individual mind and conscience — especially of parents — so that this question might be more wisely solved than it now is. Such would be a legitimate field for discussion, and the social consequences of foresight and early self-denial, such as are now employed by the best parents and young people amongst us, would be incalculable; but no public question can properly be raised as to how some shall make it easier for others to get a living, when the first are already fully burdened with the task of getting a living for themselves. Here, as at every other point in any unbiased attempt to deal with this subject, it is found that the real question is whether we shall maintain or abandon liberty with responsibility.
It is sometimes said to be a shocking doctrine that the employee enters into a contract to dispose of his energies, because this would put him on the same plane with commodities. This objection has been current amongst the German professorial socialists for years, and it has recently been made much of here by those who catch eagerly at the sentimental aspects of this subject. Every man who earns his living uses up his vital energy. He may till his own land and live on his own product, or he may raise a product and contract it away in exchange for what he wants, or he may contract away his time, or his productive energies, or "himself," for the commodities that he needs for his maintenance. In the first case, there is no social relation at all. In the last two cases, no distinction can be made affecting the dignity or the interests of the man which is anything more than a dialectical refinement. The lawyer, doctor, clergyman, teacher, and editor each makes a commodity of himself just as much as the handicraftsman does; each renders services that wear him out; each takes pay for his ser-
