unless the government conducted the economic system upon which employment
and maintenance depend? Finally, what is implied in the equal right of
all to the pursuit of happiness? What form of happiness, so far as it
depends at all on material facts, is not bound up with economic
conditions; and how shall an equal opportunity for the pursuit of
happiness be guaranteed to all save by a guarantee of economic equality?"

"Yes," I said, "it is indeed all there, but why were we so long in seeing
it?"

"Let us make ourselves comfortable on this bench," said the doctor, "and
I will tell you what is the modern answer to the very interesting
question you raise. At first glance, certainly the delay of the world in
general, and especially of the American people, to realize that democracy
logically meant the substitution of popular government for the rule of
the rich in regulating the production and distribution of wealth seems
incomprehensible, not only because it was so plain an inference from the
idea of popular government, but also because it was one which the masses
of the people were so directly interested in carrying out. Edith's
conclusion that people who were not capable of so simple a process of
reasoning as that did not deserve much sympathy for the afflictions they
might so easily have remedied, is a very natural first impression.

"On reflection, however, I think we shall conclude that the time taken by
the world in general and the Americans in particular in finding out the
full meaning of democracy as an economic as well as a political
proposition was not greater than might have been expected, considering
the vastness of the conclusions involved. It is the democratic idea that
all human beings are peers in rights and dignity, and that the sole just
excuse and end of human governments is, therefore, the maintenance and