TERILS. — SOCIALISM. 157 



content on the part of our wage-working population, the 

 development of classes and class antipathies, popular 

 skepticism, a powerful individualism, and immigration. 

 If these conditions should remain constant, socialism 

 would continue to grow; but most of these causes are 

 becoming more active. Within the life-time of some now 

 living, population will be three times as dense in the 

 United States as it is to-day. Wage-workers, now one- 

 half of all our workers, will multiply more rapidly than 

 the population. After our agricultural land is all occu- 

 pied, as it will be a few years hence, our agricultural 

 population which heretofore has not been socialistically 

 inclined, will increase but little, while great manufac- 

 turing and mining towns will go on multiplying and to 

 multiply. In the development of our manufacturing 

 industries and our mining resources we have made, as 

 yet, hardly more than a beginning. When these indus- 

 tries have- been multiplied ten-fold, the evils which now 

 attend them Avill be correspondingly multiplied, if pres- 

 ent tendencies continue unchecked. 



It must not be forgotten that, side by side with this 

 deep discontent of intelligent and unsatisfied wants, has 

 been developed, in modern times, a tremendous enginery 

 of destruction, which offers itself to every man. Since 

 the French Revolution nitro-glycerine, illuminating gas, 

 petroleum, dynamite, the revolver, the repeating rifle 

 and the Gatling gun have all come into use. Science has 

 placed in man's hand superhuman powers. Society, also, 

 is become more highly organized, much more complex, 

 and is therefore much more susceptible of injury. There 

 never was a time in the history of the world when an 

 enemy of society could work such mighty mischief as 

 to-day. The more highly developed a civilization is, the 

 more vulnerable does it become. This is pre-eminently 

 true of a material civilization. Learning, statesmanship, 

 character, respect for law, love of justice, cannot be 

 blown up with dynamite; palaces, factories, railways, 

 Brooklyn bridges, Hoosac tunnels, and all the long inven- 

 tory of our material wonders are destructible by mate- 



