uality in official
power. Even the pleasing phrase, "Equality of opportunity," will not bear
analysis as applied to human nature and human welfare, under the very
highest ideals of social unity. Indeed, the lesson of facts in all
activity is that inter-dependence of _unlike_ and _unequal_ forces makes
the true unity of organization, and the surest welfare of multitudes. That
each individual should have the best opportunity possible for his own
development is best for each and for all in a community; but that such
opportunities shall be equal in any other sense no wisdom can contrive.
Most socialistic theories presuppose almost immediate change of human
nature under the new form of administration. But for this supposition
there is little ground in the history of the race or of all nature. Growth
there will be, and evolution of ideals; but the administration grows out
of these, instead of being their cause.

_Socialistic tendencies._--Socialistic theories gain adherence under the
provocation of certain tendencies in society. First, they appear whenever
by oppression or fraud of any kind a community is made up of one class
possessing wealth directly opposed to another class without wealth, with
no extended middle class, and therefore with no ready means of transition
from one class to another. As long as the doors are open for real progress
in power of accomplishment, all the way from poverty to wealth, society
has a unity in its variety that is better than any communism promises. At
present in our own country, with the great multitude of farmers' families
furnishing not only the necessities of life, but the larger part of human
energy that goes into every calling and every rank, socialism does not
appeal to any large number. An earnest, thriving farmer's family will
never believe advantage to come either to themselves or to the race by
making them all practically mere wage-earners.

Second, a common cause of socialistic views is separation, under extreme
division of labor and opposing organizations sustained by it, of the
workers in very distinct fields of labor. The jealousies arising between
these classes, or guilds, or between employers and employed, foster the
revolutionary spirit which jumps at any promise of relief from
unsatisfactory conditions.

In the third place, a political revolution, if it has destroyed landmarks
of the past and any natural sentiments growing out of social relations,
leaves a mass of people