Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/237

Slavery Question in Oregon. 213 To the countryman who asked Thoreau why he did not fall in with the procession following the band of music, he replied, that is not the music I hear." And there are others who hear the higher class music, though the majority hear the music of the street and join the noisy, thoughtless procession. It should be remembered, while viewing this question, that in the private walks of life the energies of men are devoted to the production of wealth, which is distributed among the factors producing it, and while the distribution may not be according to the rule of absolute justice, owing to our de- fective social state, still there is the maxim that every one is entitled to what he produces, and, in practice, an approxima- tion to rewarding every one according to his works. So, there may be prizes but no blanks. For inequalities in wages, there ,<^hould be no complaint, when opportunities are equal, for such is the order of nature; that those who sow should reap, and those who would not plow in spring by reason of the cold should beg in harvest and have nothing. ' ' In this primal law of nature which entitles man to the fruits of his industry, and the other, no less primal, which impels him to satisfy his wants with the least exertion, we have the duplex key to progress and prosperity in every de- partment of human endeavor and in society as a whole. It is also in the line of least resistance as respects conformity to ethical principles. There may be competition for preference in the market to be obtained only by superiority in the qual- ity of goods, industrial products, but such is unavoidable, indeed, desirable, for it is the working out in practice of the laws heretofore expressed, the negation of which would de- stroy the incentive to individual exertion and therefore of im- provement. Does not any defensible idea of justice consist in equal freedom and equal access to the bounties of nature, and of course a free market in which chicanery has no permanent standing ? And such relations are automatic in their nature. The fittest survive ; the fraudulent is expelled ; and hence the con- stant converging tendency to square dealing and open, abovc- 4