But let us remember that we are not removed from barbarism by the
length of a universe. The crust of orderly civilization is deep under our
feet: but not six hundred years deep. The primitive fires still smoke on
our Mexican borders and in the Balkans. And blow holes open from time to
time through our own seemingly solid crust--in Colorado, in West Virginia,
in the Copper Country. It is evidently premature to affirm that the
security of property has fulfilled its mission.
IX
The question at issue, is not, however, the rights of property against the
rights of man--or more honestly--the rights of labor. The claims of labor
upon the social income may advance at the expense of the claims of
property. In the institutional struggle between the propertied and the
propertyless, the sympathies of the writer are with the latter party. It
is his hope and belief that an ever increasing share of the social income
will assume the form of rewards for personal effort.
But this is an altogether different matter from the crushing of one
private property interest after another, in the name of the social welfare
or the social morality. Such detailed attacks upon property interests are,
in the end, to the injury of both social classes.
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