X.—The Class War.

Between the two classes there is perpetual strife. Disguise it as we may by feudal benevolence, or the kindly attempts of philanthropists, the material interests of the small nation privileged to exact rent for its monopolies, and of the great nation, thereby driven to receive only the remnant of the product, are permanently opposed. "The more there is allotted to labor the less there will remain to be appropriated as rent" (Fawcett, "Manual of Political Economy," p. 123).

It is therefore "the enormous share which the possessors of the instruments of industry are able to take from the produce" (J. S. Mill, quoting Feugueray, "Principles of Political Economy," p. 477, popular edition of 1865), which is the primary cause of the small incomes of the comparatively poor. That neither class makes the best possible social use of its revenues, and that both waste much in extravagance and vice, is an apparently inevitable secondary result of the unequal division, which it intensifies and renders permanent; but it is a secondary result only, not the primary cause. Even if the whole "manual-labor class" made the best possible use of the £38 per adult, which is their average income, it would still be impossible for them to live the cultured human life which the other classes demand for themselves as the minimum of the life worth living. It is practically inevitable that many of the poor, being debarred from this "Standard of Life," should endeavor to enjoy themselves in ways not permanently advantageous to themselves or to society.

The force by which this conflict of interest is maintained, without the conscious contrivance of either party, is competition, diverted, like other forces, from its legitimate social use. The legal disposers of the great natural monopolies are able, by means of legally licensed competition, to exact the full amount of their economic rents, and the political economists tell us that so long as these natural monopolies are left practically unrestrained in private hands, a thorough remedy is impossible.

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In 1874, Professor Cairnes thought that some help might be found (at any rate, by the better paid laborers) by means of co-operation in production. He then wrote : "If workmen do not rise from dependence upon capital by the path of co-operation, then they must remain in dependence upon capital; the margin for the possible improvement of their lot is confined within narrow barriers which cannot be passed, and the problem of their elevation is hopeless. As j a body they will not rise at all. A few, more energetic or more fortunate than the rest, will from time to time escape, as they do now, from the ranks of their fellows to the higher walks of industrial life, but the great majority will remain substantially where they are. The remuneration of labor, as such, skilled or unskilled, can never rise much above its present level" (Prof. J. E. Cairnes, "Some Leading Principles of Political Economy," p. 348; 1874).

Nineteen years have passed away since these words were written, and it must now be apparent, even to the most sanguine of individualists, that the chance of the great bulk of the laborers ever coming to work upon their own land and capital in associations for co-operative production, has become even less hopeful than it ever was; and Dr. J. K. Ingram tells us that modern economists, such as Professors T. E. Cliffe Leslie and F. A. Walker, regard the idea as "chimerical" (Article on "Political Economy" in Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIX., p. 382). Even so friendly an economist as Mr. Leonard Courtney agrees in this view. Yet this, according to authorities so eminent, is the only* hope for the laborer under the present arrangements of society, or any other that the Professor could suggest.