Strifes, and no right to be heard on their own behalf. They imply that economic forces are automatic, natural and not human and ethical. The influences which fix the rate of wages are treated as if they belonged to the same category as the law of gravitation. Human intelligence, will and aspiration are excluded from consideration by such logic. Economics is put on the same level as biology, or even chemistry.
The corrective of this attitude of some practical men is not abuse but facts, just such facts as the studies of social history supply in abundance. It is the duty and function of the theorist to confront this automatic and fatalistic class theory of business with the history of factory legislation. There are few facts so pathetic as the opposition of John Bright, the pious manufacturer, to the movement by which ethical sentiment redeemed the laboring population of England from utter degradation.
It is the duty of the ethical theorist to show that the self-interest of the manufacturer and landlord do not secure the public welfare in any city of this country, and that it is precisely this self-interest, narrowly conceived, which prevents rational legislation against child-labor and sweat shops in Illinois. To show these phenomena, their causes and wide results is precisely the duty of the social scholar. "Philanthropy has nothing to do with it . . . any more than with astronomy or with the law of gravitation." "The purposes of business, the sense of responsibility to others, the danger of personal loss and possible failure, and the hope of reward are the surest guarantees for the conduct of affairs in the mutual interests of employe and employed." Compare with these assertions the evidence presented before the Poor Law Commissioners of England in 1834 and succeeding years; the black list of adulterations of food so familiar as to hardly excite comment; the pictures of degradation of laborers, the crippling of children, the demoralization of women due to unregulated "free" competition, which are adduced by Professor Walker in his work on "Wages," and by Professor H. C. Adams in his essay on "Relation of the State to Industrial Action." Con the "Hull House" Maps for Chicago facts; and then say
