GOVERNMENTAL AID TO INJUSTICE. 191 



comes possibly the most serious complication of all. But literally 

 these complications are endless, and do not admit of further elab- 

 oration in this paper. They suggest the conclusion that the Chi- 

 nese question, whether exclusion excludes or not, is so far from 

 being finally disposed of, that it is now assuming its gravest 

 and most important aspect. While we may well wish that the 

 Chinaman might have been permitted to remain at home to enjoy 

 his opium cum dignitate, yet regrets on this point are worse than 

 useless, and the question now is, that, having him, like the poor, 

 always with us, what shall we do with him ? 



--- 



GOVERNMENTAL AID TO INJUSTICE. 



By GEORGE M. WALLACE. 



PLACED in a world in common, with every degree of financial 

 ability, positive and negative, we are all spurred on by com- 

 mon necessity, by common desire to escape hunger, cold, disease, 

 and death. To this end we enter the business arena and struggle 

 for bread, each offering for sale something he has himself pro- 

 duced in return for like offerings from others. In this arena we 

 find the successful business man offering for sale a hundred tons 

 of steel rails; beside him is a slender girl offering for sale the 

 labor of her hands for ten hours. The commodity offered by each, 

 by each has been produced : the business man's from a hundred 

 tons of coal burned beneath a dozen boilers, perhaps ; the young 

 girl's, worked up in a physiological laboratory, comes from a 

 night's rest, a morning and midday repast. 



So long as each has produced his and her own offering, and is 

 allowed to enjoy to the full the fruits of his and her own effort, 

 no one shall say him nay if the business man offsets the muscular 

 energy of the young girl by a thousand or by ten thousand fold. 

 Neither economics nor morals shall stint or limit the business 

 man's returns so long as legitimate business methods alone are 

 adhered to, so long simply as business men are content to take 

 what they have produced, and leave to others their own produc- 

 tions. In a purely democratic country each should enjoy all the 

 freedom which is consistent with a like amount of freedom in 



1 



others, and each should be given full right to the enjoyment of 

 the fruits of his own effort. The maintenance of this status is the 

 best function and only justification of government. Just as 

 church and state, or science and religion, are best separated, so 

 politics and business should be divorced. The latter, depending 

 on the natural resources of a country, should not be made to flue- 



