very
best.

But you know very well that not one workingman in a hundred, nay, not
one in a thousand, is fortunate enough never to be sick, or out of
work, or on strike, or to be involved in an accident, or to have
sickness in his family. Not one worker in a thousand lives to old age
and goes down to his grave without having known the pangs of hunger
and want, both for himself and those dependent upon him. On the
contrary, dull, helpless, poverty is the lot of millions of workers
whose lines are cast in less pleasant places.

Mr. Frederic Harrison the well-known conservative English publicist,
some years ago gave a graphic description of the lot of the working
class of England, a description which applies to the working class of
America with equal force. He said:

"Ninety per cent of the actual producers of wealth have no
home that they can call their own beyond the end of a week,
have no bit of soil, or so much as a room that belongs to
them; have nothing of value of any kind except as much as will
go in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which
barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the most
part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are
separated by so narrow a margin from destruction that a month
of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss brings them face to
face with hunger and pauperism."[1]

I am perfectly willing, of course, to admit that, upon the whole,
conditions are worse in England than in this country, but I am still
certain that Mr. Harrison's description is fairly applicable to the
United States of America, in this year of Grace, nineteen hundred and
eight.

At present we are passing through a period of industrial depression.
Everywhere there are large numbers of unemployed workers. Poverty is
rampant. Notwithstanding all that is being done to ease their misery,
all the doles of the charitable and compassionate, there are still
many thousands of men, women and children who are hungry and
miserable. You see them every day in Pittsburg, as I see them in New
York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, and elsewhere. It is
easy to see in times like the present that there is some great, vital
defect in our social economy.

Later on, if you will give me your attention, Jonathan, I want you to
consider the causes of such cycles of depression as this that we are
so patiently enduring. But at present I am interested in get