endure and to have become more helpless and hopeless as time went on.
The modern wage slave is something different. The machine has conquered production and the worker must keep pace with it. Intelligence and a measure of resourcefulness are necessary to his continued presence in industry—the besotted and slothful are of no use to the present master class, for that gentry yet practice a certain amount of competition. Furthermore, the worker, thrown on his own resources, as to food, clothing and shelter, and having no certainty of continuous employment, must take heed of the morrow. The very nature of capitalist production forces him to think and, thereby, his wits are exercised and sharpened. The "Machine proletariat" as this class is now beginning to call itself, is not to be measured by the old slave or serf standards, but by standards of its own.
The capitalist system of machine production requires the workers to possess considerable dexterity and education in order to function to the best advantage. Also, the capitalist method of absentee ownership throws a great part of the burden of management upon the workers, so that they have, not only a large technical training, but executive ability as well. Is it any wonder that such a class should become critical of its conditions and surroundings? Is it strange that, finding itself in practical control of industry, it should commence to inquire why it continues in poverty while the proprietors mount to the position of millionaires? Is it amazing that this class, having the wealth of society within its grasp, should seek to take possession?
History teaches us that, in each epoch of the world since the advent of private property, some one class has been dominant; that the civilization of each epoch was the product of the then ruling class; and that a subject class grew and expanded within that civilization and finally made itself the dominant class. The new class created a
