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This book was originated published anonymously by the author in 1905 and privately circulated. The 2nd edition includes brief comments from prominent readers, including Hamlin Garland and Lincoln Steffens. The author, and attorney by profession, hoped this book would initiate a national debate over discussed public policies and a commitment to reform, but this did not develop. In addition to the Introductory, Chapter XIV: The Ultimate Remedy is reproduced here as well.

QUESTIONS FOR THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST TO ANSWER

WHEN the real explanation of any puzzling phenomenon in nature is discovered, it is generally found to be simple and easily understood. This does not always insure an immediate admission of the truth, however clear and easy of proof the explanation may be. The mind will not act impartially, when biased by previously conceived ideas, or by long training in the accepted canons of any art, or when warped by self-interest.

The phenomena of the sail of a ship being seen before the hull, of day following night, and of planets changing their places in the sky, were studied by astronomers for centuries before the simple explanation was advanced that the earth is round, turns on its axis, and revolves about the sun. Yet for many years afterwards this theory was disputed in all the great institutions of learning in the world. Its very simplicity, as well as the powerful influence of ecclesiastics, Protestant and Catholic alike, retarded its acceptance; but finally, from the teachings of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, the beautiful theory of the solar system was made the basis of an exact science in place of the jargon which had been solemnly expounded as astronomy since the days of Ptolemy.

And so as to the new system of political economy. It is possible that an underlying cause, controlling the distribution of wealth and accounting for sociological phenomena which have heretofore baffled philanthropists and statesmen, has at last been discovered, and that from it has been evolved a system of political economy as simple and yet as comprehensive as the science which explains the movements of the stars.

Wealth in a civilized community is always produced by a combination of land, capital and labor. Land furnishes the material, capital the machinery, and labor does the work, including the work of planning and superintending. Under normal conditions, wealth, when produced, is divided among the factors entering into its production, a portion of it going to land as rent, another to capital as interest, and the remainder to labor as wages, the latter including compensation for superintendence and also for direction of the use of capital, a service which is often performed by the owner of the capital employed.

Land and rent, capital and interest, labor and wages are the primary factors to be taken into account in the study of the science of political economy. Properly defined from an economic standpoint these factors are all that need be considered in ascertaining the laws which control the production of wealth and fix the ratio of its distribution among land owners, capitalists and laborers. If political economy is a science, it will not only explain and account for the most important of sociological phenomena but it will also show the bearing of existing laws upon such phenomena, and the effect of legislative changes which a comprehensive grasp of the science may suggest.

Legislation must be viewed by the political economist from a cold and purely scientific point of view, without reference to the justice or the injustice of it, but solely as to its effect upon the production and distribution of wealth. Questions of ethics, of compensation, of equitable distribution, of the effect of popular prejudice and passion in applying to practical politics the knowledge obtained from the study of political economy, have nothing to do with the science itself. Such questions are for the moralist and the statesman, not for the student of economic science. His work should neither be embarrassed nor confused by considerations relating to them. Neither should his judgment be biased by interest in any so-called reform or by prejudice in favor of what future generations may perhaps regard as time honored wrongs.*

It is possible that economic science may point with unerring certainty to the necessity of changes in legislation in the interest of an overwhelming majority of people, modifying to some extent now accepted rights of property and affecting the distribution of wealth; but even so, the timid conservative need not be alarmed on this account, nor should he for this reason shrink from a thorough investigation of one of the most important and interesting subjects of human thought. As has ever been the case in the progress of the race toward improved social conditions, such changes as may be found desirable will come slowly, periods of reaction following those of action, and the losses, if any, accompanying unavoidable readjustments of economic conditions will necessarily be largely diffused among all.

It is generally claimed, whether true or not, that wages do not keep pace with the wealth producing power of the laborer. And not only so, but that the disproportion between the total amount of wealth produced and the portion of it going to labor as wages is becoming more and more marked, as, with accelerated ratio, labor-saving inventions increase and multiply. Wages of individual members of the highly skilled class of workers have risen and are undoubtedly higher than ever before. The prizes offered for exceptional ability on the part of such workers are of dazzling magnificence, and the law of the survival of the fittest gives to the child of the poor, when highly endowed by nature, an equal chance with the child of the rich to win in the field of mighty enterprise. The lives of the captains of industry and the self-made men of America tend to prove that this is true. Still, as is always the case with prizes, while all may have equal opportunity to strive for them, success can crown the efforts only of the few. As to the overwhelming majority, labor-saving processes have not as yet relieved them from the necessity of working almost as hard as ever before for a bare living, nor does the struggle for existence appear to be less intense or the fear of the loss of employment less disquieting than when wheat was cut with a sickle and the whir of the bobbin was heard at every door.

Is the failure of wages to advance more rapidly and the frequent inability of laborers to find employment justly attributable to the faults of laborers themselves? The teeming millions, under any condition of society, must perform the manual and clerical work of the world, and if every one working for stated wages were to become a Washington in honesty and a Franklin in ability and thrift, is it clear that the demand for labor would increase thereby? The efficiency of the laborer and the amount of wealth produced would be increased; but this is what labor-saving appliances have already accomplished and what they bid fair to accomplish in far greater degree. In many lines of employment the most idle and trifling of laborers, with the aid of such appliances, produce wealth in far greater quantities than was possible on the part of the most conscientious and intelligent fifty years ago. Why should increased efficiency of all laborers through improvements in their character and ability any more increase the demand for labor and the wages of laborers than increased efficiency produced by improvements in labor-saving appliances?

Is it true that, as population increases, the wages of the poorest paid class of labor naturally tend to fall to the point at which the laborer can barely subsist, and that the wages of all other classes tend to fall in like proportion? If this is the case, what is the reason of it? It would be natural to suppose that the more wealth the working class produced, either by the aid of labor-saving machinery, or by working more hours in a day, or by greater faithfulness toward employers, the higher would wages be for all. Such, however, does not seem to be the result. The impression that a labor-saving device, by dispensing with the work of laborers, to that extent reduces the demand for labor and the wages of the laborer, still lurks in the mind of the working man; and improvements in machinery which increase his capacity to produce wealth are dreaded and feared, instead of welcomed as the means by which his burdens can be lightened and his hours of leisure increased.

If it is true that labor-saving processes do not increase wages in the same proportion in which they increase the laborer's ability to produce wealth, where does the increasing difference between the wealth which he produces and that which he receives as wages go? Who gets it, and what becomes of it, and what is the law which controls its distribution?

Mr. Carroll D. Wright, formerly United States Labor Commissioner, who was usually able to prove by figures that social conditions, no matter how bad, were better in all respects than ever before, states, in "Practical Sociology," that the census of 1800 showed that 5 per cent, of the workers of the United States (about 1,250,000) were involuntarily idle all the time. Why is it that in the midst of unlimited opportunities for work which unused lots and lands afford, such immense numbers of men, willing to work and begging for work, should be unable to obtain it?

In 1880, tenants operated 25 per cent, of the farms in the United States; in 1890, 28 per cent.; in 1900, 35 per cent.; in 1910, 37 per cent. Is it necessary that others should own the land on which the real farmer toils, or that the number of land owning working farmers in America should steadily decrease as wealth increases?

The census shows that the average amount of wealth in the United States in 1850 was $308 for every man, woman and child, while in 1900 it was $1,243, and in 1914 about $1,800 -- a six fold increase. If capital and labor can thus produce wealth in such immensely increasing quantities, why is it that in a free and enlightened country the average wages of the great majority of wealth producers are still little more than barely sufficient for the support of life, while many men, in a dingle lifetime, accumulate millions, tens of millions, and even hundreds of millions of dollars? Mr. Frank A. Fetter, Professor of Political Economy at Cornell University, in "Principles of Economics," states that 1 per cent, of all the families in the United States own more wealth than the remaining 99 per cent. Shall this apparently increasing inequality in the distribution of the wealth in this country be wholly attributed to the superior virtues of men of the class of Rockefeller, Schwab and Carnegie, or to the maladministration of the forces of government? And if to the latter, in part at least, in what respects are the powers of government maladministered?

In England today, where wages are higher than in most of the countries of Europe, and where labor-saving appliances are utilized to the fullest extent, it is claimed that one-fifth of the population is "condemned to a poverty which destroys them physically and spiritually, …they do not have enough to eat, are inadequately clothed, sheltered and warmed in a rigorous climate, and are doomed to a moral degeneracy which puts them lower than the savages in cleanliness and decency." Commenting on this statement from the "People of the Abyss," by Jack London, and referring to the fact that Mr. London's conclusions are supported by those of Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. B. S. Rountree and others who have investigated the matter, The Public, published in Chicago, says: "College settlements, missions, charities and what not can make no perceptible impression on the rising tide of poverty accompanying increase of population and produced by an artificial scarcity of land. 'In the nature of things,' says Mr. London, 'they cannot be but failures. They are wrongly though sincerely conceived. They approach life through a misunderstanding of life, these good folks. …The very money they dribble out in their child's schemes has been wrung from the poor.' Shall thrift be preached? 'It is sheer nonsense,' he replies, 'to preach thrift to the one million eight hundred thousand London workers who are divided into families which have a total income of less than $5.25 per week, one-quarter to one-half of which must be paid for rent.' "

We seem to be approaching similar conditions in the United States. Thus, a correspondent of The Outlook, after describing the dreadful homes in which the striking packing-house employes of Chicago were living, says:

" 'I have never had a child come to me for treatment,' said a local doctor, 'who has not had enlarged glands of the neck. These glands are meant to absorb poisonous matter. These little children live in homes so foul and overcrowded, they take in so much poison that their glands are overworked. They suffer, too, from underfeeding, and hence anaemia. In the blood of a healthy person, the "count" should be between 85 and95. Among my patients, I rejoice at finding the count of 50. I have found it as low as 28.'

"In such homes, it is hard for family life to keep wholesome and pure. 'Any man who has a family of little children here,' said a Polish doctor, 'simply cannot keep it alive on the un-American wage of six or seven dollars a week, especially since the cost of living is rising so high. To keep the home alive on such a wage, the mother, too, must work in the yards, and sometimes she not only works by day, but comes home at night to cook for the six boarders who are crowded with the family into the small four or five room flat. With no money for wholesome recreation, and with the home so overcrowded with boarders, it is natural enough that drinking is so heavy, and that in many cases immigrant wives and daughters grow inured to sexual immorality -- or rather unmorality.' The moral is -- don't have families."

The late Thorold Rogers, professor of political economy of Oxford University, and for many years a member of parliament, in his "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," shows that the golden age of the English workingman as regards wages was back in the fifteenth century, 500 years ago, when he received the equivalent of the carcass of a sheep for a day's work of eight hours. The eight-hour day was then universal; paupers were unknown, and such a thing as an able-bodied man wanting work and unable to find work was unheard of in England. Now 8 per cent of its population in normal times are paupers, and over one-fifth of its people do not have enough to eat and are insufficiently warmed, clothed and sheltered. Yet food, fuel, clothing and shelter can be produced in greater abundance now and with far less expenditure of human labor than ever before.

In the fifteenth century a man could spin five hanks of twist in a week; today a man and a boy spin one thousand hanks in the same length of time. Wheat was garnered with a sickle and threshed with a flail; now the reaper and the threshing machine increase the output of harvest hands twenty fold. Nails were then forged by blacksmiths one by one; now they are so cheap that carpenters can not afford to pick them up when dropped. And so in hundreds of other instances labor saving appliances have increased in like degree the efficiency of labor as well as the ease and rapidity with which the necessities, comforts and luxuries of life can be produced.

But inventions which save labor have not as yet saved the laborer. They have not as yet made it easier for him to obtain the primary necessities of life. His children, often denied the child's birthright to play in the sunshine and under the green trees, by the millions toil long and dreary hours in mines and factories, his women folks, in constantly increasing numbers, compete with men for work which men alone should do. And the employer, no matter how kindly disposed, can seldom afford to pay higher wages. He, too, has to stand the pressure of the upper and nether millstones of our murderous industrial system, which grind alike the average employer and the average employe. And so progress in the industrial arts as to multitudes of average men is now a hollow mockery if not a blighting curse. As to them, inventions have not lessened the intensity of the struggle for existence. They are the victims, not the beneficiaries, of steam and electricity, the mighty forces of nature tamed by man and now often used in the enslavement of fellow man.

We are always suffering chronic dull times; duller some times than at other times, but more or less dull all the time. We grow too much cotton, though millions of people are insufficiently clothed. We produce too much food, though half the population of the world is insufficiently fed -- shoemakers wanting work and millions wanting shoes. And so in every line of industry men are out of work, while other men need the products of their work, which products they would freely buy but for their own involuntary idleness. Why this constant derangement and clogging of the wheels of industry? What, if any, are the obstacles to steady employment for all who want steady employment?

Why do not the rewards of labor, both as to the average employer and the average employe, keep pace with constantly accelerating progress in the arts and sciences?

Why are men willing to work so often unable to find work, and this, too, in the midst of abundant unused natural opportunities for work?

Why is it that in every great and populous center of wealth and civilization a submerged class is found whose condition, as was stated by Huxley, is more deplorable than that of man-eating South Sea Island savages ?

Is it not probable that the evils referred to in these questions are caused by an improper application of the forces of government, and might they not disappear if these forces were understood and properly applied?

Is it not true that our social as well as our physical relations are controlled by natural laws? If so, does legislation in harmony with the natural law tend toward individualism and freedom, or toward socialism and slavery?

In an age in which the phenomena of the physical universe are studied with great eagerness and success, the indifference everywhere shown to a knowledge of the laws which control the social relations of men to one another and the earth on which all must live is a remarkable psychological fact. How strange that we should be more interested in the movements of stars than in knowing the cause of appalling want in the midst of constantly increasing plenty. When strikes, lockouts, boycotts and the hatred and passions engendered by the present wasteful system of industrial warfare shall have passed away, what then?

Why is it that so few sociological experts attempt to answer, even in their own minds, the questions propounded in this chapter? Is it because the questions are uninteresting? Is it because they do not pertain to the science of political economy? How can political economy be other than a dull and profitless study if questions within its scope, vitally affecting the well being of mankind, are ignored?

NOTES

*The author while agreeing in the main with the majority of those to whom he refers as political economists of the new school, disclaims any attempt to reflect the views commonly accepted by them. Those of this school who may be disposed to criticize some of his positions are reminded that the object of this work, as stated on the title page, is simply to show, from the cold standpoint of science, the underlying cause of involuntary idleness and the failure of wages to keep pace with the increasing wealth-producing power of wage earners.

CHAPTER XIV: THE ULTIMATE REMEDY