controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the
legislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been
enforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached
to the wage-earners by the legislature. But I must not be led away from
my theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the
Iron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer
on trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth
turns from its axis.

I wish to see society organized so that it shall be malleable to the
general will. But political and economic progress are obstructed
because existing political and economic organizations are almost
entirely unmalleable by the general will. Public opinion does not
control the press. The press, capitalistically controlled, creates
public opinion. Our legislators have grown so secure that they confess
openly they have passed measures which they knew would be hateful to the
majority of citizens, and which, if they had been voted on, would never
have been passed. The theory of representative government has broken
down. To tell the truth, the life of the nation is so complicated that
it is difficult for the private citizen to have any intelligent opinion
about national policies, and we can hardly blame the politician for
despising the judgment of the private citizen. Government departments
are still less malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an
individual to attack the policy of a Government department is almost as
hopeless a proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel
and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet
Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The
Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was
adamantine in policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation
and Government departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it in