Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/114

Rh be appointed to apportion the work of society, and distribute the product, according to some standards which each school of socialists says can easily be defined, but upon which no two schools are agreed. The professorial socialists say that some more "just" distribution ought to be found, that supply and demand will not do, that the socialistic schemes will not do, and that "ethics" must be asked to decide. The press, the pulpit, the politicians — all who solicit the power that the wages-class, by virtue of numbers, now possesses — stand eagerly ready to flatter and cajole it by any proposal or proposition that will please it.

Is the question above stated properly raised, or properly forced upon public attention? I venture to maintain that it is not. The question of how we shall get our living is common to all of us but that insignificant minority which has inherited land or capital enough to support a family without work. The question is no more anxious and perplexing to artisans or handicraftsmen than it is to the mass of the farmers, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, teachers, book-keepers, merchants, and editors, or to the aged, invalid, women, and others who depend upon small investments. It is constantly alleged in vague and declamatory terms that artisans and unskilled laborers are in distress and misery or are under oppression. No facts to bear out these assertions are offered. The wages-class is not a pauper class. It is not a petitioner for bounty nor a social burden. The problem how that part of society is to earn its living is not a public question; it is not a class question. The question how to earn one's living, or the best living possible in one's circumstances, is the most distinctly individual question that can be raised. A great deal might be done, by instruction and exhortation, to inform the