TEE SOCIAL PROBLEM 261 



origin; the disproportion is due to inexorable natural law, for men are 

 born unequal, mentally, morally and physically. 



And thus it is that supply and demand determine the matter. The 

 man in position of greatest responsibility, the vis a tergo, naturally re- 

 ceives the apparently disproportionate reward, because his group is so 

 small that to replace him is difficult ; he deserves the greater part of the 

 gain, be it money or glory, because he alone makes the gain possible. 

 He alone can determine the gradations of responsibility among his 

 subordinates and he assigns rewards according to the relative im- 

 portance of the services and the difficulty of replacing. The pay of 

 the mere laborer is small because it is worth no more ; the supply is in 

 excess of the demand. If at any time demand be in excess of supply, 

 inventive genius enters at once and makes fewer laborers needed, while 

 the work is done better, more cheaply and more expeditiously. Dur- 

 ing the Civil War, agricultural laborers could not be obtained, but the 

 land did not remain unfilled. Gang ploughs, mowing, reaping and 

 threshing machines did the work. When vast enterprises in railway 

 and other construction were undertaken, there was insufficient supply 

 of brainless muscle, living picks, shovels and hods, but the steam 

 shovel, automatic cars, hod elevators and other contrivances quickly 

 made the supply again more than equal to the demand. Experience 

 shows that machinery is preferable to ordinary labor; it can be de- 

 pended on; its strikes are brief and are overcome quickly. 



Skilled mechanics recognize the conditions. Products of even the 

 highest type of hand labor are rarely equal to those of machinery. The 

 hand-made watch is not so good as the watch made by machine at very 

 much less cost. Fifty years ago the man with a trade was a capitalist ; 

 but every decade has brought about a decrease in his importance. 

 Machinery has reduced the carpenter to a mere fitter and nail driver; 

 the cabinet maker is little more than a handler of the glue pot and 

 screw driver. It is the same wherever one looks; the outcome is inevi- 

 table ; mere manual labor will be replaced by machinery in such measure 

 as to render even the better members of the third class barely essen- 

 tial. If this is to be the outcome, what about the great mass of men 

 able or willing to work only as mere pawns in the hands of others? 



This question can not be answered in a priori fashion. The ele- 

 ments of the problem are not hypothetical, they are cold facts and 

 their interlocking makes the whole complex almost beyond comprehen- 

 sion. It is certain that at present no one student will see more than 

 a little way toward the solution. 



The problem is but one part of the greater problem, the elimina- 

 tion of poverty. It is true that incompetents are born in all stations, 

 but it is especially true that poverty leads to their multiplication, while 

 it is also true that their multiplication intensifies the curse of poverty 



