Equality | Page 5

a half hour's walk in Boston, New York, Chicago, or any other great city of America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century."
"And yet," said Edith, "it appears from all the books that meanwhile the Americans' great boast was that they differed from all other and former nations in that they were free and equal. One is constantly coming upon this phrase in the literature of the day. Now, you have made it clear that they were neither free nor equal in any ordinary sense of the word, but were divided as mankind had always been before into rich and poor, masters and servants. Won't you please tell me, then, what they meant by calling themselves free and equal?"
"It was meant, I suppose, that they were all equal before the law."
"That means in the courts. And were the rich and poor equal in the courts? Did they receive the same treatment?"
"I am bound to say," I replied, "that they were nowhere else more unequal. The law applied in terms to all alike, but not in fact. There was more difference in the position of the rich and the poor man before the law than in any other respect. The rich were practically above the law, the poor under its wheels."
"In what respect, then, were the rich and poor equal?"
"They were said to be equal in opportunities."
"Opportunities for what?"
"For bettering themselves, for getting rich, for getting ahead of others in the struggle for wealth."
"It seems to me that only meant, if it were true, not that all were equal, but that all had an equal chance to make themselves unequal. But was it true that all had equal opportunities for getting rich and bettering themselves?"
"It may have been so to some extent at one time when the country was new," I replied, "but it was no more so in my day. Capital had practically monopolized all economic opportunities by that time; there was no opening in business enterprise for those without large capital save by some extraordinary fortune."
"But surely," said Edith, "there must have been, in order to give at least a color to all this boasting about equality, some one respect in which the people were really equal?"
"Yes, there was. They were political equals. They all had one vote alike, and the majority was the supreme lawgiver."
"So the books say, but that only makes the actual condition of things more absolutely unaccountable."
"Why so?"
"Why, because if these people all had an equal voice in the government--these toiling, starving, freezing, wretched masses of the poor--why did they not without a moment's delay put an end to the inequalities from which they suffered?"
"Very likely," she added, as I did not at once reply, "I am only showing how stupid I am by saying this. Doubtless I am overlooking some important fact, but did you not say that all the people, at least all the men, had a voice in the government?"
"Certainly; by the latter part of the nineteenth century manhood suffrage had become practically universal in America."
"That is to say, the people through their chosen agents made all the laws. Is that what you mean?"
"Certainly."
"But I remember you had Constitutions of the nation and of the States. Perhaps they prevented the people from doing quite what they wished."
"No; the Constitutions were only a little more fundamental sort of laws. The majority made and altered them at will. The people were the sole and supreme final power, and their will was absolute."
"If, then, the majority did not like any existing arrangement, or think it to their advantage, they could change it as radically as they wished?"
"Certainly; the popular majority could do anything if it was large and determined enough."
"And the majority, I understand, were the poor, not the rich--the ones who had the wrong side of the inequalities that prevailed?"
"Emphatically so; the rich were but a handful comparatively."
"Then there was nothing whatever to prevent the people at any time, if they just willed it, from making an end of their sufferings and organizing a system like ours which would guarantee their equality and prosperity?"
"Nothing whatever."
"Then once more I ask you to kindly tell me why, in the name of common sense, they didn't do it at once and be happy instead of making a spectacle of themselves so woeful that even a hundred years after it makes us cry?"
"Because," I replied, "they were taught and believed that the regulation of industry and commerce and the production and distribution of wealth was something wholly outside of the proper province of government."
"But, dear me, Julian, life itself and everything that meanwhile makes life worth living, from the satisfaction of the most primary physical needs to the gratification of the most refined tastes, all that belongs to the development of mind as well as body, depend