This self-generating wealth that exists in the shape of capital is so much on the increase that it fills all classes of our population with hopes or if not with hopes at least with discontents—and discontent is certainly the product of hope struggling up from the depths of the soul. Without the vivid perception of a higher ideal and without the feeling that it is attainable, there would not be any such thing as discontent. The average production of man, woman, and child in the United States increased in the thirty years between 1850 and 1880 from about 25 cents per day to 40 cents per day—an increase of over 60 per cent. This means the production of far more substantial improvements for human comfort. Much more wealth is created that possesses an enduring character and may be handed down to the next generation. Finer dwellings, better roads and streets, fences for lands, drainings and levelings, and the processes necessary to bring wild land under cultivation, artificial supplies of water and gas, the warehouses and elevators, and the appliances of commerce—and finally the buildings and furnishings of culture, including churches, schools, libraries, museums, asylums, and all manner of public buildings. Great Britain, the leading nation in commerce and manufactures, according to the returns for 1888 (see Mulhall’s “Dict. Statistics,” new edition) distributed comfortable incomes of $1000 and upwards to each family of 30 per cent. of the entire population, and the remaining 70 per cent. averaged $485 per annum (for each family). France provided incomes of $1300 per annum for 24 per cent. of its families. This shows what great capitalists are doing for the creation and distribution of wealth. Italy showed by its income returns that less than 2 per cent. received incomes of $1000 and upwards, while 98 per cent. of the families averaged less than $300 income. Italy makes little use of steam power and labor saving machines. If science progresses and its concomitant, useful invention, progresses as fast for the next hundred years as it has done for the past forty years, the vision of Edward Bellamy of comfort for all will be realised without the necessity of any form of socialism. There will be comfort and even luxury for all who will labor a moderate amount of time. Science inventories nature and discovers properties and possible combinations. Invention uses these combinations to meet mechanical problems. Can any one doubt who looks into the state of science and its continually improving methods that the conquest of nature will be more rapid in the coming century than it has been in the past century?