The general tendency is to leave the question of labor to what is called the law of supply and demand. My hope is that in time we shall become civilized enough to know that there is a higher law, or rather a higher meaning in the law of supply and demand, than is now perceived.
Year after year what are called the necessaries of life increase. Many things now regarded as necessaries were formerly looked upon as luxuries. So, as man becomes civilized, he increases what may be called the necessities of his life. When perfectly civilized, one of the necessities of his life will be that the lives of others shall be of some value to them. A good man is not happy so long as he knows that other good men and women suffer for raiment and for food, and have no roof but the sky, no home but the highway. Consequently what is called the law of supply and demand will then have a much larger meaning.
In nature everything lives upon something else. Life feeds upon life. Something is lying in wait for something else, and even the victim is weaving a web or crouching for some other victim, and the other victim is in the same business – watching for something else. The same is true in the human world – people are living on each other; the cunning obtain the property of the simple; wealth picks the pockets of poverty; success is a highwayman leaping from the hedge. The rich combine, the poor are unorganized, without the means to act in concert, and for that reason become the prey of corporations and trusts.
The great questions are: Will man ever be sufficiently civilized to be honest? Will the time ever come when it can truthfully be said that right is might? The lives of millions of people are not worth living, because of their ignorance and poverty, and the lives of millions of others are not worth living, on account of their wealth and selfishness. The palace without justice, without charity, is as terrible as the hovel without food.
– RGI