e
reform is portentous.

Another of the signs of the new times which calls for mention is the
spread and militancy of the labor movement, to which the war and its
concomitants gave a potent impulse. It is differentiated from all
previous ferments by this, that it constitutes merely an episode in the
universal insurgency of the masses, who are fast breaking through the
thin social crust formed by the upper classes and are emerging rapidly
above the surface. One of the most impressive illustrations of this
general phenomenon is the rise of wages, which in Paris has set the
municipal street-sweepers above university professors, the former
receiving from 7,600 to 8,000 francs a year, whereas the salary of the
latter is some 500 francs less.[44]

This general disturbance is the outcome of many causes, among which are
the over-population of the world, the spread of education and of equal
opportunity, the anonymity of industrial enterprises, scientific and
unscientific theories, the specialization of labor and its depressing
influence.[45] These factors produced a labor organization which the
railways, newspapers, and telegraph contributed to perfect and transform
into a proletarian league, and now all progressive humanity is tending
steadily and painfully to become one vast collectivity for producing and
sharing on more equitable lines the means of living decently. This
consummation is coming about with the fatality of a natural law, and the
utmost the wisest of governments can do is to direct it through pacific
channels and dislodge artificial obstacles in its course.

One of the first reforms toward which labor is tending with more or
less conscious effort is the abolition of the hereditary principle in
the possession of wealth and influence and of the means of obtaining
them. The division of labor in the past caused the dissociation of the
so-called nobler avocations from manual work, and gradually those who
followed higher pursuits grew into a sort of hereditary caste which
bestowed relative immunity from the worst hardships of life's struggle
and formed a ruling class. To-day the masses have their hands on the
principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social sphere and
seem resolved to press them.

The problem for the solution of which they now menacingly clamor is the
establishment of an approximately equitable principle for the
redistribution of the world's resources--land, capital, industries,
monopol