Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/216

Rh these interests, and to define the rights corresponding to them, is rich in advantage to different classes in the community and in advantage to the industrial development. The specific interest in the gains of the enterprise is that of the landlord, mortgagee, bondholder, or employee; the contingent interest in the gains is that of the title-holder, stock-holder, tenant, or employer. The specific interest is always free from risk and excluded from control. The maintenance of this separation of interests is not possible unless there is the most firm enforcement of contracts. In some of the cases the difficulty is that the specific interest tries to get a share in the contingent gains, when it is found out that there are such. In other cases, the contingent gain not having been realized, those who own it try to encroach upon the specific or guaranteed interest. If it is possible for either to succeed, then a contract relation is transformed into a relation of "heads I win, tails you lose." The responsibilities of the parties are made to vary from the engagements into which they have entered. The current attacks on landlords and creditors are, therefore, radically unjust, and the insecurity for the more refined relations and interests which arises from the weakening of the contract relation is injurious to the whole industrial organization.

In short, the policy which we are invited to accept is one in which every duty which a man accomplishes is made the basis, not for rights and rewards, but for new duties and subjection to new demands. Every duty which is neglected becomes a ground for new rights and claims. The well-to-do man is to do without things which his means might buy for himself in order that he may pay taxes to provide those same things in a public way for people who have not earned them. The man who