Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/108

98 the property, and each subsists upon a common treasury. All the sons work in the same business, shop or store, with the father. This is why for a hundred generations the Chinese follow the same calling. A shoemaker's sons are shoemakers, for the reason that they are put to work at the bench as soon as they can drive a peg. Shifting from one employment to another is rare with them. They do not take freely to learning a new trade, because, if they have any property in the family, it can not be divided and sold by the heirs, unless the sale is by consent of all the heirs, and then, of course, a mutual distribution is made. In business pursuits, the profits of the enterprise are not drawn out by the members of the firm, which in almost all cases means the family; but, after meeting current expenses, the accrued surplus goes into the accumulated assets. Thus, unequal wealth is not a source of family quarrels. I never knew two brothers where one was poor and the other rich. They are all poor or rich together. The trait, thus developed, of intimacy between brothers and all members of the household has left its imprint upon Chinese character in general. Clannishness is one of their national marks.

—In this proposition is the province of ethics. It is a far wider field for the philanthropist and reformer to deal with than any of the foregoing. Here all ties of kinship and fear of authority are removed, and the question of the equality and rights of man comes in. The same sentiments in our Constitution are lauded as the climax of humanity and civilization. The same sentiments were promulgated by a pagan philosopher five hundred years before the Christian era; and he founded his arguments upon what had been written so long before his time as to be ancient history.

Men have always been in each other's way. Conflicting interests of tradesmen and fellow-workmen of the same crafts always have and always will exist. The harmonious co-operation of Bellamy will probably require more than twenty centuries to materialize. Labor unions seek to regulate the matter by restricting apprenticeships. Merchants try by underselling each other to drive the weaker ones to the wall. Manufacturers and capitalists enter into trusts, hoping to freeze out the smaller competitors and destroy competition. But all alike fail of their purpose, and conflicting interests as old as the human race itself continue, and always will, in all likelihood. In times past unwelcome competition was checked in a more violent manner. Walking delegates and boycott committees were armed with daggers and clubs, and the stronger tribes annihilated the weaker ones or enslaved them. It is certainly a high testimonial to the pagan reformer that he sought to inculcate the doctrine that one man had any rights that another was under obligations to respect.