And then such matters as the place where a man begins to practise, and the connections he makes early in his career, are largely fortuitous and have results beyond his foresight. One course of circumstances may lead him into a position where his services are indispensable to a group of wealthy clients, while another may result very differently. Men with an ill-paying practice are not necessarily men of less ability than those who are getting rich.
Still less can we expect that exorbitant gains in business could be obviated by any possible equality of opportunity. In general such gains imply not only ability but a fortunate conjunction of circumstances which could not have been foreseen with any certainty when the man was making his start. There is an element of luck and speculation in the matter, the result of which is that of a thousand who started with equal abilities and opportunities, perhaps only one or two will be on hand at the right place and time, and with the right equipment to make the most of an opening. When it appears there is commonly a small group of men in range of it who are there rather by good fortune than foresight. Of these the ablest, by endowment and training, will grasp it.
So long as the movements of life are free and unanticipated in anything like the present measure, the individual will be like a swimmer upon the surface of a torrent, able to make headway in this direction or that according to his strength, but still very much at the mercy of the stream. If he finds himself near a boat he may reach it and climb aboard, but ninety-nine others who can swim just as well may have all they can do to keep their heads above water.
This is fairly obvious in common observation. At a gathering, which I was privileged to attend, of the principal men of a neighboring commercial city, it seemed that the prevailing type was quite commonplace. They appeared kindly and of a good business intelligence, but hardly in such a degree as one might expect in the leading men of a leading community. Apparently the city had grown and these men attached, as it were, to the growing branches, had been lifted up accordingly.
I take it that large gains, and even gains that are unjust, so far as individual merit is concerned, are inevitable, though some of the more flagrant inequalities might be reduced by social reform. We must, then, deal with them after they are made, and this points to a policy of drastic taxation, the revenue to be used for the common welfare, and also to moral control of the use of wealth through public opinion and social ideals.
It is probably true that the poor, of a scattered and sporadic sort, will always be with us; but organized poverty might be abolished. I mean that the misery class, now existing at the bottom of the economic scale and perpetuating itself through lack of opportunity for the children, might be eliminated through minimum standards of family life and cognate social reforms. For those who, for whatever reason, fall below the standards there should be a special care designed to prevent their condition becoming established in misery environments, and so passed on to another generation. As it is now, lack of opportunity perpetuates misery, which in turn prevents opportunity, and so on in a vicious circle. The general result is a state of social degeneracy through which ignorance, vice, inefficiency, squalor, and lack of ambition are reproduced in the children. Families not far above the misery line also need special care to prevent their being crowded over it. While it seems likely that, in spite of all our precautions, misery will continue to be generated, we ought to be able to prevent its organization in a continuous class.
To do this we shall certainly have to proceed with the delicate task of supplementing family responsibility without essentially impairing it. We have already come far in this direction, with our compulsory education, restrictions on child labor, removal from parents of abused or neglected children, probation officers, mothers’ pensions, visiting nurses, medical inspection in the schools, and so on. We need to do much more of the same sort, and the question just how far we can go in a given direction without doing more harm than good must be decided by experience.
I think that equal opportunity, though not wholly practicable, is one of our best working ideals. We are not likely to go too far in this direction. There is a natural current of privilege, arising from the tendency of advantages to flow in the family line, and any feasible diversion into broader channels will probably be beneficial. The unfailing tendency of possessors to hold on to their possessions and pass them to their children is guaranty against excessive equalization.
Although dead-level equality is neither possible nor desirable, we may hope for equality in the sense that every child may have the conditions of healthy development, and a wide range of choice, including, if he has the ability, some of the more intellectual occupations. There is such a thing as a human equality—as distinguished from one that is mechanical—which would consist in every one having, in one way or another, a suitable field of growth and self-expression. This would be reconcilable with great differences of environment and of wealth, but not with ignorance or extreme poverty.