Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/280

 266 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

For "own" must mean either that which a man possesses or that which he ought to possess. In the first case the principle is outrageously false, in the second it merely supplies us with the valuable information that a person ought to be given what he ought to have.

Turning away from such emptiness we find two criteria in the field, each intelligible, each with the best claims for a careful hearing and consideration, each commanding the allegiance of many intelligent men. It will be the aim of this paper to pre- sent such data as may place the reader in a position to decide between them. The former is a special application of the cri- terion of morality which is accepted by the two leading schools of moralists in England and America today. According to this view the Tightness or wrongness of every action is determined by the relation in which it stands to the well-being of those directly or indirectly affected by it. This principle, applied to the prob- lem of distribution of property would stamp that industrial system as right which all things considered makes for the greatest amount of well-being. One member of this school may claim that this result is best attained on the whole by a system of laissez faire, notwithstanding the room it gives to the play of luck, of inheritance, of wealth created by others, etc.; a second, by an organization of society by which the return for labor expended is measured solely by the amount and excellence of the services rendered ; still another, by a system in which rewards are apportioned directly according to needs. But all would agree that the problem in each case is the same, namely, to get such a ratio between quantity of production and equality of distribution as will best serve the economic interests of all concerned, while at the same time none of the higher elements of human life shall be sacrificed. Such a system these moralists would declare to be just, whatever particular form it might take.

The second of the criteria above referred to is one that never fails to commend itself to the popular imagination ; it declares that reward should be proportioned to individual desert. According to this view, if not taken in a Pickwickian sense, as is