700 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



SOCIAL DISTUEBANCES. 



THE events of the last few months 

 in this country have certainly been 

 enough to rouse the most indifferent 

 citizen to serious reflection. In an al- 

 ready depressed condition of industry 

 and commerce we have had thousands 

 of men condemned by arbitrary action 

 to wholly unnecessary idleness, trade 

 in certain sections of the country all 

 but paralyzed by the interruption of 

 communication, and property to the 

 value of millions of dollars destroyed. 

 As an accompaniment to all this there 

 has been considerable loss of life 

 through violence; and the heated pas- 

 sions of men have not stopped short 

 even of the most hideous and diabolic- 

 al crime of train- wrecking. What fur- 

 ther developments the future may have 

 in store for us it is impossible to say ; 

 but it is hard to feel hopeful over the 

 prospect unless the public can be got to 

 look a little more deeply into the causes 

 of these troubles than hitherto they have 

 been accustomed to do. 



It seems to us that the prevalent 

 habit of regarding such disturbances as 

 arising entirely out of a strained rela- 

 tion between capital and labor is an 

 unfortunate one. Still more unfortu- 

 nate is it, and still wider of the mark, 

 when emotional people attribute all 

 such troubles to the tyranny of capital. 

 If capital were at all times to give way 

 to the demands of labor, capital would 

 cease to exist, and, population having 

 meanwhile increased in a more than 

 ordinary ratio, general social penury 

 would be the result. Capital may be 

 said, without much abuse of metaphor, 

 to have the same instinct of self-preser- 

 vation that organic beings have : it will 

 fight for its life. To many people the 

 sight of a capitalist withstanding the 

 demands of his workmen suggests noth- 



ing but inordinate selfishness and greed ; 

 but this is not the capitalist's view of 

 it ; what he feels we are now suppos- 

 ing a typical case is that he can not 

 meet those demands without unduly 

 weakening himself and putting his men 

 in the position of getting more than the 

 market value for their labor. We do 

 not say, and are very far from thinking, 

 that capitalists never do selfish things. 

 Still less do we say, or think, that they 

 rise, as a rule, to the level of their so- 

 cial responsibilities; but we wish to 

 affirm our opinion that capital is per- 

 fectly justified in acting on that instinct 

 of self-preservation already referred to, 

 seeing that it is a strictly limited quan- 

 tity and can not without risk of extinc- 

 tion take upon itself the burden of 

 satisfying the ever-expanding desires of 

 mankind. Human desires are like a 

 gas whose volume varies inversely with 

 the pressure to which it is subjected, 

 or, to state it otherwise, which expands 

 just as the pressure acting on it is re- 

 duced; and to suppose that one set of 

 men should be able by successive con- 

 cessions to keep another much more 

 numerous set of men continually satis- 

 fied is to suppose what in the very na- 

 ture of the case is absurd. 



Instead of perpetually canvassing the 

 supposed rival claims of capital and la- 

 bor it would be better if our social re- 

 formers would apply themselves to the 

 underlying question how it comes that 

 there is so much competition among the 

 so-called laboring classes for the kind of 

 employment which capitalists supply. 

 The capitalists themselves do not create 

 the competition. If they yielded to all 

 the demands made upon them in the 

 matter of wages and hours, they might 

 be said to do, because then they would 

 be creating conditions which would 

 have a tendency to cause men to rush 



