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in the direction of further limitations on the rights of prop. erty and the more rigid regulation of industries is also a conviction widely shared. In fact, there is so little real difference as regards their attitude toward the practical problems of the day between evolutionary socialists and progressive social reformers that it is often difficult to tell one from the other. Consistent socialists cling to the belief that the ultimate solution of our economic problems is to be secured through the socialist state, but they admit that this ultimate solution is remote and that for many generations social reform is the important thing to be striven after. Non-socialists can see no reason to assign such an all-embracing rôle to the state in the industrial society of the future, but agree that there is urgent need of social reform in the present and that all should work together to secure it.

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Although based on an incorrect analysis of economic relations in its revolutionary form and looking forward to a future so remote as to have little direct bearing on presentday problems in its evolutionary form, socialism is much more than a mere philosophy of the unsuccessful vision of deluded dreamers." As an ideal it appeals strongly to many men and women who are neither unsuccessful nor dreamers and it supplies them with an excellent standard by which to criticize the undoubted evils in the present economic situation. Such criticism is both helpful and harmful. So far as it serves to concentrate attention upon definite evils and to foster the belief that they are remediable, it is a valuable aid to constructive social reform. So far, however, as it tends to intensify class antagonisms and to teach wage-earners that they are the victims of legalized exploitation and that they must organize to despoil by force the owners of property who oppress them, it is a bar to true progress. It is reassuring that in the United States, as well as in European countries where socialistic parties are strongest, less and less attention is being devoted in socialistic literature to exploitation," "the class struggle," etc., and more and more to the real evils of the present day and the remedies that may be immediately applied to them.

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REFERENCES FOR COLLATERAL READING

*Kirkup, History of Socialism, third edition; *Spargo, Socialism; *Macdonald, The Socialist Movement; * Fabian Essays in Socialism; Hillquit, Socialism in Theory and Practice; Cross, The Essentials of Socialism; *Wells, New Worlds for Old; Bellamy, Looking Backward; Sombart, Socialism and the Social Movement; Marx, Capital, 3 vols.; Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of his System; *Simkhovitch, Marxism vs. Socialism; *Walling, Socialism As It Is and The Larger Aspects of Socialism.

The Nature of Eco

nomic Progress.

CHAPTER XXXIV

ECONOMIC PROGRESS

§ 364. Economic progress is improvement in general wellbeing due either to increased command over economic goods or to reduced costs of production. It may show itself in increased earnings for the laboring masses, in shortened hours of labor or in an increased adaptation of work to the tastes and capacities of workmen. Definite as these criteria of progress appear to be, it is unfortunately true that there are no means of comparing them accurately from generation to generation. Until recently few records were kept of the commodities which families in different circumstances were in the habit of consuming. Even those which are now preserved will be puzzling in many of their details to future economists because the goods consumed will have changed in kind and quality as well as in quantity. The impossibility of making exact allowance for such changes opposes a permanent barrier to accurate comparisons between the standards of living of different periods. Similar difficulties are encountered in trying to gage changes in the sacrifices involved in production. Although it can be shown that the length of the working day has been shortened, it may yet be claimed by the unbelieving that the intensity of labor has increased correspondingly, and there is no certain way of deciding whether or not this has been the case. Under these circumstances the economist must content himself with comparing those objective indications of well-being, such as the rates of wages earned by workmen of different grades, the length of the working day, etc., which admit of measurement and appeal to the judgment of intelligent observers to determine whether these and other changes have really added to human welfare.

Even so simple a question as that whether average wages

CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION

Hours of

641 have increased or diminished can be answered only after Changes in elaborate statistical investigation. In recent years careful wages and studies of wage statistics have been made in many different Employcountries. It will be impossible even to summarize the re- ment. sults of these inquiries in these pages, but it may be asserted confidently that in the United Kingdom during the last one hundred years real wages have increased on the average not less than fifty per cent and that in the United States they have increased nearly, though apparently not quite, as much. As regards hours of labor the evidence of progress in both countries is equally conclusive. The reduction has not been less than two a day, that is, the workday in different employments has been shortened from an average of from ten to fourteen hours to an average of from eight to twelve hours. As regards command over commodities and leisure time in which to enjoy them wage-earners generally are, therefore, distinctly better off to-day than they were a century ago.

§ 365. Another method of gaging the extent and direction Progress of economic progress is to review the changes that have oc- in Concurred in the fields of consumption, production and distri- sumption. bution to determine whether they have been, on the whole, favorable. In Chapter V. we considered the contributions which changes in wants and habits of consumption may make to general well-being. Progress in this field depends upon increasing attention to the laws of variety, of harmony and of least social cost, upon greater economy in consumption and upon the substitution for narrow and selfish luxury of more social uses of wealth. No one can compare impartially these aspects of the life of to-day and of life in the past, from the point of view of the average wage-earning family, without being impressed by the remarkable advance that has been made.

tion.

Even more obvious than progress in consumption is the Progress progress that has been made in production. Invention and in Producdiscovery have scored triumph after triumph since the first application of steam power to industry, and in every branch of business the productiveness of labor has been largely increased. Other causes contributing to this result have been the opening up to exploitation of new lands and new sources

Progress in Distribution.

Reasons

Why
Wages
Remain
Low.

of mineral wealth, the growth of capital, improvements in forms of industrial organization and the development of more capable and intelligent men and women.

When the enormous multiplication of goods that has been made possible by these changes is considered, it may well seem surprising that the condition of wage-earners has not been improved even more than has been the case. To account for this fact we must consider the progress that has been made in the field of distribution.

§ 366. Progress in distribution results from changes which increase the command over goods enjoyed by the masses. To measure it the earning-power of the bare-handed unskilled workman of one period must be compared with that of the same workman of another, allowance being made for any change in the proportion which unskilled workmen bear to the whole population. The facts already cited indicate that wages have risen substantially, and yet the margin between the necessary expenses of the ordinary laboring family and its earnings is still painfully narrow, even in the United States, the country of high wages.

The reasons why the average workman still receives such a small return have already been suggested. In the first place, the increased productiveness of industry has been due in large measure to improvements in the capital goods which assist production. The immediate tendency of such improvements is to add to the earning power of capital, rather than to that of labor. This has been neutralized by a remarkable growth in the amount of capital, and the rate of interest must have fallen to a very low level had not population also increased at a remarkable rate. The net result of these changes has been a lower rate of interest on an immensely larger capital fund and a somewhat higher rate of wages for a greatly increased laboring population. A second point concerns the trend of rent. The opening of new lands to exploitation must have raised materially the margin of cultivation and thus reduced the rent fund, had it not been paralleled by the remarkable growth in population just referred to. The older countries of Europe have poured out millions upon millions of colonists to the new lands, but at the same

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