In the course of a conversation during the past winter one of the members of the present city government of New York remarked that although he was not a Socialist, yet he failed to see how the election of Morris Hillquit on his un-American platform to be Mayor of New York would have had any result except as regards the national safety and the immediate influence upon our international relations.  He added that the life of the city would have gone on just the same for a time at least; hence why the great fear of Socialism?  What this man failed to see was that in fact the life of the city would go on for a time without change only on account of the impetus the former democratic government had given.  That the policy of individual responsibility and judgment, which had always been the professed aim of American government in the past, had produced leadership and popular experience by the process of natural selection, and that this leadership would last only until the time that the deadening influence of Socialism had its true effect.

Let us consider for a moment the result of Socialism as a permanent policy.  It means the substitution, as already shown, of government or official judgment and initiative for that of the individual.  The whole process would be one to deaden and atrophy the powers of the people in general, with the result that there would follow a leveling down to a plane of mediocrity rather than a leveling up according to individual capacities and ambitions, exercised through equality of opportunity.

It should not be forgotten that the varying degrees of success in the different walks of life finally have caused so-called social differences.  These differences result from the attempt on the part of mankind to meet “the inequality of men in their capacity for the work with which they are confronted in this life,” said the New York Journal of Commerce, with great acuteness, in a recent editorial discussion of the phase of the question.[6] It continued by saying,—­

“What we must strive for is intelligent understanding and sound reasoning on the question of rights, and a just application of principles for the common benefit.  Everything should be done to develop and train intelligence and increase the capacity of the people for their various tasks and duties, and they should be stimulated by the rewards to which they are fairly entitled in the results; but that cannot be made to mean that they are all equal in contributing to results and entitled to equality in the returns.  Nothing could be more inconsistent with a sound democracy than the distribution of the material results of productive activity applied to the resources of nature, regardless of the merits or just claims of those engaged in the work.  To apply that so-called principle of equality of rights without regard to the part taken in producing results, would deaden the energies applied in achieving them, and greatly reduce the product.  It would prevent material prosperity and defeat national progress.”