n whom it bestows excessive
pecuniary independence, there are many more who are by that very
circumstance denied any sort of liberation. Even pecuniary independence
is usually purchased at the price of moral and intellectual bondage.
Such genuine individuality as can be detected in the existing social
system is achieved not because of the prevailing money-making motive,
but in spite thereof.

The ordinary answer to such criticisms is that while the existing
system may have many faults, it certainly has proved an efficient means
of releasing individual energy; whereas the exercise of a positive
national responsibility for the wholesome distribution of wealth would
tend to deprive the individual of any sufficient initiative. The claim
is that the money-making motive is the only one which will really arouse
the great majority of men, and to weaken it would be to rob the whole
economic system of its momentum. Just what validity this claim may have
cannot, with our present experience, be definitely settled. That to
deprive individuals suddenly of the opportunities they have so long
enjoyed would be disastrous may be fully admitted. It may also be
admitted that any immediate and drastic attempt to substitute for the
present system a national regulation of the distribution of wealth or a
national responsibility for the management even of monopolies or
semi-monopolies would break down and would do little to promote either
individual or social welfare. But to conclude from any such admissions
that a systematic policy of promoting individual and national
amelioration should be abandoned in wholly unnecessary. That the
existing system has certain practical advantages, and is a fair
expression of the average moral standards of to-day is not only its
chief merit, but also its chief and inexcusable defect. What a
democratic nation must do is not to accept human nature as it is, but to
move in the direction of its improvement. The question it must answer
is: How can it contribute to the increase of American individuality? The
defender of the existing system must be able to show either (1) that it
does contribute to the increase of American individuality; or that (2)
whatever its limitations, the substitution of some better system is
impossible.

Of course, a great many defenders of the existing system will
unequivocally declare that it does contribute effectually to the
increase of individuality, and it is this defense which is most