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WORK FOR THE WORKERS: WEALTH TO THE NATION.
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[Second Edition, Enlarged]
WORK FOR THE WORKERS: WEALTH TO THE NATION
BY CHARLES M. DUPUY
"Whether the sure way to supply people with tool and materials and set them to work, be not a free circulation of money, whether silver or paper." -- BISHOP BERKELEY'S QUERIST.
The steady and profitable employment of the people should be the highest
aim of government. Its encouragement to thrift and industry is all-important
to social progress. Generally idleness is distasteful. Men like to be
usefully and profitably employed. Organized for action, their highest
pleasure is in activity. By wise legislation all the people should be
encouraged to use their wasted faculties so as to become a hive of busy
bodies -- either of brain or hand.
Millions Lost by Idleness.
As it stands to-day, there is a sad lack of opportunity. With the exhaustless
productiveness of the earth to mine, to cultivate, to explore, the channels
of industry are everywhere blocked and gorged, and the hand of labor is
palsied. The earth teems with raw material, awaiting the magic transformation
of man's energies; but labor stands idle in the market-places, and capital
lies piled up uselessly in the banks. Millions of men are either in enforced
idleness, or are unprofitably employed.
The waste of productive energy may be counted by the daily loss of millions
of dollars, and yet all this is, but an atom in comparison to the miseries
of the people, the shipwreck of human life, and the general demoralization
from enforced idleness.
Want of the employment leads to discouragement, hopelessness, and despair.
It overflows almshouses, charitable institutions, prison-houses, and penitentiaries.
It degrades manhood. It ruins families.