Page:Adolph Douai - Better Times (1877).djvu/13

 rulers. These guilds guaranteed each other, and every one of their members an existence of some sort, so that nobody could be entirely helpless who was willing to learn a trade thoroughly, and took care that only skilled workmen should be educated. This latter benevolent provision was likewise destroyed by laws in the interest of Capitalist producers' or destroyed by their competition. The resistance of the working classes was but gradually broken down, so that the new generations of wages laborers grew up in the belief that their wages were a fair equivalent for their work, and that the capitalist employer was fairly entitled to all the additional profit which he might coin out of their work. And there arose a new school of "philosophers," called Political Economists, who tried to demonstrate on Scientific grounds that this could not be otherwise, that it was a divinely ordained and an iron natural law that there should be employing capitalists, and that they should be the benefactors of mankind by employing laborers who otherwise would starve, in advancing all kinds of industry and making them far more productive of merchandise than ever before, and by enriching thus the nations. And this seemed to be proven furthermore by a wonderful development of industry and private riches, when railroads were built, steam introduced into machinery, telegraphs were invented, and a world's commerce sprang up which led to a rapid settlement by millions of workers of countries like ours, and Australia, the Dominion of Canada, Siberia, and others. It was evident that only a concentration of capital could produce such wonders of civilization and progress, and capital began to be looked upon as far more important than labor. There arose a Religion of Mammon which overshadowed all other religions and all human ideals.

Of all this philosophy, which was imbibed by all of us with our mother's milk, not one word is founded in fact or truth, as we are going to show. But before doing so we must overthrow a mistaken popular belief.

It is undoubtedly true that an accumulation of riches is necessary in order to create and uphold our modern civilization. If all the goods and wares which human labor produces, were fully consumed by each generation, there would be no progress in any direction. Some economy for future improvements is practiced in every, even the most rude community, and was known for thousands of years—long before there was any private capital. But it is a mistaken notion that the accumulated riches must be private possessions, in order to benefit a community or a nation; this institution of private capitalism is of a comparatively recent origin, and was, in Northern Europe, hardly known a few