_ON A NEW PHILOSOPHY: THAT POVERTY IS THE BEST POLICY._


It is commonly asserted that there are in the United States no classes,
and any allusion to classes is resented. On the other hand, we
constantly read and hear discussions of social topics in which the
existence of social classes is assumed as a simple fact. "The poor,"
"the weak," "the laborers," are expressions which are used as if they
had exact and well-understood definition. Discussions are made to bear
upon the assumed rights, wrongs, and misfortunes of certain social
classes; and all public speaking and writing consists, in a large
measure, of the discussion of general plans for meeting the wishes of
classes of people who have not been able to satisfy their own desires.
These classes are sometimes discontented, and sometimes not. Sometimes
they do not know that anything is amiss with them until the "friends of
humanity" come to them with offers of aid. Sometimes they are
discontented and envious. They do not take their achievements as a fair
measure of their rights. They do not blame themselves or their parents
for their lot, as compared with that of other people. Sometimes they
claim that they have a right to everything of which they feel the need
for their happiness on earth. To make such a claim against God and
Nature would, of course, be only to say that we claim a right to live
on earth if we can. But God and Nature have ordained the chances and
conditions of life on earth once for all. The case cannot be reopened.
We cannot get a revision of the laws of human life. We are absolutely
shut up to the need and duty, if we would learn how to live happily, of
investigating the laws of Nature, and deducing the rules of right
living in the world as it is. These are very wearisome and commonplace
tasks. They consist in labor and self-denial repeated over and over
again in learning and doing. When the people whose claims we are