decaying European communities. We could contemplate the clouds in the distant horizon, hear the low mutterings of the thunder with composure. Those lightning flashes, the pent up fury of that tempest might involve others, not us Let them have a care. Now the storm is here, and already there have been ominous, premonitory cloud-bursts.

What are we to think of these labor troubles? Are we to regard them as mere riffles on the surface of our industrial affairs, having no deeper significance than the temporary caprice of the laboring classes, which will shortly pass away of their own accord, leaving the former harmony between labor and capital to resume its sway? These troubles, on the contrary are world wide, deeply seated, indicating a cause nearly universal. It seems to be the opinion of the most sagacious among our business men that these troubles have come to stay; that we may as well make up our minds to consider them henceforth the necessary accompaniments of our industrial and political conditions, until a cure shall be discovered and applied. And in searching out a cure in this case as in all others, we must first gain a clear conception of the cause.

Everything in this world is in a state of perpetual flux and change. There is nothing absolutely permanent. The earth itself has reached its present stage of development by the process of evolution, a process still going on. What is true of the material world, is equally true of human society, the world of mankind. And as the chronicles of our globe show that the evolutionary processes are marked by greater activity at some periods than others, even so of human society, and what may be called the necessary or involuntary movements of the race. To mark the trend of these movements, to study and endeavor to fully comprehend them, to mold institutions and adapt legislation so as to meet the requirements of these ever changing conditions, is the task of the sound political economist and wise legislator.

Now in what respect have the industrial conditions of the world undergone the greatest change within the last fifty years, a period so marked with changes? It is scarcely necessary to say that it is in the production of labor-saving machinery; of those wonderful contrivances of human skill and ingenuity,

whereby man has been able to lay hold on the forces of nature, more especially steam and electricity, put them in harness and compel him to do his work. It is right here that the process of evolution in our time has been so rapid as to work a revolution in human affairs.

We are in midst of this revolution to-day, wnether conscious of it or not, and it behooves us to mark well its passing phenomena. It has happened more than once in the world's history, that a revolution has taken firm hold and become an accomplished fact, before those chiefly interested were fully

aware.

It is not easy for those who have lived through this period to realize by the aid of memory how great are the changes that have taken place; while those who must rely upon recitals aided by imagination, will find it still more difficult to comprehend them. Fifty years ago there were no railroads. Many of us can recollect the building of the first railroad in the United States. Steam navigation was then confined to the Hudson, Long Island Sound, and to short trips between some of the Atlantic ports. It was not until many years later that a steamer ventured across the Ocean.

The electric telegraph followed years after on the track of the locomotive and in the wake of the steamer. Previous to this, the post-man, stage-coach, and the Ocean clipper supplied our facilities for rapid travel and the transmission of news. Fifty years ago we had no manufactures in this country worthy of mention. Consequently there were no conflicts between labor and capital. These terms were not then mentioned in contradistinction from, still less in antagonism to, each other. The laborer was a capitalist, and the capitalist, for the most part, a laborer. Great manufacturing centers, with their crowds of operatives, their strikes, their lockouts and boycotts, were things unknown. It was the age of home spun. The farmer raised the flax and sheared the fleece from which with the aid perhaps of a simple carding-machine and fulling mill in the neighborhood, his wife and daughters spun, wove and manufactured the cloth with which the family were clothed. There was work enough for all; and though the wages were

low, they were sufficient to enable the willing worker to procure the necessaries and most of the comforts of life as measured by the simple standard of the times. Those extreme contrasts in the conditions of men now visible did not then exist. There were no millionaires and few beggars.

Consider now the improvements introduced during this period in the means and appliances which man has devised wherewith to do his work. From the simplest tools in common use to the most complicated machine, whereby man has contrived to make matter do everything but think, and has even dispensed with the necessity for doing that, the triumphs of human skill have been most marvellous. The workman of to-day would smile with contempt at the gimlet, the auger, the axe, the hoe, with which our fathers managed to perform their tasks; and innumerable little tools of all sorts now cover the work bench of the craftsman and aid his operations which were then unknown.

On the farm too, consider what inventive genius has accomplished, since the time when the sward was broken with. no better implement than a cluinsy wooden plow with an iron point, when the crop was planted and cultivated by hand with the use of an equally clumsy hoe, when the harvest was gathered with the sickle, scythe, or that marvel of modern improvement, as then considered, the grain cradle; when the wheat, rye, oats and barley were threshed out with the hand flail, and winnowed out by tossing up to the breeze in a fan. From the minutest operation to the greatest, the construction of the mechanism of a watch, the manufacture of that necessary article of the ladies toilet, the common pin, to the construction of the most ponderous engines for propelling ocean steamers and steel-plated men of war, every where the ingenuity of man has achieved its triumphs. Time was, and not long since, when in English work shops it required the successive manipulations of a dozen men to finish a brass pin. Now a single machine managed by one woman produces a better article with far greater rapidity, while another machine sticks the pins into their papers with more regularity than could possibly be done by hand, and folds them for the market.

Searcely more than fifty years ago the iron nails used by the carpenter were slowly hammered out, pointed and headed, each separately, by the smith on his anvil. Consider how the cost of building was cheapened by the invention whereby nails are manufactured by machine faster than one can count. Consider how the gang plow with its polished steel blade, the cultivator, numerous seeding-machines, mowers, reapers and binders, threshing-machines with their attachments, and the numerous other inventions and improvements in the line of agricultural implements, have supplemented or superseded mere manual labor in conducting the operations of the farm. Consider, too, how many men and teams would be required to do the work of transportation now done by the iron-horse on the hundred and twenty thousand miles of railway traversing and intersecting our country in all directions.

Without proceeding farther to multiply examples, it will be safe to affirm that the efficiency of human labor, including the whole range of industrial pursuits, has been fully quadru pled by labor-saving machinery within the last fifty years; while at the same time numerous achievements have been accomplished which would have been impossible without such machinery. In making these statements, exactness in the matter of dates is not attempted, since not necessary to the argument. Now how does all this affect the condition of the laborer?

Of course, the benefits of cheapened production and consequent reduced prices of various commodities, the laborer shares in common with other consumers-shares too the tendency to extravagance and waste which cheapness always induces. Labor-saving machinery has also opened, new avenues to employment, in the construction of the machinery as well as in its management; and in some instances, though not in all cases, by elevating the operative from a common laborer to a skilled workman, has thus improved his condition

Our railways furnish employment directly or indirectly to a vast army of workmen; in grading the road bed and keeping it in order, cutting and supplying ties, digging ore and coal, and manufacturing iron for rails and rolling stock, building engines, cars and coaches, and the numberless other employ

ments of all grades necessary in conducting their operations. Labor-saving machinery has accelerated all the movements of our modern life. How long, think you, would it have taken to build a city like Chicago before the era of steam and the telegraph? Would one century, would two centuries have sufficed for such a work? With the aid of labor-saving machinery, gigantic enterprizes are now undertaken and carried through to success, which otherwise would never have been dreamed of. The scope of human endeavor and achievement has been vastly enlarged and extended thereby in all directions. And the machine however perfect in its functions must still be supplimented by human labor and supervision.

But after making all due allowance for the instances, ways and modes in which the machine works with and for the laborer, the net result is still vastly in favor of the capitalist. On the one hand, the laborer sees in the machine, a remorseless rival, operated by the tireless forces of nature, taking away from him the accustomed task whereby he earned bread for his family, conscious that competition with such a rival must be hopeless. On the other hand the employer sees in the same machine an obedient servant, which will neither strike for an increase of wages nor rise in mutiny in case of a lockout. While these inventions have opened new lines and avenues of employment, they have done so in no degree proportioned to those they have taken away or closed. The term labor-saving machinery is not a misnomer, but conveys the correct idea. It means machinery which saves labor, or dispenses with the services of the laborer.

This, then, is the revolution which we are called upon to face; and these, briefly indicated or outlined, are the causes that have brought it about. And these causes, it should be borne in mind, are cumulative in their operation. One invention paves the way for another. Numberless operations of our daily life, now performed slowly and painfully by hand, hereafter will be done by machines. Even now the busy brain of the inventor is at work on the problem. Revolutions are said never to go backward; this least of all. The applications of steam to the work of man are by no means exhausted, and the