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of superior powers; while the feeble, the stolid, and the ignorant would be left poor and helpless. And, as the different classes of the community would be no longer directly associated with each other in their labors and interests, but would be, on the contrary, competitors--and as the fact that there had been free competition would be held by all classes to absolve them from any responsibility as to each other's welfare--it would inevitably result that the weaker orders should fall into indigence, degradation, wretchedness, starvation, and premature death. Such has been the case. With the advent of Competitive Industry in Europe and America--to confine ourselves to these countries--with the disintegration of the Social System in which the different classes were associated in mutually dependent and cooeperative efforts; with the abrogation, on the part of the superior body of citizens, of all responsibility for, and direct interest in, the affairs and comfort of the lower orders, has come Pauperism, Social Instability, and a degree of misery and depravity among the poorest of the masses, never before known in the history of the world, all things being taken into consideration. It is a well-known saying of Political Economists, that the rich are daily growing richer, and the poor poorer. It might be added with truth: and more degraded and dangerous. The effects of this method of Competitive Industry upon the higher classes have been scarcely less injurious, though in a different direction. It has bred an intense selfishness and an apathy in respect to the sufferings of others which no lover of his race can contemplate without emotions of anguish. Not only is the idea of any effort for the permanent relief of the poorer classes, for taking them under special care and making their welfare the business of Society, not entertained by any large number of persons; but those who do feel keenly the necessity of such a step, and whose sympathies are aroused by the sufferings of the masses around them, are too deeply imbued with the ease-loving spirit of the age, too much wedded to their own comfort, to take any active measures for the realization of their desires, or to forego their momentary interests to secure them. The rich heap up riches by the iniquitous trade-system which drifts the earnings of the laborers into their net, and are dead to the call of those whom they are, unconsciously in most cases, defrauding. Nay!
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