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Title: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

Author: William Graham Sumner

Release date: June 16, 2006 [eBook #18603]

Language: English

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Transcriber's Note:

The original from which this text is transcribed
uses an unusual capitalization style which has
been faithfully reproduced.
Obvious typographical errors have been
corrected in this text.
For a complete list, please see the bottom of
this document.
With no copyright notice, the 1951 intro falls
under Rule 5, and is therefore public domain.

WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES
OWE TO EACH OTHER

By

William Graham Sumner

First published by Harper & Brothers, 1883

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
Foreword 5
Introduction 6
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" 25
III. That it is Not Wicked to be Rich: Nay,
Even, That It Is Not Wicked to be Richer
than One's Neighbor 38
IV. On the Reasons Why Man Is Not
Altogether a Brute 51

V. That We Must Have Few Men, if We Want
Strong Men 63
VI. That He Who Would be Well Taken Care
of Must Take Care of Himself 71
VII. Concerning Some Old Foes under New
Faces 88
VIII. On the Value, as a Sociological Principle,
of the Rule To Mind One's Own Business 97
IX. On the Case of a Certain Man Who is
Never Thought of 107
X. The Case of the Forgotten Man Farther
Considered 116
XI. Wherefore We Should Love One Another 132

FOREWORD

Written more than fifty years ago—in 1883—What Social Classes Owe
to Each Other is even more pertinent today than at the time of its first
publication. Then the arguments and "movements" for penalizing the thrifty,
energetic, and competent by placing upon them more and more of the
burdens of the thriftless, lazy and incompetent, were just beginning to make
headway in our country, wherein these "social reforms" now all but
dominate political and so-called "social" thinking.
Among the great nations of the world today, only the United States of
America champions the rights of the individual as against the state and
organized pressure groups, and our faith has been dangerously weakened—
watered down by a blind and essentially false and cruel sentimentalism.

In "Social Classes" Sumner defined and emphasized the basically
important role in our social and economic development played by "The
Forgotten Man." The misappropriation of this title and its application to a
character the exact opposite of the one for whom Sumner invented the
phrase is, unfortunately, but typical of the perversion of words and phrases
indulged in by our present-day "liberals" in their attempt to further their
revolution by diverting the loyalties of individualists to collectivist theories
and beliefs.
How often have you said: "If only someone had the vision to see and the
courage and ability to state the truth about these false theories which today
are attracting our youth and confusing well-meaning people everywhere!"
Well, here is the answer to your prayer—the everlasting truth upon the
greatest of issues in social science stated for you by the master of them all
in this field. If this edition calls this great work to the attention of any of
you for the first time, that alone will amply justify its republication. To
those of you who have read it before, we commend it anew as the most up-
to-date and best discussion you can find anywhere of the most important
questions of these critical days.
—William C. Mullendore
Los Angeles, California
November 15, 1951

WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH
OTHER
INTRODUCTIONToC

We are told every day that great social problems stand before us and
demand a solution, 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 rôle as the heralds of the coming duty and the coming woe. They
assume to speak for a large, but vague and undefined, constituency, who set
the task, exact a fulfillment, 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 problem. 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 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 question forms itself with more and more distinctness in my mind:
Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other people and to
demand 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?
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 problems,
they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich,
comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those
whose right it 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 the latter be made as comfortable as the former? To solve this
problem, and make us all equally well off, is assumed to be the duty of the

former class; the penalty, if they fail of this, is to be bloodshed and
destruction. If they cannot make everybody else as well off as themselves,
they are to be brought 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 tutelary 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 Bismarck 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 abstraction, the State is to
me only All-of-us. In practice—that is, when it exercises will or adopts a
line of action—it is only a little group of men chosen in a very haphazard
way by the majority of us to perform certain services for all of us. The
majority do not go about their selection very rationally, and they are almost
always disappointed by the results of their own operation. Hence "the
State," instead of offering resources of wisdom, right reason, 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 bureau, 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 which no positive and sweeping
theoretical objection could be made from the side of economic science; but
statesmen never can acquire the requisite knowledge and wisdom.—To me
this seems a mere waste of words. The inadequacy of the State to regulative

tasks is agreed upon, as a matter of fact, by all. Why, then, bring State
regulation into the discussion simply in order to throw it out again? The
whole subject ought to be discussed 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 State means power-to-do it means All-of-us, as brute force or as
industrial force.
If anybody is to benefit from the action of the State it must be Some-of-
us. If, then, the question is raised, What ought the State to do for labor, for
trade, for manufactures, for 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 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 cancelled out of All-of-us. Then
the question which remains is, What ought Some-of-us to do for Others-of-
us? or, What do social classes owe to each other?
I 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 problems for the satisfaction of any other
class; also, whether there is any class which has the right to formulate
demands on "society"—that is, on other classes; also, whether there is
anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the notion that "the State" owes
anything to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantees of rights.
I have in view, throughout the discussion, the economic, social, and
political circumstances which exist in the United States.

I.ToC

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

It is commonly asserted that there are in the United 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 misfortunes of certain social classes; and all public speaking and
writing consists, in a large measure, 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
not. Sometimes they do not know that anything is amiss with them until the
"friends of humanity" come to them with offers of aid. Sometimes they are
discontented and envious. They do not take 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 and Nature would, of
course, be only to say that we claim a right to live on earth if we can. But
God and Nature have ordained the chances and conditions of life on earth
once for all. The case cannot be reopened. 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 Nature, and
deducing the rules of right living in the world as it is. These are very
wearisome and commonplace tasks. They consist in labor and self-denial
repeated over and over again in learning and doing. When the people whose
claims we are considering are told to apply themselves to these tasks they
become irritated and feel almost insulted. They formulate their claims as
rights against society—that is, against some other men. In their view they
have 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 grievances, 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. For a man who
can command another man's labor and self-denial for the support of his 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 all. On
the other hand, a man whose labor and self-denial may be diverted 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 contradiction, that
there are classes and that there are not classes, will produce repeated
confusion and absurdity. We shall find that, in our efforts to eliminate the
old vices of class government, we are impeded and defeated by new
products of the worst class theory. We shall find that all the schemes for
producing equality 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 another 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 classes." 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 charitable sound and a kind-hearted tone generally 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 doctrine in regard to
social classes that "the rich" ought to "care for the poor"; that 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 perform its duties to another; and that clergymen,

economists, and social philosophers have a technical and professional duty
to devise schemes for "helping the poor." The preaching 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 consists in injunctions to those who have taken care of themselves
to perform their assumed duty to take care of others. Whatever may be one's
private sentiments, the fear of appearing cold and hard-hearted causes these
conventional theories of social duty and these assumptions 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 human life. They are natural. They
are part of the struggle with Nature for existence. We cannot blame our
fellow-men for our share of these. My neighbor and I are both struggling to
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 malice of men, and to the imperfections or errors of civil
institutions. These ills are an object of agitation, and a subject for
discussion. The former class of ills is to be met only by manly effort and
energy; the latter may be corrected by associated effort. The 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 second class of
ills may fall on certain social classes, and reform will take the form of
interference by other classes in favor of that one. The last fact is, no doubt,
the reason why people have been led, not noticing distinctions, to believe
that the same method was applicable to the other class of ills. The
distinction here made between the ills which belong to the struggle for
existence and those which are due to the faults of human institutions 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 to the political
significance of assumed duties of one class to 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 between the parties. In the former

case we might assume that the givers of aid were willing 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
unwillingly. Here, then, there would be a question of rights. The question
whether voluntary charity 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
questions to become entangled in the discussion. Especially we shall need
to notice the attempts to apply legislative methods of reform to the ills
which belong to the order of Nature.
There is no possible definition of "a poor man." A pauper is a person who
cannot earn his living; whose producing powers have fallen positively
below his necessary consumption; who cannot, therefore, pay his way. A
human society needs the active co-operation and productive energy of every
person in it. A man who is present as a consumer, yet who does 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 workers and
producers. Society must support him. It accepts the burden, but he must be
cancelled 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
humanitarians and philanthropists call the weak are the ones through whom
the productive and conservative forces of society are wasted. 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. Whether the people who mean no harm, but are
weak in the essential powers necessary to the performance of one's duties in
life, or those who are malicious and vicious, do the more mischief, 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 reformers, looking at the facts of
life as they 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 inequality 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 gloss over all the faults
of the classes in question, and they exaggerate their misfortunes and their
virtues. They invent new theories of property, distorting rights and
perpetuating injustice, as anyone is sure to do who sets about the
readjustment of social relations with the interests of one group distinctly
before 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
property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and
that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The man
who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these
discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to raise
himself above poverty finds that the social doctors flock about him,
bringing 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 work
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 arrangements. 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 of A, B, and D we can
better appreciate the 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 the theories
of 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 support you.
No doubt one chief reason for the unclear and contradictory theories of
class relations lies in the fact that our society, largely controlled 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 associations, ranks, guilds,
and communities of various kinds. These ties endured as long as life lasted.
Consequently society was dependent, throughout all its details, on status,
and the tie, or bond, was sentimental. In our modern state, and in the United
States more than anywhere else, the social structure is based on contract,
and status is of the least importance. Contract, however, is rational—even
rationalistic. It is also realistic, cold, and matter-of-fact. A contract relation
is based on a sufficient 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 affairs.
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
estimates. 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 troubles us in our social discussions arises from the fact
that men do not distinguish the elements of status and of contract which
may be found in our society.
Whether social philosophers think it desirable or not, it is out of the
question to go back to status or to the sentimental relations which once

united baron and retainer, master and servant, teacher and pupil, comrade
and comrade. That we have lost some grace and elegance is undeniable.
That life once held more poetry and romance is true enough. But 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 backward. The feudal ties can never be restored. If they could
be restored they would bring back personal caprice, favoritism, sycophancy,
and intrigue. A society based on contract is a society of free and
independent men, who form ties without favor or obligation, and co-operate
without cringing or intrigue. A society based on contract, therefore, gives
the utmost room and chance for individual development, and for all the self-
reliance and dignity of a free man. 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. It
follows, however, that one man, in a free state, cannot claim help from, and
cannot be charged to give help to, another. To understand the full meaning
of this assertion it will be worth while to see what a free democracy is.

II.ToC

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 questions of
detail.
In order, however, that they may be so employed successfully and
correctly it is essential that the terms should be correctly defined, and that
their popular use should conform to correct definitions. No doubt it is
generally believed that the terms are easily understood, and present no
difficulty. Probably the popular notion is, that liberty means doing as one
has a mind to, and that it is a metaphysical or sentimental good. A little
observation 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 President, 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 determines to realize
some sort of liberty of this kind accomplishes his purpose only by
sacrificing most of the rights and turning his back on most of the duties of a
civilized man, while filching as much as he can of the advantages of living
in a civilized state. Moreover, liberty is not a metaphysical or sentimental
thing at all. It is positive, practical, and actual. It is produced and
maintained by law and institutions, and is, therefore, concrete and
historical. Sometimes we speak distinctively of civil liberty; but if there be
any liberty other than civil liberty—that is, liberty under law—it is a mere
fiction of the schoolmen, which they may be left to discuss.
Even as I write, however, I find in a leading review the following
definition of liberty: Civil liberty is "the result of the restraint exercised by
the sovereign people on the more powerful individuals and classes of the
community, preventing them from availing themselves of the excess of their
power to the detriment of the other classes." This definition lays the
foundation for the result which it is apparently desired to reach, that "a
government 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 distinctly formulated.
In the definition of liberty it will be noticed that liberty is construed as the
act of the sovereign people against somebody who must, of course, be

differentiated 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 dogmas which contain the word "people" are
construed under the limited definition of "people," 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 others. Autocracies, aristocracies,
theocracies, 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,
millionaires, 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, democracies, and ochlocracies, all alike. The only thing which
has ever restrained these vices of human nature in those who had political
power is law sustained by impersonal institutions. If political power be
given to the masses who have not hitherto had it, nothing will stop them
from abusing it but laws and institutions. To say that a popular government
cannot be paternal is to give it a charter that it can do no wrong. The trouble
is that a democratic government is in greater danger than any other of
becoming paternal, for it is sure of itself, and ready to undertake anything,
and its power is excessive and pitiless against dissentients.
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 of
nobles has been developed, who have broken into the oligarchy and made
an aristocracy. Later the demos, rising into an independent development,
has assumed power and made a democracy. Then the mob of a capital city
has overwhelmed the democracy in an ochlocracy. Then the "idol of the
people," 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 delusive round; to set
barriers to selfishness, cupidity, envy, and lust, in all classes, from highest
to lowest, by laws and institutions; and to create great organs of civil life
which can eliminate, as far as possible, arbitrary and personal elements
from the adjustment of interests and the definition of rights. Liberty is an
affair 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 modern. It has been developed with
the development of the middle class, and with the growth of a commercial
and industrial civilization. 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 commercial development of that
country. It has been inherited by all the English-speaking nations, who have
made liberty real because 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 state of the European continent so fast as they have felt the influence
of the expanding industrial civilization; but they have realized it only
imperfectly, because they have no body of local institutions or traditions,
and it remains for them as yet too much a matter of "declarations" and
pronunciamentos.
The notion of civil liberty which we have inherited is that of a status
created for the individual 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 impaired for major considerations.
Any one who so argues has lost the bearing and relation 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 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 themselves. Jealousy
and prejudice against all such interferences are high political virtues in a
free man. 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 under which
the pursuit of happiness is carried 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 ulterior 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 whenever there are
privileged classes—that is, classes 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
unquestionably the doctrine which needs to be reiterated and inculcated
beyond all others, if the democracy is to be made sound and permanent. Our
orators and writers never speak of it, and do not seem often to know
anything about it; but the real danger of democracy is, that the classes
which have the power under it will assume all the rights and reject all the
duties—that is, that they will use the political power to plunder those-who-
have. Democracy, 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 entertain
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 periodical literature to see the danger that
democracy will be construed as a system of favoring a new privileged class
of the many and the poor.
Holding in mind, now, the notions of liberty and democracy as we have
defined them, we see that it is not altogether a matter of fanfaronade when
the American citizen calls 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 division 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 reduced 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
gratification 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
responsibilities 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 sovereigns will not
respect his independence if he becomes dependent, and they cannot respect
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 expected to take care of
himself and his family, to make no trouble for his neighbor, and to
contribute his full share to public interests and common necessities. If he
fails in this he throws burdens on others. He does not thereby acquire rights
against the others. On the contrary, he only accumulates obligations toward
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 petted person-
emancipated from duties, endowed with claims. This is the inevitable result
of combining democratic political theories 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 plutocracy; 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 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 immoral and vicious. When a community establishes
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 burdens
which we all have to bear in order to support 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
responsibility. The State gives equal rights and equal chances just because it
does not mean to give anything else. It sets each man on his feet, and gives
him leave to run, just because it does not mean to carry him. Having

obtained his chances, he must take upon himself the responsibility for his
own success or failure. It is a pure misfortune to the community, 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.

III.ToC

THAT IT IS NOT 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. Alongside 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 become, 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 represent a great deal of crude thinking and declaiming
which is in fashion. I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense
who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of
economy and the practice of accumulation. A good father believes that he
does wisely to encourage enterprise, productive skill, prudent self-denial,
and judicious expenditure on the part of his son. The object 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 "capital"; and if, with the
ingenuousness of youth, he should take these productions at their literal
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 practical purposes, we
ought to define the point nearer than between one and five millions of
dollars.
There is an old ecclesiastical prejudice in favor of the poor and against
the rich. In days when men acted by ecclesiastical rules 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: they 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 good
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 dangerous 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
denounced by writers and speakers who have never taken the trouble to find
out what capital is, and who use the word in two or three different senses in
as many pages. Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined
effort for a common object, but to indulge 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 retained only a
residuum of religious sentimentalism, find a special field in the discussion
of the rights of the poor and the duties of the rich. We have denunciations of
banks, corporations, and monopolies, which denunciations encourage only
helpless rage and animosity, because they are not controlled by any
definitions or limitations, or by any distinctions 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 monopolies, 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 transportation, when they mean that he cannot make any profits
because his farm is too far from the market, and who denounce the railroad
because it does not correct for the farmer, at the expense of its stockholders,
the disadvantage which lies in the physical situation of the farm! Think of
that construction of this situation which attributes all the trouble to the
greed of "moneyed corporations!" 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
themselves to new forms of business, and constantly devise new methods of
fraud and robbery, just as burglars devise new artifices to circumvent 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 legitimate 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 companies in the same way, and for
similar reasons.
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
invoked 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 numberless efforts in his behalf? When,
rather, were 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 increment 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 fortunate that any class of
mortals ever has enjoyed; but the present moment, when the rent of
agricultural land in England is declining under the competition of American
land, is not well chosen for attacking the old advantage. 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, industrious, and prosperous society. A
tax on land and a succession or probate duty on capital 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 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 services, and he also shares in the enjoyment of
all that accumulated capital of a wealthy community 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 struggle for
existence, and the man who tries to earn a living by the subjugation of raw
land makes that attempt under the most unfavorable 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 today 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
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, because in this way
we all get more than we would if each one owned some land and used it
directly. Supply and demand now determine 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 profits 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 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 all men; but it is held that Egyptians,
Nicaraguans, or Indians have such right to the territory 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. Anyone who believes that any great
enterprise of an industrial character can be started without labor must have
little experience of life. Let anyone 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 necessary. Especially in a new country, where
many tasks are waiting, where resources are strained to the utmost all the
time, the judgment, courage, and perseverance required to organize new
enterprizes 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 ability to organize and
conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare; the great

captains of industry are as rare as great generals. 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 died, he left no competent
successor, the business must break up, and pass into new organization in the
hands of other men. Some have said 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 together, 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 benefit of
all; but he contributed to it what no one else was able to contribute—the
one guiding mind which made the whole thing possible. In no sense
whatever does a man who accumulates a fortune by legitimate industry
exploit his employés, 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 generals in war. A great deal is said, in the cant 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 fellow-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
indispensable. 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 speaking, aggregated capital will be more and
more essential to the performance of our social tasks. Furthermore, it seems
to me certain 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
responsibility. The great hindrance to the development of this continent has
lain in the lack of capital. The capital which we have had has been wasted
by division and dissipation, and by injudicious applications. The waste of
capital, in proportion to the total capital, in this country between 1800 and
1850, in the attempts which were made to establish means of
communication 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 development of the country pushed forward at an
unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic
application of it under the direction of competent men. This development
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 absence of such laws, capital inherited by a spendthrift will be
squandered and re-accumulated 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.

IV.ToC

ON THE REASONS WHY MAN IS NOT ALTOGETHER A BRUTE.

The Arabs have a story of a man who desired 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 present. The three sons met in a distant city,
and compared the gifts they had found. The first had a carpet on which he
could transport himself 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
administered 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
capital is most essential to production. No production is possible without
the co-operation of all three.
We know that men once lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth, just
as other animals 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 make 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 capital; he lived out of his product, and production had only
the two elements of land and labor of appropriation. At the present time
man is an intelligent animal. He knows something of the laws of Nature; he
can avail himself 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 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 understand 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 capital, 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 everything 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 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
civilization than that was so like the brutes that, like them, he could leave
no sign of his presence 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. He 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 increase. 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 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 today because, from
the flint-knife up, one achievement 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 accumulated, 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 development of capital. Nothing has ever made men spread over the
earth and develop the arts but necessity—that is, the need of getting a
living, 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 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 population has succumbed
and sunk, instead of developing energy enough for a new advance, there
races have degenerated and settled into permanent 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 horrible shadows of all the old primitive barbarism are
now to be found in the slums of great cities, and in the lowest groups of
men, in the midst of civilized nations. Men impose labor on women in some
such groups today. Through various grades of slavery, serfdom, villeinage,
and through various organizations of castes and guilds, the industrial
organization 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
admiration of some writers, were fit only for a most elementary and
unorganized society. They were fit neither to cope with the natural
difficulties of winning much food from little land, nor to cope with the
malice of men. Hence they perished. In the modern society the organization
of labor is high. Some are land-owners and agriculturists, some are
transporters, 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 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 former 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 subjection
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 them 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 them—that is, unless we go back to
slavery, and make one man's effort conduce to another man's welfare. Of
course, if a speculator 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 social co-operation. It is
automatic and instinctive 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 circumference 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 without 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 refinements, because
here, more than anywhere else, intelligence comes in, but intelligence so
clear and correct that it does not need expression.
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 society who come into it as it is today can live only by entering
into the organization. If numbers increase, the organization must be
perfected, and capital must increase—i.e., power over Nature. If the society
does not keep up its 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 weakest members. Hence human
society lives at a constant strain forward and upward, and those who have
most interest that this strain be successfully 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 today 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 without first appropriating land, so as to get the ore,

wood, wool, cotton, fur, or other raw material. All that men ever appropriate
land for is to get out of it the natural materials on which they exercise their
industry. Appropriation, therefore, precedes labor-production, both
historically and logically. Primitive races regarded, and often now regard,
appropriation 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
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 purpose. 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 to a higher organization of society, to develop a
completer co-operation, and so to win greater 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 circumstances 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
inequalities in property, luxury, and creature comforts, not to knowledge,
virtue, or even physical beauty and strength. But it is plainly impossible that
we should all attain to equality 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 today; for it embraces every
grade, from the most civilized nations down to the lowest surviving types of
barbarians. Furthermore, if we analyze the society of the most civilized
state, especially in one of the great cities where the highest triumphs of
culture are presented, we find survivals of every form of barbarism and
lower civilization. Hence, those who today 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 standard 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 in hopeless absurdities and
contradictions. If any man is not in the 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 brutishness. It would be a correct statement of the facts
intended, from an historical and sociological 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 correction 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.

V.ToC

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 accidental.
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 those things were better 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 legislation has thrown upon some parents the
responsibility, not only of their own children, but of those of others.
The relation of parents and children is the 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 we go backward. We cannot stand still. Now, parental 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 motive to social
ambition and personal self-respect—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 Malthusianism in their own affairs. Among respectable
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, would be severely blamed by the public
opinion of the community. 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
demand which he means to make 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 inside 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 is, if we hold up to
the higher standard of men, we must have fewer of them.
Taking men as they have been and are, they are subjects of passion,
emotion, and instinct. Only the élite 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 better 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 support 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 organization of society, on 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 productive energy to apply
capital to land for the further production of wealth, and he must secure a
share in the existing capital by a contract 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
immeasurable advantages over the other. If it were not so capital would not
be formed. Capital is only formed by self-denial, and if the possession of it
did not secure advantages and superiorities of a high order men would
never 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 partially 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 ratio, and the element of self-denial declines. This
fact, also, is favorable to the accumulation 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 further accumulation would not
pay. The man who has capital has secured his future, won leisure which he
can employ in winning secondary objects of necessity and advantage, and
emancipated himself from those things in life which are gross and belittling.
The possession of capital is, therefore, an indispensable prerequisite of
educational, scientific, and moral goods. This is not saying that a man in the
narrowest circumstances may not be a good man. It is saying that the
extension and elevation of all the moral and metaphysical interests of the
race are conditioned on that extension of civilization of which capital is the
prerequisite, and that he who has capital can participate in and move along
with the highest developments 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.
The maxim, or injunction, to which a study of capital leads us is, Get
capital. In a community where the standard of living is high, and the
conditions of production are favorable, 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 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 especially remain as a third class, and so long 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 struggling 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 insulting. If there were such a proletariat it would be
hopelessly in the hands of a body of plutocratic capitalists, and a society so
organized 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.

VI.ToC

THAT HE WHO WOULD BE WELL TAKEN CARE OF MUST TAKE
CARE OF HIMSELF.

The discussion of "the relations of labor and capital" has not hitherto
been very fruitful. It has been confused by ambiguous definitions, and it has
been based upon assumptions 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 exertion, expenditure of productive
energy.
2. The term is used, secondly, by a figure of speech, and in a collective
sense, to designate the body of persons who, having neither capital nor
land, come into the industrial organization offering productive services in
exchange for means of subsistence. These persons are united by community
of interest into a group, or class, or interest, and, when interests 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 excluded from the
category, and we should immediately pass, by such a restriction, from a
broad and philosophical to a technical definition of the labor class. But
merchants, bankers, professional men, and all whose labor is, to an
important 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 to

determine. It seems that they are or are not, as the interest of the disputants
may require.
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 persons 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 services. These persons constitute
an interest, group, or class, although they are not united by any such
community of interest as laborers, and, in the adjustment of interests, the
interests of the owners of capital must be limited 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, and in this sense, to mean employers of
laborers, but it seems to be restricted 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 "capital and labor," if each of
the terms has three definitions, and if one definition of each is loose and
doubtful, we have everything prepared for a discussion which shall be
interminable 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 successful study of the
question, or of successful investigation 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
"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 "capitalists" when we mean the persons described in the
second definition under each term.
It is a common assertion that the interests of employers 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

encouraging observations in the facts of sociology, and to refute, if possible,
any unpleasant observations. 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
interests of employers and employed as parties to a contract are antagonistic
in certain respects and united in others, as in 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' interest is that wheat be good and attractive
but not plentiful, 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 employé is
interested that capital be good and plentiful, but that productive energy be
good and rare. When one man alone can do a service, 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.
Employers and employed make contracts on the best terms which they
can agree upon, like buyers and sellers, renters and hirers, borrowers 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 capital and labor have
been applied. Under the wages system the employer and the employé
contract for time. The employé 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 advantageous
arrangement for him, on the whole and in the great majority of cases, is
very certain. Salaried men and wage-receivers are in precisely the same
circumstances, except that the former, by custom and usage, are those who
have special skill or training, which is almost always an investment of
capital, and which narrows the range of competition in their case.
Physicians, lawyers, and others 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 condition and
chances of employés. Employers formerly made use of guilds to secure
common action for a common interest. They have given up this mode of
union because it has been superseded by a better one. Correspondence,
travel, newspapers, circulars, and telegrams bring to employers and
capitalists the information which they need for the defense of their interests.
The combination between them is automatic and instinctive. It is not formal
and regulated by rule. It is all the stronger on that account, because
intelligent 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 employés have not the leisure necessary for the higher modes
of communication. Capital is also necessary to establish the ties of common
action under the higher forms. Moreover, there is, no doubt, an incidental
disadvantage connected with the release which the employé gets under the
wages system from all responsibility for the conduct of the business. That
is, that employés 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 employés. Employers are
generally separated by jealousy and pride in regard to all but the most
universal class interests. Employés have a much closer interest in each
other's wisdom. Competition of capitalists for profits redounds to the
benefit of laborers. Competition of laborers for subsistence redounds to the
benefit of capitalists. 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 employés
withdraw 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 foresight of the movements of
industry and commerce, and if they make skillful use of credit, win
exceptional profits for a limited period. One great means of exceptional
profit lies in the very fact that the employés have not exercised the same
foresight, but have plodded along and waited for the slow and successive
action of the industrial system through successive periods of production,
while the employer has anticipated and synchronized several 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 informed 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 employés have no means of information which is as good and
legitimate as association, and it is fair and necessary that their action should
be united in behalf of their interests. They are not in a position for the
unrestricted development of individualism 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 gain. In
the meantime the labor market, in which wages are fixed, cannot reach fair
adjustments 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 fall, of its variations in different districts and in different trades—
such notices are always made for the interest of the employers. Re-
distribution of employés, 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 really 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
traditional 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 production. It must, therefore,
lower wages subsequently below what they would have been if there had
been no strike. If a strike succeeds, 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 assume a great responsibility, and that they can only be
justified by the circumstances of the case. I cannot believe that a strike for
wages 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 ought to have made 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 nature 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 phenomenon as they are often thought to be. Buyers
strike when they refuse to buy commodities 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. Tenants strike when
house rents rise too high for them. They seek smaller houses or parts of
houses until there is a complete readjustment. Borrowers strike when the
rates for capital are so high that they cannot employ it to advantage 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 to succeed. Of course, strikes with violence against employers or other
employés are not to be discussed at all.
Trades-unions, then, are right and useful, and it may be that they are
necessary. They 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 class. 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 workmen. 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 allotted time, is not to
be distinguished from the man who says that wages can be raised by putting
protective taxes on all clothing, furniture, crockery, bedding, books, fuel,

utensils, and tools. One lowers the services given for the capital, and the
other lowers the capital 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, correction, and 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
improvement duties for which we now rely on Government inspection,
which never 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 children, Sunday
work, hours of labor—these and other like matters ought to be controlled by
the men themselves through their organizations. The laborers about whom
we are talking 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
propriety do it on behalf of the body of workmen. Here is a great and
important need, and, instead of applying suitable and adequate means to
supply it, we have demagogues declaiming, trades-union officers resolving,
and Government inspectors drawing salaries, while little or nothing is done.
I have said that trades-unions are right and useful, and perhaps,
necessary; but trades-unions are, in fact, in this country, an exotic and
imported institution, and a great many of their rules and modes of
procedure, having been developed in England to meet English
circumstances, are out of place here. The institution itself does not flourish
here as it would if it 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 composed of men who have grown up together, who have close
personal acquaintance and mutual 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 frequently and
with facility, the unions suffer in their harmony and stability. It was a
significant 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 independent and strong position in the labor
market, that he does not need the union. He is farther on the road toward the
point where personal liberty supplants the associative principle than any
other workman. Hence the association is likely to be a clog to him,
especially if he is a good laborer, rather than an assistance. If it were not for
the notion brought from England, that trades-unions are, in some
mysterious 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 Government boards, commissions,
and inspectors to set right everything which is wrong. No experience seems
to damp the faith of our public 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 instrumentalities, and have greatly multiplied them since they have
had a great number of reforms to carry out. They seem to think that
interference is good if only they interfere. In this country the party which is
"in" always interferes, and the party which is "out" favors non-interference.
The system of interference is a complete failure to the ends it aims at, and
sooner or later it will fall of its own expense 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, because men who are taught to expect Government 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 individual 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 dependence 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 employés. I
have never seen a defense 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
many proportionately of one of these classes as of the other. The employers
of the United States—as a class, proper exceptions being understood—have
no advantage over their workmen. 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 workmen in all
respects, and would give redress for any grievance which was brought to
their attention. They are considerate of the circumstances 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
sympathies 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 rejoice 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 needs and deserves help because he is trying
to help himself will be sure to meet with sympathy, encouragement, and
assistance from those who are better off. If those who are in that position
are related to him as employers to employé, that tie will be recognized as
giving him an especial claim.

VII.ToC

CONCERNING SOME OLD FOES UNDER NEW FACES.

The history of the human race is one long story of attempts by certain
persons and classes to obtain control of the power of the State, so as to win
earthly gratifications at the expense of others. People constantly assume that
there is something metaphysical and sentimental 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 defend
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 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 loyalty.
They took all the rank, glory, power, and prestige of the great civil
organization, and they took all the rights. They threw on others the burdens
and the duties. At one time, no doubt, feudalism was an organization which
drew together again the fragments of a dissolved society; but when the
lawyers had applied the Roman law to modern kings, and feudal nobles had
been converted into an aristocracy 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 feudal class, and it has, during three or four centuries,
gradually invented and established institutions to guarantee personal and
property rights against the arbitrary will of kings and nobles.
In its turn wealth is now becoming a power in three or four centuries,
gradually invented and 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 plutocracy might be even far
worse than an aristocracy. Aristocrats have always had their class vices and
their class virtues. They have always been, as a class, chargeable with
licentiousness 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 licentiousness, 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 influential society. The feudal code has,
through centuries, bred a high type of men, and constituted a caste. The
mercantile code has 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 social 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 plutocratic spirit and measures. In
the United States many plutocratic doctrines have a currency which is not
granted them anywhere else; that is, a man's right to have almost anything
which he can pay for is more popularly recognized here than elsewhere. So
far the most successful limitation on plutocracy has come from aristocracy,
for the prestige 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 growing 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 would, 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 aristocracy, 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 assail "on
principle" the inherited social notions and distinctions are not serving
civilization. Society can do without patricians, but it cannot do without
patrician virtues.
In the United States the opponent of plutocracy 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 plutocracy as formidable as it is here. To it we
oppose the power of numbers as it is presented by democracy. Democracy
itself, however, is new and experimental. It has not yet existed long enough
to find its appropriate forms. It has no prestige from antiquity such as
aristocracy possesses. It has, indeed, none of the surroundings 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 period in the future. Its
political processes 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 correct interpretation, or fonder. Can democracy 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

elective judiciary is a device so much in the interest 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 machinery 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 aggregated capital. If charters have been given which
confer undue powers, who gave them? Our legislators did. Who elected
these legislators. We did. If we are a free, self-governing people, we must
understand that it costs vigilance and exertion to be self-governing. 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-governing people, we can blame nobody but ourselves 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 constitutional 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 passing
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 political 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 simply trying to do what the generals, nobles, and priests
have done in the past—get the power of the 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 Government 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 passions take
good care here to deck themselves out in the trappings of democratic

watchwords and phrases, so that they are more often greeted with cheers
than with opposition when they first appear. The plan of electing men to
represent us who systematically surrender public to private interests, and
then trying to cure the mischief by newspaper and platform declamation
against capital and corporations, is an entire failure.
The new foes must be met, as the old ones were met—by institutions and
guarantees. The problem of civil liberty is constantly renewed. Solved once,
it re-appears in a new form. The old constitutional guarantees were all
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 judiciary has given the most satisfactory
evidence 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 aggrieved. Such co-
operation is a constant necessity under free self-government; and when, in
any community, men lose the power of voluntary co-operation in
furtherance or defense of their own interests, they deserve to suffer, with no
other remedy than newspaper denunciations 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,
overthrow credit, and impair the most essential interests of society. On the
side of political 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.

VIII.ToC

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

The passion for dealing with social questions 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 dogmatism 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 purpose, or to use the society for some constructive and
inferential individual purpose. For 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-flattering, and public-spirited all at once. It satisfies 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, philanthropists, 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 her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, 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 former 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
anybody else than himself is fit to be head of a family; and when he
becomes head of a family 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 position, if he does not find
in his immediate surroundings people who need his care and have some sort

of a personal claim upon him. If, now, he is able to fulfill 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 suffice to the full measure of duty
for which a family may draw upon him. Neither can a man give to society
so advantageous an employment of his services, whatever they are, in any
other way as by spending them on his family. Upon this, however, I will not
insist. 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 business is twofold. First, there is
the danger that a man may leave his own business unattended to; and,
second, there is the danger of an impertinent interference with another's
affairs. The "friends of humanity" almost always 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 rôle of a friend of humanity as
impertinent. The reference to the friend of humanity back to his own
business 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
teetotalers, and they want a law passed to make everybody else a teetotaler.
Some people have resolved to eschew luxury, and they want taxes laid to
make others eschew luxury. The taxing power is especially something after
which the reformer's finger always itches. Sometimes there is an element of
self-interest in the proposed reformation, as when a publisher wanted a duty
imposed on books, to keep Americans from reading books which would
unsettle their Americanisms; and when artists wanted a tax laid on pictures,
to save Americans 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 separates that relation from any
connection with the work of the social busybody, the professional
philanthropist, and the empirical legislator.
The amateur social doctors are like the amateur physicians—they always
begin with the question of remedies, and they go at this without any
diagnosis or any knowledge of the anatomy or physiology of society. They
never have any doubt of the efficacy of their 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 hardships to contend with. Poverty, pain, disease, and
misfortune surround our existence. We fight against them all the time. The
individual is a centre of hopes, affections, desires, and sufferings. When he
dies, life changes its form, but does not cease. That means that the person—
the centre of all the hopes, affections, etc.—after struggling as long as he
can, is sure to succumb at last. We would, therefore, as far as the hardships
of the human lot are concerned, go on struggling to the best of our ability
against them but for the social doctors, 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
science. It is a fact worth noticing, just when there seems to be a revival of
faith in legislative agencies, that our States are generally providing against
the experienced evils of over-legislation by ordering that the Legislature

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 was 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 reform is to find out how to undo their work without injury to what
is natural and sound. 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 today we suffer the consequences. 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 itself 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 distorted facts.
Society, therefore, does not need any care or supervision. If we can
acquire a science of society, based on observation of phenomena and study
of forces, we may hope to gain some ground slowly toward the elimination
of old errors and the re-establishment of a sound and natural social order.
Whatever we gain that way 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. Here we are, then, once more back
at the old doctrine—Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, 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 action and
interest impinges on that of any other man, there will have to be
compromise and adjustment. Wait for the occasion. Do not 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 utmost reserve
possible in your interferences even of this kind, and by no means seize

occasion for interfering with natural adjustments. Try first long and
patiently whether the natural adjustment will not come about through the
play of interests and the voluntary concessions of the parties.
I have said that we have an empirical political economy and social
science to fit the distortions of our society. The test of empiricism 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 a perfect happiness
on earth, we are mistaken. The half-way men—the professional 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 expressed, but really the point of the
whole, that we shall get perfect happiness if we put ourselves in the hands
of the world-reformer. We never supposed that laissez faire would give us
perfect happiness. We have left perfect happiness 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 we
can. What we desire is, that the friends of humanity should cease to add to
them. Our disposition toward the ills which our fellow-man inflicts on us
through malice or meddling is quite different from our disposition toward
the ills which are inherent in the conditions of human life.
To mind one's own business is a purely negative and unproductive
injunction, but, taking social matters as they are just now, it is a sociological
principle of the first importance. There might be developed a grand
philosophy on the basis of minding one's own business.

IX.ToC

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 interests, 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
understand that all the parts of society hold together, and that forces which
are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an
equilibrium is produced by a readjustment of all interests and rights. They
therefore ignore 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 government, and,
forgetting that a government produces 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 saved it. This latter is the
Forgotten Man.

The friends of humanity start out with certain 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 sentiments of the
human heart. Action in the line proposed consists in a transfer of capital
from the better off to the worse off. Capital, however, as we have seen, is
the force by which civilization is maintained and carried on. The same piece
of capital cannot be used in two ways. Every bit of capital, therefore, which
is given to a shiftless and inefficient member 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. Hence the real sufferer by that kind of benevolence
which consists in an expenditure of capital to protect the good-for-nothing
is the industrious laborer. The latter, however, is never thought of in this
connection. It is assumed that he is provided for and out of the account.
Such 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 generous and kind-hearted, but that a
man who refuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a savings-bank is stingy
and mean. The former is putting capital where it is very sure to be 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 occasioned by a refusal in the first place. Inasmuch 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 millionaire gives a dollar to a beggar the gain of utility to the
beggar is enormous, and the loss of utility to the millionaire is insignificant.
Generally the discussion is allowed to rest there. But if the millionaire
makes capital of the dollar, it must go upon the labor market, 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, industrious, independent, and self-
supporting. He is not, technically, "poor" or "weak"; he minds his own

business, and makes no complaint. Consequently the philanthropists never
think of him, and trample on him.
We hear a great deal of schemes for "improving the condition of the
working-man." In the United States the farther down we go in the grade of
labor, the greater is the advantage 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, bookkeeper, 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 carpenter, as compared with the
bookkeeper, surveyor, 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 parasites 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 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 important 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 improving
the condition of the working classes interfere in the competition of
workmen with each other. The beneficiaries are selected by favoritism, and
are apt to be those who have recommended 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 raising 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 workmen as interested
in the matter. It is supposed that the fight is between the workmen 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 employer 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
laborers, 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 interested or concerned, they most deserve our sympathy and
attention.
The cases already mentioned involve no legislation. Society, however,
maintains police, 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 protective of vice, because all
such legislation saves the vicious man from the penalty of his vice. Nature's
remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A
drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness
and tendency 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 mentionable 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 policeman picks him up, we say that
society has interfered to save him from perishing. "Society" is a fine word,
and it saves us the trouble of thinking. The industrious and sober workman,
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 Forgotten 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 C to be a
teetotaler for the sake of D, who is in danger of drinking 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
pressure all comes on C. The question then arises, Who is C? He is the man
who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would
use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question,
and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgotten 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.

X.ToC

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 corresponding duty by
the side of it, as the price of it. The rights, advantages, capital, knowledge,
and all other goods which we inherit from past generations have been won
by the struggles and sufferings of past generations; and the fact that the race
lives, though men die, and that the race can by heredity accumulate within
some cycle its victories over Nature, is one of the facts which make
civilization possible. The struggles of the race as a whole produce the
possessions of the race as a whole. Something for nothing is not to be found
on earth.
If there were such things as natural rights, the question would arise,
Against whom are they good? Who has the corresponding obligation to
satisfy these rights? There can be no rights against Nature, except to get out
of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for existence
stated over again. The common assertion is, that the rights are good against
society; that is, that society is bound to obtain and secure them for the
persons interested. Society, however, is only the persons interested plus
some other persons; and as the persons interested have by the hypothesis
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 interpretation 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
must be somebody else's fault, and that somebody is bound to come and
make him comfortable. Now, the people who are most uncomfortable 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 consequently 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 discussing turns out to be in practice only a scheme for
making injustice prevail in human 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 public 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 in his sphere. There are relations
of employer and employé which need to be regulated by compromise and
treaty. There are sanitary precautions which need to be taken in factories
and houses. There are precautions against fire which are necessary. There is
care needed 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 officers 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 providing 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 deserts 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 Forgotten Man again
—the man who has watched his own investments, made his own machinery

safe, attended to his own plumbing, and educated his own children, and
who, just when he wants to enjoy the fruits of his care, is told that it is his
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 in his interest to go or
to send, rather than to have the matter neglected, on account of his own
connection with the thing neglected, 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. 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
themselves.
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 means that society rules him out of its
membership, and separates him from its association, by execution or
imprisonment, according to the gravity of his offense. 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 society 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.

When public offices are to be filled numerous candidates at once appear.
Some are urged on the ground that they are poor, or 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 service 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 somewhere who is
fit for it; that is, the social injustice 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 previous 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 jobbery.
Whatever there is in legislative charters, watering stocks, etc., etc., which is
objectionable, 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
pretended 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.
Jobbery is the vice of plutocracy, and it is the especial form under which
plutocracy corrupts a democratic and republican form of government. 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 which we need
through fear of jobbery. Our public buildings are jobs—not always, but
often. They are not needed, or are costly beyond all necessity or even
decent luxury. Internal 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 aristocrats, because aristocrats had political
influence, 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 River to make a farm, and then
they want to tax all the people 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 Government to go into the market and buy what the public
did not want, in order to sustain (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 experiments, and
to provide capital for enterprises 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 would be a rebellion 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 tobacco-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 tribute to the manufacturers;
now the manufacturing and other laborers are to pay tribute to the farmers.
The system is made more comprehensive and complete, and we all are
living on each other more than ever.
Now, the plan of plundering each other produces nothing. It only wastes.
All the material over which the protected interests wrangle and grab must
be got from somebody outside 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 considered—the one who gets and the one who gives.
Every protected industry has to plead, as the major premise of its argument,
that any industry which does not pay ought to be carried on at the expense
of the consumers of the product, and, as its minor premise, that the industry
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.
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 agreement 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 schemers,
the pitiless bores. Now, who is the victim? He is the Forgotten Man. If we
go to find him, we shall find him hard at work tilling 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, paying his debts
and his taxes, supporting the church and the school, reading his party
newspaper, and cheering for his pet politician.
We must not overlook the fact that the Forgotten Man is not infrequently
a woman. I have before me a newspaper which contains five letters from
corset-stitchers who complain 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
retail price, if the American work-woman were allowed to exchange her
labor for thread on the best terms that the art and commerce of today 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 institution for getting thread for the American people,
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 employés in the thread-mill get
high wages, and that, but for 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 seamstresses, washer-women, servants,
factory-hands, saleswomen, teachers, and laborers' wives and daughters,
scattered in the garrets and tenements of great cities and in cottages all over
the country, who are paying the tax which 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 something. Then some light might
be thrown upon the obstinate fallacy of "creating an industry," 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 protection 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 the 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 forgotten. Yet
who is there whom the statesman, 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 unflinching
advocate of strict scientific thinking in sociology, and a hard-hearted skeptic
as regards 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 trustworthy signs that the Forgotten Man is in
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 philosophers sit down to think what the
State can do or ought to do, they really mean to decide 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
individual liberty and responsibility. The consequence of this mixed state of
things is, that those who are clever enough to get into control use the
paternal theory by which to measure 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 father and who is to be child. The rôle of
parent 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 philosopher, 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 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 advantageous, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to those who
must bear the weight of it than complete non-interference by the State with
the relations of the parties in question.

XI.ToC

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 conformably to it. How heartless! You do not reflect that it may be
a beautiful little child falling from a window.
These two suppositions may be of some use to us as illustrations.
Let us take the second first. It is the objection of the sentimentalist; and,
ridiculous as the mode of discussion appears when applied to the laws of
natural philosophy, the sociologist 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 clearness 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 illustration. In the first place, a child would fall just as a stone
would fall. Nature's forces know no pity. Just so in sociology. The forces
know no 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 concentrate, 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 sociology, with the
additional fact that the forces 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 falling 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
understand 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 living, so that, in any case in which the
individual stands face to face with the necessity of deciding what to do, if
he is an educated man, he may know how to make a wise and intelligent
decision. If he knows chemistry, physics, 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 economy, he will know what effect on wealth and on the welfare of
society one course or another 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 to solve equations. It only gives one element
necessary to an intelligent decision, and in every practical and concrete case
the responsibility 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 anybody who says, You ought to give
money to charity; and, in opposition to any such person, 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 can make a wise and intelligent
decision. Certainly there is no harder thing to do than to employ capital
charitably. It would be extreme folly to say that nothing of that sort ought to
be done, but I fully believe that today the next 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, nourish no man's sympathies and
sentiments. Furthermore, 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 impertinent to prevent his effort as it is to force co-operation in
an effort on some one who does not want to participate in it. What I choose
to do by way of exercising my own sympathies 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 careless. 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 another 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 interest to rescue the
one for whom the chances of life have turned out badly just now. Probably
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 account 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 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, carelessness, 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 interpretation that A can tell B what this law
enjoins on B to do. Hence the relations of sympathy and sentiment are
essentially limited 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 direct effort. It is secondary, and
results from physical or economic improvements. That is the reason why
schemes of direct social amelioration always have an arbitrary, sentimental,
and artificial character, while true social advance must be a product and a
growth. The efforts which are being put forth for every kind of progress in
the arts and sciences are, therefore, contributing to true social progress. Let
any one learn what hardship was involved, even for a wealthy person, a
century ago, in crossing 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 improvement in surgical instruments or in anaesthetics 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 accomplished by all the
artificial doctrines about wages which they seem to feel bound to
encourage. 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 "corporations" 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 quality, which they can buy
cheaper. These answers represent the bitterest and basest social injustice.
Every honest citizen of a free state owes it to himself, to the community,
and especially to those who are at once weak and wronged, to go to their
assistance and to help redress their wrongs. Whenever a law or social
arrangement acts so as to injure any one, and that one the humblest, then
there is a duty on those who are stronger, or who know better, to demand
and fight for redress and correction. When generalized this means that it is
the duty of All-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. Rights do not pertain to
results, but only to chances. They pertain to the conditions of the struggle
for existence, not to any of the results of it; to the pursuit of happiness, 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 provide 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
fallacies run through all socialistic schemes and theories. If we take rights
to pertain to results, 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.

Rights should be equal, because they pertain to chances, and all ought to
have equal 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
because 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 generalize this, it means that All-of-us ought to
guarantee rights to each of us. But our modern free, constitutional States are
constructed entirely 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 corrected and expanded
notions of rights from one generation to another. Therefore, when we say
that we owe it to each other to guarantee 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 independent 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 consists 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 sympathy 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 simply take a
product from one and give it to 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 operation to produce. It
would seem that the difference between getting something already in
existence from the one who has it, and producing 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 discussions about the claims and
rights of social classes on each other are radically erroneous and fallacious,
and we have seen that an analysis of the general obligations which we all
have to each other leads us to nothing but an emphatic repetition of old but
well acknowledged obligations to perfect our political institutions. 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
might be set up 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
extravagant, 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 social
distinctions can endure. If, then, we look to the origin and definition of
these classes, we shall find it impossible to deduce any obligations 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 endeavoring to
redistribute the acquisitions which have been made between the existing
classes, our aim should be to increase, multiply, and extend the chances.
Such is the work of civilization. Every old error or abuse which is removed
opens new chances of development to all the new energy of society. Every
improvement in education, science, art, or government 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 greater 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 possible 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
capital, 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, 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.

Typographical errors corrected in text:

Page 27: millionnaires replaced by
millionaires

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CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER ***

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