The facts speak for themselves. The existence of such chaos is a matter of every day comment and experience. Though its nature and its causes are little understood, there is no issue of more immediate concern to the western world than the intelligent solution of the vexing questions arising out of the production and distribution of wealth.
Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the entire western world was so organized that one group or class owned the land, the machines and the productive devices with which other groups or classes worked in order to live. The establishment of this "capitalist" system between 1750 when it had its start in England, and 1860, when it secured a foothold in Japan, has raised certain questions of economic procedure which lie at the background of the economic problems which men are seeking to understand and to solve.
There is no necessity for an elaborate discussion of these problems, since they are at the moment quite generally under the dissecting knife of social students, reformers and revolutionaries. They may be divided into two main groups:—those which are localized in character and those which are world-wide in character. Perhaps the latter group might be called "worldized."
There are a number of outstanding economic problems that affect locally, each community that has adopted the capitalist system. Among the most important of them are:
1. The relations between the job owner and the job taker.
These relations involve the question as to whether job control shall be vested in those who hold the property or in those who do the work. The issue is an old one, intensified to-day by the absentee ownership which stocks and bonds make possible, and aggravated by the presence of vast industrial establishments in which there are employed thousands of workers without the possibility of any direct contact between job owners and job takers.
2. The distribution of wealth and income.
Another old issue has returned to plague a society that makes it possible for some to enjoy "progress" while others must suffer from "poverty." Labor saving machinery has increased the quantity of the industrial product, but as yet there has been no general effort to see that the advantages of this wealth production go to those who are in need of food, clothing and shelter. Indeed, under the present order, millions of those who work are called upon to accept a standard of living which represents less than physical health and social decency, while those who own the land and the machinery with which the wealth is produced are able to exact a rent or unearned income that keeps them permanently on easy street. This embittering contrast between the house of have and the house of want is leading to-day, as it has in any historical society, to division and conflict, for, as Madison wisely observed in the Federalist, "The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property."
3. The interrelation of industries.