aspect of the question, however. With the development of the Trust, production, in accordance with the economic demand, is more and more being regulated, always keeping in mind, of course, the solvent demand. As the Trust develops, therefore, there will be an increasing tendency to convert only that portion of the products of labor into capital which is actually needed to supply the economic requirements of society; hence, every increase in the intensity of labor, every method for increasing the total product, "industrial efficiency," in a word, which is so dear to the hearts of our exploiters, will have the very opposite effect to that claimed for it, as a lesser quantity of that portion of capital advanced as wages will be required.
So far as those spheres of industry are concerned, in which the Trust has not yet found a footing, the future of the worker is no less precarious—assuming, of course, that the little schemes of the capitalist class and their efficiency experts are allowed to come to maturity. The history of the capitalist system affords many illustrations of how blind competition among capitalists, with the resultant phenomenon of over-production, affects the economic and social well-being of the workers.
Marx throws a flood of light on this question of over-production in his third volume of "Capital" in dealing with the cotton crisis in Lancashire following the year 1860. Many authorities state that more cotton goods were produced in that year than were absorbed by the world's markets in the following three. As a result, over 50 per cent of the workers were thrown out of employment; those actually employed were obliged to offer themselves for any wages the manufacturers in their benevolence offered, 4 or 5 shillings ($0.96 or $1.20) per week being considered something above the ordinary; young girls left the factories because they could not earn as much as one shilling per week, and begged to be taken into the charitable institutions. One factory inspector reported that "had information concerning self-acting
