eir cause. But if that cause wins, the
barriers of every union must break down, and the industrial energies
of the nation will be scattered in the unimportant work in order to
give an equal chance to the unproductive.

Nobody doubts that socialism would overcome some of the obvious
weaknesses of the capitalistic era, and those weaknesses may be
acknowledged even if we are faithful to our plan and abstract from
mere human happiness. If only the objective achievement is our aim, we
cannot deny that the millionfold misery from sickness and old age,
from accidents at work, and from unemployment through a crisis in
trade, from starvation wages, and from losses through fraudulent
undertakings, is keeping us from the goal. But has the groaning of
this misery remained unheard in these times, when capitalism has been
reaching its height? The last two decades have shown that the system
of private ownership can be in deepest harmony with all those efforts
to alleviate its cruelties in order to strengthen the efficiency of
the nation at work. Certainly the socialists themselves deserve credit
for much in the great international movement toward the material
security of the workingman's social life. It is doubtful whether
without her social democrats, Germany, the pioneer in the social
insurance movement, would have given to the army of workingmen those
protective laws which became the model for England and other nations,
and which are beginning to be influential in American thinking, too.
The laws against child labour, the efforts for minimum wage rates,
and, most important, the worldwide tendency to secure a firm
supervision and regulation of the private companies by the state, are
characteristic features of the new period in which capitalism
triumphs, and yet is freeing itself from cancerous growths which
destroy its power for fullest achievement.

To work nine hours instead of ten, and eight instead of nine, was only
apparently an encroachment on the industrial work. The worldwide
experiment has proved that the shorter working hours allow an
intensity of strain and an improvement of the workmen which ultimately
heighten the value of the output. The safety devices burdened the
manufacturer with expenses, and yet the economist knows that no outlay
is more serviceable for the achievement of the factory. Unionism and
arbitration treaties are sincere and momentous efforts to help the
whole industrial nation. And all this may be only