In spite of hopeful signs, the great mass of those who produce our household stuff still work under conditions which arrest bodily and mental development, shorten life, and crush out happiness. There is not enough encouragement in the present situation to lull to inactivity any one who is interested in the improvement of the producer’s conditions, but just enough to prevent complete discouragement and to suggest promising fields for future work in the interest of those who make what others use. MORE CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER The consumer is he who uses wealth. Each of us, therefore, is a consumer. The wealth which we use is of two classes. The first includes natural products; the second, those commodities which have been made from natural products through human agency. To the first class belongs the wild berry which one picks for his own use, and for which he is beholden to no one. To the second belongs the cultivated berry, which is served to one at his own table without labor or forethought on his part. The second berry may be considered to be the first one plus the thought and ingenuity and manual labor that were expended in cultivating, transporting, and serving it. Of the first kind of wealth, the average consumer uses ever less, of the second ever more, and thus his dependence upon his fellows increases. A person uses wealth for the purpose of satisfying his desires. But other people as well as he have desires, which must be satisfied, if at all, by natural wealth or by natural wealth adapted to human use by human agency. Of unsatisfied desires the world is full. Some, to be sure, are unworthy, but after we have stricken these out, the number is still appalling. We want food, and good food. Some of us go hungry, and some get sick because we are forced to eat bad food. We want safe water, and thousands of us die every year because we cannot get it. We want parks or large open spaces, with good roads and paths and plenty of comfortable seats, with green grass, flowers, trees, playgrounds, gymnasiums, and lunch rooms. We want beautiful factories and public buildings, good schools, and libraries. We want beautiful houses, furniture, clothes. Of these good things some of us have all, more of us have only part, and many of us have none. When we try to explain the fact that so many legitimate desires are unfulfilled, the first reason that occurs to us is the fact that wealth is not fairly distributed. This no one can gainsay. No one pretends that incomes are proportioned to desert, to need, or even to men’s capacity for using them for the public good. This, however, is a fact over which the average person has little control. The most he can do is to give moral support to the specialist who is trying to think out a fairer means of distribution.