In a free society every man may work as many hours as he wants to work, and get the full value of what he produces.
So now we can make what would have seemed at the beginning a bold claim:
From a free society involuntary poverty will be banished.
And finally—one sentence more—and I beg you to learn this one:
The end of involuntary poverty means the end of most prostitution and crime, and of all war between civilized peoples.
LETTER XIV
My dear Judd:
It is an interesting thing to study the development of human society through a long period of history. Men began in small tribes, in which they were very much alike, and stood on an equal footing. These tribes fought, and absorbed one another, and grew more complex, with greater differences among the members; dukedoms and principalities arose, and then kingdoms, and at last great empires, with rulers and subjects ranged in classes, and the class lines rigidly drawn.
It was against such a form of society that our ancestors revolted; they had a new theory of government, and established a new form—a republic, owned and run by its citizens, all standing on an equal plane. The process of evolution in the political world is still going on, and some day we shall see a world-wide federation of republics, in which the human race will share equal rights.