THE BOOK OF THE BLIND.
If the reader were to judge merely from what has been set down in these
pages he would be likely to infer that my most absorbing interest during
these days I am endeavoring to recall was the study of the political
economy and social philosophy of the modern world, which I was pursuing
under the direction of Dr. Leete. That, however, would be a great
mistake. Full of wonder and fascination as was that occupation, it was
prosaic business compared with the interest of a certain old story which
his daughter and I were going over together, whereof but slight mention
has been made, because it is a story which all know or ought to know for
themselves. The dear doctor, being aware of the usual course of such
stories, no doubt realized that this one might be expected presently to
reach a stage of interest where it would be likely, for a time at least,
wholly to distract my attention from other themes. No doubt he had been
governed by this consideration in trying to give to our talks a range
which should result in furnishing me with a view of the institutions of
the modern world and their rational basis that would be as symmetrical
and rounded out as was at all consistent with the vastness of the subject
and the shortness of the time. It was some days after he had told me the
story of the transition period before we had an opportunity for another
long talk, and the turn he gave to our discourse on that occasion seemed
to indicate that he intended it as a sort of conclusion of the series, as
indeed it proved to be.
Edith and I had come home rather late that evening, and when she left me
I turned into the library, where a light showed that the doctor was still
sitting. As I entered he was turning over the leaves of a very old and
yellow-looking volume, the title of which, by its oddity, caught my eye.
"Kenloe's Book of the Blind," I said. "That is an odd title."
"It is the title of an odd book," replied the doctor. "The Book of the
Blind is nearly a hundred years old, having been compiled soon after the
triumph of the Revolution. Everybody was happy, and the people in their
joy were willing to forgive and forget the bitter opposition of the
capitalists and the learned class, which had so long held back the
blessed change. The preachers who had preached, the teachers who had
taught, and the writers who had written against the Revolution, were now
the loudest in its praise, and desired nothing so much as to have their
previous utterances forgotten. But Kenloe, moved by a certain crabbed
sense of justice, was bound that they should not be forgotten.
Accordingly, he took the pains to compile, with great care as to
authenticity, names, dates, and places, a mass of excerpts from speeches,
books, sermons, and newspapers, in which the apologists of private
capitalism had defended that system and assailed the advocates of
economic equality during the long period of revolutionary agitation. Thus
he proposed to pillory for all time the blind guides who had done their
best to lead the nation and the world into the ditch. The time would
come, he foresaw, as it has come, when it would seem incredible to
posterity that rational men and, above all, learned men should have
opposed in the name of reason a measure which, like economic equality
obviously meant nothing more nor less than the general diffusion of
happiness. Against that time he prepared this book to serve as a
perpetual testimony. It was dreadfully hard on the men, all alive at the
time and desiring the past to be forgotten, on whom he conferred this
most undesirable immortality. One can imagine how they must have
anathematized him when the book came out. Nevertheless it must be said
that if men ever deserved to endure perpetual obloquy those fellows did.
"When I came across this old volume on the top shelf of the library the
other day it occurred to me that it might be helpful to complete your
impression of the great Revolution by giving you an idea of the other
side of the controversy--the side of your own class, the capitalists, and
what sort of reasons they were able to give against the proposition to
equalize the basis of human welfare."
I assured the doctor that nothing would interest me more. Indeed, I had
become so thoroughly naturalized as a twentieth-century American that
there was something decidedly piquant in the idea of having my former
point of view as a nineteenth-century capitalist recalled to me.
"Anticipating that you would take that view," said the doctor, "I have
prepared a little list of the main heads of objection from Kenloe's
collection, and we will go over them, if you like, this evening. Of
course, there are many more than I shall quote, but the others are mainly
variations of these, or else relate to points which have been covered in
our talks."
I made myself comfortable, and the doctor proceeded:
THE PULPIT OBJECTION.
"The clergy in your day assumed to be the leaders of the people, and it
is but respectful to their pretensions to take up first what seems to
have been the main pulpit argument against the proposed system of
economic equality collectively guaranteed. It appears to have been rather
in the nature of an excuse for not espousing the new social ideal than a
direct attack on it, which indeed it would have been rather difficult for
nominal Christians to make, seeing that it was merely the proposal to
carry out the golden rule.
"The clergy reasoned that the fundamental cause of social misery was
human sin and depravity, and that it was vain to expect any great
improvement in the social condition through mere improvements in social
forms and institutions unless there was a corresponding moral improvement
in men. Until that improvement took place it was therefore of no use to
introduce improved social systems, for they would work as badly as the
old ones if those who were to operate them were not themselves better men
and women.
"The element of truth in this argument is the admitted fact that the use
which individuals or communities are able to make of any idea,
instrument, or institution depends on the degree to which they have been
educated up to the point of understanding and appreciating it.
"On the other hand, however, it is equally true, as the clergy must at
once have admitted, that from the time a people begins to be morally and
intellectually educated up to the point of understanding and appreciating
better institutions, their adoption is likely to be of the greatest
benefit to them. Take, for example, the ideas of religious liberty and of
democracy. There was a time when the race could not understand or fitly
use either, and their adoption as formal institutions would have done no
good. Afterward there came a time when the world was ready for the ideas,
and then their realization by means of new social institutions
constituted great forward steps in civilization.
"That is to say, if, on the one hand, it is of no use to introduce an
improved institution before people begin to be ready for it, on the other
hand great loss results if there be a delay or refusal to adopt the
better institution as soon as the readiness begins to manifest itself.
"This being the general law of progress, the practical question is, How
are we to determine as to any particular proposed improvement in
institutions whether the world is yet ready to make a good use of it or
whether it is premature?
"The testimony of history is that the only test of the fitness of people
at any time for a new institution is the volume and earnestness of the
popular demand for the change. When the peoples began in earnest to cry
out for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, it was evident that
they were ready for them. When nations began strongly to demand popular
government, it was proof that they were ready for that. It did not follow
that they were entirely able at once to make the best possible use of the
new institution; that they could only learn to do by experience, and the
further development which they would attain through the use of the better
institution and could not otherwise attain at all. What was certain was
that after the people had reached this state of mind the old institution
had ceased to be serviceable, and that however badly for a time the new
one might work, the interest of the race demanded its adoption, and
resistance to the change was resistance to progress.
"Applying this test to the situation toward the close of the nineteenth
century, what evidence was there that the world was beginning to be ready
for a radically different and more humane set of social institutions? The
evidence was the volume, earnestness, and persistence of the popular
demand for it which at that period had come to be the most widespread,
profound, and powerful movement going on in the civilized world. This was
the tremendous fact which should have warned the clergy who withstood the
people's demand for better things to beware lest haply they be found
fighting even against God. What more convincing proof could be asked that
the world had morally and intellectually outgrown the old economic order
than the detestation and denunciation of its cruelties and fatuities
which had become the universal voice? What stronger evidence could there
be that the race was ready at least to attempt the experiment of social
life on a nobler plane than the marvelous development during this period
of the humanitarian and philanthropic spirit, the passionate acceptance
by the masses of the new idea of social solidarity and the universal
brotherhood of man?
"If the clergymen who objected to the Revolution on the ground that
better institutions would be of no utility without a better spirit had
been sincere in that objection, they would have found in a survey of the
state and tendencies of popular feeling the most striking proof of the
presence of the very conditions in extraordinary measure which they
demanded as necessary to insure the success of the experiment.
"But indeed it is to be greatly feared that they were not sincere. They
pretended to hold Christ's doctrine that hatred of the old life and a
desire to lead a better one is the only vocation necessary to enter upon
such a life. If they had been sincere in professing this doctrine, they
would have hailed with exultation the appeal of the masses to be
delivered from their bondage to a wicked social order and to be permitted
to live together on better, kinder, juster terms. But what they actually
said to the people was in substance this: It is true, as you complain,
that the present social and economic system is morally abominable and
thoroughly antichristian, and that it destroys men's souls and bodies.
Nevertheless, you must not think of trying to change it for a better
system, because you are not yet good enough to try to be better. It is
necessary that you should wait until you are more righteous before you
attempt to leave off doing evil. You must go on stealing and fighting
until you shall become fully sanctified.
"How would the clergy have been scandalized to hear that a Christian
minister had in like terms attempted to discourage an individual penitent
who professed loathing for his former life and a desire to lead a better!
What language shall we find then that is strong enough fitly to
characterize the attitude of these so-called ministers of Christ, who in
his name rebuked and derided the aspirations of a world weary of social
wrong and seeking for a better way?"
THE LACK OF INCENTIVE OBJECTION.
"But, after all," pursued the doctor, turning the pages of Kenloe, "let
us not be too hard on these unfortunate clergymen, as if they were more
blinded or bigoted in their opposition to progress than were other
classes of the learned men of the day, as, for example, the
economists. One of the main arguments--perhaps the leading one--of the
nineteenth-century economists against the programme of economic equality
under a nationalized economic system was that the people would not prove
efficient workers owing to the lack of sufficiently sharp personal
incentives to diligence.
"Now, let us look at this objection. Under the old system there were two
main incentives to economic exertion: the one chiefly operative on the
masses, who lived from hand to mouth, with no hope of more than a bare
subsistence; the other operating to stimulate the well-to-do and rich to
continue their efforts to accumulate wealth. The first of these motives,
the lash that drove the masses to their tasks, was the actual pressure or
imminent fear of want. The second of the motives, that which spurred the
already rich, was the desire to be ever richer, a passion which we know
increased with what it fed on. Under the new system every one on easy
conditions would be sure of as good a maintenance as any one else and be
quite relieved from the pressure or fear of want. No one, on the other
hand, by any amount of effort, could hope to become the economic superior
of another. Moreover, it was said, since every one looked to his share in
the general result rather than to his personal product, the nerve of zeal
would be cut. It was argued that the result would be that everybody would
do as little as he could and keep within the minimum requirement of the
law, and that therefore, while the system might barely support itself, it
could never be an economic success."
"That sounds very natural," I said. "I imagine it is just the sort of
argument that I should have thought very powerful."
"So your friends the capitalists seem to have regarded it, and yet the
very statement of the argument contains a confession of the economic
imbecility of private capitalism which really leaves nothing to be
desired as to completeness. Consider, Julian, what is implied as to an
economic system by the admission that under it the people never escape
the actual pressure of want or the immediate dread of it. What more could
the worst enemy of private capitalism allege against it, or what stronger
reason could he give for demanding that some radically new system be at
least given a trial, than the fact which its defenders stated in this
argument for retaining it--namely, that under it the masses were always
hungry? Surely no possible new system could work any worse than one which
confessedly depended upon the perpetual famine of the people to keep it
going."
"It was a pretty bad giving away of their case," I said, "when you come
to think of it that way. And yet at first statement it really had a
formidable sound."
"Manifestly," said the doctor, "the incentives to wealth-production under
a system confessedly resulting in perpetual famine must be ineffectual,
and we really need consider them no further; but your economists praised
so highly the ambition to get rich as an economic motive and objected so
strongly to economic equality because it would shut it off, that a word
may be well as to the real value of the lust of wealth as an economic
motive. Did the individual pursuit of riches under your system
necessarily tend to increase the aggregate wealth of the community? The
answer is significant. It tended to increase the aggregate wealth only
when it prompted the production of new wealth. When, on the other hand,
it merely prompted individuals to get possession of wealth already
produced and in the hands of others, it tended only to change the
distribution without at all increasing the total of wealth. Not only,
indeed, did the pursuit of wealth by acquisition, as distinguished from
production, not tend to increase the total, but greatly to decrease it by
wasteful strife. Now, I will leave it to you, Julian, whether the
successful pursuers of wealth, those who illustrated most strikingly the
force of this motive of accumulation, usually sought their wealth by
themselves producing it or by getting hold of what other people had
produced or supplanting other people's enterprises and reaping the field
others had sown."
"By the latter processes, of course," I replied. "Production was slow and
hard work. Great wealth could not be gained that way, and everybody knew
it. The acquisition of other people's product and the supplanting of
their enterprises were the easy and speedy and royal ways to riches for
those who were clever enough, and were the basis of all large and rapid
accumulations."
"So we read," said the doctor; "but the desire of getting rich also
stimulated capitalists to more or less productive activity which was the
source of what little wealth you had. This was called production for
profit, but the political-economy class the other morning showed us that
production for profit was economic suicide, tending inevitably, by
limiting the consuming power of a community, to a fractional part of its
productive power to cripple production in turn, and so to keep the mass
of mankind in perpetual poverty. And surely this is enough to say about
the incentives to wealth-making which the world lost in abandoning
private capitalism, first general poverty, and second the profit system,
which caused that poverty. Decidedly we can dispense with those
incentives.
"Under the modern system it is indeed true that no one ever imagined such
a thing as coming to want unless he deliberately chose to, but we think
that fear is on the whole the weakest as well as certainly the cruelest
of incentives. We would not have it on any terms were it merely for
gain's sake. Even in your day your capitalists knew that the best man was
not he who was working for his next dinner, but he who was so well off
that no immediate concern for his living affected his mind. Self-respect
and pride in achievement made him a far better workman than he who was
thinking of his day's pay. But if those motives were as strong then,
think how much more powerful they are now! In your day when two men
worked side by side for an employer it was no concern of the one, however
the other might cheat or loaf. It was not his loss, but the employer's.
But now that all work for the common fund, the one who evades or scamps
his work robs every one of his fellows. A man had better hang himself
nowadays than get the reputation of a shirk.
"As to the notion of these objectors that economic equality would cut the
nerve of zeal by denying the individual the reward of his personal
achievements, it was a complete misconception of the effects of the
system. The assumption that there would be no incentives to impel
individuals to excel one another in industry merely because these
incentives would not take a money form was absurd. Every one is as
directly and far more certainly the beneficiary of his own merits as in
your day, save only that the reward is not in what you called 'cash.' As
you know, the whole system of social and official rank and headship,
together with the special honors of the state, are determined by the
relative value of the economic and other services of individuals to the
community. Compared with the emulation aroused by this system of nobility
by merit, the incentives to effort offered under the old order of things
must have been slight indeed.
"The whole of this subject of incentive taken by your contemporaries
seems, in fact, to have been based upon the crude and childish theory
that the main factor in diligence or execution of any kind is external,
whereas it is wholly internal. A person is congenitally slothful or
energetic. In the one case no opportunity and no incentive can make him
work beyond a certain minimum of efficiency, while in the other case he
will make his opportunity and find his incentives, and nothing but
superior force can prevent his doing the utmost possible. If the motive
force is not in the man to start with, it can not be supplied from
without, and there is no substitute for it. If a man's mainspring is not
wound up when he is born, it never can be wound up afterward. The most
that any industrial system can do to promote diligence is to establish
such absolutely fair conditions as shall promise sure recognition for all
merit in its measure. This fairness, which your system, utterly unjust in
all respects, wholly failed to secure, ours absolutely provides. As to
the unfortunates who are born lazy, our system has certainly no
miraculous power to make them energetic, but it does see to it with
absolute certainty that every able-bodied person who receives economic
maintenance of the nation shall render at least the minimum of service.
The laziest is sure to pay his cost. In your day, on the other hand,
society supported millions of able-bodied loafers in idleness, a dead
weight on the world's industry. From the hour of the consummation of the
great Revolution, this burden ceased to be borne."
"Doctor," I said, "I am sure my old friends could do better than that.
Let us have another of their objections."
AFRAID THAT EQUALITY WOULD MAKE EVERYBODY ALIKE.
"Here, then, is one which they seem to have thought a great deal of. They
argued that the effect of economic equality would be to make everybody
just alike, as if they had been sawed off to one measure, and that
consequently life would become so monotonous that people would all hang
themselves at the end of a month. This objection is beautifully typical
of an age when everything and everybody had been reduced to a money
valuation. It having been proposed to equalize everybody's supply of
money, it was at once assumed, as a matter of course, that there would be
left no points of difference between individuals that would be worth
considering. How perfectly does this conclusion express the philosophy of
life held by a generation in which it was the custom to sum up men as
respectively 'worth' so many thousands, hundred thousands, or millions of
dollars! Naturally enough, to such people it seemed that human beings
would become well-nigh indistinguishable if their bank accounts were the
same.
"But let us be entirely fair to your contemporaries. Possibly those who
used this argument against economic equality would have felt aggrieved to
have it made out the baldly sordid proposition it seems to be. They
appear, to judge from the excerpts collected in this book, to have had a
vague but sincere apprehension that in some quite undefined way economic
equality would really tend to make people monotonously alike, tediously
similar, not merely as to bank accounts, but as to qualities in general,
with the result of obscuring the differences in natural endowments, the
interaction of which lends all the zest to social intercourse. It seems
almost incredible that the obvious and necessary effect of economic
equality could be apprehended in a sense so absolutely opposed to the
truth. How could your contemporaries look about them without seeing that
it is always inequality which prompts the suppression of individuality by
putting a premium on servile imitation of superiors, and, on the other
hand, that it is always among equals that one finds independence?
Suppose, Julian, you had a squad of recruits and wanted to ascertain at a
glance their difference in height, what sort of ground would you select
to line them up on?"
"The levelest piece I could find, of course."
"Evidently; and no doubt these very objectors would have done the same in
a like case, and yet they wholly failed to see that this was precisely
what economic equality would mean for the community at large. Economic
equality with the equalities of education and opportunity implied in it
was the level standing ground, the even floor, on which the new order
proposed to range all alike, that they might be known for what they were,
and all their natural inequalities be brought fully out. The charge of
abolishing and obscuring the natural differences between men lay justly
not against the new order, but against the old, which, by a thousand
artificial conditions and opportunities arising from economic inequality,
made it impossible to know how far the apparent differences in
individuals were natural, and how far they were the result of artificial
conditions. Those who voiced the objection to economic equality as
tending to make men all alike were fond of calling it a leveling process.
So it was, but it was not men whom the process leveled, but the ground
they stood on. From its introduction dates the first full and clear
revelation of the natural and inherent varieties in human endowments.
Economic equality, with all it implies, is the first condition of any
true anthropometric or man-measuring system."
"Really," I said, "all these objections seem to be of the boomerang
pattern, doing more damage to the side that used them than to the enemy."
"For that matter," replied the doctor, "the revolutionists would have
been well off for ammunition if they had used only that furnished by
their opponents' arguments. Take, for example, another specimen, which we
may call the aesthetic objection to economic equality, and might regard
as a development of the one just considered. It was asserted that the
picturesqueness and amusement of the human spectacle would suffer without
the contrast of conditions between the rich and poor. The question first
suggested by this statement is: To whom, to what class did these
contrasts tend to make life more amusing? Certainly not to the poor, who
made up the mass of the race. To them they must have been maddening. It
was then in the interest of the mere handful of rich and fortunate that
this argument for retaining poverty was urged. Indeed this appears to
have been quite a fine ladies' argument. Kenloe puts it in the mouths of
leaders of polite society. As coolly as if it had been a question of
parlor decoration, they appear to have argued that the black background
of the general misery was a desirable foil to set off the pomp of the
rich. But, after all, this objection was not more brutal than it was
stupid. If here and there might be found some perverted being who
relished his luxuries the more keenly for the sight of others' want, yet
the general and universal rule is that happiness is stimulated by the
sight of the happiness of others. As a matter of fact, far from desiring
to see or be even reminded of squalor and poverty, the rich seem to have
tried to get as far as possible from sight or sound of them, and to wish
to forget their existence.
"A great part of the objections to economic equality in this book seems
to have been based on such complete misapprehensions of what the plan
implied as to have no sort of relevancy to it. Some of these I have
passed over. One of them, by way of illustration, was based on the
assumption that the new social order would in some way operate to
enforce, by law, relations of social intimacy of all with all, without
regard to personal tastes or affinities. Quite a number of Kenloe's
subjects worked themselves up to a frenzy, protesting against the
intolerable effects of such a requirement. Of course, they were fighting
imaginary foes. There was nothing under the old social order which
compelled men to associate merely because their bank accounts or incomes
were the same, and there was nothing under the new order that would any
more do so. While the universality of culture and refinement vastly
widens the circle from which one may choose congenial associates, there
is nothing to prevent anybody from living a life as absolutely unsocial
as the veriest cynic of the old time could have desired.
OBJECTION THAT EQUALITY WOULD END THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM.
"The theory of Kenloe," continued the doctor, "that unless he carefully
recorded and authenticated these objections to economic equality,
posterity would refuse to believe that they had ever been seriously
offered, is specially justified by the next one on the list. This is an
argument against the new order because it would abolish the competitive
system and put an end to the struggle for existence. According to the
objectors, this would be to destroy an invaluable school of character and
testing process for the weeding out of inferiority, and the development
and survival as leaders of the best types of humanity. Now, if your
contemporaries had excused themselves for tolerating the competitive
system on the ground that, bad and cruel as it was, the world was not
ripe for any other, the attitude would have been intelligible, if not
rational; but that they should defend it as a desirable institution in
itself, on account of its moral results, and therefore not to be
dispensed with even if it could be, seems hard to believe. For what was
the competitive system but a pitiless, all-involving combat for the means
of life, the whole zest of which depended on the fact that there was not
enough to go round, and the losers must perish or purchase bare existence
by becoming the bondmen of the successful? Between a fight for the
necessary means of life like this and a fight for life itself with sword
and gun, it is impossible to make any real distinction. However, let us
give the objection a fair hearing.
"In the first place, let us admit that, however dreadful were the
incidents of the fight for the means of life called competition, yet, if
it were such a school of character and testing process for developing the
best types of the race as these objectors claimed, there would be
something to have been said in favor of its retention. But the first
condition of any competition or test, the results of which are to command
respect or possess any value, is the fairness and equality of the
struggle. Did this first and essential condition of any true competitive
struggle characterize the competitive system of your day?"
"On the contrary," I replied, "the vast majority of the contestants were
hopelessly handicapped at the start by ignorance and lack of early
advantages, and never had even the ghost of a chance from the word go.
Differences in economic advantages and backing, moreover, gave half the
race at the beginning to some, leaving the others at a distance which
only extraordinary endowments might overcome. Finally, in the race for
wealth all the greatest prizes were not subject to competition at all,
but were awarded without any contest according to the accident of birth."
"On the whole, then, it would appear," resumed the doctor, "that of all
the utterly unequal, unfair, fraudulent, sham contests, whether in sport
or earnest, that were ever engaged in, the so-called competitive system
was the ghastliest farce. It was called the competitive system apparently
for no other reason than that there was not a particle of genuine
competition in it, nothing but brutal and cowardly slaughter of the
unarmed and overmatched by bullies in armor; for, although we have
compared the competitive struggle to a foot race, it was no such harmless
sport as that, but a struggle to the death for life and liberty, which,
mind you, the contestants did not even choose to risk, but were forced to
undertake, whatever their chances. The old Romans used to enjoy the
spectacle of seeing men fight for their lives, but they at least were
careful to pair their gladiators as nearly as possible. The most hardened
attendants at the Coliseum would have hissed from the arena a performance
in which the combatants were matched with such utter disregard of
fairness as were those who fought for their lives in the so-called
competitive struggle of your day."
"Even you, doctor," I said, "though you know these things so well through
the written record, can not realize how terribly true your words are."
"Very good. Now tell me what it would have been necessary to do by way of
equalizing the conditions of the competitive struggle in order that it
might be called, without mockery, a fair test of the qualities of the
contestants."
"It would have been necessary, at least," I said, "to equalize their
educational equipment, early advantages, and economic or money backing."
"Precisely so; and that is just what economic equality proposed to do.
Your extraordinary contemporaries objected to economic equality because
it would destroy the competitive system, when, in fact, it promised the
world the first and only genuine competitive system it ever had."
"This objection seems the biggest boomerang yet," I said.
"It is a double-ended one," said the doctor, "and we have yet observed
but one end. We have seen that the so-called competitive system under
private capitalism was not a competitive system at all, and that nothing
but economic equality could make a truly competitive system possible.
Grant, however, for the sake of the argument, that the old system was
honestly competitive, and that the prizes went to the most proficient
under the requirements of the competition; the question would remain
whether the qualities the competition tended to develop were desirable
ones. A training school in the art of lying, for example, or burglary, or
slander, or fraud, might be efficient in its method and the prizes might
be fairly distributed to the most proficient pupils, and yet it would
scarcely be argued that the maintenance of the school was in the public
interest. The objection we are considering assumes that the qualities
encouraged and rewarded under the competitive system were desirable
qualities, and such as it was for the public policy to develop. Now, if
this was so, we may confidently expect to find that the prize-winners in
the competitive struggle, the great money-makers of your age, were
admitted to be intellectually and morally the finest types of the race at
the time. How was that?"
"Don't be sarcastic, doctor."
"No, I will not be sarcastic, however great the temptation, but just
talk straight on. What did the world, as a rule, think of the great
fortune-makers of your time? What sort of human types did they represent?
As to intellectual culture, it was held as an axiom that a college
education was a drawback to success in business, and naturally so, for
any knowledge of the humanities would in so far have unmanned men for the
sordid and pitiless conditions of the fight for wealth. We find the great
prize takers in the competitive struggle to have generally been men who
made it a boast that they had never had any mental education beyond the
rudiments. As a rule, the children and grandchildren, who gladly
inherited their wealth, were ashamed of their appearance and manners as
too gross for refined surroundings.
"So much for the intellectual qualities that marked the victors in the
race for wealth under the miscalled competitive system; what of the
moral? What were the qualities and practices which the successful seeker
after great wealth must systematically cultivate and follow? A lifelong
habit of calculating upon and taking advantage of the weaknesses,
necessities, and mistakes of others, a pitiless insistence upon making
the most of every advantage which one might gain over another, whether by
skill or accident, the constant habit of undervaluing and depreciating
what one would buy, and overvaluing what one would sell; finally, such a
lifelong study to regulate every thought and act with sole reference to
the pole star of self-interest in its narrowest conception as must needs
presently render the man incapable of every generous or self-forgetting
impulse. That was the condition of mind and soul which the competitive
pursuit of wealth in your day tended to develop, and which was naturally
most brilliantly exemplified in the cases of those who carried away the
great prizes of the struggle.
"But, of course, these winners of the great prizes were few, and had the
demoralizing influence of the struggle been limited to them it would have
involved the moral ruin of a small number. To realize how wide and deadly
was the depraving influence of the struggle for existence, we must
remember that it was not confined to its effect upon the characters of
the few who succeeded, but demoralized equally the millions who failed,
not on account of a virtue superior to that of the few winners, or any
unwillingness to adopt their methods, but merely through lack of the
requisite ability or fortune. Though not one in ten thousand might
succeed largely in the pursuit of wealth, yet the rules of the contest
must be followed as closely to make a bare living as to gain a fortune,
in bargaining for a bag of old rags as in buying a railroad. So it was
that the necessity equally upon all of seeking their living, however
humble, by the methods of competition, forbade the solace of a good
conscience as effectually to the poor man as to the rich, to the many
losers at the game as to the few winners. You remember the familiar
legend which represents the devil as bargaining with people for their
souls, with the promise of worldly success as the price. The bargain was
in a manner fair as set forth in the old story. The man always received
the price agreed on. But the competitive system was a fraudulent devil,
which, while requiring everybody to forfeit their souls, gave in return
worldly success to but one in a thousand.
"And now, Julian, just let us glance at the contrast between what winning
meant under the old false competitive system and what it means under the
new and true competitive system, both to the winner and to the others.
The winners then were those who had been most successful in getting away
the wealth of others. They had not even pretended to seek the good of the
community or to advance its interest, and if they had done so, that
result had been quite incidental. More often than otherwise their wealth
represented the loss of others. What wonder that their riches became a
badge of ignominy and their victory their shame? The winners in the
competition of to-day are those who have done most to increase the
general wealth and welfare. The losers, those who have failed to win the
prizes, are not the victims of the winners, but those whose interest,
together with the general interest, has been served by them better than
they themselves could have served it. They are actually better off
because a higher ability than theirs was developed in the race, seeing
that this ability redounded wholly to the common interest. The badges of
honor and rewards of rank and office which are the tangible evidence of
success won in the modern competitive struggle are but expressions of the
love and gratitude of the people to those who have proved themselves
their most devoted and efficient servants and benefactors."
"It strikes me," I said, "so far as you have gone, that if some one had
been employed to draw up a list of the worst and weakest aspects of
private capitalism, he could not have done better than to select the
features of the system on which its champions seem to have based their
objections to a change."
OBJECTION THAT EQUALITY WOULD DISCOURAGE INDEPENDENCE AND ORIGINALITY.
"That is an impression," said the doctor, "which you will find confirmed
as we take up the next of the arguments on our list against economic
equality. It was asserted that to have an economic maintenance on simple
and easy terms guaranteed to all by the nation would tend to discourage
originality and independence of thought and conduct on the part of the
people, and hinder the development of character and individuality. This
objection might be regarded as a branch of the former one that economic
equality would make everybody just alike, or it might be considered a
corollary of the argument we have just disposed of about the value of
competition as a school of character. But so much seems to have been made
of it by the opponents of the Revolution that I have set it down
separately.
"The objection is one which, by the very terms necessary to state it,
seems to answer itself, for it amounts to saying that a person will be in
danger of losing independence of feeling by gaining independence of
position. If I were to ask you what economic condition was regarded as
most favorable to moral and intellectual independence in your day, and
most likely to encourage a man to act out himself without fear or favor,
what would you say?"
"I should say, of course, that a secure and independent basis of
livelihood was that condition."
"Of course. Now, what the new order promised to give and guarantee
everybody was precisely this absolute independence and security of
livelihood. And yet it was argued that the arrangement would be
objectionable, as tending to discourage independence of character. It
seems to us that if there is any one particular in which the influence
upon humanity of economic equality has been more beneficent than any
other, it has been the effect which security of economic position has had
to make every one absolute lord of himself and answerable for his
opinions, speech, and conduct to his own conscience only.
"That is perhaps enough to say in answer to an objection which, as I
remarked, really confutes itself, but the monumental audacity of the
defenders of private capitalism in arguing that any other possible system
could be more unfavorable than itself to human dignity and independence
tempts a little comment, especially as this is an aspect of the old order
on which I do not remember that we have had much talk. As it seems to us,
perhaps the most offensive feature of private capitalism, if one may
select among so many offensive features, was its effect to make cowardly,
time-serving, abject creatures of human beings, as a consequence of the
dependence for a living, of pretty nearly everybody upon some individual
or group.
"Let us just glance at the spectacle which the old order presented in
this respect. Take the women in the first place, half the human race.
Because they stood almost universally in a relation of economic
dependence, first upon men in general and next upon some man in
particular, they were all their lives in a state of subjection both to
the personal dictation of some individual man, and to a set of irksome
and mind-benumbing conventions representing traditional standards of
opinion as to their proper conduct fixed in accordance with the masculine
sentiment. But if the women had no independence at all, the men were not
so very much better off. Of the masculine half of the world, the greater
part were hirelings dependent for their living upon the favor of
employers and having the most direct interest to conform so far as
possible in opinions and conduct to the prejudices of their masters, and,
when they could not conform, to be silent. Look at your secret ballot
laws. You thought them absolutely necessary in order to enable workingmen
to vote freely. What a confession is that fact of the universal
intimidation of the employed by the employer! Next there were the
business men, who held themselves above the workingmen. I mean the
tradesmen, who sought a living by persuading the people to buy of them.
But here our quest of independence is even more hopeless than among the
workingmen, for, in order to be successful in attracting the custom of
those whom they cringingly styled their patrons, it was necessary for the
merchant to be all things to all men, and to make an art of
obsequiousness.
"Let us look yet higher. We may surely expect to find independence of
thought and speech among the learned classes in the so-called liberal
professions if nowhere else. Let us see how our inquiry fares there. Take
the clerical profession first--that of the religious ministers and
teachers. We find that they were economic servants and hirelings either
of hierarchies or congregations, and paid to voice the opinions of their
employers and no others. Every word that dropped from their lips was
carefully weighed lest it should indicate a trace of independent
thinking, and if it were found, the clergyman risked his living. Take the
higher branches of secular teaching in the colleges and professions.
There seems to have been some freedom allowed in teaching the dead
languages; but let the instructor take up some living issue and handle it
in a manner inconsistent with the capitalist interest, and you know well
enough what became of him. Finally, take the editorial profession, the
writers for the press, who on the whole represented the most influential
branch of the learned class. The great nineteenth-century newspaper was a
capitalistic enterprise as purely commercial in its principle as a woolen
factory, and the editors were no more allowed to write their own opinions
than the weavers to choose the patterns they wove. They were employed to
advocate the opinions and interests of the capitalists owning the paper
and no others. The only respect in which the journalists seem to have
differed from the clergy was in the fact that the creeds which the latter
were employed to preach were more or less fixed traditions, while those
which the editors must preach changed with the ownership of the paper.
This, Julian, is the truly exhilarating spectacle of abounding and
unfettered originality, of sturdy moral and intellectual independence and
rugged individuality, which it was feared by your contemporaries might be
endangered by any change in the economic system. We may agree with them
that it would have been indeed a pity if any influence should operate to
make independence any rarer than it was, but they need not have been
apprehensive; it could not be."
"Judging from these examples of the sort of argumentative opposition
which the revolutionists had to meet," I observed, "it strikes me that
they must have had a mighty easy time of it."
"So far as rational argument was concerned," replied the doctor, "no
great revolutionary movement ever had to contend with so little
opposition. The cause of the capitalists was so utterly bad, either from
the point of view of ethics, politics, or economic science, that there
was literally nothing that could be said for it that could not be turned
against it with greater effect. Silence was the only safe policy for the
capitalists, and they would have been glad enough to follow it if the
people had not insisted that they should make some sort of a plea to the
indictment against them. But because the argumentative opposition which
the revolutionists had to meet was contemptible in quality, it did not
follow that their work was an easy one. Their real task--and it was one
for giants--was not to dispose of the arguments against their cause, but
to overcome the moral and intellectual inertia of the masses and rouse
them to do just a little clear thinking for themselves.
POLITICAL CORRUPTION AS AN OBJECTION TO NATIONALIZING INDUSTRY.
"The next objection--there are only two or three more worth
mentioning--is directed not so much against economic equality in itself
as against the fitness of the machinery by which the new industrial
system was to be carried on. The extension of popular government over
industry and commerce involved of course the substitution of public and
political administration on a large scale for the previous irresponsible
control of private capitalists. Now, as I need not tell you, the
Government of the United States--municipal, State, and national--in the
last third of the nineteenth century had become very corrupt. It was
argued that to intrust any additional functions to governments so corrupt
would be nothing short of madness."
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "that is perhaps the rational objection we have been
waiting for. I am sure it is one that would have weighed heavily with me,
for the corruption of our governmental system smelled to heaven."
"There is no doubt," said the doctor, "that there was a great deal of
political corruption and that it was a very bad thing, but we must look a
little deeper than these objectors did to see the true bearing of this
fact on the propriety of nationalizing industry.
"An instance of political corruption was one where the public servant
abused his trust by using the administration under his control for
purposes of private gain instead of solely for the public interest--that
is to say, he managed his public trust just as if it were his private
business and tried to make a profit out of it. A great outcry was made,
and very properly, when any such conduct was suspected; and therefore the
corrupt officers operated under great difficulties, and were in constant
danger of detection and punishment. Consequently, even in the worst
governments of your period the mass of business was honestly conducted,
as it professed to be, in the public interest, comparatively few and
occasional transactions being affected by corrupt influences.
"On the other hand, what were the theory and practice pursued by the
capitalists in carrying on the economic machinery which were under their
control? They did not profess to act in the public interest or to have
any regard for it. The avowed object of their whole policy was so to use
the machinery of their position as to make the greatest personal gains
possible for themselves out of the community. That is to say, the use of
his control of the public machinery for his personal gain--which on the
part of the public official was denounced and punished as a crime, and
for the greater part prevented by public vigilance--was the avowed policy
of the capitalist. It was the pride of the public official that he left
office as poor as when he entered it, but it was the boast of the
capitalist that he made a fortune out of the opportunities of his
position. In the case of the capitalist these gains were not called
corrupt, as they were when made by public officials in the discharge of
public business. They were called profits, and regarded as legitimate;
but the practical point to consider as to the results of the two systems
was that these profits cost the people they came out of just as much as
if they had been called political plunder.
"And yet these wise men in Kenloe's collection taught the people, and
somebody must have listened to them, that because in some instances
public officials succeeded in spite of all precautions in using the
public administration for their own gain, it would not be safe to put any
more public interests under public administration, but would be safer to
leave them to private capitalists, who frankly proposed as their regular
policy just what the public officials were punished whenever caught
doing--namely, taking advantage of the opportunities of their position to
enrich themselves at public expense. It was precisely as if the owner of
an estate, finding it difficult to secure stewards who were perfectly
faithful, should be counseled to protect himself by putting his affairs
in the hands of professional thieves."
"You mean," I said, "that political corruption merely meant the
occasional application to the public administration of the profit-seeking
principle on which all private business was conducted."
"Certainly. A case of corruption in office was simply a case where the
public official forgot his oath and for the occasion took a businesslike
view of the opportunities of his position--that is to say, when the
public official fell from grace he only fell to the normal level on which
all private business was admittedly conducted. It is simply astonishing,
Julian, how completely your contemporaries overlooked this obvious fact.
Of course, it was highly proper that they should be extremely critical of
the conduct of their public officials; but it is unaccountable that they
should fail to see that the profits of private capitalists came out of
the community's pockets just as certainly as did the stealings of
dishonest officials, and that even in the most corrupt public departments
the stealings represented a far less percentage than would have been
taken as profits if the same business were done for the public by
capitalists.
"So much for the precious argument that, because some officials sometimes
took profits of the people, it would be more economical to leave their
business in the hands of those who would systematically do so! But, of
course, although the public conduct of business, even if it were marked
with a certain amount of corruption, would still be more economical
for the community than leaving it under the profit system, yet no
self-respecting community would wish to tolerate any public corruption at
all, and need not, if only the people would exercise vigilance. Now, what
will compel the people to exercise vigilance as to the public
administration? The closeness with which we follow the course of an agent
depends on the importance of the interests put in his hands. Corruption
has always thrived in political departments in which the mass of the
people have felt little direct concern. Place under public administration
vital concerns of the community touching their welfare daily at many
points, and there will be no further lack of vigilance. Had they been
wiser, the people who objected to the governmental assumption of new
economic functions on account of existing political corruption would have
advocated precisely that policy as the specific cure for the evil.
"A reason why these objectors seem to have been especially short-sighted
is the fact that by all odds the most serious form which political
corruption took in America at that day was the bribery of legislators by
private capitalists and corporations in order to obtain franchises and
privileges. In comparison with this abuse, peculation or bribery of crude
direct sorts were of little extent or importance. Now, the immediate and
express effect of the governmental assumption of economic businesses
would be, so far as it went, to dry up this source of corruption, for it
was precisely this class of capitalist undertakings which the
revolutionists proposed first to bring under public control.
"Of course, this objection was directed only against the new order while
in process of introduction. With its complete establishment the very
possibility of corruption, would disappear with the law of absolute
uniformity governing all incomes.
"Worse and worse," I exclaimed. "What is the use of going further?"
"Patience," said the doctor. "Let us complete the subject while we are on
it. There are only a couple more of the objections that have shape enough
to admit of being stated."
OBJECTION THAT A NATIONALIZED INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM WOULD THREATEN LIBERTY.
"The first of them," pursued the doctor, "was the argument that such an
extension of the functions of public administration as nationalized
industries involved would lodge a power in the hands of the Government,
even though it were the people's own government, that would be dangerous
to their liberties.
"All the plausibility there was to this objection rested on the tacit
assumption that the people in their industrial relations had under
private capitalism been free and unconstrained and subject to no form of
authority. But what assumption could have been more regardless of facts
than this? Under private capitalism the entire scheme of industry and
commerce, involving the employment and livelihood of everybody, was
subject to the despotic and irresponsible government of private masters.
The very demand for nationalizing industry has resulted wholly from the
sufferings of the people under the yoke of the capitalists.
"In 1776 the Americans overthrew the British royal government in the
colonies and established their own in its place. Suppose at that time the
king had sent an embassy to warn the American people that by assuming
these new functions of government which formerly had been performed for
them by him they were endangering their liberty. Such an embassy would,
of course, have been laughed at. If any reply had been thought needful,
it would have been pointed out that the Americans were not establishing
over themselves any new government, but were substituting a government of
their own, acting in their own interests, for the government of others
conducted in an indifferent or hostile interest. Now, that was precisely
what nationalizing industry meant. The question was, Given the necessity
of some sort of regulation and direction of the industrial system,
whether it would tend more to liberty for the people to leave that power
to irresponsible persons with hostile interests, or to exercise it
themselves through responsible agents? Could there conceivably be but one
answer to that question?
"And yet it seems that a noted philosopher of the period, in a tract
which has come down to us, undertook to demonstrate that if the people
perfected the democratic system by assuming control of industry in the
public interest, they would presently fall into a state of slavery which
would cause them to sigh for the days of Nero and Caligula. I wish we had
that philosopher here, that we might ask him how, in accordance with any
observed laws of human nature, slavery was going to come about as the
result of a system aiming to establish and perpetuate a more perfect
degree of equality, intellectual as well as material, than had ever been
known. Did he fancy that the people would deliberately and maliciously
impose a yoke upon themselves, or did he apprehend that some usurper
would get hold of the social machinery and use it to reduce the people to
servitude? But what usurper from the beginning ever essayed a task so
hopeless as the subversion of a state in which there were no classes or
interests to set against one another, a state in which there was no
aristocracy and no populace, a state the stability of which represented
the equal and entire stake in life of every human being in it? Truly it
would seem that people who conceived the subversion of such a republic
possible ought to have lost no time in chaining down the Pyramids, lest
they, too, defying ordinary laws of Nature, should incontinently turn
upon their tops.
"But let us leave the dead to bury their dead, and consider how the
nationalization of industry actually did affect the bearing of government
upon the people. If the amount of governmental machinery--that is, the
amount of regulating, controlling, assigning, and directing under the
public management of industry--had continued to be just the same it was
under the private administration of the capitalists, the fact that it was
now the people's government, managing everything in the people's interest
under responsibility to the people, instead of an irresponsible tyranny
seeking its own interest, would of course make an absolute difference in
the whole character and effect of the system and make it vastly more
tolerable. But not merely did the nationalization of industry give a
wholly new character and purpose to the economic administration, but it
also greatly diminished the net amount of governing necessary to carry it
on. This resulted naturally from the unity of system with the consequent
co-ordination and interworking of all the parts which took the place of
the former thousand-headed management following as many different and
conflicting lines of interest, each a law to itself. To the workers the
difference was as if they had passed out from under the capricious
personal domination of innumerable petty despots to a government of laws
and principles so simple and systematic that the sense of being subject
to personal authority was gone.
"But to fully realize how strongly this argument of too much government
directed against the system of nationalized industry partook of the
boomerang quality of the previous objections, we must look on to the
later effects which the social justice of the new order would naturally
have to render superfluous well-nigh the whole machinery of government as
previously conducted. The main, often almost sole, business of
governments in your day was the protection of property and person against
criminals, a system involving a vast amount of interference with the
innocent. This function of the state has now become almost obsolete.
There are no more any disputes about property, any thefts of property, or
any need of protecting property. Everybody has all he needs and as much
as anybody else. In former ages a great number of crimes have resulted
from the passions of love and jealousy. They were consequences of the
idea derived from immemorial barbarism that men and women might acquire
sexual proprietorship in one another, to be maintained and asserted
against the will of the person. Such crimes ceased to be known after the
first generation had grown up under the absolute sexual autonomy and
independence which followed from economic equality. There being no lower
classes now which upper classes feel it their duty to bring up in the way
they should go, in spite of themselves, all sorts of attempts to regulate
personal behavior in self-regarding matters by sumptuary legislation have
long ago ceased. A government in the sense of a coordinating directory of
our associated industries we shall always need, but that is practically
all the government we have now. It used to be a dream of philosophers
that the world would some time enjoy such a reign of reason and justice
that men would be able to live together without laws. That condition, so
far as concerns punitive and coercive regulations, we have practically
attained. As to compulsory laws, we might be said to live almost in a
state of anarchy.
"There is, as I explained to you in the Labor Exchange the other morning,
no compulsion, in the end, even as to the performance of the universal
duty of public service. We only insist that those who finally refuse to
do their part toward maintaining the social welfare shall not be
partakers of it, but shall resort by themselves and provide for
themselves.
THE MALTHUSIAN OBJECTION.
"And now we come to the last objection on my list. It is entirely
different in character from any of the others. It does not deny that
economic equality would be practicable or desirable, or assert that the
machinery would work badly. It admits that the system would prove a
triumphant success in raising human welfare to an unprecedented point and
making the world an incomparably more agreeable place to live in. It was
indeed the conceded success of the plan which was made the basis of this
objection to it."
"That must be a curious sort of objection," I said. "Let us hear about
it."
"The objectors put it in this way: 'Let us suppose,' they said, 'that
poverty and all the baneful influences upon life and health that follow
in its train are abolished and all live out their natural span of life.
Everybody being assured of maintenance for self and children, no motive
of prudence would be operative to restrict the number of offspring. Other
things being equal, these conditions would mean a much faster increase of
population than ever before known, and ultimately an overcrowding of the
earth and a pressure on the food supply, unless indeed we suppose new and
indefinite food sources to be found?'"
"I do not see why it might not be reasonable to anticipate such a
result," I observed, "other things being equal."
"Other things being equal," replied the doctor, "such a result might be
anticipated. But other things would not be equal, but so different that
their influence could be depended on to prevent any such result."
"What are the other things that would not be equal?"
"Well, the first would be the diffusion of education, culture, and
general refinement. Tell me, were the families of the well-to-do and
cultured class in the America of your day, as a whole, large?"
"Quite the contrary. They did not, as a rule, more than replace
themselves."
"Still, they were not prevented by any motive of prudence from increasing
their numbers. They occupied in this respect as independent a position as
families do under the present order of economic equality and guaranteed
maintenance. Did it never occur to you why the families of the well-to-do
and cultured in your day were not larger?"
"Doubtless," I said, "it was on account of the fact that in proportion as
culture and refinement opened intellectual and aesthetic fields of
interest, the impulses of crude animalism played less important parts in
life. Then, too, in proportion as families were refined the woman ceased
to be the mere sexual slave of the husband, and her wishes as to such
matters were considered."
"Quite so. The reflection you have suggested is enough to indicate the
fallacy of the whole Malthusian theory of the increase of population on
which this objection to better social conditions was founded. Malthus, as
you know, held that population tended to increase faster than means of
subsistence, and therefore that poverty and the tremendous wastes of life
it stood for were absolutely necessary in order to prevent the world from
starving to death by overcrowding. Of course, this doctrine was
enormously popular with the rich and learned class, who were responsible
for the world's misery. They naturally were delighted to be assured that
their indifference to the woes of the poor, and even their positive
agency in multiplying those woes, were providentially overruled for good,
so as to be really rather praiseworthy than otherwise. The Malthus
doctrine also was very convenient as a means of turning the tables on
reformers who proposed to abolish poverty by proving that, instead of
benefiting mankind, their reforms would only make matters worse in the
end by overcrowding the earth and starving everybody. By means of the
Malthus doctrine, the meanest man who ever ground the face of the poor
had no difficulty in showing that he was really a slightly disguised
benefactor of the race, while the philanthropist was an injurious fellow.
"This prodigious convenience of Malthusianism has an excuse for things as
they were, furnishes the explanation for the otherwise incomprehensible
vogue of so absurd a theory. That absurdity consists in the fact that,
while laying such stress on the direct effects of poverty and all the
ills it stands for to destroy life, it utterly failed to allow for the
far greater influence which the brutalizing circumstances of poverty
exerted to promote the reckless multiplication of the species. Poverty,
with all its deadly consequences, slew its millions, but only after
having, by means of its brutalizing conditions, promoted the reckless
reproduction of tens of millions--that is to say, the Malthus doctrine
recognized only the secondary effects of misery and degradation in
reducing population, and wholly overlooked their far more important
primary effect in multiplying it. That was its fatal fallacy.
"It was a fallacy the more inexcusable because Malthus and all his
followers were surrounded by a society the conditions of which absolutely
refuted their theory. They had only to open then eyes to see that
wherever the poverty and squalor chiefly abounded, which they vaunted as
such valuable checks to population, humankind multiplied like rabbits,
while in proportion as the economic level of a class was raised its
proliferousness declined. What corollary from this fact of universal
observation could be more obvious than that the way to prevent reckless
overpopulation was to raise, not to depress, the economic status of the
mass, with all the general improvement in well-being which that implied?
How long do you suppose such an absurdly fundamental fallacy as underlay
the Malthus theory would have remained unexposed if Malthus had been a
revolutionist instead of a champion and defender of capitalism?
"But let Malthus go. While the low birth-rate among the cultured
classes--whose condition was the prototype of the general condition under
economic equality--was refutation enough of the overpopulation objection,
yet there is another and far more conclusive answer, the full force of
which remains to be brought out. You said a few moments ago that one
reason why the birth-rate was so moderate among the cultured classes was
the fact that in that class the wishes of women were more considered than
in the lower classes. The necessary effect of economic equality between
the sexes would mean, however, that, instead of being more or less
considered, the wishes of women in all matters touching the subject we
are discussing would be final and absolute. Previous to the establishment
of economic equality by the great Revolution the non-child-bearing sex
was the sex which determined the question of child-bearing, and the
natural consequence was the possibility of a Malthus and his doctrine.
Nature has provided in the distress and inconvenience of the maternal
function a sufficient check upon its abuse, just as she has in regard to
all the other natural functions. But, in order that Nature's check should
be properly operative, it is necessary that the women through whose wills
it must operate, if at all, should be absolutely free agents in the
disposition of themselves, and the necessary condition of that free
agency is economic independence. That secured, while we may be sure that
the maternal instinct will forever prevent the race from dying out, the
world will be equally little in danger of being recklessly overcrowded."
THE END.