cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a
reasonable chance. This is, of course, denied. It is denied so volubly
and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of
unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human
and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. All this goes
to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each
other. It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves. We
do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of
each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to
question their own ideas. None have more persistently and dogmatically
insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom
they come in closest contact. It is the husbands, brothers, and sons of
women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women
seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound
to respect. So, too, it is those people who live in closest contact with
black folk who have most unhesitatingly asserted the utter impossibility
of living beside Negroes who are not industrial or political slaves or
social pariahs. All this proves that none are so blind as those nearest
the thing seen, while, on the other hand, the history of the world is
the history of the discovery of the common humanity of human beings
among steadily-increasing circles of men.

If the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we
going to make democracy effective where it now fails to
function--particularly in industry? The Marxists assert that industrial
democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and
materials. Their opponents object that nationalization of machines and
materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand
the industrial process. They do not know:

What to do
How to do it
Who could do it best
or
How to apportion the resulting goods.

There can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials is a
chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker
and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to
thrift and intelligence. So far as it is due to chance and cheating, the
argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though
it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance.
This is being wi