I have attacked Socialism, not Socialists.  Multitudes of Socialists are most charming men and women, and the aspirations of pure Socialism are the noblest of which the human mind can conceive.  How impossible they are of realization I think they are, I have endeavored to show.  But there are individualists whose ideals are equally noble.  Any conception that Socialists as a class are upon a higher ethical plane than individualists may be dismissed.  Personally, I fear that at present the average ethical plane of Socialists is below that of opponents for the allurements of Socialistic theory have attracted to that cult a great number of the economically impotent, but nevertheless greedy, who know nothing and care less about Socialistic theory but lust for that which they have never earned.  It is they who promote class hatred as well as class consciousness.  They are an effective offset, morally, to the greedy and consciousless employers who nevertheless perform a useful economic function which the greedy among the Socialists do not.

But, my controversy at this time is not with them, but with the Socialistic idealists moved by the loftiest conception of the welfare of mankind and the most earnest desire to promote it.  And now let us introduce somewhat of humanitarianism, which, while it has no place in economic theory, is that which most ennobles and beautifies human character.  And here let me register my last attack upon Socialistic controversy, which is, that fundamentally it tends to degrade human character by adopting for, and applying to the manual workers of the world a contemptuous epithet.  When Marx, if it was he, I am not sure, shouted:  “Proletariat of all nations, unite” he said a very wicked thing.  It is not my conception of the manual worker that he is a mere “child getter,” but rather that he is as such, morally and socially the equal of any of us, from whose ranks there are continually emerging the leaders of thought, of discovery, of direction and of accumulation to whose abilities and activities all human progress is due, and I cannot hear without indignation suggestions from his own would-be leaders which impair his self-respect.  I wish, for a concrete example, that the workingman should pay his poll tax and contribute to his occupational insurance with the rest of us, not to relieve Capital of a burden, but that the character of the working man himself may be strengthened by a conscious contribution to the upkeep of Society.

Our emotions are stronger than our reasoning powers, and as a matter of fact, collective human action is and during any period which we need consider will be controlled by humanitarian instincts and not by the rigidity of economic theory.  Individually, we do and always shall, seek each his own particular interest.  Collectively, we invariably consider the welfare of all.  This has been particularly impressed on me during the last few years, during which I have presided over the deliberations of a