nstitute his contribution to the "commonwealth," to the race. Our
buildings, roads, railroads, churches, cathedrals, works of
art--everything which makes the modern world a better place to live in
than the primitive world was: these represent the combined
contributions of all previous men and races. And if society is so able
to handle men that they produce any fraction more than they consume,
the more men the better the world.

{179}

My conviction is that the Oriental nations are poor, not because of
their dense populations, but because of their defective industrial
organizations, because they do not provide men Tools and Knowledge to
work with.

Ignorance and lack of machinery--these have kept Asia poor; knowledge
and modern tools--these have made America rich.

If Asia had a Panama Canal to dig, she would dig it with picks, hoes,
and spades and tote out the earth in buckets. Nothing but human bone
and sinew would be employed, and the men would be paid little, because
without tools and knowledge they must always earn little. But America
puts brains, science, steam, electricity, machinery into the Big
Ditch--Tools and Knowledge, in other words--and she pays good wages
because a man thus equipped does the work of ten men whose only force
is the force of muscle.

But Asia--deluded, foolish Asia--has scorned machinery. "The more work
machinery does, the less there will be for human beings to do. Men
will be without work, and men without work will starve." With this
folly on her lips she has rejected the agencies that would have
rescued her from her never-ending struggle with starvation.

Oftentimes, we know, the same cry has been heard in England--and alas!
even in America; our labor unions even now sometimes lend a willing
ear to such nonsense. There were riots in England when manufacturers
sought to introduce labor-saving methods in cotton-spinning; and when
railroads were introduced among us there were doubtless thousands of
draymen, stage-drivers, and boatmen who, if they had dared, would have
torn up the rails and thrown them into the rivers, as the Chinese did
along the Yangtze-Kiang. With much the same feeling the old-time hand
compositors looked upon the coming of the typesetting machine.

And yet with all our engines doing the work of millions of draymen and
cabmen, with all our factory-machines doing the {180} work of hundreds
of thousands of weavers and spinners, with all our telegraphs and
telephones