three millions of men and women, except a small portion, and that for a very limited time, have found but partial employment, and that only by the displacement of others.

In no sense was the war the cause of our present industrial distress, as I have clearly shown by the facts and operations presented. On the contrary, it broke the tendency to idleness and distress which began with us more than fifty years ago. It gave employment to the idle, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, shelter to the roofless, and prosperity to all. When the war closed we simply went back again to the idleness and distress of four and five years before we began again where we left off at its commencement and are surely reaping the legitimate results of our wilful refusal to profit by the industrial lessons of the war, which are so little understood and so constantly perverted by our modern economists.

By the barbarism of war we are clearly taught the lesson that whenever the masses are brought into active employment-whenever they are placed in the condition that will enable them to make their consumption the greatest that that condition is immediately followed by the greatest prosperity of all classes and individuals, and especially is it the harvest season of the capitalist and the manufacturer. But that, on the other hand, whenever the masses are least employed, whenever their ability to obtain for consumption is reduced to the lowest point, there closely follows the greatest distress in society, from which the capitalists and manufacturers are by no means exempted. The destruction of human life is in no way

involved in the industrial problem; that is the barbaric feature that may well be eliminated; it is not necessarily connected with the case. The whole matter rests upon the two points of the actual and constant employment of the masses and their compensation. The time of their daily employment is not a factor in the case, except so far as it shall determine whether sufficient is or is not produced to meet the consumption of society when in its most prosperous condition. With these simple factors, it does not seem difficult to discover a way out of our distress, and an economic law that may be as well understood, and as easily applied, as the law that governs in any other matter.

If the operations of the war of the rebellion shall have the effect of discovering to us the way out of our present distress, and an economic law that shall lift society out of its ruts of slavery to fallacies and false economies, to renewed and permanent prosperity and development, it will have conferred upon the world a much greater blessing than can be found in lifting the negro alone out of bondage, and make one almost tempted to apologize for the barbarism of that war.

CHAPTER IX.

DID RAILROAD BUILDING CAUSE OUR INDUSTRIAL

DISTRESS?

UR late Secretary of the Interior, in his Cincinnati speech, herein before referred to, charged the cause of our industrial distress not only to "great wars resulting in immense destruction of wealth," but, in addition, to "excessive enterprise, such as the building of railroads where they were not needed — running from point nowhere to point nowhere.”

The editor of one of the great journals published in Chicago, Horace White, Esq., in testifying before the Hewitt Labor Committee, in August, 1878, also charged our distress to excessive railroad building. When such men lead in fallacies a multitude is sure to follow. Let us also examine this charge and see what there is in it.

In what way did the employment of a large number of men, after the close of the war, in building railroads, cause our industrial distress ?

Edward Atkinson, of Boston, says that 250,000 men (see Industrial Redistribution, in International Review), being only one twelfth of those discharged from the armies of the North alone, and the indus

tries which sustained them, were so employed. Did the keeping of that number of men out of idleness, giving them employment, and consequently the means of buying food and clothing, and other necessaries and comforts of life, bring misery upon our whole country, or assist in doing it? Did the employment of one twelfth of those discharged from the armies, and their attendant industries, bring poverty and distress, not only upon the other eleven twelfths, but upon our whole people?

The idea is a fit companion for that which charges the cause of our distress upon the war. It has not one fact, or grain of common sense, to sustain it. It is a gross perversion of the results of labor, of industry, of enterprise.

The truth is, the industry that was developed in railroad construction delayed to just that extent the general distress that is now upon us. The capital that was thus used set into activity the wheels of industry in many avocations, and acted beneficially on all. The great trouble was, that railroad building was almost our only industrial development, and the other eleven twelfths who had been in government employ were compelled to divide the work with those already employed, or remain idle. In railroad building there was no "destruction of wealth," no "large industries ministering to the work of destruction," but large industries creating that which ministered to the wants of man; the making of something useful where nothing before existed.

Not a dollar of capital that was thus expended was lost, or wiped out of existence. It went to draw out

of the earth the coal and the ore that was wrought into iron. It built furnaces, mills, shops, and dwellings; it wrought in wood and metal; it cultivated the soil; it furnished food and clothing, pleasure and instruction; it built highways, opened up vast extents of country to settlement and development, and in every way ministered to the wants of man, and then returned, every dollar of it, not one cent lost, again to the capitalist. It might not have been to the same individual; at most it had but changed hands; but none of it remained in the pockets of the working people; it all returned to the capitalist.

A portion, only, of the interest which it has paid are the additional roads that have been built, the furnaces, mills, dwellings, stores, and everything which remain unconsumed. The capital that was used in the building of these roads is still in the hands of the capitalist, and in addition all these evidences of increased material wealth.

Capital in activity assisted in doing this; capital brought into activity labor, and, being divided and distributed, moved and excited the industries of the people, and gave to the masses the means to enter into the market and make use and consume of all of the products of industry. In this way capital was an agent by which all this was accomplished. Nothing was destroyed, nothing lost, nothing wiped out of existence, as is charged on the war, but very much was added to the means which should contribute to man's welfare, and solely by the application of man's industry.

That which entered into and was consumed in the