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Show THE CITIZEN I 7 DIPPING INTO THE FUTUR-EQ the t vogue nowadays to probe into the future life, but even the devotees of this form of religion or relaxation, or whatever we have a mind to call it, have admitted the comparative futility of tlieir efforts. Practical men must ever find it T T is quite more profitable for themselves and lor society to try to discern what the future life will be, not on some other planet or in some other world, but in this world. This is not the slightest reflection upon religion; it does not depreciate in any fashion the spiritual instinct in man; it is simply a recognition that we have been placed on this planet to earn our bread in the sweat of our brows and that we must fulfill our destiny. We must provide not only for our salvation, but we must keep this material world of ours in operation and provide for future generations as well as for our own. Necessarily we must be occupied most of the time with the things of this world. In a word, because man lives but for a day he must interest himself in the future life, but because mankind lives for ages all of us must interest ourselves intensively in what the future is to be in this world of our present cognition. . 0 All of us are conscious, more or less, that a new world is before us, that the customs and the systems of the age we have just departed from are dying, and that the age which is just springing into life will be something quite different. We must consult our compass and all our new scientific instruments to steer a reasonable course in the hope of arriving at safe ports of refuge or vantage. In the age just behind us the Capitalistic System achieved its greatest triumphs and those who suggested changes, especially in our own country, could appeal only to theory and not to the logic of facts. We deluded ourselves, however, if we harbored the e conviction that any system could in a world subject to constant change. They were wise who realized that the world was simply passing through another phase and that still another phase was just beyond. Few suspected, however, that we should be hurled suddenly from one phase to another. We believed that the old order would vanish by a process of extinction and not by destruction. 1 sur-viv- q In the half century preceding the war society amassed wealth and spent sparingly. This will sound strange to those .who recall certain startling feats of expenditure by spectacular millionaires, but the fact was that wherever civilization was building, a surplus was produced year after year to meet and outstrip the pressure of population. The circumstance that this surplus was unevenly distributed, that it was concentrated in a comparatively few hands, does not minify the circumstance itself. True, the world consumed each year . its bread, its wool, its cotton, its wine and its oil, but it built up the machinery of production and established vast wealth in railways, ships, public utilities, roads, mines, factories, skyscrapers and homes. All classes, even the rich, had been habituated to economy. The rich accumulated rapidly, but they reinvested their surplus and began developing the worlds resources at an unparalleled rate of progress. European capitalists who derived their profits from the upbuilding of industry in Great Britain or Germany, for example, invested their savings in North or South America, in Australia or Africa or Russia. Their money went into the development of ranches, mines, oil wells and many other natural resources. Europe, particularly Germany, constructed a complex industrial system, nor did the Teuton capitalists worry that their systems would become While they builded in tlieir own domain they obtained cheap bread and wool and cotton and oil from Russia or the United States. top-heav- y. Even before the war the keenest economic observers could see that the old system was passing away. More and more the pressure of population in the United States was reducing the exportable surplus of foodstuffs. The time was aproaching when that population, increasing at the rate of more than a million a year, would require all that farms could grow, even with the aid of labor-savin- g machinery. The war destroyed the civilized worlds surplus just at a time when men were beginning to spend with a more liberal hand. The phenomenon was more obvious in our own country than anywhere else. The population was drifting away from the farms to build up the industries. Industry-waassuming a new character. Prices were cheap because the necessaries of life were easily produced and because the farms and mines were still turning out more than our own population could use. Entire new departments of industry were calling for labor to make machinery, telephones, automobiles, electrical devices of a thousand kinds and the railway cars and ships in which to transport all of these things. On the eve of the war we were about to extinguish the old system. The war simply hastened the process with stunning speed. It is true that men were more devoted to pleasure as evidenced by the fabrication of hundreds of thousands of automobiles and the growth of the theatrical industry, especially the moving picture business. But it would be a grave error to assume that there was an abnormal tendency toward leisure and luxury. It probably was true that men were making up their minds to give themselves more and more to the immediate enjoyment of what they produced, but there was no sudden and fatal decision to seek surcease from labor and go in for sloth. By F. P. Gallagher must not lose sight of the fact that men were still manufacturing the Instrumentalities of production. They were making the devices that simplified and accelerated output. They were constructing automobile trucks, 'railway cars and ships. The war, so to say, gulped down this later production, at the same time stopping the wheels of industry and diminishnecesing the output of peace-tim- sure and pleasure. That was the psychological result of the facility and cheapness of production prior to the labor-savinstruggle of the powers. Our machinery of production, in other words, was adequate to our needs, but when the conflict came on we either transformed the machinery into war machinery or destroyed it altogether. Necessarily we have been at work e for several years replacing our masaries. chinery and while thus engaged we have been trying to live on the old To what extent the war reduced the . scale. Our workmen have been toiling to make more luxuries than ever surplus wealth of civilization it is un' necessary to discuss here. We saw while, at the same time, trying to rethat wealth disappear, as it were, be- place the sunken ships and to reorfore our very eyes as each German ganize the factories on a peace-tim, torpedo found its mark in the hull of basis. a richly laden merchant ship. But the We have been consuming rapidly, conflict destroyed wealth in many producing slowly. In the sense that other ways. We stopped producing the we have been providing the machinery of production we are the gainers. We luxuries, and in some degree the necessaries of life, so that one part of have not yet felt the full benefit of our labor could make explosives while that process. While the machines another part of our labor hurled the have been in the making the output explosives across a few feet or miles lias been by that much restricted. of space for the destruction of other From now on we should begin to see wealth producers. We took a sanguinthe fruits of our labors. ary vacation, bought shells and greOnce more machinery is being nades to explode, sank ships, killed labrought to a state of adequacy and tile borers, drove workers off the farms labor which was involved can be used ' and transformed our machinery so for production of commodities. Here, that it would make more explosives then, we see one of the causes of lafor our festival of blood. bor shortage in the output of foodstuffs and other necessaries. Much of Perhaps it is not to be denied that our labor has been employed in mak-- ( men were acquiring the habit of lei Continued on Page 15.) 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