The assumption, therefore, that "A fall in the average duration of human life" would necessarily occur if the poor were growing poorer, must be taken at least cum grano salis.

5. Another assumption is that if the aggregate of wages "is a larger proportion of the aggregate produce of the country," ," the poor are not growing poorer. This does not follow. Suppose fifty per cent of the entire product goes to 100 laborers, and at a future time seventy-five per cent to 200 laborers; are not the laborers worse off?

If, then, the number of laborers increase faster than production, or should complex industrial and social conditions disproportionately increase the cost of living, the poor might be continually growing poorer, even though they received in wages a larger share of the aggregate production. Numerous other factors enter into the question involved in this assumption which render it inconclusive.

6. Still another assumption is that if the families of the rich and working classes respectively now receive about the same proportion of the national product as they did at the beginning of the century, it shows that the rich are not growing richer, and the poor poorer. Does this conclusion follow? Only on the further assumption that the number of the rich has increased pari passu with the poor; which is contrary to the fact as shown by statistics which Mr. Rae adduces for other purposes.

The whole number of families in England in 1800 was 1,780,000. Of this number 1,117,000 belonged to the working class. In 1883 the whole number of families was 6,575,000, while 4,629,000 of these belonged to the working class. That is, while working families have increased nine per cent faster than rich families, there has been no corresponding increase in their proportion of the national product; while rich families receive the same proportion, notwithstanding their diminished numbers, as at the beginning of the century.

It would be difficult to find more convincing proof that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, than is afforded by these figures adduced by Mr. Rae himself. 1 "Contemporary Socialism," p. 397.

This general consideration is doubtless what Mr. George intends when he says, "I do not mean that the quantity of wealth obtained by laborers as wages is necessarily less, but that the proportion which it bears to the whole product is necessarily less."

Mr. Rae, with a formidable array of statistics, logic, and sarcasın, makes a vigorous assault upon this statement; but it contains, in the sense intended by Mr. George, a most important truth. It is worthy of attention that Mr. Rae endeavors to show that the poor are not only absolutely, but relatively to the rich, growing richer.

But perhaps the most remarkable feature of Mr. Rae's refutation is the following inconsistency. He first declares that this Postulate as to the increase of wealth simultaneously with poverty is a delusion. He says, “We imagine our train to be going back when a parallel train is going faster forward." The real explanation of this social phenomenon is the "unequal rates of progress."

That is, the poor are not going back, but the rich are going forward relatively very much faster. But soon it is boldly asserted, and statistics are introduced to show, that the poor are receiving a larger and larger proportion of the national product; that is, the poor are progressing faster than the rich. Of these parallel trains, first the capitalists', then the laborers' train is going the faster. Of two contradictory propositions one must be true and the other false.

We have dwelt at length upon this part of the discussion because the fallacy in question is deeply seated in the popular mind.

Newspapers are continually comparing the present high rate of wages with the miserable pittances of former times, and it is hastily inferred that the laborers' charge that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, is thereby shown to be untrue.

Writers whose predilections are on the side of capital, good men and women who have merely glanced at the social question, people with little sympathy for the working classes, readily take it for granted that, if wages have

absolutely increased, laborers have no cause for complaint, and the present social disturbance is due to caprice or sheer ugliness.

Let it be understood, then, that the Postulate does not deny that wages have not increased, or that laborers with all other classes of society have absolutely more than ever before; for an author to assume the contrary is to misrep resent Socialism, and to mislead the popular mind.

We admit that the man of straw which the writers we have been reviewing have set up is ably attacked, but the brilliancy of the pugilism should not obscure the fact that the antagonist is a purely imaginary character.

This third Postulate of Socialism, then, according to its intent and meaning, is true. The rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer. Capital is being centralized, and not diffused as Mr. Rae claims.

Dr. Theodore Woolsey, who holds many points in common with Mr. Rae, admits, "This enormous accumulation of capital in a few hands."

It is true, as Mr. George says, "In the United States it is clear that squalor and misery, and the vices and crimes. that spring from them, everywhere increase as the village grows to the city. . . . It is in the older and richer sections of the Union that pauperism and distress are becoming most painfully apparent. If there is less deep poverty in San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind New York in all that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets?" 1

No array of statistics, no subtilty of logic, or brilliancy of rhetoric, can disprove that "the tramp comes with the locomotive, and almshouses and prisons are as surely the marks of 'material progress' as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses, and magnificent churches." Whoever has eyes to see and ears to hear knows that these extremes of wealth and poverty are developing and increasing under the existing industrial régime.

1 "Progress and Poverty," p. 9.
2 Ibid., p. 7.

When, notwithstanding the marvellous increase of production, one-fifth of the population, as is the case in England, are insufficiently clothed,' and nearly half the laborers are children of fifteen years and under, as is the case in Massachusetts (p. 100); when, as we have shown, the annual wages of the average working man at the head of a family are $195.74 less than the sum necessary to support his family (p. 106). and when, at the same time, millionnaires are daily multiplying, it requires no great credulity to believe that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer; and we can well afford to be charitable toward those who despair of any remedy so long as the principles of the capitalistic system remain unmodified.

Professor Walker, after showing that "the degradation of labor" is constantly imminent, and that the so-called economical harmonies of our industrial system are practically impotent to protect the laborer, says, "The tendency of purely economic forces is continually to aggravate the disadvantages from which any person or class may suffer. . . Emphatically is it true that the curse of the poor is their poverty. Cheated in quantity, quality, and price in whatever they purchase, they are notoriously unable to get as much proportionately for their little as the rich for their larger means. Economically speaking, this must ever remain true and operate with increasing power. Moral forces may indeed enter in to restore the equilibrium; . . . but it cannot be controverted that the tendency of purely economical forces is to widen the differences existing in the constitution of industrial society." 2 The italics are ours.

This is a serious arraignment of the capitalistic system. It lays the axe at the root of the tree: it suggests and seems to us to say, that unless the present system is modified the rich will continue to grow richer and the poor poorer. "Moral forces" will doubtless continue to be employed "to restore the equilibrium," but the time is at hand when "moral forces" will not be merely restorative; they will concern themselves not only with counteracting the

1 "The Wages Question" (Walker), p. 58.

2 Ibid., p. 166.

effects of unrighteous institutions, by means of the current capitalized ethical platitudes and pious exhortation to endurance, or crumbs thrown from the table of charity to allay social and industrial irritation, but they will address themselves to the work of prevention; the seed of the woman will cause His followers to bruise the head of the serpent, instead of following him around and stepping gently now and then on the end of his tail, or trying to patch up the gaps which his frightful ravages are making in the social organism.

Equality is preached while inequality is practised. Fraternity, the essence of which is "each for all and all for each," is everywhere extolled, while economic individualism, the essence of which is every man for himself, is practised with unabated zeal.

Liberty is proclaimed, while in, due form of law and even with prayer-book in hand, the strong, the rich, and the wise oppress the weak, the poor, and the ignorant. It is this complacent profession of God and the faithful service of Satan, which is one of the main props of capitalism, and which must be abandoned before Socialism can be realized.

IV. The Wages of Labor furnish a bare Subsistence.

"It is found that, throughout countries comprising a large part of the human race, the wages given and taken, not only provide subsistence so scanty and so little nourishing that the population become stunted and more or less deformed and ineffective in labor, but that, even so, a large part of all who are born die in infancy and early childhood from the effects of privation." - PROFESSOR FRANCIS A. WALKER.

A fourth Postulate of Socialism is that under the wagesystem the Wages of Labor furnish a bare Subsistence.

Marx declared that the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, exploited the laborer "of property, for they treated him as a ware, buying him in the cheapest market for the cost of his production, that is to say, the cost of his living, and taking from him the whole surplus of his work, after deducting the value of his subsistence. Under the system of wage-labor, it could not be otherwise. Wages could never,