http://www.archive.org/details/ethicsofcopera00tuftuoft the ethics of coöperation * * * * * barbara weinstock lectures on the morals of trade the ethics of coöperation. by james h. tufts. higher education and business standards. by willard eugene hotchkiss. creating capital: money-making as an aim in business. by frederick l. lipman. is civilization a disease? by stanton coit. social justice without socialism. by john bates clark. the conflict between private monopoly and good citizenship. by john graham brooks. commercialism and journalism. by hamilton holt. the business career in its public relations. by albert shaw. * * * * * the ethics of coöperation by james h. tufts professor of philosophy in the university of chicago boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge 1918 copyright, 1918, by the regents of the university of california all rights reserved published september 1918 barbara weinstock lectures on the morals of trade this series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the university of california on the weinstock foundation. the ethics of coöperation i according to plato's famous myth, two gifts of the gods equipped man for living: the one, arts and inventions to supply him with the means of livelihood; the other, reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of societies and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. agencies for mastery over nature and agencies for coöperation among men remain the two great sources of human power. but after two thousand years, it is possible to note an interesting fact as to their relative order of development in civilization. nearly all the great skills and inventions that had been acquired up to the eighteenth century were brought into man's service at a very early date. the use of fire, the arts of weaver, potter, and metal worker, of sailor, hunter, fisher, and sower, early fed man and clothed him. these were carried to higher perfection by egyptian and greek, by tyrian and florentine, but it would be difficult to point to any great new unlocking of material resources until the days of the chemist and electrician. domestic animals and crude water mills were for centuries in man's service, and until steam was harnessed, no additions were made of new powers. during this long period, however, the progress of human association made great and varied development. the gap between the men of santander's caves, or early egypt, and the civilization of a century ago is bridged rather by union of human powers, by the needs and stimulating contacts of society, than by conquest in the field of nature. it was in military, political, and religious organization that the power of associated effort was first shown. army, state, and hierarchy were its visible representatives. then, a little over a century ago, began what we call the industrial revolution, still incomplete, which combined new natural forces with new forms of human association. steam, electricity, machines, the factory system, railroads: these suggest the natural forces at man's disposal; capital, credit, corporations, labor unions: these suggest the bringing together of men and their resources into units for exploiting or controlling the new natural forces. sometimes resisting the political, military, or ecclesiastical forces which were earlier in the lead, sometimes mastering them, sometimes combining with them, economic organization has now taken its place in the world as a fourth great structure, or rather as a fourth great agency through which man achieves his greater tasks, and in so doing becomes conscious of hitherto unrealized powers. early in this great process of social organization three divergent types emerged, which still contend for supremacy in the worlds of action and of valuation: dominance, competition, and coöperation. all mean a meeting of human forces. they rest respectively on power, rivalry, and sympathetic interchange. each may contribute to human welfare. on the other hand, each may be taken so abstractly as to threaten human values. i hope to point out that the greatest of these is coöperation, and that it is largely the touchstone for the others. coöperation and dominance both mean organization. dominance implies inequality, direction and obedience, superior and subordinate. coöperation implies some sort of equality, some mutual relation. it does not exclude difference in ability or in function. it does not exclude leadership, for leadership is usually necessary to make coöperation effective. but in dominance the special excellence is kept isolated; ideas are transmitted from above downward. in coöperation there is interchange, currents flowing in both directions, contacts of mutual sympathy, rather than of pride-humility, condescension-servility. the purpose of the joint pursuit in organization characterized by dominance may be either the exclusive good of the master or the joint good of the whole organized group, but in any case it is a purpose formed and kept by those few who know. the group may share in its execution and its benefits, but not in its construction or in the estimating and forecasting of its values. the purpose in coöperation is joint. whether originally suggested by some leader of thought or action, or whether a composite of many suggestions in the give and take of discussion or in experiences of common need, it is weighed and adopted as a common end. it is not the work or possession of leaders alone, but embodies in varying degrees the work and active interest of all. coöperation and competition at first glance may seem more radically opposed. for while dominance and coöperation both mean union of forces, competition appears to mean antagonism. _they_ stand for combination; _it_ for exclusion of one by another. yet a deeper look shows that this is not true of competition in what we may call its social, as contrasted with its unsocial, aspect. the best illustration of what i venture to call social competition is sport. here is rivalry, and here in any given contest one wins, the other loses, or few win and many lose. but the great thing in sport is not to win; the great thing is the game, the contest; and the contest is no contest unless the contestants are so nearly equal as to forbid any certainty in advance as to which will win. the best sport is found when no one contestant wins too often. there is in reality a common purpose--the zest of contest. players combine and compete to carry out this purpose; and the rules are designed so to restrict the competition as to rule out certain kinds of action and preserve friendly relations. the contending rivals are in reality uniting to stimulate each other. without the coöperation there would be no competition, and the competition is so conducted as to continue the relation. competition in the world of thought is similarly social. in efforts to reach a solution of a scientific problem or to discuss a policy, the spur of rivalry or the matching of wits aids the common purpose of arriving at the truth. similar competition exists in business. many a firm owes its success to the competition of its rivals which has forced it to be efficient, progressive. as a manufacturing friend once remarked to me: "when the other man sells cheaper, you generally find he has found out something you don't know." but we also apply the term "competition" to rivalry in which there is no common purpose; to contests in which there is no intention to continue or repeat the match, and in which no rules control. weeds compete with flowers and crowd them out. the factory competes with the hand loom and banishes it. the trust competes with the small firm and puts it out of business. the result is monopoly. when plants or inventions are thus said to compete for a place, there is frequently no room for both competitors, and no social gain by keeping both in the field. competition serves here sometimes as a method of selection, although no one would decide to grow weeds rather than flowers because weeds are more efficient. in the case of what are called natural monopolies, there is duplication of effort instead of coöperation. competition is here wasteful. but when we have to do, not with a specific product, or with a fixed field such as that of street railways or city lighting, but with the open field of invention and service, we need to provide for continuous coöperation, and competition seems at least one useful agency. to retain this, we frame rules against "unfair competition." as the rules of sport are designed to place a premium upon certain kinds of strength and skill which make a good game, so the rules of fair competition are designed to secure efficiency for public service, and to exclude efficiency in choking or fouling. in unfair competition there is no common purpose of public service or of advancing skill or invention; hence, no coöperation. the coöperative purpose or result is thus the test of useful, as contrasted with wasteful or harmful, competition. there is also an abstract conception of coöperation, which, in its one-sided emphasis upon equality, excludes any form of leadership, or direction, and in fear of inequality allows no place for competition. selection of rulers by lot in a large and complex group is one illustration; jealous suspicion of ability, which becomes a cult of incompetence, is another. refusals to accept inventions which require any modification of industry, or to recognize any inequalities of service, are others. but these do not affect the value of the principle as we can now define it in preliminary fashion: union tending to secure common ends, by a method which promotes equality, and with an outcome of increased power shared by all. ii what are we to understand by the ethics of coöperation? can we find some external standard of unquestioned value or absolute duty by which to measure the three processes of society which we have named, dominance, competition, coöperation? masters of the past have offered many such, making appeal to the logic of reason or the response of sentiment, to the will for mastery or the claim of benevolence. to make a selection without giving reasons would seem arbitrary; to attempt a reasoned discussion would take us quite beyond the bounds appropriate to this lecture. but aside from the formulations of philosophers, humanity has been struggling--often rather haltingly and blindly--for certain goods and setting certain sign-posts which, if they do not point to a highway, at least mark certain paths as blind alleys. such goods i take to be the great words, liberty, power, justice; such signs of blind paths i take to be rigidity, passive acceptance of what is. but those great words, just because they are so great, are given various meanings by those who would claim them for their own. nor is there complete agreement as to just what paths deserve to be posted as leading nowhere. groups characterized by dominance, cut-throat competition, or coöperation, tend to work out each its own interpretations of liberty, power, justice; its own code for the conduct of its members. without assuming to decide your choice, i can indicate briefly what the main elements in these values and codes are. the group of masters and servants will develop what we have learned to call a morality of masters and a morality of slaves. this was essentially the code of the feudal system. we have survivals of such a group morality in our code of the gentleman, which in england still depreciates manual labor, although it has been refined and softened and enlarged to include respect for other than military and sportsman virtues. the code of masters exalts liberty--for the ruling class--and resents any restraint by inferiors or civilians, or by public opinion of any group but its own. it has a justice which takes for its premise a graded social order, and seeks to put and keep every man in his place. but its supreme value is power, likewise for the few, or for the state as consisting of society organized and directed by the ruling class. such a group, according to treitschke, will also need war, in order to test and exhibit its power to the utmost in fierce struggle with other powers. it will logically honor war as good. a group practicing cut-throat competition will simply reverse the order: first, struggle to put rivals out of the field; then, monopoly with unlimited power to control the market or possess the soil. it appeals to nature's struggle for existence as its standard for human life. it too sets a high value upon liberty in the sense of freedom from control, but originating as it did in resistance to control by privilege and other aspects of dominance, it has never learned the defects of a liberty which takes no account of ignorance, poverty, and ill health. it knows the liberty of nature, the liberty of the strong and the swift, but not the liberty achieved by the common effort for all. it knows justice, but a justice which is likely to be defined as securing to each his natural liberty, and which therefore means non-interference with the struggle for existence except to prevent violence and fraud. it takes no account as to whether the struggle kills few or many, or distributes goods widely or sparingly, or whether indeed there is any room at the table which civilization spreads; though it does not begrudge charity if administered under that name. a coöperating group has two working principles: first, common purpose and common good; second, that men can achieve by common effort what they cannot accomplish singly. the first, reinforced by the actual interchange of ideas and services, tends to favor equality. it implies mutual respect, confidence, and good-will. the second favors a constructive and progressive attitude, which will find standards neither in nature nor in humanity's past, since it conceives man able to change conditions to a considerable extent and thus to realize new goods. these principles tend toward a type of liberty different from those just mentioned. as contrasted with the liberty of a dominant group, coöperation favors a liberty for all, a liberty of live and let live, a tolerance and welcome for variation in type, provided only this is willing to make its contribution to the common weal. instead of imitation or passive acceptance of patterns on the part of the majority, it stimulates active construction. as contrasted with the liberty favored in competing groups, coöperation would emphasize positive control over natural forces, over health conditions, over poverty and fear. it would make each person share as fully as possible in the knowledge and strength due to combined effort, and thus liberate him from many of the limitations which have hitherto hampered him. similarly with justice. coöperation's ethics of distribution is not rigidly set by the actual interest and rights of the past on the one hand, nor by hitherto available resources on the other. neither natural rights nor present ability and present service form a complete measure. since coöperation evokes new interests and new capacities, it is hospitable to new claims and new rights; since it makes new sources of supply available, it has in view the possibility at least of doing better for all than can an abstract insistence upon old claims. it may often avoid the deadlock of a rigid system. it is better to grow two blades of grass than to dispute who shall have the larger fraction of the one which has previously been the yield. it is better, not merely because there is more grass, but also because men's attitude becomes forward-looking and constructive, not pugnacious and rigid. power is likewise a value in a coöperating group, but it must be power not merely used for the good of all, but to some extent controlled by all and thus actually shared. only as so controlled and so shared is power attended by the responsibility which makes it safe for its possessors. only on this basis does power over other men permit the free choices on their part which are essential to full moral life. as regards the actual efficiency of a coöperating group, it may be granted that its powers are not so rapidly mobilized. in small, homogeneous groups, the loss of time is small; in large groups the formation of public opinion and the conversion of this into action is still largely a problem rather than an achievement. new techniques have to be developed, and it may be that for certain military tasks the military technique will always be more efficient. to the coöperative group, however, this test will not be the ultimate ethical test. it will rather consider the possibilities of substituting for war other activities in which coöperation is superior. and if the advocate of war insists that war as such is the most glorious and desirable type of life, coöperation may perhaps fail to convert him. but it may hope to create a new order whose excellence shall be justified of her children. iii a glance at the past rôles of dominance, competition, and coöperation in the institutions of government, religion, and commerce and industry, will aid us to consider coöperation in relation to present international problems. primitive tribal life had elements of each of the three principles we have named. but with discovery by some genius of the power of organization for war the principle of dominance won, seemingly at a flash, a decisive position. no power of steam or lightning has been so spectacular and wide-reaching as the power which egyptian, assyrian, macedonian, roman, and their modern successors introduced and controlled. political states owing their rise to military means naturally followed the military pattern. the sharp separation between ruler or ruling group and subject people, based on conquest, was perpetuated in class distinction. gentry and simple, lord and villein, were indeed combined in exploitation of earth's resources, but coöperation was in the background, mastery in the fore. and when empires included peoples of various races and cultural advance the separation between higher and lower became intensified. yet though submerged for long periods, the principle of coöperation has asserted itself, step by step and it seldom loses ground. beginning usually in some group which at first combined to resist dominance, it has made its way through such stages as equality before the law, abolition of special privileges, extension of suffrage, influence of public sentiment, interchange of ideas, toward genuine participation by all in the dignity and responsibility of political power. it builds a panama canal, it maintains a great system of education, and has, we may easily believe, yet greater tasks in prospect. it may be premature to predict its complete displacement of dominance in our own day as a method of government, yet who in america doubts its ultimate prevalence? religion presents a fascinating mixture of coöperation with dominance on the one hand, and exclusiveness on the other. the central fact is the community, which seeks some common end in ritual, or in beneficent activity. but at an early period leaders became invested, or invested themselves, with a sanctity which led to dominance. not the power of force, but that of mystery and the invisible raised the priest above the level of the many. and, on another side, competition between rival national religions, like that between states, excluded friendly contacts. jew and samaritan had no dealings; between the followers of baal and jehovah there was no peace but by extermination. yet it was religion which confronted the _herrenmoral_ with the first reversal of values, and declared, "so shall it not be among you. but whosoever will be great among you let him be your minister." and it was religion which cut across national boundaries in its vision of what professor royce so happily calls the great community. protest against dominance resulted, however, in divisions, and although coöperation in practical activities has done much to prepare the way for national understanding, the hostile forces of the world to-day lack the restraint which might have come from a united moral sentiment and moral will. in the economic field the story of dominance, coöperation, and competition is more complex than in government and religion. it followed somewhat different courses in trade and in industry. the simplest way to supply needs with goods is to go and take them; the simplest way to obtain services is to seize them. dominance in the first case gives piracy and plunder, when directed against those without; fines and taxes, when exercised upon those within; in the second case, it gives slavery or forced levies. but trade, as a voluntary exchange of presents, or as a bargaining for mutual advantage, had likewise its early beginnings. carried on at first with timidity and distrust, because the parties belonged to different groups, it has developed a high degree of mutual confidence between merchant and customer, banker and client, insurer and insured. by its system of contracts and fiduciary relations, which bind men of the most varying localities, races, occupations, social classes, and national allegiance, it has woven a new net of human relations far more intricate and wide-reaching than the natural ties of blood kinship. it rests upon mutual responsibility and good faith; it is a constant force for their extension. the industrial side of the process has had similar influence toward union. free craftsmen in the towns found mutual support in guilds, when as yet the farm laborer or villein had to get on as best he could unaided. the factory system itself has been largely organized from above down. it has very largely assumed that the higher command needs no advice or ideas from below. hours of labor, shop conditions, wages, have largely been fixed by "orders," just as governments once ruled by decrees. but as dominance in government has led men to unite against the new power and then has yielded to the more complete coöperation of participation, so in industry the factory system has given rise to the labor movement. as for the prospects of fuller coöperation, this may be said already to have displaced the older autocratic system within the managing group, and the war is giving an increased impetus to extension of the process. exchange of goods and services is indeed a threefold coöperation: it meets wants which the parties cannot themselves satisfy or cannot well satisfy; it awakens new wants; it calls new inventions and new forces into play. it thus not only satisfies man's existing nature, but enlarges his capacity for enjoyment and his active powers. it makes not only for comfort, but for progress. iv if trade and industry, however, embody so fully the principle of coöperation, how does it come about that they have on the whole had a rather low reputation, not only among the class groups founded on militarism, but among philosophers and moralists? why do we find the present calamities of war charged to economic causes? perhaps the answer to these questions will point the path along which better coöperation may be expected. there is, from the outset, one defect in the coöperation between buyer and seller, employer and laborer. the coöperation is largely unintended. each is primarily thinking of his own advantage, rather than that of the other, or of the social whole; he is seeking it in terms of money, which as a material object must be in the pocket of one party or of the other, and is not, like friendship or beauty, sharable. mutual benefit is the result of exchange--it need not be the motive. this benefit comes about as if it were arranged by an invisible hand, said adam smith. indeed, it was long held that if one of the bargainers gained, the other must lose. and when under modern conditions labor is considered as a commodity to be bought and sold in the cheapest market by an impersonal corporate employer, there is a strong presumption against the coöperative attitude on either side. the great problem here is, therefore: how can men be brought to seek consciously what now they unintentionally produce? how can the man whose ends are both self-centered and ignoble be changed into the man whose ends are wide and high? something may doubtless be done by showing that a narrow selfishness is stupid. if we rule out monopoly the best way to gain great success is likely to lie through meeting needs of a great multitude; and to meet these effectively implies entering by imagination and sympathy into their situation. the business maxim of "service," the practices of refunding money if goods are unsatisfactory, of one price to all, of providing sanitary and even attractive factories and homes, and of paying a minimum wage far in excess of the market price, have often proved highly remunerative. yet, i should not place exclusive, and perhaps not chief, reliance on these methods of appeal. they are analogous to the old maxim, honesty is the best policy; and we know too well that while this holds under certain conditions,--that is, among intelligent people, or in the long run,--it is often possible to acquire great gains by exploiting the weak, deceiving the ignorant, or perpetrating a fraud of such proportions that men forget its dishonesty in admiration at its audacity. in the end it is likely to prove that the level of economic life is to be raised not by proving that coöperation will better satisfy selfish and ignoble interests, but rather by creating new standards for measuring success, new interests in social and worthy ends, and by strengthening the appeal of duty where this conflicts with present interests. the one method stakes all on human nature as it is; the other challenges man's capacity to listen to new appeals and respond to better motives. it is, if you please, idealism; but before it is dismissed as worthless, consider what has been achieved in substituting social motives in the field of political action. there was a time when the aim in political life was undisguisedly selfish. the state, in distinction from the kinship group or the village community, was organized for power and profit. it was nearly a gigantic piratical enterprise, highly profitable to its managers. the shepherd, says thrasymachus in plato's dialogue, does not feed his sheep for their benefit, but for his own. yet now, what president or minister, legislator or judge, would announce as his aim to acquire the greatest financial profit from his position? even in autocratically governed countries, it is at least the assumption that the good of the state does not mean solely the prestige and wealth of the ruler. a great social and political order has been built up, and we all hold that it must not be exploited for private gain. it has not been created or maintained by chance. nor could it survive if every man sought primarily his own advantage and left the commonwealth to care for itself. nor in a democracy would it be maintained, provided the governing class alone were disinterested, deprived of private property, and given education, as plato suggested. the only safety is in the general and intelligent desire for the public interest and common welfare. at this moment almost unanimous acceptance of responsibility for what we believe to be the public good and the maintenance of american ideals--though it brings to each of us sacrifice and to many the full measure of devotion--bears witness to the ability of human nature to adopt as its compelling motives a high end which opposes private advantage. is the economic process too desperate a field for larger motives? to me it seems less desperate than the field of government in the days of autocratic kings. one great need is to substitute a different standard of success for the financial gains which have seemed the only test. our schools of commerce are aiming to perform this service, by introducing professional standards. a physician is measured by his ability to cure the sick, an engineer by the soundness of his bridge and ship; why not measure a railroad president by his ability to supply coal in winter, to run trains on time, and decrease the cost of freight, rather than by his private accumulations? why not measure a merchant or banker by similar tests? mankind has built up a great economic system. pioneer, adventurer, inventor, scientist, laborer, organizer, all have contributed. it is as essential to human welfare as the political system, and like that system it comes to us as an inheritance. i can see no reason why it should be thought unworthy of a statesman or a judge to use the political structure for his own profit, but perfectly justifiable for a man to exploit the economic structure for private gain. this does not necessarily exclude profit as a method of paying for services, and of increasing capital needed for development, but it would seek to adjust profits to services, and treat capital, just as it regards political power, as a public trust in need of coöperative regulation and to be used for the general welfare. but the war is teaching with dramatic swiftness what it might have needed decades of peace to bring home to us. we _are_ thinking of the common welfare. high prices may still be a rough guide to show men's needs, but we are learning to raise wheat because others need it--not merely because the price is high. prices may also be a rough guide to consumption, but we are learning that eating wheat or sugar is not merely a matter of what i can afford. it is a question of whether i take wheat or sugar away from some one else who needs it--the soldier in france, the child in belgium, the family of my less fortunate neighbor. the great argument for not interfering with private exchange in all such matters has been that if prices should by some authority be kept low in time of scarcity, men would consume the supply too rapidly; whereas if prices rise in response to scarcity, men at once begin to economize and so prevent the total exhaustion of the supply. we now reflect that if prices of milk rise it does not mean uniform economy--it means cutting off to a large degree the children of the poor and leaving relatively untouched the consumption of the well-to-do. merely raising the _price_ of meat or wheat means taking these articles from the table of one class to leave them upon the table of another. war, requiring, as it does, the united strength and purpose of the whole people, has found this method antiquated. in europe governments have said to their peoples: we _must_ all think of the common weal; we _must_ all share alike. in this country, the appeal of the food administrator, though largely without force of law, has been loyally answered by the great majority. it is doubtless rash to predict how much peace will retain of what war has taught, but who of us will again say so easily, "my work or leisure, my economy or my luxury, is my own affair, if i can afford it?" who can fail to see that common welfare comes not without common intention? the second great defect in our economic order, from the point of view of coöperation, has been the inequality of its distribution. this has been due largely to competition when parties were unequal, not merely in their ability, but in their opportunity. and the most serious, though not the most apparent, aspect of this inequality, has not been that some have more comfort or luxuries to enjoy; it is the fact that wealth means power. in so far as it can set prices on all that we eat, wear, and enjoy, it is controlling the intimate affairs of life more thoroughly than any government ever attempted. in so far as it controls natural resources, means of transportation, organization of credit, and the capital necessary for large-scale manufacturing and marketing, it can set prices. the great questions then are, as with political power: how can this great power be coöperatively used? is it serving all or a few? two notable doctrines of the courts point ways for ethics. the first is that of property affected with public interest. applied thus far by the courts to warehouses, transportation, and similar public services, what limits can we set ethically to the doctrine that power of one man over his fellows, whether through his office, or through his property, is affected with public interest? the police power, which sets the welfare of all above private property when these conflict, is a second doctrine whose ethical import far outruns its legal applications. yet it is by neither of these that the most significant progress has been made toward removing that handicap of inequality which is the chief injustice of our economic system. it is by our great educational system, liberal in its provisions, generously supported by all classes, unselfishly served, opening to all doors of opportunity which once were closed to the many, the most successful department of our democratic institutions in helping and gaining confidence of all--a system of which this university of california is one of the most notable leaders and the most useful members--that fair conditions for competition and intelligent coöperation in the economic world are increasingly possible. v what bearing has this sketch of the significance and progress of coöperation upon the international questions which now overshadow all else? certainly the world cannot remain as before: great powers struggling for empire; lesser powers struggling for their separate existence; great areas of backward peoples viewed as subjects for exploitation; we ourselves aloof. it must then choose between a future world order based on dominance, which means world empire; a world order based on nationalism joined with the non-social type of competition, which means, every nation the judge of its own interests, continuance of jealousies and from time to time the recurrence of war; and a world order based on nationalism plus international coöperation, "to establish justice, to provide for common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." it is not necessary to discuss in this country the principle of dominance and world empire. it contradicts our whole philosophy. safety for dominance lies only in a civilization of discipline from above down, in ruthless repression of all thinking on the part of the subject class or race. nor can i see any genuine alternative in what some advocate--reliance by each nation on its own military strength as the sole effective guarantee for its interests. after the military lessons of this war, the concentration of scientific, economic, and even educational attention upon military purposes would almost inevitably be vastly in excess of anything previously conceived. what limits can be set to the armies of france and great britain if these are to protect those countries from a german empire already double its previous extent, and taking steps to control the resources of eastern europe and the near east? what navy could guarantee german commerce against the combined forces of great britain and the united states? what limits to the frightfulness yet to be discovered by chemist and bacteriologist? what guarantee against the insidious growth of a militarist attitude even in democratically minded peoples if the constant terror of war exalts military preparations to the supreme place? something has changed the germany of other days which many of us loved even while we shrank from its militarist masters. is it absolutely certain that nothing can change the spirit of democratic peoples? at any rate, america, which has experimented on a larger scale with coöperation--political, economic, and religious--than any other continent, may well assert steadily and insistently that this is the more hopeful path. it may urge this upon distrustful europe. the obstacles to coöperation are: 1. the survival of the principle of dominance, showing itself in desire for political power and prestige, and in certain conceptions of national honor. 2. the principle of non-social competition, exhibited in part in the political policy of eliminating weaker peoples, and conspicuously in foreign trade when the use of unfair methods relies upon national power to back up its exploitation or monopoly. 3. the principle of nationalistic sentiment, itself based on coöperation, on social tradition and common ideals, but bound up so closely with political sovereignty and antagonisms as to become exclusive instead of coöperative in its attitude toward other cultures. the principle of dominance deters from coöperation, not only the people that seeks to dominate, but peoples that fear to be dominated or to become involved in entangling alliances. doubtless a policy of aloofness was long the safe policy for us. we could not trust political liberty to an alliance with monarchies, even as with equal right some european peoples might distrust the policies of a republic seemingly controlled by the slavery interest. at the present time one great power professes itself incredulous of the fairness of any world tribunal; smaller powers fear the commanding influence of the great; new national groups just struggling to expression fear that a league of nations would be based on present status and therefore give them no recognition, or else a measure of recognition conditioned by past injustices rather than by future aspirations and real desert. all these fears are justified in so far as the principle of dominance is still potent. the only league that can be trusted by peoples willing to live and let live, is one that is controlled by a coöperative spirit. and yet who can doubt that this spirit is spreading? few governments are now organized on the avowed basis that military power, which embodies the spirit of dominance, should be superior to civil control, and even with them the principle of irresponsible rule, despite its reinforcement by military success, is likely to yield to the spirit of the age when once the pressure of war is removed which now holds former protesters against militarism solid in its support. for all powers that are genuine in their desire for coöperation there is overwhelming reason to try it; for only by the combined strength of those who accept this principle can liberty and justice be maintained against the aggression of powers capable of concentrating all their resources with a suddenness and ruthlessness in which dominance is probably superior. yet coöperation for protection of liberty and justice is liable to fall short of humanity's hopes unless liberty and justice be themselves defined in a coöperative sense. the great liberties which man has gained, as step by step he has risen from savagery, have not been chiefly the assertion of already existing powers or the striking-off of fetters forged by his fellows. they have been _additions_ to previous powers. science, art, invention, associated life in all its forms, have opened the windows of his dwelling, have given possibilities to his choice, have given the dream and the interpretation which have set him free from his prison. the liberty to which international coöperation points is not merely self-direction or self-determination, but a larger freedom from fear, a larger freedom from suspicion, a fuller control over nature and society, a new set of ideas, which will make men free in a far larger degree than ever before. similarly justice needs to be coöperatively defined. a justice that looks merely to existing status will not give lasting peace. peoples change in needs as truly as they differ in needs. but no people can be trusted to judge its own needs any more than to judge its own right. a justice which adheres rigidly to vested interests, and a justice which is based on expanding interests, are likely to be deadlocked unless a constructive spirit is brought to bear. abstract rights to the soil, to trade, to expansion, must be subordinate to the supreme question: how can peoples live together and help instead of destroy? this can be approached only from an international point of view. the second obstacle, unsocial competition, is for trade what dominance is in politics. it prevents that solution for many of the delicate problems of international life which coöperation through trade might otherwise afford. exchange of goods and services by voluntary trade accomplishes what once seemed attainable only by conquest or slavery. if germany or japan or italy needs iron or coal; if england needs wheat, or if the united states sugar, it is possible, or should be possible, to obtain these without owning the country in which are the mines, grain, and sugar cane. the united states needs canada's products; it has no desire to own canada. but in recent years the exchange of products has been subjected to a new influence. national self-interest has been added to private self-interest. this has intensified and called out many of the worst features of antagonism and inequality. few in this country have realized the extent to which other countries have organized their foreign commerce on national lines. we are now becoming informed as to the carefully worked-out programmes of commercial education, merchant marines, trade agreements, consular service, financial and moral support from the home government, and mutual aid among various salesmen of the same nationality living in a foreign country. we are preparing to undertake similar enterprises. we are reminded that "eighty per cent of the world's people live in the countries bordering on the pacific ocean, and that as a result of the rearrangement of trade routes, san francisco's chance of becoming the greatest distributing port of the pacific for goods _en route_ to the markets of the orient, are now more promising than ever before." can the united states take part in this commerce in such a way as to help, not hinder, international progress in harmony? not unless we remember that commerce may be as predatory as armies, and that we must provide international guarantees against the exclusive types of competition which we have had to control by law in our own domestic affairs. an indian or an african may be deprived of his possessions quite as effectively by trade as by violence. we need at least as high standards of social welfare as in domestic commerce. i cannot better present the situation than by quoting from a recent article by mr. william notz in the "journal of political economy" (feb. 1918): during the past twenty-five years competition in the world markets became enormously keen. in the wild scramble for trade the standards of honest business were disregarded more and more by all the various rival nations. in the absence of any special regulation or legislation, it appeared as though a silent understanding prevailed in wide circles that foreign trade was subject to a code of business ethics widely at variance with the rules observed in domestic trade. what was frowned upon as unethical and poor business policy, if not illegal at home, was condoned and winked at or openly espoused when foreign markets formed the basis of operations and foreigners were the competitors. high-minded men of all nations have long observed with concern the growing tendency of modern international trade toward selfish exploitation, concession-hunting, cut-throat competition, and commercialistic practices of the most sordid type. time and again complaints have been voiced, retaliatory measures threatened, and more than once serious friction has ensued. mr. notz brings to our attention various efforts by official and commercial bodies looking toward remedies for such conditions and toward official recognition by all countries of unfair competition as a penal offense. what more do we need than fair competition to constitute the coöperative international life which we dreamed yesterday and now must consider, not merely as a dream, but as the only alternative to a future of horror? free trade has been not unnaturally urged as at least one condition. tariffs certainly isolate. to say to a country: "you shall manufacture nothing unless you own the raw material; you shall sell nothing unless at prices which i fix," is likely to provoke the reply: "then i must acquire lands in which raw materials are found; i must acquire colonies which will buy my products." trade agreements mean coöperation for those within, unless they are one-sided and made under duress; in any case they are exclusive of those without. free trade, the open door, seems to offer a better way. but free trade in name is not free trade unless the parties are really free--free from ignorance, from pressure of want. if one party is weak and the other unscrupulous; if one competitor has a lower standard of living than the other, freedom of trade will not mean genuine coöperation. such coöperation as means good for all requires either an equality of conditions between traders and laborers of competing nations and of nations which exchange goods, or else an international control to prevent unfair competition, exploitation of weaker peoples, and lowering of standards of living. medical science is giving an object lesson which may well have a wide application. it is seeking to combat disease in its centers of diffusion. instead of attempting to quarantine against the orient, it is aiding the orient to overcome those conditions which do harm alike to orient and occident. plague, anthrax, yellow fever, cannot exist in one country without harm to all. nor in the long run can men reach true coöperation so long as china and africa are a prize for the exploiter rather than equals in the market. not merely in the political sense, but in its larger meanings democracy here is not safe without democracy there. education, and the lifting of all to a higher level, is the ultimate goal. and until education, invention, and intercommunication have done their work of elevation, international control must protect and regulate. in many respects the obstacle to international coöperation which is most difficult to remove is the strong and still growing sentiment of nationality. this is not, like dominance, a waning survival of a cruder method of social order; it is a genuine type of coöperation. rooted as it is in a historic past, in community of ideals and traditions, and usually of language and art, it wakens the emotional response to a degree once true only of religion. born of such a social tradition, the modern may be said in truth mentally and spiritually, as well as physically, to be born a frenchman or a german, a scotchman or irishman or englishman. he may be content to merge this inheritance in an empire if he can be senior partner, but the struggles of irish, poles, czechs, and south slavs, the zionist movement, the nationalistic stirrings in india, with their literary revivals, their fierce self-assertions, seem to point away from internationalism rather than toward it. the balkans, in which serb, bulgar, roumanian, and greek have been developing this national consciousness, have been the despair of peacemakers. the strongest point in the nationalist programme is, however, not in any wise opposed to coöperation, but rather to dominance or non-social competition. the strongest point is the importance of diversity combined with group unity for the fullest enrichment of life and the widest development of human capacity. a world all of one sort would not only be less interesting, but less progressive. we are stimulated by different customs, temperaments, arts, and ideals. but all this is the strongest argument for genuine coöperation, since by this only can diversity be helpful, even as it is only through diversity in its members that a community can develop fullest life. a world organization based on the principle that any single group is best and therefore ought to rule, or to displace all others, would be a calamity. a world organization which encourages every member to be itself would be a blessing. why do nationalism and internationalism clash? because this national spirit has rightly or wrongly been bound up so intimately with political independence. tara's harp long hangs mute when erin is conquered. poland's children must not use a language in which they might learn to plot against their masters. a french-speaking alsatian is suspected of disloyalty. professor dewey has recently pointed out that in the united states we have gone far toward separating culture from the state, and suggests that this may be the path of peace for europe. we allow groups to keep their religion, their language, their song festivals. it may perhaps be claimed that this maintenance of distinct languages and separate cultures is a source of weakness in such a crisis as we now face. yet it may well be urged, on the other hand, that a policy less liberal would have increased rather than diminished disunion and disloyalty. vi the student of human progress is likely to be increasingly impressed with the interaction between ideas and institutions. how far does man build and shape institutions to give body to his ideas? how far is it the organized life with its social contacts, its give and take, its enlargement of its membership to see life _sub specie communitatis_, which itself brings ideas to birth? desire may bring the sexes together, but it is the association and organized relationships of the family which transform casual to permanent affection and shape our conceptions of its values. a herding instinct or a common need of defense or of food supplies may bring together early groups, and will to power may begin the state, but it is the living together which generates laws and wakens the craving for liberty and the struggle for justice. seer and poet doubtless contribute to progress by their kindling appeals to the imagination and sympathy; the philosopher may, as plato claimed for him, live as citizen of a perfect state which has no earthly being, and shape his life according to its laws; but mankind in general has learned law and right, as well as the arts of use and beauty, in the school of life in common. so it is likely to be with international coöperation. fears and hopes now urge it upon a reluctant, incredulous world. but the beginnings--scientific, legal, commercial, political--timid and imperfect though they be, like our own early confederation, will work to reshape those who take part. mutual understanding will increase with common action. when men work consistently to create new resources instead of treating their world as a fixed system, when they see it as a fountain, not as a cistern, they will gradually gain a new spirit. the great community must create as well as prove the ethics of coöperation. _the riverside press_ cambridge · massachusetts u · s · a * * * * * +------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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 7 i. on a new philosophy: that poverty is the best policy 13 ii. that a free man is a sovereign, but that a sovereign cannot take "tips" 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 introduction 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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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. _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 | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * proofreading team. [illustration: exchanging the grip of the third degree] old gorgon graham more letters from a self-made merchant to his son _by_ george horace lorimer _with pictures by f.r. gruger and martin justice_ 1903 from a son to his father contents i. from john graham, head of the house of graham & company, pork packers, in chicago, familiarly known on 'change as old gorgon graham, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards. _the old man is laid up temporarily for repairs, and pierrepont has written asking if his father doesn't feel that he is qualified now to relieve him of some of the burden of active management_ ii. from john graham, at the schweitzerkasenhof, carlsbad, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the head of the lard department has died suddenly, and pierrepont has suggested to the old man that there is a silver lining to that cloud of sorrow_ iii. from john graham, at the schweitzerkasenhof, carlsbad, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _a friend of the young man has just presented a letter of introduction to the old man, and has exchanged a large bunch of stories for a small roll of bills_ iv. from john graham, at the hotel cecil, london, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the old man has just finished going through the young man's first report as manager of the lard department, and he finds it suspiciously good_ v. from john graham, at the waldorf-astoria, new york, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the young man has hinted vaguely of a quarrel between himself and helen heath, who is in new york with her mother, and has suggested that the old man act as peacemaker_ vi. from john graham, at the waldorf-astoria, new york, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the young man has written describing the magnificent wedding presents that are being received, and hinting discreetly that it would not come amiss if he knew what shape the old man's was going to take, as he needs the money_ vii. from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at yemassee-on-the-tallahassee. _the young man is now in the third quarter of the honeymoon, and the old man has decided that it is time to bring him fluttering down to earth_ viii. from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at yemassee-on-the-tallahassee. _in replying to his father's hint that it is time to turn his thoughts from love to lard, the young man has quoted a french sentence, and the old man has been both pained and puzzled by it_ ix. from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, care of graham & company's brokers, atlanta. _following the old man's suggestion, the young man has rounded out the honeymoon into a harvest moon, and is sending in some very satisfactory orders to the house_ x. from john graham, at mount clematis, michigan, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the young man has done famously during the first year of his married life, and the old man has decided to give him a more important position_ xi. from john graham, at mount clematis, michigan, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the young man has sent the old man a dose of his own medicine, advice, and he is proving himself a good doctor by taking it_ xii. from john graham, at magnolia villa, on the florida coast, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the old man has started back to nature, but he hasn't gone quite far enough to lose sight of his business altogether_ xiii. from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, care of graham & company, denver. _the young man has been offered a large interest in a big thing at a small price, and he has written asking the old man to lend him the price_ xiv. from john graham, at the omaha branch of graham & company, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _the old man has been advised by wire of the arrival of a prospective partner, and that the mother, the son, and the business are all doing well_ no. 1 from john graham, head of the house of graham & company, pork packers, in chicago, familiarly known on 'change as old gorgon graham, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards. the old man is laid up temporarily for repairs, and pierrepont has written asking if his father doesn't feel that he is qualified now to relieve him of some of the burden of active management. i carlsbad, october 4, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: i'm sorry you ask so many questions that you haven't a right to ask, because you put yourself in the position of the inquisitive bull-pup who started out to smell the third rail on the trolley right-of-way--you're going to be full of information in a minute. in the first place, it looks as if business might be pretty good this fall, and i'm afraid you'll have your hands so full in your place as assistant manager of the lard department that you won't have time to run my job, too. then i don't propose to break any quick-promotion records with you, just because you happened to be born into a job with the house. a fond father and a fool son hitch up into a bad team, and a good business makes a poor family carryall. out of business hours i like you better than any one at the office, but in them there are about twenty men ahead of you in my affections. the way for you to get first place is by racing fair and square, and not by using your old daddy as a spring-board from which to jump over their heads. a man's son is entitled to a chance in his business, but not to a cinch. it's been my experience that when an office begins to look like a family tree, you'll find worms tucked away snug and cheerful in most of the apples. a fellow with an office full of relatives is like a sow with a litter of pigs--apt to get a little thin and peaked as the others fat up. a receiver is next of kin to a business man's relatives, and after they are all nicely settled in the office they're not long in finding a job for him there, too. i want you to get this firmly fixed in your mind, because while you haven't many relatives to hire, if you ever get to be the head of the house, you'll no doubt marry a few with your wife. for every man that the lord makes smart enough to help himself, he makes two who have to be helped. when your two come to you for jobs, pay them good salaries to keep out of the office. blood is thicker than water, i know, but when it's the blood of your wife's second cousin out of a job, it's apt to be thicker than molasses--and stickier than glue when it touches a good thing. after you have found ninety-nine sound reasons for hiring a man, it's all right to let his relationship to you be the hundredth. it'll be the only bad reason in the bunch. i simply mention this in passing, because, as i have said, you ain't likely to be hiring men for a little while yet. but so long as the subject is up, i might as well add that when i retire it will be to the cemetery. and i should advise you to anchor me there with a pretty heavy monument, because it wouldn't take more than two such statements of manufacturing cost as i have just received from your department to bring me back from the graveyard to the stock yards on the jump. and until i do retire you don't want to play too far from first base. the man at the bat will always strike himself out quick enough if he has forgotten how to find the pitcher's curves, so you needn't worry about that. but you want to be ready all the time in case he should bat a few hot ones in your direction. some men are like oak leaves--they don't know when they're dead, but still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything has really touched them. of course, i may be in the first class, but you can be dead sure that i don't propose to get into the second, even though i know a lot of people say i'm an old hog to keep right along working after i've made more money than i know how to spend, and more than i could spend if i knew how. it's a mighty curious thing how many people think that if a man isn't spending his money their way he isn't spending it right, and that if he isn't enjoying himself according to their tastes he can't be having a good time. they believe that money ought to loaf; i believe that it ought to work. they believe that money ought to go to the races and drink champagne; i believe that it ought to go to the office and keep sober. when a man makes a specialty of knowing how some other fellow ought to spend his money, he usually thinks in millions and works for hundreds. there's only one poorer hand at figures than these over-the-left financiers, and he's the fellow who inherits the old man's dollars without his sense. when a fortune comes without calling, it's apt to leave without asking. inheriting money is like being the second husband of a chicago grass-widow--mighty uncertain business, unless a fellow has had a heap of experience. there's no use explaining when i'm asked why i keep on working, because fellows who could put that question wouldn't understand the answer. you could take these men and soak their heads overnight in a pailful of ideas, and they wouldn't absorb anything but the few loose cuss-words that you'd mixed in for flavoring. they think that the old boys have corralled all the chances and have tied up the youngsters where they can't get at them; when the truth is that if we all simply quit work and left them the whole range to graze over, they'd bray to have their fodder brought to them in bales, instead of starting out to hunt the raw material, as we had to. when an ass gets the run of the pasture he finds thistles. i don't mind owning up to you, though, that i don't hang on because i'm indispensable to the business, but because business is indispensable to me. i don't take much stock in this indispensable man idea, anyway. i've never had one working for me, and if i had i'd fire him, because a fellow who's as smart as that ought to be in business for himself; and if he doesn't get a chance to start a new one, he's just naturally going to eat up yours. any man can feel reasonably well satisfied if he's sure that there's going to be a hole to look at when he's pulled up by the roots. i started business in a shanty, and i've expanded it into half a mile of factories; i began with ten men working for me, and i'll quit with 10,000; i found the american hog in a mud-puddle, without a beauty spot on him except the curl in his tail, and i'm leaving him nicely packed in fancy cans and cases, with gold medals hung all over him. but after i've gone some other fellow will come along and add a post-graduate course in pork packing, and make what i've done look like a country school just after the teacher's been licked. and i want you to be that fellow. for the present, i shall report at the office as usual, because i don't know any other place where i can get ten hours' fun a day, year in and year out. after forty years of close acquaintance with it, i've found that work is kind to its friends and harsh to its enemies. it pays the fellow who dislikes it his exact wages, and they're generally pretty small; but it gives the man who shines up to it all the money he wants and throws in a heap of fun and satisfaction for good measure. a broad-gauged merchant is a good deal like our friend doc graver, who'd cut out the washerwoman's appendix for five dollars, but would charge a thousand for showing me mine--he wants all the money that's coming to him, but he really doesn't give a cuss how much it is, just so he gets the appendix. i've never taken any special stock in this modern theory that no fellow over forty should be given a job, or no man over sixty allowed to keep one. of course, there's a dead-line in business, just as there is in preaching, and fifty's a good, convenient age at which to draw it; but it's been my experience that there are a lot of dead ones on both sides of it. when a man starts out to be a fool, and keeps on working steady at his trade, he usually isn't going to be any solomon at sixty. but just because you see a lot of bald-headed sinners lined up in the front row at the show, you don't want to get humorous with every bald-headed man you meet, because the first one you tackle may be a deacon. and because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure--unless he takes failing too easy. no man's a failure till he's dead or loses his courage, and that's the same thing. sometimes a fellow that's been batted all over the ring for nineteen rounds lands on the solar plexus of the proposition he's tackling in the twentieth. but you can have a regiment of good business qualities, and still fail without courage, because he's the colonel, and he won't stand for any weakening at a critical time. i learned a long while ago not to measure men with a foot-rule, and not to hire them because they were young or old, or pretty or homely, though there are certain general rules you want to keep in mind. if you were spending a million a year without making money, and you hired a young man, he'd be apt to turn in and double your expenses to make the business show a profit, and he'd be a mighty good man; but if you hired an old man, he'd probably cut your expenses to the bone and show up the money saved on the profit side; and he'd be a mighty good man, too. i hire both and then set the young man to spending and the old man to watching expenses. of course, the chances are that a man who hasn't got a good start at forty hasn't got it in him, but you can't run a business on the law of averages and have more than an average business. once an old fellow who's just missed everything he's sprung at gets his hooks in, he's a tiger to stay by the meat course. and i've picked up two or three of these old man-eaters in my time who are drawing pretty large salaries with the house right now. whenever i hear any of this talk about carting off old fellows to the glue factory, i always think of doc hoover and the time they tried the "dead-line-at-fifty" racket on him, though he was something over eighty when it happened. after i left missouri, doc stayed right along, year after year, in the old town, handing out hell to the sinners in public, on sundays, and distributing corn-meal and side-meat to them on the quiet, week-days. he was a boss shepherd, you bet, and he didn't stand for any church rows or such like nonsense among his sheep. when one of them got into trouble the doc was always on hand with his crook to pull him out, but let an old ram try to start any stampede-and-follow-the-leader-over-the-precipice foolishness, and he got the sharp end of the stick. there was one old billy-goat in the church, a grocer named deacon wiggleford, who didn't really like the elder's way of preaching. wanted him to soak the amalekites in his sermons, and to leave the grocery business alone. would holler amen! when the parson got after the money-changers in the temple, but would shut up and look sour when he took a crack at the short-weight prune-sellers of the nineteenth century. said he "went to church to hear the simple gospel preached," and that may have been one of the reasons, but he didn't want it applied, because there wasn't any place where the doc could lay it on without cutting him on the raw. the real trouble with the deacon was that he'd never really got grace, but only a pretty fair imitation. well, one time after the deacon got back from his fall trip north to buy goods, he tried to worry the doc by telling him that all the ministers in chicago were preaching that there wasn't any super-heated hereafter, but that each man lived through his share of hell right here on earth. doc's face fell at first, but he cheered up mightily after nosing it over for a moment, and allowed it might be so; in fact, that he was sure it was so, as far as those fellows were concerned--they lived in chicago. and next sunday he preached hell so hot that the audience fairly sweat. he wound up his sermon by deploring the tendency to atheism which he had noticed "among those merchants who had recently gone up with the caravans to babylon for spices" (this was just his high-toned way of describing deacon wiggleford's trip to chicago in a day-coach for groceries), and hoped that the goods which they had brought back were better than the theology. of course, the old folks on the mourners' bench looked around to see how the deacon was taking it, and the youngsters back on the gigglers' bench tittered, and everybody was happy but the deacon. he began laying for the doc right there. and without meaning to, it seems that i helped his little game along. doc hoover used to write me every now and then, allowing that hams were scarcer in missouri and more plentiful in my packing-house than they had any right to be, if the balance of trade was to be maintained. said he had the demand and i had the supply, and he wanted to know what i was going to do about it. i always shipped back a tierce by fast freight, because i was afraid that if i tried to argue the point he'd come himself and take a car-load. he made a specialty of seeing that every one in town had enough food and enough religion, and he wasn't to be trifled with when he discovered a shortage of either. a mighty good salesman was lost when doc got religion. well, one day something more than ten years ago he wrote in, threatening to make the usual raid on my smoke-house, and when i answered, advising him that the goods were shipped, i inclosed a little check and told him to spend it on a trip to the holy land which i'd seen advertised. he backed and filled over going at first, but finally the church took it out of his hands and arranged for a young fellow not long out of the theological seminary to fill the pulpit, and doc put a couple of extra shirts in a grip and started off. i heard the rest of the story from si perkins next fall, when he brought on a couple of car-loads of steers to chicago, and tried to stick me half a cent more than the market for them on the strength of our having come from the same town. it seems that the young man who took doc's place was one of these fellows with pink tea instead of red blood in his veins. hadn't any opinions except your opinions until he met some one else. preached pretty, fluffy little things, and used eau de cologne on his language. never hit any nearer home than the unspeakable turk, and then he was scared to death till he found out that the dark-skinned fellow under the gallery was an armenian. (the armenian left the church anyway, because the unspeakable turk hadn't been soaked hard enough to suit him.) didn't preach much from the bible, but talked on the cussedness of robert elsmere and the low-downness of trilby. was always wanting everybody to lead the higher life, without ever really letting on what it was, or at least so any one could lay hold of it by the tail. in the end, i reckon he'd have worked around to hoyle's games--just to call attention to their wickedness, of course. the pillars of the church, who'd been used to getting their religion raw from doc hoover, didn't take to the bottle kindly, and they all fell away except deacon wiggleford. he and the youngsters seemed to cotton to the new man, and just before doc hoover was due to get back they called a special meeting, and retired the old man with the title of pastor emeritus. they voted him two donation parties a year as long as he lived, and elected the higher lifer as the permanent pastor of the church. deacon wiggleford suggested the pastor emeritus extra. he didn't quite know what it meant, but he'd heard it in chicago, and it sounded pretty good, and as if it ought to be a heap of satisfaction to a fellow who was being fired. besides, it didn't cost anything, and the deacon was one of those christians who think that you ought to be able to save a man's immortal soul for two bits. the pillars were mighty hot next day when they heard what had happened, and were for calling another special meeting; but two or three of them got together and decided that it was best to lay low and avoid a row until the doc got back. he struck town the next week with a jugful of water from the river jordan in one hand and a gripful of paper-weights made of wood from the mount of olives in the other. he was chockful of the joy of having been away and of the happiness of getting back, till they told him about the deacon's goings on, and then he went sort of gray and old, and sat for a minute all humped up. si perkins, who was one of the unregenerate, but a mighty good friend of the doc's, was standing by, and he blurted right out: "you say the word, doc, and we'll make the young people's society ride this rooster out of town on a rail." that seemed to wake up the elder a bit, for he shook his head and said, "no nonsense now, you si"; and then, as he thought it over, he began to bristle and swell up; and when he stood it was to his full six feet four, and it was all man. you could see that he was boss of himself again, and when a man like old doc hoover is boss of himself he comes pretty near being boss of every one around him. he sent word to the higher lifer by one of the pillars that he reckoned he was counting on him to preach a farewell sermon the next sunday, and the young man, who'd been keeping in the background till whatever was going to drop, dropped, came around to welcome him in person. but while the doc had been doing a heap of praying for grace, he didn't propose to take any chances, and he didn't see him. and he wouldn't talk to any one else, just smiled in an aggravating way, though everybody except deacon wiggleford and the few youngsters who'd made the trouble called to remonstrate against his paying any attention to their foolishness. the whole town turned out the next sunday to see the doc step down. he sat beside the higher lifer on the platform, and behind them were the six deacons. when it came time to begin the services the higher lifer started to get up, but the doc was already on his feet, and he whispered to him: "set down, young man"; and the young man sat. the doc had a way of talking that didn't need a gun to back it up. the old man conducted the services right through, just as he always did, except that when he'd remembered in his prayer every one in america and had worked around through europe to asia minor, he lingered a trifle longer over the turks than usual, and the list of things which he seemed to think they needed brought the armenian back into the fold right then and there. [illustration: "we'll make the young people's society ride this rooster out of town on a rail"] by the time the doc got around to preaching, deacon wiggleford was looking like a fellow who'd bought a gold brick, and the higher lifer like the brick. everybody else felt and looked as if they were attending the doc's funeral, and, as usual, the only really calm and composed member of the party was the corpse. "you will find the words of my text," doc began, "in the revised version of the works of william shakespeare, in the book--i mean play--of romeo and juliet, act two, scene two: 'parting is such sweet sorrow that i shall say good-night till it be morrow,'" and while the audience was pulling itself together he laid out that text in four heads, each with six subheads. began on partings, and went on a still hunt through history and religion for them. made the audience part with julius caesar with regret, and had 'em sniffling at saying good-by to napoleon and jeff davis. made 'em feel that they'd lost their friends and their money, and then foreclosed the mortgage on the old homestead in a this-is-very-sad-but-i-need-the-money tone. in fact, when he had finished with parting and was ready to begin on sweet sorrow, he had not only exhausted the subject, but left considerable of a deficit in it. they say that the hour he spent on sweet sorrow laid over anything that the town had ever seen for sadness. put 'em through every stage of grief from the snuffles to the snorts. doc always was a pretty noisy preacher, but he began work on that head with soft-pedal-tremolo-stop preaching and wound up with a peroration like a steamboat explosion. started with his illustrations dying of consumption and other peaceful diseases, and finished up with railroad wrecks. he'd been at it two hours when he got through burying the victims of his last illustration, and he was just ready to tackle his third head with six subheads. but before he took the plunge he looked at his watch and glanced up sort of surprised: "i find," he said, "that we have consumed more time with these introductory remarks than i had intended. we would all, i know, like to say good-by till to-morrow, did our dear young brother's plans permit, but alas! he leaves us on the 2:17. such is life; to-day we are here, to-morrow we are in st. louis, to which our young friend must return. usually, i don't approve of traveling on the sabbath, but in a case like this, where the reasons are very pressing, i will lay aside my scruples, and with a committee of deacons which i have appointed see our pastor emeritus safely off." the doc then announced that he would preach a series of six sunday night sermons on the six best-selling books of the month, and pronounced the benediction while the higher lifer and deacon wiggleford were trying to get the floor. but the committee of deacons had 'em by the coat-tails, and after listening to their soothing arguments the higher lifer decided to take the 2:17 as per schedule. when he saw the whole congregation crowding round the doc, and the women crying over him and wanting to take him home to dinner, he understood that there'd been a mistake somewhere and that he was the mistake. of course the doc never really preached on the six best-selling books. that was the first and last time he ever found a text in anything but the bible. si perkins wanted to have deacon wiggleford before the church on charges. said he'd been told that this pastor emeritus business was latin, and it smelt of popery to him; but the doc wouldn't stand for any foolishness. allowed that the special meeting was illegal, and that settled it; and he reckoned they could leave the deacon's case to the lord. but just the same, the small boys used to worry wiggleford considerably by going into his store and yelling: "mother says she doesn't want any more of those pastor emeritus eggs," or, "she'll send it back if you give us any more of that dead-line butter." if the doc had laid down that sunday, there'd probably have been a whole lot of talk and tears over his leaving, but in the end, the higher lifer or some other fellow would have had his job, and he'd have become one of those nice old men for whom every one has a lot of respect but no special use. but he kept right on, owning his pulpit and preaching in it, until the great call was extended to him. i'm a good deal like the doc--willing to preach a farewell sermon whenever it seems really necessary, but some other fellow's. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 2 from john graham, at the schweitzerkasenhof, carlsbad, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the head of the lard department has died suddenly, and pierrepont has suggested to the old man that there is a silver lining to that cloud of sorrow. ii carlsbad, october 20, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: i've cabled the house that you will manage the lard department, or try to, until i get back; but beyond that i can't see. four weeks doesn't give you much time to prove that you are the best man in the shop for the place, but it gives you enough to prove that you ain't. you've got plenty of rope. if you know how to use it you can throw your steer and brand it; if you don't, i suppose i won't find much more than a grease-spot where the lard department was, when i get back to the office. i'm hopeful, but i'm a good deal like the old deacon back in missouri who thought that games of chance were sinful, and so only bet on sure things--and i'm not betting. naturally, when a young fellow steps up into a big position, it breeds jealousy among those whom he's left behind and uneasiness among those to whom he's pulled himself up. between them he's likely to be subjected to a lot of petty annoyances. but he's in the fix of a dog with fleas who's chasing a rabbit--if he stops to snap at the tickling on his tail, he's going to lose his game dinner. even as temporary head of the lard department you're something of a pup, and where there's dog there's fleas. you've simply got to get used to them, and have sense enough to know that they're not eating you up when they're only nibbling a little at your hide. and you don't want to let any one see that a flea-bite can worry you, either. a pup that's squirming and wriggling and nosing around the seat of the trouble whenever one of his little friends gets busy, is kicked out into the cold, sad night in the end. but a wise dog lies before the fire with a droop in his ear and a dreamy look in his eyes until it gets to the point where he can't stand 'em any longer. then he sneaks off under the dining-room table and rolls them out into the carpet. there are two breeds of little things in business--those that you can't afford to miss and those that you can't afford to notice. the first are the details of your own work and those of the men under you. the second are the little tricks and traps that the envious set around you. a trick is always so low that a high-stepper can walk right over it. when a fellow comes from the outside to an important position with a house he generally gets a breathing-space while the old men spar around taking his measure and seeing if he sizes up to his job. they give him the benefit of the doubt, and if he shows up strong and shifty on his feet they're apt to let him alone. but there isn't any doubt in your case; everybody's got you sized up, or thinks he has, and those who've been over you will find it hard to accept you as an equal, and those who've been your equals will be slow to regard you as a superior. when you've been bill to a man, it comes awkward for him to call you mister. he may do it to your face, but you're always bill again when you've turned the corner. of course, everybody's going to say you're an accident. prove it. show that you're a regular head-on collision when anything gets in your way. they're going to say that you've got a pull. prove it--by taking up all the slack that they give you. back away from controversy, but stand up stubborn as a mule to the fellow who's hunting trouble. i believe in ruling by love, all right, but it's been my experience that there are a lot of people in the world whom you've got to make understand that you're ready to heave a brick if they don't come when you call them. these men mistake kindness for weakness and courtesy for cowardice. of course, it's the exception when a fellow of this breed can really hurt you, but the exception is the thing that you always want to keep your eye skinned for in business. when it's good growing weather and the average of the crop is ninety-five, you should remember that old satan may be down in arizona cooking up a sizzler for the cornbelt; or that off cuba-ways, where things get excited easy, something special in the line of tornadoes may be ghost-dancing and making ready to come north to bust you into bits, if it catches you too far away from the cyclone cellar. when a boy's face shines with soap, look behind his ears. up to this point you've been seeing business from the seat of the man who takes orders; now you're going to find out what sort of a snap the fellow who gives them has. you're not even exchanging one set of worries for another, because a good boss has to carry all his own and to share those of his men. he must see without spying; he must hear without sneaking; he must know without asking. it takes a pretty good guesser to be a boss. the first banana-skin which a lot of fellows step on when they're put over other men is a desire to be too popular. of course, it's a nice thing to have everyone stand up and cheer when your name is mentioned, but it's mighty seldom that that happens to any one till he's dead. you can buy a certain sort of popularity anywhere with soft soap and favors; but you can't buy respect with anything but justice, and that's the only popularity worth having. you'll find that this world is so small, and that most men in it think they're so big, that you can't step out in any direction without treading on somebody's corns, but unless you keep moving, the fellow who's in a hurry to get somewhere is going to fetch up on your bunion. some men are going to dislike you because you're smooth, and others because you have a brutal way of telling the truth. you're going to repel some because they think you're cold, and others will cross the street when they see you coming because they think you slop over. one fellow won't like you because you're got curly hair, and another will size you up as a stiff because you're bald. whatever line of conduct you adopt you're bound to make some enemies, but so long as there's a choice i want you to make yours by being straightforward and just. you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that every enemy you make by doing the square thing is a rascal at heart. don't fear too much the enemy you make by saying no, nor trust too much the friend you make by saying yes. speaking of being popular naturally calls to mind the case of a fellow from the north named binder, who moved to our town when i was a boy, and allowed that he was going into the undertaking business. absalom magoffin, who had had all the post-mortem trade of the town for forty years, was a queer old cuss, and he had some mighty aggravating ways. never wanted to talk anything but business. would buttonhole you on the street, and allow that, while he wasn't a doctor, he had had to cover up a good many of the doctor's mistakes in his time, and he didn't just like your symptoms. said your looks reminded him of bill shorter, who' went off sudden in the fifties, and was buried by the masons with a brass band. asked if you remembered bill, and that peculiar pasty look about his skin. naturally, this sort of thing didn't make ab any too popular, and so binder got a pretty warm welcome when he struck town. he started right out by saying that he didn't see any good reason why an undertaker should act as if he was the next of kin. was always stopping people on the streets to tell them the latest, and yelling out the point in a horse-laugh. everybody allowed that jolly old binder had the right idea; and that magoffin might as well shut up shop. every one in town wanted to see him officiate at a funeral, and there was a lot of talk about encouraging new enterprises, but it didn't come to anything. no one appeared to have any public spirit. seemed as if we'd never had a healthier spring than that one. couldn't fetch a nigger, even. the most unpopular man in town, miser dosher, came down with pneumonia in december, and every one went around saying how sad it was that there was no hope, and watching for binder to start for the house. but in the end dosher rallied and "went back on the town," as si perkins put it. then the hoskins-bustard crowds took a crack at each other one court day, but it was mighty poor shooting. ham hoskins did get a few buckshot in his leg, and that had to come off, but there were no complications. by this time binder, though he still laughed and cracked his jokes, was beginning to get sort of discouraged. but si perkins used to go round and cheer him up by telling him that it was bound to come his way in the end, and that when it did come it would come with a rush. then, all of a sudden, something happened--yellow jack dropped in from down new orleans way, and half the people in town had it inside a week and the other half were so blamed scared that they thought they had it. but through it all binder never once lost his merry, cheery ways. luckily it was a mild attack and everybody got well; but it made it mighty easy for doc hoover to bring sinners tinder conviction for a year to come. when it was all over binder didn't have a friend in town. leaked out little by little that as soon as one of the men who'd been cheering for jolly old binder got yellow jack, the first thing he did was to make his wife swear that she'd have magoffin do the planting. you see, that while a man may think it's all foolishness for an undertaker to go around solemn and sniffling, he'll be a little slow about hiring a fellow to officiate at his funeral who's apt to take a sense of humor to it. si perkins was the last one to get well, and the first time he was able to walk as far as the store he made a little speech. wanted to know if we were going to let a connecticut yankee trifle with our holiest emotions. thought he ought to be given a chance to crack his blanked new england jokes in hades. allowed that the big locust in front of binder's store made an ideal spot for a jolly little funeral. of course si wasn't exactly consistent in this, but, as he used to say, it's the consistent men who keep the devil busy, because no one's ever really consistent except in his cussedness. it's been my experience that consistency is simply a steel hoop around a small mind--it keeps it from expanding. well, si hadn't more than finished before the whole crowd was off whooping down the street toward binder's. as soon as they got in range of the house they began shooting at the windows and yelling for him to come out if he was a man, but it appeared that binder wasn't a man--leastways, he didn't come out--and investigation showed that he was streaking it back for connecticut. i simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that popularity is a mighty uncertain critter and a mighty unsafe one to hitch your wagon to. it'll eat all the oats you bring it, and then kick you as you're going out of the stall. it's happened pretty often in my time that i've seen a crowd pelt a man with mud, go away, and, returning a few months or a few years later, and finding him still in the same place, throw bouquets at him. but that, mark you, was because first and last he was standing in the right place. it's been my experience that there are more cases of hate at first sight than of love at first sight, and that neither of them is of any special consequence. you tend strictly to your job of treating your men square, without slopping over, and when you get into trouble there'll be a little bunch to line up around you with their horns down to keep the wolves from cutting you out of the herd. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 3 from john graham, at the schweitzerkasenhof, carlsbad, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. a friend of the young man has just presented a letter of introduction to the old man, and has exchanged a large bunch of stories for a small roll of bills. iii carlsbad, october 24, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: yesterday your old college friend, clarence, blew in from monte carlo, where he had been spending a few days in the interests of science, and presented your letter of introduction. said he still couldn't understand just how it happened, because he had figured it out by logarithms and trigonometry and differential calculus and a lot of other high-priced studies that he'd taken away from harvard, and that it was a cinch on paper. was so sure that he could have proved his theory right if he'd only had a little more money that it hardly seemed worth while to tell him that the only thing he could really prove with his system was old professor darwin's theory that men and monkeys began life in the same cage. it never struck me before, but i'll bet the professor got that idea while he was talking with some of his students. personally, i don't know a great deal about gambling, because all i ever spent for information on the subject was $2.75--my fool horse broke in the stretch--and that was forty years ago; but first and last i've heard a lot of men explain how it happened that they hadn't made a hog-killing. of course, there must be a winning end to gambling, but all that these men have been able to tell about is the losing end. and i gather from their experiences that when a fellow does a little gambling on the side, it's usually on the wrong side. the fact of the matter is, that the race-horse, the faro tiger, and the poker kitty have bigger appetites than any healthy critter has a right to have; and after you've fed a tapeworm, there's mighty little left for you. following the horses may be pleasant exercise at the start, but they're apt to lead you to the door of the poorhouse or the jail at the finish. to get back to clarence; he took about an hour to dock his cargo of hard luck, and another to tell me how strange it was that there was no draft from his london bankers waiting to welcome him. naturally, i haven't lived for sixty years among a lot of fellows who've been trying to drive a cold-chisel between me and my bank account, without being able to smell a touch coming a long time before it overtakes me, and clarence's intentions permeated his cheery conversation about as thoroughly as a fertilizer factory does a warm summer night. of course, he gave me every opportunity to prove that i was a gentleman and to suggest delicately that i should be glad if he would let me act as his banker in this sudden emergency, but as i didn't show any signs of being a gentleman and a banker, he was finally forced to come out and ask me in coarse commercial words to lend him a hundred. said it hurt him to have to do it on such short acquaintance, but i couldn't see that he was suffering any real pain. frankly, i shouldn't have lent clarence a dollar on his looks or his story, for they both struck me as doubtful collateral, but so long as he had a letter from you, asking me to "do anything in my power to oblige him, or to make his stay in carlsbad pleasant," i let him have the money on your account, to which i have written the cashier to charge it. of course, i hope clarence will pay you back, but i think you will save bookkeeping by charging it off to experience. i've usually found that these quick, glad borrowers are slow, sad payers. and when a fellow tells you that it hurts him to have to borrow, you can bet that the thought of having to pay is going to tie him up into a bow-knot of pain. right here i want to caution you against giving away your signature to every clarence and willie that happens along. when your name is on a note it stands only for money, but when it's on a letter of introduction or recommendation it stands for your judgment of ability and character, and you can't call it in at the end of thirty days, either. giving a letter of introduction is simply lending your name with a man as collateral, and if he's no good you can't have the satisfaction of redeeming your indorsement, even; and you're discredited. the first thing that a young merchant must learn is that his brand must never appear on a note, or a ham, or a man that isn't good. i reckon that the devil invented the habit of indorsing notes and giving letters to catch the fellows he couldn't reach with whisky and gambling. of course, letters of introduction have their proper use, but about nine out of ten of them are simply a license to some clarence to waste an hour of your time and to graft on you for the luncheon and cigars. it's getting so that a fellow who's almost a stranger to me doesn't think anything of asking for a letter of introduction to one who's a total stranger. you can't explain to these men, because when you try to let them down easy by telling them that you haven't had any real opportunity to know what their special abilities are, they always come back with an, "oh! that's all right--just say a word and refer to anything you like about me." i give them the letter then, unsealed, and though, of course, they're not supposed to read it, i have reason to think that they do, because i've never heard of one of those letters being presented. i use the same form on all of them, and after they've pumped their thanks into me and rushed around the corner, they find in the envelope: "this will introduce mr. gallister. while i haven't had the pleasure of any extended acquaintance with mr. gallister, i like his nerve." it's a mighty curious thing, but a lot of men who have no claim on you, and who wouldn't think of asking for money, will panhandle both sides of a street for favors that mean more than money. of course, it's the easy thing and the pleasant thing not to refuse, and after all, most men think, it doesn't cost anything but a few strokes of the pen, and so they will give a fellow that they wouldn't ordinarily play on their friends as a practical joke, a nice sloppy letter of introduction to them; or hand out to a man that they wouldn't give away as a booby prize, a letter of recommendation in which they crack him up as having all the qualities necessary for an a1 sunday-school superintendent and bank president. now that you are a boss you will find that every other man who comes to your desk is going to ask you for something; in fact, the difference between being a sub and a boss is largely a matter of asking for things and of being asked for things. but it's just as one of those poets said--you can't afford to burn down the glue factory to stimulate the demand for glue stock, or words to that effect. of course, i don't mean by this that i want you to be one of those fellows who swell out like a ready-made shirt and brag that they "never borrow and never lend." they always think that this shows that they are sound, conservative business men, but, as a matter of fact, it simply stamps them as mighty mean little cusses. it's very superior, i know, to say that you never borrow, but most men have to at one time or another, and then they find that the never-borrow-never-lend platform is a mighty inconvenient one to be standing on. be just in business and generous out of it. a fellow's generosity needs a heap of exercise to keep it in good condition, and the hand that writes out checks gets cramped easier than the hand that takes them in. you want to keep them both limber. while i don't believe in giving with a string tied to every dollar, or doing up a gift in so many conditions that the present is lost in the wrappings, it's a good idea not to let most people feel that money can be had for the asking. if you do, they're apt to go into the asking business for a living. but these millionaires who give away a hundred thousand or so, with the understanding that the other fellow will raise another hundred thousand or so, always remind me of a lot of boys coaxing a dog into their yard with a hunk of meat, so that they can tie a tin can to his tail--the pup edges up licking his chops at the thought of the provisions and hanging his tail at the thought of the hardware. if he gets the meat, he's got to run himself to death to get rid of the can. while we're on this subject of favors i want to impress on you the importance of deciding promptly. the man who can make up his mind quick, makes up other people's minds for them. decision is a sharp knife that cuts clear and straight and lays bare the fat and the lean; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it. say yes or no--seldom perhaps. some people have such fertile imaginations that they will take a grain of hope and grow a large definite promise with bark on it overnight, and later, when you come to pull that out of their brains by the roots, it hurts, and they holler. when a fellow asks for a job in your department there may be reasons why you hate to give him a clear-cut refusal, but tell him frankly that you see no possibility of placing him, and while he may not like the taste of the medicine, he swallows it and it's down and forgotten. but you say to him that you're very sorry your department is full just now, but that you think a place will come along later and that he shall have the first call on it, and he goes away with his teeth in a job. you've simply postponed your trouble for a few weeks or months. and trouble postponed always has to be met with accrued interest. never string a man along in business. it isn't honest and it isn't good policy. either's a good reason, but taken together they head the list of good reasons. of course, i don't mean that you want to go rampaging along, trampling on people's feelings and goring every one who sticks up a head in your path. but there's no use shilly-shallying and doddering with people who ask questions and favors they have no right to ask. don't hurt any one if you can help it, but if you must, a clean, quick wound heals soonest. when you can, it's better to refuse a request by letter. in a letter you need say only what you choose; in a talk you may have to say more than you want to say. with the best system in the world you'll find it impossible, however, to keep a good many people who have no real business with you from seeing you and wasting your time, because a broad-gauged merchant must be accessible. when a man's office is policed and every one who sees him has to prove that he's taken the third degree and is able to give the grand hailing sign, he's going to miss a whole lot of things that it would be mighty valuable for him to know. of course, the man whose errand could be attended to by the office-boy is always the one who calls loudest for the boss, but with a little tact you can weed out most of these fellows, and it's better to see ten bores than to miss one buyer. a house never gets so big that it can afford to sniff at a hundred-pound sausage order, or to feel that any customer is so small that it can afford not to bother with him. you've got to open a good many oysters to find a pearl. you should answer letters just as you answer men--promptly, courteously, and decisively. of course, you don't ever want to go off half-cocked and bring down a cow instead of the buck you're aiming at, but always remember that game is shy and that you can't shoot too quick after you've once got it covered. when i go into a fellow's office and see his desk buried in letters with the dust on them, i know that there are cobwebs in his head. foresight is the quality that makes a great merchant, but a man who has his desk littered with yesterday's business has no time to plan for to-morrow's. the only letters that can wait are those which provoke a hot answer. a good hot letter is always foolish, and you should never write a foolish thing if you can say it to the man instead, and never say it if you can forget it. the wisest man may make an ass of himself to-day, over to-day's provocation, but he won't tomorrow. before being used, warm words should be run into the cooling-room until the animal heat is out of them. of course, there's no use in a fool's waiting, because there's no room in a small head in which to lose a grievance. speaking of small heads naturally calls to mind a gold brick named solomon saunders that i bought when i was a good deal younger and hadn't been buncoed so often. i got him with a letter recommending him as a sort of happy combination of the three wise men of the east and the nine muses, and i got rid of him with one in which i allowed that he was the whole dozen. i really hired sol because he reminded me of some one i'd known and liked, though i couldn't just remember at the time who it was; but one day, after he'd been with me about a week, it came to me in a flash that he was the living image of old bucker, a billy-goat i'd set aheap of store by when i was a boy. that was a lesson to me on the foolishness of getting sentimental in business. i never think of the old homestead that echo doesn't answer, "give up!"; or hear from it without getting a bill for having been born there. sol had started out in life to be a great musician. had raised the hair for the job and had kept his finger-nails cut just right for it, but somehow, when he played "my old kentucky home," nobody sobbed softly in the fourth row. you see, he could play a piece absolutely right and meet every note just when it came due, but when he got through it was all wrong. that was sol in business, too. he knew just the right rule for doing everything and did it just that way, and yet everything he did turned out to be a mistake. made it twice as aggravating because you couldn't consistently find fault with him. if you'd given sol the job of making over the earth he'd have built it out of the latest text-book on "how to make the world better," and have turned out something as correct as a spike-tail coat--and every one would have wanted to die to get out of it. then, too, i never saw such a cuss for system. other men would forget costs and prices, but sol never did. seemed he ran his memory by system. had a way when there was a change in the price-list of taking it home and setting it to poetry. used "ring out, wild bells," by a. tennyson, for a bull market--remember he began it "ring off, wild bulls"--and "break, break, break," for a bear one. it used to annoy me considerable when i asked him the price of pork tenderloins to have him mumble through two or three verses till he fetched it up, but i didn't have any real kick coming till he got ambitious and i had to wait till he'd hummed half through a grand opera to get a quotation on pickled pigs' feet in kits. i felt that we had reached the parting of the ways then, but i didn't like to point out his way too abruptly, because the friend who had unloaded him on us was pretty important to me in my business just then, and he seemed to be all wrapped up in sol's making a hit with us. it's been my experience, though, that sometimes when you can't kick a man out of the back door without a row, you can get him to walk out the front way voluntarily. so when i get stuck with a fellow that, for some reason, it isn't desirable to fire, i generally promote him and raise his pay. some of these weak sisters i make the assistant boss of the machine-shop and some of the bone-meal mill. i didn't dare send sol to the machine-shop, because i knew he wouldn't have been there a week before he'd have had the shop running on gã¶tterdã¤mmerung or one of those other cuss-word operas of wagner's. but the strong point of a bone-meal mill is bone-dust, and the strong point of bone-dust is smell, and the strong point of its smell is its staying qualities. naturally it's the sort of job for which you want a bald-headed man, because a fellow who's got nice thick curls will cheat the house by taking a good deal of the product home with him. to tell the truth, sol's hair had been worrying me almost as much as his system. when i hired him i'd supposed he'd finally molt it along with his musical tail-feathers. i had a little talk with him then, in which i hinted at the value of looking clear-cut and trim and of giving sixteen ounces to the pound, but the only result of it was that he went off and bought a pot of scented vaseline and grew another inch of hair for good measure. it seemed a pity now, so long as i was after his scalp, not to get it with the hair on. sol had never seen a bone-meal mill, but it flattered him mightily to be promoted into the manufacturing end, "where a fellow could get ahead faster," and he said good-by to the boys in the office with his nose in the air, where he kept it, i reckon, during the rest of his connection with the house. if sol had stuck it out for a month at the mill i'd have known that he had the right stuff in him somewhere and have taken him back into the office after a good rub-down with pumice-stone. but he turned up the second day, smelling of violet soap and bone-meal, and he didn't sing his list of grievances, either. started right in by telling me how, when he got into a street-car, all the other passengers sort of faded out; and how his landlady insisted on serving his meals in his room. almost foamed at the mouth when i said the office seemed a little close and opened the window, and he quoted some poetry about that being "the most unkindest cut of all." wound up by wanting to know how he was going to get it out of his hair. i broke it to him as gently as i could that it would have to wear out or be cut out, and tried to make him see that it was better to be a bald-headed boss on a large salary than a curly-headed clerk on a small one; but, in the end, he resigned, taking along a letter from me to the friend who had recommended him and some of my good bone-meal. i didn't grudge him the fertilizer, but i did feel sore that he hadn't left me a lock of his hair, till some one saw him a few days later, dodging along with his collar turned up and his hat pulled down, looking like a new-clipped lamb. i heard, too, that the fellow who had given him the wise-men-muses letter to me was so impressed with the almost exact duplicate of it which i gave sol, and with the fact that i had promoted him so soon, that he concluded he must have let a good man get by him, and hired him himself. sol was a failure as a musician because, while he knew all the notes, he had nothing in himself to add to them when he played them. it's easy to learn all the notes that make good music and all the rules that make good business, but a fellow's got to add the fine curves to them himself if he wants to do anything more than beat the bass-drum all his life. some men think that rules should be made of cast iron; i believe that they should be made of rubber, so that they can be stretched to fit any particular case and then spring back into shape again. the really important part of a rule is the exception to it. your affectionate father, john graham. p.s.--leave for home to-morrow. no. 4 from john graham, at the hotel cecil, london, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the old man has just finished going through the young man's first report as manager of the lard department, and he finds it suspiciously good. iv london, december 1, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: your first report; looks so good that i'm a little afraid of it. figures don't lie, i know, but that's, only because they can't talk. as a matter of fact, they're just as truthful as the man who's behind them. it's been my experience that there are two kinds of figures--educated and uneducated ones--and that the first are a good deal like the people who have had the advantage of a college education on the inside and the disadvantage of a society finish on the outside--they're apt to tell you only the smooth and the pleasant things. of course, it's mighty nice to be told that the shine of your shirt-front is blinding the floor-manager's best girl; but if there's a hole in the seat of your pants you ought to know that, too, because sooner or later you've got to turn your back to the audience. now don't go off half-cocked and think i'm allowing that you ain't truthful; because i think you are--reasonably so--and i'm sure that everything you say in your report is true. but is there anything you don't say in it? a good many men are truthful on the installment plan--that is, they tell their boss all the good things in sight about their end of the business and then dribble out the bad ones like a fellow who's giving you a list of his debts. they'll yell for a week that the business of their department has increased ten per cent., and then own up in a whisper that their selling cost has increased twenty. in the end, that always creates a worse impression than if both sides of the story had been told at once or the bad had been told first. it's like buying a barrel of apples that's been deaconed--after you've found that the deeper you go the meaner and wormier the fruit, you forget all about the layer of big, rosy, wax-finished pippins which was on top. i never worry about the side of a proposition that i can see; what i want to get a look at is the side that's out of sight. the bugs always snuggle down on the under side of the stone. the best year we ever had--in our minds--was one when the superintendent of the packing-house wanted an increase in his salary, and, to make a big showing, swelled up his inventory like a poisoned pup. it took us three months, to wake up to what had happened, and a year to get over feeling as if there was sand in our eyes when we compared the second showing with the first. an optimist is as bad as a drunkard when he comes to figure up results in business--he sees double. i employ optimists to get results and pessimists to figure them up. after i've charged off in my inventory for wear and tear and depreciation, i deduct a little more just for luck--bad luck. that's the only sort of luck a merchant can afford to make a part of his calculations. the fellow who said you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear wasn't on to the packing business. you can make the purse and you can fill it, too, from the same critter. what you can't do is to load up a report with moonshine or an inventory with wind, and get anything more substantial than a moonlight sail toward bankruptcy. the kittens of a wildcat are wildcats, and there's no use counting on their being angoras. speaking of educated pigs naturally calls to mind jake solzenheimer and the lard that he sold half a cent a pound cheaper than any one else in the business could make it. that was a long time ago, when the packing business was still on the bottle, and when the hogs that came to chicago got only a common-school education and graduated as plain hams and sides and lard and sausage. literature hadn't hit the hog business then. it was just graham's hams or smith's lard, and there were no poetical brands or high-art labels. well, sir, one day i heard that this jake was offering lard to the trade at half a cent under the market, and that he'd had the nerve to label it "driven snow leaf." told me, when i ran up against him on the street, that he'd got the name from a song which began, "once i was pure as the driven snow." said it made him feel all choky and as if he wanted to be a better man, so he'd set out to make the song famous in the hope of its helping others. allowed that this was a hard world, and that it was little enough we could do in our business life to scatter sunshine along the way; but he proposed that every can which left his packing-house after this should carry the call to a better life into some humble home. i let him lug that sort of stuff to the trough till he got tired, and then i looked him square in the eye and went right at him with: "jake, what you been putting in that lard?" because i knew mighty well that there was something in it which had never walked on four feet and fattened up on fifty-cent corn and then paid railroad fare from the missouri river to chicago. there are a good many things i don't know, but hogs ain't one of them. jake just grinned at me and swore that there was nothing in his lard except the pure juice of the hog; so i quit fooling with him and took a can of "driven snow" around to our chemist. it looked like lard and smelt like lard--in fact, it looked better than real lard: too white and crinkly and tempting on top. and the next day the chemist came down to my office and told me that "driven snow" must have been driven through a candle factory, because it had picked up about twenty per cent. of paraffin wax somewhere. of course, i saw now why jake was able to undersell us all, but it was mighty important to knock out "driven snow" with the trade in just the right way, because most of our best customers had loaded up with it. so i got the exact formula from the chemist and had about a hundred sample cans made up, labeling each one "wandering boy leaf lard," and printing on the labels: "this lard contains twenty per cent. of paraffin." i sent most of these cans, with letters of instruction, to our men through the country. then i waited until it was jake's time to be at the live stock exchange, and happened in with a can of "wandering boy" under my arm. it didn't take me long to get into conversation with jake, and as we talked i swung that can around until it attracted his attention, and he up and asked: "what you got there, graham?" "oh, that," i answered, slipping the can behind my back--"that's a new lard we're putting out--something not quite so expensive as our regular brand." jake stopped grinning then and gave me a mighty sharp look. "lemme have a squint at it," says he, trying not to show too keen an interest in his face. i held back a little; then i said: "well, i don't just know as i ought to show you this. we haven't regularly put it on the market, and this can ain't a fair sample of what we can do; but so long as i sort of got the idea from you i might as well tell you. i'd been thinking over what you said about that lard of yours, and while they were taking a collection in church the other day the soprano up and sings a mighty touching song. it began, 'where is my wandering boy to-night?' and by the time she was through i was feeling so mushy and sobby that i put a five instead of a one into the plate by mistake. i've been thinking ever since that the attention of the country ought to be called to that song, and so i've got up this missionary lard"; and i shoved the can of "wandering boy" under his eyes, giving him time to read the whole label. "h--l!" he said. "yes," i answered; "that's it. good lard gone wrong; but it's going to do a great work." [illustration: "that's it--good lard gone wrong"] jake's face looked like the lost tribes--the whole bunch of 'em--as the thing soaked in; and then he ran his arm through mine and drew me off into a corner. "graham," said he, "let's drop this cussed foolishness. you keep dark about this and we'll divide the lard trade of the country." i pretended not to understand what he was driving at, but reached out and grasped his hand and wrung it. "yes, yes, jake," i said; "we'll stand shoulder to shoulder and make the lard business one grand sweet song," and then i choked him off by calling another fellow into the conversation. it hardly seemed worth while to waste time telling jake what he was going to find out when he got back to his office--that there wasn't any lard business to divide, because i had hogged it all. you see, my salesmen had taken their samples of "wandering boy" around to the buyers and explained that it was made from the same formula as "driven snow," and could be bought at the same price. they didn't sell any "boy," of course--that wasn't the idea; but they loaded up the trade with our regular brand, to take the place of the "driven snow," which was shipped back to jake by the car-lot. since then, when anything looks too snowy and smooth and good at the first glance, i generally analyze it for paraffin. i've found that this is a mighty big world for a square man and a mighty small world for a crooked one. i simply mention these things in a general way. i've confidence that you're going to make good as head of the lard department, and if, when i get home, i find that your work analyzes seventy-five per cent, as pure as your report i shall be satisfied. in the meanwhile i shall instruct the cashier to let you draw a hundred dollars a week, just to show that i haven't got a case of faith without works. i reckon the extra twenty-five per will come in mighty handy now that you're within a month of marrying helen. i'm still learning how to treat an old wife, and so i can't give you many pointers about a young one. for while i've been married as long as i've been in business, and while i know all the curves of the great american hog, your ma's likely to spring a new one on me tomorrow. no man really knows anything about women except a widower, and he forgets it when he gets ready to marry again. and no woman really knows anything about men except a widow, and she's got to forget it before she's willing to marry again. the one thing you can know is that, as a general proposition, a woman is a little better than the man for whom she cares. for when a woman's bad, there's always a man at the bottom of it; and when a man's good, there's always a woman at the bottom of that, too. the fact of the matter is, that while marriages may be made in heaven, a lot of them are lived in hell and end in south dakota. but when a man has picked out a good woman he holds four hearts, and he needn't be afraid to draw cards if he's got good nerve. if he hasn't, he's got no business to be sitting in games of chance. the best woman in the world will begin trying out a man before she's been married to him twenty-four hours; and unless he can smile over the top of a four-flush and raise the ante, she's going to rake in the breeches and keep them. the great thing is to begin right. marriage is a close corporation, and unless a fellow gets the controlling interest at the start he can't pick it up later. the partner who owns fifty-one per cent. of the stock in any business is the boss, even if the other is allowed to call himself president. there's only two jobs for a man in his own house--one's boss and the other's office-boy, and a fellow naturally falls into the one for which he's fitted. of course, when i speak of a fellow's being boss in his own home, i simply mean that, in a broad way, he's going to shape the policy of the concern. when a man goes sticking his nose into the running of the house, he's apt to get it tweaked, and while he's busy drawing _it_ back out of danger he's going to get his leg pulled, too. you let your wife tend to the housekeeping and you focus on earning money with which she can keep house. of course, in one way, it's mighty nice of a man to help around the place, but it's been my experience that the fellows who tend to all the small jobs at home never get anything else to tend to at the office. in the end, it's usually cheaper to give all your attention to your business and to hire a plumber. you don't want to get it into your head, though, that because your wife hasn't any office-hours she has a soft thing. a lot of men go around sticking out their chests and wondering why their wives have so much trouble with the help, when they are able to handle their clerks so easy. if you really want to know, you lift two of your men out of their revolving-chairs, and hang one over a forty-horse-power cook-stove that's booming along under forced draft so that your dinner won't be late, with a turkey that's gobbling for basting in one oven, and a cake that's gone back on you in a low, underhand way in another, and sixteen different things boiling over on top and mixing up their smells. and you set the other at a twelve-hour stunt of making all the beds you've mussed, and washing all the dishes you've used, and cleaning all the dust you've kicked up, and you boss the whole while the baby yells with colic over your arm--you just try this with two of your men and see how long it is before there's rough-house on the wabash. yet a lot of fellows come home after their wives have had a day of this and blow around about how tired and overworked they are, and wonder why home isn't happier. don't you ever forget that it's a blamed sight easier to keep cool in front of an electric fan than a cook-stove, and that you can't subject the best temper in the world to 500 degrees fahrenheit without warming it up a bit. and don't you add to your wife's troubles by saying how much better you could do it, but stand pat and thank the lord you've got a snap. i remember when old doc hoover, just after his wife died, bought a mighty competent nigger, aunt tempy, to cook and look after the house for him. she was the boss cook, you bet, and she could fry a chicken into a bird of paradise just as easy as the doc could sizzle a sinner into a pretty tolerable christian. the old man took his religion with the bristles on, and he wouldn't stand for any sunday work in his house. told tempy to cook enough for two days on saturday and to serve three cold meals on sunday. tempy sniffed a little, but she'd been raised well and didn't talk back. that first sunday doc got his cold breakfast all right, but before he'd fairly laid into it tempy trotted out a cup of hot coffee. that made the old man rage at first, but finally he allowed that, seeing it was made, there was no special harm in taking a sup or two, but not to let it occur again. a few minutes later he called back to tempy in the kitchen and asked her if she'd been sinful enough to make two cups. doc's dinner was ready for him when he got back from church, and it was real food--that is to say, hot food, a-sizzling and a-smoking from the stove. tempy told around afterward that the way the old man went for her about it made her feel mighty proud and set-up over her new master. but she just stood there dripping perspiration and good nature until the doc had wound up by allowing that there was only one part of the hereafter where meals were cooked on sunday, and that she'd surely get a mention on the bill of fare there as dark meat, well done, if she didn't repent, and then she blurted out: "law, chile, you go 'long and 'tend to yo' preaching and i'll 'tend to my cookin'; yo' can't fight the debbil with snow-balls." and what's more, the doc didn't, not while aunt tempy was living. there isn't any moral to this, but there's a hint in it to mind your own business at home as well as at the office. i sail to-morrow. i'm feeling in mighty good spirits, and i hope i'm not going to find anything at your end of the line to give me a relapse. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 5 from john graham, at the waldorf-astoria, new york, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the young man has hinted vaguely of a quarrel between himself and helen heath, who is in new york with her mother, and has suggested that the old man act as peacemaker. v new york, december 8, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: i've been afraid all along that you were going to spoil the only really sensible thing you've ever done by making some fool break, so as soon as i got your letter i started right out to trail down helen and her ma. i found them hived up here in the hotel, and miss helen was so sweet to your poor old pa that i saw right off she had a stick cut for his son. of course, i didn't let on that i knew anything about a quarrel, but i gradually steered the conversation around to you, and while i don't want to hurt your feelings, i am violating no confidence when i tell you that the mention of your name aroused about the same sort of enthusiasm that bill bryan's does in wall street--only helen is a lady and so she couldn't cuss. but it wasn't the language of flowers that i saw in her eyes. so i told her that she must make allowances for you, as you were only a half-baked boy, and that, naturally, if she stuck a hat-pin into your crust she was going to strike a raw streak here and there. she sat up a little at that, and started in to tell me that while you had said "some very, very cruel, cruel things to her, still--" but i cut her short by allowing that, sorry as i was to own it, i was afraid you had a streak of the brute in you, and i only hoped that you wouldn't take it out on her after you were married. well, sir, the way she flared up, i thought that all the fourth of july fireworks had gone off at once. the air was full of trouble--trouble in set pieces and bombs and sizzy rockets and sixteen-ball roman candles, and all pointed right at me. then it came on to rain in the usual way, and she began to assure me between showers that you were so kind and gentle that it hurt you to work, or to work at my horrid pig-sticking business, i forget which, and i begged her pardon for having misjudged you so cruelly, and then the whole thing sort of simmered off into a discussion of whether i thought you'd rather she wore pink or blue at breakfast. so i guess you're all right. only you'd better write quick and apologize. i didn't get at the facts of the quarrel, but you're in the wrong. a fellow's always in the wrong when he quarrels with a woman, and even if he wasn't at the start he's sure to be before he gets through. and a man who's decided to marry can't be too quick learning to apologize for things he didn't say and to be forgiven for things he didn't do. when you differ with your wife, never try to reason out who's in the wrong, because you'll find that after you've proved it to her shell still have a lot of talk left that she hasn't used. of course, it isn't natural and it isn't safe for married people, and especially young married people, not to quarrel a little, but you'll save a heap of trouble if you make it a rule never to refuse a request before breakfast and never to grant one after dinner. i don't know why it is, but most women get up in the morning as cheerful as a breakfast-food ad., while a man will snort and paw for trouble the minute his hoofs touch the floor. then, if you'll remember that the longer the last word is kept the bitterer it gets, and that your wife is bound to have it anyway, you'll cut the rest of your quarrels so short that she'll never find out just how much meanness there is in you. be the silent partner at home and the thinking one at the office. do your loose talking in your sleep. of course, if you get a woman who's really fond of quarreling there isn't any special use in keeping still, because she'll holler if you talk back and yell if you don't. the best that you can do is to pretend that you've got a chronic case of ear-ache, and keep your ears stuffed with cotton. then, like as not, she'll buy you one of these things that you hold in your mouth so that you can hear through your teeth. i don't believe you're going to draw anything of that sort with helen, but this is a mighty uncertain world, especially when you get to betting on which way the kitten is going to jump--you can usually guess right about the cat--and things don't always work out as planned. while there's no sure rule for keeping out of trouble in this world, there's a whole set of them for getting into it. i remember a mighty nice, careful mother who used to shudder when slang was used in her presence. so she vowed she'd give _her_ son a name that the boys couldn't twist into any low, vulgar nick-name. she called him algernon, but the kid had a pretty big nose, and the first day he was sent to school with his long lace collar and his short velvet pants the boys christened him snooty, and now his parents are the only people who know what his real name is. after you've been married a little while you're going to find that there are two kinds of happiness you can have--home happiness and fashionable happiness. with the first kind you get a lot of children and with the second a lot of dogs. while the dogs mind better and seem more affectionate, because they kiss you with their whole face, i've always preferred to associate with children. then, for the first kind of happiness you keep house for yourself, and for the second you keep house for the neighbors. you can buy a lot of home happiness with a mighty small salary, but fashionable happiness always costs just a little more than you're making. you can't keep down expenses when you've got to keep up appearances--that is, the appearance of being something that you ain't. you're in the fix of a dog chasing his tail--you can't make ends meet, and if you do it'll give you such a crick in your neck that you won't get any real satisfaction out of your gymnastics. you've got to live on a rump-steak basis when you're alone, so that you can appear to be on a quail-on-toast basis when you have company. and while they're eating your quail and betting that they're cold-storage birds, they'll be whispering to each other that the butcher told their cook that you lived all last week on a soup-bone and two pounds of hamburger steak. your wife must hog it around the house in an old wrapper, because she's got to have two or three of those dresses that come high on the bills and low on the shoulders, and when she wears 'em the neighbors are going to wonder how much you're short in your accounts. and if you've been raised a shouting methodist and been used to hollering your satisfaction in a good hearty glory! or a hallelujah! you've got to quit it and go to one of those churches where the right answer to the question, "what is the chief end of man?" is "dividend," and where they think you're throwing a fit and sick the sexton on to you if you forget yourself and whoop it up a little when your religion gets to working. then, if you do have any children, you can't send them to a plain public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, because they've got to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. they've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. it's been my experience that it takes a good four-year course in snubbing before you can graduate a first-class snob. then, when you've sweat along at it for a dozen years or so, you'll wake up some morning and discover that your appearances haven't deceived any one but yourself. a man who tries that game is a good deal like the fellow who puts on a fancy vest over a dirty shirt--he's the only person in the world who can't see the egg-spots under his chin. of course, there isn't any real danger of your family's wearing a false front while i'm alive, because i believe helen's got too much sense to stand for anything of the sort; but if she should, you can expect the old man around with his megaphone to whisper the real figures to your neighbors. i don't care how much or how little money you make--i want you to understand that there's only one place in the world where you can live a happy life, and that's inside your income. a family that's living beyond its means is simply a business that's losing money, and it's bound to go to smash. and to keep a safe distance ahead of the sheriff you've got to make your wife help. more men go broke through bad management at home than at the office. and i might add that a lot of men who are used to getting only one dollar's worth of food for a five-dollar bill down-town, expect their wives to get five dollars' worth of food for a one-dollar bill at the corner grocery, and to save the change toward a pair of diamond earrings. these fellows would plant a tin can and kick because they didn't get a case of tomatoes. of course, some women put their husband's salaries on their backs instead of his ribs; but there are a heap more men who burn up their wives' new sealskin sacques in two-bit cigars. because a man's a good provider it doesn't always mean that he's a good husband--it may mean that he's a hog. and when there's a cuss in the family and it comes down to betting which, on general principles the man always carries my money. i make mistakes at it, but it's the only winning system i've ever been able to discover in games of chance. you want to end the wedding trip with a business meeting and talk to your wife quite as frankly as you would to a man whom you'd taken into partnership. tell her just what your salary is and then lay it out between you--so much for joint expenses, the house and the housekeeping, so much for her expenses, so much for yours, and so much to be saved. that last is the one item on which you can't afford to economize. it's the surplus and undivided profits account of your business, and until the concern accumulates a big one it isn't safe to move into offices on easy street. a lot of fool fathers only give their fool daughters a liberal education in spending, and it's pretty hard to teach those women the real facts about earning and saving, but it's got to be done unless you want to be the fool husband of a fool wife. these girls have an idea that men get money by going to a benevolent old party behind some brass bars and shoving a check at him and telling him that they want it in fifties and hundreds. you should take home your salary in actual money for a while, and explain that it's all you got for sweating like a dog for ten hours a day, through six long days, and that the cashier handed it out with an expression as if you were robbing the cash-drawer of an orphan asylum. make her understand that while those that have gets, when they present a check, those that haven't gets it in the neck. explain that the benevolent old party is only on duty when papa's daughter has a papa that bradstreet rates aa, and that when papa's daughter's husband presents a five-dollar check with a ten-cent overdraft, he's received by a low-browed old brute who calls for the bouncer to put him out. tell her right at the start the worst about the butcher, and the grocer, and the iceman, and the milkman, and the plumber, and the gas-meter--that they want their money and that it has to come out of that little roll of bills. then give her enough to pay them, even if you have to grab for your lunch from a high stool. i used to know an old jew who said that the man who carved was always a fool or a hog, but you've got to learn not to divide your salary on either basis. make your wife pay cash. a woman never really understands money till she's done that for a while. i've noticed that people rarely pay down the money for foolish purchases--they charge them. and it's mighty seldom that a woman's extravagant unless she or her husband pays the bills by check. there's something about counting out the actual legal tender on the spot that keeps a woman from really wanting a lot of things which she thinks she wants. when i married your ma, your grandpa was keeping eighteen niggers busy seeing that the family did nothing. she'd had a liberal education, which, so far as i've been able to find out, means teaching a woman everything except the real business that she's going into--that is, if she marries. but when your ma swapped the big house and the eighteen niggers for me and an old mammy to do the rough work, she left the breakfast-in-bed, fine-lady business behind her and started right in to get the rest of the education that belonged to her. she did a mighty good job, too, all except making ends meet, and they were too elastic for her at first--sort of snapped back and left a deficit just when she thought she had them together. she was mighty sorry about it, but she'd never heard of any way of getting money except asking papa for it, and she'd sort of supposed that every one asked papa when they wanted any, and, why didn't i ask papa? i finally made her see that i couldn't ask my papa, because i hadn't any, and that i couldn't ask hers, because it was against the rules of the game as i played it, and that was her first real lesson in high finance and low finances. i gave her the second when she came to me about the twentieth of the month and kissed me on the ear and sent a tickly little whisper after it to the effect that the household appropriation for the month was exhausted and the pork-barrel and the meal-sack and the chicken-coop were in the same enfeebled condition. i didn't say anything at first, only looked pretty solemn, and then i allowed that she'd have to go into the hands of a receiver. well, sir, the way she snuggled up to me and cried made me come pretty close to weakening, but finally i told her that i reckoned i could manage to be appointed by the court and hush up the scandal so the neighbors wouldn't hear of it. i took charge of her little books and paid over to myself her housekeeping money each month, buying everything myself, but explaining every move i made, until in the end i had paid her out of debt and caught up with my salary again. then i came home on the first of the month, handed out her share of the money, and told her that the receiver had been discharged by the court. my! but she was pleased. and then she paid me out for the scare i'd given her by making me live on side-meat and corn-bread for a month, so she'd be sure not to get the sheriff after her again. of course, i had to tell her all about it in the end, and though she's never forgotten what she learned about money during the receivership, she's never quite forgiven the receiver. speaking of receiving, i notice the receipts of hogs are pretty light. hold your lard prices up stiff to the market. it looks to me as if that milwaukee crowd was getting under the february delivery. your affectionate father, john graham. p.s.--you've got to square me with helen. no. 6 from john graham, at the waldorf-astoria, new york, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the young man has written describing the magnificent wedding presents that are being received, and hinting discreetly that it would not come amiss if he knew what shape the old man's was going to take, as he needs the money. vi new york, december 12, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: these fellows at the branch house here have been getting altogether too blamed refined to suit me in their ideas of what's a fair day's work, so i'm staying over a little longer than i had intended, in order to ring the rising bell for them and to get them back into good chicago habits. the manager started in to tell me that you couldn't do any business here before nine or ten in the morning--and i raised that boy myself! we had a short season of something that wasn't exactly prayer, but was just as earnest, and i think he sees the error of his ways. he seemed to feel that just because he was getting a fair share of the business i ought to be satisfied, but i don't want any half-sports out gunning with me. it's the fellow that settles himself in his blind before the ducks begin to fly who gets everything that's coming to his decoys. i reckon we'll have to bring this man back to chicago and give him a beef house where he has to report at five before he can appreciate what a soft thing it is to get down to work at eight. i'm mighty glad to hear you're getting so many wedding presents that you think you'll have enough to furnish your house, only you don't want to fingermark them looking to see it a hundred-thousand-dollar check from me ain't slipped in among them, because it ain't. i intend to give you a present, all right, but there's a pretty wide margin for guessing between a hundred thousand dollars and the real figures. and you don't want to feel too glad about what you've got, either, because you're going to find out that furnishing a house with wedding presents is equivalent to furnishing it on the installment plan. along about the time you want to buy a go-cart for the twins, you'll discover that you'll have to make tommy's busted old baby-carriage do, because you've got to use the money to buy a tutti-frutti ice-cream spoon for the young widow who sent you a doormat with "welcome" on it. and when she gets it, the young widow will call you that idiotic mr. graham, because she's going to have sixteen other tutti-frutti ice-cream spoons, and her doctor's told her that if she eats sweet things she'll have to go in the front door like a piano--sideways. then when you get the junk sorted over and your house furnished with it, you're going to sit down to dinner on some empty soap-boxes, with the soup in cut-glass finger-bowls, and the fish on a hand-painted smoking-set, and the meat on dinky, little egg-shell salad plates, with ice-cream forks and fruit knives to eat with. you'll spend most of that meal wondering why somebody didn't send you one of those hundred and sixteen piece five-dollar-ninety-eight-marked-down-from-six sets of china. while i don't mean to say that the average wedding present carries a curse instead of a blessing, it could usually repeat a few cuss-words if it had a retentive memory. speaking of wedding presents and hundred-thousand-dollar checks naturally brings to mind my old friend hamilton huggins--old ham they called him at the yards--and the time he gave his son, percival, a million dollars. take him by and large, ham was as slick as a greased pig. before he came along, the heft of the beef hearts went into the fertilizer tanks, but he reasoned out that they weren't really tough, but that their firmness was due to the fact that the meat in them was naturally condensed, and so he started putting them out in his celebrated condensed mincemeat at ten cents a pound. took his pigs' livers, too, and worked 'em up into a genuine strasburg pã¢tã© de foie gras that made the wild geese honk when they flew over his packing-house. discovered that a little chopped cheek-meat at two cents a pound was a blamed sight healthier than chopped pork at six. reckoned that by running twenty-five per cent. of it into his pork sausage he saved a hundred thousand people every year from becoming cantankerous old dyspeptics. ham was simply one of those fellows who not only have convolutions in their brains, but kinks and bow-knots as well, and who can believe that any sort of a lie is gospel truth just so it is manufactured and labeled on their own premises. i confess i ran out a line of those pigs' liver pã¢tã©s myself, but i didn't do it because i was such a patriot that i couldn't stand seeing the american flag insulted by a lot of frenchmen getting a dollar for a ten-cent article, and that simply because geese have smaller livers than pigs. for all old ham was so shrewd at the yards, he was one of those fellows who begin losing their common-sense at the office door, and who reach home doddering and blithering. had a fool wife with the society bug in her head, and as he had the one-of-our-leading-citizens bug in his, they managed between them to raise a lovely warning for a sunday-school superintendent in their son, percival. percy was mommer's angel boy with the sunny curls, who was to be raised a gentleman and to be "shielded from the vulgar surroundings and coarse associations of her husband's youth," and he was proud popper's pet, whose good times weren't going to be spoiled by a narrow-minded old brute of a father, or whose talents weren't going to be smothered in poverty, the way the old man's had been. no, sir-ee, percy was going to have all the money he wanted, with the whisky bottle always in sight on the sideboard and no limit on any game he wanted to sit in, so that he'd grow up a perfect little gentleman and know how to use things instead of abusing them. i want to say right here that i've heard a good deal of talk in my time about using whisky, and i've met a good many thousand men who bragged when they were half loaded that they could quit at any moment, but i've never met one of these fellows who would while the whisky held out. it's been my experience that when a fellow begins to brag that he can quit whenever he wants to, he's usually reached the point where he can't. naturally, percy had hardly got the pap-rag out of his mouth before he learned to smoke cigarettes, and he could cuss like a little gentleman before he went into long pants. took the four-years' sporting course at harvard, with a postgraduate year of draw-poker and natural history--observing the habits and the speed of the ponies in their native haunts. then, just to prove that he had paresis, old ham gave him a million dollars outright and a partnership in his business. percy started in to learn the business at the top--absorbing as much of it as he could find room for between ten and four, with two hours out for lunch--but he never got down below the frosting. the one thing that old ham wouldn't let him touch was the only thing about the business which really interested percy--the speculating end of it. but everything else he did went with the old gentleman, and he was always bragging that percy was growing up into a big, broad-gauged merchant. he got mighty mad with me when i told him that percy was just a ready-made success who was so small that he rattled round in his seat, and that he'd better hold in his horses, as there were a good many humps in the road ahead of him. old ham was a sure-thing packer, like myself, and let speculating alone, never going into the market unless he had the goods or knew where he could get them; but when he did plunge into the pit, he usually climbed out with both hands full of money and a few odd thousand-dollar bills sticking in his hair. so when he came to me one day and pointed out that prime steam lard at eight cents for the november delivery, and the west alive with hogs, was a crime against the consumer, i felt inclined to agree with him, and we took the bear side of the market together. somehow, after we had gone short a big line, the law of supply and demand quit business. there were plenty of hogs out west, and all the packers were making plenty of lard, but people seemed to be frying everything they ate, and using lard in place of hair-oil, for the prime steam moved out as fast as it was made. the market simply sucked up our short sales and hollered for more, like a six-months shoat at the trough. pound away as we would, the november option moved slowly up to 8-1/2, to 9, to 9-1/2. then, with delivery day only six weeks off, it jumped overnight to 10, and closed firm at 12-1/4. we stood to lose a little over a million apiece right there, and no knowing what the crowd that was under the market would gouge us for in the end. as soon as 'change closed that day, old ham and i got together and gave ourselves one guess apiece to find out where we stood, and we both guessed right--in a corner. we had a little over a month to get together the lard to deliver on our short sales or else pay up, but we hadn't had enough experience in the paying-up business to feel like engaging in it. so that afternoon we wired our agents through the west to start anything that looked like a hog toward chicago, and our men in the east to ship us every tierce of prime steam they could lay their hands on. then we made ready to try out every bit of hog fat, from a grease spot up, that we could find in the country. and all the time the price kept climbing on us like a nigger going up a persimmon tree, till it was rising seventeen cents. so far the bull crowd had managed to keep their identity hidden, and we'd been pretty modest about telling the names of the big bears, because we weren't very proud of the way we'd been caught napping, and because old ham was mighty anxious that percy shouldn't know that his safe old father had been using up the exception to his rule of no speculation. it was a near thing for us, but the american hog responded nobly--and a good many other critters as well, i suspect--and when it came on toward delivery day we found that we had the actual lard to turn over on our short contracts, and some to spare. but ham and i had lost a little fat ourselves, and we had learned a whole lot about the iniquity of selling goods that you haven't got, even when you do it with the benevolent intention of cheapening an article to the consumer. we got together at his office in the board of trade building to play off the finals with the bull crowd. we'd had inspectors busy all night passing the lard which we'd gathered together and which was arriving by boat-loads and train-loads. then, before 'change opened, we passed the word around through our brokers that there wasn't any big short interest left, and to prove it they pointed to the increase in the stocks of prime steam in store and gave out the real figures on what was still in transit. by the time the bell rang for trading on the floor we had built the hottest sort of a fire under the market, and thirty minutes after the opening the price of the november option had melted down flat to twelve cents. we gave the bulls a breathing space there, for we knew we had them all nicely rounded up in the killing-pens, and there was no hurry. but on toward noon, when things looked about right, we jumped twenty brokers into the pit, all selling at once and offering in any sized lots for which they could find takers. it was like setting off a pack of firecrackers--biff! bang! bang! our brokers gave it to them, and when the smoke cleared away the bits of that busted corner were scattered all over the pit, and there was nothing left for us to do but to pick up our profits; for we had swung a loss of millions over to the other side of the ledger. just as we were sending word to our brokers to steady the market so as to prevent a bad panic and failures, the door of the private office flew open, and in bounced mr. percy, looking like a hound dog that had lapped up a custard pie while the cook's back was turned and is hunting for a handy bed to hide under. had let his cigarette go out--he wore one in his face as regularly as some fellows wear a pink in their buttonhole--and it was drooping from his lower lip, instead of sticking up under his nose in the old sporty, sassy way. "oh, gov'ner!" he cried as he slammed the door behind him; "the market's gone to hell." "quite so, my son, quite so," nodded old ham approvingly; "it's the bottomless pit to-day, all right, all right." i saw it coming, but it came hard. percy sputtered and stuttered and swallowed it once or twice, and then it broke loose in: "and oh! gov'ner, i'm caught--in a horrid hole--you've got to help me out!" "eh! what's that!" exclaimed the old man, losing his just-after-a-hearty-meal expression. "what's that--caught--speculating, after what i've said to you! don't tell me that you're one of that bull crowd--don't you dare do it, sir." "ye-es," and percy's voice was scared back to a whisper; "yes; and what's more, i'm the whole bull crowd--the great bull they've all been talking and guessing about." great scott! but i felt sick. here we'd been, like two pebbles in a rooster's gizzard, grinding up a lot of corn that we weren't going to get any good of. i itched to go for that young man myself, but i knew this was one of those holy moments between father and son when an outsider wants to pull his tongue back into its cyclone cellar. and when i looked at ham, i saw that no help was needed, for the old man was coming out of his twenty-five-years' trance over percy. he didn't say a word for a few minutes, just kept boring into the young man with his eyes, and though percy had a cheek like brass, ham's stare went through it as easy as a two-inch bit goes into boiler-plate. then, "take that cigaroot out of your mouth," he bellered. "what d'ye mean by coming into my office smoking cigareets?" percy had always smoked whatever he blamed pleased, wherever he blamed pleased before, though old ham wouldn't stand for it from any one else. but because things have been allowed to go all wrong for twenty-five years, it's no reason why they should be allowed to go wrong for twenty-five years and one day; and i was mighty glad to see old ham rubbing the sleep out of his eyes at last. "but, gov'ner," percy began, throwing the cigarette away, "i really--" "don't you but me; i won't stand it. and don't you call me gov'ner. i won't have your low-down street slang in my office. so you're the great bull, eh? you bull-pup! you bull in a china shop! the great bull-calf, you mean. where'd you get the money for all this cussedness? where'd you get the money? tell me that. spit it out--quick--i say." [illustration: "tried to bust your poor old father"] "well, i've got a million dollars," percy dribbled out. "had a million dollars, and it was my good money," the old man moaned. "and an interest in the business, you know." "yep; i oughter. i s'pose you hocked that." "not exactly; but it helped me to raise a little money." "you bet it helped you; but where'd you get the rest? where'd you raise the money to buy all this cash lard and ship it abroad? where'd you get it? you tell me that." "well, ah--the banks--loaned--me--a---good deal." "on your face." "not exactly that--but they thought--inferred--that you were interested with me--and without--" percy's tongue came to a full stop when he saw the old man's face. "oh! they did, eh! they did, eh!" ham exploded. "tried to bust your poor old father, did you! would like to see him begging his bread, would you, or piking in the bucket-shops for five-dollar bills! wasn't satisfied with soaking him with his own million! couldn't rest when you'd swatted him with his own business! wanted to bat him over the head with his own credit! and now you come whining around--" "but, dad--" "don't you dad me, dad-fetch you--don't you try any absalom business on me. you're caught by the hair, all right, and i'm not going to chip in for any funeral expenses." right here i took a hand myself, because i was afraid ham was going to lose his temper, and that's one thing you can't always pick up in the same place that you left it. so i called ham off, and told percy to come back in an hour with his head broker and i'd protect his trades in the meanwhile. then i pointed out to the old man that we'd make a pretty good thing on the deal, even after we'd let percy out, as he'd had plenty of company on the bull side that could pay up; and anyway, that the boy was a blamed sight more important than the money, and here was the chance to make a man of him. we were all ready for mister percy when he came back, and ham got right down to business. "young man, i've decided to help you out of this hole," he began. percy chippered right up. "thank you, sir," he said. "yes, i'm going to help you," the old man went on. "i'm going to take all your trades off your hands and assume all your obligations at the banks." "thank you, sir." "stop interrupting when i'm talking, i'm going to take up all your obligations, and you're going to pay me three million dollars for doing it. when the whole thing's cleaned up that will probably leave me a few hundred thousand in the hole, but i'm going to do the generous thing by you." percy wasn't so chipper now. "but, father," he protested, "i haven't got three million dollars; and you know very well i can't possibly raise any three million dollars." "yes, you can," said ham. "there's the million i gave you: that makes one. there's your interest in the business; i'll buy it back for a million: that makes two. and i'll take your note at five per cent, for the third million. a fair offer, mr. graham?" "very liberal, indeed, mr. huggins," i answered. "but i won't have anything to live on, let alone any chance to pay you back, if you take my interest in the business away," pleaded percy. "i've thought of that, too," said his father, "and i'm going to give you a job. the experience you've had in this campaign ought to make you worth twenty-five dollars a week to us in our option department. then you can board at home for five dollars a week, and pay ten more on your note. that'll leave you ten per for clothes and extras." percy wriggled and twisted and tried tears. talked a lot of flip-flap flub-doodle, but ham was all through with the proud-popper business, and the young man found him as full of knots as a hickory root, and with a hide that would turn the blade of an ax. percy was simply in the fix of the skunk that stood on the track and humped up his back at the lightning express--there was nothing left of him except a deficit and the stink he'd kicked up. and a fellow can't dictate terms with those assets. in the end he left the room with a ring in his nose. after all, there was more in percy than cussedness, for when he finally decided that it was a case of root hog or die with him, he turned in and rooted. it took him ten years to get back into his father's confidence and a partnership, and he was still paying on the million-dollar note when the old man died and left him his whole fortune. it would have been cheaper for me in the end if i had let the old man disinherit him, because when percy ran that mess pork corner three years ago, he caught me short a pretty good line and charged me two dollars a barrel more than any one else to settle. explained that he needed the money to wipe out the unpaid balance of a million-dollar note that he'd inherited from his father. i simply mention percy to show why i'm a little slow to regard members of my family as charitable institutions that i should settle endowments on. if there's one thing i like less than another, it's being regarded as a human meal-ticket. what is given to you always belongs to some one else, and if the man who gave it doesn't take it back, some fellow who doesn't have to have things given to him is apt to come along and run away with it. but what you earn is your own, and apt to return your affection for it with interest--pretty good interest. your affectionate father, john graham. p.s.--i forgot to say that i had bought a house on michigan avenue for helen, but there's a provision in the deed that she can turn you out if you don't behave. no. 7 from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at yemassee-on-the-tallahassee. the young man is now in the third quarter of the honeymoon, and the old man has decided that it is time to bring him fluttering down to earth. vii chicago, january 17, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: after you and helen had gone off looking as if you'd just bought seats on 'change and been baptized into full membership with all the sample bags of grain that were handy, i found your new mother-in-law out in the dining-room, and, judging by the plates around her, she was carrying in stock a full line of staple and fancy groceries and delicatessen. when i struck her she was crying into her third plate of ice cream, and complaining bitterly to the butler because the mould had been opened so carelessly that some salt had leaked into it. of course, i started right in to be sociable and to cheer her up, but i reckon i got my society talk a little mixed--i'd been one of the pall-bearers at josh burton's funeral the day before--and i told her that she must bear up and eat a little something to keep up her strength, and to remember that our loss was helen's gain. now, i don't take much stock in all this mother-in-law talk, though i've usually found that where there's so much smoke there's a little fire; but i'm bound to say that helen's ma came back at me with a sniff and a snort, and made me feel sorry that i'd intruded on her sacred grief. told me that a girl of helen's beauty and advantages had naturally been very, very popular, and greatly sought after. said that she had been received in the very best society in europe, and might have worn strawberry leaves if she'd chosen, meaning, i've since found out, that she might have married a duke. [illustration: crying into her third plate of ice cream] i tried to soothe the old lady, and to restore good feeling by allowing that wearing leaves had sort of gone out of fashion with the garden of eden, and that i liked helen better in white satin, but everything i said just seemed to enrage her the more. told me plainly that she'd thought, and hinted that she'd hoped, right up to last month, that helen was going to marry a french nobleman, the count de somethingerino or other, who was crazy about her. so i answered that we'd both had a narrow escape, because i'd been afraid for a year that i might wake up any morning and find myself the father-in-law of a crystal slipper chorus-girl. then, as it looked as if the old lady was going to bust a corset-string in getting out her answer, i modestly slipped away, leaving her leaking brine and acid like a dill pickle that's had a bite taken out of it. good mothers often make bad mothers-in-law, because they usually believe that, no matter whom their daughters marry, they could have gone farther and fared better. but it struck me that helen's ma has one of those retentive memories and weak mouths--the kind of memory that never loses anything it should forget, and the kind of mouth that can't retain a lot of language which it shouldn't lose. of course, you want to honor your mother-in-law, that your days may be long in the land; but you want to honor this one from a distance, for the same reason. otherwise, i'm afraid you'll hear a good deal about that french count, and how hard it is for helen to have to associate with a lot of mavericks from the stock yards, when she might be running with blooded stock on the other side. and if you glance up from your morning paper and sort of wonder out loud whether corbett or fitzsimmons is the better man, mother-in-law will glare at you over the top of her specs and ask if you don't think it's invidious to make any comparisons if they're both striving, to lead earnest, christian lives. then, when you come home at night, you'll be apt to find your wife sniffing your breath when you kiss her, to see if she can catch that queer, heavy smell which mother has noticed on it; or looking at you slant-eyed when she feels some letters in your coat, and wondering if what mother says is true, and if men who've once taken chorus-girls to supper never really recover from the habit. on general principles, it's pretty good doctrine that two's a company and three's a crowd, except when the third is a cook. but i should say that when the third is helen's ma it's a mob, out looking for a chance to make rough-house. a good cook, a good wife and a good job will make a good home anywhere; but you add your mother-in-law, and the first thing you know you've got two homes, and one of them is being run on alimony. you want to remember that, beside your mother-in-law, you're a comparative stranger to your wife. after you and helen have lived together for a year, you ought to be so well acquainted that she'll begin to believe that you know almost as much as mamma; but during the first few months of married life there are apt to be a good many tie votes on important matters, and if mother-in-law is on the premises she is generally going to break the tie by casting the deciding vote with daughter. a man can often get the best of one woman, or ten men, but not of two women, when one of the two is mother-in-law. when a young wife starts housekeeping with her mother too handy, it's like running a business with a new manager and keeping the old one along to see how things go. it's not in human nature that the old manager, even with the best disposition in the world, shouldn't knock the new one a little, and you're helen's new manager. when i want to make a change, i go about it like a crab--get rid of the old shell first, and then plunge right in and begin to do business with the new skin. it may be a little tender and open to attack at first, but it doesn't take long to toughen up when it finds out that the responsibility of protecting my white meat is on it. you start a woman with sense to making mistakes and you've started her to learning common-sense; but you let some one else shoulder her natural responsibilities and keep her from exercising her brain, and it'll be fat-witted before she's forty. a lot of girls find it mighty handy to start with mother to look after the housekeeping and later to raise the baby; but by and by, when mamma has to quit, they don't understand that the butcher has to be called down regularly for leaving those heavy ends on the steak or running in the shoulder chops on you, and that when willie has the croup she mustn't give the little darling a stiff hot scotch, or try to remove the phlegm from his throat with a button-hook. there are a lot of women in this world who think that there's only one side to the married relation, and that's their side. when one of them marries, she starts right out to train her husband into kind old carlo, who'll go downtown for her every morning and come home every night, fetching a snug little basketful of money in his mouth and wagging his tail as he lays it at her feet. then it's a pat on the head and "nice doggie." and he's taught to stand around evenings, retrieving her gloves and handkerchief, and snapping up with a pleased licking of his chops any little word that she may throw to him. but you let him start in to have a little fun scratching and stretching himself, or pawing her, and it's "charge, carlo!" and "bad doggie!" of course, no man ever believes when he marries that he's going to wind up as kind carlo, who droops his head so that the children can pull his ears, and who sticks up his paw so as to make it easier for his wife to pull his leg. but it's simpler than you think. as long as fond fathers slave and ambitious mothers sacrifice so that foolish daughters can hide the petticoats of poverty under a silk dress and crowd the doings of cheap society into the space in their heads which ought to be filled with plain, useful knowledge, a lot of girls are going to grow up with the idea that getting married means getting rid of care and responsibility instead of assuming it. a fellow can't play the game with a girl of this sort, because she can't play fair. he wants her love and a wife; she wants a provider, not a lover, and she takes him as a husband because she can't draw his salary any other way. but she can't return his affection, because her love is already given to another; and when husband and wife both love the same person, and that person is the wife, it's usually a life sentence at hard labor for the husband. if he wakes up a little and tries to assert himself after he's been married a year or so, she shudders and sobs until he sees what a brute he is; or if that doesn't work, and he still pretends to have a little spirit, she goes off into a rage and hysterics, and that usually brings him to heel again. it's a mighty curious thing how a woman who has the appetite and instincts of a turkey--buzzard will often make her husband believe that she's as high-strung and delicate as a canary-bird! it's been my experience that both men and women can fool each other before marriage, and that women can keep right along fooling men after marriage, but that as soon as the average man gets married he gets found out. after a woman has lived in the same house with a man for a year, she knows him like a good merchant knows his stock, down to any shelf-worn and slightly damaged morals which he may be hiding behind fresher goods in the darkest corner of his immortal soul. but even if she's married to a fellow who's so mean that he'd take the pennies off a dead man's eyes (not because he needed the money, but because he hadn't the change handy for a two-cent stamp), she'll never own up to the worst about him, even to herself, till she gets him into a divorce court. i simply mention these things in a general way. helen has shown signs of loving you, and you've never shown any symptoms of hating yourself, so i'm not really afraid that you're going to get the worst of it now. so far as i can see, your mother-in-law is the only real trouble that you have married. but don't you make the mistake of criticizing her to helen or of quarrelling with her. i'll attend to both for the family. you simply want to dodge when she leads with the right, take your full ten seconds on the floor, and come back with your left cheek turned toward her, though, of course, you'll yank it back out of reach just before she lands on it. there's nothing like using a little diplomacy in this world, and, so far as women are concerned, diplomacy is knowing when to stay away. and a diplomatist is one who lets the other fellow think he's getting his way, while all the time _he's_ having his own. it never does any special harm to let people have their way with their mouths. what you want to do is to keep mother-in-law from mixing up in your family affairs until after she gets used to the disgrace of having a pork-packer for a son-in-law, and helen gets used to pulling in harness with you. then mother'll mellow up into a nice old lady who'll brag about you to the neighbors. but until she gets to this point, you've got to let her hurt your feelings without hurting hers. don't you ever forget that helen's got a mother-in-law, too, and that it's some one you think a heap of. whenever i hear of a fellow's being found out by his wife, it always brings to mind the case of dick hodgkins, whom i knew when i was a young fellow, back in missouri. dickie was one of a family of twelve, who all ran a little small any way you sized them up, and he was the runt. like most of these little fellows, when he came to match up for double harness, he picked out a six-footer, kate miggs. used to call her honeybunch, i remember, and she called him doodums. honeybunch was a good girl, but she was as strong as a six-mule team, and a cautious man just naturally shied away from her. was a pretty free stepper in the mazes of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. it ought to have been a warning to doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. after that the boys used to make honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken. still he didn't take the hint, and in the end she led him to the altar. we started in to give them a lovely shivaree after the wedding, beginning with a sort of yell which had been invented by the only fellow in town who had been to college. as i remember, it ran something like this: _hun, hun, hunch! bun, bun, bunch! funny, funny! honey, honey! funny honeybunch!_ but as soon as we got this off, and before we could begin on the dishpan chorus, honeybunch came at us with a couple of bed-slats and cleaned us all out. before he had married, doodums had been one of half a dozen half-baked sports who drank cheap whisky and played expensive poker at the dutchman's; and after he'd held honeybunch in his lap evenings for a month, he reckoned one night that he'd drop down street and look in on the boys. honeybunch reckoned not, and he didn't press the matter, but after they'd gone to bed and she'd dropped off to sleep, he slipped into his clothes and down the waterspout to the ground. he sat up till two o'clock at the dutchman's, and naturally, the next morning he had a breath like a gasoline runabout, and looked as if he'd been attending a successful coon-hunt in the capacity of the coon. honeybunch smelt his breath and then she smelt a mouse, but she wasn't much of a talker and she didn't ask any questions--of him. but she had brother jim make some inquiries, and a few days later, when doodums complained of feeling all petered out and wanted to go to bed early, she was ready for him. honeybunch wasn't any invalid, and when she went to bed it was to sleep, so she rigged up a simple little device in the way of an alarm and dropped off peacefully, while doodums pretended to. when she began to snore in her upper register and to hit the high c, he judged the coast was clear, and leaped lightly out of bed. even before he'd struck the floor he knew there'd been a horrible mistake somewhere, for he felt a tug as if he'd hooked a hundred-pound catfish. there was an awful ripping and tearing sound, something fetched loose, and his wife was sitting up in bed blinking at him in the moonlight. it seemed that just before she went to sleep she'd pinned her nightgown to his with a safety pin, which wasn't such a bad idea for a simple, trusting, little village maiden. "was you wantin' anything, duckie doodums?" she asked in a voice like the running of sap in maple-sugar time. "n-n-nothin' but a drink of water, honeybunch sweetness," he stammered back. [illustration: "n-n-nothin' but a drink of water"] "you're sure you ain't mistook in your thirst and that it ain't a suddint cravin' for licker, and that you ain't sort of p'intin' down the waterspout for the dutchman's, duckie doodums?" "shorely not, honeybunch darlin'," he finally fetched up, though he was hardly breathing. "because your ma told me that you was given to somnambulasticatin' in your sleep, and that i must keep you tied up nights or you'd wake up some mornin' at the foot of a waterspout with your head bust open and a lot of good licker spilt out on the grass." "don't you love your doodums anymore?" was all dickie could find to say to this; but honeybunch had too much on her mind to stop and swap valentines just then. "you wouldn't deceive your honeybunch, would you, duckie doodums?" "i shorely would not." "well, don't you do it, duckie doodums, because it would break my heart; and if you should break my heart i'd just naturally bust your head. are you listenin', doodums?" doodums was listening. "then you come back to bed and stay there." doodums never called his wife honeybunch after that. generally it was kate, and sometimes it was kitty, and when she wasn't around it was usually kitty-cat. but he minded better than anything i ever met on less than four legs. your affectionate father, john graham. p.s.--you might tear up this letter. no. 8 from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at yemassee-on-the-tallahassee. in replying to his father's hint that it is time to turn his thoughts from love to lard, the young man has quoted a french sentence, and the old man has been both pained and puzzled by it. viii chicago, january 24, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: i had to send your last letter to the fertilizer department to find out what it was all about. we've got a clerk there who's an oxford graduate, and who speaks seven languages for fifteen dollars a week, or at the rate of something more than two dollars a language. of course, if you're such a big thinker that your ideas rise to the surface too fast for one language to hold 'em all, it's a mighty nice thing to know seven; but it's been my experience that seven spread out most men so thin that they haven't anything special to say in any of them. these fellows forget that while life's a journey, it isn't a palace-car trip for most of us, and that if they hit the trail packing a lot of weight for which they haven't any special use, they're not going to get very far. you learn men and what men should do, and how they should do it, and then if you happen to have any foreigners working for you, you can hire a fellow at fifteen per to translate hustle to 'em into their own fool language. it's always been my opinion that everybody spoke american while the tower of babel was building, and that the lord let the good people keep right on speaking it. so when you've got anything to say to me, i want you to say it in language that will grade regular on the chicago board of trade. some men fail from knowing too little, but more fail from knowing too much, and still more from knowing it all. it's a mighty good thing to understand french if you can use it to some real purpose, but when all the good it does a fellow is to help him understand the foreign cuss-words in a novel, or to read a story which is so tough that it would make the queen's english or any other ladylike language blush, he'd better learn hog-latin! he can be just the same breed of yellow dog in it, and it don't take so much time to pick it up. never ask a man what he knows, but what he can do. a fellow may know everything that's happened since the lord started the ball to rolling, and not be able to do anything to help keep it from stopping. but when a man can do anything, he's bound to know something worth while. books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them. it isn't what a man's got in the bank, but what he's got in his head, that makes him a great merchant. rob a miser's safe and he's broke; but you can't break a big merchant with a jimmy and a stick of dynamite. the first would have to start again just where he began--hoarding up pennies; the second would have his principal assets intact. but accumulating knowledge or piling up money, just to have a little more of either than the next fellow, is a fool game that no broad-gauged man has time enough to sit in. too much learning, like too much money, makes most men narrow. i simply mention these things in a general way. you know blame well that i don't understand any french, and so when you spring it on me you are simply showing a customer the wrong line of goods. it's like trying to sell our pickled luncheon tidbits to a fellow in the black belt who doesn't buy anything but plain dry-salt hog in hunks and slabs. it makes me a little nervous for fear you'll be sending out a lot of letters to the trade some day, asking them if their stock of porkuss americanuss isn't running low. the world is full of bright men who know all the right things to say and who say them in the wrong place. a young fellow always thinks that if he doesn't talk he seems stupid, but it's better to shut up and seem dull than to open up and prove yourself a fool. it's a pretty good rule to show your best goods last. whenever i meet one of those fellows who tells you all he knows, and a good deal that he doesn't know, as soon as he's introduced to you, i always think of bill harkness, who kept a temporary home for broken-down horses--though he didn't call it that--back in missouri. bill would pick up an old critter whose par value was the price of one horse-hide, and after it had been pulled and shoved into his stable, the boys would stand around waiting for crape to be hung on the door. but inside a week bill would be driving down main street behind that horse, yelling whoa! at the top of his voice while it tried to kick holes in the dashboard. bill had a theory that the ten commandments were suspended while a horse-trade was going on, so he did most of his business with strangers. caught a northerner nosing round his barn one day, and inside of ten minutes the fellow was driving off behind what bill described as "the peartest piece of ginger and cayenne in pike county." bill just made a free gift of it to the yankee, he said, but to keep the transaction from being a piece of pure charity he accepted fifty dollars from him. the stranger drove all over town bragging of his bargain, until some one casually called his attention to the fact that the mare was stone-blind. then he hiked back to bill's and went for him in broken bostonese, winding up with: "what the skip-two-and-carry-one do you mean, you old hold-your-breath-and-take-ten-swallows, by stealing my good money. didn't you know the horse was blind? why didn't you tell me?" "yep," bill bit off from his piece of store plug; "i reckon i knew the hoss was blind, but you see the feller i bought her of"--and he paused to settle his chaw--"asked me not to mention it. you wouldn't have me violate a confidence as affected the repertashun of a pore dumb critter, and her of the opposite sect, would you?" and the gallant bill turned scornfully away from the stranger. there were a good many holes in bill's methods, but he never leaked information through them; and when i come across a fellow who doesn't mention it when he's asked not to, i come pretty near letting him fix his own salary. it's only a mighty big man that doesn't care whether the people whom he meets believe that he's big; but the smaller a fellow is, the bigger he wants to appear. he hasn't anything of his own in his head that's of any special importance, so just to prove that he's a trusted employee, and in the confidence of the boss, he gives away everything he knows about the business, and, as that isn't much, he lies a little to swell it up. it's a mighty curious thing how some men will lie a little to impress people who are laughing at them; will drink a little in order to sit around with people who want to get away from them; and will even steal a little to "go into society" with people who sneer at them. the most important animal in the world is a turkey-cock. you let him get among the chickens on the manure pile behind the barn, with his wings held down stiff, his tail feathers stuck up starchy, his wish-bone poked out perky, and gobbling for room to show his fancy steps, and he's a mighty impressive fowl. but a small boy with a rock and a good aim can make him run a mile. when you see a fellow swelling up and telling his firm's secrets, holler cash! and you'll stampede him back to his hall bedroom. i dwell a little on this matter of loose talking, because it breaks up more firms and more homes than any other one thing i know. the father of lies lives in hell, but he spends a good deal of his time in chicago. you'll find him on the board of trade when the market's wobbling, saying that the russians are just about to eat up turkey, and that it'll take twenty million bushels of our wheat to make the bread for the sandwich; and down in the street, asking if you knew that the cashier of the teenth national was leading a double life as a single man in the suburbs and a singular life for a married man in the city; and out on prairie avenue, whispering that it's too bad mabel smokes turkish cigarettes, for she's got such pretty curly hair; and how sad it is that daisy and dan are going to separate, "but they do say that he--sh! sh! hush; here she comes." yet, when you come to wash your pan of dirt, and the lies have all been carried off down the flume, and you've got the color of the few particles of solid, eighteen-carat truth left, you'll find it's the sultan who's smoking turkish cigarettes; and that mabel is trying cubebs for her catarrh; and that the cashier of the teenth national belongs to a whist club in the suburbs and is the superintendent of a sunday-school in the city; and that dan has put daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that the czar hasn't done a blame thing except to become the father of another girl baby. it's pretty hard to know how to treat a lie when it's about yourself. you can't go out of your way to deny it, because that puts you on the defensive; and sending the truth after a lie that's got a running start is like trying to round up a stampeded herd of steers while the scare is on them. lies are great travellers, and welcome visitors in a good many homes, and no questions asked. truth travels slowly, has to prove its identity, and then a lot of people hesitate to turn out an agreeable stranger to make room for it. about the only way i know to kill a lie is to live the truth. when your credit is doubted, don't bother to deny the rumors, but discount your bills. when you are attacked unjustly, avoid the appearance of evil, but avoid also the appearance of being too good--that is, better than usual. a man can't be too good, but he can appear too good. surmise and suspicion feed on the unusual, and when a man goes about his business along the usual rut, they soon fade away for lack of nourishment. first and last every fellow gets a lot of unjust treatment in this world, but when he's as old as i am and comes to balance his books with life and to credit himself with the mean things which weren't true that have been said about him, and to debit himself with the mean things which were true that people didn't get on to or overlooked, he'll find that he's had a tolerably square deal. this world has some pretty rotten spots on its skin, but it's sound at the core. there are two ways of treating gossip about other people, and they're both good ways. one is not to listen to it, and the other is not to repeat it. then there's young buck pudden's wife's way, and that's better than either, when you're dealing with some of these old heifers who browse over the range all day, stuffing themselves with gossip about your friends, and then round up at your house to chew the cud and slobber fake sympathy over you. buck wasn't a bad fellow at heart, for he had the virtue of trying to be good, but occasionally he would walk in slippery places. wasn't very sure-footed, so he fell down pretty often, and when he fell from grace it usually cracked the ice. still, as he used to say, when he shot at the bar mirrors during one of his periods of temporary elevation, he paid for what he broke--cash for the mirrors and sweat and blood for his cussedness. then one day buck met the only woman in the world--a mighty nice girl from st. jo--and she was hesitating over falling in love with him, till the gossips called to tell her that he was a dear, lovely fellow, and wasn't it too bad that he had such horrid habits? that settled it, of course, and she married him inside of thirty days, so that she could get right down to the business of reforming him. i don't, as a usual thing, take much stock in this marrying men to reform them, because a man's always sure of a woman when he's married to her, while a woman's never really afraid of losing a man till she's got him. when you want to teach a dog new tricks, it's all right to show him the biscuit first, but you'll usually get better results by giving it to him after the performance. but buck's wife fooled the whole town and almost put the gossips out of business by keeping buck straight for a year. she allowed that what he'd been craving all the time was a home and family, and that his rare-ups came from not having 'em. then, like most reformers, she overdid it--went and had twins. buck thought he owned the town, of course, and that would have been all right if he hadn't included the saloons among his real estate. had to take his drinks in pairs, too, and naturally, when he went home that night and had another look at the new arrivals, he thought they were quadruplets. buck straightened right out the next day, went to his wife and told her all about it, and that was the last time he ever had to hang his head when he talked to her, for he never took another drink. you see, she didn't reproach him, or nag him--simply said that she was mighty proud of the way he'd held on for a year, and that she knew she could trust him now for another ten. man was made a little lower than the angels, the good book says, and i reckon that's right; but he was made a good while ago, and he hasn't kept very well. yet there are a heap of women in this world who are still right in the seraphim class. when your conscience doesn't tell you what to do in a matter of right and wrong, ask your wife. naturally, the story of buck's final celebration came to the gossips like a thousand-barrel gusher to a drilling outfit that's been finding dusters, and they went one at a time to tell mrs. buck all the dreadful details and how sorry they were for her. she would just sit and listen till they'd run off the story, and hemstitched it, and embroidered it, and stuck fancy rosettes all over it. then she'd smile one of those sweet baby smiles that women give just before the hair-pulling begins, and say: "law, mrs. wiggleford"--the deacon's wife was the one who was condoling with her at the moment--"people will talk about the best of us. seems as if no one is safe nowadays. why, they lie about the deacon, even. i know it ain't true, and you know it ain't true, but only yesterday somebody was trying to tell me that it was right strange how a professor and a deacon got that color in his beak, and while it might be inflammatory veins or whatever he claimed it was, she reckoned that, if he'd let some one else tend the alcohol barrel, he wouldn't have to charge up so much of his stock to leakage and evaporation." of course, mrs. buck had made up the story about the deacon, because every one knew that he was too mean to drink anything that he could sell, but by the time buck's wife had finished, mrs. wiggleford was so busy explaining and defending him that she hadn't any further interest in buck's case. and each one that called was sent away with a special piece of home scandal which mrs. buck had invented to keep her mind from dwelling on her neighbor's troubles. she followed up her system, too, and in the end it got so that women would waste good gossip before they'd go to her with it. for if the pastor's wife would tell her "as a true friend" that the report that she had gone to the theatre in st. louis was causing a scandal, she'd thank her for being so sweetly thoughtful, and ask if nothing was sacred enough to be spared by the tongue of slander, though she, for one, didn't believe that there was anything in the malicious talk that the doc was cribbing those powerful sunday evening discourses from a volume of beecher's sermons. and when they'd press her for the name of her informant, she'd say: "no, it was a lie; she knew it was a lie, and no one who sat under the dear pastor would believe it; and they mustn't dignify it by noticing it." as a matter of fact, no one who sat under doc pottle would have believed it, for his sermons weren't good enough to have been cribbed; and if beecher could have heard one of them he would have excommunicated him. buck's wife knew how to show goods. when buck himself had used up all the cuss-words in missouri on his conduct, she had sense enough to know that his stock of trouble was full, and that if she wanted to get a hold on him she mustn't show him stripes, but something in cheerful checks. yet when the trouble-hunters looked her up, she had a full line of samples of their favorite commodity to show them. i simply mention these things in a general way. seeing would naturally be believing, if cross-eyed people were the only ones who saw crooked, and hearing will be believing when deaf people are the only ones who don't hear straight. it's a pretty safe rule, when you hear a heavy yarn about any one, to allow a fair amount for tare, and then to verify your weights. your affectionate father, john graham. p.s.--i think you'd better look in at a few of the branch houses on your way home and see if you can't make expenses. no. 9 from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, care of graham & company's brokers, atlanta. following the old man's suggestion, the young man has rounded out the honeymoon into a harvest moon, and is sending in some very satisfactory orders to the house. ix chicago, february 1, 189-. _dear pierrepont_: judging from the way the orders are coming in, i reckon that you must be lavishing a little of your surplus ardor on the trade. so long as you are in such good practise, and can look a customer in the eye and make him believe that he's the only buyer you ever really loved, you'd better not hurry home too fast. i reckon helen won't miss you for a few hours every day, but even if she should it's a mighty nice thing to be missed, and she's right there where you can tell her every night that you love her just the same; while the only way in which you can express your unchanged affection for the house is by sending us lots of orders. if you do that you needn't bother to write and send us lots of love. the average buyer is a good deal like the heiress to a million dollars who's been on the market for eight or ten years, not because there's no demand for her, but because there's too much. most girls whose capital of good looks is only moderate, marry, and marry young, because they're like a fellow on 'change who's scalping the market--not inclined to take chances, and always ready to make a quick turn. old maids are usually the girls who were so homely that they never had an offer, or so good-looking that they carried their matrimonial corner from one option to another till the new crop came along and bust them. but a girl with a million dollars isn't a speculative venture. she can advertise for sealed proposals on her fiftieth birthday and be oversubscribed like an issue of 10 per cent. government bonds. there's no closed season on heiresses, and, naturally, a bird that can't stick its head up without getting shot at becomes a pretty wary old fowl. a buyer is like your heiress--he always has a lot of nice young drummers flirting and fooling around him, but mighty few of them are so much in earnest that they can convince him that their only chance for happiness lies in securing his particular order. but you let one of these dead-in-earnest boys happen along, and the first thing you know he's persuaded the heiress that he loves her for herself alone or has eloped from town with an order for a car-load of lard. a lot of young men start off in business with an idea that they must arm themselves with the same sort of weapons that their competitors carry. there's nothing in it. fighting the devil with fire is all foolishness, because that's the one weapon with which he's more expert than any one else. i usually find that it's pretty good policy to oppose suspicion with candor, foxiness with openness, indifference with earnestness. when you deal squarely with a crooked man you scare him to death, because he thinks you're springing some new and extra-deep game on him. a fellow who's subject to cramps and chills has no business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and think they've had a bath. you mustn't forget, though, that it's just as important to know when to come out as when to dive in. i mention this because yesterday some one who'd run across you at yemassee told me that you and helen were exchanging the grip of the third degree under the breakfast-table, and trying to eat your eggs with your left hands. of course, this is all very right and proper if you can keep it up, but i've known a good many men who would kiss their wives on the honeymoon between swallows of coffee and look like an ass a year later when she chirruped out at the breakfast-table, "do you love me, darling?" i'm just a little afraid that you're one of those fellows who wants to hold his wife in his lap during the first six months of his married life, and who, when she asks him at the end of a year if he loves her, answers "sure." i may be wrong about this, but i've noticed a tendency on your part to slop over a little, and a pail that slops over soon empties itself. it's been my experience that most women try to prove their love by talking about it, and most men by spending money. but when a pocketbook or a mouth is opened too often nothing but trouble is left in it. don't forget the little attentions due your wife, but don't hurt the grocer's feelings or treat the milkman with silent contempt in order to give them to her. you can hock your overcoat before marriage to buy violets for a girl, but when she has the run of your wardrobe you can't slap your chest and explain that you stopped wearing it because you're so warm-blooded. a sensible woman soon begins to understand that affection can be expressed in porterhouse steaks as well as in american beauties. but when charlie, on twenty-five a week, marries a fool, she pouts and says that he doesn't love her just the same because he takes her to the theatre now in the street-cars, instead of in a carriage, as he used to in those happy days before they were married. as a matter of fact, this doesn't show that she's losing charlie's love, but that he's getting his senses back. it's been my experience that no man can really attend to business properly when he's chased to the office every morning by a crowd of infuriated florists and livery-men. of course, after a girl has spent a year of evenings listening to a fellow tell her that his great ambition is to make her life one grand, sweet song, it jars her to find the orchestra grunting and snoring over the sporting extra some night along six months after the ceremony. she stays awake and cries a little over this, so when he sees her across the liver and bacon at breakfast, he forgets that he's never told her before that she could look like anything but an angel, and asks, "gee, mame, what makes your nose so red?" and that's the place where a young couple begins to adjust itself to life as it's lived on michigan avenue instead of in the story-books. there's no rule for getting through the next six months without going back to mamma, except for the brute to be as kind as he knows how to be and the angel as forgiving as she can be. but at the end of that time a boy and girl with the right kind of stuff in them have been graduated into a man and a woman. it's only calf love that's always bellering about it. when love is full grown it has few words, and sometimes it growls them out. i remember, when i was a youngster, hearing old mrs. hoover tell of the trip she took with the doc just after they were married. even as a young fellow the doc was a great exhorter. knew more scripture when he was sixteen than the presiding elder. couldn't open his mouth without losing a verse. would lose a chapter when he yawned. well, when doc was about twenty-five, he fell in love with a mighty sweet young girl, leila hardin, who every one said was too frivolous for him. but the doc only answered that it was his duty to marry her to bring her under christian influences, and they set off down the river to new orleans on their honeymoon. mrs. hoover used to say that he hardly spoke to her on the trip. sat around in a daze, scowling and rolling his eyes, or charged up and down the deck, swinging his arms and muttering to himself. scared her half to death, and she spent all her time crying when he wasn't around. thought he didn't love her any more, and it wasn't till the first sunday after she got home that she discovered what had ailed him. seemed that in the exaltation produced by his happiness at having got her, he'd been composing a masterpiece, his famous sermon on the horrors of hell, that scared half of pike county into the fold, and popularized dominoes with penny points as a substitute for dollar-limit draw-poker among those whom it didn't quite fetch. curious old cuss, the doc. found his wife played the piano pretty medium rotten, so when he wanted to work himself into a rage about something he'd sit down in the parlor and make her pound out "the maiden's prayer." it's a mighty lucky thing that the lord, and not the neighbors, makes the matches, because doc's friends would have married him to deacon dody's daughter, who was so chuck full of good works that there was no room inside her for a heart. she afterward eloped with a st. louis drummer, and before he divorced her she'd become the best lady poker player in the state of missouri. but with leila and the doc it was a case of give-and-take from the start--that is, as is usual with a good many married folks, she'd give and he'd take. there never was a better minister's wife, and when you've said that you've said the last word about good wives and begun talking about martyrs, because after a minister's wife has pleased her husband she's got to please the rest of the church. i simply mention doc's honeymoon in passing as an example of the fact that two people can start out in life without anything in common apparently, except a desire to make each other happy, and, with that as a platform to meet on, keep coming closer and closer together until they find that they have everything in common. it isn't always the case, of course, but then it's happened pretty often that before i entered the room where an engaged couple were sitting i've had to cough or whistle to give them a chance to break away; and that after they were married i've had to keep right on coughing or whistling for the same couple to give them time to stop quarreling. there are mighty few young people who go into marriage with any real idea of what it means. they get their notion of it from among the clouds where they live while they are engaged, and, naturally, about all they find up there is wind and moonshine; or from novels, which always end just before the real trouble begins, or if they keep on, leave out the chapters that tell how the husband finds the rent and the wife the hired girls. but if there's one thing in the world about which it's possible to get all the facts, it's matrimony. part of them are right in the house where you were born, and the neighbors have the rest. it's been my experience that you've got to have leisure to be unhappy. half the troubles in this world are imaginary, and it takes time to think them up. but it's these oftener than the real troubles that break a young husband's back or a young wife's heart. a few men and more women can be happy idle when they're single, but once you marry them to each other they've got to find work or they'll find trouble. everybody's got to raise something in this world, and unless people raise a job, or crops, or children, they'll raise cain. you can ride three miles on the trolley car to the stock yards every morning and find happiness at the end of the trip, but you may chase it all over the world in a steam yacht without catching up with it. a woman can find fun from the basement to the nursery of her own house, but give her a license to gad the streets and a bunch of matinã©e tickets and shell find discontent. there's always an idle woman or an idle man in every divorce case. when the man earns the bread in the sweat of his brow, it's right that the woman should perspire a little baking it. there are two kinds of discontent in this world--the discontent that works and the discontent that wrings its hands. the first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. there's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second, especially if a woman has it; for she doesn't know what she wants, and so you can't give it to her. happiness is like salvation--a state of grace that makes you enjoy the good things you've got and keep reaching out, for better ones in the hereafter. and home isn't what's around you, but what's inside you. i had a pretty good illustration of this whole thing some years ago when a foolish old uncle died and left my cellar boss, mike shaughnessy, a million dollars. i didn't bother about it particularly, for he'd always been a pretty level-headed old mick, and i supposed that he'd put the money in pickle and keep right along at his job. but one morning, when he came rooting and grunting into my office in a sort of casual way, trying to keep a plug hat from falling off the back of his head, i knew that he was going to fly the track. started in to tell me that his extensive property interests demanded all his attention now, but i cut it short with: "mike, you've been a blamed good cellar boss, but you're going to make a blamed bad millionaire. think it over." well, sir, i'm hanged if that fellow, whom i'd raised from the time he was old enough to poke a barrel along the runways with a pointed stick, didn't blow a cloud of cigar smoke in my face to show that he was just as big as i was, and start tight in to regularly cuss me out. but he didn't get very far. i simply looked at mm, and said sudden, "git, you mick," and he wilted back out of the office just as easy as if he hadn't had ten cents. i heard of him off and on for the next year, putting up a house on michigan avenue, buying hand-painted pictures by the square foot and paying for them by the square inch--for his wife had decided that they must occupy their proper station in society--and generally building up a mighty high rating as a good thing. as you know, i keep a pretty close eye on the packing house, but on account of my rheumatism i don't often go through the cellars. but along about this time we began to get so many complaints about our dry salt meats that i decided to have a little peek at our stock for myself, and check up the new cellar boss. i made for him and his gang first, and i was mightily pleased, as i came upon him without his seeing me, to notice how he was handling his men. no hollering, or yelling, or cussing, but every word counting and making somebody hop. i was right upon him before i discovered that it wasn't the new foreman, but mike, who was bossing the gang. he half ducked behind a pile of extra short clears when he saw me, but turned, when he found that it was too late, and faced me bold as brass. "a nice state you've let things get in while i was away, sorr," he began. it was mike, the cellar boss, who knew his job, and no longer mr. shaughnessy, the millionaire, who didn't know his, that was talking, so i wasn't too inquisitive, and only nodded. "small wonder," he went on, "that crime's incr'asing an' th' cotton crop's decreasing in the black belt, when you're sendin' such mate to the poor naygurs. why don't you git a cellar man that's been raised with the hogs, an' 'll treat 'em right when they're dead?" "i'm looking for one," says i. "i know a likely lad for you," says he. "report to the superintendent," says i; and mike's been with me ever since. i found out when i looked into it that for a week back he'd been paying the new cellar boss ten dollars a day to lay around outside while he bossed his job. mike sold his old masters to a saloon-keeper and moved back to packingtown, where he invested all his money in houses, from which he got a heap of satisfaction, because, as his tenants were compatriots, he had plenty of excitement collecting his rents. like most people who fall into fortunes suddenly, he had bought a lot of things, not because he needed them or really wanted them, but because poorer people couldn't have them. yet in the end he had sense enough to see that happiness can't be inherited, but that it must be earned. being a millionaire is a trade like a doctor's--you must work up through every grade of earning, saving, spending and giving, or you're no more fit to be trusted with a fortune than a quack with human life. for there's no trade in the world, except the doctor's, on which the lives and the happiness of so many people depend as the millionaire's; and i might add that there's no other in which there's so much malpractice. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 10 from john graham, at mount clematis, michigan, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the young man has done famously during the first year of his married life, and the old man has decided to give him a more important position. x mount clematis, january 1, 1900. _dear pierrepont_: since i got here, my rheumatism has been so bad mornings that the attendant who helps me dress has had to pull me over to the edge of the bed by the seat of my pajamas. if they ever give way, i reckon i'll have to stay in bed all day. as near as i can figure out from what the doctor says, the worse you feel during the first few days you're taking the baths, the better you really are. i suppose that when a fellow dies on their hands they call it a cure. i'm by the worst of it for to-day, though, because i'm downstairs. just now the laugh is on an old boy with benevolent side-whiskers, who's sliding down the balusters, and a fat old party, who looks like a bishop, that's bumping his way down with his feet sticking out straight in front of him. shy away from these things that end in an ism, my boy. from skepticism to rheumatism they've an ache or a pain in every blamed joint. still, i don't want to talk about my troubles, but about your own. barton leaves us on the first, and so we shall need a new assistant general manager for the business. it's a ten-thousand-dollar job, and a nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-dollar man can't fill it. from the way in which you've handled your department during the past year, i'm inclined to think that you can deliver that last dollar's worth of value. anyway, i'm going to try you, and you've got to make good, because if you should fail it would be a reflection on my judgment as a merchant and a blow to my pride as a father. i could bear up under either, but the combination would make me feel like firing you. as a matter of fact, i can't make you general manager; all i can do is to give you the title of general manager. and a title is like a suit of clothes--it must fit the man who tries to wear it. i can clothe you in a little brief authority, as your old college friend, shakespeare, puts it, but i can't keep people from laughing at you when they see you swelling around in your high-water pants. it's no use demanding respect in this world; you've got to command it. there's old jim wharton, who, for acting as a fourth-class consul of a fifth-class king, was decorated with the order of the garter or the suspender or the eagle of the sixth class--the kind these kings give to the cook when he gets just the right flavor of garlic in a fancy sauce. jim never did a blame thing in his life except to inherit a million dollars from a better man, who happened to come over on the cunard line instead of the mayflower, but he'd swell around in our best society, with that ribbon on his shirt-front, thinking that he looked like prince rupert by louis the fourteenth and lady clara vere de vere, instead of the fourth assistant to the floor manager at the plumbers' ball. but you take tom lipton, who was swelled up into sir thomas because he discovered how to pack a genuine yorkshire ham in chicago, and a handle looks as natural on him as on a lard pail. a man is a good deal like a horse--he knows the touch of a master, and no matter how lightly the reins are held over him, he understands that he must behave. but let a fellow who isn't quite sure of himself begin sawing on a horse's mouth, and the first thing you know the critter bucks and throws him. you've only one pair of eyes with which to watch 10,000 men, so unless they're open all the time you'll be apt to overlook something here and there; but you'll have 10,000 pairs of eyes watching you all the time, and they won't overlook anything. you mustn't be known as an easy boss, or as a hard boss, but as a just boss. of course, some just men lean backward toward severity, and some stoop down toward mercy. both kinds may make good bosses, but i've usually found that when you hold the whip hand it's a great thing not to use the whip. it looks like a pretty large contract to know what 10,000 men are doing, but, as a matter of fact, there's nothing impossible about it. in the first place, you don't need to bother very much about the things that are going all right, except to try to make them go a little better; but you want to spend your time smelling out the things that are going all wrong and laboring with them till you've persuaded them to lead a better life. for this reason, one of the most important duties of your job is to keep track of everything that's out of the usual. if anything unusually good happens, there's an unusually good man behind it, and he ought to be earmarked for promotion; and if anything unusually bad happens, there's apt to be an unusually bad man behind that, and he's a candidate for a job with another house. a good many of these things which it's important for you to know happen a little before beginning and a little after quitting time; and so the real reason why the name of the boss doesn't appear on the time-sheet is not because he's a bigger man than any one else in the place, but because there shouldn't be any one around to take his time when he gets down and when he leaves. you can tell a whole lot about your men from the way in which they come in and the way in which they go home; but because a fellow is in the office early, it doesn't always mean that he's panting to begin work; it may mean that he's been out all night. and when you see a fellow poring over his books after the others have quit, it doesn't always follow that he's so wrapped up in his work that he can't tear himself away from it. it may mean that during business hours he had his head full of horse-racing instead of figures, and that he's staying to chase up the thirty cents which he's out in his balance. you want to find out which. the extra-poor men and the extra-good men always stick their heads up above the dead-level of good-enough men; the first to holler for help, and the second to get an extra reach. and when your attention is attracted to one of these men, follow him up and find out just what sort of soil and fertilizer he needs to grow fastest. it isn't enough to pick likely stock; you've got to plant it where the conditions are right to develop its particular possibilities. a fellow who's got the making of a five-thousand-dollar office man in him may not sell enough lard to fry a half-portion of small potatoes if you put him on the road. praise judiciously given may act on one man like an application of our bone-meal to a fruit tree, and bring out all the pippins that are in the wood; while in the other it may simply result in his going all to top. you mustn't depend too much on the judgment of department heads and foremen when picking men for promotion. take their selection if he is the best man, but know for yourself that he is the best man. sometimes a foreman will play a favorite, and, as any fellow who's been to the races knows, favorites ain't always winners. and sometimes, though not often, he'll try to hold back a good man through jealousy. when i see symptoms of a foreman's being jealous of a man under him, that fellow doesn't need any further recommendation to me. a man's never jealous of inferiority. it's a mighty valuable asset for a boss, when a vacancy occurs in a department, to be able to go to its head when he recommends bill smith for the position, and show that he knows all about bill smith from his number-twelve socks up to his six-and-a-quarter hat, and to ask: "what's the matter with tom jones for the job?" when you refuse to take something just as good in this world, you'll usually find that the next time you call the druggist has the original snicker's sassafras sneezer in stock. it's mighty seldom, though, that a really good man will complain to you that he's being held down, or that his superior is jealous of him. it's been my experience that it's only a mighty small head that so small an idea as this can fill. when a fellow has it, he's a good deal like one of those girls with the fatal gift of beauty in her imagination, instead of her face--always believing that the boys don't dance with her because the other girls tell them spiteful things about her. besides always having a man in mind for any vacancy that may occur, you want to make sure that there are two men in the office who understand the work of each position in it. every business should be bigger than any one man. if it isn't, there's a weak spot in it that will kill it in the end. and every job needs an understudy. sooner or later the star is bound to fall sick, or get the sulks or the swelled head, and then, if there's no one in the wings who knows her lines, the gallery will rotten-egg the show and howl for its money back. besides, it has a mighty chastening and stimulating effect on the star to know that if she balks there's a sweet young thing in reserve who's able and eager to go the distance. of course, i don't mean by this that you want to play one man against another or try to minimize to a good man his importance to the house. on the contrary, you want to dwell on the importance of all positions, from that of office-boy up, and make every man feel that he is a vital part of the machinery of the business, without letting him forget that there's a spare part lying around handy, and that if he breaks or goes wrong it can be fitted right in and the machine kept running. it's good human nature to want to feel that something's going to bust when you quit, but it's bad management if things are fixed so that anything can. in hiring new men, you want to depend almost altogether on your own eyes and your own judgment. remember that when a man's asking for a job he's not showing you himself, but the man whom he wants you to hire. for that reason, i never take on an applicant after a first interview. i ask him to call again. the second time he may not be made up so well, and he may have forgotten some of his lines. in any event, hell feel that he knows you a little better, and so act a little easier and talk a little freer. very often a man whom you didn't like on his first appearance will please you better on his second, because a lot of people always appear at their worst when they're trying to appear at their best. and again, when you catch a fellow off guard who seemed all right the first time, you may find that he deaconed himself for your benefit, and that all the big strawberries were on top. don't attach too much importance to the things which an applicant has a chance to do with deliberation, or pay too much attention to his nicely prepared and memorized speech about himself. watch the little things which he does unconsciously, and put unexpected questions which demand quick answers. if he's been working for dick saunders, it's of small importance what dick says of him in his letter of recommendation. if you want dick's real opinion, get it in some other way than in an open note, of which the subject's the bearer. as a matter of fact, dick's opinion shouldn't carry too much weight, except on a question of honesty, because if dick let him go, he naturally doesn't think a great deal of him; and if the man resigned voluntarily, dick is apt to feel a little sore about it. but your applicant's opinion of dick saunders is of very great importance to you. a good man never talks about a real grievance against an old employer to a new one; a poor man always pours out an imaginary grievance to any one who will listen. you needn't cheer in this world when you don't like the show, but silence is louder than a hiss. hire city men and country men; men who wear grandpa's sunday suit; thread-bare men and men dressed in those special four-ninety-eight bargains; but don't hire dirty men. time and soap will cure dirty boys, but a full-grown man who shrinks from the use of water externally is as hard to cure as one who avoids its use internally. it's a mighty curious thing that you can tell a man his morals are bad and he needs to get religion, and hell still remain your friend; but that if you tell him his linen's dirty and he needs to take a bath, you've made a mortal enemy. give the preference to the lean men and the middleweights. the world is full of smart and rich fat men, but most of them got their smartness and their riches before they got their fat. always appoint an hour at which you'll see a man, and if he's late a minute don't bother with him. a fellow who can be late when his own interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when yours are. have a scribbling pad and some good letter paper on a desk, and ask the applicant to write his name and address. a careful and economical man will use the pad, but a careless and wasteful fellow will reach for the best thing in sight, regardless of the use to which it's to be put. look in a man's eyes for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for cleanliness. his tongue will tell you his experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as it runs along. always remember, in the case of an applicant from another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which he's been working it's usually because he didn't do very well there. you want to be just as careful about hiring boys as men. a lot of employers go on the theory that the only important thing about a boy is his legs, and if they're both fitted on and limber they hire him. as a matter of fact, a boy is like a stick of dynamite, small and compact, but as full of possibilities of trouble as a car-load of gunpowder. one bad boy in a sunday-school picnic can turn it into a rough-house outfit for looting orchards, and one little cuss in your office can demoralize your kids faster than you can fire them. i remember one boy who organized a secret society, called the mysterious league. it held meetings in our big vault, which they called the donjon keep, and, naturally, when one of them was going on, boys were scarcer around the office than hen's teeth. the object of the league, as i shook it out of the head leaguer by the ear, was to catch the head bookkeeper, whom the boys didn't like, and whom they called the black caitiff, alone in the vault some night while he was putting away his books, slam the door, and turn the combination on him. tucked away in a corner of the vault, they had a message for him, written in red ink, on a sheep's skull, telling him to tremble, that he was in the hands of the mysterious league, and that he would be led at midnight to the torture chamber. i learned afterward that when the bookkeeper had reached in his desk to get a pen, a few days before, he had pulled out a cold, clammy, pickled pig's foot, on which was printed: "beware! first you will lose a leg!" i simply mention the mysterious league in passing. of course, boys will be boys, but you mustn't let them be too cussed boyish during business hours. a slow boy can waste a lot of the time of a five-thousand-dollar man whose bell he's answering; and a careless boy can mislay a letter or drop a paper that will ball up the work of the most careful man in the office. it's really harder to tell what you're getting when you hire a boy than when you hire a man. i found that out for keeps a few years ago, when i took on the angel child. he was the son of rich parents, who weren't quite rich enough to buy chips and sit in the game of the no-limit millionaires. so they went in for what they called the simple life. i want to say right here that i'm a great believer in the simple life, but some people are so blamed simple about it that they're idiotic. the world is full of rich people who talk about leading the simple life when they mean the stingy life. they are the kind that are always giving poorer people a chance to chip in an even share with them toward defraying the expenses of the charities and the entertainments which they get up. they call it "affording those in humbler walks an opportunity to keep up their self-respect," but what they really mean is that it helps them to keep down their own expenses. the angel child's mother was one of these women who talk to people that aren't quite so rich as she in the tone of one who's commending a worthy charity; but who hangs on the words of a richer woman like a dog that hopes a piece of meat is going to be thrown at it, and yet isn't quite sure that it won't get a kick instead. as a side-line, she made a specialty of trying to uplift the masses, and her husband furnished the raw material for the uplifting, as he paid his men less and worked 'em harder than any one else in chicago. well, one day this woman came into my office, bringing her only son with her. he was a solemn little cuss, but i didn't get much chance to size him up, because his ma started right in to explain how he'd been raised--no whipping, no--but i cut it short there, and asked her to get down to brass tacks, as i was very busy trying to see that 70,000,000 people were supplied with their daily pork. so she explained that she wanted me to give the angel child a job in my office during his summer vacation, so that he could see how the other half lived, and at the same time begin to learn self-reliance. i was just about to refuse, when it occurred to me that if he had never really had a first-class whipping it was a pity not to put him in the way of getting one. so i took him by the hand and led him to headquarters for whippings, the bench in the shipping department, where a pretty scrappy lot of boys were employed to run errands, and told the boss to take him on. i wasn't out of hearing before one kid said, "i choose him," and another, whom they called the breakfast-food baby, because he was so strong, answered, "naw; i seen him first." i dismissed the matter from my mind then, but a few days later, when i was walking through the shipping department, it occurred to me that i might as well view the remains of the angel child, if they hadn't been removed to his late residence. i found him sitting in the middle of the bench, looking a little sad and lonesome, but all there. the other boys seemed to be giving him plenty of room, and the breakfast-food baby, with both eyes blacked, had edged along to the end of the bench. i beckoned to the angel child to follow me to my private office. "what does this mean, young man?" i asked, when he got there. "have you been fighting?" "yes, sir," he answered, sort of brightening up. "which one?" "michael and patrick the first day, sir." "did you lick 'em?" "i had rather the better of it," he answered, as precise as a slice of cold-boiled boston. "and the second?" "why, the rest of 'em, sir." "including the breakfast-food--er, james?" he nodded. "james is very strong, sir, but he lacks science. he drew back as if he had a year to hit me, and just as he got good and ready to strike, i pasted him one in the snoot, and followed that up with a left jab in the eye." i hadn't counted on boxing lessons being on the bill of fare of the simple life, and it raised my hopes still further to see from that last sentence how we had grafted a little union stock yards on his back bay boston. in fact, my heart quite warmed to the lad; but i looked at him pretty severely, and only said: "mark you, young man, we don't allow any fighting around here; and if you can't get along without quarrelling with the boys in the shipping department, i'll have to bring you into these offices, where i can have an eye on your conduct." there were two or three boys in the main office who were spoiling for a thrashing, and i reckoned that the angel child would attend to their cases; and he did. he was cock of the walk in a week, and at the same time one of the bulliest, daisiest, most efficient, most respectful boys that ever worked for me. he put a little polish on the other kids, and they took a little of the extra shine off him. he's in harvard now, but when he gets out there's a job waiting for him, if he'll take it. that was a clear case of catching an angel on the fly, or of entertaining one unawares, as the boy would have put it, and it taught me not to consider my prejudices or his parents in hiring a boy, but to focus my attention on the boy himself, when he was the one who would have to run the errands. the simple life was a pose and pretense with the angel child's parents, and so they were only a new brand of snob; but the kid had been caught young and had taken it all in earnest; and so he was a new breed of boy, and a better one than i'd ever hired before. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 11 from john graham, at mount clematis, michigan, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the young man has sent the old man a dose of his own medicine, advice, and he is proving himself a good doctor by taking it. xi mount clematis, january 25, 1900. _dear pierrepont_: they've boiled everything out of me except the original sin, and even that's a little bleached, and they've taken away my roll of yellow-backs, so i reckon they're about through with me here, for the present. but instead of returning to the office, i think i'll take your advice and run down to florida for a few weeks and have a "try at the tarpon," as you put it. i don't really need a tarpon, or want a tarpon, and i don't know what i could do with a tarpon if i hooked one, except to yell at him to go away; but i need a burned neck and a peeled nose, a little more zest for my food, and a little more zip about my work, if the interests of the american hog are going to be safe in my hands this spring. i don't seem to have so much luck as some fellows in hooking these fifty-pound fish lies, but i always manage to land a pretty heavy appetite and some big nights' sleep when i strike salt water. then i can go back to the office and produce results like a hen in april with eggs at eleven cents a dozen. [illustration: i don't really need a tarpon ... but i need a burned neck and a peeled nose] health is like any inheritance--you can spend the interest in work and play, but you mustn't break into the principal. once you do, and it's only a matter of time before you've got to place the remnants in the hands of a doctor as receiver; and receivers are mighty partial to fees and mighty slow to let go. but if you don't work with him to get the business back on a sound basis there's no such thing as any further voluntary proceedings, and the remnants become remains. it's a mighty simple thing, though, to keep in good condition, because about everything that makes for poor health has to get into you right under your nose. yet a fellow'll load up with pie and buckwheats for breakfast and go around wondering about his stomach-ache, as if it were a put-up job that had been played on him when he wasn't looking; or he'll go through his dinner pickling each course in a different brand of alcohol, and sob out on the butler's shoulder that the booze isn't as pure as it used to be when he was a boy; or he'll come home at midnight singing "the old oaken bucket," and act generally as if all the water in the world were in the well on the old homestead, and the mortgage on that had been foreclosed; or from 8 p.m. to 3 g.x. he'll sit in a small game with a large cigar, breathing a blend of light-blue cigarette smoke and dark-blue cuss-words, and next day, when his heart beats four and skips two, and he has that queer, hopping sensation in the knees, he'll complain bitterly to the other clerks that this confining office work is killing him. of course, with all the care in the world, a fellow's likely to catch things, but there's no sense in sending out invitations to a lot of miscellaneous microbes and pretending when they call that it's a surprise party. bad health hates a man who is friendly with its enemies--hard work, plain food, and pure air. more men die from worry than from overwork; more stuff themselves to death than die of starvation; more break their necks falling down the cellar stairs than climbing mountains. if the human animal reposed less confidence in his stomach and more in his legs, the streets would be full of healthy men walking down to business. remember that a man always rides to his grave; he never walks there. when i was a boy, the only doubt about the food was whether there would be enough of it; and there wasn't any doubt at all about the religion. if the pork barrel was full, father read a couple of extra psalms at morning prayers, to express our thankfulness; and if it was empty, he dipped into job for half an hour at evening prayers, to prove that we were better off than some folks. but you don't know what to eat these days, with one set of people saying that only beasts eat meat, and another that only cattle eat grain and green stuff; or what to believe, with one crowd claiming that there's nothing the matter with us, as the only matter that we've got is in our minds; and another crowd telling us not to mind what the others say, because they've got something the matter with their minds. i reckon that what this generation really needs is a little less pie and a little more piety. i dwell on this matter of health, because when the stomach and liver ain't doing good work, the brain can't. a good many men will say that it's none of your business what they do in their own time, but you want to make it your business, so long as it affects what they do in your time. for this reason, you should never hire men who drink after office hours; for it's their time that gets the effects, and your time that gets the after-effects. even if a boss grants that there's fun in drinking, it shouldn't take him long to discover that he's getting the short end of it, when all the clerks can share with him in the morning is the head and the hangover. i might add that i don't like the effects of drinking any more than the after-effects; and for this reason you should never hire men who drink during business hours. when a fellow adds up on whisky, he's apt to see too many figures; and when he subtracts on beer, he's apt to see too few. it may have been the case once that when you opened up a bottle for a customer he opened up his heart, but booze is a mighty poor salesman nowadays. it takes more than a corkscrew to draw out a merchant's order. most of the men who mixed their business and their drinks have failed, and the new owners take their business straight. of course, some one has to pay for the drinks that a drummer sets up. the drummer can't afford it on his salary; the house isn't really in the hospitality business; so, in the end, the buyer always stands treat. he may not see it in his bill for goods, but it's there, and the smart ones have caught on to it. after office hours, the number of drinks a fellow takes may make a difference in the result to his employer, but during business hours the effect of one is usually as bad as half a dozen. a buyer who drinks hates a whisky breath when he hasn't got one himself, and a fellow who doesn't drink never bothers to discover whether he's being talked to by a simple or a compound breath. he knows that some men who drink are unreliable, and that unreliable men are apt to represent unreliable houses and to sell unreliable goods, and he hasn't the time or the inclination to stop and find out that this particular salesman has simply had a mild snort as an appetizer and a gentle soother as a digester. so he doesn't get an order, and the house gets a black eye. this is a very, very busy world, and about the only person who is really interested in knowing just how many a fellow has had is his wife, and she won't always believe him. naturally, when you expect so much from your men, they have a right to expect a good deal from you. if you want them to feel that your interests are theirs, you must let them see that their interests are yours. there are a lot of fellows in the world who are working just for glory, but they are mostly poets, and you needn't figure on finding many of them out at the stock yards. praise goes a long way with a good man, and some employers stop there; but cash goes the whole distance, and if you want to keep your growing men with you, you mustn't expect them to do all the growing. small salaries make slow workers and careless clerks; because it isn't hard to get an underpaid job. but a well-paid man sticketh closer than a little brother-in-law-to-be to the fellow who brings the candy. for this reason, when i close the books at the end of the year, i always give every one, from the errand boys up, a bonus based on the size of his salary and my profits. there's no way i've ever tried that makes my men take an interest in the size of my profits like giving them a share. and there's no advertisement for a house like having its men going around blowing and bragging because they're working for it. again, if you insist that your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. a man who works only half a day saturday can usually do a day and half's work monday. i'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle for ten. of course, the world is full of horses who won't work except with the whip, but that's no reason for using it on those who will. when i get a critter that hogs my good oats and then won't show them in his gait, i get rid of him. he may be all right for a fellow who's doing a peddling business, but i need a little more speed and spirit in mine. a lot of people think that adversity and bad treatment is the test of a man, and it is--when you want to develop his strength; but prosperity and good treatment is a better one when you want to develop his weakness. by keeping those who show their appreciation of it and firing those who don't, you get an office full of crackerjacks. while your men must feel all the time that they've got a boss who can see good work around a corner, they mustn't be allowed to forget that there's no private burying-ground on the premises for mistakes. when a western town loses one of its prominent citizens through some careless young fellow's letting his gun go off sudden, if the sheriff buys a little rope and sends out invitations to an inquest, it's apt to make the boys more reserved about exchanging repartee; and if you pull up your men sharp when you find them shooting off their mouths to customers and getting gay in their correspondence, it's sure to cut down the mortality among our old friends in the trade. a clerk's never fresh in letters that the boss is going to see. the men who stay in the office and plan are the brains of your business; those who go out and sell are its arms; and those who fill and deliver the orders are its legs. there's no use in the brains scheming and the arms gathering in, if the legs are going to deliver the goods with a kick. that's another reason why it's very important for you to be in the office early. you can't personally see every order filled, and tell whether it was shipped promptly and the right goods sent, but when the telegrams and letters are opened, you can have all the kicks sorted out, and run through them before they're distributed for the day. that's where you'll meet the clerk who billed a tierce of hams to the man who ordered a box; the shipper who mislaid bill smith's order for lard, and made bill lose his saturday's trade through the delay; the department head who felt a little peevish one morning and so wrote hardin & co., who buy in car-lots, that if they didn't like the smoke of the last car of bacon short clears they could lump it, or words to that effect; and that's where you'll meet the salesman who played a sure thing on the new orleans track and needs twenty to get to the next town, where his check is waiting. then, a little later, when you make the rounds of the different departments to find out how it happened, the heads will tell you all the good news that was in the morning's mail. of course, you can keep track of your men in a sneaking way that will make them despise you, and talk to them in a nagging spirit that will make them bristle when they see you. but it's your right to know and your business to find out, and if you collect your information in an open, frank manner, going at it in the spirit of hoping to find everything all right, instead of wanting to find something all wrong; and if you talk to the responsible man with an air of "here's a place where we can get together and correct a weakness in our business"--not my business--instead of with an "ah! ha! i've-found-you-out" expression, your men will throw handsprings for your good opinion. never nag a man tinder any circumstances; fire him. a good boss, in these days when profits are pared down to the quick, can't afford to have any holes, no matter how small, in his management; but there must be give enough in his seams so that every time he stoops down to pick up a penny he won't split his pants. he must know how to be big, as well as how to be small. some years ago, i knew a firm who did business under the name of foreman & sowers. they were a regular business vaudeville team--one big and broad-gauged in all his ideas; the other unable to think in anything but boys' and misses' sizes. foreman believed that men got rich in dollars; sowers in cents. of course, you can do it in either way, but the first needs brains and the second only hands. it's been my experience that the best way is to go after both the dollars and the cents. well, sir, these fellows launched a specialty, a mighty good thing, the peep o' daisy breakfast food, and started in to advertise. sowers wanted to use inch space and sell single cases; foreman kicked because full pages weren't bigger and wanted to sell in car-lots, leaving the case trade to the jobbers. sowers only half-believed in himself, and only a quarter in the food, and only an eighth in advertising. so he used to go home nights and lie awake with a living-picture exhibit of himself being kicked out of his store by the sheriff; and out of his house by the landlord; and, finally, off the corner where he was standing with his hat out for pennies, by the policeman. he hadn't a big enough imagination even to introduce into this last picture a sport dropping a dollar bill into his hat. but foreman had a pretty good opinion of himself, and a mighty big opinion of the food, and he believed that a clever, well-knit ad. was strong enough to draw teeth. so he would go home and build steam-yachts and country places in his sleep. naturally, the next morning, sowers would come down haggard and gloomy, and grow gloomier as he went deeper into the mail and saw how small the orders were. but foreman would start out as brisk and busy as a humming-bird, tap the advertising agent for a new line of credit on his way down to the office, and extract honey and hope from every letter. sowers begged him, day by day, to stop the useless fight and save the remains of their business. but foreman simply laughed. said there wouldn't be any remains when he was ready to quit. allowed that he believed in cremation, anyway, and that the only way to fix a brand on the mind of the people was to burn it in with money. sowers worried along a few days more, and then one night, after he had been buried in the potter's field, he planned a final stroke to stop foreman, who, he believed, didn't know just how deep in they really were. foreman was in a particular jolly mood the next morning, for he had spent the night bidding against pierrepont morgan at an auction sale of old masters; but he listened patiently while sowers called off the figures in a sort of dirge-like singsong, and until he had wailed out his final note of despair, a bass-drum crash, which he thought would bring foreman to a realizing sense of their loss, so to speak. "that," sowers wound up, "makes a grand total of $800,000 that we have already lost." foreman's head drooped, and for a moment he was deep in thought, while sowers stood over him, sad, but triumphant, in the feeling that he had at last brought this madman to his senses, now that his dollars were gone. "eight hundred thou!" the senior partner repeated mechanically. then, looking up with a bright smile, he exclaimed: "why, old man, that leaves us two hundred thousand still to spend before we hit the million mark!" they say that sowers could only gibber back at him; and foreman kept right on and managed some way to float himself on to the million mark. there the tide turned, and after all these years it's still running his way; and sowers, against his better judgment, is a millionaire. i simply mention foreman in passing. it would be all foolishness to follow his course in a good many situations, but there's a time to hold on and a time to let go, and the limit, and a little beyond, is none too far to play a really good thing. but in business it's quite as important to know how to be a good quitter as a good fighter. even when you feel that you've got a good thing, you want to make sure that it's good enough, and that you're good enough, before you ask to have the limit taken off. a lot of men who play a nice game of authors get their feelings hurt at whist, and get it in the neck at poker. you want to have the same principle in mind when you're handling the trade. sometimes you'll have to lay down even when you feel that your case is strong. often you'll have to yield a point or allow a claim when you know you're dead right and the other fellow all wrong. but there's no sense in getting a licking on top of a grievance. another thing that helps you keep track of your men is the habit of asking questions. your thirst for information must fairly make your tongue loll out. when you ask the head of the canning department what we're netting for two-pound corned beef on the day's market for canners, and he has to say, "wait a minute and i'll figure it out," or turn to one of his boys and ask, "bill, what are twos netting us?" he isn't sitting close enough to his job, and, perhaps, if bill were in his chair, he'd be holding it in his lap; or when you ask the chief engineer how much coal we burned this month, as compared with last, and why in thunder we burned it, if he has to hem and haw and say he hasn't had time to figure it out yet, but he thinks they were running both benches in the packing house most of the time, and he guesses this and reckons that, he needs to get up a little more steam himself. in short, whenever you find a fellow that ought to know every minute where he's at, but who doesn't know what's what, he's pretty likely to be _it_. when you're dealing with an animal like the american hog, that carries all its profit in the tip of its tail, you want to make sure that your men carry all the latest news about it on the tip of the tongue. it's not a bad plan, once in a while, to check up the facts and figures that are given you. i remember one lightning calculator i had working for me, who would catch my questions hot from the bat, and fire back the answers before i could get into position to catch. was a mighty particular cuss. always worked everything out to the sixth decimal place. i had just about concluded he ought to have a wider field for his talents, when i asked him one day how the hams of the last week's run had been averaging in weight. answered like a streak; but it struck me that for hogs which had been running so light they were giving up pretty generously. so i checked up his figures and found 'em all wrong. tried him with a different question every day for a week. always answered quick, and always answered wrong. found that he was a base-ball rooter and had been handing out the batting averages of the chicagos for his answers. seems that when i used to see him busy figuring with his pencil he was working out where anson stood on the list. he's not in who's who in the stock yards any more, you bet. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 12 from john graham, at magnolia villa, on the florida coast, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the old man has started back to nature, but he hasn't gone quite far enough to lose sight of his business altogether. xii magnolia villa, february 5, 1900. _dear pierrepont_: last week i started back to nature, as you advised, but at the ocean high roller house i found that i had to wear knee-breeches, which was getting back too far, or creases in my trousers, which wasn't far enough. so we've taken this little place, where there's nothing between me and nature but a blue shirt and an old pair of pants, and i reckon that's near enough. i'm getting a complexion and your ma's losing hers. hadn't anything with her but some bonnets, so just before we left the hotel she went into a little branch store, which a new york milliner runs there, and tried to buy a shade hat. "how would this pretty little shepherdess effect do?" asked the girl who was showing the goods, while she sized me up to see if the weight of my pocketbook made my coat sag. "how much is it?" asked your ma. "fifty dollars," said the girl, as bright and sassy as you please. "i'm not such a simple little shepherdess as that," answered your ma, just a little brighter and a little sassier, and she's going around bareheaded. she's doing the cooking and making the beds, because the white girls from the north aren't willing to do "both of them works," and the native niggers don't seem to care a great deal about doing any work. and i'm splitting the wood for the kitchen stove, and an occasional fish that has committed suicide. this morning, when i was casting through the surf, a good-sized drum chased me up on shore, and he's now the star performer in a chowder that your ma has billed for dinner. they call this place a villa, though it's really a villainy; and what i pay for it rent, though it's actually a robbery. but they can have the last bill in the roll if they'll leave me your ma, and my appetite, and that tired feeling at night. it's the bulliest time we've had since the spring we moved into our first little cottage back in missouri, and raised climbing-roses and our pet pig, toby. it's good to have money and the things that money will buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money won't buy. when a fellow's got what he set out for in this world, he should go off into the woods for a few weeks now and then to make sure that he's still a man, and not a plug-hat and a frock-coat and a wad of bills. you can't do the biggest things in this world unless you can handle men; and you can't handle men if you're not in sympathy with them; and sympathy begins in humility. i don't mean the humility that crawls for a nickel in the street and cringes for a thousand in the office; but the humility that a man finds when he goes gunning in the woods for the truth about himself. it's the sort of humility that makes a fellow proud of a chance to work in the world, and want to be a square merchant, or a good doctor, or an honest lawyer, before he's a rich one. it makes him understand that while life is full of opportunities for him, it's full of responsibilities toward the other fellow, too. that doesn't mean that you ought to coddle idleness, or to be slack with viciousness, or even to carry on the pay-roll well-meaning incompetence. for a fellow who mixes business and charity soon finds that he can't make any money to give to charity; and in the end, instead of having helped others, he's only added himself to the burden of others. the kind of sympathy i mean holds up men to the bull-ring without forgetting in its own success the hardships and struggles and temptations of the fellow who hasn't got there yet, but is honestly trying to. there's more practical philanthropy in keeping close to these men and speaking the word that they need, or giving them the shove that they deserve, than in building an eighteen-hole golf course around the stock yards for them. your force can always find plenty of reasons for striking, without your furnishing an extra one in the poor quality of the golf-balls that you give them. so i make it a rule that everything i hand out to my men shall come in the course of business, and be given on a business basis. when profits are large, they get a large bonus and a short explanation of the business reasons in the office and the country that have helped them to earn it; when profits are small, the bonus shrinks and the explanation expands. i sell the men their meats and give them their meals in the house restaurant at cost, but nothing changes hands between us except in exchange for work or cash. if you want a practical illustration of how giving something for nothing works, pick out some one who has no real claim on you--an old college friend who's too strong to work, or a sixteenth cousin who's missed connections with the express to fortune--and say: "you're a pretty good fellow, and i want to help you; after this i'm going to send you a hundred dollars the first of every month, until you've made a new start." he'll fairly sicken you with his thanks for that first hundred; he'll call you his generous benefactor over three or four pages for the second; he'll send you a nice little half-page note of thanks for the third; he'll write, "yours of the first with inclosure to hand--thanks," for the fourth; he'll forget to acknowledge the fifth; and when the sixth doesn't come promptly, he'll wire collect: "why this delay in sending my check--mail at once." and all the time he won't have stirred a step in the direction of work, because he'll have reasoned, either consciously or unconsciously: "i can't get a job that will pay me more than a hundred a month to start with; but i'm already drawing a hundred without working; so what's the use?" but when a fellow can't get a free pass, and he has any sort of stuff in him, except what hoboes are made of, he'll usually hustle for his car fare, rather than ride through life on the bumpers of a freight. the only favor that a good man needs is an opportunity to do the best work that's in him; and that's the only present you can make him once a week that will be a help instead of a hindrance to him. it's been my experience that every man has in him the possibility of doing well some one thing, no matter how humble, and that there's some one, in some place, who wants that special thing done. the difference between a fellow who succeeds and one who fails is that the first gets out and chases after the man who needs him, and the second sits around waiting to be hunted up. when i was a boy, we were brought up to believe that we were born black with original sin, and that we bleached out a little under old doc hoover's preaching. and in the church down main street they taught that a lot of us were predestined to be damned, and a few of us to be saved; and naturally we all had our favorite selections for the first bunch. i used to accept the doctrine of predestination for a couple of weeks every year, just before the main street church held its sunday-school picnic, and there are a few old rascals in the stock yards that make me lean toward it sometimes now; but, in the main, i believe that most people start out with a plenty of original goodness. the more i deal in it, the surer i am that human nature is all off the same critter, but that there's a heap of choice in the cuts. even then a bad cook will spoil a four-pound porterhouse, where a good one will take a chuck steak, make a few passes over it with seasoning and fixings, and serve something that will line your insides with happiness. circumstances don't make men, but they shape them, and you want to see that those under you are furnished with the right set of circumstances. every fellow is really two men--what he is and what he might be; and you're never absolutely sure which you're going to bury till he's dead. but a man in your position can do a whole lot toward furnishing the officiating clergyman with beautiful examples, instead of horrible warnings. the great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man's going wrong than eager to punish him for it. that's why i centre authority and distribute checks upon it. that's why i've never had any honest old toms, or good old dicks, or faithful old harrys handling my good money week-days and presiding over the sabbath-school sundays for twenty years, and leaving the old man short a hundred thousand, and the little ones short a superintendent, during the twenty-first year. it's right to punish these fellows, but a suit for damages ought to lie against their employers. criminal carelessness is a bad thing, but the carelessness that makes criminals is worse. the chances are that, to start with, tom and dick were honest and good at the office and sincere at the sunday-school, and that, given the right circumstances, they would have stayed so. it was their employers' business to see that they were surrounded by the right circumstances at the office and to find out whether they surrounded themselves with them at home. a man who's fundamentally honest is relieved instead of aggrieved by having proper checks on his handling of funds. and the bigger the man's position and the amount that he handles, the more important this is. a minor employee can take only minor sums, and the principal harm done is to himself; but when a big fellow gets into you, it's for something big, and more is hurt than his morals and your feelings. i dwell a little on these matters, because i want to fix it firmly in your mind that the man who pays the wages must put more in the weekly envelope than money, if he wants to get his full money's worth. i've said a good deal about the importance of little things to a boss; don't forget their importance to your men. a thousand-dollar clerk doesn't think with a ten-thousand-dollar head; a fellow whose view is shut in by a set of ledgers can't see very far, and so stampedes easier than one whose range is the whole shop; a brain that can't originate big things can't forget trifles so quick as one in which the new ideas keep crowding out the old annoyances. ten thousand a year will sweeten a multitude of things that don't taste pleasant, but there's not so much sugar in a thousand to help them down. the sting of some little word or action that wouldn't get under your skin at all, is apt to swell up one of these fellows' bump of self-esteem as big as an egg-plant, and make it sore all over. it's always been my policy to give a little extra courtesy and consideration to the men who hold the places that don't draw the extra good salaries. it's just as important to the house that they should feel happy and satisfied as the big fellows. and no man who's doing his work well is too small for a friendly word and a pat on the back, and no fellow who's doing his work poorly is too big for a jolt that will knock the nonsense out of him. you can't afford to give your men a real grievance, no matter how small it is; for a man who's got nothing to occupy thin but his work can accomplish twice as much as one who's busy with his work and a grievance. the average man will leave terrapin and champagne in a minute to chew over the luxury of feeling abused. even when a man isn't satisfied with the supply of real grievances which life affords, and goes off hunting up imaginary ones, like a blame old gormandizing french hog that leaves a full trough to root through the woods for truffles, you still want to be polite; for when you fire a man there's no good reason for doing it with a yell. noise isn't authority, and there's no sense in ripping and roaring and cussing around the office when things don't please you. for when a fellow's given to that, his men secretly won't care a cuss whether he's pleased or not. they'll jump when he speaks, because they value their heads, not his good opinion. indiscriminate blame is as bad as undiscriminating praise--it only makes a man tired. i learned this, like most of the sense i've got--hard; and it was only a few years ago that i took my last lesson in it. i came down one morning with my breakfast digesting pretty easy, and found the orders fairly heavy and the kicks rather light, so i told the young man who was reading the mail to me, and who, of course, hadn't had anything special to do with the run of orders, to buy himself a suit of clothes and send the bill to the old man. well, when the afternoon mail came in, i dipped into that, too, but i'd eaten a pretty tony luncheon, and it got to finding fault with its surroundings, and the letters were as full of kicks as a drove of missouri mules. so i began taking it out on the fellow who happened to be handiest, the same clerk to whom i had given the suit of clothes in the morning. of course, he hadn't had anything to do with the run of kicks either, but he never put up a hand to defend himself till i was all through, and then he only asked: "say, mr. graham, don't you want that suit of clothes back?" [illustration: "say, mr. graham, don't you want that suit of clothes back?"] of course, i could have fired him on the spot for impudence, but i made it a suit and an overcoat instead. i don't expect to get my experience on free passes. and i had my money's worth, too, because it taught me that it's a good rule to make sure the other fellow's wrong before you go ahead. when you jump on the man who didn't do it, you make sore spots all over him; and it takes the spring out of your leap for the fellow who did it. one of the first things a boss must lose is his temper--and it must stay lost. there's about as much sense in getting yourself worked up into a rage when a clerk makes a mistake as there is in going into the barn and touching off a keg of gunpowder under the terrier because he got mixed up in the dark and blundered into a chicken-coop instead of a rat-hole. fido may be an all-right ratter, in spite of the fact that his foot slips occasionally, and a cut now and then with a switch enough to keep him in order; but if his taste for chicken develops faster than his nose for rats, it's easier to give him to one of the neighbors than to blow him off the premises. where a few words, quick, sharp, and decisive, aren't enough for a man, a cussing out is too much. it proves that he's unfit for his work, and it unfits you for yours. the world is full of fellows who could take the energy which they put into useless cussing of their men, and double their business with it. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 13 from john graham, at the union stock yards, chicago, to his son, pierrepont, care of graham & company, denver. the young man has been offered a large interest in a big thing at a small price, and he has written asking the old man to lend him the price. xiii chicago, june 4, 1900. _dear pierrepont_: judging from what you say about the highfaluting lulu, it must be a wonder, and the owner's reason for selling--that his lungs are getting too strong to stand the climate--sounds perfectly good. you can have the money at 5 per cent, as soon as you've finally made up your mind that you want it, but before you plant it in the mine for keeps, i think you should tie a wet towel around your head, while you consider for a few minutes the bare possibility of having to pay me back out of your salary, instead of the profits from the mine. you can't throw a stone anywhere in this world without hitting a man, with a spade over his shoulder, who's just said the last sad good-byes to his bank account and is starting out for the cemetery where defunct flyers are buried. while you've only asked me for money, and not for advice, i may say that, should you put a question on some general topic like, "what are the wild waves saying, father?" i should answer, "keep out of watered stocks, my son, and wade into your own business a little deeper." though, when you come to think of it, these continuous-performance companies, that let you in for ten, twenty, and thirty cents a share, ought to be a mighty good thing for investors after they've developed their oil and gold properties, because a lot of them can afford to pay 10 per cent. before they've developed anything but suckers. so long as gold-mining with a pen and a little fancy paper continues to be such a profitable industry, a lot of fellows who write a pretty fair hand won't see any good reason for swinging a pick. they'll simply pass the pick over to the fellow who invests, and start a new prospectus. while the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they're something after all; but the walls along the short cuts to fortune are papered with only the prospectuses of good intentions--intentions to do the other fellow good and plenty. i don't want to question your ability or the purity of your friends' intentions, but are you sure you know their business as well as they do? denver is a lovely city, with a surplus of climate and scenery, and a lot of people there go home from work every night pushing a wheelbarrow full of gold in front of them, but at the same time there is no surplus of _that_ commodity, and most of the fellows who find it have cut their wisdom teeth on quartz. it isn't reasonable to expect that you're going to buy gold at fifty cents on the dollar, just because it hasn't been run through the mint yet. i simply mention these things in a general way. there are two branches in the study of riches--getting the money and keeping it from getting away. when a fellow has saved a thousand dollars, and every nickel represents a walk home, instead of a ride on a trolley; and every dollar stands for cigars he didn't smoke and for shows he didn't see--it naturally seems as if that money, when it's invested, ought to declare dividends every thirty days. but almost any scheme which advertises that it will make small investors rich quick is like one of these yellowstone geysers that spouts up straight from hades with a boom and a roar--it's bound to return to its native brimstone sooner or later, leaving nothing behind it but a little smoke, and a smell of burned money--your money. if a fellow would stop to think, he would understand that when money comes in so hard, it isn't reasonable to expect that it can go out and find more easy. but the great trouble is that a good many small investors don't stop to think, or else let plausible strangers do their thinking for them. that's why most young men have tucked away with their college diploma and the picture of their first girl, an impressive deed to a lot in nowhere-on-the-nothingness, or a beautiful certificate of stock in the gushing girlie oil well, that has never gushed anything but lies and promises, or a lovely receipt for money invested in one of these discretionary pools that are formed for the higher education of indiscreet fools. while i reckon that every fellow has one of these certificates of membership in the great society of suckers, i had hoped that you would buy yours for a little less than the highfaluting lulu is going to cost you. young men are told that the first thousand dollars comes hard and that after that it comes easier. so it does--just a thousand dollars plus interest easier; and easier through all the increased efficiency that self-denial and self-control have given you, and the larger salary they've made you worth. it doesn't seem like much when you take your savings' bank book around at the end of the year and get a little thirty or forty dollars interest added, or when you cash in the coupon on the bond that you've bought; yet your bank book and your bond are still true to you. but if you'd had your thousand in one of these 50 per cent. bleached blonde schemes, it would have lit out long ago with a fellow whose ways were more coaxing, leaving you the laugh and a mighty small lock of peroxide gold hair. if you think that saving your first thousand dollars is hard, you'll find that saving the second, after you've lost the first, is hell and repeat. you can't too soon make it a rule to invest only on your own _know_ and never on somebody else's say so. you may lose some profits by this policy, but you're bound to miss a lot of losses. often the best reason for keeping out of a thing is that everybody else is going into it. a crowd's always dangerous; it first pushes prices up beyond reason and then down below common sense. the time to buy is before the crowd comes in or after it gets out. it'll always come back to a good thing when it's been pushed up again to the point where it's a bad thing. it's better to go slow and lose a good bargain occasionally than to go fast and never get a bargain. it's all right to take a long chance now and then, when you've got a long bank account, but it's been my experience that most of the long chances are taken by the fellows with short bank accounts. you'll meet a lot of men in chicago who'll point out the corner of state and madison and tell you that when they first came to the city they were offered that lot for a hundred dollars, and that it's been the crowning regret of their lives that they didn't buy it. but for every genuine case of crowning regret because a fellow didn't buy, there are a thousand because he did. don't let it make you feverish the next time you see one of those won't-you-come-in-quick-and-get-rich-sudden ads. freeze up and on to your thousand, and by and by you'll get a chance to buy a little stock in the concern for which you're working and which you know something about; or to take that thousand and one or two more like it, and buy an interest in a nice little business of the breed that you've been grooming and currying for some other fellow. but if your money's tied up in the sudden--millionaire business, you'll have to keep right on clerking. a man's fortune should grow like a tree, in rings around the parent trunk. it'll be slow work at first, but every ring will be a little wider and a little thicker than the last one, and by and by you'll be big enough and strong enough to shed a few acorns within easy reaching distance, and so start a nice little nursery of your own from which you can saw wood some day. whenever you hear of a man's jumping suddenly into prominence and fortune, look behind the popular explanation of a lucky chance. you'll usually find that these men manufactured their own luck right on the premises by years of slow preparation, and are simply realizing on hard work. speaking of manufacturing luck on the premises, naturally calls to mind the story of old jim jackson, "dealer in mining properties," and of young thornley harding, graduate of princeton and citizen of new york. thorn wasn't a bad young fellow, but he'd been brought up by a nice, hard-working, fond and foolish old papa, in the fond belief that his job in life was to spend the income of a million. but one week papa failed, and the next week he died, and the next thorn found he had to go to work. he lasted out the next week on a high stool, and then he decided that the top, where there was plenty of room for a bright young man, was somewhere out west. thorn's life for the next few years was the whole series of hard-luck parables, with a few chapters from job thrown in, and then one day he met old jim. he seemed to cotton to thorn from the jump. explained to him that there was nothing in this digging gopher holes in the solid rock and eating chinaman's grub for the sake of making niggers' wages. allowed that he was letting other fellows dig the holes, and that he was selling them at a fair margin of profit to young eastern capitalists who hadn't been in the country long enough to lose their roll and that trust in mankind and nature which was youth's most glorious possession. needed a bright young fellow to help him--someone who could wear good clothes and not look as if he were in a disguise, and could spit out his words without chewing them up. would thorn join him on a grub, duds, and commission basis? would thorn surprise his skin with a boiled shirt and his stomach with a broiled steak? you bet he would, and they hitched up then and there. they ran along together for a year or more, selling a played-out mine now and then or a "promising claim," for a small sum. thorn knew that the mines which they handled were no golcondas, but, as he told himself, you could never absolutely swear that a fellow wouldn't strike it rich in one of them. there came a time, though, when they were way down on their luck. the run of young englishmen was light, and visiting easterners were a little gun-shy. almost looked to thorn as if he might have to go to work for a living, but he was a tenacious cuss, and stuck it out till one day when jim came back to leadville from a near-by camp, where he'd been looking at some played-out claims. jim was just boiling over with excitement. wouldn't let on what it was about, but insisted on thorn's going back with him then and there. said it was too big to tell; must be taken in by all thorn's senses, aided by his powers of exaggeration. it took them only a few hours to make the return trip. when jim came within a couple of miles of the camp, he struck in among some trees and on to the center of a little clearing. there he called thorn's attention to a small, deep spring of muddy water. "thorn," jim began, as impressive as if he were introducing him to an easy millionaire, "look at thet spring. feast yer eyes on it and tell me what you see." "a spring, you blooming idiot," thorn replied, feeling a little disappointed. "you wouldn't allow, thorn, to look at it, thet thar was special pints about thet spring, would you?" he went on, slow and solemn. "you wouldn't be willin' to swar thet the wealth of the hindoos warn't in thet precious flooid which you scorn? son," he wound up suddenly, "this here is the derndest, orneriest spring you ever see. thet water is rich enough to be drunk straight." thorn began to get excited in earnest now. "what is it? spit it out quick?" "watch me, sonny," and jim hung his tin cup in the spring and sat down on a near-by rock. then after fifteen silent minutes had passed, he lifted the cup from the water and passed it over. thorn almost jumped out of his jack-boots with surprise. "silver?" he gasped. "generwine," jim replied. "down my way, in illinois, thar used to be a spring thet turned things to stone. this gal gives 'em a jacket of silver." after thorn had kicked and rolled and yelled a little of the joy out of his system, he started to take a drink of the water, but jim stopped him with: "taste her if you wanter, but she's one of them min'rul springs which leaves a nasty smack behind." and then he added: "i reckon she's a winner. we'll christen her the infunt fernomerner, an' gin a lib'rul investor a crack at her." the next morning thorn started back, doing fancy steps up the trail. he hadn't been in leadville two days before he bumped into an old friend of his uncle's, tom castle, who was out there on some business, and had his daughter, a mighty pretty girl, along. thorn sort of let the spring slide for a few days, while he took them in hand and showed them the town. and by the time he was through, castle had a pretty bad case of mining fever, and thorn and the girl were in the first stages of something else. castle showed a good deal of curiosity about thorn's business and how he was doing, so he told 'em all about how he'd struck it rich, and in his pride showed a letter which he had received from jim the day before. it ran: "_dere thorn_: the infunt fernomerner is a wunder and the pile groes every day. i hav 2 kittles, a skilit and a duzzen cans in the spring every nite wich is awl it wil hold and days i trys out the silver frum them wich have caked on nites. this is to dern slo. we nede munny so we kin dril and get a bigger flo and tanks and bilers and sech. hump yoursel and sell that third intrest. i hav to ten the kittles now so no mor frum jim." "you see," thorn explained, "we camped beside the spring one night, and a tin cup, which jim let fall when he first tasted the water, discovered its secret. it's just the same principle as those lime springs that incrust things with lime. this one must percolate through a bed of ore. there's some quality in the water which acts as a solvent of the silver, you know, so that the water becomes charged with it." now, thorn hadn't really thought of interesting castle as an investor in that spring, because he regarded his western business and his eastern friends as things not to be mixed, and he wasn't very hot to have castle meet jim and get any details of his life for the past few years. but nothing would do castle but that they should have a look at the infant, and have it at once. well, sir, when they got about a mile from camp they saw jim standing in the trail, and smiling all over his honest, homely face. he took castle for a customer, of course, and after saying "howdy" to thorn, opened right up: "i reckon thorn hev toted you up to see thet blessid infunt as i'm mother, father and wet-nuss to. thar never was sich a kid. she's jest the cutest little cuss ever you see. eh, thorn?" "do you prefer to the er--er--infant phenomenon?" asked castle, all eagerness. "the same precious infunt. she's a cooin' to herself over thar in them pines," jim replied, and he started right in to explain: "as you see, jedge, the precious flooid comes from the bowels of the earth, as full of silver as sody water of gas; and to think thet water is the mejum. nacher's our silent partner, and the blessid infunt delivers the goods. no ore, no stamps, no sweatin', no grindin', and crushin', and millin', and smeltin'. thar you hev the pure juice, and you bile it till it jells. looky here," and jim reached down and pulled out a skillet. "taste it! smell it! bite it! lick it! an' then tell me if sollermun in all his glory was dressed up like this here!" castle handled that skillet like a baby, and stroked it as if he just naturally loved children. stayed right beside the spring during the rest of the day, and after supper he began talking about it with jim, while thorn and kate went for a stroll along the trail. during the time they were away jim must have talked to pretty good purpose, for no sooner were the partners alone for the night than jim said to thorn: "i hev jest sold the jedge a third intrest in the fernomerner fur twenty thousand dollars." "i'm not so sure about that," answered thorn, for he still didn't quite like the idea of doing business with one of his uncle's friends. "the infant looks good and i believe she's a wonder, but it's a new thing, and twenty thousand's a heap of money to castle. if it shouldn't pan out up to the first show-down, i'd feel deucedly cut up about having let him in. i'd a good deal rather refuse to sell castle and hunt up a stranger." "don't be a dern fool, son," jim replied. "he knew we was arter money to develop, and when he made thet offer i warn't goin' to be sich a permiscuss charley-hoss as to refuse. it'd be a burnin' crime not to freeze to this customer. it takes time to find customers, even for a good thing like this here, and it's bein' a leetle out of the usual run will make it slower still." "but my people east. if castle should get stuck he'll raise an awful howl." jim grinned: "he'd holler, would he? in course; it might help his business. yer the orneriest ostrich fur a man of yer keerful eddication! did you hear thet boston banker what bought the cracker-jack from us a-hollerin'? he kept so shet about it, i'll bet, thet you couldn't a-blasted it outer him." they argued along until after midnight, but jim carried his point; and two weeks later thorn was in denver, saying good-by to kate, and listening to her whisper, "but it won't be for long, as you'll soon be able to leave business and come back east," and to castle yelling from the rear platform to "push the infant and get her sizzling." later, as jim and thorn walked back to the hotel, the old scoundrel turned to his partner with a grin and said: "i hev removed the insides from the infunt and stored 'em fur future ref'rence. meanin', in course," he added, as thorn gaped up at him like a chicken with the pip, "the 'lectro-platin' outfit. p'r'aps it would be better to take a leetle pasear now, but later we can come back and find another orphant infunt and christen her the phoenix, which is greek fur sold agin." it took thorn a full minute to comprehend the rascality in which he'd been an unconscious partner, but when he finally got it through his head that jim had substituted the child of a base-born churl for the earl's daughter, he fairly raged. threatened him with exposure and arrest if he didn't make restitution to castle, but jim simply grinned and asked him whether he allowed to sing his complaint to the police. wound up by saying that, even though thorn had rounded on him, old jim was a square man, and he proposed to divide even. thorn was simply in the fix of the fellow between the bull and the bulldog--he had a choice, but it was only whether he would rather be gored or bitten, so he took the ten thousand, and that night jim faded away on a west-bound pullman, smoking two-bit cigars and keeping the porter busy standing by with a cork-screw. thorn took his story and the ten thousand back to his uncle in the east, and after a pretty solemn interview with the old man, he went around and paid castle in full and resumed his perch on top of the high stool he'd left a few years before. he never got as far as explaining to the girl in person, because castle told him that while he didn't doubt his honesty, he was afraid he was too easy a mark to succeed in wall street. yet thorn did work up slowly in his uncle's office, and he's now in charge of the department that looks after the investments of widows and orphans, for he is so blamed conservative that they can't use him in any part of the business where it's necessary to take chances. i simply speak of thorn as an example of why i think you should have a cool head before you finally buy the lulu with my money. after all, it seems rather foolish to pay railroad fares to the west and back for the sake of getting stuck when there are such superior facilities for that right here in the east. your affectionate father, john graham. no. 14 from john graham, at the omaha branch of graham & company, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. the old man has been advised by wire of the arrival of a prospective partner, and that the mother, the son, and the business are all doing well. xiv omaha, october 6, 1900. _dear pierrepont_: i'm so blame glad it's a boy that i'm getting over feeling sorry it ain't a girl, and i'm almost reconciled to it's not being twins. twelve pounds, bully! maybe that doesn't keep up the graham reputation for giving good weight! but i'm coming home on the run to heft him myself, because i never knew a fellow who wouldn't lie a little about the weight of number one, and then, when you led him up to the hay scales, claim that it's a well-known scientific principle that children shrink during the first week like a ham in smoke. allowing for tare, though, if he still nets ten i'll feel that he's a credit to the brand. it's a great thing to be sixty minutes old, with nothing in the world except a blanket and an appetite, and the whole fight ahead of you; but it's pretty good, too, to be sixty years old, and a grandpop, with twenty years of fight left in you still. it sort of makes me feel, though, as if it were almost time i had a young fellow hitched up beside me who was strong enough to pull his half of the load and willing enough so that he'd keep the traces taut on his side. i don't want any double-team arrangement where i have to pull the load and the other horse, too. but you seem strong, and you act willing, so when i get back i reckon we'll hitch for a little trial spin. a good partner ought to be like a good wife--a source of strength to a man. but it isn't reasonable to tie up with six, like a mormon elder, and expect that you're going to have half a dozen happy homes. they say that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves in a good many families, but i don't want any such gap as that in ours. i hope to live long enough to see the kid with us at the stock yards, and all three of us with our coats off hustling to make the business hum. if i shouldn't, you must keep the boy strong in the faith. it makes me a little uneasy when i go to new york and see the carryings-on of some of the old merchants' grandchildren. i don't think it's true, as andy says, that to die rich is to die disgraced, but it's the case pretty often that to die rich is to be disgraced afterward by a lot of light-weight heirs. every now and then some blame fool stops me on the street to say that he supposes i've got to the point now where i'm going to quit and enjoy myself; and when i tell him i've been enjoying myself for forty years and am going to keep right on at it, he goes off shaking his head and telling people i'm a money-grubber. he can't see that it's the fellow who doesn't enjoy his work and who quits just because he's made money that's the money-grubber; or that the man who keeps right on is fighting for something more than a little sugar on his bread and butter. when a doctor reaches the point where he's got a likely little bunch of dyspeptics giving him ten dollars apiece for telling them to eat something different from what they have been eating, and to chew it--people don't ask him why he doesn't quit and live on the interest of his dyspepsia money. by the time he's gained his financial independence, he's lost his personal independence altogether. for it's just about then that he's reached the age where he can put a little extra sense and experience into his pills; so he can't turn around without some one's sticking out his tongue at him and asking him to guess what he had for dinner that disagreed with him. it never occurs to these people that he will let his experience and ability go to waste, just because he has made money enough to buy a little dyspepsia of his own, and it never occurs to him to quit for any such foolish reason. you'll meet a lot of first-class idiots in this world, who regard business as low and common, because their low and common old grandpas made money enough so they don't have to work. and you'll meet a lot of second-class fools who carry a line of something they call culture, which bears about the same relation to real education that canned corned beef does to porterhouse steak with mushrooms; and these fellows shudder a little at the mention of business, and moan over the mad race for wealth, and deplore the coarse commercialism of the age. but while they may have no special use for a business man, they always have a particular use for his money. you want to be ready to spring back while you're talking to them, because when a fellow doesn't think it's refined to mention money, and calls it an honorarium, he's getting ready to hit you for a little more than the market price. i've had dealings with a good many of these shy, sensitive souls who shrink from mentioning the dollar, but when it came down to the point of settling the bill, they usually tried to charge a little extra for the shock to their refinement. the fact of the matter is, that we're all in trade when we've got anything, from poetry to pork, to sell; and it's all foolishness to talk about one fellow's goods being sweller than another's. the only way in which he can be different is by making them better. but if we haven't anything to sell, we ain't doing anything to shove the world along; and we ought to make room on it for some coarse, commercial cuss with a sample-case. i've met a heap of men who were idling through life because they'd made money or inherited it, and so far as i could see, about all that they could do was to read till they got the dry rot, or to booze till they got the wet rot. all books and no business makes jack a jack-in-the-box, with springs and wheels in his head; all play and no work makes jack a jackass, with bosh in his skull. the right prescription for him is play when he really needs it, and work whether he needs it or not; for that dose makes jack a cracker-jack. like most fellows who haven't any too much of it, i've a great deal of respect for education, and that's why i'm sorry to see so many men who deal in it selling gold-bricks to young fellows who can't afford to be buncoed. it would be a mighty good thing if we could put a lot of the professors at work in the offices and shops, and give these canned-culture boys jobs in the glue and fertilizer factories until a little of their floss and foolishness had worn off. for it looks to an old fellow, who's taking a bird's-eye view from the top of a packing house, as if some of the colleges were still running their plants with machinery that would have been sent to the scrap-heap, in any other business, a hundred years ago. they turn out a pretty fair article as it is, but with improved machinery they could save a lot of waste and by-products and find a quicker market for their output. but it's the years before our kid goes to college that i'm worrying about now. for i believe that we ought to teach a boy how to use his hands as well as his brain; that he ought to begin his history lessons in the present and work back to b.c. about the time he is ready to graduate; that he ought to know a good deal about the wheat belt before he begins loading up with the list of patagonian products; that he ought to post up on abraham lincoln and grover cleveland and thomas edison first, and save rameses second to while away the long winter evenings after business hours, because old rameses is embalmed and guaranteed to keep anyway; that if he's inclined to be tonguey he ought to learn a living language or two, which he can talk when a dutch buyer pretends he doesn't understand english, before he tackles a dead one which in all probability he will only give decent interment in his memory. of course, it's a fine thing to know all about the past and to have the date when the geese cackled in rome down pat, but life is the present and the future. the really valuable thing which we get from the past is experience, and a fellow can pick up a pretty fair working line of that along la salle street. a boy's education should begin with to-day, deal a little with to-morrow, and then go back to day before yesterday. but when a fellow begins with the past, it's apt to take him too long to catch up with the present. a man can learn better most of the things that happened between a.d. 1492 and b.c. 5000 after he's grown, for then he can sense their meaning and remember what's worth knowing. but you take the average boy who's been loaded up with this sort of stuff, and dig into him, and his mind is simply a cemetery of useless dates from the tombstones of those tough and sporty old kings, with here and there the jaw-bone of an ass who made a living by killing every one in sight and unsettling business for honest men. some professors will tell you that it's good training anyway to teach boys a lot of things they're going to forget, but it's been my experience that it's the best training to teach them things they'll remember. i simply mention these matters in a general way. i don't want you to underestimate the value of any sort of knowledge, and i want you to appreciate the value of other work besides your own--music and railroading, ground and lofty tumbling and banking, painting pictures and soap advertising; because if you're not broad enough to do this you're just as narrow as those fellows who are running the culture corner, and your mind will get so blame narrow it will overlap. i want to raise our kid to be a poor man's son, and then, if it's necessary, we can always teach him how to be a rich one's. child nature is human nature, and a man who understands it can make his children like the plain, sensible things and ways as easily as the rich and foolish ones. i remember a nice old lady who was raising a lot of orphan grandchildren on a mighty slim income. they couldn't have chicken often in that house, and when they did it was a pretty close fit and none to throw away. so instead of beginning with the white meat and stirring up the kids like a cage full of hyenas when the "feeding the carnivora" sign is out, she would play up the pieces that don't even get a mention on the bill-of-fare of a two-dollar country hotel. she would begin by saying in a please-don't-all-speak-at-once tone, "now, children, who wants this dear little neck?" and naturally they all wanted it, because it was pretty plain to them that it was something extra sweet and juicy. so she would allot it as a reward of goodness to the child who had been behaving best, and throw in the gizzard for nourishment. the nice old lady always helped herself last, and there was nothing left for her but white meat. it isn't the final result which the nice old lady achieved, but the first one, that i want to commend. a child naturally likes the simple things till you teach him to like the rich ones; and it's just as easy to start him with books and amusements that hold sense and health as those that are filled with slop and stomach-ache. a lot of mothers think a child starts out with a brain that can't learn anything but nonsense; so when maudie asks a sensible question they answer in goo-goo gush. and they believe that a child can digest everything from carpet tacks to fried steak, so whenever willie hollers they think he's hungry, and try to plug his throat with a banana. you want to have it in mind all the time while you're raising this boy that you can't turn over your children to subordinates, any more than you can your business, and get good results. nurses and governesses are no doubt all right in their place, but there's nothing "just as good" as a father and mother. a boy doesn't pick up cuss-words when his mother's around or learn cussedness from his father. yet a lot of mothers turn over the children, along with the horses and dogs, to be fed and broken by the servants, and then wonder from which side of the family isobel inherited her weak stomach, and where she picked up her naughty ways, and why she drops the h's from some words and pronounces others with a brogue. but she needn't look to isobel for any information, because she is the only person about the place with whom the child ain't on free and easy terms. i simply mention these things in passing. life is getting broader and business bigger right along, and we've got to breed a better race of men if we're going to keep just a little ahead of it. there are a lot of problems in the business now--trust problems and labor problems--that i'm getting old enough to shirk, which you and the boy must meet, though i'm not doing any particular worrying about them. while i believe that the trusts are pretty good things in theory, a lot of them have been pretty bad things in practice, and we shall be mighty slow to hook up with one. the trouble is that too many trusts start wrong. a lot of these fellows take a strong, sound business idea--the economy of cost in manufacture and selling--and hitch it to a load of the rottenest business principle in the bunch--the inflation of the value of your plant and stock--, and then wonder why people hold their noses when their outfit drives down wall street. of course, when you stop a little leakage between the staves and dip out the sugar by the bucket from the top, your net gain is going to be a deficit for somebody. so if these fellows try to do business as they should do it, by clean and sound methods and at fair and square prices, they can't earn money enough to satisfy their stockholders, and they get sore; and if they try to do business in the only way that's left, by clubbing competition to death, and gouging the public, then the whole country gets sore. it seems to me that a good many of these trusts are at a stage where the old individual character of the businesses from which they came is dead, and a new corporate character hasn't had time to form and strengthen. naturally, when a youngster hangs fire over developing a conscience, he's got to have one licked into him. personally, i want to see fewer businesses put into trusts on the canned-soup theory--add hot water and serve--before i go into one; and i want to know that the new concern is going to put a little of itself into every case that leaves the plant, just as i have always put in a little of myself. of course, i don't believe that this stage of the trusts can last, because, in the end, a business that is founded on doubtful values and that makes money by doubtful methods will go to smash or be smashed, and the bigger the business the bigger the smash. the real trust-busters are going to be the crooked trusts, but so long as they can keep out of jail they will make it hard for the sound and straight ones to prove their virtue. yet once the trust idea strikes bed-rock, and a trust is built up of sound properties on a safe valuation; once the most capable man has had time to rise to the head, and a new breed, trained to the new idea, to grow up under him; and once dishonest competition--not hard competition--is made a penitentiary offense, and the road to the penitentiary macadamized so that it won't be impassable to the fellows who ride in automobiles--then there'll be no more trust-busting talk, because a trust will be the most efficient, the most economical, and the most profitable way of doing business; and there's no use bucking that idea or no sense in being so foolish as to want to. it would be like grabbing a comet by the tail and trying to put a twist in it. and there's nothing about it for a young fellow to be afraid of, because a good man isn't lost in a big business--he simply has bigger opportunities and more of them. the larger the interests at stake, the less people are inclined to jeopardize them by putting them in the hands of any one but the best man in sight. i'm not afraid of any trust that's likely to come along for a while, because graham & co. ain't any spring chicken. i'm not too old to change, but i don't expect to have to just yet, and so long as the trust and labor situation remains as it is i don't believe that you and i and the kid can do much better than to follow my old rule: _mind your own business; own your own business; and run your own business_. your affectionate father, john graham. the end. the citizen's library of economics, politics, and sociology under the general editorship of richard t. ely, ph.d, ll.d. _director of the school of economics and political science; professor of political economy at the university of wisconsin_ 12mo. half leather. $1.25, net, each * * * * * *monopolies and trusts*. by richard t. ely, ph.d., ll.d. "it is admirable. it is the soundest contribution on the subject that has appeared."--professor john r. commons. "by all odds the best written of professor ely's work."--professor simon n. patten, _university of pennsylvania_. *outlines of economics*. by richard t. ely, ph.d., ll.d., author of "monopolies and trusts," etc. *the economics of distribution*. by john a. hobson, author of "the evolution of modern capitalism," etc. *world politics*. by paul s. reinsch, ph.d., ll.b., assistant professor of political science, university of wisconsin. *economic crises*. by edward d. jones, ph.d., instructor in economics and statistics, university of wisconsin. *government in switzerland*. by john martin vincent, ph.d., associate professor of history, johns hopkins university. *political parties in the united states, 1846-1861*. by jesse macy, ll.d., professor of political science in iowa college. *essays on the monetary history of the united states*. by charles j. bullock, ph.d., assistant professor of economics, williams college. *social control: a survey of the foundations of order*. by edward alsworth ross, ph.d. *municipal engineering and sanitation*. by w.n. baker, ph.b., associate editor of _engineering news_. * * * * * the macmillan company 66 fifth avenue, new york *in preparation for early issue* *democracy and social ethics* by jane addams, head of "hull house," chicago; joint author of "philanthropy and social progress." (_now ready._) miss addams' settlement work is known to all who are interested in social amelioration and municipal conditions. as the title of her book shows, it will be occupied with the reciprocal relations of ethical progress and the growth of democratic thought, sentiment, and institutions. *custom and competition* by richard t. ely, ll.d., professor of political economy and director of the school of economics and political science in the university of wisconsin; president of the american economic association; author of "monopolies and trusts," etc. topics treated under custom include the rent of land and custom; interest and custom; the remuneration of personal services and custom; custom and commerce. competition is first discussed with reference to the biological aspects of the question, and the significance of subhuman competition is confined and a careful classification of its various kinds is presented. one of the main topics of the book is competition as a principle of distribution, and its treatment of the subject of price admirably supplements the theoretical discussion in "monopolies and trusts." *american municipal progress* by charles zueblin, b.d., associate professor of sociology in the university of chicago. this work takes up the problem of the so-called public utilities, public schools, libraries, children's playgrounds, public baths, public gymnasiums, etc. the discussion is from the standpoint of public welfare and is based on repeated personal investigations in leading cities of europe, especially england and the united states. *colonial government* by paul s. reinsch, ph.d., ll.b., professor of political science in the university of wisconsin; author of "world politics at the end of the nineteenth century as influenced by the oriental situation." by the author of the "world politics," which met so cordial a reception from students of modern political history. the main divisions of the book are: motives and methods of colonization; forms of colonial government; relations between the mother country and the colonies; internal government of the colonies; the special colonial problems of the united states. * * * * * the macmillan company 66 fifth avenue, new york the citizen's library of economics, politics, and sociology edited by richard t. ely, ph.d., ll.d. director of the school of economics and political science, university of wisconsin * * * * * democracy and social ethics *the citizen's library of economics, politics, and sociology.* 12mo. half leather. $1.25 _net_ each. * * * * * *monopolies and trusts.* by richard t. ely, ph.d., ll.d. *the economics of distribution.* by john a. hobson. *world politics.* by paul s. reinsch, ph.d., ll.b. *economic crises.* by edward d. jones, ph.d. *outline of economics.* by richard t. ely. *government in switzerland.* by john martin vincent, ph.d. *essays in the monetary history of the united states.* by charles j. bullock, ph.d. *social control.* by edward a. ross, ph.d. *history of political parties in the united states.* by jesse macy, ll.d. *municipal engineering and sanitation.* by m.n. baker, ph.b. *democracy and social ethics.* by jane addams. *colonial government.* by paul s. reinsch, ph.d., ll.b. * * * * * _in preparation._ *custom and competition.* by richard t. ely, ph.d., ll.d. *municipal sociology.* by charles zueblin. * * * * * the macmillan company, 66 fifth avenue. _the citizen's library_ * * * * * democracy and social ethics by jane addams hull-house, chicago _new york_ the macmillan company london: macmillan & co., ltd. 1902 set up and electrotyped march, 1902. reprinted june, september, 1902. norwood press j.s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith norwood mass. u.s.a. to: m.r.s. prefatory note the following pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures on "democracy and social ethics" which have been delivered at various colleges and university extension centres. in putting them into the form of a book, no attempt has been made to change the somewhat informal style used in speaking. the "we" and "us" which originally referred to the speaker and her audience are merely extended to possible readers. acknowledgment for permission to reprint is extended to _the atlantic monthly_, _the international journal of ethics_, _the american journal of sociology_, and to _the commons_. contents chapter i page introduction 1 chapter ii charitable effort 13 chapter iii filial relations 71 chapter iv household adjustment 102 chapter v industrial amelioration 137 chapter vi educational methods 178 chapter vii political reform 221 index 279 democracy and social ethics chapter i introduction it is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. it is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. to steal would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and expectation which makes virtue easy. in the same way we have been carefully reared to a sense of family obligation, to be kindly and considerate to the members of our own households, and to feel responsible for their well-being. as the rules of conduct have become established in regard to our self-development and our families, so they have been in regard to limited circles of friends. if the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of right living would lie easily in their hands. but we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately use a previous and less vigorous test. the advanced test must indeed include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have "arrived" when in reality we have not yet started. to attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. it is perhaps significant that a german critic has of late reminded us that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of the day of judgment offers, is the social test. the stern questions are not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry? all about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to their attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round of uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite, the declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food which characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their fellow-citizens. these men and women have caught a moral challenge raised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered, others who are denied the relief which sturdy action brings are even seeking an escape, but all are increasingly anxious concerning their actual relations to the basic organization of society. the test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. they fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand involving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another requirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of social ethics. the conception of life which they hold has not yet expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between their consciences and their conduct. they desire both a clearer definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality. in the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is becoming clear: if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a social morality, it is inevitable that those who desire it must be brought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to procure an adequate social motive. these men and women have realized this and have disclosed the fact in their eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the life about them. they believe that experience gives the easy and trustworthy impulse toward right action in the broad as well as in the narrow relations. we may indeed imagine many of them saying: "cast our experiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the larger social aims. we have met the obligations of our family life, not because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare ourselves for the larger social duties." such a demand is reasonable, for by our daily experience we have discovered that we cannot mechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in rare moments of exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that even as the ideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the strength to attain it must be secured from interest in life itself. we slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. we are thus brought to a conception of democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith. we are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another's burdens. to follow the path of social morality results perforce in the temper if not the practice of the democratic spirit, for it implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy which are the foundation and guarantee of democracy. there are many indications that this conception of democracy is growing among us. we have come to have an enormous interest in human life as such, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness. we do not believe that genuine experience can lead us astray any more than scientific data can. we realize, too, that social perspective and sanity of judgment come only from contact with social experience; that such contact is the surest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and concerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. indeed, it is a consciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and more thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that new curiosity regarding human life which has more of a moral basis than an intellectual one. the newspapers, in a frank reflection of popular demand, exhibit an omniverous curiosity equally insistent upon the trivial and the important. they are perhaps the most obvious manifestations of that desire to know, that "what is this?" and "why do you do that?" of the child. the first dawn of the social consciousness takes this form, as the dawning intelligence of the child takes the form of constant question and insatiate curiosity. literature, too, portrays an equally absorbing though better adjusted desire to know all kinds of life. the popular books are the novels, dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social adjustment--for the remedying of social ills. doubtless one under the conviction of sin in regard to social ills finds a vague consolation in reading about the lives of the poor, and derives a sense of complicity in doing good. he likes to feel that he knows about social wrongs even if he does not remedy them, and in a very genuine sense there is a foundation for this belief. partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world before. evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only that man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the criminal. we have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people. already there is a conviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life. we know instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics. we can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one common characteristic,--the conviction that they are different from other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they are more sensitive or more refined. such people "refuse to be bound by any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration, or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed." we have learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say that they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on narrow and unprogressive issues. we know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. thus the identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. it is as though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience, because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd. the six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct. no attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the assumption that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy, but the quite unlooked-for result of the studies would seem to indicate that while the strain and perplexity of the situation is felt most keenly by the educated and self-conscious members of the community, the tentative and actual attempts at adjustment are largely coming through those who are simpler and less analytical. chapter ii charitable effort all those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them. our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct, which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing moral conceptions. when this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon another. probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing more rapidly than the charitable relation--that relation which obtains between benefactor and beneficiary; at the same time there is no point of contact in our modern experience which reveals so clearly the lack of that equality which democracy implies. we have reached the moment when democracy has made such inroads upon this relationship, that the complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man is gone forever; while, at the same time, the very need and existence of charity, denies us the consolation and freedom which democracy will at last give. it is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined, and we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon convictions which we no longer hold. thus our estimate of the effect of environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our methods of administrating charity have changed. formerly when it was believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior morality. we have learned since that time to measure by other standards, and have ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive respect; while it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, its possession is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the highest moral qualities. we have learned to judge men by their social virtues as well as by their business capacity, by their devotion to intellectual and disinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we naturally resent being obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the industrial side. our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. it is largely in this modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic standard, while the old charitable attitude commonly allowed the use of two standards, that much of the difficulty adheres. we know that unceasing bodily toil becomes wearing and brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable if we judge large numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in maintaining it. the daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained only through status. the only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable reasons; but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing, and must be bolstered and helped into industrial health. the charity visitor, let us assume, is a young college woman, well-bred and open-minded; when she visits the family assigned to her, she is often embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the stress of her teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to treat the members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the industrial system. she insists that they must work and be self-supporting, that the most dangerous of all situations is idleness, that seeking one's own pleasure, while ignoring claims and responsibilities, is the most ignoble of actions. the members of her assigned family may have other charms and virtues--they may possibly be kind and considerate of each other, generous to their friends, but it is her business to stick to the industrial side. as she daily holds up these standards, it often occurs to the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made tender by much talk of brotherhood and equality, that she has no right to say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to cope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family. the grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial preaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and housewifely training. in a generation our experiences have changed, and our views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which could be applied when our consciences were in line with them, but which are daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work with their hands and those who do not. the charity visitor belonging to the latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the situation forces upon her. our democracy has taught us to apply our moral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so sensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical convictions, he finds it difficult to preach. added to this is a consciousness, in the mind of the visitor, of a genuine misunderstanding of her motives by the recipients of her charity, and by their neighbors. let us take a neighborhood of poor people, and test their ethical standards by those of the charity visitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to help them out of their distress. a most striking incongruity, at once apparent, is the difference between the emotional kindness with which relief is given by one poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the guarded care with which relief is given by a charity visitor to a charity recipient. the neighborhood mind is at once confronted not only by the difference of method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical standards. a very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly relations. there is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything, and all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate family affairs of all the others. the fact that the economic condition of all alike is on a most precarious level makes the ready outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world. there are numberless instances of self-sacrifice quite unknown in the circles where greater economic advantages make that kind of intimate knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. an irish family in which the man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling to eke out the scanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow and her five children who have been turned into the street, without a moment's reflection upon the physical discomforts involved. the most maligned landlady who lives in the house with her tenants is usually ready to lend a scuttle full of coal to one of them who may be out of work, or to share her supper. a woman for whom the writer had long tried in vain to find work failed to appear at the appointed time when employment was secured at last. upon investigation it transpired that a neighbor further down the street was taken ill, that the children ran for the family friend, who went of course, saying simply when reasons for her non-appearance were demanded, "it broke me heart to leave the place, but what could i do?" a woman whose husband was sent up to the city prison for the maximum term, just three months, before the birth of her child found herself penniless at the end of that time, having gradually sold her supply of household furniture. she took refuge with a friend whom she supposed to be living in three rooms in another part of town. when she arrived, however, she discovered that her friend's husband had been out of work so long that they had been reduced to living in one room. the friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged to sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did uncomplainingly if not cheerfully. fortunately it was summer, "and it only rained one night." the writer could not discover from the young mother that she had any special claim upon the "friend" beyond the fact that they had formerly worked together in the same factory. the husband she had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at once went forth in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon his promise of future payment. the evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right and wrong. there is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many people with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that their ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged by the methods of these agencies. when they see the delay and caution with which relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious scruple, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. it is not the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors, and they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to "be good to the poor" should be so severely supervised. they feel, remotely, that the charity visitor is moved by motives that are alien and unreal. they may be superior motives, but they are different, and they are "agin nature." they cannot comprehend why a person whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his natural impulses, should go into charity work at all. the only man they are accustomed to see whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his tenderness of heart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is frankly "on the make." if the charity visitor is such a person, why does she pretend to like the poor? why does she not go into business at once? we may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus confuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity from time to time. in moments of indignation the poor have been known to say: "what do you want, anyway? if you have nothing to give us, why not let us alone and stop your questionings and investigations?" "they investigated me for three weeks, and in the end gave me nothing but a black character," a little woman has been heard to assert. this indignation, which is for the most part taciturn, and a certain kindly contempt for her abilities, often puzzles the charity visitor. the latter may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the visited families hold. success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. the rich landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. there are moments of irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is rich and successful. the good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. he often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to accumulate little. he commands the genuine love and devotion of many a poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. in one sense he is a failure. the charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect. the poor are accustomed to help each other and to respond according to their kindliness; but when it comes to worldly judgment, they use industrial success as the sole standard. in the case of the charity visitor who has neither natural kindness nor dazzling riches, they are deprived of both standards, and they find it of course utterly impossible to judge of the motive of organized charity. even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in altruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something distasteful in the juxtaposition of the words "organized" and "charity." we say in defence that we are striving to turn this emotion into a motive, that pity is capricious, and not to be depended on; that we mean to give it the dignity of conscious duty. but at bottom we distrust a little a scheme which substitutes a theory of social conduct for the natural promptings of the heart, even although we appreciate the complexity of the situation. the poor man who has fallen into distress, when he first asks aid, instinctively expects tenderness, consideration, and forgiveness. if it is the first time, it has taken him long to make up his mind to take the step. he comes somewhat bruised and battered, and instead of being met with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at once chilled by an investigation and an intimation that he ought to work. he does not recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation. the only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by virtue of their professional training render services which may easily be interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to obvious needs which do not require investigation. the state of mind which an investigation arouses on both sides is most unfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of different standards, with the consequent misunderstandings, are not so bad as the moral deterioration which is almost sure to follow. when the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that under certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed from some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn what the conditions may be, and to follow them. though in their eyes a glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious observance. the deception in the first instances arises from a wondering inability to understand the ethical ideals which can require such impossible virtues, and from an innocent desire to please. it is easy to trace the development of the mental suggestions thus received. when a discovers that b, who is very little worse off than he, receives good things from an inexhaustible supply intended for the poor at large, he feels that he too has a claim for his share, and step by step there is developed the competitive spirit which so horrifies charity visitors when it shows itself in a tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies. the most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. the spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child is turned into righteous indignation against the district nurse, because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. or the kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary, because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can get well on a piece of paper?" if a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. when the charity visitor comes in, all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. they know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. they imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. she ought to get new shoes for the family all round, "she sees well enough that they need them." it is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has practically done, when she lent her own shoes. the charity visitor has broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is judged by the ethics of that primitive society. the neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other things. such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. but this lady visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not intend to give them things which are so plainly needed? the visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to a standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living which they formerly possessed; that saving, which seems quite commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the children of the family do not. she feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the industrial view of life. the benevolent individual of fifty years ago honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in comfortable possessions for old age. it was, indeed, the method he had practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained whatever fortune he possessed. he therefore reproved the poor family for indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity visitor. she says sometimes, "why must i talk always of getting work and saving money, the things i know nothing about? if it were anything else i had to urge, i could do it; anything like latin prose, which i had worried through myself, it would not be so hard." but she finds it difficult to connect the experiences of her youth with the experiences of the visited family. because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. she refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors" at all. he remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. he may listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only "temperance talk." the charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward their children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that the standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children so much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the punctilious wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child. the standard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself, assisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "that they do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street. the mother would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement. it is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more difficult. the visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her first month of experience with the family since bereaved. the subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: the girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. but the working girl, whose family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place, knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her position. her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to the amount which she spends upon other things. but, if social advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. she is judged largely by her clothes. her house furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the people whose social opinions she most values. her clothes are her background, and from them she is largely judged. it is due to this fact that girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where "working girls" and "young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially look very much alike. bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. for the same reason, girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little towns and villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the front parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the house. these facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment; they impede the democratic relationship and add to the self-consciousness of all concerned. every one who has had to do with down-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of some bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps wretched, and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her, although the working girl may not have been at home when the call was made, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy throughout. in some very successful down-town clubs the home address is not given at all, and only the "business address" is required. have we worked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than anything else? the charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to spend much money upon clothes, to care so much for "appearances." she realizes dimly that the care for personal decoration over that for one's home or habitat is in some way primitive and undeveloped; but she is silenced by its obvious need. she also catches a glimpse of the fact that the disproportionate expenditure of the poor in the matter of clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of the rich who hide from them the interior of their houses, and their more subtle pleasures, while of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and their street manners. every one who goes shopping at the same time may see the clothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to her receptions see the corot on her walls or the bindings in her library. the poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing the street clothes which they have seen. they are striving to conform to a common standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to all of us. the charity visitor may regret that the italian peasant woman has laid aside her picturesque kerchief and substituted a cheap street hat. but it is easy to recognize the first attempt toward democratic expression. the charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to consider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor; for she cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according to the conventions which have regulated her own life. she finds both of these fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her sympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight. she discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been, and it takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. the charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early marriages, quite naturally because she comes from a family and circle of professional and business people. a professional man is scarcely equipped and started in his profession before he is thirty. a business man, if he is on the road to success, is much nearer prosperity at thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is therefore wise for these men not to marry in the twenties; but this does not apply to the workingman. in many trades he is laid upon the shelf at thirty-five, and in nearly all trades he receives the largest wages in his life between twenty and thirty. if the young workingman has all his wages to himself, he will probably establish habits of personal comfort, which he cannot keep up when he has to divide with a family--habits which he can, perhaps, never overcome. the sense of prudence, the necessity for saving, can never come to a primitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. he naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early. a jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the cook county poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. had his little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. he was, in fact, better able to well support a family when he was twenty than when he was thirty-five, for his wages had steadily grown less as the years went on. another tailor whom i know, who is also a socialist, always speaks of saving as a bourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to the genuine workingman. he supports a family consisting of himself, a wife and three children, and his two parents on eight dollars a week. he insists it would be criminal not to expend every penny of this amount upon food and shelter, and he expects his children later to care for him. this economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to work overyoung and thus cripple their chances for individual development and usefulness, and with the avaricious parent also leads to exploitation. "i have fed her for fourteen years, now she can help me pay my mortgage" is not an unusual reply when a hardworking father is expostulated with because he would take his bright daughter out of school and put her into a factory. it has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not the excuse that the parents have. it is so easy, after one has been taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and more social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his parents, who are receiving charitable aid. she does not realize what a cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives advice. the manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children was able to show during a child-labor investigation, that the only children under fourteen years of age in his employ were protã©gã©s who had been urged upon him by philanthropic ladies, not only acquaintances of his, but valued patrons of the establishment. it is not that the charity visitor is less wise than other people, but she has fixed her mind so long upon the industrial lameness of her family that she is eager to seize any crutch, however weak, which may enable them to get on. she has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely support his widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate member to the community, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. as she has failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of marriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she fails to understand that the present conditions of employment surrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained during the energetic youth of her father. the child who is prematurely put to work is constantly oppressed by this never ending question of the means of subsistence, and even little children are sometimes almost crushed with the cares of life through their affectionate sympathy. the writer knows a little italian lad of six to whom the problems of food, clothing, and shelter have become so immediate and pressing that, although an imaginative child, he is unable to see life from any other standpoint. the goblin or bugaboo, feared by the more fortunate child, in his mind, has come to be the need of coal which caused his father hysterical and demonstrative grief when it carried off his mother's inherited linen, the mosaic of st. joseph, and, worst of all, his own rubber boots. he once came to a party at hull-house, and was interested in nothing save a gas stove which he saw in the kitchen. he became excited over the discovery that fire could be produced without fuel. "i will tell my father of this stove. you buy no coal, you need only a match. anybody will give you a match." he was taken to visit at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was paid for it. on being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no rent for that house, he came back quite wild with interest that the problem was solved. "me and my father will go to the country. you get a big house, all warm, without rent." nothing else in the country interested him but the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an exclusiveness worthy of a single taxer. the struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. parents who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn, take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with them from the very first. such a parent, when successful, impresses the immature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing habits of obedience, so that the nerves and will may not depart from this control when the child is older. the charity visitor, whose family relation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand the industrial foundation for this family tyranny. the head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of working women, and spoke of the despotism which is often established over little children. she said that the so-called determination to break a child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged the ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. but many of the women were puzzled. one of them remarked to the writer as she came out of the club room, "if you did not keep control over them from the time they were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown up." another one said, "ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't have to depend upon her children's wages. she can afford to be lax with them, because even if they don't give money to her, she can get along without it." there are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and constantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes receiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as often nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who for six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling wages which she earns in a large factory. is it habit or virtue which holds her steady in this course? if love and tenderness had been substituted for parental despotism, would the mother have had enough affection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of money obligation through all these years? this girl who spends her paltry two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her mother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on those clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some powerful force. the charity visitor finds these subtle and elusive problems most harrowing. the head of a family she is visiting is a man who has become black-listed in a strike. he is not a very good workman, and this, added to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. the fatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less eager for it, and gets a "job" less and less frequently. in order to keep up his self-respect, and still more to keep his wife's respect for him, he yields to the little self-deception that this prolonged idleness follows because he was once blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a martyr. deep down in his heart perhaps--but who knows what may be deep down in his heart? whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for an instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her earn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family. the charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. she further knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not skilful. she cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. she sees other workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many more hours in the public library reading good books than the average workman has time to do. he has formed no bad habits and has yielded only to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which come to the intellectual man. he lacks the qualifications which would induce his union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a constant speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral attitude on the questions discussed there. he contributes a certain intellectuality to his friends, and he has undoubted social value. the neighboring women confide to the charity visitor their sympathy with his wife, because she has to work so hard, and because her husband does not "provide." their remarks are sharpened by a certain resentment toward the superiority of the husband's education and gentle manners. the charity visitor is ashamed to take this point of view, for she knows that it is not altogether fair. she is reminded of a college friend of hers, who told her that she was not going to allow her literary husband to write unworthy potboilers for the sake of earning a living. "i insist that we shall live within my own income; that he shall not publish until he is ready, and can give his genuine message." the charity visitor recalls what she has heard of another acquaintance, who urged her husband to decline a lucrative position as a railroad attorney, because she wished him to be free to take municipal positions, and handle public questions without the inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in a corrupt city to a corporation attorney. the action of these two women seemed noble to her, but in their cases they merely lived on a lesser income. in the case of the workingman's wife, she faced living on no income at all, or on the precarious one which she might be able to get together. she sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she is utterly unwilling to condemn her while praising the friends of her own social position. she realizes, of course, that the situation is changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. the charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into complaining drudgery. to be sure, she could give up visiting the family altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects that she will never know many finer women than the mother. she is unwilling, therefore, to give up the friendship, and goes on bearing her perplexities as best she may. the first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their children out of all proportion to their means. the poor family which receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. but as the growth of juvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving no legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house or regular meals. there are certain boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid than the rest. their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house, to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the nearest junk dealer. with the money thus procured they buy beer and drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley. from beginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that they may be seen and caught by the "coppers," and are at times quite breathless with suspense. it is not the least unlike, in motive and execution, the practice of country boys who go forth in squads to set traps for rabbits or to round up a coon. it is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy undertakes to guide them into further excitements. from the very beginning the most enticing and exciting experiences which they have seen have been connected with crime. the policeman embodies all the majesty of successful law and established government in his brass buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon. the boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale to tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. the earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the rattling fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block," and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest lady in our street was arrested." in the first year of their settlement the hull-house residents took fifty kindergarten children to lincoln park, only to be grieved by their apathetic interest in trees and flowers. as they came back with an omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled by. their eager little heads popped out of the windows full of questioning: "was it a man or a woman?" "how many policemen inside?" and eager little tongues began to tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes had witnessed. the excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. the parent who receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation schools than the conscientious charity visitor. this very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often leads the boys into difficulty. three boys aged seven, nine, and ten were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of pilfering and destroying property. they had dug a cave under a railroad viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer vacation. they had "swiped" potatoes and other vegetables from hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations. the father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. the landlord did not want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman living near the viaduct. she conscientiously gave him his breakfast and supper, and left something in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in the summer," or to investigate what he did during the day. in the meantime the three boys lived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous stories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more as the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic passing over the street on the top of the viaduct. in spite of vigorous exertions on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the reform school, comforting himself with the conclusive remark, "well, we had fun anyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the school; it is in the country, where we can't hurt anything." in addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of the young people. "going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and satisfactory form of recreation. many boys who conscientiously give all their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on sunday afternoon. it is their one satisfactory glimpse of life--the moment when they "issue forth from themselves" and are stirred and thoroughly interested. they quite simply adopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see there. in moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the gestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry expression often conflicts hideously with the fine and genuine emotion of which it is the inadequate and vulgar vehicle. as in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they know. if we agree with a recent definition of art, as that which causes the spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries" and picture exhibits combined. the greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding and explanation. the difficulty of making clear one's own ethical standpoint is at times insurmountable. a woman who had bought and sold school books stolen from the school fund,--books which are all plainly marked with a red stamp,--came to hull house one morning in great distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident "to speak to the judge." she gave as a reason the fact that the house had known her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her little girl was buried. the resident more than suspected that her visitor knew the school books were stolen when buying them, and any attempt to talk upon that subject was evidently considered very rude. the visitor wished to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason why the house should not help her. the alderman was out of town, so she could not go to him. after a long conversation the visitor entirely failed to get another point of view and went away grieved and disappointed at a refusal, thinking the resident simply disobliging; wondering, no doubt, why such a mean woman had once been good to her; leaving the resident, on the other hand, utterly baffled and in the state of mind she would have been in, had she brutally insisted that a little child should lift weights too heavy for its undeveloped muscles. such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:-a certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and pathos of forlorn old age. she is responsible for the well-being of perhaps a dozen old women to whom she sustains a sincerely affectionate and almost filial relation. some of them learn to take her benefactions quite as if they came from their own relatives, grumbling at all she does, and scolding her with a family freedom. one of these poor old women was injured in a fire years ago. she has but the fragment of a hand left, and is grievously crippled in her feet. through years of pain she had become addicted to opium, and when she first came under the visitor's care, was only held from the poorhouse by the awful thought that she would there perish without her drug. five years of tender care have done wonders for her. she lives in two neat little rooms, where with her thumb and two fingers she makes innumerable quilts, which she sells and gives away with the greatest delight. her opium is regulated to a set amount taken each day, and she has been drawn away from much drinking. she is a voracious reader, and has her head full of strange tales made up from books and her own imagination. at one time it seemed impossible to do anything for her in chicago, and she was kept for two years in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and where she was nursed through several hazardous illnesses. she now lives a better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old woman. the neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is supported and comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she occasionally "rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar her in her tottering walk. the care of her has broken through even that second standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the plums of benevolence. the old lady herself is conscious of this criticism. indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't in the least deserve what she gets. in order to disarm them, and at the same time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn in the suburb she discovered an awful family secret,--a horrible scandal connected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order to prevent the divulgence of this that she constantly receives her ministrations. some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation as simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem. doubtless many of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. but the standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. it is certainly dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear. just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is certainly a perplexing question. to say that it should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be willing to make. of what use is all this striving and perplexity? has the experience any value? it is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do. it drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the roman catholic sisterhoods do, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and thus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment. both the tenement-house resident and the sister assume to have put themselves upon the industrial level of their neighbors, although they have left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent fear of starvation and a neglected old age. the young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which our growing democracy forces upon her. we sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not scientific enough. we dislike the entire arrangement of cards alphabetically classified according to streets and names of families, with the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. our feeling of revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted the students of botany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were tabulated in alphabetical order, when geology was taught by colored charts and thin books. no doubt the students, wearied to death, many times said that it was all too scientific, and were much perplexed and worried when they found traces of structure and physiology which their so-called scientific principles were totally unable to account for. but all this happened before science had become evolutionary and scientific at all, before it had a principle of life from within. the very indications and discoveries which formerly perplexed, later illumined and made the study absorbing and vital. we are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human affairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education of children. we are at last learning to follow the development of the child; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt methods and matter to his growing mind. no "advanced educator" can allow himself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child ought to be as to exclude the discovery of what he is. but in our charitable efforts we think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of what he may become; and we ruthlessly force our conventions and standards upon him, with a sternness which we would consider stupid indeed did an educator use it in forcing his mature intellectual convictions upon an undeveloped mind. let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to bed because he is afraid of the dark. the "soft-hearted" parent stays with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him. the scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a belief in ghosts. these two parents, wide apart in point of view, after all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific parent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. he talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and development which the child does not possess. there is no doubt that our development of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and stilted stage. we have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere repression much as the stern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the child, who is hysterically crying upstairs and laying the foundation for future nervous disorders. the pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the undeveloped stage of our philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed in our tendency to lay constant stress on negative action. "don't give;" "don't break down self-respect," we are constantly told. we distrust the human impulse as well as the teachings of our own experience, and in their stead substitute dogmatic rules for conduct. we forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull upon the sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the visitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an ultimate intellectual comprehension. indeed, part of the perplexity in the administration of charity comes from the fact that the type of person drawn to it is the one who insists that her convictions shall not be unrelated to action. her moral concepts constantly tend to float away from her, unless they have a basis in the concrete relation of life. she is confronted with the task of reducing her scruples to action, and of converging many wills, so as to unite the strength of all of them into one accomplishment, the value of which no one can foresee. on the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her social compunction through charitable effort finds that the wider social activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only increases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts her social ideals. she is chagrined to discover that in the actual task of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble beneficiaries are far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in self-sacrificing action. she reaches the old-time virtue of humility by a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits by the side of the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a contrite sinner, but she gets the dust upon her head because she has stumbled and fallen in the road through her efforts to push forward the mass, to march with her fellows. she has socialized her virtues not only through a social aim but by a social process. the hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the great forward-moving procession led by jehovah. "to love mercy" and at the same time "to do justly" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is impossible. it may be that the combination of the two can never be attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement--"to walk humbly with god," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the lowliest of his creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life. chapter iii filial relations there are many people in every community who have not felt the "social compunction," who do not share the effort toward a higher social morality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it. some of these have been shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which the trial of new powers involve, because they are content to attain standards of virtue demanded by an easy public opinion, and others of them have exhausted their moral energy in attaining to the current standard of individual and family righteousness. such people, who form the bulk of contented society, demand that the radical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his personal and family relations, and judge most harshly any deviation from the established standards. there is a certain justice in this: it expresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of men, that none of the established virtues which have been so slowly and hardly acquired shall be sacrificed for the sake of making problematic advance; that the individual, in his attempt to develop and use the new and exalted virtue, shall not fall into the easy temptation of letting the ordinary ones slip through his fingers. this instinct to conserve the old standards, combined with a distrust of the new standard, is a constant difficulty in the way of those experiments and advances depending upon the initiative of women, both because women are the more sensitive to the individual and family claims, and because their training has tended to make them content with the response to these claims alone. there is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral energy necessary to work out a more satisfactory social relation, the individual often sacrifices the energy which should legitimately go into the fulfilment of personal and family claims, to what he considers the higher claim. in considering the changes which our increasing democracy is constantly making upon various relationships, it is impossible to ignore the filial relation. this chapter deals with the relation between parents and their grown-up daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the perplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the various attempts of young women to secure a more active share in the community life. we constantly see parents very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to their daughters when these daughters undertake work lying quite outside of traditional and family interests. these parents insist that the girl is carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, that she is in search of a career, that she is restless and does not know what she wants. they will give any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine and dignified claim. possibly all this is due to the fact that for so many hundreds of years women have had no larger interests, no participation in the affairs lying quite outside personal and family claims. any attempt that the individual woman formerly made to subordinate or renounce the family claim was inevitably construed to mean that she was setting up her own will against that of her family's for selfish ends. it was concluded that she could have no motive larger than a desire to serve her family, and her attempt to break away must therefore be wilful and self-indulgent. the family logically consented to give her up at her marriage, when she was enlarging the family tie by founding another family. it was easy to understand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college, travelling in europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because these merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own members. when, however, she responded to her impulse to fulfil the social or democratic claim, she violated every tradition. the mind of each one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family obligations. we have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. we have yielded at times to the temptation of ignoring them for selfish aims, of considering the individual and not the family convenience, and we remember with shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. but just as we have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an orderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps we are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled. the attempt to bring about a healing compromise in which the two shall be adjusted in proper relation is not an easy one. it is difficult to distinguish between the outward act of him who in following one legitimate claim has been led into the temporary violation of another, and the outward act of him who deliberately renounces a just claim and throws aside all obligation for the sake of his own selfish and individual development. the man, for instance, who deserts his family that he may cultivate an artistic sensibility, or acquire what he considers more fulness of life for himself, must always arouse our contempt. breaking the marriage tie as ibsen's "nora" did, to obtain a larger self-development, or holding to it as george eliot's "romola" did, because of the larger claim of the state and society, must always remain two distinct paths. the collision of interests, each of which has a real moral basis and a right to its own place in life, is bound to be more or less tragic. it is the struggle between two claims, the destruction of either of which would bring ruin to the ethical life. curiously enough, it is almost exactly this contradiction which is the tragedy set forth by the greek dramatist, who asserted that the gods who watch over the sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher claims of the gods of the state. the failure to recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. this suspicion will never be dissipated until parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and recognize the social claim. our democracy is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human institutions, and a claim is being advanced which in a certain sense is larger than the family claim. the claim of the state in time of war has long been recognized, so that in its name the family has given up sons and husbands and even the fathers of little children. if we can once see the claims of society in any such light, if its misery and need can be made clear and urged as an explicit claim, as the state urges its claims in the time of danger, then for the first time the daughter who desires to minister to that need will be recognized as acting conscientiously. this recognition may easily come first through the emotions, and may be admitted as a response to pity and mercy long before it is formulated and perceived by the intellect. the family as well as the state we are all called upon to maintain as the highest institutions which the race has evolved for its safeguard and protection. but merely to preserve these institutions is not enough. there come periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid upon a passing generation, to enlarge the function and carry forward the ideal of a long-established institution. there is no doubt that many women, consciously and unconsciously, are struggling with this task. the family, like every other element of human life, is susceptible of progress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspirations are enlarged, although its duties can never be abrogated and its obligations can never be cancelled. it is impossible to bring about the higher development by any self-assertion or breaking away of the individual will. the new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. the family in its entirety must be carried out into the larger life. its various members together must recognize and acknowledge the validity of the social obligation. when this does not occur we have a most flagrant example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an ethical code is applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to conditions which are no longer the same as when the code was instituted, and for which it was never designed. we have all seen parental control and the family claim assert their authority in fields of effort which belong to the adult judgment of the child and pertain to activity quite outside the family life. probably the distinctively family tragedy of which we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this authority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and misunderstanding. we see parents and children acting from conscientious motives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery which can scarcely be hidden. such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in assisi, when the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet, dramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting the narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. all the conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father recognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and adjust his own claim to it. the father considered his son disrespectful and hard-hearted, yet we know st. francis to have been the most tender and loving of men, responsive to all possible ties, even to those of inanimate nature. we know that by his affections he freed the frozen life of his time. the elements of tragedy lay in the narrowness of the father's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his lack of sympathy with the power which was moving his son, and which was but part of the religious revival which swept europe from end to end in the early part of the thirteenth century; the same power which built the cathedrals of the north, and produced the saints and sages of the south. but the father's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart sore and angry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. he could not, indeed, have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of the same revival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of himself and his narrower claim. it is another proof that the notion of a larger obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged interest in life and in the social movements around us. the grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen with well-defined duties and a need of "making his way in the world," that the family claim is urged much less strenuously in his case, and as a matter of authority, it ceases gradually to be made at all. in the case of the grown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity of earning a living, and who has no strong artistic bent, taking her to paris to study painting or to germany to study music, the years immediately following her graduation from college are too often filled with a restlessness and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear thinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family ethics to modern conditions. it is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise than as a family possession. from her babyhood she has been the charm and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her as an integral part of the social order, hard to believe that she has duties outside of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense. this assumption that the daughter is solely an inspiration and refinement to the family itself and its own immediate circle, that her delicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her father's protection and prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most part so long as her education was in line with it. when there was absolutely no recognition of the entity of woman's life beyond the family, when the outside claims upon her were still wholly unrecognized, the situation was simple, and the finishing school harmoniously and elegantly answered all requirements. she was fitted to grace the fireside and to add lustre to that social circle which her parents selected for her. but this family assumption has been notably broken into, and educational ideas no longer fit it. modern education recognizes woman quite apart from family or society claims, and gives her the training which for many years has been deemed successful for highly developing a man's individuality and freeing his powers for independent action. perplexities often occur when the daughter returns from college and finds that this recognition has been but partially accomplished. when she attempts to act upon the assumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring upon ideals which are so entwined with filial piety, so rooted in the tenderest affections of which the human heart is capable, that both daughter and parents are shocked and startled when they discover what is happening, and they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. the ideal for the education of woman has changed under the pressure of a new claim. the family has responded to the extent of granting the education, but they are jealous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over against it. the modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a stress of social obligation which her family did not in the least anticipate when they sent her to college. she finds herself, in addition, under an impulse to act her part as a citizen of the world. she accepts her family inheritance with loyalty and affection, but she has entered into a wider inheritance as well, which, for lack of a better phrase, we call the social claim. this claim has been recognized for four years in her training, but after her return from college the family claim is again exclusively and strenuously asserted. the situation has all the discomfort of transition and compromise. the daughter finds a constant and totally unnecessary conflict between the social and the family claims. in most cases the former is repressed and gives way to the family claim, because the latter is concrete and definitely asserted, while the social demand is vague and unformulated. in such instances the girl quietly submits, but she feels wronged whenever she allows her mind to dwell upon the situation. she either hides her hurt, and splendid reserves of enthusiasm and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and emotions are turned inward, and the result is an unhappy woman, whose heart is consumed by vain regrets and desires. if the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even reproached for her discontent. she is told to be devoted to her family, inspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of her time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. she expects to do this, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even heroically sometimes. but where is the larger life of which she has dreamed so long? that life which surrounds and completes the individual and family life? she has been taught that it is her duty to share this life, and her highest privilege to extend it. this divergence between her self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly more apparent. but the situation is not even so simple as a conflict between her affections and her intellectual convictions, although even that is tumultuous enough, also the emotional nature is divided against itself. the social claim is a demand upon the emotions as well as upon the intellect, and in ignoring it she represses not only her convictions but lowers her springs of vitality. her life is full of contradictions. she looks out into the world, longing that some demand be made upon her powers, for they are too untrained to furnish an initiative. when her health gives way under this strain, as it often does, her physician invariably advises a rest. but to be put to bed and fed on milk is not what she requires. what she needs is simple, health-giving activity, which, involving the use of all her faculties, shall be a response to all the claims which she so keenly feels. it is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be part of a life quite outside their own, because the college woman frequently makes these first attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have not been trained in the line of action. she lacks the ability to apply her knowledge and theories to life itself and to its complicated situations. this is largely the fault of her training and of the one-sidedness of educational methods. the colleges have long been full of the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must ultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. but while the teaching has included an ever-broadening range of obligation and has insisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the training has been singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions for personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. doubtless, woman's education is at fault, in that it has failed to recognize certain needs, and has failed to cultivate and guide the larger desires of which all generous young hearts are full. during the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or the needs of old age. it gathers together crude youth in contact only with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the purpose of their mental direction. the tenderest promptings are bidden to bide their time. this could only be justifiable if a definite outlet were provided when they leave college. doubtless the need does not differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. apparently every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to begin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been preparing. but during this so-called preparation, her faculties have been trained solely for accumulation, and she has learned to utterly distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which would naturally have connected her with human interests outside of her family and her own immediate social circle. all through school and college the young soul dreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the helpless and of tenderness to the unfortunate. we persistently distrust these desires, and, unless they follow well-defined lines, we repress them with every device of convention and caution. one summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in east london, where she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds encountered there, directly to switzerland. she found the beaten routes of travel filled with young english men and women who could walk many miles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats received honorable mention in alpine journals,--a result which filled their families with joy and pride. these young people knew to a nicety the proper diet and clothing which would best contribute toward endurance. everything was very fine about them save their motive power. the writer does not refer to the hard-worked men and women who were taking a vacation, but to the leisured young people, to whom this period was the most serious of the year, and filled with the most strenuous exertion. they did not, of course, thoroughly enjoy it, for we are too complicated to be content with mere exercise. civilization has bound us too closely with our brethren for any one of us to be long happy in the cultivation of mere individual force or in the accumulation of mere muscular energy. with whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult not to advise these young people to use some of this muscular energy of which they were so proud, in cleaning neglected alleys and paving soggy streets. their stores of enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and women of east london and utilize latent social forces. the exercise would be quite as good, the need of endurance as great, the care for proper dress and food as important; but the motives for action would be turned from selfish ones into social ones. such an appeal would doubtless be met with a certain response from the young people, but would never be countenanced by their families for an instant. fortunately a beginning has been made in another direction, and a few parents have already begun to consider even their little children in relation to society as well as to the family. the young mothers who attend "child study" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and expect given characteristics from their children, at certain ages and under certain conditions. they quite calmly watch the various attempts of a child to assert his individuality, which so often takes the form of opposition to the wishes of the family and to the rule of the household. they recognize as acting under the same law of development the little child of three who persistently runs away and pretends not to hear his mother's voice, the boy of ten who violently, although temporarily, resents control of any sort, and the grown-up son who, by an individualized and trained personality, is drawn into pursuits and interests quite alien to those of his family. this attempt to take the parental relation somewhat away from mere personal experience, as well as the increasing tendency of parents to share their children's pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally result in a better understanding of the social obligation. the understanding, which results from identity of interests, would seem to confirm the conviction that in the complicated life of to-day there is no education so admirable as that education which comes from participation in the constant trend of events. there is no doubt that most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence, because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend each other. the old difficulties incident to the clash of two codes of morals must drop away, as the experiences of various members of the family become larger and more identical. at the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist and may be seen all about us. in order to illustrate the situation baldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to take an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. the tragedy of king lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed so long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his two older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of cordelia, that we have not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood, revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and unhappy a relation to all of his children. in our pity for lear, we fail to analyze his character. the king on his throne exhibits utter lack of self-control. the king in the storm gives way to the same emotion, in repining over the wickedness of his children, which he formerly exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them. it might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his old age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously urged the family claim with his whole conscience. at the opening of the drama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent parent expects when he has given gifts to his children. from the two elder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and fitting, but he longed to hear what cordelia, his youngest and best beloved child, would say. he looked toward her expectantly, but instead of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. cordelia made the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and scrupulously to express her inmost feeling. the king was baffled and distressed by this attempt at self-expression. it was new to him that his daughter should be moved by a principle obtained outside himself, which even his imagination could not follow; that she had caught the notion of an existence in which her relation as a daughter played but a part. she was transformed by a dignity which recast her speech and made it self-contained. she found herself in the sweep of a feeling so large that the immediate loss of a kingdom seemed of little consequence to her. even an act which might be construed as disrespect to her father was justified in her eyes, because she was vainly striving to fill out this larger conception of duty. the test which comes sooner or later to many parents had come to lear, to maintain the tenderness of the relation between father and child, after that relation had become one between adults, to be content with the responses made by the adult child to the family claim, while at the same time she responded to the claims of the rest of life. the mind of lear was not big enough for this test; he failed to see anything but the personal slight involved, and the ingratitude alone reached him. it was impossible for him to calmly watch his child developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy. that a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him than his sense of paternal obligation. lear apparently also ignored the common ancestry of cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal inheritance of magnanimity. he had thought of himself so long as a noble and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might perceive himself in the wrong. even in the midst of the storm he declared himself more sinned against than sinning. he could believe any amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no fidelity on the part of cordelia unless she gave him the sign he demanded. at length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around him, and he came to a larger conception of life. he put himself in the place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and comfort. he took poor tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward cordelia. in reading the tragedy of king lear, cordelia receives a full share of our censure. her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of tenderness. why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and be unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved? we see in the old king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone." his eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this, even in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense of a higher duty. it seems to us a narrow conception that would break thus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part in the new life. we want to remind her "that pity, memory, and faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to be prized as is the development of her own soul. we do not admire the cordelia who through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later admire the same woman who comes back from france that she may include her father in her happiness and freer life. the first had selfishly taken her salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her conscience had developed in her new life that she was driven back to her father, where she perished, drawn into the cruelty and wrath which had now become objective and tragic. historically considered, the relation of lear to his children was archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life since developed. his paternal expression was one of domination and indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that they could have a worthy life apart from him. if that rudimentary conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like misery. wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a code of ethics dealing with these larger relationships, instead of a code designed to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only between individuals. doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those which occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and believed in, are brought sharply together. the awkwardness and constraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference. chapter iv household adjustment if we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive, life would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the contention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as important as its aims. we can all recall acquaintances of whose integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity. this tendency to be so sure of integrity of purpose as to be unsympathetic and hardened to the means by which it is accomplished, is perhaps nowhere so obvious as in the household itself. it nowhere operates as so constant a force as in the minds of the women who in all the perplexity of industrial transition are striving to administer domestic affairs. the ethics held by them are for the most part the individual and family codes, untouched by the larger social conceptions. these women, rightly confident of their household and family integrity and holding to their own code of morals, fail to see the household in its social aspect. possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to the social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the household employer and the household employee, or, as it is still sometimes called, that between mistress and servant. this persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may be partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense, civilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one place, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number of persons. from the familiar proposition that the home began because the mother was obliged to stay in one spot in order to cherish the child, we can see a foundation for the belief that if women are much away from home, the home itself will be destroyed and all ethical progress endangered. we have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings were most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore, the good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually the two--the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her virtue--became synonymous. a code of ethics was thus developed in regard to woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited to her own family circle. when it became impossible to adequately minister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who did not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the household, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs. when women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, dyers, spinners, and weavers, the soap and candle makers, they administered large industries, but solely from the family point of view. only a few hundred years ago, woman had complete control of the manufacturing of many commodities which now figure so largely in commerce, and it is evident that she let the manufacturing of these commodities go into the hands of men, as soon as organization and a larger conception of their production were required. she felt no responsibility for their management when they were taken from the home to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to manufacture food and clothing for her family was her instinct to stay with them, and by isolation and care to guard them from evil. she had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own family, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. the british matron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own roof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals and health of young girls were endangered in the overcrowded and insanitary factories. the code of family ethics was established in her mind so firmly that it excluded any notion of social effort. it is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals, and to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of all that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting that the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of the structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to one household shall minister to that exclusively. but to make this distinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of obligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of domestic management. the moral issue involved in one has become inextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the other, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers, through the confusion of the two problems, take a difficult and untenable position. there are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a simpler code. the wife of a workingman still has a distinct economic value to her husband. she cooks, cleans, washes, and mends--services for which, before his marriage, he paid ready money. the wife of the successful business or professional man does not do this. he continues to pay for his cooking, house service, and washing. the mending, however, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings are pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated importance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings were the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they were formerly mistresses. but one industry, the cooking and serving of foods to her own family, woman has never relinquished. it has, therefore, never been organized, either by men or women, and is in an undeveloped state. each employer of household labor views it solely from the family standpoint. the ethics prevailing in regard to it are distinctly personal and unsocial, and result in the unique isolation of the household employee. as industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified, from the mediã¦val affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. were this process complete, we should have no problem of household employment. but, even in households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is neither loved nor loving. the modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who spun its clothes, and, to a large extent, the woman who washes them, but it stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food and ministers directly to its individual comfort; it strangely insists that to do that would be to destroy the family life itself. the cook is uncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable; but it will not drop her as all her fellow-workers have been dropped, although the cook herself insists upon it. so far has this insistence gone that every possible concession is made to retain her. the writer knows an employer in one of the suburbs who built a bay at the back of her house so that her cook might have a pleasant room in which to sleep, and another in which to receive her friends. this employer naturally felt aggrieved when the cook refused to stay in her bay. viewed in an historic light, this employer might quite as well have added a bay to her house for her shoemaker, and then deemed him ungrateful because he declined to live in it. a listener, attentive to a conversation between two employers of household labor,--and we certainly all have opportunity to hear such conversations,--would often discover a tone implying that the employer was abused and put upon; that she was struggling with the problem solely because she was thus serving her family and performing her social duties; that otherwise it would be a great relief to her to abandon the entire situation, and "never have a servant in her house again." did she follow this impulse, she would simply yield to the trend of her times and accept the present system of production. she would be in line with the industrial organization of her age. were she in line ethically, she would have to believe that the sacredness and beauty of family life do not consist in the processes of the separate preparation of food, but in sharing the corporate life of the community, and in making the family the unit of that life. the selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics, insists that those who minister to the comforts of her family shall minister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be cut off, more or less, from their natural social ties, excludes the best working-people from her service. a man of dignity and ability is quite willing to come into a house to tune a piano. another man of mechanical skill will come to put up window shades. another of less skill, but of perfect independence, will come to clean and relay a carpet. these men would all resent the situation and consider it quite impossible if it implied the giving up of their family and social ties, and living under the roof of the household requiring their services. the isolation of the household employee is perhaps inevitable so long as the employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even more difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this industry. in any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions. the workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with their time, quickly reorganize. the general statement may be made that the enterprising girls of the community go into factories, and the less enterprising go into households, although there are many exceptions. it is not a question of skill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will make a girl rise industrially while she is in the household; she is not in the rising movement. she is belated in a class composed of the unprogressive elements of the community, which is recruited constantly by those from the ranks of the incompetent, by girls who are learning the language, girls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life solely from the savings-bank point of view. the distracted housekeeper struggles with these unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the well-defined and independent relation of employer and employed, but the hazy and constantly changing one of mistress to servant. the latter relation is changing under pressure from various directions. in our increasing democracy the notion of personal service is constantly becoming more distasteful, conflicting, as it does, with the more modern notion of personal dignity. personal ministration to the needs of childhood, illness, and old age seem to us reasonable, and the democratic adjustment in regard to them is being made. the first two are constantly raised nearer to the level of a profession, and there is little doubt that the third will soon follow. but personal ministrations to a normal, healthy adult, consuming the time and energy of another adult, we find more difficult to reconcile to our theories of democracy. a factory employer parts with his men at the factory gates at the end of a day's work; they go to their homes as he goes to his, in the assumption that they both do what they want and spend their money as they please; but this solace of equality outside of working hours is denied the bewildered employer of household labor. she is obliged to live constantly in the same house with her employee, and because of certain equalities in food and shelter she is brought more sharply face to face with the mental and social inequalities. the difficulty becomes more apparent as the character of the work performed by the so-called servant is less absolutely useful and may be merely time consuming. a kind-hearted woman who will complacently take an afternoon drive, leaving her cook to prepare the five courses of a "little dinner for only ten guests," will not be nearly so comfortable the next evening when she speeds her daughter to a dance, conscious that her waitress must spend the evening in dull solitude on the chance that a caller or two may ring the door-bell. a conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: "in england it must be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your daughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same things. but really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my daughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when mary goes off to a frolic quite breaks my heart." too many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from manual labor, and therefore constantly impose exacting duties upon employees, the nature of which they do not understand by experience; there is thus no curb of rationality imposed upon the employer's requirements and demands. she is totally unlike the foreman in a shop, who has only risen to his position by way of having actually performed with his own hands all the work of the men he directs. there is also another class of employers of domestic labor, who grow capricious and over-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests to occupy their minds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that the duties of the latter are not clearly defined. tolstoy contends that an exaggerated notion of cleanliness has developed among such employers, which could never have been evolved among usefully employed people. he points to the fact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be immaculately clean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the household, and then is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card, in order that even his clean hands may not touch it; later, even his clean hands are covered with a pair of clean white gloves, which hold the tray upon which the card is placed. if it were not for the undemocratic ethics used by the employers of domestics, much work now performed in the household would be done outside, as is true of many products formerly manufactured in the feudal household. the worker in all other trades has complete control of his own time after the performance of definitely limited services, his wages are paid altogether in money which he may spend in the maintenance of a separate home life, and he has full opportunity to organize with the other workers in his trade. the domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her "mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity of family life. the household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a corporate body. the industrial isolation of the household employee results, as isolation in a trade must always result, in a lack of progress in the methods and products of that trade, and a lack of aspiration and education in the workman. whether we recognize this isolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that household labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements there have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. it is said that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought about by count rumford, who died a hundred years ago. this is largely due to the lack of _esprit de corps_ among the employees, which keeps them collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education in the individual keeps her from improving her implements. under this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers purposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower quality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made to perform the fullest work, there is an amount of capital invested disproportionate to the product when measured by the achievement in other branches of industry. more important than this is the result of the isolation upon the worker herself. there is nothing more devastating to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind and spirit, than the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of that fellowship which makes our public opinion. if an angry foreman reprimands a girl for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, and the culprit knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or injustice of her situation. in either case she bears it better for knowing that, and not thinking it over in solitude. if a household employee breaks a utensil or a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by her employer, too often the invisible jury is the family of the latter, who naturally uphold her censorious position and intensify the feeling of loneliness in the employee. the household employee, in addition to her industrial isolation, is also isolated socially. it is well to remember that the household employees for the better quarters of the city and suburbs are largely drawn from the poorer quarters, which are nothing if not gregarious. the girl is born and reared in a tenement house full of children. she goes to school with them, and there she learns to march, to read, and write in companionship with forty others. when she is old enough to go to parties, those she attends are usually held in a public hall and are crowded with dancers. if she works in a factory, she walks home with many other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly walked to school with them. she mingles with the young men she knows, in frank, economic, and social equality. until she marries she remains at home with no special break or change in her family and social life. if she is employed in a household, this is not true. suddenly all the conditions of her life are altered. this change may be wholesome for her, but it is not easy, and thought of the savings-bank does not cheer one much, when one is twenty. she is isolated from the people with whom she has been reared, with whom she has gone to school, and among whom she expects to live when she marries. she is naturally lonely and constrained away from them, and the "new maid" often seems "queer" to her employer's family. she does not care to mingle socially with the people in whose house she is employed, as the girl from the country often does, but she surfers horribly from loneliness. this wholesome, instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that, as every city intelligence-office can testify, the filling of situations is easier, or more difficult, in proportion as the place offers more or less companionship. thus, the easy situation to fill is always the city house, with five or six employees, shading off into the more difficult suburban home, with two, and the utterly impossible lonely country house. there are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts to supply domestic and social life to their employees; who take the domestic employee to drive, arrange to have her invited out occasionally; who supply her with books and papers and companionship. nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom successful in actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of companionship. the employee may have a genuine friendship for her employer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she has, merely because of the propinquity. the unnaturalness of the situation is intensified by the fact that the employee is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from her natural associates, and that her employer sympathetically insists upon filling the vacancy in interests and affections by her own tastes and friendship. she may or may not succeed, but the employee should not be thus dependent upon the good will of her employer. that in itself is undemocratic. the difficulty is increasing by a sense of social discrimination which the household employee keenly feels is against her and in favor of the factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. women seeking employment, understand perfectly well this feeling among mechanics, doubtless quite unjustifiable, but it acts as a strong inducement toward factory labor. the writer has long ceased to apologize for the views and opinions of working people, being quite sure that on the whole they are quite as wise and quite as foolish as the views and opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily demonstrated. the contrast is further accentuated by the better social position of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for her in the way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and vacation homes, from which girls performing household labor are practically excluded by their hours of work, their geographical situation, and a curious feeling that they are not as interesting as factory girls. this separation from her natural social ties affects, of course, her opportunity for family life. it is well to remember that women, as a rule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their parents, their brothers and sisters, and kinsfolk, and will sacrifice much to accomplish this. this devotion is so universal that it is impossible to ignore it when we consider women as employees. young unmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirements as young men are, and are more ready and steady in their response to the needs of aged parents and the helpless members of the family. but women performing labor in households have peculiar difficulties in responding to their family claims, and are practically dependent upon their employers for opportunities of even seeing their relatives and friends. curiously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to its claims, on the part of the employer, operates against the girl employed in household labor, and still further contributes to her isolation. the employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her own family life intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to her cook, for instance, but once or twice a week, such opportunity for untrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family claims constantly. this in itself is undemocratic, in that it makes a distinction between the value of family life for one set of people as over against another; or, rather, claims that one set of people are of so much less importance than another, that a valuable side of life pertaining to them should be sacrificed for the other. this cannot be defended theoretically, and no doubt much of the talk among the employers of household labor, that their employees are carefully shielded and cared for, and that it is so much better for a girl's health and morals to work in a household than to work in a factory, comes from a certain uneasiness of conscience, and from a desire to make up by individual scruple what would be done much more freely and naturally by public opinion if it had an untrammelled chance to assert itself. one person, or a number of isolated persons, however conscientious, cannot perform this office of public opinion. certain hospitals in london have contributed statistics showing that seventy-eight per cent of illegitimate children born there are the children of girls working in households. these girls are certainly not less virtuous than factory girls, for they come from the same families and have had the same training, but the girls who remain at home and work in factories meet their lovers naturally and easily, their fathers and brothers know the men, and unconsciously exercise a certain supervision and a certain direction in their choice of companionship. the household employees living in another part of the city, away from their natural family and social ties, depend upon chance for the lovers whom they meet. the lover may be the young man who delivers for the butcher or grocer, or the solitary friend, who follows the girl from her own part of town and pursues unfairly the advantage which her social loneliness and isolation afford him. there is no available public opinion nor any standard of convention which the girl can apply to her own situation. it would be easy to point out many inconveniences arising from the fact that the old economic forms are retained when moral conditions which befitted them have entirely disappeared, but until employers of domestic labor become conscious of their narrow code of ethics, and make a distinct effort to break through the status of mistress and servant, because it shocks their moral sense, there is no chance of even beginning a reform. a fuller social and domestic life among household employees would be steps toward securing their entrance into the larger industrial organizations by which the needs of a community are most successfully administered. many a girl who complains of loneliness, and who relinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly tries to formulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. she sometimes says that she "feels so unnatural all the time." the writer has known the voice of a girl to change so much during three weeks of "service" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her home. it alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child "speaks a piece" and the husky gulp with which the _globus hystericus_ is swallowed. the alertness and _bonhomie_ of the voice of the tenement-house child had totally disappeared. when such a girl leaves her employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally concludes that she wishes to get away from the work and back to her dances and giddy life, content, if she has these, to stand many hours in an insanitary factory. the charge of the employer is only half a truth. these dances may be the only organized form of social life which the disheartened employee is able to mention, but the girl herself, in her discontent and her moving from place to place, is blindly striving to respond to a larger social life. her employer thinks that she should be able to consider only the interests and conveniences of her employer's family, because the employer herself is holding to a family outlook, and refuses to allow her mind to take in the larger aspects of the situation. although this household industry survives in the midst of the factory system, it must, of course, constantly compete with it. women with little children, or those with invalids depending upon them, cannot enter either occupation, and they are practically confined to the sewing trades; but to all other untrained women seeking employment a choice is open between these two forms of labor. there are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or do some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed housekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her household. household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment, in point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family and social life. three points are easily disposed of. first, in regard to hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. the average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the evening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. this leaves most of the evenings and sundays entirely free. the average hours of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night, with little difference in seasons. there is one afternoon a week, with an occasional evening, but sunday is seldom wholly free. even these evenings and afternoons take the form of a concession from the employer. they are called "evenings out," as if the time really belonged to her, but that she was graciously permitting her employee to use it. this attitude, of course, is in marked contrast to that maintained by the factory operative, who, when she works evenings is paid for "over-time." second, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found clearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any measure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less competition. third, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we consider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving money. this is greater among household employees, because they do not pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend money in recreation is less frequent. the minimum wages paid an adult in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week; the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month. the factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers for increased wages. a girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a week. whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. a girl finds it easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board, in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be content with four dollars a week and pay no board, in a scale of wages rising toward six dollars; and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen at sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar housekeeper. in many cases this position is well taken economically, for, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employees in the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she works in a factory and lives with them. the rent is no more when she is at home. the two dollars and a half a week which she pays into the family fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night she can often contribute toward the family labor by helping her mother wash and sew. the fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to remedy this, at least in its domestic and social aspects. to allow household employees to live with their own families and among their own friends, as factory employees now do, would be to relegate more production to industrial centres administered on the factory system, and to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the household. in those cases in which the household employees have no family ties, doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most keenly felt. indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. in these residence clubs, the household employee could have the independent life which only one's own abiding place can afford. this, of course, presupposes a higher grade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the other hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher grades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. as the plan of separate clubs for household employees will probably come first in the suburbs, where the difficulty of securing and holding "servants" under the present system is most keenly felt, so the plan of buying cooked food from an outside kitchen, and of having more and more of the household product relegated to the factory, will probably come from the comparatively poor people in the city, who feel most keenly the pressure of the present system. they already consume a much larger proportion of canned goods and bakers' wares and "prepared meats" than the more prosperous people do, because they cannot command the skill nor the time for the more tedious preparation of the raw material. the writer has seen a tenement-house mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door of a local grocery store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they could be easily prepared for supper and "the children liked the tinny taste." it is comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household industry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. the difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall altogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in a flat, or, worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one set of utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making the living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly insupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. such a woman, rather than the prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high standard of quality is established. the problem of domestic service, which has long been discussed in the united states and england, is now coming to prominence in france. as a well-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in the ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an "unconscious slavery," while english and american writers appeal to the statistics which point to the absorption of an enormous number of the class from which servants were formerly recruited into factory employments, and urge, as the natural solution, that more of the products used in households be manufactured in factories, and that personal service, at least for healthy adults, be eliminated altogether. both of these lines of discussion certainly indicate that domestic service is yielding to the influence of a democratic movement, and is emerging from the narrower code of family ethics into the larger code governing social relations. it still remains to express the ethical advance through changed economic conditions by which the actual needs of the family may be supplied not only more effectively but more in line with associated effort. to fail to apprehend the tendency of one's age, and to fail to adapt the conditions of an industry to it, is to leave that industry ill-adjusted and belated on the economic side, and out of line ethically. chapter v industrial amelioration there is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. we have all been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly individualized people gathered together as a committee. their aimless attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering motion of a baby's arm before he has learned to coã¶rdinate his muscles. if, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism to one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive and effective action the individual still has the best of it. he will secure efficient results while committees are still deliberating upon the best method of making a beginning. and yet, if the need of the times demand associated effort, it may easily be true that the action which appears ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the more highly developed line of associated effort, may represent a finer social quality and have a greater social value than the more effective individual action. it is possible that an individual may be successful, largely because he conserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any of his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act with others. the individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code. nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial relations, as existing between the owner of a large factory and his employees. a growing conflict may be detected between the democratic ideal, which urges the workmen to demand representation in the administration of industry, and the accepted position, that the man who owns the capital and takes the risks has the exclusive right of management. it is in reality a clash between individual or aristocratic management, and corporate or democratic management. a large and highly developed factory presents a sharp contrast between its socialized form and individualistic ends. it is possible to illustrate this difference by a series of events which occurred in chicago during the summer of 1894. these events epitomized and exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics which regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that so-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an individual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual ethics. as this situation illustrates a point of great difficulty to which we have arrived in our development of social ethics, it may be justifiable to discuss it at some length. let us recall the facts, not as they have been investigated and printed, but as they remain in our memories. a large manufacturing company had provided commodious workshops, and, at the instigation of its president, had built a model town for the use of its employees. after a series of years it was deemed necessary, during a financial depression, to reduce the wages of these employees by giving each workman less than full-time work "in order to keep the shops open." this reduction was not accepted by the men, who had become discontented with the factory management and the town regulations, and a strike ensued, followed by a complete shut-down of the works. although these shops were non-union shops, the strikers were hastily organized and appealed for help to the american railway union, which at that moment was holding its biennial meeting in chicago. after some days' discussion and some futile attempts at arbitration, a sympathetic strike was declared, which gradually involved railway men in all parts of the country, and orderly transportation was brought to a complete standstill. in the excitement which followed, cars were burned and tracks torn up. the police of chicago did not cope with the disorder, and the railway companies, apparently distrusting the governor of the state, and in order to protect the united states mails, called upon the president of the united states for the federal troops, the federal courts further enjoined all persons against any form of interference with the property or operation of the railroads, and the situation gradually assumed the proportions of internecine warfare. during all of these events the president of the manufacturing company first involved, steadfastly refused to have the situation submitted to arbitration, and this attitude naturally provoked much discussion. the discussion was broadly divided between those who held that the long kindness of the president of the company had been most ungratefully received, and those who maintained that the situation was the inevitable outcome of the social consciousness developing among working people. the first defended the president of the company in his persistent refusal to arbitrate, maintaining that arbitration was impossible after the matter had been taken up by other than his own employees, and they declared that a man must be allowed to run his own business. they considered the firm stand of the president a service to the manufacturing interests of the entire country. the others claimed that a large manufacturing concern has ceased to be a private matter; that not only a number of workmen and stockholders are concerned in its management, but that the interests of the public are so involved that the officers of the company are in a real sense administering a public trust. this prolonged strike clearly puts in a concrete form the ethics of an individual, in this case a benevolent employer, and the ethics of a mass of men, his employees, claiming what they believed to be their moral rights. these events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has become organized into a vast social operation, not with the coã¶peration of the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the individual owning the capital. there is a sharp divergence between the social form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the employees are more highly socialized and dependent. the president of the company under discussion went further than the usual employer does. he socialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were living. he built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town, without calling upon the workmen either for self-expression or self-government. he honestly believed that he knew better than they what was for their good, as he certainly knew better than they how to conduct his business. as his factory developed and increased, making money each year under his direction, he naturally expected the town to prosper in the same way. he did not realize that the men submitted to the undemocratic conditions of the factory organization because the economic pressure in our industrial affairs is so great that they could not do otherwise. under this pressure they could be successfully discouraged from organization, and systematically treated on the individual basis. social life, however, in spite of class distinctions, is much freer than industrial life, and the men resented the extension of industrial control to domestic and social arrangements. they felt the lack of democracy in the assumption that they should be taken care of in these matters, in which even the humblest workman has won his independence. the basic difficulty lay in the fact that an individual was directing the social affairs of many men without any consistent effort to find out their desires, and without any organization through which to give them social expression. the president of the company was, moreover, so confident of the righteousness of his aim that he had come to test the righteousness of the process by his own feelings and not by those of the men. he doubtless built the town from a sincere desire to give his employees the best surroundings. as it developed, he gradually took toward it the artist attitude toward his own creation, which has no thought for the creation itself but is absorbed in the idea it stands for, and he ceased to measure the usefulness of the town by the standard of the men's needs. this process slowly darkened his glints of memory, which might have connected his experience with that of his men. it is possible to cultivate the impulses of the benefactor until the power of attaining a simple human relationship with the beneficiaries, that of frank equality with them, is gone, and there is left no mutual interest in a common cause. to perform too many good deeds may be to lose the power of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out a personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral lesson which our times offer. the president of this company fostered his employees for many years; he gave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks; but in their extreme need, when they were struggling with the most difficult situation which the times could present to them, he lost his touch and had nothing wherewith to help them. the employer's conception of goodness for his men had been cleanliness, decency of living, and, above all, thrift and temperance. means had been provided for all this, and opportunities had also been given for recreation and improvement. but this employer suddenly found his town in the sweep of a world-wide moral impulse. a movement had been going on about him and among his working men, of which he had been unconscious, or concerning which he had heard only by rumor. outside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in many languages, that "the injury of one is the concern of all." their watchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual and trade interests, to the good of the working classes, and they were moved by a determination to free that class from the untoward conditions under which they were laboring. compared to these watchwords, the old ones which this philanthropic employer had given his town were negative and inadequate. he had believed strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual effort, but had failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined abstinence and concerted action. with all his fostering, the president had not attained to a conception of social morality for his men and had imagined that virtue for them largely meant absence of vice. when the labor movement finally stirred his town, or, to speak more fairly, when, in their distress and perplexity, his own employees appealed to an organized manifestation of this movement, they were quite sure that simply because they were workmen in distress they would not be deserted by it. this loyalty on the part of a widely ramified and well-organized union toward the workmen in a "non-union shop," who had contributed nothing to its cause, was certainly a manifestation of moral power. in none of his utterances or correspondence did the president for an instant recognize this touch of nobility, although one would imagine that he would gladly point out this bit of virtue, in what he must have considered the moral ruin about him. he stood throughout for the individual virtues, those which had distinguished the model workmen of his youth; those which had enabled him and so many of his contemporaries to rise in life, when "rising in life" was urged upon every promising boy as the goal of his efforts. of the code of social ethics he had caught absolutely nothing. the morals he had advocated in selecting and training his men did not fail them in the hour of confusion. they were self-controlled, and they themselves destroyed no property. they were sober and exhibited no drunkenness, even although obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon hall of a neighboring town. they repaid their employer in kind, but he had given them no rule for the life of association into which they were plunged. the president of the company desired that his employees should possess the individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them the social virtues which express themselves in associated effort. day after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires constantly reported the same message, "the president of the company holds that there is nothing to arbitrate," one was forced to feel that the ideal of one-man rule was being sustained in its baldest form. a demand from many parts of the country and from many people was being made for social adjustment, against which the commercial training and the individualistic point of view held its own successfully. the majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of similar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same commercial experience, shared and sustained this position. it was quite impossible for them to catch the other point of view. they not only felt themselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually accustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they had come to consider their motives beyond reproach. habit held them persistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions. a wise man has said that "the consent of men and your own conscience are two wings given you whereby you may rise to god." it is so easy for the good and powerful to think that they can rise by following the dictates of conscience, by pursuing their own ideals, that they are prone to leave those ideals unconnected with the consent of their fellow-men. the president of the company thought out within his own mind a beautiful town. he had power with which to build this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it. the most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent, makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious of social plans and experiments, ignoring this, is prone to failure. the man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the "feasible right" as well as the absolute right. he is often obliged to attain only mr. lincoln's "best possible," and then has the sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. he has to move along with those whom he leads toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. he has to discover what people really want, and then "provide the channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow." what he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-climber beyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. he has not taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher; added to this, he has made secure his progress. a few months after the death of the promoter of this model town, a court decision made it obligatory upon the company to divest itself of the management of the town as involving a function beyond its corporate powers. the parks, flowers, and fountains of this far-famed industrial centre were dismantled, with scarcely a protest from the inhabitants themselves. the man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the coã¶peration of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure. he does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his own permanent success which associated efforts afford. genuine experiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic faith and practice than those which underlie private venture. public parks and improvements, intended for the common use, are after all only safe in the hands of the public itself; and associated effort toward social progress, although much more awkward and stumbling than that same effort managed by a capable individual, does yet enlist deeper forces and evoke higher social capacities. the successful business man who is also the philanthropist is in more than the usual danger of getting widely separated from his employees. the men already have the american veneration for wealth and successful business capacity, and, added to this, they are dazzled by his good works. the workmen have the same kindly impulses as he, but while they organize their charity into mutual benefit associations and distribute their money in small amounts in relief for the widows and insurance for the injured, the employer may build model towns, erect college buildings, which are tangible and enduring, and thereby display his goodness in concentrated form. by the very exigencies of business demands, the employer is too often cut off from the social ethics developing in regard to our larger social relationships, and from the great moral life springing from our common experiences. this is sure to happen when he is good "to" people rather than "with" them, when he allows himself to decide what is best for them instead of consulting them. he thus misses the rectifying influence of that fellowship which is so big that it leaves no room for sensitiveness or gratitude. without this fellowship we may never know how great the divergence between ourselves and others may become, nor how cruel the misunderstandings. during a recent strike of the employees of a large factory in ohio, the president of the company expressed himself as bitterly disappointed by the results of his many kindnesses, and evidently considered the employees utterly unappreciative. his state of mind was the result of the fallacy of ministering to social needs from an individual impulse and expecting a socialized return of gratitude and loyalty. if the lunch-room was necessary, it was a necessity in order that the employees might have better food, and, when they had received the better food, the legitimate aim of the lunch-room was met. if baths were desirable, and the fifteen minutes of calisthenic exercise given the women in the middle of each half day brought a needed rest and change to their muscles, then the increased cleanliness and the increased bodily comfort of so many people should of themselves have justified the experiment. to demand, as a further result, that there should be no strikes in the factory, no revolt against the will of the employer because the employees were filled with loyalty as the result of the kindness, was of course to take the experiment from an individual basis to a social one. large mining companies and manufacturing concerns are constantly appealing to their stockholders for funds, or for permission to take a percentage of the profits, in order that the money may be used for educational and social schemes designed for the benefit of the employees. the promoters of these schemes use as an argument and as an appeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes will be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the stockholders will be increased. however praiseworthy this appeal may be in motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory deserves the failure it so often meets with in practice. in the clash which follows a strike, the employees are accused of an ingratitude, when there was no legitimate reason to expect gratitude; and useless bitterness, which has really a factitious basis, may be developed on both sides. indeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of misunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and employees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so far as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual code of ethics. there is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from the standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked industrial significance. failing, as they do, however, to touch the question of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of trades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when they urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation existing between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance of strikes and other trades-union tactics. the men have individually accepted the kindness of the employers as it was individually offered, but quite as the latter urges his inability to increase wages unless he has the coã¶peration of his competitors, so the men state that they are bound to the trades-union struggle for an increase in wages because it can only be undertaken by combinations of labor. even the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the profits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of their wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact that the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit shall accrue. both individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and employer may in time be legally compelled to conform. progress must always come through the individual who varies from the type and has sufficient energy to express this variation. he first holds a higher conception than that held by the mass of his fellows of what is righteous under given conditions, and expresses this conviction in conduct, in many instances formulating a certain scruple which the others share, but have not yet defined even to themselves. progress, however, is not secure until the mass has conformed to this new righteousness. this is equally true in regard to any advance made in the standard of living on the part of the trades-unionists or in the improved conditions of industry on the part of reforming employers. the mistake lies, not in overpraising the advance thus inaugurated by individual initiative, but in regarding the achievement as complete in a social sense when it is still in the realm of individual action. no sane manufacturer regards his factory as the centre of the industrial system. he knows very well that the cost of material, wages, and selling prices are determined by industrial conditions completely beyond his control. yet the same man may quite calmly regard himself and his own private principles as merely self-regarding, and expect results from casual philanthropy which can only be accomplished through those common rules of life and labor established by the community for the common good. outside of and surrounding these smaller and most significant efforts are the larger and irresistible movements operating toward combination. this movement must tend to decide upon social matters from the social standpoint. until then it is difficult to keep our minds free from a confusion of issues. such a confusion occurs when the gift of a large sum to the community for a public and philanthropic purpose, throws a certain glamour over all the earlier acts of a man, and makes it difficult for the community to see possible wrongs committed against it, in the accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. it is possible also that the resolve to be thus generous unconsciously influences the man himself in his methods of accumulation. he keeps to a certain individual rectitude, meaning to make an individual restitution by the old paths of generosity and kindness, whereas if he had in view social restitution on the newer lines of justice and opportunity, he would throughout his course doubtless be watchful of his industrial relationships and his social virtues. the danger of professionally attaining to the power of the righteous man, of yielding to the ambition "for doing good" on a large scale, compared to which the ambition for politics, learning, or wealth, are vulgar and commonplace, ramifies through our modern life; and those most easily beset by this temptation are precisely the men best situated to experiment on the larger social lines, because they so easily dramatize their acts and lead public opinion. very often, too, they have in their hands the preservation and advancement of large vested interests, and often see clearly and truly that they are better able to administer the affairs of the community than the community itself: sometimes they see that if they do not administer them sharply and quickly, as only an individual can, certain interests of theirs dependent upon the community will go to ruin. the model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will with which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless be of great public value. this again shows the advantage of individual management, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth, but this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites the ambition to provide other schools from public funds. the town of zurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the vote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. every man who voted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits, and, of course, the voluntary attendance must be larger than in a school accepted as a gift to the community. in the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts toward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is trying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to do for themselves. the result of his efforts will only attain its highest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by the community as well as for the community. there are doubtless many things which the public would never demand unless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because the public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating their wants. thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until they become so established in the popular affections that they are incorporated in the public school system. churches and missions establish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots the city with branch reading rooms and libraries. for this willingness to take risks for the sake of an ideal, for those experiments which must be undertaken with vigor and boldness in order to secure didactic value in failure as well as in success, society must depend upon the individual possessed with money, and also distinguished by earnest and unselfish purpose. such experiments enable the nation to use the referendum method in its public affairs. each social experiment is thus tested by a few people, given wide publicity, that it may be observed and discussed by the bulk of the citizens before the public prudently makes up its mind whether or not it is wise to incorporate it into the functions of government. if the decision is in its favor and it is so incorporated, it can then be carried on with confidence and enthusiasm. but experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for a certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and social advancement. the list of those who found churches, educational institutions, libraries, and art galleries, is very long, as is again the list of those contributing to model dwellings, recreation halls, and athletic fields. at the present moment factory employers are doing much to promote "industrial betterment" in the way of sanitary surroundings, opportunities for bathing, lunch rooms provided with cheap and wholesome food, club rooms, and guild halls. but there is a line of social experiment involving social righteousness in its most advanced form, in which the number of employers and the "favored class" are so few that it is plain society cannot count upon them for continuous and valuable help. this lack is in the line of factory legislation and that sort of social advance implied in shorter hours and the regulation of wages; in short, all that organization and activity that is involved in such a maintenance and increase of wages as would prevent the lowering of the standard of life. a large body of people feel keenly that the present industrial system is in a state of profound disorder, and that there is no guarantee that the pursuit of individual ethics will ever right it. they claim that relief can only come through deliberate corporate effort inspired by social ideas and guided by the study of economic laws, and that the present industrial system thwarts our ethical demands, not only for social righteousness but for social order. because they believe that each advance in ethics must be made fast by a corresponding advance in politics and legal enactment, they insist upon the right of state regulation and control. while many people representing all classes in a community would assent to this as to a general proposition, and would even admit it as a certain moral obligation, legislative enactments designed to control industrial conditions have largely been secured through the efforts of a few citizens, mostly those who constantly see the harsh conditions of labor and who are incited to activity by their sympathies as well as their convictions. this may be illustrated by the series of legal enactments regulating the occupations in which children may be allowed to work, also the laws in regard to the hours of labor permitted in those occupations, and the minimum age below which children may not be employed. the first child labor laws were enacted in england through the efforts of those members of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the condition of the little parish apprentices bound out to the early textile manufacturers of the north; and through the long years required to build up the code of child labor legislation which england now possesses, knowledge of the conditions has always preceded effective legislation. the efforts of that small number in every community who believe in legislative control have always been reã«nforced by the efforts of trades-unionists rather than by the efforts of employers. partly because the employment of workingmen in the factories brings them in contact with the children who tend to lower wages and demoralize their trades, and partly because workingmen have no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy, and must perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only channel of redress which is open to them. we may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving street-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of the last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper. a comfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral shock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the little fellow, who is making his way in the world. the philanthropic lady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such a bright boy is not in school. she may make up her mind in a moment of compunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys' schools and homes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a chance at manual training. she probably is convinced that he alone, by his unaided efforts, is supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is moved to do all she can for him. next to her sits a workingman trained in trades-union methods. he knows that the boy's natural development is arrested, and that the abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up the force which should go into growth; moreover, that this premature use of his powers has but a momentary and specious value. he is forced to these conclusions because he has seen many a man, entering the factory at eighteen and twenty, so worn out by premature work that he was "laid on the shelf" within ten or fifteen years. he knows very well that he can do nothing in the way of ameliorating the lot of this particular boy; that his only possible chance is to agitate for proper child-labor laws; to regulate, and if possible prohibit, street-vending by children, in order that the child of the poorest may have his school time secured to him, and may have at least his short chance for growth. these three people, sitting in the street car, are all honest and upright, and recognize a certain duty toward the forlorn children of the community. the self-made man is encouraging one boy's own efforts; the philanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the workingman alone is obliged to include all the boys of his class. workingmen, because of their feebleness in all but numbers, have been forced to appeal to the state, in order to secure protection for themselves and for their children. they cannot all rise out of their class, as the occasionally successful man has done; some of them must be left to do the work in the factories and mines, and they have no money to spend in philanthropy. both public agitation and a social appeal to the conscience of the community is necessary in order to secure help from the state, and, curiously enough, child-labor laws once enacted and enforced are a matter of great pride, and even come to be regarded as a register of the community's humanity and enlightenment. if the method of public agitation could find quiet and orderly expression in legislative enactment, and if labor measures could be submitted to the examination and judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of warfare, we should have the ideal development of the democratic state. but we judge labor organizations as we do other living institutions, not by their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their blundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and by the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual finds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action. the very blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a union, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often confuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust uncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. the situation is made even more complicated by the fact that those who are formulating a code of associated action so often break through the established code of law and order. as society has a right to demand of the reforming individual that he be sternly held to his personal and domestic claims, so it has a right to insist that labor organizations shall keep to the hardly won standards of public law and order; and the community performs but its plain duty when it registers its protest every time law and order are subverted, even in the interest of the so-called social effort. yet in moments of industrial stress and strain the community is confronted by a moral perplexity which may arise from the mere fact that the good of yesterday is opposed to the good of today, and that which may appear as a choice between virtue and vice is really but a choice between virtue and virtue. in the disorder and confusion sometimes incident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see anything but the unlovely struggle itself. the writer recalls a conversation between two workingmen who were leaving a lecture on "organic evolution." the first was much puzzled, and anxiously inquired of the second "if evolution could mean that one animal turned into another." the challenged workman stopped in the rear of the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and expounded what he thought evolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the conversation can be recalled, is what he said: "you see a lot of fishes are living in a stream, which overflows in the spring and strands some of them upon the bank. the weak ones die up there, but others make a big effort to get back into the water. they dig their fins into the sand, breathe as much air as they can with their gills, and have a terrible time. but after a while their fins turn into legs and their gills into lungs, and they have become frogs. of course they are further along than the sleek, comfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving their tails and despising the poor damaged things thrashing around on the bank. he--the lecturer--did not say anything about men, but it is easy enough to think of us poor devils on the dry bank, struggling without enough to live on, while the comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all they want and despise us because we thrash about." his listener did not reply, and was evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the application. doubtless the illustration was bungling in more than its setting forth, but the story is suggestive. at times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so anxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably on the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for him to see the situation fairly. he becomes insensible to the unselfish impulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers in a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on the disorder which has become associated with the strike. he is completely side-tracked by the ugly phases of a great moral movement. it is always a temptation to assume that the side which has respectability, authority, and superior intelligence, has therefore righteousness as well, especially when the same side presents concrete results of individual effort as over against the less tangible results of associated effort. it is as yet most difficult for us to free ourselves from the individualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their social relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to produce a social result through all the difficulties of associated action. the philanthropist still finds his path much easier than do those who are attempting a social morality. in the first place, the public, anxious to praise what it recognizes as an undoubted moral effort often attended with real personal sacrifice, joyfully seizes upon this manifestation and overpraises it, recognizing the philanthropist as an old friend in the paths of righteousness, whereas the others are strangers and possibly to be distrusted as aliens. it is easy to confuse the response to an abnormal number of individual claims with the response to the social claim. an exaggerated personal morality is often mistaken for a social morality, and until it attempts to minister to a social situation its total inadequacy is not discovered. to attempt to attain a social morality without a basis of democratic experience results in the loss of the only possible corrective and guide, and ends in an exaggerated individual morality but not in social morality at all. we see this from time to time in the care-worn and overworked philanthropist, who has taxed his individual will beyond the normal limits and has lost his clew to the situation among a bewildering number of cases. a man who takes the betterment of humanity for his aim and end must also take the daily experiences of humanity for the constant correction of his process. he must not only test and guide his achievement by human experience, but he must succeed or fail in proportion as he has incorporated that experience with his own. otherwise his own achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes to believe in his own goodness as something outside of himself. he makes an exception of himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank and file of his fellows. he forgets that it is necessary to know of the lives of our contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their integrity, which is after all but the first beginnings of social morality, but in order to attain to any mental or moral integrity for ourselves or any such hope for society. chapter vi educational methods as democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the value and function of each member of the community, however humble he may be. we have come to believe that the most "brutish man" has a value in our common life, a function to perform which can be fulfilled by no one else. we are gradually requiring of the educator that he shall free the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of life. we ask this not merely because it is the man's right to be thus connected, but because we have become convinced that the social order cannot afford to get along without his special contribution. just as we have come to resent all hindrances which keep us from untrammelled comradeship with our fellows, and as we throw down unnatural divisions, not in the spirit of the eighteenth-century reformers, but in the spirit of those to whom social equality has become a necessity for further social development, so we are impatient to use the dynamic power residing in the mass of men, and demand that the educator free that power. we believe that man's moral idealism is the constructive force of progress, as it has always been; but because every human being is a creative agent and a possible generator of fine enthusiasm, we are sceptical of the moral idealism of the few and demand the education of the many, that there may be greater freedom, strength, and subtilty of intercourse and hence an increase of dynamic power. we are not content to include all men in our hopes, but have become conscious that all men are hoping and are part of the same movement of which we are a part. many people impelled by these ideas have become impatient with the slow recognition on the part of the educators of their manifest obligation to prepare and nourish the child and the citizen for social relations. the educators should certainly conserve the learning and training necessary for the successful individual and family life, but should add to that a preparation for the enlarged social efforts which our increasing democracy requires. the democratic ideal demands of the school that it shall give the child's own experience a social value; that it shall teach him to direct his own activities and adjust them to those of other people. we are not willing that thousands of industrial workers shall put all of their activity and toil into services from which the community as a whole reaps the benefit, while their mental conceptions and code of morals are narrow and untouched by any uplift which the consciousness of social value might give them. we are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and writing, suspecting them to rest upon the assumption that the ordinary experience of life is worth little, and that all knowledge and interest must be brought to the children through the medium of books. such an assumption fails to give the child any clew to the life about him, or any power to usefully or intelligently connect himself with it. this may be illustrated by observations made in a large italian colony situated in chicago, the children from which are, for the most part, sent to the public schools. the members of the italian colony are largely from south italy,--calabrian and sicilian peasants, or neapolitans from the workingmen's quarters of that city. they have come to america with the distinct aim of earning money, and finding more room for the energies of themselves and their children. in almost all cases they mean to go back again, simply because their imaginations cannot picture a continuous life away from the old surroundings. their experiences in italy have been those of simple outdoor activity, and their ideas have come directly to them from their struggle with nature,--such a hand-to-hand struggle as takes place when each man gets his living largely through his own cultivation of the soil, or with tools simply fashioned by his own hands. the women, as in all primitive life, have had more diversified activities than the men. they have cooked, spun, and knitted, in addition to their almost equal work in the fields. very few of the peasant men or women can either read or write. they are devoted to their children, strong in their family feeling, even to remote relationships, and clannish in their community life. the entire family has been upheaved, and is striving to adjust itself to its new surroundings. the men, for the most part, work on railroad extensions through the summer, under the direction of a _padrone_, who finds the work for them, regulates the amount of their wages, and supplies them with food. the first effect of immigration upon the women is that of idleness. they no longer work in the fields, nor milk the goats, nor pick up faggots. the mother of the family buys all the clothing, not only already spun and woven but made up into garments, of a cut and fashion beyond her powers. it is, indeed, the most economical thing for her to do. her house-cleaning and cooking are of the simplest; the bread is usually baked outside of the house, and the macaroni bought prepared for boiling. all of those outdoor and domestic activities, which she would naturally have handed on to her daughters, have slipped away from her. the domestic arts are gone, with their absorbing interests for the children, their educational value, and incentive to activity. a household in a tenement receives almost no raw material. for the hundreds of children who have never seen wheat grow, there are dozens who have never seen bread baked. the occasional washings and scrubbings are associated only with discomfort. the child of such a family receives constant stimulus of most exciting sort from his city street life, but he has little or no opportunity to use his energies in domestic manufacture, or, indeed, constructively in any direction. no activity is supplied to take the place of that which, in italy, he would naturally have found in his own surroundings, and no new union with wholesome life is made for him. italian parents count upon the fact that their children learn the english language and american customs before they do themselves, and the children act not only as interpreters of the language, but as buffers between them and chicago, resulting in a certain almost pathetic dependence of the family upon the child. when a child of the family, therefore, first goes to school, the event is fraught with much significance to all the others. the family has no social life in any structural form and can supply none to the child. he ought to get it in the school and give it to his family, the school thus becoming the connector with the organized society about them. it is the children aged six, eight, and ten, who go to school, entering, of course, the primary grades. if a boy is twelve or thirteen on his arrival in america, his parents see in him a wage-earning factor, and the girl of the same age is already looking toward her marriage. let us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years to speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified with the fortunes of his family. whatever interest has come to the minds of his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open air; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable accompaniments of all their experiences. yet the first thing that the boy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the time, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. he does not find this very stimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the schoolroom. the peasant child is perfectly indifferent to showing off and making a good recitation. he leaves all that to his schoolfellows, who are more sophisticated and equipped with better english. his parents are not deeply interested in keeping him in school, and will not hold him there against his inclination. their experience does not point to the good american tradition that it is the educated man who finally succeeds. the richest man in the italian colony can neither read nor write--even italian. his cunning and acquisitiveness, combined with the credulity and ignorance of his countrymen, have slowly brought about his large fortune. the child himself may feel the stirring of a vague ambition to go on until he is as the other children are; but he is not popular with his schoolfellows, and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic interest. even the pictures and objects presented to him, as well as the language, are strange. if we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the experiences which the child already has and to use his spontaneous and social activity, then the city streets begin this education for him in a more natural way than does the school. the south italian peasant comes from a life of picking olives and oranges, and he easily sends his children out to pick up coal from railroad tracks, or wood from buildings which have been burned down. unfortunately, this process leads by easy transition to petty thieving. it is easy to go from the coal on the railroad track to the coal and wood which stand before a dealer's shop; from the potatoes which have rolled from a rumbling wagon to the vegetables displayed by the grocer. this is apt to be the record of the boy who responds constantly to the stimulus and temptations of the street, although in the beginning his search for bits of food and fuel was prompted by the best of motives. the school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition to the distractions of the neighborhood. nothing is more fascinating than that mysterious "down town," whither the boy longs to go to sell papers and black boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay all night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great dailies. if a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements, nothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and worthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and with a distaste for its dulness. on the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities who conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of the early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories, painstakingly performing their work year after year. these later are the men who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood of every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year after year without in the least knowing what it is all about. the one fixed habit which the boy carries away with him from the school to the factory is the feeling that his work is merely provisional. in school the next grade was continually held before him as an object of attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole object of present effort is to get ready for something else. this tentative attitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his factory work; he pursues it merely as a necessity, and his very mental attitude destroys his chance for a realization of its social value. as the boy in school contracted the habit of doing his work in certain hours and taking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory he earns his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. both in the school and in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and monotonous, his recreation must become more exciting and stimulating. the hopelessness of adding evening classes and social entertainments as a mere frill to a day filled with monotonous and deadening drudgery constantly becomes more apparent to those who are endeavoring to bring a fuller life to the industrial members of the community, and who are looking forward to a time when work shall cease to be senseless drudgery with no self-expression on the part of the worker. it sometimes seems that the public schools should contribute much more than they do to the consummation of this time. if the army of school children who enter the factories every year possessed thoroughly vitalized faculties, they might do much to lighten this incubus of dull factory work which presses so heavily upon so large a number of our fellow-citizens. has our commercialism been so strong that our schools have become insensibly commercialized, whereas we supposed that our industrial life was receiving the broadening and illuminating effects of the schools? the training of these children, so far as it has been vocational at all, has been in the direction of clerical work. it is possible that the business men, whom we in america so tremendously admire, have really been dictating the curriculum of our public schools, in spite of the conventions of educators and the suggestions of university professors. the business man, of course, has not said, "i will have the public schools train office boys and clerks so that i may have them easily and cheaply," but he has sometimes said, "teach the children to write legibly and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of punctuality and order; to be prompt to obey; and you will fit them to make their way in the world as i have made mine." has the workingman been silent as to what he desires for his children, and allowed the business man to decide for him there, as he has allowed the politician to manage his municipal affairs, or has the workingman so far shared our universal optimism that he has really believed that his children would never need to go into industrial life at all, but that all of his sons would become bankers and merchants? certain it is that no sufficient study has been made of the child who enters into industrial life early and stays there permanently, to give him some offset to its monotony and dulness, some historic significance of the part he is taking in the life of the community. it is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing democracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. as the political expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the free right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting that he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of his social and industrial value. the early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to exchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently still survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools. we have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres of production and manufacture in which a huge population is engaged, or we have lacked sufficient presence of mind to adjust ourselves to the change. we admire much more the men who accumulate riches, and who gather to themselves the results of industry, than the men who actually carry forward industrial processes; and, as has been pointed out, our schools still prepare children almost exclusively for commercial and professional life. quite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and begins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so the school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a clerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation of ignorant and unsuccessful men. the schools do so little really to interest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition in the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost from the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work and a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for money with which unmeaning purchases may be made and an unmeaning social standing obtained. the son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he comes back to dazzle his native town. the children of the working people learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,--that every promising boy goes into business or a profession. the children destined for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister, who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the cramped limits of her flat partly because so little is done for him educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress meanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his interest. theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom, who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to our theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. certainly no serious effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration regarding it. apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. to get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is still the desirable status. this may readily be seen all along the line. a workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are superior to factory or even office work. "teacher" in the vocabulary of many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is indiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner. the same desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano, or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. the overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much the same source, and from the conviction that "an education" is wasted if a boy goes into a factory or shop. a chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended and meant to give a start in life. he sent them both to the athenã¦um for several winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them into his office, where they speedily became known as the bright one and the stupid one. the stupid one was finally dismissed after repeated trials, when to the surprise of the entire establishment, he quickly betook himself into the shops, where he became a wide-awake and valuable workman. his chagrined benefactor, in telling the story, admits that he himself had fallen a victim to his own business training and his early notion of rising in life. in reality he had merely followed the lead of most benevolent people who help poor boys. they test the success of their efforts by the number whom they have taken out of factory work into some other and "higher occupation." quite in line with this commercial ideal are the night schools and institutions of learning most accessible to working people. first among them is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of type-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and methods of distribution. commodities are treated as exports and imports, or solely in regard to their commercial value, and not, of course, in relation to their historic development or the manufacturing processes to which they have been subjected. these schools do not in the least minister to the needs of the actual factory employee, who is in the shop and not in the office. we assume that all men are searching for "puddings and power," to use carlyle's phrase, and furnish only the schools which help them to those ends. the business college man, or even the man who goes through an academic course in order to prepare for a profession, comes to look on learning too much as an investment from which he will later reap the benefits in earning money. he does not connect learning with industrial pursuits, nor does he in the least lighten or illuminate those pursuits for those of his friends who have not risen in life. "it is as though nets were laid at the entrance to education, in which those who by some means or other escape from the masses bowed down by labor, are inevitably caught and held from substantial service to their fellows." the academic teaching which is accessible to workingmen through university extension lectures and classes at settlements, is usually bookish and remote, and concerning subjects completely divorced from their actual experiences. the men come to think of learning as something to be added to the end of a hard day's work, and to be gained at the cost of toilsome mental exertion. there are, of course, exceptions, but many men who persist in attending classes and lectures year after year find themselves possessed of a mass of inert knowledge which nothing in their experience fuses into availability or realization. among the many disappointments which the settlement experiment has brought to its promoters, perhaps none is keener than the fact that they have as yet failed to work out methods of education, specialized and adapted to the needs of adult working people in contra-distinction to those employed in schools and colleges, or those used in teaching children. there are many excellent reasons and explanations for this failure. in the first place, the residents themselves are for the most part imbued with academic methods and ideals, which it is most difficult to modify. to quote from a late settlement report, "the most vaunted educational work in settlements amounts often to the stimulation mentally of a select few who are, in a sense, of the academic type of mind, and who easily and quickly respond to the academic methods employed." these classes may be valuable, but they leave quite untouched the great mass of the factory population, the ordinary workingman of the ordinary workingman's street, whose attitude is best described as that of "acquiescence," who lives through the aimless passage of the years without incentive "to imagine, to design, or to aspire." these men are totally untouched by all the educational and philanthropic machinery which is designed for the young and the helpless who live on the same streets with them. they do not often drink to excess, they regularly give all their wages to their wives, they have a vague pride in their superior children; but they grow prematurely old and stiff in all their muscles, and become more and more taciturn, their entire energies consumed in "holding a job." various attempts have been made to break through the inadequate educational facilities supplied by commercialism and scholarship, both of which have followed their own ideals and have failed to look at the situation as it actually presents itself. the most noteworthy attempt has been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for which has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who have from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed for workingmen's sons. the early schools of this type inevitably reflected the ideal of the self-made man. they succeeded in transferring a few skilled workers into the upper class of trained engineers, and a few less skilled workers into the class of trained mechanics, but did not aim to educate the many who are doomed to the unskilled work which the permanent specialization of the division of labor demands. the peter coopers and other good men honestly believed that if intelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully attended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in time even become an employer himself. such schools are useful beyond doubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure satisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question. almost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions founded by rich men, anxious to help "poor boys." these have been captured by conventional educators for the purpose of fitting young men for the colleges and universities. they have compromised by merely adding to the usual academic course manual work, applied mathematics, mechanical drawing and engineering. two schools in chicago, plainly founded for the sons of workingmen, afford an illustration of this tendency and result. on the other hand, so far as schools of this type have been captured by commercialism, they turn out trained engineers, professional chemists, and electricians. they are polytechnics of a high order, but do not even pretend to admit the workingman with his meagre intellectual equipment. they graduate machine builders, but not educated machine tenders. even the textile schools are largely seized by young men who expect to be superintendents of factories, designers, or manufacturers themselves, and the textile worker who actually "holds the thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed, in one of the largest schools women are not allowed, in spite of the fact that spinning and weaving have traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are at present employed in the textile mills. it is much easier to go over the old paths of education with "manual training" thrown in, as it were; it is much simpler to appeal to the old ambitions of "getting on in life," or of "preparing for a profession," or "for a commercial career," than to work out new methods on democratic lines. these schools gradually drop back into the conventional courses, modified in some slight degree, while the adaptation to workingmen's needs is never made, nor, indeed, vigorously attempted. in the meantime, the manufacturers continually protest that engineers, especially trained for devising machines, are not satisfactory. three generations of workers have invented, but we are told that invention no longer goes on in the workshop, even when it is artificially stimulated by the offer of prizes, and that the inventions of the last quarter of the nineteenth century have by no means fulfilled the promise of the earlier three-quarters. every foreman in a large factory has had experience with two classes of men: first with those who become rigid and tolerate no change in their work, partly because they make more money "working by the piece," when they stick to that work which they have learned to do rapidly, and partly because the entire muscular and nervous system has become by daily use adapted to particular motions and resents change. secondly, there are the men who float in and out of the factory, in a constantly changing stream. they "quit work" for the slightest reason or none at all, and never become skilled at anything. some of them are men of low intelligence, but many of them are merely too nervous and restless, too impatient, too easily "driven to drink," to be of any use in a modern factory. they are the men for whom the demanded adaptation is impossible. the individual from whom the industrial order demands ever larger drafts of time and energy, should be nourished and enriched from social sources, in proportion as he is drained. he, more than other men, needs the conception of historic continuity in order to reveal to him the purpose and utility of his work, and he can only be stimulated and dignified as he obtains a conception of his proper relation to society. scholarship is evidently unable to do this for him; for, unfortunately, the same tendency to division of labor has also produced over-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that when the scholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the result of more specialization rather than an offset from it. he cannot bring healing and solace because he himself is suffering from the same disease. there is indeed a deplorable lack of perception and adaptation on the part of educators all along the line. it will certainly be embarrassing to have our age written down triumphant in the matter of inventions, in that our factories were filled with intricate machines, the result of advancing mathematical and mechanical knowledge in relation to manufacturing processes, but defeated in that it lost its head over the achievement and forgot the men. the accusation would stand, that the age failed to perform a like service in the extension of history and art to the factory employees who ran the machines; that the machine tenders, heavy and almost dehumanized by monotonous toil, walked about in the same streets with us, and sat in the same cars; but that we were absolutely indifferent and made no genuine effort to supply to them the artist's perception or student's insight, which alone could fuse them into social consciousness. it would further stand that the scholars among us continued with yet more research, that the educators were concerned only with the young and the promising, and the philanthropists with the criminals and helpless. there is a pitiful failure to recognize the situation in which the majority of working people are placed, a tendency to ignore their real experiences and needs, and, most stupid of all, we leave quite untouched affections and memories which would afford a tremendous dynamic if they were utilized. we constantly hear it said in educational circles, that a child learns only by "doing," and that education must proceed "through the eyes and hands to the brain"; and yet for the vast number of people all around us who do not need to have activities artificially provided, and who use their hands and eyes all the time, we do not seem able to reverse the process. we quote the dictum, "what is learned in the schoolroom must be applied in the workshop," and yet the skill and handicraft constantly used in the workshop have no relevance or meaning given to them by the school; and when we do try to help the workingman in an educational way, we completely ignore his everyday occupation. yet the task is merely one of adaptation. it is to take actual conditions and to make them the basis for a large and generous method of education, to perform a difficult idealization doubtless, but not an impossible one. we apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life through his vocation. we easily recognize the historic association in regard to ancient buildings. we say that "generation after generation have stamped their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them, until they have become the property of all." and yet this is even more true of the instruments of labor, which have constantly been held in human hands. a machine really represents the "seasoned life of man" preserved and treasured up within itself, quite as much as an ancient building does. at present, workmen are brought in contact with the machinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present set of industrial implements had been newly created. they handle the machinery day by day, without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. few of the men who perform the mechanical work in the great factories have any comprehension of the fact that the inventions upon which the factory depends, the instruments which they use, have been slowly worked out, each generation using the gifts of the last and transmitting the inheritance until it has become a social possession. this can only be understood by a man who has obtained some idea of social progress. we are still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby, and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product long enough to really focus it upon the producer. theoretically, "the division of labor" makes men more interdependent and human by drawing them together into a unity of purpose. "if a number of people decide to build a road, and one digs, and one brings stones, and another breaks them, they are quite inevitably united by their interest in the road. but this naturally presupposes that they know where the road is going to, that they have some curiosity and interest about it, and perhaps a chance to travel upon it." if the division of labor robs them of interest in any part of it, the mere mechanical fact of interdependence amounts to nothing. the man in the factory, as well as the man with the hoe, has a grievance beyond being overworked and disinherited, in that he does not know what it is all about. we may well regret the passing of the time when the variety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally stimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into contact both with the raw material and the finished product. but the problem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to supply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were. if the shop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem of the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what may be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to supply him with general information and to insist that he shall be a cultivated member of society with a consciousness of his industrial and social value. as sad a sight as an old hand-loom worker in a factory attempting to make his clumsy machine compete with the flying shuttles about him, is a workingman equipped with knowledge so meagre that he can get no meaning into his life nor sequence between his acts and the far-off results. manufacturers, as a whole, however, when they attempt educational institutions in connection with their factories, are prone to follow conventional lines, and to exhibit the weakness of imitation. we find, indeed, that the middle-class educator constantly makes the mistakes of the middle-class moralist when he attempts to aid working people. the latter has constantly and traditionally urged upon the workingman the specialized virtues of thrift, industry, and sobriety--all virtues pertaining to the individual. when each man had his own shop, it was perhaps wise to lay almost exclusive stress upon the industrial virtues of diligence and thrift; but as industry has become more highly organized, life becomes incredibly complex and interdependent. if a workingman is to have a conception of his value at all, he must see industry in its unity and entirety; he must have a conception that will include not only himself and his immediate family and community, but the industrial organization as a whole. it is doubtless true that dexterity of hand becomes less and less imperative as the invention of machinery and subdivision of labor proceeds; but it becomes all the more necessary, if the workman is to save his life at all, that he should get a sense of his individual relation to the system. feeding a machine with a material of which he has no knowledge, producing a product, totally unrelated to the rest of his life, without in the least knowing what becomes of it, or its connection with the community, is, of course, unquestionably deadening to his intellectual and moral life. to make the moral connection it would be necessary to give him a social consciousness of the value of his work, and at least a sense of participation and a certain joy in its ultimate use; to make the intellectual connection it would be essential to create in him some historic conception of the development of industry and the relation of his individual work to it. workingmen themselves have made attempts in both directions, which it would be well for moralists and educators to study. it is a striking fact that when workingmen formulate their own moral code, and try to inspire and encourage each other, it is always a large and general doctrine which they preach. they were the first class of men to organize an international association, and the constant talk at a modern labor meeting is of solidarity and of the identity of the interests of workingmen the world over. it is difficult to secure a successful organization of men into the simplest trades organization without an appeal to the most abstract principles of justice and brotherhood. as they have formulated their own morals by laying the greatest stress upon the largest morality, so if they could found their own schools, it is doubtful whether they would be of the mechanic institute type. courses of study arranged by a group of workingmen are most naã¯ve in their breadth and generality. they will select the history of the world in preference to that of any period or nation. the "wonders of science" or "the story of evolution" will attract workingmen to a lecture when zoã¶logy or chemistry will drive them away. the "outlines of literature" or "the best in literature" will draw an audience when a lecturer in english poetry will be solitary. this results partly from a wholesome desire to have general knowledge before special knowledge, and is partly a rebound from the specialization of labor to which the workingman is subjected. when he is free from work and can direct his own mind, he tends to roam, to dwell upon large themes. much the same tendency is found in programmes of study arranged by woman's clubs in country places. the untrained mind, wearied with meaningless detail, when it gets an opportunity to make its demand heard, asks for general philosophy and background. in a certain sense commercialism itself, at least in its larger aspect, tends to educate the workingman better than organized education does. its interests are certainly world-wide and democratic, while it is absolutely undiscriminating as to country and creed, coming into contact with all climes and races. if this aspect of commercialism were utilized, it would in a measure counterbalance the tendency which results from the subdivision of labor. the most noteworthy attempt to utilize this democracy of commerce in relation to manufacturing is found at dayton, ohio, in the yearly gatherings held in a large factory there. once a year the entire force is gathered together to hear the returns of the business, not so much in respect to the profits, as in regard to its extension. at these meetings, the travelling salesmen from various parts of the world--from constantinople, from berlin, from rome, from hong kong--report upon the sales they have made, and the methods of advertisement and promotion adapted to the various countries. stereopticon lectures are given upon each new country as soon as it has been successfully invaded by the product of the factory. the foremen in the various departments of the factory give accounts of the increased efficiency and the larger output over former years. any man who has made an invention in connection with the machinery of the factory, at this time publicly receives a prize, and suggestions are approved that tend to increase the comfort and social facilities of the employees. at least for the moment there is a complete esprit de corps, and the youngest and least skilled employee sees himself in connection with the interests of the firm, and the spread of an invention. it is a crude example of what might be done in the way of giving a large framework of meaning to factory labor, and of putting it into a sentient background, at least on the commercial side. it is easy to indict the educator, to say that he has gotten entangled in his own material, and has fallen a victim to his own methods; but granting this, what has the artist done about it--he who is supposed to have a more intimate insight into the needs of his contemporaries, and to minister to them as none other can? it is quite true that a few writers are insisting that the growing desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part of many laborers. they point to the fact that the same duality of conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we have the separation of the people who think from those who work. and yet, since ruskin ceased, no one has really formulated this in a convincing form. and even ruskin's famous dictum, that labor without art brutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art could only be a sense of beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a sense of companionship with all other workers. the situation demands the consciousness of participation and well-being which comes to the individual when he is able to see himself "in connection and cooperation with the whole"; it needs the solace of collective art inherent in collective labor. as the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling, so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human significance--some one who shall teach him to find that which will give a potency to his life. his education, however simple, should tend to make him widely at home in the world, and to give him a sense of simplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality and noise to which he is constantly subjected. he, like other men, can learn to be content to see but a part, although it must be a part of something. it is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate him in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which is his by simple right. we have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having. in spite of many attempts we do not really act upon either statement. chapter vii political reform throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. in addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands. nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests itself in certain quarters of every great city. it is most difficult to hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains to keep on common ground in our human experiences. otherwise there is in various parts of the community an inevitable difference of ethical standards which becomes responsible for much misunderstanding. it is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals of those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely different from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the gains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so painfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. this wide difference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes toward politics. the well-to-do men of the community think of politics as something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political duty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the expression of their moral or social life. as a result of this detachment, "reform movements," started by business men and the better element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political machinery and with a concern for the better method of administration, rather than with the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the people. they fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they fail to consider the final aims of city government. this accounts for the growing tendency to put more and more responsibility upon executive officers and appointed commissions at the expense of curtailing the power of the direct representatives of the voters. reform movements tend to become negative and to lose their educational value for the mass of the people. the reformers take the rã´le of the opposition. they give themselves largely to criticisms of the present state of affairs, to writing and talking of what the future must be and of certain results which should be obtained. in trying to better matters, however, they have in mind only political achievements which they detach in a curious way from the rest of life, and they speak and write of the purification of politics as of a thing set apart from daily life. on the other hand, the real leaders of the people are part of the entire life of the community which they control, and so far as they are representative at all, are giving a social expression to democracy. they are often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they are proceeding upon a sounder theory. although they would be totally unable to give it abstract expression, they are really acting upon a formulation made by a shrewd english observer; namely, that, "after the enfranchisement of the masses, social ideals enter into political programmes, and they enter not as something which at best can be indirectly promoted by government, but as something which it is the chief business of government to advance directly." men living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately, recognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to social needs. they realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for social results, and they hold their power because they respond to that demand. they are corrupt and often do their work badly; but they at least avoid the mistake of a certain type of business men who are frightened by democracy, and have lost their faith in the people. the two standards are similar to those seen at a popular exhibition of pictures where the cultivated people care most for the technique of a given painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall be domestic and human. this difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a certain ward of chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made to dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. in this ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people, representing a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated latin, teuton, celt, greek, and slav who live there have little in common save the basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all conditions. in order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any demand, it must be founded upon universal experiences which are perforce individual and not social. an instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of which he is constantly guilty. this leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be committing. they thus free the alderman from blame because his corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous. in certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his acquaintances, and it is a long step in moral progress to set the good of the many before the interest of the few, and to be concerned for the welfare of a community without hope of an individual return. how far the selfish politician befools his constituents into believing that their interests are identical with his own; how far he presumes upon their inability to distinguish between the individual and social virtues, an inability which he himself shares with them; and how far he dazzles them by the sense of his greatness, and a conviction that they participate therein, it is difficult to determine. morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than in the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate upon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized before they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints have been after all "the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands of christians to whom the credo has been but mysterious words." ethics as well as political opinions may be discussed and disseminated among the sophisticated by lectures and printed pages, but to the common people they can only come through example--through a personality which seizes the popular imagination. the advantage of an unsophisticated neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do not keep their ideas as treasures--they are untouched by the notion of accumulating them, as they might knowledge or money, and they frankly act upon those they have. the personal example promptly rouses to emulation. in a neighborhood where political standards are plastic and undeveloped, and where there has been little previous experience in self-government, the office-holder himself sets the standard, and the ideas that cluster around him exercise a specific and permanent influence upon the political morality of his constituents. nothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous population, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, most admires is the quality of simple goodness; that the man who attracts them is the one whom they believe to be a good man. we all know that children long "to be good" with an intensity which they give to no other ambition. we can all remember that the earliest strivings of our childhood were in this direction, and that we venerated grown people because they had attained perfection. primitive people, such as the south italian peasants, are still in this stage. they want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire nothing so much as the good man. abstract virtues are too difficult for their untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple enough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people. the successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the morality of his constituents. he must not attempt to hold up too high a standard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. his safety lies in doing on a large scale the good deeds which his constituents are able to do only on a small scale. if he believes what they believe and does what they are all cherishing a secret ambition to do, he will dazzle them by his success and win their confidence. there is a certain wisdom in this course. there is a common sense in the mass of men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just as there is sure to be an eccentricity in the differing and reforming individual which it is perhaps well to challenge. the constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a previous chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and distresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy themselves. the kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor is doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in distress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too drunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or child, when he is evicted for non-payment of rent, when he is arrested for a petty crime. it seems to such a man entirely fitting that his alderman should do the same thing on a larger scale--that he should help a constituent out of trouble, merely because he is in trouble, irrespective of the justice involved. the alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to "fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised by his constituents. all this conveys the impression to the simple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a powerful friend. one may instance the alderman's action in standing by an italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the civil service regulations. the commissioners had sent out notices to certain italian day-laborers who were upon the eligible list that they were to report for work at a given day and hour. one of the padrones intercepted these notifications and sold them to the men for five dollars apiece, making also the usual bargain for a share of their wages. the padrone's entire arrangement followed the custom which had prevailed for years before the establishment of civil service laws. ten of the laborers swore out warrants against the padrone, who was convicted and fined seventy-five dollars. this sum was promptly paid by the alderman, and the padrone, assured that he would be protected from any further trouble, returned uninjured to the colony. the simple italians were much bewildered by this show of a power stronger than that of the civil service, which they had trusted as they did the one in italy. the first violation of its authority was made, and various sinister acts have followed, until no italian who is digging a sewer or sweeping a street for the city feels quite secure in holding his job unless he is backed by the friendship of the alderman. according to the civil service law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are discharged by the foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only upon the aldermanic recommendation. he thus practically holds his old power over the laborers working for the city. the popular mind is convinced that an honest administration of civil service is impossible, and that it is but one more instrument in the hands of the powerful. it will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men, who learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such a nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that "civil service" is "no good." as many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact that the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so instances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. a young man may enter a saloon long after midnight, the legal closing hour, and seat himself at a gambling table, perfectly secure from interruption or arrest, because the place belongs to an alderman; but in order to secure this immunity the policeman on the beat must pretend not to see into the windows each time that he passes, and he knows, and the young man knows that he knows, that nothing would embarrass "headquarters" more than to have an arrest made on those premises. a certain contempt for the whole machinery of law and order is thus easily fostered. because of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all the places which he can seize from the city hall. the alderman of the ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he had twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll. this, of course, included day laborers, but each one felt under distinct obligations to him for getting a position. when we reflect that this is one-third of the entire vote of the ward, we realize that it is very important to vote for the right man, since there is, at the least, one chance out of three for securing work. if we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a political one. an italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else, and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. it is not so different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two strengthen each other. the alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his constituents under obligations to him; but the action of such an individual becomes a demoralizing element in the community when kindly impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of personal ambition, and when the plastic morals of his constituents gradually conform to his own undeveloped standards. the alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. he seizes these days of family festivities for making friends. it is easiest to reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. the alderman procures passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest lady or the most popular man. at a church bazaar, for instance, the alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. when others are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. when anxious relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying off the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the sick of the parish. the moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly. he murmurs many times, "never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it is all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too many questions." the oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds of his constituents, the better he is pleased. nothing so rapidly prepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. we see again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered so praiseworthy. there is something archaic in a community of simple people in their attitude toward death and burial. there is nothing so easy to collect money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early religious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. at times one encounters almost the greek feeling in regard to burial. if the alderman seizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much more does he seize upon periods of sorrow. at a funeral he has the double advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and solace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to express that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment of quick sorrow, that desire to "make up" for past delinquencies, to show the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is as natural as it is universal. in addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of which almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. the alderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful horror of burial by the county; he provides carriages for the poor, who otherwise could not have them. it may be too much to say that all the relatives and friends who ride in the carriages provided by the alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly influenced by his kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long hours of the ride back and forth from the suburban cemetery. a man who would ask at such a time where all the money thus spent comes from would be considered sinister. the tendency to speak lightly of the faults of the dead and to judge them gently is transferred to the living, and many a man at such a time has formulated a lenient judgment of political corruption, and has heard kindly speeches which he has remembered on election day. "ah, well, he has a big irish heart. he is good to the widow and the fatherless." "he knows the poor better than the big guns who are always talking about civil service and reform." indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of administration make against this big manifestation of human friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? the notions of the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. such an alderman will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into "hundreds a year." he understands what the people want, and ministers just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. an attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the hull-house nursery. an investigation showed that it had been born ten days previously in the cook county hospital, but no trace could be found of the unfortunate mother. the little child lived for several weeks, and then, in spite of every care, died. it was decided to have it buried by the county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o'clock; about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached the neighbors. a half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of mind, to protest. they took up a collection out of their poverty with which to defray a funeral. the residents of hull-house were then comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. in their crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every attention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even intimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be buried as it had been born, at the county's expense. it is doubtful if hull-house has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the minds of some of its neighbors. it was only forgiven by the most indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not know a mother's heart. no one born and reared in the community could possibly have made a mistake like that. no one who had studied the ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely. we are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple people. the songs which are most popular among them are those of a reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and faithful through all vicissitudes. the tendency is to condone and forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. in the theatres it is the magnanimous man, the kindly reckless villain who is always applauded. so shrewd an observer as samuel johnson once remarked that it was surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society contained. on the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more important of his friends. here again he has seized upon an old tradition and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best expressed when men drink together. the saloons offer a common meeting ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who meet there. he distributes each christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters, but to families who are represented by no vote. by a judicious management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey again. as he does not distribute his christmas favors from any hardly acquired philanthropic motive, there is no disposition to apply the carefully evolved rules of the charitable societies to his beneficiaries. of course, there are those who suspect that the benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." an example of this is the young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, giving a sly wink at the others. but this freedom from any sense of obligation is often the first step downward to the position where he is willing to sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as he pleases. the writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he complained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had "sold for only two dollars this year," and that he was "awfully disappointed." the writer happened to know that his income during the nine months previous had been but twenty-eight dollars, and that he was in debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well imagine the eagerness with which he had counted upon this source of revenue. after some years the selling of votes becomes a commonplace, and but little attempt is made upon the part of the buyer or seller to conceal the fact, if the transaction runs smoothly. a certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire house to a political party and was "well paid for it too"; but being of a grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the rival party. such an outrage could not be borne. the man was treated to a modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held under a street hydrant in november, contracted pneumonia which resulted in his death. no official investigation took place, since the doctor's certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and public sentiment sustained the action. in various conversations which the writer had concerning the entire transaction, she discovered great indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, but none whatever for his original offence of selling out the votes of his house. a club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation for political power which may later be sold out. the president and executive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the funds, promise to divide with "the boys" who swell the size of the membership. a reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are active and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can "deliver." the reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and only gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the express purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most active in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their allegiance when they are ready to sell. reformers seeing them drop away one by one, talk of desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power of money over well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand temptation; but in reality the men are not deserters because they have never actually been enrolled in the ranks. the money they take is neither a bribe nor the price of their loyalty, it is simply the consummation of a long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. they came into the new movement for the purpose of being bought out of it, and have successfully accomplished that purpose. hull-house assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against the same alderman. in the two years following the end of the first one, nearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office from the reã«lected alderman. a printer had been appointed to a clerkship in the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the police barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in the city construction department. at the beginning of the next campaign, the greatest difficulty was experienced in finding a candidate, and each one proposed, demanded time to consider the proposition. during this period he invariably became the recipient of the alderman's bounty. the first one, who was foreman of a large factory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that the city institutions would use the product of his firm. the second one, a keeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was promised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the expiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and it may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and successfully elected. the third proposed candidate received a place for his son in the office of the city attorney. not only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. any requests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the alderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides. there is thus constant opportunity for the alderman to put his constituents under obligations to him, to make it difficult for a constituent to withstand him, or for one with large interests to enter into political action at all. from the italian pedler who wants a license to peddle fruit in the street, to the large manufacturing company who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of conveying pipes from one building to another, everybody is under obligations to his alderman, and is constantly made to feel it. in short, these very regulations for presenting requests to the council have been made, by the aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of increasing the dependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting aldermanic power and prestige. the alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of his ward. the paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his district, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side holds him responsible for this condition, and promises better paving under another rã©gime. but the paving could not be made better without a special assessment upon the property owners of the vicinity, and paying more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not want to do. in reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing the time of the improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he performs. a movement to have the paving done from a general fund would doubtless be opposed by the property owners in other parts of the city who have already paid for the asphalt bordering their own possessions, but they have no conception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy which repaving may mean to the small property owner, nor how his chief concern may be to elect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and pocket-books of his constituents than he does for the repute and cleanliness of his city. the alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his down-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars with which to uniform and equip a boys' temperance brigade which had been formed in one of the ward churches a few months before his campaign. is it strange that the good leader, whose heart was filled with innocent pride as he looked upon these promising young scions of virtue, should decline to enter into a reform campaign? of what use to suggest that uniforms and bayonets for the purpose of promoting temperance, bought with money contributed by a man who was proprietor of a saloon and a gambling house, might perhaps confuse the ethics of the young soldiers? why take the pains to urge that it was vain to lecture and march abstract virtues into them, so long as the "champion boodler" of the town was the man whom the boys recognized as a loyal and kindhearted friend, the public-spirited citizen, whom their fathers enthusiastically voted for, and their mothers called "the friend of the poor." as long as the actual and tangible success is thus embodied, marching whether in kindergartens or brigades, talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to change the code of ethics. the question of where does the money come from which is spent so successfully, does of course occur to many minds. the more primitive people accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to their moral sense. to their simple minds he gets it "from the rich" and, so long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true robin hood, with open hand, they have no objections to offer. their ethics are quite honestly those of the merry-making foresters. the next less primitive people of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the "gang" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he makes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to steer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal pay; that he is, in short, a successful "boodler." when, however, there is intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to make the contention that this is universally done, that all the aldermen do it more or less successfully, but that the alderman of this particular ward is unique in being so generous; that such a state of affairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that is the way business is run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man who is close to the people gets a large share of the spoils; that he serves franchised companies who employ men in the building and construction of their enterprises, and that they are bound in return to give work to his constituents. it is again the justification of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. even when they are intelligent enough to complete the circle, and to see that the money comes, not from the pockets of the companies' agents, but from the street-car fares of people like themselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two cents more each time they ride than to give up the consciousness that they have a big, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in an emergency. the sense of just dealing comes apparently much later than the desire for protection and indulgence. on the whole, the gifts and favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of genuine loving-kindness. the alderman is really elected because he is a good friend and neighbor. he is corrupt, of course, but he is not elected because he is corrupt, but rather in spite of it. his standard suits his constituents. he exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type of a good man. he has attained what his constituents secretly long for. at one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly called "con row." the term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is nevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are occupied by professional office holders. this row is supposed to form a happy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in prosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. it would be difficult to justly estimate the influence which this group of successful, prominent men, including the alderman who lives there, have had upon the ideals of the youth in the vicinity. the path which leads to riches and success, to civic prominence and honor, is the path of political corruption. we might compare this to the path laid out by benjamin franklin, who also secured all of these things, but told young men that they could be obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal living, by the cultivation of the mind, and the holding fast to righteousness; or, again, we might compare it to the ideals which were held up to the american youth fifty years ago, lower, to be sure, than the revolutionary ideal, but still fine and aspiring toward honorable dealing and careful living. they were told that the career of the self-made man was open to every american boy, if he worked hard and saved his money, improved his mind, and followed a steady ambition. the writer remembers that when she was ten years old, the village schoolmaster told his little flock, without any mitigating clauses, that jay gould had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by always saving bits of string, and that, as a result, every child in the village assiduously collected party-colored balls of twine. a bright chicago boy might well draw the inference that the path of the corrupt politician not only leads to civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and philanthropy. this lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is perhaps the worst of the situation, for, as we said in the first chapter, we determine ideals by our daily actions and decisions not only for ourselves, but largely for each other. we are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the community stand indicted. this is the penalty of a democracy,--that we are bound to move forward or retrograde together. none of us can stand aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the same air. that the alderman has much to do with setting the standard of life and desirable prosperity may be illustrated by the following incident: during one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew a poster representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other revellers. in contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, who sat upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a workingman's dinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of representative he preferred, the presumption being that at least in a workingman's district the bricklayer would come out ahead. to the chagrin of the reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a diamond in his shirt front. the district wished its representative "to stand up with the best of them," and certainly some of the constituents would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer. it is part of that general desire to appear well, the optimistic and thoroughly american belief, that even if a man is working with his hands to-day, he and his children will quite likely be in a better position in the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no need of being too closely associated with common working people. there is an honest absence of class consciousness, and a naã¯ve belief that the kind of occupation quite largely determines social position. this is doubtless exaggerated in a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact that as each nationality becomes more adapted to american conditions, the scale of its occupation rises. fifty years ago in america "a dutchman" was used as a term of reproach, meaning a man whose language was not understood, and who performed menial tasks, digging sewers and building railroad embankments. later the irish did the same work in the community, but as quickly as possible handed it on to the italians, to whom the name "dago" is said to cling as a result of the digging which the irishman resigned to him. the italian himself is at last waking up to this fact. in a political speech recently made by an italian padrone, he bitterly reproached the alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of sitting in an office to irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs" of sweeping the streets to the italians. this general struggle to rise in life, to be at least politically represented by one of the best, as to occupation and social status, has also its negative side. we must remember that the imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and that the loss of social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps most dreaded by the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct, the power to give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but feebly developed. a form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, is afforded by the simple desire to do what others do, in order to share with them the approval of the community. of course, the larger the number of people among whom an habitual mode of conduct obtains, the greater the constraint it puts upon the individual will. thus it is that the political corruption of the city presses most heavily where it can be least resisted, and is most likely to be imitated. according to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. when the water of chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes from using the city's supply. when the garbage contracts are not enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. the prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat with the "boss" politician or preserve his independence on a smaller income; but to an italian day laborer it is a choice between obeying the commands of a political "boss" or practical starvation. again, a more intelligent man may philosophize a little upon the present state of corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of our commercialism, from which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he may give himself the solace of literature and ideals in other directions, but the more ignorant man who lives only in the narrow present has no such resource; slowly the conviction enters his mind that politics is a matter of favors and positions, that self-government means pleasing the "boss" and standing in with the "gang." this slowly acquired knowledge he hands on to his family. during the month of february his boy may come home from school with rather incoherent tales about washington and lincoln, and the father may for the moment be fired to tell of garibaldi, but such talk is only periodic, and the long year round the fortunes of the entire family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend upon the "boss." in a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation depend upon him. to use a former illustration, if a man happens to have a taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes to those houses which are protected by political influence. if he and his friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to hear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he is breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be exempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is friendly to him and expects his allegiance in return. during the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local speakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from other parts of the town, from the so-called "better element." suddenly it was rumored on all sides that, while the money and speakers for the reform candidate were coming from the swells, the money which was backing the corrupt alderman also came from a swell source; that the president of a street-car combination, for whom he performed constant offices in the city council, was ready to back him to the extent of fifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a good man, and sat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum of money to an educational institution and was therefore as philanthropic, not to say good and upright, as any man in town; that the corrupt alderman had the sanction of the highest authorities, and that the lecturers who were talking against corruption, and the selling and buying of franchises, were only the cranks, and not the solid business men who had developed and built up chicago. all parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. if the so-called more enlightened members accept corporate gifts from the man who buys up the council, and the so-called less enlightened members accept individual gifts from the man who sells out the council, we surely must take our punishment together. there is the difference, of course, that in the first case we act collectively, and in the second case individually; but is the punishment which follows the first any lighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the more obvious one which follows the second? have our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use mr. chapman's generalization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or educational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked when the saloon interest is thus served? the street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal class, and questionable money with which to debauch his constituents. both sets of men assume that the only appeal possible is along the line of self-interest. they frankly acknowledge money getting as their own motive power, and they believe in the cupidity of all the men whom they encounter. no attempt in either case is made to put forward the claims of the public, or to find a moral basis for action. as the corrupt politician assumes that public morality is impossible, so many business men become convinced that to pay tribute to the corrupt aldermen is on the whole cheaper than to have taxes too high; that it is better to pay exorbitant rates for franchises, than to be made unwilling partners in transportation experiments. such men come to regard political reformers as a sort of monomaniac, who are not reasonable enough to see the necessity of the present arrangement which has slowly been evolved and developed, and upon which business is safely conducted. a reformer who really knew the people and their great human needs, who believed that it was the business of government to serve them, and who further recognized the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would possess a clew by which he might analyze the situation. he would find out what needs, which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which the city itself could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which pander to the lower instincts of the constituency. a mother who eats her christmas turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman who gave it to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of appreciation and gratitude to the city which supplies her little children with a kindergarten, or, to the board of health which properly placarded a case of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless nights and wearing anxiety, as well as the money paid with such difficulty to the doctor and the druggist. the man who in his emotional gratitude almost kneels before his political friend who gets his boy out of jail, might be made to see the kindness and good sense of the city authorities who provided the boy with a playground and reading room, where he might spend his hours of idleness and restlessness, and through which his temptations to petty crime might be averted. a man who is grateful to the alderman who sees that his gambling and racing are not interfered with, might learn to feel loyal and responsible to the city which supplied him with a gymnasium and swimming tank where manly and well-conducted sports are possible. the voter who is eager to serve the alderman at all times, because the tenure of his job is dependent upon aldermanic favor, might find great relief and pleasure in working for the city in which his place was secured by a well-administered civil service law. after all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and largely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is good to you, who understands you, and who gets you out of trouble. all the social life of the voter from the time he was a little boy and played "craps" with his "own push," and not with some other "push," has been founded on this sense of loyalty and of standing in with his friends. now that he is a man, he likes the sense of being inside a political organization, of being trusted with political gossip, of belonging to a set of fellows who understand things, and whose interests are being cared for by a strong friend in the city council itself. all this is perfectly legitimate, and all in the line of the development of a strong civic loyalty, if it were merely socialized and enlarged. such a voter has already proceeded in the forward direction in so far as he has lost the sense of isolation, and has abandoned the conviction that city government does not touch his individual affairs. even mill claims that the social feelings of man, his desire to be at unity with his fellow-creatures, are the natural basis for morality, and he defines a man of high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an isolated individual, but as a part in a social organism. upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure of civic virtue. it is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied for all. if we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the community, and rises into a sense of the common weal. in order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of self-interest. the demand should be universalized; in this process it would also become clarified, and the basis of our political organization become perforce social and ethical. would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself, because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? the former at least are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a whole. the wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to make it hard for him to act upon it. he is more or less a victim to that curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient, and that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to the self-seeking. this results in a certain repellent manner, commonly regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences" singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. both are akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have ever and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in revolt against the conventionalized good. the success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and selfish process. for the painful condition of endeavoring to minister to genuine social needs, through the political machinery, and at the same time to remodel that machinery so that it shall be adequate to its new task, is to encounter the inevitable discomfort of a transition into a new type of democratic relation. the perplexing experiences of the actual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own. the economist who treats the individual cases as mere data, and the social reformer who labors to make such cases impossible, solely because of the appeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they feel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth, working outward from within; before they can gain the exhilaration and uplift which comes when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into the forward intuitive movement of the mass. this general movement is not without its intellectual aspects, but it has to be transferred from the region of perception to that of emotion before it is really apprehended. the mass of men seldom move together without an emotional incentive. the man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of the perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great source of vitality. perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social conduct or control. for action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. we continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory. a stirring appeal has lately been made by a recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that "it is insanity to expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. we arrive at moral knowledge only by tentative and observant practice. we learn how to apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the old and having found it to fail." this necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality. the power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible intelligence. in the range of individual morals, we have learned to distrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. the result, as well as the process of virtues attained by repression, has become distasteful to us. when the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. in this effort toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection with the activity of the many. the cry of "back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of "back to christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows and believe in our common experiences as a preparation for a new moral struggle. as the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune. tolstoy has portrayed the experience in "master and man." the former saves his servant from freezing, by protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. such experiences, of which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great multitude of the dead. it is akin to the assurance that the dead understand, because they have entered into the great experience, and therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the misunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and all life's fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and great experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and forgiveness. consciously to accept democracy and its manifold experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom. index[1] alderman, basis of his political success, 226, 228, 240, 243, 248, 267; his influence on morals of the american boy, 251, 255, 256; on standard of life, 257; his power, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260; his social duties, 234, 236, 243, 250. art and the workingman, 219, 225. "boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, 260, 266. business college, the, 197. charity, administration of, 14, 22; neighborly relations in, 29, 230; organized, 25; standards in, 15, 27, 32, 38, 49, 58; scientific _vs._ human relations in, 64. child labor, premature work, 41, 188; first laws concerning, 167, 170. city, responsibilities of, 266. civil service law, its enforcement, 231, 233. commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, 193. commercialism and education, 190-199, 216; morals captured by, 264; polytechnic schools taken by, 202. coã¶peration, 153, 158. cooper, peter, 202. dayton, ohio, factory at, 216. death and burials among simple people, 238. domestic service, problem of, in france, england, and america, 135; industrial difficulty of, 106; moral issues of, 106. education, attempts at industrial, 201; commercialism in, 196, 201; in commercialism, 216; in technical schools, 201; lack of adaptation in, 199, 208, 212; of industrial workers, 180, 193, 199, 219; offset to overspecialization, 211; public school and, 190, 192; relation of, to the child, 180, 185, 193; relation of, to the immigrant, 181-186; university extension lectures and settlements, 199; workingmen's lecture courses, 214. educators, mistakes of, 212; new demands on, 178, 192, 201, 211. family claim, the, 4, 74, 78; daughter's college education, 82; employer's _vs._ domestic's, 123, 124; on the daughter, 82; on the son, _ibid._ family life, misconception of, 116. filial relations, clash of moral codes, 94. funerals, attitude of simple people toward, 238. household employee, the, 108, 109; character of, 112; domestic _vs._ factory, 116, 118, 119, 122; isolation of, 109, 111, 117, 120, 132; morals of, 125; unnatural relation of, 113, 120, 121, 126, 127; unreasonable demands on, 113, 115; residence clubs for, 133; social position of, 114, 119, 122. household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, 116; reform of, in relation to employee, 126. household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, 129; competition of factory work with, 128; difficulties of the small, 135; industrial isolation of, 117; industry of, transferred to factory, 104, 105; lack of progress in, 117; origin of, 104; social _vs._ individual aspects of, 103; suburban difficulties of, 134; wages in, 131. hull-house experiences, 43, 53, 58, 59, 240, 247. human life, value of, 7, 178. individual action _vs._ associated, 137, 153, 158; advantages of, 158, 162; limitations of, 165; moral evolution involved in, 226. individual _vs._ social needs, 155, 269. individual _vs._ social virtues, 224, 227, 265. italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, 229; dependence of, on their children, 184; education of, 185; new conditions of life of, 181. juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, 53-56, 187. labor, division of, 210, 213; reaction from, 215. law and order, 172, 174, 234. moral fact and moral idea, 227, 229, 273. morality, natural basis of, 268; personal and social, 6, 176, 103. philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, 150, 155-157. philanthropist, the, 154, 175-176. political corruption, ethical development in, 270; formation of reform clubs, 246; greatest pressure of, 260; individual and social aspect of, 264; leniency in regard to, 239; responsibility for, 256, 263; selling of votes, 244-246; street railway and saloon interest, 262. political leaders, causes of success of, 224. political standards, 228, 229, 251-253, 261; compared with benjamin franklin's, 255. referendum method, the, 164. reformer, the, ethics of, 270. reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, 222, 240, 262, 272, 274; business men's attitude toward, 265. rumford, count, 117. ruskin, 219. saloon, the, 243, 264. social claim, the, 4, 77; child study and, 92, 180; misplaced energy and, 90. social virtues, code of employer, 143, 148; code of laboring man, _ibid._ technical schools, 201; adaptation of, to workingmen, 204; compromises in, 203; polytechnic institutions, 202; textile schools, 203; women in, _ibid._ thrift, individualism of, 31, 40, 212. trades unions, 148, 158, 167, 169, 171; sympathetic strikes, 174. workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, 191, 258; art in relation to, 218; charity of, 154; evening classes and social entertainment for, 189; grievance of, 211; historical perspective in the work of, _ibid._; organizations of, 214; standards for political candidate, 257. [footnote 1: this index is not intended to be exhaustive.] [illustration: "_young fellows come to me looking for jobs and telling me what a mean house they have been working for._"] letters from a self-made merchant to his son being the letters written by john graham, head of the house of graham & company, pork-packers in chicago, familiarly known on 'change as "old gorgon graham," to his son, pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "piggy." boston: small, maynard & company: 1903 * * * * * _copyright, 1901-1902, by_ _the curtis publishing co._ _copyright, 1901-1902, by_ _george horace lorimer_ _copyright, 1902, by_ _small, maynard & company_ (_incorporated_) _entered at stationers' hall_ _published october, 1902_ _sixtieth thousand december, 1902_ _plates by_ _riggs printing & publishing co._ _albany, u.s.a._ _presswork by_ _the university press,_ _cambridge, u.s.a._ * * * * * to cyrus curtis a self-made man * * * * * contents page i. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at harvard university, cambridge, mass. _mr. pierrepont has just become a member, in good and regular standing, of the freshman class._ 1 ii. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at harvard university. _mr. pierrepont's expense account has just passed under his father's eye, and has furnished him with a text for some plain particularities._ 15 iii. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at harvard university. _mr. pierrepont finds cambridge to his liking, and has suggested that he take a post-graduate course to fill up some gaps which he has found in his education._ 29 iv. from john graham, head of the house of graham & co., at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont graham, at the waldorf-astoria, in new york. _mr. pierrepont has suggested the grand tour as a proper finish to his education._ 45 v. from john graham, head of the house of graham & co., at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont graham, at lake moosgatchemawamuc, in the maine woods. _mr. pierrepont has written to his father withdrawing his suggestion._ 57 vi. from john graham, en route to texas, to pierrepont graham, care of graham & co., union stock yards, chicago. _mr. pierrepont has, entirely without intention, caused a little confusion in the mails, and it has come to his father's notice in the course of business._ 69 vii. from john graham, at the omaha branch of graham & co., to pierrepont graham, at the union stock yards, chicago. _mr. pierrepont hasn't found the methods of the worthy milligan altogether to his liking, and he has commented rather freely on them._ 81 viii. from john graham, at hot springs, arkansas, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards in chicago. _mr. pierrepont has just been promoted from the mailing to the billing desk and, in consequence, his father is feeling rather "mellow" toward him._ 93 ix. from john graham, at hot springs, arkansas, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards in chicago. _mr. pierrepont has been investing more heavily in roses than his father thinks his means warrant, and he tries to turn his thoughts to staple groceries._ 113 x. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at the commercial house, jeffersonville, indiana. _mr. pierrepont has been promoted to the position of traveling salesman for the house, and has started out on the road._ 127 xi. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at the planters' palace hotel, at big gap, kentucky. _mr. pierrepont's orders are small and his expenses are large, so his father feels pessimistic over his prospects._ 141 xii. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at little delmonico's, prairie centre, indiana. _mr. pierrepont has annoyed his father by accepting his criticisms in a spirit of gentle, but most reprehensible, resignation._ 157 xiii. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, care of the hoosier grocery co., indianapolis, indiana. _mr. pierrepont's orders have been looking up, so the old man gives him a pat on the back--but not too hard a one._ 177 xiv. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at the travelers' rest, new albany, indiana. _mr. pierrepont has taken a little flyer in short ribs on 'change, and has accidentally come into the line of his father's vision._ 191 xv. from john graham, at the union stock yards in chicago, to his son, pierrepont, at the scrub oaks, spring lake, michigan. _mr. pierrepont has been promoted again, and the old man sends him a little advice with his appointment._ 209 xvi. from john graham, at the schweitzerkasenhof, karlsbad, austria, to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards, chicago. _mr. pierrepont has shown mild symptoms of an attack of society fever, and his father is administering some simple remedies._ 223 xvii. from john graham, at the london house of graham & co., to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards in chicago. _mr. pierrepont has written his father that he is getting along famously in his new place._ 243 xviii. from john graham, at the london house of graham & co., to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards in chicago. _mr. pierrepont is worried over rumors that the old man is a bear on lard and that the longs are about to make him climb a tree._ 259 xix. from john graham, at the new york house of graham & co., to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards in chicago. _the old man, on the voyage home, has met a girl who interests him and who in turn seems to be interested in mr. pierrepont._ 275 xx. from john graham, at the boston house of graham & co., to his son, pierrepont, at the union stock yards in chicago. _mr. pierrepont has told the old man "what's what" and received a limited blessing._ 301 * * * * * illustrations _by_ f. r. gruger _and_ b. martin justice 1. "young fellows come to me looking for jobs and telling me what a mean house they have been working for." _frontispiece_ _facing p._ 2. "old doc hoover asked me right out in sunday school if i didn't want to be saved." 4 3. "i have seen hundreds of boys go to europe who didn't bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes." 20 4. "i put jim durham on the road to introduce a new product." 38 5. "old dick stover was the worst hand at procrastinating that i ever saw." 50 6. "charlie chase told me he was president of the klondike exploring, gold prospecting, and immigration company." 62 7. "jim donnelly, of the donnelly provision company, came into my office with a fool grin on his fat face." 72 8. "bill budlong was always the last man to come up to the mourners' bench." 84 9. "clarence looked to me like another of his father's bad breaks." 98 10. "you looked so blamed important and chesty when you started off." 128 11. "josh jenkinson would eat a little food now and then just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco." 146 12. "herr doctor paracelsus von munsterberg was a pretty high-toned article." 166 13. "when john l. sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the plant." 184 14. "i started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp." 200 15. "a good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in funny stories." 216 16. "jim hicks dared fatty wilkins to eat a piece of dirt." 248 17. "elder hoover was accounted a powerful exhorter in our parts." 268 18. "miss curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner." 294 * * * * * +------------------------------+ | no. 1 | +------------------------------+ | from john graham, at | | the union stock yards | | in chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at harvard | | university, cambridge, | | mass. mr. pierrepont has | | just been settled by his | | mother as a member, in | | good and regular standing, | | of the freshman class. | +------------------------------+ letters _from a_ self-made merchant _to his_ son i chicago, october 1, 189_dear pierrepont:_ your ma got back safe this morning and she wants me to be sure to tell you not to over-study, and i want to tell you to be sure not to under-study. what we're really sending you to harvard for is to get a little of the education that's so good and plenty there. when it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for i want you to get your share. you'll find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away. everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost. i didn't have your advantages when i was a boy, and you can't have mine. some men learn the value of money by not having any and starting out to pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are lying around; and some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left to them and starting out to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a year. some men learn the value of truth by having to do business with liars; and some by going to sunday school. some men learn the cussedness of whiskey by having a drunken father; and some by having a good mother. some men get an education from other men and newspapers and public libraries; and some get it from professors and parchments--it doesn't make any special difference how you get a half-nelson on the right thing, just so you get it and freeze on to it. the package doesn't count after the eye's been attracted by it, and in the end it finds its way to the ash heap. it's the quality of the goods inside which tells, when they once get into the kitchen and up to the cook. you can cure a ham in dry salt and you can cure it in sweet pickle, and when you're through you've got pretty good eating either way, provided you started in with a sound ham. if you didn't, it doesn't make any special difference how you cured it--the ham-tryer's going to strike the sour spot around the bone. and it doesn't make any difference how much sugar and fancy pickle you soak into a fellow, he's no good unless he's sound and sweet at the core. the first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education. that is where i'm a little skittish about this college business. i'm not starting in to preach to you, because i know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to himself harder than any one else can, and that he's mighty often switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him in the wrong way. i remember when i was a boy, and i wasn't a very bad boy, as boys go, old doc hoover got a notion in his head that i ought to join the church, and he scared me out of it for five years by asking me right out loud in sunday school if i didn't want to be saved, and then laying for me after the service and praying with me. of course i wanted to be saved, but i didn't want to be saved quite so publicly. when a boy's had a good mother he's got a good conscience, and when he's got a good conscience he don't need to have right and wrong labeled for him. now that your ma's left and the apron strings are cut, you're naturally running up against a new sensation every minute, but if you'll simply use a little conscience as a tryer, and probe into a thing which looks sweet and sound on the skin, to see if you can't fetch up a sour smell from around the bone, you'll be all right. [illustration: "_old doc hoover asked me right out in sunday school if i didn't want to be saved._"] i'm anxious that you should be a good scholar, but i'm more anxious that you should be a good clean man. and if you graduate with a sound conscience, i shan't care so much if there are a few holes in your latin. there are two parts of a college education--the part that you get in the schoolroom from the professors, and the part that you get outside of it from the boys. that's the really important part. for the first can only make you a scholar, while the second can make you a man. education's a good deal like eating--a fellow can't always tell which particular thing did him good, but he can usually tell which one did him harm. after a square meal of roast beef and vegetables, and mince pie and watermelon, you can't say just which ingredient is going into muscle, but you don't have to be very bright to figure out which one started the demand for painkiller in your insides, or to guess, next morning, which one made you believe in a personal devil the night before. and so, while a fellow can't figure out to an ounce whether it's latin or algebra or history or what among the solids that is building him up in this place or that, he can go right along feeding them in and betting that they're not the things that turn his tongue fuzzy. it's down among the sweets, among his amusements and recreations, that he's going to find his stomach-ache, and it's there that he wants to go slow and to pick and choose. it's not the first half, but the second half of a college education which merchants mean when they ask if a college education pays. it's the willie and the bertie boys; the chocolate eclair and tutti-frutti boys; the la-de-dah and the baa-baa-billy-goat boys; the high cock-a-lo-rum and the cock-a-doodle-do boys; the bah jove!, hair-parted-in-the-middle, cigaroot-smoking, champagne-charlie, up-all-night-and-in-all-day boys that make 'em doubt the cash value of the college output, and overlook the roast-beef and blood-gravy boys, the shirt-sleeves and high-water-pants boys, who take their college education and make some fellow's business hum with it. does a college education pay? does it pay to feed in pork trimmings at five cents a pound at the hopper and draw out nice, cunning, little "country" sausages at twenty cents a pound at the other end? does it pay to take a steer that's been running loose on the range and living on cactus and petrified wood till he's just a bunch of barb-wire and sole-leather, and feed him corn till he's just a solid hunk of porterhouse steak and oleo oil? you bet it pays. anything that trains a boy to think and to think quick pays; anything that teaches a boy to get the answer before the other fellow gets through biting the pencil, pays. college doesn't make fools; it develops them. it doesn't make bright men; it develops them. a fool will turn out a fool, whether he goes to college or not, though he'll probably turn out a different sort of a fool. and a good, strong boy will turn out a bright, strong man whether he's worn smooth in the grab-what-you-want-and-eat-standing-with-one-eye-skinned-for-the-dog school of the streets and stores, or polished up and slicked down in the give-your-order-to-the-waiter-and-get-a-sixteen-course-dinner school of the professors. but while the lack of a college education can't keep no. 1 down, having it boosts no. 2 up. it's simply the difference between jump in, rough-and-tumble, kick-with-the-heels-and-butt-with-the-head nigger fighting, and this grin-and-look-pleasant, dodge-and-save-your-wind-till-you-see-a-chance-to-land-on-the-solar-plexus style of the trained athlete. both styles win fights, but the fellow with a little science is the better man, providing he's kept his muscle hard. if he hasn't, he's in a bad way, for his fancy sparring is just going to aggravate the other fellow so that he'll eat him up. of course, some men are like pigs, the more you educate them, the more amusing little cusses they become, and the funnier capers they cut when they show off their tricks. naturally, the place to send a boy of that breed is to the circus, not to college. speaking of educated pigs, naturally calls to mind the case of old man whitaker and his son, stanley. i used to know the old man mighty well ten years ago. he was one of those men whom business narrows, instead of broadens. didn't get any special fun out of his work, but kept right along at it because he didn't know anything else. told me he'd had to root for a living all his life and that he proposed to have stan's brought to him in a pail. sent him to private schools and dancing schools and colleges and universities, and then shipped him to oxford to soak in a little "atmosphere," as he put it. i never could quite lay hold of that atmosphere dodge by the tail, but so far as i could make out, the idea was that there was something in the air of the oxford ham-house that gave a fellow an extra fancy smoke. well, about the time stan was through, the undertaker called by for the old man, and when his assets were boiled down and the water drawn off, there wasn't enough left to furnish stan with a really nourishing meal. i had a talk with stan about what he was going to do, but some ways he didn't strike me as having the making of a good private of industry, let alone a captain, so i started in to get him a job that would suit his talents. got him in a bank, but while he knew more about the history of banking than the president, and more about political economy than the board of directors, he couldn't learn the difference between a fiver that the government turned out and one that was run off on a hand press in a halsted street basement. got him a job on a paper, but while he knew six different languages and all the facts about the arctic regions, and the history of dancing from the days of old adam down to those of old nick, he couldn't write up a satisfactory account of the ice-men's ball. could prove that two and two made four by trigonometry and geometry, but couldn't learn to keep books; was thick as thieves with all the high-toned poets, but couldn't write a good, snappy, merchantable street-car ad.; knew a thousand diseases that would take a man off before he could blink, but couldn't sell a thousand-dollar tontine policy; knew the lives of our presidents as well as if he'd been raised with them, but couldn't place a set of the library of the fathers of the republic, though they were offered on little easy payments that made them come as easy as borrowing them from a friend. finally i hit on what seemed to be just the right thing. i figured out that any fellow who had such a heavy stock of information on hand, ought to be able to job it out to good advantage, and so i got him a place teaching. but it seemed that he'd learned so much about the best way of teaching boys, that he told his principal right on the jump that he was doing it all wrong, and that made him sore; and he knew so much about the dead languages, which was what he was hired to teach, that he forgot he was handling live boys, and as he couldn't tell it all to them in the regular time, he kept them after hours, and that made them sore and put stan out of a job again. the last i heard of him he was writing articles on why young men fail, and making a success of it, because failing was the one subject on which he was practical. i simply mention stan in passing as an example of the fact that it isn't so much knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little and how to use it that counts. your affectionate father, john graham. +----------------------------+ | no. 2 | +----------------------------+ | from john graham, at | | the union stock yards | | in chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at harvard | | university. | | | | mr. pierrepont's expense | | account has just passed | | under his father's eye, | | and has furnished him | | with a text for some | | plain particularities. | +----------------------------+ ii chicago, may 4, 189_dear pierrepont:_ the cashier has just handed me your expense account for the month, and it fairly makes a fellow hump-shouldered to look it over. when i told you that i wished you to get a liberal education, i didn't mean that i wanted to buy cambridge. of course the bills won't break me, but they will break you unless you are very, very careful. i have noticed for the last two years that your accounts have been growing heavier every month, but i haven't seen any signs of your taking honors to justify the increased operating expenses; and that is bad business--a good deal like feeding his weight in corn to a scalawag steer that won't fat up. i haven't said anything about this before, as i trusted a good deal to your native common-sense to keep you from making a fool of yourself in the way that some of these young fellows who haven't had to work for it do. but because i have sat tight, i don't want you to get it into your head that the old man's rich, and that he can stand it, because he won't stand it after you leave college. the sooner you adjust your spending to what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live together. the only sure way that a man can get rich quick is to have it given to him or to inherit it. you are not going to get rich that way--at least, not until after you have proved your ability to hold a pretty important position with the firm; and, of course, there is just one place from which a man can start for that position with graham & co. it doesn't make any difference whether he is the son of the old man or of the cellar boss--that place is the bottom. and the bottom in the office end of this business is a seat at the mailing-desk, with eight dollars every saturday night. i can't hand out any ready-made success to you. it would do you no good, and it would do the house harm. there is plenty of room at the top here, but there is no elevator in the building. starting, as you do, with a good education, you should be able to climb quicker than the fellow who hasn't got it; but there's going to be a time when you begin at the factory when you won't be able to lick stamps so fast as the other boys at the desk. yet the man who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write letters. naturally, that is the time when knowing whether the pie comes before the ice-cream, and how to run an automobile isn't going to be of any real use to you. i simply mention these things because i am afraid your ideas as to the basis on which you are coming with the house have swelled up a little in the east. i can give you a start, but after that you will have to dynamite your way to the front by yourself. it is all with the man. if you gave some fellows a talent wrapped in a napkin to start with in business, they would swap the talent for a gold brick and lose the napkin; and there are others that you could start out with just a napkin, who would set up with it in the dry-goods business in a small way, and then coax the other fellow's talent into it. i have pride enough to believe that you have the right sort of stuff in you, but i want to see some of it come out. you will never make a good merchant of yourself by reversing the order in which the lord decreed that we should proceed--learning the spending before the earning end of business. pay day is always a month off for the spend-thrift, and he is never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes to him. but a dollar is worth one hundred and six cents to a good business man, and he never spends the dollar. it's the man who keeps saving up and expenses down that buys an interest in the concern. that is where you are going to find yourself weak if your expense accounts don't lie; and they generally don't lie in that particular way, though baron munchausen was the first traveling man, and my drummers' bills still show his influence. i know that when a lot of young men get off by themselves, some of them think that recklessness with money brands them as good fellows, and that carefulness is meanness. that is the one end of a college education which is pure cussedness; and that is the one thing which makes nine business men out of ten hesitate to send their boys off to school. but on the other hand, that is the spot where a young man has the chance to show that he is not a light-weight. i know that a good many people say i am a pretty close proposition; that i make every hog which goes through my packing-house give up more lard than the lord gave him gross weight; that i have improved on nature to the extent of getting four hams out of an animal which began life with two; but you have lived with me long enough to know that my hand is usually in my pocket at the right time. now i want to say right here that the meanest man alive is the one who is generous with money that he has not had to sweat for, and that the boy who is a good fellow at some one else's expense would not work up into first-class fertilizer. that same ambition to be known as a good fellow has crowded my office with second-rate clerks, and they always will be second-rate clerks. if you have it, hold it down until you have worked for a year. then, if your ambition runs to hunching up all week over a desk, to earn eight dollars to blow on a few rounds of drinks for the boys on saturday night, there is no objection to your gratifying it; for i will know that the lord didn't intend you to be your own boss. [illustration: "_i have seen hundreds of boys go to europe who didn't bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes._"] you know how i began--i was started off with a kick, but that proved a kick up, and in the end every one since has lifted me a little bit higher. i got two dollars a week, and slept under the counter, and you can bet i knew just how many pennies there were in each of those dollars, and how hard the floor was. that is what you have got to learn. i remember when i was on the lakes, our schooner was passing out through the draw at buffalo when i saw little bill riggs, the butcher, standing up above me on the end of the bridge with a big roast of beef in his basket. they were a little short in the galley on that trip, so i called up to bill and he threw the roast down to me. i asked him how much, and he yelled back, "about a dollar." that was mighty good beef, and when we struck buffalo again on the return trip, i thought i would like a little more of it. so i went up to bill's shop and asked him for a piece of the same. but this time he gave me a little roast, not near so big as the other, and it was pretty tough and stringy. but when i asked him how much, he answered "about a dollar." he simply didn't have any sense of values, and that's the business man's sixth sense. bill has always been a big, healthy, hard-working man, but to-day he is very, very poor. the bills ain't all in the butcher business. i've got some of them right now in my office, but they will never climb over the railing that separates the clerks from the executives. yet if they would put in half the time thinking for the house that they give up to hatching out reasons why they ought to be allowed to overdraw their salary accounts, i couldn't keep them out of our private offices with a pole-ax, and i wouldn't want to; for they could double their salaries and my profits in a year. but i always lay it down as a safe proposition that the fellow who has to break open the baby's bank toward the last of the week for car-fare isn't going to be any russell sage when it comes to trading with the old man's money. he'd punch my bank account as full of holes as a carload of wild texans would a fool stockman that they'd got in a corner. now i know you'll say that i don't understand how it is; that you've got to do as the other fellows do; and that things have changed since i was a boy. there's nothing in it. adam invented all the different ways in which a young man can make a fool of himself, and the college yell at the end of them is just a frill that doesn't change essentials. the boy who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch a poor man's back all his life. he's the chap that's buying wheat at ninety-seven cents the day before the market breaks. they call him "the country" in the market reports, but the city's full of him. it's the fellow who has the spunk to think and act for himself, and sells short when prices hit the high c and the house is standing on its hind legs yelling for more, that sits in the directors' meetings when he gets on toward forty. we've got an old steer out at the packing-house that stands around at the foot of the runway leading up to the killing pens, looking for all the world like one of the village fathers sitting on the cracker box before the grocery--sort of sad-eyed, dreamy old cuss--always has two or three straws from his cud sticking out of the corner of his mouth. you never saw a steer that looked as if he took less interest in things. but by and by the boys drive a bunch of steers toward him, or cows maybe, if we're canning, and then you'll see old abe move off up that runway, sort of beckoning the bunch after him with that wicked old stump of a tail of his, as if there was something mighty interesting to steers at the top, and something that every texan and colorado, raw from the prairies, ought to have a look at to put a metropolitan finish on him. those steers just naturally follow along on up that runway and into the killing pens. but just as they get to the top, old abe, someways, gets lost in the crowd, and he isn't among those present when the gates are closed and the real trouble begins for his new friends. i never saw a dozen boys together that there wasn't an old abe among them. if you find your crowd following him, keep away from it. there are times when it's safest to be lonesome. use a little common-sense, caution and conscience. you can stock a store with those three commodities, when you get enough of them. but you've got to begin getting them young. they ain't catching after you toughen up a bit. you needn't write me if you feel yourself getting them. the symptoms will show in your expense account. good-by; life's too short to write letters and new york's calling me on the wire. your affectionate father, john graham. +-------------------------------+ | no. 3 | +-------------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | union stock yards in | | chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at harvard | | university. mr. pierrepont | | finds cambridge to his | | liking, and has suggested | | that he take a post-graduate | | course to fill up some | | gaps which he has found | | in his education. | +-------------------------------+ iii june 1, 189_dear pierrepont:_ no, i can't say that i think anything of your post-graduate course idea. you're not going to be a poet or a professor, but a packer, and the place to take a post-graduate course for that calling is in the packing-house. some men learn all they know from books; others from life; both kinds are narrow. the first are all theory; the second are all practice. it's the fellow who knows enough about practice to test his theories for blow-holes that gives the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it. there's a chance for everything you have learned, from latin to poetry, in the packing business, though we don't use much poetry here except in our street-car ads., and about the only time our products are given latin names is when the state board of health condemns them. so i think you'll find it safe to go short a little on the frills of education; if you want them bad enough you'll find a way to pick them up later, after business hours. the main thing is to get a start along right lines, and that is what i sent you to college for. i didn't expect you to carry off all the education in sight--i knew you'd leave a little for the next fellow. but i wanted you to form good mental habits, just as i want you to have clean, straight physical ones. because i was run through a threshing machine when i was a boy, and didn't begin to get the straw out of my hair till i was past thirty, i haven't any sympathy with a lot of these old fellows who go around bragging of their ignorance and saying that boys don't need to know anything except addition and the "best policy" brand of honesty. we started in a mighty different world, and we were all ignorant together. the lord let us in on the ground floor, gave us corner lots, and then started in to improve the adjacent property. we didn't have to know fractions to figure out our profits. now a merchant needs astronomy to see them, and when he locates them they are out somewhere near the fifth decimal place. there are sixteen ounces to the pound still, but two of them are wrapping paper in a good many stores. and there're just as many chances for a fellow as ever, but they're a little gun shy, and you can't catch them by any such coarse method as putting salt on their tails. thirty years ago, you could take an old muzzle-loader and knock over plenty of ducks in the city limits, and chicago wasn't cook county then, either. you can get them still, but you've got to go to kankakee and take a hammerless along. and when i started in the packing business it was all straight sailing--no frills--just turning hogs into hog meat--dry salt for the niggers down south and sugar-cured for the white folks up north. everything else was sausage, or thrown away. but when we get through with a hog nowadays, he's scattered through a hundred different cans and packages, and he's all accounted for. what we used to throw away is our profit. it takes doctors, lawyers, engineers, poets, and i don't know what, to run the business, and i reckon that improvements which call for parsons will be creeping in next. naturally, a young man who expects to hold his own when he is thrown in with a lot of men like these must be as clean and sharp as a hound's tooth, or some other fellow's simply going to eat him up. the first college man i ever hired was old john durham's son, jim. that was a good many years ago when the house was a much smaller affair. jim's father had a lot of money till he started out to buck the universe and corner wheat. and the boy took all the fancy courses and trimmings at college. the old man was mighty proud of jim. wanted him to be a literary fellow. but old durham found out what every one learns who gets his ambitions mixed up with number two red--that there's a heap of it lying around loose in the country. the bears did quick work and kept the cash wheat coming in so lively that one settling day half a dozen of us had to get under the market to keep it from going to everlasting smash. that day made young jim a candidate for a job. it didn't take him long to decide that the lord would attend to keeping up the visible supply of poetry, and that he had better turn his attention to the stocks of mess pork. next morning he was laying for me with a letter of introduction when i got to the office, and when he found that i wouldn't have a private secretary at any price, he applied for every other position on the premises right down to office boy. i told him i was sorry, but i couldn't do anything for him then; that we were letting men go, but i'd keep him in mind, and so on. the fact was that i didn't think a fellow with jim's training would be much good, anyhow. but jim hung on--said he'd taken a fancy to the house, and wanted to work for it. used to call by about twice a week to find out if anything had turned up. finally, after about a month of this, he wore me down so that i stopped him one day as he was passing me on the street. i thought i'd find out if he really was so red-hot to work as he pretended to be; besides, i felt that perhaps i hadn't treated the boy just right, as i had delivered quite a jag of that wheat to his father myself. "hello, jim," i called; "do you still want that job?" "yes, sir," he answered, quick as lightning. "well, i tell you how it is, jim," i said, looking up at him--he was one of those husky, lazy-moving six-footers--"i don't see any chance in the office, but i understand they can use another good, strong man in one of the loading gangs." i thought that would settle jim and let me out, for it's no joke lugging beef, or rolling barrels and tierces a hundred yards or so to the cars. but jim came right back at me with, "done. who'll i report to?" that sporty way of answering, as if he was closing a bet, made me surer than ever that he was not cut out for a butcher. but i told him, and off he started hot-foot to find the foreman. i sent word by another route to see that he got plenty to do. i forgot all about jim until about three months later, when his name was handed up to me for a new place and a raise in pay. it seemed that he had sort of abolished his job. after he had been rolling barrels a while, and the sport had ground down one of his shoulders a couple of inches lower than the other, he got to scheming around for a way to make the work easier, and he hit on an idea for a sort of overhead railroad system, by which the barrels could be swung out of the storerooms and run right along into the cars, and two or three men do the work of a gang. it was just as i thought. jim was lazy, but he had put the house in the way of saving so much money that i couldn't fire him. so i raised his salary, and made him an assistant timekeeper and checker. jim kept at this for three or four months, until his feet began to hurt him, i guess, and then he was out of a job again. it seems he had heard something of a new machine for registering the men, that did away with most of the timekeepers except the fellows who watched the machines, and he kept after the superintendent until he got him to put them in. of course he claimed a raise again for effecting such a saving, and we just had to allow it. i was beginning to take an interest in jim, so i brought him up into the office and set him to copying circular letters. we used to send out a raft of them to the trade. that was just before the general adoption of typewriters, when they were still in the experimental stage. but jim hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month before he had the writer's cramp, and began nosing around again. the first thing i knew he was sicking the agents for the new typewriting machine on to me, and he kept them pounding away until they had made me give them a trial. then it was all up with mister jim's job again. i raised his salary without his asking for it this time, and put him out on the road to introduce a new product that we were making--beef extract. jim made two trips without selling enough to keep them working overtime at the factory, and then he came into my office with a long story about how we were doing it all wrong. said we ought to go for the consumer by advertising, and make the trade come to us, instead of chasing it up. that was so like jim that i just laughed at first; besides, that sort of advertising was a pretty new thing then, and i was one of the old-timers who didn't take any stock in it. but jim just kept plugging away at me between trips, until finally i took him off the road and told him to go ahead and try it in a small way. jim pretty nearly scared me to death that first year. at last he had got into something that he took an interest in--spending money--and he just fairly wallowed in it. used to lay awake nights, thinking up new ways of getting rid of the old man's profits. and he found them. seemed as if i couldn't get away from graham's extract, and whenever i saw it i gagged, for i knew it was costing me money that wasn't coming back; but every time i started to draw in my horns jim talked to me, and showed me where there was a fortune waiting for me just around the corner. [illustration: "_i put jim durham out on the road to introduce a new product._"] graham's extract started out by being something that you could make beef-tea out of--that was all. but before jim had been fooling with it a month he had got his girl to think up a hundred different ways in which it could be used, and had advertised them all. it seemed there was nothing you could cook that didn't need a dash of it. he kept me between a chill and a sweat all the time. sometimes, but not often, i just _had_ to grin at his foolishness. i remember one picture he got out showing sixteen cows standing between something that looked like a letter-press, and telling how every pound or so of graham's extract contained the juice squeezed from a herd of steers. if an explorer started for the north pole, jim would send him a case of extract, and then advertise that it was the great heat-maker for cold climates; and if some other fellow started across africa he sent _him_ a case, too, and advertised what a bully drink it was served up with a little ice. he broke out in a new place every day, and every time he broke out it cost the house money. finally, i made up my mind to swallow the loss, and mister jim was just about to lose his job sure enough, when the orders for extract began to look up, and he got a reprieve; then he began to make expenses, and he got a pardon; and finally a rush came that left him high and dry in a permanent place. jim was all right in his way, but it was a new way, and i hadn't been broad-gauged enough to see that it was a better way. that was where i caught the connection between a college education and business. i've always made it a rule to buy brains, and i've learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised. the fellow who hasn't had the training may be just as smart, but he's apt to paw the air when he's reaching for ideas. i suppose you're asking why, if i'm so hot for education, i'm against this post-graduate course. but habits of thought ain't the only thing a fellow picks up at college. i see you've been elected president of your class. i'm glad the boys aren't down on you, but while the most popular man in his class isn't always a failure in business, being as popular as that takes up a heap of time. i noticed, too, when you were home easter, that you were running to sporty clothes and cigarettes. there's nothing criminal about either, but i don't hire sporty clerks at all, and the only part of the premises on which cigarette smoking is allowed is the fertilizer factory. i simply mention this in passing. i have every confidence in your ultimate good sense, and i guess you'll see the point without my elaborating with a meat ax my reasons for thinking that you've had enough college for the present. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 4 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, head | | of the house of graham | | & co., at the union stock | | yards in chicago, to his | | son, pierrepont graham, | | at the waldorf-astoria, | | in new york. mr. | | pierrepont has suggested | | the grand tour as a | | proper finish to his | | education. | +-----------------------------+ iv june 25, 189_dear pierrepont:_ your letter of the seventh twists around the point a good deal like a setter pup chasing his tail. but i gather from it that you want to spend a couple of months in europe before coming on here and getting your nose in the bull-ring. of course, you are your own boss now and you ought to be able to judge better than any one else how much time you have to waste, but it seems to me, on general principles, that a young man of twenty-two, who is physically and mentally sound, and who hasn't got a dollar and has never earned one, can't be getting on somebody's pay-roll too quick. and in this connection it is only fair to tell you that i have instructed the cashier to discontinue your allowance after july 15. that gives you two weeks for a vacation--enough to make a sick boy well, or a lazy one lazier. i hear a good deal about men who won't take vacations, and who kill themselves by overwork, but it's usually worry or whiskey. it's not what a man does during working-hours, but after them, that breaks down his health. a fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it. a clear mind is one that is swept clean of business at six o'clock every night and isn't opened up for it again until after the shutters are taken down next morning. some fellows leave the office at night and start out to whoop it up with the boys, and some go home to sit up with their troubles--they're both in bad company. they're the men who are always needing vacations, and never getting any good out of them. what every man does need once a year is a change of work--that is, if he has been curved up over a desk for fifty weeks and subsisting on birds and burgundy, he ought to take to fishing for a living and try bacon and eggs, with a little spring water, for dinner. but coming from harvard to the packing-house will give you change enough this year to keep you in good trim, even if you didn't have a fortnight's leeway to run loose. you will always find it a safe rule to take a thing just as quick as it is offered--especially a job. it is never easy to get one except when you don't want it; but when you have to get work, and go after it with a gun, you'll find it as shy as an old crow that every farmer in the county has had a shot at. when i was a young fellow and out of a place, i always made it a rule to take the first job that offered, and to use it for bait. you can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass will take your minnow. a good fat bass will tempt an otter, and then you've got something worth skinning. of course, there's no danger of your not being able to get a job with the house--in fact, there is no real way in which you can escape getting one; but i don't like to see you shy off every time the old man gets close to you with the halter. i want you to learn right at the outset not to play with the spoon before you take the medicine. putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible. procrastination is the longest word in the language, but there's only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet. old dick stover, for whom i once clerked in indiana, was the worst hand at procrastinating that i ever saw. dick was a powerful hearty eater, and no one ever loved meal-time better, but he used to keep turning over in bed mornings for just another wink and staving off getting up, until finally his wife combined breakfast and dinner on him, and he only got two meals a day. he was a mighty religious man, too, but he got to putting off saying his prayers until after he was in bed, and then he would keep passing them along until his mind was clear of worldly things, and in the end he would drop off to sleep without saying them at all. what between missing the sunday morning service and never being seen on his knees, the first thing dick knew he was turned out of the church. he had a pretty good business when i first went with him, but he would keep putting off firing his bad clerks until they had lit out with the petty cash; and he would keep putting off raising the salaries of his good ones until his competitor had hired them away. finally, he got so that he wouldn't discount his bills, even when he had the money; and when they came due he would give notes so as to keep from paying out his cash a little longer. running a business on those lines is, of course, equivalent to making a will in favor of the sheriff and committing suicide so that he can inherit. the last i heard of dick he was ninety-three years old and just about to die. that was ten years ago, and i'll bet he's living yet. i simply mention dick in passing as an instance of how habits rule a man's life. there is one excuse for every mistake a man can make, but only one. when a fellow makes the same mistake twice he's got to throw up both hands and own up to carelessness or cussedness. of course, i knew that you would make a fool of yourself pretty often when i sent you to college, and i haven't been disappointed. but i expected you to narrow down the number of combinations possible by making a different sort of a fool of yourself every time. that is the important thing, unless a fellow has too lively an imagination, or has none at all. you are bound to try this european foolishness sooner or later, but if you will wait a few years, you will approach it in an entirely different spirit--and you will come back with a good deal of respect for the people who have sense enough to stay at home. [illustration: "_old dick stover was the worst hand at procrastinating that i ever saw._"] i piece out from your letter that you expect a few months on the other side will sort of put a polish on you. i don't want to seem pessimistic, but i have seen hundreds of boys graduate from college and go over with the same idea, and they didn't bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes. seeing the world is like charity--it covers a multitude of sins, and, like charity, it ought to begin at home. culture is not a matter of a change of climate. you'll hear more about browning to the square foot in the mississippi valley than you will in england. and there's as much art talk on the lake front as in the latin quarter. it may be a little different, but it's there. i went to europe once myself. i was pretty raw when i left chicago, and i was pretty sore when i got back. coming and going i was simply sick. in london, for the first time in my life, i was taken for an easy thing. every time i went into a store there was a bull movement. the clerks all knocked off their regular work and started in to mark up prices. they used to tell me that they didn't have any gold-brick men over there. so they don't. they deal in pictures--old masters, they call them. i bought two--you know the ones--those hanging in the waiting-room at the stock yards; and when i got back i found out that they had been painted by a measly little fellow who went to paris to study art, after bill harris had found out that he was no good as a settling clerk. i keep 'em to remind myself that there's no fool like an old american fool when he gets this picture paresis. the fellow who tried to fit me out with a coat-of-arms didn't find me so easy. i picked mine when i first went into business for myself--a charging steer--and it's registered at washington. it's my trade-mark, of course, and that's the only coat-of-arms an american merchant has any business with. it's penetrated to every quarter of the globe in the last twenty years, and every soldier in the world has carried it--in his knapsack. i take just as much pride in it as the fellow who inherits his and can't find any place to put it, except on his carriage door and his letter-head--and it's a heap more profitable. it's got so now that every jobber in the trade knows that it stands for good quality, and that's all any englishman's coat-of-arms can stand for. of course, an american's can't stand for anything much--generally it's the burned-in-the-skin brand of a snob. after the way some of the descendants of the old new york dutchmen with the hoe and the english general storekeepers have turned out, i sometimes feel a little uneasy about what my great-grandchildren may do, but we'll just stick to the trade-mark and try to live up to it while the old man's in the saddle. i simply mention these things in a general way. i have no fears for you after you've been at work for a few years, and have struck an average between the packing-house and harvard; then if you want to graze over a wider range it can't hurt you. but for the present you will find yourself pretty busy trying to get into the winning class. your affectionate father, john graham. +------------------------------+ | no. 5 | +------------------------------+ | from john graham, head | | of the house of graham & | | co., at the union stock | | yards in chicago, to his | | son, pierrepont graham, | | at lake moosgatchemawamuc, | | in the maine woods. mr. | | pierrepont has written to | | his father withdrawing | | his suggestion. | +------------------------------+ v july 7, 189_dear pierrepont:_ yours of the fourth has the right ring, and it says more to the number of words used than any letter that i have ever received from you. i remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it _instead_ of thought. a business man's conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. they are: have something to say. say it. stop talking. beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the second. i maintain a legal department here, and it costs a lot of money, but it's to keep me from going to law. it's all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. you've got to preach short sermons to catch sinners; and deacons won't believe they need long ones themselves. give fools the first and women the last word. the meat's always in the middle of the sandwich. of course, a little butter on either side of it doesn't do any harm if it's intended for a man who likes butter. remember, too, that it's easier to look wise than to talk wisdom. say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man's listening he isn't telling on himself and he's flattering the fellow who is. give most men a good listener and most women enough note-paper and they'll tell all they know. money talks--but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive. poverty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say. i simply mention these things in passing because i'm afraid you're apt to be the fellow who's doing the talking; just as i'm a little afraid that you're sometimes like the hungry drummer at the dollar-a-day house--inclined to kill your appetite by eating the cake in the centre of the table before the soup comes on. of course, i'm glad to see you swing into line and show the proper spirit about coming on here and going to work; but you mustn't get yourself all "het up" before you take the plunge, because you're bound to find the water pretty cold at first. i've seen a good many young fellows pass through and out of this office. the first week a lot of them go to work they're in a sweat for fear they'll be fired; and the second week for fear they won't be. by the third, a boy that's no good has learned just how little work he can do and keep his job; while the fellow who's got the right stuff in him is holding down his own place with one hand and beginning to reach for the job just ahead of him with the other. i don't mean that he's neglecting his work; but he's beginning to take notice, and that's a mighty hopeful sign in either a young clerk or a young widow. you've got to handle the first year of your business life about the way you would a trotting horse. warm up a little before going to the post--not enough to be in a sweat, but just enough to be limber and eager. never start off at a gait that you can't improve on, but move along strong and well in hand to the quarter. let out a notch there, but take it calm enough up to the half not to break, and hard enough not to fall back into the ruck. at the three-quarters you ought to be going fast enough to poke your nose out of the other fellow's dust, and running like the limited in the stretch. keep your eyes to the front all the time, and you won't be so apt to shy at the little things by the side of the track. head up, tail over the dashboard--that's the way the winners look in the old pictures of maud s. and dexter and jay-eye-see. and that's the way i want to see you swing by the old man at the end of the year, when we hoist the numbers of the fellows who are good enough to promote and pick out the salaries which need a little sweetening. i've always taken a good deal of stock in what you call "blood-will-tell" if you're a methodist, or "heredity" if you're a unitarian; and i don't want you to come along at this late day and disturb my religious beliefs. a man's love for his children and his pride are pretty badly snarled up in this world, and he can't always pick them apart. i think a heap of you and a heap of the house, and i want to see you get along well together. to do that you must start right. it's just as necessary to make a good first impression in business as in courting. you'll read a good deal about "love at first sight" in novels, and there may be something in it for all i know; but i'm dead certain there's no such thing as love at first sight in business. a man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having. there's nothing comes without calling in this world, and after you've called you've generally got to go and fetch it yourself. our bright young men have discovered how to make a pretty good article of potted chicken, and they don't need any help from hens, either; and you can smell the clover in our butterine if you've developed the poetic side of your nose; but none of the boys have been able to discover anything that will pass as a substitute for work, even in a boarding-house, though i'll give some of them credit for having tried pretty hard. [illustration: "_charlie chase told me he was president of the klondike exploring, gold prospecting and immigration company._"] i remember when i was selling goods for old josh jennings, back in the sixties, and had rounded up about a thousand in a savings-bank--a mighty hard thousand, that came a dollar or so at a time, and every dollar with a little bright mark where i had bit it--i roomed with a dry-goods clerk named charlie chase. charlie had a hankering to be a rich man; but somehow he could never see any connection between that hankering and his counter, except that he'd hint to me sometimes about an heiress who used to squander her father's money shamefully for the sake of having charlie wait on her. but when it came to getting rich outside the dry-goods business and getting rich in a hurry, charlie was the man. along about tuesday night--he was paid on saturday--he'd stay at home and begin to scheme. he'd commence at eight o'clock and start a magazine, maybe, and before midnight he'd be turning away subscribers because his presses couldn't print a big enough edition. or perhaps he wouldn't feel literary that night, and so he'd invent a system for speculating in wheat and go on pyramiding his purchases till he'd made the best that cheops did look like a five-cent plate of ice cream. all he ever needed was a few hundred for a starter, and to get that he'd decide to let me in on the ground floor. i want to say right here that whenever any one offers to let you in on the ground floor it's a pretty safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden. i never exactly refused to lend charlie the capital he needed, but we generally compromised on half a dollar next morning, when he was in a hurry to make the store to keep from getting docked. he dropped by the office last week, a little bent and seedy, but all in a glow and trembling with excitement in the old way. told me he was president of the klondike exploring, gold prospecting and immigration company, with a capital of ten millions. i guessed that he was the board of directors and the capital stock and the exploring and the prospecting and the immigrating, too--everything, in fact, except the business card he'd sent in; for charlie always had a gift for nosing out printers who'd trust him. said that for the sake of old times he'd let me have a few thousand shares at fifty cents, though they would go to par in a year. in the end we compromised on a loan of ten dollars, and charlie went away happy. the swamps are full of razor-backs like charlie, fellows who'd rather make a million a night in their heads than five dollars a day in cash. i have always found it cheaper to lend a man of that build a little money than to hire him. as a matter of fact, i have never known a fellow who was smart enough to think for the house days and for himself nights. a man who tries that is usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn't much good to either; but if there's any choice the house gets the worst of it. i simply mention these little things in a general way. if you can take my word for some of them you are going to save yourself a whole lot of trouble. there are others which i don't speak of because life is too short and because it seems to afford a fellow a heap of satisfaction to pull the trigger for himself to see if it is loaded; and a lesson learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never being forgotten. you report to milligan at the yards at eight sharp on the fifteenth. you'd better figure on being here on the fourteenth, because milligan's a pretty touchy irishman, and i may be able to give you a point or two that will help you to keep on his mellow side. he's apt to feel a little sore at taking on in his department a man whom he hasn't passed on. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 6 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, en route | | to texas, to pierrepont | | graham, care of graham & | | co., union stock yards, | | chicago. mr. pierrepont | | has, entirely without | | intention, caused a little | | confusion in the mails, | | and it has come to his | | father's notice in the | | course of business. | +-----------------------------+ vi private car parnassus, aug. 15, 189_dear pierrepont:_ perhaps it's just as well that i had to hurry last night to make my train, and so had no time to tell you some things that are laying mighty heavy on my mind this morning. jim donnelly, of the donnelly provision company, came into the office in the afternoon, with a fool grin on his fat face, to tell me that while he appreciated a note which he had just received in one of the firm's envelopes, beginning "dearest," and containing an invitation to the theatre to-morrow night, it didn't seem to have any real bearing on his claim for shortage on the last carload of sweet pickled hams he had bought from us. of course, i sent for milligan and went for him pretty rough for having a mailing clerk so no-account as to be writing personal letters in office hours, and such a blunderer as to mix them up with the firm's correspondence. milligan just stood there like a dumb irishman and let me get through and go back and cuss him out all over again, with some trimmings that i had forgotten the first time, before he told me that you were the fellow who had made the bull. naturally, i felt pretty foolish, and, while i tried to pass it off with something about your still being green and raw, the ice was mighty thin, and you had the old man running tiddledies. it didn't make me feel any sweeter about the matter to hear that when milligan went for you, and asked what you supposed donnelly would think of that sort of business, you told him to "consider the feelings of the girl who got our brutal refusal to allow a claim for a few hundredweight of hams." i haven't any special objection to your writing to girls and telling them that they are the real sugar-cured article, for, after all, if you overdo it, it's your breach-of-promise suit, but you must write before eight or after six. i have bought the stretch between those hours. your time is money--my money--and when you take half an hour of it for your own purposes, that is just a petty form of petty larceny. milligan tells me that you are quick to learn, and that you can do a powerful lot of work when you've a mind to; but he adds that it's mighty seldom your mind takes that particular turn. your attention may be on the letters you are addressing, or you may be in a comatose condition mentally; he never quite knows until the returns come from the dead-letter office. a man can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right. it doesn't make any difference how mean and trifling the thing he's doing may seem, that's the big thing and the only thing for him just then. business is like oil--it won't mix with anything but business. you can resolve everything in the world, even a great fortune, into atoms. and the fundamental principles which govern the handling of postage stamps and of millions are exactly the same. they are the common law of business, and the whole practice of commerce is founded on them. they are so simple that a fool can't learn them; so hard that a lazy man won't. boys are constantly writing me for advice about how to succeed, and when i send them my receipt they say that i am dealing out commonplace generalities. of course i am, but that's what the receipt calls for, and if a boy will take these commonplace generalities and knead them into his job, the mixture'll be cake. [illustration: "_jim donnelly of the donnelly provision company came into my office with a fool grin on his fat face._"] once a fellow's got the primary business virtues cemented into his character, he's safe to build on. but when a clerk crawls into the office in the morning like a sick setter pup, and leaps from his stool at night with the spring of a tiger, i'm a little afraid that if i sent him off to take charge of a branch house he wouldn't always be around when customers were. he's the sort of a chap who would hold back the sun an hour every morning and have it gain two every afternoon if the lord would give him the same discretionary powers that he gave joshua. and i have noticed that he's the fellow who invariably takes a timekeeper as an insult. he's pretty numerous in business offices; in fact, if the glance of the human eye could affect a clockface in the same way that a man's country cousins affect their city welcome, i should have to buy a new timepiece for the office every morning. i remember when i was a boy, we used to have a pretty lively camp-meeting every summer, and elder hoover, who was accounted a powerful exhorter in our parts, would wrastle with the sinners and the backsliders. there was one old chap in the town--bill budlong--who took a heap of pride in being the simon pure cuss. bill was always the last man to come up to the mourners' bench at the camp-meeting and the first one to backslide when it was over. used to brag around about what a hold satan had on him and how his sin was the original brand, direct from adam, put up in cans to keep, and the can-opener lost. doc hoover would get the whole town safe in the fold and then have to hold extra meetings for a couple of days to snake in that miserable bill; but, in the end, he always got religion and got it hard. for a month or two afterward, he'd make the chills run down the backs of us children in prayer-meeting, telling how he had probably been the triflingest and orneriest man alive before he was converted. then, along toward hog-killing time, he'd backslide, and go around bragging that he was standing so close to the mouth of the pit that his whiskers smelt of brimstone. he kept this up for about ten years, getting vainer and vainer of his staying qualities, until one summer, when the elder had rounded up all the likeliest sinners in the bunch, he announced that the meetings were over for that year. you never saw a sicker-looking man than bill when he heard that there wasn't going to be any extra session for him. he got up and said he reckoned another meeting would fetch him; that he sort of felt the clutch of old satan loosening; but doc hoover was firm. then bill begged to have a special deacon told off to wrastle with him, but doc wouldn't listen to that. said he'd been wasting time enough on him for ten years to save a county, and he had just about made up his mind to let him try his luck by himself; that what he really needed more than religion was common-sense and a conviction that time in this world was too valuable to be frittered away. if he'd get that in his head he didn't think he'd be so apt to trifle with eternity; and if he didn't get it, religion wouldn't be of any special use to him. a big merchant finds himself in doc hoover's fix pretty often. there are too many likely young sinners in his office to make it worth while to bother long with the bills. very few men are worth wasting time on beyond a certain point, and that point is soon reached with a fellow who doesn't show any signs of wanting to help. naturally, a green man always comes to a house in a pretty subordinate position, and it isn't possible to make so much noise with a firecracker as with a cannon. but you can tell a good deal by what there is left of the boy, when you come to inventory him on the fifth of july, whether he'll be safe to trust with a cannon next year. it isn't the little extra money that you may make for the house by learning the fundamental business virtues which counts so much as it is the effect that it has on your character and that of those about you, and especially on the judgment of the old man when he's casting around for the fellow to fill the vacancy just ahead of you. he's pretty apt to pick some one who keeps separate ledger accounts for work and for fun, who gives the house sixteen ounces to the pound, and, on general principles, to pass by the one who is late at the end where he ought to be early, and early at the end where he ought to be late. i simply mention these things in passing, but, frankly, i am afraid that you have a streak of the bill in you; and you can't be a good clerk, let alone a partner, until you get it out. i try not to be narrow when i'm weighing up a young fellow, and to allow for soakage and leakage, and then to throw in a little for good feeling; but i don't trade with a man whom i find deliberately marking up the weights on me. this is a fine country we're running through, but it's a pity that it doesn't raise more hogs. it seems to take a farmer a long time to learn that the best way to sell his corn is on the hoof. your affectionate father, john graham. p.s. i just had to allow donnelly his claim on those hams, though i was dead sure our weights were right, and it cost the house sixty dollars. but your fool letter took all the snap out of our argument. i get hot every time i think of it. +------------------------------+ | no. 7 | +------------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | omaha branch of graham & | | co., to pierrepont graham, | | at the union stock yards, | | chicago. mr. pierrepont | | hasn't found the methods | | of the worthy milligan | | altogether to his liking, | | and he has commented | | rather freely on them. | +------------------------------+ vii omaha, september 1, 189_dear pierrepont:_ yours of the 30th ultimo strikes me all wrong. i don't like to hear you say that you can't work under milligan or any other man, for it shows a fundamental weakness. and then, too, the house isn't interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in how he likes you. i understand all about milligan. he's a cross, cranky old irishman with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with the bull-stick six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the sermon; who puts the black-snake on a clerk's hide when he sends a letter to oshkosh that ought to go to kalamazoo, and begs him off when the old man wants to have him fired for it. altogether he's a hard, crabbed, generous, soft-hearted, loyal, bully old boy, who's been with the house since we took down the shutters for the first time, and who's going to stay with it till we put them up for the last time. but all that apart, you want to get it firmly fixed in your mind that you're going to have a milligan over you all your life, and if it isn't a milligan it will be a jones or a smith, and the chances are that you'll find them both harder to get along with than this old fellow. and if it isn't milligan or jones or smith, and you ain't a butcher, but a parson or a doctor, or even the president of the united states, it'll be a way-back deacon, or the undertaker, or the machine. there isn't any such thing as being your own boss in this world unless you're a tramp, and then there's the constable. like the old man if you can, but give him no cause to dislike you. keep your self-respect at any cost, and your upper lip stiff at the same figure. criticism can properly come only from above, and whenever you discover that your boss is no good you may rest easy that the man who pays his salary shares your secret. learn to give back a bit from the base-burner, to let the village fathers get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in range, and you'll find them making a little room for you in turn. old men have tender feet, and apologies are poor salve for aching corns. remember that when you're in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you're in the wrong you can't afford to lose it. when you've got an uncertain cow it's all o.k. to tie a figure eight in her tail, if you ain't thirsty, and it's excitement you're after; but if you want peace and her nine quarts, you will naturally approach her from the side, and say, so-boss, in about the same tone that you would use if you were asking your best girl to let you hold her hand. of course, you want to be sure of your natural history facts and learn to distinguish between a cow that's a kicker, but whose intentions are good if she's approached with proper respect, and a hooker, who is vicious on general principles, and any way you come at her. there's never any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute or human. the only safe place is the other side of the fence or the top of the nearest tree. [illustration: "_bill budlong was always the last man to come up to the mourners' bench._"] when i was clerking in missouri, a fellow named jeff hankins moved down from wisconsin and bought a little clearing just outside the town. jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, and so we learned a heap about how things were done in wisconsin, but he didn't pick up much information about the habits of our missouri fauna. when it came to cows, he had had a liberal education and he made out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing time and jeff naturally bought a mule--a little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy as if they ran on ball-bearings. her owner didn't give her a very good character, but jeff was too busy telling how much he knew about horses to pay much attention to what anybody was saying about mules. so finally the seller turned her loose in jeff's lot, told him he wouldn't have any trouble catching her if he approached her right, and hurried off out of range. next morning at sunup jeff picked out a bridle and started off whistling buffalo gals--he was a powerful pretty whistler and could do the mocking bird with variations--to catch the mule and begin his plowing. the animal was feeding as peaceful as a water-color picture, and she didn't budge; but when jeff began to get nearer, her ears dropped back along her neck as if they had lead in them. he knew that symptom and so he closed up kind of cautious, aiming for her at right angles and gurgling, "muley, muley, here muley; that's a good muley," sort of soothing and caressing-like. still she didn't stir and jeff got right up to her and put one arm over her back and began to reach forward with the bridle, when something happened. he never could explain just what it was, but we judged from the marks on his person that the mule had reached forward and kicked the seat of his trousers with one of her prehensile hind feet; and had reached back and caught him on the last button of his waistcoat with one of her limber fore feet; and had twisted around her elastic neck and bit off a mouthful of his hair. when jeff regained consciousness, he reckoned that the only really safe way to approach a mule was to drop on it from a balloon. i simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that there are certain animals with which the lord didn't intend white men to fool. and you will find that, as a rule, the human varieties of them are not the fellows who go for you rough-shod, like milligan, when you're wrong. it's when you come across one of those gentlemen who have more oil in their composition than any two-legged animal has a right to have, that you should be on the lookout for concealed deadly weapons. i don't mean that you should distrust a man who is affable and approachable, but you want to learn to distinguish between him and one who is too affable and too approachable. the adverb makes the difference between a good and a bad fellow. the bunco men aren't all at the county fair, and they don't all operate with the little shells and the elusive pea. when a packer has learned all that there is to learn about quadrupeds, he knows only one-eighth of his business; the other seven-eighths, and the important seven-eighths, has to do with the study of bipeds. i dwell on this because i am a little disappointed that you should have made such a mistake in sizing up milligan. he isn't the brightest man in the office, but he is loyal to me and to the house, and when you have been in business as long as i have you will be inclined to put a pretty high value on loyalty. it is the one commodity that hasn't any market value, and it's the one that you can't pay too much for. you can trust any number of men with your money, but mighty few with your reputation. half the men who are with the house on pay day are against it the other six. a good many young fellows come to me looking for jobs, and start in by telling me what a mean house they have been working for; what a cuss to get along with the senior partner was; and how little show a bright, progressive clerk had with him. i never get very far with a critter of that class, because i know that he wouldn't like me or the house if he came to work for us. i don't know anything that a young business man ought to keep more entirely to himself than his dislikes, unless it is his likes. it's generally expensive to have either, but it's bankruptcy to tell about them. it's all right to say nothing about the dead but good, but it's better to apply the rule to the living, and especially to the house which is paying your salary. just one word before i close, as old doc hoover used to say, when he was coming into the stretch, but still a good ways off from the benediction. i have noticed that you are inclined to be a little chesty and starchy around the office. of course, it's good business, when a fellow hasn't much behind his forehead, to throw out his chest and attract attention to his shirt-front. but as you begin to meet the men who have done something that makes them worth meeting you will find that there are no "keep off the grass" or "beware of the dog" signs around their premises, and that they don't motion to the orchestra to play slow music while they talk. superiority makes every man feel its equal. it is courtesy without condescension; affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity without snide. it weighs sixteen ounces to the pound without the package, and it doesn't need a four-colored label to make it go. we are coming home from here. i am a little disappointed in the showing that this house has been making. pound for pound it is not getting nearly so much out of its hogs as we are in chicago. i don't know just where the leak is, but if they don't do better next month i am coming back here with a shotgun, and there's going to be a pretty heavy mortality among our head men. your affectionate father, john graham. +------------------------------+ | no. 8 | +------------------------------+ | from john graham, at hot | | springs, arkansas, to his | | son, pierrepont, at the | | union stock yards in | | chicago. mr. pierrepont | | has just been promoted | | from the mailing to the | | billing desk and, in | | consequence, his father | | is feeling rather "mellow" | | toward him. | +------------------------------+ viii hot springs, january 15, 189_dear pierrepont:_ they've run me through the scalding vats here till they've pretty nearly taken all the hair off my hide, but that or something else has loosened up my joints so that they don't squeak any more when i walk. the doctor says he'll have my rheumatism cured in thirty days, so i guess you can expect me home in about a fortnight. for he's the breed of doctor that is always two weeks ahead of his patients' condition when they're poor, and two weeks behind it when they're rich. he calls himself a specialist, which means that it costs me ten dollars every time he has a look in at my tongue, against two that i would pay the family doctor for gratifying his curiosity. but i guess this specialist business is about the only outlet for marketing the surplus of young doctors. reminds me of the time when we were piling up canned corned beef in stock faster than people would eat it, and a big drought happened along in texas and began driving the canners in to the packing-house quicker than we could tuck them away in tin. jim durham tried to "stimulate the consumption," as he put it, by getting out a nice little booklet called, "a hundred dainty dishes from a can," and telling how to work off corned beef on the family in various disguises; but, after he had schemed out ten different combinations, the other ninety turned out to be corned-beef hash. so that was no use. but one day we got together and had a nice, fancy, appetizing label printed, and we didn't economize on the gilt--a picture of a steer so fat that he looked as if he'd break his legs if they weren't shored up pretty quick with props, and with blue ribbons tied to his horns. we labeled it "blue ribbon beef--for fancy family trade," and charged an extra ten cents a dozen for the cans on which that special label was pasted. of course, people just naturally wanted it. there's nothing helps convince some men that a thing has merit like a little gold on the label. and it's pretty safe to bet that if a fellow needs a six or seven-syllabled word to describe his profession, he's a corn doctor when you come to look him up in the dictionary. and then you'll generally find him in the back part of the book where they tuck away the doubtful words. but that isn't what i started out to say. i want to tell you that i was very, very glad to learn from your letter that you had been promoted to the billing desk. i have felt all along that when you got a little of the nonsense tried out of you there would be a residue of common-sense, and i am glad to have your boss back up my judgment. there's two things you just naturally don't expect from human nature--that the widow's tombstone estimate of the departed, on which she is trying to convince the neighbors against their better judgment that he went to heaven, and the father's estimate of the son, on which he is trying to pass him along into a good salary, will be conservative. i had that driven into my mind and spiked down when i hired the widow's son a few years ago. his name was clarence--clarence st. clair hicks--and his father used to keep books for me when he wasn't picking the winners at washington park or figuring out the batting averages of the chicagos. he was one of those quick men who always have their books posted up half an hour before closing time for three weeks of the month, and spend the evenings of the fourth hunting up the eight cents that they are out on the trial balance. when he died his wife found that his life insurance had lapsed the month before, and so she brought clarence down to the office and asked me to give him a job. clarence wasn't exactly a pretty boy; in fact, he looked to me like another of his father's bad breaks; but his mother seemed to think a heap of him. i learned that he would have held the belt in his sunday-school for long-distance verse-reciting if the mother of one of the other boys hadn't fixed the superintendent, and that it had taken a general conspiracy of the teachers in his day-school to keep him from walking off with the good-conduct medal. i couldn't just reconcile those statements with clarence's face, but i accepted him at par and had him passed along to the head errand boy. his mother cried a little when she saw him marched off, and asked me to see that he was treated kindly and wasn't bullied by the bigger boys, because he had been "raised a pet." a number of unusual things happened in the offices that morning, and the head office boy thought clarence might be able to explain some of them, but he had an alibi ready every time--even when a bookkeeper found the vault filled with cigarette smoke and clarence in it hunting for something he couldn't describe. but as he was a new boy, no one was disposed to bear down on him very hard, so his cigarettes were taken away from him and he was sent back to his bench with a warning that he had used up all his explanations. along toward noon, a big boston customer came in with his little boy--a nice, plump, stall-fed youngster, with black velvet pants and hair that was just a little longer than was safe in the stock-yards district. and while we were talking business, the kid wandered off to the coat-room, where the errand boys were eating lunch, which was a pretty desperate place for a boy with velvet pants on to go. [illustration: "_clarence looked to me like another of his father's bad breaks._"] as far as we could learn from willie when he came out of his convulsions, the boys had been very polite to him and had insisted on his joining in a new game which clarence had just invented, called playing pig-sticker. and, because he was company, clarence told him that he could be the pig. willie didn't know just what being the pig meant, but, as he told his father, it didn't sound very nice and he was afraid he wouldn't like it. so he tried to pass along the honor to some one else, but clarence insisted that it was "hot stuff to be the pig," and before willie could rightly judge what was happening to him, one end of a rope had been tied around his left ankle and the other end had been passed over a transom bar, and he was dangling headforemost in the air, while clarence threatened his jugular with a lath sword. that was when he let out the yell which brought his father and me on the jump and scattered the boys all over the stock yards. willie's father canceled his bologna contract and marched off muttering something about "degrading surroundings brutalizing the young;" and clarence's mother wrote me that i was a bad old man who had held her husband down all his life and now wouldn't give her son a show. for, naturally, after that little incident, i had told the boy who had been raised a pet that he had better go back to the menagerie. i simply mention clarence in passing as an instance of why i am a little slow to trust my judgment on my own. i have always found that, whenever i thought a heap of anything i owned, there was nothing like getting the other fellow's views expressed in figures; and the other fellow is usually a pessimist when he's buying. the lady on the dollar is the only woman who hasn't any sentiment in her make-up. and if you really want a look at the solid facts of a thing you must strain off the sentiment first. i put you under milligan to get a view of you through his eyes. if he says that you are good enough to be a billing clerk, and to draw twelve dollars a week, i guess there's no doubt about it. for he's one of those men that never show any real enthusiasm except when they're cussing. naturally, it's a great satisfaction to see a streak or two of business ability beginning to show under the knife, because when it comes closing time for me it will make it a heap easier to know that some one who bears the name will take down the shutters in the morning. boys are a good deal like the pups that fellows sell on street corners--they don't always turn out as represented. you buy a likely setter pup and raise a spotted coach dog from it, and the promising son of an honest butcher is just as like as not to turn out a poet or a professor. i want to say in passing that i have no real prejudice against poets, but i believe that, if you're going to be a milton, there's nothing like being a mute, inglorious one, as some fellow who was a little sore on the poetry business once put it. of course, a packer who understands something about the versatility of cottonseed oil need never turn down orders for lard because the run of hogs is light, and a father who understands human nature can turn out an imitation parson from a boy whom the lord intended to go on the board of trade. but on general principles it's best to give your cottonseed oil a latin name and to market it on its merits, and to let your boy follow his bent, even if it leads him into the wheat pit. if a fellow has got poetry in him it's bound to come out sooner or later in the papers or the street cars; and the longer you keep it bottled up the harder it comes, and the longer it takes the patient to recover. there's no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. and the only way to show a fellow that he's chosen the wrong business is to let him try it. if it really is the wrong thing you won't have to argue with him to quit, and if it isn't you haven't any right to. speaking of bull-pups that turned out to be terriers naturally calls to mind the case of my old friend jeremiah simpkins' son. there isn't a solider man in the boston leather trade than jeremiah, nor a bigger scamp that the law can't touch than his son ezra. there isn't an ounce of real meanness in ezra's whole body, but he's just naturally and unintentionally a maverick. when he came out of college his father thought that a few years' experience in the hide department of graham & co. would be a good thing for him before he tackled the leather business. so i wrote to send him on and i would give him a job, supposing, of course, that i was getting a yearling of the steady, old, reliable simpkins strain. i was a little uneasy when ezra reported, because he didn't just look as if he had had a call to leather. he was a tall, spare new englander, with one of those knobby foreheads which has been pushed out by the overcrowding of the brain, or bulged by the thickening of the skull, according as you like or dislike the man. his manners were easy or familiar by the same standard. he told me right at the start that, while he didn't know just what he wanted to do, he was dead sure that it wasn't the leather business. it seemed that he had said the same thing to his father and that the old man had answered, "tut, tut," and told him to forget it and to learn hides. simpkins learned all that he wanted to know about the packing industry in thirty days, and i learned all that i wanted to know about ezra in the same time. pork-packing seemed to be the only thing that he wasn't interested in. i got his resignation one day just five minutes before the one which i was having written out for him was ready; for i will do simpkins the justice to say that there was nothing slow about him. he and his father split up, temporarily, over it, and, of course, it cost me the old man's trade and friendship. i want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends. i lost sight of simpkins for a while, and then he turned up at the office one morning as friendly and familiar as ever. said he was a reporter and wanted to interview me on the december wheat deal. of course, i wouldn't talk on that, but i gave him a little fatherly advice--told him he would sleep in a hall bedroom all his life if he didn't quit his foolishness and go back to his father, though i didn't really believe it. he thanked me and went off and wrote a column about what i might have said about december wheat, and somehow gave the impression that i had said it. the next i heard of simpkins he was dead. the associated press dispatches announced it, the cuban junta confirmed it, and last of all, a long dispatch from simpkins himself detailed the circumstances leading up to the "atrocity," as the headlines in his paper called it. i got a long wire from ezra's father asking me to see the managing editor and get at the facts for him. it seemed that the paper had thought a heap of simpkins, and that he had been sent out to cuba as a correspondent, and stationed with the insurgent army. simpkins in cuba had evidently lived up to the reputation of simpkins in chicago. when there was any news he sent it, and when there wasn't he just made news and sent that along. the first word of his death had come in his own letter, brought across on a filibustering steamer and wired on from jacksonville. it told, with close attention to detail--something he had learned since he left me--how he had strayed away from the little band of insurgents with which he had been out scouting and had blundered into the spanish lines. he had been promptly made a prisoner, and, despite his papers proving his american citizenship, and the nature of his job, and the red cross on his sleeve, he had been tried by drumhead court martial and sentenced to be shot at dawn. all this he had written out, and then, that his account might be complete, he had gone on and imagined his own execution. this was written in a sort of pigeon, or perhaps you would call it black spanish, english, and let on to be the work of the eyewitness to whom simpkins had confided his letter. he had been the sentry over the prisoner, and for a small bribe in hand and the promise of a larger one from the paper, he had turned his back on simpkins while he wrote out the story, and afterward had deserted and carried it to the cuban lines. the account ended: "then, as the order to fire was given by the lieutenant, seã±or simpkins raised his eyes toward heaven and cried: 'i protest in the name of my american citizenship!'" at the end of the letter, and not intended for publication, was scrawled: "this is a bully scoop for you, boys, but it's pretty tough on me. good-by. simpkins." the managing editor dashed a tear from his eye when he read this to me, and gulped a little as he said: "i can't help it; he was such a d----d thoughtful boy. why, he even remembered to inclose descriptions for the pictures!" simpkins' last story covered the whole of the front page and three columns of the second, and it just naturally sold cords of papers. his editor demanded that the state department take it up, though the spaniards denied the execution or any previous knowledge of any such person as this seã±or simpkins. that made another page in the paper, of course, and then they got up a memorial service, which was good for three columns. one of those fellows that you can find in every office, who goes around and makes the boys give up their lunch money to buy flowers for the deceased aunt of the cellar boss' wife, managed to collect twenty dollars among our clerks, and they sent a floral notebook, with "gone to press," done in blue immortelles on the cover, as their "tribute." i put on a plug hat and attended the service out of respect for his father. but i had hardly got back to the office before i received a wire from jamaica, reading: "cable your correspondent here let me have hundred. notify father all hunk. keep it dark from others. simpkins." i kept it dark and ezra came back to life by easy stages and in such a way as not to attract any special attention to himself. he managed to get the impression around that he'd been snatched from the jaws of death by a rescue party at the last moment. the last i heard of him he was in new york and drawing ten thousand a year, which was more than he could have worked up to in the leather business in a century. fifty or a hundred years ago, when there was good money in poetry, a man with simpkins' imagination would naturally have been a bard, as i believe they used to call the top-notchers; and, once he was turned loose to root for himself, he instinctively smelled out the business where he could use a little poetic license and made a hit in it. when a pup has been born to point partridges there's no use trying to run a fox with him. i was a little uncertain about you at first, but i guess the lord intended you to hunt with the pack. get the scent in your nostrils and keep your nose to the ground, and don't worry too much about the end of the chase. the fun of the thing's in the run and not in the finish. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 9 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, at hot | | springs, arkansas, to his | | son, pierrepont, at the | | union stock yards in | | chicago. mr. pierrepont | | has been investing more | | heavily in roses than his | | father thinks his means | | warrant, and he tries to | | turn his thoughts to | | staple groceries. | +-----------------------------+ ix hot springs, january 30, 189_dear pierrepont:_ i knew right off that i had made a mistake when i opened the inclosed and saw that it was a bill for fifty-two dollars, "for roses sent, as per orders, to miss mabel dashkam." i don't just place miss dashkam, but if she's the daughter of old job dashkam, on the open board, i should say, on general principles, that she was a fine girl to let some other fellow marry. the last time i saw her, she inventoried about $10,000 as she stood--allowing that her diamonds would scratch glass--and that's more capital than any woman has a right to tie up on her back, i don't care how rich her father is. and job's fortune is one of that brand which foots up to a million in the newspapers and leaves the heirs in debt to the lawyers who settle the estate. of course i've never had any real experience in this sparking business, except with your ma; but i've watched from the other side of the fence while a heap of fellows were getting it, and i should say that marrying a woman like mabel dashkam would be the first step toward becoming a grass widower. i'll bet if you'll tell her you're making twelve a week and ain't going to get any more till you earn it, you'll find that you can't push within a mile of her even on a soo ice-breaker. she's one of those women with a heart like a stock-ticker--it doesn't beat over anything except money. of course you're in no position yet to think of being engaged even, and that's why i'm a little afraid that you may be planning to get married. but a twelve-dollar clerk, who owes fifty-two dollars for roses, needs a keeper more than a wife. i want to say right here that there always comes a time to the fellow who blows fifty-two dollars at a lick on roses when he thinks how many staple groceries he could have bought with the money. after all, there's no fool like a young fool, because in the nature of things he's got a long time to live. i suppose i'm fanning the air when i ask you to be guided by my judgment in this matter, because, while a young fellow will consult his father about buying a horse, he's cock-sure of himself when it comes to picking a wife. marriages may be made in heaven, but most engagements are made in the back parlor with the gas so low that a fellow doesn't really get a square look at what he's taking. while a man doesn't see much of a girl's family when he's courting, he's apt to see a good deal of it when he's housekeeping; and while he doesn't marry his wife's father, there's nothing in the marriage vow to prevent the old man from borrowing money of him, and you can bet if he's old job dashkam he'll do it. a man can't pick his own mother, but he can pick his son's mother, and when he chooses a father-in-law who plays the bucket shops, he needn't be surprised if his own son plays the races. never marry a poor girl who's been raised like a rich one. she's simply traded the virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich without going long on their good points. to marry for money or to marry without money is a crime. there's no real objection to marrying a woman with a fortune, but there is to marrying a fortune with a woman. money makes the mare go, and it makes her cut up, too, unless she's used to it and you drive her with a snaffle-bit. while you are at it, there's nothing like picking out a good-looking wife, because even the handsomest woman looks homely sometimes, and so you get a little variety; but a homely one can only look worse than usual. beauty is only skin deep, but that's deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man. (i want to say right here that to get any sense out of a proverb i usually find that i have to turn it wrong side out.) then, too, if a fellow's bound to marry a fool, and a lot of men have to if they're going to hitch up into a well-matched team, there's nothing like picking a good-looking one. i simply mention these things in a general way, because it seems to me, from the gait at which you're starting off, that you'll likely find yourself roped and branded any day, without quite knowing how it happened, and i want you to understand that the girl who marries you for my money is getting a package of green goods in more ways than one. i think, though, if you really understood what marrying on twelve a week meant, you would have bought a bedroom set instead of roses with that fifty-two you owe. speaking of marrying the old man's money by proxy naturally takes me back to my old town in missouri and the case of chauncey witherspoon hoskins. chauncey's father was the whole village, barring the railroad station and the saloon, and, of course, chauncey thought that he was something of a pup himself. so he was, but not just the kind that chauncey thought he was. he stood about five foot three in his pumps, had a nice pinky complexion, pretty wavy hair, and a curly mustache. all he needed was a blue ribbon around his neck to make you call, "here, fido," when he came into the room. still i believe he must have been pretty popular with the ladies, because i can't think of him to this day without wanting to punch his head. at the church sociables he used to hop around among them, chipping and chirping like a dicky-bird picking up seed; and he was a great hand to play the piano, and sing saddish, sweetish songs to them. always said the smooth thing and said it easy. never had to choke and swallow to fetch it up. never stepped through his partner's dress when he began to dance, or got flustered when he brought her refreshments and poured the coffee in her lap to cool instead of in the saucer. we boys who couldn't walk across the floor without feeling that our pants had hiked up till they showed our feet to the knees, and that we were carrying a couple of canvased hams where our hands ought to be, didn't like him; but the girls did. you can trust a woman's taste on everything except men; and it's mighty lucky that she slips up there or we'd pretty nigh all be bachelors. i might add that you can't trust a man's taste on women, either, and that's pretty lucky, too, because there are a good many old maids in the world as it is. one time or another chauncey lolled in the best room of every house in our town, and we used to wonder how he managed to browse up and down the streets that way without getting into the pound. i never found out till after i married your ma, and she told me chauncey's heart secrets. it really wasn't violating any confidence, because he'd told them to every girl in town. seems he used to get terribly sad as soon as he was left alone with a girl and began to hint about a tragedy in his past--something that had blighted his whole life and left him without the power to love again--and lots more slop from the same pail. of course, every girl in that town had known chauncey since he wore short pants, and ought to have known that the nearest to a tragedy he had ever been was when he sat in the top gallery of a chicago theatre and saw a lot of barnstormers play othello. but some people, and especially very young people, don't think anything's worth believing unless it's hard to believe. chauncey worked along these lines until he was twenty-four, and then he made a mistake. most of the girls that he had grown up with had married off, and while he was waiting for a new lot to come along, he began to shine up to the widow sharpless, a powerful, well-preserved woman of forty or thereabouts, who had been born with her eye-teeth cut. he found her uncommon sympathetic. and when chauncey finally came out of his trance he was the stepfather of the widow's four children. she was very kind to chauncey, and treated him like one of her own sons; but she was very, very firm. there was no gallivanting off alone, and when they went out in double harness strangers used to annoy him considerable by patting him on the head and saying to his wife: "what a bright-looking chap your son is, mrs. hoskins!" she was almost seventy when chauncey buried her a while back, and they say that he began to take notice again on the way home from the funeral. anyway, he crowded his mourning into sixty days--and i reckon there was plenty of room in them to hold all his grief without stretching--and his courting into another sixty. and four months after date he presented his matrimonial papers for acceptance. said he was tired of this mother-and-son foolishness, and wasn't going to leave any room for doubt this time. didn't propose to have people sizing his wife up for one of his ancestors any more. so he married lulu littlebrown, who was just turned eighteen. chauncey was over fifty then, and wizened up like a late pippin that has been out overnight in an early frost. he took lu to chicago for the honeymoon, and mose greenebaum, who happened to be going up to town for his fall goods, got into the parlor car with them. by and by the porter came around and stopped beside chauncey. "wouldn't your daughter like a pillow under her head?" says he. chauncey just groaned. then--"git; you senegambian son of darkness!" and the porter just naturally got. mose had been taking it all in, and now he went back to the smoking-room and passed the word along to the drummers there. every little while one of them would lounge up the aisle to chauncey and ask if he couldn't lend his daughter a magazine, or give her an orange, or bring her a drink. and the language that he gave back in return for these courtesies wasn't at all fitting in a bridegroom. then mose had another happy thought, and dropped off at a way station and wired the clerk at the palmer house. when they got to the hotel the clerk was on the lookout for them, and chauncey hadn't more than signed his name before he reached out over his diamond and said: "ah, mr. hoskins; would you like to have your daughter near you?" i simply mention chauncey in passing as an example of the foolishness of thinking you can take any chances with a woman who has really decided that she wants to marry, or that you can average up matrimonial mistakes. and i want you to remember that marrying the wrong girl is the one mistake that you've got to live with all your life. i think, though, that if you tell mabel what your assets are, she'll decide she won't be your particular mistake. your affectionate father, john graham. +----------------------------+ | no. 10 | +----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | union stock yards in | | chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at the | | commercial house, | | jeffersonville, indiana. | | mr. pierrepont has been | | promoted to the position | | of traveling salesman | | for the house, and has | | started out on the road. | +----------------------------+ x chicago, march 1, 189_dear pierrepont:_ when i saw you start off yesterday i was just a little uneasy; for you looked so blamed important and chesty that i am inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn't like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it. repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. and what the house needs is more orders. sausage is the one subject of all others that a fellow in the packing business ought to treat solemnly. half the people in the world take a joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often enough. only last week the head of our sausage department started to put out a tin-tag brand of frankfurts, but i made him take it off the market quicker than lightning, because i knew that the first fool who saw the tin-tag would ask if that was the license. and, though people would grin a little at first, they'd begin to look serious after a while; and whenever the butcher tried to sell them our brand they'd imagine they heard the bark, and ask for "that real country sausage" at twice as much a pound. he laughs best who doesn't laugh at all when he's dealing with the public. it has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a laugh at the expense of the other fellow. there's nothing in the world sicker-looking than the grin of the man who's trying to join in heartily when the laugh's on him, and to pretend that he likes it. speaking of sausage with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little experience that i had last year. a fellow came into the office here with a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow's mustache tickles. said he wanted to sell him. i wasn't really disposed to add a dog to my troubles, but on general principles i asked him what he wanted for the little cuss. [illustration: "_you looked so blamed important and chesty when you started off._"] the fellow hawed and choked and wiped away a tear. finally, he fetched out that he loved the dog like a son, and that it broke his heart to think of parting with him; that he wouldn't dare look dandy in the face after he had named the price he was asking for him, and that it was the record-breaking, marked-down sacrifice sale of the year on dogs; that it wasn't really money he was after, but a good home for the little chap. said that i had a rather pleasant face and he knew that he could trust me to treat dandy kindly; so--as a gift--he would let me have him for five hundred. "cents?" says i. "dollars," says he, without blinking. "it ought to be a mastiff at that price," says i. "if you thought more of quality," says he, in a tone of sort of dignified reproof, "and less of quantity, your brand would enjoy a better reputation." i was pretty hot, i can tell you, but i had laid myself open, so i just said: "the sausage business is too poor to warrant our paying any such price for light-weights. bring around a bigger dog and then we'll talk;" but the fellow only shook his head sadly, whistled to dandy, and walked off. i simply mention this little incident as an example of the fact that when a man cracks a joke in the middle ages he's apt to affect the sausage market in the nineteenth century, and to lay open an honest butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. there's such a thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending to believe that he's paying for pork and getting dog is pretty apt to get dog in the end. but all that aside, i want you to get it firmly fixed in your mind right at the start that this trip is only an experiment, and that i am not at all sure you were cut out by the lord to be a drummer. but you can figure on one thing--that you will never become the pride of the pond by starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates. a real salesman is one-part talk and nine-parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk. goods ain't sold under marquess of queensberry rules any more, and you'll find that knowing how many rounds the old 'un can last against the boiler-maker won't really help you to load up the junior partner with our corn-fed brand hams. a good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in baseball, and funny stories, and tom lipton, and that business is a side line with them; but as a matter of fact mighty few men work up to the position of buyer through giving up their office hours to listening to anecdotes. i never saw one that liked a drummer's jokes more than an eighth of a cent a pound on a tierce of lard. what the house really sends you out for is orders. of course, you want to be nice and mellow with the trade, but always remember that mellowness carried too far becomes rottenness. you can buy some fellows with a cheap cigar and some with a cheap compliment, and there's no objection to giving a man what he likes, though i never knew smoking to do anything good except a ham, or flattery to help any one except to make a fool of himself. real buyers ain't interested in much besides your goods and your prices. never run down your competitor's brand to them, and never let them run down yours. don't get on your knees for business, but don't hold your nose so high in the air that an order can travel under it without your seeing it. you'll meet a good many people on the road that you won't like, but the house needs their business. some fellows will tell you that we play the hose on our dry salt meat before we ship it, and that it shrinks in transit like a baxter street jew's all-wool suits in a rainstorm; that they wonder how we manage to pack solid gristle in two-pound cans without leaving a little meat hanging to it; and that the last car of lard was so strong that it came back of its own accord from every retailer they shipped it to. the first fellow will be lying, and the second will be exaggerating, and the third may be telling the truth. with him you must settle on the spot; but always remember that a man who's making a claim never underestimates his case, and that you can generally compromise for something less than the first figure. with the second you must sympathize, and say that the matter will be reported to headquarters and the boss of the canning-room called up on the carpet and made to promise that it will never happen again. with the first you needn't bother. there's no use feeding expensive "hen food" to an old dominick that sucks eggs. the chances are that the car weighed out more than it was billed, and that the fellow played the hose on it himself and added a thousand pounds of cheap salt before he jobbed it out to his trade. where you're going to slip up at first is in knowing which is which, but if you don't learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far for the house. for your own satisfaction i will say right here that you may know you are in a fair way of becoming a good drummer by three things: first--when you send us orders. second--more orders. third--big orders. if you do this you won't have a great deal of time to write long letters, and we won't have a great deal of time to read them, for we will be very, very busy here making and shipping the goods. we aren't specially interested in orders that the other fellow gets, or in knowing how it happened after it has happened. if you like life on the road you simply won't let it happen. so just send us your address every day and your orders. they will tell us all that we want to know about "the situation." i was cured of sending information to the house when i was very, very young--in fact, on the first trip which i made on the road. i was traveling out of chicago for hammer & hawkins, wholesale dry-goods, gents' furnishings and notions. they started me out to round up trade in the river towns down egypt ways, near cairo. i hadn't more than made my first town and sized up the population before i began to feel happy, because i saw that business ought to be very good there. it appeared as if everybody in that town needed something in my line. the clerk of the hotel where i registered wore a dicky and his cuffs were tied to his neck by pieces of string run up his sleeves, and most of the merchants on main street were in their shirt-sleeves--at least those that had shirts were--and so far as i could judge there wasn't a whole pair of galluses among them. some were using wire, some a little rope, and others just faith--buckled extra tight. pride of the prairie xxx flour sacks seemed to be the nobby thing in boys' suitings there. take it by and large, if ever there was a town which looked as if it had a big, short line of dry-goods, gents' furnishings and notions to cover, it was that one. but when i caught the proprietor of the general store during a lull in the demand for navy plug, he wouldn't even look at my samples, and when i began to hint that the people were pretty ornery dressers he reckoned that he "would paste me one if i warn't so young." wanted to know what i meant by coming swelling around in song-and-dance clothes and getting funny at the expense of people who made their living honestly. allowed that when it came to a humorous get-up my clothes were the original end-man's gag. i noticed on the way back to the hotel that every fellow holding up a hitching-post was laughing, and i began to look up and down the street for the joke, not understanding at first that the reason why i couldn't see it was because i was it. right there i began to learn that, while the prince of wales may wear the correct thing in hats, it's safer when you're out of his sphere of influence to follow the styles that the hotel clerk sets; that the place to sell clothes is in the city, where every one seems to have plenty of them; and that the place to sell mess pork is in the country, where every one keeps hogs. that is why when a fellow comes to me for advice about moving to a new country, where there are more opportunities, i advise him--if he is built right--to go to an old city where there is more money. i wrote in to the house pretty often on that trip, explaining how it was, going over the whole situation very carefully, and telling what our competitors were doing, wherever i could find that they were doing anything. i gave old hammer credit for more curiosity than he possessed, because when i reached cairo i found a telegram from him reading: "_know what our competitors are doing: they are getting all the trade. but what are you doing?_" i saw then that the time for explaining was gone and that the moment for resigning had arrived; so i just naturally sent in my resignation. that is what we will expect from you--or orders. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 11 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | union stock yards in | | chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at the | | planters' palace hotel, | | at big gap, kentucky. mr. | | pierrepont's orders are | | small and his expenses | | are large, so his father | | feels pessimistic over | | his prospects. | +-----------------------------+ xi chicago, april 10, 189_dear pierrepont:_ you ought to be feeling mighty thankful to-day to the fellow who invented fractions, because while your selling cost for last month was within the limit, it took a good deal of help from the decimal system to get it there. you are in the position of the boy who was chased by the bull--open to congratulations because he reached the tree first, and to condolence because a fellow up a tree, in the middle of a forty-acre lot, with a disappointed bull for company, is in a mighty bad fix. i don't want to bear down hard on you right at the beginning of your life on the road, but i would feel a good deal happier over your showing if you would make a downright failure or a clean-cut success once in a while, instead of always just skinning through this way. it looks to me as if you were trying only half as hard as you could, and in trying it's the second half that brings results. if there's one piece of knowledge that is of less use to a fellow than knowing when he's beat, it's knowing when he's done just enough work to keep from being fired. of course, you are bright enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a half-way place on a half-way salary by doing half the work you are capable of, but you've got to add dynamite and ginger and jounce to your equipment if you want to get the other half that's coming to you. you've got to believe that the lord made the first hog with the graham brand burned in the skin, and that the drove which rushed down a steep place was packed by a competitor. you've got to know your goods from a to izzard, from snout to tail, on the hoof and in the can. you've got to know 'em like a young mother knows baby talk, and to be as proud of 'em as the young father of a twelve-pound boy, without really thinking that you're stretching it four pounds. you've got to believe in yourself and make your buyers take stock in you at par and accrued interest. you've got to have the scent of a bloodhound for an order, and the grip of a bulldog on a customer. you've got to feel the same personal solicitude over a bill of goods that strays off to a competitor as a parson over a backslider, and hold special services to bring it back into the fold. you've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction. you've got to eat hog, think hog, dream hog--in short, go the whole hog if you're going to win out in the pork-packing business. that's a pretty liberal receipt, i know, but it's intended for a fellow who wants to make a good-sized pie. and the only thing you ever find in pastry that you don't put in yourself is flies. you have had a wide-open chance during the last few months to pick up a good deal about the practical end of the business, and between trips now you ought to spend every spare minute in the packing-house getting posted. nothing earns better interest than judicious questions, and the man who invests in more knowledge of the business than he has to have in order to hold his job has capital with which to buy a mortgage on a better one. i may be mistaken, but i am just a little afraid that you really did not get beyond a bowing acquaintance with mr. porker when you were here at the packing-house. of course, there isn't anything particularly pretty about a hog, but any animal which has its kindly disposition and benevolent inclination to yield up a handsome margin of profit to those who get close to it, is worthy of a good deal of respect and attention. i ain't one of those who believe that a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge he finds it's the other half which would really come in handy. so, when a man's in the selling end of the business what he really needs to know is the manufacturing end; and when he's in the factory he can't know too much about the trade. you're just about due now to run into a smart aleck buyer who'll show you a sample of lard which he'll say was made by a competitor, and ask what you think the grand jury ought to do to a house which had the nerve to label it "leaf." of course, you will nose around it and look wise and say that, while you hesitate to criticize, you are afraid it would smell like a hot-box on a freight if any one tried to fry doughnuts in it. that is the place where the buyer will call for jack and charlie to get in on the laugh, and when he has wiped away the tears he will tell you that it is your own lard, and prove it to you. of course, there won't be anything really the matter with it, and if you had been properly posted you would have looked surprised when he showed it to you and have said: "i don't quite diagnose the case your way, mr. smith; that's a blamed sight better lard than i thought muggins & co. were making." and you'd have driven a spike right through that fellow's little joke and have nailed down his order hard and tight with the same blow. what you know is a club for yourself, and what you don't know is a meat-ax for the other fellow. that is why you want to be on the lookout all the time for information about the business, and to nail a fact just as a sensible man nails a mosquito--the first time it settles near him. of course, a fellow may get another chance, but the odds are that if he misses the first opening he will lose a good deal of blood before he gets the second. [illustration: "_josh jenkinson would eat a little food now and then just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco._"] speaking of finishing up a subject as you go along naturally calls to mind the case of josh jenkinson, back in my home town. as i first remember josh, he was just bone and by-products. wasn't an ounce of real meat on him. in fact, he was so blamed thin that when he bought an outfit of clothes his wife used to make them over into two suits for him. josh would eat a little food now and then, just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco. usually kept a chew in one cheek and a cob pipe in the other. he was a powerful hand for a joke and had one of those porous heads and movable scalps which go with a sense of humor in a small village. used to scare us boys by drawing in on his pipe and letting the smoke sort of leak out through his eyes and ears and nose. pretended that he was the devil and that he was on fire inside. old doc hoover caught him at it once and told us that he wasn't, but allowed that he was a blood relation. elder hoover was a methodist off the tip of the sirloin. there weren't any evasions or generalities or metaphors in his religion. the lower layers of the hereafter weren't hades or gehenna with him, but just plain hell, and mighty hot, too, you bet. his creed was built of sheet iron and bolted together with inch rivets. he kept the fire going under the boiler night and day, and he was so blamed busy stoking it that he didn't have much time to map out the golden streets. when he blew off it was super-heated steam and you could see the sinners who were in range fairly sizzle and parboil and shrivel up. there was no give in doc; no compromises with creditors; no fire sales. he wasn't one of those elders who would let a fellow dance the lancers if he'd swear off on waltzing; or tell him it was all right to play whist in the parlor if he'd give up penny-ante at the dutchman's; or wink at his smoking if he'd quit whisky. josh knew this, so he kept away from the camp-meeting, though the elder gunned for him pretty steady for a matter of five years. but one summer when the meetings were extra interesting, it got so lonesome sitting around with the whole town off in the woods that josh sneaked out to the edge of the camp and hid behind some bushes where he could hear what was going on. the elder was carrying about two hundred and fifty pounds, by the gauge, that day, and with that pressure he naturally traveled into the sinners pretty fast. the first thing josh knew he was out from under cover and a-hallelujahing down between the seats to the mourners' bench. when the elder saw what was coming he turned on the forced draft. inside of ten minutes he had josh under conviction and had taken his pipe and plug away from him. i am just a little inclined to think that josh would have backslid if he hadn't been a practical joker, and a critter of that breed is about as afraid of a laugh on himself as a raw colt of a steam roller. so he stuck it out, and began to take an interest in meal time. kicked because it didn't come eight or ten times a day. the first thing he knew he had fatted up till he filled out his half suit and had to put it away in camphor. then he bought a whole suit, living-skeleton size. in two weeks he had strained a shoulder seam and looked as if he was wearing tights. so he retired it from circulation and moved up a size. that one was a little loose, and it took him a good month to crowd it. josh was a pretty hefty man now, but he kept right on bulging out, building on an addition here and putting out a bay window there, all the time retiring new suits, until his wife had fourteen of them laid away in the chest. said it didn't worry him; that he was bound to lose flesh sooner or later. that he would catch them on the way down, and wear them out one at a time. but when he got up to three hundred and fifty pounds he just stuck. tried exercise and dieting and foreign waters, but he couldn't budge an ounce. in the end he had to give the clothes to the widow doolan, who had fourteen sons in assorted sizes. i simply mention josh in passing as an example of the fact that a fellow can't bank on getting a chance to go back and take up a thing that he has passed over once, and to call your attention to the fact that a man who knows his own business thoroughly will find an opportunity sooner or later of reaching the most hardened cuss of a buyer on his route and of getting a share of his. i want to caution you right here against learning all there is to know about pork-packing too quick. business is a good deal like a nigger's wool--it doesn't look very deep, but there are a heap of kinks and curves in it. when i was a boy and the fellow in pink tights came into the ring, i used to think he was doing all that could be reasonably expected when he kept eight or ten glass balls going in the air at once. but the beautiful lady in the blue tights would keep right on handing him things--kerosene lamps and carving knives and miscellaneous cutlery and crockery, and he would get them going, too, without losing his happy smile. the great trouble with most young fellows is that they think they have learned all they need to know and have given the audience its money's worth when they can keep the glass balls going, and so they balk at the kerosene lamps and the rest of the implements of light housekeeping. but there's no real limit to the amount of extras a fellow with the right stuff in him will take on without losing his grin. i want to see you come up smiling; i want to feel you in the business, not only on pay day but every other day. i want to know that you are running yourself full time and overtime, stocking up your brain so that when the demand comes you will have the goods to offer. so far, you promise to make a fair to ordinary salesman among our retail trade. i want to see you grow into a car-lot man--so strong and big that you will force us to see that you are out of place among the little fellows. buck up! your affectionate father, john graham. +---------------------------+ | no. 12 | +---------------------------+ | from john graham, at | | the union stock yards | | in chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at little | | delmonico's, prairie | | centre, indiana. mr. | | pierrepont has annoyed | | his father by accepting | | his criticisms in a | | spirit of gentle, but | | most reprehensible, | | resignation. | +---------------------------+ xii chicago, april 15, 189_dear pierrepont:_ don't ever write me another of those sad, sweet, gentle sufferer letters. it's only natural that a colt should kick a trifle when he's first hitched up to the break wagon, and i'm always a little suspicious of a critter that stands too quiet under the whip. i know it's not meekness, but meanness, that i've got to fight, and it's hard to tell which is the worst. the only animal which the bible calls patient is an ass, and that's both good doctrine and good natural history. for i had to make considerable of a study of the missouri mule when i was a boy, and i discovered that he's not really patient, but that he only pretends to be. you can cuss him out till you've nothing but holy thoughts left in you to draw on, and you can lay the rawhide on him till he's striped like a circus zebra, and if you're cautious and reserved in his company he will just look grieved and pained and resigned. but all the time that mule will be getting meaner and meaner inside, adding compound cussedness every thirty days, and practicing drop kicks in his stall after dark. of course, nothing in this world is wholly bad, not even a mule, for he is half horse. but my observation has taught me that the horse half of him is the front half, and that the only really safe way to drive him is hind-side first. i suppose that you could train one to travel that way, but it really doesn't seem worth while when good roadsters are so cheap. that's the way i feel about these young fellows who lazy along trying to turn in at every gate where there seems to be a little shade, and sulking and balking whenever you say "git-ap" to them. they are the men who are always howling that bill smith was promoted because he had a pull, and that they are being held down because the manager is jealous of them. i've seen a good many pulls in my time, but i never saw one strong enough to lift a man any higher than he could raise himself by his boot straps, or long enough to reach through the cashier's window for more money than its owner earned. when a fellow brags that he has a pull, he's a liar or his employer's a fool. and when a fellow whines that he's being held down, the truth is, as a general thing, that his boss can't hold him up. he just picks a nice, soft spot, stretches out flat on his back, and yells that some heartless brute has knocked him down and is sitting on his chest. a good man is as full of bounce as a cat with a small boy and a bull terrier after him. when he's thrown to the dog from the second-story window, he fixes while he's sailing through the air to land right, and when the dog jumps for the spot where he hits, he isn't there, but in the top of the tree across the street. he's a good deal like the little red-headed cuss that we saw in the football game you took me to. every time the herd stampeded it would start in to trample and paw and gore him. one minute the whole bunch would be on top of him and the next he would be loping off down the range, spitting out hair and pieces of canvas jacket, or standing on one side as cool as a hog on ice, watching the mess unsnarl and the removal of the cripples. i didn't understand football, but i understood that little sawed-off. he knew his business. and when a fellow knows his business, he doesn't have to explain to people that he does. it isn't what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. big talk means little knowledge. there's a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated for convenient handling and immediate delivery. a ham never weighs so much as when it's half cured. when it has soaked in all the pickle that it can, it has to sweat out most of it in the smoke-house before it is any real good; and when you've soaked up all the information you can hold, you will have to forget half of it before you will be of any real use to the house. if there's anything worse than knowing too little, it's knowing too much. education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. the best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust; and then, of course, there's nothing left. poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does. it's easy to stand hard times, because that's the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work. i simply mention these things in a general way. a good many of them don't apply to you, no doubt, but it won't do any harm to make sure. most men get cross-eyed when they come to size themselves up, and see an angel instead of what they're trying to look at. there's nothing that tells the truth to a woman like a mirror, or that lies harder to a man. what i am sure of is that you have got the sulks too quick. if you knew all that you'll have to learn before you'll be a big, broad-gauged merchant, you might have something to be sulky about. when you've posted yourself properly about the business you'll have taken a step in the right direction--you will be able to get your buyer's attention. all the other steps are those which lead you into his confidence. right here you will discover that you are in the fix of the young fellow who married his best girl and took her home to live with his mother. he found that the only way in which he could make one happy was by making the other mad, and that when he tried to make them both happy he only succeeded in making them both mad. naturally, in the end, his wife divorced him and his mother disinherited him, and left her money to an orphan asylum, because, as she sensibly observed in the codicil, "orphans can not be ungrateful to their parents." but if the man had had a little tact he would have kept them in separate houses, and have let each one think that she was getting a trifle the best of it, without really giving it to either. tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality. a tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung. some men deal in facts, and call bill jones a liar. they get knocked down. some men deal in subterfuges, and say that bill jones' father was a kettle-rendered liar, and that his mother's maiden name was sapphira, and that any one who believes in the darwinian theory should pity rather than blame their son. they get disliked. but your tactful man says that since baron munchausen no one has been so chuck full of bully reminiscences as bill jones; and when that comes back to bill he is half tickled to death, because he doesn't know that the higher criticism has hurt the baron's reputation. that man gets the trade. there are two kinds of information: one to which everybody's entitled, and that is taught at school; and one which nobody ought to know except yourself, and that is what you think of bill jones. of course, where you feel a man is not square you will be armed to meet him, but never on his own ground. make him be honest with you if you can, but don't let him make you dishonest with him. when you make a mistake, don't make the second one--keeping it to yourself. own up. the time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest. the deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast-table. a mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up. and one lie breeds enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated. of course, it's easy to have the confidence of the house, or the confidence of the buyer, but you've got to have both. the house pays you your salary, and the buyer helps you earn it. if you skin the buyer you will lose your trade; and if you play tag with the house you will lose your job. you've simply got to walk the fence straight, for if you step to either side you'll find a good deal of air under you. even after you are able to command the attention and the confidence of your buyers, you've got to be up and dressed all day to hold what trade is yours, and twisting and turning all night to wriggle into some of the other fellow's. when business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too, because we will need the orders. speaking of making trade naturally calls to my mind my old acquaintance, herr doctor paracelsus von munsterberg, who, when i was a boy, came to our town "fresh from his healing triumphs at the courts of europe," as his handbills ran, "not to make money, but to confer on suffering mankind the priceless boon of health; to make the sick well, and the well better." munsterberg wasn't one of your common, coarse, county-fair barkers. he was a pretty high-toned article. had nice, curly black hair and didn't spare the bear's grease. wore a silk hat and a prince albert coat all the time, except when he was orating, and then he shed the coat to get freer action with his arms. and when he talked he used the whole language, you bet. [illustration: "_herr doctor paracelsus von munsterberg was a pretty high-toned article._"] of course, the priceless boon was put up in bottles, labeled munsterberg's miraculous medical discovery, and, simply to introduce it, he was willing to sell the small size at fifty cents and the large one at a dollar. in addition to being a philanthropist the doctor was quite a hand at card tricks, played the banjo, sung coon songs and imitated a saw going through a board very creditably. all these accomplishments, and the story of how he cured the emperor of austria's sister with a single bottle, drew a crowd, but they didn't sell a drop of the discovery. nobody in town was really sick, and those who thought they were had stocked up the week before with quackenboss' quick quinine kure from a fellow that made just as liberal promises as munsterberg and sold the large size at fifty cents, including a handsome reproduction of an old master for the parlor. some fellows would just have cussed a little and have moved on to the next town, but munsterberg made a beautiful speech, praising the climate, and saying that in his humble capacity he had been privileged to meet the strength and beauty of many courts, but never had he been in any place where strength was stronger or beauty beautifuller than right here in hoskins' corners. he prayed with all his heart, though it was almost too much to hope, that the cholera, which was raging in kentucky, would pass this eden by; that the yellow fever, which was devastating tennessee, would halt abashed before this stronghold of health, though he felt bound to add that it was a peculiarly malignant and persistent disease; that the smallpox, which was creeping southward from canada, would smite the next town instead of ours, though he must own that it was no respecter of persons; that the diphtheria and scarlet-fever, which were sweeping over new england and crowding the graveyards, could be kept from crossing the hudson, though they were great travelers and it was well to be prepared for the worst; that we one and all might providentially escape chills, headaches, coated tongue, pains in the back, loss of sleep and that tired feeling, but it was almost too much to ask, even of such a generous climate. in any event, he begged us to beware of worthless nostrums and base imitations. it made him sad to think that to-day we were here and that to-morrow we were running up an undertaker's bill, all for the lack of a small bottle of medicine's greatest gift to man. i could see that this speech made a lot of women in the crowd powerful uneasy, and i heard the widow judkins say that she was afraid it was going to be "a mighty sickly winter," and she didn't know as it would do any harm to have some of that stuff in the house. but the doctor didn't offer the priceless boon for sale again. he went right from his speech into an imitation of a dog, with a tin can tied to his tail, running down main street and crawling under si hooper's store at the far end of it--an imitation, he told us, to which the sultan was powerful partial, "him being a cruel man and delighting in torturing the poor dumb beasts which the lord has given us to love, honor and cherish." he kept this sort of thing up till he judged it was our bedtime, and then he thanked us "one and all for our kind attention," and said that as his mission in life was to amuse as well as to heal, he would stay over till the next afternoon and give a special matinã©e for the little ones, whom he loved for the sake of his own golden-haired willie, back there over the rhine. naturally, all the women and children turned out the next afternoon, though the men had to be at work in the fields and the stores, and the doctor just made us roar for half an hour. then, while he was singing an uncommon funny song, mrs. brown's johnny let out a howl. the doctor stopped short. "bring the poor little sufferer here, madam, and let me see if i can soothe his agony," says he. mrs. brown was a good deal embarrassed and more scared, but she pushed johnny, yelling all the time, up to the doctor, who began tapping him on the back and looking down his throat. naturally, this made johnny cry all the harder, and his mother was beginning to explain that she "reckoned she must have stepped on his sore toe," when the doctor struck his forehead, cried "eureka!", whipped out a bottle of the priceless boon, and forced a spoonful of it into johnny's mouth. then he gave the boy three slaps on the back and three taps on the stomach, ran one hand along his windpipe, and took a small button-hook out of his mouth with the other. johnny made all his previous attempts at yelling sound like an imitation when he saw this, and he broke away and ran toward home. then the doctor stuck one hand in over the top of his vest, waved the button-hook in the other, and cried: "woman, your child is cured! your button-hook is found!" then he went on to explain that when baby swallowed safety-pins, or pennies, or fish-bones, or button-hooks, or any little household articles, that all you had to do was to give it a spoonful of the priceless boon, tap it gently fore and aft, hold your hand under its mouth, and the little article would drop out like chocolate from a slot machine. every one was talking at once, now, and nobody had any time for mrs. brown, who was trying to say something. finally she got mad and followed johnny home. half an hour later the doctor drove out of the corners, leaving his stock of the priceless boon distributed--for the usual consideration--among all the mothers in town. it was not until the next day that mrs. brown got a chance to explain that while the boon might be all that the doctor claimed for it, no one in her house had ever owned a button-hook, because her old man wore jack-boots and she wore congress shoes, and little johnny wore just plain feet. i simply mention the doctor in passing, not as an example in morals, but in methods. some salesmen think that selling is like eating--to satisfy an existing appetite; but a good salesman is like a good cook--he can create an appetite when the buyer isn't hungry. i don't care how good old methods are, new ones are better, even if they're only just as good. that's not so irish as it sounds. doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days. along toward the middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a broiled crow or a slice of cold dog. your affectionate father, john graham. +----------------------------+ | no. 13 | +----------------------------+ | from john graham, at | | the union stock yards | | in chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, care of the | | hoosier grocery co., | | indianapolis, indiana. | | mr. pierrepont's orders | | have been looking up, so | | the old man gives him a | | pat on the back--but not | | too hard a one. | +----------------------------+ xiii chicago, may 10, 189_dear pierrepont:_ that order for a carload of spotless snow leaf from old shorter is the kind of back talk i like. we can stand a little more of the same sort of sassing. i have told the cashier that you will draw thirty a week after this, and i want you to have a nice suit of clothes made and send the bill to the old man. get something that won't keep people guessing whether you follow the horses or do buck and wing dancing for a living. your taste in clothes seems to be lasting longer than the rest of your college education. you looked like a young widow who had raised the second crop of daisies over the deceased when you were in here last week. of course, clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that's a pretty considerable area of the human animal. a dirty shirt may hide a pure heart, but it seldom covers a clean skin. if you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven't time to bother with the dandruff on your shoulders. and if you wear blue and white striped pants and a red necktie, you will find it difficult to get close enough to a deacon to be invited to say grace at his table, even if you never play for anything except coffee or beans. appearances are deceitful, i know, but so long as they are, there's nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us. i've seen a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousand-dollar job, and a cigarette and a pint of champagne knock the bottom out of a million-dollar pork corner. four or five years ago little jim jackson had the bears in the provision pit hibernating and living on their own fat till one morning, the day after he had run the price of mess pork up to twenty dollars and nailed it there, some one saw him drinking a small bottle just before he went on 'change, and told it round among the brokers on the floor. the bears thought jim must have had bad news, to be bracing up at that time in the morning, so they perked up and everlastingly sold the mess pork market down through the bottom of the pit to solid earth. there wasn't even a grease spot left of that corner when they got through. as it happened, jim hadn't had any bad news; he just took the drink because he felt pretty good, and things were coming his way. but it isn't enough to be all right in this world; you've got to look all right as well, because two-thirds of success is making people think you are all right. so you have to be governed by general rules, even though you may be an exception. people have seen four and four make eight, and the young man and the small bottle make a damned fool so often that they are hard to convince that the combination can work out any other way. the lord only allows so much fun for every man that he makes. some get it going fishing most of the time and making money the rest; some get it making money most of the time and going fishing the rest. you can take your choice, but the two lines of business don't gee. the more money, the less fish. the farther you go, the straighter you've got to walk. i used to get a heap of solid comfort out of chewing tobacco. picked up the habit in missouri, and took to it like a yankee to pie. at that time pretty much every one in those parts chewed, except the elder and the women, and most of them snuffed. seemed a nice, sociable habit, and i never thought anything special about it till i came north and your ma began to tell me it was a vile relic of barbarism, meaning missouri, i suppose. then i confined operations to my office and took to fine cut instead of plug, as being tonier. well, one day, about ten years ago, when i was walking through the office, i noticed one of the boys on the mailing-desk, a mighty likely-looking youngster, sort of working his jaws as he wrote. i didn't stop to think, but somehow i was mad in a minute. still, i didn't say a word--just stood and looked at him while he speeded up the way the boys will when they think the old man is nosing around to see whose salary he can raise next. i stood over him for a matter of five minutes, and all the time he was pretending not to see me at all. i will say that he was a pretty game boy, for he never weakened for a second. but at last, seeing he was about to choke to death, i said, sharp and sudden--"spit." well, sir, i thought it was a cloudburst. you can bet i was pretty hot, and i started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp. but before i got out a word, something hit me all of a sudden, and i just went up to the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "let's swear off, son." naturally, he swore off--he was so blamed scared that he would have quit breathing if i had asked him to, i reckon. and i had to take my stock of fine cut and send it to the heathen. i simply mention this little incident in passing as an example of the fact that a man can't do what he pleases in this world, because the higher he climbs the plainer people can see him. naturally, as the old man's son, you have a lot of fellows watching you and betting that you are no good. if you succeed they will say it was an accident; and if you fail they will say it was a cinch. there are two unpardonable sins in this world--success and failure. those who succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can't forgive him for being a success. if you do succeed, though, you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think. i dwell a little on this matter of appearances because so few men are really thinking animals. where one fellow reads a stranger's character in his face, a hundred read it in his get-up. we have shown a dozen breeds of dukes and droves of college presidents and doctors of divinity through the packing-house, and the workmen never noticed them except to throw livers at them when they got in their way. but when john l. sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the plant. the men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer him. you see, john looked his job, and you didn't have to explain to the men that he was the real thing in prize-fighters. of course, when a fellow gets to the point where he is something in particular, he doesn't have to care because he doesn't look like anything special; but while a young fellow isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like something special. just here i want to say that while it's all right for the other fellow to be influenced by appearances, it's all wrong for you to go on them. back up good looks by good character yourself, and make sure that the other fellow does the same. a suspicious man makes trouble for himself, but a cautious one saves it. because there ain't any rotten apples in the top layer, it ain't always safe to bet that the whole barrel is sound. [illustration: "_when john l. sullivan went through the stock yards, it just simply shut down the plant._"] a man doesn't snap up a horse just because he looks all right. as a usual thing that only makes him wonder what really is the matter that the other fellow wants to sell. so he leads the nag out into the middle of a ten-acre lot, where the light will strike him good and strong, and examines every hair of his hide, as if he expected to find it near-seal, or some other base imitation; and he squints under each hoof for the grand hailing sign of distress; and he peeks down his throat for dark secrets. if the horse passes this degree the buyer drives him twenty or thirty miles, expecting him to turn out a roarer, or to find that he balks, or shies, or goes lame, or develops some other horse nonsense. if after all that there are no bad symptoms, he offers fifty less than the price asked, on general principles, and for fear he has missed something. take men and horses, by and large, and they run pretty much the same. there's nothing like trying a man in harness a while before you bind yourself to travel very far with him. i remember giving a nice-looking, clean-shaven fellow a job on the billing-desk, just on his looks, but he turned out such a poor hand at figures that i had to fire him at the end of a week. it seemed that the morning he struck me for the place he had pawned his razor for fifteen cents in order to get a shave. naturally, if i had known that in the first place i wouldn't have hired him as a human arithmetic. another time i had a collector that i set a heap of store by. always handled himself just right when he talked to you and kept himself looking right up to the mark. his salary wasn't very big, but he had such a persuasive way that he seemed to get a dollar and a half's worth of value out of every dollar that he earned. never crowded the fashions and never gave 'em any slack. if sashes were the thing with summer shirts, why charlie had a sash, you bet, and when tight trousers were the nobby trick in pants, charlie wore his double reefed. take him fore and aft, charlie looked all right and talked all right--always careful, always considerate, always polite. one noon, after he had been with me for a year or two, i met him coming in from his route looking glum; so i handed him fifty dollars as a little sweetener. i never saw a fifty cheer a man up like that one did charlie, and he thanked me just right--didn't stutter and didn't slop over. i earmarked charlie for a raise and a better job right there. just after that i got mixed up with some work in my private office and i didn't look around again till on toward closing time. then, right outside my door i met the office manager, and he looked mighty glum, too. "i was just going to knock on your door," said he. "well?" i asked. "charlie chasenberry is eight hundred dollars short in his collections." "um--m," i said, without blinking, but i had a gone feeling just the same. "i had a plain-clothes man here to arrest him this evening, but he didn't come in." "looks as if he'd skipped, eh?" i asked. "i'm afraid so, but i don't know how. he didn't have a dollar this morning, because he tried to overdraw his salary account and i wouldn't let him, and he didn't collect any bills to-day because he had already collected everything that was due this week and lost it bucking the tiger." i didn't say anything, but i suspected that there was a sucker somewhere in the office. the next day i was sure of it, for i got a telegram from the always polite and thoughtful charlie, dated at montreal: "many, many thanks, dear mr. graham, for your timely assistance." careful as usual, you see, about the little things, for there were just ten words in the message. but that "many, many thanks, dear mr. graham," was the closest to slopping over i had ever known him to come. i consider the little lesson that charlie gave me as cheap at eight hundred and fifty dollars, and i pass it along to you because it may save you a thousand or two on your experience account. your affectionate father, john graham. +----------------------------+ | no. 14 | +----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | union stock yards in | | chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at the | | travelers' rest, new | | albany, indiana. mr. | | pierrepont has taken a | | little flyer in short | | ribs on 'change, and has | | accidentally come into | | the line of his father's | | vision. | +----------------------------+ xiv chicago, july 15, 189_dear pierrepont:_ i met young horshey, of horshey & horter, the grain and provision brokers, at luncheon yesterday, and while we were talking over the light run of hogs your name came up somehow, and he congratulated me on having such a smart son. like an old fool, i allowed that you were bright enough to come in out of the rain if somebody called you, though i ought to have known better, for it seems as if i never start in to brag about your being sound and sweet that i don't have to wind up by allowing a rebate for skippers. horshey was so blamed anxious to show that you were over-weight--he wants to handle some of my business on 'change--that he managed to prove you a light-weight. told me you had ordered him to sell a hundred thousand ribs short last week, and that he had just bought them in on a wire from you at a profit of four hundred and sixty-odd dollars. i was mighty hot, you bet, to know that you had been speculating, but i had to swallow and allow that you were a pretty sharp boy. i told horshey to close out the account and send me a check for your profits and i would forward it, as i wanted to give you a tip on the market before you did any more trading. i inclose the check herewith. please indorse it over to the treasurer of the home for half orphans and return at once. i will see that he gets it with your compliments. now, i want to give you that tip on the market. there are several reasons why it isn't safe for you to trade on 'change just now, but the particular one is that graham & co. will fire you if you do. trading on margin is a good deal like paddling around the edge of the old swimming hole--it seems safe and easy at first, but before a fellow knows it he has stepped off the edge into deep water. the wheat pit is only thirty feet across, but it reaches clear down to hell. and trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. when a man buys, he's buying something that the other fellow hasn't got. when a man sells, he's selling something that he hasn't got. and it's been my experience that the net profit on nothing is nit. when a speculator wins he don't stop till he loses, and when he loses he can't stop till he wins. you have been in the packing business long enough now to know that it takes a bull only thirty seconds to lose his hide; and if you'll believe me when i tell you that they can skin a bear just as quick on 'change, you won't have a board of trade indian using your pelt for a rug during the long winter months. because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. there's nothing in it. the poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires. when i sell futures on 'change, they're against hogs that are traveling into dry salt at the rate of one a second, and if the market goes up on me i've got the solid meat to deliver. but, if you lose, the only part of the hog which you can deliver is the squeal. i wouldn't bear down so hard on this matter if money was the only thing that a fellow could lose on 'change. but if a clerk sells pork, and the market goes down, he's mighty apt to get a lot of ideas with holes in them and bad habits as the small change of his profits. and if the market goes up, he's likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money. most men think that they can figure up all their assets in dollars and cents, but a merchant may owe a hundred thousand dollars and be solvent. a man's got to lose more than money to be broke. when a fellow's got a straight backbone and a clear eye his creditors don't have to lie awake nights worrying over his liabilities. you can hide your meanness from your brain and your tongue, but the eye and the backbone won't keep secrets. when the tongue lies, the eyes tell the truth. i know you'll think that the old man is bucking and kicking up a lot of dust over a harmless little flyer. but i've kept a heap smarter boys than you out of joliet when they found it easy to feed the board of trade hog out of my cash drawer, after it had sucked up their savings in a couple of laps. you must learn not to overwork a dollar any more than you would a horse. three per cent. is a small load for it to draw; six, a safe one; when it pulls in ten for you it's likely working out west and you've got to watch to see that it doesn't buck; when it makes twenty you own a blame good critter or a mighty foolish one, and you want to make dead sure which; but if it draws a hundred it's playing the races or something just as hard on horses and dollars, and the first thing you know you won't have even a carcass to haul to the glue factory. i dwell a little on this matter of speculation because you've got to live next door to the board of trade all your life, and it's a safe thing to know something about a neighbor's dogs before you try to pat them. sure things, straight tips and dead cinches will come running out to meet you, wagging their tails and looking as innocent as if they hadn't just killed a lamb, but they'll bite. the only safe road to follow in speculation leads straight away from the board of trade on the dead run. speaking of sure things naturally calls to mind the case of my old friend deacon wiggleford, whom i used to know back in missouri years ago. the deacon was a powerful pious man, and he was good according to his lights, but he didn't use a very superior article of kerosene to keep them burning. used to take up half the time in prayer-meeting talking about how we were all weak vessels and stewards. but he was so blamed busy exhorting others to give out of the fullness with which the lord had blessed them that he sort of forgot that the lord had blessed him about fifty thousand dollars' worth, and put it all in mighty safe property, too, you bet. the deacon had a brother in chicago whom he used to call a sore trial. brother bill was a broker on the board of trade, and, according to the deacon, he was not only engaged in a mighty sinful occupation, but he was a mighty poor steward of his sinful gains. smoked two-bit cigars and wore a plug hat. drank a little and cussed a little and went to the episcopal church, though he had been raised a methodist. altogether it looked as if bill was a pretty hard nut. well, one fall the deacon decided to go to chicago himself to buy his winter goods, and naturally he hiked out to brother bill's to stay, which was considerable cheaper for him than the palmer house, though, as he told us when he got back, it made him sick to see the waste. the deacon had his mouth all fixed to tell brother bill that, in his opinion, he wasn't much better than a faro dealer, for he used to brag that he never let anything turn him from his duty, which meant his meddling in other people's business. i want to say right here that with most men duty means something unpleasant which the other fellow ought to do. as a matter of fact, a man's first duty is to mind his own business. it's been my experience that it takes about all the thought and work which one man can give to run one man right, and if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty apt to scamp the building of his own. well, when brother bill got home from business that first night, the deacon explained that every time he lit a two-bit cigar he was depriving a zulu of twenty-five helpful little tracts which might have made a better man of him; that fast horses were a snare and plug hats a wile of the enemy; that the board of trade was the temple of belial and the brokers on it his sons and servants. brother bill listened mighty patiently to him, and when the deacon had pumped out all the scripture that was in him, and was beginning to suck air, he sort of slunk into the conversation like a setter pup that's been caught with the feathers on its chops. "brother zeke," says he, "i shall certainly let your words soak in. i want to be a number two red, hard, sound and clean sort of a man, and grade contract on delivery day. perhaps, as you say, the rust has got into me and the inspector won't pass me, and if i can see it that way i'll settle my trades and get out of the market for good." the deacon knew that brother bill had scraped together considerable property, and, as he was a bachelor, it would come to him in case the broker was removed by any sudden dispensation. what he really feared was that this money might be fooled away in high living and speculation. and so he had banged away into the middle of the flock, hoping to bring down those two birds. now that it began to look as if he might kill off the whole bunch he started in to hedge. "is it safe, william?" says he. "as sunday-school," says bill, "if you do a strictly brokerage business and don't speculate." "i trust, william, that you recognize the responsibilities of your stewardship?" [illustration: "_i started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp._"] bill fetched a groan. "zeke," says he, "you cornered me there, and i 'spose i might as well walk up to the captain's office and settle. i hadn't bought or sold a bushel on my own account in a year till last week, when i got your letter saying that you were coming. then i saw what looked like a safe chance to scalp the market for a couple of cents a bushel, and i bought 10,000 september, intending to turn over the profits to you as a little present, so that you could see the town and have a good time without it's costing you anything." the deacon judged from bill's expression that he had got nipped and was going to try to unload the loss on him, so he changed his face to the one which he used when attending the funeral of any one who hadn't been a professor, and came back quick and hard: "i'm surprised, william, that you should think i would accept money made in gambling. let this be a lesson to you. how much did you lose?" "that's the worst of it--i didn't lose; i made two hundred dollars," and bill hove another sigh. "made two hundred dollars!" echoed the deacon, and he changed his face again for the one which he used when he found a lead quarter in his till and couldn't remember who had passed it on him. "yes," bill went on, "and i'm ashamed of it, for you've made me see things in a new light. of course, after what you've said, i know it would be an insult to offer you the money. and i feel now that it wouldn't be right to keep it myself. i must sleep on it and try to find the straight thing to do." i guess it really didn't interfere with bill's sleep, but the deacon sat up with the corpse of that two hundred dollars, you bet. in the morning at breakfast he asked brother bill to explain all about this speculating business, what made the market go up and down, and whether real corn or wheat or pork figured in any stage of a deal. bill looked sort of sad and dreamy-eyed, as if his conscience hadn't digested that two hundred yet, but he was mighty obliging about explaining everything to zeke. he had changed his face for the one which he wore when he sold an easy customer ground peas and chicory for o. g. java, and every now and then he gulped as if he was going to start a hymn. when bill told him how good and bad weather sent the market up and down, he nodded and said that that part of it was all right, because the weather was of the lord. "not on the board of trade it isn't," bill answered back; "at least, not to any marked extent; it's from the weather man or some liar in the corn belt, and, as the weather man usually guesses wrong, i reckon there isn't any special inspiration about it. the game is to guess what's going to happen, not what has happened, and by the time the real weather comes along everybody has guessed wrong and knocked the market off a cent or two." that made the deacon's chin whiskers droop a little, but he began to ask questions again, and by and by he discovered that away behind--about a hundred miles behind, but that was close enough for the deacon--a deal in futures there were real wheat and pork. said then that he'd been misinformed and misled; that speculation was a legitimate business, involving skill and sagacity; that his last scruple was removed, and that he would accept the two hundred. bill brightened right up at that and thanked him for putting it so clear and removing the doubts that had been worrying him. said that he could speculate with a clear conscience after listening to the deacon's able exposition of the subject. was only sorry he hadn't seen him to talk it over before breakfast, as the two hundred had been lying so heavy on his mind all night that he'd got up early and mailed a check for it to the deacon's pastor and told him to spend it on his poor. zeke took the evening train home in order to pry that check out of the elder, but old doc. hoover was a pretty quick stepper himself and he'd blown the whole two hundred as soon as he got it, buying winter coal for poor people. i simply mention the deacon in passing as an example of the fact that it's easy for a man who thinks he's all right to go all wrong when he sees a couple of hundred dollars lying around loose a little to one side of the straight and narrow path; and that when he reaches down to pick up the money there's usually a string tied to it and a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank. easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury. of course, the board of trade and every other commercial exchange have their legitimate uses, but all you need to know just now is that speculation by a fellow who never owns more pork at a time than he sees on his breakfast plate isn't one of them. when you become a packer you may go on 'change as a trader; until then you can go there only as a sucker. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 15 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, at | | the union stock yards | | in chicago, to his son, | | pierrepont, at the scrub | | oaks, spring lake, | | michigan. mr. pierrepont | | has been promoted again, | | and the old man sends him | | a little advice with his | | appointment. | +-----------------------------+ xv chicago, september 1, 189_dear pierrepont:_ i judge from yours of the twenty-ninth that you must have the black bass in those parts pretty well terrorized. i never could quite figure it out, but there seems to be something about a fish that makes even a cold-water deacon see double. i reckon it must be that while eve was learning the first principles of dressmaking from the snake, adam was off bass fishing and keeping his end up by learning how to lie. don't overstock yourself with those four-pound fish yarns, though, because the boys have been bringing them back from their vacations till we've got enough to last us for a year of fridays. and if you're sending them to keep in practice, you might as well quit, because we've decided to take you off the road when you come back, and make you assistant manager of the lard department. the salary will be fifty dollars a week, and the duties of the position to do your work so well that the manager can't run the department without you, and that you can run the department without the manager. to do this you will have to know lard; to know yourself; and to know those under you. to some fellows lard is just hog fat, and not always that, if they would rather make a dollar to-day than five to-morrow. but it was a good deal more to jack summers, who held your new job until we had to promote him to canned goods. jack knew lard from the hog to the frying pan; was up on lard in history and religion; originated what he called the "ham and" theory, proving that moses' injunction against pork must have been dissolved by the circuit court, because noah included a couple of shoats in his cargo, and called one of his sons ham, out of gratitude, probably, after tasting a slice broiled for the first time; argued that all the great nations lived on fried food, and that america was the greatest of them all, owing to the energy-producing qualities of pie, liberally shortened with lard. it almost broke jack's heart when we decided to manufacture our new cottonseed oil product, seedoiline. but on reflection he saw that it just gave him an extra hold on the heathen that he couldn't convert to lard, and he started right out for the hebrew and vegetarian vote. jack had enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the best shortening for any job; it makes heavy work light. a good many young fellows envy their boss because they think he makes the rules and can do as he pleases. as a matter of fact, he's the only man in the shop who can't. he's like the fellow on the tight-rope--there's plenty of scenery under him and lots of room around him, but he's got to keep his feet on the wire all the time and travel straight ahead. a clerk has just one boss to answer to--the manager. but the manager has just as many bosses as he has clerks under him. he can make rules, but he's the only man who can't afford to break them now and then. a fellow is a boss simply because he's a better man than those under him, and there's a heap of responsibility in being better than the next fellow. no man can ask more than he gives. a fellow who can't take orders can't give them. if his rules are too hard for him to mind, you can bet they are too hard for the clerks who don't get half so much for minding them as he does. there's no alarm clock for the sleepy man like an early rising manager; and there's nothing breeds work in an office like a busy boss. of course, setting a good example is just a small part of a manager's duties. it's not enough to settle yourself firm on the box seat--you must have every man under you hitched up right and well in hand. you can't work individuals by general rules. every man is a special case and needs a special pill. when you fix up a snug little nest for a plymouth rock hen and encourage her with a nice porcelain egg, it doesn't always follow that she has reached the fricassee age because she doesn't lay right off. sometimes she will respond to a little red pepper in her food. i don't mean by this that you ever want to drive your men, because the lash always leaves its worst soreness under the skin. a hundred men will forgive a blow in the face where one will a blow to his self-esteem. tell a man the truth about himself and shame the devil if you want to, but you won't shame the man you're trying to reach, because he won't believe you. but if you can start him on the road that will lead him to the truth he's mighty apt to try to reform himself before any one else finds him out. consider carefully before you say a hard word to a man, but never let a chance to say a good one go by. praise judiciously bestowed is money invested. never learn anything about your men except from themselves. a good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow who can't read human nature can't manage it. the phonograph records of a fellow's character are lined in his face, and a man's days tell the secrets of his nights. be slow to hire and quick to fire. the time to discover incompatibility of temper and curl-papers is before the marriage ceremony. but when you find that you've hired the wrong man, you can't get rid of him too quick. pay him an extra month, but don't let him stay another day. a discharged clerk in the office is like a splinter in the thumb--a centre of soreness. there are no exceptions to this rule, because there are no exceptions to human nature. never threaten, because a threat is a promise to pay that it isn't always convenient to meet, but if you don't make it good it hurts your credit. save a threat till you're ready to act, and then you won't need it. in all your dealings, remember that to-day is your opportunity; to-morrow some other fellow's. keep close to your men. when a fellow's sitting on top of a mountain he's in a mighty dignified and exalted position, but if he's gazing at the clouds, he's missing a heap of interesting and important doings down in the valley. never lose your dignity, of course, but tie it up in all the red tape you can find around the office, and tuck it away in the safe. it's easy for a boss to awe his clerks, but a man who is feared to his face is hated behind his back. a competent boss can move among his men without having to draw an imaginary line between them, because they will see the real one if it exists. besides keeping in touch with your office men, you want to feel your salesmen all the time. send each of them a letter every day so that they won't forget that we are making goods for which we need orders; and insist on their sending you a line every day, whether they have anything to say or not. when a fellow has to write in six times a week to the house, he uses up his explanations mighty fast, and he's pretty apt to hustle for business to make his seventh letter interesting. right here i want to repeat that in keeping track of others and their faults it's very, very important that you shouldn't lose sight of your own. authority swells up some fellows so that they can't see their corns; but a wise man tries to cure his own while remembering not to tread on his neighbors'. [illustration: "_a good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in funny stories._"] in this connection, the story of lemuel hostitter, who kept the corner grocery in my old town, naturally comes to mind. lem was probably the meanest white man in the state of missouri, and it wasn't any walk-over to hold the belt in those days. most grocers were satisfied to adulterate their coffee with ground peas, but lem was so blamed mean that he adulterated the peas first. bought skin-bruised hams and claimed that the bruise was his private and particular brand, stamped in the skin, showing that they were a fancy article, packed expressly for his fancy family trade. ran a soda-water fountain in the front of his store with home-made syrups that ate the lining out of the children's stomachs, and a blind tiger in the back room with moonshine whiskey that pickled their daddies' insides. take it by and large, lem's character smelled about as various as his store, and that wasn't perfumed with lily-of-the-valley, you bet. one time and another most men dropped into lem's store of an evening, because there wasn't any other place to go and swap lies about the crops and any of the neighbors who didn't happen to be there. as lem was always around, in the end he was the only man in town whose meanness hadn't been talked over in that grocery. naturally, he began to think that he was the only decent white man in the county. got to shaking his head and reckoning that the town was plum rotten. said that such goings on would make a pessimist of a goat. wanted to know if public opinion couldn't be aroused so that decency would have a show in the village. most men get information when they ask for it, and in the end lem fetched public opinion all right. one night the local chapter of the w.c.t.u. borrowed all the loose hatchets in town and made a good, clean, workmanlike job of the back part of his store, though his whiskey was so mean that even the ground couldn't soak it up. the noise brought out the men, and they sort of caught the spirit of the happy occasion. when they were through, lem's stock and fixtures looked mighty sick, and they had lem on a rail headed for the county line. i don't know when i've seen a more surprised man than lem. he couldn't cuss even. but as he never came back, to ask for any explanation, i reckon he figured it out that they wanted to get rid of him because he was too good for the town. i simply mention lem in passing as an example of the fact that when you're through sizing up the other fellow, it's a good thing to step back from yourself and see how you look. then add fifty per cent. to your estimate of your neighbor for virtues that you can't see, and deduct fifty per cent. from yourself for faults that you've missed in your inventory, and you'll have a pretty accurate result. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 16 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | schweitzerkasenhof, | | karlsbad, austria, to his | | son, pierrepont, at the | | union stock yards, | | chicago. mr. pierrepont | | has shown mild symptoms | | of an attack of society | | fever, and his father is | | administering some simple | | remedies. | +-----------------------------+ xvi karlsbad, october 6, 189_dear pierrepont:_ if you happen to run across doc titherington you'd better tell him to go into training, because i expect to be strong enough to lick him by the time i get back. between that ten-day boat which he recommended and these dutch doctors, i'm almost well and about broke. you don't really have to take the baths here to get rid of your rheumatism--their bills scare it out of a fellow. they tell me we had a pretty quiet trip across, and i'm not saying that we didn't, because for the first three days i was so busy holding myself in my berth that i couldn't get a chance to look out the porthole to see for myself. i reckon there isn't anything alive that can beat me at being seasick, unless it's a camel, and he's got three stomachs. when i did get around i was a good deal of a maverick--for all the old fellows were playing poker in the smoking-room and all the young ones were lallygagging under the boats--until i found that we were carrying a couple of hundred steers between decks. they looked mighty homesick, you bet, and i reckon they sort of sized me up as being a long ways from chicago, for we cottoned to each other right from the start. take 'em as they ran, they were a mighty likely bunch of steers, and i got a heap of solid comfort out of them. there must have been good money in them, too, for they reached england in prime condition. i wish you would tell our people at the beef house to look into this export cattle business, and have all the facts and figures ready for me when i get back. there seems to be a good margin in it, and with our english house we are fixed up to handle it all right at this end. it makes me mighty sick to think that we've been sitting back on our hindlegs and letting the other fellow run away with this trade. we are packers, i know, but that's no reason why we can't be shippers, too. i want to milk the critter coming and going, twice a day, and milk her dry. unless you do the whole thing you can't do anything in business as it runs to-day. there's still plenty of room at the top, but there isn't much anywheres else. there may be reasons why we haven't been able to tackle this exporting of live cattle, but you can tell our people there that they have got to be mighty good reasons to wipe out the profit i see in it. of course, i may have missed them, for i've only looked into the business a little by way of recreation, but it won't do to say that it's not in our line, because anything which carries a profit on four legs is in our line. i dwell a little on the matter because, while this special case is out of your department, the general principle is in it. the way to think of a thing in business is to think of it first, and the way to get a share of the trade is to go for all of it. half the battle's in being on the hilltop first; and the other half's in staying there. in speaking of these matters, and in writing you about your new job, i've run a little ahead of your present position, because i'm counting on you to catch up with me. but you want to get it clearly in mind that i'm writing to you not as the head of the house, but as the head of the family, and that i don't propose to mix the two things. even as assistant manager of the lard department, you don't occupy a very important position with us yet. but the great trouble with some fellows is that a little success goes to their heads. instead of hiding their authority behind their backs and trying to get close to their men, they use it as a club to keep them off. and a boss with a case of big-head will fill an office full of sore heads. i don't know any one who has better opportunities for making himself unpopular than an assistant, for the clerks are apt to cuss him for all the manager's meanness, and the manager is likely to find fault with him for all the clerks' cussedness. but if he explains his orders to the clerks he loses his authority, and if he excuses himself to the manager he loses his usefulness. a manager needs an assistant to take trouble from him, not to bring it to him. the one important thing for you to remember all the time is not to forget. it's easier for a boss to do a thing himself than to tell some one twice to do it. petty details take up just as much room in a manager's head as big ideas; and the more of the first you store for him, the more warehouse room you leave him for the second. when a boss has to spend his days swearing at his assistant and the clerks have to sit up nights hating him, they haven't much time left to swear by the house. satisfaction is the oil of the business machine. some fellows can only see those above them, and others can only see those under them, but a good man is cross-eyed and can see both ends at once. an assistant who becomes his manager's right hand is going to find the left hand helping him; and it's not hard for a clerk to find good points in a boss who finds good ones in him. pulling from above and boosting from below make climbing easy. in handling men, your own feelings are the only ones that are of no importance. i don't mean by this that you want to sacrifice your self-respect, but you must keep in mind that the bigger the position the broader the man must be to fill it. and a diet of courtesy and consideration gives girth to a boss. of course, all this is going to take so much time and thought that you won't have a very wide margin left for golf--especially in the afternoons. i simply mention this in passing, because i see in the chicago papers which have been sent me that you were among the players on the links one afternoon a fortnight ago. golf's a nice, foolish game, and there ain't any harm in it so far as i know except for the balls--the stiff balls at the beginning, the lost balls in the middle, and the highballs at the end of the game. but a young fellow who wants to be a boss butcher hasn't much daylight to waste on any kind of links except sausage links. of course, a man should have a certain amount of play, just as a boy is entitled to a piece of pie at the end of his dinner, but he don't want to make a meal of it. any one who lets sinkers take the place of bread and meat gets bilious pretty young; and these fellows who haven't any job, except to blow the old man's dollars, are a good deal like the little niggers in the pie-eating contest at the county fair--they've a-plenty of pastry and they're attracting a heap of attention, but they've got a stomach-ache coming to them by and by. i want to caution you right here against getting the society bug in your head. i'd sooner you'd smoke these turkish cigarettes which smell like a fire in the fertilizer factory. you're going to meet a good many stray fools in the course of business every day without going out to hunt up the main herd after dark. everybody over here in europe thinks that we haven't any society in america, and a power of people in new york think that we haven't any society in chicago. but so far as i can see there are just as many ninety-nine-cent men spending million-dollar incomes in one place as another; and the rules that govern the game seem to be the same in all three places--you've got to be a descendant to belong, and the farther you descend the harder you belong. the only difference is that, in europe, the ancestor who made money enough so that his family could descend, has been dead so long that they have forgotten his shop; in new york he's so recent that they can only pretend to have forgotten it; but in chicago they can't lose it because the ancestor is hustling on the board of trade or out at the stock yards. i want to say right here that i don't propose to be an ancestor until after i'm dead. then, if you want to have some fellow whose grandfather sold bad whiskey to the indians sniff and smell pork when you come into the room, you can suit yourself. of course, i may be off in sizing this thing up, because it's a little out of my line. but it's been my experience that these people who think that they are all the choice cuts off the critter, and that the rest of us are only fit for sausage, are usually chuck steak when you get them under the knife. i've tried two or three of them, who had gone broke, in the office, but when you separate them from their money there's nothing left, not even their friends. i never see a fellow trying to crawl or to buy his way into society that i don't think of my old friend hank smith and his wife kate--kate botts she was before he married her--and how they tried to butt their way through the upper crust. hank and i were boys together in missouri, and he stayed along in the old town after i left. i heard of him on and off as tending store a little, and farming a little, and loafing a good deal. then i forgot all about him, until one day a few years ago when he turned up in the papers as captain henry smith, the klondike gold king, just back from circle city, with a million in dust and anything you please in claims. there's never any limit to what a miner may be worth in those, except his imagination. i was a little puzzled when, a week later, my office boy brought me a card reading colonel henry augustus bottes-smythe, but i supposed it was some distinguished foreigner who had come to size me up so that he could round out his roast on chicago in his new book, and i told the boy to show the general in. i've got a pretty good memory for faces, and i'd bought too much store plug of hank in my time not to know him, even with a clean shave and a plug hat. some men dry up with success, but it was just spouting out of hank. told me he'd made his pile and that he was tired of living on the slag heap; that he'd spent his whole life where money hardly whispered, let alone talked, and he was going now where it would shout. wanted to know what was the use of being a nob if a fellow wasn't the nobbiest sort of a nob. said he'd bought a house on beacon hill, in boston, and that if i'd prick up my ears occasionally i'd hear something drop into the back bay. handed me his new card four times and explained that it was the rawest sort of dog to carry a brace of names in your card holster; that it gave you the drop on the swells every time, and that they just had to throw up both hands and pass you the pot when you showed down. said that bottes was old english for botts, and that smythe was new american for smith; the augustus was just a fancy touch, a sort of high-card kicker. i didn't explain to hank, because it was congratulations and not explanations that he wanted, and i make it a point to show a customer the line of goods that he's looking for. and i never heard the full particulars of his experiences in the east, though, from what i learned afterward, hank struck boston with a bang, all right. he located his claim on beacon hill, between a mayflower descendant and a declaration signer's great-grandson, breeds which believe that when the lord made them he was through, and that the rest of us just happened. and he hadn't been in town two hours before he started in to make improvements. there was a high wrought-iron railing in front of his house, and he had that gilded first thing, because, as he said, he wasn't running a receiving vault and he didn't want any mistakes. then he bought a nice, open barouche, had the wheels painted red, hired a nigger coachman and started out in style to be sociable and get acquainted. left his card all the way down one side of beacon street, and then drove back leaving it on the other. everywhere he stopped he found that the whole family was out. kept it up a week, on and off, but didn't seem to have any luck. thought that the men must be hot sports and the women great gadders to keep on the jump so much. allowed that they were the liveliest little lot of fleas that he had ever chased. decided to quit trying to nail 'em one at a time, and planned out something that he reckoned would round up the whole bunch. hank sent out a thousand invitations to his grand opening, as he called it; left one at every house within a mile. had a brass band on the front steps and fireworks on the roof. ordered forty kegs from the brewery and hired a fancy mixer to sling together mild snorts, as he called them, for the ladies. they tell me that, when the band got to going good on the steps and the fireworks on the roof, even beacon street looked out the windows to see what was doing. there must have been ten thousand people in the street and not a soul but hank and his wife and the mixer in the house. some one yelled speech, and then the whole crowd took it up, till hank came out on the steps. he shut off the band with one hand and stopped the fireworks with the other. said that speechmaking wasn't his strangle-hold; that he'd been living on snowballs in the klondike for so long that his gas-pipe was frozen; but that this welcome started the ice and he thought about three fingers of the plumber's favorite prescription would cut out the frost. would the crowd join him? he had invited a few friends in for the evening, but there seemed to be some misunderstanding about the date, and he hated to have good stuff curdle on his hands. while this was going on, the mayflower descendant was telephoning for the police from one side and the signer's great-grandson from the other, and just as the crowd yelled and broke for the house two patrol wagons full of policemen got there. but they had to turn in a riot call and bring out the reserves before they could break up hank's little boston tea-party. after all, hank did what he started out to do with his party--rounded up all his neighbors in a bunch, though not exactly according to schedule. for next morning there were so many descendants and great-grandsons in the police court to prefer charges that it looked like a reunion of the pilgrim fathers. the judge fined hank on sixteen counts and bound him over to keep the peace for a hundred years. that afternoon he left for the west on a special, because the limited didn't get there quick enough. but before going he tacked on the front door of his house a sign which read: "neighbors paying their party calls will please not heave rocks through windows to attract attention. not in and not going to be. gone back to circle city for a little quiet. "yours truly, "hank smith. "n.b.--too swift for your uncle." hank dropped by my office for a minute on his way to 'frisco. said he liked things lively, but there was altogether too much rough-house on beacon hill for him. judged that as the crowd which wasn't invited was so blamed sociable, the one which was invited would have stayed a week if it hadn't slipped up on the date. that might be the boston idea, but he wanted a little more refinement in his. said he was a pretty free spender, and would hold his end up, but he hated a hog. of course i told hank that boston wasn't all that it was cracked up to be in the school histories, and that circle city wasn't so tough as it read in the newspapers, for there was no way of making him understand that he might have lived in boston for a hundred years without being invited to a strawberry sociable. because a fellow cuts ice on the arctic circle, it doesn't follow that he's going to be worth beans on the back bay. i simply mention hank in a general way. his case may be a little different, but it isn't any more extreme than lots of others all around you over there and me over here. of course, i want you to enjoy good society, but any society is good society where congenial men and women meet together for wholesome amusement. but i want you to keep away from people who choose play for a profession. a man's as good as he makes himself, but no man's any good because his grandfather was. your affectionate father, john graham. +----------------------------+ | no. 17 | +----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | london house of graham & | | co., to his son, | | pierrepont, at the union | | stock yards in chicago. | | mr. pierrepont has | | written his father that | | he is getting along | | famously in his new | | place. | +----------------------------+ xvii london, october 24, 189_dear pierrepont:_ well, i'm headed for home at last, checked high and as full of prance as a spotted circus horse. those dutchmen ain't so bad as their language, after all, for they've fixed up my rheumatism so that i can bear down on my right leg without thinking that it's going to break off. i'm glad to learn from your letter that you're getting along so well in your new place, and i hope that when i get home your boss will back up all the good things which you say about yourself. for the future, however, you needn't bother to keep me posted along this line. it's the one subject on which most men are perfectly frank, and it's about the only one on which it isn't necessary to be. there's never any use trying to hide the fact that you're a jim-dandy--you're bound to be found out. of course, you want to have your eyes open all the time for a good man, but follow the old maid's example--look under the bed and in the closet, not in the mirror, for him. a man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. when the jaws really need exercise, chew gum. some men go through life on the sarsaparilla theory--that they've got to give a hundred doses of talk about themselves for every dollar which they take in; and that's a pretty good theory when you're getting a dollar for ten cents' worth of ingredients. but a man who's giving a dollar's worth of himself for ninety-nine cents doesn't need to throw in any explanations. of course, you're going to meet fellows right along who pass as good men for a while, because they say they're good men; just as a lot of fives are in circulation which are accepted at their face value until they work up to the receiving teller. and you're going to see these men taking buzzards and coining eagles from them that will fool people so long as they can keep them in the air; but sooner or later they're bound to swoop back to their dead horse, and you'll get the buzzard smell. hot air can take up a balloon a long ways, but it can't keep it there. and when a fellow's turning flip-flops up among the clouds, he's naturally going to have the farmers gaping at him. but in the end there always comes a time when the parachute fails to work. i don't know anything that's quite so dead as a man who's fallen three or four thousand feet off the edge of a cloud. the only way to gratify a taste for scenery is to climb a mountain. you don't get up so quick, but you don't come down so sudden. even then, there's a chance that a fellow may slip and fall over a precipice, but not unless he's foolish enough to try short-cuts over slippery places; though some men can manage to fall down the hall stairs and break their necks. the path isn't the shortest way to the top, but it's usually the safest way. life isn't a spurt, but a long, steady climb. you can't run far up-hill without stopping to sit down. some men do a day's work and then spend six lolling around admiring it. they rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that. and when they're rested and have got it back, they whoop again and start off in a new direction. they mistake intention for determination, and after they have told you what they propose to do and get right up to doing it, they simply peter out. i've heard a good deal in my time about the foolishness of hens, but when it comes to right-down, plum foolishness, give me a rooster, every time. he's always strutting and stretching and crowing and bragging about things with which he had nothing to do. when the sun rises, you'd think that he was making all the light, instead of all the noise; when the farmer's wife throws the scraps in the henyard, he crows as if he was the provider for the whole farmyard and was asking a blessing on the food; when he meets another rooster, he crows; and when the other rooster licks him, he crows; and so he keeps it up straight through the day. he even wakes up during the night and crows a little on general principles. but when you hear from a hen, she's laid an egg, and she don't make a great deal of noise about it, either. i speak of these things in a general way, because i want you to keep in mind all the time that steady, quiet, persistent, plain work can't be imitated or replaced by anything just as good, and because your request for a job for courtland warrington naturally brings them up. you write that court says that a man who has occupied his position in the world naturally can't cheapen himself by stepping down into any little piddling job where he'd have to do undignified things. i want to start right out by saying that i know court and his whole breed like a glue factory, and that we can't use him in our business. he's one of those fellows who start in at the top and naturally work down to the bottom, because that is where they belong. his father gave him an interest in the concern when he left college, and since the old man failed three years ago and took a salary himself, court's been sponging on him and waiting for a nice, dignified job to come along and steal him. but we are not in the kidnapping business. the only undignified job i know of is loafing, and nothing can cheapen a man who sponges instead of hunting any sort of work, because he's as cheap already as they can be made. i never could quite understand these fellows who keep down every decent instinct in order to keep up appearance, and who will stoop to any sort of real meanness to boost up their false pride. [illustration: "_jim hicks dared fatty wilkins to eat a piece of dirt._"] they always remind me of little fatty wilkins, who came to live in our town back in missouri when i was a boy. his mother thought a heap of fatty, and fatty thought a heap of himself, or his stomach, which was the same thing. looked like he'd been taken from a joke book. used to be a great eater. stuffed himself till his hide was stretched as tight as a sausage skin, and then howled for painkiller. spent all his pennies for cakes, because candy wasn't filling enough. hogged 'em in the shop, for fear he would have to give some one a bite if he ate them on the street. the other boys didn't take to fatty, and they didn't make any special secret of it when he was around. he was a mighty brave boy and a mighty strong boy and a mighty proud boy--with his mouth; but he always managed to slip out of anything that looked like a fight by having a sore hand or a case of the mumps. the truth of the matter was that he was afraid of everything except food, and that was the thing which was hurting him most. it's mighty seldom that a fellow's afraid of what he ought to be afraid of in this world. of course, like most cowards, while fatty always had an excuse for not doing something that might hurt his skin, he would take a dare to do anything that would hurt his self-respect, for fear the boys would laugh at him, or say that he was afraid, if he refused. so one day during recess jim hicks dared him to eat a piece of dirt. fatty hesitated a little, because, while he was pretty promiscuous about what he put into his stomach, he had never included dirt in his bill-of-fare. but when the boys began to say that he was afraid, fatty up and swallowed it. and when he dared the other boys to do the same thing and none of them would take the dare, it made him mighty proud and puffed up. got to charging the bigger boys and the lounger around the post-office a cent to see him eat a piece of dirt the size of a hickory-nut. found there was good money in that, and added grasshoppers, at two cents apiece, as a side line. found them so popular that he took on chinch bugs at a nickel, and fairly coined money. the last i heard of fatty he was in a dime museum, drawing two salaries--one as "the fat man," and the other as "launcelot, the locust eater, the only man alive with a gizzard." you are going to meet a heap of fatties, first and last, fellows who'll eat a little dirt "for fun" or to show off, and who'll eat a little more because they find that there's some easy money or times in it. it's hard to get at these men, because when they've lost everything they had to be proud of, they still keep their pride. you can always bet that when a fellow's pride makes him touchy, it's because there are some mighty raw spots on it. it's been my experience that pride is usually a spur to the strong and a drag on the weak. it drives the strong man along and holds the weak one back. it makes the fellow with the stiff upper lip and the square jaw smile at a laugh and laugh at a sneer; it keeps his conscience straight and his back humped over his work; it makes him appreciate the little things and fight for the big ones. but it makes the fellow with the retreating forehead do the thing that looks right, instead of the thing that is right; it makes him fear a laugh and shrivel up at a sneer; it makes him live to-day on to-morrow's salary; it makes him a cheap imitation of some willie who has a little more money than he has, without giving him zip enough to go out and force luck for himself. i never see one of these fellows swelling around with their petty larceny pride that i don't think of a little experience of mine when i was a boy. an old fellow caught me lifting a watermelon in his patch, one afternoon, and instead of cuffing me and letting me go, as i had expected if i got caught, he led me home by the ear to my ma, and told her what i had been up to. your grandma had been raised on the old-fashioned plan, and she had never heard of these new-fangled theories of reasoning gently with a child till its under lip begins to stick out and its eyes to fill with tears as it sees the error of its ways. she fetched the tears all right, but she did it with a trunk strap or a slipper. and your grandma was a pretty substantial woman. nothing of the tootsey-wootsey about her foot, and nothing of the airy-fairy trifle about her slipper. when she was through i knew that i'd been licked--polished right off to a point--and then she sent me to my room and told me not to poke my nose out of it till i could recite the ten commandments and the sunday-school lesson by heart. there was a whole chapter of it, and an old testament chapter at that, but i laid right into it because i knew ma, and supper was only two hours off. i can repeat that chapter still, forward and backward, without missing a word or stopping to catch my breath. every now and then old doc hoover used to come into the sunday-school room and scare the scholars into fits by going around from class to class and asking questions. that next sunday, for the first time, i was glad to see him happen in, and i didn't try to escape attention when he worked around to our class. for ten minutes i'd been busting for him to ask me to recite a verse of the lesson, and, when he did, i simply cut loose and recited the whole chapter and threw in the ten commandments for good measure. it sort of dazed the doc, because he had come to me for information about the old testament before, and we'd never got much beyond, and ahab begat jahab, or words to that effect. but when he got over the shock he made me stand right up before the whole school and do it again. patted me on the head and said i was "an honor to my parents and an example to my playmates." i had been looking down all the time, feeling mighty proud and scared, but at that i couldn't help glancing up to see the other boys admire me. but the first person my eye lit on was your grandma, standing in the back of the room, where she had stopped for a moment on her way up to church, and glaring at me in a mighty unpleasant way. "tell 'em, john," she said right out loud, before everybody. there was no way to run, for the elder had hold of my hand, and there was no place to hide, though i reckon i could have crawled into a rat hole. so, to gain time, i blurted out: "tell 'em what, mam?" "tell 'em how you come to have your lesson so nice." i learned to hate notoriety right then and there, but i knew there was no switching her off on to the weather when she wanted to talk religion. so i shut my eyes and let it come, though it caught on my palate once or twice on the way out. "hooked a watermelon, mam." there wasn't any need for further particulars with that crowd, and they simply howled. ma led me up to our pew, allowing that she'd tend to me monday for disgracing her in public that way--and she did. that was a twelve-grain dose, without any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than i could get back into it for the next twenty years. i learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud. there are mighty few men that need any lessons in that. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 18 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | london house of graham & | | co., to his son, | | pierrepont, at the union | | stock yards in chicago. | | mr. pierrepont is worried | | over rumors that the old | | man is a bear on lard, | | and that the longs are | | about to make him climb a | | tree. | +-----------------------------+ xviii london, october 27, 189_dear pierrepont:_ yours of the twenty-first inst. to hand and i note the inclosed clippings. you needn't pay any special attention to this newspaper talk about the comstock crowd having caught me short a big line of november lard. i never sell goods without knowing where i can find them when i want them, and if these fellows try to put their forefeet in the trough, or start any shoving and crowding, they're going to find me forgetting my table manners, too. for when it comes to funny business i'm something of a humorist myself. and while i'm too old to run, i'm young enough to stand and fight. first and last, a good many men have gone gunning for me, but they've always planned the obsequies before they caught the deceased. i reckon there hasn't been a time in twenty years when there wasn't a nice "gates ajar" piece all made up and ready for me in some office near the board of trade. but the first essential of a quiet funeral is a willing corpse. and i'm still sitting up and taking nourishment. there are two things you never want to pay any attention to--abuse and flattery. the first can't harm you and the second can't help you. some men are like yellow dogs--when you're coming toward them they'll jump up and try to lick your hands; and when you're walking away from them they'll sneak up behind and snap at your heels. last year, when i was bulling the market, the longs all said that i was a kind-hearted old philanthropist, who was laying awake nights scheming to get the farmers a top price for their hogs; and the shorts allowed that i was an infamous old robber, who was stealing the pork out of the workingman's pot. as long as you can't please both sides in this world, there's nothing like pleasing your own side. there are mighty few people who can see any side to a thing except their own side. i remember once i had a vacant lot out on the avenue, and a lady came in to my office and in a soothing-syrupy way asked if i would lend it to her, as she wanted to build a _crã¨che_ on it. i hesitated a little, because i had never heard of a _crã¨che_ before, and someways it sounded sort of foreign and frisky, though the woman looked like a good, safe, reliable old heifer. but she explained that a _crã¨che_ was a baby farm, where old maids went to wash and feed and stick pins in other people's children while their mothers were off at work. of course, there was nothing in that to get our pastor or the police after me, so i told her to go ahead. she went off happy, but about a week later she dropped in again, looking sort of dissatisfied, to find out if i wouldn't build the _crã¨che_ itself. it seemed like a worthy object, so i sent some carpenters over to knock together a long frame pavilion. she was mighty grateful, you bet, and i didn't see her again for a fortnight. then she called by to say that so long as i was in the business and they didn't cost me anything special, would i mind giving her a few cows. she had a surprised and grieved expression on her face as she talked, and the way she put it made me feel that i ought to be ashamed of myself for not having thought of the live stock myself. so i threw in half a dozen cows to provide the refreshments. i thought that was pretty good measure, but the carpenters hadn't more than finished with the pavilion before the woman telephoned a sharp message to ask why i hadn't had it painted. i was too busy that morning to quarrel, so i sent word that i would fix it up; and when i was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it. there was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the avenue, and i saw right off that it was just a natural signboard. so i called over the boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice little ad that ran something like this: graham's extract: it makes the weak strong. well, sir, when she saw the ad next morning that old hen just scratched gravel. went all around town saying that i had given a five-hundred-dollar shed to charity and painted a thousand-dollar ad on it. allowed i ought to send my check for that amount to the _crã¨che_ fund. kept at it till i began to think there might be something in it, after all, and sent her the money. then i found a fellow who wanted to build in that neighborhood, sold him the lot cheap, and got out of the _crã¨che_ industry. i've put a good deal more than work into my business, and i've drawn a good deal more than money out of it; but the only thing i've ever put into it which didn't draw dividends in fun or dollars was worry. that is a branch of the trade which you want to leave to our competitors. i've always found worrying a blamed sight more uncertain than horse-racing--it's harder to pick a winner at it. you go home worrying because you're afraid that your fool new clerk forgot to lock the safe after you, and during the night the lard refinery burns down; you spend a year fretting because you think bill jones is going to cut you out with your best girl, and then you spend ten worrying because he didn't; you worry over charlie at college because he's a little wild, and he writes you that he's been elected president of the y.m.c.a.; and you worry over william because he's so pious that you're afraid he's going to throw up everything and go to china as a missionary, and he draws on you for a hundred; you worry because you're afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead. worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don't get any satisfaction out of your smartness. a busy man has no time to bother with it. he can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying over their own troubles and to sit up nights waking his. speaking of handing over your worries to others naturally calls to mind the widow williams and her son bud, who was a playmate of mine when i was a boy. bud was the youngest of the widow's troubles, and she was a woman whose troubles seldom came singly. had fourteen altogether, and four pair of 'em were twins. used to turn 'em loose in the morning, when she let out her cows and pigs to browse along the street, and then she'd shed all worry over them for the rest of the day. allowed that if they got hurt the neighbors would bring them home; and that if they got hungry they'd come home. and someways, the whole drove always showed up safe and dirty about meal time. i've no doubt she thought a lot of bud, but when a woman has fourteen it sort of unsettles her mind so that she can't focus her affections or play any favorites. and so when bud's clothes were found at the swimming hole one day, and no bud inside them, she didn't take on up to the expectations of the neighbors who had brought the news, and who were standing around waiting for her to go off into something special in the way of high-strikes. she allowed that they were bud's clothes, all right, but she wanted to know where the remains were. hinted that there'd be no funeral, or such like expensive goings-on, until some one produced the deceased. take her by and large, she was a pretty cool, calm cucumber. but if she showed a little too much christian resignation, the rest of the town was mightily stirred up over bud's death, and every one just quit work to tell each other what a noble little fellow he was; and how his mother hadn't deserved to have such a bright little sunbeam in her home; and to drag the river between talks. but they couldn't get a rise. through all the worry and excitement the widow was the only one who didn't show any special interest, except to ask for results. but finally, at the end of a week, when they'd strained the whole river through their drags and hadn't anything to show for it but a collection of tin cans and dead catfish, she threw a shawl over her head and went down the street to the cabin of louisiana clytemnestra, an old yellow woman, who would go into a trance for four bits and find a fortune for you for a dollar. i reckon she'd have called herself a clairvoyant nowadays, but then she was just a voodoo woman. well, the widow said she reckoned that boys ought to be let out as well as in for half price, and so she laid down two bits, allowing that she wanted a few minutes' private conversation with her bud. clytie said she'd do her best, but that spirits were mighty snifty and high-toned, even when they'd only been poor white trash on earth, and it might make them mad to be called away from their high jinks if they were taking a little recreation, or from their high-priced new york customers if they were working, to tend to cut-rate business. still, she'd have a try, and she did. but after having convulsions for half an hour, she gave it up. reckoned that bud was up to some cussedness off somewhere, and that he wouldn't answer for any two-bits. [illustration: "_elder hoover was accounted a powerful exhorter in our parts._"] the widow was badly disappointed, but she allowed that that was just like bud. he'd always been a boy that never could be found when any one wanted him. so she went off, saying that she'd had her money's worth in seeing clytie throw those fancy fits. but next day she came again and paid down four bits, and clytie reckoned that that ought to fetch bud sure. someways though, she didn't have any luck, and finally the widow suggested that she call up bud's father--buck williams had been dead a matter of ten years--and the old man responded promptly. "where's bud?" asked the widow. hadn't laid eyes on him. didn't know he'd come across. had he joined the church before he started? "no." then he'd have to look downstairs for him. clytie told the widow to call again and they'd get him sure. so she came back next day and laid down a dollar. that fetched old buck williams' ghost on the jump, you bet, but he said he hadn't laid eyes on bud yet. they hauled the sweet by and by with a drag net, but they couldn't get a rap from him. clytie trotted out george washington, and napoleon, and billy patterson, and ben franklin, and captain kidd, just to show that there was no deception, but they couldn't get a whisper even from bud. i reckon clytie had been stringing the old lady along, intending to produce bud's spook as a sort of red-fire, calcium-light, grand-march-of-the-amazons climax, but she didn't get a chance. for right there the old lady got up with a mighty set expression around her lips and marched out, muttering that it was just as she had thought all along--bud wasn't there. and when the neighbors dropped in that afternoon to plan out a memorial service for her "lost lamb," she chased them off the lot with a broom. said that they had looked in the river for him and that she had looked beyond the river for him, and that they would just stand pat now and wait for him to make the next move. allowed that if she could once get her hands in "that lost lamb's" wool there might be an opening for a funeral when she got through with him, but there wouldn't be till then. altogether, it looked as if there was a heap of trouble coming to bud if he had made any mistake and was still alive. the widow found her "lost lamb" hiding behind a rain-barrel when she opened up the house next morning, and there was a mighty touching and affecting scene. in fact, the widow must have touched him at least a hundred times and every time he was affected to tears, for she was using a bed slat, which is a powerfully strong moral agent for making a boy see the error of his ways. and it was a month after that before bud could go down main street without some man who had called him a noble little fellow, or a bright, manly little chap, while he was drowned, reaching out and fetching him a clip on the ear for having come back and put the laugh on him. no one except the widow ever really got at the straight of bud's conduct, but it appeared that he left home to get a few indian scalps, and that he came back for a little bacon and corn pone. i simply mention the widow in passing as an example of the fact that the time to do your worrying is when a thing is all over, and that the way to do it is to leave it to the neighbors. i sail for home to-morrow. your affectionate father, john graham. +----------------------------+ | no. 19 | +----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | new york house of graham | | & co., to his son, | | pierrepont, at the union | | stock yards in chicago. | | the old man, on the | | voyage home, has met a | | girl who interests him | | and who in turn seems to | | be interested in mr. | | pierrepont. | +----------------------------+ xix new york, november 4, 189_dear pierrepont:_ who is this helen heath, and what are your intentions there? she knows a heap more about you than she ought to know if they're not serious, and i know a heap less about her than i ought to know if they are. hadn't got out of sight of land before we'd become acquainted somehow, and she's been treating me like a father clear across the atlantic. she's a mighty pretty girl, and a mighty nice girl, and a mighty sensible girl--in fact she's so exactly the sort of girl i'd like to see you marry that i'm afraid there's nothing in it. of course, your salary isn't a large one yet, but you can buy a whole lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have the right sort of a woman for your purchasing agent. and while i don't go much on love in a cottage, love in a flat, with fifty a week as a starter, is just about right, if the girl is just about right. if she isn't, it doesn't make any special difference how you start out, you're going to end up all wrong. money ought never to be _the_ consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be _a_ consideration. when a boy and a girl don't think enough about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether too much about it after; and when a man's doing sums at home evenings, it comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap. there's nothing in this talk that two can live cheaper than one. a good wife doubles a man's expenses and doubles his happiness, and that's a pretty good investment if a fellow's got the money to invest. i have met women who had cut their husband's expenses in half, but they needed the money because they had doubled their own. i might add, too, that i've met a good many husbands who had cut their wives' expenses in half, and they fit naturally into any discussion of our business, because they are hogs. there's a point where economy becomes a vice, and that's when a man leaves its practice to his wife. an unmarried man is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real estate--he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn't of any particular use except to build on. the great trouble with a lot of these fellows is that they're "made land," and if you dig down a few feet you strike ooze and booze under the layer of dollars that their daddies dumped in on top. of course, the only way to deal with a proposition of that sort is to drive forty-foot piles clear down to solid rock and then to lay railroad iron and cement till you've got something to build on. but a lot of women will go right ahead without any preliminaries and wonder what's the matter when the walls begin to crack and tumble about their ears. i never come across a case of this sort without thinking of jack carter, whose father died about ten years ago and left jack a million dollars, and left me as trustee of both until jack reached his twenty-fifth birthday. i didn't relish the job particularly, because jack was one of these charlotte-russe boys, all whipped cream and sponge cake and high-priced flavoring extracts, without any filling qualities. there wasn't any special harm in him, but there wasn't any special good, either, and i always feel that there's more hope for a fellow who's an out and out cuss than for one who's simply made up of a lot of little trifling meannesses. jack wore mighty warm clothes and mighty hot vests, and the girls all said that he was a perfect dream, but i've never been one who could get a great deal of satisfaction out of dreams. it's mighty seldom that i do an exhibition mile, but the winter after i inherited jack--he was twenty-three years old then--your ma kept after me so strong that i finally put on my fancy harness and let her trot me around to a meet at the ralstons one evening. of course, i was in the percheron class, and so i just stood around with a lot of heavy old draft horses, who ought to have been resting up in their stalls, and watched the three-year-olds prance and cavort round the ring. jack was among them, of course, dancing with the youngest churchill girl, and holding her a little tighter, i thought, than was necessary to keep her from falling. had both ends working at once--never missed a stitch with his heels and was turning out a steady stream of fancy work with his mouth. and all the time he was looking at that girl as intent and eager as a scotch terrier at a rat hole. i happened just then to be pinned into a corner with two or three women who couldn't escape--edith curzon, a great big brunette whom i knew jack had been pretty soft on, and little mabel moore, a nice roly-poly blonde, and it didn't take me long to see that they were watching jack with a hair-pulling itch in their finger-tips. in fact, it looked to me as if the young scamp was a good deal more popular than the facts about him, as i knew them, warranted him in being. i slipped out early, but next evening, when i was sitting in my little smoking-room, jack came charging in, and, without any sparring for an opening, burst out with: "isn't she a stunner, mr. graham!" i allowed that miss curzon was something on the stun. "miss curzon, indeed," he sniffed. "she's well enough in a big, black way, but miss churchill----" and he began to paw the air for adjectives. "but how was i to know that you meant miss churchill?" i answered. "it's just a fortnight now since you told me that miss curzon was a goddess, and that she was going to reign in your life and make it a heaven, or something of that sort. i forget just the words, but they were mighty beautiful thoughts and did you credit." "don't remind me of it," jack groaned. "it makes me sick every time i think what an ass i've been." i allowed that i felt a little nausea myself, but i told him that this time, at least, he'd shown some sense; that miss churchill was a mighty pretty girl and rich enough so that her liking him didn't prove anything worse against her than bad judgment; and that the thing for him to do was to quit his foolishness, propose to her, and dance the heel, toe, and a one, two, three with her for the rest of his natural days. jack hemmed and hawked a little over this, but finally he came out with it: "that's the deuce of it," says he. "i'm in a beastly mess--i want to marry her--she's the only girl in the world for me--the only one i've ever really loved, and i've proposed--that is, i want to propose to her, but i'm engaged to edith curzon on the quiet." "i reckon you'll marry her, then," i said; "because she strikes me as a young woman who's not going to lose a million dollars without putting a tracer after it." "and that's not the worst of it," jack went on. "not the worst of it! what do you mean! you haven't married her on the quiet, too, have you?" "no, but there's mabel moore, you know." i didn't know, but i guessed. "you haven't been such a double-barreled donkey as to give her an option on yourself, too?" "no, no; but i've said things to her which she may have misconstrued, if she's inclined to be literal." "you bet she is," i answered. "i never saw a nice, fat, blonde girl who took a million-dollar offer as a practical joke. what is it you've said to her? 'i love you, darling,' or something about as foxy and noncommittal." "not that--not that at all; but she may have stretched what i said to mean that." well, sir, i just laid into that fellow when i heard that, though i could see that he didn't think it was refined of me. he'd never made it any secret that he thought me a pretty coarse old man, and his face showed me now that i was jarring his delicate works. "i suppose i have been indiscreet," he said, "but i must say i expected something different from you, after coming out this way and owning up. of course, if you don't care to help me----" i cut him short there. "i've got to help you. but i want you to tell me the truth. how have you managed to keep this curzon girl from announcing her engagement to you?" "well," and there was a scared grin on jack's face now; "i told her that you, as trustee under father's will, had certain unpleasant powers over my money--in fact, that most of it would revert to sis if i married against your wishes, and that you disliked her, and that she must work herself into your good graces before we could think of announcing our engagement." i saw right off that he had told mabel moore the same thing, and that was why those two girls had been so blamed polite to me the night before. so i rounded on him sudden. "you're engaged to that miss moore, too, aren't you?" "i'm afraid so." "why didn't you come out like a man and say so at first?" "i couldn't, mr. graham. someways it seemed like piling it up so, and you take such a cold-blooded, unsympathetic view of these things." "perhaps i do; yes, i'm afraid i do. how far are you committed to miss churchill?" jack cheered right up. "i'm all right there, at least. she hasn't answered." "then you've asked?" "why, so i have; at least she may take it for something like asking. but i don't care; i want to be committed there; i can't live without her; she's the only----" i saw that he was beginning to foam up again, so i shut him off straight at the spigot. told him to save it till after the ceremony. set him down to my desk, and dictated two letters, one to edith curzon and the other to mabel moore, and made him sign and seal them, then and there. he twisted and squirmed and tried to wiggle off the hook, but i wouldn't give him any slack. made him come right out and say that he was a yellow pup; that he had made a mistake; and that the stuff was all off, though i worded it a little different from that. slung in some fancy words and high-toned phrases. you see, i had made up my mind that the best of a bad matter was the churchill girl, and i didn't propose to have her commit herself, too, until i'd sort of cleared away the wreckage. then i reckoned on copper-riveting their engagement by announcing it myself and standing over jack with a shotgun to see that there wasn't any more nonsense. they were both so light-headed and light-waisted and light-footed that it seemed to me that they were just naturally mates. jack reached for those letters when they were addressed and started to put them in his pocket, but i had reached first. i reckon he'd decided that something might happen to them on their way to the post-office; but nothing did, for i called in the butler and made him go right out and mail them then and there. i'd had the letters dated from my house, and i made jack spend the night there. i reckoned it might be as well to keep him within reaching distance for the next day or two. he showed up at breakfast in the morning looking like a calf on the way to the killing pens, and i could see that his thoughts were mighty busy following the postman who was delivering those letters. i tried to cheer him up by reading some little odds and ends from the morning paper about other people's troubles, but they didn't seem to interest him. "they must just about have received them," he finally groaned into his coffee cup. "why did i send them! what will those girls think of me! they'll cut me dead--never speak to me again." the butler came in before i could tell him that this was about what we'd calculated on their doing, and said: "beg pardon, sir, but there's a lady asking for you at the telephone." "a lady!" says jack. "tell her i'm not here." talk to one of those girls, even from a safe distance! he guessed not. he turned as pale as a hog on ice at the thought of it. "i'm sorry, sir," said the man, "but i've already said that you were breakfasting here. she said it was very important." i could see that jack's curiosity was already getting the best of his scare. after all, he threw out, feeling me, it might be best to hear what she had to say. i thought so, too, and he went to the instrument and shouted "hello!" in what he tried to make a big, brave voice, but it wobbled a little all the same. i got the other end of the conversation from him when he was through. "hello! is that you, jack?" chirped the curzon girl. "yes. who is that?" "edith," came back. "i have your letter, but i can't make out what it's all about. come this afternoon and tell me, for we're still good friends, aren't we, jack?" "yes--certainly," stammered jack. "and you'll come?" "yes," he answered, and cut her off. he had hardly recovered from this shock when a messenger boy came with a note, addressed in a woman's writing. "now for it," he said, and breaking the seal read: "'_jack dear:_ your horrid note doesn't say anything, nor explain anything. come this afternoon and tell what it means to mabel.'" "here's a go," exclaimed jack, but he looked pleased in a sort of sneaking way. "what do you think of it, mr. graham?" "i don't like it." "think they intend to cut up?" he asked. "like a sausage machine; and yet i don't see how they can stand for you after that letter." "well, shall i go?" "yes, in fact i suppose you must go; but jack, be a man. tell 'em plain and straight that you don't love 'em as you should to marry 'em; say you saw your old girl a few days ago and found you loved her still, or something from the same trough, and stick to it. take what you deserve. if they hold you up to the bull-ring, the only thing you can do is to propose to take the whole bunch to utah, and let 'em share and share alike. that'll settle it. be firm." "as a rock, sir." i made jack come downtown and lunch with me, but when i started him off, about two o'clock, he looked so like a cat padding up the back-stairs to where she knows there's a little canary meat--scared, but happy--that i said once more: "now be firm, jack." "firm's the word, sir," was the resolute answer. "and unyielding." "as the old guard." and jack puffed himself out till he was as chesty as a pigeon on a barn roof, and swung off down the street looking mighty fine and manly from the rear. i never really got the straight of it, but i pieced together these particulars later. at the corner there was a flower store. jack stepped inside and sent a box of roses by special messenger to miss curzon, so there might be something to start conversation when he got there. two blocks farther on he passed a second florist's, turned back and sent some lilies to miss moore, for fear she might think he'd forgotten her during the hour or more before he could work around to her house. then he chased about and found a third florist, from whom he ordered some violets for miss churchill, to remind her that she had promised him the first dance at the blairs' that night. your ma told me that jack had nice instincts about these little things which women like, and always put a good deal of heavy thought into selecting his flowers for them. it's been my experience that a critter who has instincts instead of sense belongs in the bushes with the dicky-birds. no one ever knew just what happened to jack during the next three hours. he showed up at his club about five o'clock with a mighty conceited set to his jaw, but it dropped as if the spring had broken when he caught sight of me waiting for him in the reading-room. "you here?" he asked as he threw himself into a chair. "you bet," i said. "i wanted to hear how you made out. you settled the whole business, i take it?" but i knew mighty well from his looks that he hadn't settled anything. "not--not exactly--that is to say, entirely; but i've made a very satisfactory beginning." "began it all over again, i suppose." this hit so near the truth that jack jumped, in spite of himself, and then he burst out with a really swear. i couldn't have been more surprised if your ma had cussed. "damn it, sir, i won't stand any more of your confounded meddling. those letters were a piece of outrageous brutality. i'm breaking off with the girls, but i've gone about it in a gentler and, i hope, more dignified, way." "jack, i don't believe any such stuff and guff. you're tied up to them harder and tighter than ever." i could see i'd made a bull's eye, for jack began to bluster, but i cut him short with: "go to the devil your own way," and walked out of the club. i reckon that jack felt mighty disturbed for as much as an hour, but a good dinner took the creases out of his system. he'd found that miss moore didn't intend to go to the blairs', and that miss curzon had planned to go to a dance with her sister somewheres else, so he calculated on having a clear track for a trial spin with miss churchill. i surprised your ma a good deal that evening by allowing that i'd go to the blairs' myself, for it looked to me as if the finals might be trotted there, and i thought i'd better be around, because, while i didn't see much chance of getting any sense into jack's head, i felt i ought to do what i could on my friendship account with his father. jack was talking to miss churchill when i came into the room, and he was tending to business so strictly that he didn't see me bearing down on him from one side of the room, nor edith curzon's sister, mrs. dick, a mighty capable young married woman, bearing down on him from the other, nor miss curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner. there must have been a council of war between the sisters that afternoon, and a change of their plans for the evening. [illustration: "_miss curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner._"] mrs. dick beat me stalking jack, but i was just behind, a close second. he didn't see her until she got right up to him and rapped him on the arm with her fan. "dear jack," she says, all smiles and sugar; "dear jack, i've just heard. edith has told me, though i'd suspected something for a long, long time, you rogue," and she fetched him another kittenish clip with the fan. jack looked about the way i once saw old miss curley, the president of the good templars back in our town in missouri, look at a party when she half-swallowed a spoonful of her ice cream before she discovered that it was flavored with liquor. but he stammered something and hurried miss churchill away, though not before a fellow who was going by had wrung his hand and said, "congratulations, old chap. just heard the news." jack's only idea seemed to travel, and to travel far and fast, and he dragged his partner along to the other end of the room, while i followed the band. we had almost gone the length of the course, when jack, who had been staring ahead mighty hard, shied and balked, for there, not ten feet away, stood miss moore, carrying his lilies, and blushing and smiling at something young blakely was saying to her. i reckon jack guessed what that something was, but just then blakely caught sight of him and rushed up to where he was standing. "i congratulate you, jack," he said. "miss moore's a charming girl." and now miss churchill slipped her hand from his arm and turned and looked at jack. her lips were laughing, but there was something in her eye which made jack turn his own away. "oh, you lucky jack," she laughed. "you twice lucky jack." jack simply curled up: "wretched mistake somewhere," he mumbled. "awfully hot here--get you a glass of water," and he rushed off. he dodged around miss moore, and made a flank movement which got him by miss curzon and safely to the door. he kept on; i followed. i had to go to new york on business next day. jack had already gone there, bought a ticket for europe, and was just loafing around the pier trying to hurry the steamer off. i went down to see him start, and he looked so miserable that i'd have felt sorry for him if i hadn't seen him look miserable before. "is it generally known, sir, do you think?" he asked me humbly. "can't you hush it up somehow?" "hush it up! you might as well say 'shoo!' to the limited and expect it to stop for you." "mr. graham, i'm simply heartbroken over it all. i know i shall never reach liverpool. i'll go mad on the voyage across, and throw myself overboard. i'm too delicately strung to stand a thing of this sort." "delicate rats! you haven't nerve enough not to stand it," i said. "brace up and be a man, and let this be a lesson to you. good-by." jack took my hand sort of mechanically and looked at me without seeing me, for his grief-dimmed eyes, in straying along the deck, had lit on that pretty little southern baggage, fanny fairfax. and as i started off he was leaning over her in the same old way, looking into her brown eyes as if he saw a full-course dinner there. "think of _your_ being on board!" i heard him say. "i'm the luckiest fellow alive; by jove, i am!" i gave jack up, and an ex-grass widow is keeping him in order now. i don't go much on grass widows, but i give her credit for doing a pretty good job. she's got jack so tame that he eats out of her hand, and so well trained that he don't allow strangers to pet him. i inherited one jack--i couldn't help that. but i don't propose to wake up and find another one in the family. so you write me what's what by return. your affectionate father, john graham. +-----------------------------+ | no. 20 | +-----------------------------+ | from john graham, at the | | boston house of graham & | | co., to his son, | | pierrepont, at the union | | stock yards in chicago. | | mr. pierrepont has told | | the old man "what's what" | | and received a limited | | blessing. | +-----------------------------+ xx boston, november 11, 189_dear pierrepont:_ if that's what, it's all right. and you can't get married too quick to suit the old man. i believe in short engagements and long marriages. i don't see any sense in a fellow's sitting around on the mourner's bench with the sinners, after he's really got religion. the time to size up the other side's strength is before the engagement. some fellows propose to a girl before they know whether her front and her back hair match, and then holler that they're stuck when they find that she's got a cork leg and a glass eye as well. i haven't any sympathy with them. they start out on the principle that married people have only one meal a day, and that of fried oysters and tutti-frutti ice-cream after the theatre. naturally, a girl's got her better nature and her best complexion along under those circumstances; but the really valuable thing to know is how she approaches ham and eggs at seven a.m., and whether she brings her complexion with her to the breakfast table. and these fellows make a girl believe that they're going to spend all the time between eight and eleven p.m., for the rest of their lives, holding a hundred and forty pounds, live weight, in their lap, and saying that it feels like a feather. the thing to find out is whether, when one of them gets up to holding a ten pound baby in his arms, for five minutes, he's going to carry on as if it weighed a ton. a girl can usually catch a whisper to the effect that she's the showiest goods on the shelf, but the vital thing for a fellow to know is whether her ears are sharp enough to hear him when he shouts that she's spending too much money and that she must reduce expenses. of course, when you're patting and petting and feeding a woman she's going to purr, but there's nothing like stirring her up a little now and then to see if she spits fire and heaves things when she's mad. i want to say right here that there's only one thing more aggravating in this world than a woman who gets noisy when she's mad, and that's one who gets quiet. the first breaks her spell of temper with the crockery, but the second simmers along like a freight engine on the track beside your berth--keeps you scared and ready to jump for fear she's going to blow off any minute; but she never does and gets it over with--just drizzles it out. you can punch your brother when he plays the martyr, but you've got to love your wife. a violent woman drives a fellow to drink, but a nagging one drives him crazy. she takes his faults and ties them to him like a tin can to a yellow dog's tail, and the harder he runs to get away from them the more he hears of them. i simply mention these things in a general way, and in the spirit of the preacher at the funeral of the man who wasn't "a professor"--because it's customary to make a few appropriate remarks on these occasions. from what i saw of helen heath, i reckon she's not getting any the best of it. she's what i call a mighty eligible young woman--pretty, bright, sensible, and without any fortune to make her foolish and you a fool. in fact, you'd have to sit up nights to make yourself good enough for her, even if you brought her a million, instead of fifty a week. i'm a great believer in women in the home, but i don't take much stock in them in the office, though i reckon i'm prejudiced and they've come to stay. i never do business with a woman that i don't think of a little incident which happened when i was first married to your ma. we set up housekeeping in one of those cottages that you read about in the story books, but that you want to shy away from, when it's put up to you to live in one of them. there were nice climbing roses on the front porch, but no running water in the kitchen; there were a-plenty of old fashioned posies in the front yard, and a-plenty of rats in the cellar; there was half an acre of ground out back, but so little room inside that i had to sit with my feet out a window. it was just the place to go for a picnic, but it's been my experience that a fellow does most of his picnicking before he's married. your ma did the cooking, and i hustled for things to cook, though i would take a shy at it myself once in a while and get up my muscle tossing flapjacks. it was pretty rough sailing, you bet, but one way and another we managed to get a good deal of satisfaction out of it, because we had made up our minds to take our fun as we went along. with most people happiness is something that is always just a day off. but i have made it a rule never to put off being happy till to-morrow. don't accept notes for happiness, because you'll find that when they're due they're never paid, but just renewed for another thirty days. i was clerking in a general store at that time, but i had a little weakness for livestock, even then; and while i couldn't afford to plunge in it exactly, i managed to buy a likely little shoat that i reckoned on carrying through the summer on credit and presenting with a bill for board in the fall. he was just a plain pig when he came to us, and we kept him in a little sty, but we weren't long in finding out that he wasn't any ordinary root-and-grunt pig. the first i knew your ma was calling him toby, and had turned him loose. answered to his name like a dog. never saw such a sociable pig. wanted to sit on the porch with us. tried to come into the house evenings. used to run down the road squealing for joy when he saw me coming home from work. well, it got on towards november and toby had been making the most of his opportunities. i never saw a pig that turned corn into fat so fast, and the stouter he got the better his disposition grew. i reckon i was attached to him myself, in a sort of a sneaking way, but i was mighty fond of hog meat, too, and we needed toby in the kitchen. so i sent around and had him butchered. when i got home to dinner next day, i noticed that your ma looked mighty solemn as she set the roast of pork down in front of me, but i strayed off, thinking of something else, as i carved, and my wits were off wool gathering sure enough when i said: "will you have a piece of toby, my dear?" well sir, she just looked at me for a moment, and then she burst out crying and ran away from the table. but when i went after her and asked her what was the matter, she stopped crying and was mad in a minute all the way through. called me a heartless, cruel cannibal. that seemed to relieve her so that she got over her mad and began to cry again. begged me to take toby out of pickle and to bury him in the garden. i reasoned with her, and in the end i made her see that any obsequies for toby, with pork at eight cents a pound, would be a pretty expensive funeral for us. but first and last she had managed to take my appetite away so that i didn't want any roast pork for dinner or cold pork for supper. that night i took what was left of toby to a store keeper at the crossing, who i knew would be able to gaze on his hams without bursting into tears, and got a pretty fair price for him. i simply mention toby in passing, as an example of why i believe women weren't cut out for business--at least for the pork-packing business. i've had dealings with a good many of them, first and last, and it's been my experience that when they've got a weak case they add their sex to it and win, and that when they've got a strong case they subtract their sex from it and deal with you harder than a man. they're simply bound to win either way, and i don't like to play a game where i haven't any show. when a clerk makes a fool break, i don't want to beg his pardon for calling his attention to it, and i don't want him to blush and tremble and leak a little brine into a fancy pocket handkerchief. a little change is a mighty soothing thing, and i like a woman's ways too much at home to care very much for them at the office. instead of hiring women, i try to hire their husbands, and then i usually have them both working for me. there's nothing like a woman at home to spur on a man at the office. a married man is worth more salary than a single one, because his wife makes him worth more. he's apt to go to bed a little sooner and to get up a little earlier; to go a little steadier and to work a little harder than the fellow who's got to amuse a different girl every night, and can't stay at home to do it. that's why i'm going to raise your salary to seventy-five dollars a week the day you marry helen, and that's why i'm going to quit writing these letters--i'm simply going to turn you over to her and let her keep you in order. i bet she'll do a better job than i have. your affectionate father, john graham. the end * * * * * notable books of american humor from the list of small, maynard & company, boston * * * * * by finlay peter dunne ("mr. dooley") "mr. dooley must be added to the acquaintance of all who esteem good sense and good humor. he is worthy to take his place as a national satirist beside hosea biglow."--_the academy_, london. * * * =mr. dooley: in peace and in war (70th thousand)= "we awoke in the morning to kneel at the shrine of dooley, and to confess that here was the man, here the very fellow, we had long been waiting for,--here at last america's new humorist."--max pemberton, in _the london daily mail_. "full of wit and humor and real philosophy which rank their possessor among those humorists who have really made a genuine contribution to permanent literature."--harry thurston peck, in _the bookman_. "his eloquence is a torrent, and his satire as strong and stinging as a slave-driver's whip."--_pall mall gazette_. green cloth, decorative, 7 x 4-1/2 in. =$1.25= * * * =mr. dooley: in the hearts of his countrymen (35th thousand)= "the depression that could prevail against the influence of 'mr. dooley's' ebullient drollery, gay wisdom, and rich brogue would be profound indeed, and its victim would be an altogether hopeless case."--_the london world._ "his new book shows no falling off: his wit is as nimble as ever, his eye as quick to note incongruities, his satire as well directed and as brilliant."--_the academy_, london. 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"the charm of the book is the permanent charm of all literature, according to matthew arnold's admirable definition. _georgie_ is a singularly acute and humorous interpretation of the home life led by the american who is neither too rich to be aping the english nor too poor to avoid the other extreme of europeanism in slum or hovel. the book is worth reading as holding 'a mirror up to nature,' and it is also worth praising because it discloses between its lines a kindly and unspoiled nature on the part of the author."--_chicago tribune._ cloth, decorative, 6-3/8 x 5-7/8 in. with ten illustrations by ralph bergengren. =$1.00= * * * * * by holman f. day =up in maine. stories of yankee life told in verse.= few books of verse have won popular favor so quickly as this volume, which is now in its ninth edition and selling as steadily as when first published. it is a rare combination of wit, humor, sense, and homely pathos. "reading the book, one feels as though he had maine in the phonograph."--_the new york sun._ "james russell lowell would have welcomed this delicious adjunct to _the biglow papers._"--_the outlook._ "so fresh, so vigorous, and so full of manly feeling that they sweep away all criticism."--_the nation._ "his subjects are rough diamonds. they have the inherent qualities from which great characters are developed, and out of which heroes are made."--_buffalo commercial._ cloth, decorative, six illustrations, 7-1/2 x 4-7/8 in. =$1.00= * * * =pine tree ballads. rhymed stories of unplaned human natur' up in maine.= mr. day's second book bids fair to outdo in popularity his earlier volume. the section titles, "our home folks," "songs of the sea and shore," "ballads of drive and camp," "just human nature," "next to the heart," "our good prevaricators," and "ballads of capers and actions," give an idea of the nature of the contents, which are fully equal in freshness, vigour, and manly feeling to the poems by which mr. day has already won an established reputation. "it is impossible to think of any person or class of people in america that these epical lyrics, these laughter-fetching, tear-provoking ballads will fail to please."--_the chicago record-herald._ cloth, decorative, gilt top, illustrated, 7-1/2 x 4 in. _net_, =$1.00= * * * * * by oliver herford =alphabet of celebrities, an= "mr. herford, less considerate than dr. holmes, always dares to be as funny as he can, and the wicked glee with which he groups persons incongruous and antipathetic and shows them doing things impossible to them, and makes pictures of them, is a thing to shock the gradgrinds and dismay the chadbands. the book is printed in two colors to divert the reader's mind from the jokes, lest laughter be fatal to him."--_new york times._ paper boards, 9-3/8 x 7-1/8 in. with 26 illustrations by the author. =$1.50= * * * * * by john b. tabb =child verse. poems grave and gay= little poems, full of fancy and sweetness, for grown people as well as for children. "it is pleasant to observe that father tabb is not afraid of the pun. he uses it very felicitously in a number of his verses. it is good to see the rehabilitation of an ancient and unfortunate friend."--_harper's weekly._ cloth, decorative, 7-7/8 x 6-3/8 in. =$1.00= * * * * * by agnes lee =round rabbit, the. and other child verse= a new holiday edition of mrs. lee's delightful verse, which includes a number of new poems. with illustrations by o'neill latham. "the mother who (can read) to her young ones these cheerful, sweet, and fascinating jingles, with the pretty quaint conceits and ingenious rimes, without chuckling and forgetting her woes, will be indeed deeply dyed in cerulean."--_the bookseller, newsdealer, and stationer._ cloth, decorative, 7-7/8 x 6-1/4 in. net, =$1.00= * * * * * a standard library of biography * * * _the beacon biographies of eminent americans_ * * * the aim of this series is to furnish brief, readable, and authentic accounts of the lives of those americans whose personalities have impressed themselves most deeply on the character and history of their country. on account of the length of the more formal lives, often running into large volumes, the average busy man and woman have not the time or hardly the inclination to acquaint themselves with american biography. in the present series everything that such a reader would ordinarily care to know is given by writers of special competence, who possess in full measure the best contemporary point of view. each volume is equipped with a photogravure portrait, an engraved title-page, a calendar of important dates, and a brief bibliography for further reading. finally, the volumes are printed in a form convenient for reading and for carrying handily in the pocket. "they contain exactly what every intelligent american ought to know about the lives of our great men."--_boston herald._ "surprisingly complete studies, ... admirably planned and executed."--_christian register._ "prepared as carefully as if they were so many imperial quartos, instead of being so small that they may be carried in the pocket."--_new york times._ "they are books of marked excellence."--_chicago inter-ocean._ "they interest vividly, and their instruction is surprisingly comprehensive."--_the outlook._ price per volume, cloth, =75c=. _net._ lambskin, =$1.00= _net._ +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | -------------------------------------------------- | | the beacon biographies | | of eminent americans. | | -------------------------------------------------- | | the following volumes are issued:- | | | | =louis agassiz=, by alice bache gould. | | =john james audubon=, by john burroughs. | | =edwin booth=, by charles townsend copeland. | | =phillips brooks=, by m. a. dewolfe howe. | | =john brown=, by joseph edgar chamberlin. | | =aaron burr=, by henry childs merwin. | | =james fenimore cooper=, by w. b. shubrick clymer. | | =stephen decatur=, by cyrus townsend brady. | | =frederick douglass=, by charles w. chesnutt. | | =ralph waldo emerson=, by frank b. sanborn. | | =david g. farragut=, by james barnes. | | =ulysses s. grant=, by owen wister. | | =alexander hamilton=, by james schouler. | | =nathaniel hawthorne=, by mrs. james t. fields. | | =father hecker=, by henry d. sedgwick, jr. | | =sam houston=, by sarah barnwell elliott. | | ="stonewall" jackson=, by carl hovey. | | =thomas jefferson=, by thomas e. watson. | | =robert e. lee=, by william p. trent. | | =henry w. longfellow=, by george rice carpenter. | | =james russell lowell=, by edward everett hale, jr. | | =samuel f. b. morse=, by john troweridge. | | =thomas paine=, by ellery sedgwick. | | =daniel webster=, by norman hapgood. | | =john greenleaf whittier=, by richard burton. | | | | price per volume, cloth, 75c. _net_; leather, $1.00 _net._ | | | | small, maynard & company, publishers. | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | _a companion series to the beacon biographies_ | | -------------------------------------------------- | | the westminster biographies | | _of eminent englishmen_ | | -------------------------------------------------- | | the westminster biographies are uniform in plan, | | size, and general make-up with the beacon biographies, | | the point of important difference lying in the fact that | | they deal with the lives of eminent englishmen instead | | of eminent americans. they are bound in limp red cloth, | | are gilt-topped, and have a cover design and a vignette | | title-page by bertram grosvenor goodhue. like the _beacon | | biographies_, each volume has a frontispiece portrait, a | | photogravure, a calendar of dates, and a bibliography for | | further reading. | | | | the following volumes are issued:- | | | | =robert browning=, by arthur waugh. | | =daniel defoe=, by wilfred whitten. | | =adam duncan= (lord camperdown), by h. w. wilson. | | =george eliot=, by clara thomson. | | =cardinal newman=, by a. r. waller. | | =john wesley=, by frank banfield. | | | | price per volume, cloth, 75c. _net_, lambskin, $1.00 _net._ | | | | small, maynard & company, publishers. | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ the ethical library social rights and duties addresses to ethical societies by leslie stephen in two volumes vol. i. london swan sonnenschein & co., limited new york: macmillan & co. 1896 note. the following chapters are chiefly a republication of addresses delivered to the ethical societies of london. some have previously appeared in the _international journal of ethics_, the _national review_, and the _contemporary review_. the author has to thank the proprietors of these periodicals for their consent to the republication. l. s. contents. page the aims of ethical societies, 1 science and politics, 45 the sphere of political economy, 91 the morality of competition, 133 social equality, 175 ethics and the struggle for existence, 221 the aims of ethical societies.[1] i am about to say a few words upon the aims of this society: and i should be sorry either to exaggerate or to depreciate our legitimate pretensions. it would be altogether impossible to speak too strongly of the importance of the great questions in which our membership of the society shows us to be interested. it would, i fear, be easy enough to make an over-estimate of the part which we can expect to play in their solution. i hold indeed, or i should not be here, that we may be of some service at any rate to each other. i think that anything which stimulates an active interest in the vital problems of the day deserves the support of all thinking men; and i propose to consider briefly some of the principles by which we should be guided in doing whatever we can to promote such an interest. [1] address to west london ethical society, 4th december, 1892. we are told often enough that we are living in a period of important intellectual and social revolutions. in one way we are perhaps inclined even to state the fact a little too strongly. we suffer at times from the common illusion that the problems of to-day are entirely new: we fancy that nobody ever thought of them before, and that when we have solved them, nobody will ever need to look for another solution. to ardent reformers in all ages it seems as if the millennium must begin with their triumph, and that their triumph will be established by a single victory. and while some of us are thus sanguine, there are many who see in the struggles of to-day the approach of a deluge which is to sweep away all that once ennobled life. the believer in the old creeds, who fears that faith is decaying, and the supernatural life fading from the world, denounces the modern spirit as materialising and degrading. the conscience of mankind, he thinks, has become drugged and lethargic; our minds are fixed upon sensual pleasures, and our conduct regulated by a blind struggle for the maximum of luxurious enjoyment. the period in his eyes is a period of growing corruption; modern society suffers under a complication of mortal diseases, so widely spread and deeply seated that at present there is no hope of regeneration. the best hope is that its decay may provide the soil in which seed may be sown of a far-distant growth of happier augury. such dismal forebodings are no novelty. every age produces its prophecies of coming woes. nothing would be easier than to make out a catena of testimonies from great men at every stage of the world's history, declaring each in turn that the cup of iniquity was now at last overflowing, and that corruption had reached so unprecedented a step that some great catastrophe must be approaching. a man of unusually lofty morality is, for that reason, more keenly sensitive to the lowness of the average standard, and too easily accepts the belief that the evils before his eyes must be in fact greater, and not, as may perhaps be the case, only more vividly perceived, than those of the bygone ages. a call to repentance easily takes the form of an assertion that the devil is getting the upper hand; and we may hope that the pessimist view is only a form of the discontent which is a necessary condition of improvement. anyhow, the diametrical conflict of prophecies suggests one remark which often impresses me. we are bound to call each other by terribly hard names. a gentleman assures me in print that i am playing the devil's game; depriving my victims, if i have any, of all the beliefs that can make life noble or happy, and doing my best to destroy the very first principles of morality. yet i meet my adversary in the flesh, and find that he treats me not only with courtesy, but with no inconsiderable amount of sympathy. he admits--by his actions and his argument--that i--the miserable sophist and seducer--have not only some good impulses, but have really something to say which deserves a careful and respectful answer. an infidel, a century or two ago, was supposed to have forfeited all claim to the ordinary decencies of life. now i can say, and can say with real satisfaction, that i do not find any difference of creed, however vast in words, to be an obstacle to decent and even friendly treatment. i am at times tempted to ask whether my opponent can be quite logical in being so courteous; whether, if he is as sure as he says that i am in the devil's service, i ought not, as a matter of duty, to be encountered with the old dogmatism and arrogance. i shall, however, leave my friends of a different way of thinking to settle that point for themselves. i cannot doubt the sincerity of their courtesy, and i will hope that it is somehow consistent with their logic. rather i will try to meet them in a corresponding spirit by a brief confession. i have often enough spoken too harshly and vehemently of my antagonists. i have tried to fix upon them too unreservedly what seemed to me the logical consequences of their dogmas. i have condemned their attempts at a milder interpretation of their creed as proofs of insincerity, when i ought to have done more justice to the legitimate and lofty motives which prompted them. and i at least am bound by my own views to admit that even the antagonist from whose utterances i differ most widely may be an unconscious ally, supplementing rather than contradicting my theories, and in great part moved by aspirations which i ought to recognise even when allied with what i take to be defective reasoning. we are all amenable to one great influence. the vast shuttle of modern life is weaving together all races and creeds and classes. we are no longer shut up in separate compartments, where the mental horizon is limited by the area visible from the parish steeple; each little section can no longer fancy, in the old childish fashion, that its own arbitrary prejudices and dogmas are parts of the eternal order of things; or infer that in the indefinite region beyond, there live nothing but monsters and anthropophagi, and men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders. the annihilation of space has made us fellows as by a kind of mechanical compulsion; and every advance of knowledge has increased the impossibility of taking our little church--little in comparison with mankind, be it even as great as the catholic church--for the one pattern of right belief. the first effect of bringing remote nations and classes into closer contact is often an explosion of antipathy; but in the long run it means a development of human sympathy. wide, therefore, as is the opposition of opinions as to what is the true theory of the world--as to which is the divine and which the diabolical element--i fully believe that beneath the war of words and dogmas there is a growth of genuine toleration, and, we must hope, of ultimate conciliation. this is manifest in another direction. the churches are rapidly making at least one discovery. they are beginning to find out that their vitality depends not upon success in theological controversy, but upon their success in meeting certain social needs and aspirations common to all classes. it is simply impossible for any thinking man at the present day to take any living interest, for example, in the ancient controversies. the "drum ecclesiastic" of the seventeenth century would sound a mere lullaby to us. here and there a priest or a belated dissenting minister may amuse himself by threshing out once more the old chaff of dead and buried dogmas. there are people who can argue gravely about baptismal regeneration or apostolical succession. such doctrines were once alive, no doubt, because they represented the form in which certain still living problems had then to present themselves. they now require to be stated in a totally different shape, before we can even guess why they were once so exciting, or how men could have supposed their modes of attacking the question to be adequate. the pope and general booth still condemn each other's tenets; and in case of need would, i suppose, take down the old rusty weapons from the armoury. but each sees with equal clearness that the real stress of battle lies elsewhere. each tries, after his own fashion, to give a better answer than the socialists to the critical problems of to-day. we ought so far to congratulate both them and ourselves on the direction of their energies. nay, can we not even co-operate, and put these hopeless controversies aside? why not agree to differ about the questions which no one denies to be all but insoluble, and become allies in promoting morality? enormous social forces find their natural channel through the churches; and if the beliefs inculcated by the church were not, as believers assert, the ultimate cause of progress, it is at least clear that they were not incompatible with progress. the church, we all now admit, whether by reason of or in spite of its dogmatic creed, was for ages one great organ of civilisation, and still exercises an incalculable influence. why, then, should we, who cannot believe in the dogmas, yet fall into line with believers for practical purposes? churches insist verbally upon the importance of their dogma: they are bound to do so by their logical position; but, in reality, for them, as for us, the dogma has become in many ways a mere excrescence--a survival of barren formulæ which do little harm to anybody. carlyle, in his quaint phrase, talked about the exodus from houndsditch, but doubted whether it were yet time to cast aside the hebrew old clothes. they have become threadbare and antiquated. that gives a reason to the intelligent for abandoning them; but, also, perhaps a reason for not quarrelling with those who still care to masquerade in them. orthodox people have made a demand that the board schools should teach certain ancient doctrines about the nature of christ; and the demand strikes some of us as preposterous if not hypocritical. but putting aside the audacity of asking unbelievers to pay for such teaching, one might be tempted to ask, what harm could it really do? do you fancy for a moment that you can really teach a child of ten the true meaning of the incarnation? can you give him more than a string of words as meaningless as magical formulæ? i was brought up at the most orthodox of anglican seminaries. i learned the catechism, and heard lectures upon the thirty-nine articles. i never found that the teaching had ever any particular effect upon my mind. as i grew up, the obsolete exuviæ of doctrine dropped off my mind like dead leaves from a tree. they could not get any vital hold in an atmosphere of tolerable enlightenment. why should we fear the attempt to instil these fragments of decayed formulæ into the minds of children of tender age? might we not be certain that they would vanish of themselves? they are superfluous, no doubt, but too futile to be of any lasting importance. i remember that, when the first education act was being discussed, mention was made of a certain jew who not only sent his son to a christian school, but insisted upon his attending all the lessons. he had paid his fees, he said, for education in the gospels among other things, and he meant to have his money's worth. "but your son," it was urged, "will become a christian." "i," he replied, "will take good care of that at home." was not the jew a man of sense? can we suppose that the mechanical repetition of a few barren phrases will do either harm or good? as the child develops he will, we may hope, remember his multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the athanasian creed. let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior vitality of the more valuable plant. the sentiment might be expressed sentimentally as easily as cynically. we may urge, like many sceptics of the last century, that christianity should be kept "for the use of the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. or we may urge the literary and æsthetic beauty of the old training, and wish it to be preserved to discipline the imagination, though we may reject its value as a historical statement of fact. the audience which i am addressing has, i presume, made up its mind upon such views. they come too late. it might have been a good thing, had it been possible, to effect the transition from old to new without a violent convulsion: good, if christian conceptions had been slowly developed into more simple forms; if the beautiful symbols had been retained till they could be impregnated with a new meaning; and if the new teaching of science and philosophy had gradually percolated into the ancient formulæ without causing a disruption. possibly the protestant reformation was a misfortune, and erasmus saw the truth more clearly than luther. i cannot go into might-have-beens. we have to deal with facts. a conspiracy of silence is impossible about matters which have been vehemently discussed for centuries. we have to take sides; and we at least have agreed to take the side of the downright thinker, who will say nothing that he does not believe, and hide nothing that he does believe, and speak out his mind without reservation or economy and accommodation. indeed, as things are, any other course seems to me to be impossible. i have spoken, for example, of general booth. many people heartily admire his schemes of social reform, and have been willing to subscribe for its support, without troubling themselves about his theology. i will make no objection; but i confess that i could not therefore treat that theology as either morally or intellectually respectable. it has happened to me once or twice to listen to expositions from orators of the salvation army. some of them struck me as sincere though limited, and others as the victims of an overweening vanity. the oratory, so far as i could hear, consisted in stringing together an endless set of phrases about the blood of christ, which, if they really meant anything, meant a doctrine as low in the intellectual scale as that of any of the objects of missionary enterprise. the conception of the transactions between god and man was apparently modelled upon the dealings of a petty tradesman. the "blood of christ" was regarded like the panacea of a quack doctor, which will cure the sins of anybody who accepts the prescription. for anything i can say, such a creed may be elevating--relatively: elevating as slavery is said to have been elevating when it was a substitute for extermination. the hymns of the army may be better than public-house melodies, and the excitement produced less mischievous than that due to gin. but the best that i can wish for its adherents is, that they should speedily reach a point at which they could perceive their doctrines to be debasing. i hope, indeed, that they do not realise their own meaning: but i could almost as soon join in some old pagan ceremonies, gash my body with knives, or swing myself from a hook, as indulge in this variety of spiritual intoxication. there are, it is true, plenty of more refined and intellectual preachers, whose sentiments deserve at least the respect due to tender and humane feeling. they have found a solution, satisfactory to themselves, of the great dilemma which presses on so many minds. a religion really to affect the vulgar must be a superstition; to satisfy the thoughtful, it must be a philosophy. is it possible to contrive so to fuse the crude with the refined as to make at least a working compromise? to me personally, and to most of us living at the present day, the enterprise appears to be impracticable. my own experience is, i imagine, a very common one. when i ceased to accept the teaching of my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of discovering that i had never really believed. the contrast between the genuine convictions which guide and govern our conduct, and the professions which we were taught to repeat in church, when once realised, was too glaring. one belonged to the world of realities, and the other to the world of dreams. the orthodox formulæ represent, no doubt, a sentiment, an attempt to symbolise emotions which might be beautiful, or to indicate vague impressions about the tendency of things in general; but to put them side by side with real beliefs about facts was to reveal their flimsiness. the "i believe" of the creed seemed to mean something quite different from the "i believe" of politics and history and science. later experience has only deepened and strengthened that feeling. kind and loving and noble-minded people have sought to press upon me the consolations of their religion. i thank them in all sincerity; and i feel,--why should i not admit it?--that it may be a genuine comfort to set your melancholy to the old strain in which so many generations have embodied their sorrows and their aspirations. and yet to me, its consolation is an invitation to reject plain facts; to seek for refuge in a shadowy world of dreams and conjectures, which dissolve as you try to grasp them. the doctrine offered for my acceptance cannot be stated without qualifications and reserves and modifications, which make it as useless as it is vague and conjectural. i may learn in time to submit to the inevitable; i cannot drug myself with phrases which evaporate as soon as they are exposed to a serious test. you profess to give me the only motives of conduct; and i know that at the first demand to define them honestly--to say precisely what you believe and why you believe it--you will be forced to withdraw, and explain and evade, and at last retire to the safe refuge of a mystery, which might as well be admitted at starting. as i have read and thought, i have been more and more impressed with the obvious explanation of these observations. how should the beliefs be otherwise than shadowy and illusory, when their very substance is made of doubts laboriously and ingeniously twisted into the semblance of convictions? in one way or other that is the characteristic mark of the theological systems of the present day. proof is abandoned for persuasion. the orthodox believer professed once to prove the facts which he asserted and to show that his dogmas expressed the truth. he now only tries to show that the alleged facts don't matter, and that the dogmas are meaningless. nearly two centuries ago, for example, a deist pointed out that the writer of the book of daniel, like other people, must have written after the events which he mentioned. all the learned, down to dr. pusey, denounced his theory, and declared his argument to be utterly destructive of the faith. now an orthodox professor will admit that the deist was perfectly right, and only tries to persuade himself that arguments from facts are superfluous. the supposed foundation is gone: the superstructure is not to be affected. what the keenest disputant now seeks to show is, not that the truth of the records can be established beyond reasonable doubt; but that no absolute contradiction in terms is involved in supposing that they correspond more or less roughly to something which may possibly have happened. so long as a thing is not proved false by mathematical demonstration, i may still continue to take it for a divine revelation, and to listen respectfully when experienced statesmen and learned professors assure me with perfect gravity that they can believe in noah's flood or in the swine of gadara. they have an unquestionable right to believe if they please: and they expect me to accept the facts for the sake of the doctrine. there, unluckily, i have a similar difficulty. it is the orthodox who are the systematic sceptics. the most famous philosophers of my youth endeavoured to upset the deist by laying the foundation of agnosticism, arbitrarily tagged to an orthodox conclusion. they told me to believe a doctrine because it was totally impossible that i should know whether it was true or not, or indeed attach any real meaning to it whatever. the highest altar, as sir w. hamilton said, was the altar to the unknown and unknowable god. others, seeing the inevitable tendency of such methods, have done their best to find in that the christian doctrine, rightly understood, the embodiment of the highest philosophy. it is the divine voice which speaks in our hearts, though it has caught some accretion of human passion and superstition. the popular versions are false and debased; the old versions of the atonement, for example, monstrous; and the belief in the everlasting torture of sinners, a hideous and groundless caricature. with much that such men have said i could, of course, agree heartily; for, indeed, it expresses the strongest feelings which have caused religious revolt. but would it not be simpler to say, "the doctrine is not true," than to say, "it is true, but means just the reverse of what it was also taken to mean"? i prefer plain terms; and "without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" seems to be an awkward way of denying the endlessness of punishment. you cannot denounce the immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their infinite value with the believer. you defend the doctrine by showing that in its plain downright sense,--the sense in which it embodied popular imaginations,--it was false and shocking. the proposal to hold by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration for a genuine intellectual belief. explaining away, however dexterously and delicately, is not defending, but at once confessing error, and encumbering yourself with all the trammels of misleading associations. the more popular method, therefore, at the present day is not to rationalise, but to try to outsceptic the sceptic. we are told that we have no solid ground from reason at all, and that even physical science is as full of contradictions as theology. such enterprises, conducted with whatever ingenuity, are, as i believe, hopeless; but at least they are fundamentally and radically sceptical. that, under whatever disguises, is the true meaning of the catholic argument, which is so persuasive to many. to prove the truth of christianity by abstract reasoning may be hopeless; but nothing is easier than to persuade yourself to believe it, if once you will trust instinct in place of reason, and forget that instinct proves anything and everything. the success of such arguments with thoughtful men is simply a measure of the spread of scepticism. the conviction that truth is unattainable is the master argument for submitting to "authority". the "authority," in the scientific sense of any set of men who agree upon a doctrine, varies directly as their independence of each other. their "authority" in the legal sense varies as the closeness of their mutual dependence. as the consent loses its value logically, it gains in power of coercion. and therefore it is easy to substitute drilling for arguing, and to take up a belief as you accept admission to a society, as a matter of taste and feeling, with which abstract logic has nothing to do. the common dilemma--you must be a catholic or an atheist--means, that theology is only tenable if you drill people into belief by a vast organisation appealing to other than logical motives. i do not argue these points: i only indicate what i take to be your own conviction as well as mine. it seems to me, in fact, that the present state of mind--if we look to men's real thoughts and actions, not to their conventional phrases--is easily definable. it is simply a tacit recognition that the old orthodoxy cannot be maintained either by the evidence of facts or by philosophical argument. it has puzzled me sometimes to understand why the churches should insist upon nailing themselves down to the truth of their dogmas and their legendary history. why cannot they say frankly, what they seem to be constantly on the verge of saying--our dogmas and our history are not true, or not "true" in the historical or scientific sense of the word? to ask for such truth in the sphere of theology is as pedantic as to ask for it in the sphere of poetry. poetical truth means, not that certain events actually happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. it reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. this seems to me to be actually the view of many thoughtful people, though for obvious reasons it is not often explicitly stated. one reason is, of course, the consciousness that the great mass of mankind requires plain, tangible motives for governing its life; and if it once be admitted that so much of the orthodox doctrine is mere symbolism or adumbration of truths, the admission would involve the loss of the truths so indicated. moral conduct, again, and moral beliefs are supposed to depend upon some affirmation of these truths; and excellent people are naturally shy of any open admission which may appear to throw doubt upon the ultimate grounds of morality. indeed, if it could be really proved that men have to choose between renouncing moral truths and accepting unproved theories, it might be right--i will not argue the point--to commit intellectual suicide. if the truth is that we are mere animals or mere automata, shall we sacrifice the truth, or sacrifice what we have at least agreed to call our higher nature? for us the dilemma has no force: for we do not admit the discrepancy. we believe that morality depends upon something deeper and more permanent than any of the dogmas that have hitherto been current in the churches. it is a product of human nature, not of any of these transcendental speculations or faint survivals of traditional superstitions. morality has grown up independently of, and often in spite of, theology. the creeds have been good so far as they have accepted or reflected the moral convictions; but it is an illusion to suppose that they have generated it. they represent the dialect and the imagery by which moral truths have been conveyed to minds at certain stages of thought; but it is a complete inversion of the truth to suppose that the morality sprang out of them. from this point of view we must of necessity treat the great ethical questions independently. we cannot form a real alliance with thinkers radically opposed to us. divines tell us that we reject the one possible basis of morality. to us it appears that we are strengthening it, by severing it from a connection with doctrines arbitrary, incapable of proof, and incapable of retaining any consistent meaning. theologians once believed that hell-fire was the ultimate sentence, and persecution the absolute duty of every christian ruler. the churches which once burnt and exterminated are now only anxious to proclaim freedom of belief, and to cast the blame of persecution upon their rivals. divines have discovered that the doctrine of hell-fire deserves all that infidels have said of it; and a member of dante's church was arguing the other day that hell might on the whole be a rather pleasant place of residence. doctrines which can thus be turned inside out are hardly desirable bases for morality. so the early christians, again, were the socialists of their age, and took a view of dives and lazarus which would commend itself to the nihilists of to-day. the church is now often held up to us as the great barrier against socialism, and the one refuge against subversive doctrines. in a well-known essay on "people whom one would have wished to have seen," lamb and his friends are represented as agreeing that if christ were to enter they would all fall down and worship him. it may have been so; but if the man who best represents the ideas of early christians were to enter a respectable society of to-day, would it not be more likely to send for the police? when we consider such changes, and mark in another direction how the dogmas which once set half the world to cut the throats of the other half, have sunk into mere combinations of hard words, can we seriously look to the maintenance of dogmas, even in the teeth of reason, as a guarantee for ethical convictions? what you call retaining the only base of morality, appears to us to be trying to associate morality with dogmas essentially arbitrary and unreasonable. from this point of view it is naturally our opinion that we should promote all thorough discussion of great ethical problems in a spirit and by methods which are independent of the orthodox dogmas. there are many such problems undoubtedly of the highest importance. the root of all the great social questions of which i have spoken lies in the region of ethics; and upon that point, at least, we can go along with much that is said upon the orthodox side. we cannot, indeed, agree that ethics can be adequately treated by men pledged to ancient traditions, employing antiquated methods, and always tempted to have an eye to the interest of their own creeds and churches. but we can fully agree that ethical principles underlie all the most important problems. every great religious reform has been stimulated by the conviction that the one essential thing is a change of spirit, not a mere modification of the external law, which has ceased to correspond to genuine beliefs and powerful motives. the commonest criticism, indeed, of all projectors of new utopias is that they propose a change of human nature. the criticism really suggests a sound criterion. unless the change proposed be practicable, the utopia will doubtless be impossible. and unless some practicable change be proposed, the utopia, even were it embodied in practice, would be useless. if the sole result of raising wages were an increase in the consumption of gin, wages might as well stay at a minimum. but the tacit assumption that all changes of human nature are impracticable is simply a cynical and unproved assertion. all of us here hold, i imagine, that human nature has in a sense been changed. we hold that, with all its drawbacks, progress is not an illusion; that men have become at least more tolerant and more humane; that ancient brutalities have become impossible; and that the suffering of the weaker excites a keener sympathy. to say that, in that sense, human nature must be changed, is to say only that the one sound criterion of all schemes for social improvement lies in their ethical tendency. the standard of life cannot be permanently raised unless you can raise the standard of motive. old-fashioned political theorists thought that a simple change of the constitutional machinery would of itself remedy all evils, and failed to recognise that behind the institutions lie all the instincts and capabilities of the men who are to work them. a similar fallacy is prevalent, i fancy, in regard to what we call social reforms. some scheme for a new mode of distributing the products of industry would, it is often assumed, remedy all social evils. to my thinking, no such change would do more than touch the superficial evils, unless it had also some tendency to call out the higher and repress the lower impulses. unless we can to some extent change "human nature," we shall be weaving ropes of sand, or devising schemes for perpetual motion, for driving our machinery more effectively without applying fresh energy. we shall be falling into the old blunders; approving jack cade's proposal--as recorded by shakespeare--that the three-hooped pot should have seven hoops; or attempting to get rid of poverty by converting the whole nation into paupers. no one, perhaps, will deny this in terms; and to admit it frankly is to admit that every scheme must be judged by its tendency to "raise the manhood of the poor," and to make every man, rich and poor, feel that he is discharging a useful function in society. old robert owen, when he began his reforms, rested his doctrine and his hopes of perfectibility upon the scientific application of a scheme for "the formation of character". his plans were crude enough, and fell short of success. but he had seen the real conditions of success; and when, in after years, he imagined that a new society might be made by simply collecting men of any character in a crowd, and inviting them to share alike, he fell into the inevitable failure. modern socialists might do well to remember his history. now it is, as i understand, primarily the aim of an ethical society to promote the rational discussion of these underlying ethical principles. we wish to contribute to the clearest understanding we can of the right ends to which human energy should be devoted, and of the conditions under which such devotion is most likely to be rewarded with success. we desire to see the great controversy carried on in the nearest possible approach to a scientific spirit. that phrase implies, as i have said, that we must abandon much of the old guidance. the lights by which our ancestors professed to direct their course are not for us supernatural signs, shining in a transcendental region, but at most the beacons which they had themselves erected, and valuable as indications, though certainly not as infallible guides, to the right path. we must question everything, and be prepared to modify or abandon whatever is untenable. we must be scientific in spirit, in so far as we must trust nothing but a thorough and systematic investigation of facts, however the facts may be interpreted. undoubtedly, the course marked out is long and arduous. it is perfectly true, moreover, as our antagonists will hasten to observe, that professedly scientific reasoners are hardly better agreed than their opponents. if they join upon some negative conclusions, and upon some general principles of method, they certainly do not reach the same results. they have at present no definite creed to lay down. i need only refer, for example, to one very obvious illustration. the men who were most conspicuous for their attempt to solve social problems by scientific methods, and most confident that they had succeeded, were, probably, those who founded the so-called "classical" political economy, and represented what is now called the individualist point of view. government, they were apt to think, should do nothing but stand aside, see fair-play, and keep our knives from each other's throats and our hands out of each other's pockets. much as their doctrines were denounced, this view is still represented by the most popular philosopher of the day. and undoubtedly we shall do well to take to heart the obvious moral. if we still believe in the old-fashioned doctrines, we must infer that to work out a scientific doctrine is by no means to secure its acceptance. if we reject them we must argue that the mere claim to be scientific may inspire men with a premature self-confidence, which tends only to make their errors more systematic. when, however, i look at the actual course of controversy, i am more impressed by another fact. "individualism" is sometimes met by genuine argument. more frequently, i think, it is met by simple appeal to sentiment. this kind of thing, we are told, is exploded; it is not up to date; it is as obsolete as the plesiosaurus; and therefore, without bothering ourselves about your reasoning, we shall simply neglect it. talk as much as you please, we can get a majority on the other side. we shall disregard your arguments, and, therefore--it is a common piece of logic at the present day--your arguments must be all wrong. i must be content here with simply indicating my own view. i think, in fact, that, in this as in other cases, the true answer to extreme theorists would be very different. i hold that we would begin by admitting the immense value of the lesson taught by the old individualists, if that be their right name. if they were precipitate in laying down "iron laws" and proclaiming inexorable necessity, they were perfectly right in pointing out that there are certain "laws of human nature," and conditions of social welfare, which will not be altered by simply declaring them to be unpleasant. they did an inestimable service in emphatically protesting against the system of forcibly suppressing, or trying to suppress, deep-seated evils, without an accurate preliminary diagnosis of the causes. and--not to go into remote questions--the "individualist" creed had this merit, which is related to our especial aims. the ethical doctrine which they preached may have had--i think that it had--many grave defects; but at least it involved a recognition of the truth which their opponents are too apt to shun or reject. they, at least, asserted strenuously the cardinal doctrine of the importance of individual responsibility. they might draw some erroneous inferences, but they could not put too emphatically the doctrine that men must not be taught to shift the blame of all their sufferings upon some mysterious entity called society, or expect improvement unless, among other virtues, they will cultivate the virtue of strenuous, unremitting, masculine self-help. if this be at all true, it may indicate what i take to be the aim of our society, or rather of us as members of an ethical society. we hold, that is, that the great problems of to-day have their root, so to speak, in an ethical soil. they will be decided one way or other by the view which we take of ethical questions. the questions, for example, of what is meant by social justice, what is the justification of private property, or the limits of personal liberty, all lead us ultimately to ethical foundations. the same is, of course, true of many other problems. the demand for political rights of women is discussed, rightly no doubt, upon grounds of justice, and takes us to some knotty points. does justice imply the equality of the sexes; and, if so, in what sense of "equality"? and, beyond this, we come to the question, what would be the bearing of our principles upon the institution of marriage, and upon the family bond? no question can be more important, or more vitally connected with ethics. we, at any rate, can no longer answer such problems by any traditional dogmatism. they--and many other questions which i need not specify--have been asked, and have yet to be answered. they will probably not be answered by a simple yes or no, nor by any isolated solution of a metaphysical puzzle. undoubtedly, a vast mass of people will insist upon being consulted, and will adopt methods which cannot be regarded as philosophical. therefore, it is a matter of pressing importance that all people who can think at all should use their own minds, and should do their best to widen and strengthen the influence of the ablest thinkers. the chaotic condition of the average mind is our reason for trying to strengthen the influence, always too feeble, of the genuine thinkers. much that passes itself off for thought is simply old prejudice in a new dress. tradition has always this, indeed, to say for itself: that it represents the product of much unconscious reasoning from experience, and that it is at least compatible with such progress as has been hitherto achieved. progress has in future to take place in the daylight, and under the stress of keen discussion from every possible point of view. it would be rash indeed to assume that we can hope to see the substitution of purely rational and scientific methods for the old haphazard and tentative blundering into slightly better things. it is possible enough that the creed of the future may, after all, be a compromise, admitting some elements of higher truth, but attracting the popular mind by concessions to superstition and ignorance. we can hardly hope to get rid of the rooted errors which have so astonishing a vitality. but we should desire, and, so far as in us lies, endeavour to secure the presence of the largest possible element of genuine and reasoned conviction in the faith of our own and the rising generation. i have not sought to say anything new. i have only endeavoured to define the general position which we, as i imagine, have agreed to accept. we hold in common that the old dogmas are no longer tenable, though we are very far from being agreed as to what should replace them. we have each, i dare say, our own theory; we agree that our theories, whatever they may be, are in need of strict examination, of verification, it may be, but it may be also of modification or rejection. we hope that such societies as this may in the first place serve as centres for encouraging and popularising the full and free discussion of the great questions. we wish that people who have reached a certain stage of cultivation should be made aware of the course which is being taken by those who may rightly claim to be in the van. we often wish to know, as well as we can, what is the direction of the deeper currents of thought; what genuine results, for example, have been obtained by historical criticism, especially as applied to the religious history of the world; we want to know what are the real points now at issue in the world of science; the true bearing of the theories of evolution, and so forth, which are known by name far beyond the circle in which their logical reasoning is really appreciated; we want to know, again, what are the problems which really interest modern metaphysicians or psychologists; in what directions there seems to be a real promise of future achievement, and in what directions it seems to be proved by experience that any further expansion of intellectual energy is certain to result only in the discovery of mares' nests. matthew arnold would have expressed this by saying that we are required to be made accessible to the influence of the zeitgeist. there is a difficulty, no doubt, in discovering by what signs we may recognise the utterances of the zeitgeist; and distinguish between loyalty to the real intellectual leaders and a simple desire to be arrayed in the last new fashion in philosophy. there is no infallible sign; and, yet, a genuine desire to discover the true lines in which thought is developing, is not of the less importance. arnold, like others, pointed the moral by a contrast between england and germany. the best that has been done in england, it is said, has generally been done by amateurs and outsiders. they have, perhaps, certain advantages, as being less afraid to strike into original paths, and even the originality of ignorance is not always, though it may be in nine cases out of ten, a name for fresh blundering. but if sporadic english writers have now and then hit off valuable thoughts, there can be no doubt that we have had a heavy price to pay. the comparative absence of any class, devoted, like german professors, to a systematic and combined attempt to spread the borders of knowledge and speculation, has been an evil which is the more felt in proportion as specialisation of science and familiarity with previous achievements become more important. it would be very easy to give particular instances of our backwardness. how different would have been the course of english church history, said somebody, if newman had only known german! he would have breathed a larger air, and might have desisted--i suppose that was the meaning--from the attempt to put life into certain dead bones. and with equal truth, it may be urged, how much better work might have been done by j. s. mill if he had really read kant! he might not have been converted, but he would have been saved from maintaining in their crude form, doctrines which undoubtedly require modification. under his reign, english thought was constantly busied with false issues, simply from ignorance of the most effective criticism. it is needless to point out how much time is wasted in the defence of positions that have long been turned by the enemy from sheer want of acquaintance with the relevant evidence, or with the logic that has been revealed by the slow thrashing out of thorough controversy. it would be invidious perhaps to insist too much upon another obvious result: the ease with which a man endowed with a gift of popular rhetoric, and a facility for catching at the current phrases, can set up as a teacher, however palpable to the initiated may be his ignorance. scientific thought has perhaps as much to fear from the false prophets who take its name as from the open enemies who try to stifle its voice. i would rather emphasise another point, perhaps less generally remarked. the study has its idols as well as its market-place. certain weaknesses are developed in the academical atmosphere as well as in the arenas of public discussion. freeman used to say that english historians had avoided certain errors into which german writers of far greater knowledge and more thorough scholarship had fallen, simply because points were missed by a professor in a german university which were plain to those who, like many englishmen, had to take a part in actual political work. i think that this is not without a meaning for us. we have learnt, very properly, to respect german research and industry; and we are trying in various directions to imitate their example. perhaps it would be as well to keep an eye upon some german weaknesses. a philosophy made for professors is apt to be a philosophy for pedants. a professor is bound to be omniscient; he has to have an answer to everything; he is tempted to construct systems which will pass muster in the lecture-room, and to despise the rest of their applicability to daily life. i confess myself to be old-fashioned enough to share some of the old english prejudices against those gigantic structures which have been thrown out by imposing philosophers, who evolved complete systems of metaphysics and logic and religion and politics and æsthetics out of their own consciousness. we have multiplied professors of late, and professors are bound to write books, and to magnify the value of their own studies. they must make a show of possessing an encyclopædic theory which will explain everything and take into account all previous theories. sometimes, perhaps, they will lose themselves in endless subtleties and logomachies and construct cobwebs of the brain, predestined to the rubbish-heap of extinct philosophies. it is enough, however, to urge that a mere student may be the better for keeping in mind the necessity of keeping in mind real immediate human interests; as the sentimentalist has to be reminded of the importance of strictly logical considerations. and i think too that a very brief study of the most famous systems of old days will convince us that philosophers should be content with a more modest attitude than they have sometimes adopted; give up the pretensions to framing off-hand theories of things in general, and be content to puzzle out a few imperfect truths which may slowly work their way into the general structure of thought. i wish to speak humbly as befits one who cannot claim any particular authority for his opinion. but, in all humility, i suggest that if we can persuade men of reputation in the regions where subtle thought and accurate research are duly valued, we shall be doing good, not only to ourselves, but, if i may whisper it, to them. we value their attainments so highly that we desire their influence to spread beyond the narrow precinct of university lecture-rooms; and their thoughts be, at the same time, stimulated and vitalised by bringing them into closer contact with the problems which are daily forced upon us in the business of daily life. a divorce between the men of thought and the men of action is really bad for both. whatever tends to break up the intellectual stupor of large classes, to rouse their minds, to increase their knowledge of the genuine work that is being done, to provide them even with more of such recreations as refine and invigorate, must have our sympathy, and will be useful both to those who confer and to those who receive instruction. so, after all, a philosopher can learn few things of more importance than the art of translating his doctrines into language intelligible and really instructive to the outside world. there was a period when real thinkers, as locke and berkeley and butler and hume, tried to express themselves as pithily and pointedly as possible. they were, say some of their critics, very shallow: they were over-anxious to suit the taste of wits and the town: and in too much fear of the charge of pedantry. well, if some of our profounder thinkers would try for once to pack all that they really have to say as closely as they can, instead of trying to play every conceivable change upon every thought that occurs to them, i fancy that they would be surprised both at the narrowness of the space which they would occupy and the comparative greatness of the effect they would produce. an ethical society should aim at supplying a meeting-place between the expert and specialist on one side, and, on the other, with the men who have to apply ideas to the complex concretes of political and social activity. how far we can succeed in furthering that aim i need not attempt to say. but i will conclude by reverting to some thoughts at which i hinted at starting. you may think that i have hardly spoken in a very sanguine or optimistic tone. i have certainly admitted the existence of enormous difficulties and the probabilities of very imperfect success. i cannot think that the promised land of which we are taking a pisgah sight is so near or the view so satisfactory as might be wished. a mirage like that which attended our predecessors may still be exercising illusions for us; and i anticipate less an immediate fruition, than a beginning of another long cycle of wanderings through a desert, let us hope rather more fertile than that which we have passed. if this be something of a confession you may easily explain it by personal considerations. in an old controversy which i was reading the other day, one of the disputants observed that his adversary held that the world was going from bad to worse. "i do not wonder at the opinion," he remarks; "for i am every day more tempted to embrace it myself, since every day i am leaving youth further behind." i am old enough to feel the force of that remark. without admitting senility, i have lived long enough, that is, to know well that for me the brighter happiness is a thing of the past; that i have to look back even to realise what it means; and to feel that a sadder colouring is conferred upon the internal world by the eye "which hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." i have watched the brilliant promise of many contemporaries eclipsed by premature death; and have too often had to apply newton's remark, "if that man had lived, we might have known something". lights which once cheered me have gone out, and are going out all too rapidly; and, to say nothing of individuals, i have also lived long enough to watch the decay of once flourishing beliefs. i can remember, only too vividly, the confident hope with which many young men, whom i regarded as the destined leaders of progress, affirmed that the doctrines which they advocated were going forth conquering and to conquer; and though i may still think that those doctrines had a permanent value, and were far from deserving the reproaches now often levelled at them, i must admit that we greatly exaggerated our omniscience. i am often tempted, i confess, to draw the rather melancholy moral that some of my younger friends may be destined to disillusionment, and may be driven some thirty years hence to admit that their present confidence was a little in excess. i admit all this: but i do not admit that my view could sanction despondency. i can see perhaps ground for foreboding which i should once have rejected. i can realise more distinctly, not only the amount of misery in the world, but the amount of misdirected energy, the dulness of the average intellect, and the vast deadweight of superstition and dread of the light with which all improvement must have to reckon. and yet i also feel that, if a complacent optimism be impossible, the world was never so full of interest. when we complain of the stress and strain and over-excitement of modern society we indicate, i think, a real evil; but we also tacitly admit that no one has any excuse for being dull. in every direction there is abundant opportunity for brave and thoughtful men to find the fullest occupation for whatever energy they may possess. there is work to be found everywhere in this sense, and none but the most torpid can find an excuse for joining the spiritually unemployed. the fields, surely, are white for the harvest, though there are weeds enough to be extirpated, and hard enough furrows to be ploughed. we know what has been done in the field of physical science. it has made the world infinite. the days of the old pagan, "suckled in some creed outworn," are regretted in wordsworth's sonnet; for the old pagan held to the poetical view that a star was the chariot of a deity. the poor deity, however, had, in fact, a duty as monotonous as that of a driver in the underground railway. to us a star is a signal of a new world; it suggests universe beyond universe; sinking into the infinite abysses of space; we see worlds forming or decaying and raising at every moment problems of a strange fascination. the prosaic truth is really more poetical than the old figment of the childish imagination. the first great discovery of the real nature of the stars did, in fact, logically or not, break up more effectually than perhaps any other cause, the old narrow and stifling conception of the universe represented by dante's superlative power; and made incredible the systems based on the conception that man can be the centre of all things and the universe created for the sake of this place. it is enough to point to the similar change due to modern theories of evolution. the impassable barriers of thought are broken down. instead of the verbal explanation, which made every plant and animal an ultimate and inexplicable fact, we now see in each a movement in an indefinite series of complex processes, stretching back further than the eye can reach into the indefinite past. if we are sometimes stunned by the sense of inconceivable vastness, we feel, at least, that no intellectual conqueror need ever be affected by the old fear. for him there will always be fresh regions to conquer. every discovery suggests new problems; and though knowledge may be simplified and codified, it will always supply a base for fresh explanations of the indefinite regions beyond. can that which is true of the physical sciences be applied in any degree to the so-called moral sciences? to bentham, i believe, is ascribed the wish that he could fall asleep and be waked at the end of successive centuries, to take note of the victories achieved in the intervals by his utilitarianism. tennyson, in one of his youthful poems, played with the same thought. it would be pleasant, as the story of the sleeping beauty suggested, to rise every hundred years to mark the progress made in science and politics; and to see the "titanic forces" that would come to the birth in divers climes and seasons; for we, he says- for we are ancients of the earth, and in the morning of the times. tennyson, if this expressed his serious belief, seems to have lost his illusions; and it is probable enough that bentham's would have had some unpleasant surprises could his wish have been granted. it is more than a century since his doctrine was first revealed, and yet the world has not become converted; and some people doubt whether it ever will be. if, indeed, bentham's speculations had been adopted; if we had all become convinced that morality means aiming at the greatest happiness of the greatest number; if we were agreed as to what is happiness, and what is the best way of promoting it,--there would still have been a vast step to take, no less than to persuade people to desire to follow the lines of conduct which tend to minimise unhappiness. the mere intellectual conviction that this or that will be useful is quite a different thing from the desire. you no more teach men to be moral by giving them a sound ethical theory, than you teach them to be good shots by explaining the theory of projectiles. a religion implies a philosophy, but a philosophy is not by itself a religion. the demand that it should be is, i hold, founded upon a wrong view as to the relation between the abstract theory and the art of conduct. to convert the world you have not merely to prove your theories, but to stimulate the imagination, to discipline the passions, to provide modes of utterance for the emotions and symbols which may represent the fundamental beliefs--briefly, to do what is done by the founders of the great religions. to transmute speculation into action is a problem of tremendous difficulty, and i only glance in the briefest way at its nature. we, i take it, as members of ethical societies, have no claim to be, even in the humblest way, missionaries of a new religion: but are simply interested in doing what we can to discuss in a profitable way the truths which it ought to embody or reflect. but that is itself a work of no trifling importance; and we may imagine that a bentham, refreshed by his century's slumber, and having dropped some of his little personal vanities, would on the whole be satisfied with what he saw. if bacon could again come to life, he too would find that the methods which he contemplated and the doctrines which he preached were narrow and refutive; yet his prophecies of scientific growth have been more than realised by his successors, modifying, in some ways, rejecting his principles. and so bentham might hold to-day that, although his sacred formula was not so exhaustive or precise as he fancied, yet the conscious and deliberate pursuit of the happiness of mankind had taken a much more important place in the aspirations of the time. he would see that the vast changes which have taken place in society, vast beyond all previous conception, were bringing up ever new problems, requiring more elaborate methods, and more systematic reasoning. he would observe that many of the abuses which he denounced have disappeared, and that though progress does not take place along the precise lines which he laid down, there is both a clearer recognition of the great ends of conduct, and a general advance in the direction which he desired. that this can be carried on by promoting a free and full discussion of first principles; that the great social evils which still exist can be diminished, and the creed of the future, however dim its outlines may be to our perception, may be purified as much as possible from ancient prejudice and superstition, is our faith; and however little we can do to help in carrying out that process, we desire to do that little. science and politics.[2] it is with great pleasure that i address you as president of this society. your main purpose, as i understand, is to promote the serious study of political and social problems in a spirit purged from the prejudice and narrowness of mere party conflict. you desire, that is, to promote a scientific investigation of some of the most important topics to which the human mind can devote itself. there is no purpose of which i approve more cordially: yet the very statement suggests a doubt. to speak of science and politics together is almost to suggest irony. and if politics be taken in the ordinary sense; if we think of the discussions by which the immediate fate of measures and of ministries is decided, i should be inclined to think that they belong to a sphere of thought to which scientific thought is hardly applicable, and in which i should be personally an unwarrantable intruder. my friends have sometimes accused me, indeed, of indifference to politics. i confess that i have never been able to follow the details of party warfare with the interest which they excite in some minds: and reasons, needless to indicate, have caused me to stray further and further away from intercourse with the society in which such details excite a predominant--i do not mean to insinuate an excessive--interest. i feel that if i were to suggest any arguments bearing directly upon home rule or disestablishment, i should at once come under that damnatory epithet "academical," which so neatly cuts the ground from under the feet of the political amateur. moreover, i recognise a good deal of justice in the implied criticism. an active politician who wishes to impress his doctrines upon his countrymen, should have a kind of knowledge to which i can make no pretension. i share the ordinary feelings of awful reverence with which the human bookworm looks up to the man of business. he has faculties which in me are rudimentary, but which i can appreciate by their contrast to my own feebleness. the "knowledge of the world" ascribed to lawyers, to politicians, financiers, and such persons, like the "knowledge of the human heart" so often ascribed to dramatists and novelists, represents, i take it, a very real kind of knowledge; but it is rather an instinct than a set of definite principles; a power of somehow estimating the tendencies and motives of their fellow-creatures in a mass by rule of thumb, rather than by any distinctly assignable logical process; only to be gained by long experience and shrewd observation of men and cities. such a faculty, as it reaches sound results without employing explicit definitions and syllogisms and inductive processes, sometimes inclines its possessors to look down too contemptuously upon the closet student. [2] address to the social and political education league, 29th march, 1892. while, however, i frankly confess my hopeless incapacity for taking any part in the process by which party platforms are constructed, i should be ashamed to admit that i was not very keenly interested in political discussions which seem to me to touch vitally important matters. and fully recognising the vast superiority of the practical man in his own world, i also hold that he should not treat me and my like as if we, according to the famous comparison, were black beetles, and he at the opposite pole of the universe. there exists, in books at least, such a thing as political theory, apart from that claiming to underlie the immediate special applications. your practical man is given to appealing to such theories now and then; though i confess that he too often leaves the impression of having taken them up on the spur of the moment to round a peroration and to give dignity to a popular cry; and that, in his lips, they are apt to sound so crude and artificial that one can only wonder at his condescending to notice them. he ridicules them as the poorest of platitudes whenever they are used by an antagonist, and one can only hope that his occasional homage implies that he too has a certain belief that there ought to be, and perhaps may somewhere be, a sound theory, though he has not paid it much attention. well, we, i take it, differ from him simply in this respect, that we believe more decidedly that such theory has at least a potential existence; and that if hitherto it is a very uncertain and ambiguous guide, the mere attempt to work it out seriously may do something to strengthen and deepen our practical political convictions. a man of real ability, who is actively engaged in politics without being submerged by merely political intrigues, can hardly fail to wish at least to institute some kind of research into the principles which guide his practice. to such a desire we may attribute some very stimulating books, such, for example, as bagehot's _physics and politics_ or mr. bryce's philosophical study of the united states. what i propose to do is to suggest a few considerations as to the real value and proper direction of these arguments, which lie, as it were, on the borderland between the immediate "platform" and the abstract theory. philosophers have given us the name "sociology"--a barbarous name, say some--for the science which deals with the subject matter of our inquiries. is it more than a name for a science which may or may not some day come into existence? what is science? it is simply organised knowledge; that part of our knowledge which is definite, established beyond reasonable doubt, and which achieves its task by formulating what are called "scientific laws". laws in this sense are general formulæ, which, when the necessary data are supplied, will enable us to extend our knowledge beyond the immediate facts of perception. given a planet, moving at a given speed in a given direction, and controlled by given attractive forces, we can determine its place at a future moment. or given a vegetable organism in a given environment, we can predict within certain limits the way in which it will grow, although the laws are too obscure and too vague to enable us to speak of it with any approach to the precision of astronomy. and we should have reached a similar stage in sociology if from a given social or political constitution adopted by a given population, we could prophesy what would be the results. i need not say that any approximation to such achievements is almost indefinitely distant. personal claims to such powers of prediction rather tend to bring discredit upon the embryo science. coleridge gives in the _biographia literaria_ a quaint statement of his own method. on every great occurrence, he says, he tried to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. he examined the original authorities. "then fairly subtracting the points of difference from the points of likeness," as the balance favoured the former or the latter, he conjectured that the result would be the same, or different. so, for example, he was able to prophesy the end of the spanish rising against napoleon from the event of the war between philip ii. and the dutch provinces. that is, he cried, "heads!" and on this occasion the coin did not come down tails. but i need hardly point out how impossible is the process of political arithmetic. what is meant by adding or subtracting in this connection? such a rule of three would certainly puzzle me, and, i fancy, most other observers. we may say that the insurrection of a patriotic people, when they are helped from without, and their oppressors have to operate from a distant base and to fight all europe at the same time, will often succeed; and we may often be right; but we should not give ourselves the airs of prophets on that account. there are many superficial analogies of the same character. my predecessor, professor dicey, pointed out some of them, to confirm his rather depressing theory that history is nothing but an old almanac. let me take a common one, which, i think, may illustrate our problem. there is a certain analogy between the cases of cæsar, cromwell, and napoleon. in each case we have a military dictatorship as the final outcome of a civil war. some people imagined that this analogy would apply to the united states, and that washington or grant would be what was called the man on horseback. the reasoning really involved was, in fact, a very simple one. the destruction of an old system of government makes some form of dictatorship the only alternative to chaos. it therefore gives a chance to the one indisputable holder of power in its most unmistakable shape, namely, to the general of a disciplined army. a soldier accordingly assumed power in each of the three first cases, although the differences between the societies ruled by the roman, the english and the french dictators are so vast that further comparison soon becomes idle. neither washington nor grant had the least chance of making themselves dictators had they wished, because the civil wars had left governments perfectly uninjured and capable of discharging all their functions, and had not produced a regular army with interests of its own. in this and other cases, i should say that such an analogy may be to some extent instructive, but i should certainly deny that there was anything like a scientific induction. we, happily, can reason to some extent upon political matters by the help of simple common sense before it has undergone that process of organisation, of reduction to precise measurable statements, which entitles it to be called a scientific procedure. the resemblance of washington to cromwell was of the external and superficial order. it may be compared to those analogies which exist between members of different natural orders without implying any deeper resemblance. a whale, we know, is like a fish in so far as he swims about in the sea, and he has whatever fishlike qualities are implied in the ability to swim. he will die on land, though not from the same causes. but, physiologically, he belongs to a different race, and we should make blunders if we argued from the external likeness to a closer resemblance. or, to drop what may be too fanciful a comparison, it may be observed that all assemblies of human beings may be contrasted in respect of being numerous or select, and have certain properties in consequence. we may therefore make some true and general propositions about the contrasts between the action of small and large consultative bodies which will apply to many widely different cases. a good many, and, i think, some really valuable observations of this kind have been made, and form the substance of many generalisations laid down as to the relative advantages of democracy and aristocracy. now i should be disposed to say that such remarks belong rather to the morphology than the physiology of the social organism. they indicate external resemblances between bodies of which the intimate constitution and the whole mode of growth and conditions of vitality, may be entirely different. such analogies, then, though not without their value, are far from being properly scientific. what remains? there is, shall we say, no science of sociology--merely a heap of vague, empirical observations, too flimsy to be useful in strict logical inference? i should, i confess, be apt to say so myself. then, you may proceed, is it not idle to attempt to introduce a scientific method? and to that i should emphatically reply, no! it is of the highest importance. the question, then, will follow, how i can maintain these two positions at once. and to that i make, in the first place, this general answer: sociology is still of necessity a very vague body of approximate truths. we have not the data necessary for obtaining anything like precise laws. a mathematician can tell you precisely what he means when he speaks of bodies moving under the influence of an attraction which varies inversely as the square of the distance. but what are the attractive forces which hold together the body politic? they are a number of human passions, which even the acutest psychologists are as yet quite unable to analyse or to classify: they act according to laws of which we have hardly the vaguest inkling; and, even if we possessed any definite laws, the facts to which they have to be applied are so amazingly complex as to defy any attempt at assigning results. there is, so far as i can see, no ground for supposing that there is or ever can be a body of precise truths at all capable of comparison with the exact sciences. but this obvious truth, though it implies very narrow limits to our hopes of scientific results, does not force us to renounce the application of scientific method. the difficulty applies in some degree even to physiology as compared with physics, as the vital phenomena are incomparably more complex than those with which we have to deal in the simpler sciences; and yet nobody doubts that a scientific physiology is a possibility, and, to some extent, a reality. now, in sociology, however imperfect it may be, we may still apply the same methods which have been so fruitful in other departments of thought. we may undertake it in the scientific spirit which depends upon patient appeal to observation, and be guided by the constant recollection that we are dealing with an organism, the various relations of whose constituent parts are determined by certain laws to which we may, perhaps, make some approximation. we may do so, although their mutual actions and reactions are so complex and subtle that we can never hope to disentangle them with any approach to completeness. and one test of the legitimacy of our methods will be, that although we do not hope to reach any precise and definitely assignable law, we yet reach, or aim at reaching, results which, while wanting in precision, want precision alone to be capable of incorporation in an ideal science such as might actually exist for a supernatural observer of incomparably superior powers. a man who knows, though he knows nothing more, that the moon is kept in its orbit by forces similar to or identical with those which cause the fall of an apple, knows something which only requires more definite treatment to be made into a genuine theory of gravitation. if, on the contrary, he merely pays himself with words, with vague guesses about occult properties, or a supposed angel who directs the moon's course, he is still in the unscientific stage. his theory is not science still in the vague, but something which stops the way to science. now, if we can never hope to get further than the step which in the problem of gravitation represents the first step towards science, yet that step may be a highly important one. it represents a diversion of the current of thought from such channels as end in mere shifting sands of speculation, into the channel which leads towards some definite conclusion, verifiable by experience, and leading to conclusions, not very precise, but yet often pointing to important practical results. it may, perhaps, be said that, as the change which i am supposing represents only a change of method and spirit, it can achieve no great results in actual assignable truth. well! a change of method and spirit is, in my opinion, of considerable importance, and very vague results would still imply an improvement in the chaos of what now passes for political philosophy. i will try to indicate very briefly the kind of improvement of which we need not despair. first of all, i conceive that, as i have indicated, a really scientific habit of thought would dispel many hopeless logomachies. when burke, incomparably the greatest of our philosophical politicians, was arguing against the american policy of the government, he expressed his hatred of metaphysics--the "serbonian bog," as he called it, in which whole armies had been lost. the point at which he aimed was the fruitless discussion of abstract rights, which prevented people from applying their minds to the actual facts, and from seeing that metaphysical entities of that kind were utterly worthless when they ceased to correspond to the wants and aspirations of the peoples concerned. he could not, as he said, draw up an indictment against a nation, because he could not see how such troubles as had arisen between england and the colonies were to be decided by technical distinctions such as passed current at _nisi prius_. i am afraid that the mode of reasoning condemned by burke has not yet gone out of fashion. i do not wish to draw down upon myself the wrath of metaphysicians. i am perfectly willing that they should go on amusing themselves by attempting to deduce the first principles of morality from abstract considerations of logical affirmation and denial. but i will say this, that, in any case, and whatever the ultimate meaning of right and wrong, all political and social questions must be discussed with a continual reference to experience, to the contents as well as to the form of their metaphysical concepts. it is, to my mind, quite as idle to attempt to determine the value, say, of a political theory by reasoning independent of the character and circumstances of the nation and its constituent members, as to solve a medical question by abstract formulæ, instead of by careful, prolonged, and searching investigation into the constitution of the human body. i think that this requires to be asserted so long as popular orators continue to declaim, for example, about the "rights of man," or the doctrines of political equality. i by no means deny, or rather i should on due occasion emphatically assert, that the demands covered by such formulæ are perfectly right, and that they rest upon a base of justice. but i am forced to think that, as they are generally stated, they can lead to nothing but logomachy. when a man lays down some such sweeping principle, his real object is to save himself the trouble of thinking. so long as the first principles from which he starts are equally applicable,--and it is of the very nature of these principles that they should be equally applicable to men in all times and ages, to englishmen and americans, hindoos and chinese, negroes and australians,--they are worthless for any particular case, although, of course, they may be accidentally true in particular cases. in short, leaving to the metaphysicians--that is, postponing till the greek kalends--any decision as to the ultimate principles, i say that every political theory should be prepared to justify itself by an accurate observation of the history and all the various characteristics of the social organisation to which it is to be applied. this points to the contrast to which i have referred: the contrast between the keen vigorous good sense upon immediate questions of the day, to which i often listen with the unfeigned admiration due to the shrewd man of business, and the paltry little outworn platitudes which he introduces when he wants to tag his arguments with sounding principles. i think, to take an example out of harm's way, that an excellent instance is found in the famous american treatise, the _federalist_. it deserves all the credit it has won so long as the authors are discussing the right way to form a constitution which may satisfy the wants and appease the prejudices then actually existing. in spite of such miscalculations as beset all forecasts of the future, they show admirable good sense and clear appreciation. but when they think it necessary to appeal to montesquieu, to tag their arguments from common sense with little ornamental formulæ learnt from philosophical writings, they show a very amiable simplicity; but they also seem to me to sink at once to the level of a clever prize essay in a university competition. the mischief may be slight when we are merely considering literary effect. but it points to a graver evil. in political discussions, the half-trained mind has strong convictions about some particular case, and then finds it easiest to justify its conviction by some sweeping general principle. it really starts, speaking in terms of logic, by assuming the truth of its minor and takes for granted that any major which will cover the minor is therefore established. nothing saves so much trouble in thinking as the acceptance of a good sounding generality or a self-evident truth. where your poor scientific worker plods along, testing the truth of his argument at every point, making qualifications and reservations, and admitting that every general principle may require to be modified in concrete cases, you can thus both jump to your conclusion and assume the airs of a philosopher. it is, i fancy, for this reason that people have such a tendency to lay down absolute rules about really difficult points. it is so much easier to say at once that all drinking ought to be suppressed, than to consider how, in actual circumstances, sobriety can be judiciously encouraged; and by assuming a good self-evident law and denouncing your opponents as immoral worshippers of expediency, you place yourself in an enviable position of moral dignity and inaccessibility. no argument can touch you. these abstract rules, too, have the convenience of being strangely ambiguous. i have been almost pathetically affected when i have observed how some thoroughly commonplace person plumes himself on preserving his consistency because he sticks resolutely to his party dogmas, even when their whole meaning has evaporated. some english radicals boasted of consistency because they refused to be convinced by experience that republicans under a military dictator could become tyrannous and oppressive. at the present day, i see many worthy gentlemen, who from being thorough-going individualists, have come to swallow unconsciously the first principles of socialism without the least perception that they have changed, simply because a new meaning has been gradually insinuated into the sacred formulæ. scientific habits of thought, i venture to suggest, would tend to free a man from the dominion of these abstract phrases, which sometimes make men push absolute dogmas to extravagant results, and sometimes blind them to the complete transformation which has taken place in their true meaning. the great test of statesmanship, it is said, is the knowledge how and when to make a compromise, and when to hold fast to a principle. the tendency of the thoughtless is to denounce all compromise as wicked, and to stick to a form of words without bothering about the real meaning. belief in "fads"--i cannot avoid the bit of slang--and singular malleability of real convictions are sometimes generated just by want of serious thought; and, at any rate, both phenomena are very common at present. this suggests another aspect of reasoning in a scientific spirit, namely, the importance which it attaches to a right comprehension of the practicable. the scientific view is sometimes described as fatalistic. a genuine scientific theory implies a true estimate of the great forces which mould institutions, and therefore a true apprehension of the limits within which they can be modified by any proposed change. we all remember sydney smith's famous illustration, in regard to the opposition to the reform bill, of mrs. partington's attempt to stop the atlantic with her mop. such an appeal is sometimes described as immoral. many politicians, no doubt, find in it an excuse for immoral conduct. they assume that such and such a measure is inevitable, and therefore they think themselves justified for advocating it, even though they hold it to be wrong. indeed, i observe that many excellent journalists are apparently unable to perceive any distinction between the assertion that a measure will be passed, and that it ought to be passed. undoubtedly, if i think a measure unjust, i ought to say that it is unjust, even if i am sure that it will nevertheless be carried, and, in some cases, even though i may be a martyr to my opposition. if it is inevitable, it can be carried without my help, and my protest may at least sow a seed for future reaction. but this is no answer to the argument of sydney smith when taken in a reasonable sense. the opposition to the reform bill was a particular case of the opposition to the advance of democracy. the statement that democracy has advanced and will advance, is sometimes taken to be fatalistic. people who make the assertion may answer for themselves. i should answer, as i think we should all answer now, that the advance of democracy, desirable or undesirable, depended upon causes far too deep and general to be permanently affected by any reform bill. it was only one aspect of vast social changes which had been going on for centuries; and to propose to stop it by throwing out the reform bill was like proposing to stop a child's growth by forcing him to go on wearing his long clothes. sydney smith's answer might be immoral if it simply meant, don't fight because you will be beaten. it may often be a duty to take a beating. but it was, perhaps, rather a way of saying that if you want to stop the growth of democracy, you must begin by altering the course of the social, intellectual and moral changes which have been operating through many generations, and that unless you can do that, it is idle to oppose one particular corollary, and so to make a revolution inevitable, instead of a peaceful development. to say that any change is impossible in the absolute sense, may be fatalism; but it is simple good sense, and therefore good science, to say that to produce any change whatever you must bring to bear a force adequate to the change. when a man's leg is broken, you can't expect to heal it by a bit of sticking-plaster; a pill is not supposed, now, to be a cure for an earthquake; and to insist upon such facts is not to be fatalistic, but simply to say that a remedy must bear some proportion to an evil. it is a commonplace to observe upon the advantage which would have been gained if our grandfathers would have looked at the french revolution scientifically. a terrible catastrophe had occurred abroad. the true moral, as we all see now, was that england should make such reforms as would obviate the danger of a similar catastrophe at home. the moral which too many people drew was too often, that all reforms should be stopped; with the result that the evils grew worse and social strata more profoundly alienated. it is a first principle of scientific reasoning, that a break-down of social order implies some antecedent defect, demanding an adequate remedy. it is a primary assumption of party argument, that the opposite party is wholly wrong, that its action is perfectly gratuitous, and either causeless or produced by the direct inspiration of the devil. the struggle, upon the scientific theory, represents two elements in an evolution which can be accomplished peacefully by such a reconstruction as will reconcile the conflicting aims and substitute harmony for discord. on the other doctrine, it is a conflict of hopelessly antagonistic principles, one of which is to be forcibly crushed. i hope that i am not too sanguine, but i cannot help believing that in this respect we have improved, and improved by imbibing some of the scientific doctrine. i think that in recent discussions of the most important topics, however bitter and however much distorted by the old party spirit, there is yet a clearer recognition than of old, that widely-spread discontent is not a reason for arbitrary suppression, but for seeking to understand and remove its causes. we should act in the spirit of spinoza's great saying; and it should be our aim, as it was his care, "neither to mock, to bewail, nor to denounce men's actions, but to understand them". that is equally true of men's opinions. if they are violent, passionate, subversive of all order, our duty is not bare denunciations, but a clear comprehension of the causes, not of the ostensible reasons, of their opinions, and a resolution to remove those causes. i think this view has made some way: i am sure that it will make more way if we become more scientific in spirit; and it is one of the main reasons for encouraging such a spirit. the most obvious difficulty just now is one upon which i must touch, though with some fear and trembling. a terrible weapon has lately been coming into perfection, to which its inventors have given the elegant name of a "boom". the principle is--so far as i can understand--that the right frame of mind for dealing with the gravest problems is to generate a state of violent excitement, to adopt any remedy, real or supposed, which suggests itself at the moment, and to denounce everybody who suggests difficulties as a cynic or a cold-blooded egoist; and therefore to treat grave chronic and organic diseases of society by spasmodic impulses, to make stringent laws without condescending to ask whether they will work, and try the boldest experiments without considering whether they are likely to increase or diminish the evil. this, as some people think, is one of the inevitable consequences of democracy. i hope that it is not; but if it is, it is one of the inevitable consequences against which we, as cultivators of science, should most seriously protest, in the hope that we may some day find philip sober enough to consider the consequences of his actions under the influence of spiritual intoxication. professor huxley, in one of those smart passages of arms which so forcibly illustrated his intellectual vigour, gave an apologue, which i wish that i could steal without acknowledgment. he spoke of an irish carman who, on being told that he was not going in the right direction, replied that he was at any rate going at a great pace. the scientific doctrine is simply that we should look at the map before we set out for utopia; and i think that a doctrine which requires to be enforced by every means in our power. this tendency, of course, comes out prominently in the important discussions of social and economic problems. that is a matter upon which i cannot now dwell, and which has been sufficiently emphasised by many eminent writers. if modern orators confined themselves to urging that the old economists exaggerated their claims to scientific accuracy, and were, in point of fact, guilty of many logical errors and hasty generalisations, i, at least, could fully agree with them. but the general impression seems to be, that because the old arguments were faulty, all argument is irrelevant: that because the alleged laws of nature were wrongly stated, there are no laws of nature at all; and that we may proceed to rearrange society, to fix the rate of wages or the rent of land or the incomes of capitalists without any reference at all to the conditions under which social arrangements have been worked out and actually carried on. this is, in short, to sanction the most obvious weakness of popular movements, and to assure the ignorant and thoughtless that they are above reason, and their crude guesses infallible guides to truth. one view which tries to give some plausibility to these assumptions is summed up in the now current phrase about the "masses" and the "classes". we all know the regular process of logical fence of the journalist, _i.e._, thrust and parry, which is repeated whenever such questions turn up. the radical calls his opponent tory and reactionary. the wicked tory, it is said, thinks only of the class interest; believes that the nation exists for the sake of the house of lords; lives in a little citadel provided with all the good things, which he is ready to defend against every attempt at a juster distribution; selfishness is his one motive; repression by brute force his only theory of government; and his views of life in general are those of the wicked cynics who gaze from their windows in pall mall. then we have the roll of all the abuses which have been defended by this miscreant and his like since the days of george iii.--slavery and capital punishment, and pensions and sinecures, and protection and the church establishment. the popular instinct, it is urged, has been in the right in so many cases that there is an enormous presumption in favour of the infallibility of all its instincts. the reply, of course, is equally obvious. your boast, says the conservative, that you please the masses, is in effect a confession that you truckle to the mob. you mean that your doctrines spread in proportion to the ignorance of your constituents. you prove the merits of your theories by showing that they disgust people the more they think. the liberalism of a district, it has been argued, varies with the number of convictions for drunkenness. if it be easy to denounce our ancestors, it is also easy to show how they built up the great empire which now shelters us; and how, if they had truckled, as you would have us truckle, to popular whims, we should have been deprived of our commerce, our manufactures, and our position in the civilised world. and then it is easy to produce a list of all the base demagogues who have misled popular impatience and ignorance from the days of cleon to those of the french convention, or of the last disreputable "boss" bloated with corruption and the plunder of some great american city. this is the result, it is suggested, of pandering to the mob, and generally ostracising the intelligent citizen. i merely sketch the familiar arguments which any journalist has ready at hand, and, by a sufficient spice of references to actual affairs, can work up into any number of pointed leading articles. i will only observe that such arguments seem to me to illustrate that curious unreality of political theories of which i have spoken. it seems to be tacitly assumed on both sides, that votes are determined by a process of genuine reasoning. one side may be ignorant and the other prejudiced; but the arguments i have recapitulated seem to imply the assumption that the constituents really reflect upon the reasons for and against the measures proposed, and make up their minds accordingly. they are spoken of as though they were a body of experts, investigating a scientific doctrine, or at least a jury guided by the evidence laid before them. upon that assumption, as it seems to me, the moral would be that the whole system is a palpable absurdity. the vast majority of voters scarcely think at all, and would be incapable of judging if they did. hundreds of thousands care more for dr. grace's last score or the winner of the derby than for any political question whatever. if they have opinions, they have neither the training nor the knowledge necessary to form any conclusion whatever. consider the state of mind of the average voter--of nine men out of ten, say, whom you meet in the strand. ask yourselves honestly what value you would attach to his opinion upon any great question--say, of foreign politics or political economy. has he ever really thought about them? is he superficially acquainted with any of the relevant facts? is he even capable of the imaginative effort necessary to set before him the vast interests often affected? and would the simple fact that he said "yes" to a given question establish in your mind the smallest presumption against the probability that the right answer would be "no"? what are the chances that a majority of people, of whom not one in a hundred has any qualifications for judging, will give a right judgment? yet that is the test suggested by most of the conventional arguments on both sides; for i do not say this as intending to accept the anti-democratic application. it is just as applicable, i believe, to the educated and the well-off. i need not labour the point, which is sufficiently obvious. i am quite convinced that, for example, the voters for a university will be guided by unreasonable prejudices as the voters for a metropolitan constituency. in some ways they will be worse. to find people who believe honestly in antiquated prejudices, you must go to the people who have been trained to believe them. an ecclesiastical seminary can manage to drill the pupils into professing absurdities from which average common sense would shrink, and only supply logical machinery for warring against reason. the reference to enlightened aristocracies is common enough; but i cannot discover that, "taken in a lump," any particular aristocracy cannot be as narrow-minded, short-sighted, and selfish, as the most rampant democracy. in point of fact, we all know that political action is determined by instinct rather than by reason. i do not mean that instinct is opposed to reason: it is simply a crude, undeveloped, inarticulate form of reason; it is blended with prejudices for which no reason is assigned, or even regarded as requisite. such blind instincts, implying at most a kind of groping after error, necessarily govern the majority of men of all classes, in political as in other movements. the old apologists used to argue on the hypothesis that men must have accepted christianity on the strength of a serious inquiry into the evidences. the fallacy of the doctrine is sufficiently plain: they accepted it because it suited them on the whole, and was fitted, no doubt, to their intellectual needs, but was also fitted to their emotional and moral needs as developed under certain social conditions. the inference from the general acceptance of any theory is not that it is true, but that it is true enough to satisfy the very feeble demand for logic--that it is not palpably absurd or self-contradictory; and that, for some reason or other, it satisfies also the imagination, the affections, and the aspirations of the believers. not to go into other questions, this single remark indicates, i think, the attitude which the scientific observer would adopt in regard to this ancient controversy. he would study the causes as well as the alleged reasons assignable for any general instinct, and admit that its existence is one of the primary data which have to be taken into account. to denounce democracy or aristocracy is easy enough; and it saves trouble to assume that god is on one side and the devil on the other. the true method, i take it, is that which was indicated by tocqueville's great book upon democracy in america; a book which, if i may trust my own impressions, though necessarily imperfect as regards america, is a perfectly admirable example of the fruitful method of studying such problems. though an aristocrat by birth and breeding, tocqueville had the wisdom to examine democratic beliefs and institutions in a thoroughly impartial spirit; and, instead of simply denouncing or admiring, to trace the genesis of the prevalent ideas and their close connection with the general state of social development. an inquiry conducted in that spirit would not lead to the absolute dogmatic conclusions in which the superficial controversialist delights. it would show, perhaps, that there was at least this much truth in the democratic contention, that the masses are, by their position, exempt from some of the prejudices which are ingrained in the members of a smaller caste; that they are therefore more accessible to certain moral considerations, and more anxious to promote the greatest happiness of the greater number. but it might also show how the weakness of the ignorant and untrained mind produces the characteristic evils of sentimentalism and impatience, of a belief in the omnipotence of legislation, and an excessive jealousy of all superiorities; and might possibly, too, exhibit certain merits which are impressed upon the aristocrat by his sense of the obligations of nobility. i do not in the least mean to express any opinion about such questions; i desire only to indicate the temper in which i conceive that they should be approached. i have lived long enough to be utterly unable to believe--though some older politicians than i seem still to believe, especially on the eve of a dissolution--that any of our party lines coincide with the lines between good and bad, wise and foolish. every one, of course, will repudiate the abstract theory. yet we may notice how constantly it is assumed; and can see to what fallacies it leads when we look for a moment at the historical questions which no longer unite party feeling. few, indeed, even of our historians, can write without taking party views of such questions. even the candid and impartial seem to deserve these epithets chiefly because they want imagination, and can cast blame or applaud alternately, because they do not enter into the real spirit of either party. their views are sometimes a medley of inconsistent theories, rather than a deeper view which might reconcile apparent inconsistencies. i will only mention one point which often strikes me, and may lead to a relevant remark. every royalist historian, we all know, labours to prove that charles i. was a saint, and cromwell a hypocrite. the view was natural at the time of the civil wars; but it now should suggest an obvious logical dilemma. if the monarchical theory which charles represented was sound, and charles was also a wise and good man, what caused the rebellion? a perfect man driving a perfect engine should surely not have run it off the rails. the royalist ought to seek to prove that charles was a fool and a knave, to account for the collapse of royalty; and the case against royalty is all the stronger, if you could show that charles, in spite of impeccable virtue, was forced by his position to end on the scaffold. choose between him and the system which he applied. so catholics and conservatives are never tired of denouncing henry viii. and the french revolutionists. so far as i can guess (i know very little about it), their case is a very strong one. i somehow believe, in spite of froude, that henry viii. was a tyrant; and eulogies upon the reign of terror generally convince me that a greater set of scoundrels seldom came to the surface, than the perpetrators of those enormities. but then the real inference is, to my mind, very different. henry viii. was the product of the previous time; the ultimate outcome of that ideal state of things in which the church had its own way during the ages of truth. must not the system have been wrong, when it had so lost all moral weight as to be at the mercy of a ruffianly plunderer? and so, as we all admit now, the strongest condemnation of the old french _régime_ is the fact that it had not only produced such a set of miscreants as those who have cast permanent odium even upon sound principles; but that its king and rulers went down before them without even an attempt at manly resistance. a revolution does not, perhaps, justify itself; it does not prove that its leaders judged rightly and acted virtuously: but, beyond a doubt, it condemns the previous order which brought it about. what a horrid thing is the explosion! why, is the obvious answer, did you allow the explosive materials to accumulate, till the first match must fire the train? the greatest blot upon burke, i need hardly say, is that his passions blinded him in his age, to this, as we now see, inevitable conclusion. the old-fashioned view, i fancy, is a relic of that view of history in which all the great events and changes were personified in some individual hero. the old "legislators," lycurgus and solon and the like, were supposed to have created the institutions which were really the products of a slow growth. when a favourable change due to economical causes took place in the position of the french peasantry, the peasants, says michelet somewhere, called it "good king henry". carlyle's theory of hero worship is partly an application of the same mode of thought. you embody your principle in some concrete person; canonise him or damn him, as he represents truth or error; and take credit to yourself for insight and for a lofty morality. it becomes a kind of blasphemy to suggest that your great man, who thus stands for an inspired leader dropped straight out of heaven, was probably at best very imperfect, one-sided, and at least as much of a product as a producer. the crudity of the method is even regarded as a proof of its morality. your common-place moralist likes to call everything black or white; he despises all qualifications as casuistical refinements, and plumes himself on the decisive verdict, saint or sinner, with which he labels the adherents and opponents of his party. and yet we know as a fact, how absurd are such judgments. we know how men are betrayed into bad causes from good motives, or put on the right side because it happens to harmonise with their lower interests. saints--so we are told--have been the cruellest persecutors; and kings, acting from purely selfish ambition, have consolidated nations or crushed effete and mischievous institutions. if we can make up our minds as to which was, on the whole, the best cause,--and, generally speaking, both sides represented some sound principle,--it does not follow that it was also the cause of all the best men. before we can judge of the individual, we must answer a hundred difficult questions: if he took the right side, did he take it from the right motives? was it from personal ambition or pure patriotism? did he see what was the real question at issue? did he foresee the inevitable effect of the measures which he advocated? if he did not see, was it because he was human, and therefore short-sighted; or because he was brutal, and therefore wanting in sympathy; or because he had intellectual defects, which made it impossible for him to escape from the common illusions of the time? these, and any number of similar difficulties, arise when we try to judge of the great men who form landmarks in our history, from the time of boadicea to that of queen victoria. they are always amusing, and sometimes important; but there is always a danger that they may warp our views of the vital facts. the beauty of mary queen of scots still disqualifies many people from judging calmly the great issues of a most important historical epoch. i will leave it to you to apply this to our views of modern politics, and judge the value of the ordinary assumption which assumes that all good men must be on one side. now we may say that the remedy for such illusions points to the importance of a doctrine which is by no means new, but which has, i think, bearings not always recognised. we have been told, again and again, since plato wrote his _republic_, that society is an organism. it is replied that this is at best an analogy upon which too great stress must not be laid; and we are warned against the fanciful comparisons which some writers have drawn between the body corporate and the actual physical body, with its cells, tissues, nervous system, and so forth. now, whatever may be the danger of that mode of reasoning, i think that the statement, properly understood, corresponds to a simple logical canon too often neglected in historical and political reasonings. it means, i take it, in the first place, that every man is a product as well as a producer; that there is no such thing as the imaginary individual with fixed properties, whom theorists are apt to take for granted as the base of their reasoning; that no man or group of men is intelligible without taking into account the mass of instincts transmitted through their predecessors, and therefore without referring to their position in the general history of human development. and, secondly, it is essential to remember in speaking of any great man, or of any institution, their position as parts of a complicated system of actions and emotions. the word "if," i may say, changes its meaning. "if" harold had won the battle of hastings, what would have been the result? the answer would be comparatively simple, if we could, in the old fashion, attribute to william the conqueror all the results in which he played a conspicuous part: if, therefore, we could make out a definite list of effects of which he was the cause, and, by simply "deducting" them, after coleridge's fashion, from the effects which actually followed, determine what was the precise balance. but when we consider how many causes were actually in operation, how impossible it is to disentangle and separate them, and say this followed from that, and that other from something else, we have to admit that the might have been is simply indiscoverable. the great man may have hastened what was otherwise inevitable; he may simply have supplied the particular point, round which a crystallisation took place of forces which would have otherwise discovered some other centre; and the fact that he succeeded in establishing certain institutions or laws may be simply a proof that he saw a little more clearly than others the direction towards which more general causes were inevitably propelling the nation. briefly, we cannot isolate the particular "cause" in this case, and have to remember at every moment that it was only one factor in a vast and complex series of changes, which would no doubt have taken a different turn without it, but of which it may be indefinitely difficult to say what was the precise deflection due to its action. in trying to indicate the importance, i have had to dwell upon the difficulty, of applying anything like scientific methods to political problems. i shall conclude by trying once more to indicate why, in spite of this, i hold that the attempt is desirable, and may be fruitful. people sometimes say that scientific methods are inapplicable because we cannot try experiments in social matters. i remember being long ago struck by a remark of dr. arnold, which has some bearing upon this assertion. he observed upon the great advantage possessed by aristotle in the vast number of little republics in his time, each of which was virtually an experiment in politics. i always thought that this was fallacious somehow, and i fancy that it is not hard to indicate the general nature of the fallacy. freeman, upon whose services to thorough and accurate study of history i am unworthy to pronounce an eulogy, fell into the same fallacy, i fancy, when he undertook to write a history of federal governments. he fancied that because the achæan league and the swiss cantons and the united states of america all had this point in common, and that they represented the combinations of partially independent states, their history would be in a sense continuous. the obvious consideration that the federations differed in every possible way, in their religions and state of civilisation and whole social structure, might be neglected. freeman's tendency to be indifferent to everything which was not in the narrowest sense political led him to this--as it seems to me--pedantic conception. if the prosperity of a nation depended exclusively upon the form of its government, aristotle, as arnold remarks, would have had before him a greater number of experiments than the modern observer. but the assumption is obviously wrong. every one of these ancient states depended for its prosperity upon a vast number of conditions--its race, its geographical position, its stage of development, and so forth, quite impossible to tabulate or analyse; and the form of government which suited one would be entirely inapplicable to another. to extricate from all these conflicting elements the precise influence due to any institutions would be a task beyond the powers of any number of philosophers; and indeed the perplexity would probably be increased by the very number of experiments. to make an experiment fruitful, it is necessary to eliminate all the irrelevant elements which intrude into the concrete cases spontaneously offered by nature, and, for example, to obtain two cases differing only in one element, to which we may therefore plausibly attribute other contrasts. now, the history of a hundred or a thousand small states would probably only present the introduction of new and perplexing elements for every new case. the influence, again, of individuals, or accident of war, or natural catastrophes, is greater in proportion as the state is smaller, and therefore makes it more difficult to observe the permanent and underlying influences. it seems to me, therefore, that the study, say of english history, where we have a continuous growth over many centuries, where the disturbing influences of individuals or chance are in a greater degree cancelled by the general tendencies working beneath them, we have really a far more instructive field for political observation. this may help us to see what are the kinds of results which may be anticipated from sociological study undertaken in a serious spirit. the growth, for example, of the industrial system of england is a profoundly interesting subject of inquiry, to which we are even now only beginning to do justice. historians have admitted, even from the time of hume, that the ideal history should give less of mere battles and intrigues, and more account of those deeper and more continuous processes which lie, so to speak, beneath the surface. they have hardly, i think, even yet realised the full bearing and importance of this observation. yet, of late, much has been done, though much still remains to do, in the way of a truly scientific study of the development of institutions, political, ecclesiastical, industrial, and so forth, of this and other countries. as this tendency grows, we may hope gradually to have a genuine history of the english people; an account--not of the virtues and vices of mary queen of scots, or arguments as to the propriety of cutting off charles i.'s head--but a trustworthy account of the way in which the actual structure of modern society has been developed out of its simpler germs. the biographies of great kings and generals, and so forth, will always be interesting; but to the genuine historian of the future they will be interesting not so much as giving room for psychological analyses or for dramatic portraits, but as indications of the great social forces which produced them, and the direction of which at the moment may be illustrated by their cases. i have spoken of the history of our industrial system. to know what was the position of the english labourer at various times, how it was affected by the political changes or by the great mechanical discoveries, to observe what grievances arose, what remedies were applied or sought to be applied, and with what result,--to treat all this with due reference to the whole social and intellectual evolution of which it formed a part, may well call forth the powers of our acutest and most thoroughgoing inquirers, and will, when it is done, give essential data for some of the most vitally important problems of the day. this is what i understand by an application of the scientific spirit to social and political problems. we cannot try experiments, it is said, in historical questions. we cannot help always trying experiments, and experiments of vast importance. every man has to try an experiment upon himself when he chooses his career; and the results are frequently very unpleasant, though very instructive. we have to be our own experiments. every man who sets up in business tries an experiment, ending in fortune or in bankruptcy. every strike is an experiment, and generally a costly one. every attempt at starting a new charitable organisation, or a new system of socialism or co-operation, is an experiment. every new law is an experiment, rash or otherwise. and from all these experiments we do at least collect a certain number of general observations, which, though generally consigned to copybooks, are not without value. what is true, however, is that we cannot try such experiments as a man of science can sometimes try in his laboratory, where he can select and isolate the necessary elements in any given process, and decide, by subjecting them to proper conditions, how a definite question is to be answered. our first experiments are all in the rough, so to speak, tried at haphazard, and each involving an indefinite number of irrelevant conditions. but there is a partial compensation. we cannot tabulate the countless experiments which have been tried with all their distracting varieties. yet in a certain sense the answer is given for us. for the social structure at any period is in fact the net product of all the experiments that have been made by the individuals of which it is and has been composed. therefore, so far as we can obtain some general views of the successive changes in social order which have been gradually and steadily developing themselves throughout the more noisy and conspicuous but comparatively superficial political disturbances, we can detect the true meaning of some general phenomena in which the actors themselves were unconscious of the determining causes. we can see more or less what were the general causes which have led to various forms of associations, to the old guilds, or the modern factory system, to the trades unions or the co-operative societies; and correcting and verifying our general results by a careful examination of the particular instances, approximate, vaguely it may be and distantly, to some such conception of the laws of development of different social tissues as, if not properly scientific, may yet belong to the scientific order of thought. thus, when distracted by this or that particular demand, by promises of the millennium to be inaugurated to-morrow by an act of parliament, or threats of some social cataclysm to overwhelm us if we concede an inch to wicked agitators, we may succeed in placing ourselves at a higher point of view, from which it is possible to look over wider horizons, to regard what is happening to-day in its relations to slow processes of elaboration, and to form judgments based upon wide and systematic inquiry, which, if they do not entitle us to predict particular events, as an astronomer predicts an eclipse, will at least be a guide to sane and sober minds, and suggest at once a humbler appreciation of what is within our power, and--i think also--a more really hopeful anticipation of genuine progress in the future. all scientific inquiry is an interrogation of nature. we have, in bacon's grand sententious phrase, to command nature by obeying. we learn what are the laws of social growth by living them. the great difficulty of the interrogation is to know what questions we are to put. under the guidance of metaphysicians, we have too often asked questions to which no answer is conceivable, like children, who in first trying to think, ask, why are we living in the nineteenth century, why is england an island, or why does pain hurt, or why do two and two make four? the only answer is by giving the same facts in a different set of words, and that is a kind of answer to which metaphysical dexterity sometimes gives an air of plausibility. more frequently our ingenuity takes the form of sanctioning preconceived prejudices, by wrapping up our conclusion in our premisses, and then bringing it out triumphantly with the air of a rigorous deduction. the progress of social science implies, in the first place, the abandonment of the weary system of hunting for fruitful truths in the region of chimeras, and trying to make empty logical concepts do the work of observation of facts. it involves, again, a clear perception of the kind of questions which can be profitably asked, and the limits within which an answer, not of the illusory kind, can really be expected. and then we may come to see that, without knowing it, we have really been trying a vast and continuous experiment, since the race first began to be human. we have, blindly and unconsciously, constructed a huge organism which does, somehow or other, provide a great many millions of people with a tolerable amount of food and comfort. we have accomplished this, i say, unconsciously; for each man, limited to his own little sphere, and limited to his own interests, and guided by his own prejudices and passions, has been as ignorant of more general tendencies as the coral insect of the reef which it has helped to build. to become distinctly conscious of what it is that we have all been doing all this time, is one step in advance. we have obeyed in ignorance; and as obedience becomes conscious, we may hope, within certain narrow limits, to command, or, at least, to direct. an enlarged perception of what have been the previous results may enable us to see what results are possible, and among them to select what may be worthy ends. it is not to be supposed that we shall ever get beyond the need of constant and careful experiment. but, in proportion as we can cultivate the right frame of mind, as each member of society requires wider sympathies and a larger horizon, it is permissible to hope that the experiments may become more intelligent; that we shall not, as has so often been done, increase poverty by the very remedies which are intended to remove it, or diverge from the path of steady progressive development, into the chase of some wild chimera, which requires for its achievement only the radical alteration of all the data of experience. "annihilate space and time, and make two lovers happy," was the modest petition of an enthusiast; and he would probably have been ready to join in the prayer, "make all men angels, and then we shall have a model society". although in saying this my immediate moral is to preach sobriety, i do not intend to denounce enthusiasm, but to urge a necessity of organising enthusiasm. i only recommend people not to venture upon flying machines before they have studied the laws of mechanics; but i earnestly hope that some day we may be able to call a balloon as we now call a cab. to point out the method, and to admit that it is not laborious, is not to discourage aspiration, but to look facts in the face: not to preach abandonment of enthusiasm, but to urge that enthusiasm should be systematic, should lead men to study the conditions of success, and to make a bridge before they leap the gulf. the sphere of political economy. there seem to be at present many conflicting views as to the nature of political economy. there is a popular impression that political economy, or, at any rate, the so-called "classical" doctrine, the doctrine which was made most definite by ricardo, and accepted with modifications by j. s. mill, is altogether exploded. their main doctrines, it is suggested, were little better than mares' nests, and we may set aside their pretensions to have founded an exact science. what, then, is to come in its place? are we simply to admit that there is no certainty about economical problems, and to fall back upon mere empiricism? everything,--shall we say?--is to be regarded as an open question. that is, perhaps, a common impression in the popular mind. yet, on the other hand, we may find some very able thinkers applying mathematical formulæ to economics; and that seems to suppose, that within a certain region they obtain results comparable in precision and accuracy to those of the great physical sciences. the topic is a very wide one; and it would be presumptuous in me to speak dogmatically. i wish, however, to suggest certain considerations which may, perhaps, be worth taking into account; and, as i must speak briefly, i must not attempt to supply all the necessary qualifications. i can only attempt to indicate what seems to me to be the correct point of view, and apologise if i appear to speak too dogmatically, simply because i cannot waste time by expressions of diffidence, by reference to probable criticisms, or even by a full statement of my own reasons. a full exposition would have to define the sphere of political economy by describing its data and its methods. what do we assume, and how do we reason? a complete answer to these questions would indicate the limits within which we can hope for valid conclusions. i will first refer, briefly, to a common statement of one theory advocated by the old-fashioned or classical school. economic doctrine, they have said, supposes a certain process of abstraction. we have to do with what has been called the "economic man". he is not, happily, the real man. he is an imaginary being, whose sole principle of action is to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market: a man, more briefly, who always prefers a guinea--even a dirty guinea--to a pound of the cleanest. economists reply to the remonstrances of those who deny the existence of such a monster, by adding that they do not for a moment suppose that men in general, or even tradesmen or stockbrokers, are in reality such beings,--mere money-making machines, stripped bare of all generous or altruistic sentiment--but simply that, as a matter of fact, most people do, _ceteris paribus_, prefer a guinea to a pound; and that so large a part of our industrial activity is carried on from motives of this kind, that we may obtain a fair approximation to the actual course of affairs by considering them as the sole motives. we shall not go wrong, for example, in financial questions, by assuming that the sole motive of speculators in the stock exchange is the desire to make money. now, it is possible, perhaps, to justify this way of putting the case, by certain qualifications. i think, however, that, if strictly interpreted, it is apt to cover a serious fallacy. the "economic man" theory, we may say, assumes too much in one direction, and too little in another. it assumes too much if it is understood as implying that the desire for wealth is a purely selfish desire. a man may desire to make money in order simply to gratify his own sensual appetites. but he may also desire to be independent; and that may include a desire to do his part in the work of society, and probably does include some desire to relieve others of a burden. the wish to be self-supporting is not necessarily or purely "selfish". and obviously, too, one great motive in all such occupations is the desire to support a family, and one main inducement to saving is the desire to support it after your own death. remove such motives, and half the impulses to regular industrial energy of all kinds would be destroyed. we must, therefore, give our "economic man" credit for motives referring to many interests besides those which he buttons into his own waistcoat. and therefore, too, as i have said, the assumption is insufficient. the very conception of economic science supposes all that is supposed, in the growth of a settled order of society. the purest type of the "economic man," as he is sometimes described, would be realised in the lowest savage, as sometimes described, who is absolutely selfish, who knocks his child on the head because it cries, and eats his aged parent if he cannot find a supply of roots. but such a being could only form herds, not societies. political economy only becomes conceivable when we suppose certain institutions to have been developed. it assumes, obviously, and in the first place, the institution of property; it becomes applicable, with less qualification, in proportion to the growth of the corresponding sentiments; it takes for granted all that highly elaborate set of instincts which induce me, when i want something, to produce an equivalent in exchange for it, instead of going out to take it by force. the more thorough the respect for property, the more applicable are rules of economics; and that respect implies a long training in that sense of other people's rights, which, unfortunately, is by no means so perfect as might be desired. it follows, then, that the economist really assumes more--and rightly assumes more--than he sometimes claims. he assumes what adam smith assumed at the opening of his great treatise: that is, the division of labour. but the division of labour implies the organisation of society. it implies that one man is growing corn while another is digging gold, because each is confident that he will be able to exchange the products of his own labour for the products of the other man's labour. this, of course, implies settled order, respect for contracts, the preservation of peace, and the abolition of force throughout the area occupied by the society. and this, again, is only possible in so far as certain political and ecclesiastical and military institutions have been definitely constructed. the economic assumption is really an assumption--not of a certain psychological condition of the average man, but--of the existence of a certain social mechanism. a complete science would clear up fully a problem which must occur often to all of us: how do you account for london? how is it that four or five millions of people manage to subsist on an area of a few square miles, which itself produces nothing? that other millions all over the world are engaged in providing for their wants? that food and clothes and fuel, in sufficient quantities to preserve life, are being distributed with tolerable regularity to each unit in this vast and apparently chaotic crowd? and that, somehow or other, we struggle on, well or ill, by the help of a gigantic commissariat, performing functions incomparably more complex than were ever needed for military purposes? the answer supposes that there is, as a matter of fact, a great industrial organisation which discharges the various functions of producing, exchanging, distributing, and so forth; and that its mutual relations are just as capable of being investigated and stated as the relations between different parts of an army. the men and officers do not wear uniforms; they are not explicitly drilled or subject to a definite code of discipline; and their rates of pay are not settled by any central authority. but there are capitalists, "undertakers" and labourers, merchants and retail dealers and contractors, and so forth, just as certainly as there are generals and privates, horse, foot, and artillery; and their mutual relations are equally definable. the economist has to explain the working of this industrial mechanism; and the thought may sometimes occur to us, that it is strange that he should find the task so difficult. since we ourselves have made, or at any rate constitute, the mechanism, why should it be so puzzling to find out what it is? we are cooperating in a systematic production and distribution of wealth, and we surely ought not to find any impenetrable mystery in discovering what it is that we are doing every day of our lives. certain economists writing within this century have often been credited with the discovery of the true theory of rent, or, which is equally good for my purpose, of starting a false theory. yet landowners and agents had been letting farms and houses for generations; and surely they ought to have known what it was that they were themselves doing. one explanation of the difficulty is, that whereas an army is constituted by certain regulations of a central authority, the industrial army has grown up unconsciously and spontaneously. its multitudinous members have only looked each at his own little circle; the labourer only thinks of his wages, and the capitalist of his profits, without considering his relations to the whole system of which he forms a part. the peasant drives his plough for wages, and buys his tea as if the tea fell like manna from the skies, without thinking of the curious relation into which he is thus brought with the natives of another hemisphere. the order which results from all these independent activities appeared to the older economists as an illustration of the doctrine of final causes. providence had so ordered things that each man, by pursuing his own interests, pursued the interests of all. to a later school it appears rather as an illustration of the doctrine by which organisms are constructed through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. in either case, it seems as though the mechanism were made rather for us than by us; that it is the product of conditions which we cannot control, instead of being an arrangement put together by conscious volitions. and, therefore, when the economist shows us what in fact are the existing arrangements and their mutual relations, he appears to be making a discovery of a scientific fact as much as if he were describing the anatomy of some newly-discovered animal or plant. the real assumption of the economist therefore is, as i think, simply the existence of a certain industrial organisation, which has a real existence as much as an army or a church; and there is no reason why his description should not be as accurate as the complexity of the facts allows. he is giving us the anatomy of society considered as a huge mechanism for producing and distributing wealth, and he makes an abstraction only in the sense that he is considering one set of facts at a time. the military writer would describe the constitution of an army without going into the psychological or political conditions which are of course implied, and without considering the soldiers in any other relations than those implied in their military services. in the same way, the economist describes the army of industry, and classifies its constituent parts. in order to explain their mutual relations, he has to make certain further assumptions, of which it would be rash to attempt a precise summary. he assumes as a fact, what has of course always been known, that scarcity implies dearness and plenty cheapness; that commodities flow to the markets where they will fetch the highest prices; that there is a certain gravitation towards equalisation of profits among capitalists, and of wages among labourers; so that capital or labour will flow towards the employments in which they will secure the highest reward. he endeavours to give the greatest accuracy to such formulæ, of which nobody, so far as i know, denies a certain approximate truth. so long as they hold good, his inferences, if logically drawn, will also hold good. they take for granted certain psychological facts, such as are implied in all statements about human nature. but the economist, as an economist, is content to take them for granted without investigating the ultimate psychological laws upon which they depend. those laws, or rather their results, are a part of his primary data, although he may go so far into psychological problems as to try to state them more accurately. the selfishness or unselfishness of the economic man has to be considered by the psychologist or by the moralist; but the economist has only to consider their conclusions so far as they affect the facts. so long as it is true, for example, that scarcity causes dearness, that profits attract capital, that demand and supply tend to equalise each other, and so forth, his reasonings are justified; and the further questions of the ethical and psychological implications of these facts must be treated by a different science. the question of the play of economic forces thus generally reduces itself to a problem which may be thus stated: what are the conditions of industrial equilibrium? how must prices, rates of wages, and profit be related in order that the various classes concerned may receive such proportions of produce as are compatible with the maintenance of the existing system of organisation? if any specified change occurs, if production becomes easier or more difficult, if a tax be imposed, or a regulation of any kind affects previous conditions, what changes will be necessary to restore the equilibrium? these are the main problems of political economy. to solve, or attempt to solve them, we have to describe accurately the existing mechanism, and to suppose that it will regulate itself on the assumption which i have indicated as to demand and supply, the flow of capital and labour, and so forth. to go beyond these assumptions, and to justify them by psychological and other considerations, may be and is a most interesting task, but it takes us beyond the sphere of economics proper. i must here diverge for a little, to notice the view of the school of economists which seems to regard scientific accuracy as attainable by a different path. jevons, its most distinguished leader in england, says roundly, that political science must be a "mathematical science," because "it deals throughout with quantities"; and we have been since provided with a number of formulæ, corresponding to this doctrine. the obvious general reply would be, that political economy cannot be an exact science because it also deals throughout with human desires. the objection is not simply that our data are too vague. that objection, as jevons says, would, perhaps, apply to meteorology, of which nobody doubts that it is capable of being made an exact science. but why does nobody doubt that meteorology might become an exact science? because we are convinced that all the data which would be needed are expressible in precise terms of time and space; we have to do with volumes, and masses, and weights, and forces which can be exactly measured by lines; and, in short, with things which could be exactly measured and counted. the data are, at present, insufficiently known, and possibly the problems which would result might be too complex for our powers of calculation. still, if we could once get the data, we could express all relevant considerations by precise figures and numbers. now, is this true of economic science? within certain limits, it is apparently true: ricardo used mathematical formulæ, though he kept to arithmetic, instead of algebra. when malthus spoke of arithmetical and geometrical ratios, the statement, true or false, was, of course, capable of precise numerical expression, so soon as the ratios were assigned. so there was the famous formula proving a relation between the number of quarters of corn produced by a given harvest, and the number of shillings that would be given for a quarter of corn. if, again, we took the number of marriages corresponding to a given price of corn, we should obtain a formula connecting the number of marriages with the number of quarters of corn produced. the utility of statistics, of course, depends upon the fact that we do empirically discover some tolerably constant and simple numerical formulæ. such statistical statements are useful, indeed, not only in economical, but in other inquiries, which are clearly beyond the reach of mathematics. the proportion of criminals in a given population, the number of suicides, or of illegitimate births, may throw some light upon judicial and political, and even religious or ethical problems. nor are such formulæ useless simply because empirical. the law of gravitation, for example, is empirical. nobody knows the cause of the observed tendency of bodies to gravitate to each other, and therefore no one can say how far the law which represents the tendency must be universal. still, the fact that, so far as we have observed, it is invariably verified, and that calculations founded upon it enable us to bring a vast variety of phenomena under a single rule, is quite enough to justify astronomical calculation. if, therefore, we could find a mathematical formula which was, as a matter of fact, verifiable in economical problems about prices, and so forth, we should rightly apply to mathematicians to help us with their methods. but, not only do we not find any such simple relations, but we can see conclusive reasons for being sure that we can never find them. take, for example, the case of the number of marriages under given conditions. i need hardly say that it is impossible for the ablest mathematician to calculate whether the individual a will marry the individual b. but, by taking averages, and so eliminating individual eccentricities, he might discover that, in a given country and at a given time, a rise of prices will diminish marriages in certain proportion. our knowledge of human nature is sufficient to make that highly probable. but our knowledge also shows that such a change will act differently in different cases: there will be one formula for france, and another for england; one for lancashire, and another for cornwall; one for the rich, and another for the poor; and both the total wealth of a country and its distribution will affect the rule. differences of national temperament, of political and social constitution, of religion and ecclesiastical organisation, will all have an effect; and, therefore, a formula true here and now must, in all probability, fail altogether elsewhere. the formula is, in the mathematical phrase, a function of so many independent variables, that it must be complex beyond all conception, if it takes them all into account; while it must yet be necessarily inaccurate if it does not take them into account. but, besides this, the conditions upon which the law obviously depends are not themselves capable of being accurately defined, and still less of being numerically stated. ingenious thinkers have, indeed, tried to apply mathematical formulæ to psychology; but they have not got very far; and it may, i think, be assumed, without further argument, that while you have to deal both with psychological and sociological elements, with human desires, and with those desires modified by social relations, it is impossible to find any data which can be mathematically stated. there is no arithmetical measure of the forces of love, or hunger, or avarice, by which (among others) the whole problem is worked out. it seems to me, therefore, that we must accept the alternative which is only mentioned to be repudiated by jevons, namely, that political economy, if not a "mathematical science," must be part of sociology. i should say that it clearly is so; for if we wish to investigate the cause of any of the phenomena concerned, and not simply to tabulate from observations, we are at once concerned with the social structure and with the underlying psychology. the mathematical methods are quite in their place when dealing with statistics. the rise and fall of prices, and so forth, can be stated precisely in figures; and, whenever we can discover some approximation to a mathematical law (as in the cases i have noticed) we may work out the results. if, for example, the price of a commodity under certain conditions bears a certain relation to its scarcity, we can discover the one fact when the other fact is given, remembering only that our conclusions are not more certain than our premisses, and that the observed law depends upon unknown and most imperfectly knowable conditions. such results, again, may be very useful in various ways, as illustrative of the way in which certain laws will work if they hold good; and, again, as testing many of our general theories. if you have argued that the price of gold or silver cannot be fixed, the fact that it has been fixed under certain conditions will of course lead to a revision of your arguments. but i cannot help thinking that it is an illusion to suppose that such methods can justify the assertion that the science as a whole is "mathematical". nothing, indeed, is easier than to speak as if you had got a mathematical theory. let _x_ mean the desire for marriage and _y_ the fear of want, then the number of marriages is a function of _x_ and _y_, and i can express this by symbols as well as by ordinary words. but there is no magic about the use of symbols. mathematical inquiries are not fruitful because symbols are used, but because the symbols represent something absolutely precise and assignable. the highest mathematical inquiries are simply ingenious methods of counting; and till you have got something precise to count, they can take you no further. i cannot help thinking that this fallacy imposes upon some modern reasoners; that they assume that they have got the data because they have put together the formulæ which would be useful if they had the data; and, in short, that you can get more out of a mill than you put into it; or, in other words, that more conclusions than really follow can be got out of premisses, simply because you show what would follow if you had the required knowledge. when the attempt is made, as it seems to me to be made sometimes, to deduce economical laws from some law of human desire--as from the simple theorem that equal increments of a commodity imply diminishing amounts of utility--i should reply not only that the numerical data are vaguely defined and incapable of being accurately stated, but that the attempt must be illusory because the conclusions are not determinable from the premisses. the economic laws do not follow from any simple rule about human desires, because they vary according to the varying constitution of human society; and any conclusion which you could obtain would be necessarily confined to the abstract man of whom the law is supposed to hold good. every such method, therefore, if it could be successful, could only lead to conclusions about human desire in general, and could throw no light upon the special problems of political economy, which essentially depend upon varying industrial organisation. i will not, however, go further. you must either, i hold, limit political economy to the field of statistical inquiry, or admit that, as a part of sociology, it deals with questions altogether beyond the reach of mathematics. like physiology, it is concerned with results capable of numerical statement. the number of beats of the pulse, or the number of degrees of temperature of the body, are important data in physiological problems. they may be counted, and may give rise to mathematically expressible formulæ. but the fact does not excuse us from considering the physical conditions of the organs which are in some way correlated with these observed phenomena; and, in the case of political economy, we have to do with the social structure, which is dependent upon forces altogether incapable of precise numerical estimates. that, at least, is my view; and i shall apply it to illustrate one remark, which must, i think, have often occurred to us. political economy, that is, often appears to have a negative rather than a positive value. it is exceedingly potent--so, at least, i think--in dispersing certain popular fallacies; but it fails when we regard it as a science which can give us positive concrete "laws". the general reason is, i should say, that although its first principles may be true descriptions of facts, and any denial of them, or any inconsistent applications of them, may lead us into error, they are yet far from sufficient descriptions. they omit some considerations which are relevant in any concrete case; and the facts which they describe are so complex that, even when we look at them consistently and follow the right clue, we cannot solve the complicated problems which occur. it may be worth while to insist a little upon this, and to apply it to one or two peculiar problems. let me start from the ordinary analogy. economic inquiry, i have suggested, describes a certain existing mechanism, which exists as really as the physical structure described by an anatomist. the industrial organism has, of course, many properties of which the economist, as such, does not take account. the labourer has affections, and imaginations, and opinions outside of his occupation as labourer; he belongs to a state, a church, a family, and so forth, which affect his whole life, including his industrial life. is it therefore impossible to consider the industrial organisation separately? not more impossible, i should reply, than to apply the same method in regard to the individual body. were i to regard my stomach simply as a bag into which i put my food, i should learn very little about the process of digestion. still, it is such a bag, and it is important to know where it is, and what are its purely mechanical relations to other parts of the body. my arms and legs are levers, and i can calculate the pressure necessary to support a weight on the hand, as though my bones and muscles were made of iron and whipcord. i am a piece of mechanism, though i am more, and all the principles of simple mechanics apply to my actions, though they do not, by themselves, suffice to explain the actions. the discovery of the circulation of the blood explained, as i understand, my structure as a hydraulic apparatus; and it was of vast importance, even though it told us nothing directly of the other processes necessarily involved. in this case, therefore, we have an instance of the way in which a set of perfectly true propositions may, so to speak, be imbedded in a larger theory, and may be of the highest importance, though they are not by themselves sufficient to solve any concrete problem. we cannot, that is, deduce the physiological principles from the mechanical principles, although they are throughout implied. but those principles are not the less true and useful in the detection of fallacies. they may enable us to show that an argument supposes facts which do not exist; or, perhaps, that it is, at any rate, inconsistent because it assumes one structure in its premisses, and another in its conclusions. i state this by way of illustration: but the value of the remark may be best tested by applying it to some economical doctrines. let us take, for example, the famous argument of adam smith against what he called the mercantile theory. that theory, according to him, supposed that the wealth of nations, like the wealth of an individual, was in proportion to the amount of money in their possession. he insisted upon the theory that money, as it is useful solely for exchange, cannot be, in itself, wealth; that its absolute amount is a matter of indifference, because if every coin in existence were halved or doubled, it would discharge precisely the same function; and he inferred that the doctrine which tested the advantages of foreign commerce by the balance of trade or the net return of money, was altogether illusory. his theory is expounded in every elementary treatise on the subject. it may be urged that it was a mere truism, and therefore useless; or, again, that it does not enable us to deduce a complete theory of the functions of money. in regard to the first statement, i should reply that, although smith probably misrepresented some of his antagonists, the fallacy which he exposed was not only current at the time, but is still constantly cropping up in modern controversies. so long as arguments are put forward which implicitly involve an erroneous, because self-contradictory, conception of the true functions of money, it is essential to keep in mind these first principles, however obvious they may be in an abstract statement. euclid's axioms are useful because they are self-evident; and so long as people make mistakes in geometry, it will be necessary to expose their blundering by bringing out the contradictions involved. as hobbes observed, people would dispute even geometrical axioms if they had an interest in doing so; and, certainly, they are ready to dispute the plainest doctrines about money. the other remark, that we cannot deduce a complete theory from the axiom is, of course, true. thus, for example, although the doctrine may be unimpeachable, there is a difficulty in applying it to the facts. as gold has other uses besides its use as money, its value is not regulated exclusively by the principle assigned; as other things, again, such as bank-notes and cheques, discharge some of the functions of money, we have all manner of difficult problems as to what money precisely is, and how the most elementary principles will apply to the concrete facts. a very shrewd economist once remarked, listening to a metaphysical argument, "if there had been any money to be made out of it, we should have solved that question in the city long ago". yet, there is surely money to be made out of a correct theory of the currency; and people in the city do not seem to have arrived at a complete agreement. in fact, such controversies illustrate the extreme difficulty which arises out of the complexity of the phenomena, even where the economic assumption of the action of purely money-loving activity is most nearly verified. the moral is, i fancy, that while inaccurate conclusions are extremely difficult, we can only hope to approach them by a firm grasp of the first principles revealed in the simplest cases. even in such a case, we have also to notice how we have to make allowance for the intrusion of other than purely economic cases. the doctrine just noticed is, of course, closely connected with the theory of free trade. the free trade argument is, i should mention, perfectly conclusive in a negative sense. it demonstrates, that is, the fallacy which lurks in the popular argument for protection. that argument belongs to the commonest class of economic fallacies, which consists in looking at one particular result without considering the necessary implications. the great advantage of any rational theory is, that it forces us to look upon the industrial mechanism as a whole, and to trace out the correlative changes involved in any particular operation. it disposes of the theories which virtually propose to improve our supply of water by pouring a cup out of one vessel into another; and such theories have had considerable success in economy. so far, in short, as a protectionist really maintains that the advantage consists in accumulating money, without asking what will be the effect upon the value of money, or that it consists in telling people to make for themselves what they could get on better terms by producing something to exchange for it, his arguments may be conclusively shown to be contradictory. such arguments, at least, cannot be worth considering. but, to say nothing of cases which may be put by an ingenious disputant in which this may not quite apply, we have to consider reasons which may be extra-economical. when it is suggested, for example, that the economic disadvantage is a fair price for political independence; or, on the other hand, that the stimulus of competition is actually good for the trade affected; or, again, that protection tends naturally to corruption; we have arguments which, good or bad, are outside the sphere of economics proper. to answer them we have to enter the field of political or ethical inquiry, where we have to take leave of tangible facts and precise measures. this is a more prominent element as we approach the more human side (if i may so call it) of political economy. consider, for example, the doctrine which made so profound an impression upon the old school--malthus's theory of population. it was summed up in the famous--though admittedly inaccurate--phrase, that population had a tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, while the means of subsistence increased only in an arithmetical ratio. the food available for each unit would therefore diminish as the population increased. the so-called law obviously states only a possibility. it describes a "tendency," or, in other words, only describes what would happen under certain, admittedly variable, conditions. it showed how, in a limited area and with the efficiency of industry remaining unaltered, the necessary limits upon the numbers of the population would come into play. if, then, the law were taken, or in so far as it was taken, to assert that, in point of fact, the population must always be increasing in civilised countries to the stage at which the lowest class would be at starvation level, it was certainly erroneous. there are cases in which statesmen are alarmed by the failure of population to show its old elasticity, and beginning to revert to the view that an increased rate is desirable. it cannot be said to be even necessarily true that in all cases an increased population implies, of necessity, increased difficulty of support. there are countries which are inadequately peopled, and where greater numbers would be able to support themselves more efficiently because they could adopt a more elaborate organisation. nor can it be said with certainty that some pressure may not, within limits, be favourable to ultimate progress by stimulating the energies of the people. in a purely stationary state people might be too content with a certain stage of comfort to develop their resources and attain a permanently higher stage. whatever the importance of such qualifications of the principle, there is a most important conclusion to be drawn. malthus or his more rigid followers summed up their teaching by one practical moral. the essential condition of progress was, according to them, the discouragement of early marriages. if, they held, people could only be persuaded not to produce families until they had an adequate prospect of supporting their families, everything would go right. we shall not, i imagine, be inclined to dispute the proposition, that a certain degree of prudence and foresight is a quality of enormous value; and that such a quality will manifest itself by greater caution in taking the most important step in life. what such reasoners do not appear to have appreciated was, the immense complexity and difficulty of the demand which they were making. they seem to have fancied that it was possible simply to add another clause--the clause "thou shalt not marry"--to the accepted code of morals; and that, as soon as the evil consequences of the condemned behaviour were understood,--properly expounded, for example, in little manuals for the use of school children,--obedience to the new regulation would spontaneously follow. what they did not see, or did not fully appreciate, was the enormous series of other things--religious, moral, and intellectual--which are necessarily implied in altering the relation of the strongest human passion to the general constitution, and the impossibility of bringing home such an alteration, either by an act of legislation or by pointing out the bearing of a particular set of prudential considerations. political economy might be a very good thing; but its expositors were certainly too apt to think that it could by itself at once become a new gospel for mankind. should we then infer from such criticisms that the doctrine of malthus was false, or was of no importance? nothing would be further from my opinion. i hold, on the contrary, that it was of the highest importance, because it drew attention to a fact, the recognition of which was essential to all sound reasoning on social questions. the fact is, that population is not to be treated as a fixed quantity, but as capable of rapid expansion; and that this elasticity may at any moment require consideration, and does in fact give the explanation of many important phenomena. the main fact which gave importance to malthus's writings was the rapid and enormous increase of pauperism during the first quarter of this century. the charitable and sentimental writers of the day were alarmed, but proposed to meet the evil by a reckless increase of charity, either of the official or the private variety. pitt, we know, declared (though he qualified the statement) that to be the father of a large family should be a source of honour, not of obloquy; and the measures adopted under the influence of such notions did in fact tend to diminish all sense of responsibility, encouraged people to rely upon the parish for the support of their children, and brought about a state of things which alarmed all intelligent observers. the greatest check to the evil was given by the new poor-law, adopted under the influence of the principles advocated by malthus and his friends. his achievement, then, was not that he laid down any absolutely correct scientific truth, or even said anything which had not been more or less said by many judicious people before his time; but that he encouraged the application of a more systematic method of reasoning upon the great problem of the time. instead of simply giving way to the first kindly impulse, abolishing a hardship here and distributing alms elsewhere, he substantially argued that society formed a complex organism, whose diseases should be considered physiologically, their causes explained, and the appropriate remedies considered in all their bearings. we must not ask simply whether we were giving a loaf to this or that starving man, or indulge in _à priori_ reasoning as to the right of every human being to be supported by others; but treat the question as a physician should treat a disease, and consider whether, on the whole, the new regulations would increase or diminish the causes of the existing evils. he did not, therefore, so much proclaim a new truth, as induce reformers to place themselves at a new and a more rational point of view. the so-called law of population which he announced might be in various ways inaccurate, but the announcement made it necessary for rational thinkers to take constantly into account considerations which are essential in any satisfactory treatment of the great problems. if it were right to consider pauperism as a gulf of fixed dimensions, we might hope to fill it by simply taking a sufficient quantity of wealth from the richer classes. if, as malthus urged, this process had a tendency to enlarge the dimensions of the gulf itself, it was obvious that the whole problem required a more elaborate treatment. by impressing people with this truth, and by showing how, in a great variety of cases, the elasticity of the population was a most important factor in determining the condition of the people, malthus did a great service, and introduced a more systematic and scientific method of discussing the immensely important questions involved. i will very briefly try to indicate one further application of economic principles. a critical point in the modern development of the study was marked by mill's abandonment of the so-called "wage fund theory". that doctrine is now generally mentioned with contempt, as the most conspicuous instance of an entirely exploded theory. it is often said that it is either a falsity, or a barren truism. i am not about to argue the point, observing only that some very eminent economists consider that it was rather inadequate than fallacious; and that to me it has always seemed that the theory which has really been confuted is not so much a theory which was ever actually held by economists, as a formula into which they blundered when they tried to give a quasi-scientific definition of their meaning. it is common enough for people to argue sensibly, when the explicit statements of their argument may be altogether erroneous. at any rate, i think it has been a misfortune that a good phrase has been discredited; and that mill's assailants, in exposing the errors of that particular theory of a "wage fund," seemed to imply that the whole conception of a "wage fund" was a mistake. for the result has been, that the popular mind seems to regard the amount spent in wages as an arbitrary quantity; as something which, as malthus put it, might be fixed at pleasure by her majesty's justices of the peace. because the law was inaccurately stated, it is assumed that there is no law at all, and that the share of the labourers in the total product of industry might be fixed without reference to the effect of a change upon the general organisation. now, if the wage fund means the share which, under existing circumstances, actually goes to the class dependent upon wages, it is of the highest importance to discover how that share is actually determined; and it does not even follow that a doctrine which is in some sense a truism may not be a highly important doctrine. one of the ablest of the old economists, nassan senior, after laying down his version of the theory, observes that it is "so nearly self-evident" that if political economy were a new science, it might be taken for granted. but he proceeds to enumerate seven different opinions, some of them held by many people, and others by writers of authority, with which it is inconsistent. and, without following his arguments, this statement suggests what i take to be a really relevant defence of his reasons. at the time when the theory was first formulated, there were many current doctrines which were self-contradictory, and which could, therefore, best be met by the assertion of a truism. when the peace of 1815 brought distress instead of plenty, some people, such as southey, thought it a sufficient explanation to say that the manufacturer had lost his best customer, because the government wanted fewer guns and less powder. they chose to overlook the obvious fact that a customer who pays for his goods by taking money out of the pockets of the seller, is not an unmixed blessing. then, there was the theory of general "gluts," and of what is still denounced as over-production. the best cure for commercial distress would be, as one disputant asserted, to burn all the goods in our warehouses. it was necessary to point out that this theory (when stated in superficial terms) regarded superabundance of wealth as the cause of universal poverty. another common theory was the evil effect of manufacturers in displacing work. the excellent robert owen stated it as an appalling fact, that the cotton manufacture supplanted the labour of a hundred (perhaps it was two hundred) millions of men. he seems to assume that, if the machinery had not been there, there would still have been wages for the hundred millions. the curious confusion, indeed, which leads us to speak of men wanting work, when what we really mean is that they want wages, shows the tenacity of an old fallacy. mandeville argued long ago that the fire of london was a blessing, because it set at work so many carpenters, plumbers, and glaziers. the protestant reformation had done less good than the invention of hooped petticoats, which had provided employment for so many milliners. i shall not insult you by exposing fallacies; and yet, so long as they survive, they have to be met by truisms. while people are proposing to lengthen their blankets by cutting off one end to sew upon the other, one has to point out that the total length remains constant. now, i fancy that, in point of fact, these fallacies are often to be found in modern times. i read, the other day, in the papers, an argument, adduced by some advocate, on behalf of the eight hours bill. he wished, he said, to make labour dear, and would therefore make it scarce. this apparently leads to the conclusion that the less people work the more they will get, which i take to be a fallacy. so, to mention nothing else, it is still apparently a common argument in favour of protection in america, that the native labourer requires to be supported against the pauperised labour of europe. americans in general are to be made richer by paying higher prices, and by being forced to produce commodities which they could get with less labour employed on the production of other things in exchange. i will not go further; for i think that no one who reads the common arguments can be in want of sufficient illustrations of popular fallacies. this, i say, is some justification for dwelling upon the contrary truisms. i admit, indeed, that even these fallacies may apply to particular cases in which they may represent partial truths; and i also agree that, as sometimes stated, the wage fund theory was not only a truism, but a fruitless truism. it was, however, as i believe, an attempt to generalise a very pertinent and important doctrine, as to the way in which the actual competition in which labourers and employers are involved, actually operates. if so, it requires rather modification than indiscriminate denunciation; and it is, i believe, so treated by the best modern economists. i consider, then, that the economists were virtually attempting to describe systematically the main relations of the industrial mechanism. they showed what were the main functions which it, in fact, discharges. their theory was sufficient to expose many errors, especially those which arise from looking solely at one part of a complex process, and neglecting the implied reactions. it enabled them to point out the inconsistencies and actual contradictions involved in many popular arguments, which are still very far from being destroyed. their main error--apart from any particular logical slips--was, namely, that when they had laid down certain principles which belong properly to the prolegomena of the science, and which are very useful when regarded as providing logical tests of valid reasoning, they imagined that they had done a great deal more, and that the desired science was actually constituted. they laid down three or four primary axioms, such as the doctrine that men desire wealth, and fancied that the whole theory could be deduced from them. this, if what i have said be true, was really to misunderstand what they were really doing. it was to suppose that you could obtain a description of social phenomena without examining the actual structure of society; and was as erroneous as to suppose that you could deduce physiological truths from a few general propositions about the mechanical relations of the skeleton. such criticisms have been made by the historical school of economists; and i, at least, can fully accept their general view. i quite agree that the old assumptions of the older school were frequently unjustifiable; nor can i deny that they laid them down with a tone of superlative dogmatism, which was apt to be very offensive, and which was not justified by their position. moreover, i entirely agree that the progress of economic science, and of all other moral sciences, requires a historical basis; and that we should make a very great blunder if we thought that the creation of an economic man would justify us in dispensing with an investigation of concrete facts, both of the present day and of earlier stages of industrial evolution. but to this there is an obvious qualification. what do we mean by investigating facts? it seems to be a very simple rule, but it leads us at once to great difficulties. so, as mill and later writers have very rightly asked, how are we to settle even the most obvious questions in inquiries where, for obvious reasons, we cannot make experiments, and where we have not such a set of facts as would spontaneously give us the truths which we might seek by experiment? take, as mill suggested, such a question as free trade. we cannot get two countries alike in all else, and differing only in respect to their adoption or rejection of a protective tariff. anything like a thoroughgoing system of free trade has been tried in england alone; and the commercial prosperity of the country since its adoption has been affected by innumerable conditions, so that it is altogether impossible to isolate the results which are to be attributed to the negative condition of the absence of protection. briefly, the result is that the phenomena with which we have to deal are so complex, and our power of arranging them so as to unravel the complexity is so limited, that the direct method of observation breaks down altogether. mill confessed the necessity of applying a different method, which he described with great ability, and which substantially amounts to the method of the older economists. if, with some writers of the historical school, we admit the objections which apply to this method, we seem to be reduced to a hopeless state of uncertainty. a treatise on political economy becomes nothing but a miscellaneous collection of facts, with no definite clue or uniform method of reasoning. i must beg, in conclusion, to indicate what, so far as i can guess, seems to be the view suggested in presence of this difficulty. if i am asked whether political economy, understood, for example, as mill understood it, is to be regarded as a science, i should have to admit that i could not simply reply, yes. to say nothing of any errors in his logic, i should say that i do not believe that it gives us sufficient guidance even in regard to economic phenomena. we could not, that is, deduce from the laws accepted by economists the necessary working of any given measure--say, the effect of protection or free trade, or, still more, the making of a poor-law system. such problems involve elements of which the economist, purely as an economist, is an incompetent judge; and the further we get from those questions in which purely economical considerations are dominant, towards those in which other factors become relevant,--from questions as to currency, for example, to questions as to the relations of capitalists and labourers,--the greater the inadequacy of our methods. but i also hold that political economists may rightly claim a certain scientific character for their speculations. if their ultimate aim is to frame a science of economics which shall be part of the science--not yet constituted--of sociology, then i should say that what they have really done--so far as they have reasoned accurately--has been to frame an essential part of the prolegomena to such a science. the "laws" which they have tried to formulate are not laws which, even if established, would enable us to predict the results of any given action; but they are laws which would have to be taken into account in attempting any such prediction. and this is so, i think, because the laws are descriptions--within limits accurate descriptions--of actually existing facts as to the social mechanism. they are not mere abstract hypotheses, in the sense sometimes attached to that phrase; but accounts of the plan upon which the industrial arrangements of civilised countries are, as a matter of fact, constructed. such a classification and systematic account of facts is, as i should suggest, absolutely necessary for any sound historical method. facts are not simply things lying about, which anybody can pick up and describe for the mere pains of collecting them. we cannot even see a fact without reflection and observation and judgment; and to arrange them in an order which shall be both systematic and fruitful, to look at them from that point of view in which we can detect the general underlying principles, is, in all cases, an essential process before we can begin to apply a truly historical method. anything, it is said, may be proved by facts; and that is painfully true until we have the right method of what has been called "colligating" facts. the catholic and the protestant, the conservative and the radical, the individualist and the socialist, have equal facility in proving their own doctrines with arguments, which habitually begin, "all history shows". printers should be instructed always to strike out that phrase as an erratum; and to substitute, "i choose to take for granted". in order to judge between them we have to come to some conclusion as to what is the right method of conceiving of history, and probably to try many methods before reaching that which arranges the shifting and complicated chaos of phenomena in something like an intelligible order. a first step and a necessary basis, as i believe, for all the more complex inquiries will have to be found by disentangling the various orders of laws (if i may so speak), and considering by themselves those laws of industrial growth which are nearest to the physical sciences in certain respects, and which, within certain limits, can be considered apart, inasmuch as they represent the working of forces which are comparatively independent of forces of a higher order. what i should say for political economists is that they have done a good deal in this direction; that they have explained, and, i suppose, with considerable accuracy, what is the actual nature of the industrial mechanism; that they have explained fairly its working in certain cases where the economic are practically also the sole or dominant motives; and that they have thus laid down certain truths which require attention even when we take into account the play of other more complex and, as we generally say, higher motives. we may indeed hope and believe that society will ultimately be constituted upon a different system; and that for the organisation which has spontaneously and unconsciously developed itself, another will be substituted which will correspond more closely to some principles of justice, and give freer scope for the full development of the human faculties. that is a very large question: i only say that, in any case, all genuine progress consists in a development of institutions already existing, and therefore that a full understanding of the working of the present system is essential to a rational consideration of possible improvements. the socialist may look forward to a time--let us hope that it may come soon!--when nobody will have any grievances. but his schemes will be the better adapted for the realisation of his hopes in proportion as he has fully understood what is the part played by each factor of the existing system; what is its function, and how that function may be more efficiently discharged by any substitute. only upon that condition can he avoid the common error of inventing some scheme which is in sociology what schemes for perpetual motion are in mechanics; plans for making everything go right by condemning some existing portion of the system without fully understanding how it has come into existence, and what is the part which it plays in the whole. i think myself that a study of the good old orthodox system of political economy is useful in this sense, even where it is wrong; because at least it does give a system, and therefore forces its opponents to present an alternative system, instead of simply cutting a hole in the shoe when it pinches, or striking out the driving wheel because it happens to creak unpleasantly. and i think so the more because i cannot but observe that whenever a real economic question presents itself, it has to be argued on pretty much the old principles, unless we take the heroic method of discarding argument altogether. i should be the last to deny that the old political economy requires careful revision and modification, and equally slow to deny that the limits of its applicability require to be carefully defined. but, with these qualifications, i say, with equal conviction, that it does lay down principles which require study and consideration, for the simple reason that they assert the existence of facts which are relevant and important in all the most vitally interesting problems of to-day. the morality of competition. when it has occurred to me to say--as i have occasionally said--that, to my mind, the whole truth lies neither with the individualist nor with his antagonist, my friends have often assured me that i was illogical. of two contradictory principles, they say, you must take one. there are cases, i admit, in which this remark applies. it is true, or it is not true, that two and two make four. we cannot, in arithmetic, adopt sir roger de coverley's conciliatory view, that there is much to be said on both sides. but this logical rule supposes that, in point of fact, the two principles apply to the same case, and are mutually exclusive. i also think that the habit of taking for granted that social problems are reducible to such an alternative, is the source of innumerable fallacies. i hold that, as a rule, any absolute solution of such problems is impossible; and that a man who boasts of being logical, is generally announcing his deliberate intention to be one-sided. he is confusing the undeniable canon that of two contradictory propositions one must be true, with the assumption that two propositions are really contradictory. the apparent contradiction may be illusory. society, says the individualist, is made up of all its members. certainly: if all englishmen died, there would be no english race. but it does not follow that every individual englishman is not also the product of the race. society, says the socialist, is an organic whole. i quite admit the fact; but it does not follow that, as a whole, it has any qualities or aims independent of the qualities and aims of the constituent parts. metaphysicians have amused themselves, in all ages, with the puzzle about the many and the one. perhaps they may find contradictions in the statement that a human society is both one and many; a unit and yet complex; but i am content to assume that unless we admit the fact, we shall get a very little way in sociology. society, we say, is an organism. that implies that every part of a society is dependent upon the other parts, and that although, for purposes of argument, we may find it convenient to assume that certain elements remain fixed while others vary, we must always remember that this is an assumption which, in the long run, never precisely corresponds to the facts. we may, for example, in economical questions, attend simply to the play of the ordinary industrial machinery, without taking into account the fact that the industrial machinery is conditioned by the political and ecclesiastical constitution, by the whole social order, and, therefore, by the acceptance of corresponding ethical, or philosophical or scientific creeds. the method is justifiable so long as we remember that we are using a logical artifice; but we blunder if we take our hypothesis for a full statement of the actual facts. we are then tempted, and it is, perhaps, the commonest of all sources of error in such inquiries, to assume that conditions are absolute which are really contingent; or, to attend only to the action, without noticing the inevitable reactions of the whole system of institutions. and i would suggest, that from this follows a very important lesson in such inquiries. to say that this or that part of a system is bad, is to say, by implication, that some better arrangement is possible consistently with our primary assumptions. in other words, we cannot rationally propose simply to cut out one part of a machine, dead or living, without considering the effect of the omission upon all the other dependent parts. the whole system is necessarily altered. what, we must therefore ask, is the tacit implication as well as what is the immediate purpose of a change? may not the bad effect be a necessary part of the system to which we also owe the good; or necessary under some conditions? it is always, therefore, a relevant question, what is the suggested alternative? we can then judge whether the removal of a particular evil is or is not to be produced at a greater cost than it is worth; whether it would be a process, say, of really curing a smoky chimney or of stopping the chimney altogether, and so abolishing not only the smoke but the fire. i propose to apply this to the question of "competition". competition is frequently denounced as the source of social evils. the complaint is far from a new one. i might take for my text a passage from j. s. mill's famous chapter on the probable future of the labouring classes. mill, after saying that he agrees with the socialists in their practical aims, declares his utter dissent from their declamations against competition. "they forget," he says, "that where competition is not, monopoly is; and that monopoly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the industrious for the support of indolence, if not of plunder." that suggests my question: if competition is bad, what is good? what is the alternative to competition? is it, as mill says, monopoly, or is any third choice possible? if it is monopoly, do you defend monopoly, or only monopoly in some special cases? i opened, not long ago, an old book of caricatures, in which the revolutionary leader is carrying a banner with the double inscription, "no monopoly! no competition!" the implied challenge--how can you abolish both?--seemed to me to require a plain answer. directly afterwards i then took up the newspaper, and read the report of an address upon the prize-day of a school. the speaker dwelt in the usual terms upon the remorseless and crushing competition of the present day, which he mentioned as an incitement to every boy to get a good training for the struggle. the moral was excellent; but it seemed to me curious that the speaker should be denouncing competition in the very same breath with proofs of its influence in encouraging education. when i was a lad, a clever boy and a stupid boy had an equal chance of getting an appointment to a public office. the merit which won a place might be relationship to a public official, or perhaps to a gentleman who had an influence in the constituency of the official. the system was a partial survival of the good old days in which, according to sam weller, the young nobleman got a position because his mother's uncle's wife's grandfather had once lighted the king's pipe. the nobleman, i need hardly add, considered this as an illustration of the pleasant belief, "whatever is, is right". as we had ceased to accept that opinion in politics, offices were soon afterwards thrown open to competition, with the general impression that we were doing justice and opening a career to merit. that the resulting system has grave defects is, i think, quite undeniable; but so far as it has succeeded in determining that the men should be selected for public duty, for their fitness, and for nothing else, it is surely a step in advance which no one would now propose to retrace. and yet it was simply a substitution of competition for monopoly. as it comes into wider operation, some of us begin to cry out against competition. the respectable citizen asks, what are we to do with our boys? the obvious reply is, that he really means, what are we to do with our fools? a clever lad can now get on by his cleverness; and of course those who are not clever are thrust aside. that is a misfortune, perhaps, for them; but we can hardly regard it as a misfortune for the country. and clearly, too, pressure of this kind is likely to increase. we have come to believe that it is a main duty of the nation to provide general education. when the excellent miss hannah more began to spread village schools, she protested warmly that she would not teach children anything which would tend to make the poor discontented with their station. they must learn to read the bible, but she hoped that they would stop short of such knowledge as would enable them to read tom paine. now, hannah more deserves our gratitude for her share in setting the ball rolling; but it has rolled far beyond the limits she would have prescribed. we now desire not only that every child in the country should be able to acquire the elements of learning at least; but, further, we hope that ladders may be provided by which every promising child may be able to climb beyond the elements, and to acquire the fullest culture of which his faculties are capable. there is not only no credit at the present day in wishing so much, but it is discreditable not to do what lies in one's power to further its accomplishment. but, then, is not that to increase enormously the field of competition? i, for example, am a literary person, after a fashion; i have, that is, done something to earn a living by my pen. i had the advantage at starting of belonging to the small class which was well enough off to send its children to the best schools and universities. that is to say, i was one of the minority which had virtually a monopoly of education, and but for that circumstance i should in all probability have taken to some possibly more honest, but perhaps even worse paid, occupation. every extension of the margin of education, everything which diffuses knowledge and intellectual training through a wider circle, must increase the competition among authors. if every man with brains, whether born in a palace or a cottage is to have a chance of making the best of them, the capacity for authorship, and therefore the number of competitors, will be enormously spread. it may also, we will hope, increase the demand for their work. the same remark applies to every profession for which intellectual culture is a qualification. do we regret the fact? would we sentence three-quarters of the nation to remain stupid, in order that the fools in the remaining quarter may have a better chance? that would be contrary to every democratic instinct, to the highest as well as the lowest. but if i say, every office and every profession shall be open to every man; success in it shall depend upon his abilities and merits; and, further, every child in the country shall have the opportunity of acquiring the necessary qualifications, what is that but to accept and to stimulate the spirit of competition? what, i ask, is the alternative? should people be appointed by interest? or is nobody to be anxious for official or professional or literary or commercial success, but only to develop his powers from a sense of duty, and wait till some infallible observer comes round and says, "friend, take this position, which you deserve"? somehow i do not think that last scheme practicable at present. but, even in that case, i do not see how the merits of any man are to be tested without enabling him to prove by experiment that he is the most meritorious person; and, if that be admitted, is not every step in promoting education, in equalising, therefore, the position from which men start for the race, a direct encouragement to competition? carlyle was fond of saying that napoleon's great message to mankind was the declaration that careers should be open to talent, or the tools given to him who could use them. surely that was a sound principle; and one which, so far as i can see, cannot be applied without stimulating competition. the doctrine, indeed, is unpalatable to many socialists. to me, it seems to be one to which only the cowardly and the indolent can object in principle. will not a society be the better off, in which every man is set to work upon the tasks for which he is most fitted? if we allowed our teaching and our thinking to be done by blockheads; our hard labour to be done by men whose muscles were less developed than their brains; made our soldiers out of our cowards, and our sailors out of the sea-sick,--should we be better off? it seems, certainly, to me, that whatever may be the best constitution of society, one mark of it will be the tendency to distribute all social functions according to the fitness of the agents; to place trust where trust is justifiable, and to give the fullest scope for every proved ability, intellectual, moral, and physical. of course, such approximation to this result, as we can observe in the present order of things, is very imperfect. many of the most obvious evils in the particular system of competition now adopted, may be summed up in the statement, that the tests according to which success is awarded, are not so contrived as to secure the success of the best competitors. some of them, for example, are calculated to give an advantage to the superficial and the showy. but that is to say that they are incompatible with the true principle which they were intended to embody; and that we should reform our method, not in the direction of limiting competition, but in the direction of so framing our system that it may be a genuine application of carlyle's doctrine. in other words, in all the professions for which intellectual excellence is required, the conditions should be such as to give the best man the best chance, as far as human arrangements can secure that object. what other rule can be suggested? competition, in this sense, means the preservation of the very atmosphere which is necessary to health; and to denounce it is either to confirm the most selfish and retrograde principles, or to denounce something which is only called competition by a confusion of ideas. how easy such a confusion may be, is obvious when we look at the ordinary language about industrial competition. we are told that wages are kept down by competition. to this mill replied in the passage i have quoted, and, upon his own theory, at any rate, replied with perfect justice, that they were also kept up by competition. the common language upon the subject is merely one instance of the fallacies into which men fall when they personify an abstraction. competition becomes a kind of malevolent and supernatural being, to whose powers no conceivable limits are assigned. it is supposed to account for any amount of degradation. yet if, by multiplying their numbers, workmen increase supply, and so lower the price of labour, it follows, conversely, by the very same reasoning, that if they refused to multiply, they would diminish the supply and raise the price. the force, by its very nature, operates as certainly in one direction as in the other. if, again, there is competition among workmen, there is competition among capitalists. in every strike, of course, workmen apply the principle, and sometimes apply it very effectually, in the attempt to raise their wages. it was often argued, indeed, that in this struggle, the employer possessed advantages partly due to his power of forming tacit combinations. the farmers in a parish, or the manufacturers in a business, were pledged to each other not to raise the rate of wages. if that be so, you again complain, not of competition, but of the want of competition; and you agree that the labourer will benefit, as in fact, i take it, he has undoubtedly benefited, by freer competition among capitalists, or by the greater power of removing his own labour to better markets. in such cases, the very meaning of the complaint is not that there is competition, but that the competition is so arranged as to give an unfair advantage to one side. and a similar misunderstanding is obviously implied in other cases. the australian or american workman fears that his wages will be lowered by the competition of the chinese; and the englishman protests against the competition of pauper aliens. let us assume that he is right in believing that such competition will tend to lower his wages, whatever the moral to be drawn from the fact. briefly, denunciations of "competition" in this sense are really complaints that we do not exclude the chinese immigrant and therefore give a monopoly to the native labourer. that may be a good thing for him, and if it be not a good thing for the chinaman who is excluded from the field, we perhaps do not care very much about the results to china. we are so much better than the heathen that we need not bother about their interests. but, of course, the english workman, when he complains of the intensity of competition, does not propose to adopt the analogous remedy of giving a monopoly to one section of our own population. the english pauper is here; we do not want to suppress him, but only to suppress his pauperism; and he certainly cannot be excluded from any share in the fund devoted to the support of labour. the evil, therefore, of which we complain is primarily the inadequacy of the support provided, not,--though that may also be complained of,--the undesirable method by which those funds are distributed. in other words, the complaint may so far be taken to mean that there are too many competitors, not that, given the competitors, their shares are determined by competition, instead of being determined by monopoly or by some other principle. we have therefore to inquire whether any principle can be suggested which will effect the desired end, and which will yet really exclude competition. the popular suggestion is that the remedy lies in suppressing competition by equalising the prizes. if no prizes are to be won, there will so far be less reason for competing. enough may be provided for all by simply taking something from those who have too much. now, i may probably assume that we all agree in approving the contemplated end--a greater equality of wealth, and especially an elevation of the lower classes to a higher position in the scale of comfort. every social reformer, whatever his particular creed, would probably agree that some of us are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. but we still have to ask, in what sense it is conceivable that a real suppression of competition can contribute to the desired end. it is obvious that when we denounce competition we often mean not that it is to be abolished, but that it is to be regulated and limited in its application. so, for example, people sometimes speak as if competition were the antithesis to co-operation. but i need hardly say that individualists, as well as their opponents, may legitimately sing the praises of co-operation. nobody was more forward than mill, for example, and mill's followers, in advocating the principles of the early co-operative societies. he and they rejoiced to believe that the co-operative societies had revealed unsuspected virtues and capacities in the class from which they sprang; that they had done much to raise the standard of life and to extend sympathy and human relations among previously disconnected units of society. but it is, of course, equally obvious that they have grown up in a society which supposes free competition in every part of its industrial system; that co-operative societies, so far as the outside world is concerned, have to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market; that the rate of wages of their members is still fixed by competition; and that they encourage habits of saving and forethought which presuppose that each man is to have private ends of his own. in what sense, then, can co-operation ever be regarded as really opposed to competition? competition may exist among groups of men just as much as among individuals: a state of war is not less a state of war if it is carried on by regiments and armies, instead of by mere chaotic struggles in which each man fights for his own hand. competition does not mean that there should be no combination, but that there should be no monopoly. so long as a trade or a profession is open to every one who chooses to take it up, its conduct will be equally regulated by competition, whether it be competition as between societies or individuals, or whether its profits be divided upon one system or another between the various classes concerned. co-operators, of course, may look forward to a day in which society at large will be members of a single co-operative society; or, again, to a time in which every industrial enterprise may be conducted by the state. supposing any such aspiration to be realised, the question still remains, whether they would amount to the abolition or still only to the shifting of the incidence of competition. socialists tell us that hitherto the labourer has not had his fair share of the produce of industry. the existing system has sanctioned a complicated chicanery, by which one class has been enabled to live as mere bloodsuckers and parasites upon the rest of society. property is the result of theft, instead of being, as economists used to assure us, the reward of thrift. it is hoped that these evils may be remedied by a reconstruction of society, in which the means of production shall all be public property, and every man's income be simply a salary in proportion to the quantity of his labour. if we, then, ask how far competition would be abolished, we may first make one remark. such a system, like every other system, requires, for its successful working, that the instincts and moral impulses should correspond to the demands of the society. absolute equality of property is just as compatible with universal misery as with universal prosperity. a population made up of thoroughly lazy, sensual, stupid individuals could, if it chose, work such a machinery so as to suppress all who were industrious, refined and intelligent. however great may be the revenue of a nation, it is a very simple problem of arithmetic to discover how many people could be supported just above the starvation level. the nation at large would, on the supposed system, have to decide how its numbers and wants are to be proportioned to its means. if individuals do not compete, the whole society has, presumably, to compete with other societies; and, in every case whatever, with the general forces of nature. an indolent and inefficient majority might decide, if it pleased, that the amount of work to be exacted should be that which would be just enough to provide the simplest material necessities. if, again, the indolent and inefficient are to exist at all,--and we can scarcely count upon their disappearance,--and if further, they are to share equally with the industrious and the efficient, we must, in some way, coerce them into the required activity. if every industrial organisation is to be worked by the state, the state, it would seem, must appeal to the only means at its disposal,--namely, the prison and the scourge. if, moreover, the idle and sensual choose to multiply, the state must force them to refrain, or the standard of existence will be lowered. and, therefore, as is often argued, socialism logically carried out would, under such conditions, lead to slavery; to a state in which labour would be enforced, and the whole system of life absolutely regulated by the will of the majority; and, in the last resort, by physical force. that seems, i confess, to be a necessary result, unless you can assume a moral change, which is entirely different from the mere change of machinery, and not necessarily implied, nor even made probable, by the change. the intellectual leaders of socialism, no doubt, assume that the removal of "injustice" will lead to the development of a public spirit which will cause the total efficiency to be as great as it is at present, or perhaps greater. but the mass who call themselves socialists take, one suspects, a much simpler view. they are moved by the very natural, but not especially lofty, desire to have more wages and less work. they take for granted that if their share of the total product is increased, they will get a larger dividend; and do not stop to inquire whether the advantage may be not more than counterbalanced by the diminution of the whole product, when the present incitements to industry are removed. they argue,--that is, so far as they argue at all,--as though the quantity to be distributed were a fixed quantity, and regard capitalists as pernicious persons, somehow intercepting a lion's share of the stream of wealth which, it is assumed, would flow equally if they were abolished. that is, of course, to beg the whole question. i, however, shall venture to assume that the industrial machinery requires a corresponding moral force to work it; and i, therefore, proceed to ask how such a force can be supposed to act without some form of competition. nothing, as a recent writer suggests,--ironically, perhaps,--could be easier than to secure an abolition of competition. you have only to do two things: to draw a "ring-fence" round your society, and then to proportion the members within the fence to the supplies. the remark suggests the difficulty. a ring-fence, for example, round london or manchester would mean the starvation of millions in a month; or, if round england, the ruin of english commerce, the enormous rise in the cost of the poor man's food, and the abolition of all his little luxuries. but, if you include even a population as large as london, what you have next to do is to drill some millions of people--vast numbers of them poor, reckless, ignorant, sensual, and selfish--to regulate their whole mode of life by a given code, and refrain from all the pleasures which they most appreciate. the task is a big one, and not the less if you have also to undertake that everybody, whatever his personal qualities, shall have enough to lead a comfortable life. i do not suppose, however, that any rational socialist would accept that programme of isolation. he would hold that, in his utopia, we can do more efficiently all that is done under a system which he regards as wasteful and unjust. the existing machinery, whatever else may be said of it, does, in fact, tend to weld the whole world more and more into a single industrial organism. english workmen are labouring to satisfy the wants of other human beings in every quarter of the world; while chinese, and africans, and europeans, and americans are also labouring to satisfy theirs. this vast and almost inconceivably complex machinery has grown up in the main unconsciously, or, at least, with a very imperfect anticipation of the ultimate results, by the independent efforts of innumerable inventors, and speculators, and merchants, and manufacturers, each of them intent, as a rule, only upon his own immediate profits and the interests of the little circle with which he is in immediate contact. the theory is not, i suppose, that this gigantic system of mutual interdependence should be abolished or restricted, but that it should be carried on consciously, with definite and intelligible purpose, and in such a way as to promote the interests of every fraction of society. the whole organism should resemble one worked by a single brain, instead of representing the resultant of a multitude of distracted and conflicting forces. the difficulties are obvious enough, nor need i dwell upon them here. i will not inquire whether it does not suppose something like omniscience in the new industrial leaders; and whether the restless and multifarious energy now displayed in discovering new means of satisfying human wants could be supplied by a central body, or a number of central bodies, made up of human beings, and, moreover, official human beings, reluctant to try experiments and strike into new courses, and without the present motives for enterprise, "individualists" have enlarged sufficiently upon such topics. what i have to note is that, in any case, the change supposes the necessity of a corresponding morality in the growth of the instincts, the public spirit, the hatred of indolence, the temperance and self-command which would be requisite to work it efficiently. the organisation into which we are born presupposes certain moral instincts, and, moreover, necessarily implies a vast system of moral discipline. our hopes and aspirations, our judgments of our neighbours and of ourselves, are at every moment guided and moulded by the great structure of which we form a part. whenever we ask how our lives are to be directed, what are to be the terms on which we form our most intimate ties, whom we are to support or suppress, how we are to win respect or incur contempt, we are profoundly affected by the social relations in which we are placed at our birth, and the corresponding beliefs or prejudices which we have unconsciously imbibed. such influences, it may perhaps be said, are of incomparably greater importance than the direct exhortations to which we listen, or than the abstract doctrines which we accept in words, but which receive their whole colouring from the concrete facts to which they conform. now, i ask how such discipline can be conceived without some kind of competition; or, rather, what would be the discipline which would remain if, in some sense, competition could be suppressed? if in the ideal society there are still prizes to be won, positions which may be the object of legitimate desire, and if those positions are to be open to every one, whatever his circumstances, we might still have the keenest competition, though carried on by different methods. if, on the other hand, no man's position were to be better than another's, we might suppress competition at the price of suppressing every motive for social as well as individual improvement. in any conceivable state of things, the welfare of every society, the total means of enjoyment at its disposal, must depend upon the energy, intelligence, and trustworthiness of its constituent members. such qualities, i need hardly say, are qualities of individuals. unless john and peter and thomas are steady, industrious, sober, and honest, the society as a whole will be neither honest nor sober nor prosperous. the problem, then, becomes, how can you ensure the existence of such qualities unless john and peter and the rest have some advantage in virtue of possessing them? somehow or other, a man must be the better off for doing his work well and treating his neighbour fairly. he ought surely to hold the positions in which such qualities are most required, and to have, if possible, the best chance of being a progenitor of the rising generation. a social condition in which it made no difference to a man, except so far as his own conscience was concerned, whether he were or were not honest, would imply a society favourable to people without a conscience, because giving full play to the forces which make for corruption and disintegration. if you remove the rewards accessible to the virtuous and peaceful, how are you to keep the penalties which restrain the vicious and improvident? a bare repeal of the law, "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat," would not of itself promote industry. you would at most remove the compulsion which arises from competition, to introduce the compulsion which uses physical force. you would get rid of what seems to some people the "natural" penalty of want following waste, and be forced to introduce the "artificial" or legislative penalty of compulsory labour. but, otherwise, you must construct your society so that, by the spontaneous play of society, the purer elements may rise to the surface, and the scum sink to the bottom. so long as human nature varies indefinitely, so long as we have knaves and honest men, sinners and saints, cowards and heroes, some process of energetic and active sifting is surely essential to the preservation of social health; and it is difficult to see how that is conceivable without some process of active and keen competition. the socialist will, of course, say, and say with too much truth, that the present form of competition is favourable to anti-social qualities. if, indeed, a capitalist is not a person who increases the productive powers of industry, but a person who manages simply to intercept a share produced by the industry of others, there is, of course, much to be said for this view. i cannot now consider that point, for my subject to-day is the moral aspect of competition considered generally. and what i have just said suggests what is, i think, the more purely moral aspect of the question. a reasonable socialist desires to maintain what is good in the existing system, while suppressing its abuses. the question, what is good? is partly economical; but it is partly also ethical: and it is with that part that i am at present concerned. any system of competition, any system which supposes a reward for virtue other than virtue itself, may be accused of promoting selfishness and other ugly qualities. the doctrine that virtue is its own reward is very charming in the mouth of the virtuous man; but when his neighbours use it as an excuse for not rewarding him, it becomes rather less attractive. it saves a great deal of trouble, no doubt, and relieves us from an awkward responsibility. i must, however, point out, in the first place, that a fallacy is often introduced into these discussions which mr. herbert spencer has done a great deal to expose. he has dwelt very forcibly, for example, on the fact that it is a duty to be happy and healthy; and that selfishness, if used in a bad sense, should not mean simply regard for ourselves, but only disregard for our neighbours. we ought not, in other words, to be unjust because we ourselves happen to be the objects of injustice. the parable of the good samaritan is generally regarded as a perfect embodiment of a great moral truth. translated from poetry into an abstract logical form, it amounts to saying that we should do good to the man who most needs our services, whatever be the accidents which alienate ordinary sympathies. now, suppose that the good samaritan had himself fallen among thieves, what would have been his duty? his first duty, i should say, would have been, if possible, to knock down the thief; his second, to tie up his own wounds; and his third, to call in the police. we should not, perhaps, call him virtuous for such conduct; but we should clearly think him wrong for omitting it. not to resist a thief is cowardly; not to attend to your own health is to incapacitate yourself for duty; not to apply to the police is to be wanting in public spirit. assuming robbery to be wrong, i am not the less bound to suppress it because i happen to be the person robbed; i am only bound not to be vindictive--that is, not to allow my personal feelings to make me act otherwise than i should act if i had no special interest in the particular case. adam smith's favourite rule of the "indifferent spectator" is the proper one in the case. i should be impartial, and incline no more to severity than to lenity, because i am forced by circumstances to act both as judge and as plaintiff. so, in questions of self-support, it is obviously a fallacy to assume that an action, directed in the first instance to a man's own benefit, is therefore to be stigmatised as selfish. on the good samaritan's principle, a person should be supported, _ceteris paribus_, by the person who can do it most efficiently, and in nine cases out of ten that person is himself. if self-support is selfish in the sense that the service is directly rendered to self, it is not the less unselfish in so far as it is necessarily also a service to others. if i keep myself by my labour, i am preventing a burden from falling upon my fellows. and, of course, the case is stronger when i include my family. we were all impressed the other day by the story of the poor boy who got some wretchedly small pittance by his work, spent a small portion of it upon his own needs, and devoted the chief part of it to trying to save his mother and her other children from starvation. was he selfish? was he selfish even in taking something for himself, as the only prop of his family? what may be the immediate motive of a man when he is working for his own bread and the bread of his family may often be a difficult question; but as, in point of fact, he is helping not only himself and those who depend on him, but also in some degree relieving others from a burden, his conduct must clearly not be set down as selfish in any sense which involves moral disapproval. let us apply this to the case of competition. the word is generally used to convey a suggestion of selfishness in a bad sense. we think of the hardship upon the man who is ousted, as much as of the benefit to the man who gets in; or perhaps we think of it more. it suggests to us that one man has been shut out for the benefit of his neighbour; and that, of course, suggests envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. we hold that such competition must generate ill-will. i used--when i was intimately connected with a competitive system at the university--to hear occasionally of the evil influences of competition, as tending to promote jealousy between competitors. i always replied that, so far as my experience went, the evil was altogether imaginary. so far from competition generating ill-will, the keenest competitors were, as a rule, the closest friends. there was no stronger bond than the bond of rivalry in our intellectual contests. one main reason was, of course, that we had absolute faith in the fairness of the competition. we felt that it would be unworthy to complain of being beaten by a better man; and we had no doubt that, in point of fact, the winners were the better men; or, at any rate, were honestly believed to be the better men by those who distributed honours. the case, though on a small scale, may suggest one principle. so far as the end of such competitions is good, the normal motives cannot be bad. the end of a fair competition is the discovery of the ablest men, with a view to placing them in the position where their talents may be turned to most account. it can only be achieved so far as each man does his best to train his own powers, and is prepared to test them fairly against the powers of others. to work for that end is, then, not only permissible, but a duty. the spirit in which the end is pursued may be bad, in so far as a man pursues it by unfair means; in so far as he tries to make sham performance pass off for genuine; or, again, in so far as he sets an undue value upon the reward, as apart from the qualities by which it is gained. but if he works simply with the desire of making the best of himself, and if the reward is simply such a position as may enable him to be most useful to society, the competition which results will be bracing and invigorating, and will appeal to no such motives as can be called, in the bad sense, selfish. he is discharging a function which is useful, it is true, to himself; but which is also intrinsically useful to the whole society. the same principle applies, again, to intellectual activity in general. all genuine thought is essentially useful to mankind. in the struggle to discover truth, even our antagonists are, necessarily, our co-operators. a philosopher, as a man of science, owes, at least, as much to those who differ from him, as to those who agree with him. the conflict of many minds, from many sides, is the essential condition of intellectual progress. now, if a man plays his part manfully and honourably in such a struggle, he deserves our gratitude, even if he takes the wrong side. if he looks forward to the recognition by the best judges as one motive for his activity, i think that he is asking for a worthy reward. he deserves blame, only so far as his motives have a mixture of unworthy personal sentiment. obviously, if he aims at cheap fame, at making a temporary sensation instead of a permanent impression, at flattering prejudices instead of spreading truth; or, if he shows greediness of notoriety, by trying to get unjust credit, as we sometimes see scientific people squabbling over claims to the first promulgation of some trifling discovery, he is showing paltriness of spirit. the men whom we revere are those who, like faraday or darwin, devoted themselves exclusively to the advancement of knowledge, and would have scorned a reputation won by anything but genuine work. the fact that there is a competition in such matters implies, no doubt, a temptation,--the temptation to set a higher value upon praise than upon praiseworthiness; but i think it not only possible that the competitors in such rivalries may keep to the honourable path, but probable that, as a matter of fact, they frequently,--i hope that i may say generally,--do so. if the fame at which a man aims be not that which "in broad rumour lies," but that which "lives and spreads aloft in those pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging jove," then i think that the desire for it is scarcely to be called a last infirmity--rather, it is an inseparable quality of noble minds. we wish to honour men who have been good soldiers in that warfare, and we can hardly wish them to be indifferent to our homage. we may add, then, that a competition need not be demoralising when the competitors have lofty aims and use only honourable means. when, passing from purely intellectual aims, we consider the case, say, of the race for wealth, we may safely make an analogous remark. if a man's aim in becoming rich is of the vulgar kind; if he wishes to make an ostentatious display of wealth, and to spend his money upon demoralising amusement; or if, again, he tries to succeed by quackery instead of by the production of honest work, he is, of course, so far mischievous and immoral. but a man whose aims are public-spirited, nay, even if they be such as simply tend to improve the general comfort; who develops, for example, the resources of the country, and introduces new industries or more effective modes of manufacture, is, undoubtedly, in fact conferring a benefit upon his fellows, and may, so far, be doing his duty in the most effectual way open to him. if he succeeds by being really a more efficient man of business than his neighbours, he is only doing what, in the interests of all, it is desirable that he should do. he is discharging an essential social function; and what is to be desired is, that he should feel the responsibility involved, that he should regard his work as on one side the discharge of a social function, and not simply as a means of personal aggrandisement. it is not the fact that he is competing that is against him; but the fact, when it is a fact, that there is something discreditable about the means which he adopts, or the reward that he contemplates. this, indeed, suggests another and a highly important question--the question, namely, whether, in our present social state, his reward may not be excessive, and won at too great a cost to his rivals. and, without going into other questions involved, i will try to say a little, in conclusion, upon this, which is certainly a pressing problem. competition, i have suggested, is not immoral if it is a competition in doing honest work by honourable means, and if it is also a fair competition. but it must, of course, be added, that fairness includes more than the simple equality of chances. it supposes, also, that there should be some proportion between the rewards and the merits. if it is simply a question between two men, which shall be captain of a ship, and which shall be mate, then the best plan is to decide by their merits as sailors; and, if their merits be fairly tried, the loser need bear no grudge against the winner. but when we have such cases as sometimes occur, when, for example, the ship is cast away, and it becomes a question whether i shall eat you or you shall eat me, or, let us say, which of us is to have the last biscuit, we get one of those terrible cases of temptation in which the strongest social bonds sometimes give way under the strain. the competition, then, becomes, in the highest degree, demoralising, and the struggle for existence resolves itself into a mere unscrupulous scramble for life, at any sacrifice of others. that, it is sometimes said, is a parallel to our social state at present. if i gave an excessive prize to the first boy in a school and flogged the second, i should not be doing justice. if one man is rewarded for a moderate amount of forethought by becoming a millionaire, and his unsuccessful rivals punished by starvation or the workhouse, the lottery of life is not arranged on principles of justice. a man must be a very determined optimist if he denied the painful truth to be found in such statements. he must be blind to many evils if he does not perceive the danger of dulling his sympathies by indifference to the fate of the unsuccessful. the rich man in clough's poem observes that, whether there be a god matters very little- for i and mine, thank somebody, manage to get our victual. but, even if we are not very rich, we must often, i think, doubt whether we are not wrapping ourselves in a spirit of selfish complacency when we are returning to a comfortable home and passing outcasts of the street. we must sometimes reflect that our comfort is not simply a reward for virtue or intelligence, even if it be not sometimes the prize of actual dishonesty. to shut our eyes to the mass of wretchedness around us is to harden our hearts, although to open our hands is too often to do more harm than good. it is no wonder that we should be tempted to declaim against competition, when the competition means that so many unfortunates are to be crowded off their narrow standing-ground into the gulf of pauperism. this may suggest the moral which i have been endeavouring to bring out. looking at society at large, we may surely say that it will be better in proportion as every man is strenuously endeavouring to play his part, and in which the parts are distributed to those best fitted to play them. we must admit, too, that for any period to which we can look forward, the great mass of mankind will find enough to occupy their energies in labouring primarily for their own support, and so bearing the burden of their own needs and the needs of their families. we may infer, too, that a society will be the better so far as it gives the most open careers to all talents, wherever displayed, and as it shows respect for the homely virtues of industry, integrity, and forethought, which are essential to the whole body as to its constituent members. and we may further say that the corresponding motives in the individual cannot be immoral. a desire of independence, the self-respect which makes a man shrink from accepting as a gift what he can win as a fair reward, the love of fairplay, which makes him use only honest means in the struggle, are qualities which can never lose their value, and which are not the less valuable because in the first instance they are most profitable to their possessors. nothing which tends to weaken such motives can be good; but while they preserve their intensity, they necessarily imply the existence of competition in some form or other. it is equally clear that competition by itself is not a sufficient panacea. whenever we take an abstract quality, personify it by the help of capital letters, and lay it down as the one principle of a complex system, we generally blunder. competition is as far as possible from being the solitary condition of a healthy society. it must be not only a competition for worthy ends by honourable means, but should be a competition so regulated that the reward may bear some proportion to the merit. monopoly is an evil in so far as it means an exclusive possession of some advantages or privileges, especially when they are given by the accidents of birth or position. it is something if they are given to the best and the ablest; but the evil still remains if even the best and ablest are rewarded by a position which cramps the energies and lowers the necessity of others. competition is only desirable in so far as it is a process by which the useful qualities are encouraged by an adequate, and not more than an adequate, stimulus; and in which, therefore, there is not involved the degradation and the misery on the one side, the excessive reward on the other, of the unsuccessful and the successful in the struggle. competition, therefore, we might say, could be unequivocally beneficial only in an ideal society; in a state in which we might unreservedly devote ourselves to making the best of our abilities and accepting the consequent results, without the painful sense in the background that others were being sacrificed and debased; crushed because they had less luck in the struggle, and were, perhaps, only less deserving in some degree than ourselves. so long as we are still far enough from having realised any such state; so long as we feel, and cannot but feel, that the distribution of rewards is so much at the mercy of chance, and so often goes to qualities which, in an ideal state, would deserve rather reprobation than applause, we can only aim at better things. we can do what in us lies to level some inequalities, to work, so far as our opportunities enable us, in the causes which are mostly beneficial for the race, to spread enlightenment and good feeling, and to help the unfortunate. but it is also incumbent upon us to remember carefully, what is so often overlooked in the denunciations of competition, that the end for which we must hope, and the approach to which we must further, is one in which the equivocal virtue of charity shall be suppressed; that is, in which no man shall be dependent upon his neighbour in such a sense as to be able to neglect his own duties; in which there may be normally a reciprocity of good services, and the reciprocity not be (as has been said) all on one side. there is a very explicable tendency at present to ask for such one-sided reciprocity. it is natural enough, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, that reformers should dwell exclusively upon the right of every one to support, and neglect to point out the correlative duty of every one to do his best to support himself. the popular arguments about "old-age pensions" may illustrate the general state of mind. it is disgraceful, people say, that so large a proportion of the aged poor should come to depend upon the rates. undoubtedly it is disgraceful. then upon whom does the disgrace fall? it sounds harsh to say that it falls upon the sufferers. we shrink from saying to a pauper, "it serves you right". that sounds brutal, and is only in part true. still, we should not shrink from stating whatever is true, painful though it may be. it sounds better to lay all the blame upon the oppressor than to lay it upon the oppressed; and yet, as a rule, the cowardice or folly of the oppressed has generally been one cause of their misfortunes, and cannot be overlooked in a true estimate of the case. that drunkenness, improvidence, love of gambling, and so forth, do in fact lead to pauperism is undeniable; and that they are bad, and so far disgraceful, is a necessary consequence. in such cases, then, pauperism is a proof of bad qualities; and the fact, like all other facts, must be recognised. the stress of argument, therefore, is laid upon the hardships suffered by the honest and industrious poor. the logical consequence should be, that the deserving poor should become pensioners, and the undeserving paupers. this at once opens the amazingly difficult question of moral merit, and the power of poor-law officials to solve problems which would certainly puzzle the keenest psychologists. suppose, for example, that a man, without being definitely vicious, has counted upon the promised pension, and therefore neglected any attempts to save. if you give him a pension, you virtually tell everybody that saving is a folly; if you don't, you inflict upon him the stigma which is deserved by the drunkard and the thief. so difficult is it to arrange for this proposed valuation of a man's moral qualities that it has been proposed to get rid of all stigma by making it the right and duty of every one to take a pension. that might conceivably alter the praise, but it would surely not alter the praiseworthiness. it must be wrong in me to take money from my neighbours when i don't want it; and, if wrong, it surely ought to be disgraceful. and this seems to indicate the real point. we may aim at altering the facts, at making them more conducive to good qualities; but we cannot alter or attempt to decide by laws the degree of praise or blame to be attached to individuals. it would be very desirable to bring about a state of things in which no honest and provident man need ever fall into want; and, in that state, pauperism would be rightly discreditable as an indication of bad qualities. but to say that nobody shall be ashamed of taking support would be to ruin the essential economic virtues, and to pauperise the nation; and to try to lay down precise rules as to the distribution of honour and discredit, seems, to me, to be a problem beyond the power of a legislature. i express no opinion upon the question itself, because i am quite incompetent to do so. i only refer to it as illustrating the difficulties which beset us when we try to remove the evils of the present system, and yet to preserve the stimulus to industry, which is implied in competition. the shortest plan is to shut one's eyes to the difficulty, and roundly deny its existence. i hope that our legislators may hit upon some more promising methods. the ordinary mode of cutting the knot too often suggests that the actually contemplated ideal is the land in which the chickens run about ready roasted, and the curse of labour is finally removed from mankind. the true ideal, surely, is the state in which labour shall be generally a blessing; in which we shall recognise the fact--disagreeable or otherwise--that the race can only be elevated by the universal diffusion of public spirit, and a general conviction that it is every man's first duty to cultivate his own capacities, to turn them to the best possible account, and to work strenuously and heartily in whatever position he has been placed. it is because i cannot help thinking that when we attack competition in general terms, we are, too often, blinding ourselves to those homely and often-repeated, and, as i believe, indisputable truths, that i have ventured to speak to-day, namely, on the side of competition--so far, at least, on the side of competition as to suggest that our true ideal should be, not a state, if such a state be conceivable, in which there is no competition, but a state in which competition should be so regulated that it should be really equivalent to a process of bringing about the best possible distribution of the whole social forces; and should be held to be, because it would really be, not a struggle of each man to seize upon a larger share of insufficient means, but the honest effort of each man to do the very utmost he can to make himself a thoroughly efficient member of society. social equality. the problem of which i propose to speak is the old dispute between dives and lazarus. lazarus, presumably, was a better man than dives. how could dives justify himself for living in purple and fine linen, while lazarus was lying at the gates, with the dogs licking his sores? the problem is one of all ages, and takes many forms. when the old puritan saw a man going to the gallows, "there," he said, "but for the grace of god, goes john bradford". when the rich man, entering his club, sees some wretched tatterdemalion, slouching on the pavement, there, he may say, goes sir gorgius midas, but for--what? i am here and he there, he may say, because i was the son of a successful stock-jobber, and he the son of some deserted mother at the workhouse. that is the cause, but is it a reason? suppose, as is likely enough, that lazarus is as good a man as midas, ought they not to change places, or to share their property equally? a question, certainly, to be asked, and, if possible, to be answered. it is often answered, and is most simply answered, by saying that all men ought to be equal. dives should be cut up and distributed in equal shares between lazarus and his brethren. the dogma which embodies this claim is one which is easily refuted in some of the senses which it may bear, though in spite of such refutations it has become an essential part of the most genuine creed of mankind. the man of science says, with perfect truth, that so far from men being born equal, some are born with the capacity of becoming shakespeares and newtons, and others with scarcely the power of rising above sally the chimpanzee. the answer would be conclusive, if anybody demanded that we should all be just six feet high, with brains weighing sixty ounces, neither more nor less. it is also true, and, i conceive, more relevant, that, as the man of science will again say, all improvement has come through little groups of men superior to their neighbours, through races or through classes, which, by elevating themselves on the shoulders of others, have gained leisure and means for superior cultivation. but equality may be demanded as facilitating this process, by removing the artificial advantages of wealth. it may be taken as a demand for a fair start, not as a demand that the prizes shall be distributed irrespectively of individual worth. and, whether the demand is rightly or wrongly expressed, we must, i think, admit that the real force with which we have to reckon is the demand for justice and for equality as somehow implied by justice. it is easy to browbeat a poor man who wants bread and cheese for himself and his family, by calling his demands materialistic, and advising him to turn his mind to the future state, where he will have the best of dives. it is equally easy to ascribe the demands to mere envy and selfishness, or to those evil-minded agitators who, for their own wicked purposes, induce men to prefer a guinea to a pound of wages. but, after all, there is something in the demand for fair play and for the means of leading decent lives, which requires a better answer. it is easy, again, to say that all socialists are utopian. make every man equal to-day, and the old inequalities will reappear to-morrow. pitch such a one over london bridge, it was said, with nothing on but his breeches, and he will turn up at woolwich with his pockets full of gold. it is as idle to try for a dead level, when you work with such heterogeneous materials, as to persuade a homogeneous fluid to stand at anything but a dead level. but surely it may be urged that this is as much a reason for declining to believe that equal conditions of life will produce mere monotony, as for insisting that equality in any state is impossible. the present system includes a plan for keeping the scum at the surface. one of the few lessons which i have learnt from life, and not found already in copy-books, is the enormous difficulty which a man of the respectable classes finds in completely ruining himself, even by vice, extravagance, and folly; whereas, there are plenty of honest people who, in spite of economy and prudence, can scarcely keep outside of the workhouse. admitting the appeal to justice, it is, again, often urged that justice is opposed to the demand for equality. property is sacred, it is said, because a man has (or ought to have) a right to what he has made either by labour or by a course of fair dealings with other men. i am not about to discuss the ultimate ground on which the claim to private property is justified, and, as i think, satisfactorily established. a man has a right, we say, to all that he has fairly earned. has he, then, a right to inherit what his father has earned? a man has had the advantage of all that a rich father can do for him in education, and so forth. why should he also have the father's fortune, without earning it? are the merits of making money so great that they are transmissible to posterity? should a man who has been so good as to become rich, be blessed even to the third and fourth generation? why, as a matter of pure justice, should not all fortunes be applied to public uses, on the death of the man who made them? such a law, however impolitic, would not be incompatible with the moral principle to which an appeal is made. there are, of course, innumerable other ways in which laws may favour an equality of property, without breaking any of the fundamental principles. what, for example, is the just method of distributing taxation? a rich man can not only pay more money than a poor man, in proportion to his income, but he can, with equal ease, pay a greater proportion. to double the income of a labourer may be to raise him from starvation to comfort. to double the income of a millionaire may simply be to encumber him with wealth by which he is unable to increase his own pleasure. there is a limit beyond which it is exceedingly difficult to find ways of spending money on one's own enjoyment--though i have never been able to fix it precisely. on this ground, such plans as a graduated income-tax are, it would seem, compatible with the plea of justice; and, within certain limits, we do, in fact, approve of various taxes, on the ground, real or supposed, that they tend to shift burdens from the poor to the rich, and, so far, to equalise wealth. in fact, this appeal to justice is a tacit concession of the principle. if we justify property on the ground that it is fair that a man should keep what he has earned by his own labour, it seems to follow that it is unjust that he should have anything not earned by his labour. in other words, the answer admits the ordinary first principle from which socialism starts, and which, in some socialist theories, it definitely tries to embody. all that i have tried to do, so far, is to show that the bare doctrine of equality, which is in some way connected with the demand for justice, is not, of necessity, either unjust or impracticable. it may be used to cover claims which are unjust, to sanction bare confiscation, to take away motives for industry, and, briefly, may be a demand of the drones to have an equal share of the honey. from the bare abstract principle of equality between men, we can, in my own opinion, deduce nothing; and, i do not think that the principle can itself be established. that is why it is made a first principle, or, in other words, one which is not to be discussed. the french revolutionists treated it in this way as _à priori_ and self-evident. no school was in more deadly opposition to such _à priori_ truths than the school of bentham and the utilitarians. yet, bentham's famous doctrine, that in calculating happiness each man is to count for one, and nobody for more than one, seems to be simply the old principle in a new disguise. james mill applied the doctrine to politics. j. s. mill again applied it, with still more thoroughness, especially in his doctrine of representation and of the equality of the sexes. accordingly, various moralists have urged that this was an inconsistency in utilitarian doctrine, implying that they, too, could make _à priori_ first principles when they wanted them. it has become a sort of orthodox dogma with radicals, who do not always trouble themselves about a philosophical basis, and is applied with undoubting confidence to many practical political problems. "one man, one vote" is not simply the formulation of a demand, but seems to intimate a logical ground for the demand. if, in politics, one man is rightfully entitled to one vote, is it not also true that, in economics, one man should have a right to one income, or, that money, like political power, should be distributed into precisely equal shares? yet, why are we to take for granted the equality of men in the sense required for such deductions? since men are not equally qualified for political power, it would seem better _primâ facie_ that each man should have the share of power and wealth which corresponds to his powers of using, or, perhaps, to his powers of enjoying. why should we not say, "to each man according to his deserts"? one practical reason, of course, is the extreme difficulty of saying what are the deserts, and how they are to be ascertained. undoubtedly, equality is the shortest and simplest way but, if we take it merely as the most convenient assumption, it loses its attractive appearance of abstract justice or _à priori_ self-certainty. do a common labourer and mr. gladstone deserve the same share of voting power? if not, how many votes should mr. gladstone possess to give him his just influence? to ask such questions is to show that answering is impossible, though political theorists have, now and then, tried to put together some ostensible pretext for an answer. what, let us ask, is the true relation between justice and equality? a judge, to take the typical case, is perfectly just when he ascertains the facts by logical inferences from the evidence, and then applies the law in the spirit of a scientific reasoner. given the facts, what is the rule under which they come? to answer that question, generally speaking, is his whole duty. in other words, he has to exclude all irrelevant considerations, such as his own private interests or affections. the parties are to be to him merely a and b, and he has to work out the result as an arithmetician works out a sum. among the irrelevant considerations are frequently some moral aspects of the case. a judge, for example, decides a will to be valid or invalid without asking whether the testator acted justly or unjustly in a moral sense, but simply whether his action was legal or illegal. he cannot go behind the law, even from motives of benevolence or general maxims of justice, without being an unjust judge. cases may arise, indeed, as i must say in passing, in which this is hardly true. a law may be so flagrantly unjust that a virtuous judge would refuse to administer it. one striking case was that of the fugitive slave law in the united states, where a man had to choose between acting legally and outraging humanity. so we consider a parent unjust who does not leave his fortune equally among his children. unless there should be some special reason to the contrary, we shall hold him to be unfair for making distinctions out of mere preference of one child to another. yet in the case of primogeniture our opinion would have to be modified. supposing, for example, a state of society in which primogeniture was generally recognised as desirable for public interests, we could hardly call a man unjust for leaving his estates to his eldest son. if, in such a state, a man breaks the general rule, our judgment of his conduct would be determined perhaps by considering whether he was before or behind his age, whether he was acting from a keener perception of the evils of inequality or actuated by spite or regardless of the public interests which he believed to be concerned. a parent treats his children equally in his will in regard to money; but he does not, unless he is a fool, give the same training or the same opening to all his children, whether they are stupid or clever, industrious or idle. but what i wish to insist upon is, that justice implies essentially indifference to irrelevant considerations, and therefore, in many cases, equality in the treatment of the persons concerned. a judge has to decide without reference to bribes, and not be biassed by the position of an accused person. in that sense he treats the men equally, but of course he does not give equal treatment to the criminal and innocent, to the rightful and wrongful claimant. the equality implied in justice is therefore to be understood as an exclusion of the irrelevant, and thus supposes an understanding as to what is irrelevant. it is not a mere abstract assertion of equality; but the assertion that, in a given concrete case, a certain rule is to be applied without considering anything outside of the rule. an ideally perfect rule would contain within itself a sufficient indication of what is to be relevant. all men of full age, sound mind, and so forth, are to be treated in such and such a way. then all cases falling within the rule are to be decided on the same principles, and in that sense equally. but the problem remains, what considerations should be taken into account by the rule itself? let us put the canon of equality in a different shape, namely, that there should always be a sufficient reason for any difference in the treatment of our fellows. this rule does not imply that i should act in all cases as though all men were equal in character or mind, but that my action should in all cases be justified by some appropriate consideration. it does not prove that every man should have a vote, but that if one man has a vote and another has not, there should be some adequate reason for the difference. it does not prove that every man should work eight hours a day and have a shilling an hour; but that differences of hours or of pay and, equally, uniformity of hours and pay, should have some sufficient justification. this is a deeper principle, which in some cases justifies and in others does not justify the rule of equality. the rule of equality follows from it under certain conditions, and has gained credit because, in point of fact, those conditions have often been satisfied. the revolutionary demand for equality was, historically speaking, a protest against arbitrary inequality. it was a protest against the existence of privileges accompanied by no duties. when the rich man could only answer the question, "what have you done to justify your position?" by the famous phrase of beaumarchais, "i took the trouble to be born," he was obviously in a false position. the demand for a society founded upon reason, in this sense that a sufficient reason should be given for all differences, was, it seems to me, perfectly right; and, moreover, was enough to condemn the then established system. but when this demand has been so constructed as to twist a logical rule, applicable to all scientific reasoning, into a dogmatic assertion that certain concrete beings were in fact equal, and to infer that they should have equal rights, it ceased to be logical at all, and has been a fruitful parent of many fallacies. reasonable beings require a sufficient reason for all differences of conduct, for the difference between their treatment of a man and a monkey or a white man and a black, as well as for differences between treatment of rich and poor or wise men and fools; and there must, as the same principle implies, be also a sufficient reason for treating all members of a given class equally. we have to consider whether, for any given purpose, the differences between human beings and animals, englishmen and negroes, men and women, are or are not of importance for our purpose. when the differences are irrelevant we neglect them or admit the claim to equality of treatment. but the question as to relevance is not to be taken for granted either way. it would be a very convenient but a very unjustifiable assumption in many cases, as it might save an astronomer trouble if he assumed that every star was equal to every other star. the application of this is, i think, obvious. the _â priori_ assumption of the equality of men is, in some sense, easily refuted. but the refutation does not entitle us to assume that arbitrary inequality, inequality for which no adequate ground can be assigned, is therefore justifiable. it merely shows that the problem is more complex than has been assumed at first sight. "all men ought to be equal." if you mean equal in natural capacity or character, it is enough to say that what is impossible cannot be. if you propose that the industrious and idle, the good and bad, the wise and foolish, should share equally in social advantages, the reply is equally obvious, that such a scheme, if possible, would be injurious to the qualities on which human welfare depends. if you say that men should be rewarded solely according to their intrinsic merits, we must ask, do you mean to abstract from the adventitious advantages of education, social surroundings, and so forth, or to take men as they actually are, whatever the circumstances to which their development is owing? to ask what a man would have been had he been in a different position from his youth, is to ask for an impossible solution, and one, moreover, of no practical bearing. i shall not employ a drunkard if i am in want of a butler, whether he has become a drunkard under overpowering temptation or become a drunkard from inherited dipsomania. but if, on the other hand, i take the man for what he is, without asking how he has come to be what he is, i leave the source at least of all the vast inequalities of which we complain. the difficulty, which i will not try to develop further, underlies, as i think, the really vital difference of method by which different schools attempt to answer the appeal for social justice. the school of so-called individualists finds, in fact, that equality in their sense is incompatible with the varied differences due to the complete growth of the social structure. they look upon men simply as so many independent units of varying qualities, no doubt, but still capable of being considered for political and social purposes as equal. they ask virtually what justice would demand if we had before us a crowd of independent applicants for the good things of the world, and the simplest answer is to distribute the good things equally. if it is replied that the idle and the industrious should not be upon the same footing, they are ready to agree, perhaps, that men should be rewarded according to their services to society, however difficult it may be to arrange the proportions. but it soon appears that the various classes into which society is actually divided imply differences not due to the individual and his intrinsic merits, but to the varying surroundings in which he is placed. to do justice, then, it becomes necessary to get rid of these differences. the extreme case is that of the family. every one probably owes more to his mother and to his early domestic environment than to any other of the circumstances which have influenced his development. if you and i started as perfectly equal babies, and you have become a saint and i a sinner, the divergence probably began when our mothers watched our cradles, and was made inevitable before we had left their knees. consequently, the more thorough-going designers of utopia have proposed to abolish this awkward difference. men must be different at their birth; but we might conceivably arrange public nurseries which should place them all under approximately equal conditions. then any differences would result from a man's intrinsic qualities, and he might be said to be rewarded simply according to his own merits. the plan may be tempting, but has its disadvantages. there are injustices, if we call all inequality injustice, which we can only attribute to nature or to the unknown power which makes men and monkeys, shakespeares and stephens. and one result is that the character and conduct of human beings depend to a great extent upon circumstances, which are accidental in the sense that they are circumstances other than the original endowment of the individual. in this sense, maternal love, for example, is unjust. the mother loves her child because it is her own, not because it is better (though of course it is better) than other children. so, as adam smith, i think, observed, we are more moved by our neighbour's suffering from a corn on his great toe than by the starvation of millions in china. in other words, the affections, which are the great moving forces of society, are unjust in so far as they cause us to be infinitely more interested in our own little circle than in the remoter members of humanity known to us only by report. without discussing the "justice" of this arrangement, we shall have, i think, to admit that it is inevitable. for i, at least, hold that the vague and vast organism of humanity depends for its cohesion upon the affinities and attractions, and not _vice versâ_. my interests are strongest where my power of action is greatest. the love of mothers for children is a force of essential value, and therefore to be cultivated rather than repressed, for no force known to us could replace it. and what is pre-eminently true in this case is, of course, true to a degree in others. burke stated this with admirable force in his attack upon the revolutionists who expounded the opposite principle of abstract equality. "to be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle," he says, "the germ, as it were, of public affections. it is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind." the assertion that they desired to invert this order, to destroy every social link in so far as it tended to produce inequalities, was the pith of his great indictment against the french "metaphysical" revolutionists. they had perverted the general logical precept of the sufficient reason for all inequalities by converting it into an assuming of the equality of concrete units. they fell into the fallacy of which i have spoken; and many radicals, utilitarians, and others have followed them. they assumed that all the varieties of human character, or all those due to the influence of the social environment, through whose structure and inherited instincts every full-grown man has been moulded, might be safely disregarded for the purpose of political and social construction. they have spoken, in brief, as if men were the equal and homogeneous atoms of physical inquiry and social problems capable of solution by a simple rearrangement of the atoms in different orders, instead of remembering that they are dealing with a complex organism, in which not only the whole order but every constituent atom is also a complex structure of indefinitely varying qualities. in the recognition of this truth lies, as i believe, the true secret of any satisfactory method of treatment. does this fact justify inequality in general? or does not the principle of equality still remain as essentially implied in the utopia which we all desire to construct? we have to take it for granted that to each man the first and primary moving instinct is and must be the love of the little "platoon" of which he is a member; that the problem is, not to destroy all these minor attractions, to obliterate the structure and replace society by a vast multitude of independent atoms, each supposed to aim directly at the good of the whole, but so to harmonise and develop or restrain the smaller interests of families, of groups and associations, that they may spontaneously co-operate towards the general welfare. it is a long and difficult task to which we have to apply ourselves; a task not to be effected by the demonstration or application of a single abstract dogma, but to be worked out gradually by the co-operation of many classes and of many generations. if it is fairly solved in the course of a thousand years or so, i for one shall be very fairly satisfied. but distant as the realisation may be, we may or rather ought to consider seriously the end to which we should be working. the conception implies a distinction of primary importance towards any clear treatment of the problem. we have, that is, two different, though not altogether distinct, provinces of what i may, perhaps, call organic and functional morality. we may take the existing order for granted, and ask what is then our duty; or we may ask how far the structure itself requires modification, and, if so, what kind of modification. a man who assumes the existence of the present structure may act justly or unjustly within the limits so prescribed. he must generally be guided in a number of cases by some principle of equality. the judge should endeavour to give the same law to rich and poor; the parent should not make arbitrary distinctions between his children; the statesman should try to distribute his burdens without favouring one particular class, and so forth. a man who, in such a sense, acts justly may be described as up to the level of his age and its accepted established moral ideas, and is, therefore, entitled at least to the negative praise of not being corrupt or dishonest. he fulfils accurately the functions imposed upon him, and is not governed by what bentham called the sinister interests which would prevent them from being effectually discharged for the welfare of the community. but the problem which we have to consider is the deeper and more difficult one of organic justice; and our question is what justice means in this case, or what are the irrelevant considerations to be excluded from our motives of conduct. between these two classes of justice there are distinctions which it is necessary to state briefly. justice, as we generally use the word, implies that the unjust man deserves to be hanged, or, at least, is responsible for his actions. what "responsibility" precisely implies is, of course, a debatable question. i only need assume that, in any case, it implies that somebody is guilty of wrong-doing, for which he should receive an appropriate penalty. but in organic questions it is not the individual, but the race which is responsible; and we require a reform, not a penalty. an impatient temper leads us to generalise too hastily from the case of the individual to that of the country. we bestow the blame for all the wrongs of an oppressed nation, for example, upon the nation which oppresses. but in simple point of fact, the oppressed nation generally deserves (if the word can be fairly used) to share the blame. the trodden worm would not have been trodden upon if it had been a bit of a viper. whatever the duty of turning the second cheek, it is clearly not a national duty. if we admire a tell or robert bruce for resisting oppressors, we implicitly condemn those who submitted to oppressors. if a nation is divided or wanting in courage, public spirit, and independence, it will be trampled down; and though we may most rightfully blame the tramplers, it is idle to exonerate the trampled. it is easy, in the same way, to make the rich solely responsible for all the misery of the poor. the man who has got the booty is naturally regarded as the robber. but, speaking scientifically, that is, with the desire to state the plain facts, we must admit that if the poor are those who have gone to the wall in the struggle for wealth; then, whatever unjust weapons have been used in that struggle, the improvidence and vice and idleness have certainly been among the main causes of defeat. here, as before, the question is not, who is to be punished? we can only settle that when dealing with individual cases. it is the question, what is the cause of certain evils? and here we must resist the temptation of supposing that the class which in some sense appears to profit by them, or, at least, to be exempt from them, has, therefore, any more to do with bringing them about than the class which suffers from them. the reflection may put us in mind of what seems to be a general law. the ultimate cause of the adoption of institutions and rules of conduct is often the fact of their utility to the race; but it is only at a later period that their utility becomes the conscious or avowed reason for maintaining them. the political fabric has been clearly built up, in great part, by purely selfish ambition. nations have been formed by energetic rulers, who had no eye for anything beyond the gratification of their own ambition, although they were clear-headed enough to see that their own ambition could best secure its objects by taking the side of the stronger social forces, and by giving substantial benefit to others. the same holds good pre-eminently of industrial relations. we all know how adam smith, sharing the philosophical optimism of his time, showed how the pursuit of his own welfare by each man tended, by a kind of pre-ordained harmony, to contribute to the welfare of all. since his time we have ceased to be so optimistic, and have recognised the fact that the building up of modern industrial systems has involved much injury to large classes. and yet we may, i think, in great measure adopt his view. the fact that each man was rogue enough to think first of himself and of his own wife and family is not a proof or a presumption that he did not flourish because, in point of fact, he was contributing (quite unintentionally perhaps) to the comforts of mankind in general. what we have to reflect is that, while the bare existence of certain institutions gives a strong presumption of their utility, there is also a probability that when the utility becomes a conscious aim or a consciously adopted criterion of their advantage, they will require a corresponding modification intended to secure the advantages at a minimum cost of evil. premising these remarks as to the meaning of organic justice, we can now come to the question of equality. justice in its ordinary sense may be regarded from one point of view as the first condition of the efficiency of the social organ. in saying that a judge is just, we imply that he is so far efficiently discharging his part in society--the due application of the law--without reference to irrelevant considerations. he is a machine which rightly parts the sheep and goats--taking the legal definition of goats and sheep--instead of putting some goats into the sheepfold, and _vice versâ_. that is, he secures the accurate application of the purely legal rule. organic justice involves an application of the same principle because it equally depends upon the exclusion of irrelevant considerations. it implies such a distribution of functions and of maintenance as may secure the greatest possible efficiency of society towards some end in itself good. society of course may be organised with great efficiency for bad or doubtful ends. a purely military organisation, however admirable for its purpose, may imply a sacrifice of the highest welfare of the nation. assuming, however, the goodness of the end, the greatest efficiency is of course desirable. we may, for our purposes, assume that the efficiency of a nation regarded as a society for the production of wealth is a desirable end. there are, of course, many other purposes which must not be sacrificed to the production of wealth. but power of producing wealth, meaning roughly whatever contributes to the physical support and comfort of the nation, is undoubtedly a necessary condition of all other happiness. if we all starve we can have neither art nor science nor morality. what i mean, therefore, is that a nation is so far better as it is able to raise all necessary supplies with the least expenditure of labour, leaving aside the question how far the superfluous forces should be devoted to raising comparative luxuries or to some purely religious or moral or intellectual purposes. the perfect industrial organisation is, i shall assume, compatible with or rather a condition of a perfect organisation of other kinds. in the most general terms we have to consider what are the principles of social organisation, which of course implies a certain balance between the various organs and a thorough nutrition of all, while yet we may for a moment confine our attention to the purely industrial or economic part of the question. how, if at all, does the principle of equality or of social justice enter the problem? we may assume, in the first place, from this point of view, that one most obvious condition is the absence of all purely useless structures, whether of the kind which we call "survivals" or such as may be called parasitic growths. the organ which has ceased to discharge corresponding functions is simply a drag upon the vital forces. when a class, such as the old french aristocracy, ceases to perform duties while retaining privileges, it will be removed,--too probably, as in that case, it will be removed by violent and mischievous methods,--if the society is to grow in vigour. the individuals, as i have said, may or may not deserve punishment, for they are not personally responsible for the general order of things; but they are not unlikely to incur severe penalties, and what we should really hope is that they may be in some way absorbed by judicious medical treatment, instead of extirpated by the knife. at the other end of the scale, we have the parasitic class of the beggars or thieves. they, too, are not personally responsible for the conditions into which they are born. but they are not only to be pitied individually, but to be regarded, in the mass, as involving social disease and danger. more words upon that topic are quite superfluous, but i may just recall the truth that the two evils are directly connected. we hear it often said, and often denied, that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. so far, however, as it is true, it is one version of the very obvious fact that where there are many careless rich people, there will be the best chance for the beggars. the thoughtless expenditure of the rich without due responsibilities, provides the steady stream of so-called charity,--the charity which, as shakespeare (or somebody else) observes, is twice cursed, which curses him that gives and him that receives; which is to the rich man as a mere drug to still his conscience and offer a spurious receipt in full for his neglect of social duties, and to the poor man an encouragement to live without self-respect, without providence, a mere hanger-on and dead-weight upon society, and a standing injury and source of temptation to his honest neighbours. briefly, a wholesome social condition implies that every social organ discharges a useful function; it renders some service to the community which is equivalent to the support which it derives; brain and stomach each get their due share of supply; and there is a thorough reciprocity between all the different members of the body. but what kind of equality should be desired in order to secure this desirable organic balance? we have to do, i may remark, with the case of a homogeneous race. by this i mean not only that there is no reason to suppose that there is any difference between the innate qualities of rich and poor, but that there is the strongest reason for believing in an equality; that is to say, more definitely, that if you took a thousand poor babies and a thousand rich babies, and subjected them to the same conditions, they would show great individual differences, but no difference traceable to the mere difference of class origin. i therefore may leave aside such problems as might arise in the southern states of america, or even in british india, where two different races are in presence; or, again, the case of the sexes, where we cannot assume as self-evident, that the organic differences are irrelevant to political or social ends. so far as we are concerned, we may take it for granted that the differences which emerge are not due to any causes antecedent to and overriding the differences due to different social positions. if we can say justly (as has been said) that a poor man is generally more charitable in proportion to his means, or, again, that he is, as a rule, a greater liar or a greater drunkard than the rich man, the difference is not due to a difference of breed, but to the education (in the widest sense) which each has received. so long as that difference remains, we must take account of it for purposes of obtaining the maximum efficiency. we must not make the poor man a professor of mathematics, or even manager of a railway, because he has talents which, if trained, would have qualified him for the post; but we may and must assume that an equal training would do as much for the poor man as for the rich; and the question is, how far it is desirable or possible to secure such equality. now, from the point of view of securing a maximum efficiency, it seems to be a clearly desirable end that the only qualities which should indisputably help to determine a man's position in life, should also be those which determine his fitness for working in it efficiently. in utopia, it should be the rule that each man shall do what he can do best. if one man is a gamekeeper and another a prime minister, it should be because one has the gifts of a gamekeeper and the other the gifts of a prime minister: whereas, in the actual state, as we all know, the gamekeeper often becomes the prime minister, while the potential prime minister is limited to looking after poachers. but i also urge that we must take into account the actual and not the potential qualities at any given moment. the inequality may be obviated by raising the grade of culture in all classes; but we must not assume that there is an actual equality where, in fact, there is the widest possible difference. in short, i assert that it is our duty to try to make men equal; though i deny that we are clearly justified in assuming an equality. by making them equal, i do not, of course, mean that we should try to make them all alike. i recognise, with mill and every sensible writer on the subject, that such a consummation represents rather a danger than an advantage. i wish to see individuality strengthened, not crushed, to encourage men to develop the widest possible diversity of tastes, talents, and pursuits, and to attain unity of opinion, not by a calm assumption that this or that creed is true, but by encouraging the sharpest and freest collision of opinions. the equality of which i speak is that which would result, if the distinction into organs were not of such a nature as to make one class more favourable than another to the full development of whatever character and talents a man may possess. in other words, the distribution into classes would correspond purely and simply to the telling off of each man to the duties which he is best fitted to discharge. the position into which he is born, the class surroundings which determine his development, must not carry with them any disqualification for his acquiring the necessary aptitude for any other position. it was, i think, fourier who argued that a man ought to be paid more highly for being a chimney-sweep than for being a prime minister, because the duties of a sweep are the more disagreeable,--a position which some prime ministers may, perhaps, see reason to doubt. my suggestion is, that in utopia every human being would be so placed as to be capable of preparing himself for any other position, and should then go to the work for which he is best fitted. the equality as thus defined would, i submit, leave no room for a sense of injustice, because the qualities which determine a man's position would be the qualities for which he deserves the position, desert in this sense being measurable by fitness. discontent with class distinctions must arise so long as a man feels that his position in a class limits and cramps his capacities below the level of happier fortunes. discontent is not altogether a bad thing, for it is often an _alias_ for hope; remove all discontent and you remove all guarantee for improvement. but discontent is of the malignant variety when it is allied with a sense of injustice; that is, of restrictions imposed upon one class for no assignable reason. the only sufficient reason for classes is the efficient discharge of social functions. the differences between the positions of men in social strata, supply some of the most effective motives for the struggle of life; and the effort of men to rise into the wealthy or the powerful class is not likely to cease so long as men are men; but they take an unworthy form so long as the ambition is simply to attain privileges unconnected with or disproportioned to the duties involved, and which therefore generate hatred to the social structure. if a class could be simply an organ for the discharge of certain functions, and each man in the whole body politic able to fit himself for that class, the injustice, and therefore the malignant variety of discontent, would disappear. of course, i am speaking only of justice. i do not attempt to define the proper ends of society, or regard justice in itself as a sufficient guarantee for all desirable results. such justice may exist even in a savage tribe or a low social type. there may be a just distribution of food among a shipwrecked crew, but the attainment of such justice would not satisfy all their wants. the abolition of misery, the elevation of a degraded class to a higher stage is a good thing in itself, unless it can be shown to involve some counterbalancing evil. i only argue that the ideal society would have this, among other attributes, and, therefore, that to secure such equality is a legitimate object of aspiration. i am speaking of "utopia". the time is indefinitely distant when a man will choose to be a sweep or a prime minister according to his aptitudes, and be equally able to learn his trade whether he is the son of a prime minister or a sweep. i only try to indicate the goal to which our efforts should be directed. but the goal thus defined implies methods different from that of some advocates of equality. they propose at once to assume the non-existence of a disagreeable difficulty, and to take men as equal in a sense in which they are not, in fact, equal. to me the problem appears to be, not the instant introduction of a new system, but a necessarily long and very gradual process of education directed towards the distant goal of making men equal in the desirable sense; and that problem, i add, is in the main a moral problem. it is idle to make institutions without making the qualities by which they must be worked. i do not say--far from it--that we are not to propose what may roughly be called external changes: new regulations and new forms of association, and so forth. on the contrary, i believe, as i have intimated, that this method corresponds to the normal order of development. the new institution protects and stimulates the germs of the moral instincts by which it must be worked. but i also hold that no mere rearrangement does any permanent good unless it calls forth a corresponding moral change, and, moreover, that the moral change, however slow and imperceptible, does incomparably more than any external change. if we assume our present institutions to be permanent, a slight improvement in moral qualities, a growth of sobriety, of chastity, of prudence and intellectual culture, would make an almost indefinite improvement in the condition of the masses. if, for example, englishmen ceased to drink, every english home might be made reasonably comfortable. the two kinds of change imply each other; but it is the most characteristic error of the designers of utopias to suppose a mere change of regulations without sufficiently attending to the moral implication. to attain equality, as i have tried to define the word, would imply vast moral changes, and therefore a long and difficult elaboration. we have not simply to make men happy, as they now count happiness, but to alter their views of happiness. the good old copy-books tell us that happiness is as common in poor men's huts as in rich men's palaces. we are apt to reply that the statement is a mockery and a lie. but it points to the consummation which in some simple social states has been partly realised, and which in some distant future may come to be an expression of facts. it is conceivable surely that rich men may some day find that there are modes of occupation which are more interesting as well as more useful than accumulation of luxuries or the keeping of horses for the turf; that, in place of propitiating fate by supporting the institution of beggary, there is an indefinite field for public-spirited energy in the way not of throwing crumbs to lazarus, but of promoting national culture of mind, of spirit, and of body; that benevolence does not mean simple self-sacrifice, except to the selfish, but the pursuit of a noble and most interesting career; that men's duty to their children is not to enable them to lead idle lives, but to fit them for playing a manly part in the great game of life; and that their relation to those whom they employ is not that of persons exploiting the energies of inferior animals, but of leaders of industry with a common interest in the prosperity of their occupation. people, no doubt, will hardly pursue business from motives of pure benevolence to others, and i do not think it desirable that they should. but the recognition that the pursuit of an honourable business is useful to others may, nevertheless, guide their energies, make the mere scramble for wealth disreputable, and induce them to labour for solid and permanent advantages. such moral changes are, i conceive, necessary conditions of the equality of which i have spoken; they must be brought about to some extent if the industrial organism is to free itself from the injustice necessarily implied in a mere blind struggle for personal comfort. moreover, however distant the final consummation may be, there are, i think, many indications of an approximation. nothing is more characteristic of modern society than the enormous development of the power of association for particular purposes. in former days a society had to form an independent organ, a corporation, a college, and so forth, to discharge any particular function, and the resulting organ was so distinct as to absorb the whole life of its members. the work of the fellow was absorbed in the corporate life of his corporation, and he had no distinct personal interests. now we are all members of societies by the dozen, and society is constantly acquiring the art of forming associations for any purpose, temporary or permanent, which imply no deep structural division, and unite people of all classes and positions. as the profounder lines are obliterated, the tendency to form separate castes, defended by personal privileges, and holding themselves apart from other classes, rapidly diminishes; and the corresponding prejudices are in process of diminution. but i can only hint at this principle. a correlative moral change in the poor is, of course, equally essential. america is described by mr. lowell in the noblest panegyric ever made upon his own country, as "she that lifts up the manhood of the poor". she has taken some rather queer methods of securing that object lately; yet, however imperfect the result, every american traveller will, i believe, sympathise with what mr. bryce has recently said in his great book. america is still the land of hope--the land where the poor man's horizon is not bounded by a vista of inevitable dependence on charity; where--in spite of some superficially grotesque results--every man can speak to every other without the oppressive sense of condescension; where a civil word from a poor man is not always a covert request for a gratuity and a tacit confession of dependence. "alas," says wordsworth, in one of his pregnant phrases, "the gratitude of men has oftener left me mourning" than their cold-heartedness; because, i presume, it is a painful proof of the rarity of kindness. when one man can only receive a gift and another can only bestow it as a payment on account of a long accumulation of the arrears of class injustice, the relations hardly admit of genuine gratitude on either side. what grates most painfully upon me, and, i suppose, upon most of us, is the "servility" of man; the acceptance of a beggar's code of morals as natural and proper for any one in a shabby coat. the more prominent evil just now, according to conservatives and pessimists, is the correlative one of the beggar on horseback; of the man who has found out that he can squeeze more out of his masters, and uses his power even without considering whether it is wise to drain your milch cow too exhaustively. a hope of better things is encouraged by schemes for arbitration and conciliation between employers and employed. but we require a moral change if arbitration is to imply something more than a truce between natural enemies, and conciliation to be something different from that employed by hood's butcher when, after hauling a sheep by main force into the slaughter-house, he exclaimed, "there, i've conciliated _him_!" the only principle on which arbitration can proceed is that the profits should be divided in such a way as to be a sufficient inducement to all persons concerned to give their money or their labour, mental or physical, to promote the prosperity of the business at large. but the reconciliation can only be complete when the capitalist is capable of employing his riches with enough public spirit and generosity to disarm mere envy by his obvious utility, and the poor man justifies his increased wages by his desire to secure permanent benefits and a better standard of life. in utopia, the question will still be, what plan shall be a sufficient inducement to the men who co-operate as employers or labourers, but the inducement will appeal to better motives, and the positions be so far equalised that each will be most tolerable to the man best fitted for it. here a vast series of problems opens about which i can only suggest the briefest hint. the principle i now urge is the old one, namely, that the usual mark of a quack remedy is the neglect of the moral aspect of a question. we want a state of opinion in which the poor are not objects to be slobbered over, but men to help in a manly struggle for moral as well as material elevation. a great deal is said, for example, about the evils of competition. it is remarkable indeed that few proposals for improvement even, so far as i can discover, tend to get rid of competition. co-operation, as tradesmen will tell us, is not an abolition of competition, but a competition of groups instead of units. "profit-sharing" is simply a plan by which workmen may take a direct share in the competition carried on by their masters. i do not mention this as any objection to such schemes, for i do not think that competition is an evil. i do not doubt the vast utility of schemes which tend to increase the intelligence and prudence of workmen, and give them an insight into the conditions of successful business. competition is no doubt bad so far as it means cheating or gambling. but competition is, it seems to me, inevitable so long as we are forced to apply the experimental method in practical life, and i fail to see what other method is available. competition means that thousands of people all over the world are trying to find out how they can supply more economically and efficiently the wants of other people, and that is a state of things to which i do not altogether object. equality in my sense implies that every one should be allowed to compete for every place that he can fill. the cry is merely, as it seems to me, an evasion of the fundamental difficulty. that difficulty is not that people compete, but that there are too many competitors; not that a man's seat at the table has to be decided by fair trial of his abilities, but that there is not room enough to seat everybody. malthus brought to the front the great stumbling-block in the way of utopian optimism. his theory was stated too absolutely, and his view of the remedy was undoubtedly crude. but he hit the real difficulty; and every sensible observer of social evils admits that the great obstacle to social improvement is that social residuum, the parasitic class, which multiplies so as to keep down the standard of living, and turns to bad purposes the increased power of man over nature. we have abolished pestilence and famine in their grimmest shape; if we have not abolished war, it no longer involves usurpation or slavery or the permanent desolation of the conquered; but one result is just this, that great masses can be regularly kept alive at the lowest stage of existence without being periodically swept away by a "black death" or a horde of brutal invaders. if we choose to turn our advantages to account in this way, no nostrums will put an end to poverty; and the evil can only be met--as i venture to assume--by an elevation of the moral level, involving all that is implied in spreading civilisation downward. the difficulty shows itself in discussions of the proper sphere of government. upon that vast and most puzzling topic i will only permit myself one remark. in former times the great aim of reformers was the limitation of the powers of government. they came to regard it as a kind of bogy or extra-natural force, which acted to oppress the poor in order to maintain certain personal privileges. some, like godwin of the "political justice," held that the millennium implied the abolition of government and the institution of anarchy. the early utilitarians held that government might be reformed by placing power in the hands of the subjects, who would use it only for their own interests, but still retained the prejudices engendered in their long struggle against authority, and held that its functions should still be gradually restricted on pain of developing a worse tyranny than the old. the government has been handed over to the people as they desired, but with the natural result that the new authorities not only use it to support their interests, but retain the conviction of its extra-natural, or perhaps supernatural, efficacy. it is regarded as an omnipotent body which can not only say (as it can) that whatever it pleases shall be legal, but that whatever is made a law in the juridical sense shall at once become a law of nature. even their individualist opponents, who profess to follow mr. herbert spencer, seem often to regard the power of government, not as one result of evolution, but as something external which can constrain and limit evolution. it corresponds to a kind of outside pressure which interferes arbitrarily with the so-called natural course of development, and should therefore be abolished. to me, on the contrary, it seems that government is simply one of the social organs, with powers strictly limited by its relation to others and by the nature of the sentiment upon which it rests. there are obvious reasons, in the centralisation of vast industrial interests, the "integration," as mr. spencer calls it, which is the correlative of differentiation, in the growing solidarity of different classes and countries, in the consequent growth of natural monopolies, which give a solid reason for believing that the functions of the central government may require expansion. to decide by any _à priori_ principle what should be the limits of this expansion is, to my mind, hopeless. the problem is one to be worked out by experiment,--that is, by many generations and by repeated blundering. a fool, said erasmus darwin, is a man who never makes an experiment; an experiment is a new mode of action which fails in its object ninety-nine times out of a hundred; therefore, wise men make more blunders, though they also make more discoveries than fools. now, experiments in government and social organisation are as necessary to improvement as any other kind of experiment, and probably still more liable to failure. one thing, however, is again obvious. the simple remedy of throwing everything upon government, of allowing it to settle the rate of wages, the hours of labour, the prices of commodities, and so forth, requires for success a moral and intellectual change which it is impossible to over-estimate. i will not repeat the familiar arguments which, to my mind, justify this statement. it is enough to say that there is no ground in the bare proposal for putting all manner of industrial regulations into the hands of government, for supposing that it would not drag down every one into pauperism instead of raising everybody to comfort. i often read essays of which the weakness seems to be that while they purpose to establish equality, they give no real reason for holding that it would not be an equality of beggary. if every one is to be supported, idle or not, the natural conclusion is universal pauperism. if people are to be forced to work by government, or their numbers to be somehow restricted by government, you throw a stress upon the powers of government which, i will not say, it is impossible that it should bear, but which, to speak in the most moderate terms, implies a complete reconstruction of the intelligence, morality, and conceptions of happiness of human beings. your government would have to be omniscient and purely benevolent as well as omnipotent, and i confess that i cannot see in the experience of those countries where the people have the most direct influence upon the government, any promise that this state of things will be realised just yet. thus, i return to my conclusion,--to my platitude, if you will. professor fawcett used to say that he could lay down no rules for the sphere of government influence, except this rule, that no interference would do good unless it helped people to help themselves. i think that the doctrine was characteristic of his good sense, and i fully subscribe to it. i heartily agree that equality in the sense i have given, is a most desirable ideal; i agree that we should do all that in us lies to promote it; i only say that our aims should be always in consistence with the principle that such equality is only possible and desirable in so far as the lowest classes are lifted to a higher standard, morally as well as physically. of course, that implies approval of every variety of new institutions and laws, of co-operation, of profit sharing, of boards of conciliation, of educational and other bodies for carrying light into darkness and elevating popular standards of life: but always with the express condition that no such institution is really useful except as it tends to foster a genuine spirit of independence, and to supply the moral improvement without which no outward change is worth a button. this is a truism, you may say. yet, when i read the proposals to get rid of poverty by summarily ordering people to be equal, or to extirpate pauperism by spending a million upon certain institutions for out-door relief, i cannot help thinking that it is a truism which requires to be enforced. the old political economy, you say, is obsolete; meaning, perhaps, that you do not mean to be bothered with its assertions; but the old economists had their merits. they were among the first who realised the vast importance of deeper social questions; they were the first who tried to treat them scientifically; they were not (i hope) the last who dared to speak unpleasant truths, simply because they believed them and believed in their importance. perhaps, indeed, they rather enjoyed the practice a little too much, and indulged in it a little too ostentatiously. yet, i am sure that, on the whole, it was a very useful practice, and one which is now scarcely as common as it should be. people are more anxious to pick holes in their statement of economic laws than to insist upon the essential fact that, after all, there are laws, not "laws" made by parliament, but laws of nature, which do, and will, determine the production and distribution of wealth, and the recognition of which is as important to human welfare as the recognition of physiological laws to the bodily health. holding this faith, the old economists were never tired of asserting what is the fundamental truth of so-called "individualism," that, after all we may say about the social development, the essential condition of all social improvement is not that we should have this or that system of regulations, but that the individual should be manly, self-respecting, doing his duty as well as getting his pay, and deeply convinced that nothing will do any permanent good which does not imply the elevation of the individual in his standards of honesty, independence, and good conduct. we can only say to lazarus: "you are probably past praying for, and all we can do is to save you from starving, by any means which do not encourage other people to fall into your weaknesses; but we recognise the right of your class for any and every possible help that can be given towards making men of them, and putting them on their legs by teaching them to stand upright". ethics and the struggle for existence. in his deeply-interesting romanes lecture, professor huxley has stated the opinion that the ethical progress of society depends upon our combating the "cosmic process" which we call the struggle for existence. since, as he adds, we inherit the "cosmic nature" which is the outcome of millions of years of severe training, it follows that the "ethical nature" may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. this is not a cheerful prospect. it is, as he admits, an audacious proposal to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm. we cannot help fearing that the microcosm may get the worst of it. professor huxley has not fully expanded his meaning, and says much to which i could cordially subscribe. but i think that the facts upon which he relies admit or require an interpretation which avoids the awkward conclusion. pain and suffering, as professor huxley tells us, are always with us, and even increase in quantity and intensity as evolution advances. the fact had been recognised in remote ages long before theories of evolution had taken their modern form. pessimism, from the time of the ancient hindoo philosophers to the time of their disciple, schopenhauer, has been in no want of evidence to support its melancholy conclusions. it would be idle to waste rhetoric in the attempt to recapitulate so familiar a position. though i am not a pessimist, i cannot doubt that there is more plausibility in the doctrine than i could wish. moreover, it may be granted that any attempt to explain or to justify the existence of evil is undeniably futile. it is not so much that the problem cannot be answered, as that it cannot even be asked in any intelligible sense. to "explain" a fact is to assign its causes--that is, to give the preceding set of facts out of which it arose. however far we might go backwards, we should get no nearer to perceiving any reason for the original fact. if we explain the fall of man by adam's eating the apple, we are quite unable to say why the apple should have been created. if we could discover a general theory of pain, showing, say, that it implied certain physiological conditions, we shall be no nearer to knowing why those physiological conditions should have been what they are. the existence of pain, in short, is one of the primary data of our problem, not one of the accidents, for which we can hope in any intelligible sense to account. to give any "justification" is equally impossible. the book of job really suggests an impossible, one may almost say a meaningless, problem. we can give an intelligible meaning to a demand for justice when we can suppose that a man has certain antecedent rights, which another man may respect or neglect. but this has no meaning as between the abstraction "nature" and the concrete facts which are themselves nature. it is unjust to meet equal claims differently. but it is not "unjust" in any intelligible sense that one being should be a monkey and another a man, any more than that part of me should be a hand and another head. the question would only arise if we supposed that the man and the monkey had existed before they were created, and had then possessed claims to equal treatment. the most logical theologians, indeed, admit that as between creature and creator there can be properly no question of justice. the pot and the potter cannot complain of each other. if the writer of job had been able to show that the virtuous were rewarded and the vicious punished, he would only have transferred the problem to another issue. the judge might be justified, but the creator would be condemned. how can it be just to place a being where he is certain to sin, and then to damn him for sinning? that is the problem to which no answer can be given; and which already implies a confusion of ideas. we apply the conception of justice in a sphere where it is not applicable, and naturally fail to get any intelligible answer. it is impossible to combine the conceptions of god as the creator and god as the judge; and the logical straits into which the attempt leads are represented by the endless free-will controversy. i will not now enter that field of controversy: and i will only indicate what seems to me to be the position which we must accept in any scientific discussion of our problem. hume, as i think, laid down the true principle when he said that there could be no _à priori_ proof of a matter of fact. an _à priori_ truth is a truth which cannot be denied without self-contradiction, but there can never be a logical consideration in supposing the non-existence of any fact whatever. the ordinary appeal to the truths of pure mathematics is, therefore, beside the question. all such truths are statements of the precise equivalence of two propositions. to say that there are four things is also to say that there are two pairs of things: to say that there is a plane triangle is also to say that there is a plane trilateral. one statement involves the other, because the difference is not in the thing described, but in our mode of contemplating it. we, therefore, cannot make one assertion and deny the other without implicit contradiction. from such results, again, is evolved (in the logical sense of evolution) the whole vast system of mathematical truths. the complexity of that system gives the erroneous idea that we can, somehow, attain a knowledge of facts, independently of experience. we fail to observe that even the most complex mathematical formula is simply a statement of an exact equivalence of two assertions; and that, till we know by experience the truth of one statement, we can never infer the truth, in fact, of the other. however elaborate may be the evolutions of mathematical truth, they can never get beyond the germs out of which they are evolved. they are valid precisely because the most complex statement is always the exact equivalent of the simpler, out of which it is constructed. they remain to the end truths of number or truths of geometry. they cannot, by themselves, tell us that things exist which can be counted or which can be measured. the whole claim, however elaborate, still requires its point of suspension. we may put their claims to absolute or necessary truth as high as we please; but they cannot give us by themselves a single fact. i can show, for example, that a circle has an infinite number of properties, all of which are virtually implied in the very existence of a circle. but that the circle or that space itself exists, is not a necessary truth, but a datum of experience. it is quite true that such truths are not, in one sense, empirical; they can be discovered without any change of experience; for, by their very nature, they refer to the constant element of experience, and are true on the supposition of the absolute changelessness of the objects contemplated. but it is a fallacy to suppose that, because independent of particular experiences, they are, therefore, independent of experience in general. now, if we agree, as huxley would have agreed, that hume's doctrine is true, if we cannot know a single fact except from experience, we are limited in moral questions, as in all others, to elaborating and analysing our experience, and can never properly transcend it. a scientific treatment of an ethical question, at any rate, must take for granted all the facts of human nature. it can show what morality actually is; what are, in fact, the motives which make men moral, and what are the consequences of moral conduct. but it cannot get outside of the universe and lay down moral principles independent of all influences. i am well aware that in speaking of ethical questions upon this ground, i am exposed to many expressions of metaphysical contempt. i may hope to throw light upon the usual working of morality; but my theory of the facts cannot make men moral of itself. i cannot hope, for example, to show that immorality involves a contradiction, for i know that immorality exists. i cannot even hope to show that it is necessarily productive of misery to the individual, for i know that some people take pleasure in vicious conduct. i cannot deduce facts from morals, for i must consistently regard morals as part of the observed consequences of human nature under given conditions. metaphysicians may, if they can, show me a more excellent method. i admit that their language sometimes enables them to take what, in words at least, is a sublimer position than mine. kant's famous phrase, "thou must, therefore thou canst," is impressive. and yet, it seems to me to involve an obvious piece of logical juggling. it is quite true that whenever it is my duty to act in a certain way, it must be a possibility; but that is only because an impossibility cannot be a duty. it is not my duty to fly, because i have not wings; and conversely, no doubt, it would follow that _if_ it were my duty i must possess the organs required. thus understood, however, the phrase loses its sublimity, and yet, it is only because we have so to understand it, that it has any plausibility. admitting, however, that people who differ from me can use grander language, and confessing my readiness to admit error whenever they can point to a single fact attainable by the pure reason, i must keep to the humbler path. i speak of the moral instincts as of others, simply from the point of view of experience: i cannot myself discover a single truth from the abstract principle of non-contradiction; and am content to take for granted that the world exists as we know it to exist, without seeking to deduce its peculiarities by any high _à priori_ road. upon this assumption, the question really resolves itself into a different one. we can neither explain nor justify the existence of pain; but, of course, we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, pain predominates over pleasure; and we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, the "cosmic processes" tend to promote or discourage virtuous conduct. does the theory of the "struggle for existence" throw any new light upon the general problem? i am quite unable to see, for my own part, that it really makes any difference: evil exists; and the question whether evil predominates over good, can only, i should say, be decided by an appeal to experience. one source of evil is the conflict of interests. every beast preys upon others; and man, according to the old saying, is a wolf to man. all that the darwinian or any other theory can do is, to enable us to trace the consequences of this fact in certain directions; but it neither creates the fact nor makes it more or less an essential part of the process. it "explains" certain phenomena, in the sense of showing their connection with previous phenomena, but does not show why the phenomena should present themselves at all. if we indulge our minds in purely fanciful constructions, we may regard the actual system as good or bad, just as we choose to imagine for its alternative a better or a worse system. if everybody had been put into a world where there was no pain, or where each man could get all he wanted without interfering with his neighbours, we may fancy that things would have been pleasanter. if the struggle, which we all know to exist, had no effect in preventing the "survival of the fittest," things--so, at least, some of us may think--would have been worse. but such fancies have nothing to do with scientific inquiries. we have to take things as they are and make the best of them. the common feeling, no doubt, is different. the incessant struggle between different races suggests a painful view of the universe, as hobbes' natural state of war suggested painful theories as to human nature. war is evidently immoral, we think; and a doctrine which makes the whole process of evolution a process of war must be radically immoral too. the struggle, it is said, demands "ruthless self-assertion" and the hunting down of all competitors; and such phrases certainly have an unpleasant sound. but in the first place, the use of the epithets implies an anthropomorphism to which we have no right so long as we are dealing with the inferior species. we are then in a region to which such ideas have no direct application, and where the moral sentiments exist only in germ, if they can properly be said to exist at all. is it fair to call a wolf ruthless because he eats a sheep and fails to consider the transaction from the sheep's point of view? we must surely admit that if the wolf is without mercy he is also without malice. we call an animal ferocious because a man who acted in the same way would be ferocious. but the man is really ferocious because he is really aware of the pain which he inflicts. the wolf, i suppose, has no more recognition of the sheep's feelings than a man has of feelings in the oyster or the potato. for him, they are simply non-existent; and it is just as inappropriate to think of the wolf as cruel, as it would be to call the sheep cruel for eating grass. are we to say that "nature" is cruel because the arrangement increases the sum of undeserved suffering? that is a problem which i do not feel able to examine; but it is, at least, obvious that it cannot be answered off-hand in the affirmative. to the individual sheep it matters nothing whether he is eaten by the wolf or dies of disease or starvation. he has to die any way, and the particular way is unimportant. the wolf is simply one of the limiting forces upon sheep, and if he were removed others would come into play. the sheep, left to himself, would still give a practical illustration of the doctrine of malthus. if, as evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf tends to improve the breed of sheep, to encourage him to think more and to sharpen his wits, the sheep may be, on the whole, the better for the wolf, in this sense at least: that the sheep of a wolfless region might lead a more wretched existence, and be less capable animals and more subject to disease and starvation than the sheep in a wolf-haunted region. the wolf may, so far, be a blessing in disguise. this suggests another obvious remark. when we speak of the struggle for existence, the popular view seems to construe this into the theory that the world is a mere cockpit, in which one race carries on an interminable struggle with the other. if the wolves are turned in with the sheep, the first result will be that all the sheep will become mutton, and the last that there will be one big wolf with all the others inside him. but this is contrary to the essence of the doctrine. every race depends, we all hold, upon its environment, and the environment includes all the other races. if some, therefore, are in conflict, others are mutually necessary. if the wolf ate all the sheep, and the sheep ate all the grass, the result would be the extirpation of all the sheep and all the wolves, as well as all the grass. the struggle necessarily implies reciprocal dependence in a countless variety of ways. there is not only a conflict, but a system of tacit alliances. one species is necessary to the existence of others, though the multiplication of some implies also the dying out of particular rivals. the conflict implies no cruelty, as i have said, and the alliance no goodwill. the wolf neither loves the sheep (except as mutton) nor hates him; but he depends upon him as absolutely as if he were aware of the fact. the sheep is one of the wolf's necessaries of life. when we speak of the struggle for existence we mean, of course, that there is at any given period a certain equilibrium between all the existing species; it changes, though it changes so slowly that the process is imperceptible and difficult to realise even to the scientific imagination. the survival of any species involves the disappearance of rivals no more than the preservation of allies. the struggle, therefore, is so far from internecine that it necessarily involves co-operation. it cannot even be said that it necessarily implies suffering. people, indeed, speak as though the extinction of a race involved suffering in the same way as the slaughter of an individual. it is plain that this is not a necessary, though it may sometimes be the actual result. a corporation may be suppressed without injury to its members. every individual will die before long, struggle or no struggle. if the rate of reproduction fails to keep up with the rate of extinction, the species must diminish. but this might happen without any increase of suffering. if the boys in a district discovered how to take birds' eggs, they might soon extirpate a species; but it does not follow that the birds would individually suffer. perhaps they would feel themselves relieved from a disagreeable responsibility. the process by which a species is improved, the dying out of the least fit, implies no more suffering than we know to exist independently of any doctrine as to a struggle. when we use anthropomorphic language, we may speak of "self-assertion". but "self-assertion," minus the anthropomorphism, means self-preservation; and that is merely a way of describing the fact that an animal or plant which is well adapted to its conditions of life is more likely to live than an animal which is ill-adapted. i have some difficulty in imagining how any other arrangement can even be supposed possible. it seems to be almost an identical proposition that the healthiest and strongest will generally live longest; and the conception of a "struggle for existence" only enables us to understand how this results in certain progressive modifications of the species. if we could ever for a moment have fancied that there was no pain and disease, and that some beings were not more liable than others to those evils, i might admit that the new doctrine has made the world darker. as it is, it seems to me that it leaves the data just what they were before, and only shows us that they have certain previously unsuspected bearings upon the history of the world. one other point must be mentioned. not only are species interdependent as well as partly in competition, but there is an absolute dependence in all the higher species between its different members which may be said to imply a _de facto_ altruism, as the dependence upon other species implies a _de facto_ co-operation. every animal, to say nothing else, is absolutely dependent for a considerable part of its existence upon its parents. the young bird or beast could not grow up unless its mother took care of it for a certain period. there is, therefore, no struggle as between mother and progeny; but, on the contrary, the closest possible alliance. otherwise, life would be impossible. the young being defenceless, their parents could exterminate them if they pleased, and by so doing would exterminate the race. the parental relation, of course, constantly involves a partial sacrifice of the mother to her young. she has to go through a whole series of operations, which strain her own strength and endanger her own existence, but which are absolutely essential to the continuance of the race. it may be anthropomorphic to attribute any maternal emotions of the human kind to the animal. the bird, perhaps, sits upon her eggs because they give her an agreeable sensation, or, if you please, from a blind instinct which somehow determines her to the practice. she does not look forward, we may suppose, to bringing up a family, or speculate upon the delights of domestic affection. i only say that as a fact she behaves in a way which is at once injurious to her own chances of individual survival, and absolutely necessary to the survival of the species. the abnormal bird who deserts her nest escapes many dangers; but if all birds were devoid of the instinct, the birds would not survive a generation. now, i ask, what is the difference which takes place when the monkey gradually loses his tail and sets up a superior brain? is it properly to be described as a development or improvement of the "cosmic process," or as the beginning of a prolonged contest against it? in the first place, so far as man becomes a reasonable being, capable of foresight and of the adoption of means to ends, he recognises the nature of these tacit alliances. he believes it to be his interest not to exterminate everything, but to exterminate those species alone whose existence is incompatible with his own. the wolf eats every sheep that he comes across as long as his appetite lasts. if there are too many wolves, the process is checked by the starvation of the supernumerary eaters. man can maintain just as many sheep as he wants, and may also proportion the numbers of his own species to the possibilities of future supply. many of the lower species thus become subordinate parts of the social organism--that is to say, of the new equilibrium which has been established. there is so far a reciprocal advantage. the sheep that is preserved with a view to mutton gets the advantage, though he is not kept with a view to his own advantage. of all arguments for vegetarianism, none is so weak as the argument from humanity. the pig has a stronger interest than any one in the demand for bacon. if all the world were jewish, there would be no pigs at all. he has to pay for his privileges by an early death; but he makes a good bargain of it. he dies young, and, though we can hardly infer the "love of the gods," we must admit that he gets a superior race of beings to attend to his comforts, moved by the strongest possible interest in his health and vigour, and induced by its own needs, perhaps, to make him a little too fat for comfort, but certainly also to see that he has a good sty, and plenty to eat every day of his life. other races, again, are extirpated as "ruthlessly" as in the merely instinctive struggle for existence. we get rid of wolves and snakes as well as we can, and more systematically than can be done by their animal competitors. the process does not necessarily involve cruelty, and certainly does not involve a diminution of the total of happiness. the struggle for existence means the substitution of a new system of equilibrium, in which one of the old discords has been removed, and the survivors live in greater harmony. if the wolf is extirpated as an internecine enemy, it is that there may be more sheep when sheep have become our allies and the objects of our earthly providence. the result may be, perhaps i might say must be, a state in which, on the whole, there is a greater amount of life supported on the planet; and therefore, as those will think who are not pessimists, a decided gain on the balance. at any rate, the difference so far is that the condition which was in all cases necessary, is now consciously recognised as necessary; and that we deliberately aim at a result which always had to be achieved on penalty of destruction. so far, again, as morality can be established on purely prudential grounds, the same holds good of relations between human beings themselves. men begin to perceive that, even from a purely personal point of view, peace is preferable to war. if war is unhappily still prevalent, it is at least not war in which every clan is fighting with its neighbours, and where conquest means slavery or extirpation. millions of men are at peace within the limits of a modern state, and can go about their business without cutting each other's throats. when they fight with other nations they do not enslave nor massacre their prisoners. starting from the purely selfish ground hobbes could prove conclusively that everybody benefited by the social compact which substituted peace and order for the original state of war. is this, then, a reversal of the old state of things--a combating of a "cosmic process"? i should rather say that it is a development of the tacit alliances, and a modification so far of the direct or internecine conflict. both were equally implied in the older conditions, and both still exist. some races form alliances, while others are crowded out of existence. of course, i cease to do some things which i should have done before. i don't attack the first man i meet in the street and take his scalp. one reason is that i don't expect he will take mine; for, if i did, i fear that, even as a civilised being, i should try to anticipate his intentions. this merely means that we have both come to see that we have a common interest in keeping the peace. and this, again, merely means that the tacit alliance which was always an absolutely necessary condition of the survival of the species has now been extended through a wider area. the species could not have got on at all if there had not been so much alliance as is necessary for its reproduction and for the preservation of its young for some years of helplessness. the change is simply that the small circle which included only the primitive family or class has extended, so that we can meet members of the same nation, or, it may be, of the same race, on terms which were previously confined to the minor group. we have still to exterminate and still to preserve. the mode of employing our energies has changed, but not the essential nature. morality proper, however, has so far not emerged. it begins when sympathy begins; when we really desire the happiness of others; or, as kant says, when we treat other men as an end and not simply as a means. undoubtedly this involves a new principle, no less than the essential principle of all true morality. still, i have to ask whether it implies a combating or a continuation of a cosmic process. now, as i have observed, even the animal mother shows what i have called a _de facto_ altruism. she has instincts which, though dangerous to the individual, are essential for the race. the human mother sacrifices herself with a consciousness of the results to herself, and her personal fears are overcome by the strength of her affections. she intentionally endures a painful death to save them from suffering. the animal sacrifices herself, but without foresight of the result, and therefore without moral worth. this is merely the most striking exemplification of the general process of the development of morality. conduct is first regarded purely with a view to the effects upon the agent, and is therefore enforced by extrinsic penalties, by consequences, that is, supposed to be attached to us by the will of some ruler, natural or supernatural. the instinct which comes to regard such conduct as bad in itself, which implies a dislike of giving pain to others, and not merely a dislike to the gallows, grows up under such probation until the really moralised being acquires feelings which make the external penalty superfluous. this, indubitably, is the greatest of all changes, the critical fact which decides whether we are to regard conduct simply as useful, or also to regard it as moral in the strictest sense. but i should still call it a development and not a reversal of the previous process. the conduct which we call virtuous is the same conduct externally which we before regarded as useful. the difference is that the simple fact of its utility, that is, of its utility to others and to the race in general, has now become also the sufficient motive for the action as well as the implicit cause of the action. in the earlier stages, when no true sympathy existed, men and animals were still forced to act in a certain way because it was beneficial to others. they now act in that way because they are conscious that it is beneficial to others. the whole history of moral evolution seems to imply this. we may go back to a period at which the moral law is identified with the general customs of the race; at which there is no perception of any clear distinction between that which is moral and that which is simply customary; between that which is imposed by a law in the strict sense and that which is dictated by general moral principles. in such a state of things, the motives for obedience partake of the nature of "blind instincts". no definite reason for them is present to the mind of the agent, and it does not occur to him even to demand a reason. "our fathers did so and we do so" is the sole and sufficient explanation of their conduct. thus instinct again may be traced back by evolutionists to the earliest period at which the instincts implied in the relations between the sexes or between parents and offspring, existed. they were the germ from which has sprung all morality such as we now recognise. morality, then, implies the development of certain instincts which are essential to the race, but which may, in an indefinite number of cases, be injurious to the individual. the particular mother is killed because she obeys her natural instincts; but, if it were not for mothers and their instincts, the race would come to an end. professor huxley speaks of the "fanatical individualism" of our time as failing to construct morality from the analogy of the cosmic process. an individualism which regards the cosmic process as equivalent simply to an internecine struggle of each against all, must certainly fail to construct a satisfactory morality upon such terms, and i will add that any individualism which fails to recognise fully the social character, which regards society as an aggregate instead of an organism, will, in my opinion, find itself in difficulties. but i also submit that the development of the instincts which directly correspond to the needs of the race, is merely another case in which we aim consciously at an end which was before an unintentional result of our actions. every race, above the lowest, has instincts which are only intelligible by the requirements of the race; and has both to compete with some and to form alliances with others of its fellow occupants of the planet. both in the unmoralised condition and in that in which morality has become most developed, these instincts have common characteristics, and may be regarded as conditions of the power of the race to which they belong to maintain its position in the world, and, speaking roughly, to preserve or increase its own vitality. i will not pause to insist upon this so far as regards many qualities which are certainly moral, though they may be said to refer primarily to the individual. that chastity and temperance, truthfulness and energy, are, on the whole, advantages both to the individual and to the race, does not, i fancy, require elaborate proof; nor need i argue at length that the races in which they are common will therefore have inevitable advantages in the struggle for existence. of all qualities which enable a race to hold its own, none is more important than the power of organising individually, politically, and socially, and that power implies the existence of justice and the instinct of mutual confidence-in short, all the social virtues. the difficulty seems to be felt in regard to those purely altruistic impulses, which, at first glance at any rate, make it apparently our duty to preserve those who would otherwise be unfit to live. virtue, says professor huxley, is directed "not so much to the survival of the fittest," as to the "fitting of as many as possible to survive". i do not dispute the statement, i think it true in a sense; but i have a difficulty as to its application. morality, it is obvious, must be limited by the conditions in which we are placed. what is impossible is not a duty. one condition plainly is that the planet is limited. there is only room for a certain number of living beings; and though we may determine what shall be the number, we cannot arbitrarily say that it shall be indefinitely great. it is one consequence that we do, in fact, go on suppressing the unfit, and cannot help going on suppressing them. is it desirable that it should be otherwise? should we wish, for example, that america could still be a hunting-ground for savages? is it better that it should contain a million red men or sixty millions of civilised whites? undoubtedly the moralist will say with absolute truth that the methods of extirpation adopted by spaniards and englishmen were detestable. i need not say that i agree with him, and hope that such methods may be abolished wherever any remnant of them exists. but i say so partly because i believe in the struggle for existence. this process underlies morality, and operates whether we are moral or not. the most civilised race, that which has the greatest knowledge, skill, power of organisation, will, i hold, have an inevitable advantage in the struggle, even if it does not use the brutal means which are superfluous as well as cruel. all the natives who lived in america a hundred years ago would be dead now in any case, even if they had invariably been treated with the greatest humanity, fairness, and consideration. had they been unable to suit themselves to new conditions of life, they would have suffered an euthanasia instead of a partial extirpation; and had they suited themselves they would either have been absorbed or become a useful part of the population. to abolish the old brutal method is not to abolish the struggle for existence, but to make the result depend upon a higher order of qualities than those of the mere piratical viking. mr. pearson has been telling us in his most interesting book, that the negro may not improbably hold his own in africa. i cannot say i regard this as an unmixed evil. why should there not be parts of the world in which races of inferior intelligence or energy should hold their own? i am not so anxious to see the whole earth covered by an indefinite multiplication of the cockney type. but i only quote the suggestion for another reason. till recent years the struggle for existence was carried on as between europeans and negroes by simple violence and brutality. the slave trade and its consequences have condemned the whole continent to barbarism. that, undoubtedly, was part of the struggle for existence. but, if mr. pearson's guess should be verified, the results have been so far futile as well as disastrous. the negro has been degraded, and yet, after all our brutality, we cannot take his place. therefore, besides the enormous evils to slave-trading countries themselves, the lowering of their moral tone, the substitution of piracy for legitimate commerce, and the degradation of the countries which bought the slaves, the superior race has not even been able to suppress the inferior. but the abolition of this monstrous evil does not involve the abolition but the humanisation of the struggle. the white man, however merciful he becomes, may gradually extend over such parts of the country as are suitable to him; and the black man will hold the rest and acquire such arts and civilisation as he is capable of appropriating. the absence of cruelty would not alter the fact that the fittest race would extend; but it may ensure that whatever is good in the negro may have a chance of development in his own sphere, and that success in the struggle will be decided by more valuable qualities. without venturing further into a rather speculative region, i need only indicate the bearing of such considerations upon problems nearer home. it is often complained that the tendency of modern civilisation is to preserve the weakly, and therefore to lower the vitality of the race. this seems to involve inadmissible assumptions. in the first place, the process by which the weaker are preserved consists in suppressing various conditions unfavourable to human life in general. sanitary legislation, for example, aims at destroying the causes of many of the diseases from which our forefathers suffered. if we can suppress the smallpox, we of course save many weakly children, who would have died had they been attacked. but we also remove one of the causes which weakened the constitutions of many of the survivors. i do not know by what right we can say that such legislation, or again, the legislation which prevents the excessive labour of children, does more harm by preserving the weak than it does good by preventing the weakening of the strong. one thing is at any rate clear: to preserve life is to increase the population, and therefore to increase the competition; or, in other words, to intensify the struggle for existence. the process is as broad as it is long. if we could be sure that every child born should grow up to maturity, the result would be to double the severity of the competition for support, what we should have to show, therefore, in order to justify the inference of a deterioration due to this process, would be, not that it simply increased the number of the candidates for living, but that it gave to the feebler candidates a differential advantage; that they are now more fitted than they were before for ousting their superior neighbours from the chances of support. but i can see no reason for supposing such a consequence to be probable or even possible. the struggle for existence, as i have suggested, rests upon the unalterable facts that the world is limited and population elastic. under all conceivable circumstances we shall still have in some way or other to proportion our numbers to our supplies; and under all circumstances those who are fittest by reason of intellectual or moral or physical qualities will have the best chance of occupying good places, and leaving descendants to supply the next generation. it is surely not less true that in the civilised as much as in the most barbarous race, the healthiest are the most likely to live, and the most likely to be ancestors. if so, the struggle will still be carried on upon the same principles, though certainly in a different shape. it is true that this suggests one of the most difficult questions of the time. it is suggested, for example, that in some respects the "highest" specimens of the race are not the healthiest or the fittest. genius, according to some people, is a variety of disease, and intellectual power is won by a diminution of reproductive power. a lower race, again, if we measure "high" and "low" by intellectual capacity, may oust a higher race, because it can support itself more cheaply, or, in other words, because it is more efficient for industrial purposes. without presuming to pronounce upon such questions, i will simply ask whether this does not interpret professor huxley's remark about that "cosmic nature" which is still so strong, and which is likely to be strong so long as men require stomachs. we have not, i think, to suppress it, but to adapt it to new circumstances. we are engaged in working out a gigantic problem: what is the best, in the sense of the most efficient, type of human being? what is the best combination of brains and stomach? we turn out saints, who are "too good to live," and philosophers, who have run too rapidly to brains. they do not answer in practice, because they are instruments too delicate for the rough work of daily life. they may give us a foretaste of qualities which will be some day possible for the average man; of intellectual and moral qualities, which, though now exceptional, may become commonplace. but the best stock for the race are those in whom we have been lucky enough to strike out the happy combination, in which greater intellectual power is produced without the loss of physical vigour. such men, it is probable, will not deviate so widely from the average type. the reconciliation of the two conditions can only be effected by a very gradual process of slowly edging onwards in the right direction. meanwhile the theory of a struggle for existence justifies us, instead of condemning us, for preserving the delicate child, who may turn out to be a newton or a keats, because he will leave to us the advantage of his discoveries or his poems, while his physical feebleness assures us that he will not propagate his race. this may lead to a final question. does the morality of a race strengthen or weaken it; fit it to hold its own in the general equilibrium, or make its extirpation by low moral races more probable? i do not suppose that anybody would deny what i have already suggested, that the more moral the race, the more harmonious and the better organised, the better it is fitted for holding its own. but if this be admitted, we must also admit that the change is not that it has ceased to struggle, but that it struggles by different means. it holds its own, not merely by brute force, but by justice, humanity, and intelligence, while, it may be added, the possession of such qualities does not weaken the brute force, where such a quality is still required. the most civilised races are, of course, also the most formidable in war. but, if we take the opposite alternative, i must ask how any quality which really weakens the vitality of the race can properly be called moral. i should entirely repudiate any rule of conduct which could be shown to have such a tendency. this, indeed, indicates what seems to me to be the moral difficulty with most people. charity, you say, is a virtue; charity increases beggary, and so far tends to produce a feebler population; therefore, a moral quality tends doubly to diminish the vigour of a nation. the answer is, of course, obvious, and i am confident that professor huxley would have so far agreed with me. it is that all charity which fosters a degraded class is therefore immoral. the "fanatical individualism" of to-day has its weaknesses; but in this matter it seems to me that we see the weakness of the not less fanatical "collectivism". the question, in fact, how far any of the socialistic or ethical schemes of to-day are right or wrong, depends upon our answer to the question how far they tend to produce a vigorous or an enervated population. if i am asked to subscribe to general booth's scheme, i inquire first whether the scheme is likely to increase or diminish the number of helpless hangers-on upon the efficient part of society. will the whole nation consist in larger proportions of active and responsible workers, or of people who are simply burdens upon the real workers? the answer decides not only the question whether it is expedient, but also the question whether it is right or wrong, to support the proposed scheme. every charitable action is so far a good action that it implies sympathy for suffering; but if it is so much in want of prudence that it increases the evil which it means to remedy, it becomes for that reason a bad action. to develop sympathy without developing foresight is just one of the one-sided developments which fail to constitute a real advance in morality, though i will not deny that it may incidentally lead to an advance. i hold, then, that the "struggle for existence" belongs to an underlying order of facts to which moral epithets cannot be properly applied. it denotes a condition of which the moralist has to take account, and to which morality has to be adapted; but which, just because it is a "cosmic process," cannot be altered, however much we may alter the conduct which it dictates. under all conceivable circumstances, the race has to adapt itself to the environment, and that necessarily implies a conflict as well as an alliance. the preservation of the fittest, which is surely a good thing, is merely another aspect of the dying out of the unfit, which is hardly a bad thing. the feast which nature spreads before us, according to malthus's metaphor, is only sufficient for a limited number of guests, and the one question is how to select them. the tendency of morality is to humanise the struggle, to minimise the suffering of those who lose the game; and to offer the prizes to the qualities which are advantageous to all, rather than to those which increase and intensify the bitterness of the conflict. this implies the growth of foresight, which is an extension of the earlier instinct, and enables men to adapt themselves to the future and to learn from the past, as well as to act up to immediate impulse of present events. it implies still more the development of the sympathy which makes every man feel for the hurts of all, and which, as social organisation is closer, and the dependence of each constituent atom upon the whole organisation is more vividly realised, extends the range of a man's interests beyond his own private needs. in that sense, again, it must stimulate "collectivism" at the expense of a crude individualism, and condemns the doctrine which, as professor huxley puts it, would forbid us to restrain the member of a community from doing his best to destroy it. to restrain such conduct is surely to carry on the conflict against all anti-social agents or tendencies. for i should certainly hold any form of collectivism to be immoral which denied the essential doctrine of the abused individualist, the necessity, that is, for individual responsibility. we have surely to suppress the murderer, as our ancestors suppressed the wolf. we have to suppress both the external enemies, the noxious animals whose existence is incompatible with our own, and the internal enemies which are injurious elements in the society itself. that is, we have to work for the same end of eliminating the least fit. our methods are changed; we desire to suppress poverty, not to extirpate the poor man. we give inferior races a chance of taking whatever place they are fit for, and try to supplant them with the least possible severity if they are unfit for any place. but the suppression of poverty supposes not the confiscation of wealth, which would hardly suppress poverty in the long run, nor even the adoption of a system of living which would enable the idle and the good-for-nothing to survive. the progress of civilisation depends, i should say, on the extension of the sense of duty which each man owes to society at large. that involves such a constitution of society that, although we abandon the old methods of hanging and flogging and shooting down--methods which corrupted the inflicters of punishment by diminishing their own sense of responsibility--may give an advantage to the prudent and industrious, and make it more probable that they will be the ancestors of the next generation. a system which should equalise the advantages of the energetic and the helpless would begin by demoralising, and would very soon lead to an unprecedented intensification of the struggle for existence. the probable result of a ruthless socialism would be the adoption of very severe means for suppressing those who did not contribute their share of work. but, in any case, as it seems, we never get away or break away from the inevitable fact. if individual ends could be suppressed, if every man worked for the good of society as energetically as for his own, we should still feel the absolute necessity of proportioning the whole body to the whole supplies obtainable from the planet, and to preserve the equilibrium of mankind relatively to the rest of nature. that day is probably distant; but even upon that hypothesis the struggle for existence would still be with us, and there would be the same necessity for preserving the fittest and killing out, as gently as might be, those who were unfit. social rights and duties _the volumes of the series already published are_:- +civilisation of christendom, and other studies.+ by bernard bosanquet, m.a. (oxon.), hon. ll.d. (glasgow). 4s. 6d. +short studies in character.+ by sophie bryant, d.sc. (lond.). 4s. 6d. +social rights and duties.+ by leslie stephen. 2 vols., 9s. other volumes to follow by-professor a. sidgwick, professor d. g. ritchie, and j. h. muirhead, esq. (the editor). the ethical library social rights and duties addresses to ethical societies leslie stephen in two volumes vol. ii. [illustration: logo] london swan sonnenschein & co., limited new york: macmillan & co. 1896 aberdeen university press. note. the following chapters are chiefly a republication of addresses delivered to the ethical societies of london. some have previously appeared in the _international journal of ethics_, the _national review_, and the _contemporary review_. the author has to thank the proprietors of these periodicals for their consent to the republication. l. s. contents. page heredity, 1 punishment, 55 luxury, 95 the duties of authors, 137 the vanity of philosophising, 183 forgotten benefactors, 225 heredity. i found, the other day, that an address upon heredity had been announced, of which i was to be the deliverer. i admit that i was fully responsible for the statement, although, for reasons with which i need not trouble you, i was not quite prepared for it in this form. i mention this fact in order simply to say that the title may possibly give rise to false expectations. i am quite incompetent to express any opinion of the slightest scientific value upon certain problems suggested by that rather ugly word "heredity". the question as to the precise relationship between any organism and its parents or remoter ancestors, is one of the highest interest. the solution, for example, of the problem, whether is it possible for a living being to transmit to its descendants qualities which have only been acquired during its own lifetime, has an important bearing upon the general theory of evolution. but i have nothing whatever to suggest in regard to that problem. i simply take it for granted that there is some relation between parents and children: and a relation, speaking in the most general way, such that the qualities with which we start in life, resemble more or less closely those of our ancestors. i may also assume that, in some form or other, the doctrine of evolution must be accepted: and that all living things now in the world are the descendants, more or less modified, of the population which preceded them. i proceed to ask whether, as some people appear to believe, the acceptance of this doctrine in the most unqualified form, would introduce any difficulty into our primary ethical conceptions. i will also at once give my answer. i do not believe that it introduces any difficulty whatever. i do believe that the general theory of evolution tends in very important ways to give additional distinctness to certain ethical doctrines; although, to go at all fully into the how and the why would take me beyond my present purpose. all that i have to argue to-day is, that a belief in "heredity" need not be a stumbling-block to any reasonable person. i cannot doubt that the popular mind is vaguely alarmed by the doctrine. i read, the other day, a novel by a well-known author, of which, so far as i can remember, the main substance was as follows: a virtuous doctor (his virtue had some limitations) studied the problem of heredity, and had read darwin, and herbert spencer, and weissmann, and all the proper authorities. his own researches are carefully described, with the apparent assumption that they were both profound and of tremendous significance. he had, it appears, accumulated a vast amount of material; and his method was to cut out slips from newspapers, whenever they recorded any events in his own family history, and to preserve them in a mysterious cabinet. these investigations proved that there was a decided family likeness running through the descendants of a common ancestor. as a general rule, they had all belonged to the class "blackguard". from this result he inferred that there was no god and no soul. his relations were dreadfully scandalised: one was converted to his views; but the others contrived diabolical plots for setting fire to these marvellous collections and so stopping the contagion of these dreadful doctrines at their source. it struck me, i confess, that instead of burning the collections, they would have done better to ask him what was the connection between his premisses and his conclusions. what was this terrible, heart-paralysing truth which the poor man had discovered? has any human being ever doubted, since mothers were invented, that children are apt to resemble their parents? i do not personally remember the fact, but i should be prepared to bet, if the point could be settled, that, before i was a month old,--and in those days neither darwin nor weissmann had published a line,--my nurse and my mother had affirmed that the baby was like his papa. that, at any rate, is a remark, the omission of which would show more originality than the assertion. if i desired, again, to produce classical authority for the importance of race, i should not have to extend my researches beyond the latin grammar. if, once more, we look into the writings of famous theologians, we meet it everywhere. i take the first that comes to hand. "good men," says calvin, "and beyond all others, augustine, have laboured to demonstrate, that we are not corrupted by any adventitious means but that we derive an innate depravity from our very birth." the denial of this was an instance of consummate impudence--reserved, as calvin shows, for such wicked heretics as pelagius. the doctrine of heredity, in short, in a theological version, is essentially involved in the dogmatic foundations of the orthodox creed. i have no doubt that an investigation of the reasonings of augustine and others would exhibit much affinity to modern controversy, though in a very different terminology. whatever we may think of its merits, the doctrine of original sin implies that a depraved nature may have been transmitted to the whole human race; and, if the commonly alleged cause of the original depravity strikes us as insufficient, it is, at least, a very familiar argument of divines, that the doctrine corresponds to undeniable facts. why should it startle us in a scientific dress? if we can transmit depravity, why not genius and bodily health? in one respect, modern theories tend rather to limit than to extend the applicability of the principle. no one ever doubted, nor could doubt, that the child of a monkey is always a monkey; and that the child of a negro, or even of a mongol, has certain characteristics which distinguish it from the child of a european. but the difference is that, whereas it used to be held that there was an impassable barrier between the monkey and the man, it is now widely believed that both may be descendants from a common ancestor. should this belief establish itself, we shall have to admit that, in spite of heredity, organic forms are capable of much wider variation than was believed by our fathers to be even conceivable. let us try, then, to discover some more plausible explanation of the fear excited by the doctrine. now, i wish to give as wide a berth as possible to that freewill controversy which perplexes so many minds, and is apt to intrude at this point. i will try to assume,--though it is not my own position,--the doctrine of the freedom of the will in the widest sense that any reasonable person can devise. no such person will deny that there is a close connection--the terms of which have not yet been defined--between the physical constitution and the moral or intellectual character. the man plainly grows out of the baby. if the baby's skull has a certain conformation it can only be an idiot; with another skull and brain it may be developed into a shakespeare or a dante. the possibilities ranging between those limits are immovably fixed at birth. and what determines the constitution with which the child is born? surely it can be nothing but the constitution and circumstances of its parents. whether i can be a great man, or cannot be more than a commonplace man, or a fool,--nay, whether i shall be man or monkey or an oak,--is settled before i have had any power of volition at all. now, it is curious how, even at this early period, we are led to use delusive language. the difficulty is quaintly indicated in a remark by jonathan swift. the dean "hath often been heard to say" (says a fragment of autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of his parents' marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greater part of his life". if they had not married, he apparently implies, he would have been born of other parents, and certainly would have felt it for life. what the word "he" means in that connection, is a puzzle for logicians. i fell into the difficulty myself, the other day, when i had occasion to say that a man's character had been influenced, both by his inheritance of certain qualities and by the later circumstances of his education. having said this, which, i think, aimed at a real meaning, it occurred to me that the phrase was grossly illogical, and i shall be still obliged if any one will put it straight for me. the difficulty was, that i had used the same form of words to indicate the influence of a separable accident, and to describe one aspect of the essential character. to say that a man is influenced by his education is to say that he would have been different had he gone, for example, to another school. that is intelligible. but to say that "he" would have been different if he had been born of other parents is absurd, for "he" would not have been "he". he would not have existed at all. "he" means the man who has grown out of the baby with all its innate qualities; and not some, but all those qualities, the very essence of the man himself, is, of course, the product of his progenitors. such phrases, in short, suggest the fancy that a man had a pre-existence somewhere, and went about like er the pamphylian in plato's myth, selecting the conditions of his next stay upon earth. in that case, no doubt, there might be some meaning in the doctrine. the character of the future incarnation would depend upon the soul's choice of position. but as we know nothing about any pre-existent soul, we must agree that each of us starts as the little lump of humanity, every characteristic of which is determined by the characteristics of the parents, however much its later career may be affected by the independent powers of thought and volition which it develops. so much, it seems to me, must be granted on all hands, and is perhaps implicitly denied by no one. but granting this very obvious remark, what harm does "heredity" do us? it is the most familiar of all remarks that you and i and all of us depend upon our brains in some sense. if they are pierced, we die; if they are inflamed, we go mad; and their constitution determines the whole of our career. a grain of sand in the wrong place, as the old epigrams have told us,--in cæsar's eye, for example,--may change the course of history. that unlucky fly, which, as fuller remarks, could find no other place to creep into in the whole patrimony of st. peter except the pope's throat, choked the unlucky man, and, for the time at least, altered the ecclesiastical order of christendom. in other words, we are dependent at every instant upon elements in the outside world,--bacteria, for instance,--and the working of our own physical organism. but, that being so, what conceivable difference does it make whether the brain, which we certainly did not ourselves make, has a fixed resemblance to that of our parents, or be, if it be possible, the product of some other series of processes? it is important, no doubt, to recognise the fact; it would be of the highest importance if we could define the exact nature of the fact; but the influence upon any general ethical doctrine of the recognition of the bare fact itself seems to be precisely nothing at all. it is part of the necessary data of all psychological speculation, and has been recognised with more or less precision from the very first attempts to speculate. trying, once more, to discover what it is that alarms, or is said to alarm, some people, we are reminded of certain facts, which again are of profound interest in some respects. i take a special instance,--not, unfortunately, a rare or at all a strange instance,--to illustrate the point. many years ago i knew a clergyman, a man of most amiable character and refined tastes. one morning he shocked his friends by performing the church service in a state of intoxication, and within a few months had drunk himself to death. the case was explained,--that is, a proper name for it was found,--when we learnt that more than one of his nearest relations had developed similar propensities, and died in much the same way. then we called it an instance of "hereditary dipsomania," and were more or less consoled by the classification. we were not, i think, unreasonable. the discovery proved apparently that the man whom we had respected and admired was not a vulgar debauchee, who had been hypocritically concealing his vices; but that he had really possessed the excellent qualities attributed to him, only combined with an unfortunate constitutional tendency, which was as much a part of his original nature as a tendency to gout or consumption. now this, as i think, suggests the problem which puzzles us at times. a man develops some vicious propensity, for which we were quite unprepared. in some cases, perhaps, he may show homicidal mania or kleptomania, or some of the other manias which physicians have discovered in late years. they say, though the lawyers are rather recalcitrant, that a man suffering from such a mania is not "responsible"; and if asked, why not? they reply, because he was the victim of a disease which made him unable to resist the morbid impulse. but then, we say, are not all our actions dependent upon our physical constitution? if a man develops homicidal mania, may not a murderer of the average type excuse himself upon the same ground? you have committed an action, we say, which shows you to be a man of abnormal wickedness. you are a bloodthirsty, ferocious, inhuman villain. certainly, he may reply; but if you could examine my brain you would see that i could not be anything else. there is something wrong about its molecular construction, or about the shape of the skull into which it was fitted, which makes bloodthirstiness quite as inevitable in me as a tendency to drink is in others, or perhaps as the most ardent philanthropy may be in some. in short, i am a murderer; but wickedness is so natural to me that you must in all fairness excuse me. this is, of course, a kind of excuse which would not free a man from the gallows. it would simply suggest that punishment should not be considered from the moral, but, if i may say so, from the sanitary point of view. we should hang the murderer--not to satisfy our sense of justice, but to get rid of a nuisance. i will not now inquire what may be said upon that undoubtedly difficult problem; but i must touch upon the previous question which is raised by the argument. would our supposed murderer make out a good case for himself? is there no difference between him and the maniac; or, rather, what is the nature of the difference which we clearly recognise in practice? in the extreme case which our ancestors took as the typical case, the madman kills because he is under some complete illusion: he supposes that he is only breaking a glass when he is really taking a life, and so forth. he is therefore not wicked, but accidentally mischievous. we have now come to recognise the existence of many states of mind intervening between this and complete sanity. among them, for example, is the state of mind of the homicidal monomaniac, whose propensity is considered to be the cause of his actions, and which may be consistent with his being in many other respects capable of acting upon the ordinary motives and judging reasonably in most of the affairs of life. what, then, is the meaning of the statement that he is a madman, and therefore excusable? the contention must, of course, be, in the first place, that his character is in some way abnormal. he is not governable by the ordinary motives which determine human action. but, beyond this, it is evident that the abnormality is taken to mean something more than the mere deviation from the average. a man may be abominably wicked, and yet not in the least abnormal in the sense here required. he may be deficient in the higher motives, and the more brutal passions may be unusually developed; and yet we do not hold that he therefore deviates from the type. so, in a different sphere, we may have one man possessing enormous strength and another exceedingly feeble, one very active and another very clumsy; and yet they may all be perfectly normal, they are free from physical disease, and all their physical functions may be performed according to the normal system. entire freedom from disease, in short, is perfectly compatible with exceedingly wide deviations from the average, with capacity for walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or with inability to walk a single mile; and yet such deviations do not imply a departure from a certain common type. to say precisely what symptoms indicate mere differences within the normal type, and what imply an actual deviation from the type, is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible; and yet that such a distinction exists has to be constantly recognised. "so-and-so is delicate, but not diseased; feeble, but not deformed," has a definite meaning, though we may be unable to define the precise meaning of our words, or to decide which statement is true in particular cases. the great difficulty in the case of insanity corresponds to this. the physician tells us that the madman's mind works abnormally, but not abnormally in the sense merely of having some faculties weaker and others stronger than is common; but in such a way as to indicate disease, and, moreover, a particular kind of disease, or one, perhaps, of several particular kinds of diseases. the vagueness of this statement provokes lawyers, who have a natural love of definite external tests to govern their decisions; and it has led to a number of delicate discussions, upon which i need not enter. the legal problem seems essentially to be, what tests should guide us in determining whether a man should be regarded as a normal human being, or as a being so far differing from the normal type that he should be treated exceptionally, and especially put under the guidance of other persons, and excused from legal responsibility, that is, liability to punishment. i have to do with the moral problem alone. it is a still more difficult problem; but it has this advantage, that we do not require so definite an answer. we have not, happily, to decide whether our fellows shall go to heaven or to hell, though we have to decide whether they shall be hanged or locked up; and we must be content as a rule with very vague estimates as to their moral character. what we practically have to take, more or less roughly, into account is simply this: that our inference from conduct to character has often to be modified by the existence of these abnormal cases. a man is drunk on an important occasion; i infer, as a rule, that he has all the qualities which go with low sensuality; but in some cases the inference is wrong; the man may be really a person of most admirable feelings; but one of his instincts has suddenly taken an abnormal development, owing to a set of causes entirely different from the usual causes. another man suddenly and causelessly kills a friend. the natural inference that he must be a bloodthirsty brute is erroneous, if it turns out that he has acted from impulses not generated by any habitual want of benevolence, but from some special defect in the constitution of his brain. in other words, our moral judgment must vary in the two cases, and may vary so much that the same action may rightly suggest only pity in one case and abhorrence in the other; although, in many cases, where it may be very difficult to say what is the precise implication as to character, the judgment must, if we are properly diffident, remain obscure. the moral problem always depends ultimately upon this: what is the character implied by this conduct? if the moral conduct shows malignity within the normal type, it justifies condemnation; if it shows only a blind instinctive impulse, due to a deflection from the type, it may justify no other feelings than those which we have for the poor maniac who fancies himself a king, and takes his limbs to be made of glass. if we hold that such responsibility implies free will we shall argue that the madman is deprived of free will, or that his freedom of will is more or less restricted, and that he is therefore irresponsible. in my own opinion, that proposition would be by no means an easy one to establish. i fancy that a man may be insane and yet capable, within very wide limits, of being good or bad, and that therefore we must at any rate hold that he has still some power of free will. the bearing of this upon the question of moral responsibility brings us within sight of some delicate problems. but, however this may be, the criterion by which we shall have to judge whether we are believers in free will or determinists will be the same. the problem is essentially, is this man accessible to the motives by which normal men regulate their conduct? or does he so far deflect from the typical constitution, however that constitution may be precisely defined, that his conscience or his affections or his intellectual powers are unable to act according to the general laws of human nature? having said so much, i think that i may proceed to this conclusion, that the theory of heredity can make no real difference whatever to our problem. there is a difficulty for the metaphysician--the difficulty which is involved in discussions between materialists and idealists, determinists and believers in free will. i do not deny the existence of that difficulty. i only say that the question of heredity is altogether irrelevant to the difficulty. the desire to treat ethical problems by the methods of science may predispose a thinker to materialism, and may at the same time lead him to attach particular importance to the doctrine of heredity. but that doctrine only takes note of facts which every theory has to state in its own phraseology, and do not alter the ultimate problem. let us, in fact, go back to our murderer. i am not responsible, he says, because i am determined by the processes in my brain. i am a mere machine, grinding out one set of actions or another as external accidents set my wheels and pulleys in motion. if that argument be fatal to moral responsibility, or to the belief that any truly moral action exists (a point which i do not argue), it will no doubt remove the moral element from the treatment both of murderers and madmen. they might still require different measures, just as we treat a machine differently when we consider that it is not of the normal construction, or that its various parts have somehow got out of gear, so that we can no longer, for example, expect that the mainspring will transmit its motion to the wheels. but, in any case, if the dependence upon the body be a fatal objection to morality in the highest sense, the circumstance that the body is made upon the plan of previously existing bodies makes no additional difficulty. if we could suppose every brain to be started afresh by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, the difficulty would be neither increased nor diminished. the problem, are we automatic? and the validity of the inference, is morality meaningless? are questions altogether independent of the question, what particular kind of automata are we? and do we or do we not resemble a previous generation of automata? if, however, we reply to the criminal that he is not a machine or an automaton, but a responsible, reasoning, and thinking being, we do not get away from the facts. we then assert that he is responsible because he possesses a certain moral constitution. but whatever words we may use to express the facts correctly, we must still allow that there is such a correlation between soul and body (if those old-fashioned words be admissible) that the health of his moral constitution depends at every instant upon the health of his nervous system and his brain. it may be shattered or destroyed by an injury; and, if this be so, what does it matter whether the injury--say the defective shape of the skull, which causes pressure on the brain--is due to some accident or to a connate malformation due to his parents? the difficulty, if it be difficulty, is that the want of responsibility is due to some cause, accidental relatively to him; and it matters not whether that cause be in his parents' constitution or in some other combination of circumstances. in any case, we have to suppose, whatever the relation of mind and body, we must at least assume that a man is born with some character. like everything that exists, he has certain definite qualities which he did not make for himself, and upon which his subsequent development depends. and, if that be once admitted, the whole difficulty still occurs, and the question as to whether the origin of these innate qualities be derived from his parents or from a something else is a mere matter of detail. in fact, the confusion seems to me to arise from the vague phraseology which induces us to accept, virtually at least, the mental attitude of dean swift in er the pamphylian. we speak as if the man were an independent entity, lying somehow outside the chain of cause and effect, and arbitrarily plunged into it; nay, as if even his inner constitution were something superinduced upon his nature. it is really an absurd abstraction to distinguish between the man and his character, as though he meant a something existing without a character, and afterwards run into a mould by fate. the character is the man in certain relations, and he can never exist without it, any more than a piece of matter can be outside of all particular times and places. if the doctrine of free will and moral responsibility be so interpreted as to imply our acceptance of such fallacies, i can only say that it appears to me to be irreconcilable with the most undeniable facts. but i am very far from supposing that any intelligent supporter of the doctrine would state it in such a form. he would admit as fully as i do the facts, and, if they can be admitted and reconciled to the doctrine of moral responsibility, certainly the doctrine of heredity can be so reconciled. the only peculiarity of the doctrine is, that it has called attention to an order of facts which must in any case be recognised by every philosopher; and that it helps, therefore, to disperse a fallacy which only requires articulate statement to show its radical want of logic or even conceivability. we are, beyond all doubt, affected somehow, and affected profoundly, by our environment; and this particular form of relation to other beings has no more bearing upon the problem than the other forces which have been recognised ever since speculation began. there is, however, another side from which i must briefly consider the question of heredity; and it is a side which, i think, is really more important, because it involves issues of facts, and has suggested some more reasonable prejudices. it is, undoubtedly, very common that when a theory has obtained a certain currency it should be applied rashly beyond its proper limits. when the speculations of darwin encouraged us to believe that the natural selection might be analogous to artificial selection, that different species of animals have been produced as varieties of dogs and pigeons have been produced by breeders, it was, at least, tempting to apply the same formula directly to other cases. some men of science have endeavoured to show that genius or criminality is hereditary; and that, if one man writes a great poem and another picks a pocket, it is always in virtue of their hereditary endowment. within certain limits, this statement is not surprising, and i shall be very glad when men of science can tell us what those limits may be. without being a man of science, i fully believe that our congenital characteristics form, as i have said, certain impassable limits to our development. one baby is a potential shakespeare, and, probably, only one in a million. the qualities with which he starts, again, are, no doubt, derived from his parents, though we do not, as yet, understand in what way; whether, for example, we should infer that shakespeare's parents had more than usual capacity, or were especially healthy, or had some peculiar form of one-sided development which generated the disease called poetical genius; or whether he may have inherited qualities from a remote ancestor, which had remained latent for several generations. in any case, he was at birth only a potential shakespeare. he might have died of the measles, or been made stupid by a sunstroke, or have taken to drink in bad company, or have run away to sea, or been sent to the university and become a mere bishop or professor of casuistry; in short, though he could not easily have done very much better work than he did, he might have done inconceivably less. that is to say, his congenital qualities implied certain powers; but what he would do with them remained to be partly determined by an indefinite variety of external circumstances acting upon him in various ways. hence, we have always the complex problem, what, given certain raw material in the shape of new-born babies, will be the characteristics of the finished product in the shape of a grown-up population? if the social state is determined from the inherited qualities directly, we should be able, for example, to infer from a given proportion of criminals, that a certain number of children were born with a corresponding physical constitution, with "foreheads villainous low," and prognathous jaws, and with the other peculiar signs which mark the felon from his birth. in that case, again, we should infer, i suppose, that the only possible means of improving the social state would be by somehow improving the breed; perhaps, by appointing some of the inspectors who play so great a part in modern society, to examine infants, and get rid of those who were thus distinguished, by the means now adopted in the case of superfluous puppies. one objection to this system is, of course, that men of science have not yet shown that they are qualified for exercising such a supervision; and there are other difficulties upon which i need not dwell. this much, indeed, we may grant without any scientific prepossessions whatever. it is clearly very desirable that every generation should raise up for its successors as many children with sturdy bodies and vigorous brains as possible; and it is to be hoped that the objection to transmitting disease and imbecility may be more generally recognised, and, in some shape or other, have an influence even upon the strongest passions. but i am only concerned with the general theory, which, if i understand it rightly, would appear to imply that the characteristics of a society are irrevocably fixed by the characteristics of the children born into it; and, whether this theory be true or false, we must admit that it has a considerable bearing upon morality. if, in fact, we hold it to be rigidly true, we should have to suppose that no serious improvement can be produced in society at large, except by breeding a superior race of men. this, again, is a discouraging prospect. let me quote what has been said by an authority who expresses, i believe, the accepted scientific view. "there can be no doubt," says professor huxley, "that vast changes have taken place in english civilisation since the days of the tudors. but i am not aware that there is a single particle of evidence in favour of the conclusion that this evolutionary process has been accompanied by any modification of the physical or the mental characters of the men who have been the subjects of it. i have not met with any grounds for suspecting that the average englishmen of to-day are sensibly different from those that shakespeare knew and drew." the statement, i imagine, might be very much extended. i do not suppose that the average cockney of to-day is a superior animal, physically or morally, to the average athenian of the days of pericles, or even, it may be, to the pre-historic savages who made flint implements for the amusement of our antiquaries. briefly, whatever change has taken place, within historical period, has been a social change, not a change in the structure of the individual. this is surely conceivable. we need only consider, for example, how vast a change has been made in all the conditions of life by the modern applications of practical science. whether, in other respects, we are better or worse than our forefathers, we have an enormously greater aggregate of wealth now than we had, say, two centuries ago; we can support four times the population, though the condition of the lowest stratum may not be better. and this amazing advance of wealth is not due to the fact that englishmen of to-day have better brains for mathematics than the englishmen of newton's time; but to the accumulation of capital, the improvement of the natural conditions of the soil, the turning to account of vast masses of material, previously neglected; to the invention of machinery, and so forth; all of which imply, not necessarily the very slightest improvement of natural capacity, but simply the growth of knowledge, and the fact that each generation has preserved more than it has consumed. what we call progress or civilisation, which means, whatever else it may or may not mean, a gigantic increase in the power of man over nature, is due, therefore, to the one fact that man can accumulate. he can modify the earth in such a way as to facilitate the labours of the coming generations; he can make tools which last beyond his own time, and which themselves become, as it were, the ancestors of incomparably superior tools; he can, moreover, accumulate and transmit knowledge, not merely the knowledge of facts, but the knowledge of scientific laws and of useful inventions, and of the right methods of investigating facts. when newton made a discovery, he made it for all the following generations; and, though it may well be that no superior or even equal intellect has since arisen to carry on his work, the dwarf now stands on the shoulders of the giant. it is not simply that we know more facts. the modes of mathematical inquiry differ as much from those which newton could employ, as the latest steam engine from the crude fire machine before the time of watt; and an average undergraduate can solve with ease problems which once puzzled the greatest intellects that ever appeared among men. man, then, can accumulate; and that simple fact enables every generation enormously to surpass its predecessors. accumulation, again, is, of course, a form of inheritance. we are born heirs to the intellectual as well as to the material fortunes of our ancestors. but, it is obvious, this is something very different from heredity. it supposes an alteration, not in the man, but in his surroundings or his education in the widest sense; not in his intellectual capacity, but in the knowledge which it can attain and the rules which it has worked out. in order that a man may be capable either of bequeathing or inheriting, he must have certain faculties; he must be an observing, remembering, reasoning animal; but he may become indefinitely richer, not from any improvement in his powers of observing and remembering and using, but simply from the change in his position. people's memories, it is sometimes suggested, have been weakened by the invention of printing. but, weakened or not, we have an incomparably greater knowledge of the past than was formerly possible, because we can now keep our memories upon our bookshelves, in the form of histories and encyclopædias, and know every fact that we want to know when we want it, without troubling ourselves to fill our minds with all the knowledge that may ever be possibly useful. a library is an external and materialised memory. but without illustrating so plain a point any further, i simply take note of what it implies: that is, that, as professor huxley has pointed out, all that distinguishes the present state of things from the state of things in the time of elizabeth, or, perhaps, at the time of remote egyptian dynasties, may be due, not to any change in the individual, but to what is called the social factor. the inference from the individual to the society, or from the society to the individual, is, therefore, rigidly impossible, because, given the man, the position in which he is placed and the stage of development of the society to which he belongs, are relevant facts which exercise an incalculably great influence. if this be true, what follows? we remark, in the first place, that the evolution of which we speak in regard to natural history, the process by which the present population of the globe has gradually grown out of the population of remote geological epochs, is slow. the changes which it may produce are not sensible within a generation--for, indeed, the very nature of the case implies that they must take many generations--not perhaps even within such a period as is covered by all authentic history. it is not, of course, on that account to be overlooked for scientific purposes. monkeys must have grown into men before they could begin to accumulate capital, either material or spiritual. the faculty of accumulating must itself have been developed. only when once it was developed, another process would begin, the process of social evolution, which, however it may resemble the other, or possibly be in some sense its continuation, proceeds, at least, at a totally different rate. the difference is comparable, one may say roughly, to the difference between the speed of an express train and the speed of a four-wheeled waggon. beneath the surface, it may be, the slower process is still continuing; men, for anything i can say to the contrary, may be acquiring larger brains and more sensitive bodies; and it is further possible, or rather obvious, that if we can do anything to facilitate this proceeding, to behave so as to give nature a better chance of turning out better work, we ought to do so. only nature is pretty sure to take her time about it. how far, again, one process is to be considered as a continuation of the other, or as a modification, or even as in opposition to it, is a point which i cannot now touch. what i have to say is simply this: that if we take any two periods of society, the present, for example, and that of a thousand or five thousand years ago, we shall find enormous or incalculably great differences in the social structure, in the amount of knowledge, in the character of the ethical, religious, and philosophical beliefs, and in the relations between the individuals of which the society is constructed; but between the individuals at the two periods we may find hardly any definable difference whatever. for anything we can say, we should be able, if we could move people about in time as well as in space, to exchange a thousand infants of the nineteenth century a.d., for a thousand of the nineteenth century b.c., and nobody would be able to detect the difference which would result. hence it follows, in my opinion, that the evolutionary process with which moralists and political philosophers have practically to deal, is what i have called the social, and not the individual process. we inherit thoughts as we inherit wealth; we inherit customs and laws and forms of worship, and indeed our whole mental furniture; we can add enormously to our inheritance, and can transmit the augmented fund to our descendants. but the other process of inheritance, to which the word "heredity" is taken to apply, is not, immediately at least, cumulative. we inherit the old faculties, bodily and mental, unaltered, or with infinitesimal alterations, though we live in a different environment, and are ourselves as much altered as our environment. the modern social organism is built up, if i may say so, of cells almost identical in their properties with those of the old organism, although the mode of combination gives entirely new properties to the whole, and brings out new actions and reactions among the constituent cells themselves. i have been touching the edge of certain problems of great interest but enormous complexity, and i shall venture to indicate the difference between these views and some which have recently attracted much attention. mr. kidd's work upon "social evolution" has made the phrase popular; but, instead of using it in my sense, he speaks as though "social evolution" involved what i have called individual evolution. in order to keep within limits, i will confine myself to one case upon which he lays great stress. it will show sufficiently why i hold his mode of reasoning to be inconclusive. mr. kidd has achieved success by very excellent qualities, by remarkable literary ability, and by his uniformly high tone of moral feeling. i should, therefore, be very sorry to speak of him otherwise than respectfully. mr. kidd, however, chooses to maintain a thesis in which he has certainly no personal interest,--the thesis, namely, that a little stupidity may be a very good thing. this view is, perhaps, intelligible when we observe that he also maintains that the progress of the race depends upon its holding "ultra-rational," which i think he would find it hard to distinguish from "irrational," beliefs. in support of this view he writes a chapter to prove that "progress is not primarily intellectual". the argument of which i have spoken is part of this proof. the greeks, he tells us, were a race intellectually superior to ourselves. they were, so mr. galton informs him, two degrees above modern englishmen in the scale of intelligence, and as superior to us as we are to the negro. and yet, says mr. kidd, this marvellous race died out, and no trace of its blood is now to be found in the present population of the world. let us look shortly into the logic of this argument, and consider how far it is entitled to be regarded as scientific reasoning. first of all, i should ask, what precisely is meant by "the greeks"? the argument is founded partly on the number of great thinkers, poets, and artists, in proportion to the population. now, it is obviously essential to a scientific statement that we should know what is the population indicated. if we compare the number of great men at athens in its best period with the number of free athenians, we shall get one ratio; if we admit the athenian slaves, or add boeotia and other greek states to our population, we get quite a different ratio. and the difference is of immense importance. the smaller the population, the higher the excellence indicated by a given number of great men; but, also, the smaller the population, the less is the wonder that it should have died out or been swallowed up in the whirlpools of political, religious, and social convulsions. a similar remark applies in regard to the period during which this race flourished. when did they begin and when did they cease to be superior to other people? till the statement is more precise we do not even know what are the phenomena to be explained; and the case is susceptible of any number of explanations. did the superior race cease to be prolific; or was it prolific, but of inferior descendants; and, if so, was it because it was mixed with races of an inferior stamp; or was it because its position exposed it to the attacks of more numerous enemies; or because its energy led it to attempt impossible feats? has it died out, or has it been swamped by other races? to answer such questions is absolutely necessary before we can say positively that the higher organisation was the cause of the decay, or that it did not cause the decay by some indirect process due to the special combination of circumstances. but to answer such questions, if they be answerable at all, would require the investigations of a lifetime, and a mastery of a whole series of studies, historical, statistical, ethnological, and so forth, in which i am an absolute ignoramus. but i cannot perceive that mr. kidd claims more than second-hand information. but, secondly, there is another obvious question to which an answer is necessary. mr. kidd and mr. galton deduce their view about greek intellect, first, from the proportion of great men. does, then, the occurrence of a group of great men at a certain period prove a superior organisation in the race? that leads to a very familiar problem: what were the causes of what we may call the flowering times of arts and sciences? we are all familiar with the phenomenon; with the sudden display of astonishing excellence at athens, at florence, or in the england of elizabeth. it seems to be the rule that processes which may have been going on quietly for centuries suddenly culminate; that artistic, poetic, or philosophic excellence becomes unprecedentedly common for a generation or two, and that the impulse then dies away as rapidly. it is the kind of problem which is satisfactorily solved by the authors of university prize essays, which somehow fail to convince the world or to be republished by their writers. are we, then, entitled to argue from the great works an organic superiority in the race? must we suppose, for example, that englishmen at the time of shakespeare and bacon and spenser and raleigh were an abler race than their descendants, because, when there was a very much smaller number of educated men, they produced more first-rate authors than have been produced by generations much more numerous and more generally cultivated? this seems to me at least to be a very rash hypothesis; and some of the obvious remarks made in our university essays seem to me to indicate considerations which, though not conclusive, cannot be neglected. it is clear, for example, that particular stages of intellectual progress are abnormally stimulating; that, as the last step to a pass in the mountains suddenly reveals vast prospects, while a hundred equally difficult steps before made no appreciable change, so there are mental advances which, as at the time of bacon, seemed suddenly to disclose boundless prospects of knowledge. it is the pisgah sight of the promised land which causes a burst of energy. or, again, a certain social condition is obviously required; philosophers and poets may exist potentially among barbarous tribes, but they cannot get a chance to speak, and they have no opportunity of communication with other thinkers. the intellect may be impelled in various directions, some of which leave no trace of a tangible kind. the amount of intellectual power implied in building up the roman empire may have been as great as that implied in developing greek art; and in america, as we are often told, intellect turns to dollar-making, instead of book-writing. so, conversely, the outburst of power may indicate, not greater faculties, but special opportunities, or special stimulus, applied to already existing faculties. everybody who has written an æsthetic treatise has pointed to all manner of conditions which were in this sense favourable to the greeks. how far such conditions were sufficient i cannot even guess; but at least an allowance must be made for them before we can argue from the achievements to the intrinsic power of the race which achieved. i do not see that it is even "proved" that the average athenian was in the least superior in this sense to the average englishman. it would require a lifetime of study to pronounce any opinion worth having. i fully confess that, so far as a vague impression is worth anything, it is the most obvious impression, after looking at the elgin marbles, that the greeks were possessed of a finer organisation than ourselves. still, i cannot accept as certain the quasi-mathematical formula that the greek is to the englishman as the englishman to the negro. this, however, suggests another and very difficult series of problems. mr. kidd is arguing against intellectual superiority. he, of course, does not argue that the general superiority of a race leads to its disappearance; but that a one-sided superiority--an improvement of one set of faculties at the expense of others--may have that result. this at once suggests a whole series of psychological problems. the intellect and the emotional nature are not two separate organs, each capable of independent development. every mental process involves both, and neither faculty can be developed without reference to the other. mr. kidd accepts the conclusion that certain primitive races were as clever as ourselves, because their brains were as large. if the argument be sound, it proves equally that their emotional nature was as well developed as ours; for no one can doubt that the brain is the physical condition of feeling as well as of thought. even the most abstract thought, as he elsewhere notices, implies certain moral qualities. newton remarked that he was superior to other men, not because his intellect was clearer, but because he attended more persistently to his problems. the statement, i think, involves a fallacy. newton himself, no doubt, did better the longer he kept a problem before him. he inferred, unjustifiably, that of two different men, the one who could keep up his attention longest would be the best. that does not follow. the difference may indeed be moral as well as intellectual; and it is quite true that a power of sustained attention is of the highest importance in mathematics, and that that power supposes a moral quality; but, conversely, the power of attention probably implies also the power of clear intellectual vision. a muddle-headed man would find attention useless. this is, of course, still clearer in the case where the mind is exercised upon questions of human interest. the statesman and the dramatist both depend upon their power of sympathy and the strength of their emotions, as much as upon their logical capacity. to feel for others i must imagine their position: if i imagine it, i can hardly avoid feeling for them. "altruism" is the product, in other words, of a process both intellectual and moral. now, remembering this, we see the difficulty of pronouncing upon the nature of the greek organisation. perhaps the commonest of all remarks upon greek work is the symmetry and harmony, the "all-roundness," if i may say so, of the development implied. poetry and philosophy, art and science seem to be so blended in their work that we cannot tell which faculty is predominant. what, then, is the inequality of development which is essential to mr. kidd's argument? they were wanting, he seems to answer, in "altruism". what does this mean? the astonishing power of the greeks was certainly as conspicuous in poetry and art as in anything else; and that power surely implies development of the emotional as well as of the intellectual nature. by a defect of "altruism," i take him to mean that these emotions did not flow along the channel of general philanthropy. they were wanting then, as i should put it, rather in cosmopolitanism than in altruism. if altruism means care for something outside yourself, where could we find better examples of altruism than at thermopylæ or marathon? was it not due to greek altruism in this form (some historians would say) that mr. kidd is not now living under the rule of a persian satrap? the altruism, no doubt, meant an intense and patriotic devotion to a small state, or an interest in greek as against barbarian, and was compatible with much brutality to individuals and acquiescence in slavery. but this does not indicate an absence of the emotions themselves, but simply their confinement within narrow limits, by the conditions under which they were placed. slavery, for example, is abominable; but i see no reason for supposing that the slave-holders in america were worse men by innate constitution than their opponents. they were corrupted by their position. this, in any case, leads to another problem. were the greeks more or less altruistic than other races? if you could show that altruistic races had survived while the greeks perished, there might be a presumption that the want of altruism was the cause of their decay. but this again does not seem to be the case. hardly one of the ancient races, indeed, has survived unvaried. the romans were at least as brutal as the greeks, and, one would say, as far from "altruistic". yet they overpowered the greeks. how, then, can it be inferred that the greeks perished because of defective altruism? the struggle for existence was between races equally defective to all appearance in that quality; and it must be a sophistry to signalise its absence in one as the cause of its disappearance. there is, indeed, one race to which every one would turn as the most prominent example of survival, namely, the jews. the jews have enormous merits and great intellectual endowments; but can anybody say that they were altruistic in the sense of being cosmopolitan? are they not conspicuous, beyond any race, for the narrower forms of altruism, rejection of a cosmopolitan creed, even when it arose among them, and exclusive devotion to the welfare of their own people? i think that it would be perfectly easy to argue that the greeks died out just because of their cosmopolitan and therefore dispersive tendencies, and that the jews have held out from a judicious adherence to narrower views of self-preservation. but personally i regard all such "arguments" as really belonging to the extra-scientific regions of rhetorical illustration. this suggests one other point which requires consideration. mr. kidd regards it as proved that progress has been due to the christian religion, which revealed the new moral doctrine. the christian religion introduced, it seems, that belief in the supernatural which is essential to altruism. it seems to me to be inconsistent with his own principles, that he should attribute progress to what is essentially, on his own showing, an intellectual change: that is, to a change in belief and even to a change which, in comparison with the old polytheism, was distinctly sceptical and rationalistic. but one point is clear. the introduction of christianity may be interpreted more consistently in a totally different way. the greek who became a christian was not provided with a new set of emotions, but his emotions were directed into new channels. he ceased to care for athens, because athens had ceased to be an independent state; he began to be cosmopolitan when he was forced to be part of a cosmopolitan empire. the important distinction was no longer the distinction between athenian and spartan, but between the different classes in the world-wide system. that is to say, the "altruism" which came in with christianity was not the product of a new dogma suddenly dropped from heaven; but of the new social condition, which made it inevitable that the forces which previously stimulated a local patriotism should now exert themselves nearer a cosmopolitan organisation. this is, of course, a commonplace; but, for that reason, it should not be simply ignored. it suggests one other consequence of mr. kidd's theory. it is proved, he says, that the progress of the western world is due to christianity. his "proof," as i suppose, is that the states which have sprung out of the old empire of the west have been christian and have progressed. how, then, about the empire of the east? if the great kingdoms of the west are the unique example of progress, what is the unique example of decay? surely, the regions where christian dogmatic theology was defended by athanasius and chrysostom. if you wish to point out a region where the race has actually gone backwards, you would refer to the turkish empire. why, if christianity was the sole cause of progress in one quarter, was it comparable with complete decay in the other? does the eastern theory about the _filioque_ explain it? or were the mohammedans more "altruistic" than the christians? or is it that it is absurd, especially upon mr. kidd's own doctrine, to assign the dogmatic creed of a race as the sole cause of its character and its success in the struggle for existence? i do not lay any stress upon the argument, except in a negative sense. i do not see, that is, how mr. kidd can make his theory fit the facts. but i infer one other remark. it is impossible to divine the causes of the rise and fall of empires, the success or decay of a race, from any of these sweeping generalisations about ill-defined qualities. if we ask why the greeks died out, we should have to take into account another and a totally different set of considerations: what i may call the accidents of their position. we should have to consider all the arguments by which historians have tried to explain the events; the facts of physical geography, for example, which account for the division into small separate states; the relations of the greeks to the eastern races on the one side, and to the romans on the other; and, briefly, to all the material conditions, those different from the intrinsic character of the race, by which the whole course of political development and of the conflict between different peoples, is moulded and directed into particular courses. i do not say, for i cannot guess, what would be the result of such an inquiry; but i think it just as possible that it would lead us to wonder at the persistence of the greek states for so long a period, as that it would lead us to wonder at their disappearance. our conclusion might be, that nothing but the astonishing intellectual powers of the greeks enabled them to play so great a part in the world's history, not that their intellectual superiority was the cause of their decay. i consider, therefore, that the alleged fact is stated so vaguely that we have no distinct problem set before us; that we don't know what is the process to be explained; that the suggested intellectual superiority is doubtful, at least in degree: that the excess of intellectual above other development, which the superiority is supposed to have created, is not proved, and, still less, that such excess was more conspicuous among the greeks than among their rivals; that, even if it existed, it is not proved that it would have produced the effect ascribed to it; and, finally, that the other causes which undoubtedly operated, are simply overlooked. i confess, therefore, that the whole argument seems to me to illustrate the danger of rashly applying certain scientific formulæ,--themselves, perhaps, still doubtful,--to new and exceedingly complex questions. if darwin had reasoned in this light-hearted way, no one would have been moved by his conclusions. but i must still add, what brings me back to my point, that even if the proposition were proved, it would not establish the conclusion. it may be, that races of abnormal intellectual development are at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence. that does not prove that "progress is not primarily intellectual". buckle, who argued that progress was due to intellectual causes exclusively, always assumed that human nature was constant, or that the faculties did not change. though i do not accept his view, any more than mr. kidd's, i do not see that he was inconsistent. i take the most obvious case to illustrate the point. no one can doubt that one of the most important influences in modern social evolution was the set of mechanical contrivances devised by arkwright and watt and their contemporaries. without them, the enormous development of great cities, of a population of artisans, and of the bringing together of all quarters of the globe, would have been impossible. the inventions, again, were due to no moral purpose in the inventors. they wanted to make money, and represented what is called (i do not say justly) the most egoistic impulse of modern times. one condition, then, of the great social change was essentially intellectual. this does not mean that watt was a cleverer man than archimedes. i don't know whether he was or not; but it does mean that the mechanical sciences had improved; and, consequently, that watt, though not possessed of intrinsically greater powers, was, in this direction, a more intellectual person. he had inherited the truths discovered by archimedes and many generations of successors. that science should be efficient, it is not required that men should be greater geniuses than their predecessors; but simply that they should know more of the facts and laws of nature, and have, so to speak, better intellectual tools. mr. kidd thinks that the inability of a savage to count three does not prove him to be stupid, only to be without certain rules discovered by the higher races. yet, he will not deny that by the help of arithmetic we can work out sums inconceivable to the savage; and that our power affects our whole social position. does not the existence of a currency affect mankind; and if we could not count, could we make use of it? i therefore hold that in many cases the causes of progress are "primarily intellectual". the mechanical discoveries of which i have spoken have revolutionised the whole world. i agree, indeed, fully, that the causes are not exclusively intellectual. a certain social condition--the existence, to say nothing more, of peace and order over wide regions--was as necessary as the intellectual condition to the development of commerce and manufactures. this, of course, implies the growth of corresponding sentiments, including, no doubt, what mr. kidd means by altruism. but the change may, and, i fancy, generally does, originate in intellectual movements. the new ideas shake the world. reason, says mr. kidd, is the great disintegrating and egoistic force. i should say that reasoning is essentially altruistic: my discoveries are mentally discoveries for you; i cannot keep a truth for my private consumption, as i can keep a material product. but it is true, to use eulogistic instead of dyslogistic language, that reason is the great force of movement, and breaks up the old social conditions, not only by getting rid of the ultra-rational, but by spreading the power of the rational; and therefore it inevitably brings about a state of things in which the old moral impulses have to run in new channels; a narrow patriotism, to widen into a regard for the interests of other races; and the class distinctions which repose upon no reasonable ground, to disappear in favour of a wider humanity. when we are arguing about an organism, it is surely a mistake to fix our minds upon one aspect of the problem: to deny with buckle the moral evolution, and with mr. kidd to disparage the intellectual evolution. mr. kidd's doctrine appears to me, though, of course, not to him, to be eminently discouraging. if he worked it out logically, his argument, i think, would come to this: that the progress of mankind has resulted from the accidental, that is, inexplicable, appearance of a quality called altruism, which gave to those who possessed it an advantage in the struggle for existence. it would be far more consistent to say that the religious dogma was determined by this new element, than that it was the cause. altruism, again, was only produced in effect on this hypothesis by the slow results of a process necessarily lasting through many generations; and our only hope must be in a slow organic change of the primary characteristics of mankind. now, it is, of course, true that those characteristics, whatever they may be, impose definite limits upon our progress. the raw material limits the product; and the new-born baby is the raw material of society, as wool is of cloth: you cannot convert it into tissue of gold. so much is undeniable. we, it is said, have been developed out of an arboreal animal, and i have sometimes regretted that we were not developed out of a flying animal. the course of civilisation would have been very different if we had not been forced to come into contact by crawling and swimming, instead of the much freer methods of aerial travelling. however, as things were, the choice was apparently between wings and hands; and if we could not have both, perhaps hands were preferable, and may in time lead to flying machines. the speculation, it may be, borders upon the fanciful. i mention it only by way of illustrating the unevitable conditions imposed upon us by "heredity". we have to be content with walking instead of flying; and similarly we have to be content with having only the five senses of our forefathers, and the various old-fashioned apparatuses for eating, drinking, digesting, and so forth, which they unconsciously elaborated. no material change can possibly be made in this system within any period to which we can look forward. to regret these limitations is just as idle as to regret that we cannot fly, or that we cannot extend our voyages to the moon. they are part of the primary data of the problem with which we have to deal; and to regret that that problem was not differently contrived is to propose to set about reconstructing the universe. but when we go on to ask how far this limits any possibilities of achieving really desirable, because distinctly conceivable results, i say that we have ample room for hopes large enough to animate our loftiest desires. we inherit, it is true, certain faculties which scarcely alter, or do not perceptibly alter, for the better. we do not see or smell or hear better than the savage, and in some of these faculties we are surpassed by the dog. we inherit also certain intellectual powers, and, if they improve, the improvement is so slow as to be perceptible only after many generations. but then this intellect carries with it another power,--the power of inheriting thoughts, beliefs, methods of reasoning and rules of conduct. and, therefore, to the organic evolution is added the social evolution, which enables us to accumulate our vast spiritual inheritance. the inheritance is everything, or almost everything, that makes the distinctions between the civilised races of to-day and the wandering savages who roamed the fens and the forests which were supplanted by fields and towns. and this, i think, makes room enough for all reasonable aspirations, though it certainly does not open any prospect that we shall ever become gods or angels. thus, for example, we look with sorrow, sometimes with something like despair, upon the masses of the criminal or degraded population which grovels at the base of modern society. if we were bound to say, the crime and the stupidity are the necessary expression of the shape of the skull and the organisation of the brain; if we had therefore to infer that the only possible remedy is by so modifying the struggle for existence that the inferior forms may be killed off and a better breed of humanity take the place of the present; we should certainly feel that we were confined within very narrow limits. i do not for a moment say, that such considerations may not point to important practical conclusions. i should be very glad to hear of any practical suggestions for so applying these doctrines as to increase the probability that the next generation may be stronger, healthier, and more intelligent than the present. but i also assert that the most obvious facts also show that there are enormous possibilities of progress without supposing any such organic transformation. if all that makes the difference between the england of to-day and the england of two or three centuries back is the presence of the social factor, not of the organic change, it shows in the most striking way the vast educability of mankind, even without any ultimate change of human nature. we must all, i think, have been impressed lately by one of the most singular phenomena which have ever taken place in history. we have ourselves seen the transformation of the japanese--whom we so recently regarded as semi-barbarians--acquire almost at a bound all the arts of western civilisation, and able not only to use with singular effect that most complex and delicate piece of machinery which forms a modern warship, but to adopt systems of military organisation and the strategy of a moltke. that is not because the japanese have changed any one of their physical characteristics, for they are the very same men who the other day were chiefly known to us as performing the "happy despatch". they have changed simply because they were able to assimilate european results. now, if that be a perfectly possible result, consistently with all the so-called laws of heredity, the same laws cannot be inconsistent with changes of a similar character within ourselves. you take a thorough ruffian,--a drinking, rowdy, fighting brute, who has stamped his wife or his friend into a jelly. you say that he is an illustration of slavism, or the reproduction of an ancient type which once had its place among his ancestors. the fact may be quite true; that he is, for example, acting-still in the spirit of those ancient vikings who have been idealised by our romantic writers; but who, when they landed in an old british village, behaved pretty much as the modern roughs or some of those noble blackguards who are described in mr. rudyard kipling's novels. but if you mean that he is divided from civilised beings by an impassable gulf, and is doomed to be a scoundrel by the shape of his skull, i venture to dispute the assumption. the viking in a generation or two became the norman knight, capable of the highest cultivation of his time; and even the rough, according to mr. rudyard kipling, is capable, under judicious discipline, of developing some very fine qualities, chiefly, it is true, in the shape of devotion to his colours. to wean him from some of his weaknesses it is probably necessary to catch him rather younger. all, however, that i desire to say, for the present, is this--as it seems to me--very undeniable fact: that the difference between a civilised man and a barbarian, between the highest types of modern life and the apparently irreclaimable brutes who are exhibited in our police-courts, is not dependent upon the mark of the beast irreclaimably fixed upon them at their birth; but to certain later influences, which may or may not be brought to bear upon them effectually. there is nothing, for example, in the doctrine of heredity inconsistent with the belief that if such influences could be properly directed, the standard, say, of sobriety and prudence among the lowest classes might be improved, as much as the standard of the same virtues has been improved in classes above them. the consequences of such a change would, i suspect, be incomparably greater than the consequences of whole systems of laws regulating the hours of labour and whole armies of official inspectors. but into this i need not go; and i have only one thing to say in conclusion. i have spoken of the enormous results of what we call progress and civilisation. that they are in one sense enormous is, i suppose, undeniable. that the power which we generally describe as the command of man over nature has been immensely increased is too palpable a fact to be denied; that there has been a corresponding change in many political and social respects is a fact which i only mention without seeking to say how far it has been in all respects a change for the better. further, i urge that this change, whatever it is, has not been due to a change in the individual constitution, but to a change in the social factor. and, this being so, i simply suggest that, considering how vast is the total change thus effected, we may reasonably hope, or, at the very least, we may reasonably endeavour to justify the hope, that a change of great magnitude may be brought about in those directions where we all have to regret the survival or even the development of so much that is melancholy: of regeneration going on alongside of amelioration. i think that the doctrine of heredity is sometimes interpreted in such a way as to suggest the hopelessness or at least the extreme difficulty of introducing any sensible improvement within any limited time; and what i have tried to urge is that, if properly understood, it does not in the least degree tend to justify such forebodings, or to imply that we are to abandon ourselves to a demoralising fatalism. punishment. i invite you to consider a rather dry problem. i ventured to select this topic because it has lately been my duty to occupy myself with certain legal writings, which, perhaps, took me a little beyond my depth. they touched, however, problems which are common to the lawyer and to the moralist. although not a lawyer, i am interested in some moral problems which have also a legal aspect: what i propose to do this evening is, to consider certain questions which lie in the region common to both provinces of inquiry, and especially this question: what is the true ethical theory of punishments inflicted by the criminal law? how, and in what sense, are they to be regarded as just? there is, obviously, a relation between the two codes--moral and legal. murder is both a sin and a crime: a breach of the moral law, and of the laws of every civilised country. yet, there is one broad and deep distinction between the two systems of law. the moral law is essentially concerned with a man's motives. to say that a man's conduct is wicked, is necessarily also to say that it is the action of a bad man, or due to evil passions. murder is wicked, as it is the manifestation of the murderer's hatred of his neighbour. the criminal law, on the other hand, has to deal, in the first instance, with the external facts. it contemplates, primarily, what a man does, not what he is. it does not attempt to punish every man who hates his neighbour, but every man who has, in fact, killed, whether the action springs from hatred or some other motive. every one who deliberately kills, unless the act falls under certain definite exceptions, is guilty of murder. this, of course, does not imply that the moral aspect is of no account. the exceptions are so arranged that the legal classification corresponds roughly to the moral classification. under certain exceptions, killing is regarded as justifiable homicide, and under others, it is only manslaughter, and, therefore, receives none, or a slighter penalty. the coincidence between the codes may thus be very close. in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the action condemned by the criminal law will be condemned by the moralist. the man who is legally guilty of murder is also, almost invariably, guilty of a great moral offence. although, again, the moral law applies to large classes of conduct, which are not within the cognisance of the criminal law, it is, at least, plainly desirable that the criminal law should condemn nothing which is not also morally wrong. the sway of the moral law is universal; it applies to all conduct, and, of course, to the conduct of legislators and judges: they and the law which they define and apply should be consistent with the general law of right and wrong. they and all of us are bound not to make virtue more difficult nor vice easier. but, further, the questions as to the relations between the two codes arise in various directions. it is obvious that the criminal law has to employ very rough and ready methods. it cannot estimate, with any accuracy, the degree of immorality implied by any given action. it cannot, and it does not attempt to, look closely into the secrets of a man's heart. it cannot inquire, as a rule, how far a man's crime is the result of bad education or bad surroundings; how far it implies thorough corruption or only superficial faults of temper, or a misunderstanding of some fact or doctrine. it cannot take into account a number of metaphysical or psychological considerations which are connected with the theory of moral responsibility. to settle such points you would have to empanel a jury of philosophers, and the only thing of which you could be certain would be, that such a jury would never agree upon a verdict. again, there are whole classes of virtues and vices with which the criminal law is not concerned. ingratitude, to take the common example, is a grave vice, but one which it would be absurd to punish legally. not only would such an attempt involve impossible inquiries, but the attempt would be self-defeating. if the duty of gratitude to a benefactor were turned into a legal obligation, gratitude proper would cease to exist. to confer a benefit would be the same thing as to acquire a right to repayment. a man who allows his best friend to starve, or to go to the workhouse, may be, morally, far worse than a thief; but you could not punish him legally, without adopting a principle which, even if practicable, would, so far as it operated, be destructive of all disinterested friendship. the law, again, can deal only with criminals who are found out. what proportion they may bear to the whole class of moral offenders is not discoverable; but it is, at least, safe to say that, for every man whom you convict of a crime, you must leave unpunished, because undetected, another sinner who is equally deserving of punishment. and, finally, it is apparently impossible to say, upon any intelligible grounds, what should be the proportion between crime and punishment. how many years' imprisonment does a man deserve for putting out his neighbour's eye? i do not see how such a rule of three can be stated. the good old theory of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, seems to suggest a possible criterion. but it was difficult to carry out. deloraine, in the _lay of the last minstrel_, has, as he points out, killed musgrove's brother; but, on the other hand, musgrove has killed deloraine's nephew, and, besides, got a thousand marks ransom out of deloraine himself. is the account to be regarded as accurately balanced? is one brother just equal to a nephew plus a thousand marks? the theory, of course, is an application of an inappropriate analogy. if we regard crime simply as a case of private injury, we may say that it is fair that the wrong-doer should restore the thing that he has taken, and so put matters where they were before. but this is obviously to take a view which is quite inapplicable in most cases, and in all cases becomes inadequate when we take the moral view, and regard crime as an offence against society--not simply as a wrong to another individual. for such reasons, it is apparently impossible to say that a legal punishment can be just, in the full sense in which the moralist would use the words. no doubt we may say,--and we wish that we could always say,--that a man "deserves" what he has got; and that implies that we recognise as desirable some satisfaction to our sense of justice. and, of course, too, we demand that justice should be done in another sense of the word; that the case, for example, should be impartially investigated; that a man should not be punished severely because he is poor, or because he is unpopular, or let off easily because he is a private friend of the judge. such demands mean that justice should not be perverted by applying irrelevant considerations; but they leave our previous questions untouched. the criminal law, from its nature, cannot impose equal penalties upon all men who are equally wicked; but only upon those who have made themselves liable: and that always involves elements of accident; it cannot take into account at all some of the elements upon which the depth of moral depravity essentially depends; and it is, at least, very difficult to say what specific meaning can be given to the proportion between crime and the suffering imposed upon the criminal. if, then, the legislative action must, of necessity, be very imperfect from the moral point of view, we may try what will be the effect of dismissing the moral question altogether, or, at least, reducing it to a secondary place. we may, that is, consider crime not in so far as immoral, but in so far as mischievous. here we have the doctrine worked out very consistently by bentham and his followers. pain, they said, is an evil, the only evil; pleasure, a good, and the only good. to inflict needless pain--pain which does not cause a balance of pleasure--upon any one, be he a good man or be he a bad man, is, so far, wrong. for the same reason, it is justifiable, and, indeed, right, to inflict pain, so far as it prevents some greater evil. hence, you should punish criminals just so far as the pain which you inflict is less than the pain which you prevent. it is wrong to give a single useless pang even to the worst of men. if (according to a sentiment attributed to bentham) a fine of five shillings would prevent a man from committing murder, it would be wrong to fine him seven shillings and sixpence. this gives a justification of punishment, in so far as deterrent. it is obviously connected with another doctrine. a man is the best judge of his own pleasures and pains. therefore, in so far as a man's actions affect himself alone, they are not to be forbidden by the law. we may think them bad or degrading; but so long as they do not affect others, the fact that a man chooses them is a proof that they give him pleasure; and we shall, therefore, only diminish the sum of happiness by interfering. now, it is plain that this distinction does not draw the line between what is morally bad or good. every habit which affects a man's own character, affects, also, his capacity to fulfil his duties to others. but this theory overlooks immorality, except so far as it happens to involve certain extraneous consequences. we are, upon this showing, to punish a criminal precisely in the same spirit as we are to abate a nuisance. the thief is to be suppressed, as we are to extirpate a mischievous weed, and to be suppressed by just as much severity as is required for the purpose. the drunkard, so long as he confines himself to making a beast of himself in his own room, does his neighbours no direct injury, and must be left to enjoy the pleasure which is shown, because he chooses it, to be a pleasure to him. of this theory, it may, i think, be said that, however imperfect, it is tolerably consistent, and, moreover, that it undoubtedly does express one legitimate end of punishment. there can be no doubt, that is, that the punishment of murderers may be rightly defended, among other grounds, at any rate, on the ground that it discourages the practice; though we may not fully agree with the famous saying of the judge, "you are not hanged for stealing sheep, but hanged in order that sheep may not be stolen". and, further, though there are various difficulties about the distinction between "self-regarding" and "extra-regarding" conduct, we must also, i think, allow, in general terms, that the fact that a man's conduct has a direct and assignable influence upon his neighbour's happiness, must always be one reason, and, frequently, the only sufficient reason, for suppressing it by legal penalties. this doctrine of simple deterrence, however, seems, to most critics, to be insufficient. it omits the moral element too completely. when a man is punished for some revolting offence, we are not simply providing him and his like with reasons for abstaining in future. we are, as a fact, exposing him to infamy, sometimes more painful to bear than the immediate penalty, and are thus, in fact, invoking the sanction of the moral sentiment. therefore, it is urged, we must still, whether we like it or not, be moralists. the purely utilitarian argument has omitted one element of the calculation. the punishment not only deters offenders, but gratifies the feeling of resentment to moral indignation, which has been approved by many moralists. hence, it is urged, besides the deterrent theory, we must make room for the vindictive theory. it is legitimate and right to hate crime, and, therefore, to hate criminals; and legal punishments are defensible, not merely as adding to the motives for refraining from crime, but as gratifying the desire for revenge, which, in early ages, was assumed in the rude modes of putting down violence, and which, even now, should be not eradicated but confined within legal channels and directed towards the desirable ends. postponing, for the present, a consideration of this proposed emendation, let us consider, a little more closely, the objection made to the theory of deterrence. in what way does it come into direct conflict with a moral theory of punishment? it looks upon immorality as mischievous, or as diminishing happiness; and upon the utilitarian view immorality means the diminution of happiness. now, without discussing ultimate moral questions, i may assume that, for practical purposes, this seems to be a sufficiently tenable position. after all, we admit, to whatever school we belong, that crime is mischievous, and, whatever deeper meaning may be assigned to it, may be considered in that light by the legislator. he cannot--certainly he ought not to--forbid actions which do no harm to anybody, or which nobody, at the time and place, feels to be injurious to happiness. even, therefore, if utilitarianism be unsatisfactory as an ultimate theory, it may represent adequately the point of view of the practical legislator. he tries to suppress violence and fraud because, as a fact, they cause what their victims unanimously agree to be painful consequences; and he need not look any further for a reason. people, it is said, have very different standards of pleasure. still, we all dislike having our throats cut or our pockets picked; and that fact supplies a sufficient ground upon which to base the whole criminal law. when we go a little further, a point of divergence may be noticed, a short consideration of which may help to clear the case. let us assume the legitimate end of all punishment to be deterrence. it will follow, that we must annex as a consequence to crimes an adequate counterpoise, and a counterpoise not more than adequate to the criminal's motives. the fine to be paid must be just sufficient to prevent the transgression. now, it has been urged, this necessarily implies a conflict with morality. the degree of moral guilt implied in a given crime varies inversely as the temptation. the greater the inducement to the offence, the less the wickedness shown in committing the offence. a man may have enough virtue to refrain from a gratuitous injustice, although he has not virtue enough to resist a large bribe, or the threats of a man in power. but, if the legislator is to provide simply a counterpoise, he will have to follow the opposite rule. the greater the temptation, the greater must be the force of the motive which must be added to counterbalance the temptation. if there be a crime by which a man might make a million of money, you must, if you would prevent it, hold out the prospect of such pains as would, in his estimation, be cheaply avoided at the sacrifice of a million; or, making allowance for the uncertainty of detection, by the sacrifice of more than a million. but if, by the same crime, he only got a five-pound note, the prospect of paying a hundred pounds in case of detection might be a sufficient preservative of his honesty. yet, the man who is tempted by the million gives less proof of dishonesty than the man who commits the same crime for a paltry five pounds. therefore the punishment must be increased, as the wickedness is less. i must first set aside one ambiguity which perplexes this argument. when we speak of a temptation as varying, we may mean one of two very different things. to say that i am more "tempted" than you to commit a given crime, may mean that the gain expected by me is itself greater; or, it may mean that i am more predisposed to the crime. i may be more tempted, let us say, to poison my uncle than you are to poison yours. that may mean that my uncle is a rich old sinner and i am his heir, whereas your uncle is a poor saint and you will get nothing by his death. or it may mean that i am more tempted because, our uncles being alike, i am spiteful, and you affectionate, by nature. in the first case, to say that i am under the stronger temptation would, perhaps, tend to alleviate the gravity of my crime; in the second, it would simply be another way of saying that i was the greater brute. in both cases, of course, it is true that the greater temptation would require the greater counterpoise. in one case, this only means that the worse the man, the stronger the restraints which he requires; and, if you could make different laws for bad men and good, it would follow that the bad would require the heaviest penalties. but this does not conflict with the moral view. it is no excuse for a murderer to say, "i am so bloodthirsty that i really could not help murdering". no contradiction to morality arises from punishing his crime more severely. in the other case alone,--the case in which we made distinctions founded upon the difference of surrounding circumstances,--it is true that we should, from the point of view of simple deterrence, require heavier penalties where the temptations were greater, and, therefore, the intrinsic malevolence proved to exist less. for most purposes, this argument seems to have very little practical application. the law is made for people in general; we cannot have one law for bad men and another for good; partly because good and bad people do not carry about tangible marks of their quality written upon their faces. no doubt, indeed, the atrocity of a crime is recognised, if not by the general law, by the nature of the sentence. an assault may show unnatural ferocity or merely a rather excessive warmth of temper; and, though the offence may be forbidden under the same clause of the criminal law, the judge may be empowered to give sentences of varying severity, varying more or less according to the moral depravity implied. so far, the worst offences (in a moral sense) get the heaviest punishment; and the deterring influence is rightly exerted by proportioning the penalty to the temptation, that is, to the predisposition to crime. the other case, again, requires some qualification. it is not true, as an absolute proposition, that the criminality is always, or generally, diminished, in proportion to the greatness of the temptation; for we must remember that both the temptation and the crime will generally be greater in proportion to the amount of mischief inflicted. it is more tempting, no doubt, to appropriate a thousand pounds than a shilling; but we cannot infer that the man who takes the larger sum is, therefore, less wicked; that he has a conscience which would have kept him honest under the smaller temptation, and has only yielded to the greater. compare, for example, the case of the petty pilferer who appropriates my watch, with the case of the man of business who appropriates securities worth many thousand pounds and ruins widows and orphans by the dozen. we should all agree, i imagine, that the perpetrator of the more gigantic fraud would require the stronger deterring motive to be kept straight. he is playing for heavy stakes, and we cannot hold out too strong a threat of infamy and suffering, if our aim is simply to prevent the crime. but neither, if we consider him from the purely moral point of view, would it be fair to argue that he was a better man than the pickpocket, because the plunder which tempted him was greater. the opposite, i fancy, would be true. he shows a callousness to human suffering, and an amount of deliberate hypocrisy and treachery which proves him to be not only the more dangerous, but the more thoroughly corrupt of the two. the two ends of providing a sufficient counterpoise and of punishing the worst men most severely, would, therefore, coincide in this case also; and the argument that the greater temptation implies less wickedness is plainly inapplicable. without going further into this, which may briefly indicate some of the perplexities involved, i may mention certain cases in which there seems to be a real divergence of the two principles. there are cases in which the temptation may be fairly held to lessen guilt, and in which punishment has, notwithstanding, been made severer in consequence. the criminal law of the last century, for example, imposed a penalty of death upon persons who stole certain kinds of property left in specially exposed positions. the ease of taking it would very possibly tempt to theft men who would elsewhere be honest; and it was sought to compensate for the strength of the temptation by more savage punishment of those who yielded to it. or, again, there are certain problems of a similar kind connected with political offences. a man who gets up a rebellion from sincere political motives is generally far better morally than the man who gets up a rebellion for the sake, say, of simple plunder. ought the motive to be allowed as an extenuation of the offence? it ought, it may be said, from a moral point of view; but, from the point of view of simple deterrence, we might rather consider that the patriotic rebel is the more dangerous person of the two, and, therefore, requires the prospect of at least as heavy a punishment to keep him quiet. so, again, it has been asked, whether it should be admitted as an excuse for a rioter, that he has joined in violent courses under threats from the riotous mob. this is, of course, an excuse from the moralist's point of view; the man is only attacking the police in order to save his own house from being burnt, not from a disorderly or disaffected spirit. but it is replied, from the deterring point of view, that, if such an excuse be allowed, you are ceasing to threaten at the precise moment when the threats are most required. if the law is not to press from one side, all the pressure will come from the other, and every argument will be in favour of joining the side of disorder. hence, it is argued, we ought to proportion the punishment, not to the offence, but to the temptation. now, i may say, very briefly, that such a divergence of the two principles appears to me to be possible; and, further, that cases may be put in which it might be necessary to deter, at all hazards, even to the neglect of moral considerations. a general who is defending a town must sometimes burn the houses of innocent people, without stopping to consider whether they can ever be compensated; and i think that there may be analogous cases even in regard to law, where the consideration of the absolute necessity of putting down mischievous conduct may override the normal moral considerations. but the general answer is, i think, different, and may help to clear the principle. the law to which i have referred, for the protection of exposed property, obviously suggests one remark. the true remedy for the evil would have been not to increase the penalty, but to increase the protection. you ought to have provided more watchmen, or to have forbidden owners to put temptation in the way of their neighbours, and not to have tried to make the hangman do the work of the policeman. so our ancestors erred when they protected their fields, not by putting up fences, but by setting mantraps to mutilate occasional trespassers. in that, as in other cases, the mistake is to confuse between the deterring influence of punishment and the preventive influence of protective measures. arguments, questionable when used on behalf of punishment considered as deterring, are perfectly applicable to the preventive measures. it is obviously right that such measures should be proportioned to the temptation. when a starving man steals a loaf, he is not so bad as a man who steals when he is not starving. we should, therefore, think it morally wrong to punish him as severely. but, if we thought that he ought not to have the loaf, we should take stronger precautions in proportion to the probable temptation. if, for example, we were sending supplies to relieve a starving district, it would be clearly right to send such a force with them as might prevent their appropriation by the strongest, or the first comers. but, at the same time, we should also think it right to save the men from temptation, by providing as much as possible against the danger of starvation. so, again, it would be monstrous to punish a poor man more severely than a duke, for stealing a watch; but, as a matter of prudence, i should take more precautions if i were dining in a poor public-house, than if i were dining in a ducal palace. this suggests the true application of another doctrine, about the responsibility of society. society, it is sometimes said, has no right to punish, because it ought to have suppressed the causes of crime. this doctrine is often stated very illogically, and would sanction a great deal of false sentimentalism. if society includes many corrupt and dangerous elements, that is no reason at all for not suppressing them by all available means. but, no doubt, it is a very good and sufficient reason for trying, as far as possible, to remove the cause as well as the effects; for getting rid of the temptations to crime, and training people so as to make them less disposed to crime, instead of simply punishing more severely those who have yielded to temptation and given play to instincts which have not been properly disciplined. this applies conspicuously to the case of the political criminal. it is generally essential to the welfare of a nation, that order should be preserved by a settled government. it is the duty of every government, not only to crush resistance, but to take such precautions as will make resistance hopeless. but a correlative duty is suggested when a rebellion actually occurs, and especially a rebellion which excites the sympathy of otherwise moral people. such a case, that is, affords the strongest presumption that there are real grievances to be redressed, and that the rebel should not be confounded with the vulgar criminal. it may be, and often is, quite necessary to shoot him down, so long as he is actively attacking authority; but, when he is disarmed, he cannot be regarded simply as a thief or murderer, but as a man who has given a useful, though a disagreeable, hint that the times are out of joint. i have gone so far into these questions--which might lead to a great many other problems of legal casuistry--with the desire of bringing out one essential part of the question. the difficulties which have arisen point, i think, to the impossibility of treating the problem exclusively, from a simple consideration of the deterring influence of punishment. that, however, remains an essential element. if the sole reason for punishing a sheep-stealer be not the prevention of sheep-stealing, that is, at least, a very excellent reason as far as it goes. but it seems to me an insufficient reason from the moral point of view, and, in particular, to fail in assigning a sufficiently distinct ground for determining the desirable degree of punishment. the principle was advocated as limiting the severity of the old laws; but it is not quite easy to define the limit suggested. there is a necessary clumsiness about the method. a punishment only becomes operative in the cases in which the threat has failed to deter. the fact that a man has committed a crime demonstrates the inadequacy of the system in his case; we have not given him a sufficient motive for abstaining. when bentham says, that if a fine of five shillings would prevent a murder, you ought not to fine the murderer seven and sixpence, he says what is, in a sense, obviously true. if i could prevent a murder, or, indeed, achieve any other desirable object, for a given sum, why should i throw away another penny? but the fine is not inflicted till somebody has committed a murder, and, in that case, the threat of fining has obviously failed. the question arises, therefore, how far am i to go? am i to go on raising the tariff till murder becomes altogether obsolete? but we have already got as far as capital punishment, without achieving that result. and, if we consider the case upon this method, we begin to find a difficulty in the method of calculation. we are to compare the pain inflicted upon the criminal with the pain saved to the victim. but the greater the pain inflicted, the smaller, according to the assumption made, will be the number of criminals, and the greater the number of victims saved. if we could adopt the draconic system, and be sure of punishing every crime with death, crime ought to disappear; for hardly anybody would break the law if he were quite certain of the gallows. but, in that case, the pain, both of the criminal and the victim, would disappear, for there would be no one in either class. the result, therefore, would be a pure gain: no crime and no punishment. against this practical conclusion, indeed, bentham was one of the first to protest; and he uses one very sound argument. punish all crime equally, he says, and you put a premium on the worst crimes. if both robber and murderer are to be hanged, the robber will have a good reason for destroying evidence, by adding the murder to the plunder of his victims. but, though the argument is very much to the purpose, it seems to make our calculations rather difficult. we cannot look simply to the deterring influence of a given punishment, but have to consider its place in the general tariff, and its influence in inducing people to prefer one variety of crime to another. and if we try to find our way out of this difficulty, we shall have, i think, to find that the mode of reasoning requires some modification. the theory on which the calculation goes may, perhaps, be represented thus: it is supposed that by hanging a murderer, you prevent, say, ten murders which would otherwise happen. the suffering saved to the ten victims is greater than the actual suffering of the single criminal. therefore, the infliction of the penalty gives a balance on the side of happiness. the argument seems to me to be sound as far as it goes, and, in some cases, it would, i think, be sufficient. if, for example, it were proved that the use of a certain remedy, such as inoculation, caused a certain number of deaths, while, on the other hand, it prevented ten times as many, we should consider that a good case had been made out for its adoption. and, similarly, if we attended simply to the number of executions and to the number of crimes, and could make the necessary arithmetical comparison, we should be able to estimate the balance of good or evil in terms of pain and pleasure. but this mode of considering the case is obviously inadequate; and, indeed, bentham (though i cannot now go into his teaching) feels and makes allowance for its inadequacy. for, to say nothing else, the mere deterrence of a certain number of crimes is an entirely insufficient measure of the effect of the law. the one obvious remark is that, by suppressing violence, you not only save a certain number of lives, but you secure an essential condition of all civilised life. i came here to-night without a revolver in my pocket; and i am not aware that i showed any particular courage by doing so. but it would have been foolhardy to have shown the same negligence, a few years ago, in some of the western states of america. if i had lived in such conditions, i should not only have taken a revolver, but have, very possibly, thought it a duty to join a vigilance committee, with a view to the suppression of crimes of violence. there are still regions where the fact that a man lives in a neighbouring village is a sufficient justification for shooting him down as soon as he comes in sight, for the simple reason that, otherwise, he would shoot you. so, when private war was still part of the regular custom, there was an obstacle which had to be crushed before any progress could be made in industrial development, which presupposes peaceful intercourse and mutual confidence. the formation of all that is meant by social order, the bringing about of a state of things in which men can meet habitually without fear or precaution, counting with complete confidence upon the absence of any hostile intention, is, obviously, an essential condition of everything that makes life worth living in a civilised country. the fact is too obvious to require much illustration; but it requires notice, for it is very imperfectly recognised when you regard murder, for example, simply as a kind of sporadic disease, which breaks out here and there, and can be kept within limits by killing some murderers, and so frightening other would-be murderers. the criminal law, no doubt, includes that consideration; but it includes infinitely more. it is a necessary corollary of that state of social relations which alone gives a secure base for every conceivable kind of satisfactory social relation. it might, perhaps, serve as a sufficient defence of the old system, when, in the absence of any settled order, the system of private vengeance, of blood-feuds, and so forth, served to restrain the prevalence of actual violence. but it is a totally insufficient measure of the real advantage gained by enforcing order. we have to compare, not only the number of murders and the number of victims which would exist in a given social order, supposing the penalty to be inflicted or not inflicted; but to compare two radically different social states, and to ask, whether it is better to live in a society where peace is the almost invariable rule, and violence the rare exception, or in one in which there is a chaos of little societies, each of them being in constant fear of all its neighbours. the construction of a central authority which will keep the peace is a necessary part of the process of civilisation, and the criminal law is involved in the process. for, of course, it follows that, so long as anti-social elements exist within the borders of society, and some people resort to the old methods of the knife or the bludgeon, they must be put down; and the hangman and the jailer, clumsy as the action may be, represent the only kind of machinery which has hitherto been invented for the purpose. it follows that we must understand "deterrence" in a wider sense than we have hitherto given to it. when we speak of punishment as deterring from crime, we must consider, not merely the effect upon the individual of the prospect of punishment following detection, but the total effect of a systematic adherence to the law upon the preservation of a peaceful state of society at large. we do not simply wish to provide a sufficient motive to decide the individual who is asking himself, shall i steal or not steal? but to maintain an organisation under which property shall be normally respected, and stealing become as exceptional as we can make it. this, in turn, involves much more than a simple execution of the criminal law; it involves the support of agencies for prevention, education, and reformation; though it does, also, involve an inflexible adherence to the criminal law. the law has to use rough means, and cannot possibly affect to adhere precisely to the moral deserts of individual cases. but it is justified by the simple ground that the only alternative is a chaos of barbarism. if you ask, therefore, in what sense is a criminal law just? we must confess that, in certain respects, it is impossible that it should be strictly just; it must deal with the found-out exclusively and with those who are found out in certain definite cases of criminality, and it must, therefore, impose penalties which do not precisely correspond to the degree of criminality implied. but the relation to morality is, nevertheless, intimate. for the growth of the social order depends upon the growth of the corresponding social instincts; or rather, the two processes are correlative. if i love my neighbour i shall not wish to cut his throat; and, in order that i may love him, i must be pretty sure that he does not mean to cut mine. the external framework provides a protection under which the primary moral instincts can expand; and the expansion of the instincts supposes a correlative modification of the external framework. the moral requirement in regard to the criminal law is, therefore, essentially, that it should be such a law as is favourable, when considered in connection with the whole order, to the strength and development of the existing morality. if the criminal asks, how do you justify yourself for punishing me? the reply must be, because the inflexible administration of the law is an essential precondition of the whole system, under which alone progress is possible. a society in which peace and order are preserved is superior, in morals as in other respects, to a society in which peace and order are made impossible by violence; and the suppression by punishment of offenders is involved in the system. the advantage of belonging to such a society is not to be measured by counting up the working of individual cases; but by the whole characteristics of the social state, taken as a whole, and including, as one essential part, the administration of criminal law in such a way as to be in conformity with the conditions of healthy social development. the difficulty, i think, though i can only indicate the argument briefly, results from a common illusion, which is illustrated by the once famous social contract theory. you suppose a number of independent individuals, agreeing to join and expecting to receive a precise equivalent for every sacrifice that they make in consequence. the reply is, that the individual is the product of the society, and it is a mere fiction to consider him as possessing any antecedent rights whatever. his rights are to be deduced from, not to supply the premisses for deducing, the social order. the only considerations which are relevant are those which affect the welfare of the social organism, taken as a whole; and we must regard them as determined, before we come to the distribution of benefits and burdens among its constituent facts. otherwise, we should be falling into the same fallacy as if we argued about the health of separate bodily organs, legs, and arms, and stomachs, as though they were independent things, fastened together to make a single machine. since the leg implies the stomach, any consideration of the leg's separate rights would be absurd. so the individual member of a political society cannot be regarded as though he had existed outside society somewhere, and was entitled to a precise equivalent for the sacrifice of his independence. the doctrine involves impossible considerations. i have to contribute to certain sanitary regulations, though i may be stronger or weaker than my neighbours, and therefore less or more in need of them. or, i have to pay a school-rate, whether i have a dozen children or none at all. do those facts give me a right to complain if i am taxed equally with my neighbours? if so, every benefit which i receive from society must be set down as a separate item in an account to be balanced by itself. obviously, the advantage which i receive in such cases is the whole advantage received from living in a healthy place or among educated people; and it is essentially impossible to cut that up into a number of different bits of happiness conferred in return for separate payments on account. if i use the contract formula, i must interpret it to mean that amenability to various regulations, including the criminal law, is part of the whole bargain, which would have been made, if it had ever been real, when i decided, if i ever had decided, to join the society. the instinct for punishing criminals guilty of violence is one of the fundamental instincts of civilisation, and we must accept it just as we accept any other fundamental instinct. the question of justice, however, is not a whit the less essential because it presupposes this social characteristic instead of supplying the primary axioms from which it is to be deduced. it is undoubtedly of the highest importance that every difference in our method of treating different classes should have its sufficient reason, to be assigned as clearly as possible. the preservation of the peace is essential; but that does not settle the methods by which it is to be preserved. on what ground, then, are we to deal with the problem of justice as regards different classes of crime? if the calculation of pain and pleasure, as already stated, seems to be unsatisfactory, what is the right principle of proportioning punishment to offence? i have noticed one argument which bentham applied, and, as i think, with very good reason. to punish crimes equally, he said, is virtually to put a premium upon the worst. the "in for a penny in for a pound" maxim becomes at once applicable. moreover, as every one now admits, the old brutal system is condemned by experience. to punish a great number of offences with death led to a mixture of excessive brutality with excessive uncertainty. the cruel punishment of some criminals was balanced by the complete escape of others. but this practical failure clearly resulted, in great measure, from an obscure sense of justice. it was grossly unjust, it seemed, to hang a man for stealing a loaf, when you could only hang another for the brutal murder of his wife. the penalty in the first case, was, it was felt, altogether out of proportion to the offence. this instinctive sentiment was, as i think we all feel, substantially right. in any case, it would have to be taken into account by the legislator, for the obvious reason that punishments which outrun public opinion, tend to make martyrs of criminals. they are either not inflicted, or they set the sympathy of the people on the side of the offender. but to say this, is not to prove the sentiment to be just, only to take account of its existence. and the question, therefore, remains, how it is to be logically justified, for it may seem to imply the theory to which i have objected--the hypothesis of a sort of debtor and creditor account--of the old "eye for an eye" doctrine, which, as i have argued, involves a misconception of the true doctrine. my reply would be, in general terms, that the doctrine requires restatement, and, if properly stated, will not lose but acquire new forces. let us consider the consequences of my previous statements. the essential condition of social development is enforcement, where necessary, of peace and order by adequate means. the criminal law corresponds to one part of this process. the whole social system includes machinery for prevention, for reformation and for education, as well as for punishment; and it is only when taken in its relation to other parts of the system, that we can give the full justification. its methods are, as i have said, obviously full of imperfections, from the purely moral point of view. if we consider it as an isolated fact, comparably to the interference of a quasi-supernatural power, which clutches an offender here and there, and punishes him simply to frighten others, the arbitrary and unequal nature of the proceeding assumes an air of injustice. in fact, if you take the extreme individualist view, according to which each man is an independent unit, while society represents a force impinging upon him from without, it always becomes difficult to introduce the conception of justice without ending in the approval of anarchy. when, however, we consider the social organisation as including all the means of civilising society, of strengthening the general spirit of order, as well as acting upon the fears of the disorderly, we have to take wider considerations into account. we become sensible, in the first place, of the importance of the principle that punishment should never be substituted for prevention. wherever it is possible to remove temptations, or take precautions which make crime impossible, we can have no excuse for adopting the blundering and unsatisfactory system of punishing those who have committed it. we admit, that is, that the criminal law, though absolutely necessary, is an essentially clumsy contrivance, to be used only when other methods fail. when certain punishments have been condemned as brutalising, it has been replied that the persons punished were already so brutal that it is impossible to make them worse. but the brutalising influence is even more objectionable as it applies to the legislator than as it applies to the criminal. to make up for neglect of appropriate precautions by severity against the offender, is to adopt the necessarily arbitrary method in which chance must always play a part in place of more effective and civilising methods. frugality in applying punishment is desirable as a guarantee that we are acting in the proper spirit. an indian official was asked why the native police were disposed to use torture for the detection of crime. the cause was, he said, mainly from laziness: it was so much easier to sit in the shade, rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes, than to go about in a hot sun collecting evidence. so, it would be very much easier to inflict cruel punishment than to try to remove the causes of crime; and a resolution never to use the more brutal methods is not, as i think, to be regarded as a proof of weak sentimentalism, but as a judicious self-denying ordinance, imposed upon society by itself, as binding it always to adopt, as far as it possibly can, what is at once the more humane and the more scientific method. the same principle involves the careful graduation of punishment. there are, indeed, as i believe, though i cannot give reasons, cases in which crimes ought to be punished with death. there are persons of whom we may say that it would have been better, especially for their neighbours, if they had never been born. "i am worth inconceivably more for hanging than for any other purpose," said the heroic john brown; and the words may be applied, in a very different sense, to some of the wretches who occasionally make their appearance in the courts. to hang such a man is to act upon the assumption that murderers represent elements which are entirely and radically anti-social. the only remedy for them is extirpation. but, if this be admitted, it suggests a sufficient reason for not applying it to the cases of less gravity, in which such radical incompatibility has not been demonstrated. punishment by death, even if necessary, is certainly a confession of impotence. we are admitting that we can do nothing better with the man than convert him into a scarecrow for the benefit of his like. what more, it may be asked, can we do with a criminal? the obvious reply would be, reform him. although no one can doubt that reformation would be an extremely good thing, wherever practicable, it may be urged that the enterprise is exceedingly difficult; that, in many cases, it is hopeless; and that we might spend our money and our efforts to better purpose upon more hopeful materials. and yet, i think that the answer is the true one, if properly understood, and will suggest the right meaning to be given to the word "deterrence". so long as we consider the individual case alone, and merely mean that we are giving motives to bad men for refraining from particular lines of conduct, the results, however desirable, are of limited value. but if we consider deterrence as including or coinciding with reformation, as indicating a part of the general system of moral pressure by which the classes exposed to temptation may be gradually raised in the scale of civilisation, we recognise an acceptable meaning. in fact, if we ask what is the deterring influence of punishment, we must observe that at one extreme it will always fail, or only induce a bad man to take precautions against detection; and that, at the other end of the scale, there are a great many cases in which it does not come into active operation at all. you and i, i hope, are not in the least disposed to assault each other, even though no policeman is present. the bare thought of resorting to violence, pelting me, say, with rotten eggs, has not even suggested itself to you, even though i may be making a very provoking use of my tongue. but there is also an intermediate class of people upon whom the possibility of having to appear in a police court, and the strong sense of shame attached to such appearances, is an active restraining force, tending to limit, and, in cases where the proper conditions exist, gradually to narrow, the sphere of violence. we, the peaceable and law-abiding citizens, have gained a right to those epithets, because we have lived in a sphere where the law has been habitually enforced. we have ceased to carry deadly weapons about us, and have established a general condition of good order. the deterring influence of the criminal law acts, or ought to act, by gradually spreading that state of mind through a steadily widening circle. the classes which are still in need of such a support to their moral instincts are clearly capable of reformation, whatever may be the case of some of the individuals who break the law. a fighting tribe, which has been in the habit of resenting every injury by the use of the knife, may learn, in a very short time, that a court of law settles disputes more agreeably than a free fight; and may become a most admirable and efficient part of the society to which it belongs. and the same may be said of large classes in our own society, which are perfectly capable of being converted into good citizens, though they may retain certain propensities developed under a rougher and more brutal system. to employ excessive and brutalising punishments in order to suppress small offences, is, therefore, to abandon the aim of civilising, to declare internecine war against the class, and to regard them simply as a nuisance to be abated. the effect might be, if the law could be carried out, to prevent a certain number of crimes; but it must also be to generate a more dangerous spirit in the class which you regard simply as dangerous, instead of regarding it as the possible raw materials of a more civilised and orderly society. without attempting to dwell upon a familiar argument, i merely say that this view of the case implies that the governing power should be regarded, not simply as a machinery for catching and killing noxious criminals, but as a great civilising influence, suppressing all temptations to crime, where possible; preferring prevention, in every practicable case, to punishment, and making use of the clumsy, though necessary, weapons in the last resort; and acting by a steady and regulated pressure upon all anti-social elements. it is only possible to give a satisfactory theory of the jail and the gallows, when you take them as a subordinate part of the system which includes reformatories and schools, and due precautions for the regular preservation of order. the ultimate criterion of justice is not to be found in any attempt to form a debtor and creditor account between the government and the individual; but in the civilising influence of the system, taken as a whole. and, finally, i come back to the other theory which i have noticed. to supply the defects of the simply deterrent theory, it has been found necessary, as i said, to invoke the vindictive theory. we should go, it was suggested, upon the theory that a criminal is hateful, and, therefore, that it should be a pleasure to punish him. the feelings of resentment and moral indignation are parts of our nature, to which the punishment of the offender affords them a legitimate gratification. now, to this, i should reply that, in the first place, i do not admit that the desire for revenge, as usually understood, can ever be legitimate. revenge, as i understand the word, implies a personal feeling. it is taking pleasure in giving pain to a man because he has given pain to me. according to my view of morals, any pleasure in causing pain is, so far, wrong; and the public punishment should be free from all personal motive. i quite agree with bentham that we ought not to take a positive pleasure in the sufferings, even of the worst criminal; and to admit the legitimacy of such pleasure is to admit an element of pure sentiment to which it is difficult to assign any precise limits. if you allow yourself to hate a man so as to take pleasure in his sufferings, you might justify the infliction of superfluous torture and the old methods of hanging, drawing, and quartering. to do so is precisely to approve the ferocious old treatment, to which, as i conceive, the theory of simple deterrence was an excellent corrective, in so far as it at least implied a definite limit to the indulgence of fiercer passions. there is, however, i think, an element of truth in the doctrine. i admit, that is, that the punishment of a criminal should carry a moral approval, and not be regarded purely as a measure of convenience. successful crime should be regarded with abhorrence. if a man convicted of a grave offence should be allowed to go without punishment, we should be rightly aggrieved. it is not, however, that we should take pleasure in his suffering, but that we should be pained by an example of the practical impunity of anti-social conduct. the escape of a murderer would, as we should feel, be a blow to the security of all innocent people. in that sense, we may take pleasure in his punishment, not in the sense of positive enjoyment, but, certainly, in the sense of relief from positive sense of evil. it is, and should be, painful to see the rogues flourish and honest men droop, and to observe "captive good attending captain ill". but the pleasure of seeing the necessary equilibrium restored is different from the pleasure of dwelling upon the sufferings of the disturber. the practical difference is that, while we regard the infliction of suffering as necessary, we admit it to be a necessary evil, and are keenly alive to the inability of keeping it within the limits fixed by the general necessities of the law. luxury. professor sidgwick has been discussing the ethics of luxury, and, according to his wont, has been giving fresh interest to a well-worn topic. i do not wish to dispute anything that he has said, nor do i hope to clear up problems which he professedly left unsolved. in one sense, they obviously cannot be solved precisely. luxury is a relative term, which cannot be defined in absolute terms. a luxury, in the first place, is distinguished from a necessary. but, then, one man's necessary may be another man's luxury. my very existence depends upon conditions with which another man can dispense. if, again, we admit that there are many things which, though not absolutely necessary, may rightly be used, if they can be used without injuring others, we see that we must also take into account the varying social conditions. if we use luxury, in what bentham called the dyslogistic sense, we must distinguish between necessaries and superfluities, and then divide superfluities into comforts which may be rightfully enjoyed, and luxuries which cannot be enjoyed without incurring some degree of moral censure. but the dividing lines are always shifting. scott tells somewhere of a highlander sleeping on the open moor in a winter night. when he tried to roll the snow into a pillow his companion kicked it away, as a proof of disgraceful effeminacy. most of us would come to a speedy end if we lived in a social state where such a standard of hardiness was rigidly enforced. we admit that some kind of pillow may be permitted, if not as absolutely necessary, as, at least, a pardonable comfort. we shall probably agree, also, that nobody is to be blamed for using clean sheets and securing a certain amount of warmth and softness--as much, at least, as is desirable for sanitary reasons. but if we endeavour to prescribe precisely how much may be allowed in excess of the necessary, how often we are to send our sheets to the wash, whether it is right to have lace upon our pillows, and so forth, we get into problems where any attempt at precision is obviously illusory. we are the more perplexed by the question, whether the provision of a bed for ourselves causes other people to go without a bed, and, perhaps, without supper, or how far we are bound to take such consequences into account. without aiming, therefore, at an impossible precision, i shall try to consider--not what objects should be called luxuries, or comforts, or necessaries, but what are the really relevant considerations by which we should endeavour to guide our judgments. luxury is, as i have said, a well-worn topic. saints and philosophers in all ages, have denounced the excessive love of material enjoyments, and set examples of a more or less thorough-going asceticism. it was--to go no further back--one of the favourite topics of our ancestors, in such papers as the _spectator_ and the _rambler_. addison, in his _cato_, described the simple numidian, whose standard appears to have resembled that of scott's highlander. the numidian, he says, rests his head upon a rock at night, and, if next day he chances to find a new repast or an untasted spring, "blesses his stars and calls it luxury". general oglethorpe quoted this passage, in an argument about luxury, to johnson, and added, "let us have _that_ kind of luxury, sir, if you will". johnson himself put down all this declamation as part of the cant from which we ought to clear our minds. no nation, he said to goldsmith, was ever hurt by luxury. "let us take a walk from charing cross to whitechapel, through the greatest series of shops in the world: what is there in any of these shops (if you except gin-shops) that can do any human being any harm?" "i accept your challenge," said goldsmith. "the next shop to northumberland house is a pickle-shop." to which the excellent johnson replied, first, that five pickle-shops could serve the whole kingdom; secondly, that no harm was done to anybody either by making pickles or by eating pickles. i will not go into the ethics of pickles. i only quote this to remind you that this was one of the stock questions of the period; and not without reason. the denunciation of luxury was, in fact, the mark of a very significant tendency. goldsmith had expressed the prevalent sentiment in the _deserted village_, as in the familiar passage beginning:- ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay. and goldsmith, like many contemporaries, was only versifying the sentiments uttered most powerfully by rousseau in his famous exaltation of the ideal man of nature above the man of a corrupt civilisation. the theory has some affinity to the ancient doctrine already expounded by classical writers, according to which each form of government includes a principle of decay as well as of life. one stage in the process of corruption of plato's ideal republic is marked by the appearance of the drones, people who take a surfeit of unnecessary pleasures, and, to obtain satisfaction, associate themselves with the fierce and rapacious. in rousseau's time, this view became connected with the growing belief in progress and "perfectibility". it was a symptom of warning to the drones of his day. it showed that the thoughtful classes were becoming dimly sensible that something was wrong in the social organisation; and that a selfish and indolent aristocracy should be called upon to put its house in order. the denunciation of luxury meant, in short, that the rich and powerful were accused of indulgence in pleasures which they had not earned by services, but by the rigid enforcement of class privileges. considered from this point of view, as the muttering of a coming storm, as the expression of a vague foreboding that the world was somehow out of joint, we may see more meaning than appears at first sight, in the old-fashioned commonplaces of our great-grandfathers. the language has changed its form; but the discontent at the misuse of wealth in various forms has certainly not diminished since that time. obviously, then, the question of luxury is connected with very wide and deep problems as to what is the proper use of wealth, and might lead us into ultimate questions as to the justification of the right to private property at all. i shall try, however, to keep as closely as may be to the particular aspect of such problems, which is immediately relevant to this particular question. and for this purpose, i think it will be convenient to take two points separately. the objections to luxury may be stated either with reference to the individual or with reference to the society. that is to say, that if we consider a man by himself, we may ask with johnson, whether expenditure upon pickles is injurious to the constitution, or at what point it becomes injurious. and, in the next place, we may ask whether, if we see our way to decide that pickles are wholesome as well as agreeable, some of us may not be getting more than our fair share of pickles, and so diminishing the total sum of pleasure, by inordinate consumption. first, then, i discard, for the moment, all social considerations. i take for granted, for the sake of argument, that my indulgence does no harm to any one else; that i am not depriving others of a means of enjoyment, but simply adding to my own; or, at any rate, that i am not, for the moment, to take into account that set of consequences. how far, on this hypothesis, or, say, setting aside all question of duty to my neighbour, should i be prudent in accumulating wealth? i sometimes amuse myself with the problem, how rich should i like to be, supposing that i were perfectly wise in that sense in which wisdom is compatible with thorough-going egoism, or with what is called enlightened self-interest? the obvious answer is that, in that case, there would be no limits to my desires. an imaginative american, we are told, defined competence as "a million a minute and all your expenses paid". the suggestion is fascinating, but not, to my mind, quite satisfactory. it recalls a doctrine which used to be put forward by the old political economists. they had to meet the theory--a preposterous theory enough--of the danger of a universal glut; the danger, that is, that a nation might produce so much that nothing would have any value, and, therefore, that we should all be ruined by all becoming enormously rich. to meet this, it was often urged--along with more satisfactory arguments--that human desires were illimitable; and, therefore, that however rich a man might become he would always wish to become a little richer. according to this doctrine, the desire for wealth cannot be satiated. the millionaire would still choose an extra half-crown rather than refuse it, although the half-crown brings him incomparably less additional pleasure than it brought him when his pockets were empty. but it is also true that long before we were millionaires, the pleasure obtainable by additional wealth may be infinitesimal, or absolutely non-existent. the simple desires may be easily saturated. pope asks, "what riches give us, let us then inquire". and he replies, "meat, fire, and clothes--what more? meat, clothes, and fire." this is, in fact, a pithy summary of our most elementary and necessary wants. now, our demand for meat is obviously strictly limited. as soon as we have eaten, say, a pound of beefsteak, we do not want more; by the time we have eaten, say, three pounds we do not only not want more, we loathe the very thought of eating. so, when we are clothed sufficiently for comfort and decency, more clothing is simply a burden; and we wish only for so much fire as will keep our thermometer within certain limits; a heat above or below would mean death either by burning or by freezing. our ultimate aim, therefore, in regard to desires of this class, is not to increase the stimulus indefinitely, but to preserve a certain balance or equilibrium. if we want more food after our appetites are satisfied, it must either be with a view to our future consumption, which is still strictly finite, or else with a view to exchanging the food for something else, in which case it is desired, not as food, but as the means of satisfying some other desire. if, then, pope's doctrine were really sound, which actually amounts to saying, if our desires were really limited to the physical conditions necessary to life, we should very soon reach the state in which they would be completely glutted or saturated. it may be worth while to note the circumstance which rather obscures our recognition of this fact. we may distinguish between the wealth which a man actually uses and that which remains, as i may say, only potential. a man may desire an indefinite quantity of wealth, because he may wish to have rights which he may yet never turn to actual account. there is a certain satisfaction, no doubt, in knowing that i have a vast balance at my banker's, though i have no desire to use it. i may want it some time or other; and, even if i never want it, i may enjoy the sense of having a disproportionate barrier of money-bags piled up between me and the yawning gulf of actual poverty. therefore, though a very limited amount may be enough to satiate all our existing desires, we may like to know that there is more at our disposal. if possession carried with it the necessity of using our property, if we could not have potential as distinguished from actual wealth, we should be so far from desiring an indefinite increase of wealth that we should regard the increase beyond a certain limit as only one of two intolerable alternatives. the question, therefore, how rich should i wish to be? requires an answer to the previous question, how rich can i be? a man, even if on the intellectual level of a savage, can be indefinitely rich in potential wealth: he may, that is, have a right to millions of pounds or be the owner of thousands of acres; but in order to use them he must have certain capacities and sensibilities. it is a curious question, for example, how much of the wealth of a country would cease to be wealth at all if the intelligence of the possessors were lowered certain degrees in the scale? a large part of the wealth of england consists, i suppose, of machinery. if nobody knew more of machines than i do--and my whole notion of a machine is that it is something that goes round somehow if you happen to turn the right handle--all this wealth would become as useless as an electric telegraph in the possession of a hairy ainu. and if nobody had any better artistic perception than mine, and we were therefore unable to see the difference between a raphael and the daub in an advertising placard, the pictures in the national gallery would have an average value, say, of eighteen-pence. a man, therefore, who is at the lower levels of intelligence is simply unable to be actually rich, beyond a narrow limit. the fact is occasionally forced upon us by striking examples. i heard the other day a story--i am afraid we all hear such stories too often--of a man who had become enormously rich by a freak of fortune. his only idea of enjoyment happened to be gin. he could, therefore, only use his wealth by drinking himself to death; a proceeding which he accordingly felt to be only a proper tribute to his improved social position. a similar result happens whenever a sudden rise of wages to an insufficiently civilised class leads to the enrichment of publicans, instead of increased indulgence in refined and innocent pleasures. the man, in short, whose idea of pleasure is simply the gratification of the physical appetites in their coarser forms is incapable of becoming actually rich, because a small amount of wealth will enable him to saturate his desires by providing a superfluity of the material means of gratification. it is, perhaps, here that we may take into account the remark so often made by moralists, by adam smith among others, as professor sidgwick reminds us, that happiness is more evenly distributed among different classes than we suppose. the king, according to shakespeare, cannot- with all the tide of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world ... sleep so soundly as the wretched slave who with a body filled and vacant mind gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread. the "body filled" and the "vacant mind" make up for the "distressful bread". it is as well, that is, to have no wants except the want of mere physical comfort, as to have higher wants and the means of gratifying them, and yet to be saddled with the anxieties and responsibilities which the higher position involves. the doctrine, "i am not really better off than you," is, indeed, not a very graceful one from those who are actually better off. there was some excuse for the fox who said the grapes were sour when he could not get them; it argued a judicious desire to make the best of things: but if he made the remark while he was comfortably chewing them, by way of pacifying the grapeless foxes, we should have thought him a more objectionable hypocrite. the pauper may fairly reply, "if you really mean that your wealth brings no happiness, why don't you change places with me?" i will, therefore, not defend the statement, considered as an exhortation to content; but i accept it as a recognition of the obvious fact, that if happiness means a satisfaction of all our desires, a man of small means may be as happy as the man of the greatest means, if his desires are limited in proportion. but is it for our happiness to increase them? does our principle hold when we suppose a man to have the necessary sensibilities for the actual enjoyment of wealth? if he acquires the tastes which imply greater intellectual cultivation, a power, therefore, of taking into account sources of pleasure more complex and more distant in time and space, does it then become true that his power of using wealth will be indefinite? i should reply, in the first place, that we must still admit the same psychological truth. any desire whatever, that is, is capable of yielding only a strictly finite amount of enjoyment; the pleasure which we can derive from it must be limited both by the necessity of gratifying other desires and by the fact that no desire whatever is capable of an indefinite increase by increased stimulation. after a certain point of excitement is reached, we cannot get more pleasure by any accumulation of internal conditions. we assume for the present that our aim is simply to extract the greatest possible amount of gratification out of life. we must then take for our data our actual constitution, capacities, sensibilities, and so forth, and calculate how much wealth could be actually applied in order to keep us moving always along the line of maximum enjoyment. this would be to study the art of life on purely hedonistic principles. we should ask, what career will on the whole be fullest of enjoyment? and then, what material conditions can enable us to follow that career? i imagine that the amount requisite would vary indefinitely according to our characters. suppose, for example, that a man has strong intellectual tastes, a love of art or science or literature. he will require, of course, enough wealth to enable him to devote himself without anxiety to his favourite pursuits, and enough, moreover, to train himself in all requisite knowledge. but granting this, the material conditions of happiness will be sufficiently fulfilled. i think it was agassiz who observed when he was devoting himself to science that he had not time to get rich. wealth to him would have been rather an impediment than an advantage. a man like faraday, who placed his whole happiness in the extension of scientific knowledge, and who was not less honoured because he lived upon a modest income, would not have had a greater amount of that kind of happiness had he possessed the wealth of a rothschild. a man whose pleasure is in reading books, or contemplating works of art, or listening to music, can obtain the highest enjoyment at a very moderate price, and could get very little more if he had the most unbounded wealth at his disposal. if we inquired what men possessing such tastes had derived from them the greatest happiness, we should, i fancy, find ourselves mentioning men comparatively poor, whose enjoyments were even comparatively keen, because they had to devote a certain amount of care and contrivance to obtaining full play for their capacities. charles lamb, plotting and contriving to get an old volume from a bookstall, possibly got more pleasure from his taste than if he had been the possessor of a gigantic library. the sociable man, again, the man whose pleasure in society is the genuine delight in a real interchange of thought and sympathy, who does not desire magnificent entertainment, but the stimulus of intimate association with congenial friends, would probably find the highest pleasure in comparatively simple social strata, where the display of wealth was no object, and men met, as johnson met his friends at the club, to put mind fairly to mind, and to stimulate intellectual activity, instead of consuming the maximum of luxury. milton's sonnet to lawrence gives perhaps a rather severe but a very fascinating ideal of refined luxury:- what neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, of attic taste with wine, whence we may rise to hear the lute well touched, or artful voice warble immortal notes and tuscan air? he who of these delights can judge, and spare to interpose them oft, is not unwise. nor need we be accused of inordinate boasting if we should say that we would rather have made a third at such a feast than have joined a dozen rowdy courtiers at the table of charles ii. there are, however, pleasures which undoubtedly suppose an indefinite capacity for using wealth. there is, for example, such a thing as the pure love of splendour, which is represented so curiously in some of disraeli's novels. one of his heroes, if i remember rightly, proposed to follow the precedent actually set by beckford, who built at fonthill a tower 300 feet high--not because it was wanted for any other purpose, but simply for the sake of building a tower. of course, if one has a taste for towers 300 feet high, there is no particular limit to the quantity of wealth which may be found convenient. one of the gentlest and most delicate satirists of modern society, mr. du maurier, has given us admirable illustrations of a more vulgar form of the same tendency in his portraits of sir gorgius midas. when that worthy denounces his servants because there are only three footmen sitting up till two o'clock to save him the trouble of using a latch-key, we may admit that his pleasures, such as they were, were capable of finding gratification in any quantity of expenditure. it might be a question, indeed, if we had time to ask it, whether the pleasure derived from such expenses by the millionaire be really so great as the pleasure which he had when he first turned the proverbial half-crown, with which he must have come to london, into his first five shillings; and it is certainly also a question whether his expenditure was ethically right. but at present we are only considering facts, and we may admit that there would be no filling such a gulf of desire by any dribble of bullion; and, further, that there are pleasures--not, on the face of them, immoral--in procuring which any quantity of money may be spent. if a man is simply desirous of obtaining influence, or, in some cases, political power; or if he decides to muddle away his money upon charity, there are no limits to the sums he may spend, especially if he has no objection to corrupting his neighbours. before saying anything upon this, however, i must pause to deduce a conclusion. keeping still to the purely hedonistic point of view, i ask, at what point does expenditure become luxurious in a culpable sense? meaning by "culpable" not morally culpable, but simply injudicious from the point of view of enlightened self-interest. to this i think that one answer is already suggested, that is to say, that since, on the one hand, a certain finite quantity of wealth will enable us to keep to the happiest or most philosophic career; and since, on the other hand, a man may possess a quantity of superfluous wealth which he can only use on penalty of deviating from that career, he becomes foolish, if not immoral--upon which i say nothing--when he tries to use more. that people frequently commit this folly is undeniable. wealth ought to be (i mean would be by a judiciously selfish person) regarded as a means of enjoyment. therefore the superfluous wealth should be left in the potential stage--as a balance at his banker's or accumulating in the funds. but though the possession does not imply a necessity of using, it does generally imply a sort of tacit feeling of responsibility--responsibility, that is, to a man's self. i have got so much money; surely it is a duty to myself to use it for my pleasure. so far as a man yields to such an argument, he becomes the slave instead of the master of his wealth. what ought to be machinery for furthering an end, becomes an end in itself: and, at that point of conduct, i think that we are disposed to call a man's life luxurious in a distinctly bad sense. the error, as i have suggested, is perhaps at bottom much the same as that which leads a poor man to spend an increase of wages at a gin-shop. but we do not call the gin-drinker luxurious, but simply vicious. for luxury seems to apply less to conduct which we can distinctly call bad in itself, than to conduct which only becomes bad or foolish as implying a disproportion between the end attained and the expense of attaining it. it applies when a man has, as we say, so much money that he does not know what to do with it. we speak of luxuries in the case of sir gorgius, where the prominent fact is that the man has been gorged with excessive wealth, and is yet too dull to use it in any manner which would increase the happiness of a reasonable or refined being. so it is generally regarded as characteristic rather of the upstart or newly-made millionaire than of the man born to higher position, whose life is perhaps as selfish and hardly superior morally. but the nobleman by birth has inherited a certain art of life; he has acquired traditional modes of arranging his pleasures, which give him the appearance, at least, of possessing more judicious and refined tastes; and we are less shocked than by the man who has obviously wealth which he knows not how to use, and which he, therefore, deliberately devotes to coarse and vulgar ostentation. the upstart may not be more selfish at bottom; but he dashes in your face the evidence of his selfishness, and appeals for admiration on the simple ground that he has a larger income than his neighbours. luxury means, on this showing, all such expenditure as is objectionable, not because the pleasure obtained is intrinsically bad, but because we are spending for the sake of spending, and could get more real enjoyment at a lower sum. i need not dwell upon the fact that men of moderate means may fall into the same error. the fault of exaggerating the importance of machinery is not confined to those whom we call rich. thackeray's discourses upon snobs are full expositions of the same weakness in the middle classes. when we read, for example, of colonel ponto being miserable because he tries to make an income of a thousand a year support the pomp accessible to persons with ten thousand, we see that he has as false a view as sir gorgius of the true ends of life. and i refer to the same great satirist for abundant illustrations of the weaknesses which too often make society a machinery for wasting money on display, and entirely oblivious that it should be a machinery for the promotion of intellectual and refined pleasures. now, if i have given a fair account of luxury as considered simply from the point of view of an enlightened selfishness, i may proceed to the ethical question. so far, i have only asked, in substance, at what point our expenditure upon pickles becomes foolish. but, of course, the more important question arises, at what point it becomes selfish. a man may be silly for spending money upon erecting towers; but if he does no harm to his neighbours we hardly call him wicked. we cannot say that it is unconditionally wrong to build a tower. we must inquire, therefore, how far luxury necessarily involves a wrong to others. here we must begin by listening to all the philosophers and divines of whom i spoke at starting. any number of wise and good men will tell us, in various dialects, that pleasure is in itself bad, or, at least, that all the pleasures obtainable by wealth are bad, or, at any rate, beneath the notice of the higher spirits. there are the thorough-going ascetics, who strive, not to regulate, but to suppress all except the absolutely necessary physical instincts, and think that even those desires savour of evil; who consider the best man to be the man who lives upon bread and water, and, if possible, upon mouldy bread and ditch-water. there are, again, spiritually-minded people, who consider all happiness to be worthless, except such happiness as results from aspirations to another world; who regard all riches as chains binding the soul to earth; who take the words "blessed are the poor" in the most literal sense, as defining the true aim of life. we should seek, they say, for happiness elsewhere than in this transitory stage of existence, remember that the world is a mere screen hiding the awful realities of heaven and hell; and despise even such pleasures as are generally called intellectual pleasures, the pleasures, for example, of art or science, for they, too, belong really to the sphere of illusion, and are simply more subtle temptations than those of the flesh. and, besides these, we have the philosophers, who would have us live in the world of pure intellect, and tell us that the true moral of life is to make ourselves independent of external circumstances by suppressing all the corresponding desires. renunciation, therefore, is the first lesson to be learned by the wise man; and the practical rule, as has been said, is that we should endeavour not to increase our numerator but to lessen our denominator. i cannot now discuss such doctrines. i am content to say that i regard them not as simply false, but as distorted views of truth. for my part, i am content to say that, even as a moralist, i wish to see people as happy as possible; that being, after all, a poor utilitarian after my own fashion, i desire--however erroneously--the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and, in particular, that i should like to see, not a feebler, but a much keener appreciation of all the pleasures derivable from art, or science, or literature, or rational society, even, if i may say so, from good cookery and athletic sports. briefly, the ideal society seems to me to be one in which even our lower instincts should not be suppressed, but regulated; and the typical man of the future to be one whose whole faculties and their corresponding sensibilities should be cultivated to the utmost possible degree. what is the application of this to our special question? i do not know that i can do better than refer to the writings of bernard mandeville, who in his _fable of the bees_--one of the cleverest books in the language--succeeded by the help of much paradox, and under a cloak of cynicism, in stating the problem with singular vivacity. private vices, that was his way of putting it, are public benefits. his meaning, put less paradoxically, was this: accept, on the one hand, the ascetic doctrine that pursuit of pleasure is intrinsically vicious, and you condemn all the impulses by which the structure of society, especially the industrial structure, has been built up. accept, on the other hand, the doctrine that civilisation is, on the whole, a good thing, and you admit that the instincts, which, upon this hypothesis, correspond to private vices, are the only means of producing a public benefit. in other words, if we took the language of theologians in its natural sense, and really regarded the world as worthless, we should have no industry, no trade or commerce, and be still living in swamps and forests, digging up roots with our nails, living upon acorns and shell-fish, and scarcely even painting ourselves blue, for to the savage blue paint was a luxury. now, apart from any question as to the fairness of this version of theological doctrine, we may ask, what is the real underlying difficulty--or that aspect of it which is still worth considering? we may grant, in the first place, to mandeville, that, in point of fact, the construction of a civilised society presupposes the development of numerous desires, many of which are more or less condemned by severe moralists. if the savage comes to value blue paint, he may take to planting something to exchange for it, instead of simply lying on his back to digest his last handful of acorns; and, in so doing, he makes the first step towards the development of an industrial system. the desire for wealth is, of course, implied in all stages of progress if men are to create wealth; and we can partly answer mandeville's paradox by throwing over the ascetic and declaring that a desire for good meat, and fire, and clothes, even for pictures, and books, and music, or for such comforts as most of us enjoy, is not in itself immoral; and that, on the contrary, the more there is of such enjoyment the better for men's bodies and minds, and therefore, on the whole, the better for their morality. but the moral difficulty returns in a new shape. the desire for wealth, let us say, is not in itself bad; it is simply natural--it is a desire for one essential condition of a tolerably happy life. but is it not bad, in so far as it is selfish? do not the desires which have been the mainspring of all modern development imply a desire of each man to get rich at the expense of others? have they not been the source of all that division between rich and poor which makes one side luxurious and the other miserable? has not dives become rich and bloated by force of the very same process which has made lazarus a mass of sores and misery? suppress the desire for wealth, and we should still be savages "running wild in woods". but was not even the noble savage better than the pauper who now hangs on to the fringes of society? and is his existence compensated by the existence of other classes who have more wealth than they can use? and so the old problem comes back; and we have, as of old, the most contradictory answers to the problem. i am, i confess it, one of those old-fashioned people who believe in progress, and hold that their own century is distinctly better than any which preceded it; who would on no account go back, if they could, to the days of the noble savages or even to the brutalities and superstitions of the ages of faith. but i do not think that i need argue that question for our present purpose. we have got to this century somehow, and we can only get out of it by living till the twentieth. meanwhile, we should make the best of the interval. i will, therefore, only permit myself one remark. if we suppose, with mandeville, that the instincts which have developed modern society have been, to a great extent, selfish desires, that is, for the personal comfort of the agent, irrespectively of consequences to others, it does not follow that the corresponding development has been mischievous. good commonplace moralists have been much in the habit of condemning the selfish passions of kings and conquerors. what can be an easier mark for denunciation than such a man, for example, as louis xi. of france, and the wily and cruel rulers of past ages, whose only aim was to enlarge their own powers and wealth? and yet, if we consider the matter historically, we must admit that such men have rendered enormous services to mankind. a ruler, let us say, had for his only object the extension and concentration of his own authority. still, it was by the conflicts of rulers that the great nations have been formed out of a chaos of struggling clans; that peace and order, therefore, have been substituted for violence, throughout broad territories; that law has taken the place of private war; moreover, that the privileges of selfish orders have been suppressed through the development of a larger and more civilised national organisation; and that, although the immediate victory was won by the selfish ruler, the ultimate benefit has accrued to the people upon whom he was forced to rely for support against the oppressive subordinate powers. the ruler, perhaps, did not look beyond his own interests; but his own interest forced him to find allies among the mass of the population, and so gradually led to the formation of central organs, representing not the personal interest of the king, but the interest of the whole nation in which they had arisen. we may make a similar remark upon industrial development. the great merchant and capitalist and inventor of new methods and machinery has not looked, it may be, beyond his own interest; but, intentionally or not, he was helping to construct a vast organisation, which, whether it has, on the whole, improved the world or not, has, at least, made it enormously richer. perhaps watt, when he was improving the steam-engine, thought only of the profits to be derived from his invention. but the profit which he gained after a laborious life was but an infinitesimal fraction of the enormous increase of efficiency which resulted to the national industry. we cannot doubt that the whole gigantic system which at least maintains a population several times multiplied, which maintains part of it in wealth and a large proportion in reasonable comfort, has been due to the labours of many men, each working for his own interest and animated chiefly by the desire of wealth. so much remains true of the economist's doctrine of the natural harmony between individual and public interest. in this case, as in the case of governments, we may, perhaps, say that men acted from motives which must be called selfish, in this sense at least, that they thought of little but their own interests; but that, at the same time, their own interests compelled them to work in a direction which promoted, more or less, the interests of others. i add, briefly, that these are only instances of what we may call the general rule: namely, that morality begins from an external or unrecognised conformity of interests, and ends by recognising and adopting, as motives, the consequences which, in the earlier stage, seemed to be internal or accidental consequences. i begin by helping a man because circumstances make it useful to myself, and i end--and only become truly moral when i end--by doing what is useful to him, because it is useful to him. when, indeed, i have reached that point, my end itself is profoundly modified; it becomes much wider, and yet only regulates and directs to new channels a great deal of the corresponding conduct. the consideration of this modification--of the change which should take place when a man not only pursues such conduct as is beneficial on the whole to a country, but pursues it with a view to the beneficial consequences--brings us back to the question of luxury. the bare pursuit of wealth as the end of existence implies, of course, indifference to the means by which it is produced; an equal readiness, for example, to grow rich by cheating my neighbour, or by actually producing a greater quantity of useful produce. it is consistent with a simple desire to enlarge my business without reference to the effect upon the persons i employ, as when manufacturers enriched themselves by cruel exploitation of the labour of infants. but if we hope for a state of things in which an employer should consider himself as essentially part of the national organism, as increasing his own wealth only by such means as would be also advantageous to the comfort of the nation generally, the pursuit of wealth would become moralised. here, in fact, we must once more consider mandeville's paradox. desire for wealth, he substantially says, must be good because it stimulates industry. when your lazy barbarian, who has no pleasure but gorging himself with food, comes also to desire fine clothes, he is not only a degree more refined in his tastes, but his increased industry leads him to produce enough food to support his tailor, and provision is made for two men instead of one. but desire for wealth, it is replied, is bad, because it leads our barbarian not only to consume the product of his own labour, but to consume that of somebody else. mandeville gained piquancy for his argument by confusing the two cases. since the desire is good, all its manifestations must be good. extravagance, for example, is good, and, as he put it, the fire of london was a benefit to industry because it set up a greater demand for the services of carpenters and bricklayers. i need not say how frequently an argument substantially the same has been adopted by good writers, and simple extravagance been praised because it was supposed to be "good for trade". political economists have been forced to labour the point that extravagant consumption does not increase wealth; but the only curious thing is that such a point should ever have required demonstration. the conclusion, which is sufficient for our purpose, is simply that an absolute denunciation or an absolute exaltation of the desire for wealth is equally impossible; for the desire may have contrary effects. in one shape it may stimulate to enjoyments which actually diminish wealth in general, or, at any rate, to those which lead to the actual exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few; and, on the other hand, to denounce it, simply would be to denounce all the springs of action which raise men above the barbarous state of society. when we look at the contrasts between the rich and the poor, we must rightfully desire a greater equality of distribution; but we may be tempted to approve too easily any means which may lead to such equality. it is, indeed, obvious that if all the national resources which are now applied to producing superfluities could be turned to the production of necessaries, we could support the same population in a greater comfort, or support a much greater population at a point just above starvation level. but it does not at all follow that a society in which every man's labour was devoted entirely to the task of providing necessaries would in fact be either more comfortable or more numerous. historically speaking, the fact is the very reverse. the only societies in which there is such an equality are societies in which the level is one of uniform misery, and whose total industrial efficiency is incomparably smaller than that of the more civilised races. it has been only in so far as a nation has been able to support classes with sufficient means to devote themselves to science and art, and the cultivation of the higher faculties generally, that it has acquired the vast powers of production which enable some to be disproportionately rich, but which also enable numerous masses to support themselves in tolerable comfort where there were once a few wandering barbarians. that the more cultivated classes have sought only their own advantage instead of the general benefit, may be too true; but the conclusion is, not that they should cease to have the desires which entitle a man to be called a civilised being, but that these desires should be so regulated and moralised as to subserve directly and necessarily the ends which they have only promoted indirectly and accidentally. a society which has grown rich by mechanical discoveries and industrious organisation has acquired the power of greatly raising the average level of comfort. if, in point of fact, its power has been greatly misused, if a great development of poverty has taken place side by side with a great development of industrial efficiency, the proper inference is not that we should denounce the desires from which the efficiency is derived, but that we should direct them into such channels as may lead to the more universal distribution of the advantages which they create. it is, i think, from this point of view that we can best judge of the moral objection to luxury. for, as i previously suggested, luxury begins when a man becomes the slave instead of the master of his wealth; when that which ought to be a mere machinery becomes an end in itself; and when, therefore, there is a tendency to cultivate and stimulate to excess those lower passions which, though necessary within limits, may beyond those limits distort and lower the whole character, and make the pursuit of worthy objects impossible. we know that the king who had the reputation of being the wisest of mankind, after building a splendid temple and a gorgeous palace, and filling them with vessels of gold, and importing ivory and apes and peacocks, could find nothing better to do with the rest than to take 700 wives and 300 concubines--a measure which hardly increased his domestic felicity, but no doubt got rid of a good deal of money. although few men have solomon's opportunities of affording a typical instance of luxury, many of us show ourselves capable of weakness similar at least in kind. i need not multiply examples. the great mystery of fashion is perhaps a trifling but a significant example. when people, instead of considering dress as a means of displaying the beauty of the human frame, consider their bodies as mere pegs upon which to display clothes, and are ready to distort their own forms to fill arbitrary shapes, changed at short intervals to increase the cost, they are clearly exemplifying the confusion between means and ends. when a young gentleman spends a fortune upon the turf, or upon gambling, he shows that he has no more conception than the poor boy who plays pitch-and-toss with halfpence of the ways in which wealth might be made conducive to undertakings worthy of absorbing human energy. when, on pretence of cultivating society, we invent a whole cumbrous social apparatus which makes all rational conversation impossible, we know that the display of wealth has become an end to which we are ready to sacrifice our ostensible purpose. now, i suggest that such luxury, such exaltation of the machinery above the ultimate good, corresponds pretty nearly to the distinction between the desires which lead to the rightful use and those which lead to the shameful misuse of wealth in a social sense. human nature, indeed, is singularly complex, and it is impossible to deny that the hope of acquiring such luxuries may incidentally lead to that increase of industry and development of national resources which, as we have seen, is the ground upon which it is defended. the industrious apprentice may have been stimulated to become lord mayor by the odours from his master's turtle-soup; arkwright, perhaps, was induced to invent the machinery which revolutionised the cotton manufactures by the hope of becoming sir richard, and rivalling the coarse luxury of some stupid squire western. but we cannot doubt that upon a large scale the love of the grosser indulgences is bad, even from its purely economical point of view. if, incidentally, it encourages industry, it far more directly and necessarily encourages wasteful expenditure. if a rich man can only spend his thousands at a gambling-table, the poorer man cannot be blamed for gambling with a thimble-rigger. when solomon set up his domestic establishment, every shopkeeper in jerusalem might be encouraged to marry an extra wife. if a rich man, who has enough to saturate a healthy appetite, tries how much money he can spend, like the old classical epicures, upon new dishes of nightingales' tongues, you can hardly expect the poorer man to refrain from an extra glass of gin. briefly, so far as the resources of a nation are spent upon the mere ostentation--which we call vulgar, to imply that it is spending for the sake of expense, foolishly trying to get more pleasure for an appetite already gorged to excess, by simply increasing the stimulus--it is encouraging all the forces which make rather for waste than increased productiveness, and justifying the natural jealousy of the poorer. so far, that is, as a desire for wealth means a desire to consume as much as possible on supersaturating the lower appetites, the commonest argument against private property in general is not only plausible but justified. i should say, then, that luxury in a bad sense begins wherever in expenditure it indicates an insufficient sense of the responsibility which attaches to all wealth. this does not condemn an expenditure which may seem, from some points of view, luxurious; though, as i have said, i cannot profess to draw any distinct line in what is essentially a question of degree and of actual possibilities, i can only suggest in general that a man is _primâ facie_ justified in all such expenditure as tends to the highest possible cultivation of his faculties and of the faculties of those dependent upon him. i hold it to be a matter of the highest importance that there should be a thoroughly civilised class--a class capable of all intellectual pleasures; loving the beauties of art and nature; studying every possible department of knowledge, scientific and historical; maintaining all such modes of recreation and social enjoyment as are naturally appropriate to such a class. and i do not call any man luxurious for maintaining his position in such a sphere, or for enabling his children to follow in his steps. i believe that, as things are, the existence of such a class is a necessary condition of national welfare and of the preservation and extension of the whole body of cultivation which we have received from our ancestors. what is requisite is, that the class should be not only capable of refined enjoyment, but of discharging its functions relatively to the nation at large, and spreading a higher standard of enjoyment through the whole community. so far as the richer class maintains certain traditions, moral and intellectual--traditions of personal honour and public spirit, of artistic and literary cultivation--it may be discharging an invaluable function, and its existence may be a necessary means of diffusing a higher civilisation through the masses who have not the same advantage. whatever employments of wealth contribute to make a man more efficient as an individual member of society, to strengthen his understanding and his perceptions, to widen his intellectual horizon and interest his sympathies, and the enjoyments which correspond to them, are not to be condemned as luxurious. they are, at present, only within the reach of the richer classes, ardently as we may hope that the power of partaking them may be extended as rapidly and widely as possible. but the growth of luxury, in the bad sense, is the indication that the class which should act as the brain of the social organism is ceasing to discharge its functions, and becoming what we call a survival. it is a kind of moral gout--an aristocratic disease, showing that the secretions are becoming disordered for want of a proper application of the energies. it was in that sense, as i said before, that our grandfathers denounced the luxury which proved that the ruling classes, especially in france, had retained their privileges while abandoning the corresponding duties. if in england we escaped so violent a catastrophe, it was because, with all their luxuries and levities and shortsightedness, the aristocratic classes were still playing an active part, and, if not governing well, doing whatever was done in the way of governing. but every class, and every member of a class, should always remember that he may be asked whether, on the whole, he and his like can give any sufficient reason for his or their existence, and that he ought to be prepared with a satisfactory answer. when he has to admit that his indulgences are in the main what may be called luxuries in the bad sense, he may consider that he is receiving notice to quit. this may suggest the last remark that i need make. it is impossible, i have said, to say definitely this is, and that is not, a luxury: and, in general, that is not the way in which the question presents itself. we have rather to decide upon our general standard of life, and to adopt a certain scale of living more or less fixed for us by our social surroundings. we can all do something towards rationalising the habitual modes of expenditure, and adapting the machinery to such ends as are worthy of intelligent and cultivated beings. so far as inclination is in the direction of vulgarity, of ostentatious habits, of multiplying idle ceremonies and cumbrous pomposities, we can protest by our own conduct, at least, in favour of plain living and high thinking. but so far as social life is really adapted to the advancement of intellect, the humanising and refinement of our sympathies, it promotes an improvement which cannot but spread beyond the immediate circle. even such pursuits, it is true, may incidentally become provocative of an objectionable luxury. a man who is a lover of art, for example, occasionally shuts himself out all the more from the average sympathies, and indulges in pleasures, less gross but, perhaps, even more enervating than some which we should call distinctly sensual. the art, whether literary or plastic, which is only appreciable by the connoisseur, is an art which is luxurious because it is on the way to corruption. nothing is clearer in the vague set of guesses which pass for æsthetic theory, than this: that to be healthy and vigorous, art must spread beyond cliques and studios, and express the strongest instincts and emotions of the society in which it is developed. this, i think, is significant of a general principle. luxury is characteristic of a class with narrow outlook, and devoted to such enjoyments as are, by their nature, incapable of communication. whenever the enjoyments are such as have an intrinsic tendency to raise the general standard, as well as to heighten the pleasure of a few, they cannot be simply stigmatised as luxurious. the old view of the responsibilities of wealth was chiefly confined to the doctrine that the rich man should give away as many of his superfluities as possible, to be scrambled for by the poor, in order to appease the fates. we have come to see that charity, though at present a necessary, should be regarded as a degrading necessity; and, therefore, not in the long run a possible alternative to luxury. too often it is itself a kind of luxury as mischievous as selfish disregard to the natural consequences of our expenditure. the true direction of our wishes should rather be to direct social energies into such channels as have a natural affinity to public spirit. a man who really loves art because he has a keen sense of beauty, not because he wishes to have the reputation of a skilful collector, would surely try to beautify the world in which we all live, to get rid of the hideous deformities which meet us at every turn, and not simply to make a little corner into which he may retire for simple self-indulgence. a lover of truth should not be content, as some philosophers were forced to be content, with discussion in an esoteric circle, but should endeavour, now that thought is free, to stimulate the intellectual activity of all men, confident that the greater the number of investigators, the more rapid will be the advance of truth. i do not venture to suggest what special direction should be taken by those who have the privileges and responsibilities of great wealth. i have never had to consider that problem in any practical reference. still, considering how vast a part they actually play in social development, how great is their influence, and how many people and enterprises seem to be in want of a little money, i cannot help fancying that a rich man may find modes of expenditure other than reckless charity or elaborate pampering of his personal wants, which would be not only more useful to the world, but more interesting to himself than many of the ordinary forms of indulgence. but i am only speaking of general tendencies, and have disavowed any capacity for laying down precise regulations. if i have stated rightly what is the evil properly attacked when we speak of luxury as vicious, it will, i think, come mainly to this: that the direction in which we should look for improvement is not so much in directly prescribing any spartan or ascetic system of life, as in cultivating in every one who possesses superfluities, the sense of his implicit responsibility to his fellows, which should go with every increase of wealth, and the conviction, not that he should regard pleasure as in itself bad, but that he should train himself to find pleasures in such conduct as makes him a more efficient member of the body corporate of society. if, indeed, there should be any man who feels that he has no right to superfluities at all, while so many are wanting necessaries, and should resolve to devote himself to the improvement of their elevation, i should say, in the first place, i fully and heartily recognise him to be one of the very large class which i regard as my superiors in morality; although, in the next place, i should insinuate that he is one of those heroes who, while they deserve all honour, cannot be taken as models for universal imitation, inasmuch as i cannot help thinking that the ultimate end is not the renunciation but the multiplication of all innocent happiness. the duties of authors. i propose to speak to you to-day upon a subject which, though i may perhaps be tempted to exaggerate its importance, possesses some real importance. i have undertaken to speak upon the duties of the class to which i belong. i make, however, no claims to the position of censor. i have no such claim, except, indeed, the claim of possessing some experience. there are two ways, i may observe, in which a man may acquire a sense of the importance of any moral law. one is by keeping the law, and the other is by breaking it. in some ways, perhaps, the systematic offender has acquired the most valuable experience. no one can speak more feelingly about the evils of intemperance than the reformed drunkard, unless it be the drunkard who has not reformed. the sober gentleman who has never exceeded can realise neither the force of the temptation nor the severity of the penalty. on the other hand, i must admit that some writers upon ethical questions have been men of fair moral character. i only make the statement by way of explaining that, in speaking of the duties of authors, i do not assert, even by the most indirect implication, that i personally have either observed or disregarded the principles which i shall discuss. whether i am a model for imitation or an example of the evils to be avoided, matters nothing to this discourse; though the question to which of these classes i belong has a certain interest for myself. there is one other matter which i can deal with very briefly. i have said that the subject has a certain importance. upon that it is needless to dilate; for, in the first place, authors have been engaged for generations, and never more industriously than in this generation, in preaching the vast importance of authors to mankind. i could not hope to add anything to their eloquence upon a topic with which they are so familiar. we may, however, assume that the enormous mass of literature which is daily produced, whether its abundance be a matter of regret or exultation, is at least a proof that a vast number of people read something, and are, we may suppose, more or less affected by what they read. it cannot be indifferent to inquire what are the duties of those who undertake to provide for this ever-growing demand. one matter has been lately discussed which may serve as a starting-point for what i have to say. a french author who came the other day to observe our manners and customs, was impressed by the fact that so much of our writing is anonymous. the public, that is, reads without knowing who are its instructors, and the instructors write without incurring any definite personal responsibility. the problem is naturally suggested, whether such a system be not morally objectionable. ought not a man who undertakes to speak as an authority let us know who he is, and therefore with what authority he speaks? the question could hardly be answered satisfactorily without some study of the facts; and especially of the way in which the system has grown up. i can only notice one or two obvious reflections. a century ago we boasted--and we had reason to boast--that the english press was the freest in europe. it was already a very important factor in political life. but at that period the profession of letters was still regarded as more or less disreputable. the great author--the poet, divine, or historian--was indeed fully as much respected as he is now; but to write for money or to write in periodicals was held to be not quite worthy of a gentleman. byron, for example, refused to take money for his poetry, and taunted others for taking money, until so much money was offered to him that he swallowed his scruples. burns, though as much in need of money, had shortly before refused to write for money; and wordsworth held that his high calling imposed upon him the duty of rather repelling than seeking the popularity by which money is to be won. we have changed all this, and the greatest modern authors are less apt to disavow a desire for pay, than to complain that their pay is insufficient. the employment--it can hardly be called the profession--of periodical writing, again--the only kind of writing which could make literature a source of a regular income--was long regarded as a kind of poor relation of the respectable or so-called learned professions, clerical, legal, and medical. jeffrey, whose fame now rests upon his position as the editor of _the edinburgh review_, was for a long time anxious to conceal his employment as not exactly creditable. in the year 1809 the benchers of lincoln's inn passed a resolution that no one should be called to the bar who had written for money in a newspaper. writers in newspapers since that time have frequently risen to the bench, and have been not the least honoured of cabinet ministers. yet the sentiment which involved a certain stigma has only disappeared in this generation. and the historical cause seems to be obvious. the newspaper press had gradually grown up in spite of authority. it had first been persecuted, and writers had escaped persecution by consenting to be spies or dependants upon great men. half the hack-authors aspired to subsidies from the secret-service money, and the other half were looking for a reward when their patrons should have a turn in the distribution of good things. the press was freer than elsewhere, for the english system of government gave importance to public discussion. both ministers and opposition wished to influence voters through the papers. but the authors were in the position of dependent auxiliaries, prosecuted for libel if they went too far, and recompensed by pensions for the risks they had to run; they were despised, even by those who used them, as a set of mercenary guerillas, employed to do dirty work and insinuate charges which could not be made by responsible people, and ready, as was supposed, to serve on whichever side would pay them best. according to a well-known anecdote, two writers of the eighteenth century decided by the toss of a halfpenny which should write for walpole and which should write for his adversary pulteney; but the choice was generally decided by less reputable motives. now, so long as the press meant such a class it was of course natural that the trade should be regarded as discreditable, and should be carried on by men who had less care for their character than for their pockets. in england, where our development has been continuous and traditions linger long, the sentiment long survived; and the practice which corresponded to it--the practice, that is, of anonymity--has itself survived the sentiment which gave it birth. i do not, indeed, mean to insinuate that the practice may not have better reasons than that which led to its first adoption. the mask was formerly worn by men who were ashamed of their employment, and who had the same reasons for anonymity as a thief or an anarchist may have for a disguise. it may now be worn even by men who are proud of their profession, because the mask has a different significance. when a journalist calls himself "we" instead of "i," the word really represents a fact: the fact that he speaks not simply as an individual, but as the mouthpiece of a corporation, which itself claims to be the organ of a party. the plural covers whatever additional weight may be due to this representative character. to consider the value of this justification would take me too far. i have spoken of this historical fact because i think that it illustrates a more general problem. for, in the first place, i think that there were some elements in the older sentiment which deserved respect. when an author was as anxious to disavow the charge of writing for money as an author at the present day is to claim his reward, i cannot, for my part, simply set him down as silly. "my songs," said burns, "are either above price or below price, and, therefore, i will accept nothing." i respect his feelings. he may not have been quite logical; but he was surely right in the belief that the poet whose inspiration should come from his breeches-pocket would never write true songs or embody the very spirit of a nation. i do not doubt that authors ought to be paid; but i certainly agree that a money reward never ought to be the chief aim of their writing. and i confess that some utterances about copyrights in these days have jarred upon me, because they seem to imply that the doctrine is not disavowed so unequivocally as it should be by our leaders. i am, indeed, happy to believe, as i fully believe, that there has never been a time at which more good work has been done for pure love of the work, independently, and even in defiance, of pecuniary considerations. but i cannot help thinking that in their desire to establish a right to the profits of their work, authors have condescended at moments to speak as if that reward constituted their sole motive to work, instead of being desired--as it may most properly be desired--simply as the means of enabling them to work. the old contempt was aristocratic, and in these days we have come to use aristocratic as a term of abuse. my own impression is that we ought to be just even to aristocrats; and in that contempt for all such work, i think that there was a genuine element of self-respect. the noble despised the poor scribe who had to get his living by his pen. we, my lords, as chesterfield put it, may thank providence that we do not depend upon our brains. it is wrong, no doubt, to despise anybody; and especially mean to despise a man for poverty. but the sentiment also included the belief--surely not so wrong--that the adventurer who joined the ranks of a party for the sake of the pay was so far contemptible, and likely to join the party which paid best. the misfortune, no doubt, was that the political state involved such dependence; and the desirable solution that every one should become independent. till that solution was more or less reached, the corresponding sentiment was inevitable, and not without meaning. well, the literary class has had its declaration of independence. an author has long ceased to need a patron, and he is in little danger of the law of libel. the question occurs: what are the qualities by which we should justify our independence? have we not still a certain stoop of the shoulders, a kind of traditional shamefacedness, an awkwardness of manner, and a tendency to blush and stammer, which shows that we are not quite at ease in our new position? or have we not--it is a more serious question--exchanged dependence upon the great for dependence upon the public, rather than learnt to stand upon our own feet? have we made ourselves, and, if we have not, how can we make ourselves, worthy of our position as free men? we boast that the press does part of what used to be done by the priesthood, that we enlighten and encourage and purify public opinion. there is a whole class which depends upon us for intellectual culture; which reads nothing that is not in newspapers and magazines. do we give them a wholesome training, provide them with sound knowledge, and stimulate them to real thought? are we such a priesthood as is really raising the standard of human life; or such a priesthood as is clinging to power by echoing the superstitions of its congregations? nature is ruled by obeying her; and what is called ruling public opinion is too often servilely following its dictates. there is an old story which tells how a certain newspaper used to send out an emissary to discover what was the common remark that every one was making in omnibuses and club smoking-rooms, and to fashion it into next morning's article for the instruction of mankind. the echo affected to set the tune which it really repeated. now, there is nothing more flattering than an echo. "this must be an inspired teacher, for he says exactly what i thought myself," is a very common and effective argument. to reproduce the opinions of the average reader; to dress them so skilfully that he will be pleased to see what keen intelligence is implied in holding such opinions; to say just what everybody wishes to have said a little more neatly than everybody could say it, or, at the outside, to say to-day what every one will be saying to-morrow, is one path to success in journalism. there is, i am afraid, much so-called education which tends to nothing better than a development of this art. i was consulted the other day by a young gentleman who was proposing to put himself under a professor of journalism. so far as i could gather from his account, the professor did not suggest that the pupil should study any branch of serious knowledge: that he should become, for example, a good political economist, or read ancient or modern history, or make himself familiar with continental affairs or bimetallism, or other thorny and complex subjects. the aim was precisely to enable him to dispense with all study, and to spin words out of absolute mental vacuity. if such an art can really be acquired, it is scarcely an art to be recommended to ingenuous youth. and yet, as i understand, it is an art which is more or less countenanced even at our universities. a distinguished classman learns much, but the last thing he learns is the depth of his own ignorance. he is too often practised in the power of beating out his gold or his tinsel to cover the largest possible surface; he becomes an adept in adopting the very last new fashion of thought; he can pronounce dogmatically upon all previous thinkers after reading not their own works, but the summary given in the last text-book. success in the art of passing examinations requires the same qualities which enable a man to write off-hand a brilliant leading article upon any side of any subject. i have often heard remarks upon the modern diffusion of literary skill. ten people, it is said, can write well now for one who could write well fifty years ago. no doubt the demand for facile writing has enormously increased the supply. but i do not think that first-rate writing--the writing which speaks of a full mind and strong convictions, which is clear because it is thorough, not because it is shallow--has increased in the same proportion, if, indeed, we can be sure that it has increased at all. perhaps there are ten times as many people who can put other men's thoughts into fluent phrases; but are there ten times as many, are there even as many, who think for themselves and speak at first hand? the practice of anonymous writing affords, of course, obvious conveniences to a superficial omniscience. the young gentleman who dogmatises so early might blush if he had to sign his name to his audacious utterances. his tone of infallibility would be absurd if we knew who was the pope that was promulgating dogmas. the man in a mask professes to detect at a glance the absurd sophistries which impose upon the keenest contemporary intellects; but if he doffed the mask and appeared as young mr. smith, or jones, who took his degree last year, we might doubt whether he had a right to assume so calmly that the sophistry is all on the other side. i am, however, quite aware that this is only one side of the question of anonymity. were the practice abolished, the journalist who was forced to appear in his own character might abandon not his superficiality, but whatever power of blushing he retains. the more fluent phrase-monger might take himself even more seriously than he now does, and might persuade other people to take him seriously too. the charlatan, in short, might have a better chance, and use his notoriety as a stepping-stone to more mischievous ambition. i refrain from discussing this question: the rather because it is obvious that such changes must work themselves out gradually, and that we may assume, for the present, that the position will not be materially changed. i am, therefore, content to infer that the journalist should at least bear in mind one obvious criterion. he should never say anything anonymously to which he would be ashamed to sign his name. i do not mean merely that he should not be libellous or spiteful--i hope and believe that the underhand assassin of reputations, who at one period was common enough, has almost ceased to exist,--but rather that he should refrain from that pompous assumption of omniscience which would he ludicrous in a simple individual. he should say nothing when he speaks in the plural which would make him look silly if he used the first person singular. now, this modest requirement involves, i think, a good deal. i will try to say what it involves by an example, of which i frequently think. i remember a young gentleman, who, in my hearing, confessed, in answer to a question from carlyle, that he did a certain amount of journalistic work. the great man thereupon said, with his usual candour, and, i must add, without any personal discourtesy, that, in his opinion, the journalism of the period was just so much ditch-water. what should be a well of english undefiled poured forth streams little better than a public sewer. the phrase, like some other prophetic utterances, sounded a trifle harsh, but was all the more calculated to set me thinking. my thinking naturally led me to reflect upon carlyle's own example. i was invited some time afterwards to sign a little testimonial presented to him upon his eightieth birthday, in imitation of the gift which he had himself forwarded to goethe. in this it was said, and said, i think, most truly, that carlyle was himself an example of the heroic life in literature. and why? a good many epigrams have been levelled at carlyle, and he has more than once been ridiculed as the philosopher who preached the virtues of silence in thirty volumes. now, carlyle's utterances about silence may not have been unimpeachable; but i think that, stated in a commonplace way, they substantially come to this: that idle talk, a mere spinning of phrases, is a very demoralising habit, and one great mischief of the present day; but that the serious and careful utterance of real thought and genuine knowledge must be considered rather as a mode of action than of talk, and deserves the cordial welcome of all men. a goethe affects action as much as a napoleon. carlyle did not really mean to draw the line between an active and a literary life; for he knew as well as any man that literature may at once require the most strenuous activity, and be the source of life and vigour in active men; but between frivolity and earnestness, between the mere waste and dissipation of energy and its concentration upon some worthy purpose. judged by such a standard, carlyle's words were also deeds. he wrote a good deal, for he lived a long time, and had for many years to live by his pen. i could, i think, mention several professional authors who habitually provide as much copy in a month as carlyle ever achieved in a year. but, luckily for them, their works are not collected. carlyle appears to be voluminous because he never wrote anything which was not worth preservation, and that because he never wrote an essay without making it as good as his abilities permitted. he did so, although he was till middle life hard pressed for money, and helping to support his family out of his narrow earnings. he stuck indomitably to his own ideal of what was best, though he had slowly to form a public which could appreciate him. and through long years of struggle and hardship he never condescended to make easy gains at the price of inferior workmanship, or to lower his standard of excellence in order to meet the immediate demands of editors. in that sense, if in no other, i call carlyle a worthy hero of literature, and i reverence his example a great deal more, i fear, than i have imitated it. perhaps, indeed, a man must have an unusually, even unreasonably, strong conviction of the truth and importance of his mission before he can make such sacrifices in order to discharge it worthily. to most of us the question occurs whether it can possibly be worth while to do so. perhaps, if i devoted myself exclusively to delivering my message to mankind as forcibly as i could, and to making all necessary preparations, it might be rather more effective than the second-hand twaddle which i actually produce. but would the game be worth the candle? i have, it may be, a family to support. should i not, as an honest man, think first of my butcher and my baker and of paying the collector of rates, before i undertake to become an immortal author? probably, at the best, my immortality would be a very short one, for there is not one author in a thousand who can make his voice audible at the distance of a generation. is it not better and wiser to earn an honest living by innocent small talk, than to aim at a great success and let my children go barefoot and lose their schooling? that low man, says browning's grammarian- that low man goes on adding one to one, his hundred's soon hit: this high man, aiming at a million, misses an unit. is it not better to hit your hundred than to aim at your million and miss it? that is a problem which i do not think it possible to answer by a general rule. we rightly honour the carlyle or the wordsworth who has forced the public to admire him in spite of critical gibes and long obscurity; but we must not forget that even success does not necessarily justify the audacity which has won it, and that a good many people who fancied themselves to be capable of enlightening the world have been empty-headed impostors who would have done better to take the critic's advice: drop their pens and mind their gallipots. devotion to an ideal, like other high qualities, may be misplaced or counterfeited by mere personal vanity. but leaving each man to decide by the concrete circumstances of his own case, i still hold that at least we should try in this respect to act in carlyle's spirit. i cannot blame the author who, under certain conditions, feels that his first duty is to pay his weekly bills, so long, of course, as he does not earn the money by pandering to the bad passions of his readers; for there are modes of making a livelihood by the pen to which starvation or the workhouse would be preferred by any high-minded man. but we will not judge harshly of the author who lives by supplying innocent, if rather insipid, food for public amusement. he might be capable of better things; but, then, he might certainly be doing much worse. yet in any case, i say that, to have a tolerably comfortable conscience, an author should try to look a little farther than this. the great mass of mankind has to devote most of its energies to employments which require nothing more than honest work; and yet even the humblest can do something to maintain and elevate the moral standard of his surroundings. the author, so far as he is simply a journeyman, a reporter of ordinary events and speeches, for example, does his duty so far as he reports them honestly; and we have no more to say to him. but the author who takes part in political and social or religious discussions has a responsibility which involves something more. probably he feels--i am sure enough that i feel--that his performance makes remarkably little difference to mankind in general; and that he is playing only an infinitesimal part in the great processes by which the huge world blunders along, struggling into some approximation to a more tolerable order. he may compare himself to one of the myriads of insects building up one square yard on the coral reef which stretches for hundreds of leagues. yet even the coral reef depends on the units, and if the insect's powers are small it concerns him to make the best of them. now, to make the best of them implies some genuine interest in his work; something that makes the reader perceive that he is being addressed by a human being, not a mere machine for vamping up old materials. i have been struck in reading newspaper articles, even my own, by the curious loss of individuality which a man seems to suffer as a writer. unconsciously the author takes the colour of his organ; he adopts not only its sentiment but its style, and seems to become a mere transmitter of messages, with whose substance he has no more to do than the wires of the electric telegraph which carries them. but now and then we suddenly come across something fresh and original; we know by instinct that we are being addressed by another man, and are in a living relation to a separate human being, not to a mere drilled characterless unit of a disciplined army; we find actually thoughts, convictions, arguments, which, though all arguments are old, have evidently struck the writer's mind, and not merely been transmitted into his pen; and then we may know that we are in the presence of a real force, and meeting with a man who is doing his duty. i refrain from mentioning, though i easily could mention, living modern instances. but on looking to the history of the past, it is curious to notice how rare the phenomenon is, and how important it is when it occurs. think for a moment, for example, of old cobbett, agricultural labourer and soldier, with nothing to help him but his shrewd mother-wit and his burly english strength. he wrote much that was poor and clumsy enough; much, too, that was pure claptrap, and much that was dictated by personal motives and desire for notoriety. but in spite of this the untaught peasant became one of the great political forces, more effective than the ninety and nine elegant _edinburgh_ and _quarterly_ reviewers, who had all the advantages which he lacked. why? partly, no doubt, because he was a really strong man; but also because he had at least one genuine and deeply-rooted conviction, springing out of his profound desire for the welfare of the class which was both the largest and the most helpless of the england of his day. he is, therefore, one example, and there are many others, of the singular power which is exercised in journalism by a man, under whatever disadvantages, who possesses, or rather who is possessed by, some master-thought, and utters it in season and out of season with perhaps disproportionate intensity, but with perfect sincerity. now, though cobbett would be in some respects a bad model, i only refer to him in this sense. when my young friends consult me as to the conditions of successful journalism, my first bit of advice comes to this: know something really; at any rate, try to know something; be the slaves of some genuine idea, or you will be the slaves of a newspaper--a bit of mechanism instead of a man. you can carry on the business with self-respect--whatever your success--if it is also something more than a business; if, for example, you can honestly feel that you are helping on the propaganda of sound principle, denouncing real grievances, and speaking from genuine belief. no man has a right to lay down the law to statesmen as though he were in possession of absolute knowledge, or as though he were a man of science talking to a class of ignorant schoolboys. but every man ought to believe that truth is attainable, and to endeavour with all his power to attain it. he should study the great problems of the day historically: for he must know how they have arisen; what previous attempts have been made to solve them; how far recent suggestions are mere reproductions of exploded fallacies; and so qualify himself to see things in their true relations as facts of a great process of evolution. he should endeavour to be philosophical in spirit, so far, at least, as to seek to base his opinions upon general principles, and to look at the events of the day from a higher point of view than that of personal or party expediency. and he must, though upon this it is hardly necessary to insist, be familiar with the affairs of the day: for no one can apply principles to politics effectively without a genuine first-hand knowledge of the actual currents of political life. unless a man can take up his calling in some such spirit, he can be but a mere retailer of popular commonplaces, and must live from hand to mouth or upon the chance utterances of people as thoughtless as himself, increasing the volume of mere noise which threatens to drown sense. but if he seriously cultivates his powers, and enriches his mind, he may feel sure that even in journalism he may be discharging one of the most important functions which a man can undertake. he may be right or wrong in the particular doctrines which he supports. indeed, the first and most obvious result of any attempt to take wider views of politics is the admission that wisdom (and as certainly, nonsense) is not the exclusive possession of any party in politics, literature, or philosophy. but something is done whenever a man of trained intellect and genuine conviction lifts popular discussion to a higher plane. at such times it rises above the region of personal invective or pure platitude, and involves a conscious reference to great principles and to the remote conditions of the little bit of history which we are actually transacting. when john stuart mill became a member of the house of commons, and was accepted as a philosopher coming among practical men, he said much that displeased his hearers; but it was observed by competent judges at the time, that the tone of parliamentary debates was perceptibly raised. members of parliament were forced to reflect for the moment, not only how their speeches would tell in next day's reports, and what traps they were setting for opponents, but also for a brief instant, how their arguments would stand the test of impartial logic. mill tells a significant story in his autobiography, which, perhaps, indicates one source of his influence. when he appeared upon the hustings he was asked whether he had not said that the english working-classes were generally liars. he replied simply, "i did," and the reply was, he says, received with "vehement applause". the incident, he adds, convinced him that the working-classes valued nothing more than thorough straightforwardness, and honoured a man for daring to tell them of their faults. i hope that it is so: i believe, in point of fact, that no quality is more heartily honoured than unflinching political honesty. and i confess that i have often wondered why it is that where the reward is so clear, so few people take the plain road which leads to it. it seems equally clear that moral courage pays better than any other quality in politics, and that it is the rarest of all qualities even to be simulated. we are all anxious to show how profound is our affection for the masses; but how many candidates for their favour dare to give mr. mill's proof of genuine respect? no doubt you must make it clear that you possess some other qualities before you can hope to conciliate the respect of a class by accusing it openly of habitual lying. indeed, this might be taken as a test of genuine independence. till you can tell men of their faults without being suspected of spite or bad temper--till you can praise them without being suspected of unworthy flattery--you are not really in a position worthy to be called independent. how many journalists--i say nothing of statesmen--stand firmly enough on their own legs to speak out without giving offence? we are often told of a great revolution of opinion, and especially of the abandonment of the old prejudice against government interference. that a great change has taken place in the opinions which men profess is undeniable; though how far that change has been due to unbiassed scientific reflection, and how far to a change in the conditions of popularity, is a very different question. i see, for example, a statement by an honourable gentleman that he approves of the eight hours bill because the principle of non-interference with adult labour is obsolete. it is too late to avow it. if the honourable gentleman means to say that experience has proved the principle to be erroneous, he is, of course, justified in abandoning it. but, if his meaning be simply that the principle has gone out of fashion, what is this but to admit that you will abandon any doctrine as soon as it ceases to be popular? do we really mean to assert that a fallacious doctrine can never get the upper hand; that the beliefs of to-day are always better than the beliefs of yesterday; that every man who has dared to stick to an opinion condemned by a majority must necessarily be a fool for his pains? that really seems to be a common opinion. we hear a great deal at the present day about "mandates," and a mandate seems to be regarded not simply as a declaration of the will of a majority which must, in point of fact, be obeyed, but as the official utterance of an infallible church which cannot in point of logic be erroneous. now, i confess that i have always had a weakness for the faithful abdiel. i believe that a man is often doing invaluable services who resists the dominant current of opinion, who denounces fallacies when they are growing and flourishing, and points out that a revolution in belief, even though it be inevitable for the time, and even though it contain an element of right reason, may yet contain errors and hasty judgments and deviations from the true line of progress, which require exposure the more unsparing in proportion to their temporary popularity. is not the ordinary journalist's frame of mind singularly unfavourable to his discharge of this function? and is it not inevitable that it should be so as long as the journalist's only aim is to gain a hearing somehow? it matters not which side he takes. he denounces some new doctrine, but only in the name of the current prejudices which it happens to shock. he advocates it, but only because it is the last new fashion of the day. in either case he falls into the ordinary party vice of imagining that his opponents must be fools or knaves, that their opinions are directly inspired by the devil or a judicial blindness inflicted by providence, simply because he will not take the trouble to understand them. the man who would try to raise himself above the position of the mere pander to passing antipathies must widen his intellectual horizon. he must qualify himself to take broad views; he must learn that his little list of commonplaces does not represent real thought, but is often the embodiment of mere prejudice, or perhaps the deposit of words left by thinkers of past generations; he must learn to do more than merely dish them up with a new sauce; he must concentrate his abilities upon definite problems, consider how they have arisen, and what is their relation to the past and the future. to do so requires some disinterestedness: some love of truth for its own sake; and a capacity for answering your opponent by explaining him, instead of a mere quickness for taunting him personally. it requires, no doubt, serious and prolonged application. even such a training will not enable a man to unlock all the puzzles of the day; but it may help towards the desirable consummation in which a solution is at least sought in connection with established principles, and with a constant reference to the organised experience which also can be a safe guide to more reasonable conclusions. even the attempt to do so may strengthen a man against the temptation to take short cuts to notoriety, and seek a momentary sensation at the sacrifice of permanent effect. we owe gratitude to all who have acted upon such principles and won the influence which comes at last, though it comes slowly, to honest work, bestowed even upon such shifting materials as political and moral philosophy. i have dwelt so far chiefly upon political journalism, because it is so characteristic a part of modern literature, and illustrates so clearly some obvious tendencies of the time. i must say something, however, of another department of literature, which is sometimes said to have nothing at all to do with morality. the poet or the novelist, it is suggested, has no duties except that duty which scheherazade discharged at the risk of her neck,--the duty of keeping her master amused. if, instead of telling him stories about genii, she had read him every morning an orthodox sermon or an ethical discourse, the one thousand and one nights would have been diminished by one thousand. am i to tell our modern scheherazades to forget the _arabian nights_, and adopt for our use passages from the homilies of tillotson? some religious persons have taken that horn of the dilemma, and perhaps with some plausibility. when the world is heaving with the throes of a social earthquake, what right have you or i to be lounging on sofas, telling silly stories about young ladies' and gentlemen's billings and cooings? perhaps the condemnation should be extended to recreations less obviously frivolous. your philosopher who tries to distinguish or to identify "is" and "is not," and to draw the true line between object and subject, has a very fascinating plaything, but is perhaps as far from influencing the world. judging from the history of past philosophical cobwebs, he might as well be framing conundrums, or learning how to throw grain through the eye of a needle. i only refer to this to say that i am not in favour of suppressing either art or philosophy. i have a kind of hankering after them in some forms myself. i assume, without further argument, that shakespeare, and milton, and wordsworth, and fielding, and scott, and dickens, did well in devoting themselves to literature, and probably did more to make the world happier and better than if they had composed sermons or systems of philosophy. i must, as i said, refrain from pronouncing any set eulogy upon the services rendered by authors. this only i take for granted. no one, i think, of any intellectual capacity can remember the early days when his faculties were ripening, when he wandered, for the pure delight of wandering, in the enchanted world of the great imaginative writers, saw through their eyes, and unconsciously caught the contagion of their sympathies, without feeling a deep gratitude to the men who not only gave him so much innocent pleasure, but who incidentally refined his taste and roused his enthusiasm, and quickened his perception of whatever is beautiful, or heroic, or pathetic, in the moral or the natural world. the highest literature embodies the instincts by which a cultivated people differs from the barbarous, and the classes are in a true sense civilised, which enjoy and appreciate the ennobling as distinguished from the coarser pleasures, and rise above the merely brutal life. one who aspires to be a leader, or to follow the steps of the leaders, in this band of crusaders against barbarism, must surely have some corresponding duties. i am here upon the edge of certain troublesome controversies which i shall refrain from discussing at length. this only i need say. some great authors explicitly accept the function of preaching. milton, and, in later days, wordsworth, identified the offices of the prophet and the poet, and set themselves deliberately to expound an ideal of life, and justify the ways of god to man. and milton gave the principle in his famous saying, that he who would write well hereafter of laudable things must be himself a true poem. yet men equally great have impressed readers by their apparent indifference to such considerations. they accept the new commandment which, as emerson tells us, the muse gave to her darling son, "thou shalt not preach". shakespeare and scott did not consciously and deliberately write to set forth any ideal; they even wrote, more or less, to make money; they were magnificent opulent geniuses, who poured out their imaginative wealth liberally and spontaneously, without a thought of any particular moral, simply because their minds were full to overflowing of great thoughts and vivid images, which they diffused as liberally as the rose gives its scent. are we to say that they were wrong or morally inferior, even if artistically superior, to those who wrote, like milton or dante, with a more definite aim? must i condemn scott because he did not write, like the excellent miss edgeworth, or even like dickens in some of his stories, to preach consciously that honesty is the best policy, or that selfishness is a vice; and, if so, must i not condemn a man from whom i have not only received an incalculable amount of innocent enjoyment, but imbibed--it is my own fault if i have not imbibed--many thoughts that have strengthened and stimulated the best elements of my nature? if i insist upon the moral influences, am i not confounding the poet and the preacher, and falling under the lash of i know not how many critical connoisseurs? if i renounce the preachers, i am renouncing some of the greatest artists, and indirectly sanctioning even such art as is worthy only of holywell street, and panders to the worst passions. i will say what i think. great writers, it seems to me, may be great in two ways; and the greatest is he who combines them most thoroughly. the first-rate writer, in the first place, must--to use a frequently misapplied word--be a thorough realist. he is great in proportion to the width and depth of the truths which he grasps, and to which he gives the most perfect expression. when we read shakespeare at his best, what strikes us is that he has expressed once for all some home-truth about human nature and the world, round which all inferior writers seem to have been blundering without ever achieving a complete utterance. more generally, every great period of our literature has been marked in one shape or other by a fresh realism, or what is called the desire to return to nature: to get rid of the phrases which have become conventional and unreal, and express the real living ultimate truth. shakespeare and the great men of his time were inspired by such a passion; they were animated by the desire to "hold the mirror up to nature" and to portray real vivid human passion, for they had burst through the old mediæval chains of theological dogma, and were aroused to a sudden fresh perception of the beauties which had been unrecognised and misconceived by ascetic monks. the men of pope's time, again, believed in what they, too, called the "religion of nature," and tried to hasten the day when enlightened reason should finally crush what berkeley called the "pedantry of courts and schools". wordsworth and his followers inaugurated a new era by proposing a return to "nature," because the language, which with pope expressed a real meaning, had again become the conventional language of a narrow class of critics and the town. it is in all ages one great function of the imaginative writers to get rid of mere survivals; to forego the spectacles used by their ancestors as helps, which have now become encumbrances; to destroy the formulas employed only to save the trouble of thinking, and make us see facts directly, instead of being befooled by words. in that sense it is their great service that they break up the old frost of dreary commonplace, and give life and power, in place of an acceptance of mere ossified or fossilised remnants of what once was thought. briefly, they teach us to see what is before us. so far the function of the poet resembles that of the scientific and philosophic observer. he differs radically in method, because he proceeds by intuition instead of analysis; shows us the type, instead of cataloguing the attributes of a class; and gives us a real living man--a falstaff or a hamlet--instead of propounding a psychological theory as to the relations of the will, the intellect, and the emotions. i take it, therefore, that realism in this sense is one essential characteristic of great imaginative power. i hold it to be more than ever necessary; more necessary because scientific methods of thought are more developed. it is less possible for a serious writer to make use of the merely fanciful symbols which were perfectly legitimate as long as they represented real beliefs, but are now fitter for only the lighter moods. the greatest writers have to dispense with fairies and fighting gods and goddesses, and the muses, and to show us a direct portraiture of the forces by which society is actually moved. but the functions of the great writer, though they involve a perception of truth, are not adequately defined by the simple condition of truthfulness. he has to be--may i say it?--a preacher; he cannot help it; and, so far as he cannot help it, his preaching will be elevating in proportion as it is truthful. he does not preach in the sense in which a moralist preaches, by arguing in favour of this or that doctrine, or expounding the consequences of opinions. it is not his business to prove, but to see, and to make you see. but, in another sense, he cannot help preaching, because his power over you is founded upon sympathy, upon his personal charms, upon the clearness with which he sees and the vividness with which he portrays the real nature of the instincts which make men lovable or hateful. what are really the most fascinating books in the language? i was impressed the other day by discovering that perhaps the most popular of all english books, judging by the number of editions, is goldsmith's _vicar of wakefield_. to what does it owe its popularity? obviously to the exquisite keenness of goldsmith's perception of the moral beauty of a simple character, which is always saved from the charge of being unctuous or sentimental by the constant play of gentle and yet penetrative humour. do we not love charles lamb for a similar reason? why, again, do we love scott, as all men ought to love him? is it not because his jeanie deans and his dandie dinmont, and a hundred more characters, show the geniality, the manliness as well as the shrewd common-sense of their creator, and his vivid perception of the elements which ennoble the national character which he loved so well? why does the british public love dickens so well? for his incomparable fun, no doubt; but also because the fun is always associated with a keen perception of certain moral qualities which they regard with, it may be, excessive admiration. but to give no more examples, i am content to say that the enduring power of every great writer depends not merely on his intellectual forces, but upon the charm of his character--the clear recognition of what it really is that makes life beautiful and desirable, and of what are the baser elements that fight against the elevating forces. we are under intellectual obligations to the man of science who will tell us, for example, how mountain chains have been raised and carved into their present shape. but we are grateful to the great poets and prose writers, to wordsworth and mr. ruskin, for interpreting and stimulating the emotions which make the vision of the great peaks a source of pure delight. we may, in the same way, thank the psychologist who can make more intelligible the principle of association of ideas, or trace the development of the moral sense or the social affections. but we love the man who, like goldsmith, and lamb, and scott, and wordsworth, has revealed to us by actual portraits of typical characters, the sweetness and tenderness and truthfulness which may be embodied in humble characters. love, says wordsworth, of his shepherd lord- love had he found in huts where poor men lie, his daily teachers had been woods and rills; the silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is among the comely hills. the power of discovering and of making us discover such thoughts in the huts of poor men and in natural scenery is the true prerogative of the poet, and it is to that power that he owes his enduring place in our hearts. i have said this much because i think that it is in a perversion of these principles that we shall find some of the temptations to which the author is in these days most liable. i can only glance at them briefly. one perversion, for example, is indicated by the common use of the phrase "realism". this word has various meanings; but the commonest, perhaps, would not be misrepresented by saying that it involves a confusion between the functions of the man of science and the poet. in a scientific sense, it is a sufficient reason for setting forth any theory that you believe it to be true. the facts which you describe may be hideous and revolting: it is not the less desirable that they should be accurately known. the poet and novelist may be equally justified in taking hideous and revolting facts into account. that, for example, is the duty of a satirist; and i am not at all concerned to say that satire is illegitimate--i think it perfectly legitimate. i should be the last to assert that a writer should confine himself to such facts as can be discussed with decency in presence of a young ladies' school. on the contrary, i think that, if not the most enviable privilege, it is sometimes a duty of the novelist to set forth vice and crime, and even, it may be, to set them forth in impressive and startling shapes. it is his duty to represent them truly and to make them intelligible; to show how they may be natural, and not to misrepresent even a villain. all i say is, that he should also recognise the fact that they are hideous and revolting. and, therefore, this is no excuse for the man who really dwells upon such facts, not because they are facts, but because he knows that such descriptions are the easiest way of attracting morbid tastes; and that he can get a readier market by being irreverent and indecent than by other expedients. to defend such work on the excuse of realism is simply to indulge in a bit of contemptible humbug, too transparent to need exposure. the purpose of an artist, you say, is to give pleasure, not to preach. that is perfectly true; but to give pleasure to whom? if it is to give pleasure to the prurient, to the cynical, to the debauchee, to give the kind of pleasure which, to a pure-minded man, is pain, and of which even the blackguard is ashamed, then i will not quarrel over words, and ask whether it can be truly artistic, but i will simply reply that i should have a greater respect for a man who lived by picking pockets. but, you reply, it requires a great deal of skill. so does picking pockets, and so do some other kinds of human energy which i need not particularise. if the ethical judgment be really irrelevant æsthetically, the æsthetic judgment must be irrelevant ethically. if that doctrine be true, we are, therefore, quite at liberty to say that a thing may be beautiful and at the same time blackguardly and beastly. i will, however, express my own conviction, that what is disgusting to a right-minded man cannot be really beautiful, and that the sentiments which it offends cannot be put out of court simply because they are called moral. they have as good a right to be considered as any others. there is a temptation of the opposite kind: the temptation to what i may briefly call sentimentalism. the virtue of idealism is as necessary as the virtue of realism; and every great writer shows his greatness by combining the two. the contradictory of the real is not properly the ideal, but the unreal--which is a very different thing. for idealism means properly, as i take it, that quality in virtue of which a poem or a fiction does not represent merely the scientific or photographic reproduction of matters of fact, but incarnates an idea and expresses a sentiment. a great work imparts to us the impression made upon a mind of unusual power, reflectiveness, and emotional sensibility by some aspect of the world in which we all live, but which he can see more vividly than others. to be really impressive, therefore, it must correspond to facts and be the genuine product of experience. the erroneous idealism is that which perverts the truth in order to gain apparent emphasis; which deals in the impossible, the absurd, and the exaggerated; and supposes a world which cannot even be better than the actual, because it cannot exist; which, therefore, has the defect of being arbitrary and inconceivable. so political utopias are interesting in proportion as they suggest a legitimate construction, based upon actual facts and observed laws of human nature. as soon as we see that they presuppose a world of monstrosities, of impossible combinations of incompatible qualities, they become mere playthings. and the same is true of every work of imagination; as soon as it ceases to have a foundation in truth--to be other than realistic--it loses its real hold upon our sympathies. you solve no problem when you call in a god to cut the knot. this is the tendency of the sentimentalist, who refuses to be bound by the actual conditions. his creations are ephemeral because only plausible, even to the imagination, so long as the illusions to which they are congenial survive. and he probably falls into the further error that the emotion which he utters becomes as factitious as the laws which he invents. the man who weeps because he is melted at the sight of misery, touches us; but when he weeps because he finds it pleasant, or because he wishes to make a public exhibition of his tenderness of heart, we find him out by degrees and call him a humbug and a sentimentalist. sham feelings and moral facts are the staple of the sentimentalist and the cause of his inevitable decay. these remarks may serve to suggest the temptations which most beset the author in our days, though peculiar to our day only in the degree in which authorship has become more professional. for the ideal author is the man who, having discovered truth, desires to reveal it to his fellows, or, being full of perceptions of beauty, cannot resist the impulse to embody them in words or outward symbols. but when he desires also to live by his powers, he is at once in a position of which all authors know the peril. he becomes self-conscious; for he has a perpetual poultice of public favour or enmity applied to soften his fibres, and to make him feel, even in his study, that an eye is upon him and that he must so act as always to preserve attention. he is tempted to produce sensation at any cost--to shock and startle by horrors if he cannot move the sympathies by gentle arts: for a man who cannot command the pathetic, can, at least, always be disgusting. he can turn our stomachs if he cannot move our hearts. he is tempted, at least, to caricature--to show how keen is his perception by crude and glaring colours, and to indulge in the grotesque as an easy substitute for the really graphic; he can affect a facile cynicism to show how profound is his penetration, and display that marvellous knowledge of the world and the human heart, and that power of discovering the emptiness of all apparent virtues which is so common an endowment of young gentlemen upon their first initiation into real experience of life. there is nothing which the author affects so easily at his first start as the world weariness which comes from long experience and years of disappointed hope. and when a man has once gained applause for his sentiment, he finds himself his own covert rival, and is forced to substitute for the first "sprightly runnings" a fanciful pumping up of the last dregs of his old feelings. nothing, unfortunately, is more common, or could be more easily illustrated by examples of good writers, than the spectacle of the veteran trying to reproduce in cold blood the effects which he struck out spontaneously and unconsciously in youth. and, then, at every instant the poor author feels that he must keep up with the fashion; he lives in fear of that verdict which will come some day, that he is an old fogey, and that he is transgressing those eternal principles which were discovered by some ingenuous youth a fortnight ago. some such danger is, indeed, shared by others than the author. it is the misfortune of his calling that success with him is intrinsically associated with notoriety. a man may do good work in many departments of life, of which no one will ever hear beyond a narrow circle. i hold, for my part, that the greatest part of the good work which is done in the world is actually of that kind, and that the best is done for the pure love of work. the world knows nothing of its greatest men, and as little, perhaps, of its best. but what would be the good of writing even a _hamlet_ or a _divine comedy_ if nobody was to read it? some great writers, i know, have prided themselves on finding fit audience and few; and i fully agree that a man who could really influence a few seminal minds might be well content with such a result of his labours. but, after all, the genuine aim of a great author must be, directly or indirectly, to affect the world in which he lives, whether by changing its beliefs or stimulating its emotions. and, as a rule, he cannot do so without becoming known, and even known to vast numbers of readers. some religious writers, the author, for example, of the _imitation of christ_, have influenced many generations, while absolutely concealing their identity. even they must, at least, have desired that their works should be known; and the case is a rare one. for the author generally, success of the worthiest kind, success in enlightening, encouraging, and stimulating his fellow-men, is inextricably connected with success of a lower kind, the success measured by fame and popularity. that, of course, is equally the case with statesmanship: a statesman has to appeal to crowds, and is too apt to be fascinated by thunders of applause; public oratory, even in the pulpit, is a terrible stimulant to unworthy vanity. the author only differs in this, that his very function presupposes a temperament of more than average sensibility; that he does not get that case-hardening which is administered to the statesman by the opposition orator; and that publicity has a specially intoxicating effect upon the man whose proper home is in his study, and who, perhaps, leaves it only to mix with a circle of reverent admirers. i have tried to indicate some of the obvious temptations of authors, especially so far as they are strengthened by the practice of authorship as a profession. they may be summed up by saying that they tend to degrade the profession into a trade, and a trade which has as many tricks as the least elevating kind of business. it would be, perhaps, desirable to end by deducing some definite moral. but, in the first place, i think that any such moral as i could give is sufficiently indicated by the statement of the dangers. and, in the second place, i do not think that there is any moral that can be regarded as peculiar to authors. for an author, after all, is a man, and, as all men ought to be, a workman. his power comes to this, that he is a man with a special capacity for exciting sympathy. that he should be a good workman, therefore, goes without saying; and it follows that he should have a sense of responsibility in whatever department he undertakes; that he should not bestow his advice upon us without qualifying himself to be a competent adviser; nor write philosophical speculation without serious study of philosophy; nor, if possible, produce poetry or even fiction without filling his mind by observation or training it by sympathy with the great movements of thought which are shaping the world in which we live. it is a sort of paradox which cannot be avoided, that we must warn a man that one condition of all good work is that it should be spontaneous, and yet tell him that it should be directed to make men better and happier. it seems to be saying that the conscious pursuit of a given end would be inconsistent with the attainment of the end. yet i believe that this is a paradox which can be achieved in practice on the simple condition of a reasonable modesty. the author, that is, should not listen to those who would exaggerate the importance of his work. the world can get on very well without it; and even the greatest men are far more the product than the producers of the intellectual surroundings. the acceptance of that truth--i hold it to be a truth--will help to keep in check the exaggerated estimate of the importance of making a noise in the world, which is our besetting sin, and help to make a regulating principle of what is a theoretical belief, that a man who is doing honestly good work in any department, whether under the eyes of a multitude or of a few, will be happiest if he can learn to take pleasure in doing it thoroughly rather than in advertising it widely. and, finally, with that conviction we shall be less liable to the common error of an author who grumbles at his want of success, and becomes morbid and irritable and inclined to lower his standard, when in reality he ought to remember that he is as unreasonable as a marksman who should complain of the target for keeping out of the line of fire. "it is my own fault" is often a bitter reflection, but a bitter may be a very wholesome tonic. the vanity of philosophising. when the preacher exclaimed, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," he did not exclude his own wisdom. "i communed with my own heart, saying, lo, i am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all that have gone before me in jerusalem: yea, my heart hath great experience of wisdom and knowledge. and i gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly: i perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. for in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." the preacher, whoever he may have been, has uttered thoughts upon which many eloquent followers have expatiated. more than two thousand years have passed since the words were written; philosophies have risen and spread and decayed; and yet, in this year 1895, can we say that they have brought more than a multiplication of doubt? has the increase of knowledge as yet diminished sorrow, or established any firm standing ground from which we may look upon the universe and say that the eternal riddle is, i will not say solved, but brought a step nearer to solution? a great poet--i can't tell whether he lived in the twelfth or the nineteenth century, for the phrase is equally characteristic of either omar khayyam or edward fitzgerald--gives the same thought:- myself, when young, did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same door as in i went. what, indeed, are eight or twenty centuries in the life even of this planet? there are moments at which we all have suddenly felt by flashes the sensation of being suspended in vast abysses of space and time: when we see, for example, a chart of the heavens which has been recently revealed to us by astronomers, and find that spaces between the stars shown to us by ordinary eyesight are filled in every direction with world beyond world, vast systems of worlds, worlds in every stage of evolution, growing out of nebulous vapour or sinking into eternal coldness: while the imagination is staggered and bewildered by the inconceivable vastness of the spaces indicated, and its own infinitesimal pettiness. if we stroll into a museum and look at the petrified bones of some grotesque monster, and after rejoicing, perhaps, that there is an end of him, we are struck by the thought of the vast lapse of ages during which he was being slowly hammered out of some mere primitive form, and then slowly decayed, and was gradually elbowed out of existence by monsters a degree less preposterous than himself, and gain a new measure of the portentous lapse of time. the greatest of poets has summed up the impression in the phrase which carlyle was fond of quoting: "we are such stuff as dreams are made of": and our little speck of existence a vanishing quantity in comparison of the infinite above and below and around us, which we dimly infer though we cannot distinctly realise it. if in such a mood, common at times to all who can think or feel, we take up some philosophical work, and find the writer complacently setting forth a cosmogony or a theory of the universe; explaining how things came into being; what is the reason why they are not better or worse; what is the end of the whole drama: are we not justified in exclaiming with carlyle:- the builder of this universe was wise, he planned all souls, all systems, planets, particles: the plan he shaped all worlds and æons by was--heavens!--was thy small nine-and-thirty articles! carlyle has been, to some of us, the most stimulating of writers, just because he succeeded in expressing, with unsurpassed power, the emotion which i must be content with indicating--the emotion which is roused by sudden revelations of the infinitudes, the silences and eternities that surround us. we cannot keep it permanently before us; the present absorbs us, and its little interests seem to be all that is important. it is only at moments when, for example, we reflect that our action of a minute ago is already a part of the mysterious past, sinking downwards, and rapidly becoming invisible in the depths of the infinite ocean, that we are startled by a momentary pang, and feel as though to live with a constant sense of our insignificance would be to risk the paralysis of all our powers of thought and action. that way, we are inclined to say, lies madness. we shall lose our heads if we gaze too long into such tremendous depths. possibly we may restore our equilibrium by meditating upon the infinitesimal, though possibly too we may rather feel that such meditations only reveal another infinite. i intended to make a few reflections suggested by such thoughts, when i found a guide, and, to a great extent, an ally, in a writer who has lately taken up the ancient parable. mr. balfour, in a book rather quaintly entitled _foundations of belief_ has dwelt upon the vanity of all known philosophy, and has shown, or appears to some of his readers to have endeavoured to show, that it is hopeless to lay any sound foundations on the little film of knowledge beneath which lie the great unknown abysses. he tries to indicate some other basis, though, so far as i can understand him, the foundations of his edifice are ingeniously supported by the superstructure; and that is a kind of architecture which, to my mind, lacks stability. through a large part of his argument, however, i find myself in the pleasanter position of an ally. he asserts, and i doubt whether any competent thinker would materially differ from him, that there does not, as a matter of fact, exist any established system of philosophic truth--any system upon which we can rely, as we do, in fact, rightly or wrongly rely, upon certain scientific doctrines. we no more doubt the truth of the newtonian system of astronomy than we doubt that fire burns or that bread nourishes. but the briefest glance at the old systems of philosophy shows us, as mr. balfour says, nothing but imperishable ruins--imperishable æsthetically--but, logically, mere crumbling fragments. we can still read plato with delight; but the delight is due to the beauty of style and exposition, not, certainly, to the conviction produced by his reasoning. aristotle's philosophy is a marvel--for his time: but his theory of the universe is no more tenable than his natural science. the luxuriant growths of later greek philosophy are interesting only to the curious investigators of the pathology of the human intellect. the vast development of scholastic philosophy in the middle ages showed only how far unlimited ingenuity and subtlety may lead in the wrong direction, if it starts with mistaken principles. it ended by upsetting the doctrines which it attempted to prove, and had finally to commit suicide, or fall before the insurrection of living thought. the great men who revolted against its tyranny in its later stages constructed new systems, which, to them, seemed demonstrable, but which, to us, are already untenable. we cannot accept descartes, or spinoza, or leibnitz, or bacon, or hobbes, or locke, as giving satisfactory or even coherent systems, or as having done more than lead to the thorough scepticism of hume. if kant presented one solution of the difficulties in which philosophy was landed, we have still to ask what precisely kant meant; whether his criticism was simply all-destructive, or really left anything standing, and, if so, what it left standing; and who represents the proper line of development. shall we, with schopenhauer, pronounce hegel to be a thorough impostor? and, if so, can we seriously accept schopenhauer's own system? if, here and there, some people accept his theories for literary purposes, nobody will maintain that they rest upon any permanently settled foundation. if, again, we believe in hegel, we have to make out what we mean by believing in hegel, and to which school of his followers we are to attach ourselves. i need not consider the polemic which mr. balfour has directed against the writers who have given a version of hegelian principles in england. personally, i agree with his criticisms in a general way; but i fancy that even the adherents of those principles would defend themselves mainly by declaring that they do not make such pretensions as he ascribes to them. they try, at most, to indicate a way of approaching, not of solving the problems. but, at least, they would claim to have done one thing: namely, to have proved the inadequacy of the rival system of empirical philosophy, accepted by the english followers of locke, and now mainly represented for us by mr. herbert spencer. i only add to this, that it is not a question of the convictions of any individual thinker, however eminent. philosophies of every different variety have been not merely accepted by those who first devised them, but have been taken up in good faith by whole schools of disciples; they have been tested, on a large scale, by systematic application to all relevant questions, and one after the other has become bankrupt; has lost its hold on the world, and confessed that it leaves the riddle as dark as it was before. all that can be claimed for the greatest philosophers is, that they have, at least, proved that certain paths which seemed to lead through the labyrinth, end in a deadlock; that they have exposed certain fallacies by the process of provisionally believing in them; and that they have buoyed certain shoals, and demonstrated that no channel leads in what seemed to be a promising direction. is there any channel open? once more, i might follow--i might even, if i had time, expand mr. balfour's argument in another direction. he has pointed out--not for the first time certainly--how men's beliefs are due not to reasoning, but to countless causes which prevent them from reasoning. the argument is too familiar, indeed, to require much emphasis. some one, arguing in the days of the old orthodoxy upon the necessity of the true faith to salvation, put the case of a couple of infants deserted by their parents. one of them is carried off by a mohammedan and the other by a christian. each will, of course, adopt the faith of the party into whose hands it has fallen; and the problem was, whether the infant seized by the mohammedan would be eternally damned, and the one taken by the christian go straight to heaven; and whether, on the whole, that would satisfy our sense of justice. the argument implies the inevitableness of error. men not only do, but ought to hold, contradictory opinions. take a scottish davie deans, brought up in the shadow of john knox's pulpit; a tyrolese peasant, educated in the catholic church; and a mohammedan, living at mecca; and, of course, it is plain, not only that each will accept the creed which pervades what is for him the whole world known to him, but that as a reasoning being each is probably in the right. that is to say, the accessible evidence is in each case overwhelmingly in favour of the doctrine, inasmuch as the supposed reasoner is entirely unaware of the evidence which might be produced on the other side. but what is true of the peasant is true of the philosopher. measured on a sufficient scale, the difference vanishes. this intellectual horizon is just as much limited, though not so narrowly limited. no one but a bigot would deny that a mediæval philosopher might accept on perfectly reasonable grounds the dogmas of the catholic church. the historical difficulties had not even been presented to his mind. he had no reason for doubting innumerable assumptions as to fact which have since turned out to be erroneous; and if the method of his reasoning was itself fundamentally vicious, the fact only came to light gradually in the process of working out the results. we--including in the "we" the philosophers--have to approach truth by the help of assumptions, and by trying how in point of fact they will work; it is so hard to remember that they are only assumptions that we generally call them self-evident truths. considering how many assumptions are involved even in the very structure of language itself; how we are led into all kinds of difficulties by the essential instrument of thought, which has been fashioned by the unconscious logic of our ancestors; it is not strange that the best that can be said of philosophies is, that they represent convenient working hypotheses. that, at least, seems to be a liberal view of their logical value. in another sense they are really to be considered as poetry, rather than as logic. they are modes of presenting certain conceptions of the world by apparently logical formulæ, instead of by concrete imagery; but, substantially, they represent the emotions with which men regard their dwelling place, and are radically imperfect if we insist upon considering them as providing us with correct plans and drawings of its various arrangements. let us look for a moment at another set of reflections upon which mr. balfour touches. what has been the influence of these systems upon men's lives? have these provisional constructions, these fluctuating, conflicting, unstable combinations of pretentious formulæ, really decided or directed the course of human history? it would seem so, if you read certain histories of philosophy. they seem to suggest that the hinge upon which all the course of human affairs ultimately turns is the growth of certain metaphysical conceptions. there is a preliminary difficulty in seeing how such pretensions can be established. the philosopher in his study or his lecture room discusses problems in which the enormously preponderating majority of the race has so little interest, that it is not even aware that there are any such problems to be discussed. he lays down dogmas so vague and unsatisfactory that half his hearers give up the attempt to understand, or understand them in a sense which the more intelligent half would utterly repudiate; and that intelligent half is itself divided into different schools, interpreting the dogmas in radically contradictory ways. is it not hard to believe that speculation leads to vast results, when for ninety-nine men out of a hundred it is practically non-existent, and with the small minority it amounts to providing new weapons for endless controversy? we must, of course, admit that men's conduct is in some sense determined by their thoughts. change the radical beliefs, and you will certainly change the whole constitution of society. and, again, it is obvious that in one sphere of thought the progress of inquiry is of vast importance. nobody can deny that scientific and mechanical discoveries have, for good or evil, materially affected our lives. the great inventions of modern times, from gunpowder and printing to the steam-engine and electricity, have changed things as much as if they had altered the physical constitution of the world. they have indeed altered it for us, for they have given us the means of applying forces previously dormant, and therefore for practical purposes non-existent. such beliefs have an immediate bearing upon the practices of ordinary human beings. but if we are to set down all philosophies as at once untenable and as absolutely unknown to the enormous majority of mankind, it becomes difficult to understand by what process they come to influence, or apparently to influence, the position of the race. a philosopher frames his scheme of the universe to his own satisfaction; but you and i hear nothing about it, and do not trouble ourselves to understand it, and go on working with our good old common-sense conceptions of things, leaving it to the philosopher to construct or destroy the fanciful system which he somehow supposes to lie beneath them. one answer is of course obvious. religious and ethical systems, it is said, presuppose a philosophy: no one denies that men are profoundly affected by the gods whom they worship and the rules of conduct which they adopt; and therefore the sceptic who is burrowing at the base may be ruining the whole superstructure, although his operations are no more obvious upon the surface than those of some minute parasite. accordingly, we are often told that revolutions are ultimately produced by speculation; and that old systems fall with a crash because some shrewd witness has been boring into the foundations upon which they really repose. the french revolution, according to one familiar statement, was due to the freethinkers who had set about prying into the ultimate grounds of the old faith, and had succeeded in shaking the convictions necessary to social welfare. that this argument expresses a truth is what i am so far from denying that i should be most anxious to give it emphasis. but what is precisely the truth expressed? destroy the belief in a church as a social system, and the organisation will crumble. but what is the real cause of the loss of belief? is it the logical argument that is effective? does the philosophical revolution underlie the political or religious revolution, or is that to invert cause and effect? let me take an example to illustrate my meaning. the doctrine of the "rights of man," proclaimed by the whole revolutionary school, was, it is said, the cause of the revolution. the destruction of the old order was caused by the sudden conviction which spread through europe of the truth of this theory, and the consequent decay of the old authority. now we may proceed, if we please, to trace the origin of this doctrine back through certain speculations to the days of the roman jurists, themselves influenced by the stoical philosophy. the view suggested is that the doctrine was a kind of germ, a something which preserved its vitality through centuries, like the bacteria of modern physiologists, and which, somehow, developed a baleful or a beneficial activity about a century ago, and changed all the conditions of social equilibrium. but, if this be true, we naturally remark that the potency of the doctrine must have been due, not to the doctrine itself, which lay dormant so long, but to the conditions which suddenly made it effective. the doctrine, indeed, is so obvious, in a sense, that it is not to be doubted that anybody who once began to philosophise about laws and political constitutions, after they had reached a certain stage, would hit upon it in one shape or another. it is not comparable to those scientific discoveries which require patient thought and a dexterous combination of arguments: but one of the primary axioms which present themselves on the very threshold of inquiry. the mediæval peasant who put the question:- when adam delved, and eve span, who was then the gentleman? was, probably, no great philosopher; but he was giving the essential pith of the doctrine of liberty, fraternity, and equality. it may be regarded as an obvious logical canon, converted by an illegitimate process into a statement of fact. if i make any general statement whatever about men or beasts or stones, i, of course, assume that there is a corresponding class of things in respect of each of which the proposition is equally true. as soon as i say anything, therefore, about morality or politics, which is intended to be true of men in general, i assume, in this sense, that men are so far equal that something may be predicated, indifferently, of every member of the class man. it is very natural and easy to convert this into the proposition that the concrete men of whom i am speaking are, in some sense, actually equal. in doing so, however, i am either making a false statement, or begging the question. as a matter of fact, men are, in many respects, as far as possible from being equal. the real question, therefore, is whether the inequalities which undoubtedly exist are or are not relevant to the political inequalities which i have to consider. as a matter of fact, the inequalities which were challenged by the revolutionary writers were, as i think, and as most of us think, entirely unjustifiable. at any rate, they had, as a matter of fact, produced widespread discontent and bitter antipathies between classes. it was the existence of these antipathies to which the outbreak was due. the peasant, for example, felt that he was forced to give up the fruit of his labour to the noble, and that the noble was discharging no duty to justify his demands. the peasant, probably, could not read; he was unaware that rousseau or voltaire was laying down principles which would cover his case; he had never even heard of philosopher or philosophy; only, when the time was ripe, when the upper orders had become useless, and the lower classes had accumulated a sufficient quantity of passion, of indignant or vindictive feeling, an outraged sense of justice, the crash came, and any formula which would cover the particular case was acceptable. the doctrine then made its fortune; not because it was true, or because it was demonstrable, but because it gave the shortest and simplest expression to the prevailing sentiment. the philosophical dogma, which had been lying idle for generations, doing no particular harm or good, was, suddenly, converted into a war-cry, the more effective because the real vagueness and uncertainty of its application enabled those who used it to save themselves the trouble of thinking or arguing. instead of substituting particular grievances, and showing that this or that inequality in general was useless and objectionable, they could, in half a dozen words, denounce all inequality, and be perfectly satisfied with a formula which was imposing for its generality, though true only in its particular application. i take this familiar case, not only as familiar, but because it seems to me to be typical. similar general remarks might, i fancy, be made about any of the great religious movements which have, undoubtedly, most profoundly affected human society. they are not due to the philosophers; to the abstract meditations of refined thinkers upon ultimate principles; but to great underlying social changes. our christian apologists of the last century held the quaint belief that a new creed was caused by the occurrence of certain miraculous facts, susceptible of legal proof. it is sufficiently obvious to us that this is to invert the process. given the faith, and there is never any difficulty in supplying the miracles. no quantity of assertions as to miraculous events would have the slightest effect, unless there were a predisposition to accept them. the same answer applies to the theory that a new religion owes its success to the discovery of new moral truths. in the first place, there are, properly speaking, no sudden discoveries in morality; and in the next place, the mere statement of a moral doctrine, and even the presentation of a lofty moral type, can have little importance unless the soil is already prepared, and the doctrine is but the overt utterance of the sentiments which are seeking for expression. the only explanation that we can give of such events is the social explanation. there are periods, that is in history, when the old order is out of joint; when society has outgrown the institutions which were adequate at a previous stage, and when, therefore, the beliefs associated with them become oppressive, and can no longer pass without challenge; when different races and nations have been brought into collision or combination, and crushed together into new forms by conquest and commerce; when, therefore, the several creeds are no longer supported by the patriotism which has ceased to have a meaning; when a vast amalgam of different faiths and modes of life has been formed out of many heterogeneous elements; and thus a need is created for some wider and more comprehensive system of belief corresponding to the general needs of society. in that case the influence of the philosopher may be of some importance, because he can do something towards suggesting the most workable compromise, and of exposing superstitions which have lost their old support, and the instinctive loyalty of their adherents. even then his voice will not be predominant. the creed will survive which is most suited to the state of the average intellect; it will include a large element of the ancient modes of thought, which still insist upon finding some satisfaction, and which, indeed, have a strange vitality beneath the surface, even when explicitly disavowed by the official interpreters of the faith. now, if this be accepted as a rough sketch of the actual course of the development of belief, what is the conclusion as to the philosopher's function? does it go to suggest that philosophy is but a vanity and vexation of spirit, and does it reduce the philosopher to a humbler position than is sometimes claimed for him? my answer would be, in the first place, that the case against philosophy would have to be frankly admitted if the criterion sometimes tacitly suggested be the true one. nothing could be more hopeless than the claim of any philosophy whatever to have laid down a definitively satisfactory plan of things in general. when mr. balfour observes that an aristotle or aquinas or descartes has not laid down a tenable theory of the universe, i can only add that the very phrase--theory of the universe--conveys a sufficient refutation. it is idle, or worse than idle, to imagine that we can lay down, or even hope to lay down, anything of the kind. it needs only one of those glances into the surrounding infinities which i have suggested, or the briefest survey of the history of philosophy, to reveal the sheer impossibility of the attempt. no one, perhaps, ever quite imagined that his speculation could really lay bare the ultimate ground plan of things in general. but, certainly, philosophers have, at times, thought, or spoken as if they thought, that they could construct a body of first principles which should be to knowledge in general what a science is to some particular application,--the general theory of physics, for example, to astronomy. philosophy would then be a system of such ultimate principles. the day for such systems has, i think, passed. we have learnt that it is for ever impossible to spin real knowledge out of pure logic. what the universe, or the little bit of it that we know, actually is, can only be learnt by experience; and if experience presupposes categories or forms of intuition, still, without experience, they remain empty; as incapable of producing truth as a mill of grinding flour without corn. philosophers must admit that on such terms we get only "brain cobwebs"; ingenious feats of intellectual legerdemain, where the operator shows his skill by dexterously hiding away his assumptions, and bringing them out at the end as triumphantly demonstrated conclusions. the more modest ideal, which is now presented to us, is what is called the unification of knowledge. that means, no doubt, that we have to bring our theories into harmony and consistency; to get rid of the hypothetical and conjectural elements which have intruded themselves from earlier and cruder speculation; and so to analyse the primary factors of thought and the most general conceptions, that we may not have to assume in one relation what we dispute in another. even this process is, no doubt, exceedingly difficult; it is difficult partly because the human mind has, generally speaking, to begin at the wrong end; to proceed upon postulates which break down here and there and leave inconvenient fragments remaining elsewhere; partly because some philosophers are still open to the charge that they raise a dust and then complain that they cannot see; and, briefly, because, in one way or other, what with the dulness of the ordinary mind and what with the over-subtlety of the acute, our thoughts and beliefs have got into intricate tangles, which will require enormous patience and judgment to wind off and weave into a satisfactory tissue. genuine philosophers, doubtless, will learn in time how to set about the work. it will probably strike them that instead of evolving pretentious systems of theology, and ethics, and politics, and art, each purporting to give an exhaustive theory of the subject, and each destined to melt away, leaving some infinitesimal residuum of real suggestion, they will have to follow a slower method of gradual and tentative investigation. if so, we must undoubtedly assign to philosophy a more modest position than has sometimes been claimed for it. it must resign its claim to a vision of transcendental realities, to a knowledge of things in themselves, and of the ultimate groundwork of the universe. it has not, i hold, a subject-matter peculiar to itself; it reveals no principles belonging to a separate sphere of thought; it corresponds simply to the attempt to correct and harmonise the cruder thoughts of the average human being, and to state explicitly in their purity the principles which have been all along implicitly involved in his ordinary observations. it is, therefore, not a substantive, but an adjective; philosophy is not a distinct department of thought, and cannot be defined by itself. all we can say is, that we think philosophically in so far as we think rightly. when our mode of conceiving the world includes no heterogeneous or conflicting element, we shall be philosophers; but we shall not, in that capacity, have a separate dominion of our own. now, it will probably do no harm to philosophers more than to other men, to be impressed with a sense of modesty and a right appreciation of the necessary limitations of their enterprise. you have been trying to soar beyond the atmosphere, and you will make the better use of your wings when you learn that they won't support you in a vacuum. your failure is not due to the want of aquiline powers of flight, but to the melancholy truth that even an eagle can't do much in an air-pump. is not that a rather consoling reflection? but here the philosopher begins to be recalcitrant. you are not lowering my pretensions, he says, but attacking the power of man to attain truth upon any terms. all that is given to us in experience is the effect of underlying causes; if the causes vary the effects would vary; and, unless, therefore, you can get back to the cause, your knowledge must remain empirical and radically uncertain. destroy all transcendental truths, and the phenomenal world itself becomes a mere shifting phantasmagoria, on which we can trace only coincidences and sequences, but are entirely unable to say that they will ever recur again. the argument, of course, raises the recollection of library upon library of controversy. i can only touch one point. practically, we do not trouble ourselves about this difficulty. we are quite convinced that we know a great many things: we are sure that the sun will rise and set to-morrow; we have no doubt as to the properties of the ordinary objects, of trees and stones and steam-engines; every action of our lives implies a certain confidence in what is called the uniformity of nature; and it is plain enough that even if our knowledge be, in some sense, only a knowledge of probabilities, yet, from its effect upon conduct, it may be exactly the same as a knowledge of certainties. there may be an indefinite distance between the "necessary truth" that two and two make four and the empirical truth that a stone will fall; but if all the evidence attainable goes to prove that the stone will fall, i should be as foolish not to act upon that hypothesis as not to assume the truth of the arithmetical formula. now, it is, of course, the growth within recent generations of vast systems of such truths which has alarmed the philosopher. he contrasts his own fluctuating and conflicting dogmas with the steady growth and assured results and mutual confirmation of the established physical sciences. he fears that they will obtain a prestige which will enable them to crush him and sweep his pretended knowledge into the limbo of alchemy and astrology and scholastic logomachy. here comes in the argument which is really the keystone of mr. balfour's whole theory; and, as i cannot accept it, i must dwell upon its true nature. it looks, at first sight, like a retort upon the men of science. your knowledge, he seems to say, is as vain as your antagonist's. your physics, and astronomy, and chemistry, and physiology are mere empty shows, like the metaphysical theories that have gone to their long home in histories of philosophy. but to say this would be to accept complete scepticism, and a kind of scepticism which mr. balfour would, i am sure, disavow. he believes, of course, just as strongly as any one of us believes, in the astronomical theories of newton and laplace; or in the mathematical theories of the great physical sciences. that in which he disbelieves is a kind of bastard science called "naturalism," which, as he tells us, leads to contradictory or incoherent results. the naturalist, it appears, proposes to confine himself to the evidence of the senses, and ends by accepting a view of the world entirely inconsistent with the sensible perceptions. i see a green field: an object which has visual and other properties recognised by my organs of sense. no, says this misguided naturalist, you do not see what you suppose; what really happens is, that there is a vast whirlpool of atoms impinging upon each other and setting up vibrations, the last set of which is communicated to another set of atoms, called my optic nerve. these atoms, by their very nature imperceptible to the senses, are the only realities. we thus start from the senses and we get a world beyond the senses, a world which is a mere dance of infinite multitudes of bits of matter performing all manner of extraordinary gyrations and evolutions. the sensible impressions of colour, sound, and so forth, are mere illusions, somehow arising in a figment called the mind. this mind is a mere phantom--an unreal spectator of things and events, among which it has no place, and upon which it exercises no influence. now, let me say first that i agree with mr. balfour that the doctrine thus imputed to the "naturalist" is absurd. i do not believe, for i cannot believe, that i am only a dance of atoms. i "cannot" believe, i say, for the words are to me meaningless. my sensations and emotions are to me the typical realities. i cannot doubt the real existence of pain and pleasure, grief and joy, whatever else i may doubt. i believe, for example, that my toothache is a reality; and nobody will ever persuade me that it is merely a set of molecular changes in my tooth. that it, in some way, is dependent upon such changes i fully believe; but that is quite a different statement. and, secondly, i agree with mr. balfour (or with what i take to be mr. balfour's belief) that the scientific doctrines which are reached by help of these atoms are established truths. i believe those doctrines, not because i am convinced by the arguments, which i may not have examined or be capable of examining; nor simply because i trust, though i do trust, in the ability and the candour of the scientific reasoners; but because the doctrines can be and have been independently verified. i believe, that is, in modern astronomy because it has enabled modern astronomers to predict eclipses, and enabled adams and leverrier to discover neptune. that is the conclusive proof; for it is impossible to suppose that the power of prediction should be a result of erroneous belief, and such proofs are verifiable by anybody who can observe the phenomena. here, then, we have the difficulty, the difficulty upon which the whole of mr. balfour's argument depends. solve it, and the whole sceptical argument crumbles. the naturalistic theory, we both say, is incredible. the scientific doctrines based upon it are, as we both admit, unassailable. how is this? i reply, first, because the atoms represent nothing more than a logical scaffolding which enables us to infer one set of sensible phenomena from another. we start from phenomena and we end with phenomena. when we have discovered the so-called "law"--the connecting formula--we can remove the hypothesis as the engineer can remove the provisional supports when he has once got the keystone into his arch. that this is so appears, i think, from the whole scientific procedure. how is the atomic theory obtained? not by any direct observation of atoms themselves. they are, as mr. balfour says, not only not objects of observation, but incapable by their nature of ever being directly observed. the man of science begins by saying, _if_ the phenomena of light correspond in some way to a vibration of atoms, the atoms must vibrate in such and such ways. he finds, again, that the laws so discovered will give the law of other phenomena of light; and he argues quite correctly that his hypothesis is for his purpose verified. that is, it has enabled him to discover a verifiable and verified formula. in order to do this he has assumed from the very first the theory which of course appears in his conclusions. all physical science consists ultimately in giving definite formulæ in terms of space and time. it is therefore assumed that the atoms are to have no qualities except those which are definable in terms of space. we exclude any other quality because our whole purpose is to obtain purely geometrical measurements. we have asked how those atoms, infinitesimal bits, so to speak, of solid space, arranged in certain positions, must move in order to correspond to the law given by observation, and we have therefore, of course, predetermined that our answer must come out in terms of atoms. but, now, what is the error of the "naturalist"? simply that he has converted the scientific doctrine into an ontological doctrine. he really knows nothing, and cannot possibly know anything, about his atoms, except just this, that they give the law of the phenomena. he has nothing whatever to say to them in any other relation. if he proceeds, as mr. balfour says that he proceeds, to declare that nothing exists except atoms, that they are the ultimate realities, that they are "things in themselves," or objects independent of any subject, he is going beyond his tether, passing from science to transcendental metaphysics, and getting into hopeless confusion. in fact, after he has done his worst we may still follow berkeley and deny the existence of matter, or declare with clifford that atoms are only bits of mindstuff, or adopt any other metaphysical theory we please. the atoms at most are things which we judge from the analogy of the senses; and it is a pure illusion to suppose that they can ever take us into an extra-sensible world. they represent not only a convenient but an indispensable contrivance for enabling us to formulate scientific laws, such as those of light and heat; but they take us no further. in a remarkable passage, mr. balfour sketches an analogy, which gives the application of this to philosophical or theological questions; and i will venture to give my own interpretation of the argument because it seems to lead to the real point. we believe, he says, in a scientific theory of heat, although our view of the "realities" has changed. people once thought that heat was a substance. they now hold it to be a mode of motion. yet our "scientific faith" (our faith, i suppose, that things are hot, and that their heat varies according to certain assigned laws) remains unaffected. on the other hand, he says, if we cease to believe in the christian doctrine of the atonement, we cease also to have that "sense of reconciliation" between god and man which the doctrine was intended to explain. this he seems to regard as a kind of melancholy paradox. why is the scepticism harmless in science and fatal in theology? first, what are the admitted facts? a man of science propounds a theory of heat. if his theory does not give us the observed laws, we reject it and adopt a more successful theory. in any case, we, of course, continue to believe in heat. we may know facts without knowing their causes; as, for example, the fact of gravitation, which is not the less certain because it is at present an ultimate fact. otherwise our knowledge would be limited indeed; for even if the cause (in the scientific sense) were given, we should still have to ask, what is the cause of that cause? if heat is due to certain systems of atoms, we might still inquire how the atoms came to occupy their places, and possess the properties which they actually have. an effect "depends upon" a cause, as we naturally say; but it does not follow that the knowledge of the effect depends upon the knowledge of the cause. now, what are the facts which correspond to the facts of heat in the theory of the atonement? if we believe in a certain being, an anthropomorphic deity, who will punish us or reward us, it is, of course, obvious that if we cease to believe in him we shall cease to desire to be reconciled to him. so if i believed that the warmth of my house depended upon a fire next door, and then discovered that no such fire existed, i should of course cease to care about lighting it. in this there is nothing which wants explanation. i suppose, therefore, that what mr. balfour means is, that if men have certain emotions,--remorse, for example, or what is called a conviction of sin,--and then learn to reject the theory by which these emotions were explained, they cease also to feel the emotions. in fact, he emphatically accepts the view that, if we cease to accept theology, we shall cease to be moral. the perversity of a few wretched "naturalists" in continuing to be moral is explained as a case of survival; the moral naturalist is the parasite who draws his sustenance from the organism which he infests. let us consider the scientific analogy. i believe in heat, and i accept a scientific theory just as far as it gives me verified laws of heat. i believe, too, in the existence of conscience; that is, i believe that people have real emotions, such as remorse and shame, which correspond to the name. i hold that to be a fact of experience. it would have to be explained, again, so far as explanation is possible, by psychology in the first instance, as heat must be explained by scientific theories. remorse is a fact, as heat is a fact; and an explanation would consist in giving accurately its place in the moral organism and the laws of its operation. the explanation furnished by any given psychology, by "association," for example, must be accepted or rejected in so far as it explains or fails to explain the facts. if some theory about spiritual "monads" enabled us to show what the conscience is, and how it is, in fact, stimulated or suppressed, we should accept it in the same way as we accept the physical theory of heat. as yet, i need hardly say, no such result has been achieved; and psychology is still far too vague to offer any definite laws of the emotional nature. but in any case, how can a theory about facts make the facts themselves vanish? would not grief be real just as pain would be real if we could clearly explain how and why it occurred? why should the "sense of reconciliation" vanish because we show the conditions of its existence? the reason of mr. balfour's difficulty, i think, appears from what i have said. in the physical theory we can draw the line clearly between the scientific and the philosophical spheres. mr. balfour can accept the scientific truth, though he does not accept the doctrine which results from translating it into ontology. but the boundary between psychology and philosophy is far less distinct. we constantly confound questions about the constitution of man, as known to us by experience, with questions about supposed intuitions of ultimate truth. the fact that sin causes remorse is interpreted as meaning that remorse actually is a knowledge of an avenging deity; and when the emotion is thus identified with the belief, it becomes easy to suppose that to destroy the belief is also to destroy the emotion. i think, indeed, that fallacies of that kind are among the commonest in philosophical writings. now, of course, psychology has something to say in this matter. it may help, and i think that it has helped us to explain how men come to believe in anthropomorphic deities, and to invest them with the attributes of human rulers. but in that way it tends to show not that the conscience is caused by the belief, but to show how, under certain conditions, it has given rise to a belief by other than logical grounds. it suggests no probability that the conscience will disappear with the fallacy, but only that it will act differently when enlightened by a different logic. conscience disappears no more than heat disappears, when both are explained; though the conduct which the emotions or the sensations determine will, of course, be affected. and now, i can say what i take to be the difficulty, and the escape. mr. balfour draws a kind of parallel between the scientific creed, which is, as he would put it, "based upon" a metaphysical doctrine, and the theological creed, which has a similar foundation. if the metaphysical foundation is so uncertain in both cases, must not the scientific be as uncertain as the theological? if we know nothing about atoms, or, on the other hand, about souls, we must be either sceptical in both cases, or credulous in both. there are the same underlying difficulties, and if we manage to overlook them in the case of science, why not overlook them in the case of theology? conversely, if we elect to be sceptics in theology, how can we escape from scepticism in science? and, as a thorough-going scepticism is, doubtless, an impossible state of mind in practice, the conclusion of many people will be to accept belief in spite of certain gaps in our logical foundations. this, no doubt, is eminently convenient for the "constructive" process adumbrated by mr. balfour, which i certainly regard as extra-logical. but is any such dilemma really offered to us? the obvious answer is, that scientific truth, as mr. balfour admits, is not "based upon" metaphysical theory. the astronomical doctrine of a newton remains equally valid, whatever is the ultimate nature of space or laws or atoms; whether we are materialists or empiricists or idealists. the philosophical "basis" is not really a set of truths which we must know before we can know the astronomical theory; but simply a set of hypotheses which have to conform to the truths given by experience. the unassailable truths are just the facts which we observe, and which science enables us to describe accurately and state systematically. if a metaphysical doctrine has any bearing upon these facts, which seems to be doubtful, it must conform to the facts, and not the facts to it. so long as no such theory is proved, we can afford to remain metaphysically sceptical without losing our hold upon the scientific truth. now, i should say, what is true of the physical sciences is true of all our knowledge. we may study the moral sciences as we can study the physical sciences. we can observe and colligate the facts of emotion and volition, as we can observe the position of the stars and the laws of heat. therefore, in so far as theology is an attempt to give a theory of the universe in general, we must accept or deny the doctrines just in so far as they serve to explain or fail to explain the facts. but, in any case, the facts will remain unaltered, and will not vanish because we may be unable to understand them. but theology corresponds, also, not to the scientific method, but to the ontological inquiries which are represented by mr. balfour's "naturalism". both doctrines, as i should say, lead to incoherence, to contradictions covered by ambiguous language, and to hopeless difficulties, which, in theology, are described as inscrutable mysteries. i am, therefore, quite ready, with mr. balfour, to reject naturalism, but, on the same grounds, i also reject the transcendental theology. attainable truth is equally independent of all such theories; and were it otherwise, we should be doomed to hopeless scepticism. mr. balfour's analogy, therefore, apparently upsets his conclusion. i believe in heat, and i believe in the conscience. i reject the atoms, and i reject the doctrine of atonement. i reject it, if it be meant for science, because, so far from explaining the facts, the facts explain how the false doctrine was generated. i reject it, if it is meant for philosophy, because, like other transcendental theories, it leads to hopeless controversies, and appears to me to be incredible as soon as any such theology as is tenable by a philosopher is substituted for the crude theology of a savage. we are driven to scepticism, then, if we first declare that scientific knowledge depends upon metaphysical theory; and then that all metaphysical theory is moonshine. i do not accept the first principle; and i hold that the danger to morals from metaphysical difficulties is pretty much the same as the danger that the stars will leave their courses if we adopt a wrong theory of an astronomy. we fancy that when we are explaining facts, we are, somehow, creating them; as the meteorologist in _rasselas_ observed the clouds till he came to think that he caused the rain. the facts upon which morality depends are the facts that men have certain emotions; that mothers love their children; that there are such things as pity, and sympathy, and public spirit; and that there are social instincts upon the growth of which depends the vitality of the race. we may, of course, ask how more precisely these emotions act, and what functions they discharge. we may make historical and psychological and metaphysical inquiries; and we may end, if ever we reach such a consummation, by establishing what we may call a science of ethics. but the facts do not depend upon the explanation. the illusion of their dependence is easily produced. you make your theory of morality, and then you define morality as a belief in the object required by your theory. it follows, of course, that morality will disappear with the belief--or else that your theory is wrong. morality, said some people, is a belief in future rewards and punishments. if that belief disappears, morality--that is, their morality--must disappear too. but that morality--taken as the actual sentiment which they have erroneously defined--should disappear also, no more follows than it follows that heat will disappear when we discover that there is no such thing as the old imaginary substance of heat. the doctrine is now more generally urged in a different form. theology, it is said, is essential to morality. such bold assertions may be best met by a dogmatic assertion of the inverse case. theology, as i hold, is not the source of the moral instincts, but, under certain conditions, derives its real power from them. theology, in the first place, is a word including not only heterogeneous but contradictory meanings,--baal and jehovah, the mumbo-jumbo of the negro and spinoza's "ens absolute infinitum". to the enormous majority of the human race, the more metaphysical conception is hopelessly unintelligible. when a savage expresses his crude sense of duties to the tribe under the form of belief in an ancestral ghost, is the morality made by the belief, or the belief generated by the incipient moral emotion? does he believe in god or really in a man like himself, and respected precisely because he is like himself? is not the truth tacitly acknowledged by the more philosophical religions? their adherents admit that the god of philosophy is too abstract a being to excite any emotion; he fades into nature or the unknowable, and it is impossible to love one whom, by his very definition, you can neither benefit nor injure and whose omnipotence makes even justice a mockery. therefore, they make a god out of a man, and by boldly combining in words two contradictory sets of attributes, make what in theology is called a mystery, and in common sense called by a different name. does not that amount to confessing that the true source of morality is in the human affections of like for like, and not in that sentiment towards a transcendental object of which you have chosen to make your definition? and, finally, if we ask what is the relation of theology to morality, from a historical point of view, we see the same result. undoubtedly, theology has been a bulwark of morality in one way. it has expressed the veneration of mankind for the most deeply-seated customs of the race. it has been the form through which, though not the cause owing to which, men have expressed the importance of adhering to certain established institutions of the highest importance to mankind. briefly, therefore, it represents the conservative instincts. but, for that reason, it has naturally lagged behind an advancing morality. the newer religions have been precisely protests against the objectionable conduct of the old-fashioned deities who retained the manners and customs of a more barbarous period; and have, therefore, been regarded by the older faith, sometimes with justice, as atheistic. without referring to the familiar cases, i am content to appeal to the present day. what are the relative positions of the theologian and his opponent during the modern phase of evolution? the theologian has, in the main, maintained the sanctity of old institutions and customs; and i do not doubt that he has rendered a useful service. but the demand for justice, for the abolition of slavery, of the hardships of the poor and oppressed, the desire to construct society upon a wholesomer ideal, has been generated, not by theological speculation, but by the new relations into which men have been brought and the new sentiments developed. it has been accepted most fully by men hostile to all theology, by the free-thinker, the atheist, and the materialist, whom the orthodox denounces as criminal. doubtless the denouncer has excuses: the reformer may err in the direction of excessive demolition; but the very survival of the older creeds depends, as we all see, upon their capacity for assimilating and finding utterance for the moral convictions which have arisen outside of their limits, and, generally, in defiance of their authority. to say, therefore, that the morality depends upon the survival of the metaphysical theory, seems to me to be inverting the true relation. i end by suggesting what is to my mind the true moral of these speculations. the vanity of philosophising means the vanity of certain philosophical pretensions; of the chimerical belief that the philosopher lays down the first principles of belief in ethics or in other departments of life, in such a sense that the destinies of the race or of knowledge depend upon accepting and applying his principles. his function is a humbler one, though one of vast importance. the great philosophical systems have vanished, though they have cleared the air. they were primitive attempts at construction; results of the fact that we have to act before we can think; and to assume postulates which can only be verified or falsified by the slow experience of ages. but the process by which truth is advanced is not confined to the philosopher; or perhaps we should rather say that some sort of crude philosophy is embedded even in the feeblest and earliest speculations of mankind. our thoughts are guided by an implicit logic long before we have even a conception of logic in the abstract, or have the least thought of codifying and tabulating its formulæ. so every savage who begins to make a tool is exemplifying some mechanical principle which will not be put into accurate and abstract language till countless generations have passed. every one at the present day who is using his wits is philosophising after a fashion, and is contributing towards the advancement of philosophy. he is increasing the mass of still more or less chaotic knowledge, the whole of which is to that philosopher what the particular set of facts is to the student of physical science. the philosopher has not to evolve first principles out of himself, so much as to discover what are the principles which have been unconsciously applied; to eliminate the obsolete elements; to bring the new into harmony; to verify them, or describe how they may be verified; and so to work towards the unification and systematisation of knowledge in general. probably he will make a great many blunders in his task; but it may be some comfort to reflect that even blunders are often useful, and that he is not in the terribly responsible position of really framing laws for the universe or for man, but only of clearing up or codifying the laws which are already in operation. forgotten benefactors. i was reading not long ago some remarks[a] which impressed me at the time, and upon which, as it came to pass, i have had reason to reflect more seriously. the writer dwelt upon the vast services which have been rendered to the race by men of whom all memory has long since faded away. compare, he said, the england of alfred with the england of victoria; think of the enormous differences which have been brought about in thirty generations; and then try to estimate how large a share of all that has been done in the interval should be put to the credit of thousands who have long sunk into oblivion, and whose achievements, by the very necessity of the case, can never be properly estimated. a few great names mark every period; the great statesmen, the great churchmen and warriors, are commemorated in our official histories; they are placed upon exalted pedestals; and to them is attributed everything that was done in their time, though, but for the co-operation of innumerable nameless fellow-labourers, they would not have been provided even with the foundations upon which their work was necessarily based. this remark recalls the familiar discussion about the importance of the individual. is the hero whom we are invited to worship everything, or is he next to nothing? is it true, as some writers put it, that had cleopatra broken her nose, or had a cannon ball gone a hair's breadth further to the right or left when napoleon was directing the siege of toulon, "the whole course of history would have been changed"? or is it rather true that, as some philosophers would say, no man is indispensable, nor even any man very important: that, if any even of the greatest of men had died of the measles in his infancy, we should have carved a different set of letters upon the pedestals of our statues, but the course of affairs would have run in much the same channel? i will not seek to discuss that old theme, to which it is evident that no very precise answer can be given. it is clearly a question of degree. nobody can deny that a great man has an influence in the spheres of action and of thought; but to attempt to say how great an influence he has, how far he depends upon others or could be replaced by others, involves considerations lying in the unprofitable region of vague conjecture. this only i wish to note. it seems often to be suggested that there is something degrading or ungenerous in taking a side against the importance of the hero. it raises a suspicion that you are a valet, capable of supposing that men are distinguished by the quantity of lace on their coats, and not by the intensity of the fire in their souls. and, moreover, the view is fatalistic: it supposes that the destinies of the race are determined by what are denounced as blind "laws," and not by the passions and aspirations which guide their energies. to me it seems that it would be easy enough to retort these imputations. i cannot feel that a man of generous sympathies should be therefore inclined to a doctrine which would tend to make the future of the race a matter of chance. the more you believe in the importance of the great men, the more you have to admit that our progress depends upon the innumerable accidents which may stifle the greatest as easily as the smallest career. if some great social change was so absolutely dependent upon the leader who first put into words the demand upon which it is based, or who led the first forlorn hope which made victory possible, that his loss would have been the loss of his cause, it follows that the cause might have been lost if a crust of bread had gone the wrong way. it ought surely to be pleasanter if we are entitled to hold that we have a stronger ground of confidence; that the great victories of thought and action prove the diffusion of enthusiasm and courage through a wide circle; and that the fall of the chief is sure to make room for a worthy successor. the wider and deeper the causes of progress, the more confidently we can derive hope from the past, and accept with comparative equanimity even the most painful catastrophes. nor can i agree that such a view implies any want of susceptibility to the claims of the hero. i do not think that we can pay homage too cheerfully to the great men who form landmarks in history. i admit, most gladly, that the admiration which we feel for such men; the thrill which stirs us in reading of the great patriots and martyrs of the past; the reverence which we are now and then able to pay to a contemporary--to a lincoln, proving that political action may represent real faiths, not party formulæ; to a gordon, impersonating the sense of duty; or a father damien, sacrificing his life for the lepers--is one of the invaluable elements of moral cultivation. but i do not see the connection between this and the desire to exalt the glory of the great man by ignoring the unknown who followed in his steps, and often made them possible. i have not so far attained to the cosmopolitan point of view that my blood is not stirred by the very name of nelson. nay, however cosmopolitan i might become, i hope that my sympathies would never blind me to the greatness of the qualities implied in his patriotic devotion. my cosmopolitanism would rather, i hope, lead me to appreciate more generously the similar qualities in his antagonists, and, also, the similar qualities in the "band of brothers" whom he was proud to lead. i should be sorry so to admire nelson as to forget the sturdy old race of sea dogs who did their duty, and helped him to do his in a memorable way, some ninety years ago. i would rather believe than not that, had nelson been killed at the nile, there were many among his followers who, had the chance come to them, would have led the _victory_ at trafalgar, and have made england impregnable. "i trust we have within this realm five hundred good as he" is surely the more heroic tone. but, to drop the old-fashioned appeal to patriotic spirit, is it not true that, in every department of life, it is more congenial to our generous feelings to remember the existence and the importance of those who have never won a general reputation? this has come to be a commonplace in the sphere of scientific discovery. we find, over and over again, that the great discoverer has been all but anticipated by his rivals; that his fame, if not his real greatness, depends upon the circumstance that he has just anticipated by a year, or, perhaps, in extreme cases, by a generation, results to which a comparatively second-rate thinker would have been competent a few years later. the winner of the race is apt to monopolise the glory, though he wins only by a hair's breadth. the familiar instance of darwin and mr. wallace is remarkable, not because the relation of the two thinkers was unique, but because, unfortunately, the generosity with which each acknowledged the merit of the other was exceptional. a great discovery is made when the fertile thought is already going through the process of incubation in a whole circle of intelligent minds; and that in which it first comes to the birth, claims, or, at least, receives, the whole merit, by a right of intellectual primogeniture not much more justifiable than the legal right. admitting, again, in the fullest sense, the value and the difficulty of that last step which has to be made in order to reach the crowning triumph, it would surely be ungenerous to forget the long series of previous explorations by which alone it was made possible. there must have been countless forgotten newtons and descartes', who, in their day, had to exert equal powers in order to discover what are now the most familiar truths; to invent the simplest systems of arithmetical notation, or solve the earliest geometrical problems, without which neither a newton nor a descartes would have been possible. and what is true in science is, surely, equally true of activities which touch most of us more nearly. of all undeniable claims to greatness i suppose the most undeniable to be the claim of the founders of religions. their disciples are so much impressed by their greatness that they regard them as supernatural beings, or, in other words, as beings who are the sole and indispensable causes of all the consequences attributed to the prevalence of their doctrines. we are told, constantly, and often as though it were too obvious to need proof, that every moral improvement which has taken place in the world since the origin of christianity, is due to christianity, and that christianity itself is entirely due to its founder. human nature was utterly corrupt until the deity became incarnate in the form of a jewish peasant; and every social or moral step which has since been made in advance--and not one of the unfortunate backslidings by which the advance has since been trammelled--is a direct consequence of that stupendous event. this is the theory of the importance of the individual, raised, so to speak, to its very highest potence. we not only attribute the most important and far-reaching of all changes to a single agent, but declare that that agent cannot have been human, and indeed cannot have been less than the first cause of all changes. i shall not, of course, discuss the plausibility of a doctrine which, if accepted, breaks the whole chain of cause and effect, and makes the later history of the world not an evolution of previously operative process, but the result of an abrupt, mysterious interference from without, incommensurable with any other set of spiritual forces. i am content to say that to my mind the doctrine becomes daily more impossible to any one who thinks seriously and tries to picture to himself distinctly the true nature of the great world processes. what is to my purpose is, that it seems to me to be not only infinitely more credible, but also more satisfactory and more generous--if there be properly a question of generosity--to do justice to the disciples as well as to the master--to believe that the creed was fermenting in the hearts and minds of millions of human beings; and that, although the imperfect and superstitious elements by which it was alloyed were due to the medium in which it was propagated, yet, on the other hand, it succeeded so far as it corresponded to the better instincts of great masses of men, struggling blindly and through many errors to discover rules of conduct and modes of conceiving the universe more congenial than the old to their better nature, and prepared to form a society by crystallising round the nucleus which best corresponded to their aspirations. when so regarded, it seems to me, and only when so regarded, we can see in the phenomenon something which may give us solid ground for hopes of humanity, and enable us to do justice to countless obscure benefactors. the corruption of human nature, as theologians sometimes tell us, expresses a simple fact. undoubtedly, it expresses a fact which nobody, so far as i know, ever thought of denying--the fact that there are bad instincts in human nature; that many men are cruel, sensual, and false; and that every man is more or less liable to succumb to temptation. but the essential meaning of the old theological dogma was, i take it, something different. it meant that man was so corrupt that he could only be made good by a miracle; that even his apparent virtues are splendid sins unless they come from divine grace; and, in short, that men cannot be really elevated without supernatural interference. if all that is good in men comes from their religions, and if religions are only explicable as inspirations from without, that, no doubt, logically follows. i prefer, myself, to believe that, though all men are weak, and a good many utter scoundrels; yet human nature does contain good principles; that those principles tend, however slow and imperfect may be the process, gradually to obtain the mastery; and that the great religions of the races, while indicating the intellectual and moral shortcomings of mankind, indicate also the gradual advance of ethical ideals, worked out by the natural and essential tendencies of the race. and thus, as it seems to me, this conception of the mode of growth of religions and of morality, which gathers strength as we come to take a more reasonable view of the world's history, is closely connected with the doctrine that, instead of ascribing all good achievement to the hero who drops from heaven, or springs spontaneously from the earth, we should steadily remember that he is only possible, and his work can only be successfully secured, by the tacit co-operation of the innumerable unknown persons in whose hearts his words find an echo because they are already feeling after the same ideal which is in him more completely embodied. in our judgment of such cases there is, then, an injustice so far as we make a false estimate of the right distribution of praise and gratitude. it would be an injustice, in a stricter sense, to the persons ignored, if we regarded such gratitude as the appropriate and main reward of a noble life. i need not repeat the commonplaces of moralists as to the real value of posthumous fame, nor inquire whether it implies an illusion, nor how far the desire for such fame is, in point of fact, a strong motive with many people. this only i will note--that obscurity is a condition, and by no means an altogether unpleasant condition, of much of the very best work that is done. the general or the statesman is conspicuous in connection with successful enterprise in which his subordinates necessarily do a great part of the labour. it is impossible for the outside world to form a correct judgment in such cases; and, therefore, there is no hardship to the particular persons concerned, if they are simply ignored where they would, certainly, be misjudged; and if they, therefore, work in obscurity, content with the approval of the very few who can estimate their merits. there is a compensation, as we see, when we reflect upon the moral disadvantages of conspicuous station. literary people, for example, must be very unobservant if they do not notice how demoralising is the influence of public applause, and the constant inducement to court notoriety. it is unwholesome to live in an atmosphere which constantly stimulates and incites the weaknesses to which we are most liable. and many of our first writers must, i should fancy, feel pangs of self-humiliation when they contrast the credit which they have got for popular work with the very scanty recognition which comes to many who have applied equal talents to the discharge of duties often far more beneficial to mankind, but, from their nature, performed in the shade. "i," such a man, i fancy, must sometimes say to himself, "am quoted in every newspaper; i am puffed, and praised, and denounced; not to know me is to write yourself down a dunce; and, yet, have i done as much for the good of my kind as this or that humble friend, who would be astonished were his name ever to be uttered in public?" some such thought, for example, is inspired by johnson's most pathetic verses, when the great lexicographer, the acknowledged dictator of english literature, thought of the poor dependant, the little humble quack doctor, levett, who was content, literally, to be fed with the crumbs from his tables. but the obscure dependant, as the patron felt, had done all that he could to alleviate the sum of human misery. his virtues walked their narrow round, nor made a pause, nor left a void; and, sure, the eternal master found the single talent well employed. have i not, johnson seems to have felt, really done less to soothe misery by my _dictionary_ and my _ramblers_ than this obscure labourer in the back lanes of london, of whom, but for my verses, no one would have heard even the name? a full answer to questions suggested by these thoughts would, perhaps, require an estimate of the relative value of different aims and different functions in life; and, for such an estimate, there are no adequate grounds. in one of browning's noblest poems, rabbi ben ezra--of whom i must say that he strikes me as being a little too self-complacent--puts a relevant question. "who," he asks, "shall arbitrate?" ten men love what i hate; shun what i follow, slight what i receive; ten who, in ears and eyes, match me; we all surmise, they this thing and i that: whom shall my soul believe? and he answers or suggests one condition of a satisfactory answer, by saying that we are not to take the coarse judgment of the world, which goes by the work achieved. we must remember- all instincts immature, all purposes unsure, that, weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's account; thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act; fancies that broke through language and escaped; all i would never be, all men ignored in me, that i was worth to god, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. if it were proper to treat a poetical utterance of this kind like a deliberate philosophical theory, i might wish to argue the point a little with the rabbi. but, at any rate, he points to considerations which show how little any one can judge of merit by any tangible and generally accessible test. i am content to say that this sentiment gives one--and a very impressive--answer to a problem which presses upon us the more as we grow older. it is natural for a man who feels that he has done most of his work, that the night is coming, and, as it seems, coming with accelerated speed; who feels, too, that whatever he has done or may do, he can no longer have the approval of those whose approval was dear to him as his breath;--it is natural for such a man to look back, to take stock more or less of his own performances perhaps, and at any rate to endeavour to estimate at their true worth the services which he has received from others. what, he may ask, has he done with his talents? what little fragment has he achieved of what might once have been in his power? the answer is pretty sure to have a very melancholy side to it; and it will lead to the question, what part of that fragment was really worth doing? what were the few really solid services which he may set off as some satisfaction to his self-esteem, against his countless errors and his wanderings in wrong directions, and his attempts to achieve the impossible, and the waste of energy upon the trifling and the worthless in which he is pretty sure to have spent a very large proportion of his time? when we try to return a verdict upon such issues, we feel painfully to how many illusions we are subject. when we are young we naturally accept the commonplaces, and do not question the ideals amid which we happen to have grown up; we are not conscious of the movement which we share. as long as we are floating with the current, we are not even aware that any current exists. we take our own little world to be the fixed base, quite unconscious that it is all the time whirling and spinning along a most complex course. and so it is difficult, even if the thought of making the attempt ever occurs to us, to try to occupy the position of a bystander looking on at life from outside, and endeavouring to pronounce some general opinion as to its merits or defects--its happiness or misery as a whole. "what a queer place this is!" i remember a man once saying to me abruptly; and i thought that he was referring to the steamboat on which we were fellow-passengers. i found that he had been suddenly struck by the oddity of the universe in general; and it seemed to me that there was a great deal to be said for a remark which seldom occurs to those people who take things for granted. we are roused sometimes by a philosopher who professes pessimism or optimism, to ask and to try to answer such questions. the answers, we know, are apt to be painfully discordant. is the world on the whole a scene of misery, of restless desires, proving that we are miserable now, and doomed never to obtain satisfaction? is it our only wisdom to give up the will to live; to hope that all this visible and tangible scenery is so much illusion, and to aspire to sink into nirvana? shall we try to conquer all earthly appetites by a thorough-going asceticism, and cultivate those spiritual emotions which can only find full satisfaction in another and a better world? or shall we agree that, after all, the love of the true and the beautiful, or, it may be, the physically pleasurable, gives a real solid comfort for the time, which it would be idle to drop for a shadow? is the world a scene of probation, in which we are to be fitted for higher spheres beyond human ken by the hearty and strenuous exertion of every faculty that we possess? or shall we say that such action is a good in itself, which requires to be supplemented by no vision of any ulterior end? shall we say that this is the best of all possible worlds because the fittest always tends to prevail, or that it is the worst because even the greatest wretchedness which is compatible with bare existence can still survive? philosophers, no doubt, contradict each other, because even philosophers are not exempt from the universal weakness. the explanation that pessimism means a disordered liver, and the counter remark that optimism means a cold heart and a good digestion, are too familiar to need exposition. each man's macrocosm is apt to be related to his microcosm, as the convex to the concave of a curve. to say the world is disagreeable, means that i find it disagreeable; and that may be either my own fault or the world's. nor is it easy to correct the personal error by observation, for the observer carries himself and his illusions with him. has such-and-such a life been a happy one? how are we to decide? we are often subject to what may be called the dramatic illusion. we judge by the catastrophe, by the success or failure of the assumed end. we see a noble young man struck down by some accident, and we think of his career sadly, because the promise has not been fulfilled. is it not equally reasonable to say that the promise was itself a blessing? that the man we regret had his twenty or thirty years of hopefulness, confidence, and happiness, and that that was a clear gain even if we lose the result which we might have anticipated? or we are impressed by the more exciting incidents of a life, the blows which crushed a man at intervals; and we forget all the monotonous years of tranquil happiness which, if we apply an arithmetical test, may have occupied by far the greater part of his existence. southey, for example, argues that although we remember cowper chiefly for his terrible mental suffering, we shall find, if we add up the moments of happiness and misery, that he probably had, on the balance, a life of much more enjoyment than torture. so, when we speak of the misery of a nation at the time of some great trouble--the french revolution, for example--it is difficult to remember how small was the proportion of actual sufferers; how many thousands or millions of children were enjoying their little sports, utterly ignorant of the distant storm; how many mothers were absorbed in watching their children; and how many quiet commonplace people were going about their daily peaceful labour, pretty much as usual, and with only a vague--and possibly pleasurable--excitement at the news, which occasionally drifted to them, of the catastrophes in a different sphere. carlyle, in one of his most vivid and famous passages, has incidentally drawn the contrast. or, if we try to form an estimate of the balance of happiness and misery through any portion of the race, and appeal to experience for an answer, we must certainly remember how limited is the field of observation, even of the best informed, and the most impartial; how rigidly they are confined for their direct knowledge to one little section of one part of the race; and how the vast majority--the thousand millions or so who are altogether beyond their ken--are known to them only by statistical tables or the casual reports of superficial observers. as there are so many difficulties in forming an estimate, as we are not agreed as to the true ends of human life, nor as to the degrees in which those ends are actually attained, nor as to the efficacy of the various causes which determine the success or failure of the means employed, it becomes any one to put forward his own opinion upon the topics to which such considerations apply, with all modesty. and, yet, i think that i may dwell upon some truths which may be admitted by those who differ upon these difficult problems, and, as i fancy, deserve more weight than they generally receive, even though they have become commonplaces. the main condition of human happiness, say some people, is physical health. a man whose organs are all working satisfactorily cannot fail to be happy under any but very abnormal conditions; as, conversely, a grain of sand in the wrong place will make any life a burden. no one will dispute the truth contained in such _dicta_; and, perhaps, as we realise more distinctly the importance of sound health to our neighbours and to our descendants, as well as to ourselves, we shall lay greater stress upon the conduct which is conducive to its preservation. we shall see that what is, apparently, a mere dictate of personal prudence, has, also, its ethical aspect. but, without dwelling upon this view, we may apply the analogy to society. whatever morality precisely means, and whatever happiness means, it clearly indicates what we call--and i think that it is no mere metaphor--a healthy state of society. this, again, implies, first of all, the health of those domestic relations which are as the ultimate molecular forces which bind together the social tissue. the society, we may say without hesitation, in which the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, are instinctively recognised and habitually observed, has, so far, secured the most deeply-seated and essential condition of happiness and virtue; the society in which the union of married people normally produces harmony, and the absolute identity of interests and affections, in which children are brought up in a pure home atmosphere, with an embodiment of the beauty of domestic love always before their eyes, imbibing unconsciously the tradition of a high moral standard, and so prepared to repay, in due time, to others the services lavishly and ungrudgingly bestowed upon them by their elders,--so far represents perfectly sound health. the degree in which any ethical theory recognises and reveals the essential importance of the family relation is, i think, the best test of its approximation to the truth. an unworthy view of domestic happiness may lead to the ascetic view which sets up a sham and quixotic ideal; or to the cynical view which regards it as a mere case of selfish indulgence. i do not deny that the relation, like all other human relations, may require modification as circumstances change. difficulties arise, as when we notice the great social changes which have broken up ancient ties, and have tended to weaken the family bond by facilitating desertion, and increasing the floating population. and many socialist schemes appear at first sight to be, and sometimes are, consciously designed to weaken the sense of responsibility of parents. i, of course, cannot now discuss a point which is, undoubtedly, of the highest importance; but i am certainly convinced that the merits of any change must be tested by its tendency to preserve, and, if possible, intensify the strength of this underlying bond upon which the welfare of society depends far more intimately than upon any other human relation. if this be true, it follows also that to those activities which knit families together, which help to enlarge the highest ideal of domestic life, we owe a greater debt than to any other kind of conduct. and to this i add that, as i believe, the highest services of this kind are rendered by persons condemned, or perhaps i should say privileged, to live in obscurity; whose very names will soon be forgotten, and who are entirely eclipsed by people whose services, though not equally valuable, are by their nature more public. to prove such an assertion is, of course, impossible. i give it only as my personal impression--for what it is worth, after any deductions you may please to make upon the score of the great fallibility of such impressions; and only because, correct or otherwise, it may serve to bring out aspects of the truth which we are apt to neglect. i have lived long enough to have had opportunities of seeing many eminent men and women. i have insensibly formed some kind of estimate of the services which they have rendered to me and my like; and i record, as far as i can, the result upon my own convictions. i will put aside for the moment the half-dozen men of really first-rate eminence,--the men whose names are written upon all the great intellectual and social movements of the century. i will think for the present only of those who may be placed in the second rank; of those who do not profess to have originated, but only to have diffused, important thoughts; who have acted as lieutenants to the great leaders, and become known to their contemporaries, with little prospect of filling any important place in the memory of their successors. yet even such men bulk far more largely in our eyes than multitudes of men and women whose names will never be known outside their own little parish, or even their family circles. and then i ask myself, how far the estimate thus formed corresponds to the real value of the services performed. i think that i can speak most easily by deserting the line of abstract argument, and endeavouring to draw a portrait or two, which you need not assume to correspond too closely to particular facts. i mean to suggest reflections which will really apply in many representative cases, and to refer to typical instances of general truths. i will first mention one such case which happened to strike me forcibly at the time, and which no one here, i am quite certain, will be able to identify. long years ago i knew a young man at college; he was so far from being intellectually eminent that he had great difficulty in passing his examinations; he died from the effects of an accident within a very short time after leaving the university, and hardly any one would now remember his name. he had not the smallest impression that there was anything remarkable about himself, and looked up to his teachers and his more brilliant companions with a loyal admiration which would have made him wonder that they should ever take notice of him. and yet i often thought then, and i believe, in looking back, that i thought rightly, that he was of more real use to his contemporaries than any one of the persons to whose influence they would most naturally refer as having affected their development. the secret was a very simple one. without any special intellectual capacity, he somehow represented with singular completeness a beautiful moral type. he possessed the "simple faith miscalled simplicity," and was so absolutely unselfish, so conspicuously pure in his whole life and conduct, so unsuspicious of evil in others, so sweet and loyal in his nature, that to know him was to have before one's eyes an embodiment of some of the most lovable and really admirable qualities that a human being can possess. he was a living exemplification of the truth which some great humorists have embodied in their writings, the truth that simplicity at which fools laugh may be venerable to wise observers. young men were not always immaculate in those days: i don't know that they are now; some of them probably were vicious in conduct, and might be cynical in the views which they openly expressed. but whatever might be their failings, they were at the age when all but the depraved--that is, i hope and fully believe, all but a very small minority--were capable of being deeply impressed by this concrete example. they might affect to ridicule, but it was impossible that even the ridicule should not be of the kindly sort; blended and tempered with something that was more like awe--profound respect, at least, for the beauty of soul that underlay the humble exterior. the direct moral addresses which took the form of eloquent sermons or of good advice naturally gained an incomparably higher reputation for those who uttered them. but, considering the facility with which the impressions so made evaporate from the minds of the hearers, i often thought that this obscure influence, the more impressive when one felt it because of its entire unconsciousness, probably did far more to stimulate good feelings and higher aspirations among his companions than all the official exhortations to which they ever listened. he would have been unfeignedly surprised to hear, what i most sincerely believe to be the truth, that his tutor owed incomparably more to his living exemplification of what is meant by a character of unblemished purity and simplicity, than he owed to the tutor whose respectable platitudes he received with unaffected humility. the case--for various reasons--impressed me deeply; and i have often thought of it and of the principle which it illustrates in later years. i once knew, for example, a woman whose whole life was devoted to domestic duties, and who confessed to me that she had sometimes felt a touch of humiliation when she thought how narrow was her own sphere of action, while her husband was daily deciding upon great questions of high political importance. some women would have drawn the conclusion, that the exclusion of women from political activity was a grievance to be abated; and such people might receive with scorn the suggestion that the discharge of the domestic duty might possibly be as important as the discharge of the more conspicuous function. the argument about the proper sphere of women is now generally treated with contempt; and i am perfectly ready to admit that it begs the question, and is often a mere utterance of blind prejudice. no one, i hope, could assert more willingly than i, that the faculties of women should be cultivated as fully as possible, and that every sphere in which their faculties can be effectively applied should be thrown open to them. but the doctrine sometimes tacitly confounded with this, that the sphere generally assigned to women is necessarily lower or less important than others, is not to be admitted, because the contradictory may be misapplied. the domestic influence is, no doubt, confined within narrower limits; but then, within those limits it is incomparably stronger and more certain of effect. the man or woman can really mould the character of a little circle, and determine the whole life of one little section of the next generation; when it may be very difficult to say whether the influence which they can bring to bear upon a class or a nation is really perceptible at all, or does not even operate in the direction opposite to that intended. and i could not help thinking that a woman who was bringing up sons and daughters ready to quit themselves like brave men and women in the great struggle of life, might be doing something more really important than her conspicuous husband, who was, after all, only part of a vast and complicated machinery, nominally directed by him, but, in reality, controlling all his energy, and, not impossibly, working out the very results which he most disapproved. it is, therefore, with no reference to any of the political theories of women's rights, and so forth, that i venture to insist upon this topic. i think that we habitually under-estimate the enormous value of the services, whether of man or woman, done in the shade, and confined within a very limited area. let me attempt, again, to draw a portrait, not all imaginary, which may explain, at least, what i often feel--the contrast between the real worth of such lives and the recognition which they can ever receive. wordsworth, in one of those poems which show best how true and tender were his moral instincts, has described one who was- a perfect woman, nobly planned to warn, to comfort, and command; and yet a spirit too, and bright with something of an angel light. the words have often come to me of late, till i fancy that i could supply a commentary. the woman of whom wordsworth speaks was, when he first saw her, a "phantom of delight," an embodiment of feminine beauty, and, as such, possessing a characteristic perhaps superfluous from a moral point of view. i have known and know women, not exactly beautiful, before whom i would gladly bow as deeply as i would if they were beautiful as helen of troy. but a poet must be allowed to take pleasure in beauty, and we may grant to it a certain place that it deserves among higher qualities. for it does so when the possessor is absolutely--not unaware of the fact, for that is hardly possible, nor, perhaps, desirable--but absolutely untouched by any vanity or self-consciousness. the beauty, one may say, gives, at least, an opportunity for displaying a quality which otherwise would not have so good an occasion of manifestation. and, moreover, there is a beauty of the rarest and most exquisite, which, if not the product, is, or at least seems to be, the spontaneous accompaniment of nobility of mind and character. some persons, by a singular felicity, possess beauty as one of their essential attributes; it seems to be not an accident or an addition, but a part of their essence, which must mould every detail, which shines through body as well as soul, and is but the outward and visible sign of all that is sweet and elevated. wordsworth's ideal woman is- not too bright or good for human nature's daily food, for transient sorrows, simple wiles, praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles: and yet displays equally- the reason firm, the temperate will, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. we cannot, even in our thoughts, separate the artistic homage which we pay to the external appearance, and that which we pay to the inner qualities, of which they are apparently the inevitable and predestined symbol. we have before us the ideal--the type which reconciles all the conditions of human life, physical and moral--the "perfect woman," who is also the fitting vehicle of the angel light. but it is, of course, upon the qualities symbolised and not upon the outward symbols that we must insist. i will, therefore, say, that the inward beauty, whether fully represented or not by the outward form, implies, in the first place, the absence of all those qualities which tend to lower and vulgarise life. what we call the worldly view, for example, of love and marriage, is simply unintelligible to such a nature. love means, to it, an absolute self-surrender, and the complete fusion of its own life with the life of the beloved object. it can only be granted in return for a reciprocal surrender; and becomes the mutual passion by which fear and distrust are utterly cast out; and the intensity proves not liability to weak illusions, but the sure insight of the lofty instincts which cannot fail to recognise corresponding instincts in others. to the lower mind, such a character appears to be too highly strung, too impassioned, romantic, and careless of the solid advantages which secure at least comfort. to those of more or less congenial sentiment, it will rather appear to imply a spirit which, because it breathes a higher element than that at which men habitually live, perceives also more distinctly what are the truest and deepest sources of all that deserves to be called real happiness. to live in an atmosphere of the strongest and most unqualified affection, to have the very substance of life woven out of the unreserved love of a worthy object, is its ideal; and that ideal represents, i am convinced, the highest and purest happiness that can be enjoyed in this world. suppose, now, that one so endowed is struck by one of those terrible blows which shiver the very foundations of life; which make the outside world a mere discordant nightmare, and seem to leave for the only reality a perpetual and gnawing pain, which lulls for an instant only to be revived by every contact with facts. sorrow becomes the element in which one lives and moves. consolation, according to the familiar phrase, is idle; for the vulgar notion of consoling is that which sir walter scott attributes to one of his characters: it is to try to prove that the very thing for which we offer consolation has not happened--in other words, to undertake an enterprise which is obviously hopeless and illusory. yet the greatest test of true nobility of character is its power of turning even the bitterest grief to account. the lofty and simple nature sorrows; it does not attempt to shut its eyes to the full extent of the calamity, nor seek to distract itself by a forgetfulness which might obscure its most sacred visions of the past; nor, on the other hand, to make a parade of its sensibility, or try to foster or stimulate enervating emotions. it knows instinctively that grief, terrible as it is, is yet, in another sense, an invaluable possession. the sufferer who has eaten his bread with herbs learns, as the poet puts it, to know the heavenly powers. for he or she acquires a deeper and keener sympathy with all who are desolate and afflicted; and the natural affections become blended, if with a certain melancholy, yet with that quick and delicate perception of the suffering of others which gives the only consolation worthy of the name--the sense of something soothing and softening and inspiring in the midst of the bitterest agony. grief, so taken, may be stunning and deadening for the time; it may make life a heavy burden, from which hope and eager interest have disappeared: "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable"; but by slow degrees it undergoes a transmutation into more steady and profound love of whatsoever may still be left. the broken and mangled fibres imperceptibly find new attachments; and the only solution of the terrible dilemma is reached when time, which heals the actual laceration, enables the sufferer to feel that the new ties do not imply infidelity to the objects still beloved, but are a continuous development of the indelible emotions, and that the later activities are but a carrying on of the old duties, made more sacred and solemn by the old grief and its associations. a lofty nature which has profited by passing through the furnace acquires claims not only upon our love but upon our reverence. it becomes perhaps within the little circle with which it is familiar the obvious and immediate resort whenever some blow of sorrow or sickness has fallen upon one of its fellows. the figure which i attempt truly to describe is happily not unfamiliar. we have all, i hope, known some one who is instinctively called to mind whenever there is need of the loving kindness which seems so obvious and spontaneous that it does not even occur to the bestower to connect the conduct with self-sacrifice. such persons appear to be formed by nature for ministering angels, and move among us unconscious of their claims to our devotion, and bringing light into darkness by their simple presence with as little thought that they deserve our gratitude as that they ought to emerge from obscurity. happiness, peaceful and contented at least, if not the old bright and confident happiness, may come in time; and new spheres be bound together by the attractive force of a character which, if it is not more intrinsically lovable, has gained a more pathetic charm from its experience. the desire to relieve suffering has become a settled instinct; and, even when there is no special appeal to it, is incessantly overflowing in those "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which, according to wordsworth again, are the "best portion of a good man's life". whether that be quite true i know not; but in so far as such acts seem to testify most unequivocally to the constant flow of a current of sympathetic tenderness, always ready to seize upon every occasion of giving happiness, on a child's birthday as on the parent's deathbed, they perhaps speak to us most convincingly of an all-pervading sweetness of character. an assiduous and watchful desire to show kindness, which makes a perpetual succession of such little attentions a part of the practical religion of the doer, may generate a corresponding love even more forcibly than the sacrifices made in obedience to a more conspicuous appeal for help. the value of such a life as i have tried imperfectly to indicate is not to be estimated by the number of good actions performed, or by any definite list of the particular consequences achieved. it may be hard to say how many pangs have been soothed, how much happiness has been added in special cases, by one who goes through life absorbed in such activities. but above and beyond all the separate instances, such a person,--the object only to a few, perhaps, of love and reverence, but to those few the object of those feelings in the most unreserved and unequivocal form,--is something far more than a source of any number of particular benefits. to reckon up and estimate the value of such benefits is a conceivable undertaking; but we cannot attempt to calculate the value of a spiritual force which has moulded our lives, which has helped by a simple consciousness of its existence to make us gentler, nobler, and purer in our thoughts of the world; which has constantly set before us a loftier ideal than we could frame for ourselves; which has bestowed upon us an ever-present criterion of the goodness or badness of our own motives by our perception of the light in which they appear to a simple and elevated character; which has made every cowardly and worldly thought shrink away abashed in the presence of noble instincts; which has given us a sympathy so close and constant that, as with the light of the sun, we are apt to be unconscious of its essential importance to us until some accident makes us realise the effect of its eclipse; and which, therefore, has in some sense become a part of ourselves, a restraining and elevating and softening impulse, to which we cling as to the worthiest and most indispensable of our possessions. i am not speaking from imagination. i am trying to utter convictions springing from my personal experience, and which i feel--most painfully--that i cannot adequately express. i could not say more, even if by saying more i could express myself adequately, without a sense of a kind of profanity for uttering what should be kept for a few. but though i speak for myself, i hope and i entirely believe that i am therefore speaking for many others also. there are few who have the eyes to see who have not recognised some such light shining upon their lives, and as one main source of what they have done or said if least unworthy. i fancy that the thought which naturally occurs to us when we reflect upon such an influence will be: was i, could i, be worthy of it? what am i that such goodness should have come to me? or, what, if anything, have i done to transmit to others the blessings conferred upon me? such questions have various aspects, and i do not quite see how they could be reduced to a form admitting of a bare logical answer. it now seems to me almost unbecoming to dwell upon the comparison which i contemplated at starting. i imagined a man who has made some such impression upon the world as is recognised by public reputation, to compare his own achievement with such achievements as these, which are absolutely private, and neither seek nor desire any public reward. in truth, the two things are, perhaps, strictly incommensurable. they must be measured by different standards, and are of importance in different spheres. and yet i must try to say this much. the achievements to which i have referred as in their nature public and recognisable, should certainly be considered with gratitude. yet, when we attempt to estimate their worth we are sensible of terrible drawbacks. i have passed, let us say, a measure admirably useful, or written a book which has made a mark. certainly i have done a good action. but what if i had not done it? were there not hundreds of people who would have been only too glad to take my place? i have been successful because i happen to have been in the front rank, which was impelled by thousands of eager supporters. i have said just a little better than my rivals what they were all striving to say; and my highest reward will be that my name will be attached in my own generation, and possibly even in the next, to some particular opinion which yet would have come to the birth without me. i have made a certain commotion on the surface for a moment or two, but the ripple will die away in a few years; and, important as i may seem to myself, i have only to look back for a generation to recognise the plain fact that there have not been at any period more than one or two conspicuous workers the products of whose activity can be distinctly recognised at the present day. even in regard to them, it is often doubtful whether they did more harm or good; whether they did not direct human energy along the wrong paths, and do as much in giving currency to fallacies as in extending permanent truths. now, after making such deductions, which to me, at least, seem to be essentially necessary, we can, i think, do justice to the truth which is contained in browning's poem. you are not, he seems to say, to measure the worth of life by the amount of work done in it, by the tangible and obvious results which can be tested by the world's coarse finger and thumb. rather, he suggests, the value depends upon the excellence of the soul which is fashioned into "heaven's consummate cup" by the stress of the potter's wheel; by the joys and sorrows, the trials and triumphs, which have affected it in its passage through life. i should prefer to say that the kind of dilemma so suggested is not really to the purpose. the rabbi may seem to speak, as i said, with a little too much complacency, if he be interpreted as sharing the feeling which is often, however unjustly, attributed to goethe--that his supreme end was the cultivation of his own nature, and that he regarded himself as a work of art, to be elaborated for its own sake, and enriched by experience even at the cost of others. but in a better interpretation this does not apply: for the very process by which the noble nature is developed and cultivated, implies the closest and most active sympathy with suffering, and an invariable reference to the highest aims of life. it becomes perfect, that is, by constantly rendering invaluable services to others; and there is, therefore, no meaning in drawing a distinction between the services and the influence upon the soul itself. they are parts of the same indivisible process. what is true and noble, as i think, in the rabbi's doctrine, is that which i have already tried to indicate: namely, that the worth of such a life is not exhausted by a catalogue of the good deeds done, but that, beyond and above all them, remains the inestimable value within its own circle of the very existence of a natural symbol of the good and holy--by the "holy" i understand that which is not only moral, but beautiful by reason of its morality--and the incalculable benefits to it of the pure fountain of all good influences which descend upon all within its reach. the stimulus which is given to the beholders of such a life--by the clear perception that morality does not mean a string of judicious commonplaces, but can be embodied as the spring of a harmonious life, and reveal itself as a concrete flesh-and-blood human being--is something which transcends in value all the particular results which we can tabulate and reckon up. we must think of it, not as the cause of so many external benefits, but as the manifestation of a spiritual force which modifies and raises the characters of all its surroundings. if the sphere within which it distinctly operates is far narrower than that of political or literary achievement, it is also incomparably purer, and works without a single drawback. every religion has its saints, and honours them in various ways, not always altogether edifying. but that man is unfortunate who has not a saint of his own--some one in whose presence, or in the very thought of whom, he does not recognise a superior, before whom it becomes him to bow with reverence and gratitude, and who has purified the atmosphere and strengthened the affections in a little circle from which the influence may be transmitted to others. the saint will be forgotten all too soon--long before less valuable, but accidentally more conspicuous, services have passed out of mind--but the moral elevation, even of a small circle, is a benefit which may be propagated indefinitely. if we cannot hope to preserve the name, we can try to carry on the good work; to maintain the ties which have been formed and propagate the goodwill through widening circles. that, i think, is what every one feels under the stress of the most terrible trials of life. we are shocked by the sense of the inevitable oblivion that will hide all that we loved so well. there is, according to my experience, only one thought which is inspiring, and--if not in the vulgar sense consoling, for it admits the existence of an unspeakable calamity--points, at least, to the direction in which we may gradually achieve something like peace and hopefulness without the slightest disloyalty to the objects of our love. it is the thought which i can only express by saying that we may learn to feel as if those who had left us had yet become part of ourselves; that we have become so permeated by their influence, that we can still think of their approval and sympathy as a stimulating and elevating power, and be conscious that we are more or less carrying on their work, in their spirit. we find, as lowell says in his noble ode- we find in our dull road their shining track; in every nobler mood we feel the orient of their spirit glow, part of our life's unalterable good, of all our saintlier aspiration; they come transfigured back, secure from change in their high-hearted ways, beautiful evermore, and with the rays of morn on their white shields of expectation. alas, he adds, even the best deeds will be hidden before long by "the thoughtless drift of the deciduous years". yes; they will be forgotten before long, as we too shall be forgotten--the incalculable majority within a generation or two. the thought may be painful, but the reasonable conclusion is, i think, not that we should fret over the inevitable; rather that we should purify our minds from this as from other illusions, and feel ashamed of the selfish desire that our own names should be preserved when we know that so many who were far better and nobler than ourselves will inevitably be forgotten, and were better and nobler without the stimulus of any such paltry desire. gratitude to the obscure is, in this sense, i take it, a duty, which we cannot practise without a proportional moral benefit. it enables us to rise above the constant temptation to seek for notoriety at any price, and to make our ultimate aim the achievement of good work, not the chorus of popular applause which may be aroused. thoroughly to conquer that temptation is, i take it, one of the objects which every man should set before himself. and nothing, i think, helps one more than a vivid and enduring consciousness of the enormous debt which we owe to men and women who lived in obscurity, who never had a thought of emerging out of obscurity, and whose ennobling influence has yet become a part of every higher principle of action in ourselves. i may or i may not have formed too low an estimate of the services of the few heroes who stand conspicuously above the ordinary level; but i am certain that nothing that i can say would exaggerate the importance of many who have no claims to such a position. to cherish and preserve that influence by every faculty we possess seems to me to be our plainest duty; and we may comfort ourselves, if comfort be needed, by the reflection that, though the memory may be transitory, the good done by a noble life and character may last far beyond any horizon which can be realised by our imaginations. the end. footnote: [a] see the "wealth of nature," in _essays by a barrister_ [sir james fitzjames stephen]. aberdeen university press. 