Mutual Interests of Labor And Capital

ealized when employment is general, wages just, and conditions of employment such as tend to promote contentment and tranquility. "Hard times" are always accompanied by widespread unemployment, which, in turn, diminishes all lines of business activity. When the workman is out of a job, sales fall away and collections are difficult and uncertain. Any investigation into the causes of "hard times" involves serious consideration of the whole subject of political economy. It was my interest in the welfare of laboring men that caused me to devote much time to the study of these questions. In my earlier study of this subject, I reached the conclusion that the centralization of wealth into the hands of the few was rapidly becoming a menace to free government. I regarded it as an unmitigated evil. I thought that when one man became enormously rich, many men must be made correspondingly poor. I believed that the one great overshadowing economic problem of this age is how to procure a wider and more equitable distribution of wealth. The error is a very common one. Millions of people are laboring under that same delusion. Like them, I overlooked the fact that God, in His providence, had solved that problem when He laid the foundations of the race. Before discovering my error, I made many speeches about Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan and other wealthy men, endeavoring to show how the common people were being impoverished by their accumulations. ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.