i68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



NEVER THOUGHT OF." " Almost all legislative effort to prevent vice 

 is really protective of vice, because all such legislation saves the 

 vicious man from the penalty of his vice. Nature's remedies against 

 vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard 

 in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and 

 tendency of things. Nature has set up on him the process of decline 

 and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived 

 their usefulness. Gambling and other less mentionable vices carry 

 their own penalties with them. 



" Now, we can never annihilate a penalty. We can only divert it 

 from the head of the man who has incurred it to the heads of others, 

 who have not incurred it. A vast amount of ' social reform ' consists 

 in just this operation. The consequence is, that those who have gone 

 astray, being relieved from Nature's fierce discipline, go on to worse, 

 and that there is a constantly heavier burden for the others to bear. 

 Who are the others ? When we see a drunkard in the gutter we pity 

 him. If a policeman picks him up, we say that society has interfered 

 to save him from perishing. ' Society ' is a fine word, and it saves 

 us the trouble of thinking. The industrious and sober workman, who 

 is mulcted of a percentage of his day's wages to pay the policeman, 

 is the one who bears the penalty. But he is the Forgotten Man. He 

 passes by, and is never noticed, because he has behaved himself, ful- 

 filled his contracts, and asked for nothing. 



" The fallacy of all prohibitory, sumptuary, and moral legislation is 

 the same. A and B determine to be teetotalers, which is often a wise 

 determination, and sometimes a necessary one. If A and B are moved 

 by considerations which seem to them good, that is enough. But A 

 and B put their heads together to get a law passed which shall force 

 C to be a teetotaler for the sake of D, who is in danger of drinking 

 too much. There is no pressure on A and B. They are having their 

 own way, and they like it. There is rarely any pressure on D. He 

 does not like it and evades it. The pressure all comes on C The 

 question then arises. Who is C ? He is the man who wants alcoholic 

 liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty 

 without abusing it, who would occasion no public question, and trouble 

 nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man again, and, as soon as he is 

 drawn from his obscurity, we see that he is just what each one of us 

 ought to be. 



" The doctrine which we are discussing turns out to be in practice 

 only a scheme for making injustice prevail in human society by re- 

 versing the distribution of rewards and punishments between those 

 who have done their duty and those who have not. 



" It is plain that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are 

 the real productive strength of the country. The Forgotten Man 

 works and votes — generally he prays — but his chief business in life is 

 to pay. His name never gets into the newspapers, except when he 



