The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-08
THE AGE BILLIONS.

Today We figure as easily in terms of billions as a few years ago We reckoned in millions. Financial mag nitudes are advancing beyond the oldtime scale. It is evident that We will have to re-adjust our stand ards While it is true that the mi nimum is still the same, the max imum has passed the older appraise- mant. Today not only governments but private undertakings are capi- talized in the billions. Loans. expen- ditures, budgets, consultations, new enterprise are written up in the bil- lionth terms.
 Easily enough the majority are a unit minded people living in bill lior scaled age-easiiy enough be- cause for the majority the old sy- stem is still more than enough.
 Or shall We put it that the earth is reaching the fourth dimension period and the people thereon are still forced to abide in the second dimension stage?
 It's a picturesque idea tC revert to the age when human beings lived in an irsular proyinciality ana the few mile journey from Jonesville to SmIthertou seemed like walking from one end of the earth to the other. when the stage coach seemed the embodiment of sweating switi- neas; when the silver piece pur- chased a months supplies; when neither extremity of poverty nor extremity of. wealth oppressed; when the voyage oE the hooker across the straits seemed to be greater than Columbus voyage and one knew not what sort of an Atlantis one might nol find. Those were strange days and since then stranger changes have been accomplished by the pass age oi time. Since then hlman be ings have explored the wilderness and entered the unknown, human ingenuity and human labor have solved the secerts of space and span ned the great distances with ~hir!- ing steam engine or with electlical mechanism We have been drawn nearer to the ultimate distances aNd in twinkling mystic rays transmit our thoughts afar. The change is searching, deep, impcnetrabie.
 But all has nos .i a. The same archaic conc4t-.as If rsaper- Is. the same ancient legal institU- ;.ons. the sane social bondage is suI to a great extent maintained
 There has no; been a sociological progress with the pIo&ro $ of tc.h- nirologv. There las been no effort made to change the proprietary legal system to the changing industrial and social economy that developed in ,H.r midst.
 The machine took the place of the tocl, tie aggregation of machines the operation of a single mech5n- ism; the labor of the craftsman is taken by hundreds of machine tend CTS. Wealth production slow, arju- ous and laborious, became intensi- fed in its ease and increase. Rut humanity proftted little or nothing. The vast majority remained in the minimum of ownership while the slender minority increased their pro pertv and their wealth beyond the maximum. From age to age the maximum passed the thousands, the tens of thousands, the millions, the hundred of millions, the billions and still the majority fret and stew and fluster in the same miserable state of poverty that was theirs In the era of rushlighs, of spades, oi hand looms, of spinning wheels, oi stages, of insularity and exclusive ness.
 While technical progress has been sweeping beyond the confines of ln- dividual effort and taking Tn the CollectlVlty or numailll!' lhoSe lH- control of the individuals alone were empowered to advantage them selves of that progress while main taining rigidly the conception that the principles, institutions, ideas, habits, customs, legal procedure that had accommodated themselves to the economy of that past age were fun