nterested in fine-spun theories, but a
practical man, graduated from the great school of hard experience. For
you, if I am not mistaken, Garfield's aphorism, that "An ounce of
fact is worth many tons of theory," is true.

So I want to ask you finally concerning this question of personal
liberty whether you think you would be less free than you are to-day
if your Pittsburg foundries and mills, instead of belonging to
corporations organized for the purpose of making profit, belonged to
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and if they were operated for the
common good instead of as now to serve the interests of a few. Would
you be less free if, instead of a corporation trying to make the
workers toil as many hours as possible for as little pay as possible,
naturally and consistently avoiding as far as possible the expenditure
of time and money upon safety appliances and other means of protecting
the health and lives of the workers, the mills were operated upon the
principle of guarding the health and lives of the workers as much as
possible, reducing the hours of labor to a minimum and paying them for
their work as much as possible? Is it a sensible fear, my friend, that
the people of any country will be less free as they acquire more power
over their own lives? You see, Jonathan, I want you to take a
practical view of the matter.

(6) The cry that Socialism would reduce all men and women to one dull
level is another bogey which frightens a great many good and wise
people. It has been answered thousands of times by Socialist writers
and you will find it discussed in most of the popular books and
pamphlets published in the interest of the Socialist propaganda. I
shall therefore dismiss it very briefly.

Like many other objections, this rests upon an entire misapprehension
of what Socialism really means. The people who make it have got firmly
into their minds the idea that Socialism aims to make all men equal;
to devise some plan for removing the inequalities with which they are
endowed by nature. They fear that, in order to realize this ideal of
equality, the strong will be held down to the level of the weak, the
daring to the level of the timid, the wisest to the level of the least
wise. That is their conception of the equality of which Socialists
talk. And I am free to say, Jonathan, that I do not wonder that
sensible men should oppose such equality as that.

Even if it were possible, through the adoption of some system