“Oh, no; we have steadily been growing richer in all the component parts of genuine wealth. Ages ago our world was poor in sound bodies, because in many cases we had ill-health on account of overwork; in other cases we were burdened with ill-health for lack of proper and sufficient exercise; in still other cases we did not enjoy good health on account of poor and insufficient subsistence. Uncleanliness, irregularity, licentiousness, jealousy, etc., were other causes of ill-health; and lastly, perhaps, all had inherited a more or less feeble and diseased constitution, consequent from the constant violations of the so-called natural laws by our numerous successive ancestors. “Under our former monopolistic, social and industrial system, our world was poor in material wealth--food, clothing, shelter and luxuries. Thousands upon thousands of industrious people in every county were forced idlers, and consequently poor or paupers. They were hungry, ragged, cold and unclean. Want and the fear of want forced them to work so hard and so long daily that cleanliness and intellectual culture had become a burden to them. They were merely industrial slaves, earning the material wealth for the rich who spent their lives largely in wasteful idleness. “At that early period, then, in the history of evolution, when our social and industrial system was as defective as your present one, when but a single couple lived together in a small house, and when individual efforts, instead of voluntary co-operation, were the recognized methods of acquiring wealth, we were poor in mental wealth. There was then little thought, love, kindness and freedom. We met with ignorance, cruelty, wrong, superstition and slavery of some kind in all directions. Our ancestors blindly trampled in the mire the best portions of bodily and mental wealth, while they were only in pursuit of gold. “Under the old social and industrial system there was a continual fear in all directions; timid thinking, avaricious accumulation of gold, industrial, religious and domestic slavery, antagonistic strife, jealous feelings, disease, ignorance, crime and poverty. “There can be very little true love, kindness and prosperity as long as one family, sect, party, organization and nation endeavors to build itself up by tearing down others. Antagonism involves an expenditure of energy. As a rule your banker’s child is forbidden to play and associate with the hod-carrier’s. The Catholic disapproves of, and often despises the Protestant, and the Protestant the Catholic. The Christian, the Pagan and _vice versa_. The Republican and Democrat condemn each other. Instead of love, kindness and harmony, there is almost universal hatred and antagonism.