300 LAND AND LABOR. 



tury, has increased at least four fold. The simplest 

 economic law demands that the consumption in soci- 

 ety among the masses where the increased produc- 

 tion has developed shall keep pace with it, or be 

 compensated in some other form. But it has not. 

 Individual consumption has actually fallen off 

 there has been no compensation in any form. The 

 increased production, in great part, has been sent 

 abroad, leaving many of our own people destitute 

 hungry and naked and sold to foreigners at prices 

 that represent the distress of our industrial classes, 

 and at the same time destroys the productive indus- 

 tries of the people who buy. 



Within the last half century our power of general 

 production has increased at least ten fold. Has the 

 comfort of the masses of the people increased in like 

 degree ? Let our crowded cities, our tenement houses 

 with their squalor and horrible mortality, our aban- 

 doned farms and ruined homes of the people, our half 

 employed and idle multitudes, our legions of beggars 

 and armies of tramps, our poverty, distress, and crime 

 of every nature, with the steady concentration and 

 growth of wealth and luxury in the hands of the few 

 all of which, with us, are the result of the " bene- 

 ficent competition " of the last half century answer 

 the question. 



To the dullest apprehension these facts and princi- 

 ples should be selfevident. But generations of false 

 teachings, fallacies, and indifference are stubborn 

 obstacles to encounter. 



One interest, and one only, in our whole country, 

 would be even apparently injured by the six hour 



