WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER

INTRODUCTION


We are told every day that great social problems stand before us and
demand a solution, and we are assailed by oracles, threats, and
warnings in reference to those problems. There is a school of writers
who are playing quite a _rôle_ as the heralds of the coming duty and
the coming woe. They assume to speak for a large, but vague and
undefined, constituency, who set the task, exact a fulfillment, and
threaten punishment for default. The task or problem is not
specifically defined. Part of the task which devolves on those who are
subject to the duty is to define the problem. They are told only that
something is the matter: that it behooves them to find out what it is,
and how to correct it, and then to work out the cure. All this is more
or less truculently set forth.

After reading and listening to a great deal of this sort of assertion I
find that the question forms itself with more and more distinctness in
my mind: Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other
people and to demand a solution of them? How did they acquire the right
to demand that others should solve their world-problems for them? Who
are they who are held to consider and solve all questions, and how did
they fall under this duty?

So far as I can find out what the classes are who are respectively