Courts have declared legal the conscience of the best and ablest of the railway managers is beginning to recognize as just. Said Mr. William Henry Baldwin, Jr.: "The exact fair cost should be capitalized, and after capital has had its fair return and business efficiency is maintained, the surplus is to go where it belongs, to the public." "

1

We can collect a rental in the form of a tax for the landowner (the public) from the landholder, and in the form of a royalty on all timber cut and all minerals extracted from the soil; and England's recent Budget is a movement, and a successful movement, in this direction. We can prevent stock-watering, and can discourage, if we cannot altogether prevent, stock-gambling; and the recent legislation against other forms of gambling, and the increasing popular condemnation of gambling in all its forms, give reasonable hope of a time when the attempt to get something for nothing, whatever form it takes, will be accounted as immoral, even if it cannot by law be made as criminal, as theft, forgery, and embezzlement.

Said Abraham Lincoln in 1861: "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the

1 J. G. Brooks, An American Citizen, p. 126.

superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of the community exists within that relation. . . . There is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition of life. Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent penniless beginner in the world labors for wages a while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to allgives hope to all, and consequently energy and progress and improvement of condition to all."

In these sentences Abraham Lincoln points the way toward the solution of our labor problem. What many independent men have done as individuals in transferring themselves from the laboring class without capital to the capitalistic class, yet still continuing their labor, I hope to see laborers as a class do for themselves. I hope to see a state of society in which there will be few or no capitalists who do not have to labor, and few or no laborers who are compelled to remain all their

lives without becoming capitalists; a state of society in which no man will live on the fruits of another man's labor, and no man will be denied the fruits of his own labor. This is what I mean by industrial democracy. More specifically, it means the universal diffusion of the economic virtues temperance, honesty, and truth; the coöperation of the head and hands in an industrial partnership; a just and equitable division of the products of their joint industry between the tool-owners and the tool-users; a fair opportunity for the tool-user to become part owner of the tools that he labors with; growing coöperation between the laborer and the capitalist, or the tooluser and the tool-owner, in both ownership of the tool and the direction of the industry; and a frank recognition of the fundamental truth that every individual is entitled to the product of his individual industry, to a just proportion of the product which in joint industry he has helped to create, and to a participation in that common wealth which, being produced by no individual industry, belongs of right to the entire community. Democracy appears to me to be slowly but surely coming to a recognition of these principles. In the recognition of these principles and their incorporation in the industrial life of the community is the solution of our labor problem.

CHAPTER X

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF GOVERNMENT

IN November, 1909, three hundred miners were entombed in a mine at Cherry, near Spring Valley, Illinois, for a week. The living were here imprisoned with the dead. At the end of that time twenty-two miners were rescued alive. They had kept themselves free from the fatal gas by building a barricade. Saved from death by suffocation, they were threatened with death by thirst. Two of these men, self-constituted leaders by virtue of their character, gave orders for the protection of the little community. They directed that the three members of the party who were sick should have the first chance at the little pools of water that were in the depressions that had been scooped out of the veins of coal. Against these orders some of the men revolted, and one was discovered stealing water from one of the sick miners. He was seized by the guard whom the self-constituted leaders had appointed and, after a struggle, was felled to the ground and made a prisoner.

Such is always the origin of government. For

the protection of the community some man, or some body of men, exercise control, to which usually the majority yield willing obedience, and, if the government is successful, the minority an unwilling obedience. This government is always based upon power. A command is not a command unless there is power to enforce it. Without such power it is only advice. When one man, or a group of men, get such control in a community that they can make the rest obey their commands, there is the beginning of government; and all governments in the history of the world have begun in this way. Parental government is no exception to this fundamental principle. In the well-ordered family the child obeys the requirements of his parents because they are his parents and have a right to demand submission to their authority, as in a well-ordered State the citizens obey the government because it is the government and has a right to demand submission to its authority.

This government may be that of one strong man ruling over the rest, in which case it is an autocracy; it may be a small body of men, or class of men, ruling over the rest, then it is an oligarchy; it may be the many ruling over the rest, then it is a democracy. But it is not a government at all unless the ruler, be he one, few, or many, has a recognized authority to issue com