The Unseen Cost of Modern Progress

There is not enough work to employ all the men who must work or starve. While improved sanitary conditions have materially increased the average duration of human life, mechanical progress has placed it in the power of one man to perform the toil which formerly employed half a hundred. The world is in continual warfare; mechanical progress mows millions from the face of the earth. The plain fact is that the human race is increasing faster than the amount of work to be done. The man with the machine does the work of fifty; but what is to become of the forty-nine who formerly aided him? 'They can be sold,' you say. Yet the amount of food raised today—wheat, potatoes, beef—has increased as well; and the farm laborer slowly recedes before the onward march of the tractor, the reaper, and the mower. The price of bread is low that the farmer is the most discontented of all. There is plenty of bread; but it does not belong to the hungry man, and he cannot get the gold to purchase it.