Page:Adolph Douai - Better Times (1877).djvu/6

 alleged causes are responsible for our ills. Side by side with our country lies the Dominion of Canada, where they have a free-trade policy, and Great Britain and other countries of Europe have the same policy,—and we find there the same depression of business. France and Russia are blessed with protective duties—and stagnation and bankruptcy are there spread as with us. Both the hard-money and the soft-money countries are suffering under an unprecedented crisis. The Republic of Switzerland no less than all the Monarchies of the Old World are complaining of miseries like our own. In short, it is a which we are in. There must, then, a cause prevail all over the world likewise, which is at the bottom of this universal depression; and all the other causes which may be found at work in our own country, can be of less importance only. In some respects we shall find our country better off than some or all the others, in other respects we are worse off than some or all; in fact, it is difficult to show which country fares worst, since each claims to be at the foot of the ladder of thrift.

Now, as all the world is depressed, and as everywhere the majority of the people are growing poorer, there can be no prospect of better times anywhere, there can come no relief from any country, unless the one great cause of depression is everywhere discovered, and the means for its removal is applied.

That cause is no secret. It has been manifest to the eyes of Science for more than thirty years; the present world's crisis has been foretold. But so long as the people are prosperous, the voice of prophetic Science counts for nothing. Let now that voice be heard, if a new prosperity is to return.

This one cause is called Capitalistic Production. What does that expression mean? It means that those who produce all the goods and merchandise are not the owners of their means of labor (lands and real estate, mines, factories, machines, means of transportation, etc.,) but must sell their working force to some owner of those means of labor; the former are called wages laborers, the latter capitalists. The capitalist does not pay to the laborer all the earnings of the labor of the latter, but only a portion thereof; he keeps the rest to reward himself for the loan of the means of labor—or, in other words, he makes the laborer work more hours a day than is needed to refund the outlay of capital and the outlay for wages. And he has the power to do so for reasons to be stated below. For the present it suffices to know that capitalistic production means a lawful state of things, in which the majority of a population are unable to own the means of labor, so as to work on their own account and to keep all their earnings for themselves, but must enter into the employment of some owner of means by which they can make their livelihood, and leave in his hands part of their earnings, called surplus labor, or surplus value.