Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/799

Rh mankind. In addition to the security which, it gives to labor and to property, it increases their value as well. "Social growth creates a demand for a constantly increasing quantity of every sort of staple goods. The greater the quantity demanded and sold, the less is the cost of production per unit of product. Not that the mere multiplication of human beings is itself creative of wealth, but that the multiplication of utilities by the productive labor of additional human beings enhances the utility created by each one. It does this by creating the means for more perfectly utilizing all labor and all means of production."

Let us now apply the principle of social duty and the test of social well-being to some of the economic questions of the day. Does our social duty, or the social welfare, require of us that we shall surrender the right of private property, either in whole or in part, as demanded by the communist and socialist? We have already indicated some of the advantages which result to society from the individualistic idea of property. It now remains to point out the disadvantages which would be likely to follow from the adoption of the communistic or socialistic ideal. The first proposes to organize society "so as to distribute the annual produce of the labor and capital of the community either in equal shares or in shares varying not according to the deserts but according to the needs of the recipient."

The decisive objection to this theory is, that it violates the first principles of justice, in that it proposes to distribute rewards, not in accordance with efforts expended, but in accordance to need, no matter how that need was occasioned, whether through the fault or the misfortune of the recipient. The unequal results that are caused by equal freedom may be deplored and voluntarily alleviated; but it would neither be wise nor well forcibly to prevent these results by taking away from the more fortunate, and thus preventing the natural penalty to be visited upon the slothful and the idle. The inevitable result of such a policy would be to decrease the amount to be divided by removing the normal stimulus to industrial activity, and preventing the normal check upon laziness.

So far as socialism involves a similar theory, the same objections may be urged against it, but this word is generally used to cover the proposition of substituting the governmental for private and competitive management. Now, it is the testimony of nearly every competent observer that governmental management is less economical, less energetic, and less plastic than private management. The result of its substitution would be in the long run to lower the product both in quality and quantity, through