Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/196

182 idealistic dreams unite in defying nature itself. Economists will agree that the processes of recent years, and especially the last 10 years, have been levelling, being against the interests of the classes and in favor of those of the masses. This is exemplified in our own economic policy of “soaking the rich,’’ which makes things harder for the intelligent and well-to-do (the two things going very much together); and of increasing the share of the masses in the division of the produce of industry, which makes things easier for them. Consequently the families of the classes contract and those of the masses increase. It is not grasped generally that this is a process of drying up the brain of the country while all the time it is promoting the growth of the body, which by itself is helpless. It is appreciated, however, that something must be done to take care of the growing body, wherefore frantic demands are made upon the engineer. His task is like that of Sisyphus. The easier are made the conditions of life the more rapid is the breeding of people, as the Malthusian doctrine teaches. The dream of the socialist would only be realizable by a state regulation of population, which would be absurd in view of the proved inability of the state to regulate successfully anything at all if it be of economic and industrial nature. The numerous ideas of idealists, philanthropologists and socialists resolve themselves into the conception that the mind of man can manage things better than nature, which is God, and their very conception is therefore irreverent and impious, although many of them will be shocked to hear this said.

Society may wisely enact laws and promote reforms for its own protection, such as laws to prevent murder