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UNSOCIAL INVESTMENTS


The "new social conscience" is essentially a class phenomenon. While it
pretends to the rôle of inner monitor and guide to conduct for all
mankind, it interprets good and evil in class terms. It manifests a
special solicitude for the welfare of one social group, and a mute
hostility toward another. Labor is its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let strife
arise between workingmen and their employers, and you will see the new
social conscience aligning itself with the former, accepting at face value
all the claims of labor, reiterating all labor's formulæ. The suggestion
that judgment should be suspended until the facts at issue are established
is repudiated as the prompting of a secret sin. For, to paraphrase a
recent utterance of the _Survey_, one of the foremost organs of the new
conscience, is it not true that the workers are fighting for their
livings, while the employers are fighting only for their profits? It would
appear, then, that there can be no question as to the side to which
justice inclines. A living is more sacred than a profit.

It is virtually never true, however, that the workers are fighting for
their "living." Contrary to Marx's exploded "iron law" they probably had
that and more before the trouble began. But of course we would not wish to