Life Insurance, Savings Banks, Etc. 31 



If a colonel can manage a regiment so splendidly, what would 

 lie not do with a million o£ men? Very likely lead ihem 1 ke 

 sheep to the slaughter. 



If a drive wheel of so much weight and diameter would d > so 

 much work, what would a drive wheel of a thousand times its 

 weight and diameter do? Fly to pieces. 



We have been massing men in the industries till the power of 

 our generalship is exhausted, and your industrial army is breaking 

 up into Moliie Magaires and tramps. 



We have made our drive wheels so large that they are flying to 

 pieces of their own momentum. 



When coal and iron mining can be carried on only a few months 

 in a year, and then at a rate of wages that would not be very en- 

 ticing to a gopher, it is evident that capital in that business has 

 passed the limits of its own safe management. 



The same thing is evident, too, when the spindles and shuttles 

 of our factories stand idle half a year, and are only operated the 

 rest of the time by women and children at rates of wages that 

 can scarcely support life for the time being. 



Under such circumstances the sceptre of ability profitably to 

 manage large masses of men has passed from the hands of capital, 

 and the sooner that fact is acknowledged and acted on the better 

 it will be for it and for civilization. 



So when every one of the savings banks of a great city goes 

 by the boird, it is useless to talk about the profitab'eness of gath- 

 ering up small saving-? and massing them that they may figure in 

 the combinations of capital. " Suum Gu;que" would certainly 

 work more satisfactorily than that. 



And when wrecking and scaling are the order ot the day in in- 

 surance, it is about time to take notice that combination in that 

 way has passed feasable limits. 



It is a pretty tough thing after all to abolish the individual; 

 and we are not so near it as we thought we were with our great 

 process of combination. And all our financial and industrial dis- 

 tress will pay for itself, when once that fact is seen and befitting 

 action taken. 



There are possibilities in man beyond any possibilities in 

 machinery. 



