Our Industrial and Financial Situation [pp. 517-529]

1875.1 FINANCIAL SITUATION. 527
inflation of bubbles of speculation, overstrained credit, extravagance of living in pampered luxury and ostentatious costliness, beyond all means to support them, which has of late,
without, however, lessening the number who are still making
the fatal strain to live beyond their means, so ignominiously
and fatally collapsed, thus bringing on a stagnation of business,
trade, and productive industry, and threatening a deluge of
pauperism, which makes the question, how we shall escape from
them, the question of the hour. And the answer to it must be
given briefly in the light of the cause of this distempered state
of things.
Now the cause we have found to be mainly, the effort of such
vast numbers to eat the bread of idleness; to live upon the
labors and earnings of others, in whole or in part; to adopt a
style and grade of expenditure beyond the legitimate means,
earnings, or income of those who adopt them; to gain large
wealth, not by skillful and effective service, which deserves and
commands large compensation, nor by a prudent husbandry of the
resources so acquired. This is the nature of the evil: correspondent must be the remedy. Let all obey the divine ordinance,
of laboring that they may eat the fruits of honest industry.
We leave out of view the helpless and disabled, who must subsist on charity, and even those able-bodied ones who, whatever
their past errors, must receive temporary help to keep them
from starvation. So far from continuing to levy unfairly upon
others, let whoever has done so, do so no more, but "labor with
his own hands, that he may have to give to him that needeth."
If he cannot work at his chosen occupation, let him work at
whatever he can find to do, and can do; if not at wages that
will satisfy him, at such as others can afford to pay him. If all
were to proceed thus, the wheels of industry would soon begin
to move. One department after another would be revived.
The immense numbers now idle would produce a vast amount
of commodities for each other, and in exchange for the bread
which the farmer now craves to sell for such commodities.
This great abundance of things, thus produced by all, would
be for the common possession and enjoyment of all engaged,
whether with their capital or labor, in producing them, but
which cannot be produced or enjoyed while all these laborers
and all this capital remain idle. If through cheapness of labor