"Simply!" The general proposition is simple enough, but there are many perplexities of detail. One inheres in the definition of "productive powers." Probably it will serve to call them the capacities of furnishing satisfactions; and to include in satisfactions those produced for oneself as well as those exchanged. In this sense the impecunious philosopher has high productive powers—often so high that he would not exchange them for those of the captain of industry, and he does not often feel discontent enough to make him a very active factor in the Irrepressible Conflict. He does sometimes, though, especially when he feels the pinch of his narrow financial income compared with that of the producer of more material satisfactions. As he is usually a man of gentle make-up, the effect of his narrow income is increased by sympathy with the unfortunate, and sometimes these combined influences send out mighty queer doctrine from professorial chairs. Such phenomena, however, do not controvert the general proposition that the satisfactions of the spirit are to be included among those upon whose more equal production depends the disappearance of the conflict that must be till then irrepressible.
There is no way to peace, then, other than increasing the productive power of the less productive man. Sharing with him material goods, except to tide over emergencies that his powers cannot meet, won't do the trick at all, as has been abundantly proved, from the English poor laws down, and as is going to be proved again before some of our recent "progressive" legislation has run its course.
This is far from saying, however, that legislation really progressive in this direction is impossible. We for our part, however, do not see as much hope in legislation as in improvement in knowledge and understanding and disposition among people generally. That great improvement in disposition may be near at hand, seems indicated by recent experiences among the most revolutionary and suggestive in human annals. The recent meeting at Gettysburg, not to speak of the minor earlier ones at Lookout Mountain and elsewhere, indicates an advance in human nature so immense that it has not been realized. Not the least significant thing it demonstrated, is the vast decrease in the necessity of wasting thousands of lives and billions of treasure to settle differences of opinion.
As this is now so startlingly indicated regarding the Irrepressible Conflict which culminated at Gettysburg, and which could be settled by force, is there not even much more reason to hope for a settlement not very remote, by methods of reason, of our new Irrepressible Conflict, which cannot be settled by force?
But even if the outcroppings of the conflict are so soon settled, the fundamental conflict will persist as long as the difference in men is so great, and that difference is the most important thing to be dealt with by all lovers of peace and humanity. The only way to cancel it is for the men in front to help those behind, and for those behind to help themselves—to everything that does not belong to somebody else.
But those in front are entitled to have their judgments followed where they are not plainly tainted by self-interest, and it will pay them to keep self-interest out of their judgments so far as self-preservation does not demand it. But how much self-preservation can properly cover, is a difficult question, and space permits little more than the suggestion of it. Shall a man's self rightly be a wearer of but one suit of clothes, an occupant of a hut, an eater of the plainest food, and an entertainer of no guests: or shall his self rightly be clothed beautifully and suitably for all occasions, occupy a house that shall be a pleasure to gaze upon, consume the food essential to both the greatest refinement and the greatest efficiency, dispense a generous hospitality, broaden his mind and develop his taste so that he can enlighten and inspire others, encourage letters and the arts, and have leisure to devote to charities, education and the common good? There are plenty of illustrations that a man may preserve a self as large as this—as large as Goethe's or Marcus Aurelius's—and yet issue no advice unworthy of the respect of smaller men, and be of an advantage to the race beside which the cost of maintaining such a self is nothing.
If most men cannot have the things just enumerated, and if many of those who have them abuse them, is it best that none should have them? That all should have them is, in the present stage of human development, impossible. If all the wealth of the United States were divided equally among us, we would have but a little over $1,300 apiece,[2] and much of it would be wasted at once, and no conceivable laws would prevent what might be left, being in a very short time as unevenly distributed as now. The only glimpse we can see of a time of even fortunes, is of a time of even capacities; and the only rational way we can see to such a time is through helping each other: every other experiment toward it has proved illusive.
The principal roots of the difficulty are generalized as ignorance and incompetence. The ignorance has already been strongly, though very blunderingly, attacked in the public schools, but not much more blunderingly perhaps than in the universities. It is a strange paradox that education, though the special care of the educated, should be among the most backward of the arts, yet so the highest-educated are the first to admit it to be. We are making hopeful progress in it, though, and are rapidly developing it to care for incompetence not only in mind but in body and disposition.
Then in the struggles of wage-earners and wage-payers, the principle of arbitration is certainly making rapid inroads on the practice of violence. The settlement of the recent great railroad controversies was by deliberative assemblies, not by mobs.