Of some of these I have spoken already; the alarming drift towards
cities, until now in the United States more than one-half the population
is urban; the segregation of industries in certain cities and regions;
the minute division of labour and intensive specialization; the abnormal
growth of a true proletariat or non-land-holding class; the flooding of
the country by cheap labour drawn from the most backward communities and
from peoples of low race-value. Out of this has arisen a bitter class
conflict and the ominous beginnings of a perilous class consciousness,
with actual warfare joined in several countries, and threatened in all
others where industrial civilization is prevalent. With this has grown
up an artificially stimulated covetousness for a thousand futile
luxuries, and a standard of living that presupposes a thousand
non-essentials as basic necessities. Production for profit, not use,
excess production due to machinery, efficient organization, and surplus
of labour, together with the necessity for marketing the product at a
profit, have produced a state of things where at least one-half the
available labour in the country is engaged in the production and sale of
articles which are not necessary to physical, intellectual or spiritual
life, while of the remainder, hardly more than a half is employed in
production, the others are devoting themselves to distribution and to
the war of competition through advertising and the capturing of trade by
ingenious and capable salesmen. It is a significant fact that two of the
greatest industries in the United States are the making of automobiles
and moving pictures.
It is probably true to say that of the potential labour in the United
States, about one-fourth is producing those things which are physically,
intellectually and spiritually necessary; the remaining three-fourths
are essentially non-producers: they must, however, be housed, fed,
clothed, and amused, and the cost of this support is added to the cost
of the necessities of life. The reason for the present high cost of
living lies possibly here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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