Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/17

Rh could, if it would, make all men prosperous; and therefore should, in some way not yet clearly defined by anybody, arbitrarily intervene and effect it. And this feeling, so far as it assumes definiteness of idea and purpose, constitutes what is called "socialism."

The following additional results—industrial and social—which have been attendant upon the world's recent material progress are also worthy of consideration by all desirous of fully comprehending the present economic situation, and the outlook for the future.

—The average rate of wages, or the share which the laborer receives of product, has within a comparatively recent period, and in almost all countries—certainly in all civilized countries—greatly increased. The extent of this increase since 1850, and even since 1860, has undoubtedly exceeded that of any previous period of equal duration in the world's history.

Mr. Giffen claims as the result of his investigations for Great Britain, that "the average money-wages of the working-classes of the community, looking at them in the mass, and comparing the mass of fifty years ago with the mass at the present