derstand the situation as an entirety; and that effort is likely to be rendered ineffectual and disturbance intensified by all discussions and actions that start from any other basis. In fact, one of the remarkable features of the situation has been the tendency of many of the best of men in all countries to rush, as it were, to the front, and, appalled by some of the revelations which economic investigations everywhere reveal, and with the emotional largely predominating over their perceptive and reasoning faculties, to proclaim that civilization is a failure, or that something ought immediately to be done, and more especially by the state, without any very clear or definite idea of what can be done, or with any well-considered and practical method of doing. The position of the Russian novelist Tolstoi, before noticed, is a case in point. The distressing picture of what the world has come. to during the fifty years of the reign of Queen Victoria, as drawn by the poet Tennyson in his new "Locksley Hall," and which Mr. Gladstone has so impressively reviewed and effectually disproved, is another. On the other hand, it may be confidently asserted that a comprehensive view of the situation will show that not an evil referable to recent economic changes or disturbances can be cited, which has not been attended with much in the way of alleviation or compensation, the comparison being between individuals and classes and society as a whole. Thus, the facts in relation to the wages earned by the poor men and women who work for the sellers of cheap clothing, and who seem to be unable to find any more remunerative occupations, are indeed pitiful; but, if clothes were not thus made cheap, many would be clothed far more poorly than they now are, or possibly not at all. It is not the rich man who buys "slop" coats and shirts, but the man who, if he could not be thus supplied, would go ragged or without them. If the decline in the price of cereals and in the value of arable land has forced many who follow agricultural pursuits out of employment, there never was a time in the history of the world when the mass of mankind was fed so abundantly and so cheaply as at present. If the decline in the rates of interest on capital has been a sore grievance to the small capitalists, a reduction in the rate of income from invested property means in the final analysis that the world pays less than it has before for the use of its machinery, and that labor is obtaining a "larger" and capital a "smaller" share of the compensation paid for production.

Inequality in the distribution of wealth seems to many to constitute the greatest of all social evils. But, great as may be the evils that are attendant on such a condition of things, the evils resulting from an equality of wealth would undoubtedly be much greater. Dissatisfaction with one's condition is the

motive power of all human progress,* and there is no such incentive for individual exertion as the apprehension of prospective want. "If everybody was content with his situation, or if everybody believed that no improvement of his condition was possible, the state of the world would be that of torpor," or even worse, for society is so constituted that it can not for any length of time remain stationary, and, if it does not continually advance, it is sure to retrograde.†

It is a matter of regret that those who declaim most loudly against the inequalities in the distribution of wealth, and are ready with schemes for the more "equal division of unequal earnings" as remedies against suffering, are the ones who seem to have the least appreciation of the positive fact, that most of the suffering which the human race endures is the result of causes which are entirely within the province of individual human nature to prevent, and that, therefore, reformation of the individual is something more important than the reformation of society.

To understand the problem of poverty, as it at present exhibits itself, especially with reference to remedial effects, it is necessary to look at it comprehensively from two different standpoints. Viewed from the standpoint of twenty or twenty-five years ago, or before what may be termed the advent of the "ma

* "The incentives of progress are the desires inherent in human nature-the desire to gratify the wants of the animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and the wants of the sympathetic nature-desires that, short of infinity, can never be satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on."-HENRY GEORGE.

The conditions which are naturally imbedded, as it were, in human nature, and which war against the realization of the idea of an ultimate equality in the distribution or possession of capital, have been thus clearly and forcibly pointed out by Mr. George Baden Powell in his "New Homes for the Old Country," published in 1872 after a visit to Australia and New Zealand: "Since the arrival of man in the world there have been perpetual questionings as to why all men are not well off. Why should the good things of this life be so unequally distributed? The two great causes, one as powerful as the other, are circumstances and talents. But these two opposite causes all through man's life influence each other greatly. Circumstances call forth peculiar talents which might otherwise be uselessly dormant, and talents often take advantage of peculiar circumstances which might otherwise be overlooked and missed. It is by no means improbable that as the world grows wiser some means will be found of considerably raising the lowest stagc of existence, but it is entirely against the nature of things that all should be equal in every way. Innate pride continually urges men to seek that which is above them, and to many happiness in life is the mere gaining of such successive steps. The essential rule is to work one's own circumstances to the highest point attainable by means of the talents possessed. These talents may be said to resolve themselves into various capitals, and a man may have capital for the improvement of his condition in the form of money, brains, or health and strength-in fact, he may thrive by the possession of talents,' whether of gold, of the mind, or of the body. With this fully recognized fact of the diversities of capital, it would seem obviously impossible for a people to continue long in the humanly imposed possession of equal personal shares in any capital."

chinery epoch," there is no evidence that the aggregate of poverty in the world is increasing, but much that proves to the contrary. The marked prolongation of human life, or the decline in the average death-rate in all countries of high civilization; the recognized large increase in such countries in the per capita consumption of all food-products; and the further fact that fluctuations in trade and industry, calamitous as they still are, are less in recent times than they used to be, and less disastrous on the whole in their effects on the masses, are absolutely conclusive on this point. Great as has been the depression of business since 1873, there is no evidence that it has yet made any impression on the "stored wealth" of the people of the great commercial countries; and that, slow as is the accumulation of capital, a year probably now never passes in which some addition is not made to the previous sum of the world's material resources. The recognized tendency of the poor to crowd more and more into the great centers of population-drawn thither, undoubtedly, in no small part by the charities which are there especially to be found, and also by the fact that town labor is better paid than country labor-and the contrasts of social conditions, which exhibit themselves more strikingly at such centers than elsewhere, naturally cause popular observation of poverty to continually center, as it were, at its focus of greatest intensity, and creates impressions and induces conclusions that broader and more systematized inspections often fail to substantiate.* Indeed, one thing which the public needs to recognize more fully than it does is, that in most of the leading nations, systematic and rigid investigations, in respect to most economic subjects and questions, have now been prosecuted for a considerable period by governments and individuals; that the broad general conclusions deducible therefrom in respect to mortality, health, wages, prices, pauperism, population, and the like,

* A chapter from the recent experience of the city of Brooklyn, New York, in respect to pauperism, affords a very striking illustration of this statement. In the five years from 1874 to 1878 inclusive, the number of persons who asked and received outside poor relief from the city authorities increased more than 50 per cent, while the increase in the population of the city during the same period was less than 14 per cent. The evidence would, therefore, almost seem conclusive that the masses of this city were rapidly becoming poorer and poorer. In the latter year, however, the system of giving outside poor relief was wholly discontinued. It was feared by many that this action would lead to great distress and suffering, and many charitable persons made preparations to meet the demands they expected would be made upon them. Nothing of the kind occurred. Not only was the whole number (46,093) drawing aid from the county wholly stopped, but it was also accompanied by a decreased demand on the public institutions and private relief societies of the city, and a reduction in the number of inmates in the almshouse. The teaching of this experience, which has since been elsewhere substantiated, is, therefore, to the effect that what seem to be unmistakable proofs of increasing poverty were merely methods to supplement wages on the gains from mendicancy.

are not open to anything like reasonable doubt or suspicion; and also that the pessimistic views which many entertain as to the future of humanity are often directly due to the exposure of bad social conditions which have been made in course of these investigations with the purpose of amending them.

During the last quarter of a century the problem of poverty has, however, been complicated by a new factor; namely, the displacement of common labor by machinery, which has been greater than ever before in one generation or in one country. To what extent the numbers of the helpless poor have been increased from this cause is not definitely known; but the popular idea is doubtless a greatly exaggerated one. In fact, considering the number and extent of the agencies that have been operative, it is a matter of wonderment that the influences in this direction have not been greater. In the United States little or no evidence has yet been presented that there has been any increase in poverty from this cause.* In London, where the cry of distress is at present especially loud and deep, it is "noteworthy that no measures have yet been taken to ascertain whether that distress is normal or abnormal, and whether it is increasing or decreasing." But even here the opinion, based on what is claimed to be an exhaustive inquiry, has been expressed that," although the number of those who are both capable and willing to give fair work for fair pay and are at the same time destitute, is in the aggregate considerable, they yet form but a very small proportion of the unemployed"; and "that probably not over two per cent of the destitute are persons of good character as well as of average ability in their trades." ↑ The following additional facts, of a more general nature, are

According to the Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor for Massachusetts for 1887, the whole number of persons of both sexes in that State, who were unemployed at their principal occupation during some part of the year preceding the date of the census enumeration (May 1, 1885), was 241,589, of whom 178,628 were males and 69,961 were females. Comparing these figures with those of the population in 1885, viz., 1,941,465, it is found that for every 8:04 persons there was one person unemployed for some part of the year at his or her principal occupation, the percentage of unemployed being greater in the case of males and less in the case of females. These conclusions, however, throw no light on the number of persons who were unemployed by reasons of displacement by machinery; and are also likely to mislead, unless sufficient consideration is given to the fact that the number of industrial occupations which only admit of being prosecuted during a portion of the year is in every community very considerable. And, as a matter of fact, the investigations in question show that there were only 882 persons representing hardly more than one-third of one per cent of the whole number of the unemployed in this State, who were returned as having been unemployed during the entire twelve months.

"The Distress in London," "Fortnightly Review," London, January, 1888.

"The Workless, the Thriftless, and the Worthless," "Contemporary Review," London, January, 1888.

also pertinent to this subject: That wages everywhere have not fallen but advanced, as a sequence to the introduction and use of cheaper and better machinery and processes, proves that labor, through various causes-probably by reason mainly of increased consumption-has not yet been supplanted or economized by such changes to a sufficient extent to reduce wages through any competition of the unemployed. The multiplicity and continuance of strikes, and the difficulty experienced in filling the places of strikers with a desirable quality of labor, are also evidence that the supply of skilled labor in almost every department of industry is rather scarce than abundant. Again, it is a matter of general experience that when, in recent years, wages, by reason of a depression of prices, have been reduced in any specialty of production, such reductions have been mainly temporary, and are rarely, if ever, equal to the fall in the prices of the articles produced; which in turn signifies that the loss contingent on such reductions has been mainly borne by capital in the shape of diminished profits. Notwithstanding this, it must be admitted that the immense changes in recent years in the conditions of production and distribution have considerably augmented-especially from the ranks of unskilled labor and from agricultural occupations-the number of those who have a rightful claim on the world's help and sympathy. That this increase is temporary in its nature, and not permanent, and that relief will ultimately come, and mainly through an adjustment of affairs to the new conditions, by a process of industrial evolution, there is much reason to believe. But, pending the interval or necessary period for adjustment, the problem of what to do to prevent a mass of adults, whose previous education has not qualified them for taking advantages of the new opportunities which material progress offers to them, from sinking into wretchedness and perhaps permanent poverty, is a serious one, and one not easy to answer.

A comprehensive review of the relations of machinery to wages, by those who by reason of special investigations are competent to judge, has led to the following conclusions: When machinery is first introduced it is imperfect, and requires a high grade of workmen to successfully operate it; and these for a time earn exceptionally high wages. As time goes on, and the machinery is made more perfect and automatic, the previous skill called for goes up to better work and even better pay. Then those who could not at the outset have operated the machinery at all, are now called in; and at higher wages than they had earned before (although less than was paid to their predecessors), they do the work. Capital in developing and applying machinery may, therefore, be fairly regarded as in the nature of