and results from physical or economic improvements. That is the reason
why schemes of direct social amelioration always have an arbitrary,
sentimental, and artificial character, while true social advance must
be a product and a growth. The efforts which are being put forth for
every kind of progress in the arts and sciences are, therefore,
contributing to true social progress. Let any one learn what hardship
was involved, even for a wealthy person, a century ago, in crossing the
Atlantic, and then let him compare that hardship even with a steerage
passage at the present time, considering time and money cost. This
improvement in transportation by which "the poor and weak" can be
carried from the crowded centres of population to the new land is worth
more to them than all the schemes of all the social reformers. An
improvement in surgical instruments or in anaesthetics really does more
for those who are not well off than all the declamations of the orators
and pious wishes of the reformers. Civil service reform would be a
greater gain to the laborers than innumerable factory acts and
eight-hour laws. Free trade would be a greater blessing to "the poor
man" than all the devices of all the friends of humanity if they could
be realized. If the economists could satisfactorily solve the problem
of the regulation of paper currency, they would do more for the wages
class than could be accomplished by all the artificial doctrines about
wages which they seem to feel bound to encourage. If we could get firm
and good laws passed for the management of savings-banks, and then
refrain from the amendments by which those laws are gradually broken
down, we should do more for the non-capitalist class than by volumes
of laws against "corporations" and the "excessive power of capital."

We each owe to the other mutual redress of grievances. It has been
said, in answer to my argument in the last chapter about the Forgotten
Women and thread, that the tax on thread is "only a little thing," and
that it cannot hurt the women much, and also that, if the women do not
want to pay two cents a spool tax, there is thread of an inferior
quality, which they can buy cheaper. These answers represent the
bitterest and basest social injustice. Every honest citizen of a free
state owes it to himself, to the community, and especially to those who
are at once weak and wronged, to go to their assistance and to help
redress their wrongs. Whenever a law or social