332 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL. 



brought a harvest, of which the world eagerly partook. Men have died 

 believing that their efforts at reform were futile, to whose memory a 

 grateful people have erected monuments many years afterward. 

 It may be true that 



"The seed ye sow another reaps, 

 The wealth ye find another keeps"; 



but it neither hinders the true reformer in the discharge of his duties, 

 nor causes a single pang of regret in his reflections. It is not necessary 

 to mention any particular reforms in order to designate certain lines of 

 duty. Nearly all reforms originate under similar conditions, and are 

 carried forward by the same forces. The battle may be bloodless, it 

 may even be without confusion or tumult, and yet it may result in the 

 weal or woe of the people of the entire world. Death and destruction 

 to the people wait upon other methods than war. 

 Carlyle says : 



"It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a rflan wretched; many 

 men have died; all men must die. But it is to live miserable, we know not why; 

 to work, save, and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unre- 

 lated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-faire" 



John Stuart Mill says : 



" If the bulk of the human race is always to remain as at present, slaves to toil 

 in which they have no interest, and therefore feel no interest, drudging from early 

 morning till late at night for the bare necessaries, and with all the intellectual and 

 moral deficiencies which that implies without resources either in mind or feeling; 

 untaught, for they cannot be better taught than fed; selfish, for their thoughts 

 are all required for themselves; without interest or sentiments as citizens and members 

 of society, and with a sense of injustice rankling in their minds equally for what 

 they have not and what others have, I know not what there is which should make 

 a person of any capacity of reason concern himself about the destinies of the human 

 race." 



What a fearful picture, and yet how true ! 



"The iron law of wages," says Ricardo, "is the natural price of labor which is 

 necessary to enable the laborers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their 

 race without increase or decrease." 



" Labor," says Karl Marx, " is bought at its exchange value, and sold at its use 

 value. Exchange value is the least amount that will permit the laborer and his 

 family to live, while the use value is all the employer can squeeze out of it." 



" You believe, perhaps, fellow laborers and citizens," said Lassalle, " that you are 

 human beings, that you are men. Speaking from the standpoint of political econ- 

 omy, you make a terrible mistake. You are nothing but a commodity, a high price 

 for which increases your numbers, just the same as a high price for stockings increases 



