THE CONDUCT OF INDUSTRIES 313 



The moral right of the citizen and his duty are comple- 

 mentary. He should be assured of the one absolutely, and 

 the other should be uncompromisingly exacted of him. ^ His 

 moral rights include perfect liberty of conscience and of judg- 

 ment and entire liberty of action within the law. He should 

 be guaranteed the right to form his own creed respecting social 

 matters, as in matters of theology and of scientific deduction. 

 He should be permitted to work by himself or with others of 

 like views; he should be given freedom to act for himself as 

 an individual or to join with others in co-operation in any 

 good works. He should be compelled to permit every other 

 citizen the enjoyment of the same rights. 



He has the moral right to protection of life and liberty 

 and to achievement and possession of his own. He has the 

 right to train his children in what seem to him the wisest 

 courses, and to educate them as far and as well as his circum- 

 stances permit, to obtain for them opportunity to make them- 

 selves in maximum degree useful to themselves, the family, 

 and the world. He has a moral right to seek his own success 

 in any legitimate path and in any form which may seem to 

 him desirable — provided he does not infringe the individual 

 or the collective rights of his neighbors. In any case of 

 antagonizing interests he has a right, moral, and presumably 

 legal, to demand that the rights and wrongs of the case be 

 precisely defined, and that he be given his individual rights 

 irrespective of the character, the position, the social or finan- 

 cial standing of the other man. But these rights must be 

 defined by properly constituted authority and not by the 

 interested participant in any dispute. 



The legal rights of the citizen are simply the formulated 

 expression of his moral rights and of his relations to the body 

 politic. The legal code is the summary of the conclusions 

 which a study of good morals and of industrial ethics in the 

 light of good sense and of good morals and good manners com- 

 pels. Laws contradictory to these principles are bad laws 

 and should be exorcised from the statute books. The primary 

 legal principle affecting the individual apart from the pro- 

 visions of the criminal law is that which gives every man the 

 right to make his own agreements and to conclude his own 



