232 Evolution of the Wages System. 



Utopian dream anticipates. In other words, with the wise 

 application of economic law, the Nationalists' millennium 

 will actually be reached quicker through the law of evolu- 

 tion under the wages system than by Bellamy's ethereal 

 scheme, even if that w^e as scientihcally correct as it is 

 economically insane. It is of the very essence of the law 

 of evolution, that the industrial system, which tends to 

 centralize and socialize the laborer, to increase the economic 

 interdependence of the capitalist, consumer and workman, 

 and to make the material well-being of the masses the basis 

 of business success, possesses all the possibilities of an 

 ever-advancing civilization, and must in the nature of things 

 be the foundation of the industrial system of the future. 

 Manifestly, then, it is not to the abolition of the wages 

 system, but to the influences which advance wages, by in- 

 creasing the leisure and educational opportunities for de- 

 veloping the character, capacity and freedom of the laboring 

 classes, that we must look for the industrial reforms which 

 shall permanently promote the evolution of the highest 

 individuality and the broadest social democracy. 



