urging of new-born powers within them; and
longed to give them exercise. So the old forms of community life were
slowly broken up. Individuals embarked in various enterprises; now no
longer consociated with others in mutual cooeperation, but for their
individual benefit. Thus _competitive_ industry gradually supplanted the
old method of _cooeperative_ or _associated_ industry, as seen in its
crude and imperfect form, and the inauguration of the false and selfish
system which still prevails began.

There could be but one result to a mode of commercial and industrial
traffic and a system of labor and wages which pits the various classes
of Society together in a strife for the wealth of the world, the
fundamental principle of which strife is, _that it is perfectly right to
take advantage of the necessities of our neighbors in order to obtain
their means for our own enrichment_.

For this was the principle which instinctively sprang up in the world as
the basis of business, and which has never been changed. Traffic
originated in the necessities of life, and was extended by the desire to
obtain wealth. Each individual perceived some want in his neighbor, and
forthwith proceeded to supply this want, _charging just as much for the
thing supplied as the desire for the article or his need of it would
force the person supplied to pay; without reference to the equitable
price, estimated with respect to the labor bestowed in supplying the
want_. This principle of trade, originating in the most complete
selfishness, and, viewed from any high moral point, both unjust and
dishonest, has always been and is to-day the fundamental principle of
our Political Economy. That 'a thing is worth what it will bring,' is a
basic axiom of all trade. The only price which is recognized in commerce
is the market price; which is, again, what a commodity will bring. What
a commodity will bring is what the necessities of mankind will make them
pay. Thus is exhibited the curious spectacle of the existence of a
Religion which inculcates good will and love to our neighbor as the
foundation of all true civilization and virtue, coexisting side by side
with a Commercial System, a relic, like slavery, of ancient barbarism,
which forces all men to traffic with each other on the principle that
our neighbor is an object of legitimate prey.

Of course, in a System of Competitive Industry thus carried on, the
wealth of the world would fall into the hands of those