o desires to guard himself
against fallacies should always scrutinize the terms "poor" and "weak"
as used, so as to see which or how many of these classes they are made
to cover.

The humanitarians, philanthropists, and reformers, looking at the facts
of life as they present themselves, find enough which is sad and
unpromising in the condition of many members of society. They see
wealth and poverty side by side. They note great inequality of social
position and social chances. They eagerly set about the attempt to
account for what they see, and to devise schemes for remedying what
they do not like. In their eagerness to recommend the less fortunate
classes to pity and consideration they forget all about the rights of
other classes; they gloss over all the faults of the classes in
question, and they exaggerate their misfortunes and their virtues. They
invent new theories of property, distorting rights and perpetuating
injustice, as anyone is sure to do who sets about the readjustment of
social relations with the interests of one group distinctly before his
mind, and the interests of all other groups thrown into the background.
When I have read certain of these discussions I have thought that it
must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own
property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living,
and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The
man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in
these discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to
raise himself above poverty finds that the social doctors flock about
him, bringing the capital which they have collected from the other
class, and promising him the aid of the State to give him what the
other had to work for. In all these schemes and projects the organized
intervention of society through the State is either planned or hoped
for, and the State is thus made to become the protector and guardian of
certain classes. The agents who are to direct the State action are, of
course, the reformers and philanthropists. Their schemes, therefore,
may always be reduced to this type--that A and B decide what C shall
do for D. It will be interesting to inquire, at a later period of our
discussion, who C is, and what the effect is upon him of all these
arrangements. In all the discussions attention is concentrated on A and
B, the noble social reformers, and on D, the "poor man." I call C