And what is true of Texas is true in greater or less degree of every State in the Union. Development, so dear to the heart of the patriotic and public-spirited citizen, has a tendency to transform an independent and moderately prosperous people into masters and slaves. But this is not the fault of labor-saving machinery, nor of capital, nor of development by itself considered. The more wealth labor creates, the more it should enjoy. When the reverse is the case distribution is at fault. The substitution of expensive machinery for hand-labor eliminated the independent artisan. His productive power was multiplied; but his independence--his ability to care for himself without the cooperation of large capital-- was gone. The wheelwright could not return to his shop nor the shoemaker to his last and live in comfort. Competition with the iron fingers of the great factory were impossible. Labor must now await the pleasure of capital-- the creature has become lord of its creator. The fierce competition of idle armies forces wages down, and slowly but surely the workman is sinking back to the level occupied before the cunning brain of genius harnessed the lightning to his lathe and gave him nerves of steel and muscles of brass with which to fight his battle for bread. With the improved machinery with which he is provided, the American workman can create as much wealth in a week as he need consume in a month; but he goes down on his knees and thanks God and the plutocracy for an opportunity to toil 300 days in the year for a bare subsistence. . . . Unfortunately, I have no catholicon for every industrial ill--but the political drug-stores are full of 'em. All you've got to do is to select your panacea, pull the cork and let peace and plenty overflow a grateful land--so we're told. Instead of the cure-me-quicks prescribed by the economic M.D.'s, I believe that our industrial system has been doped with entirely too many drugs. I'd throw physic to the dogs, exercise a little common-sense and give nature a chance. There's an old story of an Arkansaw doctor who invariably threw his patients into fits because he was master of that complaint; but the economic M.D.'s can't even cure fits. When they attempt it the patient goes into convulsions. Instead of going to so much trouble to bar out cheap goods by means of tariff walls, I'd bar out cheap men. If you're making monkey-wrenches at $2 a day and some fellow abroad is building 'em for 50 cents, your boss comes to you and says: "Jim, we've got to have a tariff to keep out the product of pauper labor or our nether garment's ripped from narrative to neck-band. I can't pay you $2 and compete with an employer who pays but 50 cents."