you must have suspected before this that, so far as the rapid accumulation of wealth is concerned, our society was in that stationary condition so much dreaded by your economists as the end of all material progress. an assumption among your thinkers that any permanent diminishment of the production of wealth is the forerunner of disaster to society, is one of those mistakes easily accounted for by the surroundings of your present stage of development. your experience teaches you that where the wealth producing energies are in the highest stage of action, your civilization shows all its other forces equally advancing; and where on the other hand, capital and wealth are restricted, there is a state of general stagnation. these opposite conditions, however, you will find to be, more than anything else, the result of difference in degrees of intelligence, knowledge, and consequently ambition. your aims, even the higher ones, are so indissolubly connected with wealth as the means by which most of them are promoted, that your[pg 235] incentives to acquire riches have become a part of your intellectual constitution. where the penalty of a straightened financial condition is the forfeiture of everything which makes life desirable, even a denial of the opportunities of association with the better class, and a surrender of offspring to the degradation and contempt which comes of limited knowledge, it may reasonably be expected that the struggle for wealth would be keen. equally as an incentive also are the innumerable avenues of gain, which are everywhere open for the investment of capital, and the remarkable profits which accrue to keep up the spirit of money-making adventure. you will certainly agree with me that this crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels in the attempt to get money is not the best possible form or type of society: more especially since you are not all fairly and evenly equipped in this struggle, the mass of your people reap no benefit from it, and its result is only to double up the incomes of the few.
stagnation is not necessarily a condition of the stationary state, as many of your writers lead you to believe. it is merely a revolution in the aims of society, brought about by changes which are inevitable, and[pg 236] which your civilization is sooner or later bound to reach. every newly applied science and invention, and above all every acre of land brought under cultivation, render this period so much dreaded by you more remote; but you will come to it all the same. it will merely be a using up of all the resources of capital to rapidly multiply itself. during your present progressive period, so far as that term is applicable to the speedy gathering in of wealth, your society presents to us an aspect of mercenary abandonment beyond anything we have ever experienced ourselves, and with a full knowledge of the end that will come we look forward with a high degree of interest to that time when you will arrive at the stationary condition.
as you approach that period where the diminished profits of capital will discourage the great activity and aggressiveness which now characterize it, some very great changes will gradually be brought about. assuming that labor will continue to enlighten itself it will slowly change its relations with capital, so that in the end instead of being below, as it is now, it will be on top, as with us. many of the ways by which wealth now multiplies itself will be shut off, and with its acquirement no longer indispensable to the honors of life, and the difficulties[pg 237] of its attainment in any large volume increased, society will not be given so intensely to its individual accumulation. your intellectual activities will be turned more in the direction of other motives. to repair waste and provide for the necessities of the living will be about all that is left to employ your industries, and there will be enough for capital to do within these limits to moderately enlarge itself; while yet within this narrowed field, limited wealth will be able to provide itself with income enough to sustain and reward habits of prudential saving. although great wealth will be exceedingly difficult to obtain, a fair competency will be within the reach of all; since labor coming to the front, owing to the weakened powers of wealth, will assume its deserving place in the forces of economy and legislation, and will demand and receive a fairer share of the profits of industry.
after the advance of civilization and knowledge beyond a certain period, the ambitions and necessities of a people will furnish abundant incentives to keep society in a state of activity. the energies of life are stimulated, not so much by the large occasional rewards which come to a few, like prizes in a lottery, as the steady and certain remuneration of each day’s output of action to all. the[pg 238] ability to obtain from industry a considerable margin beyond the daily expenses of life is sufficient to keep alive the mental and physical energies, and is certain to bring about that general state of hopefulness, which more than anything else promotes thrift and stimulates ambition.
it may be somewhat at variance with your views of political economy, to believe that any reduction of the power and value of capital will not in a corresponding degree depress labor. you must bear in mind, however, that the stationary state, as exemplified by our society, differs from your progressive condition, not in the lesser abundance of capital, but in its better diffusion, more dependent relations, and smaller comparative profits. it follows from this as a matter of course, that it requires the possession of a larger amount of the products of labor to bring about that condition of life known as a competency than it does with you. but by a well determined arrangement in all ways in favor of those who toil, by which a fair margin is secured between income and expense, the coveted independence is always within reach.
under our system, capital becoming diffused among the masses in comparatively small portions, and having no[pg 239] such extraordinary uses, nor such high rates of interest as with you, it assumes its natural place as an adjunct to all the enterprises of labor. all our factories are consequently carried on by co-operation. no such a thing is known on our planet as the owner of a manufacturing establishment depressing at his will and pleasure the pay of perhaps a whole community of working people. when an establishment is required for the manufacture of some product in demand, our workmen undertake it as a business belonging wholly to themselves, and there is never any lack of means among them to do it.
the utter helpless condition of your workmen, as a class, is not entirely owing to their enforced scant share in the profits of industry. whoever among them, by greater abstinence or otherwise, succeeds in saving any considerable portion of his earnings, hastens either to change his situation for that of employer, where self-interest inclines him to favor low wages, or to seek among the greater encouragements outside a change of occupation. by this process capital and labor are constantly being divorced, and the ranks of your workmen are left to contain only those whose necessities hold them there.
in the condition of things with us, bestowing upon[pg 240] labor all the emoluments of industry, it becomes the most advantageous pursuit of life. with wages at a uniform and fixed sum, from which there can be no deviation except to increase, the working man proceeds to lay by his surplus, until, in a reasonable time, it can be made to do service in adding to the fruits of his toil.
in our society there is no possibility, and no one has hopes of gaining money by chance. we hold it to be a demoralizing evil that wealth should be obtained without industry. the quality of mind which you honor under the name of shrewdness, and which seldom hesitates to profit by the losses and even the miseries of others, would find life a burden on account of the odium attached, in any community on our planet. the privilege to build up an individual fortune, by taking from the substance of the whole people in any unlimited degree which an unscrupulous ingenuity can devise, is one of the peculiarities of your civilization. to this general license, with its very small limitation, is to be ascribed most of your social miseries. the lessons presented to your youth at the very first glance at the affairs of life are calculated to impress them with the belief that success is not so much for the strong and considerate, as it is for the wary and cunning;[pg 241] and that the business of creating wealth is of the slightest importance, when compared with the many successful arts and schemes for capturing it after its production. the example is witnessed everywhere among you of money-making without loss of honor or respect, by the method of drawing from others, by taking advantage of their necessities, excessive and unfair portions of their substance for some sort of service rendered. the consequence is that life with you is constantly renewed, on the one hand, by persons with more or less inherited capital, who are educated to believe that existence is a game, whose winning instances are the best guides to follow; and on the other by the great mass of hereditary toilers who submit themselves as victims under sheer force of necessity and usage. this state of your civilization brings into play many of your lower feelings, as indispensable instruments of success. when selfishness is the chief promoter of thrift, practical charity is only aroused by unusual provocation. the miseries of existence are unseen and unfelt by others than the sufferers themselves among you, just as your senses become oblivious to the presence of disturbing influences which you find it unprofitable to suppress. the necessity for each one looking out for himself[pg 242] in your fierce battles of life makes him unmindful of others. yet benevolence dwells within all your hearts as a divine attribute, which cannot be wholly destroyed, no matter how neglected its cultivation. like the retarded germination of seed in a too deeply surmounting soil, it comes to the light among you here and there, under favorable conditions, with an increasing frequency which reveals your destiny as unerringly as the golden horizon presages the coming of the sun.
the difference in the degree by which each individual holds the common welfare in comparison with his own, marks the stage of progress towards perfection in society. you hold within yourselves, by a divine provision, the elements to this end. your history is full of instances to prove that self-sacrifice is an act which inspires a greater commendation than any other. all your normal mental organizations are endowed with the propensity to benefit others, which only the conditions of your society circumscribe by a conflict of interest. what is now in your higher faculties, during your present development, a pleasure, will become a passion by further progress and cultivation, and, by a still more extended pursuit, a necessity to the tranquility and enjoyment of your lives.[pg 243] filial and parental love from mere instincts have grown among you to be the most gratifying of inclinations. sexual affinity, from its origin of brutal desire, has been transformed, in your higher circles, to a pure and tender sentiment of disinterested regard. not long ago your lunatics were chained to stakes like beasts. your infected were left to die upon the roadsides. your infirm were shut from sight, consumed with vermin among their rags. you house, clothe, and care for all these now with almost the solicitude that parents bestow upon children. if you should submit yourselves now for a time to the presence of these old inhumanities, and observe their disturbing effects upon the happiness of your lives, it would be a fair measurement of your progress toward the stationary state.
supposing yourself to be one of an audience assembled for the purpose of obtaining pleasure from a performance on the stage, your delight would, in a large degree, depend upon the manifestations of approval surrounding you. any expression of dissatisfaction would spoil your enjoyment, no matter upon what it might be founded. it might arise, for instance, from unfair opportunities of view, or from the usurped privilege of some to obstruct[pg 244] the vision of others. your inclinations, arising from no higher motive than self interest, would lead you to assist in bringing about that state of general satisfaction which is indispensable to your own comfort and happiness. this illustrates one of the motives which, in our stage of development, impels us to arrange that, so far possible, every individual shall enjoy equal privileges in society. happiness is simply not possible without it.
your moralists might argue that to close and intimate a sympathy with the misfortunes of others would keep us so constantly unhappy as to make life unendurable. in answer to this, you have only to consider that if you separate from all your ills those which either directly or remotely are brought upon you by your imperfect social state, there are but few left besides death and its attendant sorrows. and of these few entirely comprised under the heads of sickness and accidents, there is a possibility of their greater diminishment by better modes of life.
that you are slowly and gradually moving towards the stationary condition, unmistakable evidence proves. material as well as spiritual indications confirm this belief. you can easily observe that wealth in the hands of the few is losing its opportunities for rapid increase.[pg 245] in your oldest advanced regions it has already worked out its resources to the extent of endeavoring to find abroad occasions for profitable use. but for the monopoly of land, which enables it to extract from industry an amount for its services out of all proportion with its value elsewhere, it would have been much further advanced towards the stationary state.
one of the greatest obstacles opposing your approach towards the perfect society is your propensity to theorize and speculate upon matters which it is not given you to know. we have a saying that he who gets his feet in the air is lost. we mean by that to convey the idea, that all speculation not founded on positive knowledge is so utterly worthless, that any indulgence therein is useless to society. the opinion is unchallenged among us, that the inhabitants of the earth are too prone to get their feet in the air. and yet the very ease by which this misfortune is accomplished among you is a proof of your goodness. your inclination to virtue is your weak side of approach, and all your inherent and intuitive charity, which might during all these centuries have been exercised upon yourselves, has been to a great extent wasted upon your schemes of salvation, in which you have no[pg 246] assurance whatever but the wild promises of imagination. when you come fully to understand that happiness, true prosperity, virtue, and even beauty are but synonyms of truth, and that misery, crime, misfortune, and ugliness are but other names for falsehood, you will no longer have any dread or hesitation to search for that verity which destroys old beliefs, even though that search melts into air your most cherished traditions. you come to understand after a while that a truth can disseminate nothing but good; and that a falsehood, no matter how venerable with age, nor how respectable by adoption, can generate little else than evil. your creeds have attracted you and plowed deep into your affections, because in them is gathered from yourselves the divine sentiments of goodness, out of which they are all robed in a pretended monopoly. your virtues are brought into service within their narrow limits, and your energies and substance consumed in the work of enlarging their influence, while the more fruitful material for your charities lies neglected in the evils and miseries of your society.
the earth is your dominion. tread firmly upon it. remember it has been put into your keeping, and that your people are entirely responsible for its social condition.[pg 247] he who assists to improve that, serves the deity better than he who spends his life in genuflections and prayers. when you look around among the wretched criminals among you, punished and unpunished, and the poverty-stricken, and the sad-eyed, neglected children; see the unsuppressed temptations to evil, the unrecognized virtue, and the uneven opportunities for individual advancement, you should bear in mind that all these are but evidences of the violation of the trust imposed in you by the divine intelligence. there is, perhaps, no spectacle upon the earth that inspires more pity among the inhabitants of mars, than the constant waste of your best parts in submitting yourselves to the impositions of your seers, who lead you away from your duties, under the theory that the earth is merely a battle ground and field of conquest for the perpetuation of their doctrines, all else upon it being blank vanities. they have kept you away from the true business of your lives, and have mesmerized you, alternately terrifying and delighting you by unreal fancies; now exhibiting to you a paradise and at another time a nightmare. they have involved you in a perpetual shadow, discouraging you of all hopes of brightness until your celestial birth. by exhibiting only your[pg 248] grosser parts, and threatening the vengeance of an austere and capricious god of their own imaginary creation, they both degrade you and belittle your conceptions of the deity. you could bend your faces upward with a better sincerity, if, instead of following phantoms all these ages, with your feet in the air, you could show a truer interpretation of the divine purpose in establishing a happier and more perfect dwelling together.
