I

THE DANGEROUS CLASS IN ALL

F

CLASSES

ROM what class of the population is the chief menace to modern society? The

philosopher of the library, meditating in opulent or academic ease, sees a dire specter rising from what he calls the lower classes. A miasm of ignorance, immorality, and discontent seems to come up from these social lowlands. Widespread, it assails the foothills of the common life, and menaces even the heights of authority with anarchical intent. The philosopher of the garret, on the other hand, sees the specter descending upon him from the pride of the better conditioned, from incorporated industrial greed, and the tyranny of political power in the hands of the rich. Both critics are partially right, but more largely wrong.

The despotism of gold is to be little feared in our new age of universal opportunity. While the wealthy are permanent as a class, the individuals who constitute this class are constantly changing. Rich men's grandchildren are not, as a rule, rich. The coming and going of the

generations make society a shaking sieve, which drops all save a few of the big clinkers into the heaps of common humanity. American aristocracy quickly becomes threadbare, and modern conditions are very prolific in generating the 'moth that fretteth the garment" of show and pride.

66

The Waldorf-Astoria has close relation with the Mills hotels, as a comparison of the guest list may show. Every pastor of a city congregation finds aristocratic names on his poor list, and has occasion to honor the memory of some large benefactor to the church by rescuing his children from penury in the tenements, in distant mining towns, or on return from the army into which they have, perhaps, sought refuge to avoid even narrower discipline. An expert genealogist notes that there are few straightblooded English families, however poor, that cannot find a king among the thousands of ancestors which accumulate in a few generations. One of our richest men is giving away his estate, not, as he confesses, to play the rôle of philanthropist, but from the prudent consideration that it is becoming impossible to endow one's descendants as a dynasty of wealth. He recognizes the fact that

"To heirs unknown descends the unguarded store, Or wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor,"

and proposes to "make a virtue of necessity"

and side with heaven by personally superintending this generous distribution.

For the same reason the danger from the lower grade of society may be heavily discounted. The class is permanent, the poor are always with us; but the individuals are changing. Poverty does not necessarily breed of its kind. When Toussaint l'Ouverture, the Haytian patriot, was twitted upon the lower condition of his black people, he pictured a prophecy: "Fill the keg with black beans on the bottom and white ones on top. Roll the keg, and count the black beans at the upper end." While the better conditioned are filtered downward by the weight of their own lethargy, the less favored individuals are climbing up by a sort of capillary energy inspired by the necessities of life. The refuse of the soIcial field is the ultimate source of its enrichment.

Most of those now in control of business, politics, educational and benevolent life could once say with Gideon, "My family is poor in Manasseh." Some of our Presidents evolved themselves from the early environment of the rail pile, the cobbler's bench, and the canal path. The writer was in England at the time of the assassination of Garfield. Some bejeweled ladies were deriding the lowly extraction of our national martyr. Professor Seeley, the eminent Cambridge historian, very courteously came to the

relief of the solitary American present, and reminded the company that the founders of the present English aristocracy in the time of William the Conqueror were doubtless roughs, and that the crest of a line of their kings was "very appropriately a wisp of broom corn." Edison, whose genius, tact, and toil have won for him the name of "Wizard of Science," began his useful career by manipulating the water glasses in the cars for the refreshment of passengers. The first chariot used by one of the great kings of industry" was an ore wagon, drawn by mules. The recent head of our national exchequer extracted his first gold from the dust of the office which he swept. Many of the brightest college professors were once charity students, or acquired the means of education by winning the prizes for scholarship. Of three prominent gentlemen speaking at the anniversary of a juvenile reformatory, two announced themselves to have been street waifs who owed their start in life to the bread and butter, sauced with discipline, which they received in that very institution. As in the industrial arts so in society, the by-products once thrown out as refuse often become the most valuable output.

By this incessant interfusion of blood the social extremes of arrogance and humiliation are kept from clashing. The danger to society comes from neither the rich nor the poor as a

class, but from the degeneration of manhood of whatever social grade.

The so-called middle class is contributing as much to the common menace as are either of the

extremes of poverty or wealth. There are a

million homes where the father's business toil provides needed comfort, but cannot endow his family with fortune for the future. Even though the parents have laid by a goodly competence against their own old age, there is not sufficient, when divided among the children, to give each either a home or an independent business start. These young people must breast the world with as much tact and persistence as do the children of the common mechanic or laboring

man.

Yet in many instances the comfortable condition of their childhood has failed to impress them with the necessity of enterprising initiative on their own behalf. They do not appreciate the fact that their favorable condition in life is not the common gift of nature, but the result of hard work and sacrifice of years on the part of others. The time of life that should be utilizedand among the poor is ordinarily utilized-in sharpening the most practical faculties, and training one's pluck to alertness and endurance, is spent over easy lessons and in abundant pastime.

The average young person is impatient of