ithout hating them; and if wages can be
fixed now by some appeal to the principle of justice, they can live
with them in that way again. This means a better method of adjudicating
claims than by a crude test of strength. There is no time to discuss a
scheme by which this can be done. I must claim that it can be done, and
take the responsibility of proving it when more time is available.
There are beginnings of a good method in New Zealand, in Australia, and
in Canada, and the point I am making now is that if we get a plan which
works well in the United States, we shall save a deplorable waste and
do more to revive the spirit of fraternity than we can by any measure
ever attempted. Struggles of classes there may be, as there are between
buyers and sellers everywhere; but this need not make the parties
enemies. Its effects do not need to extend to the heart and character
and to put distrust and hatred in the place of confidence and good
will. The moral effects of this reform will be the best ones, but the
economic effects also will be vast and beneficent.

I am not predicting a complete millennium merely as the result of the
reforms I have described. That would require also the moral perfection
of the human race. Not a little moral improvement is to be expected as
the effect of these measures, but it is too much to claim that they
will repress all vice and crime, reclaim all criminals, and give to
the race generally a keen devotion to duty. A belief in a State where
even this will be realized is deeply implanted in human nature, and
Socialism itself might easily get a major premise from it. The
syllogism would run thus: (1) A better State is bound to come. (2) It
cannot come under the system of private capital. (3) Therefore that
system must be abolished. So would we all say if the minor premise were
true--"The good State is impossible under private capital." We claim
that it is possible and that we can see how to realize it. We can trace
the forces which, without revolution, will make work lighter, pay
better. We also can make a syllogism, and it reads thus: (1) The
present State is tolerable. (2) Every reform will make it better, and
there are many to be made. (3) The coming State will be whatever we
have wit and energy enough to make it.

Our plea for the justice of the coming system will not convince any man
who starts with the assertion that capital ought to have _no_ return
whatever, and that interest is robbery, a