Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/596

 the United States Bureau of Labor (1886) have assigned a prominent place; and which the "Trades-Union Congress of England has by resolution accepted as being, in the opinion of the workmen of England," the most prominent cause, namely, "over-production." In a certain sense there can be no over-production of desirable products so long as human wants for such products remain unsatisfied. But it is in accordance with the most common of the world's experiences, that there is at times and places a production of most useful and desirable things in excess of any demand at remunerative prices to the producer. This happens, in some instances, through lack of progress or enterprise, and in others through what may be termed an excess of progress or enterprise. An example of the first is to be found in the circumstance that in the days of Turgot, the French Minister of Finance under Louis XVI, there were at times in certain departments of France such abundant harvests that wheat was almost unmarketable, while in other and not far-distant sections of the country there was such a lack of food that the inhabitants perished of hunger; and yet through the absence of facilities for transportation and communication of intelligence, the influence of bad laws, and the moral inertia of the people, there was no equalization of conditions. An example of the second, intensified to a degree never before experienced, is to be found in the results of the improvements in production and distribution which have been made especially effective within the last quarter of a century. A given amount of labor, operating through machinery, produces or distributes at least a third more product on the average, in given time, than ever before. Note the natural tendency