Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/669

Rh has become more expensive. The workingman has to get more food, clothing, and shelter for his family than he would formerly have had to get; more is expected of him; and he has to pay for such things as the education of his children to a much greater extent than he would formerly have had to pay. In this way the strain upon the workingman has increased. As I understand the complaint, he is no more a free man than before. His energies are mortgaged in advance, and he has all the old difficulty to keep his footing in the world.

Now, whether these complaints are right or wrong, well or ill founded, it is clear that they involve problems of a most vital kind as to the general effect upon the working classes of the conditions of modern civilization. To take the first head of complaint. If it be the case that a rise of rent or the charge for traveling between the place of living and the place of work or similar expenditure is sufficient to deprive workingmen of the advantage of increased money wages, then the congregation of men in cities or in certain parts of cities, where higher money wages are to be obtained than elsewhere, which appear to be the conditions of modern industrial life, would be fatal to improvement. It would be the same with the necessity for working in an exhausting climate. The problem, as stated, is certainly of the gravest kind. The questions raised by the second head of complaint are just as important. If increase of toil, not proportionately remunerated—for which perhaps there can be no proportionate remuneration—comes with the increase of productive capacity and the greater call thus made on the nervous and mental energy of the workman, what is the workingman the better off for all the civilization? Finally, as regards the increased cost of living through a rise in the scale, may it not be the case that such a rise in the scale of living is to some extent what is meant by progress, though the drawback of the slavery of the workers, which some workingmen appear to feel so keenly, remains.? How far is the "slavery" itself avoidable, so long as human nature is what it is, unless at the risk of all civilization perishing? Such problems are obviously of the deepest interest. The desire for leisure, for an ease to a severe strain, in all these complaints, is itself very striking, and may perhaps be held of itself to indicate a change of working-class conditions, as compared with a time when the masses simply endured, or were content to drag on a dull existence, with little color in it, and without hope of change. The whole subject, at any rate, should be well worth considering. What are the facts, and what should be the conclusions regarding them?

Dealing with the first head of complaint, which is perhaps the simplest and most easily dealt with, we must allow it to be