proud of, to whom you
looked up as to a modern Moses, sent federal troops into Illinois,
over the protest of the Governor of that Commonwealth, in defiance of
the laws of the land, in violation of the sacred Constitution he had
sworn to protect and obey. Your faith in the Democratic Party was
shattered. Henceforth you could not trust either the Republican Party
or the Democratic Party.

I don't want to discuss the strike further. That is all ancient
history to you now. I have already gone a good deal farther afield
than I wanted to do, or than I intended to do when I began this
letter. I want to go back--back to our discussion of the great gulf
that divides you and your former chum, Richard.

I want you to ask yourself, with perfect candor and good faith,
whether you believe that Richard has been so much better than you,
either as workman, citizen, husband or father, that his present
position can be regarded as a just reward for his virtue and ability?
I'll put it another way for you, Jonathan: in your own heart do you
believe that you are so much inferior to him as a worker or as a
citizen, so much inferior in mentality and in character that you
deserve the hard fate which has come to you, the ill-fortune compared
to his good fortune? Are you and your family being punished for your
sins, while he and his family are being rewarded for his virtues? In
other words, Jonathan, to put the matter very plainly, do you believe
that God has ordained your respective states in accordance with your
just deserts?

You know that is not the case, Jonathan. You know very well that both
Richard and yourself share the frailties and weaknesses of our kind.
Infinite mischief has been done by those who have given the struggle
between the capitalists and the workers the aspect of a conflict
between "goodness" on the one side and "wickedness" upon the other.
Many things which the capitalists do appear very wicked to the
workers, and many things which the workers do, and think perfectly
proper and right, the capitalists honestly regard as improper and
wrong.

I do not deny that there are some capitalists whose conduct deserves
our contempt and condemnation, just as there are some workingmen of
whom the same is true. Still less would I deny that there is a very
real ethical measure of life; that some conduct is anti-social while
other conduct is social. I simply want you to catch my point that we
are creatures of our environment, Jonathan