Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/203

Rh  possibly the most serious complication of all. But literally these complications are endless, and do not admit of further elaboration in this paper. They suggest the conclusion that the Chinese question, whether exclusion excludes or not, is so far from being finally disposed of, that it is now assuming its gravest and most important aspect. While we may well wish that the Chinaman might have been permitted to remain at home to enjoy his opium cum dignitate, yet regrets on this point are worse than useless, and the question now is, that, having him, like the poor, always with us, what shall we do with him?



LACED in a world in common, with every degree of financial ability, positive and negative, we are all spurred on by common necessity, by common desire to escape hunger, cold, disease, and death. To this end we enter the business arena and struggle for bread, each offering for sale something he has himself produced in return for like offerings from others. In this arena we find the successful business man offering for sale a hundred tons of steel rails; beside him is a slender girl offering for sale the labor of her hands for ten hours. The commodity offered by each, by each has been produced: the business man's from a hundred tons of coal burned beneath a dozen boilers, perhaps; the young girl's, worked up in a physiological laboratory, comes from a night's rest, a morning and midday repast.

So long as each has produced his and her own offering, and is allowed to enjoy to the full the fruits of his and her own effort, no one shall say him nay if the business man offsets the muscular energy of the young girl by a thousand or by ten thousand fold. Neither economics nor morals shall stint or limit the business man's returns so long as legitimate business methods alone are adhered to, so long simply as business men are content to take what they have produced, and leave to others their own productions. In a purely democratic country each should enjoy all the freedom which is consistent with a like amount of freedom in others, and each should be given full right to the enjoyment of the fruits of his own effort. The maintenance of this status is the best function and only justification of government. Just as church and state, or science and religion, are best separated, so politics and business should be divorced. The latter, depending on the natural resources of a country, should not be made to 