the increased population has increased its command of goods even more rapidly than its numbers. All this has to be chalked up to Capitalism's credit and considered carefully before, just because it has not created an earthly Paradise for us, we throw it down and put an untried system in its place. Itis true that part of our population has lived and continues to live under circumstances of which our civilization has every reason to be ashamed. But even in their case the gift of life is something, and social reformers are rather apt to forget, in their eagerness to put right the evils which beset the destitute among us, that the greater part of our population leads and has led lives, which though far from being ideal from an economic or any other point of view, have taken them through the world in a state of fair contentment, and with a reasonable and growing share in the gifts which science has placed at man's disposal. Industrial and scientific progress in the control of the forces of nature, has proceeded with astonishing rapidity throughout this period of production under Capitalism.
It may be argued that science and invention have done the real work, and that Capitalism has only picked their brains, applying their
