Inventions and Labor

A correspondent sends in the following:

In an editorial in Saturday evening's issue, "Tesla's Great Projects," you speculate upon the effect on society that would result upon the application of his great discoveries; possibly the solution of the social problem, etc. I wish to ask a question: If production could be carried on without any human labor at all, of what benefit would that be to the working classes under the present system, i. e, the wage system?

The correspondent answers his own question. If production could be carried on without labor, the millennium would be at hand, for a world without work would mean a world of absolute leisure in which all would share equally the joys of existence. But such a hypothesis is foolish, and argument based upon it useless.

What Tesla is trying to do is to stop the waste of human energy going on under the present mode of living, and successful efforts in this direction must of necessity benefit the laboring class as well as the capitalists. The trouble with conditions to-day is not so much a lack of work, as an inadequate distribution of work. The wage system is not responsible for this. It may be an imperfect system, but nothing better has yet been devised to take its place.