Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/137

Rh whole industrial system may not be shaken to its base by the introduction of some new force or process more revolutionary in its effects than all that has gone before.

Evidently what is wanted for the production and maintenance of the highest form of social well-being is not only a large command over the forces of Nature, but a reasonable measure of stability in the general conditions of life. The lack of such stability entails evils not only material but moral; and we are inclined, after a careful reading of Mr. Wells's pages, to believe that in our present social state the latter predominate over the former. If the question be asked, Have the working-classes, in point of fact, endured greater hardships during the last fifteen years than during the previous fifteen, or in past times generally? the answer, according to Mr. Wells, must be an emphatic No. We may, indeed, go further on the strength of the facts he furnishes, and say that, up to the present, wages have been pretty steadily rising, while the purchasing power of money has been increasing. As a result of this double improvement in the remuneration of labor, the whole standard of living among the wage-earners has advanced. The skilled mechanic or artisan can today enjoy more both of comfort and of luxury than citizens of substantial means could have done a generation or two ago. On the other hand, if we turn to the capitalist class, and ask whether their losses and perplexities have depressed their mode of living, or diminished the outward and visible marks of their prosperity, we read the answer in the handsome streets of all great cities, and their suburbs. M. de Laveleye remarked a few years ago, with special reference to continental Europe, that-one of the most conspicuous facts of the age was the vast increase in middle-class wealth and luxury; and certainly the phenomenon challenges attention at least as powerfully in this

country. The very "strikes" that have marked our time have in themselves afforded evidence of general prosperity, showing, as regards the strikers, the possession of resources on which they could fall back during the period of their voluntary idleness, and, as regards the employers of labor, an ability to withstand the derangement of business which the strikes must have entailed. The truth would therefore seem to be, that our "economic disturbances" have involved more of unrest and anxiety than of actual suffering. Society has been, naturally enough, in a nervous, excited condition, and men's minds have been filled with apprehensions of evil that fortunately has not yet come to pass. Such a condition is not free from danger. Man does not now, and never did, "live by bread alone." He lives also by formed habits, permanent associations, settled views, well-grounded hopes. Takeaway any of these, and you not only unclothe but actually unbuild average human nature. It is not enough to supply bread. The bread-eater, if he is to thrive in mind as well as in body, must be enabled to feel that it is not all a matter of chance whether he gets the bread or not, but that there is some regular provision in the general scheme of things whereby his labor and thought can be transmuted into sustenance for himself and those dependent on him.

This view of the matter can not, we think, receive too much attention. Some one, rising from the perusal of these articles, may be disposed to exclaim: "Oh, it's all right after all. I see that wages are better than they used to be, and the working-classes enjoy a great many comforts they were not accustomed to formerly, and there is more work to be done in the world than there ever was before. Why, everything is splendid!" No, everything is not splendid. On the material side we are prospering, but the deep unrest that pervades society is not a