in
higher mathematics, and avoid the thankless task of dividing eight into
seven and looking for the remainder.

Potatoes are worth fifty cents a bushel. Any yokel can dig a hole in the
ground and plant the seed and in due time gather the ripened tubers. The
engineer who drives his engine at sixty miles an hour, flashing by
warning semaphores, rolling among coloured lights, clattering over frogs
and switches, is no yokel. Therefore, because of this fact, with the
compensation of one day he can, if he so elects, buy many potatoes, or
employ many yokels.

Had Sir Isaac Newton devoted to the raising of potatoes the energy which
he gave to astronomy, he might have raised larger potatoes and more to
the hill than his yokel neighbour. But, his conditions having been
potatoes, his reward would have been potatoes, instead of the deathless
glory of the discovery and enunciation of the law of gravity. The
problem is very simple after all. The world has had a useless deal of
trouble because no one has ever before taken the trouble to state the
problem and to elaborate it. It is just as simple as is the obvious fact
that _x_ plus _y_ equals _a_.

There is a possibility, however, that we have been going too fast, and
have consequently overlooked a few items of importance. We forgot for
the moment, as often happens, that the factors in the problem are not
homogeneous digits with fixed values, but complex personalities with
decided opinions of their own as to their individual and relative
importance, as well as pugnacious tendencies for compelling an
acceptance of their assumptions by equally pugnacious factors which
claim a differential valuation in their own favour. This consideration
presents a somewhat different and more difficult phase of the problem.
It really compels us to defer attempts at final solution, for the time
being, at least; to make the best adjustment possible under present
conditions, putting off to the future the final application, much on the
same principle that communities bond their present public possessions
for their own good and complacently bestow upon posterity the obligation
of settling the bills. Considered in this light, the end of the struggle
between capital and labour is not yet. Each is striving for the sole
possession and control of things which belong to neither alone. Each
looks upon the other not as a co-labourer but as a rival, instead of
making intelligent and united effort for an object u