free professional schools preparing youth for the higher walks make the well-paid callings more accessible. СНАР. XXX Chances Chances Men Much depends upon the shifting ratio that "poor men's oppor- for Poor tunities "bear to opportunities for possessors of capital and tech- Men vs. nical knowledge. The gratuitous distribution to actual settlers for Rich of some two hundred million acres of the American public domain has had an incalculable effect in raising the economic, and therewith the social, plane of millions who work with their hands. Alluvial gold deposits have yielded small fortunes to tens of thousands of "placer" miners, whereas gold occurring in ore, since it can be extracted only with the aid of elaborate machinery, has largely gone to benefit the possessors of capital. The abandonment of the simple hand-labor processes for extracting natural wealth and the growing necessity for large initial capital for success in most lines of productive enterprise appear to have greatly lessened the ratio of "poor men's opportunities" to capitalists' opportunities. At the same time the perfecting of credit institutions enables the man of proved capacity to gain earlier control of the capital which he needs and thwarts many endeavors to make business enterprises hereditary. Besides this, en- Making trepreneur ability so scarce as to command that exorbitant Abundant price known as "the rewards of business success"— is in the way of being made more plentiful and cheap by schools of business administration, which disseminate a knowledge of the technique of such success. THE SPREAD OF A MARGIN OF LEISURE Again and again the crudeness of the ideas of the masses has defeated well-meant attempts to give them more voice in government. They have been political zeros partly because of their intense preoccupation with the stern task of gaining a living. Until they win a margin of free time the words of Jesus ben Sirach hold good: The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure; How shall he become wise that holdeth the plow, That glorieth in the shaft of the goad, That driveth oxen, and is occupied with their labors, And whose discourse is of the stock of bulls? He will set his heart upon turning his furrows; Ability And his wakefulness is to give his heifers their fodder. So is the smith sitting by the anvil . . . So is the potter sitting at his work . . All these put their trust in their hands, And each becometh wise in his own work . . . ... They shall not be sought for in the council of the people. But certain developments are giving the plain people time to look up from their work and to eye the common weal. Free land, bringing a cessation in the struggle for food; the coming into being of a population of iron slaves- the machines to do man's bidding; the greater speed and concentratedness of labor, which call for a shorter working day — these create for the workers a margin of leisure. Well employed, this means time to read, to think, to confer together, to reach a common understanding, to organize, whereby the workers gain ability to conquer and to utilize for themselves political power. THE DIFFUSION OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES Knowledge is a kind of light and it is the illumined who make their way up the social scale. Moreover, ignorance is the darkness in which thrive the fungi of superstition, falsehood, and prejudice, which wither in the sun. Hence social superiors endeavor always to keep under their control the instrumentalities of education. The mediaeval church taught the children of the common people what was essential to salvation, but had no idea of educating them to rise in life. The state at first institutes universities to provide it with trained servants, but as it gains in social purpose it pushes general education. In fact, the spirit of a government may very well be gauged by noting its policy with reference to the different grades of education. If it is generous in elementary schools but stingy in high schools, it reflects the ideas of the comfortable classes, who can pay tuition. Only when it opens an educational path to the summit for every youth able to climb the Parnassian steeps is it in the way of democratizing knowledge. The cost of instruction is, however, but one item in the cost of an education, for the child must somehow be maintained while it is studying. The power of the bright sons of the poor to com2 Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. The passage is too long to quote in full. CHAP. XXX Gratuitous tion Not Enough pete for the prizes of life with the sons of the well-to-do is limited by the financial inability of their parents to keep them long in school. It appears that out of 100 children who enter Amer- Instrucican city schools 45 drop out before reaching the sixth grade. Only 25 enter the high schools, and of these but 6 complete the course. The United States Commissioner of Education estimates that one-ninth of the pupils who began school in 1905 graduate from the high school, and that one in seventy will graduate from college. Since a higher education is rapidly becoming requisite for the better places in industry, government, and the professions, it is plain that free instruction goes only part of the way toward putting the children of the poor on an equal footing with the children of the well-to-do in vying for these better places. A society earnestly bent on equalizing educational opportunities would see that no capable child quit school because its parents could not support it or needed its earnings. What the ing of Equaliz Education. al Oppor Nor should we lose sight of the quality of the instruction society offers the children of the ill-to-do. The public elementary schools provide one teacher for forty or fifty pupils, while the best private schools insist on one teacher to every ten or fifteen tunities Implies pupils. In the private high schools, which teach a considerable proportion of the children of the comfortable classes, the annual cost of the instruction furnished averages $94 a pupil, while in the public high schools the cost is $56 a pupil. In a word, a society that seriously went about it to wipe out caste, in so far as it rests on differences in preparedness for one's life-work, would spend three or four times as much as Americans now spend and would take and devote to the better distribution of knowledge a billion or two of dollars that now go for luxury, show, and vice. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF GOVERNMENT The possession of a vote does not endow an unlettered, ignorant man with the wit to use it to realize his ends. The diffusion of political power does not, therefore, bring government at once under the control of the broader layers of the people. But, once government responds to the will of the masses rather than to the will of the classes, there are many things it may do to soften inequalities and to prevent social advantages from becoming hereditary. CHAP. XXX Equality Law It may realize the equality of all before the law, neither riches nor poverty, neither intelligence nor ignorance, to receive considbefore the eration in the courts. It may also offer equal opportunity for citizens to serve the public according to their ability. Banishing inheritance of offices, property qualifications for office-holding, nepotism and favoritism in the award of office, it may make all offices accessible to the most competent as ascertained by impartial tests, irrespective of their party allegiance or service. Steep Taxation of Inheritances Equal Protection of Little Government claims a serious fraction of the people's income, so that it is no small matter whether it taps the upper or the lower social levels. By heavy levying on luxuries and on the unearned increment, as well as by a progressive taxation of property or incomes, the peaks are made less towering. The anti-social haughtiness that, after two or three generations of divorce from hard work, grows in a family like a fungus on a dead tree may be forestalled by inheritance taxes so steeply graded as to thwart the money-maker's endeavor to endow his line for all time. are not There will be fewer unearned fortunes, too, if nuggets of public wealth such as forests, minerals and water power carelessly left lying about. Forethought and care with respect to the disposition of the public domain will cause natural resources to yield livelihoods for many instead of fortunes for a few. The curbing of monopoly in its protean forms by government regulation or ownership means fewer centers to poison the social body with the virus of competitive extravagance and contempt for labor. On the other hand, the state may do much to protect the little Properties properties so precious in fostering family independence and self-respect - - against their enemies. "Blue sky" laws, wise usury laws, the suppression of "loan sharks," the regulation of pawnbroking, public pawnshops, in some backward countries the inalienability of the cultivator's holding, have this tendency. American law has been solicitous to limit the power of the creditor over the debtor. Instances are the homestead exemptions, which are general in our states, personalty exemptions, which reserve the tools of the artisan, the library and instruments of the professional man, and the stock and implements of the farmer from seizure by the creditor, and wage exemptions, which often go so far as to put sixty days' wages of the head of the family beyond the reach of legal process. CHAP. XXX Encourage ment of tion of Finally, the state uses means to encourage the formation of small properties. Among these are found mechanics' lien laws, the regulation of insurance companies and savings banks, postal savings banks, the fostering of savings and loan associations and the Formaother forms of cooperative endeavor, the protection of the small Little investors in big companies, and, in some countries suffering from landlordism, the disintegration of large estates by special taxation, or the state purchase of such estates in order to create small proprietors. Let it be noted, however, that only a part of the social legislation of the modern state is anti-class. Ameliorative measures, such as the provision of parks, playgrounds, and other communal means of enjoyment, public health conservation, factory inspection, workingmen's compensation, social insurance, old-age pensions, legal minimum wage, and public employment bureaus make welfare more general, but do nothing to lessen those inequalities of prestige, of self-respect, and of self-assertion which underlie the hierarchy of classes. REFLECTIVE STANDARDS OF APPRAISAL Properties Appraisal Successful Upper-class prestige, resting always on a more or less visible Juster basis of fortune, is impaired to the degree that people leave behind of the them the juvenile or barbarian admiration for the money-maker. The upper class strives ever to propagate the idea that the rich are the virtuous, the "better" people. But critical observation indorses the conclusion of the economist and moralist, John Ruskin : In a community regulated only by laws of demand and supply, but protected from open violence, the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, unsensitive, and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just, and godly person. To the degree that this view spreads, the class hierarchy is undermined. betters" so Again, the rich and leisured are looked upon as "betters long as people are ruled by individual aims, for each sees them |