employment
to labor. If this were merely a theory, we could afford to ignore it;
but the trouble is that it is acted upon, and works untold evil and
damage to the world. To take a typical case, people reason that damage
done by flood or fire or storm is not a total loss because employment
will be furnished to many in repairing and rebuilding after the
devastation. They do not stop to reflect that so much wealth has been
wiped out of the world, and that _instead of the destruction furnishing
so much additional employment, it has only changed the direction of the
employment_. For money nowadays is always spent, either directly, by its
owners, or by some one to whom he lends it. And wherever money is spent
it furnishes employment. Therefore, if the money which was used in
repairing and rebuilding had not been required for that work, it would
have been spent in some other direction and furnished employment to
labor there. Understanding, then, that the economic interests of the
community are best served when each one of its members exerts his
energies with the greatest result and with the least waste in producing
wealth, let us see to what extent intense competition and monopolies
have violated this law.

In his interesting book entitled "Questions of the Day," Prof. Richard
P. Ely, of Johns Hopkins University, refers to the building of two great
railways with closely paralleled roads already in operation, the Nickel
Plate, and the New York, West Shore and Buffalo, and says:

"It is estimated that the money wasted by these two single attempts
at competition amounts to $200,000,000. Let the reader reflect for
a moment what this means. It will be admitted that, taking city and
country together, comfortable homes can be constructed for an
average of $1,000 each. Two hundred thousand homes could be
constructed for the sum wasted, and two hundred thousand homes
means homes for one million people. I suppose it is a very moderate
estimate to place the amount wasted in the construction of useless
railroads at $1,000,000,000, which, on the basis of our previous
calculations, would construct homes for five millions of people.
But this is probably altogether too small an estimate of even the
direct waste resulting from the application of a faulty political
economy to practical life. When the indirect losses are added, the
result is something astounding, for the exp