January 8, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



47 



asked and answered again in unending 

 repetition while humanity has struggled 

 from the cnidest forms of industrial or- 

 ganization, through slavery and serfdom, 

 up to the wages system. It is asked to-day, 

 when the share of the poorest who labors 

 with his hands is sufficient to purchase 

 comforts which a few centuries ago were 

 beyond the reach of kings, and although 

 the agencies which capital has established 

 seek daily in the uttermost limits of the 

 earth and among the most distant islands 

 of the sea to bring thence and lay cheaply 

 at the feet of labor every product that can 

 satisfy or please, the final answer is not 

 yet. Indeed, in this most fortunate land, 

 where sturdy manhood has found nature 

 in her most generous mood and industry 

 and genius have won an abundant and in- 

 creasing harvest, there is at this hour of 

 highest prosperity a reverberating discon- 

 tent which seems to some to menace much 

 that has been gained. 



The organized demand for a better an- 

 swer to this persistent questioning than 

 labor has ever yet received appeals 

 strongly to the sympathies of those who 

 love their fellowmen, and, as long as it is 

 kept within reasonable bounds by a due 

 sense of the responsibilities of strength 

 and the rights of others, will have the aid 

 and approval of the right-minded. But 

 sympathy may go where sanction must be 

 denied, and in every step of its perpetual 

 struggle for what it rightly or wrongly 

 conceives to be the interests of labor, and 

 the means of attaining a higher standard 

 of comfort and culture, the demands of 

 organized labor must be subjected to intel- 

 ligent scrutiny, and the probable conse- 

 quences of granting them must be calmly 

 and minutely examined. 



CONDITIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF 

 DISTRIBUTION. 



Ijet US enumerate a few of the funda- 



mental conditions of this struggle over dis- 

 tribution. Capital is the great labor-saving 

 contrivance and the mother of all labor- 

 saving devices. AVithdraw that which ex- 

 ists, and, with the most grinding toil, the 

 earth could not be made to support a tithe 

 of its present population. Stop its further 

 accumulation, and industrial progress 

 would cease until presently it should give 

 place to retrogression. Remove the incen- 

 tive to abstinence, and saving and accu- 

 mulation would stop, while the gradual 

 consumption of existing capital, not offset 

 by replacement, would inaugurate a move- 

 ment toward barbarism. Reduce the in- 

 centive, and the pace of progress will be 

 proportionately slackened. But capital is 

 not only the handmaiden of labor; it is 

 the accumulated product of labor. "Wher- 

 ever it exists, it is conclusive evidence of 

 previous effort and abstinence. Labor, 

 alone, can pluck the ripened fruit; it can 

 not increase the product by cultivation, 

 for it can not subsist during the period of 

 growth. Labor can wade in the stream 

 and catch a few fish with its naked hands, 

 but it can not spread the net to gather food 

 for a multitude unless capital provides for 

 its immediate necessities while the fabric is 

 being constructed. Labor can carry an 

 armful of coal or a stick of lumber, but 

 the locomotive which hauls its train of 

 fifty cars, each containing one hundred 

 thousand pounds of coal or lumber, is cap- 

 ital. But the instruments of husbandry, 

 the net, the locomotive, have no direct or 

 final utility of their own. Of themselves, 

 they neither feed, nor clothe, nor house the 

 body of man, nor minister to his higher 

 needs. They will not be brought into 

 being, unless, for the effort expended in 

 their creation, their producers are guaran- 

 teed a fitting recompense. This recom- 

 pense must be a share in the products ob- 

 tained through their agency and the eco- 

 nomic name for this share is 'interest.' 



