Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/256

 242 will be honestly carried out, that each and every man will do his duty, that there will be no "combines" on the part of overseers and administrators to turn the means of production to their own use and defraud the masses. For it is very certain that state socialism administered or superintended by such a class of men as that which recently met at Minneapolis to nominate their man, or the class that usually control the machinery of government in this "free" country, would not only fail in its purpose, but result in civil war, or the conditions of life would be worse than humanity has ever experienced.

Similarly, philosophical anarchism and the doctrine of non-invasion must fall short of its purpose unless all men confine themselves to their own business, and do not interfere with their neighbors. But the presence of a handful of men in an anarchistic community, who determined to live by plunder, would suffice to destroy either anarchism or the community.

Anarchy reminds one of a certain Chinese puzzle, the solution of which depended upon getting a number of different-shaped blocks together and dropping them at the same instant, so that they fell exactly into their respective places. If one happened to fall slightly out of place, it upset the entire number. Philosophical anarchy can only exist when all men have attained that condition where each fits his place and is content to remain in it.

I contend that no science of economics will elevate society to the condition its advocates believe, unaccompanied by a system of ethics. It is more a question of every man doing right, fulfilling obligations, guiding his conduct by some standard, than it is of the nationalization of land or the abolition of privilege. When every one is governed by his noblest impulses, in place of selfish instincts, poverty and misery will begin to disappear. Then the so-called science of economics will be rewritten, and a new basis of human action accepted. And, without this, no reform system will accomplish the purpose of its author.