My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

290 MY LIFEus, endure lives of excessive labour for a barelivelihood, or constitute that crying disgrace ofmodern civilization—willing men seeking in vain forhonest work, and forming a great army of theunemployed.What a demonstration is this of the utter follyand stupidity of those blind leaders of the blind whoimpute all the evils of our social system, all ourpoverty and starvation, to over-population ! Ireland,with half the population of fifty years ago, is stillpoor to the verge of famine, and is therefore stillover-peopled. And for England and Scotland aswell, the cry is still " Emigrate ! emigrate ! We areover-peopled "! But what of America, with twentyfivetimes as much land as we have, and with evengreater natural resources, and with a populationeven more ingenious, more energetic, and morehard-working than ours } Are they over-populatedwith only twenty people to the square mile ? Thereonly one rational solution of this terrible problem.isThe system that allows the land and the minerals,the means of communication, and all other publicservices, to be monopolized for the aggrandisement ofthe few—for the creation of millionaires—necessarilyleads to the poverty, the degradation, the misery ofthe many.There never has been, in the whole history of thehuman race, a people with such grand opportunitiesfor establishing a society and a nation in which theproducts of the general labour should be so distributedas to produce general well-being. It wantedbut a recognition of the fundamental principle of"equality of opportunity," tacitly implied in theDeclaration of Independence. It wanted but suchsocial arrangements as would ensure to every child