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thereof. Political liberty without economic freedom is an empty phrase. The possessors of property also possess all political power in all modern so-called representative States.
The ballot, strikes, arbitration, isolated co-operation, economy, prayers, or petitions can no longer ameliorate the condition of the wage-slave. So, far form improving their condition, the system of industry, based upon private property with wages and competition, not only renders this impossible, but must continue to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer inevitably.
The system centralizes the means of production; it gathers the people into vast commercial and manufacturing centers, where the enormous wealth they create flows continually into the coffers of the few. Here the strike is met with the lock-out, and the ballot falls powerless from the hand which holds no bread.
Under this system periodic panics occur, world-wide in their character, growing more frequent and intense as the system develops. At such times society is suddenly thrown back into barbarism, and thousands perish of want while surrounded by the greatest of abundance. We are in the midst of such a crisis now. Every country is searching for a foreign market to absorbed its so-called overproduction, and the captains of our modern industry, like Alexander of Macedon, bewail the fact that there are no more commercial worlds for them to conquer.
Look at the process of production and exchange and see what it is. The increase of the technical sciences, the division and subdivision of labor, the application of machinery, steam, and electricity is ever changing and ever increasing the productive power on one hand and decreasing the demand for wage-laborers on the other. As the power to produce rapidly increases, so does the opportunity to work, and consequently to live, rapidly diminish on the other. The commercial middle-class system of production can not longer withstand the pressure of overproduction, and the forces of production at the disposal of society has become too powerful for middle-class control. It has created the conditions which will cause its destruction. It has transformed the small workshop into the large factory, and the individual capitalist is superseded by the corporation and syndicate. The small dealer, merchant, or farmer
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