agitated the same classes abroad. But the essential conditions had all the while been the same here, and the assassination of McKinley illustrated that the great republic was at last as far along in a certain sort of "progress" as the older civilizations. It was the direct consequence of the crazy doctrines preached all the way from Emma Goldman up to some of the most "progressive" of the college professors.

But however discouraging the situation among the wage-earners may be, it is perhaps better than one of ox-like content. The average man is beginning to have ideals—not very high ideals; most of them concern merely his back and his belly; but there are a few which find vent in the orchestras and dramatic efforts at the settlements and village halls; and in the bandstands on the village greens, horrible as generally are the noises made in them. But these awakening ideals also appear in the boycotts among the Danbury hatters, in the vandalisms of the I. W. W., in the Los Angeles dynamiting, and in murders among the Chicago teamsters and Pennsylvania miners, as well as in the assassination of McKinley.

Then there is an intermediate showing of them, neither in art nor in physical force, but in the opinions behind the force, in all sorts of schemes toward the material basis of enlarged life. The people seek short cuts across the gulf, and follow like sheep those who promise them what they want. Just as Jack Cade promised them that every pint pot should hold a quart, so Bryan promised them, virtually, that silver should be as good as gold, and Roosevelt virtually promised them that all judges should be afraid to decide against them in industrial conflicts. True, he explains all that away in the Hibbert Journal. But the people he harangues do not read the Hibbert Journal, and he is astute enough to know it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Irrepressible Conflict is where it is not between two sides wanting the same dollars, but between the real and the ideal. Nearly all the schemes are ideal, eminently desirable, but utterly impossible in any state of human nature that we know or can clearly foresee. Yet they appeal to the sympathies of all, and therefore mislead the judgments of many. We wish we felt as certain as we do of sunrise that in the present stage of American evolution democratic government is not one of these ideals; but we cannot. The American people has just passed its first two measures of distinct and unqualified class legislation, and has been running wild after the two greatest demagogues in history. But fortunately as they both promise substantially the same things—"steal each other's clothes," they tend to neutralize each other.

The sources of the most pronounced conflict between facts and ideals are that ordinarily a man cannot have more than he creates and conserves; that the desire to will torture those who create and conserve little, as long as they have to look upon others who create and conserve much; and that, as long as the difference lasts, those who have little will want to get hold of what is held by those who have much. The things that all men want, but few men have. Those who have not, envy and often hate those who have. Of late this disposition has been greatly intensified by the multitude of rapid fortunes from the new control of Nature and from the trusts, and the parvenu ostentation accompanying them. It makes a difference whether princely state surrounds the king's son, or one's own pal of yesterday.

Worst of all, so many of these fortunes have been obtained wrongfully that they intensify the impression that all fortunes above the average have.

Now the fundamental question in this conflict is: to whom does that money rightfully belong? Among wise people who are not economists, the width and profundity of the ignorance on this point tends to dissipate the current skepticism regarding the miraculous.

The fortunes wrongfully acquired are exceptional and abnormal. Nearly all comfortable fortunes come from legitimate industry. Within a generation the economists have got the question of to whom they rightfully belong, into the qualitative stage of settlement. The quantitative stage is a much nicer and more complicated problem, and varies more with different cases. Possibly the first germ of the solution appeared a generation ago in a sentence in Marshall's "Economics of Industry."

It was: "The earnings of management of a manufacturer represent the value of the addition which his work makes to the total product of capital and industry." The same holds true of a farmer, miner, transporter, merchant or anybody else who directs industry. It is more easily recognized in the case of the inventor. Francis A. Walker took up this theme and gradually demonstrated that so far from the employer's profits being wrung out of the wage-earner, they are generally greatest where wages are highest, and proceed from devices and economies effected by the employer, and would not exist without them. This is being constantly illustrated by some employers succeeding where others have failed, and failing where others have succeeded. In support of the general thesis Walker says: "Discussions in Economics and Statistics," (Vol. I., pp. 367-75):

"Looking at the better employers of whatever grade ... we note that they pay wages, as a rule, equal to those paid by those employers who realize no profits, or even sustain a loss; and that, indeed, if regularity of employment be taken, as it should be, into account, the employers of the former class pay really higher wages than the latter class. We note, further, that the successful men of business pay as high prices for materials and as high rates of interest for the use of capital, if the scale of their transactions and the greater security of payment be taken, as it should be, into account.

"Whence, then, comes the surplus which is left in the hands of the higher grades of employers, after the payment of wages, the purchase of materials and supplies, the repair and renewal of machinery and plant? I answer, This surplus, in the case of any employer, represents that which he is able to produce over and above what an employer of the lowest industrial grade can produce with equal amounts of labor and capital. In other words, this surplus is of his own creation, produced wholly by that business ability which raises him above and distinguishes him from, the employers of what may be called the no-profits class.

"... The excess of produce which we are contemplating comes from directing force to its proper object by the simplest and shortest ways; from saving all unnecessary waste of materials and machinery; from boldly incurring the expense—the often large expense—of improved processes and appliances, while closely scrutinizing outgo and practicing a thousand petty economies in unessential matters; from meeting the demands of the market most aptly and instantly; and, lastly, from exercising a sound judgment as to the time of sale and the terms of payment. It is on account of the wide range among the employers of labor, in the matter of ability to meet these exacting conditions of business success, that we have the phenomenon, in every community and in every trade, in whatever state of the market, of some employers realizing no profits at all, while others are making fair profits; others, again, large profits; others, still, colossal profits. Side by side, in the same business, with equal command of capital, with equal opportunities, one man is gradually sinking a fortune, while another is doubling or trebling his accumulations....

"If this be correct, we see how mistaken is that opinion too often entertained by the wages class, which regards the successful employers of labor—men who