if he is prospering by the use of their labor. He has no right to grow rich and powerful while the people by whose labor he is thriving are poor and hungry and hopeless. He has no right to wax fat by consuming their strength and their life. It is possible that some of the disciples of Ricardo may require me to prove these propositions; but I am loath to argue the thesis that a man ought not to be a cannibal. I will venture to regard it as a moral axiom. All talk of cheapest and dearest markets is impertinent in face of these great facts of human degradation and human suffering. The employer is bound to know how the people whom he employs are affected by the work that he furnishes, and by the wages that he pays. If the conditions under which they are at work are unsanitary, so that their vitality is needlessly impaired by their labor, he must correct that evil; if the wage that he pays is so small that they are starving, he must not heap up profits coined from their life-blood, no matter what the market rate of wages may be; if the whole effect of the labor which he furnishes them and of the recompense which he gives them be to rob them of heart and hope and vigor, it is plain that he has no vocation as an employer; let him get this business which he is bungling so fatally out of his hands at once.

The man who enters the labor market as a buyer must beware lest he impair or destroy this vital force on whose healthy action the life and prosperity of the country depend.

Those who recognize no higher law than that of patriotism must feel the force of this obligation. The welfare of the nation requires the highest possible degree of health, vigor, and independence in all its citizens. It is not by the amount of wealth produced, so much as by the productive energy of the whole people, that the state of the nation is most wisely judged. A people's life consists, no more than a man's life, in the abundance of the things which it possesses. It is not commodities that we want so much as men. The main question for the people to ask is not how fast the aggregate of their products is increasing, but rather how it fares with the multitude of their producers. It is just here that the political economy of the Ricardian school diverges from that of later economists. The one fixed its attention wholly on the increase of the national wealth, the other considers more anxiously the increase of the national vigor. Says a recent writer: —

The rapid increase of wealth may be taking place at the cost of the future and to the detriment of posterity; and while the increase of the comforts and enjoyments of life is a good thing, it is not a good

thing that they should be obtained by imposing an intolerable burden on those who come after us. We cannot, then, be satisfied with economic principles which are almost wholly concerned with the greatest production of useful things in the present, but we require principles that shall help us to husband the strength and resources of the nation to the best of our wisdom.1

This is the right end for the nation to keep in view, and it is no less the proper aim of every good citizen. The individual employer must bring his enterprise to this test. The question is not merely whether he is multiplying the abundance of things; the more urgent question is whether he is improving the quality of the citizens. If he can so organize labor as to make the people about him constantly more intelligent, more vigorous in body and brain, more hopeful and more contented, he is a benefactor; if the effect of the labor which he organizes upon the people who perform it is to render them more and more degraded and discouraged and incapable of self-support, he is a malefactor, a public enemy, no matter how useful may be the wares that he produces or how abundant the profits that he hoards.

The labor of the nation is the life of the nation; is that a commodity to be bought in the cheapest market and sold in the dearest?

1 Politics and Economics. By W. Cunningham, D. D.

THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF

SOCIALISM.

THE time has passed when socialism can be dismissed with curses, or threats, or sneers, or interjections of amazement. We may be greatly astonished to hear that men entertain theories so chimerical; we may think it a sufficient answer to call them cranks or lunatics; we may denounce them as freebooters and look about for forcible measures to suppress them; but none of these methods will avail. They are here; they are the natural progeny of existing industrial conditions; and they will not be exterminated by all the hard words we may fling at them, nor silenced by any amount of indifference or contempt.

There is, indeed, a class among these socialists to whom it is difficult to make any reply. The more violent wing of them, whose mouths are full of cursing and bitterness; who constantly threaten us with revolution and with rapine; who march about the streets of our

cities with bands and banners, shouting that our homes are soon to be pillaged and our churches destroyed, these crazy nihilists are not entitled to any consideration at our hands. On their rage discussion is wasted. It is idle to ask them what they mean; they tell us plainly they mean murder and arson; they mean the destruction of the present social order, that anarchy may take its place. To such a frenzy no answer is possible. The kingdom that is based on unreason cannot be overthrown by reason. When these men begin to carry out their threats we shall know exactly what to do with them; and the business will be speedily and thoroughly done. Meantime the best thing to do is to give the utmost publicity to their movements and their outgivings. Few of their speeches and manifestoes are uttered in the English language, but they ought to be reported and translated and disseminated as widely as possible. Let the workingmen of this country hear what are the plans and the threats of these destructionists. They are able to judge for themselves whether the nihilistic programme is practicable and desirable.

It must not, however, be supposed that these miscreants are the exclusive representatives of socialism in this country. Mr. Rae, in the introductory chapter of "Contemporary Social