ll be said. Because men have been permitted,
through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out
poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of
wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive
activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away
valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children,
forever to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds, to
the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country was
parcelled out, in a lawless age, among the unworthy retainers of a
predatory prince, must we forever pay rent on every loaf we eat--as we
should do, in fact, even if we transformed great landed estates into
privately held funds? Did we not abolish human slavery, without
compensation, and is there any one to question the justice of the act?

We did indeed extinguish slavery without compensation to the slave owners.
But if no one had ever conceived of such a policy we should have been a
richer nation and a happier one. We paid for the slaves, in blood and
treasure, many times the sum that would have made every slave owner eager
to part with his slaves. Such enrichment of the slave owner would have
been an act of social injustice, it may be said. The saying would be open
to grave doubt, but the doctrine here advanced runs, not in terms of
justice, but in terms of social expediency.

And expediency is commonly regarded as a cheap substitute for justice. It
is wrongly so regarded. Social justice, as usually conceived, looks to the
past for its validity. Its preoccupation is the correction of ancient
wrongs. Social expediency looks to the future: its chief concern is the
prevention of future wrongs. As a guide to political action, the
superiority of the claims of social expediency is indisputable.

VII

In the foregoing argument it has been deliberately assumed that the
interests to be extinguished are, for the most part, universally
recognized as anti-social. Slavery, health-destroying adulteration, the
maintenance of tenements that menace life and morals, these at least
represent interests so abominable that all must agree upon the wisdom of
extinguishing them. The only point in dispute must be one of method. It is
the contention of the present writer that when even such interests have
had time to become clothed with an appearance of regularity, the method of
extinction should be thr