THE QUESTION OF THE MAXIMUM
For any social movement or development there must be a maximum limit
beyond which it cannot proceed. That civilization which does not
advance must decline, and so, when the maximum of development has
been reached in any given direction, society must either retrograde
or change the direction of its advance. There are many families of
men that have failed, in the critical period of their economic
evolution, to effect a change in direction, and were forced to fall
back. Vanquished at the moment of their maximum, they have dropped
out of the whirl of the world. There was no room for them.
Stronger competitors have taken their places, and they have either
rotted into oblivion or remain to be crushed under the iron heel of
the dominant races in as remorseless a struggle as the world has yet
witnessed. But in this struggle fair women and chivalrous men will
play no part. Types and ideals have changed. Helens and Launcelots
are anachronisms. Blows will be given and taken, and men fight and
die, but not for faiths and altars. Shrines will be desecrated, but
they will be the shrines, not of temples, but market-places.
Prophets will arise, but they will be the prophets of prices and
products. Battles will be waged, not for honor and glory, nor for
thrones and sceptres, but for dollars and cents and for marts and
exchanges. Brain and not brawn will endure, and the captains of war
will be commanded by the captains of industry. In short, it will be
a contest for the mastery of the world's commerce and for industrial
supremacy.
It is more significant, this struggle into which we have plunged,
for the fact that it is the first struggle to involve the globe. No
general movement of man has been so wide-spreading, so far-reaching.
Quite local was the supremacy of any ancient people; likewise the
rise to empire of Macedonia and Rome, the waves of Arabian valor and
fanaticism, and the mediaeval crusades to the Holy Sepulchre. But
since those times the planet has undergone a unique shrinkage.
The world of Homer, limited by the coast-lines of the Mediterranean
and Black seas, was a far vaster world than ours of today, which we
weigh, measure, and compute as accurately and as easily as if it
were a child's play-ball. Steam has made its parts accessible and
drawn them closer together. The telegraph annihilates space and
time. Each morning, every part knows what every other part is
thinking, contemplating, or doing. A discovery in a German
laboratory is being demonstrated in San Francisco within twenty-four
hours. A book written in South Africa is published by simultaneous
copyright in every English-speaking country, and on the day
following is in the hands of the translators. The death of an
obscure missionary in China, or of a whiskey-smuggler in the South
Seas, is served, the world over, with the morning toast. The wheat
output of Argentine or the gold of Klondike are known wherever men
meet and trade. Shrinkage, or centralization, has become such that
the humblest clerk in any metropolis may place his hand on the pulse
of the world. The planet has indeed grown very small; and because
of this, no vital movement can remain in the clime or country where
it takes its rise.
And so today the economic and industrial impulse is world-wide. It
is a matter of import to every people. None may be careless of it.
To do so is to perish. It is become a battle, the fruits of which
are to the strong, and to none but the strongest of the strong. As
the movement approaches its maximum, centralization accelerates and
competition grows keener and closer. The competitor nations cannot
all succeed. So long as the movement continues its present
direction, not only will there not be room for all, but the room
that is will become less and less; and when the moment of the
maximum is at hand, there will be no room at all. Capitalistic
production will have overreached itself, and a change of direction
will then be inevitable.
Divers queries arise: What is the maximum of commercial development
the world can sustain? How far can it be exploited? How much
capital is necessary? Can sufficient capital be accumulated? A
brief resume of the industrial history of the last one hundred years
or so will be relevant at this stage of the discussion.
Capitalistic production, in its modern significance, was born of the
industrial revolution in England in the latter half of the
eighteenth century. The great inventions of that period were both
its father and its mother, while, as Mr. Brooks Adams has shown, the
looted treasure of India was the potent midwife. Had there not been
an unwonted increase of capital, the impetus would not have been
given to invention, while even steam might have languished for
generations instead of at once becoming, as it did, the most
prominent factor in the new method of production. The improved
application of these inventions in the first decades of the
nineteenth century mark the transition from the domestic to the
factory system of manufacture and inaugurated the era of capitalism.
The magnitude of this revolution is manifested by the fact that
England alone had invented the means and equipped herself with the
machinery whereby she could overstock the world's markets. The home
market could not consume a tithe of the home product. To
manufacture this home product she had sacrificed her agriculture.
She must buy her food from abroad, and to do so she must sell her
goods abroad.
But the struggle for commercial supremacy had not yet really begun.
England was without a rival. Her navies controlled the sea. Her
armies and her insular position gave her peace at home. The world
was hers to exploit. For nearly fifty years she dominated the
European, American, and Indian trade, while the great wars then
convulsing society were destroying possible competitive capital and
straining consumption to its utmost. The pioneer of the industrial
nations, she thus received such a start in the new race for wealth
that it is only today the other nations have succeeded in overtaking
her. In 1820 the volume of her trade (imports and exports) was
68,000,000 pounds. In 1899 it had increased to 815,000,000 pounds,-
-an increase of 1200 per cent in the volume of trade.
For nearly one hundred years England has been producing surplus
value. She has been producing far more than she consumes, and this
excess has swelled the volume of her capital. This capital has been
invested in her enterprises at home and abroad, and in her shipping.
In 1898 the Stock Exchange estimated British capital invested abroad
at 1,900,000,000 pounds. But hand in hand with her foreign
investments have grown her adverse balances of trade. For the ten
years ending with 1868, her average yearly adverse balance was
52,000,000 pounds; ending with 1878, 81,000,000 pounds; ending with
1888, 101,000,000 pounds; and ending with 1898, 133,000,000 pounds.
In the single year of 1897 it reached the portentous sum of
157,000,000 pounds.
But England's adverse balances of trade in themselves are nothing at
which to be frightened. Hitherto they have been paid from out the
earnings of her shipping and the interest on her foreign
investments. But what does cause anxiety, however, is that,
relative to the trade development of other countries, her export
trade is falling off, without a corresponding diminution of her
imports, and that her securities and foreign holdings do not seem
able to stand the added strain. These she is being forced to sell
in order to pull even. As the London Times gloomily remarks, "We
are entering the twentieth century on the down grade, after a
prolonged period of business activity, high wages, high profits, and
overflowing revenue." In other words, the mighty grasp England held
over the resources and capital of the world is being relaxed. The
control of its commerce and banking is slipping through her fingers.
The sale of her foreign holdings advertises the fact that other
nations are capable of buying them, and, further, that these other
nations are busily producing surplus value.
The movement has become general. Today, passing from country to
country, an ever-increasing tide of capital is welling up.
Production is doubling and quadrupling upon itself. It used to be
that the impoverished or undeveloped nations turned to England when
it came to borrowing, but now Germany is competing keenly with her
in this matter. France is not averse to lending great sums to
Russia, and Austria-Hungary has capital and to spare for foreign
holdings.
Nor has the United States failed to pass from the side of the debtor
to that of the creditor nations. She, too, has become wise in the
way of producing surplus value. She has been successful in her
efforts to secure economic emancipation. Possessing but 5 per cent
of the world's population and producing 32 per cent of the world's
food supply, she has been looked upon as the world's farmer; but
now, amidst general consternation, she comes forward as the world's
manufacturer. In 1888 her manufactured exports amounted to
$130,300,087; in 1896, to $253,681,541; in 1897, to $279,652,721; in
1898, to $307,924,994; in 1899, to $338,667,794; and in 1900, to
$432,000,000. Regarding her growing favorable balances of trade, it
may be noted that not only are her imports not increasing, but they
are actually falling off, while her exports in the last decade have
increased 72.4 per cent. In ten years her imports from Europe have
been reduced from $474,000,000 to $439,000,000; while in the same
time her exports have increased from $682,000,000 to $1,111,000,000.
Her balance of trade in her favor in 1895 was $75,000,000; in 1896,
over $100,000,000; in 1897, nearly $300,000,000; in 1898,
$615,000,000; in 1899, $530,000,000; and in 1900, $648,000,000.
In the matter of iron, the United States, which in 1840 had not
dreamed of entering the field of international competition, in 1897,
as much to her own surprise as any one else's, undersold the English
in their own London market. In 1899 there was but one American
locomotive in Great Britain; but, of the five hundred locomotives
sold abroad by the United States in 1902, England bought more than
any other country. Russia is operating a thousand of them on her
own roads today. In one instance the American manufacturers
contracted to deliver a locomotive in four and one-half months for
$9250, the English manufacturers requiring twenty-four months for
delivery at $14,000. The Clyde shipbuilders recently placed orders
for 150,000 tons of plates at a saving of $250,000, and the American
steel going into the making of the new London subway is taken as a
matter of course. American tools stand above competition the world
over. Ready-made boots and shoes are beginning to flood Europe,--
the same with machinery, bicycles, agricultural implements, and all
kinds of manufactured goods. A correspondent from Hamburg, speaking
of the invasion of American trade, says: "Incidentally, it may be
remarked that the typewriting machine with which this article is
written, as well as the thousands--nay, hundreds of thousands--of
others that are in use throughout the world, were made in America;
that it stands on an American table, in an office furnished with
American desks, bookcases, and chairs, which cannot be made in
Europe of equal quality, so practical and convenient, for a similar
price."
In 1893 and 1894, because of the distrust of foreign capital, the
United States was forced to buy back American securities held
abroad; but in 1897 and 1898 she bought back American securities
held abroad, not because she had to, but because she chose to. And
not only has she bought back her own securities, but in the last
eight years she has become a buyer of the securities of other
countries. In the money markets of London, Paris, and Berlin she is
a lender of money. Carrying the largest stock of gold in the world,
the world, in moments of danger, when crises of international
finance loom large, looks to her vast lending ability for safety.
Thus, in a few swift years, has the United States drawn up to the
van where the great industrial nations are fighting for commercial
and financial empire. The figures of the race, in which she passed
England, are interesting:
Year United States Exports United Kingdom Exports
1875 $497,263,737 $1,087,497,000
1885 673,593,506 1,037,124,000
1895 807,742,415 1,100,452,000
1896 986,830,080 1,168,671,000
1897 1,079,834,296 1,139,882,000
1898 1,233,564,828 1,135,642,000
1899 1,253,466,000 1,287,971,000
1900 1,453,013,659 1,418,348,000
As Mr. Henry Demarest Lloyd has noted, "When the news reached
Germany of the new steel trust in America, the stocks of the iron
and steel mills listed on the Berlin Bourse fell." While Europe has
been talking and dreaming of the greatness which was, the United
States has been thinking and planning and doing for the greatness to
be. Her captains of industry and kings of finance have toiled and
sweated at organizing and consolidating production and
transportation. But this has been merely the developmental stage,
the tuning-up of the orchestra. With the twentieth century rises
the curtain on the play,--a play which shall have much in it of
comedy and a vast deal of tragedy, and which has been well named The
Capitalistic Conquest of Europe by America. Nations do not die
easily, and one of the first moves of Europe will be the erection of
tariff walls. America, however, will fittingly reply, for already
her manufacturers are establishing works in France and Germany. And
when the German trade journals refused to accept American
advertisements, they found their country flamingly bill-boarded in
buccaneer American fashion.
M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the French economist, is passionately preaching a
commercial combination of the whole Continent against the United
States,--a commercial alliance which, he boldly declares, should
become a political alliance. And in this he is not alone, finding
ready sympathy and ardent support in Austria, Italy, and Germany.
Lord Rosebery said, in a recent speech before the Wolverhampton
Chamber of Commerce: "The Americans, with their vast and almost
incalculable resources, their acuteness and enterprise, and their
huge population, which will probably be 100,000,000 in twenty years,
together with the plan they have adopted for putting accumulated
wealth into great cooperative syndicates or trusts for the purpose
of carrying on this great commercial warfare, are the most
formidable . . . rivals to be feared."
The London Times says: "It is useless to disguise the fact that
Great Britain is being outdistanced. The competition does not come
from the glut caused by miscalculation as to the home demand. Our
own steel-makers know better and are alarmed. The threatened
competition in markets hitherto our own comes from efficiency in
production such as never before has been seen." Even the British
naval supremacy is in danger, continues the same paper, "for, if we
lose our engineering supremacy, our naval supremacy will follow,
unless held on sufferance by our successful rivals."
And the Edinburgh Evening News says, with editorial gloom: "The
iron and steel trades have gone from us. When the fictitious
prosperity caused by the expenditure of our own Government and that
of European nations on armaments ceases, half of the men employed in
these industries will be turned into the streets. The outlook is
appalling. What suffering will have to be endured before the
workers realize that there is nothing left for them but emigration!"
That there must be a limit to the accumulation of capital is
obvious. The downward course of the rate of interest,
notwithstanding that many new employments have been made possible
for capital, indicates how large is the increase of surplus value.
This decline of the interest rate is in accord with Bohm-Bawerk's
law of "diminishing returns." That is, when capital, like anything
else, has become over-plentiful, less lucrative use can only be
found for the excess. This excess, not being able to earn so much
as when capital was less plentiful, competes for safe investments
and forces down the interest rate on all capital. Mr. Charles A.
Conant has well described the keenness of the scramble for safe
investments, even at the prevailing low rates of interest. At the
close of the war with Turkey, the Greek loan, guaranteed by Great
Britain, France, and Russia, was floated with striking ease.
Regardless of the small return, the amount offered at Paris,
(41,000,000 francs), was subscribed for twenty-three times over.
Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and the Scandinavian
States, of recent years, have all engaged in converting their
securities from 5 per cents to 4 per cents, from 4.5 per cents to
3.5 per cents, and the 3.5 per cents into 3 per cents.
Great Britain, France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, according to
the calculation taken in 1895 by the International Statistical
Institute, hold forty-six billions of capital invested in negotiable
securities alone. Yet Paris subscribed for her portion of the Greek
loan twenty-three times over! In short, money is cheap. Andrew
Carnegie and his brother bourgeois kings give away millions
annually, but still the tide wells up. These vast accumulations
have made possible "wild-catting," fraudulent combinations, fake
enterprises, Hooleyism; but such stealings, great though they be,
have little or no effect in reducing the volume. The time is past
when startling inventions, or revolutions in the method of
production, can break up the growing congestion; yet this saved
capital demands an outlet, somewhere, somehow.
When a great nation has equipped itself to produce far more than it
can, under the present division of the product, consume, it seeks
other markets for its surplus products. When a second nation finds
itself similarly circumstanced, competition for these other markets
naturally follows. With the advent of a third, a fourth, a fifth,
and of divers other nations, the question of the disposal of surplus
products grows serious. And with each of these nations possessing,
over and beyond its active capital, great and growing masses of idle
capital, and when the very foreign markets for which they are
competing are beginning to produce similar wares for themselves, the
question passes the serious stage and becomes critical.
Never has the struggle for foreign markets been sharper than at the
present. They are the one great outlet for congested accumulations.
Predatory capital wanders the world over, seeking where it may
establish itself. This urgent need for foreign markets is forcing
upon the world-stage an era of great colonial empire. But this does
not stand, as in the past, for the subjugation of peoples and
countries for the sake of gaining their products, but for the
privilege of selling them products. The theory once was, that the
colony owed its existence and prosperity to the mother country; but
today it is the mother country that owes its existence and
prosperity to the colony. And in the future, when that supporting
colony becomes wise in the way of producing surplus value and sends
its goods back to sell to the mother country, what then? Then the
world will have been exploited, and capitalistic production will
have attained its maximum development.
Foreign markets and undeveloped countries largely retard that
moment. The favored portions of the earth's surface are already
occupied, though the resources of many are yet virgin. That they
have not long since been wrested from the hands of the barbarous and
decadent peoples who possess them is due, not to the military
prowess of such peoples, but to the jealous vigilance of the
industrial nations. The powers hold one another back. The Turk
lives because the way is not yet clear to an amicable division of
him among the powers. And the United States, supreme though she is,
opposes the partition of China, and intervenes her huge bulk between
the hungry nations and the mongrel Spanish republics. Capital
stands in its own way, welling up and welling up against the
inevitable moment when it shall burst all bonds and sweep
resistlessly across such vast stretches as China and South America.
And then there will be no more worlds to exploit, and capitalism
will either fall back, crushed under its own weight, or a change of
direction will take place which will mark a new era in history.
The Far East affords an illuminating spectacle. While the Western
nations are crowding hungrily in, while the Partition of China is
commingled with the clamor for the Spheres of Influence and the Open
Door, other forces are none the less potently at work. Not only are
the young Western peoples pressing the older ones to the wall, but
the East itself is beginning to awake. American trade is advancing,
and British trade is losing ground, while Japan, China, and India
are taking a hand in the game themselves.
In 1893, 100,000 pieces of American drills were imported into China;
in 1897, 349,000. In 1893, 252,000 pieces of American sheetings
were imported against 71,000 British; but in 1897, 566,000 pieces of
American sheetings were imported against only 10,000 British. The
cotton goods and yarn trade (which forms 40 per cent of the whole
trade with China) shows a remarkable advance on the part of the
United States. During the last ten years America has increased her
importation of plain goods by 121 per cent in quantity and 59.5 per
cent in value, while that of England and India combined has
decreased 13.75 per cent in quantity and 8 per cent in value. Lord
Charles Beresford, from whose "Break-up of China" these figures are
taken, states that English yarn has receded and Indian yarn advanced
to the front. In 1897, 140,000 piculs of Indian yarn were imported,
18,000 of Japanese, 4500 of Shanghai-manufactured, and 700 of
English.
Japan, who but yesterday emerged from the mediaeval rule of the
Shogunate and seized in one fell swoop the scientific knowledge and
culture of the Occident, is already today showing what wisdom she
has acquired in the production of surplus value, and is preparing
herself that she may tomorrow play the part to Asia that England did
to Europe one hundred years ago. That the difference in the world's
affairs wrought by those one hundred years will prevent her
succeeding is manifest; but it is equally manifest that they cannot
prevent her playing a leading part in the industrial drama which has
commenced on the Eastern stage. Her imports into the port of
Newchang in 1891 amounted to but 22,000 taels; but in 1897 they had
increased to 280,000 taels. In manufactured goods, from matches,
watches, and clocks to the rolling stock of railways, she has
already given stiff shocks to her competitors in the Asiatic
markets; and this while she is virtually yet in the equipment stage
of production. Erelong she, too, will be furnishing her share to
the growing mass of the world's capital.
As regards Great Britain, the giant trader who has so long
overshadowed Asiatic commerce, Lord Charles Beresford says: "But
competition is telling adversely; the energy of the British merchant
is being equalled by other nationals. . . The competition of the
Chinese and the introduction of steam into the country are also
combining to produce changed conditions in China." But far more
ominous is the plaintive note he sounds when he says: "New
industries must be opened up, and I would especially direct the
attention of the Chambers of Commerce (British) to . . . the fact
that the more the native competes with the British manufacturer in
certain classes of trade, the more machinery he will need, and the
orders for such machinery will come to this country if our machinery
manufacturers are enterprising enough."
The Orient is beginning to show what an important factor it will
become, under Western supervision, in the creation of surplus value.
Even before the barriers which restrain Western capital are removed,
the East will be in a fair way toward being exploited. An analysis
of Lord Beresford's message to the Chambers of Commerce discloses,
first, that the East is beginning to manufacture for itself; and,
second, that there is a promise of keen competition in the West for
the privilege of selling the required machinery. The inexorable
query arises: WHAT IS THE WEST TO DO WHEN IT HAS FURNISHED THIS
MACHINERY? And when not only the East, but all the now undeveloped
countries, confront, with surplus products in their hands, the old
industrial nations, capitalistic production will have attained its
maximum development.
But before that time must intervene a period which bids one pause
for breath. A new romance, like unto none in all the past, the
economic romance, will be born. For the dazzling prize of world-
empire will the nations of the earth go up in harness. Powers will
rise and fall, and mighty coalitions shape and dissolve in the swift
whirl of events. Vassal nations and subject territories will be
bandied back and forth like so many articles of trade. And with the
inevitable displacement of economic centres, it is fair to presume
that populations will shift to and fro, as they once did from the
South to the North of England on the rise of the factory towns, or
from the Old World to the New. Colossal enterprises will be
projected and carried through, and combinations of capital and
federations of labor be effected on a cyclopean scale.
Concentration and organization will be perfected in ways hitherto
undreamed. The nation which would keep its head above the tide must
accurately adjust supply to demand, and eliminate waste to the last
least particle. Standards of living will most likely descend for
millions of people. With the increase of capital, the competition
for safe investments, and the consequent fall of the interest rate,
the principal which today earns a comfortable income would not then
support a bare existence. Saving toward old age would cease among
the working classes. And as the merchant cities of Italy crashed
when trade slipped from their hands on the discovery of the new
route to the Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope, so will there
come times of trembling for such nations as have failed to grasp the
prize of world-empire. In that given direction they will have
attained their maximum development, before the whole world, in the
same direction, has attained its. There will no longer be room for
them. But if they can survive the shock of being flung out of the
world's industrial orbit, a change in direction may then be easily
effected. That the decadent and barbarous peoples will be crushed
is a fair presumption; likewise that the stronger breeds will
survive, entering upon the transition stage to which all the world
must ultimately come.
This change of direction must be either toward industrial
oligarchies or socialism. Either the functions of private
corporations will increase till they absorb the central government,
or the functions of government will increase till it absorbs the
corporations. Much may be said on the chance of the oligarchy.
Should an old manufacturing nation lose its foreign trade, it is
safe to predict that a strong effort would be made to build a
socialistic government, but it does not follow that this effort
would be successful. With the moneyed class controlling the State
and its revenues and all the means of subsistence, and guarding its
own interests with jealous care, it is not at all impossible that a
strong curb could be put upon the masses till the crisis were past.
It has been done before. There is no reason why it should not be
done again. At the close of the last century, such a movement was
crushed by its own folly and immaturity. In 1871 the soldiers of
the economic rulers stamped out, root and branch, a whole generation
of militant socialists.
Once the crisis were past, the ruling class, still holding the curb
in order to make itself more secure, would proceed to readjust
things and to balance consumption with production. Having a
monopoly of the safe investments, the great masses of unremunerative
capital would be directed, not to the production of more surplus
value, but to the making of permanent improvements, which would give
employment to the people, and make them content with the new order
of things. Highways, parks, public buildings, monuments, could be
builded; nor would it be out of place to give better factories and
homes to the workers. Such in itself would be socialistic, save
that it would be done by the oligarchs, a class apart. With the
interest rate down to zero, and no field for the investment of
sporadic capital, savings among the people would utterly cease, and
old-age pensions be granted as a matter of course. It is also a
logical necessity of such a system that, when the population began
to press against the means of subsistence, (expansion being
impossible), the birth rate of the lower classes would be lessened.
Whether by their own initiative, or by the interference of the
rulers, it would have to be done, and it would be done. In other
words, the oligarchy would mean the capitalization of labor and the
enslavement of the whole population. But it would be a fairer,
juster form of slavery than any the world has yet seen. The per
capita wage and consumption would be increased, and, with a
stringent control of the birth rate, there is no reason why such a
country should not be so ruled through many generations.
On the other hand, as the capitalistic exploitation of the planet
approaches its maximum, and countries are crowded out of the field
of foreign exchanges, there is a large likelihood that their change
in direction will be toward socialism. Were the theory of
collective ownership and operation then to arise for the first time,
such a movement would stand small chance of success. But such is
not the case. The doctrine of socialism has flourished and grown
throughout the nineteenth century; its tenets have been preached
wherever the interests of labor and capital have clashed; and it has
received exemplification time and again by the State's assumption of
functions which had always belonged solely to the individual.
When capitalistic production has attained its maximum development,
it must confront a dividing of the ways; and the strength of capital
on the one hand, and the education and wisdom of the workers on the
other, will determine which path society is to travel. It is
possible, considering the inertia of the masses, that the whole
world might in time come to be dominated by a group of industrial
oligarchies, or by one great oligarchy, but it is not probable.
That sporadic oligarchies may flourish for definite periods of time
is highly possible; that they may continue to do so is as highly
improbable. The procession of the ages has marked not only the rise
of man, but the rise of the common man. From the chattel slave, or
the serf chained to the soil, to the highest seats in modern
society, he has risen, rung by rung, amid the crumbling of the
divine right of kings and the crash of falling sceptres. That he
has done this, only in the end to pass into the perpetual slavery of
the industrial oligarch, is something at which his whole past cries
in protest. The common man is worthy of a better future, or else he
is not worthy of his past.
NOTE.--The above article was written as long ago as 1898. The only
alteration has been the bringing up to 1900 of a few of its
statistics. As a commercial venture of an author, it has an
interesting history. It was promptly accepted by one of the leading
magazines and paid for. The editor confessed that it was "one of
those articles one could not possibly let go of after it was once in
his possession." Publication was voluntarily promised to be
immediate. Then the editor became afraid of its too radical nature,
forfeited the sum paid for it, and did not publish it. Nor, offered
far and wide, could any other editor of bourgeois periodicals be
found who was rash enough to publish it. Thus, for the first time,
after seven years, it appears in print.
