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Questions of the Day

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Anthracite Coal as an Object Lesson

The human race is progressive, but each ^feneration is conservative. One of the great obstructions to any dis- cussion of political or social problems is the instinctive prejudice of the av- erage individual against any change in the existing order of things.

People generally dread new and un- tried experiments, believing it is better to bear the ills we have than fly t > those we know not of: but I consider it most essential to insist as a preliminary upon a clear recognition of the truth that change will come whether we like it or not. It is impossible to hold the existing conditions unchanged. The United States is not the government u was one hundred years ago. States are no longer sovereign, slavery has been abolished, colonial dependencies acquired. Election of Senators and of the President by popular vote is foreshadowed. The world is not the world it was five hundred years ago. In religion, politics and economics it is different. Let us assume, therefore, that our institutions are not eternal, hut will change.

The next inquiry is what institutions seem most the object of assault and most subject to change. We should expect to find them to be those institu- tions which are most connected with the production of wealth, because, though it is true wealth does not bring happiness, it is equally true that there is no possibility of happiness where the actual necessaries of life are gained only in meagre proportion by the most laborious efforts. The facts bear out this theory.

We find the assaults to come directly or indirectlv from the laboring masses, or in their behalf, and that they are di- rected against the sources of wealth — Railroads. Trusts, Mines. Landowner-

ship, etc. We find an increasing num- ber who, while not actually starved in any one day, yet live shortened lives because of the wretched economic en- vironment into which they, are born. And we also find a stupendously in creasing wealth in the hands of a very lew: a wealth which is so great it con- vinces us it cannot be the just reward of brains or eflFort, because no brains or no effort could in a few years amass such wealth were there not some spec- ial privileges which directed the labor or the gains of the many into the chan- nels leading to the few. There is a more or less blind feeling among the people that there is something wron*^ in the economic institutions which make it possible for the wealth of the whole people to be in the hands of n very few — far beyond the just reward for the greatest possible human abili- ty. Certain of the people envy an.1 hate or fear individuals such as Mr. Rockefeller. Mr. Morgan or Mr. Car- negie. More intelligent and just minds see that the individual is rather to be commended for his use of existing in- stitutions, and it is the institution which is to be blamed. Stones are ^o be hurled, if at all, at the wrongful institution, not at the man who has profited by it.

I shall assume at this point that ev- eryone recognizes that human institu- tions have been changing since the creation, iust as the world, the sua, the moon and stars are changing; that it is as impossible for us to hold our institutions fixed and permanent as it was for the institutions of Pericles, Cae- sar, Charles I and Louis XV to remain to this day.

If we conclude change will come in spite of us, the next speculation is as to what will be the characj^er of tihe

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