Comment on these figures is unnecessary.  There is, of course, some reduplication, but in these four public service enterprises there are in Massachusetts almost twice as many direct owners as there are employees.  Two persons out of three have money in the savings bank—­men, women, and children.  There is this additional fact:  more than one quarter of the stupendous sum of over a billion dollars of the savings of nearly two and a half million savings depositors is invested in railroad, street railway, and telephone securities.

With these examples in mind it would appear that our problem of economic justice in Massachusetts, where we live and for which alone we can legislate, is not quite so simple as assuming that we can take from one class and give to another class.  We are reaching and maintaining the position in this Commonwealth where the property class and the employed class are not separate, but identical.  There is a relationship of interdependence which makes their interests the same in the long run.  Most of us earn our livelihood through some form of employment.  More and more of our people are in possession of some part of the wages of yesterday, and so are investors.  This is the ideal economic condition.

The great aim of our Government is to protect the weak—­to aid them to become strong.  Massachusetts is an industrial State.  If her people prosper, it must be by that means in some of its broad avenues.  How can our people be made strong?  Only as they draw their strength from our industries.  How can they do that?  Only by building up our industries and making them strong.  This is fundamental.  It is the place to begin.  These are the instruments of all our achievement.  When they fail, all fails.  When they prosper, all prosper.  Workmen’s compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold, consolations, if there be no employment.  And employment can be had only if some one finds it profitable.  The greater the profit, the greater the wages.

This is one of the economic lessons of the war.  It should be remembered now when taxes are to be laid, and in the period of readjustment.  Taxes must be measured by the ability to meet them out of surplus income.  Industry must expand or fail.  It must show a surplus after all payments of wages, taxes, and returns to investors.  Conscription can call once, then all is over.  Just requirements can be met again and again with ever-increasing ability.

Justice and the general welfare go hand in hand.  Government had to take over our transportation interests in order to do such justice to them that they could pay their employees and carry our merchandise.  They have been so restricted lest they do harm that they became unable to do good.  Their surplus was gone, and we New Englanders had to go without coal.  Seeing now more clearly than before the true interests of wage-earner, investor, and the public, which is the consumer, we shall hereafter be willing to pay the price and secure the benefits of justice to all these cooerdinate interests.