Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/160

Rh that those who are here can marry, can support a family, and can at the same time save capital, or, if they like it better, they can work fewer hours a day. Hence we find our age full of discussion on these matters; but does any one suppose that men could discuss emigration, family comfort, politics, wages, rates, and eight-hour laws, unless there were conditions which brought these things within the range of possibility? The great question then is, what are those conditions? But in the discussion it hardly seems to be noted that they exist and that in them lies the key of the whole matter. If this view is correct, a social science which investigates those conditions is the only social science which has value; history will have its use as serving that science, and if it does not do so it only degenerates into a new form of scholasticism.

The acquisition and use of unlimited supplies of new land has made living easy; it has taken all terror from the increase of population — in fact, has made it a help and a blessing; it has made it easy to accumulate capital and has produced leisure for invention. This increase of power has, consequently, produced expansion of being in every direction and in every form.

The extension of acreage lowers the value of land and of land products against all other things, including services; it increases food products and raw materials, that is, subsistence and materials for laborers. Inventions increase the power of machines and multiply through them all the forms of clothing, furniture, fuel, lights, literature, etc. All this makes capital abundant and interest low; it also makes real wages high, and, by reducing prices, increases the purchasing power of money wages. The conjuncture is, therefore, all in favor of wage-earners and non-capitalists. They have