h these ideas have taken of the
popular mind. The world has to have a religion of some kind, and the
hope of better food and clothing, more leisure, and a greater variety of
amusements, has become the religion of the working classes. Hope makes
them peaceful, industrious, and resigned under present suffering. A
Frenchman saw a ragged pauper spend his last few cents on a lottery
ticket, and asked him how he could commit such a folly. "In order to
have something to hope for," he said. And from this point of view the
outlay was undoubtedly excusable. It is literally hope which makes the
world go round, and one of the hardest things an educated man who opens
his mouth about public affairs has to do, is to say one word or anything
to dampen or destroy it. Yet his highest duty is to speak the truth.

Luckily, there is one truth which can always be spoken without offense,
and that is that on the whole the race advances through the increase of
intelligence and the improvement of character, and has not advanced in
any other way. The great amelioration in the condition of the working
classes in Europe within this century, including the increasing power of
the trades-unions, is the result not of any increase of benevolence in
the upper classes, but of the growth of knowledge and self-reliance and
foresight among the working classes themselves. The changes in
legislation which have improved their condition are changes which they
have demanded. When a workingman becomes a capitalist, and raises
himself in any way above his early condition, it is rarely the result of
miracle or accident. It is due to his superior intelligence and thrift.
Nothing, on the whole, can be more delusive than official and other
inquiries into the labor problem through commissions and legislative
committees. They all assume that there is some secret in the relations
of labor and capital which can be found out by taking testimony. But
they never find anything out. Their reports during the last fifty years
would make a small library, but they never tell us anything new. They
are meant to pacify and amuse the laborer, and they do so; but to their
constant failure to do anything more we owe some of the Socialist
movement. The Socialists believe this failure due to want of will, and
that Karl Marx has discovered the great truth of the situation, which
is, that labor is entitled to the whole product. The great law which
Nature seems to have prescribed for the gover