[Formerly President University of Wisconsin.]
A striking feature of the industrial world and one well fitted to
occasion alarm is the large number of persons thrown, from time to
time, out of employment. We are forced by it to accept one or other of
two conclusions; that the economic world is mismade, incapable of a
quiet and successful run, or that our handling of it has been in some
way unskillful and misapplied. This fact of unemployment has become
very conspicuous, and to those who suffer from it, and to those who
sympathize with them, exceedingly grevious. A certain portion of the
human family, and that in the most progressive nations, find
themselves superfluous, out of connection with the means of living
though others are obtaining support, comfort and luxury. They have
nothing to do but to die in their tracks. Like the feeble ones in a
forced march through an enemy’s country they first fall behind and
then perish. This state of the case does not arise by accident and
then pass away, it has periods of severity which frequently return,
and stands among those constant dangers which may at any time overtake
a few. This evil comes especially to industrious countries, like
England, and to portions of our own country, like Pittsburg, noted for
their enlarged production. The causes and remedies of this state of
things become, therefore, subjects of anxious inquiry. We may assert
that the want of employment is due in a general way, to the
deficiencies and vices of men, but this assertion does not
sufficiently point out the immediate occasion of the difficulty, nor
furnish us its remedies.
Failure of the means of livelihood arises from indolence, ignorance, 385
vice and unfavorable conditions on the part of those who suffer from
it, conditions often of the nature of accident. But while the
recipients of this disaster are plainly recognized, the disaster
itself comes to them in a measure independent of their failures. We
need to know not only those who are likely to suffer from a given
disease, but how the disease itself arises. The central and most
productive cause in this series of provocations is indolence; the
others accompany indolence and more or less arise from it. By
indolence we mean a want of life and hence a weakness of all the
functions of life. We may mean physical inactivity or intellectual
sluggishness or moral indifference, or may mean them all blended in
one or other of the various ways in which a weak and perverted life
manifests itself. The tramp is physically indolent, he hates work.
This indolence readily extends to intellectual activity; the indolent
person is ignorant of the value of success, of its motives and of its
means. The world reveals few incentives to him and makes few appeals.
This indolence and ignorance do not wholly arrest the wants and
desires of men, and hence vice, as in the case of the thief, enters as
the most ready and immediate means of gratification. The torpid nature
of the moral judgment lends itself to this result, and nothing but
fear, itself weak and vacillating, stands between the indolent man and
habits of gross indulgence, inconsistent with personal and with social
welfare.
The accidents, misjudgments and disappointments which are liable to
overtake us all owe the injury which they inflict to the weak
personality on which they fall, and so misfortune seems to follow and
persecute those who are least able to bear it. The indolent, passive
mood is a good medium for the accumulation and transfer of every form
of disaster. The class of the helpless is much enlarged by this flow 386
of every form of evil to these low places in conduct and character.
We may clearly recognize these facts and suppose them a sufficient
explanation of the farther fact, that so many are thrown out of
employment and find themselves the waifs of society with no secure
attachment to it. They do, indeed, make conspicuous the failure of
occupation and determine the direction it will take. Their numbers are
seriously increased by it, and their very presence gives the
conditions of its recurrence. They are both causes and effects. They
stand on terms of action and reaction with all the embarrassments of
production. They help to reduce wages, and when wages are reduced,
they are the first to be driven out of employment. They are the
symptoms of the disease, the product of the disease and the means by
which it is carried farther. All failures in the productive process
extend, in their worst results, to this class of defectives. They are
the recipients of past evils, of present and of coming evils. They
arise in connection with a false form of production, must be treated
with it and removed with it. They are a composite product, their
faults not being wholly their own but in part the faults of the
economic system with which they are associated. They are not the
scapegoat on whose head the sins of the people may be laid and then be
borne into the wilderness.
In discussing the causes and remedies of unemployment, we shall see
how far and in what way these feeblest workers are involved in it. We
cannot improve society by simply striking off the evils that have been
developed under it. Healthy growth alone can rid itself of failures.
It often happens in physical disease that what is accepted as a remedy
in the end aggravates the difficulty.
One dislikes to use the word pauper, it so frequently carries with it
an unreasonable and cruel contempt. Yet there are paupers in the human
household, and when the temper is once present it is most difficult of
removal. It is a form of leprosy that eats out all vital power. The 387
pauper temper indicates a disposition to secure immediate ease with no
reference to the comfort of others. It accepts any advantage that
offers without the slightest wish to return it. Yet even this spirit
may offer some excuses for itself. The evils of society which may have
originated far off in the action of the leaders of men, are apt to go
booming downward till they reach, in their most distinctive form, the
pauper class, or those but little above it. Diligence, thrift, skill,
ward off the blow and escape with only a partial loss. Those who are
always in the way of it are the weak ones, to whom prosperity brings
but little and adversity occasions immediate overthrow. When those who
at best are but partially occupied, find that labor is altogether
failing them, the question of relief becomes most difficult. There is
no profitable labor at disposal, and to provide labor means farther
loss; it is charity in its most disguised, expensive and unrequited
form. The worst lesson we can teach those already inclined to
negligence is that a form of labor may be put in the place of real
labor, and that the question of adequacy is one to be answered by
society, not by the needy, recipient of favor. Whatever we may do for
men of feeble productive power we are not to lead them still farther
on in the direction of indolence and worthlessness. Actions are not to
be separated from their normal results. We may frequently be called on
to bear the injury which proceeds from another man’s wrongs, but we
are never called on to disguise the wrong itself. A portion of the
wrong is our own; that we should correct. While the evils are in the
process of infliction we are to bear them sympathetically, but not in
a form which disguises their true character.
Something of the same danger inheres in old-age pensions. Workmen of
usual diligence should receive a return for their labor which would
enable them to provide for age. As long as workmen, reaching the age 388
of three score, generally become dependent on the public, it is
perfectly plain that their wages are too low, that the returns of
production are not fairly distributed. A pension acknowledges the
evil, but does not remove it, it tends rather to confirm it. That the
losses which accompany industrial accidents should be divided between
workmen, managers and the community at large is plainly just, and is
no temptation to remissness. The accident is not the fault of any one
person or class of persons. If it falls upon a large number, it is
more readily borne and increases the motives to care. Our machinery is
operated for the benefit of the entire community, and it is only fair
that the entire community should help to bear the increased dangers.
That injuries should be still left with the workmen on whom they have
accidentally fallen is another proof of the slight hold they have on
the public mind.
Any remedy for the lack of employment which is prompted simply by
compassion and still leaves the evil to overtake the workman is not
social hygiene; is not a recognition of the partiality and
disproportion which still inhere in our productive methods. Labor
should be successful and rewardful when left to its own development.
It is bad to create a pauper temper and most difficult to contend with
it when it has once been called out. Men should be subject to their
own incentives of hope and fear, success and failure, as far as
possible. The same discipline which comes to the active, is the
natural spring of action in the sluggish. Any compassion which reduces
the motives of effort that should come to the entire community, or
which leaves the community satisfied with a maladjustment of duties,
can never provide an adequate correction of bad distribution. We are
placed between a narrow and a wide humanity, between an immediate
reduction of suffering and a removing of its conditions. The final
result is the test of our wisdom and good will.
There are partial remedies of the failure of employment which are 389
fitted to give relief without endangering the future or disturbing the
general conditions of employment. Occupations especially irregular,
like that of the stevedore, may receive especial attention, or may be
united to other forms of labor so as to secure greater uniformity. In
these occupations the employer may frequently have but little motive
to correct an evil from which he prospers by reduced wages. Excess and
deficiency in the various branches of work should be made, as far as
possible, to correct each other. Workmen are often not in a position
to meet successfully these evils. They accept the drift of the labor
market with small power to control it.
Bureaus of intelligence should be established so that the variable
demands for labor of different localities may be quickly met. This is
a public service, and should have the ease and certainty of such
service. The same reasons which lead the Government to take the
direction of immigrants should lead it to render similar aid to
workmen. Workmen are often ignorant of the extent and character of the
employment offered in the distance, and are subject to the exactions
which arise in connection with this want of knowledge. The greater
one’s want the more difficult is the change of locality. Quickness of
response demands both intelligence and nobility.
Savings banks and insurance, while not directly affecting the demand
for labor, tend to equalize and reduce the losses which accompany
variability. They also tend strongly to call out that forecast of evil
and preparation for it which belong to thoughtfulness. The strokes of
fortune lose something of their unexpected and injurious character,
and men are put on voluntary and better terms with the world.
We are not, however, to look on these reductions of danger as covering
the whole problem. Life has its accidents and we can greatly reduce
the evil results of them by patience and prudence, but there still 390
remains the more thoroughgoing effort by which the evil is anticipated
and turned aside.
There should be that general harmony of effort, that proportion of its
several parts to each other, that recognition of the common welfare,
which fortify us against disaster, and force it in the background when
it comes. There is a wise method in production, and a just relation of
its agents to each other, which should greatly reduce the liability of
a want of labor, and should ultimately remove it altogether. A true
democracy should be exempt from this general failure in the results of
activity. Much of our political economy has rested on inferences drawn
from a faulty state of society, as if it and the conclusions contained
in it expressed the real laws of our being. Society, in its most
civilized forms, has always developed a proletariat, it has suffered
drainage, and we have come to think this a sort of necessity, a
natural result of social growth. With this starting point and
expectation we are ready for periods of unemployment, and look at the
misery which arises from them as a corrective. Superfluous lives
cannot be gotten rid of on cheaper terms. We might as well suppose
that disease is an inevitable attachment of physical life and must be
left to go with it. Society never has too many workers, and when they
are not wanted it is because they have been in some way misdirected.
Strong men, industrious and intelligent men, are the wealth of
society. There is never a time in which there is little or nothing to
do in the world; if we think so it is because we cannot see, or see
falsely. Our intelligence determines what is to be done and our
diligence performs it. The world is never deficient in occasions for
labor, no matter how defective we may be in performing it. Nor is
well-devised labor wanting in its returns; intelligence and diligence,
in full exercise, always contradict the notion. The world could not be
the home of man on any other terms. Human life begins to be superfluous 391
the moment labor miscarries, and the miscarriage sinks down to those
who have the least intelligence and industry. The constitutional
disease of society, that which it has propagated with most show of
knowledge, is ignorance and indolence. When we reach this stratum we
are always in difficulty; the more in difficulty because we come to it
in a sluggish rather than in a corrective temper.
Incident to indolence and ignorance are those vices of temper by which
we wish to reach results without labor, or to reach them by the labor
of others rather than by our own labor. As long as these vices are
prevalent among men, whether in the upper or the lower strata of
society, or, as is sure to be the case, in both, periods of arrest
will come. Men will be baffled in their narrow aims, and will have no
broader, more generous ones to put in their place. For a time they
will lie idle till the customary impulses revive and once more set
them in action. Industrial inactivity is like a financial panic. It is
the result of the transient suspension of habitual feelings, and does
not relax till men return to their usual frame of mind. These
distrustful and apprehensive periods are liable to return as long as
men are not pursuing sound purposes in a sober way. Any deficiency in
fairness, integrity and mutual confidence divides society against
itself, and renders a portion of its efforts futile. This is the more
true as the division and subdivision of labor increases, and the final
adjustment of returns is made by complicated exchanges. When a portion
of the community finds its share of good things much reduced, when in
the distribution of the rewards of labor, custom or cunning or force
has robbed them of a reasonable portion, the motives of labor are
greatly lessened, the means of exchange are lessened and the sense of
unity and integrity of society is lost. There is in civilized society
a large body of just and honest production which goes far to sustain
the mind in renewed effort, and keep firm the ties which bind men 392
together. Yet the element of distrust, as in a financial crisis,
extends through the community and weakens the points of life.
The first condition of social, economic strength is that all the
members of society shall find suitable occupation and by means of it
become the givers and receivers of aid. This plain, simple fact has
been much obscured by accepting competition, often in an unethical and
unsocial form, as the general law of economic activity. This law it is
not; and it needs at all times to be held in check by ethical impulses
and by the welfare of the community. It is this welfare which is the
supreme law. Labor owes much of its degradation to a rigid and
unreasonable application of competition. As we go down in the scale of
occupations, and in efficiency in those occupations, the greater is
the injustice and injury that attend on competition till we reach a
point at which large numbers are pressed by it to the very verge of
life. Then comes in that mischievous generalization which tends to
make human degradation a permanent product of nature. The increase of
human life is said to be geometrical, the increase of the means of
life arithmetical, and so the two tendencies grind eternally against
each other. Our best sympathy is expressed in letting this collision
come to the quickest, shortest results. Some of this crushing process
obtains between ill-trained and sluggish, well-trained and active men.
Let it have way.
Yet the agricultural products of the world have not only never given
out, they have never been brought near a maximum. Food, raiment and
shelter are most varied in kind and abundant in quantity where men are
most numerous. The Algonquin Indian wandered in the forest in the
winter, unfed and unsheltered. The foundation of his trouble was his
indolence and ignorance. The inhabitants of India may perish by famine
in large numbers. The distress arises not from the fact that the
people have outstripped the productive power of the world, but 393
because they have outstripped their wisdom in handling those powers.
Let men covet wealth, and at the same time use narrowly and
competitively the means of attaining it, and the two strata of
society, upper and lower, will shape between them a human life in
which want will stand over against luxury, hatred over against
contempt, and the two classes, oppressed by spiritual destitution and
physical poverty, will wage with each a variable and hopeless warfare
such as wisdom and good will can alone leave behind us.
A first remedy for unemployment is to make employment remunerative; so
remunerative that the workman shall be the buyer of many things as
well as the seller of one thing. When his single sale of labor stands
in equipoise over against his many purchases, we shall have buyers as
well as sellers and our production and traffic will never cease. We
have in trade-unions a first step in the adjustment of exchange.
Workmen strive to escape the competition of the incompetent and
shiftless, to redirect distribution in ways more just and equal, and
by this means to be able to play their own part in economic life more
advantageously for themselves and for all. This effort is new in its
breadth of application, but has never been new with the wise and
thrifty. Personal skill and professional attainments have always
lifted themselves above the storm-swept plain of competition, and
gathered about themselves a prosperity and comfort resting on special
and superior exertion. So long as we subject ourselves to the fortunes
of the indolent and set up our standards of life at the very foot of
the slope, we shall have a competition like that of the Chinese to
contend with. We shall march so near the verge of the precipice that
many will be pushed over it, and the least flurry will be disastrous.
A sufficient return for diligence is the first claim and the
safety of labor; it enhances its motives and fortifies it in the 394
possession of what it holds.
With paucity of pay on the one side goes the superabundance of profits
on the other side. The returns of management should be more moderate,
more uniform, more consonant with the general welfare. We can hardly
doubt that an industrial community, well-organized, with a fair share
of intelligence, diligence and honesty, will commend reasonable
prosperity extending to all its members. Indeed this is what actually
takes place in the midway forms of effort. The very poor and the very
rich complement each other. Healthy and wholesome activity is as
possible to the community as to the individual. The chief difference
lies in the increased complexity of communal action and the ease with
which results are misunderstood and misinterpreted. The instinctive
and voluntary life of the individual is replaced in the community by
divided counsels. Men shape opinion and interpret results in view of
their own interests rather than in view of the public welfare. The
public welfare is as much within the scope of human thought, when
attention is directed to it, as is individual well-being. Indeed the
universal and stable prosperity of economic society is as much
dependent on the diligence and sobriety of its members as is
individual welfare on well-ordered labor. The qualities which enhance
success in the one direction are much the same as those which cause it
in the other direction. Extreme and intemperate action work the same
mischief in the one field as in the other. Society is sufficient unto
itself when its purposes and methods are truly social. A sudden
suspension of labor, a large number out of employment, are the result
of disturbing causes which have found their way into the ordinary
processes of production. These causes are an unreasonable accumulation
of power in single hands, speculative ventures and a social philosophy
which holds in light esteem the immediate interests of the mass of 395
the community. I have in mind a peculiar manufacture which had
provided the needed buildings, and surrounded itself with the homes
and help called for. There came a combination of those engaged in this
industry. The works, comparatively new, were discontinued. Production
sought a new center and the old community was left to suffer the loss
of slow dispersion.
We are protected against theft and criminal violence, but we are not
protected against the unprovoked losses which come to us from the
speculative aims of the adventuresome capitalist, though these losses
may greatly exceed those of robbery. The stability of labor and the
returns of labor are often affected in the great centers of production
by opportunities, fanciful or real, which offer themselves to a few of
achieving large wealth; opportunities not so much of creating wealth
as of raking it together. The mass of men do not so much as conceive
that they have any ground of complaint of operations which sweep out
from under them the supports of well-devised industry. Wealth which in
its making and use tends to break up the ordinary methods of industry,
to throw off the minds of men from the familiar reconciliations of
industry and, above all, to weaken the sense of responsibility which
lies between labor and capital, must, from time to time, issue in
industrial disaster to the confusion and loss of labor. Do the best we
may and we cannot anticipate every disturbance, but we are inexcusable
for overlooking the disasters we bring upon others who are working
with us. Much of what is called enterprise renders those engaged in it
almost wholly negligent of the incidental injuries which fall to those
about them. The equilibrium of labor is dependent on the equilibrium
of productive enterprises, and when these accept no restraints the
disturbance will reappear here and there in the productive world very
much at random. Labor presses at one point and is relaxed at another,
subject to the speculative schemes of capital. Extreme wealth in the
hands of a few lacks the economic and social and moral motives which 396
make it a calculable and reliable means in the hands of many. When it
is in the process of accumulation it is lawless; when it is
accumulated it sinks into indolence.
While some gains are pretty sure to accompany the acquisition of great
wealth, once acquired, it disturbs the even flow of economic forces,
and may easily give rise to irregular occupation that brings serious
disturbance to those whose daily wants are to be supplied by labor. It
may be thought that these fluctuations in production arise from its
very nature, and that if we leave men of very different degrees of
intelligence to contend with each other for the prizes of industry,
great inequalities of prosperity are sure to appear. We can escape
them only by forcing back enterprise and making the moderate, medium
men the standards of achievement. This presentation seems plausible,
and will always be urged by those who are willing or eager to take
large risks. Men of large productive power are easily stimulated, and
their resources are kept, in reference to the community at large, in
the most fruitful form when they are compelled to moderate their
efforts, and are not left to the extreme and eccentric ways normal to
them. The community is interested in habitual lines of industry more
than in those which disturb the minds by sudden profits which cannot
be emulated or repeated. Men will separate themselves from their
fellows in the rivalries of production. Only thus is the power of
intelligence fully disclosed, yet the ordinary arrangements of
society, its privileges and opportunities, should be made as equal as
possible; no unfair advantage should be given to one or another form
of production; nor methods be allowed to the successful in achieving
wealth which are not admissible in the community at large. The laws of
the game should be wisely framed and firmly preserved. It is the able
and ambitious who bring the most strain to safe restrictions, and for
whom they are chiefly made. Equality of opportunity is the cardinal 397
principle, and cannot be sacrificed in favor of enterprise. The
enterprise that is wholesome keeps within this law. It may also be
thought that this rigid restraint would deprive the community of some
of the most prevalent means of welfare as well as of some of the most
illustrious agents in prosperity, and that those great and efficient
combinations which we have come to designate as trusts would be lost
to us; that as the result of this loss we should quickly settle down
into a sluggish routine, mediocre ideas ruling the public mind, and so
miss that very prosperity of which we are in search. Industrial
corporations are most efficient agents in wealth-making. We cannot for
a moment think of throwing any real obstacle in the way of their
formation. But while we need their aid, we should also remember the
evils which are liable to come with them. They are the creatures of
law, and the law in giving birth to them should assign them the form
and restrictions which are most consistent with the public welfare.
They are not to be allowed to fall into speculative hands, an
instrument of unrestrained power.
Industrial corporations afford ready means by which small capital and
moderate men are compacted into a service quite beyond the range of
individual producers. The difficulty has been that much dishonesty has
entered into the formation of corporations, and that unreasonable
power has been exercised by those who have had them in charge. The
responsibility of a corporation to the community, expressed in a sound
financial organization and in the relation of its officers to its
stockholders, would in no way restrain the usefulness of these
industrial agencies, and would make them wholly consistent with
extended and equal opportunities in production. Immense wealth has
often been acquired in connection with corporations whose usefulness
to the public has been thereby restricted and the profits of
stockholders disregarded. Nowhere is the eagerness of personal
enterprise so tempted, nowhere does it display itself more 398
disadvantageously than in the large and oftentimes obscure
undertakings of corporations. It is not in reduction of these
agencies, but in behalf of their safe and profitable use, that the
claim arises for uniform and well-regulated action. In large
corporations, as in insurance companies, when the business itself has
fallen into routine, extravagant salaries have been resorted to as a
means of increasing the returns of officers. Oftentimes the plea for
raising salaries is one which is self-propagating. Expenses have been
greatly enlarged and the remuneration must keep pace with them. Yes,
but will not this very increase lead to increased expenditure?
Industrial corporations have been, in the present generation, a
conspicuous means of production, but they have also conspicuously
promoted a bad distribution of wealth, and so helped to promote
irregularity and ultimate suspension in the productive process. There
may never come a time in which the adventuresome capitalist will not
magnify his own usefulness to the community, but there may come a time
in which men shall see that the wealth of a few may be purchased at
the expense of that general comfort which is the proper return of
industry.
A possible rapidity in the acquisition of wealth inflames the
speculative temper. We mean by the speculative temper, purchase and
sale, not in reference to production but with the hope of making large
profits independently of production. Speculation is an expression of a
venturesome spirit which, in its impatience, lays light emphasis on
the usually slow methods of increase, and promises itself a rapid road
to success. This hope is often disappointed, and when disappointed
carries with it a more or less extended retardation of business. When
the annual losses by bankruptcy in the United States reach
$200,000,000, the distress of those whose means of livelihood have
been involved in this overthrow must become a very sensible factor. 399
Such a sum would, in its successful use, provide for many households.
The temper which goes with sanguine and unscrupulous methods is a
careless, and often a cruel, one. The democratic notion of equality is
overridden, is pushed aside as of no significance in the business
world. The same persons who insist on an open shop, and give free play
to competition when it depresses labor, regarding it as a familiar and
convenient principle in determining wages, may combine with each other
to control products and enhance profits. The general welfare, which is
the controlling idea, is lost sight of or readily forgotten. They have
one standard when they look out on the community at large, and another
standard when they are preparing the way to make and hold fast their
own gains. The directors of business come easily to think that the
welfare of the community is identical with their own welfare, and that
the enterprise with which they sustain their own affairs is identical
with that on which the public prosperity depends. They readily come to
the conclusion that their activity, so essential to the community,
should be cherished by the community. How possibly can production
progress without them. Discrimination in their favor is a short cut to
the common prosperity. Men of comfortable means and the poor even owe
what they have to the enterprise which scatters wealth everywhere.
There is sufficient truth in this feeling, when not too boldly put, to
hide its failures. The expenditures of the very rich in the purchases
and exchanges they involve do carry a measure of advantage to all, but
they also bear with them an unjust distribution, a luxury and a
poverty, which weaken the unity and sap the strength of society. It is
the very gist of democracy that each man shall count one; that in
spite of the diversities and the advantages among men they shall still
remain units of the same value in the freedom and propagating power by
which the gains of the race are stored. It is neither identity nor 400
arbitrary difference that is admissible, but every man and every class
of men carry with them the potentialities, the social and spiritual
possibilities, which are the germs of historic development. This is
the principle with which all petty social distinctions and all civic
tyrannies have been at war.
While, therefore, the evil of monopolies may appear in various forms
and be met in different ways, they cannot be permanently removed
except by social conditions which equalize opportunities and compel
wealth and power, in all their activity, to conform to general safety.
Production in all its forms and in all its agents must be subject to
that temper of fairness, and come under those principles of equal
rights, which bind the parts of the community together, and make them
one producing and one enjoying agency. Every assertion of settled
superiority in persons, classes and races must be set aside, and the
world in its physical, intellectual and spiritual wealth be left open
to all. Thus history has treated men, and is more and more treating
them, in their claims to consideration. This birthright of men is not
to be denied or stolen; for they who steal it have nothing more than
this same birthright to plead in extenuation, the combinations which
look to the defense and extension of these original gifts are in
order, and all combinations which carry them beyond the bounds of
their own territory are another outbreak of anarchy.
The soundness of this assertion has been recently exemplified in the
history of Pittsburg. Pittsburg is the center of an industry which has
come, perhaps more than any other, under the domination of a few
leading men. In the Homestead strike they succeeded in dealing a heavy
blow to workmen in their efforts to secure something like a fair hold
on production. A little inquiry into a community built up for a few
and ordered by them discloses conditions quite at war with general
well-being. Wages are kept down by the constant presence of the
unemployed: the accidents of a dangerous occupation are left to fall 401
upon workmen; the health of the community suffers great neglect, the
remonstrances of workmen are met with the response, If they do not
like the method let them quit; and the general good order and comfort
of citizens receive but little attention. Here is an object lesson in
which work, sure, skilful and unflinching; wealth, eager, unscrupulous
and unsympathetic, have divided the world between them; no right
gained, no power lost. Men may make wealth under these conditions,
withdrawing it from the fitting returns of labor, but they cannot,
wise as they may be or generous as they may seem to be, restore that
wealth to the community in a form in which it will subserve the same
living purpose it might have subserved if it had never been withdrawn.
The life of a community is achieved where its activity is most intense
and constant. Failing in our service at these vital centers, no
extraneous effort will cover our fault. We might as well draw sap from
a tree and then pour it out on its roots.
We have now given three constitutional remedies for the want of
employment. The first is a more equal distribution of the rewards of
production, thus making the demand for products as extended and
uniform as their production. The second is increased restraints,
especially in connection with corporations, in the action of the
leaders of industry, rendering them more amenable to the wants of the
community to which they belong. The third, arising from the other two
and supporting them, is more unity, more harmony between the several
agents of production.
There was a report not long since in England of an industrial
commission, which had given protracted attention to the irregular
demand for labor. The remedies offered were chiefly palliative. It may
be thought that this form of cure is all within our reach; that what
is here offered as constitutional correctives are beyond our power.
There is some truth in the feeling, and would be much truth in it, 402
were not the actions and the sentiments now enforced under urgent
consideration for reasons of public welfare, not directly involved in
unemployment. We cannot expect to remove so grave an evil as this, the
wavering demand for labor, short of some important change in the
organization of society. Society is a structure of so many and such
delicate dependencies that its perfect action must include the general
integrity of the current relations between men. Unwholesome results of
frequent recurrence are the most direct proof of an unsound system.
Palliatives may soften the evil but cannot overcome it. We should aim
immediately to reduce the difficulty and ultimately to remove its
causes.