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COLLECTIVISM  AND  LAND  NATIONALIZATION.  2$/
with  advancing  wealth  ”  in  all  civilized  communities.  Thirty
years  ago,  he  says,  he  saw  California  in  its  infancy.  There  was
little  capital,  no  machines,  no  good  roads,  no  large  cities  ;  the
settler  inhabited  a  log-cabin  ;  but  every  one  could  make  a  living,
and  there  were  no  beggars.  To-day  San  Francisco  is  a  wealthy
town,  where  dwell  millionnaires,  and  where  their  palaces  rise  in
all  directions.  Capital  is  abundant  and  is  accumulating  with
unprecedented  rapidity  ;  meanwhile  wages  have  fallen  more
than  one-half,  and  in  the  streets  lined  with  princely  mansions,
lit  with  gas,  and  thronged  with  liveried  equipages,  beggars  wait
tor  the  passer-by,  and  “the  more  hideous  Huns  and  fiercer
Vandals,”  of  whom  Macaulay  prophesied,  become  every  day
uiore  numerous.  Go  where  you  may,  the  same  contrast  will
strike  you  :  where  capital  is  most  abundant,  there  also  is  the
deepest  poverty—look,  for  example,  at  London  or  Paris.  In
primitive  communities,  reckoned  as  poor,  and  where,  in  fact,
capital  is  scarce,  there  is  no  great  wealth,  indeed,  but  there  is
no  destitution.  Economic  history  presents  similar  facts.
Formerly,  when  all  works  were  carried  on  by  hand,  Society,
considered  as  a  whole,  was  poor,  but  the  labourer  had  work
assured  to  him  by  which  he  could  obtain  a  living.  To-day
machines  produce  useful  articles  in  abundance  and  with  marvellous ­
  ease.  The  forest-tree  is  sawn  into  planks  and  transformed
into  doors  or  window-frames,  without  the  touch  of  the  hand  of
man,  save  to  guide  the  engines  which  do  the  work.  In  cotton
or  woollen  factories,  the  mule-jenny,  tended  by  one  workman,
spins  as  much  yarn  as  fifteen  hundred  workwomen  could
formerly  have  done.  Cyclopean  steam-hammers  forge  huge
masses  of  steel,  while  mechanical  contrivances  of  extreme
delicacy  make  watches  at  a  wonderfully  small  cost  Augers
"'ith  diamond-points  pierce  the  rocks.  Gas,  petroleum,  electricity,
  light  us  for  almost  nothing.  Highly  finished  engines
perform  all  agricultural  operations  ;  while  railways  and  steamships
  bear  to  us  from  the  slopes  of  the  Himalayas  and  from  the
far  West  the  harvests  of  virgin  soils.
It  is  beyond  dispute  that  human  labour,  aided  by  these
powerful  and  marvellous  machines,  amply  suffices  to  assure  to
‘til  the  inhabitants  of  civilized  countries  the  full  satisfaction  of