Action on this matter is demanded now as it never was before, for we are advancing blindly to a crisis which our political economists and statesmen have not foreseen, and do not yet recognize. The genius that increases by invention the productive power of labor ought to increase the rewards of labor, but it does not. Labor is demanded only to supply what is consumed; and if at present a million laborers are employed to produce the food, clothing, fuel, furniture, and houses required, but in a few years invention enables half a million to produce the same, what is to become of the half million no longer needed? Will wages advance so that the million may still be employed, working for half a day instead of a day. That would be just, but instead, it produces a glut in the labor market, which by competition puts down wages, and starts a fierce contest between laborers and employers, and among laborers themselves. The fall in prices produced by competition in a crowded market makes the employer unwilling to advance wages, and an angry contest is inevitable. The multitude dislodged by invention is increased by the inevitable multitude arising from irregular demand and supply in fluctuating markets, and thus families by the hundred thousand are driven to the verge of immediate starvation, and this becomes our chronic condition, which must be rectified,--a chronic condition which bears most heavily on woman, and through her debases future generations. We are bound to see that every honest citizen, male or female, has a fair chance in the battle of life, has a fair preparation at the start, and a fair field. To insure this,--to insure that the productive power of the nation is not wasted,--is a larger question than our statesmen have ever yet considered. It requires that the government shall have a DEPARTMENT OF PRODUCTIVE LABOR, in which honest men and women, when jostled out of their industrial positions, may enlist.[2] This department should be managed by the ablest and most benevolent business men of the Peter Cooper class, who understand all productive industries, and who, seeing what is permanently and largely needed for human consumption and not abundantly supplied, or what new industries can be started which will benefit the nation, what new productions can be acclimatized, shall take charge of all the laborers who wish to enlist in governmental employ for eight hours a day, with such pay and rations as will be satisfactory and fair; and if rightly managed, not only will their labor pay all costs of the department, but it may be made to teach the country great industrial lessons in agriculture and manufactures, by improvements which scientific combined labor on a large scale may introduce; and if we are anxious to make our country independent in all things, and superior in manufactures, this is the very method in which it can be done, by the instruction in the national establishments, which may be