ns of to-day, there is, it seems
to me, a simple test in Herbert Spencer's "first principle": "Every man
may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with
the possession of like liberty by every other man." Legislation that
does not square with the self-evident truth and justice of this dictum
is bad legislation, and must prove maleficent to the nation, state, or
city that enacts it. I need not offer any modern instances.

Reasoning in reverse order, i.e., from effect to cause, we may be sure
that when we see in a country abounding in natural resources, as ours
is, inhabited by the most intelligent, energetic, and resourceful people
the world has ever seen--when we see in such a country millions of
willing workers in enforced idleness; when, to account for the idleness
and its attendant want and destitution, we are offered the absurdity of
"over-production" of the very things for which millions are suffering;
when we see men and women who toil not revelling in luxury, while others
who labor sixteen hours a day are barely able to keep body and soul
together, we may know absolutely, without further investigation, that
there is something fundamentally wrong in our social organization.

This is not the time or place to point out these wrongs specifically, or
to advance, even in the most general terms, what, after much thought, I
believe to be the remedies. I merely urge the thoughtful study of social
problems without bias or prejudice. This state of openmindedness is not
easy to achieve. We think that we think our own thoughts; but as Tarde,
the French psychologist, says: "What the individual hypnotizer is to his
sleeping and abnormally plastic subject, such, almost precisely, is
society to the waking and normally plastic man."[7]

On the solution of social problems, Ibsen says: "There is only one thing
that avails--to revolutionize people's minds." This was a difficult task
about so plain a matter as the Copernican system, which was opposed by
the combined learning and piety of Europe. How much more difficult must
it be when the change affects the every-day life of every individual? As
Nitti says: "Had the propositions of Euclid affected economic interests
they would still appear doubtful hypotheses of arduous solution."

[7] "As, then, in philosophy the first step is to begin by doubting
everything, so, in social philosophy, the first step is to throw aside
all supposed absolute rights."--JEVONS.