358 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



1874, wrote that so long as the workers were dependent 

 on the capitalists for employment " the margin for the 

 possible improvement of their lot is confined within nar- 

 row barriers which cannot be passed, and the problem of 

 their elevation is hopeless. As a body they will not rise 

 at all. A few, more energetic or more fortunate than 

 the rest, will from time to time escape, as they do now, 

 from the ranks of their fellows to the higher walks of 

 industrial life, but the great majority will remain sub- 

 stantially where they are. The remuneration of labor, 

 as such, skilled or unskilled, can never rise much above 

 its present level." * 



The result of a quarter of a century more of this de- 

 pendence, though the capitalists as a class have become 

 enormously richer, is the state of things here imperfectly 

 depicted. And so it must remain till the workers learn 

 what alone will save them, and take the matter into their 

 own hands. The capitalists will consent to nothing but 

 a few small ameliorations, which may improve the condi- 

 tion of select classes of workers, but will leave the great 

 mass just where they are. For without these thousands 

 of struggling, starving humanity, which furnish an in- 

 exhaustible reserve of cheap labor, they believe that they 

 cannot go on increasing their wealth; and they sys- 

 tematically oppose all measures which would utilize that 

 labor for the well-being of the laborers themselves, and 

 thus raise wages from the very bottom. This explains 

 why they ignored Mr. Mather's very moderate scheme 

 submitted to the Select Committee on the Unemployed, 

 as well as the far more effectual and practical scheme of 



1 " Some Leading Principles of Political Economy," p. 348. 



