•••i

UC-NRLF

WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

OWE TO EACH OTHER

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER

PROFESSOR OP POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE LV YALE COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

. All rights reterved.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION 7

I. ON A NEW PHILOSOPHY : THAT POVERTY IS

THE BEST POLICY 13

II. THAT A FREE MAN IS A SOVEREIGN, BUT THAT

A SOVEREIGN CANNOT TAKE "TIPS" . ... 28

III. THAT IT IS NOT WICKED TO BE RICH; NAY,

EVEN, THAT IT IS NOT WICKED TO BE RICH-
ER THAN ONE'S NEIGHBOR 43

IV. ON THE REASONS WHY MAN IS NOT ALTO-

GETHER A BRUTE 58

V. THAT WE MUST HAVE FEW MEN, IF WE WANT

STRONG MEN 72

VI. THAT HE WHO WOULD BE WELL TAKEN CARE

OF MUST TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF -\ . . 81

VTE. CONCERNING SOME OLD FOES UNDER NEW

FACES 101

VIII. ON THE VALUE, AS A SOCIOLOGICAL PRINCI-
PLE, OF THE RULE TO MIND ONE'S OWN
BUSINESS 112

IX. ON THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN WHO IS

NEVER THOUGHT OF . . 123

X. THE CASE OF THE FORGOTTEN MAN FARTHER

CONSIDERED 134

XI. WHEREFORE WE SHOULD LOVE ONE ANOTHER 153

WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES
OWE TO EACH OTHER.

INTKODUCTIOK

are told every day that great social
problems stand before us and demand a solu-
tion, and we are assailed by oracles, threats,
and warnings in reference to those problems.
There is a school of writers who are playing
quite a role as the heralds of the coming duty
and the coming woe. They assume to speak
for a large, but vague and undefined, constit-
uency, who set the task, exact a fulfilment,
and threaten punishment for default. The
task or problem is not specifically defined.
Part of the task which devolves on those who
are subject to the duty is to define the prob-
lem. They are told only that something is
the matter: that it behooves them to find out
what it is, and how to correct it, and then to

8 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

*

work out the cure. All this is more or less
truculently set forth.

After reading and listening to a great deal
of this sort of assertion I find that the ques-
tion forms itself with more and more distinct-
/ness in my mind : Who are those who assume
fl to put hard questions to other people and to
Ydernand a solution of them ? How did they
acquire the right to demand that others should
solve their world-problems for them? "Who
are they who are held to consider and solve
all questions, and how did they fall under this
duty?

p~ So far as I can find out what the classes are
(who are respectively endowed with the rights
and duties of posing and solving social prob-
lems, they are as follows : Thosejwho are
pound to solve the problems are the rich,
/comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable,
educated, and healthy ; those whose right it
I is to set the problems are those who have been
(less fortunate or less successful in the struggle
\for existence. The problem itself seems to
be, How shall tlie^ latter jbe ma .(\$ a.s jpomf ort-
able as the former ? To solve this problem,
and make us all equally well ott, i£assun^ed to
be the duty of the former class ; the penalty, if

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 9

,they fail of this, is to be bloodshed and destruc-

/lioB. — If they cannot make everybody else as _

well off as themselves, they are to beT)rought_

down to the same misery as others.

During the last ten years I have read a
great many books and articles, especially by
German writers, in which an attempt has been
made to set up "the State" as an entity having
conscience, power, and will sublimated above
human limitations, and as constituting a tute-
lary genius over us all. I have never been
able to find in history or experience anything,
to fit this concept. I once lived in Germany
for two years, but I certainly saw nothing of
it there then. -Whether the State which Bis-
marck is moulding will fit the notion is at best
a matter of faith and hope. My notion of the
State has dwindled with growing experience
of life. As an abstract. irm; tj^e State is to me

^only All-of-us. In practice — that is, when it
exercises will or adopts a line of action— -it is
jml^a little group of men chosen In a very~
Iiap-hazard way by the majority of us to per-
form certain services for all of us. The ina-'
]ority do, not go about their selection very

Rationally, and they are almost always disap-
pointed by the results of their own operation.

10 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

Hence " the State/^instead of offering resour-
ces of wifidnm3 right rea^Ti, and pure moral
sense beyond what the average of us possess,
generally offers much less of all those things.
Furthermore, it often turns out in practice
that "the State" is not even the known and
accredited servants of the State, but, as has
been well said, is only some obscure clerk,
hidden in the recesses of a Government bu-
reau, into whose power the chance has fallen
for the moment to pull one of the stops which
control the Government machine. In former
days it often happened that " the State " was
a barber, a fiddler, or a bad woman. In our
day it often happens that "the State" is a
little functionary on whom a big functionary
is forced to depend.

I cannot see the sense of spending time to
read and write observations, such as I find in
the writings of many men of great attainments
and of great influence, of which the following
-might be a general type : If the statesmen
'/could attain to the requisite knowledge and
wisdom, it is conceivable that the State might
perform important regulative functions in the
production and distribution of wealth, against
no positive and sweeping theoretical

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 11

objection could be made from the side of eco^N
nomic science; but statesmen never can ac- \
quire the requisite knowledge . and wisdom. I
— To me this seems a mere waste of words. J
The inadequacy of the State to regulative ]
tasks is agreed upon, as a matter of fact, by J
all. "Why, then, bring State regulation int6
the discussion simply in order to throw it out
again? The whole subject ought to be dis-
cussed and settled aside from the hypothesis
of State regulation.

The little group of public servants who, as
I have said, constitute the State, when the
State determines on anything, could not do
much for themselves or anybody else by their
own force. If they do anything, they must
dispose of men, as in an army, or of capital,
as in a treasury. But the army, or police, or
posse comitatus, is more or less All-of-us, and
the capital in the treasury is the product of
the labor and saving of All-of-us. _Therefore^
when the Rtftte Tnp.fl.-ns pnwp.y-t.o-rlf> it means

_AU.-of-us? as brute force or as industrial force.

If anybody is to benefit from, the actipft of ^
_the State it . must Jbe Some-of-us. If, then, the
question is raised, What ought the State to
do for labor, for trade, for manufactures, for

12 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

the poor, for the learned professions ? etc., etc.
—that is, for a class or an interest — it is really
the question, What ought All-of-us to do for

\v Some-of-us? But Some-of-us are included in

All-of-us, and, so far as they get the benefit
of their own efforts, it is the same as if they
worked for themselves, and they may be can-
celled out of All-of-us. Then the question
which remains is, What ought Some-of-us to
do for Others-of-us? or, What dosocial class-
^gs owe to each other ?

j now propose to try to find out whether
there is any class in society which lies under
the duty and burden of fighting the battles of
life for any other class, or of solving social
.J3>rflbl£ia§LjfQr the satisfaction of any other
_class; ,also, whether there is any class which
has the right to formulate demands on"^ soci-
ety "- — that is, on other classes} frlRf*j , yrhBther
there is anything but a fallacy and a supersti-
tion in the notion that "the State" owes any-
thing to anybody except peace, order, and
arantees of rig "

.ave in view, throughout the discussion,
the economic, social, and political circumstances
which exist in the United States.

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 13

I.

ON A NEW PHILOSOPHY: THAT POVERTY IS
THE BEST POLICY.

—i
IT is commonly asserted that there are, in

theJLLniterl States no classes, and any allusion
to classes is resented. On the other hand, we
constantly read and hear discussions of social
topics in which the existence of social classes
is assumed as a simple fact. "The poor,"
" the weak," " the laborers," are expressions
which are used as if they had exact and well-
understood definition. Discussions are made to
bear upon the assumed rights, wrongs, and mis-
fortunes of certain social classes ; and all public
speaking and writing consists, in a large meas-
ure, of the discussion of general plans for
meeting the wishes of classes of people who
have not been able to satisfy their own desires.
These classes^are sometimes discontented, and
sometimes Hot. Sometimes they do not know
that anything is amiss with them until the
"friends of humanity" come to them with

11 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

offers of aid. j^Sometimes tlievare discon-
J^ited~aiLiLenvious._ They do not taEe their
achievements as a fair measure of their rights.
They do not blame themselves or their parents
for their lot, as compared with that of other
people. Sometimes they claim that they have a
right to everything of which they feel the need
for their happiness on earth. To make such a
claim against God or Nature would, of course,
be only to say that we claim a right to live 011
earth if we can. But God and Nature have

I ordained the chances and conditions of life
on earth once for all. The case cannot be re-
opened. We cannot get a revision of the laws
of human life. We are absolutely shut up to
the need and duty, if we would learn how to
live happily, of investigating the laws of Nat-
ure, and deducing the rules of right living in
the world as it is. These are very wearisome
and commonplace tasks. They consist in la-
bor and self-denial repeated over and over
again in learning and doing. When the peo-
ple whose claims we are considering are told
to apply themselves to these tasks they become
irritated and feel almost insulted. They f ormu-
f late their claims as rights against society — that
V is, against some other men. In their view

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 15

a right, not only to pursue happiness..

but to get it ; and if they fail to get it, they
think they have a claim to the aid of other men
—that is, to the labor and self-denial of other
men — to get it for them./ They find orators
and poets who tell them that they have griev-
ances, so long as they have unsatisfied desires.
Now, if there are groups of people who have"
a claim to other people's labor and self-denial,
and if there are other people whose labor and
self-denial are liable to be claimed by the first
groups, then there certainly are " classes," and
classes of the oldest and most vicious type.j
For^a man who can command another

labor and seltj-j^ialjto^

own existence is a privileged person of the.-
highest species conceivable on earth. Princes
and paupers meet on this plane, and no other
men are on it at all. On the other hand, a*
man whose labor and self-denial may be di-
verted from his maintenance to that of some
other man is not a free man, and approaches
more or less toward the position of a slave.
Therefore we shall find that, in all the notions
which we are to discuss, this elementary con-
tradiction, that there are classes and that there
are not classes, will produce repeated confu-

16 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

-xi

sion and absurdity. We shall find that, in our
efforts to eliminate the old vices of class gov-
ernment, we are impeded and defeated by new
products of the worst class theory. We shalL
find that all the schemes for producing equal-
ity and obliterating the organization of society
produce a new differentiation based on the
worst possible distinction — the right to claim
and the duty to give one man's effort for an-
other man's satisfaction. [We shall find that
every effort to realize equality necessitates a
sacrifice of liberty. |)

It is very popular to pose as a " friend of
humanity," or a " friend of the working class-
es." The character, however, is quite exotic
in the United States. It is borrowed from
England, where some men, otherwise of small
account, have assumed it with great success
and advantage. Anything which has a chari-
table sound and a kind-hearted tone general-
ly passes without investigation, because it is
disagreeable to assail it. Sermons, essays, and
orations assume a conventional standpoint
with regard to the poor, the weak, etc. ; and
it is allowed to pass as an unquestioned doc-
trine in regard to social classes that "the
rich" ought to "care for the poor;" that

OWE TO EACH OTHEK.

Churches especially ought to collect capital
from the rich and spend it for the poor ; that
parishes ought to be clusters of institutions by
means of which one social class should per-
form its duties to another ; and that clergy-
men, economists, and social philosophers have
a technical and professional duty to devise
schemes for " helping the poor." The preach-
ing in England used all to be done to the poor
—that they ought to be contented with their
lot and respectful to their betters. Now, the
greatest part of the preaching in America con-
sists in injunctions to those who have tal^en
care of themselves to perform their assumed
duty to take care of others. Whatever may
be one's private sentiments, the fear of appear-
ing cold and hard-hearted causes these conven-
tional theories of social duty and these as-
sumptions of social fact to pass unchallenged.

Let us notice some distinctions which are of
prime importance to a correct consideration of
the subject which we intend to treat.

Certain ills belong to the hardships of hu-
man life, "they are natural. They are part of
the struggle with JNature for existence. We
cannot blame our fellow-men for our share of
^My neighbor ancL I are both strug-
2

18 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

glingjo free ourselves from these ills. The
fact that my neighbor has succeeded in this
struggle better than I constitutes no grievance
for me. ^Certain other ills are due to the mal-
ice of men, and to the imperfections or errors
of civil institutions. These ills are an object
of agitation, and a subject of discussion. The
former class of ills is to be met only by manly
effort and energy ; the latter may be correct-
ed by associated effort. jTJie former class of
ills is constantly grouped and generalized, and
made the object of social schemes. We shall'
see, as we go on, what that means. The sec-
ond class of ills may fall on certain social class-
es, and reform will take the form of interfer-
ence by other classes in favor of that one.
The last fact is, no doubt, the reason why peo-
ple have been led, not noticing distinctions, to
believe that the same method was applicable
to the other class of ills. The distinction here_

fmade between the ills which belong tn the
struggle for existfflflft »™A fWo wlnVh are
due to the faults of human institntiona is of
prime importance.

It will also be important, in order to clear
up our ideas about the notions which are in
fashion, to note the relation of the economic

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 19

to the political significance of assumed duties
of-o»encfeSs"W another. That is to say, we""
may discuss the question whether one class
owes duties to another by reference to the
economic effects which will be produced on
the classes and society; or we may discuss/
the political expediency of formulating and/
enforcing rights and duties respectively be-j
tween the parties. In the former case we
might assume that the givers of aid were will-
ing to give it, and we might discuss the benefit
or mischief of their activity. In the other case
we must assume that some at least of those
who were forced to give aid did so unwilling-
ly. Here, then, there would be a question of
rights. The question whether voluntary char-
ity is mischievous or not is one thing ; the
question whether legislation which forces one
man to aid another is right and wise, as well '
as economically beneficial, is quite another
question. Great confusion and consequent
error is produced by allowing these two ques-
tions to become entangled in the discussion.
Especially we shall need to notice the attempts 7
to apply legislative methods of reform to the /
ills which belong to the order of Nature. /
There is no possible definition of "a poor

j

20 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

man." j^ pnnpnr ifi n ponton who finrmot earn
his living ; whose producing powers have fall-
en positively below his necessary consump-
tion ; who cannot, therefore, pay his way.)A
human society needs the active co-operation
productive energy of every person in it.
man who is present as a consumer, yet who
jdoes not contribute either by land, labor, or
capital to the work of society, is a burden.
On no sound political theory ought such a
! person to share in the political power of the
State. He drops out of the ranks of work-
ers and producers. Society must support him.
It accepts the burden, but he must be cancel-
led from the ranks of the rulers likewise. So
much for the pauper. About him no more
need be said. But he is not the " poor man."
The " poor man" is an elastic term, under which
; any number of social fallacies may be hidden.
Neither is there any possible definition of
" the weak." Some are weak in one way, and
some in another; and those who are weak in
/ one sense are strong in another. In general,
however, it may be said that those whom hu-
manitarians and philanthropists call the weak
are the ones through whom the productive
and conservative forces of society are wasted.

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 21

'

They constantly neutralize and destroy the
finest efforts of the wise and industrious, and
are a dead -weight on the society in all its
struggles to realize any better things. Wheth-
er the people who mean no harm, but are weak
in the essential powers necessary to the per-
formance of one's duties in life, or those who
are malicious and vicious, do the more mis-
chief, is a question not easy to answer.

Under the names of the poor and the weak,
the negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and
imprudent are fastened upon the industrious
and prudent as a responsibility and a duty.
On the one side, the terms are extended to
cover the idle, intemperate, and vicious, who,
by the combination, gain credit which they
do not deserve, and which they could not get
if they stood alone. On the other hand, the
terms are extended to include wage-receivers
of the humblest rank, who are degraded by
the combination. The reader who desires to
guard himself against fallacies should always
scrutinize the terms "poor" and "weak" as
used, so as to see which or how many of these
classes they are made to cover.

• The humanitarians, philanthropists, and re- y
formers, looking at the facts of life as they

22 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

present themselves, find enough which is sad
and unpromising in the condition of many
members of society. They see wealth and
poverty side by side. They note great in-
equality of social position and social chances.
They eagerly set about the attempt to account
for what they see, and;to devise schemes for
__ remedying what they do not like. In their
eagerness to recommend the less fortunate
classes to pity and consideration they forget
all about the rights of other classes ; they
^gfoss over all the faults of the classes in ques-
tion, and they exaggerate their misfortunes
and their virtues. They invent new theories
of property, distorting rights and perpetrating
injustice, as any one is sure to do who sets
about the re - adjustment of social relations
with the interests of one group distinctly be-
/ fore his mind, and the interests of all other
groups thrown into the background. When
I have read certain of these discussions I have
thought that it must be quite disreputable to
be respectable, quite dishonest to own proper-
ty, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn
one's own living, and that the only really ad-

Pirable person was the good-for-nothing. The
an who by his own effort raises himself

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 23

above poverty appears, in these discussions, tcy
be of no account. The man who has donel\
nothing to raise himself above poverty finds
that the social doctors flock about him, bring-
ing the capital which they have collected from
the other class, and promising him the aid of the /
State to give him what the other had to worj^j
for./ In all these schemes and projects the
organized intervention of society through the
State is either planned or hoped for, and the
State is thus made to become the protector and
guardian of certain classes. The agents who
are to direct the State action are, of course,
the reformers and philanthropists. Their
schemes, therefore, may always be reduced to
this type — that A and B decide what C shall
do for D. It will be interesting to inquire, at
a later period of our discussion, who C is, and
what the effect is upon him of all these ar-
rangements. In all the discussions attention
is concentrated on A and B, the noble social
reformers, and on D, the " poor man/' I call
C the Forgotten Man, because I have never
seen that any notice was taken of him in any
of the discussions. When we have disposed ^J
of A, B, and D we can better appreciate the

24: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

case of C, and I think that we shall find that
he deserves our attention, for the worth of his
character and the magnitude of his unmerited
burdens. Here it may suffice to observe that,
on tlj^,-theories_j)f the social philosophers to
whom I have referred, we should get a new
maxim of judicious living: Poverty is the
best policy. If you get wealth, you will have
to support other people ; if you do not get
wealth, it will be the duty of other people to
isupport you.

No doubt one chief reason for the unclear
and contradictory theories of class relations
lies in the fact that our society, largely con-
trolled in all its organization by one set of
doctrines, still contains survivals of old social
theories which are totally inconsistent with
the former. In the Middle Ages men were
united by custom and prescription into asso-
ciations, ranks, guilds, and communities of
various kinds. These ties endured as long as
life lasted. Consequently society was depend-
ent, throughout all its details, on status, and
the tie, or bond, was sentimental. In our mod-
ern state, andjn the United States more than
anywhere else, the social structure is based on

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 25

contract, and status is of the least importance.
Contract, however, is rational— even rationai-
istic. It is also realistic, cold, and matter-of-
fact. Antract relation is based on a suffi-

_

cient reason, not on custom or prescription.
It is not permanent. It endures only so long
as the reason for it endures. In a state based
on contract sentiment is out of place in any
public or common affair^ It is relegated to
the sphere of private and personal relations,
where it depends not at all on class types, but
on personal acquaintance and personal esti-
mates. The sentimentalists among us always
seize upon the survivals of the old order.
They want to save them and restore them.
Much of the loose thinking also which trou-
bles us in our social discussions arises from
the fact that men do not distinguish the ele-
ments of status and of contract which may be
found in our society.

Whether social philosophers think it de-\ .
sirable or not, it is out of the question to go I '
back to statTiB or to the sentimental relations \
which once united baron and retainer,. master
and servant, teacher and pupil, coinrade and
comrade. That we have lost some grace and

26 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

elegance is undeniable. That life

more poetry and mm an PA ig fmp — enough.
r>nt it seems impossible that any one who has
studied the matter should doubt that we have
gained immeasurably, and that our farther
gains lie in going forward, not in going back-
ward. The feudal ties can never be restored.
If they could be restored they would bring
back personal caprice, favoritism, sycophancy,
.d intrigue. jLj&ciety based on^contract is
socigty-Qf free and independent -men, who
form ties without^ favor or__obligation.uand co
operate without cringing or intrigue. A so-
'ciety based on_con^mct^Jhgrjgfore, gijvgsjbhe
.tmost room and chance f or_individual jle-
elopment, and for all the self-reliance^ and_
dignity of jTjfree^jnan^ That a society of
free men^co-operating under contract, is by
far the strongest society which has ever yet
existed ; that no such society has ever yet
developed the full measure of strength of
which it is capable ; and that the only social
improvements which are now conceivable lie
in the direction of more complete realization
of a society of free men united by contract,
are points which cannot be controverted.

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 27

It follows, however, that one man, in a free
sfgtfij ftfl-TiTint filnim |]p.1p from? and cannot
be charged to give help to, another. To
understand the full meaning of this asser-
tion it will be worth while to see what a
free democracy is.

UNIVERSITY

28 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

II.

THAT A FREE MAN IS A SOVEREIGN, BUT
THAT A SOVEREIGN CANNOT TAKE "TIPS."

A FREE man, a free country, liberty, and
equality are terms of constant use among us.
They are employed as watchwords as soon as
any social questions come into discussion. ' It
is right that they should be so used. They
ought to contain the broadest convictions and
most positive faiths of the nation, and so they
ought to be available for the decision of ques-
tions of detail.

In order, however, that they may be so em-
ployed successfully and correctly it is essential
that the terms should be correctly defined, and
that their popular use should conform to cor-
rect definitions. ISTo doubt it is generally be-
lieved that the terms are easily understood,
and present no difficulty. Probably the pop-
ular notion is, that liberty means doing as one
has a mind to, and that it is a metaphysical
or sentimental good. A little observation

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 29

shows that there is no such thing in this
world as doing as one has a mind to. There
is no man, from the tramp up to the Presi-
dent, the Pope, or the Czar, who can do as
he has a mind to. There never has been any
man, from the primitive barbarian up to a
Humboldt or a Darwin, who could do as he
had a mind to. The " Bohemian " who deter-
mines to realize some sort of liberty of this
kind accomplishes his purpose only by sacri-
ficing most of the rights and turning his back
on most of the duties of a civilized man, wrhile
filching as much as he can of ihe advantages
of living in a civilized state. Moreover, lib-
erty is not a metaphysical or sentimental thing
at all. It is positive, practical, *and actual. It
is produced and maintained by law and insti-
tutions, and is, therefore, concrete and histor-
ical. Sometimes we speak distinctively of
civil liberty; but if there be any liberty
other than civil liberty — that is, liberty un-
der law — it is a mere fiction of the school-
men, which they may be left to discuss.

Even as I write, however, I find in a lead-
ing review the following definition of liberty :
Civil liberty is " the result of the restraint ex-
ercised by the sovereign people on the more

30 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

powerful individuals and classes of the com-
munity, preventing them from availing them-
selves of the excess of their power to the det-
riment of the other classes." This definition
lays the foundation for the result which it is
apparently desired to reach, that "a govern-
ment by the people can in no case become a
paternal government, since its law-makers are
its mandatories and servants carrying out its
will, and not its fathers or its masters." Here
we have the most mischievous fallacy under
the general topic which I am discussing dis-
tinctly formulated. In the definition of lib-
erty it will be noticed that liberty is construed
as the act of the sovereign people against
somebody who must, of course, be differenti-
ated from the sovereign people. Whenever
" people" is used in this sense for anything
less than the total population, man, woman,
child, and baby, and whenever the great dog-
mas which contain the word " people " are con-
strued under the limited definition of "peo-
ple," there is always fallacy.

History is only a tiresome repetition of one
story. Persons and classes have sought to win
possession of the power of the State in order
to live luxuriously out of the earnings of

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 31

others. Autocracies, aristocracies, theocra-
cies, and all other organizations for holding
political power, have exhibited only the same
line of action. It is the extreme of political
error to say that if political power is only
taken away from generals, nobles, priests, mil-
lionnaires, and scholars, and given to artisans
and peasants, these latter may be trusted to
do only right and justice, and never to abuse
the power ; that they will repress all excess in
others, and commit none themselves. They
will commit abuse, if they can and dare, just as
others have done. The reason for the excesses
of the old governing classes lies in the vices
and passions of human nature — cupidity, lust,
vindictiveness, ambition, and vanity. These
vices are confined to no nation, class, or age.
They appear in the church, the academy, the
workshop, and the hovel, as well as in the
army or the palace. They have appeared in
autocracies, aristocracies, theocracies, democ-
racies, and ochlocracies, all alike. ,_The only

thing which lias ever restrained these vices of

human nature in those wrho had political pow-
er is law sustained by impersonal institutions.
If political power be given to the masses who
have not hitherto had it, nothing will stop

32 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

them from abusing it but laws and institu-
tions. To say that a popular government can-
not be paternal is to give it a charter that it
can do no wrong. The trouble is that a dem-
ocratic government is in greater danger than
\ any other of becoming paternal, for it is sure
of itself 3 and ready to undertake anything, and
its power is excessive and pitiless against dis-
sentients.

What history shows is, that rights are safe
only when guaranteed against all arbitrary
power, and all class and personal interest.
Around an autocrat there has grown up an
oligarchy of priests and soldiers. In time a
class j^nobles has been developed, who have
broken into the oligarchy and made an aris-
tocracy. Later the demos, rising into inde-
pendent development, has assumed power and
made a democracy. Then the mob of a capi-
tal city has overwhelmed the democracy in
an ochlocracy. Then the "idol of the peo-
ple," or the military " savior of society," or
both in one, has made himself autocrat, and
the same old vicious round has recommenced.
"Where in all this is liberty ? There has been
no liberty at all, save where a state has known
how to break out, once for all, from this delu-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 33

sive round ; to set barriers to selfishness, cupid-
ity, envy, and lust, in all classes, from highest
to lowest, by laws and institutions ; and to cre-
ate great organs of civil life which can elimi-
nate, as far as possible, arbitrary and personal
elements from the adjustment of interests
and the definition of rights. Liberty is an af-
fair of laws and institutions which bring
rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not
at all an affair of selecting the proper class
to rule.

The notion of a free state is entirely mod-
ern. It has been developed with the develop-
ment of the middle class, and with the growth
of a commercial and industrial civilization, j
Horror at human slavery is not a century old
as a common sentiment in a civilized state.
The idea of the " free man," as we understand
it, is the product of a revolt against mediaeval
and feudal ideas ; and our notion of equality,
when it is true and practical, can be explained
only by that revolt. It was in England that
the modern idea found birth. It has been
strengthened by the industrial and commer-
cial development of that country. It has
been inherited by all the English-speaking
nations, who have made liberty real because
3

34: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

they have inherited it, not as a notion, but as
a body of institutions. It has been borrowed
and imitated by the military and police states
of the European continent so fast as they have
felt the influence of the expanding industrial
civilization ; but they have realized it only im-
perfectly, because they have no body of local
institutions or traditions, and it remains for
them as yet too much a matter of " declara-
tions" and pronunciamentos.
""The notion of civil Jiberty which we have
inherited is that of a status created for the in-
dividual by laws and institutions, the effect.
of which is that each man is guaranteed the
use of all his own powers exclusively for his
own welfare. It is not at all a matter of
elections, or universal suffrage, or democracy.
All institutions are to be tested by the degree
to which they guarantee liberty. It is not to
be admitted for a moment that liberty is a
means to social ends, and that it may be im-
paired for major considerations. Any one
who so argues has lost the bearing and rela-
tion of all the facts and factors in a free state.
A human being has a life to live, a career to
run. He is a centre of powers to work, and
of capacities to suffer. "What his powers may

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 35

be — whether they can carry him far or not ;
what his chances may be, whether wide or
restricted ; what his fortune may be, whether
to suffer much or little — are questions of his
personal destiny which he must work out and
endure as he can ; but for all that concerns the
bearing of the society and its institutions upon
that man, and upon the sum of happiness to
which he can attain during his life on earth,
the product of all history and- all philosophy
up to this time is summed up in the doctrine,
that he should be left free to do the most for
himself that he can, and should be guaranteed
the exclusive enjoyment of all that he does.
If the society — that is to say, in plain terms,
if his fellow -men, either individually, by
groups, or in a mass — impinge upon him
otherwise than to surround him with neutral
conditions of security, they must do so under
the strictest responsibility to justify them-
selves, jlealettsj-aadr-- prejudice against all
such interferences -are- high political virtues
in a -free ma^u— It is not at all the function
of the State to make men happy. They must
make themselves happy in their own way,
and at their own risk. The functions of the
State lie entirely in the conditions or chances

36 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

under which the pursuit of happiness is car-
ried on, so far as those conditions or chances
can be affected by civil organization. Hence,
liberty for labor and security for earnings are
the ends for which civil institutions exist,
not means which may be employed for ul-
terior ends.

Now, the cardinal doctrine of any sound
political system is, that rights and duties
should be in equilibrium. A monarchical
or aristocratic system is not immoral, if the
rights, and duties of persons and classes are
in equilibrium, although the rights and duties
of different persons and classes are unequal.
An immoral political system is created when-
ever there are privileged classes — that is, class-
es who have arrogated to themselves rights
while throwing the duties upon others. In
a democracy all have equal political rights.
That is the fundamental political principle.
A democracy, then, becomes immoral, if all
have not equal political duties. This is un-
questionably the doctrine which needs to be
reiterated and inculcated beyond all others, if
the democracy is to* be made sound and per-
manent. Our orators and writers never speak
of it, and do not seem often to know anything

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 37

about it; but the real danger of democracy
is, that the classes which have the power un-
der it will assume all the rights and reject all
the duties — that is, that they will use the po-
litical power to plunder those-who-have. [De-
mocracy, in order to be true to itself, and to
develop into a sound working system, must
oppose the same cold resistance to any claims
for favor on the ground of poverty, as on the
ground of birth and rank. It can no more
admit to public discussion, as within the range
of possible action, any schemes for coddling
and helping wage-receivers than it could en-
tertain schemes for restricting political power
to wage-payers. It must put down schemes
for making "the rich" pay-for whatever "the
poor" want, just as it tramples on the old
theories that only the rich are fit to regulate
society. One needs but to watch our period-
ical literature to see the danger that democ-
racy will be construed as a system of favor-
ing a new privileged class of the many and
the poor./

Holding in mind, now, the notions of liber-
ty and democracy as we have defined them,
we see that it is not altogether a matter of
fanfaronade when the American citizen calls

38 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

himself a " sovereign." A member of a free
democracy is, in a sense, a sovereign. He has
no superior. He has reached his sovereignty,
however, by a process of reduction and divis-
ion of power which leaves him no inferior.
It is very grand to call one's self a sovereign,
but it is greatly to the purpose to notice that
the political responsibilities of the free man
have been intensified and aggregated just in
proportion as political rights have been re-
duced and divided. Many monarchs have
been incapable of sovereignty and unfit for it.
Placed in exalted situations, and inheritors of
grand opportunities, they have exhibited only
their own imbecility and vice. The reason
was, because they thought only of the gratifi-
cation of their own vanity, and not at all of
their duty. {The free man who steps forward
to claim his inheritance and endowment as a
free and equal member of a great civil body
must understand that his duties and responsi-
bilities are measured to him by the same scale
as his rights and his powers. He wants to be
subject to no man. He wants to be equal to
his fellows, as all sovereigns are equal. So
be it; but he cannot escape the deduction
that he can call no man to his aid. The other

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 39

sovereigns will not respect his independence
if he becomes dependent, and they cannot re-
spect his equality if he sues for favors. The
free man in a free democracy, when he cut
off all the ties which might pull him down,
severed also all the ties by which he might
have made others pull him up. He must
take all the consequences of his new status.
He is, in a certain sense, an isolated man.
The family tie does not bring to him disgrace
for the misdeeds of his relatives, as it once
would have done, but neither does it furnish
him with the support which it once would
have given. The relations of men are open
and free, but they are also loose. A free man
in a free democracy derogates from his rank
if he takes a favor for which he does not
render an equivalent.

A free man in a free democracy has no
duty whatever toward other men of the same
rank and standing, except respect, courtesy,
and good-will. "We cannot say that there are
no classes, when we are speaking politically,
and then say that there are classes, when we
are telling A what it is his duty to do for B.
In a free state every man is held and expect-
ed to take care of himself and his family, to

40 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

make no trouble for his neighbor, and to con-
tribute his full share to public interests and
common necessities. If he fails in this he
throws burdens on others. He does not there-
by acquire rights against the others. On the
contrary, he only accumulates obligations to-
ward them ; and if he is allowed to make his
deficiencies a ground of new claims, he passes
over into the position of a privileged or pet-
ted person — emancipated from duties, en-
dowed with claims. This is the inevitable
result of combining democratic political the-
ories with humanitarian social theories. It
would be aside from my present purpose to
show, but it is worth noticing in passing, that
one result of such inconsistency must surely
be to undermine democracy, to increase the
power of wealth in the democracy, and to
hasten the subjection of democracy to plutoc-
racy ; for a man who accepts any share which
he has not earned in another man's capital
cannot be an independent citizen./

It is often affirmed that the educated and
wealthy have an obligation to those who have
less education and property, just because the
latter have political equality with the former,
and oracles and warnings are uttered about

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 4:1

what will happen if the uneducated classes
who have the suffrage are not instructed at
the care and expense of the other classes. In
this view of the matter universal suffrage is
not a measure for strengthening the State by
bringing to its support the aid and affection
of all classes, but it is a new burden, and, in
fact, a peril. Those who favor it represent it
as a peril. This doctrine is politically im-
moral and vicious. AVhen a community es-
tablishes universal suffrage, it is as if it said
to each new-comer, or to each young man:
" We give you every chance that any one else
has. Now come along with us ; take care of
yourself, and contribute your share to the bur-
dens which we all have to bear in order to sup-
port social institutions." Certainly, liberty,
and universal suffrage, and democracy are not ^
pledges of care and protection, but they carry /
with them the exaction of individual respon-/
sibility. The State gives equal rights and
equal chances just because it does not mean
to give anything else. It sets each man on f
his feet, and gives him leave to run, just be-
cause it does not mean to carry him. Having
obtained his chances, he must take upon him-
self the responsibility for his own success or

42 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

failure. It is a pure misfortune to the com-
munity, and one which will redound to its
injury, if any man has been endowed with
political power who is a heavier burden then
than he was before ; but it cannot be said that
there is any new duty created for the good
citizens toward the bad by the fact that the
bad citizens are a harm to the State.

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 43

(rtJNIVBESITY)

/r /s jvor WICKED TO BE RICH,- NAY,

EVEN, THAT IT IS NOT WICKED TO BE
RICHER THAN ONE'S NEIGHBOR.

I HAVE before me a newspaper slip on
which a writer expresses the opinion that no
one should be allowed to possess more than
one million dollars' worth of property. Along-
side of it is another slip, on which another
writer expresses the opinion that the limit
should be five millions. I do not know what
the comparative wealth of the two writers is,
but it is interesting to notice that there is a
wide margin between their ideas of how rich
they would allow their fellow-citizens to be-
come, and of the point at which they (" the
State," of course) would step in to rob a man
of his earnings. These two writers only rep-
resent a great deal of crude thinking and de-
claiming which is in fashion. I never have
known a man of ordinary common-sense who
did not urge upon his sons, from earliest child-
hood, doctrines of economy and the practice

4:4 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

of accumulation. A good father believes that
he does wisely to encourage enterprise, pro-
ductive skill, -prudent self-denial, and judicious
expenditure on the part of his son. The ob-
ject is to teach the boy to accumulate capital.
If, however, the boy should read many of the
diatribes against "the rich" which are afloat
in our literature; if he should read or hear
some of the current discussion about "capi-
tal ;" and if, with the ingenuousness of youth,
he should take these productions at their lit-
eral sense, instead of discounting them, as his
father does, he would be forced to believe
that he was on the path of infamy when he
was earning and saving capital. It is worth
while to consider which we mean or what we
mean. Is it wicked to be rich? Is it mean
to be a capitalist ? If the question is one of
degree only, and it is right to be rich up to
a certain point and wrong to be richer, how
shall we find the point ? Certainly, for prac-
tical purposes, we ought to define the point
nearer than between one and five millions of
dollars.

iThere is an old ecclesiastical prejudice in
favor of the poor and against the rich. In
days when men acted by ecclesiastical rules

OWE TO EACII OTHER. 45

these prejudices produced waste of capital,
and helped mightily to replunge Europe into
barbarism. The prejudices are not yet dead,
but they survive in our society as ludicrous
contradictions and inconsistencies. One thing
must be granted to the rich : lEey are good-
natured. Perhaps they do not recognize
themselves, for a rich man is even harder to
define than a poor one. It is not uncommon
to hear a clergyman utter from the pulpit all
the old prejudice in favor of the poor and
against the rich, while asking the rich to do
something for the poor ; and the rich comply,
without apparently having their feelings hurt
at all by the invidious comparison. We all
agree that he is a gootl member of society
who works his way up from poverty to wealth,
but as soon as he has worked his way up we
begin to regard him with suspicion, as a dan-
gerous member of society. A newspaper starts
the silly fallacy that " the rich are rich because
the poor are industrious," and it is copied from
one end of the country to the other as if it
were a brilliant apothegm. " Capital " is de-
nounced by writers and speakers who have
never taken the trouble to find out what capi-
tal is, and who use the word in two or three

46 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

i different senses in as many pages. Labor or-
ganizations are formed, not_tp_ employ com-
bined effort for a common object, but to in-
dulge in declamation and denunciation, and
especially to furnish an easy living to some
officers who do not want to work. People
who have rejected dogmatic religion, and re-
tained only a residuum of religious sentimen-
talism, find a special field in the discussion of
the rights of the poor and the duties of the
rich. We have denunciations of banks, cor-
porations, and monopolies, which denuncia-
tions encourage only helpless rage and ani-
mosity, because they are not controlled by
any definitions or limitations, or by any distinc-
tions between what is indispensably necessary
and what is abuse, between what is established
in the order of nature and what is legislative
error. Think, for instance, of a, journal which
makes it its special business to denounce mo-
nopolies, yet favors a protective tariff, and has
not a word to say against trades-unions or
patents! Think of public teachers who say
that the farmer is ruined by the cost of trans-
portation, when they mean that he cannot
make any profits because his farm is too far
from the market, and who denounce the

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 47

railroad because it does not correct for the
farmer, at the expense of its stockholders, the
disadvantage which lies in the physical situa-
tion of the farm ! • Think of that construc-
tion of this situation which attributes all the
trouble to the greed of "moneyed corpora-
tions !" Think of the piles of rubbish that
one has read about corners, and watering
stocks, and selling futures!

Undoubtedly there are, in connection with
each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling,
and other financial crimes ; that is to say, the
greed and selfishness of men are perpetual.
They put on new phases, they adjust them-
selves to new forms of business, and constant-
ly devise new methods of fraud and robbery,
just as burglars devise new artifices to circum-
vent every new precaution of the lock-makers.
The criminal law needs to be improved to
meet^new forms of crime, but to denounce
financial devices which are useful and legiti- ;
mate because use is made of them for fraud,
is ridiculous and unworthy of the age in which
we live. Fifty years ago good old English
Tories used to denounce all joint-stock com-
panies in the same way, and for similar rea-
sons.

48 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

All the denunciations and declamations
which have been referred to are made in the
interest of " the poor man." His name never
ceases to echo in the halls of legislation, and
he is the excuse and reason for all the acts
which are passed. He is never forgotten in
poetry, sermon, or essay. His interest is in-
voked to defend every doubtful procedure and
every questionable institution. Yet where is
he ? Who is he ? Who ever saw him ? When
did he ever get the benefit of any of the num-
berless efforts in his behalf ? When, rather,
was his name and interest ever invoked, when,
upon examination, it did not plainly appear
that somebody else was to win — somebody
who was far too "smart" ever to be poor, far
too lazy ever to be rich by industry and
economy ?

A great deal is said about the unearned in-
crement from land, especially with a view to
the large gains of landlords in old countries.
The unearned increment from land has indeed
made the position of an English land-owner,
for the last two hundred years, the most fort-
unate that any class of mortals ever has en-
joyed ; but the present moment, when the rent
of agricultural land in England is declining

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 49

under the competition of American land, is
not well chosen for attacking the old advan-
tage. Furthermore, the unearned increment
from land appears in the United States as a
gain to the first comers, who have here laid
the foundations of a new State. Since the
land is a monopoly, the unearned increment
lies in the laws of Nature. Then the only
question is, Who shall have it ? — the man who
has the ownership by prescription, or some or
all others ? It is a beneficent incident of the
ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces
it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a
new State, finds a profit in the increasing value
of land as the new State grows up. It would
be unjust to take that profit away from him,
or from any successor to whom he has sold it.
Moreover, there is an unearned increment on
capital and on labor, due to the presence, around
the capitalist and the laborer, of a great, in-
dustrious, and prosperous society. A tax on
land and a succession or probate duty on capi-
tal might be perfectly justified by these facts.
Unquestionably capital accumulates with a
rapidity which follows in some high series the
security, good government, peaceful order of
the State in which it is employed ; and if the
4

50 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

State steps in, on the death of the holder, to
claim a share of the inheritance, such a claim
may be fully justified. The laborer likewise
gains by carrying on his labor in a strong,
highly civilized, and well-governed State far
more than he could gain with equal industry
on the frontier or in the midst of anarchy.
He gains greater remuneration for his ser-
vices, and he also shares in the enjoyment of
all that accumulated capital of a wealthy com-
munity which is public or semi-public in its
nature.

It is often said that the earth belongs to the
race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift. Raw
land is only a chance to prosecute the strug-
gle for existence, and the man who tries to
earn a living by the subjugation of raw land
makes that attempt under the most unfavor-
able conditions, for land can be brought into
use only by great hardship and exertion. The
boon, or gift, would be to get some land after
somebody else had made it fit for use. Any
one in the world to-day can have raw land by
going to it ; but there are millions who would
regard it simply as " transportation for life,"
if they were forced to go and live on new
land and get .their living out of it. Private

. OWE TO EACH OTHER. 51

ownership of land is only division of labor./''
If it is true in any sense that we all own the
soil in common, the best use we can make of
our undivided interests is to vest them all
gratuitously (just as we now do) in any who
will assume the function of directly treating
the soil, while the rest of us take other shares
in the social organization. The reason is, be-
cause in this way we all get more than we
would if each one owned some land and used
it directly. Supply and demand now deter-
mine the distribution of population between
the direct use of land and other pursuits ; and
if the total profits and chances of land-culture
were reduced by taking all the "unearned
increment " in taxes, there would simply be a
redistribution of industry until the profits of
land -culture, less taxes and without chances
from increasing value, were equal to the prof-
its of other pursuits under exemption from
taxation.

It is remarkable that jealousy of individual
property in land often goes along with very
exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national k
property in land. We are told that John,
James, and William ought not to possess part
of the earth's surface because it belongs to -

52 WHAT SOCIAL -CLASSES

all men ; but it is held that Egyptians, Nica-
raguans, or Indians have such right to the ter-
ritory which they occupy, that they may bar
the avenues of commerce and civilization if
they choose, and that it is wrong to override
their prejudices or expropriate their land.
The truth is, that the notion that the race
own the earth has practical meaning only for
the latter class of cases.

The great gains of a great capitalist in a
/modern state must be put under the head of
/wages of superintendence. Any one who be-
lieves that any great enterprise of an industri-
al character can be started without labor must
have little experience of life. Let any one
try to get a railroad built, or to start a factory
and win reputation for its products, or to start
a school and win a reputation for it, or to found
a newspaper and make it a success, or to start
any other enterprise, and he will find what
obstacles must be overcome, what risks must
be taken, what perseverance and courage are
required, what foresight and sagacity are nec-
essary. Especially in a new country, where
many tasks are waiting, where resources are
strained to the utmost all the time, the judg-
ment, courage, and perseverance required to

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 53

organize new enterprises and carry them to
success are sometimes heroic. Persons who
possess the necessary qualifications obtain
great rewards. They ought to do so. It is
foolish to rail at them. Then, again, the abil-
ty to organize and conduct industrial, commer-
cial, or financial enterprises is rare ; the great
captains of industry are as rare as great gener-
als. The great weakness of all co-operative
enterprises is in the matter of supervision.
Men of routine or men who can do what they
are told are not hard to find ; but men who
can think and plan and tell the routine men
what to do are very rare. They are paid in
proportion to the supply and demand of
them.

If Mr. A. T. Stewart made a great fortune
by collecting and bringing dry-goods to the
people of the United States, he did so because
he understood how to do that thing better
than any other man of his generation. He
proved it, because he carried the business
through commercial crises and war, and kept
increasing its dimensions. If, when he,.<4ied,
he left no competent successor, the business
must break up, and pass into new organization
in the hands of other men. Some have said

54 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

that Mr. Stewart made his fortune out of those
who worked for him or with him. But would
those persons have been able to come togeth-
er, organize themselves, and earn what they
did earn without him ? Not at all. They
would have been comparatively helpless. He
and they together formed a great system of
factories, stores, transportation, under his
guidance and judgment. It was for the bene-
fit of all; but he contributed to it what no
one else was able to contribute — the one guid-
ing mind which made the whole thing possi-
ble. In 110 sense whatever does a man who
accumulates a fortune by legitimate industry
exploit his employes, or make his capital " out
of " anybody else. The wealth which he wins
would not be but for him.

The aggregation of large fortunes is not at
all a thing to be regretted. On the contrary,
it is a necessary condition of many forms of
social advance. If we should set a limit to
the accumulation of wealth, we should say to
our most valuable producers, "We do not
want you to do us the services which you best
understand how to perform, beyond a certain
point." It would be like killing off our gen-
erals in war. A great deal is said, in the cant

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 55

of a certain school, about "ethical views of
wealth," and we are told that some day men
will be found of such public spirit that, after
they have accumulated a few millions, they
will be willing to go on and labor simply for
the pleasure of paying the taxes of their fel-
low-citizens. Possibly this is true. It is a
prophecy. It is as impossible to deny it as it
is silly to affirm it. For if a time ever comes
when there are men of this kind, the men of
that age will arrange their affairs accordingly.
There are no such men now, and those of us
who live now cannot arrange our affairs by
what men will be a hundred generations
hence.

There is every indication that we are to see
new developments of the power of aggregated
capital to serve civilization, and that the new
developments will be made right here in
America. Joint -stock companies are yet in
their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead
of being a thing which can be overturned, is
a thing which is becoming more and more in-
dispensable. I shall have something to say
in another chapter about the necessary checks
and guarantees, in a political point of view,
which must be established. Economically

56 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

speaking, aggregated capital will be more and
more essential to the performance of onr so-
cial tasks. Furthermore, it seems to me cer-
tain that all aggregated capital will fall more
and more under personal control. Each great
company will be known as controlled by one
master mind. The reason for this lies in the
great superiority of personal management over
management by boards and committees. This
tendency is in the public interest, for it is in
the direction of more satisfactory responsibil-
ity. The great hinderance to the development
of this continent has lain in the lack of capi-
tal. The capital which we have had has been
wasted by division and dissipation, and by in-
judicious applications. The waste of capital,
in proportion to the total capital, in this coun-
try between 1800 and 1850, in the attempts
which were made to establish means of com-
munication and transportation, was enormous.
The waste was chiefly due to ignorance and
bad management, especially to State control
of public works. We are to see the develop-
ment of the country pushed forward at an un-
precedented rate by an aggregation of capital,
and a systematic application of it under the
direction of competent men. This develop-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 57

ment will be for the benefit of all, and it will
enable each one of us, in his measure and way,
to increase his wealth. We may each of us
go ahead to do so, and -we have every reason
to rejoice in each other's prosperity. There
ought to be no laws to guarantee property
against the folly of its possessors. In the ab-
sence of such laws, capital inherited by a
spendthrift will be squandered and re-accu-
mulated in the hands of men who are fit and
competent to hold it. So it should be, and
under such a state of things there is no reason
to desire to limit the property which any man
may acquire.

58 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

IV.

OF THE REASONS WHY MAN IS NOT
ALTOGETHER A BRUTE.

THE Arabs have a story of a man who de-
sired to test which of his three sons loved him
most. He sent them out to see which of the
three would bring him the most valuable pres-
ent. The three sons met in a distant city, and
compared the gifts they had found. The first
had a carpet on wThich he could transport him-
self and others whithersoever he would. The
second had a medicine which would cure any
disease. The third had a glass in which he
could see what was going on at any place he
might name. The third used his glass to see
what was going on at home : he saw his father
ill in bed. The first transported all three to
their home on his carpet. The second admin-
istered the medicine and saved the father's
life. The perplexity of the father when he
had to decide which son's gift had been of the
most value to him illustrates very fairly the
difficulty of saying whether land, labor, or

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 59

capital is most essential to production. No
production is possible without the co-opera-
tion of all three.

We know that men once lived on the spon-
taneous fruits of the earth, just as other ani-
mals do. In that stage of existence a man
was just like the brutes. His existence was
at the sport of Nature. He got what he could
by way of food, and ate what he could get,
but he depended on finding what Nature gave.
He could wrest nothing from Nature ; he could
inake her produce nothing ; and he had only
his limbs with which to appropriate what she
offered. His existence was almost entirely
controlled by accident ; he possessed no capi-
tal ; he lived out of his product, and produc-
tion had only the two elements of land and
labor of appropriation. At the present time
man is an intelligent animal. He knows some-
thing of the laws of Nature ; he can avail him-
self of what is favorable, and avert what is
unfavorable, in nature, to a certain extent ; he
has narrowed the sphere of accident, and in
some respects reduced it to computations
which lessen its importance ; he can bring
the productive forces of Nature into service,
and make them produce food, clothing, and

60 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

shelter. How has the change been brought
about ? The answer is, By capital. If we can
come to an understanding of what capital is,
and what a place it occupies in civilization,
it will clear up our ideas about a great many
of these schemes and philosophies which are
put forward to criticise social arrangements,
or as a basis of proposed reforms.

The first beginnings of capital are lost in
the obscurity which covers all the germs of
civilization. The more one comes to under-
stand the case of the primitive man, the more
wonderful it seems that man ever started on
the road to civilization.. Among the lower
animals we find some inchoate forms of capi-
tal, but from them to the lowest forms of real
capital there is a great stride. It does not
seem possible that man could have taken that
stride without intelligent reflection, and every-
thing we know about the primitive man shows
us that he did not reflect. No doubt accident
controlled the first steps. They may have
been won and lost again many times. There
was one natural element which man learned
to use so early that we cannot find any trace
of him when he had it not — fire. There was
one tool- weapon in nature — the flint. Beyond

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 61

the man who was so far superior to the brutes
that he knew how to use fire and had the use
of flints we cannot go. A man of lower civil-
ization than that was so like the brutes that,
like them, he could leave no sign of his pres-
ence on the earth save his bones.

The man who had a flint no longer need be
a prey to a wild animal, but could make a prey
of it. He could get meat food. He who had
meat food could provide his food in such time
as to get leisure to improve his flint tools. Pie
could get skins for clothing, bones for needles,
tendons for thread. He next devised traps
and snares by which to take animals alive.
He domesticated them, and lived on their in-
crease. He made them beasts of draught and
burden, and so got the use of a natural force.
He who had beasts of draught and burden
could make a road and trade, and so get the
advantage of all* soils and all climates. He
could make a boat, and use the winds as force.
He now had such tools, science, and skill that
he could till the ground, and make it give him
more food. So from the first step that man
made above the brute the thing which made
his civilization possible was capital. Every step
of capital won made the next step possible, up

62 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

to the present hour. Not a step has been
or can be made without capital. It is labor
accumulated, multiplied into itself — raised to
a higher power, as the mathematicians say.
The locomotive is only possible to-day be-
cause, from the flint-knife up, one achieve-
ment has been multiplied into another through
thousands of generations. We cannot now
stir a step in our life without capital. We
cannot build a school, a hospital, a church, or
employ a missionary society, without capital,
any more than we could build a palace or a
factory without capital. We have ourselves,
and we have the earth ; the thing which limits
what we can do is the third requisite — capital.
Capital is force, human energy stored or ac-
cumulated, and very few people ever come to
appreciate its importance to civilized life. We
get so used to it that we do not see its use.

The industrial organization of society has
undergone a development with the develop-
ment of capital. Nothing has ever made men
spread over the earth and develop the arts but
necessity — that is, the need of getting a liv-
ing, and the hardships endured in trying to
meet that need. The human race has had to
pay with its blood at every step. It has had

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 63

to buy its experience. The thing which has
kept up the necessity of more migration or
more power over Nature has been increase of
population. "Where population has become
chronically excessive, and where the popula-
tion has succumbed and sunk, instead of devel-
oping energy enough for a new advance, there
races have degenerated and settled into perma-
nent barbarism. They have lost the power
to rise again, and have made no inventions.
Where life has been so easy and ample that
it cost no effort, few improvements have been
made. It is in the middle range, with enough
social pressure to make energy needful, and
not enough social pressure to produce despair,
that the most progress has been made.

At first all labor was forced. Men forced
it on women, who were drudges and slaves.
Men reserved for themselves only the work
of hunting or war. Strange and often horri-
ble shadows of all the old primitive barbarism
are now to be found in the slums of great cit-
ies, and in the lowest groups of men, in the
midst of civilizQd nations. Men impose la-
bor on women in some such groups to-day.
Through various grades of slavery, serfdom,
villainage, and through various organizations

64: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

of castes and guilds, the industrial organiza-
tion has been modified and developed up to
the modern system. Some men have been
found to denounce and deride the modern
system — what they call the capitalist system.
The modern system is based on liberty, on
contract, and on private property. It has
been reached through a gradual emancipation
of the mass of mankind from old bonds both
to Nature and to their fellow-men. Village
communities, which excite the romantic ad-
miration of some writers, were fit only for
a most elementary and unorganized society.
They were fit neither to cope with the natu-
ral difficulties of winning much food from lit-
tle land, nor to cope with the malice of men.
Hence they perished. In the modern society
the organization of labor is high. Some ar&
land-owners and agriculturists, some are trans-
porters, bankers, merchants, teachers; some
advance the product by manufacture. It is a
system of division of functions, which is being
refined all the time by subdivision of trade
and occupation, and by the differentiation of
new trades.

The ties by which all are held together are
those of free co-operation and contract. If we

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 65

look back for comparison to anything of which
human history gives us a type or experiment,
we see that the modern free system of industry
offers to every living human being chances of
happiness indescribably in excess of what for-
mer generations have possessed. It offers no
such guarantees as were once possessed by
some, that they should in no case suffer. We
have an instance right at hand. The negroes,
once slaves in the United States, used to be
assured care, medicine, and support ; but they
spent their efforts, and other men took the
products. They have been set free. That
means only just this : they now work and hold
their own products, and are assured of nothing \
but what they earn. In escaping from sub-
jection they have lost claims. Care, medicine,
and support they get, if they earn it. Will
any one say that the black men have not
gained? Will any one deny that individual
black men may seem worse off? Will any
one allow such observations to blind him to the
true significance of the change ? If any one
thinks that there are or ought to be somewhere
in society guarantees that no man shall suffer
hardship, let him understand that there can
be no such guarantees, unless other men give
5

66 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

them — that is, unless we go back to slavery,
and make one man's effort conduce to an-
other man's welfare. Of course, if a specu-
lator breaks loose from science and history,
and plans out an ideal society in which all
the conditions are to be different, he is a law-
giver or prophet, and those may listen to him
who have leisure.

The modern industrial system is a great so-
cial co-operation. It is automatic and instinc-
tive in its operation. The adjustments of the
organs take place naturally. The parties are
held together by impersonal force — supply
and demand. They may never see each other;
they may be separated by half the circum-
ference of the globe. Their co-operation in
the social effort is combined and distributed
again by financial machinery, and the rights
and interests are measured and satisfied with-
out any special treaty or convention at all.
All this goes on so smoothly and naturally
that we forget to notice it. We think that
it costs nothing — does itself, as it were. The
truth is, that this great co-operative effort
is one of the great products of civilization-
one of its costliest products and highest re-
finements, because here, more than anywhere

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 67

else, intelligence comes in, but intelligence
so clear and correct that it does not need ex-
pression.

Now, by the great social organization the
whole civilized body (and soon we shall say
the whole human race) keeps up a combined
assault on Nature for the means of subsistence.
Civilized society may be said to be maintained
in an unnatural position, at an elevation above
the earth, or above the natural state of human
society. It can be maintained there only by
an efficient organization of the social effort
and by capital. At its elevation it supports
far greater numbers than it could support on
any lower stage. Members of the society who
come into it as it is to-day can live only by
entering into the organization. If numbers
increase, the organization must be perfected,
\ and capital must increase—^. <?., power over
Nature. If the society does not keep up its

i power, if it lowers its organization or wastes
its capital, it falls back toward the natural
state of barbarism from which it rose, and in
so doing it must sacrifice thousands of its weak-

% est members. Hence human society lives at a
constant strain forward and upward, and those
who have most interest that this strain be sue-

68 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

cessfully kept up, that the social organization
be perfected, and that capital be increased,
are those at the bottom.

The notion of property which prevails
among us to-day is, that a man has a right
to the thing which he has made by his labor.
This is a very modern and highly civilized
conception. Singularly enough, it has been
brought forward dogmatically to prove that
property in land is not reasonable, because man
did not make land. A man cannot " make " a
chattel or product of any kind whatever with-
out first appropriating land, so as to get the
ore, wood, wool, cotton, fur, or other raw ma-
terial. All that men ever appropriate land
for is to get out of it the natural materials on
which they exercise their industry. Appro-
priation, therefore, precedes labor-production,
both historically and logically. Primitive
races regarded, and often now regard, appro-
priation as the best title to property. As
usual, they are logical. It is the simplest and
most natural mode of thinking to regard a
thing as belonging to that man who has, by
carrying, wearing, or handling it, associated it
for a certain time with his person. I once
heard a little boy of four years say to his

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 69

mother, " Why is not this pencil mine now ?
It used to be my brother's, but I have been
using it all day." He was reasoning with the
logic of his barbarian ancestors. The reason
for allowing private property in land is, that
two men cannot eat the same loaf of bread.
If A has taken a piece of land, and is at work
getting his loaf out of it, B cannot use the
same land at the same time for the same pur-
pose. Priority of appropriation is the only
title of right which can supersede the title of
greater force. The reason why man is not
altogether a brute is, because he has learned to
accumulate capital, to use capital, to advance i
to a higher organization of society, to develop
a completer co-operation, and so to win great-
er and greater control over Nature.

It is a great delusion to look about us
and select those men who occupy the most
advanced position in respect to worldly cir-
cumstances as the standard to which we
think that all .might be and ought to be
brought. All the complaints and criticisms
about the inequality of men apply to inequali-
ties in property, luxury, and creature com-
forts, not to knowledge, virtue, or even phys-
ical beauty and strength. But it is plainly

70 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

impossible that we should all attain to equali-
ty on the level of the best of us. The history
of civilization shows us that the human race
has by no means marched on in a solid and
even phalanx. It has had its advance-guard,
its rear-guard, and its stragglers. It presents
us the same picture to-day ; for it embraces
every grade, from the most civilized nations
down to the lowest surviving types of barba-
rians. Furthermore, if we analyze the socie-
ty of the most civilized State, especially in
one of the great cities where the highest tri-
umphs of culture are presented, we find sur-
vivals of every form of barbarism and lower
civilization. Hence, those who to-day enjoy
the most complete emancipation from the
hardships of human life, and the greatest
command over the conditions of existence,
simply show us the best that man has yet
been able to do. ^ Can we all reach that stand-
ard by wishing for it? Can we all vote it
to each other? If we pull down those who
are most fortunate and successful, shall we
not by that very act defeat our own object?
Those who are trying to reason out any issue
from this tangle of false notions of society
and of history are only involving themselves

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 71

in hopeless absurdities and contradictions. If
any man is not in tlie first rank who might
get there, let him put forth new energy and
take his place. If any man is not in the front
rank, although he has done his best, how can
he be advanced at all ? Certainly in no way
save by pushing down any one else who is
forced to contribute to his advancement.

It is often said that the mass of mankind
are yet buried in poverty, ignorance, and brut-
ishness. It would be a correct statement of
the facts intended, from an historical and so-
ciological point of view, to say, Only a small
fraction of the human race have as yet, by
thousands of years of struggle, been partially
emancipated from poverty, ignorance, and
brutishness. When once this simple correc-
tion is made in the general point of view, we
gain most important corollaries for all the
subordinate questions about the relations of
races, nations, and classes.

72 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

V.

THAT WE MUST HAVE FEW MEN, IF WE
WANT STRONG MEN.

IN our modern revolt against the mediaeval
notions of hereditary honor and hereditary
shame we have gone too far, for we have lost
the appreciation of the true dependence of
children on parents. We have a glib phrase
about "the accident of birth," but it would
puzzle anybody to tell what it means. If A
takes B to wife, it is not an accident that he
took B rather than C, D, or any other woman ;
and if A and B have a child, X, that child's
ties to ancestry and posterity, and his relations
to the human race, into which he has been
born through A and B, are in no sense acci-
dental. The child's interest in the question
whether A should have married B or C is as
material as anything one can conceive of, and
the fortune which made X the son of A, and
not of another man, is the most material fact
in his destiny. If these things were better

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 73

understood public opinion about the ethics of
marriage and parentage would undergo a most
salutary change. In following the modern
tendency of opinion we have lost sight of the
due responsibility of parents, and our legisla-
tion has thrown upon some parents the re-
sponsibility, not only of their own children,
but of those of others. .

The relation of parents and children is the j
only case of sacrifice in Nature. Elsewhere*
equivalence of exchange prevails rigorously.
The parents, however, hand down to their
children the return for all which they had
themselves inherited from their ancestors.
They ought to hand down the inheritance
with increase. It is by this relation that the
human race keeps up a constantly advancing
contest with Nature. The penalty of ceasing
an aggressive behavior toward the hardships
of life on the part of mankind is, that w;e go
backward. "We cannot stand still. Now, pa-
rental affection constitutes the personal motive
which drives every man in his place to an
aggressive and conquering policy toward the
limiting conditions of human life. Affection
for wife and children is also the greatest mo-
tive to social ambition and personal self -re-

74: WHAT SOCIAL GLASSES

\spect — that is, to what is technically called a
^" high standard of living."

Some people are greatly shocked to read of
what is called Malthusianism, when they read
it in a book, who would be greatly ashamed
of themselves if they did not practise Malthu-
sianism in their own affairs. Among respect-
able people a man who took upon himself the
cares and expenses of a family before he had
secured a regular trade or profession, or had
accumulated some capital, and who allowed
his wife to lose caste> and his children to be
dirty, ragged, and neglected, wTould be severe-
ly blamed by the public opinion of the com-
munity. The standard of living which a man
makes for himself and his family, if he means
to earn it, and does not formulate it as a de-
mand which he means to nu;ke on his fellow-
men, is a gauge of his self-respect ; and a high
standard of living is the moral limit which an
intelligent body of men sets for itself far in-
side of the natural limits of the sustaining
power of the land, which latter limit is set by
starvation, pestilence, and war. But a high
standard of living restrains population ; that
isrif we hold up to the higher standard of
men, we must have fewer of them.

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 75

/Taking men as they have been and are, they
are subjects of passion, emotion, and instinct/
Only the elite of the race has yet been raised
to the point where reason and conscience can
even curb the lower motive forces. For the
mass of mankind, therefore, the price of bet-
ter things is too severe, for that price can be
summed up in one word — self-control, The
consequence is, that for all but a few of us the
limit of attainment in life in the best case is
to live out our term, to pay our debts, to place
three or four children in a position to sup-
port themselves in a position as good as the
father's was, and there to make the account
balance.

Since we must all live, in the civilized or-
ganization of society, 011 the existing capital ;
and since those who have only come out even
have not accumulated any of the capital, have
no claim to own it, and cannot leave it to
their children ; and since those who own land
have parted with their capital for it, which
capital has passed back through other hands
into industrial employment, how is a man
who has inherited neither land nor capital to
secure a living? He must give his produc-
tive energy to apply capital to land for the

76 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

farther production of wealth, and he must se-
cure a share in the existing capital by a con-
tract relation to those who own it.

Undoubtedly the man who possesses capital
has a great advantage over the man who has
no capital, in all the struggle for existence.
Think of two men who want to lift a weight,
one of whom has a lever, and the other must
apply his hands directly ; think of two men
tilling the soil, one of whom uses his hands
or a stick, while the other has a horse and a
plough ; think of two men in conflict with
a wild animal, one of whom has only a stick
or a stone, while the other has a repeating
rifle ; think of two men who are sick, one of
whom can travel, command medical skill, get
space, light, air, and water, while the other
lacks all these things. This does not mean
that one man has an advantage against the
other, but that, when they are rivals in the
effort to get the means of subsistence from
Nature, the one who has capital has immeas-
urable advantages over the other. If it were
not so capital would not be formed. Capital
is only formed by self-denial, and if the pos-
session of it did not secure advantages and
superiorities of a high order men would never

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 77

submit to what is necessary to get it. The
first accumulation costs by far the most, and
the rate of increase by profits at first seems
pitiful. Among the metaphors which par-
tially illustrate capital — all of which, however,
are imperfect and inadequate — the snow-ball is
useful to show some facts about capital. Its
first accumulation is slow, but as it proceeds
the accumulation becomes rapid in a high ra-
tio, and the element of self-denial declines.
This fact, also, is favorable to the accumula-
tion of capital, for if the self-denial continued
to be as great per unit when the accumulation
had become great, there would speedily come
a point at which farther accumulation would
not pay. The man who has capital has se-
cured his future, won leisure which he can
employ in winning secondary objects of ne-
cessity and advantage, and emancipated him-
self from those things in life which are gross
and belittling. The possession of capital is,
therefore, an indispensable prerequisite of ed-
ucational, scientific, and moral goods. This is
not saying that a man in the narrowest cir-
cumstances may not be a good man. It is
saying that the extension and elevation of all
the moral and metaphysical interests of the

78 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

race are conditioned on that extension of civ-
ilization of which capital is the prerequisite,
and that he who has capital can participate in
and move along with the highest develop-
ments of his time. Hence it appears that
the man who has his self-denial before him,
however good may be his intention, cannot
be as the man who has his self-denial behind
him. Some seem to think that this is very
unjust, but they get their notions of justice
from some occult source of inspiration, not
from observing the facts of this world as it
has been made and exists.
1 The maxim, or injunction, to which a study
6i capital leads us is, Get capital. In a com-
munity where the standard of living is high,
and the conditions of production are favora-
ble, there is a wide margin within which an
individual may practise self-denial and win
capital without suffering, if he has not the
charge of a family. That it requires energy,
courage, perseverance, and prudence is not to
be denied. Any one who believes that any
good thing on this earth can be got without
those virtues may believe in the philosopher's
stone or the fountain of youth. If there were

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 79

any Utopia its inhabitants would certainly
be very insipid and characterless.

Those who have neither capital nor land
unquestionably have a closer class interest
than landlords or capitalists. If one of those
who are in either of the latter classes is a
spendthrift he loses his advantage. If the
non - capitalists increase their numbers, they
surrender themselves into the hands of the
landlords and capitalists. They compete with
each other for food until they run up the rent
of land, and they compete with each other for
wages until they give the capitalist a great
amount of productive energy for a given
amount of capital. If some of them are
economical and prudent in the midst of a class
which saves nothing and marries early, the
few prudent suffer for the folly of the rest,
since they can only get current rates of wages ;
and if these are low the margin out of which
to make savings by special personal effort is
narrow. No instance has yet been seen of a
society composed of a class of great capitalists
and a class of laborers who had fallen into a
caste of permanent drudges. Probably no
such thing is possible so long as landlords es-
pecially remain as a third class, and so long

80 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

as society continues to develop strong classes
of merchants, financiers, professional men, and
other classes. If it were conceivable that
non-capitalist laborers should give up strug-
gling to become capitalists, should give way
to vulgar enjoyments and passions, should
recklessly increase their numbers, and should
become a permanent caste, they might with
some justice be called proletarians. The name
has been adopted by some professed labor
leaders, but it really should be considered in-
sulting. If there were such a proletariat it
would be hopelessly in the hands of a body
of plutocratic capitalists, and a society so or-
ganized would, no doubt, be far worse than a
society composed only of nobles and serfs,
which is the worst society the world has seen
in modern times.

At every turn, therefore, it appears that the
number of men and the quality of men limit
each other, and that the question whether we
shall have more men or better men is of most
importance to the class which has neither
land nor capital.

OWE TO EACH OTHEE. 81

/J^> on1 THR ^\

(TJNIVEESITY))

VI.

77/4 T HE WHO WOULD BE WELL TAKEN CARE
OF MUST TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF.

THE discussion of "the relations of labor
and capital " lias not hitherto been very fruit-
ful. It has been confused by ambiguous defi-
nitions, and it has been based upon assump-
tions about the rights and duties of social
classes which are, to say the least, open to
serious question as regards their truth and
justice. If, then, we correct and limit the
definitions, and if we test the assumptions,
we shall find out whether there is anything
to discuss about the relations of "labor and
capital," and, if anything, what it is.

Let us first examine the terms.

1. Labor means properly toil, irksome ex-
ertion, expenditure of productive energy.

2. The term is used, secondly, by a figure
of speech, and in a collective sense, to desig-
nate the body of persons who, having neither
capital nor land, come into the industrial or-
ganization offering productive services in ex-

6

82 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

change for means of subsistence. These per-
sons are united by community of interest into
a group, or class, or interest, and, when inter-
ests come to be adjusted, the interests of this
group will undoubtedly be limited by those of
other groups.

3. The term labor is used, thirdly, in a more
restricted, very popular and current, but very
ill-defined, way, to designate a limited sub-
group among those who live by contributing
productive efforts to the work of society.
Every one is a laborer who is not a person of
leisure. Public men, or other workers, if any,
who labor but receive no pay, might be exclud-
ed from the category, and we should immedi-
ately pass, by such a restriction, from a broad
and philosophical to a technical definition of
the labor class. But merchants, bankers, pro-
fessional men, and all whose labor is, to an im-
portant degree, mental as well as manual, are
excluded from this third use of the term labor.
The result is, that the word is used, in a sense
at once loosely popular and strictly technical,
to designate a group of laborers who separate
their interests from those of other laborers.
Whether farmers are included under " labor "
in this third sense or not I have not been able

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 83

to determine. It seems that they are or are
not, as the interest of the disputants may re-
quire.

1. Capital is any product of labor which is
used to assist production.

2. This term also is used, by a figure of
speech, and in a collective sense, for the per-
sons who possess capital, and who come into
the industrial organization to get their living
by using capital for profit. To do this they
need to exchange capital for productive ser-
vices. These persons constitute an interest,
group, or class, although they are not united
by any such community of interest as labor-
ers, and, in the adjustment of interests, the
interest of the owners of capital must be lim-
ited by the interests of other groups.

3. Capital, however, is also used in a vague
and popular sense which it is hard to define.
In general it is used, in this sense, to mean
employers of laborers, but it seems to be re-
stricted to those who are employers on a large
scale. It does not seem to include those who
employ only domestic servants. Those also
are excluded who own capital and lend it, but
do not directly employ people to use it.

It is evident that if we take for discussion

84: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

" capital and labor," if each of the terms has
three definitions, and if one definition of each
is loose and doubtful, we have everything pre-
pared for a discussion which shall be inter-
minable and fruitless, which shall offer every
attraction to undisciplined thinkers, and repel
everybody else.

The real collision of interest, which is the
centre of the dispute, is that of employers and
employed ; and the first condition of success-
ful study of the question, or of successful in-
vestigation to see if there is any question, is
to throw aside the technical economic terms,
and to look at the subject in its true meaning,
expressed in untechnical language. We will
use the terms u capital " and " labor " only in
their strict economic significance, viz., the first
definition given above under each term, and
we will use the terms " laborers " and " capi-
talists " when we mean the persons described
in the second definition under each term.
| It is a common assertion that the interests
olemployers and employed are identical, that
they are partners in an enterprise, etc. These
sayings spring from a disposition, which may
often be noticed, to find consoling and encour-
aging observations in the facts of sociology,

OWE TO EACH OTHEE. 85

and to refute, if possible, any unpleasant obser-
vations. If we try to learn what is true, we
shall both do what is alone right, and we shall
do the best for ourselves in the end. The in-
terests of employers and employed as parties
to a contract are antagonistic in certain re-
spects and united in others, as is the case
wherever supply and demand operate. If
John gives cloth to James in exchange for
wheat, John's interest is that cloth be good
and attractive but not plentiful, but that wheat
be good and plentiful ; James's interest is that
wheat be good and attractive but not plenti-
ful, but that cloth be good and plentiful. All
men have a common interest that all things Be
good, and that all things but the one which
each produces be plentiful. The employer
is interested that capital be good but rare, and
productive energy good and plentiful ; the em-
ploye is interested that capital be good and
plentiful, but that productive energy be good
and rare. "When one man alone can do a ser-
vice, and he can do it very well, he represents
the laborer's ideal. To say that employers
and employed are partners in an enterprise is
only a delusive figure of speech. It is plainly
based on no facts in the industrial system.

86 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

Employers and employed make contracts on
the best terms which they can agree upon, like
buyers and sellers, renters and hirers, borrow-
ers and lenders. Their relations are, therefore,
controlled by the universal law of supply and
demand. The employer assumes the direction
of the business, and takes all the risk, for the
capital must be consumed in the industrial
process, and whether it will be found again in
the product or not depends upon the good
judgment and foresight with which the capi-
tal and labor have been applied. Under the
wages system the employer and the employ^
contract for time. The employe fulfils the
contract if he obeys orders during the time,
and treats the capital as he is told to treat it.
Hence he is free from all responsibility, risk,
and speculation. That this is the most advan-
tageous arrangement for him, on the whole
and in the great majority of cases, is very cer-
tain. Salaried men and wage-receivers are in
precisely the same circumstances, except that
the former, by custom and usage, are those
vlio have special skill or training, which is
Imost always an investment of capital, and
Vwhich narrows the range of competition in
"their case. Physicians, lawyers, and others

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 87

paid by fees are workers by the piece. To
the capital in existence all must come for
their subsistence and their tools.

Association is the lowest and simplest mode
of attaining accord and concord between men.
It is now the mode best suited to the condi-
tion and chances of employes. Employers
formerly made use of guilds to secure com-
mon action for a common interest. They
have given up this mode of union because it
has been superseded by better ones. Corre-
spondence, travel, newspapers, circulars, and
telegrams bring to employers and capitalists
the information which they need for the de-
fence of their interests. The combination be-
tween them is automatic and instinctive. It
is not formal and regulated by rule. It is all
the stronger on that account, because intelli-
gent men, holding the same general maxims
of policy, and obtaining the same information,
pursue similar lines of action, while retaining
all the ease, freedom, and elasticity of personal
independence.

At present employes have not the leisure
necessary for the higher modes of communi-
cation. Capital is also necessary to establish
the ties of common action under the higher

88 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

forms. Moreover, there is, no doubt, an inci-
dental disadvantage connected with the release
which the employe gets under the wages sys-
tem from all responsibility for the conduct of
the business. That is, that employes do not
learn to watch or study the course of industry,
and do not plan for their own advantage, as
other classes do. There is an especial field for
combined action in the case of employes. Em-
ployers are generally separated by jealousy and
pride in regard to all but the most universal
class interests. Employes have a much closer
interest in each other's wisdom.. Competition
I of capitalists for profits redounds to the bene-
\ fit of laborers. Competition of laborers for
subsistence redounds to the benefit of capital-
ists. It is utterly futile to plan and scheme
so that either party can make a " corner " on
the other. If employers withdraw capital
from employment in an attempt to lower
wages, they lose profits. If employes with-
draw from competition in order to raise wages,
they starve to death. Capital and labor are
the two things which least admit of monopoly.
Employers can, however, if they have fore-
sight of the movements of industry and com-
merce, and if they make skilful use of credit,

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 89

win exceptional profits for a limited period.
One great means of exceptional profit lies in
the very fact that the employes have not exer-
cised the same foresight, but have plodded
along and waited for the slow and successive
action of the industrial system through suc-
cessive periods of production, while the em-
ployer has anticipated and synchronized sever-
al successive steps. No bargain is fairly made
if one of the parties to it fails to maintain his
interest. If one party to a contract is well in-
formed and the other ill informed, the former
is sure to win an advantage. No doctrine that
a true adjustment of interest follows from the
free play of interests can be construed to mean
that an interest which is neglected will get its
rights.

The employes have no means of informa-
tion which is as good and legitimate as as-
sociation, and it is fair and necessary that
their action should be united on behalf of
their interests. They are not in a position
for the unrestricted development of individu-
alism in regard to many of their interests.
Unquestionably the better ones lose by this,
and the development of individualism is to
be looked forward to and hoped for as a great

90 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

gain. In the mean time the labor market, in
which wages are fixed, cannot reach fair ad-
justments unless the interest of the laborers
is fairly defended, and that cannot, perhaps,
yet be done without associations of laborers.
No newspapers yet report the labor market.
If they give any notices of it — of its rise and
^all, of its variations in different districts and
in different trades — such notices are always
made for the interest of the employers. Re-
distribution of employes, both locally and
trade-wise (so far as the latter is possible), is
a legitimate and useful mode of raising wages.
The illegitimate attempt to raise wages by
limiting the number of apprentices is the
great abuse of trades-unions. I shall discuss
that in the ninth chapter.

It appears that the English trades were
forced to contend, during the first half of this
century, for the wages which the market real-
ly would give them, but which, under the old
traditions and restrictions which remained,
they could not get without a positive struggle.
They formed the opinion that a strike could
raise wages. They were educated so to think
by the success which they had won in certain
attempts. It appears to have become a tra-

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 91

ditional opinion, in which no account is taken
of the state of the labor market. It would be
hard to find a case of any strike within thirty
or forty years, either in England or the United
States, which has paid. If a strike occurs, it «•
certainly wastes capital and hinders produc-'
tion. It must, therefore, lower wages subse-
quently below what they would have been it
there had been no strike. If a strike suc-
ceeds, the question arises whether an advance
of wages as great or greater would not have
occurred within a limited period without a
strike.

/Nevertheless, a strike is a legitimate resort
at last. It is like war, for it is war. All that
can be said is that those who have recourse to
it at last ought to understand that they as-
sume a great responsibility, and that they can
only be justified by the circumstances of the
case. I cannot believe that a strike for wagqs
ever is expedient. There are other purposes,
to be mentioned in a moment, for which a
strike may be expedient ; but a strike for wages
is a clear case of a strife in which ultimate
success is a complete test of the justifiability
of the course of those who made the strife.
If the men win an advance, it proves that they

92 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

ought to have had it. If they do not win, it
proves that they were wrong to strike. / If
they strike with the market in their favor,
they win. If they strike with the market
against them, they fail. It is in human nat-
ure that a man whose income is increased is
happy and satisfied, although, if he demanded
it, he might perhaps at that very moment get
more. A man whose' income is lessened is
displeased and irritated, and he is more likely
to strike then, when it may be in vain. Strikes
in industry are not nearly so peculiar a phe-
nomenon as they are often thought to be.
Buyers strike when they refuse to buy com-
modities of which the price has risen. Either
the price remains high, and they permanently
learn to do without the commodity, or the
price is lowered, and they buy again. Ten-
ants strike when house-rents rise too high for
them. They seek smaller houses or parts of
houses until there is a complete re-adjustment.
Borrowers strike when the rates for capital
are so high that they cannot employ it to ad-
vantage and pay those rates. Laborers may
strike and emigrate, or, in this country, take
to the land. This kind of strike is a regular
application of legitimate means, and is sure

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 93

to succeed. Of course, strikes with violence
against employers or other employes are not
to be discussed at all.

/Trades-unions, then, are right and useful, \i
and it may be that they are necessary. Theyf
may do much by way of true economic
means to raise wages. They are useful to
spread information, to maintain esprit de
corps, to elevate the public opinion of the
classj They have been greatly abused in the
past. In this country they are in constant
danger of being used by political schemers — a
fact which does more than anything else to
disparage them in the eyes of the best work-
men. The economic notions most in favor in
the trades-unions are erroneous, although not
more so than those which find favor in the
counting-room. A man who believes that he
can raise wages by doing bad work, wasting
time, allowing material to be wasted, and giving
generally the least possible service in the al-
lotted time, is not to be distinguished from the
man who says that wages can be raised by
putting protective taxes on all clothing, furni-
ture, crockery, bedding, books, fuel, utensils,
and tools. One lowers the services given for
the capital, and the other lowers the capital

94: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

given for the services. Trades-unionism in
the higher classes consists in jobbery. There
is a great deal of it in the professions. I once
heard a group of lawyers of high standing
sneer at an executor who hoped to get a large
estate through probate without allowing any
lawyers to get big fees out of it. They all
approved of steps which had been taken to
force a contest, which steps had forced the
executor to retain two or three lawyers. No
one of the speakers had been retained.
/^Trades -unions need development, correc-
tion, an^ perfection. They ought, however,
to get this from the men themselves. If the
men do not feel any need of such institutions,
the patronage of other persons who come to
them and give them these institutions will do
harm and not good. Especially trades-unions
ought to be perfected so as to undertake a
great range of important duties for which we
now rely on Government inspection, which nev-
er gives what we need. The safety of workmen
from machinery, the ventilation and sanitary
arrangements required by factories, the special
precautions of certain processes, the hours of
labor of women and children, the schooling of
children, the limits of age for employed chil-

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 95

dren, Sunday work, hours of labor — these and
other like matters ought to be controlled by
the men themselves through their organiza-
tions. The laborers about whom we are talk-
ing are free men in a free state. If they want
to be protected they must protect themselves.
They ought to protect their own women and
children. Their own class opinion ought to
secure the education of the children of their
class. If an individual workman is not bold
enough to protest against a wrong to laborers,
the agent of a trades-union might with propri-
ety do it on behalf of the body of workmen.
Here is a great and important need, and, in-
stead of applying suitable and adequate means
to supply it, we have demagogues declaiming,
trades -union officers resolving, and Govern-
ment inspectors drawing salaries, while little
or nothing is done.y

I have said that trades-unions are right and

/useful, and, perhaps, necessary; but trades-un-

Sions are, in fact, in this country, an exotic and

/imported institution, and a great many of their

rules and modes of procedure, having been de-

•veloped in England to meet English circum-

/ stances, are out of place here. The institution

itself does not flourish here as it would if it

96 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

were in a thoroughly congenial environment.
It needs to be supported by special exertion
and care. Two things here work against it.
First, the great mobility of our population. A
trades-union, to be strong, needs to be com-
posed of men who have grown up together,
who have close personal acquaintance and mut-
ual confidence, who have been trained to the
same code, and who expect to live on together
in the same circumstances and interests. In
this country, where workmen move about fre-
quently and with facility, the unions suffer in
, their harmony and stability. It was a signifi-
i cant fact that the unions declined during the
hard times. It was only when the men were
prosperous that they could afford to keep up
the unions, as a kind of social luxury. When
the time came to use the union it ceased to be.
Secondly, the American workman really has
such personal independence, and such an inde-
pendent and strong position in the labor mar-
ket, that he does not need the union. He is
farther on the road toward the point where per-
sonal liberty supplants the associative principle
than any other workman. Hence the associa-
tion is likely to be a clog to him, especially if
he is a good laborer, rather than an assistance.

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 97

If it were not for the notion brought from
England, that trades-unions are, in some mys-
terious way, beneficial to the workmen — which
notion has now become an article of faith — it
is very doubtful whether American workmen
would find that the unions were of any use,
unless they were converted into organizations
for accomplishing the purposes enumerated in
the last paragraph.

The fashion of the time is to run to Govern-
ment boards, commissions, and inspectors to
set right everything which is wrong. No ex-^
perience seems to damp the faith of our pub-
lic in these instrumentalities. The English
Liberals in the middle of this century seemed
to have full grasp of the principle of liberty,
and to be fixed and established in favor of non-
interference. Since they have come to power,
however, they have adopted the old instrumen-
talities, and have greatly multiplied them since
they have had a great number of reforms to
carry out. They seem to think that interfer-
ence is good if only they interfere. In this
country the party which is " in " always inter-
feres, and the party which is " out " favors
non-interference. The system of interference
is a complete failure of the ends it aims at,
7

98 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

and sooner or later it will fall of its own ex-
pense and be swept away. The two notions
— one to regulate things by a committee of
control, and the other to let things regulate
themselves by the conflict of interests between
free men — are diametrically opposed ; and the
former is corrupting to free institutions, be-
cause men who are taught to expect Govern-
ment inspectors to come and take care of them
lose all true education in liberty. If we have
been all wrong for the last three hundred
years in aiming at a fuller realization of indi-
vidual liberty, as a condition of general and
widely-diffused happiness, then we must turn
back to paternalism, discipline, and authority ;
but to have a combination of liberty and de-
pendence is impossible.

I have read a great many diatribes within
the last ten years against employers, and a
great many declamations about the wrongs of
employes. I have never seen a defence of the
employer. Who dares say that he is not the
friend of the poor man ? Who dares say that
he is the friend of the employer ? I will try
to say what I think is true. There are bad,
harsh, cross employers; there are slovenly,
negligent workmen; there are just about as

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 99

many proportionately of one of these classes
as of the other. The employers of the United
States — as a class, proper exceptions being un-
derstood— have no advantage over their work-
men. They could not oppress them if they
wanted to do so. The advantage, taking good
and bad times together, is with the workmen.
The employers wish the welfare of the work-
men in all respects, and would give redress for
any grievance which was brought to their at-
tention. They are considerate of the circum-
stances and interests of the laborers. They
remember the interests of the workmen when
driven to consider the necessity of closing or
reducing hours. They go on, and take risk
and trouble on themselves in working through
bad times,, rather than close their works. The
whole class of those-who-have are quick in
their sympathy for any form of distress or
suffering. They are too quick. Their sympa-
thies need regulating, not stimulating. They
are more likely to give away capital recklessly
than to withhold it stingily when any alleged
case of misfortune is before them. They re-
joice to see any man succeed in improving his
position. They will aid him with counsel and
information if he desires it, and any man who

100 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

needs and deserves help because he is trying
to help himself will be sure to meet with
sympathy, encouragement, and assistance from
those wrho are better off. If those who are in
that position are related to him as employers
to employe, that tie will be recognized as giv-
ing him an especial claim.

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 101

VII.

CONCERNING SOME OLD FOES UNDER NEW
FACES.

THE history of the human race is one long
story of attempts by certain persons and class-
es to obtain control of the power of the State,
so as to win earthly gratifications at the ex-
pense of others. People constantly assume
that there is something metaphysical and sen-
timental about government. At bottom there
are two chief things with which government
has to deal. They are, the property of men
and the honor of women. These it has to de-
fend against crime. The capital which, as we
have seen, is the condition of all welfare on
earth, the fortification of existence, and the
means of growth, is an object of cupidity.
Some want to get it without paying the price
of industry and economy. In ancient times
they made use of force. They organized
bands of robbers. They plundered laborers '
and merchants. Chief of all, however, they

102 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

found that means of robbery which consisted
in gaining control of the civil organization —
the State — and using its poetry and romance
as a glamour under cover of which they made
robbery lawful. They developed high-spun
theories of nationality, patriotism, and loyal-
ty. They took all the rank, glory, power, and
prestige of the great civil organization, and
they took all the rights. They threw on oth-
ers the burdens and the duties. At one time,
no doubt, feudalism was an organization which
drew together again the fragments of a dis-
solved society ; but when the lawyers had ap-
plied the Roman law to modern kings, and
feudal nobles had been converted into an aris-
tocracy of court nobles, the feudal nobility
no longer served any purpose.

In modern times the great phenomenon has
been the growth of the middle class out of the
mediaeval cities, the accumulation of wealth,
and the encroachment of wealth, as a social
power, on the ground formerly occupied by
rank and birth. The middle class has been
obliged to fight for its rights against the feu-
dal class, and it has, during three or four cen-
turies, gradually invented and established in-
stitutions to guarantee personal and property

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 103

rights against the arbitrary will of kings and
nobles.

In its turn wealth is now becoming a power
in the State, and, like every other power, it is
liable to abuse unless restrained by checks and
guarantees. There is an insolence of wealth,
as there is an insolence of rank. A plutoc-
racy might be even far worse than an aristoc-
racy. Aristocrats have always had their class
vices and their class virtues. They have al-
ways been, as a class, chargeable with licen-
tiousness and gambling. They have, however,
as a class, despised lying and stealing; They
have always pretended to maintain a standard
of honor, although the definition and the code
of honor have suffered many changes and
shocking deterioration. The middle class
has always abhorred gambling and licentious-
ness, but it has not always been strict about
truth and pecuniary fidelity. That there is a
code and standard of mercantile honor which
is quite as pure and grand as any military
code, is beyond question, but it has never yet
been established and defined by long usage and
the concurrent support of a large and influ-
ential society. The feudal code has, through
centuries, bred a high type of men, and con'

104 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

stituted a caste. The mercantile code lias
not yet done so, but the wealthy class has
attempted to merge itself in or to imitate the
feudal class.

The consequence is, that the wealth-power
has been developed, while the moral and so-
cial sanctions by which that power ought to
be controlled have not yet been developed.
A plutocracy would be a civil organization in
which the power resides in wealth, in which
a man might have whatever he could buy, in
which the rights, interests, and feelings of
those who could not pay would be overridden.

There is a plain tendency of all civilized
governments toward plutocracy. The power
of wealth in the English House of Commons
has steadily increased for fifty years. The
history of the present French Republic has
shown an extraordinary development of plu-
tocratic spirit and measures. In the United
States many plutocratic doctrines have a cur-
rency which is not granted them anywhere
else; that is, a man's right to have almost
anything which he can pay for is more pop-
ularly recognized here than elsewhere. So
far the most successful limitation on plutoc-
racy has come from aristocracy, for the pres-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 105

tige of rank is still great wherever it exists.
The social sanctions of aristocracy tell with
great force on the plutocrats, more especially
on their wives and daughters. It has already
resulted that a class of wealthy men is grow-
ing up in regard to whom the old sarcasms of
the novels and the stage about parvenus are
entirely thrown away. They are men who
have no superiors, by whatever standard one
chooses to measure them. Such an interplay
of social forces wrould, indeed, be a great and
happy solution of a new social problem, if the
aristocratic forces were strong enough for the
magnitude of the task. If the feudal aris-
tocracy, or its modern representative — which
is, in reality, not at all feudal — could carry
down into the new era and transmit to the
new masters of society the grace, elegance,
breeding, and culture of the past, society
would certainly gain by that course of things,
as compared with any such rupture between
past and present as occurred in the French
Revolution. The dogmatic radicals who as-
sail "on principle" the inherited social no-
tions and distinctions are not serving civiliza-
tion. Society can do without patricians, but
it cannot do without the patrician virtues.

106 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

^ In the United States the opponent of plu-
' tocracy is democracy. Nowhere else in the
world has the power of wealth come to be
discussed in its political aspects as it is here.
Nowhere else does the question arise as it does
here. I have given some reasons for this in
former chapters. Nowhere in the world is
the danger of a plutocracy as formidable as it
/ is here. To it we oppose the power of num-
bers as it is presented by democracy. De-
mocracy itself, however, is new and experi-
mental. It has not yet existed long enough
to find its appropriate forms. It has no pres-
tige from antiquity such as aristocracy pos-
sesses. It has, indeed, none of the surround-
ings which appeal to the imagination. On
the other hand, democracy is rooted in the
physical, economic, and social circumstances
of the United States. This country cannot
be other than democratic for an indefinite pe-
riod in the future. Its political processes
I will also be republican. The affection of the
/ people for democracy makes them blind and
uncritical in regard to it, and they are as fond
of the political fallacies to which democracy
lends itself as they are of its sound and cor-
rect interpretation, or fonder. Can democ-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 107

racy develop itself and at the same time curb
plutocracy ?

Already the question presents itself as one
of life or death to democracy. Legislative
and judicial scandals show us that the conflict
is already opened, and that it is serious. The
lobby is the army of the plutocracy. An elec-
tive judiciary is a device so much in the in-
terest of plutocracy, that it must be regarded
as a striking proof of the toughness of the
judicial institution that it has resisted the
corruption so much as it has. The caucus,
convention, and committee lend themselves
most readily to the purposes of interested
speculators and jobbers. It is just such ma-
chinery as they might have invented if they
had been trying to make political devices to
serve their purpose, and their processes call
in question nothing less than the possibility
of free self-government under the forms of
a democratic republic.

For now I come to the particular point
which I desire to bring forward against all
the denunciations and complainings about the
power of chartered corporations and aggre-
gated capital. If charters have been given
which confer undue powers, who gave them ?

108 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

Our legislators did. "Who elected these legis-
lators? We did. If we are a free, self-gov-
erning people, we must understand that it
costs vigilance and exertion to be self-govern-
ing. It costs far more vigilance and exertion
to be so under the democratic form, where we
have no aids from tradition or prestige, than
under other forms. If we are a free, self-gov-
erning people, we can blame nobody but our-
selves for our misfortunes. ~No one will come
to help us out of them. It will do no good
to heap law upon law, or to try by constitu-

L tional provisions simply to abstain from the
use of powers which we find we always abuse.

\ How can we get bad legislators to pass a law
\ which shall hinder bad legislators from pass-
ing a bad law? That is what we are trying
to do by many of our proposed remedies.
The task before us, however, is one which
calls for fresh reserves of moral force and po-
litical virtue from the very foundations of the
social body. Surely it is not a new thing to
us to learn that men are greedy and covetous,
and that they will be selfish and tyrannical if
they dare. The plutocrats are synply trying
to do what the generals, nobles, and priests
have done in the past — get the power of the

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 109

State into their hands, so as to bend the rights
of others to their own advantage ; and what
we need to do is to recognize the fact that we
are face to face with the same old foes — the
vices and passions of human nature. One of
the oldest and most mischievous fallacies in
this country has been the notion that we are
better than other nations, and that Govern-
ment has a smaller and easier task here than,
elsewhere. This fallacy has hindered us from
recognizing our old foes as soon as we should
have done. Then, again, these vices and pas-
sions take good care here to deck themselves
out in the trappings of democratic watch-
words and phrases, so that they are more of-
ten greeted with cheers than with opposition
when they first appear. The plan of electing
men to represent us wrho systematically sur-
render public to private interests, and then
trying to cure the mischief by newspaper and
platform declamation against capital and cor-
porations, is an entire failure.

The new foes must be met, as the old ones

j were met — by institutions and guarantees.

\ The problem x)f civil liberty is constantly re-
newed. Solved once, it re-appears in a new
form. The old constitutional guarantees were

110 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

Lall aimed against king and nobles. New ones
! must be invented to hold the power of wealth
[to that responsibility without which no power
whatever is consistent with liberty. The ju-
diciary has given the most satisfactory evi-
dence that it is competent to the new duty
which devolves upon it. The courts have
proved, in every case in which they have been
called upon, that there are remedies, that they
are adequate, and that they can be brought to
bear upon the cases. The chief need seems
to be more power of voluntary combination
and co-operation among those who are ag-
grieved. Such co-operation is a constant ne-
cessity under free self-government ; and when,
in any community, men lose the power of vol-
untary co-operation in furtherance or defence
of their own interests, they deserve to suffer,
with no other remedy than newspaper de-
nunciations and platform declamations. Of
course, in such a state of things, political
mountebanks come forward and propose fierce
measures which can be paraded for political
effect. Such measures would be hostile to all
our institutions, would destroy capital, over-
throw credit, and impair the most essential
interests of society. On the side of political

OWE TO EACH OTHER. Ill

machinery there is no ground for hope, but
only for fear. On the side of constitutional
guarantees and the independent action of
self-governing freemen there is every ground
for hope.

112 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

VIII.

ON THE VALUE, AS A SOCIOLOGICAL PRIN-
CIPLE, OF THE RULE TO MIND ONE'S OWN
BUSINESS.

THE passion for dealing with social ques-
tions is one of the marks of our time. Every
man gets some experience of, and makes some
observations on social affairs. Except matters
of health, probably none have such general
interest as matters of society. Except matters
of health, none are so much afflicted by dog-
matism and crude speculation as those which
appertain to society. The amateurs in social
science always ask : What shall we do ? What
shall we do with Neighbor A ? What shall
we do for Neighbor B ? What shall we make
Neighbor A do for Neighbor B ? It is a fine
thing to be planning and discussing broad and
general theories of wide application. The
amateurs always plan to use the individual for
some constructive and inferential social pur-
pose, or to use the society for some construc-
tive and inferential individual purpose. For

OWE TO EACH OTHEK.

A to sit down and think, What shall I do ? is
commonplace ; but to think what B ought to
do is interesting, romantic, moral, self-flatter-
ing, and public -spirited all at once. It sat-
isfies a great number of human weaknesses
at once. To go on and plan what a whole
class of people ought to do is to feel one's self
a power on earth, to win a public position, to
clothe one's self in dignity. Hence we have
an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthro-
pists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-
in-general of society.

Every man and woman in society has one
big duty. That is, to take care of his or herf
own self. This is a social duty. For, fortu-
nately, the matter stands so that the duty of
making the best of one's self individually is
not a separate thing from the duty of filling
one's place in society, but the two are one,
and the latter is accomplished when the for-
mer is done. The common notion, however,
seems to be that one has a duty to society, as
a special and separate thing, and that this
duty consists in considering and deciding
what other people ought to do. Now, the
man who can do anything for or about any-
body else than himself is fit to be head of a
8

WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

family ; and when lie becomes head of a fam-
ily he has duties to his wife and his children,
in addition to the former big duty. Then,
again, any man who can take care of himself
and his family is in a very exceptional posi-
tion, if he does not find in his immediate sur-
roundings people who need his care and have
some sort of a personal claim upon him. If,
now, he is able to fulfil all this, and to take
care of anybody outside his family and his
dependents, he must have a surplus of energy,
wisdom, and moral virtue beyond what he
needs for his own business. No man has this ;
for a family is a charge which is capable of
infinite development, and no man could suf-
fice to the full measure of duty for which a
family may draw upon him. Neither can a
man give to society so advantageous an em-
ployment of his services, whatever they are,
in any other way as by spending them on his
family. Upon this, however, I will not in-
sist. I recur to the observation that a man
who proposes to take care of other people
must have himself and his family taken care
of, after some sort of a fashion, and must have
an as yet unexhausted store of energy.

The danger of minding other people's busi-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 115

ness is twofold. First, there is the danger
that a man may leave his own business unat-
tended to ; and, second, there is the danger of
an impertinent interference with another's af-
fairs. The " friends of humanity " almost al-
ways run into both dangers. I am one of
humanity, and I do not want any volunteer
friends. I regard friendship as mutual, and
I want to have my say about it. I suppose
that other components of humanity feel in the
same way about it. If so, they must regard
any one who assumes the role of a friend of
humanity as impertinent. The reference of
the friend of humanity back to his own busi-
ness is obviously the next step.

Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the
legislatures are kept constantly busy, by the
people who have made up their minds that
it is wise and conducive to happiness to live
in a certain way, and who want to compel
everybody else to live in their way. Some
people have decided to spend Sunday in a
certain way, and they want laws passed to
make other people spend Sunday in the same
way. Some people have resolved to be tee-
totalers, and they wrant a law passed to make
everybody else a teetotaler. Some people

116 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

have resolved to eschew luxury, and they
want taxes laid to make others eschew luxury.
The taxing power is especially something af-
ter which the reformer's finger always itches.
Sometimes there is an element of self-interest
in the proposed reformation, as when a pub-
lisher wanted a duty imposed on books, to keep
Americans from reading books which would
unsettle their Americanism ; and when artists
wanted a tax laid on pictures, to save Ameri-
cans from buying bad paintings.

I make no reference here to the giving and
taking of counsel and aid between man and
man : of that I shall say something in the last
chapter. The very sacredness of the relation
in which two men stand to one another when
one of them rescues the other from vice sep-
arates that relation from any connection with
the work of the social busybody, the profes-
sional philanthropist, and the empirical legis-
lator.

The amateur social doctors are like the ama-
teur physicians — they always begin with the
question of remedies, and thqy go at this with-
out any diagnosis or any knowledge of the
anatomy or physiology of society. They nev-
er have any doubt of the efficacy of their

OWE TO EACH OTIIEK. 117

remedies. They never take account of any
ulterior effects which may be apprehended
from the remedy itself. It generally troubles
them not a whit that their remedy implies a
complete reconstruction of society, or even a
reconstitution of human nature. Against all
such social quackery the obvious injunction
to the quacks is, to mind their own business.

The social doctors enjoy the satisfaction of
feeling themselves to be more moral or more
enlightened than their fellow-men. They are
able to see what other men ought to do when
the other men do not see it^ An examination
of the work of the social doctors, however,
shows that they are only more ignorant and
more presumptuous than other people. We
have a great many social difficulties and hard-
ships to contend with. Poverty, pain, disease,
and misfortune surround our existence. We
fight against them all the time. The individ-
ual is a centre of hopes, affections, desireSj and
sufferings. When he dies, life changes its
form, but does not cease. That means that
the person — the centre of all the hopes, affec-
tions, etc. — after struggling as long as he can,
is sure to succumb at last. We would, there-
fore, as far as the hardships of the human lot

118 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

are concerned, go on struggling to the best of
our ability against them but for the social doc-
tors, and we would endure what we could not
cure. But we have inherited a vast number
of social ills which never came from Nature.
They are the complicated products of all the
tinkering, muddling, and blundering of social
doctors in the past* These products of social
quackery are now buttressed by habit, fashion,
prejudice, platitudinarian thinking, and new
quackery in political economy and social sci-
ence. It is a fact worth noticing, just when
there seems to be a revival of faith in legisla-
tive agencies, that our States are generally
providing against the experienced evils of
over-legislation by ordering that the Legislat-
ure shall sit only every other year. During
the hard times, when Congress had a real
chance to make or mar the public welfare, the
final adjournment of that body w^as hailed
year after year with cries of relief from a
great anxiety. The greatest reforms which
could now be accomplished would consist in
undoing the work of statesmen in the past,
and the greatest difficulty in the way of re-
form is to find out how to undo their work
without injury to what is natural and sound.

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 119

All this mischief has been done by men who
sat down to consider the problem (as I heard
an apprentice of theirs once express it), What
kind of a society do we want to make ? When
they had settled this question a priori to their
satisfaction, they set to work to make their
ideal society, and to-day we suffer the conse-
quences. Human society tries hard to adapt
itself to any conditions in which it finds itself,
and we have been warped and distorted until
we have got used to it, as the foot adapts it-
self to an ill-made boot. Next, we have come
to think that that is the right way for things
to be ; and it is true that a change to a sound
and normal condition would for a time hurt us,
as a man whose foot has been distorted would
suffer if he tried to wear a well-shaped boot
Finally, we have produced a lot of economists
and social philosophers who have invented
sophisms for fitting our thinking to the dis-
torted facts.

Society, therefore, does not need any care
or supervision. If we can acquire a science
of society, based on observation of phenome-
na and studjTof forces, we may hope to gain
•feuine ground slowlyjiaward the eliniinatioBe^xT
old errors and the re-establishment of a sound

120 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

and natural social order. Whatever we gain
that wray will be by growth, never in the
world by any reconstruction of society on the
plan of some enthusiastic social architect. The
latter is only repeating the old error over
again, and postponing all our chances of real
improvement. Society needs first of all to be
freed from these meddlers — that is. to be let
alone._jHere we are, then, once .more back at
the old doctrine — Laissez faire. Let us trans-
\ late it into blunt J^iiglisn, and it will read,
Mind your own business. It is nothing but
the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be
happy in his own way. If his sphere of ac-
tion and interest impinges on that of any oth-
er man, there will have to be compromise and
adjustment, j Wait for the occasion. Jjo notT
attempt to generalize those interferences or to
plan for them a priori. We have a body of
laws and institutions which have grown up
as occasion has occurred for adjusting rights.
Let the same process go on. Practise the ut-
most reserve possible in your interferences
even of this kind, and by no means seize oc-
casion for interfering with natural adjust-
ments. Try first long and patiently whether
the natural adjustment will not come about

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 121

through the play of interests and the volun-
tary concessions of the parties.

I have said that we have an empirical polit-
ical economy and social science to fit the dis-
tortions of our society. The test of empiri-
cism in this matter is the attitude which one
takes up toward laissez faire. It no doubt
wounds the vanity of a philosopher who is just
ready with a new solution of the universe to
be told to mind his own business. So he goes
on to tell us that if we think that we shall, by
being let alone, attain to perfect happiness on
earth, we are mistaken. The half-way men —
the professorial socialists — join him. They
solemnly shake their heads, and tell us that
he is right — that letting us. alone will never
secure us perfect happiness. Under all this
lies the familiar logical fallacy, never express-
ed, but really the point of the whole, that we
shall get perfect happiness if we put ourselves,
in the hands of the world-reformer. ffiWe nev-^
re7^upposedjhaiJ^^^ faire would give us
perfect happiness. We have left perfect hap-
piness entirely out of our account. If the
social doctors will mind their own business,
we shall have no troubles but what belong to
Nature. Those we will endure or combat as

122 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

we can. What we desire is, that the friends
of humanity should cease to add to them.
Our disposition toward the ills which our fel-
low-man inflicts on us through malice or med-
dling is quite different from our disposition
toward the ills which are inherent in the con-
ditions of human life.

To mind one's own business is a purely neg-
ative and unproductive injunction, but, taking
social matters as they are just now, it is a so-
ciological principle of the first importance.
There might be developed a grand philosophy
on the basis of minding one's own business.

OWE TO EACH OTHER 123

IX.

ON THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN WHO IS
NEVER THOUGHT OF.

THE type and formula of most schemes of
philanthropy or humanitarianism is this : A
and B put their heads together to decide what
C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice
of all these schemes, from a sociological point
of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the
matter, and his position, character, and inter-
ests, as well as the ultimate effects on society
through C's interests, are entirely overlooked.
I call C the Forgotten Man. For once let us
look him up and consider his case, for the
^characteristic of all social doctors is, that they
*fix their minds on some man or group of men
whose case appeals to the sympathies and the
imagination, and they plan remedies addressed
to the particular trouble ; they do not under-
stand that all the parts of society hold togeth-
er, and that forces which are set in action act
and react throughout the whole organism, until
an equilibrium is produced by a re-adjustment

124 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

__of all interests and rights. They therefore ig-
nore entirely the source from which they must
draw all the energy which they employ in
their remedies, and they ignore all the effects
on other members of society than the ones
they have in view. They are always under
the dominion of the superstition of govern-
ment, and, forgetting that a government pro-
duces nothing at all, they leave out of sight
the first fact to be remembered in all social
discussion — that the State cannot get a cent for
any man without taking it from some other
man, and this latter must be a man who has
produced and sa^ed it. This latter is the For-
gotten Mam

The friends of humanity start out with cer-
tain Benevolent feelings toward "the poor,"
"the weak," "the laborers," and others of
whom they make pets. They generalize these
classes, and render them impersonal, and so
constitute the classes into social pets. They
turn to other classes and appeal to sympathy
and generosity, and to all the other noble sen-
timents of the human heart. Action in the
I line proposed consists in a transfer of capital
i from the better off to the worse off. Capital,
| however, as we have seen, is the force by

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 125

which civilization is maintained and carried
on. The same piece of capital cannot be used
ijin two ways. Every bit of capital, therefore,
which is given to a shiftless and inefficient
Vnember of society, who makes no return for
it, is diverted from a reproductive use; but
'if it was put to reproductive use, it would
have to be granted in wages to an efficient and
productive laborer. iHence the real sufferer
by that kind of benevolence which consists in
an expenditure of capital to protect the good-
for-nothing is the industrious laborerTT The
latter, however, is never thought of"m this
connection. It is assumed thftt he is provided
for and out of the account. Su«h a notion
only shows how little true notions of political
economy have as yet become popularized.
There is an almost invincible prejudice that
a man who gives a dollar to a beggar is gener-
ous and kind-hearted, but that a man who re-
fuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a sav-
ings-bank is stingy and mean. The former is
putting capital where it is very sure to be V
wasted, and where it will be a kind of seed
for a long succession of future dollars, which
must be wasted to ward off a greater strain on
the sympathies than would have been occa-

126 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

sioned by a refusal in the first place. Inas-
much as the dollar might have been turned
into capital and given to a laborer who, while
earning it, would have reproduced it, it must
be regarded as taken from the latter. When a
millionnaire gives a dollar to a beggar the gain
of utility to the beggar is enormous, and the
loss of utility to the millionnaire is insignificant.
Generally the discussion is allowed to rest
there. But if the millionnaire makes capital
of the dollar, it must go upon the labor mar-
ket, as a demand for productive services.
Hence there is another party in interest —
the person who supplies productive services.
There always are two parties. The second
one is always the Forgotten Man, and any one
who wants to truly understand the matter in
question must go and search for the Forgotten
Man. He will be found to be worthy, indus-
trious, independent, and self-supporting. Ho
is not, technically, "poor" or "weak;" he
minds his own business, and makes no com-
plaint. Consequently the philanthropists nev-
er think of him, and trample on him.

We hear a great deal of schemes for "im-
proving the condition of the working-man."
In the United States the farther down we go

OWE TO EACH OTIIEK. 127

in the grade of labor, the greater is the ad-
vantage which the laborer has over the higher
classes. A hod-carrier or digger here can, by
one day's labor, command many times more
days' labor of a carpenter, surveyor, book-
keeper, or doctor than an unskilled laborer
in Europe could command by one day's labor.
The same is true, in a less degree, of the car-
penter, as compared with the book-keeper, sur-
veyor, and doctor. This is why the United
States is the great country for the unskilled
laborer. The economic conditions all favor
that class. There is a great continent to be
subdued, and there is a fertile soil available
to labor, with scarcely any need of capital.
Hence the people who have the strong arms
have what is most needed, and, if it were
not for social consideration, higher education
would not pay. Such being the case, the
working-man needs no improvement in his
condition except to be freed from the para-
sites who are living on him. All schemes for
patronizing "the working classes" savor of
condescension. They are impertinent and out
of place in this free democracy. There is
not, in fact, any such state of things or any
such relation as would make projects of this

128 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

kind appropriate. Such projects demoralize
both parties, flattering the vanity of one and
undermining the self-respect of the other.

For our present purpose it is most impor-
tant to notice that if we lift any man up we
must have a fulcrum, or point of reaction. In
society that means that to lift one man up we
push another down. The schemes for improv-
ing the condition of the working classes inter-
fere in the competition of workmen with each
other. The beneficiaries are selected by favor-
itism, and are apt to be those who have recom-
mended themselves to the friends of humanity
by language or conduct which does not betoken
independence and energy. Those who suffer
a corresponding depression by the interference
are the independent and self-reliant, who once
more are forgotten or passed over ; and the
friends of humanity once more appear, in
their zeal to help somebody, to be trampling
on those who are trying to help themselves.

Trades-unions adopt various devices for rais-
ing wages, and those who give their time to
philanthropy are interested in these devices,
and wish them success. They fix their minds
entirely on the workmen for the time being in
the trade, and do not take note of any other

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 129

workmen as interested in the matter. It is
supposed that the fight is between the work-
men and their employers, and it is believed
that one can give sympathy in that contest to
the workmen without feeling responsibility for
anything farther. It is soon seen, however,
that the employer adds the trades-union and
strike risk to the other risks of his business,
and settles down to it philosophically. If,
now, we go farther, we see that he takes it
philosophically because he has passed the loss
along on the public. It then appears that the
public wealth has been diminished, and that
the danger of a trade war, like the danger of
a revolution, is a constant reduction of the
well-being of all. So far, however, we have
seen only things which could lower wages —
nothing which could raise them. The em-
ployer is worried, but that does not raise
wages. The public loses, but the loss goes
to cover extra risk, and that does not raise
wages.

A trades-union raises wages (aside from the
legitimate and economic means noticed in
Chapter VI.) by restricting the number of
apprentices who may be taken into the trade.
This device acts directly on the supply of la-
9

130 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

borers, and that produces effects on wages. If,
however, the number of apprentices is limited,
some are kept out who want to get in. Those
who are in have, therefore, made a monopoly,
and constituted themselves a privileged class
on a basis exactly analogous to that of the
old privileged aristocracies. But whatever is
gained by this arrangement for those who are
in is won at a greater loss to those who are
kept out. Hence it is not upon the masters
nor upon the public that trades-unions exert
the pressure by which they raise wages ; it is
upon other persons of the labor class who want
to get into the trades, but, not being able to
do so, are pushed down into the unskilled labor
class. These persons, however, are passed by
entirely without notice in all the discussions
about trades-unions. They are the Forgotten
Men. But, since they want to get into the
trade and win their living in it, it is fair to
suppose that they are fit for it, would succeed
at it, would do well for themselves and society
in it ; that is to say, that, of all persons in-
terested or concerned, they most deserve our
sympathy and attention.

The cases already mentioned involve no leg-
islation. Society, however, maintains police,

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 131

sheriffs, and various institutions, the object of
which is to protect people against themselves
— that is, against their own vices. Almost all
legislative effort to prevent vice is really pro-
tective of vice, because all such legislation
saves the vicious man from the penalty of his
vice. Nature's remedies against vice are ter- *••
rible. She removes the victims without pity.
A drunkard in the gutter is just where he
ought to be, according to the fitness and ten- \
dency of things. Nature has set up on him
the process of decline and dissolution by which
she removes things which have survived their
usefulness. Gambling and other less men-
tionable vices carry their own penalties with
them.

Now, we never can annihilate a penalty.
We can only divert it from the head of the
man who has incurred it to the heads of others
who have not incurred it. A vast amount of
" social reform " consists in just this operation.
The consequence is that those who have gone
astray, being relieved from Nature's fierce
discipline, go on to worse, and that there is
a constantly heavier burden for the others to
bear. Who are the others ? "When we see a
drunkard in the gutter we pity him. If a po-

132 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

liceman picks him up, we say that society has
interfered to save him from perishing. " Soci-
ety" is a fine word, and it saves us the trouble
of thinking. The industrious and sober work-
man, who is mulcted of a percentage of his
day's wages to pay the policeman, is the one
who bears the penalty. But he is the Forgot-
ten Man. He passes by and is never noticed,
because he has behaved himself, fulfilled his
contracts, and asked for nothing.

The fallacy of all prohibitory, sumptuary,
and moral legislation is the same. A and B
determine to be teetotalers, which is often a
wise determination, and sometimes a necessary
one. If A and B are moved by considerations
which seem to them good, that is enough. But
A and B put their heads together to get a law
passed which shall force 0 to be a teetotaler
for the sake of D, who is in danger of drink-
ing too much. There is no pressure on A and
B. They are having their own way, and they
like it. There is rarely any pressure on D.
He does not like it, and evades it. The press-
ure all comes on C. The question then arises,
Who is C ? He is the man who wants alco-
holic liquors for any honest purpose whatso-
ever, who would use his liberty without abus-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 133

ing it, who would occasion no public question,
and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgot-
ten Man again, and as soon as he is drawn
from his obscurity we see that he is just what
each one of us ought to be.

134: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

X.

THE CASE OF THE FORGOTTEN MAN
FARTHER CONSIDERED.

THERE is a beautiful notion afloat in our
literature and in the minds of our people that
men are born to certain " natural rights." If
that were true, there would be something on
earth which was got for nothing, and this world
would not be the place it is at all. The fact
is, that there is no right whatever inherited
by man which has not an equivalent and cor-
responding duty by the side of it, as the
price of it. The rights, advantages, capital,
knowledge, and all other goods which we in-
herit from past generations have been won by
the struggles and sufferings of past genera-
tions ; and the fact that the race lives, though
men die, and that the race can by heredity ac-
cumulate within some cycle its victories over
Nature, is one of the facts which make civili-
zation possible. The struggles of the race as
a whole produce the possessions of the race as

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 135

a whole. Something for nothing is not to be tji
found on earth.

If there were such things as natural rights,
the question would arise. Against whom are
they good ? Who has the corresponding obli-
gation to satisfy these rights ? There can be
no rights against Nature, except to get out o
her whatever we can, which is only the facj
of the struggle for existence stated over agai
The common assertion is, that the rights are
good against society; that is, that society is
bound to obtain and secure them for the per-
sons interested. Society, however, is only the
persons interested plus some other persons ;
and as the persons interested have by the hy-
pothesis failed to win the rights, we come to
this, that natural rights are the claims which
certain persons have by prerogative against
some other persons. Such is the actual inter-
pretation in practice of natural rights — claims
which some people have by prerogative on
other people.

This theory is a very far-reaching one, and
of course it is adequate to furnish a foundation
for a whole social philosophy. In its widest
extension it comes to mean that if any man
finds himself uncomfortable in this world, it

13G WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

must be somebody else's fault, and that some-
body is bound to come and make him comfort-
able. Now, the people who are most uncom-
fortable in this world (for if we should tell all
our troubles it would not be found to be a
very comfortable world for anybody) are those
who have neglected their duties, and conse-
quently have failed to get their rights. The
people who can be called upon to serve the
uncomfortable must be those who have done
their duty, as the world goes, tolerably well.
Consequently the doctrine which we are dis-
cussing turns out to be in practice only a
scheme for making injustice prevail in hu-
man society by reversing the distribution of
rewards and punishments between those who
have done their duty and those who have not.
We are constantly preached at by our pub-
lic teachers, as if respectable people were to
blame because some people are not respectable
— as if the man who has done his duty in his
own sphere was responsible in some way for
another man who has not done his duty urlris
sphere. There are relations of employer and
employe which need to be regulated by com-
promise and treaty. There are sanitary pre-
cautions which need to be taken in factories

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 137

and houses. There are precautions against
fire which are necessary. There is care need-
ed that children be not employed too young,
and that they have an education. There is
care needed that banks, insurance companies,
and railroads be well managed, and that offi-
cers do not abuse their trusts. There is a
duty in each case on the interested parties to
defend their own interest. The penalty of
neglect is suffering. The system of provid-
ing for these things by boards and inspectors
throws the cost of it, not on the interested
parties, but on the tax-payers. Some of them,
no doubt, are the interested parties, and they
may consider that they are exercising the
proper care by paying taxes to support an
inspector. If so, they only get their fair de-
serts when the railroad inspector finds out that
a bridge is not safe after it is broken down, or
when the bank examiner comes in to find out
why a bank failed after the cashier has stolen
all the funds. The real victim is the Forgot-
ten Man again — the man who has watched his
own investments, made his own machinery
safe, attended to his own plumbing, and edu-
cated his own children, and who, just when he
wants to enjoy the fruits of his care, is told

138 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

that it is liis duty to go and take care of
some of his negligent neighbors, or, if he does
not go, to pay an inspector to go. No doubt
it is often his interest to go or to send, rather
than to have the matter neglected, on account
of his own connection with the thing neglect-
ed, and his own secondary peril ; but the point
now is, that if preaching and philosophizing
can do any good in the premises, it is all wrong
to preach to the Forgotten Man that it is his
duty to go and remedy other people's neglect.
i It is not his duty. It is a harsh and unjust
burden which is laid upon him, and it is only
the more unjust because no one thinks of him
when laying the burden so that it falls on
him. The exhortations ought to be expended
on the negligent — that they take care of them-
selves.

It is an especially vicious extension of the
false doctrine above mentioned that criminals
have some sort of a right against or claim on
society. Many reformatory plans are based
on a doctrine of this kind when they are urged
upon the public conscience. A criminal is a
man who, instead of working with and for the
society, has turned against it, and become
destructive and injurious. His punishment

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 139

means that society rules him out of its mem-
bership, and separates him from its association,
by execution or imprisonment, according to
the gravity of his offence. He has no claims
against society at all. What shall be done
with him is a question of expediency to be
settled in view of the interests of society —
that is, of the non-criminals. The French
writers of the school of '48 used to represent
the badness of the bad men as the fault of
"society." As the object of this statement
was to show that the badness of the bad men
was not the fault of the bad men, and as soci-
ety contains only good men and bad men, it
followed that the badness of the bad men was
the fault of the good men. On that theory,
of course the good men owed a great deal to
the bad men who were in prison and at the
galleys on their account. If we do not admit
that theory, it behooves us to remember that
any claim which we allow to the criminal
against the " State " is only so much burden
laid upon those who have never cost the State
anything for discipline or correction. The
punishments of society are just like those of
God and Nature — they are warnings to the
wrong-doer to reform himself.

140 WIIAT SOCIAL CLASSES

When public offices are to be filled nu-
merous candidates at once appear. Some are
urged on the ground that they are poor, 01
cannot earn a living, or want support while
getting an education, or have female relatives
dependent on them, or are in poor health, or
belong in a particular district, or are related to
certain persons, or have done meritorious ser-
vice in some other line of work than that
which they apply to do. The abuses of the
public service are to be condemned on account
of the harm to the public interest, but there
is an incidental injustice of the same general
>^ character with that which we are discussing.
If an office is granted by favoritism or for any
personal reason to A, it cannot be given to B.
If an office is filled by a person who is unfit
for it, he always keeps out somebody some-
where who is fit for it ; that is, the social in-
justice has a victim in an unknown person—-
the Forgotten Man — and he is some person
who has no political influence, and who has
known no way in which to secure the chances
of life except to deserve them. He is passed
by for the noisy, pushing, importunate, and
incompetent.

I have said something disparagingly in a pre-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 141

vious chapter about the popular rage against
combined capital, corporations, corners, selling
futures, etc., etc. The popular rage is not
without reason, but it is sadly misdirected,
and the real things which deserve attack are
thriving all the time. The greatest social
evil with which we have to contend is job-
bery. Whatever there is in legislative char-
ters, watering stocks, etc., etc., which is objec-
tionable, comes under the head of jobbery.
Jobbery is any scheme which aims to gain,
not by the legitimate fruits of industry and
enterprise, but by extorting from somebody a
part of his product under guise of some pre-
tended industrial undertaking.) Of course it
is only a modification when the undertaking
in question has some legitimate character, but
the occasion is used to graft upon it devices
for obtaining what has not been earned. Job-
bery is the vice of plutocracy, and it is the
especial form under which plutocracy corrupts
a democratic and republican form of govern-
ment. The United States is deeply afflicted
with it, and the problem of civil liberty here
is to conquer it. It affects everything which
we really need to have done to such an extent
that we have to do without public objects

14:2 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

which we need through fear of jobbery. Our
public buildings are jobs — not always, but of-
ten. They are not needed, or are costly be-
yond all necessity or even decent luxury. In-
ternal improvements are jobs. They are not
made because they are needed to meet needs
which have been experienced. They are made
to serve private ends, often incidentally the
political interests of the persons who vote the
appropriations. Pensions have become jobs.
In England pensions used to be given to aris-
tocrats, because aristocrats had political influ-
ence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions
are given to the great democratic mass, because
they have political power, to corrupt them.
Instead of going out where there is plenty of
land and making a farm there, some people
go down under the Mississippi Biver to make
a farm, and then they want to tax all the peo-
ple in the United States to make dikes to keep
the river off their farms. The California gold-
miners have washed out gold, and have washed
the dirt down into the rivers and on the farms
below. They want the Federal Government
to now clean out the rivers and restore the
farms. The silver-miners found their product
declining in value, and they got the Federal

OWE TO EACH OTHER.

Government to go into the market and buy
what the public did not want, in order to sus-
tain (as they hoped) the price of silver. The
Federal Government is called upon to buy or
hire unsalable ships, to build canals which will
not pay, to furnish capital for all sorts of ex-
periments, and to provide capital for enter-
prises of which private individuals will win
the profits. All this is called "developing
our resources," but it is, in truth, the great
plan of all living on each other.

The greatest job of all is a protective tariff.
/It includes the biggest log-rolling and the
/ widest corruption of economic and political
( ideas. It was said that there wrould be a re-
bellion if the taxes were not taken off whiskey
and tobacco, which taxes were paid into the
public Treasury. Just then the importations
of Sumatra tobacco became important enough
to affect the market. The Connecticut tobac-
co-growers at once called for an import duty
on tobacco which would keep up the price of
their product. So it appears that if the tax on
tobacco is paid to the Federal Treasury there
will be a rebellion, but if it is paid to the
Connecticut tobacco-raisers there will be no
rebellion at all. The farmers have long paid

144: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

tribute to the manufacturers ; now the manu-
facturing and other laborers are to pay tribute
to the farmers. The system is made more
comprehensive and complete, and we are all
living on each other more than ever.

Now, the plan of plundering each other pro-
duces nothing. It only wastes. All the ma-
terial over which the protected interests wran-
gle and grab must be got from somebody out-
side of their circle. The talk is all about the
American laborer and American industry, but
in every case in which there is not an actual
production of wealth by industry there are
two laborers and two industries to be consid-
ered— the one who gets and the one who gives.
Every protected industry has to plead, as the
major premise of its argument, that any indus-
try which does not pay ought to be carried on
at the expense of the consumers of the prod-
uct, and, as its minor premise, that the indus-
try in question does not pay ; that is,, that it
cannot reproduce a capital equal in value to
that which it consumes plus the current rate
of profit. Hence every such industry must
be a parasite on some other industry. What
is the other industry ? Who is the other man ?
This, the real question, is always overlooked.

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 145

In all jobbery the case is the same. There
is a victim somewhere who is paying for it all.
The doors of waste and extravagance stand
open, and there seems to be a general agree-
ment to squander and spend. It all belongs
to somebody. There is somebody who had to
contribute it, and who will have to find more.
Nothing is ever said about him. Attention is
all absorbed by the clamorous interests, the
importunate petitioners, the plausible schem-
ers, the pitiless bores. Now, who is the vie- 1
tim ? He is the Forgotten Man. If we go to 1
find him, we shall find him hard at work till-
ing the soil to get out of it the fund for all
the jobbery, the object of all the plunder, the
cost of all the economic quackery, and the pay
of all the politicians and statesmen who have
sacrificed his interests to his enemies. "We
shall find him an honest, sober, industrious '
citizen, unknown outside his little circle, pay-
ing his debts and his taxes, supporting the
church and the school, reading his party news-
paper, and cheering for his pet politician.

We must not overlook the fact that the For-
gotten Man is not infrequently a woman. I
have before me a newspaper which contains
five letters from corset-stitchers who complain
10

146 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

that they cannot earn more than seventy-five
cents a day with a machine, and that they have
to provide the thread. The tax on the grade
of thread used by them is prohibitory as to all
importation, and it is the corset-stitchers who
have to pay day by day out of their time and
labor the total enhancement of price due to
the tax. Women who earn their own living
probably earn on an average seventy-five cents
per day of ten hours. Twenty-four minutes'
work ought to buy a spool of thread at the re-
tail price, if the American work-woman were
allowed to exchange her labor for thread on
the best terms that the art and commerce of
to-day would allow; but after she has done
twenty-four minutes' work for the thread she
is forced by the laws of her country to go
back and work sixteen minutes longer to pay
the tax — that is, to support the thread-mill.
The thread -mill, therefore, is not an institu-
tion for getting thread for the American peo-
ple, but for making thread harder to get than
it would be if there were no such institution.
In justification, now, of an arrangement so
monstrously unjust and out of place in a free
country, it is said that the employes in the
thread-mill get high wages, and that, but for

OWE TO EACH OTHEK.

the tax, American laborers must come down
to the low wages of foreign thread -makers.
It is not true that American thread - makers
get any more than the market rate of wages,
and they would not get less if the tax were
entirely removed, because the market rate of
wages in the United States would be controlled
then, as it is now, by the supply and demand
of laborers under the natural advantages and
opportunities of industry in this country. It
makes a great impression on the imagination,
however, to go to a manufacturing town and
see great mills and a crowd of operatives ; and
such a sight is put forward, under the special
allegation that it would not exist but for a
protective tax, as a proof that protective taxes
are wise. But if it be true that the thread-
mill would not exist but for the tax, or that the
operatives would not get such good wages but
for the tax, then how can we form a judgment
as to whether the protective system is wise or
not unless we call to mind all the seamstress-
es, washer - women, servants, factory - hands,
saleswomen, teachers, and laborers' wives and
daughters, scattered in the garrets and tene-
ments of great cities and in cottages all over
the country, who are paying the tax which

148 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

keeps the mill going and pays the extra wages ?
If the sewing-women, teachers, servants, and
washer-women could once be collected over
against the .thread-mill, then some inferences
could be drawn which would be worth some-
thing. Then some light might be thrown
upon the obstinate fallacy of " creating an in-
dustry," and we might begin to understand
the difference between wanting thread and
wanting a thread-mill. Some nations spend
capital on great palaces, others on standing
armies, others on iron -clad ships of war.
Those things are all glorious, and strike the
imagination with great force when they are
seen ; but no one doubts that they make life
harder for the scattered insignificant peasants
and laborers who have to pay for them all.
They "support a great many people," they
"make work," they "give employment to
other industries." We Americans have no
palaces, armies, or iron-clads, but we spend
our earnings on protected industries. A big
protected factory, if it really needs the protec-
tion for its support, is a heavier load for the
Forgotten Men and Women than an iron-clad
ship of war in time of peace.

It is plain that the Forgotten Man and tho

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 149

Forgotten Woman are the real productive
strength of the country. The Forgotten Man
works and votes — generally he prays— but his
chief business in life is to pay. His name
never gets into the newspapers except when
he marries or dies. He is an obscure man.
He may grumble sometimes to his wife, but
he does not frequent the grocery, and he does
not talk politics at the tavern. So he is for-
gotten. Yet who is there whom the states-
man, economist, and social philosopher ought
to think of before this man ? If any student
of social science comes to appreciate the case
of the Forgotten Man, he will become an un-
flinching advocate of strict scientific thinking
in sociology, and a hard-hearted sceptic as re-
gards any scheme of social amelioration. He
will always want to know, Who and where is
the Forgotten Man in this case, who will have
to pay for it all ?

The Forgotten Man is not a pauper. It
belongs to his character to save something.
Hence he is a capitalist, though never a great
one. He is a "poor" man in the popular
sense of the word, but not in a correct sense.
In fact, one of the most constant and trust-
worthy signs that the Forgotten Man is in

150 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

\danger of a new assault is, that "the poor
man" is brought into the discussion. Since
the Forgotten Man has some capital, any one
who cares for his interest will try to make
capital secure by securing the inviolability of
contracts, the stability of currency, and the
firmness of credit. Any one, therefore, who
cares for the Forgotten Man will be sure to
be considered a friend of the capitalist and an
enemy of the poor man.

It is the Forgotten Man who is threatened
by every extension of the paternal theory of
government. It is he who must work and pay.
, When, therefore, the statesmen and social phi-
losophers sit down to think what the State
can do or ought to do, they really mean to de-
cide what the Forgotten Man shall do. "What
the Forgotten Man wants, therefore, is a fuller
realization of constitutional liberty. He is
suffering from the fact that there are yet
mixed in our institutions mediaeval theories
of protection, regulation, and authority, and
modern theories of independence and indi-
vidual liberty and responsibility. The conse-
quence of this mixed state of things is, that
those who are clever enough to get into con-
trol use the paternal theory by which to meas-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 151

ure their own rights — that is, they assume
privileges ; and they use the theory of liberty
to measure their own duties — that is, when
it comes to the duties, they want to be "let
alone." The Forgotten Man never gets into
control. He has to pay both ways. His rights
are measured to him by the theory of liberty
— that is, he has only such as he can conquer ;
his duties are measured to him on the paternal
theory — that is, he must discharge all which
are laid upon him, as is the fortune of parents.
In a paternal relation there are always two
parties, a father and a child ; and when we use
the paternal relation metaphorically, it is of
the first importance to know who is to be fa-
ther and who is to be child. The role of par-
ent falls always to the Forgotten Man. What
he wants, therefore, is that ambiguities in our
institutions be cleared up, and that liberty be
more fully realized.

It behooves any economist or social philos-
opher, whatever be the grade of his orthodoxy,
who proposes to enlarge the sphere of the
" State," or to take any steps whatever having
in view the welfare of any class whatever, to
pursue the analysis of the social effects of his
proposition until he finds that other group

152 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

whose interests must be curtailed or whose
energies must be placed under contribution
by the course of action which he proposes;
and he cannot maintain his proposition until
he has demonstrated that it will be more ad-
vantageous, loth quantitatively and qualita-
tively, to those who must bear the weight of
it than complete non-interference by the State
with the relations of the parties in question.

OWE TO EACH OTHEK. 153

XI.

WHEREFORE WE SHOULD LOVE ONE
ANOTHER.

SUPPOSE that a man, going through a wood,
should be struck by a falling tree and pinned
down beneath it. Suppose that another man,
coming that way and finding him there, should,
instead of hastening to give or to bring aid,
begin to lecture on the law of gravitation,
taking the tree as an illustration.

Suppose, again, that a person lecturing on
the law of gravitation should state the law of
falling bodies, and suppose that an objector
should say : You state your law as a cold,
mathematical fact, and you declare that all
bodies will fall comformably to it. How
heartless ! You do not reflect that it may be
a beautiful little child falling f rona a window.

These two suppositions may be of some use
to us as illustrations.

Let us take the second first. It is the objec-
tion of the sentimentalist ; and, ridiculous as

154: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

the mode of discussion appears when applied
to the laws of natural philosophy, the sociolo-
gist is constantly met by objections of just
that character. Especially when the subject
under discussion is charity in any of its public
forms, the attempt to bring method and clear-
ness into the discussion is sure to be crossed
by suggestions which are as far from the point
and as foreign to any really intelligent point
of view as the supposed speech in the illustra-
tion. In the first place, a child would fall
just as a stone would fall, Nature's forces

knOW J)n Pity -Trig*. <f^ in gr^Jnlngy, TJ1P

forces know go pity- In the second place, if
a natural philosopher should discuss all the
bodies which may fall, he would go entirely
astray, and would certainly do no good. The
same is true of the sociologist. He must con-
centrate, not scatter, and study laws, not all
conceivable combinations of force which may
occur in practice. In the third place, nobody
ever saw a body fall as the philosophers say it
will fall, because they can accomplish nothing
unless they study forces separately, and allow
for their combined action in all concrete and
actual phenomena. The same is true in so-
ciology, with the additional fact that the forces

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 155

and their combinations in sociology are far the
most complex which we have to deal with.
In the fourth place, any natural philosopher
who should stop, after stating the law of fall-
ing bodies, to warn mothers not to let their
children fall out of the window, would make
himself ridiculous. Just so a sociologist who
should attach moral applications and practical
maxims to his investigations would entirely
miss his proper business. There is the force
of gravity as a fact in the world. If we un-
derstand this, the necessity of care to conform
to the action of gravity meets us at every step
in our private life and personal experience.
The fact in sociology is in no wise different.

If, for instance, we take political economy,
that science does not teach an individual how
to get rich. It is a social science. It treats
of the laws of the material welfare of human
societies. It is, therefore, only one science
among all the sciences which inform us about
the laws and conditions of our life on earth.
Education has for its object to give a man
knowledge of the conditions and laws of liv-
ing, so that, in any case in which the individ-
ual stands face to face with the necessity of
deciding what to do, if he is an educated man,

156 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

he may know how to make a wise and intelli-
gent decision. If he knows chemistry, phys-
ics, geology, and other sciences, he will know
what he must encounter of obstacle or help
in Nature in what he proposes to do. If he
knows physiology and hygiene, he will know
what effects on health he must expect in one
course or another. If he knows political econ-
omy, he will know what effect on wealth and
on the welfare of society one course or anoth-
er will produce. There is no injunction, no
" ought " in political economy at all. It does
not assume to tell man what he ought to do,
any more than chemistry tells us that we ought
to mix things, or mathematics that we ought
-^0 solve equations. It only gives one element
necessary to an intelligent decision, and in
every practical and concrete case the responsi-
bility ^of deciding what to do rests on the man
who has to act. The economist, therefore,
does not say to any one, You ought never to
give money to charity. He contradicts any-
body who says, You ought to give money to
charity; and, in opposition to any such per-
son, he says, Let me show you what difference
it makes to you, to others, to society, whether
you give money to charity or not, so that you

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 157

can make a wise and intelligent decision. Cer-
tainly there is no harder thing to do than to
employ capital charitably. It would be ex-
treme folly to say that nothing of that sort
ought to be done, but I fully believe that to-
day the next most pernicious thing to vice is
charity in its broad and popular sense.

In the preceding chapters I have discussed
the public and social relations of classes, and
those social topics in which groups of persons
are considered as groups or classes, without
regard to personal merits or demerits. I have
relegated all charitable work to the domain of
private relations, where personal acquaintance
and personal estimates may furnish the proper
, limitations and guarantees. A man who had
no sympathies and no sentiments would be a
very poor creature ; but the public charities,
more especially the legislative charities, nour-
jish no man's sympathies and sentiments. Fur-
thermore, it ought to be distinctly perceived
that any charitable and benevolent effort which
any man desires to make voluntarily, to see if
he can do any good, lies entirely beyond the
field of discussion. It would be as imperti-
nent to prevent his effort as it is to force co-
operation in an effort on some one who does

\

158 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

not want to participate in it. "What I choose
to do by way of exercising my own sympa-
thies under my own reason and conscience is
one thing ; what another man forces me to do
of a sympathetic character, because his reason
and conscience approve of it, is quite another
thing.

What, now, is the reason why we should
help each other ? This carries us back to the
other illustration with which we started. We
may philosophize as coolly and correctly as we
choose about our duties and about the laws of
right living ; no one of us lives up to what he
knows. The man struck by the falling tree
has, perhaps, been careless. We are all care-
less. Environed as we are by risks and perils,
which befall us as misfortunes, no man of us
is in a position to say, " I know all the laws,
and am sure to obey them all; therefore I
shall never need aid and sympathy." At the
very best, one of us fails in one way and an-
other in another, if we do not fail altogether.
Therefore the man under the tree is the one
of us who for the moment is smitten. It may
be you to-morrow, and I next day. It is the
common frailty in the midst of a common
peril which gives us a kind of solidarity of in-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 159

terest to rescue the one for whom the chances
of life have turned out badly just now. Prob-
ably the victim is to blame. He almost always
is so. A lecture to that effect in the crisis of
his peril would be out of place, because it
would not fit the need of the moment ; but it
would be very much in place at another time,
when the need was to avert the repetition of
such an accident to somebody else. Men,
therefore, owe to men, in the chances and
perils of this life, aid and sympathy, on ac-
count of the common participation in human
frailty and folly. This observation, however,
puts aid and sympathy in the field of private
and personal relations, under the regulation of
reason and conscience, and gives no ground
for mechanical and impersonal schemes.
We may, then, distinguish four things :

1. The function of science is to investigate
truth. Science is colorless and impersonal.
It investigates the force of gravity, and finds
out the laws of that force, and has nothing to
do with the weal or woe of men under the
operation of the law.

2. The moral deductions as to what one
ought to do are to be drawn by the reason
and conscience of the individual man who is

1GO WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

instructed by science. Let him take note of
the force of gravity, and see to it that he does
not walk off a precipice or get in the way of
a falling body.

3. On account of the number and variety
of perils of all kinds by which our lives are
environed, and on account of ignorance, care-
lessness, and folly, we all neglect to obey the
moral deductions which we have learned, so
that, in fact, the wisest and the best of us act
foolishly and suffer.

4. The law of sympathy, by which we share
each others' burdens, is to do as we would be
done by. It is not a scientific principle, and
does not admit of such generalization or in-
terpretation that A can tell B what this law
enjoins on B to do. Hence the relations of
sympathy and sentiment are essentially limit-
ed to two persons only, and they cannot be
made a basis for the relations of groups of
persons, or for discussion by any third party.

Social improvement is not to be won by di-
rect effort. It is secondary, and results from
physical or economic improvements. That is
the reason why schemes of direct social amel-
ioration always have an arbitrary, sentimental,
and artificial character, while true social ad-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 161

vance must be a product and a growth. The ef-
forts which are being put forth for every kind
of progress in the arts and sciences are, there-
fore, contributing to true social progress. Let
any one learn what hardship was involved, even
for a wealthy person, a century ago, in cross-
ing the Atlantic, and then let him compare
that hardship even with a steerage passage at
the present time, considering time and money
cost. This improvement in transportation by
which "the poor and weak" can be carried
from the crowded centres of population to the
new land is worth more to them than all the
schemes of all the social reformers. An im-
provement in surgical instruments or in an-
sesthetics really does more for those who are
not well off than all the declamations of the
orators and pious wishes of the reformers.
Civil service reform would be a greater gain
to the laborers than innumerable factory acts
and eight-hour laws. Free trade would be a
greater blessing to "the poor man" than all
the devices of all the friends of humanity if
they could be realized. If the economists
could satisfactorily solve the problem of the
regulation of paper currency, they would do
more for the wages class than could be accom-
11

162 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

plislied by all the artificial doctrines about
wages which they seem to feel bound to en-
courage. If we could get firm and good laws
passed for the management of savings-banks,
and then refrain from the amendments by
which those laws are gradually broken down,
we should do more for the non-capitalist class
than by volumes of laws against "corpora-
tions " and the " excessive power of capital."
We each owe to the other mutual redress
of grievances. It has been said, in answer to
my argument in the last chapter about the
Forgotten Women and thread, that the tax
on thread is " only a little thing," and that it
cannot hurt the women much, and also that,
if the women do not want to pay two cents a
spool tax, there is thread of an inferior qual-
ity, which they can buy cheaper. These an-
swers represent the bitterest and basest social
injustice. Every honest citizen of a free state
owes it to himself, to the community, and es-
pecially to those who are at once weak and
wronged, to go to their assistance and to help
redress their wrongs. Whenever a law or so-
cial arrangement acts so as to injure any one,
and that one the humblest, then there is a duty
on those wrho are stronger, or who know bet-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 163

ter, to demand and fight for redress and cor-
rection. When generalized this means that it
is the duty of AU-of^us (that is, the State) to
establish justice for all, from the least to the
greatest, and in all matters. This, however, is
no new doctrine. It is only the old, true,
and indisputable function of the State; and
in working for a redress of wrongs and a
correction of legislative abuses, we are only
struggling to a fuller realization of it — that
is, working to improve civil government.

We each owe it to the other to guarantee
rights. Eights do not pertain to 'results, but
only to chances. They pertain to the condi-
tions of the struggle for existence, not to any
of the results of it ; to the pursuit of happi-
ness, not to the possession of happiness. It
cannot be said that each one has a right to
have some property, because if one man had
such a right some other man or men would
be under a corresponding obligation to pro-
vide him with some property. Each has a
right to acquire and possess property if he
can. It is plain what fallacies are developed
when we overlook this distinction. Those fal-
lacies run through all socialistic schemes and
theories. If we take rights to pertain to re-

164: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

suits, and then say that rights must be equal,
we come to say that men have a right to be
equally happy, and so on in all the details.
Eights should be equal, because they pertain
to chances, and all ought to have e^jual chances
so far as chances are provided or limited by
the action of society. This, however, will not
produce equal results, but it is right just be-
cause it will produce unequal results — that
is, results which shall be proportioned to the
merits of individuals. We each owe it to the
other to guarantee mutually the chance to
earn, to possess, to learn, to marry, etc., etc.,
against any interference which would prevent
the exercise of those rights by a person who
wishes to prosecute and enjoy them in peace
for the pursuit of happiness. If we general-
ize this, it means that All-of-us ought to guar-
antee rights to each of us. But our modern
free, constitutional States are constructed en-
tirely on the notion of rights, and we regard
them as performing their functions more and
more perfectly according as they guarantee
rights in consonance with the constantly cor-
rected and expanded notions of rights from
one generation to another. Therefore, when
we say that we owe it to each other to guar-

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 165

antee rights we only say that we ought to
prosecute and improve our political science.

If we have in mind the value of chances to
earn, learn, possess, etc., for a man of indepen-
dent energy, we can go on one step farther in
our deductions about help. The only help
which is generally expedient, even within the
limits of the private and personal relations of
two persons to each other, is_,that_ which con-
sists in helping a man to help himself. This
always consists in opening the chances. A man
of assured position can, by an effort which is
of no appreciable importance to him, give aid
which is of incalculable value to a man who
is all ready to make his own career if he can
only get a chance. The truest and deepest
pathos in this world is not that of suffering
but that of brave struggling. The truest sym-
pathy is not compassion, but a fellow-feeling
with courage and fortitude in the midst of
noble effort.

Now, the aid which helps a man to help
himself is not in the least akin to the aid
which is given in charity. If alms are given,
or if we "make work" for a man, or "give
him employment," or " protect " him, we sim-
ply take a product from one and give it to

166 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

another. If we help a man to help himself,
by opening the chances around him, we put
him in a position to add to the wealth of the
community by putting new powers in opera-
tion to produce. It would seem that the dif-
ference between getting something already in
existence from the one who has it, and pro-
ducing a new thing by applying new labor to
natural materials, would be so plain as never
to be forgotten ; but the fallacy of confusing
the two is one of the commonest in all social
discussions.

We have now seen that the current discus-
sions about the claims and rights of social
classes on each other are radically erroneous
and fallacious, and we have seen that an anal-
ysis of the general obligations which we all
have to each other leads us to nothing but an
emphatic repetition of old but well-acknowl-
edged obligations to perfect our political insti-
tutions. We have been led to restriction, not
extension, of the functions of the State, but
we have also been led to see the necessity of
purifying and perfecting the operation of the
State in the functions which properly belong
to it. If we refuse to recognize any classes
as existing in society when, perhaps, a claim

OWE TO EACH OTHER. 167

might be set tip that the wealthy, educated,
and virtuous have acquired special rights and
precedence, we certainly cannot recognize any
classes when it is attempted to establish such
distinctions for the sake of imposing burdens
and duties on one group for the benefit of
others. The men who have not done their
duty in this world never can be equal to those
who have done their duty more or less well.
If words like wise and foolish, thrifty and ex-
travagant, prudent and negligent, have any
meaning in language, then it must make some
difference how people behave in this world,
and the difference will appear in the position
they acquire in the body of society, and in
relation to the chances of life. They may,
then, be classified in reference to these facts.
Such classes always will exist; no other so-
cial distinctions can endure. If, then, we look
to the origin and definition of these classes, we
shall find it impossible to deduce any obliga-
tions which one of them bears to the other.
The class distinctions simply result from the
different degrees of success with which men
have availed themselves of the chances which
were presented to them. Instead of endeav-
oring to redistribute tfre acquisitions which

168 WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES

have been made between the existing classes,
our aim should be to increase^ multiply^ and
extend the chances. Such is the work of civil-
ization. Every old error or abuse which is
removed opens new chances of development
to all the new energy of society. Every im-
provement in education, science, art, or gov-
ernment expands the chances of man on earth.
Such expansion is no guarantee of equality.
On the contrary, if there be liberty, some will
profit by the chances eagerly and some will
neglect them altogether. Therefore, the great-
er the chances the more unequal will be the
fortune of these two sets of men. So it ought
to be, in all justice and right reason. The
yearning after equality is the offspring of
envy and covetousness, and there is no possi-
ble plan for satisfying that yearning which
can do aught else than rob A to give to B ;
consequently all such plans nourish some of
the meanest vices of human nature, waste cap-
ital, and overthrow civilization. But if we
can expand the chances we can count on a
general and steady growth of civilization and
advancement of society by and through its
best members. In the prosecution of these
chances we all owe to each other good-will,

OWE TO EACH OTHER.

169

mutual respect, and mutual guarantees of
liberty and security. Beyond this nothing
can be affirmed as a duty of one group to
another in a free state.

THE END.

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