mental development has not progressed beyond an appreciation of Bernard
Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and H.G. Wells. Most of them are estimable people,
but the difficulty is that they are so idealistic that, so to speak,
they never have both feet upon the ground at the same time. This is
especially true of our esteemed contemporaries, the Socialists. These
cheerful servants of an idealistic mammon pride themselves upon
completely ignoring human nature. A few years ago, at a London meeting
of the "parlor Socialists" known as the Fabian Society which, by the
way, was presided over by Bernard Shaw, an old man began to harangue the
audience with the words, "Human nature being as it is--" At once his
voice was drowned out by a chorus of jeers, cat-calls and laughter. He
never made his address, for the audience was unwilling to hear anything
about "human nature." No Socialists in general are willing to do so, for
human nature, with the mental and spiritual sides of life, is just the
element with which their fallacious creed cannot deal, and they know it.
But the human element must enter into business and trade in the problems
of direction, management, even in the form of competition itself, and
cannot possibly be eradicated.

It is amusing to note that these same Socialists are busily occupied
with pointing out what they consider to be the failures of government,
as well as of "business and capitalism." Yet they do not realize that
they are thus condemning their own system, for if the governments of the
world have failed to do the work at present laid upon them, how can they
ever undertake the gigantic additional political and capitalistic
burden that Socialism would impose? Thomas Jefferson, the patron saint
of the party that President Wilson now leads, always expressed a fear of
"too much government." It would appear that the present Administration
and the Democratic members of Congress have wandered far from their old
beliefs, and if recent legislation is the result of it, their