skill is no longer needed, and by members of the middle class, who have lost out altogether in their efforts to buck the gigantic brace game that the Plutocrats maintain for their special benefit.
The tendency of the machines toward perfection, naturally causes the great majority of the workers to become machine attendants to the approximate a level, so far as skill is concerned; thus breaking down the craft and other artificial barriers that formerly divided them. The machine process of production prevents the separating out of individual outputs and results in a practical equality of wages. This equality of wages naturally standardizes the livings of the various workers and causes them to flow together as a class. They find themselves subjected to almost identical conditions in all sections and begin to recognize themselves as a class, regardless of races, nationalities or creeds. Recognition of class generates that sense of duty known as the social conscience—the moral sense of the working class. They study their class needs and, through their identity of interest, associate so that they may harmoniously promote those interests.
The workers now become critical of their environment. They tear it to pieces and examine its parts—they study its effects upon themselves—and see to what depths of degradation they have been reduced. They perceive the growing numbers of the unemployed (displaced by the perfecting of the machines and the long hours of labor) and the steady operation of the law of wages towards further reductions of the standard of living. They learn also that there must be a constant effort to raise the rate of pay to keep pace with the increased production and cheapening of gold, on which the prices of all commodities, including labor power, are based.
The proletariat is at bed rock. It views the world and the institutions of society from the standpoint of utter disillusionment. Everything is naked before it and its attitude is one of absolute disgust and uncompro-
