If the spectacle of pauperism and crime, the savagery that still lingers in the slums of our cities, sternly reminds us of the yet feeble hold which our civilisation has obtained even in cities—if the census of mankind proves that three-fourths are yet counted as below the line that separates the half-civilised from the civilised—yet we are wont to console ourselves by the promise and potency which we can all discern in productive industry aided by the might of science and invention. This view is always hopeful. We see that there is a sort of geometric progress in the conquest over things and forces. The ability of man to create wealth continually accelerates. The more he obtains the more he can obtain. The more each one gets the more his neighbor also can get. Even the weakling of society, the pauper or beggar, the insane, and the criminal all fare better in the centres of wealth than they do at a distance from them where there is no wealth to beg or steal and no asylums created and sustained by wealth to shelter and heal their diseased bodies. Wealth in the modern sense of the word, far more than in its ancient sense, is self-productive. It is capital, and capital is wealth that generates wealth. Capital represents conquered forces and things—conquered for the supply of human wants. Capital consists of natural forces yoked and set to work for food, clothing, shelter, and the facilities of human culture. The three physical wants (food, clothing, and shelter) are produced by nature—they are the chains and fetters whereby nature asserts her right to enslave humanity—to keep man in a state of thralldom. But the Promethean cunning of man, realised first in science and next in useful machines, has succeeded in subduing the powers of nature and imposing on them the task of supplying and gratifying the very needs which nature creates in us. Nature had chained man to the task of daily toil for food, clothing, and shelter. But man turns back upon nature and compels her to take the place of human drudgery and produce an abundance of these needed supplies and bring them wherever they are needed for consumption. This is accomplished by mechanical combinations that secure the service of steam, electricity, and various devices of earth, air, fire, and water.