thoroughly organized and developed community. The poor man, in
the sense of one whose abilities are undeveloped and who has no visible
means of support, is relatively less able to care for himself in the
enlightened community than in the ruder pioneer life. In this sense, and
this alone, the poor man grows poorer with advancing civilization. This
may easily be seen by comparing a thrifty farming community of today and
all the accumulated stock, machinery and tools of the farms, with the same
community sixty years earlier, when all was practically wilderness. A
strong man with an ax and a hoe could enter the wilderness anywhere and
live nearly as well as any of his neighbors. Such a man in the higher
country life of our times must work for some one else at wages, or must be
supported at public expense. In either case he feels his poverty. At the
same time, the extreme of suffering is less likely to be reached in the
richer community. The poorest man has comforts of which the pioneers never
dreamed. Even a tramp can live on the fat of the land, but not by his own
exertions. The failure of a crop in the pioneer country means starvation
for a large portion of the few inhabitants. A failure in the older
community means suffering for a few in diminished food and clothing, but
all live on the accumulations of the past.

[Chart.]

Chart III. Illustrating the relative importance of labor and saving, in
the progress of civilization from its beginnings in pioneer life.

_Developing civilization._--This essential advantage of accumulating power
in individuals, as civilization advances, is necessarily connected with
the very nature of civilization and growth. As no conceivable device can
make a babe as efficient as a man, so no contrivance, political or social,
can make an undeveloped man equal to a fully developed one.

The intense community of interests in high civilization makes even more
important the individual abilities of each sharer in those interests. For
this reason every device for universal education, development of skill and
strengthening of character, and every check upon deterioration of personal
strength or wisdom or virtue is to be considered. Any neglect of the
individual in his development of personal attainments retards the
development of the community. Any device for the equal distribution of
wealth which does not increase individual thrift in the use of wealth at
least