Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/811

Rh indolent and improvident. The industrious and economical poor man is better off to-day than if laboring-men all through the past could have had what so many of them are at present clamoring for. This method of attaining the good does not, of course, come up to the standard of perfection; it is not harmonious and artistic; it is very far from being equitable, if tried by an ideal standard; still, it is the best possible—human nature being what it has been and still is, this taint of evil is the inevitable condition of compassing the good.

Let us suppose that capitalists and managers get less, and the workers more, of the common products. So far this would seem to be greater justice than now obtains. Suppose further—which, however, is absurd—that just as much will now be saved for business as before, and that it is in the hands of the working-people themselves for business purposes. Can they make it tell in business as it does in the hands of men whose shrewdness and skill bring them to the front by a sort of natural selection? Would there not be a great want of unity and concert of action among the million holders of this surplus to render it comparatively inefficient for the purposes of production? Would it not come to pass that, through the misapplication of capital, the masses of the people, in drawing a larger proportion of the common earnings, would soon find a smaller aggregate to draw from? Is it not plain that here is a case in which seeming justice may defeat justice, and cause the working-man after a brief triumph to fall into a worse condition than before? And this would be true, even on the supposition that the proletariat would save as much as the accumulating classes now save; but they would not so save—they would consume; there would be less capital, and business would suffer a decline, to the detriment of all classes. It is one of the difficulties of reform that a seeming good may react into evil.

Agitators do not sufficiently keep in mind that business can not be carried on without capital, and that this capital can be had only by self-denial and by saving. Capital is not a providential gift bestowed like showers of manna from heaven. Only the industrious, enterprising, economical, well-managing, are certain to acquire capital and retain it. In making investments for production by the employment of labor, there are very generally risks to run, and these risks the party responsible for the business must wholly assume. The laborer as such has no capital to fall back upon, and can not share in losses. Is it right, therefore, that he should receive so much of the products that there would be little or nothing left for the responsibility and enterprise of management? Take two men fifty years of age: A has worked hard, lived economically, invested wisely, and saved more or less every year; he is now a capitalist and employer. B has used up his earnings as he went along, and is now working for A. Has he any just right to insist that A shall forget the past, ignore its results,