cies that attention will be
drawn in the next chapter.

_III.--The Failures and Fallacies of Natural Liberty_

THE rewards and punishments of the economic world are singularly
unequal. One man earns as much in a week or even in a day as another
does in a year. This man by hard, manual labor makes only enough to pay
for humble shelter and plain food. This other by what seems a congenial
activity, fascinating as a game of chess, acquires uncounted millions. A
third stands idle in the market place asking in vain for work. A fourth
lives upon rent, dozing in his chair, and neither toils nor spins. A
fifth by the sheer hazard of a lucky "deal" acquires a fortune without
work at all. A sixth, scorning to work, earns nothing and gets nothing;
in him survives a primitive dislike of labor not yet fully "evoluted
out;" he slips through the meshes of civilization to become a "tramp,"
cadges his food where he can, suns his tattered rags when it is warm and
shivers when it is cold, migrating with the birds and reappearing with
the flowers of spring.

Yet all are free. This is the distinguishing mark of them as children of
our era. They may work or stop. There is no compulsion from without. No
man is a slave. Each has his "natural liberty," and each in his degree,
great or small, receives his allotted reward.

But is the allotment correct and the reward proportioned by his efforts?
Is it fair or unfair, and does it stand for the true measure of social
justice?

This is the profound problem of the twentieth century.

The economists and the leading thinkers of the nineteenth century were
in no doubt about this question. It was their firm conviction that the
system under which we live was, in its broad outline, a system of even
justice. They held it true that every man under free competition and
individual liberty is awarded just what he is worth and is worth
exactly what he gets: that the reason why a plain laborer is paid only
two or three dollars a day is because he only "produces" two or three
dollars a day: and that why a skilled engineer is paid ten times as much
is because he "produces" ten times as much. His work is "worth" ten
times that of the plain laborer. By the same reasoning the salary of a
corporation president who receives fifty thousand dollars a year merely
reflects the fact that the man produces--earns--brings in to the
corporation that amount or even more. The big salary corresponds to the
big efficie