Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/151

1S2 What force have they then? It is no doubt promptly answered, "Numbers." Numbers, however, are a source of weakness, not of strength, unless there is ample capital for their support. If there were here large numbers of men who were on the verge of starvation, they would submit to any terms in order to get food. Men who had capital (which we must always remember is subsistence, weapons, and tools) could hire armies of them to do any work which was demanded of them. It is, therefore, only because we all do share in the fruits of the industrial victory and in the power of the capital which has been won, that we have extra power with which to maintain our social conflicts. Democracy constantly vaunts itself against capital, and sets the power of numbers against the power of "money," but democracy, the power of the masses, is the greatest proof of the power of capital, for democracy cannot exist in any society unless the physical conditions of social power are present there in such abundance, and in such general distribution, that all the mass of the population is maintained up to the level below which they can not perform the operations which democracy assumes that they can and will perform.

It is, therefore, the demand for men, consisting in the capital and tools on hand, ready for their support and use, which maintains a number of men on a level where they can struggle to get all the material welfare which the labor market really holds for them, and where they can be democrats and win both full civil rights and a share, perhaps a predominant share, in political power. This is the only correct explanation of the power of the masses in politics and in the labor market; for it is the only one which refers the phenomena to an adequate and appropriate cause whose due connection with the