At the same time, both the wealth and the numbers of the well-to-do are increasing in greater proportion than those of the rest of the people.

While the better places get farther and farther out of the reach of the children of the masses, owing to the overcrowding of the professions by children of the well-to-do, the competition becomes ever keener, and the poor boy or girl who must struggle not only against this excessive competition, but also against his economic handicap, confronts an almost superhuman task.
It is obvious that this tendency cannot be reversed, no matter how rapidly the people's income is increased, unless it rises _more rapidly_ than that of the well-to-do.

And this, Socialists believe, has never happened except when the masses obtained political power and made full use of it _against_ the class in control of industry and government.
No amount of material progress and no reorganization of industry or government which does not promise to equalize opportunity,--however rapid or even sensational it may be,--is of the first moment to the Socialists of the movement.

Wages might increase 5 or 10 per cent every year, as profits increase to-day; hours might be shortened and the intensity of labor lessened; and yet the gulf between the classes might be growing wider than ever.

If society is to progress toward industrial democracy, it is necessary that the people should fix their attention, not merely on the improvement of their own condition, but on their progress _when compared with that of the capitalist classes, i.e._ when measured by present-day civilization and the possibilities it affords.
_No matter how fast wages increase, if profits increase faster, we are journeying not towards social democracy, but towards a caste society._ Thus to insist that we must keep our eyes on the prosperity of others in order to measure our own seems like preaching envy or class hatred.