everybody, clothe everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and
give a fair measure of little luxuries to everybody. There would be
no more material want and wretchedness, no more children toiling out
their lives, no more men and women and babes living like beasts and
dying like beasts. Not only would matter be mastered, but the
machine would be mastered. In such a day incentive would be finer
and nobler than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of
the stomach. No man, woman, or child, would be impelled to action by
an empty stomach. On the contrary, they would be impelled to action
as a child in a spelling match is impelled to action, as boys and
girls at games, as scientists formulating law, as inventors applying
law, as artists and sculptors painting canvases and shaping clay, as
poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and by statecraft.
The spiritual, intellectual, and artistic uplift consequent upon such
a condition of society would be tremendous. All the human world
would surge upward in a mighty wave.

This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class. Less
blindness on its part, less greediness, and a rational management,
were all that was necessary. A wonderful era was possible for the
human race. But the capitalist class failed. It made a shambles of
civilization. Nor can the capitalist class plead not guilty. It
knew of the opportunity. Its wise men told of the opportunity, its
scholars and its scientists told it of the opportunity. All that
they said is there to-day in the books, just so much damning evidence
against it. It would not listen. It was too greedy. It rose up (as
it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and
declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children
and babes. It lulled its conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet
ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering and misery of