230 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE y 



and 1 might plead that I am robbed to smooth the 

 way and lighten the darkness of other people. 

 But I am afraid the parochial authorities would 

 not let me off on this plea ; and I must confess I 

 do not see why they should. 



I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I 

 have every reason to believe that I came into this 

 world a small reddish person, certainly without a 

 gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no dis 

 cernible abstract or concrete " rights " or property 

 of any description. If a foot was not set upon me, 

 at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the 

 natural affection of those about me, which I cer 

 tainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of 

 the law which, ages before my birth, was painfully 

 built up by the society into which I intruded, that 

 prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, 

 cared for, taught, saved from the vagabondage of 

 a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did 

 anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I 

 possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I 

 may have fairly earned my day's wages for my 

 day's work, and may justly call them my property 

 yet, without that organization of society, created 

 out of the toil and blood of long generations before 

 my time, I should probably have had nothing but 

 a flint axe and an indifferent hut to call my own ; 

 and even those would be mine only so long as no 

 stronger savage came my way. 



So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, 



