228 Evolution of the Wages System. 



gether. No reform is worth fighting for, no statesmanship 

 is worth considering, that does not tend to improve the con- 

 ditions of the millions. I have no interest in any indus- 

 trial or social scheme, in any civilization, or in any religion, 

 that will save only a few. I believe in the survival of the 

 fittest, but I also believe in making all fit to survive. There- 

 fore to say that the wages system is opposed to freedom 

 because it tends to create a laboring class, is to entirely mis- 

 understand the trend of social progress. Indeed, that is 

 one of its most redeeming features, without which improve- 

 ment among the masses would be hopeless. Wages cannot 

 rise, nor can political freedom or social character be de- 

 veloped by anything which does not increase the economic 

 interdependence of the people, and weld them together in 

 social classes. Whatever makes men more interdepend- 

 ent makes them more human, more altruistic; and more free. 

 The savage has the minimum of interdependence ; his exist- 

 ence mainly depends upon his muscle and upon accidents of 

 his situation, and he is in almost perpetual terror. He has 

 no freedom ; he can travel but a very limited distance, and 

 is in constant fear of enemies in the form of wild beasts 

 or wild men or wild elements. In the civilized countries 

 where the wages system is most advanced and the greatest 

 industrial interdependence prevails, man can travel around 

 the world in perfect safety, because under those conditions 

 everybody has an interest in protecting the freedom of his 

 neighbors. That is why in the long run democracy is safer 

 than despotism, because it includes more interests, more 

 activities, more responsibilities and more reciprocal rela- 

 tions. 



Another feature of the wages system is the tendency to 

 promote more constant employment. Wages are an indis- 

 pensable phase of the capitalistic system of production. 

 There is no fact more conclusively established in the history 

 of industrial progress than that with the development of 

 the wages system, the division and specialization of labor 

 and the interdependence of the laborers, has come the con- 

 centration of capital in large enterprises. Nor is there any 

 fact more conclusive than that the concentration of capital 

 in fixed plants and large enterprises makes a marked in- 

 crease in the permanence of employment. That periods of 

 industrial depression and enforced idleness have accompa- 



