Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/138

128 healthy symptom; and before we take our ease we should see what can be done to moralize the existing conditions of industrial life, and to give to the world's workers a conviction that the action of natural and social forces is making for their good and will continue to do so in the future. How is this to he done? By any form of government action? Upon this point Mr. Wells does not give us all the light we should desire to have; but we thank him for having shown, in the matter of the sugar bounties and drawbacks and kindred measures, the futile character of government interference with trade. On the score of restrictive tariffs much might have been said. If the little, comparatively speaking, that has been done by different countries to force their sugar upon other countries has been productive of so much disturbance as Mr. Wells describes, to what a vast extent must the natural course of industry and commerce have been interfered with by the hostile tariffs that different nations have erected in order to shut out from their markets the cheap goods that other communities were prepared to supply! Had the commerce of each country been required to adapt itself simply to the natural conditions established in the world, there would have been far more of permanence and less of uncertainty in all business arrangements; and a natural equilibrium would have resulted, the benefits of which would have been shared by all countries alike. But with tariffs enacted either by irresponsible autocrats or by more or less purchasable majorities of representative assemblies, wholly incalculable elements have been introduced, with results as grievous to commerce in its broad aspects as would be the shifting of the stars to navigation. But more injurious still than any actual financial loss resulting from government interference has been the habit which has thus been cultivated in most countries of depending on the government or the legislature, not only to control the channels of trade, but to secure the national prosperity. With all our boasted intelligence we make an absolute fetich of the state. "Whence have these men this wisdom?" might well be asked regarding the men who undertake to make our tariffs, and say just how much of this or that foreign article we shall import, and how much we shall pay for a similar native product. But few, comparatively speaking, ask the question: the assumption is general that the man who is elected to Congress and placed on a committee is thereby invested with a wisdom and knowledge almost supernatural in their range.

For our part, we do not share the delusion. We do not believe that any man or body of men is wise enough to be intrusted with the task of fettering the industry of a nation or prescribing the extent to which its citizens shall trade with other nations. We do not believe that election to any representative assembly whatever confers such wisdom. Holding such views, we are far from looking to government for any help in the present crisis. The only help, as we conceive, that the governments of the world could give would be to cease their interference with many departments of life which they now undertake to control. Leaving, then, every form of state action out of the question, we believe that much good might be done by the dissemination in a condensed and striking form of such facts as Mr. Wells has so industriously gathered; and we learn with pleasure that it is that gentleman's intention to republish his essays in book form, with such modifications as will best adapt it to popular usefulness. If the working-classes could be brought to understand the action of economic and social laws, and if it could be made clear to them that up to the present their own position had been steadily improving, they surely would not be