hundreds of articles. If the men who are made idle by the over-production in these industries flock into other occupations to secure work, they reduce wages there; so that, in any case, their purchasing power is reduced, and this tends to perpetuate and increase the evil. Of course it is not pretended to claim that all industrial depressions have been due to over-production, or the local congestion of the world's income. But that a large part of it may be justly laid to this cause, seems to be beyond question.
We have shown that the congestion of wealth is very largely due to the growth of monopoly, and we have discussed the more immediate evils that result from this congestion of wealth. But when we attempt to describe the evils and abuses which follow close after, as a result of the power which monopoly has placed in the hands of a few, we may well pause at the task. The whole array of perplexing social problems comes before us, and we realize more and more what a curse monopoly has become. The philanthropist tells us that poverty, and all the distresses that follow in its wake, are largely due to the fact that our workingmen under present conditions must live from hand to mouth, must rely on charity for aid in every emergency, and must, therefore, decrease in manliness and self-reliance and the ambition to better themselves, as the practical impossibility of success is comprehended.
Good men are lamenting because the Church has, to a great degree, lost its hold on the laboring classes, and are casting about on all sides for a remedy. Will they ever find one as long as the wage-worker carries in his bosom a rankling sense of injury done him? Injury which he feels that the Church is merely seeking to drug with charity instead of wishing to cure it with justice? There is great need that the Church, not alone by the sermons of its most enlightened thinkers, like Dr. Heber Newton, but by the daily practice of the rank and file of its membership, should recognize, as it never yet has done, the great principles of human fraternity, and move intelligently and earnestly to remedy the great evils that menace us.