lasses.

Competition, it is declared, is the life of trade; if this be true, it
is truer that it is the death of labor, of the poorer classes. For
Great Britain has established herself in the markets of the world at
the expense of her laboring classes. While the capitalists of that
country hold up their heads among the proudest people of the world,
her laboring classes are absolutely ground to powder. Because of the
inhuman competition which her manufacturers have been led to adopt,
and the introduction of improved labor-saving machinery, her balance
of trade runs far into the millions of pounds, and political
economists place their hands upon their hearts and declare that Great
Britain is the most happy and prosperous country on the face of the
globe. But the declaration is illusory in the extreme. No country can
be happy and prosperous whose "mudsills" live in squalor, want,
misery, vice and death. If Great Britain is happy and prosperous, how
shall we account for the constant strikes of labor organizations for
higher pay or as a protest against further reduction of wages below
which man cannot live and produce? The balance of trade desire is the
curse of the people of the world. It can be obtained only by
underbidding other people in their own markets; and this can be done
only by the maximum of production at the minimum of cost--by forcing
as much labor out of the man or the machine as possible at the least
possible expense.

There is death in the theory; death to our own people and death to the
people with whom we compete. When a people no longer produce those
articles which are absolutely necessary to sustain life the days of
such people may be easily calculated.

Men talk daily of "over production," of "glutted markets," and the
like; but such is not a true statement of the case. There can be no
over production of anything as long as there are hungry mouths to be
fed. It does not matter if the possessors of these hungry mouths are
too poor to buy the bread; if they are hungry, there is no
overproduction. With a balance of $150,000,000 of trade; with
plethoric granaries and elevators all over the land; with millions of
swine, sheep and cattle on a thousand hills; with millions of surplus
revenue in the vaults of the National treasury, diverted from the
regular channels of trade by an ignorant set of legislators who have
not gumption enough to reduce unnecessary and burdensome taxation
without upsetting the ind