d I do not think
it desirable that they should. But the recognition that the pursuit of
an honourable business is useful to others may, nevertheless, guide
their energies, make the mere scramble for wealth disreputable, and
induce them to labour for solid and permanent advantages. Such moral
changes are, I conceive, necessary conditions of the equality of which
I have spoken; they must be brought about to some extent if the
industrial organism is to free itself from the injustice necessarily
implied in a mere blind struggle for personal comfort.

Moreover, however distant the final consummation may be, there are, I
think, many indications of an approximation. Nothing is more
characteristic of modern society than the enormous development of the
power of association for particular purposes. In former days a society
had to form an independent organ, a corporation, a college, and so
forth, to discharge any particular function, and the resulting organ
was so distinct as to absorb the whole life of its members. The work of
the fellow was absorbed in the corporate life of his corporation, and
he had no distinct personal interests. Now we are all members of
societies by the dozen, and society is constantly acquiring the art of
forming associations for any purpose, temporary or permanent, which
imply no deep structural division, and unite people of all classes and
positions. As the profounder lines are obliterated, the tendency to
form separate castes, defended by personal privileges, and holding
themselves apart from other classes, rapidly diminishes; and the
corresponding prejudices are in process of diminution. But I can only
hint at this principle.

A correlative moral change in the poor is, of course, equally
essential. America is described by Mr. Lowell in the noblest panegyric
ever made upon his own country, as "She that lifts up the manhood of
the poor". She has taken some rather queer methods of securing that
object lately; yet, however imperfect the result, every American
traveller will, I believe, sympathise with what Mr. Bryce has recently
said in his great book. America is still the land of hope--the land
where the poor man's horizon is not bounded by a vista of inevitable
dependence on charity; where--in spite of some superficially grotesque
results--every man can speak to every other without the oppressive
sense of condescension; where a civil word from a poor man is not
always a covert request for a gratuity an