the effectual 
distribution of accumulated wealth, and the only eftect produced 
is that of making the rich richer and the poor poorer ? 
