Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/358

 340 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

beliefs, but simply to state the facts. It may be that one man in a thousand in the United States believes that the day's work of any man, selected at random, is worth as much as the day's work of any other man in the nation. I should be very much sur- prised, however, at proof that one person in ten thousand believes it. Yet, for the sake of argument, I will assume the possibility that the time unit will prove to be the proper unit of labor value. I will assume that the man who ties corn fibers together to make brooms earns as much as the man who engraves designs on cylinders for printing cloth. I will assume that the man who weaves chair bottoms earns as much as a patternmaker in a machine shop. I will assume that the hod-carrier earns as much as the locomotive engineer, and that the press-feeder earns as much as the managing editor. It is within the bounds of credibility that a numerical majority of men may some day think these things are true. The hard fact remains at present, how- ever, that the vast majority of men do not believe they are true. We do not believe that the time standard of wages is the fair standard, any more than we believe that the earth's surface is the inside of a ball, or that there is no such thing as sickness or pain. We do not belong to this majority because we are less honest, or less just, than men of Mr. Bellamy's sort, but we see things from another point of view.

In this situation, what is sanity ? Why, it is perfectly sane for Mr. Bellamy and his fellow-believers to do their best to con- vince the rest of the world that they have made a discovery. Indeed, the only sanity, from their point of view, is to preach their doctrine, and to make converts to it as fast as possible. If they should ever bring a working majority over to their view, in any country, it would then be in order for them to propose changes accordingly. Meanwhile, it is thoroughly insane for men of that belief to agitate for revolutionizing the industrial system to match that belief ; for the same reason that it would be insane for the Mormon hierarchy to demand that the United States should make itself over according to the Mormon model. But such insanity would be mild and hopeful compared with that of the men who have not even defined to themselves what fair distribution would