We have previously stated that FOUR HOURS labor per day was enough for any one, and this would carry on the world's industry adequately and to prove this we give an excerpt from an article by the great English Divine—Rev. R. J. Campbell, his statistics prove that POVERTY IS UNNECESSARY and that wage earners can be paid enough to buy what they wish to make happiness—, pianos and other so-called luxuries, and automobiles could of course be substituted for pianos if their desires should require such.
At the present price of automobiles they are within reach of the man who will give up drinking and using tobacco or other narcotics and I want to say that I believe riding in one of the new type steel bodied automobiles with a magneto ignition is a great health augmenter as these cars when running become charged with electricity and I quite often get a shock from one of my automobiles if I happen to touch part of my hand to the body of the car while the other part has hold of the side shift lever. This statical electricity has been proved by Dr. W. J. Morton, of New York City, to be a wonderful therapeutical agency. When properly supplied to the body it causes the blood discs to take up more oxygen from the air and augments the power of the vital apparatus. (See his address published in the November, 1893, Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.)
Riding in a carriage or car will aid the circulation of the body fluids without waste of our own energy, the motions massage the body, the same as muscular action.
Work is a benefit to us but how much do we need is a question,—a sick person can not work and a person's training and condition must regulate this,—too much work draws the vital force from the vital organs and mental work is absolutely injurious in sickness, the brain draws on the vitality to the detriment of the vital organs of the body, yet again the cultivated mind has a power to govern the base faculties which debilitate the body.
Part of the English Divine's Article Which We Have Referred to:
"One of the strangest paradoxes about this period of destructiveness through which we are passing is that there is very little dire poverty about. It has taught me a lesson, a lesson which probably the workers as a class are assimilating too, namely, that destitution and the degradation which so generously accompanies it could be got rid of in a month in time of peace if we were only in earnest to do it.
"It is caused simply by an unfair distribution of wealth. We always knew that, but what we did not know was that it could be so speedily remedied. We thought it would take a long time even if the nation were willing to tackle the problem seriously, which it has not yet shown any anxiety to do. We were afraid of drastic experiments of a social nature, with the consequent displacement of capital, the shock given to that very delicate entity, the national credit, and so on.
"Go more slowly, was the universal cry. Give us breathing space. These drastic changes one after the other—all in the direction of making the rich pay more into the pockets of the poor—are very dangerous. You are impairing public confidence; do wait awhile before you attempt anything further. You are imposing a tax on industry which is certain to hinder productiveness.
"And we were wrong, the whole lot of us—Kaiser, German Bureau, British Tories, hesitant Liberals, landowners, bankers, manufacturers, shopkeepers, taxpayers generally, and probably the proletariat, too. It is nothing short of amazing. Here we are hurling our accumulated stores of wealth into hell, the hell of war, and the workers as a whole were never so well off.