What Social Classes Owe to Each Other | Page 9

on, so far as those conditions or chances can be
affected by civil organization. Hence, liberty for labor and security for
earnings are the ends for which civil institutions exist, not means which
may be employed for ulterior ends.
Now, the cardinal doctrine of any sound political system is, that rights
and duties should be in equilibrium. A monarchical or aristocratic
system is not immoral, if the rights and duties of persons and classes
are in equilibrium, although the rights and duties of different persons
and classes are unequal. An immoral political system is created
whenever there are privileged classes--that is, classes who have
arrogated to themselves rights while throwing the duties upon others. In
a democracy all have equal political rights. That is the fundamental
political principle. A democracy, then, becomes immoral, if all have
not equal political duties. This is unquestionably the doctrine which

needs to be reiterated and inculcated beyond all others, if the
democracy is to be made sound and permanent. Our orators and writers
never speak of it, and do not seem often to know anything about it; but
the real danger of democracy is, that the classes which have the power
under it will assume all the rights and reject all the duties--that is, that
they will use the political power to plunder those-who-have.
Democracy, in order to be true to itself, and to develop into a sound
working system, must oppose the same cold resistance to any claims
for favor on the ground of poverty, as on the ground of birth and rank.
It can no more admit to public discussion, as within the range of
possible action, any schemes for coddling and helping wage-receivers
than it could entertain schemes for restricting political power to
wage-payers. It must put down schemes for making "the rich" pay for
whatever "the poor" want, just as it tramples on the old theories that
only the rich are fit to regulate society. One needs but to watch our
periodical literature to see the danger that democracy will be construed
as a system of favoring a new privileged class of the many and the
poor.
Holding in mind, now, the notions of liberty and democracy as we have
defined them, we see that it is not altogether a matter of fanfaronade
when the American citizen calls himself a "sovereign." A member of a
free democracy is, in a sense, a sovereign. He has no superior. He has
reached his sovereignty, however, by a process of reduction and
division of power which leaves him no inferior. It is very grand to call
one's self a sovereign, but it is greatly to the purpose to notice that the
political responsibilities of the free man have been intensified and
aggregated just in proportion as political rights have been reduced and
divided. Many monarchs have been incapable of sovereignty and unfit
for it. Placed in exalted situations, and inheritors of grand opportunities
they have exhibited only their own imbecility and vice. The reason was,
because they thought only of the gratification of their own vanity, and
not at all of their duty. The free man who steps forward to claim his
inheritance and endowment as a free and equal member of a great civil
body must understand that his duties and responsibilities are measured
to him by the same scale as his rights and his powers. He wants to be
subject to no man. He wants to be equal to his fellows, as all sovereigns

are equal. So be it; but he cannot escape the deduction that he can call
no man to his aid. The other sovereigns will not respect his
independence if he becomes dependent, and they cannot respect his
equality if he sues for favors. The free man in a free democracy, when
he cut off all the ties which might pull him down, severed also all the
ties by which he might have made others pull him up. He must take all
the consequences of his new status. He is, in a certain sense, an isolated
man. The family tie does not bring to him disgrace for the misdeeds of
his relatives, as it once would have done, but neither does it furnish him
with the support which it once would have given. The relations of men
are open and free, but they are also loose. A free man in a free
democracy derogates from his rank if he takes a favor for which he
does not render an equivalent.
A free man in a free democracy has no duty whatever toward other men
of the same rank and standing, except respect, courtesy, and good-will.
We cannot say that there are no classes, when we are speaking
politically, and then say that there are classes, when we are telling A