What Social Classes Owe to Each Other | Page 5

we must assume that some at least of those
who were forced to give aid did so unwillingly. Here, then, there would
be a question of rights. The question whether voluntary charity is
mischievous or not is one thing; the question whether legislation which
forces one man to aid another is right and wise, as well as economically

beneficial, is quite another question. Great confusion and consequent
error is produced by allowing these two questions to become entangled
in the discussion. Especially we shall need to notice the attempts to
apply legislative methods of reform to the ills which belong to the order
of Nature.
There is no possible definition of "a poor man." A pauper is a person
who cannot earn his living; whose producing powers have fallen
positively below his necessary consumption; who cannot, therefore,
pay his way. A human society needs the active co-operation and
productive energy of every person in it. A man who is present as a
consumer, yet who does not contribute either by land, labor, or capital
to the work of society, is a burden. On no sound political theory ought
such a person to share in the political power of the State. He drops out
of the ranks of workers and producers. Society must support him. It
accepts the burden, but he must be cancelled from the ranks of the
rulers likewise. So much for the pauper. About him no more need be
said. But he is not the "poor man." The "poor man" is an elastic term,
under which any number of social fallacies may be hidden.
Neither is there any possible definition of "the weak." Some are weak
in one way, and some in another; and those who are weak in one sense
are strong in another. In general, however, it may be said that those
whom humanitarians and philanthropists call the weak are the ones
through whom the productive and conservative forces of society are
wasted. They constantly neutralize and destroy the finest efforts of the
wise and industrious, and are a dead-weight on the society in all its
struggles to realize any better things. Whether the people who mean no
harm, but are weak in the essential powers necessary to the
performance of one's duties in life, or those who are malicious and
vicious, do the more mischief, is a question not easy to answer.
Under the names of the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless,
inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and
prudent as a responsibility and a duty. On the one side, the terms are
extended to cover the idle, intemperate, and vicious, who, by the
combination, gain credit which they do not deserve, and which they

could not get if they stood alone. On the other hand, the terms are
extended to include wage-receivers of the humblest rank, who are
degraded by the combination. The reader who desires to guard himself
against fallacies should always scrutinize the terms "poor" and "weak"
as used, so as to see which or how many of these classes they are made
to cover.
The humanitarians, philanthropists, and reformers, looking at the facts
of life as they present themselves, find enough which is sad and
unpromising in the condition of many members of society. They see
wealth and poverty side by side. They note great inequality of social
position and social chances. They eagerly set about the attempt to
account for what they see, and to devise schemes for remedying what
they do not like. In their eagerness to recommend the less fortunate
classes to pity and consideration they forget all about the rights of other
classes; they gloss over all the faults of the classes in question, and they
exaggerate their misfortunes and their virtues. They invent new theories
of property, distorting rights and perpetuating injustice, as anyone is
sure to do who sets about the readjustment of social relations with the
interests of one group distinctly before his mind, and the interests of all
other groups thrown into the background. When I have read certain of
these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be
respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's
own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable
person was the good-for-nothing. The man who by his own effort raises
himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of no
account. The man who has done nothing to raise himself above poverty
finds that the social doctors flock about him, bringing the capital which
they have collected from the other class, and promising him the aid of
the State to give him what the other had to work for. In all these
schemes and projects the organized intervention of society