Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/184

172 is a question worth considering whether political freedom and industrial slavery represent an ideal with which any people may worthily remain content. An industrialism is conceivable, with hours so reasonable and conditions so wholesome that the lives of the workers shall be as beautiful as the wares they produce. Whether this will result from the present competitive system carried to its extreme, or from a substituted co-operative system, remains to be seen. In the atelier, the main process in operation is the transformation of moving, human energy into the stored-up



energy represented by a highly wrought product. One may be pardoned, then, if his thought turns occasionally upon the source of the energy, the man. It is not an agreeable reflection to present to the reader that the majority of our brothers in large cities are living bitter, hateful lives, but I believe that it is a true one. It is perhaps well to entertain the thought for a moment, since our people, presumably sympathetic and compassionate, not only