Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/743

Rh Notwithstanding the interesting nature of these questions, they are seldom discussed, and Mr. Sidgwick is almost alone in a systematic examination of the third topic. Keeping in mind that no age has seen such vast accumulations of private wealth as the present, we take up the questions in order:

I. At first sight it is not clear why some few men apparently not much distinguished from the rest should gain such disproportionate rewards in wealth and power. Nearly all our great millionaires began as poor men, and in a few years they are possessed of incomes up among the millions. Many find this plainly unjust, and a condemnation of our entire economic system. Even though the laborer has also gained both in money-wages and in their purchasing power, as well as in decreased hours of labor, this is not sufficient; his share in the increase is unfair. The capitalist gets an increasing share of the produce, and grinds the faces of the poor.

It might dampen the ardor of these reformers to reflect on the well-known fact that the average remuneration of capital in this country is not more than five per cent, as we may see in the fact that money can be borrowed on unquestioned security for much less. Here, however, we have to account for the extraordinary cases. There is nothing particularly difficult about it. As in armies we find man set over man and grade over grade, despite apparent equality, so in an age of commercial militancy, of universal competition and rapid transition, we find that a similar inequality is created.

For though industrialism is in many ways to be sharply contrasted to militancy, they agree in this—that in each there is a struggle for existence. And when by improvement in the means of competition this struggle becomes more constant and severe, and division of labor arises through the necessity of each to rely on his special power, there arises the same need of management and direction, and the same high reward is necessarily paid for it. Thus, the democratic civilization of our early history, whose ideal was that every citizen should own at least "forty acres and a mule," has given way to the modern militant industrial system. The application of steam to transportation led to universal competition, in which the strong waxed stronger and the weak became still weaker, at least relatively, or else sought pastures new. Man was set against man, town against town, and State against State; for States are competitors for the hire and business of the great world as men are competitors for the service of employers or in commerce for the service of their communities. The men and towns and