432 THE QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 



the reconstruction of society, but by its development on natural 

 lines. Towards this end it would not be impossible to con- 

 struct an affirmative program, doubtless involving changes 

 almost fundamental in our conceptions of some property rights, 

 and therefore involving changes in fundamental law, but still 

 based upon sound economic and ethical principles, and with 

 due recognition of the infirmities of human nature. It would 

 deal, among other things, with the subjects of inheritance, 

 conservation of unearned increment, acquirement of public 

 utilities, discouragement of the use of long credit, and similar 

 methods of restricting the power of concentrated capital. Some 

 thinker will evolve such a plan, and some leader of men will 

 take it up. 



In the meantime, and under present conditions, since the 

 nature and, in a great measure, the standard of the farmer's 

 life is irrevocably fixed by his natural environment, he 

 denounces as unjust and impossible any reconstruction of 

 society in which the standard of life which he is compelled 

 by unchangeable conditions to adopt, shall not be made the 

 basic standard whereto the lives of all other classes shall be 

 adjusted. He objects emphatically to any, even tenative, pro- 

 posals which shall compel him to exchange, against his will, 

 more than one day of his labor for one day's work of him 

 who makes his shoes or builds his house. He denies that such 

 reconstruction is just or necessary, or that the evils of crowded 

 society can be cured in that way. He recognizes those evils as 

 well as those with which he is himself afflicted, and is ready 

 to join in all rational — even if radical — measures for allevi- 

 ating them; he declares that such measures are humanly 

 possible, and can be formulated along the lines which the 

 evolution of civilization has always followed, and that he will 

 not join in or consent to a program in which the first step is an 

 act of injustice to himself. Personally, I suppose that things 

 will go on as they are now until gradually the organization of 

 one class forces counter-organization in self-defense, and that, 

 last of all, when survival without organization has become 

 impossible, the farmers themselves will unite, formulate their 

 demands, present them for the consideration of other classes, 



