Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/265

chester cotton goods and Sheffield knives, and more bread and meat!" What theory has neglected up to the present time practice will soon set about in earnest: viz. to demonstrate the preposterousness of the definitions and principles of the present science of political economy invented and maintained by and for Capital, and accepted without enquiry by the world. Already, the world over, man is laboring beyond all reason and producing beyond all demand. Almost every civilized country is trying to export manufactured articles and import provisions. The markets for the former are beginning to fail. We can say without fear of exaggeration, that the great manufacturing industries of the principal countries in Europe have found all the markets they ever will find. These conditions can only grow worse, never better. The countries which are not yet developed as regards manufactures are gradually becoming so. Processes of labor will be still more improved, machines still further increased and perfected, and then? Then each country will be able to supply its own demand for manufactured articles and have an abundance left over that it will try to dispose of to its neighbor, but in vain, for the latter will have no use for them. The very last naked negro on the upper Congo will have his fifty yards of cotton cloth and his gun, the very last Papuan his boots and his paper collars. The European will have then reached the point of buying a new suit of clothes every week, and having a machine to turn over the leaves of his magazine. This will be the Golden Age of the political economists who are so captivated by unrestricted production, unbounded consumption and an unlimited development of manufactures. And in this Golden Age, when the entire country will be set as thick with factory chimneys as it is now with trees, the people will live on