Revolution and Other Essays | Page 7

labour, would be able to supply a
population of 20,000,000 people with all the necessaries and small
luxuries of life by working 1.5 hours per day.
This being so, matter being mastered, man's efficiency for food- and
shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of the
caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more
miserably than lived the caveman? This is the question the revolutionist
asks, and he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class. The
capitalist class does not answer it. The capitalist class cannot answer it.
If modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfold
greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10,000,000

people in the United States to-day who are not properly sheltered and
properly fed? If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why,
then, to-day, in the United States, are 80,000 children working out their
lives in the textile factories alone? If the child of the caveman did not
have to work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are there
1,752,187 child-labourers?
It is a true count in the indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged,
is to-day mismanaging. In New York City 50,000 children go hungry to
school, and in New York City there are 1,320 millionaires. The point,
however, is not that the mass of mankind is miserable because of the
wealth the capitalist class has taken to itself. Far from it. The point
really is that the mass of mankind is miserable, not for want of the
wealth taken by the capitalist class, BUT FOR WANT OF THE
WEALTH THAT WAS NEVER CREATED. This wealth was never
created because the capitalist class managed too wastefully and
irrationally. The capitalist class, blind and greedy, grasping madly, has
not only not made the best of its management, but made the worst of it.
It is a management prodigiously wasteful. This point cannot be
emphasized too strongly.
In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the
caveman, and that modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is
a thousandfold greater than the caveman's, no other solution is possible
than that the management is prodigiously wasteful.
With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented,
a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equally
rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have
to labour more than two or three hours per day to feed 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 mankind to
continue and to increase, in short, the capitalist class failed to take
advantage of the opportunity.
But the opportunity is still here. The capitalist class has been tried and
found wanting. Remains the working-class to see what it can do with
the opportunity. "But the working-class is incapable," says the capitalist
class. "What do you know about it?" the working- class replies.
"Because you have failed is no