made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a
sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the
matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the
ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely
overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man. For once let us look him up and
consider his case, for the characteristic of all social doctors is,
that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case
appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies
addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all
the parts of society hold together, and that forces which are set in
action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an
equilibrium is produced by a readjustment of all interests and rights.
They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all
the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the
effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view.
They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government,
and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave
out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social
discussion--that the State cannot get a cent for any man without taking
it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced
and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.

The friends of humanity start out with certain benevolent feelings
toward "the poor," "the weak," "the laborers," and others of whom they
make pets. They generalize these classes, and render them impersonal,
and so constitute the classes into social pets. They turn to other
classes and appeal to sympathy and generosity, and to all the other
noble sentiments of the human heart. Action in the line proposed
consists in a transfer of capital from the better off to the worse off.
Capital, however, as we have seen, is the force by which civilization