The  Rigidity  of  the  Laws  of  Distribution.  This
relation  between  the  volumes  of  barter  and  of  enforced
idleness  is  a  rigid  one.  No  amount  of  ethical  effort  on
the  part  of  charitable  missions,  the  pulpit  or  the  public


i9'2  THE    COST    OF    COMPETITION

press,  except  as  it  may  succeed  in  diminishing  the  volume
or  the  keenness  of  barter,  can  affect  it  in  the  slightest.
No  amount  of  altruistic  economic  effort:  no  alms-giving,
no  employment-bureau,  no  vacant-lot  cultivation,  no
forced  public  works,  can  possibly  alleviate  the  situation,
except  as  they  may  incidentally  restrict  barter.  Give  a
man  money  and  you  temporarily  ease  the  pressure  upon
his  class;  barter  will  follow  it  up  and  absorb  it  until  the
pressure  is  the  same  as  before.  Show  him  how  to  live
upon  eight  cents  a  day,  as  did  kindly  Mr.  Atkinson  of
Aladdin-oven  fame:  if  his  class  adopts  the  plan  sufficiently
for  the  Idea  to  accomplish  anything  at  all,  wages  will
promptly  retreat  to  eight  cents  per  day  In  consequence.
Pick  a  man  up  out  of  the  ranks  of  the  unemployed  and
arbitrarily  give  him  a  job :  he  Immediately  absorbs  the
purchasing-power  which  was  before  keeping  someone  else
at  work,  and  somewhere  else  some  other  poor  chap  Is  told
to  "  get  his  time "  In  consequence.  Statistics  will  not
reveal  these  things,  any  more  than  they  would  the  futility
of  the  perpetual-motion  hopes  of  a  half-century  ago,  but
the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  Intelligently
applied,  makes  them  both  equally  clear.
