— 4  —

We need not investigate how far, or, if any one of these alleged
causes are responsible for our ills. Side by side with our country
lies the Dominion of Canada, where they always had, and to some
degree still have, a free-trade policy, and Great Britain and other
countries of Europe have the same policy,—and we find there the
same depression of business. France and Russia are blessed with
protective duties—and stagnation and bankruptcy are there spread
as with us. Both the hard money and the soft money countries are
suffering under an unprecedented crisis. The Republic of Switzer¬
land no less than all the Monarchies of the Old World are complain¬
ing of miseries like our own. In short, it is a World's Crisis which
we are in. There must, then, a cause prevail all over the world
likewise, which is at the bottom of this universal depression ; and
all the other causes which may be found at work in our own coun¬
try, can be of less importance only. In some respects we shall
find our country better off than some or all the others, in other re¬
spects we are worse of than some or all; in fact, it is difficult to
.show which country fares worst, since each claims to be at the foot
•of the ladder of thrift.

Now, as all the world is depressed, and as everywhere the ma¬
jority of the people are growing poorer, though a decreasing ma¬
jority may grow enormously richer, there can be no prospect of
better times anywhere, unless the one great cause of depression
.everywhereis discovered, and the means for its removal is applied.

That cause is no secret. It has been manifest to the eyes of
Science for more than thirty years ; the present world's crisis has
been foretold. But so long as the people are prosperous, the voice
.of prophetic Science counts for nothing. Let now that voice be
heard, if a new prosperity is to return.

This one cause is called Capitalistic Production. What does that ex¬
pression mean 1 It means that those who produce all the goods
and merchandise, are not the owners of their means of labor (lands
and real estate, mines, factories, machines, means of transportation,
etc.,) but must sell their working force to some owner of those
means of labor; the former are called wages laborers, the latter
capitalists. The capitalist does not pay to the laborer all the earn¬
ings of the labor of the latter, but only a portion thereof; he keeps
the rest to reward himself for the loan of the means of labor—or, in
other words, he makes the laborer work more hours a day than is '
needed to refund the outlay of capital and the outlay for wages.
And he has the power to do so for reasons to be stated below. For
the present it suffices to know that capitalistic production means a
lawful state of things, in which the majority of a population are un¬
able to own the means of labor, so as to work on their own ac¬
count and to keep all their earnings for themselves, but must enter
into the employment of some owner of means by which  they can