“He has many. He is controlled by the occult power of race transmissions, by laws which he did not help to make, by customs which he did not help to form, by organizations and environments beyond his power to change or combat. But because of these he should have no license to plunder his wealthier neighbor, for, in this republic, it is within the power of the people to change laws, and alter customs, and secure to every man the result of his own toil and skill—and that is all any man is entitled to.”
“But the wealth owners, doctor, have monopolized nearly all the resources of nature.”
“Nonsense. There is not a hungry idler in the purlieus of New York City but might catch fish enough at the nearest wharf to keep him from starvation, or find within a day’s walk a piece of land he could cultivate on ‘shares.’ The resources of nature are inexhaustible. If every adult male in the land were to build for himself a marble palace, there would be no perceptible diminution in nature’s supply of marble. If every farmer were to devote his energies and his acres to the production of wheat, until enough wheat should have been harvested to feed the world for five years, yet the capacity of soil and sun, water and air to produce more wheat would be neither exhausted nor impaired. For thousands of years the men of every civilization have been hewing forests, and smelting iron, yet the forests which are untouched and the mines which are unopened are practically limitless.”
“Doctor, a man cannot stir the earth without a spade, or cut down a tree without an ax, or mine iron ore without a pick, and the owners of the spades, and picks, and axes, exact from the laborer an undue share of his labor for their use.”
“Who is to determine whether the share exacted be an undue one? My own opinion is that the laborer’s share of results has grown larger, and the capitalist’s share smaller, during the last twenty years. At least, the rate of interest on money is not much more than half what it was before the war. But whether this be so or not it is not nature’s fault. Nature is not only implacably just, she is impartially generous. No suitor is denied the chance to gain her favors, and none is refused any favor he may have earned. There are floods and tornadoes, frosts and fevers, burning suns and chilling winds. Yet these, as well as the fruitage and the harvests, are the offspring of inexorable law, and science now interprets the law. It warns us of cyclones ten thousand miles away; it predicts the date of arrival, speed, and duration of hurricanes; it brings the ladybug from Australia to combat and destroy the scale-bug in California; it promises to conquer drought by exploding dynamite bombs in the air or by chemical production of rain; it restrains floods by diverting rivers; it destroys malarial germs by planting groves of eucalyptus; it analyzes soils; it selects seeds; it fertilizes with electric wires, and it ploughs and plants and harvests fields with iron-limbed and steam-lunged servants. A hundred years ago one man with spade and sickle slowly wrested from the earth the sustenance for his little household, with only sufficient surplus to scantily compensate the weaver, who, with hand loom, constructed a few yards of cloth between daylight and dark. Now a girl guides the spindles and shuttles and makes thousands of yards of cloth in a day, and the labor of one man industriously applied to so much land as he can advantageously cultivate with the aid of improved machinery, will in one year produce one thousand bushels of wheat, or their equivalent in agricultural products—enough to feed fifty men for a year.”
“I grant you, doctor, that the production of wealth has greatly increased. The problem of the hour is how to provide for a more equal and just distribution of it.”
“John, the solution of the problem is not difficult. Allow every man to have that which he earns, and compel every man to earn that which he has. Accord every man the opportunity to work or starve, with the assurance that for his work he will receive full value, and for his idleness a hunger that no public or private charity will alleviate. Hard labor and hard fare for the criminal, generous diet and tender care for the sick, an ax or a pump handle for the tramp, and allow no healthy man to eat his supper until he has earned it. Consider sporadic and indiscriminate charity as great an evil as injustice. Accord every man his dollar and demand from every man your dollar, and give and exact shilling for shilling. Emulate and copy the inexorable justice of nature.”
“Doctor,” said the professor, “I am silenced but not convinced. The sun is getting too high for further fishing. Come, let us go to luncheon.”
CHAPTER VI.
“No man can tell what he does not know.”
“Bob,” said Morning, as they lighted their cigars, and seated themselves after supper upon the piazza of the railroad hotel at Tucson, “the copper assays are not up to your expectations, still I am inclined to buy the property if I can arrange to employ men at rates that will enable me to work it. What are miners’ wages hereabouts?”