Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/399

 DIFFICULTIES OF INDIVIDUALISM 377 as a class, to preserve a very real control over the lives of those who depend upon their own daily labour. Moreover competition, where it still exists, is in itself one of the Individualist's difficulties, resulting, under a system of un- equal incomes, not merely in the production, as we have seen, of the wrong commodities, but also of their production in tle wrong way, and for the wrong ends. The whole range of the present competitive Individualism manifestly tends, indeed, to the glorifi- cation, not of honest personal service, but of the pursuit of personal gain not the production of wealth, but the obtaining of riches. The inevitable outcome is the apothe.osis, not of social service, but of successful financial speculation, which is already the special bane of the American civilization. With it comes inevitably a demoralization of personal character, a coarsening of moral fibre, and a hideous lack of taste. This, indeed, is the lesson which economics brings to ethics. ' Gresham's law' supplies an instructive analogy throughout the whole range of the business world. The 'fittest to survive' is not necessarily the best, but much more probably he who takes the fullest possible advantage of the conditions of the struggle, heedless of the result to his rivals. To make this conduct the rule of life is hardly the way to grow the ' gift of sympathy' for which Mr. Courthey yearns, but which is calculated to place him at a positive disadvantage in the race for wealth. Indeed, the social consequences of'complete personal liberty' in the struggle for existence have been so appalling that the principle has had necessarily to be abandoned. It is now generally admitted to be a primary duty of government to prescribe the plane on which it will allow the struggle for existence to be fought out, and so to determine which kind of fitness shall survive. We have long ruled out of the confifct the appeal to brute force, thereby depriving the stronger man of his natural advantage over his weaker brother. We stop as fast as we can every development of fraud and chicanery, and so limit the natural right of the cunning to overreach their neigh- hours. We prohibit the weapon of deceptive labels and trade marks. In spite of John Bright's protest, we rule that adultera- tion is not a permissible form of competition. We forbid slavery: with Mill's consent, we even refuse to enforce a life- long contract of service. We conclemn long hours of labour for women ana children, and insanitary conditions of labour for all workers. The whole history of social progress is, inaeea, one long series of definitions and limitations of the conclitions of the struggle, in