ductivity of the laborer, why is it that in the last half-century, when the productiveness of labor by new discoveries and inventions, has been increased a hundredfold, when with the modern means of transportation and communication, the natural resources of what our forefathers called "the ends of the earth" have been brought within helloing distance, so to speak, of the great centers of European population—why is it that the great mass of workers are still getting but the bare means of subsistence and living in constant dread of the bread-line? Or, to make the question easier for our local "economists," why is it, as the figures of the Commonwealth Statistician show, that the Australian worker is receiving today a smaller proportion of his product than ten years ago, despite the fact that, as shown by the same statistics, the laborer's productivity has increased enormously?
Of course these gentry, whose hearts are overflowing with good intentions (?) towards the working class will tell us that things should not be so, that there is "room for improvement in the distribution of wealth," that "nobody sympathizes with the position of the workers more than I do," etc., etc.; but all this is merely equivalent to saying that Capitalism should not be Capitalism; that the capitalist system of production should not bring along its own natural laws; but the workers do not benefit by this insufferable hypocrisy and patronage. As well might they regret the tendency and danger of a smoldering volcano to work havoc among the adjacent inhabitants as soon as a certain degree of heat has been reached. Pious vaporings about an "ideal state of things" and what the worker "ought to get" won't alter facts.
III.
It is sometimes contended that every increase in the employer's profits increases his available capital, and, therefore, enables him to give employment to more wage-laborers, but this plea, as already indicated, is merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There is another
