THE TRANSITION PERIOD.
"It is pretty late," I said, "but I want very much to ask you just a few
more questions about the Revolution. All that I have learned leaves me
quite as puzzled as ever to imagine any set of practical measures by
which the substitution of public for private capitalism could have been
effected without a prodigious shock. We had in our day engineers clever
enough to move great buildings from one site to another, keeping them
meanwhile so steady and upright as not to interfere with the dwellers in
them, or to cause an interruption of the domestic operations. A problem
something like this, but a millionfold greater and more complex, must
have been raised when it came to changing the entire basis of production
and distribution and revolutionizing the conditions of everybody's
employment and maintenance, and doing it, moreover, without meanwhile
seriously interrupting the ongoing of the various parts of the economic
machinery on which the livelihood of the people from day to day depended.
I should be greatly interested to have you tell me something about how
this was done."
"Your question," replied the doctor, "reflects a feeling which had no
little influence during the revolutionary period to prolong the
toleration extended by the people to private capitalism despite the
mounting indignation against its enormities. A complete change of
economic systems seemed to them, as it does to you, such a colossal and
complicated undertaking that even many who ardently desired the new order
and fully believed in its feasibility when once established, shrank back
from what they apprehended would be the vast confusion and difficulty of
the transition process. Of course, the capitalists, and champions of
things as they were, made the most of this feeling, and apparently
bothered the reformers not a little by calling on them to name the
specific measures by which they would, if they had the power, proceed to
substitute for the existing system a nationalized plan of industry
managed in the equal interest of all.
"One school of revolutionists declined to formulate or suggest any
definite programme whatever for the consummating or constructive stage of
the Revolution. They said that the crisis would suggest the method for
dealing with it, and it would be foolish and fanciful to discuss the
emergency before it arose. But a good general makes plans which provide
in advance for all the main eventualities of his campaign. His plans are,
of course, subject to radical modifications or complete abandonment,
according to circumstances, but a provisional plan he ought to have. The
reply of this school of revolutionists was not, therefore, satisfactory,
and, so long as no better one could be made, a timid and conservative
community inclined to look askance at the revolutionary programme.
"Realizing the need of something more positive as a plan of campaign,
various schools of reformers suggested more or less definite schemes. One
there was which argued that the trades unions might develop strength
enough to control the great trades, and put their own elected officers in
place of the capitalists, thus organizing a sort of federation of trades
unions. This, if practicable, would have brought in a system of group
capitalism as divisive and antisocial, in the large sense, as private
capitalism itself, and far more dangerous to civil order. This idea was
later heard little of, as it became evident that the possible growth and
functions of trade unionism were very limited.
"There was another school which held that the solution was to be found by
the establishment of great numbers of voluntary colonies, organized on
co-operative principles, which by their success would lead to the
formation of more and yet more, and that, finally, when most of the
population had joined such groups they would simply coalesce and form
one. Many noble and enthusiastic souls devoted themselves to this line of
effort, and the numerous colonies that were organized in the United
States during the revolutionary period were a striking indication of the
general turning of men's hearts toward a better social order. Otherwise
such experiments led, and could lead, to nothing. Economically weak, held
together by a sentimental motive, generally composed of eccentric though
worthy persons, and surrounded by a hostile environment which had the
whole use and advantage of the social and economic machinery, it was
scarcely possible that such enterprises should come to anything practical
unless under exceptional leadership or circumstances.
"There was another school still which held that the better order was to
evolve gradually out of the old as the result of an indefinite series of
humane legislation, consisting of factory acts, short-hour laws, pensions
for the old, improved tenement houses, abolition of slums, and I don't
know how many other poultices for particular evils resultant from the
system of private capitalism. These good people argued that when at some
indefinitely remote time all the evil consequences of capitalism had been
abolished, it would be time enough and then comparatively easy to abolish
capitalism itself--that is to say, after all the rotten fruit of the evil
tree had been picked by hand, one at a time, off the branches, it would
be time enough to cut down the tree. Of course, an obvious objection to
this plan was that, so long as the tree remained standing, the evil fruit
would be likely to grow as fast as it was plucked. The various reform
measures, and many others urged by these reformers, were wholly humane
and excellent, and only to be criticised when put forward as a sufficient
method of overthrowing capitalism. They did not even tend toward such a
result, but were quite as likely to help capitalism to obtain a longer
lease of life by making it a little less abhorrent. There was really a
time after the revolutionary movement had gained considerable headway
when judicious leaders felt considerable apprehension lest it might be
diverted from its real aim, and its force wasted in this programme of
piecemeal reforms.
"But you have asked me what was the plan of operation by which the
revolutionists, when they finally came into power, actually overthrew
private capitalism. It was really as pretty an illustration of the
military manoeuvre that used to be called flanking as the history of war
contains. Now, a flanking operation is one by which an army, instead of
attacking its antagonist directly in front, moves round one of his flanks
in such a way that without striking a blow it forces the enemy to leave
his position. That is just the strategy the revolutionists used in the
final issue with capitalism.
"The capitalists had taken for granted that they were to be directly
assaulted by wholesale forcible seizure and confiscation of their
properties. Not a bit of it. Although in the end, of course, collective
ownership was wholly substituted for the private ownership of capital,
yet that was not done until after the whole system of private capitalism
had broken down and fallen to pieces, and not as a means of throwing it
down. To recur to the military illustration, the revolutionary army did
not directly attack the fortress of capitalism at all, but so manoeuvred
as to make it untenable, and to compel its evacuation.
"Of course, you will understand that this policy was not suggested by any
consideration for the rights of the capitalists. Long before this time
the people had been educated to see in private capitalism the source and
sum of all villainies, convicting mankind of deadly sin every day that it
was tolerated. The policy of indirect attack pursued by the
revolutionists was wholly dictated by the interest of the people at
large, which demanded that serious derangements of the economic system
should be, so far as possible, avoided during the transition from the old
order to the new.
"And now, dropping figures of speech, let me tell you plainly what was
done--that is, so far as I remember the story. I have made no special
study of the period since my college days, and very likely when you come
to read the histories you will find that I have made many mistakes as to
the details of the process. I am just trying to give you a general idea
of the main course of events, to the best of my remembrance. I have
already explained that the first step in the programme of political
action adopted by the opponents of private capitalism had been to induce
the people to municipalize and nationalize various quasi-public services,
such as waterworks, lighting plants, ferries, local railroads, the
telegraph and telephone systems, the general railroad system, the coal
mines and petroleum production, and the traffic in intoxicating liquors.
These being a class of enterprises partly or wholly non-competitive and
monopolistic in character, the assumption of public control over them did
not directly attack the system of production and distribution in general,
and even the timid and conservative viewed the step with little
apprehension. This whole class of natural or legal monopolies might
indeed have been taken under public management without logically
involving an assault on the system of private capitalism as a whole. Not
only was this so, but even if this entire class of businesses was made
public and run at cost, the cheapening in the cost of living to the
community thus effected would presently be swallowed up by reductions of
wages and prices, resulting from the remorseless operation of the
competitive profit system.
"It was therefore chiefly as a means to an ulterior end that the opponent
of capitalism favored the public operation of these businesses. One part
of that ulterior end was to prove to the people the superior simplicity,
efficiency, and humanity of public over private management of economic
undertakings. But the principal use which this partial process of
nationalization served was to prepare a body of public employees
sufficiently large to furnish a nucleus of consumers when the Government
should undertake the establishment of a general system of production and
distribution on a non-profit basis. The employees of the nationalized
railroads alone numbered nearly a million, and with their dependent women
and children represented some 4,000,000 people. The employees in the coal
mines, iron mines, and other businesses taken charge of by the Government
as subsidiary to the railroads, together with the telegraph and telephone
workers, also in the public service, made some hundreds of thousands more
persons with their dependents. Previous to these additions there had been
in the regular civil service of the Government nearly 250,000 persons,
and the army and navy made some 50,000 more. These groups with their
dependents amounted probably to a million more persons, who, added to the
railroad, mining, telegraph, and other employees, made an aggregate of
something like 5,000,000 persons dependent on the national employment.
Besides these were the various bodies of State and municipal employees in
all grades, from the Governors of States down to the street-cleaners.
THE PUBLIC-SERVICE STORES.
"The first step of the revolutionary party when it came to power, with
the mandate of a popular majority to bring in the new order, was to
establish in all important centers public-service stores, where public
employees could procure at cost all provisions of necessity or luxury
previously bought at private stores. The idea was the less startling for
not being wholly new. It had been the custom of various governments to
provide for certain of the needs of their soldiers and sailors by
establishing service stores at which everything was of absolutely
guaranteed quality and sold strictly at cost. The articles thus furnished
were proverbial for their cheapness and quality compared with anything
that could be bought elsewhere, and the soldier's privilege of obtaining
such goods was envied by the civilian, left to the tender mercies of the
adulterating and profit-gorging retailer. The public stores now set up by
the Government were, however, on a scale of completeness quite beyond any
previous undertakings, intended as they were to supply all the
consumption of a population large enough for a small-sized nation.
"At first the goods in these stores were of necessity bought by the
Government of the private capitalists, producers, or importers. On these
the public employee saved all the middlemen's and retailers' profits,
getting them at perhaps half or two thirds of what they must have paid at
private stores, with the guarantee, moreover, of a careful Government
inspection as to quality. But these substantial advantages were but a
foretaste of the prosperity he enjoyed when the Government added the
function of production to that of distribution, and proceeded as rapidly
as possible to manufacture products, instead of buying them of
capitalists.
"To this end great food and cotton farms were established in all sections
of the country and innumerable shops and factories started, so that
presently the Government had in public employ not only the original
5,000,000, but as many more--farmers, artisans, and laborers of all
sorts. These, of course, also had the right to be provided for at the
public stores, and the system had to be extended correspondingly. The
buyers in the public stores now saved not only the profits of the
middleman and the retailer, but those as well of the manufacturer, the
producer, and the importer.
"Still further, not only did the public stores furnish the public
employees with every kind of goods for consumption, but the Government
likewise organized all sorts of needful services, such as cooking,
laundry work, housework agencies, etc., for the exclusive benefit of
public employees--all, of course, conducted absolutely at cost. The
result was that the public employee was able to be supplied at home or in
restaurants with food prepared by the best skill out of the best material
and in the greatest possible variety, and more cheaply than he had ever
been able to provide himself with even the coarsest provisions."
"How did the Government acquire the lands and manufacturing plants it
needed?" I inquired. "Did it buy them of the owners, or as to the plants
did it build them?"
"It co
erected them without affecting the success of the programme, but that was
generally needless. As to land, the farmers by millions were only too
glad to turn over their farms to the Government and accept employment on
them, with the security of livelihood which that implied for them and
theirs. The Government, moreover, took for cultivation all unoccupied
lands that were convenient for the purpose, remitting the taxes for
compensation.
"It was much the same with the factories and shops which the national
system called for. They were standing idle by thousands in all parts of
the country, in the midst of starving populations of the unemployed. When
these plants were suited to the Government requirements they were taken
possession of, put in operation, and the former workers provided with
employment. In most instances former superintendents and foremen as well
as the main body of operatives were glad to keep their old places, with
the nation as employer. The owners of such plants, if I remember rightly,
received some allowance, equal to a very low rate of interest, for the
use of their property until such time as the complete establishment of
the new order should make the equal maintenance of all citizens the
subject of a national guarantee. That this was to be the speedy and
certain outcome of the course of events was now no longer doubted, and
pending that result the owners of idle plants were only too glad to get
anything at all for their use.
"The manufacturing plants were not the only form of idle capital which
the Government on similar terms made use of. Considerable quantities of
foreign imports were required to supply the public stores; and to avoid
the payment of profits to capitalists on these, the Government took
possession of idle shipping, building what it further needed, and went
into foreign trade, exporting products of the public industries, and
bringing home in exchange the needed foreign goods. Fishing fleets flying
the national flag also brought home the harvest of the seas. These peace
fleets soon far outnumbered the war ships which up to that time
exclusively had borne the national commission. On these fleets the sailor
was no more a slave.
HOW MONEY LOST ITS VALUE.
"And now consider the effect of another feature of the public-store
system, namely, the disuse of money in its operations. Ordinary money was
not received in the public stores, but a sort of scrip canceled on use
and good for a limited time only. The public employee had the right of
exchanging the money he received for wages, at par, into this scrip.
While the Government issued it only to public employees, it was accepted
at the public stores from any who presented it, the Government being only
careful that the total amount did not exceed the wages exchanged into
such scrip by the public employees. It thus became a currency which
commanded three, four, and five hundred per cent premium over money which
would only buy the high-priced and adulterated goods for sale in the
remaining stores of the capitalists. The gain of the premium went, of
course, to the public employees. Gold, which had been worshiped by the
capitalists as the supreme and eternal type of money, was no more
receivable than silver, copper, or paper currency at the public stores,
and people who desired the best goods were fortunate to find a public
employee foolish enough to accept three or four dollars in gold for one
in scrip.
"The effect to make money a drug in the market, of this sweeping
reduction in its purchasing utility, was greatly increased by its
practically complete disuse by the large and ever-enlarging proportion of
the people in the public service. The demand for money was still further
lessened by the fact that nobody wanted to borrow it now for use in
extending business, seeing that the field of enterprise open to private
capital was shrinking every hour, and evidently destined presently to
disappear. Neither did any one desire money to hoard it, for it was more
evident every day that it would soon become worthless. I have spoken of
the public-store scrip commanding several hundred per cent premium over
money, but that was in the earlier stages of the transition period.
Toward the last the premium mounted to ever-dizzier altitudes, until the
value of money quite disappeared, it being literally good for nothing as
money.
"If you would imagine the complete collapse of the entire monetary and
financial system with all its standards and influences upon human
relations and conditions, you have only to fancy what the effect would
have been upon the same interests and relations in your day if positive
and unquestioned information had become general that the world was to be
destroyed within a few weeks or months, or at longest within a year. In
this case indeed the world was not to be destroyed, but to be rejuvenated
and to enter on an incomparably higher and happier and more vigorous
phase of evolution; but the effect on the monetary system and all
dependent on it was quite the same as if the world were to come to an
end, for the new world would have no use for money, nor recognize any
human rights or relations as measured by it."
"It strikes me," said I, "that as money grew valueless the public taxes
must have failed to bring in anything to support the Government."
"Taxes," replied the doctor, "were an incident of private capitalism and
were to pass away with it. Their use had been to give the Government a
means of commanding labor under the money system. In proportion as the
nation collectively organized and directly applied the whole labor of the
people as the public welfare required it, had no need and could make no
use of taxes any more than of money in other respects. Taxation went to
pieces in the culminating stage of the Revolution, in measure as the
organization of the capital and labor of the people for public purposes
put an end to its functions."
HOW THE REST OF THE PEOPLE CAME IN.
"It seems to me that about this time, if not before, the mass of the
people outside of the public service must have begun to insist pretty
loudly upon being let in to share these good things."
"Of course they did," replied the doctor; "and of course that was just
what they were expected to do and what it had been arranged they should
do as soon as the nationalized system of production and distribution was
in full running order. The previously existing body of public employees
had merely been utilized as furnishing a convenient nucleus of consumers
to start with, which might be supplied without deranging meantime any
more than necessary the outside wage or commodity markets. As soon as the
system was in working order the Government undertook to receive into the
public service not merely selected bodies of workers, but all who
applied. From that time the industrial army received its recruits by tens
and fifties of thousands a day till within a brief time the people as a
whole were in the public service.
"Of course, everybody who had an occupation or trade was kept right on at
it at the place where he had formerly been employed, and the labor
exchanges, already in full use, managed the rest. Later on, when all was
going smoothly, would be time enough for the changings and shiftings
about that would seem desirable."
"Naturally," I said, "under the operation of the public employment
programme, the working people must have been those first brought into the
system, and the rich and well-to-do must probably have remained outside
longest, and come in, so to speak, all in a batch, when they did."
"Evidently so," replied the doctor. "Of course, the original nucleus of
public employees, for whom the public stores were first opened, were all
working people, and so were the bodies of people successively taken into
the public service, as farmers, artisans, and tradesmen of all sorts.
There was nothing to prevent a capitalist from joining the service, but
he could do so only as a worker on a par with the others. He could buy in
the public stores only to the extent of his pay as a worker. His other
money would not be good there. There were many men and women of the rich
who, in the humane enthusiasm of the closing days of the Revolution,
abandoned their lands and mills to the Government and volunteered in the
public service at anything that could be given them to do; but on the
whole, as might be expected, the idea of going to work for a living on an
economic equality with their former servants was not one that the rich
welcomed, and they did not come to it till they had to."
"And were they then, at last, enlisted by force?" I asked.
"By force!" exclaimed the doctor; "dear me! no. There was no sort of
constraint brought to bear upon them any more than upon anybody else,
save that created by the growing difficulty and final impossibility of
hiring persons for private employment, or obtaining the necessities of
life except from the public stores with the new scrip. Before the
Government entered on the policy of receiving into the public service
every one who applied, the unemployed had thronged upon the capitalists,
seeking to be hired. But immediately afterward the rich began to find it
impossible to obtain men and women to serve them in field, factory, or
kitchen. They could offer no inducements in the depreciated money which
alone they possessed that were enough to counterbalance the advantages of
the public service. Everybody knew also that there was no future for the
wealthy class, and nothing to be gained through their favor.
"Moreover, as you may imagine, there was already a strong popular feeling
of contempt for those who would abase themselves to serve others for hire
when they might serve the nation of which they were citizens; and, as you
may well imagine, this growing sentiment made the position of a private
servant or employee of any sort intolerable. And not only did the
unfortunate capitalists find it impossible to induce people to cook for
them, wash for them, to black their boots, to sweep their rooms, or drive
their coaches, but they were put to straits to obtain in the dwindling
private markets, where alone their money was good, the bare necessities
of life, and presently found even that impossible. For a while, it would
seem, they struggled against a relentless fate, sullenly supporting life
on crusts in the corners of their lonesome palaces; but at last, of
course, they all had to follow their former servants into the new nation,
for there was no way of living save by connection with the national
economic organization. Thus strikingly was illustrated, in the final exit
of the capitalists from the human stage, how absolute was and always had
been the dependence of capital upon the labor it despised and tyrannized
over."
"And do I understand that there was no compulsion upon anybody to join
the public service?"
"None but what was inherent in the circumstances I have named," replied
the doctor. "The new order had no need or use for unwilling recruits. In
fact, it needed no one, but every one needed it. If any one did not wish
to enter the public service and could live outside of it without stealing
or begging, he was quite welcome to. The books say that the woods were
full of self-exiled hermits for a while, but one by one they tired of it
and came into the new social house. Some isolated communities, however,
remained outside for years."
"The mill seems, indeed, to have been calculated to grind to an exceeding
fineness all opposition to the new order," I observed, "and yet it must
have had its own difficulties, too, in the natural refractoriness of the
materials it had to make grist of. Take, for example, my own class of the
idle rich, the men and women whose only business had been the pursuit of
pleasure. What useful work could have been got out of such people as we
were, however well disposed we might have become to render service? Where
could we have been fitted into any sort of industrial service without
being more hindrance than help?"
"The problem might have been serious if the idle rich of whom you speak
had been a very large proportion of the population, but, of course,
though very much in evidence, they were in numbers insignificant compared
with the mass of useful workers. So far as they were educated
persons--and quite generally they had some smattering of knowledge--there
was an ample demand for their services as teachers. Of course, they were
not trained teachers, or capable of good pedagogical work; but directly
after the Revolution, when the children and youth of the former poor were
turned back by millions from the field and factories to the schools, and
when the adults also of the working classes passionately demanded some
degree of education to correspond with the improved conditions of life
they had entered on, there was unlimited call for the services as
instructors of everybody who was able to teach anything, even one of the
primary branches, spelling, writing, geography, or arithmetic in the
rudiments. The women of the former wealthy class, being mostly well
educated, found in this task of teaching the children of the masses, the
new heirs of the world, an employment in which I fancy they must have
tasted more real happiness in the feeling of being useful to their kind
than all their former frivolous existences could have given them. Few,
indeed, were there of any class who did not prove to have some physical
or mental quality by which they might with pleasure to themselves be
serviceable to their kind."
WHAT WAS DONE WITH THE VICIOUS AND CRIMINAL.
"There was another class of my contemporaries," I said, "which I fancy
must have given the new order more trouble to make anything out of than
the rich, and those were the vicious and criminal idle. The rich were at
least intelligent and fairly well behaved, and knew enough to adapt
themselves to a new state of things and make the best of the inevitable,
but these others must have been harder to deal with. There was a great
floating population of vagabond criminals, loafers, and vicious of every
class, male and female, in my day, as doubtless you well know. Admit that
our vicious form of society was responsible for them; nevertheless, there
they were, for the new society to deal with. To all intents and purposes
they were dehumanized, and as dangerous as wild beasts. They were barely
kept in some sort of restraint by an army of police and the weapons of
criminal law, and constituted a permanent menace to law and order. At
times of unusual agitation, and especially at all revolutionary crises,
they were wont to muster in alarming force and become aggressive. At the
crisis you are describing they must doubtless have made themselves
extremely turbulent. What did the new order do with them? Its just and
humane propositions would scarcely appeal to the members of the criminal
class. They were not reasonable beings; they preferred to live by lawless
violence, rather than by orderly industry, on terms however just. Surely
the new nation must have found this class of citizens a very tough morsel
for its digestion."
"Not nearly so tough," replied the doctor, "as the former society had
found it. In the first place, the former society, being itself based on
injustice, was wholly without moral prestige or ethical authority in
dealing with the criminal and lawless classes. Society itself stood
condemned in their presence for the injustice which had been the
provocation and excuse of their revolt. This was a fact which made the
whole machinery of so-called criminal justice in your day a mockery.
Every intelligent man knew in his heart that the criminal and vicious
were, for the most part, what they were on account of neglect and
injustice, and an environment of depraving influences for which a
defective social order was responsible, and that if righteousness were
done, society, instead of judging them, ought to stand with them in the
dock before a higher justice, and take upon itself the heavier
condemnation. This the criminals themselves felt in the bottom of their
hearts, and that feeling forbade them to respect the law they feared.
They felt that the society which bade them reform was itself in yet
greater need of reformation. The new order, on the other hand, held forth
to the outcasts hands purged of guilt toward them. Admitting the wrong
that they had suffered in the past, it invited them to a new life under
new conditions, offering them, on just and equal terms, their share in
the social heritage. Do you suppose that there ever was a human heart so
base that it did not at least know the difference between justice and
injustice, and to some extent respond to it?
"A surprising number of the cases you speak of, who had been given up as
failures by your civilization, while in fact they had been proofs of its
failure, responded with alacrity to the first fair opportunity to be
decent men and women which had ever come to them. There was, of course, a
large residuum too hopelessly perverted, too congenitally deformed, to
have the power of leading a good life, however assisted. Toward these the
new society, strong in the perfect justice of its attitude, proceeded
with merciful firmness. The new society was not to tolerate, as the old
had done, a criminal class in its midst any more than a destitute class.
The old society never had any moral right to forbid stealing or to punish
robbers, for the whole economic system was based on the appropriation, by
force or fraud on the part of a few, of the earth and its resources and
the fruit of the toil of the poor. Still less had it any right to forbid
beggary or to punish violence, seeing that the economic system which it
maintained and defended necessarily operated to make beggars and to
provoke violence. But the new order, guaranteeing an equality of plenty
to all, left no plea for the thief and robber, no excuse for the beggar,
no provocation for the violent. By preferring their evil courses to the
fair and honorable life offered them, such persons would henceforth
pronounce sentence on themselves as unfit for human intercourse. With a
good conscience, therefore, the new society proceeded to deal with all
vicious and criminal persons as morally insane, and to segregate them in
places of confinement, there to spend their lives--not, indeed, under
punishment, or enduring hardships of any sort beyond enough labor for
self-support, but wholly secluded from the world--and absolutely
prevented from continuing their kind. By this means the race, in the
first generation after the Revolution, was able to leave behind itself
forever a load of inherited depravity and base congenital instincts, and
so ever since it has gone on from generation to generation, purging
itself of its uncleanness."
THE COLORED RACE AND THE NEW ORDER.
"In my day," I said, "a peculiar complication of the social problem in
America was the existence in the Southern States of many millions of
recently freed negro slaves, but partially as yet equal to the
responsibility of freedom. I should be interested to know just how the
new order adapted itself to the condition of the colored race in the
South."
"It proved," replied the doctor, "the prompt solution of a problem which
otherwise might have continued indefinitely to plague the American
people. The population of recent slaves was in need of some sort of
industrial regimen, at once firm and benevolent, administered under
conditions which should meanwhile tend to educate, refine, and elevate
its members. These conditions the new order met with ideal perfection.
The centralized discipline of the national industrial army, depending for
its enforcement not so much on force as on the inability of any one to
subsist outside of the system of which it was a part, furnished just the
sort of a control--gentle yet resistless--which was needed by the
recently emancipated bondsman. On the other hand, the universal education
and the refinements and amenities of life which came with the economic
welfare presently brought to all alike by the new order, meant for the
colored race even more as a civilizing agent than it did to the white
population which relatively had been further advanced."
"There would have been in some parts," I remarked, "a strong prejudice on
the part of the white population against any system which compelled a
closer commingling of the races."
"So we read, but there was absolutely nothing in the new system to offend
that prejudice. It related entirely to economic organization, and had
nothing more to do then than it has now with social relations. Even for
industrial purposes the new system involved no more commingling of races
than the old had done. It was perfectly consistent with any degree of
race separation in industry which the most bigoted local prejudices might
demand."
HOW THE TRANSITION MIGHT HAVE BEEN HASTENED.
"There is just one point about the transition stage that I want to go
back to," I said. "In the actual case, as you have stated it, it seems
that the capitalists held on to their capital and continued to conduct
business as long as they could induce anybody to work for them or buy of
them. I suppose that was human nature--capitalist human nature anyway;
but it was also convenient for the Revolution, for this course gave time
to get the new economic system perfected as a framework before the strain
of providing for the whole people was thrown on it. But it was just
possible, I suppose, that the capitalists might have taken a different
course. For example, suppose, from the moment the popular majority gave
control of the national Government to the revolutionists the capitalists
had with one accord abandoned their functions and refused to do business
of any kind. This, mind you, would have been before the Government had
any time to organize even the beginnings of the new system. That would
have made a more difficult problem to deal with, would it not?"
"I do not think that the problem would have been more difficult," replied
the doctor, "though it would have called for more prompt and summary
action. The Government would have had two things to do and to do at once:
on the one hand, to take up and carry on the machinery of productive
industry abandoned by the capitalists, and simultaneously to provide
maintenance for the people pending the time when the new product should
become available. I suppose that as to the matter of providing for the
maintenance of the people the action taken would be like that usually
followed by a government when by flood, famine, siege, or other sudden
emergency the livelihood of a whole community has been endangered. No
doubt the first step would have been to requisition, for public use all
stores of grain, clothing, shoes, and commodities in general throughout
the country, excepting of course reasonable stocks in strictly private
use. There was always in any civilized country a supply ahead of these
necessities sufficient for several months or a year which would be many
times more than would be needful to bridge over the gap between the
stoppage of the wheels of production under private management and their
getting into full motion under public administration. Orders on the
public stores for food and clothing would have been issued to all
citizens making application and enrolling themselves in the public
industrial service. Meanwhile the Government would have immediately
resumed the operation of the various productive enterprises abandoned by
the capitalists. Everybody previously employed in them would simply have
kept on, and employment would have been as rapidly as possible provided
for those who had formerly been without it. The new product, as fast as
made, would be turned into the public stores and the process would, in
fact, have been just the same as that I have described, save that it
would have gone through in much quicker time. If it did not go quite so
smoothly on account of the necessary haste, on the other hand it would
have been done with sooner, and at most we can hardly imagine that the
inconvenience and hardship to the people would have been greater than
resulted from even a mild specimen of the business crises which your
contemporaries thought necessary every seven years, and toward the last
of the old order became perpetual.
HOW CAPITALIST COERCION OF EMPLOYEES WAS MET.
"Your question, however," continued the doctor, "reminds me of another
point which I had forgotten to mention--namely, the provisional methods
of furnishing employment for the unemployed before the organization of
the complete national system of industry. What your contemporaries were
pleased to call 'the problem of the unemployed'--namely, the necessary
effect of the profit system to create and perpetuate an unemployed
class--had been increasing in magnitude from the beginning of the
revolutionary period, and toward the close of the century the involuntary
idlers were numbered by millions. While this state of things on the one
hand furnished a powerful argument for the revolutionary propaganda by
the object lesson it furnished of the incompetence of private capitalism
to solve the problem of national maintenance, on the other hand, in
proportion as employment became hard to get, the hold of the employers
over the actual and would-be employees became strengthened. Those who had
employment and feared to lose it, and those who had it not but hoped to
get it, became, through fear and hope, very puppets in the hands of the
employing class and cast their votes at their bidding. Election after
election was carried in this way by the capitalists through their power
to compel the workingman to vote the capitalist ticket against his own
convictions, from the fear of losing or hope of obtaining an opportunity
to work.
"This was the situation which made it necessary previous to the conquest
of the General Government by the revolutionary party, in order that the
workingmen should be made free to vote for their own deliverance, that at
least a provisional system of employment should be established whereby
the wage-earner might be insured a livelihood when unable to find a
private employer.
"In different States of the Union, as the revolutionary party came into
power, slightly different methods were adopted for meeting this
emergency. The crude and wasteful makeshift of indiscriminate employment
on public works, which had been previously adopted by governments in
dealing with similar emergencies, would not stand the criticism of the
new economic science. A more intelligent method was necessary and easily
found. The usual plan, though varied in different localities, was for the
State to guarantee to every citizen who applied therefor the means of
maintenance, to be paid for in his or her labor, and to be taken in the
form of commodities and lodgings, these commodities and lodgings being
themselves produced and maintained by the sum of the labor of those, past
and present, who shared them. The necessary imported commodities or raw
materials were obtained by the sale of the excess of product at market
rates, a special market being also found in the consumption of the State
prisons, asylums, etc. This system, whereby the State enabled the
otherwise unemployed mutually to maintain themselves by merely furnishing
the machinery and superintendence, came very largely into use to meet the
emergencies of the transition period, and played an important part in
preparing the people for the new order, of which it was in an imperfect
way a sort of anticipation. In some of these State establishments for the
unemployed the circle of industries was remarkably complete, and the
whole product of their labor above expenses being shared among the
workers, they enjoyed far better fare than when in private employment,
together with a sense of security then impossible. The employer's power
to control his workmen by the threat of discharge was broken from the
time these co-operative systems began to be established, and when, later,
the national industrial organization was ready to absorb them, they
merely melted into it."
HOW ABOUT THE WOMEN?
"How about the women?" I said. "Do I understand that, from the first
organization of the industrial public service on a complete scale, the
women were expected, like the men, if physically able, to take their
places in the ranks?"
"Where women were sufficiently employed already in housework in their own
families," replied the doctor, "they were recognized as rendering public
service until the new co-operative housekeeping was sufficiently
systematized to do away with the necessity of separate kitchens and other
elaborate domestic machinery for each family. Otherwise, except as
occasions for exemption existed, women took their place from the
beginning of the new order as units in the industrial state on the same
basis with men.
"If the Revolution had come a hundred years before, when as yet women had
no other vocation but housework, the change in customs might have been a
striking one, but already at that time women had made themselves a place
in the industrial and business world, and by the time the Revolution came
it was rather exceptional when unmarried women not of the rich and idle
class did not have some regular occupation outside the home. In
recognizing women as equally eligible and liable to public service with
men, the new order simply confirmed to the women workers the independence
they had already won."
"But how about the married women?"
"Of course," replied the doctor, "there would be considerable periods
during which married women and mothers would naturally be wholly exempt
from the performance of any public duty. But except at such times there
seems to be nothing in the nature of the sexual relation constituting a
reason why a married woman should lead a more secluded and useless life
than a man. In this matter of the place of women under the new order, you
must understand that it was the women themselves, rather than the men,
who insisted that they must share in full the duties as well as the
privileges of citizenship. The men would not have demanded it of them. In
this respect you must remember that during its whole course the
Revolution had been contemporary with a movement for the enlargement and
greater freedom of women's lives, and their equalization as to rights and
duties with men. The women, married as well as unmarried, had become
thoroughly tired of being effaced, and were in full revolt against the
headship of man. If the Revolution had not guaranteed the equality and
comradeship with him which she was fast conquering under the old order,
it could never have counted on her support."
"But how about the care of children, of the home, etc.?"
"Certainly the mothers could have been trusted to see that nothing
interfered with the welfare of their children, nor was there anything in
the public service expected of them that need do so. There is nothing in
the maternal function which establishes such a relation between mother
and child as need permanently interfere with her performance of social
and public duties, nor indeed does it appear that it was allowed to do so
in your day by women of sufficient economic means to command needed
assistance. The fact that women of the masses so often found it necessary
to abandon an independent existence, and cease to live any more for
themselves the moment they had children, was simply a mark of the
imperfection of your social arrangements, and not a natural or moral
necessity. So, too, as to what you call caring for a home. As soon as
co-operative methods were applied to housekeeping, and its various
departments were systematized as branches of the public service, the
former housewife had perforce to find another vocation in order to keep
herself busy."
THE LODGINGS QUESTION.
"Talking about housework," I said, "how did they manage about houses?
There were, of course, not enough good lodgings to go around, now that
all were economic equals. How was it settled who should have the good
houses and who the poor?"
"As I have said," replied the doctor, "the controlling idea of the
revolutionary policy at the climax of the Revolution was not to
complicate the general readjustment by making any changes at that time
not necessary to its main purpose. For the vast number of the badly
housed the building of better houses was one of the first and greatest
tasks of the nation. As to the habitable houses, they were all assessed
at a graduated rental according to size and desirability, which their
former occupants, if they desired to keep them, were expected to pay out
of their new incomes as citizens. For a modest house the rent was
nominal, but for a great house--one of the palaces of the millionaires,
for instance--the rent was so large that no individual could pay it, and
indeed no individual without a host of servants would be able to occupy
it, and these, of course, he had no means of employing. Such buildings
had to be used as hotels, apartment houses, or for public purposes. It
would appear that nobody changed dwellings except the very poor, whose
houses were unfit for habitation, and the very rich, who could make no
use of their former habitation under the changed condition of things."
WHEN ECONOMIC EQUALITY WAS FULLY REALIZED.
"There is one point not quite clear in my mind," I said, "and that is
just when the guarantee of equal maintenance for all citizens went into
effect."
"I suppose," replied the doctor, "that it must have been when, after the
final collapse of what was left of private capitalism, the nation assumed
the responsibility of providing for all the people. Until then the
organization of the public service had been on the wage basis, which
indeed was the only practicable way of initiating the plan of universal
public employment while yet the mass of business was conducted by the
capitalists, and the new and rising system had to be accommodated at so
many points to the existing order of things. The tremendous rate at which
the membership of the national industrial army was growing from week to
week during the transition period would have made it impossible to find
any basis of equal distribution that would hold good for a fortnight. The
policy of the Government had, however, been to prepare the workers for
equal sharing by establishing, as far as possible, a level wage for all
kinds of public employees. This it was possible to do, owing to the
cheapening of all sorts of commodities by the abolition of profits,
without reducing any one's income.
"For example, suppose one workman had received two dollars a day, and
another a dollar and a half. Owing to the cheapening of goods in the
public stores, these wages presently purchased twice as much as before.
But, instead of permitting the virtual increase of wages to operate by
multiplication, so as to double the original discrepancy between the pay
of the two, it was applied by equal additions to the account of each.
While both alike were better off than before, the disproportion in their
welfare was thus reduced. Nor could the one previously more highly paid
object to this as unfair, because the increased value of his wages was
not the result of his own efforts, but of the new public organization,
from which he could only ask an equal benefit with all others. Thus by
the time the nation was ready for equal sharing, a substantially level
wage, secured by leveling up, not leveling down, had already been
established. As to the high salaries of special employees, out of all
proportion to workmen's wages, which obtained under private capitalism,
they were ruthlessly cut down in the public service from the inception of
the revolutionary policy.
"But of course the most radical innovation in establishing universal
economic equality was not the establishment of a level wage as between
the workers, but the admission of the entire population, both of workers
and of those unable to work or past the working age, to an equal share in
the national product. During the transition period the Government had of
necessity proceeded like a capitalist in respect to recognizing and
dealing only with effective workers. It took no more cognizance of the
existence of the women, except when workers, or the children, or the old,
or the infirm, crippled, or sick, or other dependents on the workers than
the capitalists had been in the habit of doing. But when the nation
gathered into its hands the entire economic resources of the country it
proceeded to administer them on the principle--proclaimed, indeed, in the
great Declaration, but practically mocked by the former republic--that
all human beings have an equal right to liberty, life, and happiness, and
that governments rightfully exist only for the purpose of making good
that right--a principle of which the first practical consequence ought to
be the guarantee to all on equal terms of the economic basis. Thenceforth
all adult persons who could render any useful service to the nation were
required to do so if they desired to enjoy the benefits of the economic
system; but all who acknowledged the new order, whether they were able or
unable to render any economic service, received an equal share with all
others of the national product, and such provision was made for the needs
of children as should absolutely safeguard their interests from the
neglect or caprice of selfish parents.
"Of course, the immediate effect must have been that the active workers
received a less income than when they had been the only sharers; but if
they had been good men and distributed their wages as they ought among
those dependent on them, they still had for their personal use quite as
much as before. Only those wage-earners who had formerly had none
dependent on them or had neglected them suffered any curtailment of
income, and they deserved to. But indeed there was no question of
curtailment for more than a very short time for any; for, as soon as the
now completed economic organization was fairly in motion, everybody was
kept too busy devising ways to expend his or her own allowance to give
any thought to that of others. Of course, the equalizing of the economic
maintenance of all on the basis of citizenship put a final end to the
employment of private servants, even if the practice had lasted till
then, which is doubtful; for if any one desired a personal servant he
must henceforth pay him as much as he could receive in the public
service, which would be equivalent to the whole income of the would-be
employer, leaving him nothing for himself."
THE FINAL SETTLEMENT WITH THE CAPITALISTS.
"There is one point," I said, "on which I should like to be a little more
clearly informed. When the nation finally took possession absolutely in
perpetuity of all the lands, machinery, and capital after the final
collapse of private capitalism, there must have been doubtless some sort
of final settling and balancing of accounts between the people and the
capitalists whose former properties had been nationalized. How was that
managed? What was the basis of final settlement?"
"The people waived a settlement," replied the doctor. "The guillotine,
the gallows, and the firing platoon played no part in the consummation of
the great Revolution. During the previous phases of the revolutionary
agitation there had indeed been much bitter talk of the reckoning which
the people in the hour of their triumph would demand of the capitalists
for the cruel past; but when the hour of triumph came, the enthusiasm of
humanity which glorified it extinguished the fires of hate and took away
all desire of barren vengeance. No, there was no settlement demanded; the
people forgave the past."
"Doctor," I said, "you have sufficiently--in fact,
overwhelmingly--answered my question, and all the more so because you did
not catch my meaning. Remember that I represent the mental and moral
condition of the average American capitalist in 1887. What I meant was to
inquire what compensation the people made to the capitalists for
nationalizing what had been their property. Evidently, however, from the
twentieth-century point of view, if there were to be any final settlement
between the people and the capitalists it was the former who had the bill
to present."
"I rather pride myself," replied the doctor, "in keeping track of your
point of view and distinguishing it from ours, but I confess that time I
fairly missed the cue. You see, as we look back upon the Revolution, one
of its most impressive features seems to be the vast magnanimity of the
people at the moment of their complete triumph in according a free
quittance to their former oppressors.
"Do you not see that if private capitalism was right, then the Revolution
was wrong; but, on the other hand, if the Revolution was right, then
private capitalism was wrong, and the greatest wrong that ever existed;
and in that case it was the capitalists who owed reparation to the people
they had wronged, rather than the people who owed compensation to the
capitalists for taking from them the means of that wrong? For the people
to have consented on any terms to buy their freedom from their former
masters would have been to admit the justice of their former bondage.
When insurgent slaves triumph, they are not in the habit of paying their
former masters the price of the shackles and fetters they have broken;
the masters usually consider themselves fortunate if they do not have
their heads broken with them. Had the question of compensating the
capitalists been raised at the time we are speaking of, it would have
been an unfortunate issue for them. To their question, Who was to pay
them for what the people had taken from them? the response would have
been, Who was to pay the people for what the capitalist system had taken
from them and their ancestors, the light of life and liberty and
happiness which it had shut off from unnumbered generations? That was an
accounting which would have gone so deep and reached back so far that the
debtors might well be glad to waive it. In taking possession of the earth
and all the works of man that stood upon it, the people were but
reclaiming their own heritage and the work of their own hands, kept back
from them by fraud. When the rightful heirs come to their own, the unjust
stewards who kept them out of their inheritance may deem themselves
mercifully dealt with if the new masters are willing to let bygones be
bygones.
"But while the idea of compensating the capitalists for putting an end to
their oppression would have been ethically absurd, you will scarcely get
a full conception of the situation without considering that any such
compensation was in the nature of the case impossible. To have
compensated the capitalists in any practical way--that is, any way which
would have preserved to them under the new order any economic equivalent
for their former holdings--would have necessarily been to set up private
capitalism over again in the very act of destroying it, thus defeating
and stultifying the Revolution in the moment of its triumph.
"You see that this last and greatest of revolutions in the nature of the
case absolutely differed from all former ones in the finality and
completeness of its work. In all previous instances in which governments
had abolished or converted to public use forms of property in the hands
of citizens it had been possible to compensate them in some other kind of
property through which their former economic advantage should be
perpetuated under a different form. For example, in condemning lands it
was possible to pay for them in money, and in abolishing property in men
it was possible to pay for the slaves, so that the previous superiority
or privilege held by the property owner was not destroyed outright, but
merely translated, so to speak, into other terms. But the great
Revolution, aiming as it did at the final destruction of all forms of
advantage, dominion, or privilege among men, left no guise or mode
possible under which the capitalist could continue to exercise his former
superiority. All the modes under which in past time men had exercised
dominion over their fellows had been by one revolution after another
reduced to the single form of economic superiority, and now that this
last incarnation of the spirit of selfish dominion was to perish there
was no further refuge for it. The ultimate mask torn off, it was left to
wither in the face of the sun."
"Your explanation leaves me nothing further to ask as to the matter of a
final settling between the people and the capitalists," I said. "Still, I
have understood that in the first steps toward the substitution of public
business management for private capitalism, consisting in the
nationalizing or municipalizing of quasi-public services, such as gas
works, railroads, telegraphs, etc., some theory of compensation was
followed. Public opinion, at that stage not having accepted the whole
revolutionary programme, must probably have insisted upon this practice.
Just when was it discontinued?'
"You will readily perceive," replied the doctor, "that in measure as it
became generally recognized that economic equality was at hand, it began
to seem farcical to pay the capitalists for their possessions in forms of
wealth which must presently, as all knew, become valueless. So it was
that, as the Revolution approached its consummation, the idea of buying
the capitalists out gave place to plans for safeguarding them from
unnecessary hardships pending the transition period. All the businesses
of the class you speak of which were taken over by the people in the
early stages of the revolutionary agitation, were paid for in money or
bonds, and usually at prices most favorable to the capitalists. As to the
greater plants, which were taken over later, such as railroads and the
mines, a different course was followed. By the time public opinion was
ripe for these steps, it began to be recognized by the dullest that it
was possible, even if not probable, that the revolutionary programme
would go completely through, and all forms of monetary value or
obligation become waste paper. With this prospect the capitalists owning
the properties were naturally not particularly desirous of taking
national bonds for them which would have been the natural form of
compensation had they been bought outright. Even if the capitalists had
been willing to take the bonds, the people would never have consented to
increase the public debt by the five or six billions of bonds that would
have been necessary to carry out the purchase. Neither the railroads nor
the mines were therefore purchased at all. It was their management, not
their ownership, which had excited the public indignation and created the
demand for their nationalization. It was their management, therefore,
which was nationalized, their ownership remaining undisturbed.
"That is to say, the Government, on the high ground of public policy and
for the correction of grievances that had become intolerable, assumed the
exclusive and perpetual management and operation of the railroad lines.
An honest valuation of the plants having been made, the earnings, if any,
up to a reasonable percentage, were paid over to the security holders.
This arrangement answered the purpose of delivering the people and the
security holders alike from the extortions and mismanagement of the
former private operators, and at the same time brought a million railroad
employees into the public service and the enjoyment of all its benefits
quite as effectively as if the lines had been bought outright. A similar
plan was followed with the coal and other mines. This combination of
private ownership with public management continued until, the Revolution
having been consummated, all the capital of the country was nationalized
by comprehensive enactment.
"The general principle which governed the revolutionary policy in dealing
with property owners of all sorts was that while the distribution of
property was essentially unjust and existing property rights morally
invalid, and as soon as possible a wholly new system should be
established, yet that, until the new system of property could as a whole
replace the existing one, the legal rights of property owners ought to be
respected, and when overruled in the public interest proper provision
should be made to prevent hardship. The means of private maintenance
should not, that is to say, be taken away from any one until the
guarantee of maintenance from public sources could take its place. The
application of this principle by the revolutionists seems to have been
extremely logical, clean cut, and positive. The old law of property, bad
as it was, they did not aim to abolish in the name of license,
spoliation, and confusion, but in the name of a stricter and more logical
as well as more righteous law. In the most nourishing days of capitalism,
stealing, so called, was never repressed more sternly than up to the very
eve of the complete introduction of the new system.
"To sum up the case in a word," I suggested, "it seems that in passing
from the old order into the new it necessarily fared with the rich as it
did when they passed out of this world into the next. In one case, as in
the other, they just absolutely had to leave their money behind them."
"The illustration is really very apt," laughed the doctor, "except in one
important particular. It has been rumored that the change which Dives
made from this world to the next was an unhappy one for him; but within
half a dozen years after the new economic system had been in operation
there was not an ex-millionaire of the lot who was not ready to admit
that life had been made as much better worth living for him and his class
as for the rest of the community."
"Did the new order get into full running condition so quickly as that?" I
asked.
"Of course, it could not get into perfect order as you see it now for
many years. The _personnel_ of any community is the prime factor in
its economic efficiency, and not until the first generation born under
the new order had come to maturity--a generation of which every member
had received the highest intellectual and industrial training--did the
economic order fully show what it was capable of. But not ten nor two
years had elapsed from the time when the national Government took all the
people into employment on the basis of equal sharing in the product
before the system showed results which overwhelmed the world with
amazement. The partial system of public industries and public stores
which the Government had already undertaken had given the people some
intimation of the cheapening of products and improvement in their quality
which might follow from the abolition of profits even under a wage
system, but not until the entire economic system had been nationalized
and all co-operated for a common weal was it possible completely to pool
the product and share it equally. No previous experience had therefore
prepared the public for the prodigious efficiency of the new economic
enginery. The people had thought the reformers made rather large promises
as to what the new system would do in the way of wealth-making, but now
they charged them of keeping back the truth. And yet the result was one
that need not have surprised any one who had taken the trouble to
calculate the economic effect of the change in systems. The incalculable
increase of wealth which but for the profit system the great inventions
of the century would long before have brought the world, was being reaped
in a long-postponed but overwhelming harvest.
"The difficulty under the profit system had been to avoid producing too
much; the difficulty under the equal sharing system was how to produce
enough. The smallness of demand had before limited supply, but supply had
now set to it an unlimited task. Under private capitalism demand had been
a dwarf and lame at that, and yet this cripple had been pace-maker for
the giant production. National cooperation had put wings on the dwarf and
shod the cripple with Mercury's sandals. Henceforth the giant would need
all his strength, all his thews of steel and sinews of brass even, to
keep him in sight as he flitted on before.
"It would be difficult to give you an idea of the tremendous burst of
industrial energy with which the rejuvenated nation on the morrow of the
Revolution threw itself into the task of uplifting the welfare of all
classes to a level where the former rich man might find in sharing the
common lot nothing to regret. Nothing like the Titanic achievement by
which this result was effected had ever before been known in human
history, and nothing like it seems likely ever to occur again. In the
past there had not been work enough for the people. Millions, some rich,
some poor, some willingly, some unwillingly, had always been idle, and
not only that, but half the work that was done was wasted in competition
or in producing luxuries to gratify the secondary wants of the few, while
yet the primary wants of the mass remained unsatisfied. Idle machinery
equal to the power of other millions of men, idle land, idle capital of
every sort, mocked the need of the people. Now, all at once there were
not hands enough in the country, wheels enough in the machinery, power
enough in steam and electricity, hours enough in the day, days enough in
the week, for the vast task of preparing the basis of a comfortable
existence for all. For not until all were well-to-do, well housed, well
clothed, well fed, might any be so under the new order of things.
"It is said that in the first full year after the new order was
established the total product of the country was tripled, and in the
second the first year's product was doubled, and every bit of it
consumed.
"While, of course, the improvement in the material welfare of the nation
was the most notable feature in the first years after the Revolution,
simply because it was the place at which any improvement must begin, yet
the ennobling and softening of manners and the growth of geniality in
social intercourse are said to have been changes scarcely less notable.
While the class differences inherited from the former order in point of
habits, education, and culture must, of course, continue to mark and in a
measure separate the members of the generation then on the stage, yet the
certain knowledge that the basis of these differences had passed away
forever, and that the children of all would mingle not only upon terms of
economic equality, but of moral, intellectual, and social sympathy, and
entire community of interest, seems to have had a strong anticipatory
influence in bringing together in a sentiment of essential brotherhood
those who were too far on in life to expect to see the full promise of
the Revolution realized.
"One other matter is worth speaking of, and that is the effect almost at
once of the universal and abounding material prosperity which the nation
had entered on to make the people forget all about the importance they
had so lately attached to petty differences in pay and wages and salary.
In the old days of general poverty, when a sufficiency was so hard to
come by, a difference in wages of fifty cents or a dollar had seemed so
great to the artisan that it was hard for him to accept the idea of an
economic equality in which such important distinctions should disappear.
It was quite natural that it should be so. Men fight for crusts when they
are starving, but they do not quarrel over bread at a banquet table.
Somewhat so it befell when in the years after the Revolution material
abundance and all the comforts of life came to be a matter of course for
every one, and storing for the future was needless. Then it was that the
hunger motive died out of human nature and covetousness as to material
things, mocked to death by abundance, perished by atrophy, and the
motives of the modern worker, the love of honor, the joy of beneficence,
the delight of achievement, and the enthusiasm of humanity, became the
impulses of the economic world. Labor was glorified, and the cringing
wage-slave of the nineteenth century stood forth transfigured as the
knight of humanity."