such Democracy as he combats exist, or could it conceivably exist? Have
his investigations of the human character failed to inform him that one of
the strongest natural instincts of man's nature is immovably opposed to
anything like an equal distribution of existing wealth?--because whoever
owns anything, if it be only a coat, wishes to keep it; and that wish
makes him aware that his fellow-man will wish to keep, and will keep at
all hazards, whatever things belong to him. What Democrats really desire
is to enable all men to have an equal chance to obtain wealth, instead of
being, as is largely the case now, hampered and kept down by all manner of
legal and arbitrary restrictions. As for the "desire for Inequality," it
seems to exist chiefly in Mr. Mallock's imagination. Who does desire it?
Does the man who "strikes" for higher wages desire it? Let us see. A
strike, to be successful, must be not an individual act, but the act of a
large body of men, all demanding the same thing--an increase in wages. If
they gain their end, no difference has taken place in their mutual
position; and their position in regard to their employers is altered only
in that an approach has been made toward greater equality with the latter.
And so in other departments of human effort: the aim, which the man who
wishes to better his position sets before himself, is not to rise head and
shoulders above his equals, but to equal his superiors. And as to the
Socialist schemes for the reorganization of society, they imply, at most,
a wish to see all men start fair in the race of life, the only advantages
allowed being not those of rank or station, but solely of innate capacity.
And the reason the Socialist desires this is, because he believes, rightly
or wrongly, that many inefficient men are, at present, only artificially
protected from betraying their inefficiency; and that many efficient men
are only artificially prevented from showing their efficiency; and that
the fair start he proposes would not result in keeping all men on a dead
level, but would simply put those in command who had a genuine right to be
there.