Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/258

246 their strength and injuring their health for the same money only that they get now. They would be no richer, and would drive their muscles and frames at a wearing pace not consistent with the laws of health.

But neither theory is true. Instead of there being a given amount of wants, as alleged, wants are found to be largely the result of means.

If the community have little, they require little, but as they become wealthy they spread out in proportion. People can't hire labor if they are poor, and hence to make a demand for labor somebody must be rich enough to pay for it. This is perfectly plain. Nobody goes in search of a poor man for employment, only in the last resort. It follows that whatever tends to wealth-making tends to want-making, and to an increase in the demand for labor and the supply of employment. On the other hand, whatever tends to a diminution of wealth tends necessarily to a diminution of the means to pay for labor, and also to less disposition to hire others to do the work. I think that these positions can not be successfully combated, and if not, we have a criterion by which to determine in what direction to look for improvement in the condition of the laboring man. Surely we shall never find it in anything that tends to a diminution of resources.

What is stated above in relation to wants being increased in proportion to the increase of wealth does not hold good in some individual cases, but in general it does, and it holds good to that extent that the common people everywhere accept it as a basis of action without stopping to reason about it at all, it is so natural. It is the reason why people leave a country like Ireland and come here. They expect to find dollars so plenty that, according to the old story, they do not deem it worth the while to pick up the quarters they may see lying on the wharf where they land. The same thing takes the smart boys from the poor country districts and small villages to the large towns and cities. They feel that they must get to places where there is an abundance of money. They do not fail to note that a man who has ten thousand dollars will build a three thousand dollar house, while the man with thirty thousand will build a house costing twelve thousand probably," and that calls for four times the labor of the other. They must get where such men abound, and where there are hundred-thousand-dollar men and millionaires, men who will build palaces, railroads, great warehouses, and ships. Poverty-stricken places are given a wide berth by all sensible folk, and so universal is the practice that we are not left in doubt as to the meaning of it.

Now wealth is principally the product of labor. Some get it by their own labor, and some by the labor of others; but however got by the individual, it is the result of personal or machine