ought to feel the weight of the obligation resting on him to establish between himself and his workmen a relation in which it will be natural for them as well as for him to obey the Christian law.

As a consequence of this economical readjustment better relations would be established between all classes in society, and sympathy and kindliness would take the place of suspicion and alienation. The iron law of wages would be broken, and the yawning chasm between rich and poor would be bridged by goodwill.

The principal remedy for the evils of which socialists complain is to be found, therefore, in the application by individuals of Christian principles and methods to the solution of the social problem. The notion that the state can cure all these mischiefs is not to be entertained. Nevertheless, though the state cannot do everything, there are some things that it can do, and must do. The limits of governmental interference are likely to be greatly enlarged in the immediate future. New occasions bring new duties; the function of the state must be broadened to meet the exigencies of our expanding civilization. We may go far beyond Mr. Spencer's limits and yet stop a great way this side of socialism. Out of unrestricted competition

arise many wrongs that the state must redress, and many abuses that it must check. It may become the duty of the state to reform its taxation, so that its burdens shall rest less heavily upon the lower classes; to repress monopolies of all sorts; to prevent and punish gambling; to regulate or control the railroads and telegraphs; to limit the ownership of land; to modify the laws of inheritance; and possibly to levy a progressive income tax, so that the enormous fortunes should bear more, instead of less, than their share of the public burdens. The keeping up of such fortunes is against public policy, and the state has the same right to discourage them that it has to inspect factories or ships, to tax saloons, or to prohibit the erection of a slaughter-house upon the public square. By some such measures the state may clearly indicate its purpose, while carefully guarding the essential liberty of its citizens, to restrain those oppressive evils which grow out of the abuses of liberty; and, while protecting property and honoring industry, to check, by every means in its power, those tendencies by which society is divided into the two contrasted and contending classes of plutocrats and proleta

rians.

IS IT PEACE OR WAR?

THE question of peace or war between capital and labor includes several questions: whether there is at the present time peace or war between these two great powers, and if it is war, what they are fighting for; whether war is better than peace, and if not, how the war is to be brought to an end and peace is to be made, whether by capital subjugating labor, or by labor subjugating capital, or by finding some way of uniting their interests.

The question whether peace or war now exists in the industrial realm need not detain us long. The answer is too easy. Optimists have been diligently assuring us, for a score of years, that there was no such thing as a labor question, except in the minds of a few crazy agitators; that everything was lovely in the industrial world, and constantly growing lovelier; that those beautiful harmonies of the French economist were sure to make everybody rich and contented and happy very soon. Few are now

heard talking in this strain. Everybody admits that the relations between the working classes and their employers are extremely uncomfortable; the strikes, the lockouts, the boycotting, the rioting here and there, make up a large share of the telegraphic news in our daily papers. The state of industrial society is a state of war, and the engagement is general all along the line.

This state of things is the natural result of a system of pure competition. Competition means conflict. The proposition is disputed, but if any philosopher wishes to test its truth by a scientific experiment, let him gather a crowd of twenty urchins together upon the sidewalk and address them as follows: "Here is a handful of coppers, which I propose to divide among you, and I wish to tell you how I am going to make the distribution. To begin with, you have all got to stand back on the other side of the curbstone; then I shall heap the coppers on that flat stone; then, when I give the word, let each one of you come forward and take what he can get. The only principle, my dear young friends, that we can recognize in the distribution of this fund is the principle of competition. Neither justice nor charity can have anything to do with it. Under competition, the political economists tell us, everybody gets a reasonably

fair share. All ready! One, two, threegrab!" If our philosopher will stand by now and watch his experiment, he will see reasons for believing that competition is not uniformly a beneficent force. In the first place, it will turn out that the biggest boys will begin at once, while he is talking, to crowd themselves up nearest to the curbstone, and nearest to the pile of coppers, pushing back the smaller boys. Likely enough they will have a fight for this vantage-ground while he is making his speech explaining the beauties of competition. When he gives his signal they will rush in at once, trampling on one another, the strongest, of course, seizing the largest share, and many of the little boys getting only a stray copper or two that may be dropped from the hands of their more greedy and powerful companions as they make off with their booty. This is the way that competition works. The whole story of the competitive régime is outlined in this thumb-nail sketch of the curbstone financiers. And the law of war

Competition means war.

is the triumph of the strongest.

What is it that the scientific people tell us always happens in the struggle for existence? Is it not that the strongest individuals and the strongest races kill off the weakest? Competition is the struggle for existence, which is the