Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/723

Rh mental, or physical competitors" to whom he refers to be satisfied with relatively inferior wages. When all are fed from the same trough, it will require much grace to be content with less than an average share. But perhaps grace will much more abound under the socialistic régime than it does amid the bustle and strife of our present system. There are, however, some special points to be noticed in connection with our correspondent's theory. We can not see that the parallel between the establishment of democracy and the suppression of private capital holds good. A government of any kind is either carried on in the interest of the people or it is not. If it is, and if it has not yet assumed a democratic form, the people are entitled, when the proper moment has come, to say: We are quite capable of managing this business of government ourselves, through representatives whom we shall freely elect; and we release you—kings, potentates, nobles—from all further responsibility on our behalf. "If it is not carried on in the interest of the people, then it is a mere tyranny, against which the people have a right to rebel the moment they feel strong enough to do so. In seizing the government they are seizing that which can not belong by right to any private individual. The case is altogether different when it comes to seizing capital. Without aiming at a too scientific definition, we may say that capital is the unexpended portion of each person's earnings. He who takes that takes what the individual has a natural right to hold and to employ. It is not customary to argue that, because the time comes when a young man assumes the direction of his own actions, and no longer trusts implicitly to paternal advice, he should, to complete his emancipation, proceed to possess himself of the old gentleman's worldly means. Yet socialists tell us that political emancipation should logically be followed by the appropriation of private capital.

To take another point. There is waste of capital involved, no doubt, in many forms of competition; but the régime of competition, or, as we would say, of freedom, is on the whole favorable in the highest degree both to the production and to the conservation of capital; seeing that the interests and the energies of all are constantly engaged for both objects. To be sure, there is clashing of interests here and there; but every one is on the alert to do his best for that portion of capital which he individually holds; and, as a result, capital is continually on the increase. The proof, if proof were needed, is found in the fact that the rate of interest tends continually to fall while the rate of wages tends to rise. Is it at all certain that under a socialistic management of capital the same phenomena would be witnessed? Is it certain that the energy activity, and resource of the workers of the community would stand at the same level at which they do to-day? He who says that they would, affirms that of which he has no knowledge, and which the experience of the world so far can not be said to render probable.

What governments do under present conditions is to take from the citizens a portion of their earnings to expend upon works in which the interest of all is concerned, and which require to be carried out with absolute uniformity of principle and method. Foremost in importance among the necessary works of government is the administration of justice, including the protection of life and property. Law must be the voice of the community; individuals can not be left to make it or apply it