did not come
when moral fervor had risen to the exploding point; the moral fervor came
rather when the economic interests of the South collided with those of
the North. That the abolitionists clarified the economic interests of the
North and gave them an ideal sanction is true enough. But the fact
remains that by 1860 some of the aspirations of Phillips and Garrison had
become the economic destiny of this country.

You can have a Hull House established by private initiative and
maintained by individual genius, just as you had planters who freed their
slaves or as you have employers to-day who humanize their factories. But
the fine example is not readily imitated when industrial forces fight
against it. So even if the Commission had drawn splendid plans for
housing, work conditions, education, and play it would have done only
part of the task of statesmanship. We should then know what to do, but
not how to get it done.

An ideal suspended in a vacuum is ineffective: it must point a dynamic
current. Only then does it gather power, only then does it enter into
life. That forces exist to-day which carry with them solutions is evident
to anyone who has watched the labor movement and the woman's awakening.
Even the interests of business give power to the cause. The discovery of
manufacturers that degradation spoils industrial efficiency must not be
cast aside by the radical because the motive is larger profits. The
discovery, whatever the motive, will inevitably humanize industry a good
deal. For it happens that in this case the interests of capitalism and of
humanity coincide. A propaganda like the single-tax will undoubtedly find
increasing support among business men. They see in it a relief from the
burden of rent imposed by that older tyrant--the landlord. But the
taxation of unimproved property happens at the same time to be a splendid
weapon against the slum.

Only when the abolition of "white slavery" becomes part of the social
currents of the time will it bear any interesting analogy to the
so-called freeing of the slaves. Even then for many enthusiasts the
comparison is misleading. They are likely to regard the Emancipation
Proclamation as the end of chattel slavery. It wasn't. That historic
document broke a legal bond but not a social one. The process of negro
emancipation is infinitely slower and it is not accomplished yet.
Likewise no statute can end "white slavery." Only vast and complicated
changes in the who