334 LAND AND LABOR. 



"A publicist of large experience and recognized ability gives, 

 in a private letter, this significant warning: 'The great mass 

 of the people are not prosperous. There is unrest among not 

 only the lower classes, but the middle classes also. The con- 

 centration of capital and the rapidly acquired fortunes and 

 unwise display of them by the few, are creating dissatisfaction 

 among the many, which will manifest itself whenever there is a 

 decided change in the condition of the country, in a manner 

 that will try the strength of republican institutions as it has 

 never yet been tried. The danger then will not be from blatant 

 and lazy revolutionists, but from men of an altogether different 

 type. The experiment of manhood suffrage has not yet been 

 worked out.'" 



During the fifty years in which, these methods have 

 been employed practically one half of the working 

 force of the people has been thrown into idleness, a 

 large portion as unskilled labor, and become a power 

 that is constantly at war with those who are em- 

 ployed, and by their competition are compelling an 

 inevitable reduction in wages. To this army of the 

 idle constant accessions are being made from among 

 those who were but recently at work, caused, by the 

 more active operation of the forces that first created 

 the idleness. At the same time the centralizing 

 power of the monopoly of capital has become a ty- 

 ranny that is overwhelming. The increase in all these 

 developments has never been so rapid as within the 

 decade. 



It has also been shown that where, fifty years ago, 

 it was truthfully said that every man owned the soil 

 he cultivated, to-day we have between one and two 

 millions of tenant farmers. A half century of the 

 methods pointed out has resulted in placing the land 



