Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/220

206 race—to such an extreme, that he wishes to remove the necessity of providing for themselves not only from those of the next generation until their maturity, but from his most remote posterity, during their entire lives. The increase of inherited property usually takes place without the slightest interference on the part of the owner, and is certainly not the result of his labor. The large and ancient fortunes consist mostly of real estate. The value of the land and of the buildings rises every year and the income from them increases in proportion to the growth of civilization. The products of the manufacturing industries become cheaper, provisions dearer and the dwelling places in the constantly increasing cities more cramped and expensive. Some political economists deny that provisions are growing dearer. But they can only bring sophistical arguments to support their assertion. It is true that in days of more restricted commercial intercourse, famine and starvation were more frequent, and a failure of crops in certain places was succeeded by such an extortionate price for the cereals as would be today inconceivable. The rapidity and extent of the variations in the cost of provisions in the past, has ceased, but the average price of meat and farm produce is constantly rising, and this rise is only retarded not prevented, by the short-sighted policy of skinning the enormous tracts of virgin soil in America and Australia. The day is not far distant when this piratical cultivation of the soil in the new continents must come to an end; the plough will find no more unclaimed lands to conquer. Then the cost of provisions will rise beyond measure, while the continual improvements made in machinery, and the constantly increasing utilization of the forces of nature now and yet to be discovered, will cause the price of all manufactured goods to fall in proportion. This two-fold current in the economic