Til K UiRl GA T10N AGE. 61 



Capital is as abundant, as idle, and as much in need of employ- 

 ment as the surplus natural resources of the world. A writer in a cur- 

 rent magazine discusses the subject. "Can New Uses Be Found for 

 Capital?" He shows how the financial centers are gorged with sur- 

 plus money, just as the large cities are congested with surplus people, 

 and just as the wide world is full of surplus land. He shows how the 

 interest rate has steadily fallen, so that those who formerly made 

 comfortable provis on for old age by the earnings of a certain amount 

 of saved capital must now have three or four times as much money 

 laid by to get the same result. This writer finds the solution of his 

 problem in the opening up of Asia and Africa and the equipment of 

 their waste places with railroads and the machinery of production. 

 Strangely enough, he does not appear to know that we have any waste 

 places in our own country, nor does it seem to have occurred to him 

 that the most valuable "machinery of production" is human beings 

 and that in "equipping"' t/n-m profitable uses might be found for large 

 capital. It is true that there is plenty of money and that the ap- 

 proved channels for its use have absorbed all and, in some c:ises, more 

 than can profitably be applied. This fact of surplus money, eager to 

 find safe outlets, is one of the reaso >s upon which I found my faith in 

 the imminence of a movement of population from overgrown cities to 

 undeveloped territories. 



The most important of our materials is the human element the 

 men, women, and children whose welfare and happiness is the true 

 end and aim of any colonization effort that i-< worth while. Now, if 

 we want people we must seek them where they are. They are not in 

 the country, but in the cities. Every colony does, of course, draw a 

 certain portion of its membership from farms and small towns, but it 

 remains true that the genuine surplus people are now resident in large 

 manufacturing and commercial centers. 



It would be an unpardonable waste of space to rehearse the old 

 story about how the people have been drawn into the cities so that 

 their growth IIMS become a startling problem When we come to dis- 

 cuss the social side of colony institutions we must, however, remem- 

 ber that we shall deal with a class of settlers having the tastes and 

 iastinsus of towasp33ple. It is almost unnecessary torafer to the eco- 

 iiomi- conditions which have created a surplus population. It is a 

 generally accepted fact that labor-saving machinery, department 

 stores, and the concentration of manufacturing and transportation in 

 the hands of comparatively few possessing great capital, has resulted 

 in making a certain number of unemployed and a larger number of 

 half-employed men and women in all our our populous centers. The 

 downfall of the small man is the most palpable and significant fact of 

 the times, and, taken in connection with' the abundance of unemploy- 

 ed capital and idle natural wealth, leads to the inevitable conclusion 

 that colonization upon a large scale will be resorted to in the new cen- 



