It would not be fair to blame the socialists for being delighted over the present condition of business. As good citizens, they are anxious to keep the social machinery functioning normally, as long as it cannot be replaced by something new and better. They are the ones who are hit first and hardest when times are bad because they belong to the working class rank and file. On the other hand, they are not at all willing to share the opinion of capitalists who, in spite of a general economic depression and 2considerable unemployment, maintain that everything is all right. Please take note that this is the situation under a Republican administration and that in its essence, it does not differ from that which prevailed in 1893 under the Democratic administration.

How long the crisis will last, whether it will go on record as the crisis of 1907, 1908, or 1909, or whether it has reached its peak or will do so in two or three years, no one can tell until it is all over and conditions improve. A crisis is a constitutional disease afflicting the capitalistic social body incurable as long as political quackery, imposition of hands, and closing one's eyes and ears are 3the only remedies offered.

President Roosevelt may brand the crisis as being foolish, but this will neither shorten nor lengthen the evil. His warning against hoarding money is just as futile, because the scarcity of money is but a result of the industrial crisis, not vice versa. The industrial crisis is a result of maldistribution or disharmony between production and distribution. The productive capacity of American industries is enormous and so is the possibility of a market, if the majority of benefits were not seized by an idle upper class while the workers, the actual producers, are hardly allowed to exist.

Society, as it is now organized, will survive the crisis and work itself towards health and some degree of prosperity again, but only temporarily. Sooner or later the crisis will again repeat itself, and so will go on indefinitely until the actual causes incorporated in the very system are removed.