The Goal of Equality

TWENTY years ago I took for the subject of a Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard, ‘The New Movement in Humanity: from Liberty to Unity.’ The movement thus indicated seemed at the time to warrant a broad generalization. It represented a very radical change in popular thought and feeling, and one which was widespread, namely, the change from an absorbing interest in individual rights to an almost equally absorbing interest in the social order. Society became possessed with the sense of the loneliness and the waste incident to individualism. In spiritual relations there was an eager craving for fellowship. In material affairs men stood ready to undertake enterprises of vast moment under the stimulus of the coöperative spirit. Naturally the conception of unity found a place among the ruling ideas of the time. It passed from a vague desire to a rational and practicable object of pursuit, worthy of endeavor and, if need be, of sacrifice, and capable of realization. By common consent unity became the immediate and definite goal of social progress.

In many ways the movement toward unity has surpassed the expectations which it awakened. It has effected vital changes in the social order, changes in form as well as in spirit; it has tempered the atmosphere of religion, and brought its various agencies into more harmonious action; and it has given substance and shape to what had been the elusive hope of universal peace. But while this movement has been and is advancing throughout Christendom and beyond, it has been sharply arrested at the centre — at the heart of the great democracies. No one can overlook or ignore the effect of the struggle for equality which has arisen there. Equality and unity are in no sense incompatible, provided the natural sequence is followed. The demand for equality, like the demand for liberty, whenever it is serious takes precedence. The presumption is in favor of the seriousness and of the justice of the present demand, largely because it is so definite. Certainly it is no vague cry of discontent needing most of all to be interpreted to those who utter it. The need of interpretation is much more evidently with those who hear it — who hear, but do not heed or understand. In times of discontent, whether vague or well defined, the greatest danger lies in the over-occupied or dulled mind of the generation.

I

What is the ground of the present demand for equality? Why are we called upon to turn aside from urgent and farreaching plans in behalf of unity to make equality the more immediate goal of social progress?

Incidentally the attempt to answer this question may lead to a better understanding of the practical significance of equality. To many minds equality is an impossibility. Theoretically it is impossible. Of the classic interpretations which have been given, some have been frankly termed Utopian, and all others have been so regarded. But there are equalities which are entirely practicable, and which taken together may create a state of comparative equality. Nature has been grossly overcharged with inequality. It has been found that the area of natural inequality can be greatly restricted, and that very many apparently natural inequalities can be relieved. A condition of constantly increasing equality is thus possible in almost any community, because the inequalities below the line can be diminished more easily than the inequalities above the line can be increased. Inequality above the line ought to be allowed and encouraged in the interest of the individual as it becomes the result of personal merit.

The advance of the demand for equality from one kind or form of it to another shows how practicable a thing it really is: it shows still more clearly how impossible it is to satisfy the demand once for all. Equality is altogether a relative matter varying with the rate and general conditions of social progress. A condition of substantial equality may be reached in a democracy, only to be disturbed, and perhaps overthrown, by some unequal development, economic, educational, or even religious. The most, serious mistake possible in this matter is that of assuming that a condition of equality can be maintained by the means through which it was gained. This is the common mistake of a political democracy. It is the mistake which we are now in danger of making, as may be seen from the present tendency to treat all social grievances politically — the tendency on the one hand to make political capital out of them, and the tendency on the other hand to deny their existence apart from the operation of political causes. The fact, however, is becoming more and more evident that the determining considerations affecting the maintenance of equality among the people of this country are no longer altogether or chiefly political, but to an increasing extent economic.

Politics, using the term in the conventional sense, has much yet to accomplish in the extension of popular rights, and very much yet to accomplish for their security. There are belated issues, like woman’s suffrage, to be settled, and there are modifications of the political system to be effected to make it more responsive to the popular will. The introduction of the Australian ballot, by far the greatest device for ensuring equality in the electorate as well as purity in elections, opened the way for other devices which are now being incorporated into political programmes, some of which will prove to be permanent while others will doubtless be laid aside after having fulfilled certain local or temporary ends. The initiative, the referendum, and the recall, and even the primary, are schemes which may be said to be under trial, the problem being to find out how far the increase in political machinery can be made to work in the interest of the people at large — how far, that is, the people will be willing to work the machinery themselves without calling in, or allowing, the help of the politicians. These, however, and all like schemes (that of proportional representation must soon be included if political parties increase in number), represent the unfinished tasks of a political democracy, acting with a view to self-preservation or self-assertion. They are really inherited tasks.

They belong to the political world of yesterday rather than to the economic world of to-day.

Are we justified in believing that the further uses of political power, as in the political invasion of the economic world, will accomplish results which will be accepted as a complete, or in any way logical, satisfact ion of the new demands urged in the name of equality ? We have a partial but suggestive answer to our question in the returns of the late national election, showing so large an increase in the socialistic vote in the face of promised political advances. I think that it will appear upon candid inquiry that the steady advance of militant socialism, the only kind of socialism with a, fixed purpose and a growing constituency, is due to the incoming of ideas which mark the transition from the political world of yesterday to the economic world of to-day — ideas associated more directly with the spirit of equality than with the spirit of liberty.

What is the essential distinction between the political world of yesterday, from which we have inherited many unfinished tasks, and the economic world of to-day, which is confronting us with new tasks which are as yet mostly in the form of problems? The ruling conception of the political world was, and is, the conception of rights. The ruling conception of the economic world is the conception of values. Political progress toward equality — it has been very great — has come about through the recognition of rights. Economic progress toward equality, if it is to be equally marked, must come about through a like recognition of values.

II

In the economic world attention and interest centre around the creation of wealth. The process is twofold — to produce articles of intrinsic worth, and to induce the desire for them. The joint result of the process is expressed in terms of market value. To the extent to which a political democracy becomes an industrial democracy the new values created by industry entitle the industrial worker to another kind of consideration than that conferred upon him by the right of suffrage. Universal suffrage can no longer satisfy his claim to recognition. He demands a new rating based not simply upon his manhood, but also upon the value of his contribution to the material wealth of society. His claim rests, of course, upon the estimate which society itself places at any time upon material wealth, that is, upon its market value. There can be no question about the present estimate, the almost supreme regard in which it is held, the concentration of desire upon it.

In any attempt to understand the growing sense of inequality, as distinct from the various experiences of poverty, of misfortune, or even of injustice, there are facts of plain observation which give the right approach. One is the fact to which I have just referred — the concentration of popular desire upon material good. This desire has broken down many of the distinctions heretofore existing between persons, and opened the way to general and often fierce competition. Before the competition for material good, other competitions have retired. It is almost impossible, for example, to stimulate competition within the range of education, unless the prize bears the clear mark of utility. This leveling process, this growing flatness of desire, means leveling up as well as leveling down. Desires meet upon a common plane. The demand for works of art is still limited. Everybody wants an automobile. These objects of common desire have come to be the ordinary products of industry, increased in value as they become more artistic in design, but still the products of industry. They represent the comforts, the conveniences, and many of the luxuries, which any one can appreciate and which every one would like to enjoy.

Beyond this lies the further fact, perhaps more significant, of that love of display attending the possession of these objects of common desire, which greatly provokes the sense of inequality. The chief street of any great city is a moving-picture show, open to all dwellers on the side streets and in the alleys. The economies of trade are bringing about an enforced proximity of those who make the more attractive goods to those who buy and display them. The great stores on Fifth Avenue now use their upper floors for workshops. At the noon hour the operatives occupy the Avenue. It is not to be supposed that they are idle observers, or that their daily observation fails to make a cumulative impression. Nothing could be better calculated to develop the latent sense of inequality than this increasing familiarity, this more public intimacy, with those who are in possession of the objects of common desire. What may now seem to be a mere incident attending the growth of ‘publicity’ may yet be seen to have far-reaching social results.

This growing sense of inequality on the part of industrial workers is not to be attributed to mere envy and greed. Envy and greed are individual qualities. The sense of inequality is becoming a matter of class-consciousness, developed by the knowledge that the new material values are the creation of industry, and excited by the conviction that labor is the supreme agency in industry. Hence the rapid growth of laborism.

Laborism, like capitalism, or any other ‘ism,’ means simply the overestimation of the value of the thing for which it stands. It is the overestimation which always makes the trouble, but that would not be possible were it not for the underlying value. Capitalism has produced its own class-consciousness with all of its attendant evils — arbitrariness and arrogance, indifference to human needs and rights, and the love of luxury. Laborism, as such, has as its crude aim to supplant capitalism and to rule in its stead, avoiding of course in expectation and promise all attendant evils. We are familiar with the development of capitalism from an economic system into what has become almost a social caste. We ought not to be surprised at the counter-development of laborism in making use of classconsciousness to create its own economic system.

Our interest, however, in the growth of industrial discontent, so far as the present discussion is concerned, lies in the fact that it is just here that the spirit of equality is most evidently at work, and most easily distinguishable in aim and method from any workings of the general spirit of restlessness and discontent. If we say that the mind of the industrial worker demands too much consideration because it is the mind of a segregated class, we simply intensify the demand. Why has a class, so large a class, become segregated, and why is it specially imbued with the sense of inequality? The question grows in importance, as well as in clearness, as we disconnect the sense of inequality so generally existing among industrial workers from those discontents which are fostered by other causes. The struggle for equality, as we now see it, is a part of the evolution of labor.

Shall the labor question then — to return to our inquiry about the political invasion of the economic world — be made a political question to be settled by political methods, or shall it be allowed to work itself out under the impulse and direction of the spirit of equality? Is it primarily a question of rights or of values? The conflict of labor with capital is a social fact, but unfortunately this does not mean that society at large really understands the meaning of the conflict, or follows its programme with growing intelligence. Public opinion still reflects the political rather than the economic state of mind. A strike, for example, we refer at once to some working of the spirit of liberty, although we are often sadly confused in our endeavor to find out the ‘rights’ involved. If we could accustom ourselves to think of a strike, or any like move on the part of organized labor, as a continued and progressive assertion of the spirit of equality, we should at least relieve our minds of much confusion, whether in individual cases we approve or disapprove the strike. What I have termed the evolution of labor has been a steady, and, on the whole, consistent struggle for the recognition of the ‘values’ involved in the part taken by labor in the productive industries. No rights have been claimed apart from these values — actual or assumed. The labor question is always fundamentally a question of values, whatever question of individual rights may spring up in connection with any contest.

There is, of course, and always must be, a broad field for political action in the equalization of rights. The government must be honest, else we shall have the greatest possible inequality; it must be free from privilege and monopoly; it must be fair in the distribution of burdens; it must be wise in the opening of opportunities. The government may also be made the guardian of the national resources, if necessary through ownership; and it may be put in control of those agencies of communication and of distribution upon which all are in common and alike dependent.

Within the field of industrialism the government must be ceaselessly active in the protection of the laborer. It may determine under what conditions work shall be carried on, and in some cases prescribe, as in the case of children, who shall not work at all. All these matters are proper subjects of political action, but they do not reach the essential issue between labor and capital, which is-simply the question of the relative value of the part taken by each in the productive industries. My contention is that we cannot settle this question politically, and that any promises to this effect are altogether misleading unless we are prepared to go further and concede the socialistic state. It may be quite possible for a political party to lose control of its original intentions, but it is to be assumed that it will act within the accepted political limits.

Political legislation bearing upon this issue, even when it is accepted and urged by those most concerned, is always looked upon with a degree of mistrust, and when it is put forward as a means of arresting the socialistic tendency of labor is quite sure to provoke reply. What is the motive of it all, the reply runs, except the ‘conservation of human resources,’ the ‘stopping of the waste in the earning power of the nation.’ When you have made the state most considerate of the conditions of labor, what have you really done in the interest of a just equality? In fact, have you not, through what you have done, confirmed and established the present inequality? Your programme of legislation is designed to increase efficiency, for efficiency creates prosperity, and prosperity means more wealth, but not of necessity any change in the distribution of it. Under existing economic conditions, the reply still runs, the relative position of the classes concerned would not be changed. In prosperous times capital gets more and labor gets more, but the capitalist and the laborer are not thereby brought nearer together. The system which holds them apart remains the same, ensuring the continuance of the existing inequality.

I do not see how any political programme can satisfy and therefore silence the argument of militant socialism, unless, as I have said, those who urge it are prepared to go further and concede the socialistic state. Personally I am an ardent believer in legislation for the furtherance of ’social justice’ quite irrespective of the ability or inability of such legislation to stay the socialistic tendencies of labor. In my judgment the government can hardly be set to tasks more worthy of it than those which, in their redress of wrongs, carry the chivalrous suggestion of knight-errantry. But I do not allow myself to be beguiled into the belief that the labor question, in so far as it involves the struggle for economic equality, can be settled by legislation, least of all by legislation subject to the vicissitudes of political parties.

III

I think that it will appear upon due reflection that the goal of equality in the economic world, like the goal of liberty in the political world, must be reached through struggle, if for no other reason than that unworthy and impracticable desires may be thereby eliminated. Struggle always carries the liability of conflict, and conflict of violence. In times of conflict, especially if characterized by violence, it is difficult to appreciate the fact that the underlying and really prevailing forces may be set toward peace. Yet this has been the fact in most of the conflicts which have resulted in progress. Conflict does not necessarily mean permanent enmity, if it really means enmity at all.

More frequently than otherwise it is the means through which those who have mutual interests are able to reach some satisfactory adjustment of them. The conflict of labor with capital is a conflict for the adjustment of mutual interests. The question at issue is the question of the values contributed by each in the production of wealth. Who shall settle this question? How can it be settled except by protracted and serious experiment, involving at times the element of contention?

I have long held the theory that the most rewarding occupations, those which give the greatest intellectual and moral satisfactions, and usually corresponding social position, should not be reckoned among the more remunerative in the way of money: and that among manual occupations money should be given, in seeming disproportion, to the worker in the monotonous, disheartening, and dangerous occupations. I seldom find a person, however, whose opinion coincides with mine. Current opinion is based on the assumption that those who have acquired intellectual tastes ought to have the means of gratifying them, and that those who have acquired skill ought to be paid according to the cost of its acquisition, or its market value. Evidently opinions on this and like subjects cannot be organized into standards. Questions of values cannot be settled out of court, and court in the industrial world is the workshop.

Two closely related facts of very great significance and of very great promise are beginning to emerge out of the conflict of labor and capital — the growing intelligence of labor, and the growing intelligence of capital, in respect to matters of common interest. Of these two facts, the latter is by far the more significant. The intelligence of capital has not been directed primarily toward the value of labor. Labor has been undervalued partly because it has been undeveloped. Natural forces have in many fields been developed to their full limit, inventions have been utilized, machinery has been worked under high tension, while the laborer has been left in a state of relative inefficiency. Suddenly the mind of capital has become concerned about this lost or unutilized value.

A new type of leader has arisen among the captains of industry who is studying the human element in industrialism, directly of course in the interest of efficiency, but also with humane intentions and sympathies. ' We have got to learn,’ says one of the most successful of private manufacturers, a man well known in political life, ‘we have got to learn to utilize the brains of our workers. The man can grow, the machine cannot.’ What does this mean except partnership in profit-making — a step far in advance of profit-sharing? How long will it be after ‘ the brains ’ of labor have been fully recognized before capital must be prepared to answer questions about costs and profits, about methods, about policies, about public questions which affect not labor alone, but labor and capital alike?

No one can predict what is to follow the present change of disposition on the part of capital toward labor. Schemes of social welfare, pension systems, cooperative agreements, and limited partnerships are significant in themselves, but still more significant in what they suggest. The great point in dispute will have been recognized and conceded in all its possibilities when the word which I have quoted becomes an accepted saying — ‘The man can grow.’ The full recognition of the growth of the man in the worker will insure a just equality. Industrialism will come to represent increasingly a partnership ‘for better, for worse.’ Capitalism and laborism at least will disappear.

To dismiss this idea under the charge of impracticability is simply begging the question. Most movements involving confidence in the intelligence and capacity of the masses have passed through the stage of the impracticable or impossible. Mark Hanna is credited with having said that ‘ he would rather be the man to adjust the relations of labor and capital than be President of the United States.’ He was wise in his ambition. It showed a true sense of proportion. It showed also the possibilities evident to the mind of a sagacious man of affairs. The man who can make the adjustment suggested is possible. Such a leader ought to arise in due time out of the ranks of labor or capital. The problem is an economic problem. It does not fall within the province of the politician or statesman. Only a statesman with the economic genius of Alexander Hamilton, but thoroughly humanized in his sympathies, could hope to solve it. The merely political solution, if the process is logical, must be the socialistic state. The economic solution ought to be such an identification or partnership of labor with capital as may express their essential unity of interest.

IV

Meanwhile the public cannot be an indifferent spectator of the evolution of labor as it is now going on. The interests of us all are directly affected by the process when it is normal, and much more vitally affected when it becomes at any time abnormal. Organized labor, with all its affiliated numbers, represents a small minority of the nation. The labor question is but one of many questions of public concern. When the labor movement passes without the legitimate bounds of action it must be treated as any other movement would be treated in like circumstances. The sympathetic attitude of the public toward labor ceases when its methods become revolutionary. Offenses against the public order which have long been outlawed cannot be condoned. On the other hand there is evident need of very great patience on the part of the public in view of the many complications growing out of the employment of unskilled labor.

So long as we invite, or allow, certain kinds of immigration we must expect trouble. We pay the price of ‘cheap labor’ in disturbed social conditions and in debased moral standards. If as a nation we had given the same attention to immigration that we have given to the tariff, we might have different results to show in respect, to social security and moral advancement.

Public opinion must remain the final arbiter in all labor disputes. It cannot act with military promptness and precision. It is better that it cannot so act. The intervention of the government on occasions of violence is sufficient. For the most part the process of industrial development, in which all are concerned, must be regarded as educative. It involves the moral discipline of society as well as of labor and capital. It is but one part of the great endeavor, difficult but necessary,

The attitude, however, of the public toward the struggle for equality cannot be simply that of interest or concern. There is a more imperative duty than the duty of arbitration. The social movement which has acquired such moral momentum is the unconscious expression of the spirit of equality working downward, to meet the struggle which is going on below . The principle of all social service is community of interest. The concern of one is made the concern of all. Every member of society is regarded as an active and contributing member. He may have nothing to contribute but a grievance. That, if offered in the spirit of a contribution, may be at any given time the best gift of all. In fact, it is this giving from below as well as from above which distinguishes the present social method from the old-time methods of charity. The person who receives, if he receives at all, becomes an active recipient. Thenceforth he is more distinctly a member of the community. Perhaps he represents something more than an individual want. That increases his value. He brings others of like needs into the community — into the concern of all. Grievances thus come out into the open. Some give way before mutual understanding. Others become the subject of honest and sympathetic investigation. Meanwhile the larger and common interests of the community are brought within the range of separated and more inaccessible lives. Old channels of communication are reopened and set free. New means of intercourse are established. Access is made easy from whatever is lowest and most remote to whatever is best in the community. Individuals and families are taught how to become sharers in the public good.

Any one with the gift or training for social observation may see this socializing process going on at the great social settlements of the cities. A social settlement is a human exchange. The values dealt in are personal values. This fact, which is quickly discoverable, stands for the rarest type of equality. The steady contact of persons with persons acting toward a common end offers a very practical relief to the sense of inequality. Personal distinctions cease to be of much account: only differences in condition remain. And even in this regard the idea of equality is realized, or perhaps better, lost sight of, in the growing sense of a community of interest.

Social service has brought out the natural affiliation between education and organized labor — originally expressed in the relation between the universities and the guilds. From the strictly economic point of view, the representatives of each are upon the same footing. The salary is the same in principle with the wage — a fixed remuneration for service rendered according to contract. The average salaried person among educational workers, if he compares his position with that of the wage-earner, may with equal fitness think of himself as the hired man of society. That he does not so think of himself is due, not to any large excess of remuneration above his fellow worker in the trades, but rather to a different conception of his task and of its rewards. Judged by the standards of wealth, almost any educational worker in a community is an inferior person. He maintains his place in society by refusing to be judged by these standards, and in so doing puts himself into personal relations with all in the vast brotherhood of work.

The principle of community of interest reaches, of course, beyond and below the fellowship of work into the environment of unskilled labor. Unskilled labor touches poverty in every variety of form. The inequalities which are the result of social causes mingle with the inequalities within industrialism in almost inextricable confusion. The work of social reform must be discriminating, and yet it must be inclusive. ‘The social economist,’ says an authority on social reform, ‘seeks to establish the normal ... to eradicate the maladjustments and abnormalities, the needless inequalities which prevent our realizing our own reasonable standards.’ It is here, in this undefined region of inequality, that the struggle for equality must go on hand in hand with patient scientific service, and in no less close alliance with the forces which are fighting greed and commercialized vice. Nearly all the conditions of existence which stir our sympathies, kindle indignation, and arouse the public conscience, crowd the line of the ‘living wage.'

V

I am convinced, so far as social progress in this country is concerned, that we are wise if we relate the organized discontent in the midst of us directly to the growth of the spirit of equality. It is time for the spirit of equality to assert itself as a corrective to our unequal development. So kindly a critic as Mr. Bryce asks the pertinent question, ‘Might it not have been better for the United States if their growth had been slower, if their public lands had not been so hastily disposed of, if in their eagerness to obtain the labor they needed they had not drawn in a multitude of ignorant immigrants from central and southern Europe?’ It would be difficult to find any number of intelligent citizens who would answer this question in the negative.

We know that we have grown not only rapidly but recklessly. We know that much of our present wealth is capital borrowed from the future. We know that we have stimulated immigration at the cost of labor. We know that our prosperity will not bear many of the saving tests to which it ought to be subjected. Knowing these things, and beginning to view them with concern, we cannot deny the need of some essentially human force which shall come in to rectify our mistakes — something which shall be more vital in its action than any conventional expedients with which we are familiar. I find, as it seems to me, such a corrective in the spirit of equality, which is now at work in the nation. To many it may seem too narrow in its action, as its sphere of operation is chiefly within industrialism. We have seen the reason for this limitation in the fact that the prevailing conditions of our social life are economic conditions. The spirit of equality is concerned, therefore, with the production and distribution of economic values rather than with the righting of purely social inequalities. And for this task organized labor has been and is the ready and efficient instrument.

The question naturally arises — Will not the spirit of equality, once given the requisite freedom and scope under present industrial conditions, even if kept free from political complications, carry us over into socialism? Certainly not, if socialism is what the question implies or what the most of us think it is — in the last analysis a tyranny. If socialism is not this, but only a laissez-faire kind of democracy, the question has no significance. But if it is in its nature undemocratic and tyrannous, if it creates an enforced equality, the moment it begins to reveal its nature in practical ways the spirit of liberty may be trusted to guard against any excesses of the spirit of equality. This is one of its prerogatives. It is a part of its ancient and unrelinquished discipline to assert and maintain the rights of the individual. Even now in the midst of our social enthusiasms and compulsions one may hear the protest of liberty recalling us to the larger use of our individuality.

To my mind there is a more serious question, because open to a more doubtful answer — will the spirit of equality carry us further on the road to materialism? To borrow the figure of Professor Eucken, — ‘Man’s works have outstripped man — they go their way of their own accord and exact his submission to their demands.’ If these works are more equally shared, will they draw us further on the downward way? The immediate aim of equality is a fairer distribution of material goods. This implies, as has already been pointed out, a concentration of desire upon those objects. The value of the objects which lie above the range of necessity consists largely in the fact that they are accounted so desirable. May it not be that, with a wider distribution of these objects, their value may be lessened in the eyes of those who have had the exclusive possession of them, so that not even a superior quality will give satisfaction? Materialism has worked its way into the life of the masses from above. If not altogether the gift of those who once enjoyed the things of the mind and of the spirit, it derives its influence from them. The newly made, or simply rich, are not influential. Revulsion from the vulgarity of materialism is not a very high motive, and will not accomplish much for those who are most sensitive to it, but in due time it will doubtless have its influence through them upon the masses.

It is also to be remembered, — and too great insistence cannot be placed upon the fact, — that materialism is a very different thing to those who have not and to those who have, to those who are struggling up the social grade, and to those who are on the secure social levels. To those who are in want and in the struggle, materialism represents not merely the material things in sight, but the things which lie back of these, within reach of education and culture. The constant and honest contention of labor for shorter hours and higher wages is a contention for better homes, for better access to the schools, for better social opportunities. The materialism of the ascending classes, in sharp distinction from that of the stationary or descending classes, stands for social aspiration which may have in it no little of moral and spiritual quality. One of the compensations for the disastrous economic effects of the immigration of the past decade may yet appear in the spiritual capacity of the unknown races which have been brought here. The public schools in our great foreign centres are beginning to reveal possibilities of a renewed intellectual and spiritual growth on the part of the nation.

I think, however, that the greatest safeguard against any materialistic tendencies in the advancing struggle for equality is to be found in a corresponding growth of the spirit of altruism. Not a few persons within the knowledge of most of us have already reached, through most satisfying experience, ‘the belief that our highest pleasures are increased by sharing them.’ That belief has naturally led to much thought for others, and in the case of those far below the range of all pleasures, to much solicitude and eventual sacrifice in their behalf. The altruism of our time is learning how to express itself in splendid self-denials, quite comparable with those of socalled heroic times—young women foregoing marriage to serve the children of want and sin, young men foregoing the opportunities of fortune to fight in the warfare against greed and lust and the varied cruelties of selfishness. The altruistic spirit, which is really the spirit of equality working from above in sacrifice, is the most spiritual force of which we have personal knowledge in our generation. It can most easily set at nought the temptations of materialism, and find satisfaction in human rewards.