of superior
powers; while the feeble, the stolid, and the ignorant would be left
poor and helpless. And, as the different classes of the community would
be no longer directly associated with each other in their labors and
interests, but would be, on the contrary, competitors--and as the fact
that there had been free competition would be held by all classes to
absolve them from any responsibility as to each other's welfare--it
would inevitably result that the weaker orders should fall into
indigence, degradation, wretchedness, starvation, and premature death.

Such has been the case. With the advent of Competitive Industry in
Europe and America--to confine ourselves to these countries--with the
disintegration of the Social System in which the different classes were
associated in mutually dependent and cooeperative efforts; with the
abrogation, on the part of the superior body of citizens, of all
responsibility for, and direct interest in, the affairs and comfort of
the lower orders, has come Pauperism, Social Instability, and a degree
of misery and depravity among the poorest of the masses, never before
known in the history of the world, all things being taken into
consideration. It is a well-known saying of Political Economists, that
the rich are daily growing richer, and the poor poorer. It might be
added with truth: and more degraded and dangerous.

The effects of this method of Competitive Industry upon the higher
classes have been scarcely less injurious, though in a different
direction. It has bred an intense selfishness and an apathy in respect
to the sufferings of others which no lover of his race can contemplate
without emotions of anguish. Not only is the idea of any effort for the
permanent relief of the poorer classes, for taking them under special
care and making their welfare the business of Society, not entertained
by any large number of persons; but those who do feel keenly the
necessity of such a step, and whose sympathies are aroused by the
sufferings of the masses around them, are too deeply imbued with the
ease-loving spirit of the age, too much wedded to their own comfort, to
take any active measures for the realization of their desires, or to
forego their momentary interests to secure them.

The rich heap up riches by the iniquitous trade-system which drifts the
earnings of the laborers into their net, and are dead to the call of
those whom they are, unconsciously in most cases, defrauding. Nay!