incomes of that class had decreased.

We regret that more recent figures than some we have given cannot be had in time for the present article, but as already said, we hope before long to present the results of a special study backed by the forthcoming census bulletin, and attempting to weigh judicially the confusing factor introduced into the situation by that part of the rise in prices due to the unprecedented increase in the supply of gold. Were it not for that extraneous circumstance, the showing for the wage-earner's advance would be even greater.

The very recent and probably temporary rise in prices is principally attributed to the unprecedented production of gold, the rush away from the farms to the cities, the rise in wages, and certain wastes in labor. In some trades wages have been forced to a height which, acting on the prices of products, has in many particulars nullified the advance in wages. All raising of wages by limiting labor instead of increasing product, by increasing friction instead of efficiency, by getting more than one's own instead of making one's own larger, must raise prices. So, to put it more in detail, must all such adventitious tricks as limiting apprentices; limiting each laborer's speed to that of the slowest; limiting the kinds of things a man can reasonably do—in short, all limiting of labor below its best efficiency by men or masters, masters remembering of course that to best efficiency reasonable rest, food and other good conditions are essential. So must all making of work by putting onto a job more labor than can accomplish it economically, as by calling a painter, a carpenter and a plumber to do a little job that any one of them could complete alone, and destroying good old product to make a call for new. Under ordinary conditions there will always be work enough for everybody without these efforts to create work artificially, and the extraordinary conditions where there is not enough, are only multiplied and intensified by such efforts.

But despite these influences contributory to the rise of prices in recent years, the improvements in the wage-earner's lot that had been noted for over half a century, have on the whole continued to the present time.

All the forms of industrial conflict are but manifestations of Nature's striving for equilibration—the goal of all evolution; and only with a nearer equilibration of men's fortunes will there be peace. How can it be brought about?

Will a victory of the socialists bring it? Yes, if, by premature action, you make a desert and call it peace, or if you wait until the civic virtues are so far developed that selections at the polls will be as unbiassed and discriminating as those of Nature. But if that time is approaching, it is with leaden feet; and to act as if it had arrived would only delay it. Our steps must be cautious and tentative. That the frightful wastes of both competition and monopoly should be avoided by state management of all industries or even to any great extent by state control, is a far-off ideal—so far-off that men wise enough to be successful are slow to express opinions about it. Beside this ideal, as beside the ideal of the land directly providing the government revenue, stalks, as the extreme fallacy generally stalks beside the truth, the false ideal of the government management or the land tax producing enough revenue to take care of everybody, and doing it, leaving to no one the saving duty of taking care of himself.

The steps already taken toward that ideal, it may perhaps be worth while to glance at. Outside of government's fundamental functions—the maintenance of order and justice—it has also managed the post-office, the coast and geological surveys, the currency, the census, the public schools, the streets, and the care of the sick and incapable. Some highly centralized and highly civilized governments have added the railways, but the privately owned ones, with all their shortcomings, are better; government telegraph service has been cheapened at the expense of the taxpayers, and government telephone service has been abominable. All this has been non-competitive work. There is not yet any sign that government could make a success of competitive industries. All the indications are the other way. Governments have so far been too slow to invent or even adopt improvements, especially where they involve scrapping old plant; and so far, government has generally been an extravagant and wasteful employer.

Unlike many other conflicts, the new Irrepressible Conflict can never be settled by violence: for violence cannot remove that difference in the capacities of men from which the conflict arises. Violence, even violence disguised under votes, may spasmodically lessen the natural differences in property, but they will reappear as long as there are differences in productive capacity, and society secures to the individual a reasonable share of his production. In this and all cases, advantageous exchange of course is productive of additional value; and there is a less frequent exchange which tends not to mutual increase of fortune, but to increased difference in fortune. Should society ever go so far as to take from the inventor, the capital-saver, the work-finder, the work-manager and the exchanger their share of the products which, without them, would not exist, and which are shared in by all, production would fall off, probably below the starvation point.

If, then, the conflict cannot be fought out, how is peace to be attained, even the limited degree of peace enjoyed before the modern unrest? Simply by reducing to a negligible point the difference in the productive powers of men—in their intelligence, energy and reliability; and this by leveling up, not by leveling down, as some of the trades unions, from noble but mistaken motives, attempt.

"Simply!" The general proposition is simple enough, but there are many perplexities of detail. One inheres in the definition of "productive powers." Probably it will serve to call them the capacities of furnishing satisfactions; and to include in satisfactions those produced for oneself as well as those exchanged. In this sense the impecunious philosopher has high productive powers—often so high that he would not exchange them for those of the captain of industry, and he does not often feel discontent enough to make him a very active factor in the Irrepressible Conflict. He does sometimes, though, especially when he feels the pinch of his narrow financial income compared with that of the producer of more material satisfactions. As he is usually a man of gentle make-up, the effect of his narrow income is increased by sympathy with the unfortunate, and sometimes these combined influences send out mighty queer doctrine from professorial chairs. Such phenomena, however, do not controvert the general proposition that the satisfactions of the spirit are to be included among those upon whose more equal production depends the disappearance of the conflict that must be till then irrepressible.

There is no way to peace, then, other than increasing the productive power of the less productive man. Sharing with him material goods, except to tide over emergencies that his powers cannot meet, won't do the trick at all, as has been abundantly proved, from the English poor laws down, and as is going to be proved again before some of our recent "progressive" legislation has run its course.

This is far from saying, however, that legislation really progressive in this direction is impossible. We for our part, however, do not see as much hope in legislation as in improvement in knowledge and understanding and disposition among people generally. That great improvement in disposition may be near at hand, seems indicated by recent experiences among the