fortably at the expense of the most parsimonious
economy.

It is becoming a mooted question whether labor-saving machinery has
not supplanted muscle-power in the production of every article to such
a marvelous extent as to make thoughtful men tremble for the future of
those who can only hope to live upon the produce of their labors. The
machine has taken the place, largely, of man in the production of
articles of consumption, of wear and of ornamentation; but no machine
has, as yet, been invented to take the place of human wants. The
markets of the world are actually glutted with articles produced by
machine labor, but there are no purchasers with the means to buy, to
consume the additional production caused by machinery and the
consequent cheapening of processes of producing the articles of
consumption, ornamentation, etc. When men have work they have money;
and when men have money they spend it. Hence, when the toilers of a
land have steady employment trade is brisk; when business stagnation
forces them into idleness vice and crime afflict the country.

What avail the tireless labor of the machine and the mountains of
material it places upon the market, if there are no purchasers? One
man at a machine will do as much work in a factory to-day as required
the work of fifty men fifty years ago; but the enhanced volume of
production can have only one purchaser now where there was once fifty,
hence the fitful existence of the one and the desperate struggle for
existence of the forty-nine.[15] As iron and steel cannot compete with
muscle and brain in the volume of production, so iron and steel cannot
compete with muscle and brain in consumption. And, without
consumption, what does production amount to? What does it avail us
that our stores and granaries are overstocked, if the people are
unable to buy? The thing is reduced to a cruel mockery when stores and
granaries are over-gorged, while people clamor in vain for clothing
and food, and drop dead within reach of these prime elements of warmth
and sustentation.

What does it avail us if the balance of trade be in our favor by one,
or two, or three hundred millions of dollars, if this result be
obtained by the degradation and death of our own people? More; not
only at the expense of the well being of our own people, but of the
people of those countries in whose markets we are enabled to undersell
them, by reason of the more systematic pauperization of our own
producing c