TO 
 
 MY FAITHFUL FRIEND 
 OF TWENTY YEARS 
 
 Joljit (Srafjam Brooks 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In a time of social unrest and uncertainty 
 like the present, when the wisest are often per¬ 
 plexed, it may not be amiss to go back to first 
 principles. Instead of asking why government 
 should or should not do this or that particular 
 thing, that some one may be urging it to do or 
 denying that it has any business to do, we may 
 ask why it should do anything at all ? — may 
 endeavor to get down to the principles of its 
 action. 
 
 If we can succeed in this, we may gain no 
 little help in meeting some of the problems that 
 now confront and embarrass us. If we find 
 the logical justification for what political society 
 already does, we shall at least know what may 
 be attempted consistently therewith, and shall 
 be spared those embarrassments that only arise 
 because we have not taken this justification into 
 
 V 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 account. The conviction has come home to 
 the author in the course of the studies the 
 results of which are here given to the public, 
 that political advances are frequently opposed 
 on grounds which, if acted on and carried to 
 their appropriate conclusion, would result in 
 undoing government altogether — save for pur¬ 
 poses of defence in time of war. 
 
 The main positions of the book were stated 
 in lectures at the School of Applied Ethics in 
 Plymouth, 1894, and were afterwards more fully 
 developed in a course of lectures before the 
 Society for Ethical Culture of Philadelphia. 
 
 I am indebted to Professor Henry Carter 
 Adams and to Mr. A. L. Hodder for helpful 
 suggestions while revising the proof-sheets — 
 the more helpful, I may say, as they have not 
 at all times shared my point of view. 
 
 W. M. S. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Idea of Anarchy and the Idea of Government 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Possibility of Anarchy . . . . .11 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Problem of Government stated . . . .29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Anarchy or Government in Defensive War 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 37 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Anarchy or Government in the Industrial Realm . 93 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 An Illustration : the Pullman-Chicago Strike of 
 
 1894 * * * * * • * • . 129 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note i. — On the different relation which quasi-public cor¬ 
 porations and their employees respectively sustain to 
 the public, and on the consequent unequal bearing of 
 arbitration upon them . . . . . . .165 
 
 Note II. •—On varying Judicial opinion as to the rights of 
 
 employees of quasi-public corporations . . . 171 
 
 Index of Authors quoted 
 
 • 175 
 
THE IDEA OF ANARCHY AND 
 THE IDEA OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE IDEA OF ANARCHY AND THE IDEA OF 
 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Anarchy is a word that has a bad sound in 
 our ears, but I do not now use it in a bad sense. 
 If it necessarily meant disorder, riot, and crime, 
 there would be little room for argument about 
 it. I use it, however, in its simple literal sense, 
 as a name for a state of society without govern¬ 
 ment . 1 It is always convenient in considering 
 a thing to have a term for its opposite, — it 
 saves circumlocutions and waste of breath, — 
 and I know of no word which is thus antitheti- 
 
 1 The Greek word, avapxLa, is made up of av priv. and 
 apxla or apx'f}-, meaning a beginning or making a beginning, 
 that is, taking the lead, guiding, commanding, governing; an¬ 
 archy is accordingly simply no-governing or no-government. 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 cal to government save anarchy. The opposite 
 of despotic government may be constitutional 
 government, the opposite of monarchy or aris¬ 
 tocracy may be democracy, but the opposite of 
 government itself, of any kind of “archy,” is 
 only an-archy. 
 
 Further, “government” may itself be used 
 in more than one sense. Originally to govern 
 meant to take the rudder, to pilot, or to steer 1 
 — and hence, in general, to direct or control. 
 When people in any enterprise choose a di¬ 
 rector or leader (or a body of such persons), 
 they in one sense set up a government. We 
 speak colloquially of the government of a uni¬ 
 versity, of a church, of a trade association, 
 meaning the directors, managers, or trustees of 
 it. But government, as we ordinarily use the 
 word, is something more than this. The root 
 idea is the same, but the form it has assumed 
 is peculiar. Government in this sense is not 
 merely direction or rule, but direction or rule 
 enforcing itself. It is rule, not only for those 
 who voluntarily submit themselves to it, but for 
 
 1 Latin, gubernare. Greek KvfHepvav, to steer or pilot. 
 
THE IDEA OF ANARCHY. 
 
 5 
 
 all the members of a community or society. 
 Government might indeed be called the organ¬ 
 ized force of a society, or (when it is not demo¬ 
 cratic in form) organized force imposing itself 
 on a society. Those subject to it are not free 
 to obey it or not, as they like; they are bound 
 to obey it — if not actively, then passively by 
 submitting to physical penalties (for disobedi¬ 
 ence). If, for example, we do not pay the taxes 
 assessed upon us by the government under 
 which we live, our property may to a corre¬ 
 sponding extent be taken away from us. No 
 association of the kind I at first alluded to 
 could do the like, in case we failed to pay our 
 dues or pledges to it; though it is of course 
 possible that government might step in, and, 
 viewing our dues and pledges as contracts, 
 undertake to hold us bound by them. The 
 most the association itself could do would be to 
 exclude us from membership. 1 
 
 1 Cf. Professor Henry Sidgwick: “ The obvious differences 
 [from the power of a leading critic of literature, when he 
 directs people to read certain books, or of a physician, when 
 he orders vaccination] is that the legislature’s orders might be 
 enforced by physical violence; if it commanded vaccination 
 
6 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 So with laws. Any association may have its 
 rules or requirements, binding on its members, 
 and they may be called its laws. But in such 
 associations as I first mentioned they are only 
 morally, not literally, binding, and are in this 
 way very different from the laws of the State 
 or Government. It is not left to the option of 
 citizens whether they obey the laws of the State 
 or not, it is not simply a matter of honor; but 
 they may be physically obliged to obey — that 
 is, if they fail, they may be fined, imprisoned, or 
 even put to death. I am not arguing the right 
 or wrong of this now, but simply stating the 
 fact. There are these two types of association 
 
 under penalties, the requisite physical force would be exercised 
 by certain members of the community for the enforcement of 
 the penalties, and this exercise of force would not be resisted 
 by the will of the rest of the community.” {Elements of Politics , 
 p. 598.) Again, “The general distinction between the * quasi¬ 
 government ’ (if I may so call it) of such associations [indus¬ 
 trial, literary, etc.] when neither aided nor represented by 
 the state, and the government with which we are concerned 
 as students of politics, is, that the former, in an orderly com¬ 
 munity, can inflict no penalty worse than exclusion from the 
 benefits of the association, and perhaps from voluntary relations 
 with its members.” {Ibid. p. 547.) So Hobbes, “ Law in gen¬ 
 eral is not counsel, but command.” {Leviathan, chap, xxvi.) 
 
THE IDEA OF ANARCHY. 
 
 7 
 
 in human society, one working with the volun¬ 
 tary consent of all concerned, the other using 
 more or less force (or, if not actually using 
 force, supposed to have the right to use it when 
 necessary) ; and it is the latter type that is the 
 State and furnishes us with the phenomena of 
 Government proper. But if this is so, the an¬ 
 tithesis of government is not necessarily a com¬ 
 pany of dissociated, not to say disorderly, 
 individuals. Anarchy is not inconsistent with 
 association, but only with enforced association. 
 It means simply a state of society in which no 
 one is bound or obliged to do anything (whether 
 to associate with others or anything else); it is 
 not opposed to order, but only to enforced 
 order; not to rule, but only to obligatory rule. 
 In other words, it is synonymous with liberty. 
 Under such a system, individuals would simply 
 be left free to do as they chose; compulsion 
 would disappear; the only bonds in society 
 would be moral bonds. 
 
 I think no violence is done to language in 
 using “anarchy” and “government” in these 
 senses (certainly not in so using “ govern- 
 
8 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ment”); and in any case, inasmuch as in talk¬ 
 ing of a thing we must have a distinct idea of 
 what we are talking about, this, I allow myself 
 to say, is what I have in mind in now treating of 
 anarchy and government. It is not the words 
 I wish to discuss nor the views which others 
 may connect with the words, but the possible 
 states of society which I have just described,— 
 the further and more explicit meaning of which 
 I shall elaborate as I go along. Understanding 
 the terms, then, in this way, my inquiry is, 
 Which is better, Anarchy or Government ? In 
 other words, What is the justification of 
 Government (if there be any), and why should 
 we not be contented with a system of Liberty 
 or Anarchy ? 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF 
 ANARCHY. 
 

CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 That liberty, or complete absence of govern¬ 
 ment, would mark an ideal state of society, 
 seems hardly to admit of doubt. “ In heaven,” 
 says Channing, “ nothing like what we call 
 government on earth can exist. . . . The voice 
 of command is never heard among the spirits 
 of the just.” 1 Compulsion, in itself con¬ 
 sidered, is always an evil. 2 The evil may be 
 counterbalanced by the good resulting from 
 the compulsion, but of itself it is none the 
 less an evil. If we suppose a case in which, 
 if anywhere in the world, forcible restraint 
 is justified, — namely, to prevent a man from 
 committing robbery or murder, — must we 
 not still admit that it would be better if 
 
 1 Collected Works (A. U. A. Ed., Boston, 1875), P* 361- 
 
 2 So John Stuart Mill, “ All restraint, qua restraint, is an 
 evil.” — On Liberty , chap. v. 
 
 11 
 
12 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the man could be led to restrain himself ? 
 If he could be persuaded to desist from such 
 designs, would it not be better than to force 
 him ? Is not substituting our will for his will 
 so far taking away his dignity as a responsi¬ 
 ble and moral being—and, in just this aspect 
 of the matter, an injury, though from every 
 other point of view, a good ? If this is so, 
 compulsion, interference with liberty of any 
 kind, is always, however necessary or legiti¬ 
 mate, the mark of an imperfect state of society. 
 In an ideal state, whether here or elsewhere, 
 it would cease — the occasion and the justifi¬ 
 cation for it would be gone. Men would do 
 what was right, moved by love of the right 
 alone. 
 
 Professor Huxley after defining anarchy (as a 
 term of political philosophy) to mean “a state 
 of society in which the rule of each individual 
 by himself is the only government the legiti¬ 
 macy of which is recognized,” says, “ In this 
 sense, strict anarchy may be the highest con¬ 
 ceivable grade of perfection of social exist¬ 
 ence; for, if all men spontaneously did justice 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 13 
 
 and loved mercy, it is plain that all swords 
 might advantageously be turned into plough¬ 
 shares, and that the occupation of judges and 
 police would be gone.” 1 So Hobbes, who de¬ 
 fended what might almost be called political 
 absolutism, admitted that “ if men could rule 
 themselves, every man by his own command, 
 that is to say, could they live according to the 
 laws of nature, there would be no need at all 
 of a city, nor of a common coercive power.” 2 
 
 Even taking men as they are, government 
 can only be defended on the ground of its 
 necessity, not because it is intrinsically desir- 
 
 1 Collected Essays, Vol. I. p. 391. Alfred Russell Wallace 
 describes the ideally perfect social state as follows: “ Our 
 best thinkers maintain that it is a state of individual freedom 
 and self-government, rendered possible by the equal develop¬ 
 ment and the just balance of the intellectual, moral, and 
 physical parts of our nature — a state in which we shall each 
 be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by knowing what 
 is right, and at the same time feeling an irresistible impulse 
 to do what we know to be right, that all laws and all punishments 
 shall be unnecessary.” (The Malay Archipelago , chap, xl.) 
 
 2 Philosophical Elements, chap. vi. 13, note. Hobbes 
 uses “ city ” as the equivalent of the Latin civitas. So the 
 Greeks designated city and state by the same word, toXls. Cf. 
 Bluntschli, Allgemeine Staatslehre, S. 24, Anm. 
 
14 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 able. No one can question that when a man 
 can say with an old Greek writer, “ I have 
 gained this by philosophy — that I do, without 
 being commanded, what others do from fear 
 of the laws,” he is on a higher level than 
 those who have to be commanded, nor can 
 one deny that to the extent such philosophy 
 is really operative in the world, “ laws ” be¬ 
 come a superfluity. In a similar spirit the 
 late Bishop of Massachusetts said: “He is the 
 benefactor of his race who makes it possible 
 to have one law less. He is the enemy of his 
 kind who would lay upon the shoulders of 
 arbitrary government one burden which might 
 be carried by the educated conscience and 
 character of the community.” 1 There is hardly 
 a thing which government does, of which we 
 cannot say that it would be better if it could 
 be done without government. As Emerson 
 
 1 Sermon before The Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
 Company of Boston, reported in Boston Transcript , 4 June, 
 1888. Bishop Brooks states what may be held to be the com¬ 
 plementary truth in the same discourse: “Every just war 
 hastens the day when war shall be no longer. Every righteous 
 law makes man more fit to live with less constraint.” 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 15 
 
 tersely puts it, “The more reason the less 
 government ”; 1 or, to turn it round, to what¬ 
 ever extent government is necessary, it is 
 because more or less of unreason exists. 
 
 Indeed, men have lived with very little gov¬ 
 ernment. An eminent Frenchman visited 
 America in the last century and afterwards 
 wrote: “ Can a people without government be 
 happy? Yes, if you can suppose a whole 
 people with good morals; and this is not a 
 chimera. Will you see an example ? Observe 
 the Quakers of America. Though numerous, 
 though dispersed over the surface of Pennsyl¬ 
 vania, they have passed more than a century 
 without municipal government, without police, 
 without coercive measures, to administer the 
 state or to govern the hospitals.” 2 The pict- 
 
 1 “ Character ” in Lectures and Biographical Sketches 
 (Works, Vol. X. p. 120). He continues, “ In a sensible family, 
 nobody ever hears the words ‘ shall ’ and ‘ sha’n’t ’; nobody 
 commands, and nobody obeys, but all conspire and joyfully 
 co-operate. Take off the roofs of hundreds of happy houses, 
 and you shall see this order without ruler, and the like in 
 every intelligent and moral society.” 
 
 2 Brissot de Warville in Preface to his New Travels in 
 the United States, London, 1794 (2d ed. p. 16). He became 
 
l 6 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ure may be exaggerated and more or less 
 inaccurate; yet it is none the less interesting 
 and suggestive. And communities without the 
 high standards of morality characteristic of the 
 Quakers have yet somehow got along without 
 much in the way of what we should call gov¬ 
 ernment. They might have done better with 
 government, but they did not perish for lack 
 of it. We think government indispensable 
 for the protection of life and property. But 
 people may protect themselves, and those who 
 cannot may contract with those stronger than 
 they, to protect them. In early times when 
 violence was rife, the custom was, says M. 
 
 one of the Girondists in the French Revolution, and lost his 
 head in its later scenes. Emerson’s picture of life in New 
 England in the early part of the century is interesting from this 
 point of view. He wrote from Boston in 1822 to Mr. John E. 
 Hill of Baltimore : “ I hold that government never existed in 
 such perfection as here. Except in the newspapers and titles 
 of office, no being could be more remote, no sound more 
 strange. Indeed, the only time when government can be said 
 to make itself seen and felt is our festivals [he writes on the 
 eve of the 4th of July], when it bears the form of a kind 
 of general committee for popular amusements.” (Cabot’s 
 Memoir , Vol. I. p. 91.) 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 1 7 
 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, to place one’s self under the 
 protection of “ some brigand rather more honest 
 than the rest,” and make a bargain with him. 
 The great men of Greek antiquity, and of 
 almost every other antiquity, were, he adds, 
 “professed brigands punctual in their per¬ 
 formance and faithful to their word.” So, as 
 is well known, in the middle ages, when gov¬ 
 ernment was weak or non-existent, small pro¬ 
 prietors of freeholds placed themselves under 
 the patronage of powerful lords and became 
 by choice their vassals, or even their serfs . 1 
 
 A more primitive arrangement still seems to 
 have been for a man’s family to protect him. 
 In ancient Scandinavia, Mr. Spencer tells us, a 
 man’s relations and friends avenged his death, 
 and if they did not, they instantly lost the 
 reputation that constituted their own principal 
 security . 2 So among the old German tribes the 
 protection of rights and of liberty rested upon 
 the family . 3 Sometimes, in still less developed 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State , p. 71. 
 
 2 Sociology , Vol. II. § 533. 
 
 3 Cf. Dr. Lujo Brentano on the place of the family among 
 the ancient German tribes, in The Relation of Labor to the Law of 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 communities, a man was thrown back sternly on 
 his individual self. Sir John Lubbock tells us 
 of tribes among whom the public does not con¬ 
 cern itself at all in the punishment of criminals, 
 and if any one among them suffers an injury or 
 affront without endeavoring to revenge himself, 
 he is slighted by all the rest, and accounted a 
 coward, a person of no esteem . 1 It is evident 
 that while such an arrangement would work 
 hardship among the weaker members of the 
 tribe, it would tend to the survival of the strong, 
 
 To-day, pp. 22, 23. A survival of the old idea of family obliga¬ 
 tion is found in Morocco, where the state does not undertake 
 to nourish criminals when in prison, but leaves this to their 
 families. (Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, p. 173.) Ven¬ 
 dettas are, of course, remnants of the primitive order of things. 
 It is said that among our North American Indians, in case of 
 murder, only the family of the deceased “have the right of 
 taking satisfaction; they collect, consult, and agree. The 
 rules of a town or of the nation have nothing to do or say in 
 the business.” (Trans. American Antiq. Soc. Vol. I. p. 281.) 
 In ancient Greece, though the state punished, it did not prose¬ 
 cute or try criminals in the first place ; this was left to the 
 family of the sufferer, nor was the accused person placed under 
 arrest until he was found guilty. (Lubbock, Origin of Civiliza¬ 
 tion, chap, x.) 
 
 1 Origin of Civilization, chap. x. (quoting Du Tertre on 
 the Caribbians and Tapinambous). 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 19 
 
 the manly, the capable. Indeed, during a great 
 part of human history it has been accounted a 
 mark of honor to avenge one’s own wrongs ; it 
 is said that down to the thirteenth century, 
 Italian nobles “regarded it as disgraceful to 
 submit to laws rather than to do themselves 
 justice by force of arms .” 1 
 
 All this seems to show that the State or Gov¬ 
 ernment is not an absolute necessity of human 
 society, that anarchy, or leaving men to them¬ 
 selves, is a more or less practicable arrange- 
 
 1 Spencer, Sociology , Vol. II. § 522. With these nobles 
 may be compared the ranchmen of Wyoming, U. S. A., whose 
 motto might be said to be, “ The state be blowed ”; no one 
 being respected among them who has any use for the constable 
 or the sheriff. (Philadelphia Evening Telegraph on “ Western 
 Lawlessness,” 16 April, 1892.) Even in settled communities, 
 a man’s taking justice into his own hands is sometimes regarded 
 leniently. Not long ago General von Kirchoff of the Prussian 
 army shot the editor of a Berlin paper for publishing a para¬ 
 graph to the effect that the General’s daughter had eloped with 
 a manservant. “ What man of honor,” asked the German War 
 Minister, von Schellendorf, “would not act as General von 
 Kirchoff when the law would not help him avenge the slanders 
 on his daughter’s reputation?” Von Kirchoff was, indeed, found 
 guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, but was soon pardoned 
 by the Emperor and gazetted for the order of the Red Eagle. 
 (.Public Ledger , 5 March, 1894.) 
 
20 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ment . 1 In our own country there have been 
 times and places in which law was either 
 weak or non-existent, and yet society did not 
 go to pieces. The early settlers in Illinois, 
 who came from Virginia, cared nothing, it is 
 said, for the protection or company which 
 villages afforded; each one depended upon 
 himself and his trusty rifle for protection. 
 They did indeed form squads to pursue Indian 
 marauders, and they had their regulating soci¬ 
 eties for punishing law-breakers, but generally 
 
 1 Aristotle’s statement, “ man is, by nature, a political 
 animal ” ( Pol. i. 2), would seem to require qualification. That 
 man is, by nature, a social animal may, however, be safely 
 affirmed. A state or government is an expedient rather than 
 an organic necessity — something that society may conceivably 
 outgrow, the ends of which may possibly be attained by purely 
 moral means. A state is only necessary now because moral 
 forces are inadequate to the attainment of the ends of society 
 and need the supplementing of physical force. Thomas Aqui¬ 
 nas modified the Aristotelian dictum by saying, “ homo est 
 animal sociale el politician ” (Zte Regimine Principurn). It 
 is sometimes claimed that Hegel was the first to formulate 
 the antithesis of State and Society. (So J. S. Mann, in Pro¬ 
 ceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Vol. I. No. 3, pp. 92-98.) 
 See Professor Ritchie’s instructive discussion of “The Distinction 
 between Society and the State,” in the Appendix to his Prin¬ 
 ciples of State Interference. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 21 
 
 they lived in solitude (aside from the compan¬ 
 ionship of their families); and, says their his¬ 
 torian, “ they possessed greater individuality 
 than any people on earth .” 1 A gentleman, 
 whose courtly figure and imposing presence I 
 myself remember as a boy, once testified in 
 Congress as to the manner in which the pio¬ 
 neers of the West shifted for themselves in the 
 absence of the government. “I have lived 
 many years of my life,” he declared, “without 
 the jurisdiction of magistrates or law of any 
 kind. Yet . . . even under these circumstances 
 we administered justice and respected the laws 
 of God. Debts were collected as readily as 
 they are now and law by the common consent 
 of the people was virtually enforced. . . . 
 Although officers and a penal code were want¬ 
 ing, when a murder or other felony was com¬ 
 mitted, a jury was empanelled, and if the 
 accused was found guilty by his peers, a gallows 
 was erected and he was hanged.” 2 
 
 ♦ 
 
 1 J. Gillespie in Rufus Blanchard’s History of Illinois, p. 114. 
 
 2 Speech by the Hon. Augustus C. Dodge in the House of 
 Representatives, February 7, 1846. See Memoirs by the Rev. 
 William Salter, Iowa Historical Record, January, 1887. 
 
22 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 According to Mr. Bryce, there are parts of 
 our country even now—he speaks of a district 
 in Western New York and Ohio — where the 
 people have deliberately concluded that it is 
 cheaper and simpler to take the law into their 
 own hands on those rare occasions when a 
 police is needed, than to be at the trouble of 
 organizing and paying a force for which there 
 is usually no employment. Their method is a 
 volunteer jury, and, in a clear case, a simple 
 seizure and execution of the criminal . 1 
 
 Yes, sometimes spontaneous justice actually 
 competes with organized justice and proves 
 itself the better. A few years ago there died 
 in a little town in Iowa a remarkable man 
 named Thomas Chilson. He was a blacksmith, 
 but was crippled by an accident, and in time 
 such qualities were discovered in him that his 
 fellow-townsmen and the farmers around used 
 to come to him to have him settle their dis¬ 
 putes. For years previous to his death it was 
 not uncommon to see in front of his modest 
 dwelling the motley collection of vehicles which 
 
 1 The American Commonwealth , Part V. chap. 94. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 23 
 
 is a familiar spectacle in the vicinity of a 
 rural court house. Inside, gathered about the 
 cripple’s chair, were the litigants, their respec¬ 
 tive witnesses, and as many curious spectators 
 as were able to get within hearing distance. 
 His judgments, it is said, were almost invari¬ 
 ably respected. The people in the neighbor¬ 
 hood became thus accustomed, instead of 
 “going to law,” to “going to Chilson,” the 
 process being a great deal cheaper, costing 
 nothing in fact, and the results being much 
 more satisfactory . 1 
 
 Such an instance raises the query whether it 
 would not be well to have it always possible for 
 private enterprise to compete with government ? 
 The idea may be impracticable (Chilson, I be¬ 
 lieve, dealt only with civil cases), and yet it has 
 something to recommend it. If it were feasi¬ 
 ble, then though government existed, individ¬ 
 uals would not be subject to it, if they did 
 not choose to be . 2 A distinguished French 
 
 •t 
 
 1 Boston Post , August 7, 1889. 
 
 2 It may seem as if an instance of this were furnished in 
 the public schools of America, for we may send our children 
 
24 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 economist has been daring enough to suggest 
 competition between governments like that 
 which already exists between individuals or 
 between private associations. He asks why 
 should not political monopolies disappear as 
 industrial and commercial monopolies are (ac¬ 
 cording to him) now doing ? 1 It might be 
 thought an ideal arrangement if in the same 
 territory 2 we could have a choice of governments 
 just as we now have a choice of colleges to 
 
 to private schools if we like. But the illustration is not per¬ 
 fect, for we are all obliged to pay for the support of the public 
 schools. 
 
 1 M. de Molinari, quoted in Leroy-Beaulieu’s The Modern 
 State , pp. 123, 124. 
 
 2 M. de Molinari speaks of the rights of secession , and so 
 it would seem as if he must have the same territory in mind. 
 The right' of emigration, of withdrawing from a country, is 
 surely no longer in question. Among primitive tribes, leaving 
 one chief and going to another is more or less frequent; it 
 may only mean going from one village to another (cf. Spencer’s 
 Sociology , Vol. II. §§ 452 and 485). So in the feudal age, 
 “the freeman might choose his lord” {Ibid. § 459). But 
 liberty of government (with the right of secession) in a great 
 modern territorial state can only be possible if there are differ¬ 
 ent governments in the same territory. Whether this is a 
 consistent or whether it is a self-contradictory conception, I 
 leave for the present undetermined. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ANARCHY. 
 
 25 
 
 which to send our boys, or of shops in which to 
 do our trading. If there were several govern¬ 
 ments, and we were bound to none of them, 
 government in the sense in which it is opposed 
 to anarchy, or complete individual liberty, 
 would really cease to be. 
 
 Mr. Spencer has told us that among the 
 Kaffirs the king governs only so long as they 
 choose to obey — they leave him, if he governs 
 ill . 1 If, without leaving our abode, we might 
 refuse to obey a government we did not like, 
 no one could have much objection to govern¬ 
 ment. Emerson seems to imagine something 
 of this sort, when he says (though with a touch 
 of the humor that gave a saving grace to so 
 much that he wrote), 
 
 “ It would be but an easy extension of our 
 commercial system to pay a private emperor a 
 fee for services, as we pay an architect, an 
 engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has a 
 talent for righting wrong, for administering 
 difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers 
 how to turn their estates to good husbandry, 
 
 1 Sociology , Vol. II. § 466. 
 
26 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 for combining a hundred private enterprises to 
 general benefit, let him in country-town, or in 
 Court street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, 
 Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working-King.” 1 
 
 The idea may be fanciful, voluntary govern¬ 
 ment may be even a contradiction in terms, yet 
 in what I might call the intention of the idea, I 
 do not see how one can fail to find something 
 attractive. 
 
 1 “The Young American,” in Nature, Addresses and Lec¬ 
 tures (Works, Vol. I. p. 364). 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOVERN¬ 
 MENT STATED. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT STATED. 
 
 In the light, then, of what has gone before, we 
 may say that the abstract presumption is against 
 government. If restraint is an evil, however 
 necessary, and government involves more or 
 less restraint, then government is to this extent 
 an evil, however necessary and beneficial it may 
 be from some other point of view. If every¬ 
 thing could be done in society without violating 
 any one’s freedom, it would be vastly better. 
 However government may accord with the free¬ 
 dom of many or of most in a society, it always 
 involves force (or the right to use it) against 
 some. I see no way of blinking this fact. 
 
 “The one thing that characterizes the State,” 
 says M. Leroy-Beaulieu, “ is coercive power; 
 but what characterizes spontaneous associations 
 is merely the force of persuasion .” 1 
 
 1 The Modern State, p. 56. Cf. Sir James Fitzjames 
 Stephen, “ Force is an absolutely essential element of all law 
 
 2 9 
 
30 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Who does not see the difference at the present 
 moment, for example, between any amount of 
 agitation and appeal to conscience in behalf 
 of the arbitration of labor differences, and a 
 law obliging arbitration ? The one rests on 
 freedom, the other might be enforced by the 
 
 whatever. Indeed, law is nothing but regulated force subjected 
 to particular conditions and directed toward particular objects.” 
 (. Liberty , Equality , Fraternity , p. 239.) Again, “The differ¬ 
 ences between a rough and a civilized society is n-ot that force 
 is used in the one case and persuasion in the other, but that 
 force is (or ought to be) guided with greater care in the second 
 case than in the first” (Ibid. p. 32). So John Stuart Mill, 
 “ Penal sanction is the essence of law ” ( Utilitarianism, chap, 
 v.); Lord Pembroke, “ Law is nothing but public opinion 
 organized and equipped with force ” ( Liberty and Socialism , 
 quoted in D. G. Ritchie’s Principles of State Interference , p. 
 56); Shadworth IT. Hodgson, “ Looking back to the history 
 of law, it is found to arise from the combination of the sense of 
 justice with a de facto power enforcing it” ( Theory of Practice, 
 Vol. II. p. 171); John Grote, “Law is the public reason of a 
 society, participated in more or less by the mass of individuals, 
 enforceable upon all who will not participate in it ” (Examina¬ 
 tion of the Utilitarian Philosophy, p. 155); Goldwin Smith, 
 “ Let the edifice of law be as moral and effectual as you will, 
 its foundation is the force of the community ” (Essays on Ques¬ 
 tions of the Day , p. 203, 2 ed.). A distinction is sometimes 
 made between power and force (potentia and vis , Macht and 
 Gezvalt — see Bluntschli, Allgemeine Siaatslehre, SS. 334, 340); 
 it is not, however, a distinction between force and persuasion, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 31 
 
 courts. In the latter case, whether the parties 
 wished to arbitrate or no would make no dif¬ 
 ference—they would be obliged to; just as it 
 makes no difference now whether people with 
 some private grievance against one another wish 
 to fight it out on the streets or no ; they are sim¬ 
 ply not allowed to — their freedom is restrained. 
 
 but between legitimate and illegitimate, or lawful and unlawful, 
 force. Force used on the side of right and law is as truly force 
 {i.e. an interference with freedom) as when used in behalf of 
 wrong and lawlessness. Law itself, it may be added, is as much 
 law when it does not accord with abstract right and justice, as 
 when it does so accord. The so-called Fugitive Slave Law in 
 the United States before the late Civil War is an instance. Any 
 rule {i.e. established method of procedure) that is enforced by 
 a community, or is enforced on a community, is a law. It may 
 not be law as we should like to have it, or, as we may say, it 
 ought to be, but it is law all the same. 
 
 The nature of the State as an organization of force or power 
 comes to clear manifestation in the revolutions that sometimes 
 take place in a state; these generally mean the rising of some 
 new class to a share in political power. This was the essential 
 significance of the English revolution in 1832, and of the French 
 revolution of 1789. Actual violence is often used; and when 
 concessions are made, it is often in fear of violence. Violence 
 or the right to use it is the basis of every state in existence, 
 whether constitutional or other. Political alternatives lie simply 
 in deciding who shall use the force (or control its use), whether 
 an individual, or a class, or a majority of the people. 
 
32 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 From this point of view the essential problem 
 of government might be stated as follows : Flow 
 far may a community or society use force in 
 attaining its objects ? Or, to put it differently, 
 how far may the community itself act, and how 
 far may it trust to the private initiative and 
 action of individuals P 1 For wherever the com¬ 
 munity itself acts, — acts as a body,—it may 
 always happen that single persons will not 
 agree with it and hence will only co-operate or 
 submit as they are forced to. If a community 
 acted and put no obligation on individual mem¬ 
 bers, it would not be really the community act¬ 
 ing, but simply the majority (or whatever might 
 be the number of those deciding on the action). 
 
 Hence community — or social — action and 
 the use of force (or at least the right to use it) 
 are inseparable, so long as the action is not unani¬ 
 mous. Indeed, if the action were unanimous and 
 yet no arrangement were made to enforce the 
 
 1 Professor Huxley states the problem of government as 
 follows : “ What ought to be done and what to be left undone by 
 society as a whole, in order to bring about as much welfare of its 
 members as is compatible with the natural order of things.” 
 {CollectedEssays , Vol. I. p. 427.) 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 33 
 
 conclusion reached against any individual in the 
 future who should change his mind and rebel, 
 there would be no government in the proper 
 sense of the term ; just as in case different 
 nations now agreed henceforth to arbitrate their 
 differences, instead of going to war about them, 
 and yet should make no arrangement for re¬ 
 straining a nation that took it into its head to 
 go to war, no government would really be set up 
 by the antecedent agreement, however unani¬ 
 mous that agreement might be. 
 
 Government means power to enforce a decis¬ 
 ion— this is its essential nature . 1 In a wholly 
 ideal order of things, social action would be 
 possible without government; in the present 
 order of things social action and government 
 are practically interconvertible terms. 
 
 1 Cf. Professor J. W. Burgess, “ An organization may be 
 conceived which would include every member of a given popu¬ 
 lation, or every inhabitant of a given territory, and which might 
 continue with great permanence, and yet it would not be the 
 state. If, however, it possesses the sovereignty over the popu¬ 
 lation, then it is the state.’’ (Political Science and Constitu¬ 
 tional Law , Vol. I. p. 52.) Again, “The state must have the 
 power to compel the subject against his will; otherwise it is 
 no state, it is only an anarchic society.” {Ibid. p. 55.) 
 
 D 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN 
 DEFENSIVE WAR. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN DEFENSIVE WAR. 
 
 I have said that the presumption is always 
 against government, since interference with 
 freedom is, in itself, an evil. But this is far 
 from disposing of the matter. In a similar 
 way it might be said that inasmuch as pain 
 is an evil (in itself considered), the pre¬ 
 sumption is always against anything that 
 brings pain. So it is, and yet we justify 
 many things that bring pain (whether to our¬ 
 selves or to others), because we think that 
 in the long run they result in a counter¬ 
 balancing good. 
 
 The question is whether government may 
 not be justified in a similar way. The illus¬ 
 trations I have given show that government is 
 not always a necessity, and suggest that in an 
 ideal order of things there will be no occasion 
 for it; but where there is occasion, when it 
 would be an advantage, not to say a necessity, 
 
 37 
 
38 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 is there any reason why a society should not 
 use it ? Is restraint or compulsion not only 
 an evil, is it a wrong? 
 
 Let us take an instance. Let us suppose 
 that a tribe or community is threatened 
 with invasion, that without having done any 
 wrong itself, it is confronted with another 
 tribe that wishes to dispossess it of its lands 
 and possessions, and, if need be, to wipe it 
 out. May it resist ? Few would question 
 this right. There may be those who would 
 teach an undiluted doctrine of non-resistance, 
 but I cannot stop to enter into the ethics 
 of this view now, save to say that if it had 
 been consistently acted upon by living beings 
 in general in the past, man would probably 
 never have developed himself on this planet 
 at all. I must take for granted that a tribe 
 in the situation I have described has a right 
 to resist. The practical question is, How ? 
 
 Shall all the able-bodied men fight (or help 
 support, by their labor at home, those who 
 do) and, if any are reluctant and unwilling, 
 may they be rightfully obliged to do their 
 
DEFENSIVE WAR. 
 
 39 
 
 »part ? or, must we say, on the contrary, that 
 every individual’s freedom is so sacred that 
 it is wrong to do violence to it, and that non¬ 
 interference must be practised, even if it leads 
 to the ruin of the tribe ? I think every one 
 would feel that a claim in behalf of freedom 
 like the one just mentioned is strained 
 and exaggerated, and that an individual could 
 not really ask to be left free to do as he 
 liked, save as he was ready to act in a way 
 not inconsistent with the interests of his 
 tribe. Probably conscience itself, in one 
 who was thus cowardly and unwilling, would 
 be on the side of those who forced him into 
 the ranks (or to labor, at home); at least 
 it would not be strongly against them. 
 
 But if this is so, mere respect for men’s 
 freedom is not a principle of morality. All 
 depends on how they use this freedom, 
 as to whether others are absolutely bound 
 not to interfere with it. If they use it in 
 such a way as to endanger the existence 
 of the society of which they are members, 
 they have no valid title to it. And this is 
 
40 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 quite consistent with saying that interference 
 with freedom is, in itself considered, an evil 
 (for it is always better that people should 
 do right of their own accord than that they 
 should be forced to); it is simply saying that 
 under certain circumstances it is not a wrong 
 — and that the evil involved in it may be 
 counterbalanced by a larger good. 
 
 Moreover, suppose that the tribe in the 
 case under consideration, instead of being 
 defeated, succeeds in its resistance, despite 
 the cowardice and lack of patriotism of a 
 few. Does it seem right, in such circum¬ 
 stances, that persons should share in the bless¬ 
 ings of continued security, who had done 
 nothing to bring them about (though they 
 might have helped to this end) ? If men are to 
 have blessings, may they not, in the name of 
 right itself, be expected to bear their share 
 of the social burden in securing them? I sus¬ 
 pect it is in accordance with a deep instinct of 
 even primitive man when Homer says of certain 
 of his heroes that “ not without good right 
 do they eat the fat and drink the sweet, for 
 
DEFENSIVE WAR. 
 
 41 
 
 they fight ever in the front .” 1 It is im¬ 
 possible to get up much sympathy in behalf 
 of the rights of those who leave it to others 
 to defend their tribe or country in time of 
 danger, unless of course, as in the case of 
 Quakers, they have conscientious scruples 
 against war. 
 
 If, then, I am correct in my reasoning, there 
 is a right of government (i.e. of using force) 
 in a society, under such circumstances as I have 
 imagined. Compulsion thus far would appear 
 to be justified, whether it be to force men into 
 the field, or to oblige them to labor at home. 
 The right to personal freedom and the right of 
 property in what one produces, give way under 
 the pressure of public needs — they are not 
 absolute rights. 
 
 At the same time, it should be added, this 
 is not saying that men should , in fact , be forced 
 (under the supposed circumstances), but only that 
 they may be'if there is occasion to do so — may 
 be, that is, without violation of right or justice. 
 Doubtless it would be better if all could be 
 
 1 Iliad , XII. 31S-320. 
 
42 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 induced to do their duty of their own accord; - 
 for then public needs would be met without any 
 corresponding admixture of evil. If all people 
 could be induced to act in the right way, gov¬ 
 ernment might never have arisen among men. 
 
 In other words, it is only the right of govern¬ 
 ment (for defensive war) that we have estab¬ 
 lished ; but whether in a given crisis, force 
 should actually be used, or, on the other hand, 
 it would be better to leave individuals to their 
 own impulses, is a question for practical judg¬ 
 ment at the time. A call for volunteers or for 
 voluntary contributions might have better effect 
 than any possible conscription or measure of 
 taxation could have. In dealing with alterna¬ 
 tives like these, we are in the field of political 
 expediency, not of political principle. Principle 
 simply says that we should take whatever course 
 seems most likely to be both immediately and 
 permanently productive of good results. 
 
 But can government be justified for any end 
 beyond this of which I have spoken ? Of course 
 one who was writing a history of government 
 would have to admit that many governments 
 
DEFENSIVE WAR. 
 
 43 
 
 have owed their origin to the necessities of 
 aggressive war; and such governments I do not 
 undertake to defend . 1 But I am simply now 
 asking, What justifies government at all? It 
 may well be that some types of government can 
 not be justified. If a society has a right to 
 exist at all, it has a right to defend itself against 
 attack — defend itself, as a society, I mean, and 
 act as a body. Government, so far, is for a 
 thoroughly public purpose. But why should 
 government go any further ? Why should gov¬ 
 ernment interfere in private quarrels and under¬ 
 take to protect the life and the property of 
 individuals ? Why should it not restrict itself 
 to the public concern ? This has been the rule 
 sometimes. 
 
 “Among the lower races,” says Sir John 
 Lubbock, “ the chiefs scarcely take any cog¬ 
 nizance of offences, unless they relate to such 
 things as directly concern, or are supposed to 
 concern, the interests of the community gen- 
 
 1 About the year 200 b . c . a large force of Japanese made a 
 plundering expedition into Corea. It is amusing to hear this 
 gravely spoken of as one of the strongest historical supports of 
 Japanese rights in the Corean peninsula. 
 
44 
 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 erally. As regards private injuries, every one 
 must protect or avenge himself /’ 1 
 
 In Mediaeval Europe, too, individuals were 
 often left to protect themselves or to find such 
 protection as they were able to get by a species 
 of contract. Yes, Mr. Spencer, in his Sociology , 
 gives us instances of governments that hardly 
 last longer than during periods of public danger, 
 coming into being with the emergencies of war 
 and practically passing away when war is over . 2 
 What real justification is there for government 
 (; i.e . any kind of social coercion) save in the 
 time of war? Why should the community mix 
 itself up in men’s private affairs, and make pri¬ 
 vate quarrels and injuries matters of public con¬ 
 cern ? Modern communities do so interfere. 
 Our policemen, our courts, our laws, have for a 
 large part of their purpose the remedying of 
 private wrongs and the settling of differences 
 between individuals. Why should they ? 
 
 It is astonishing to find how little thorough¬ 
 going political philosophy there is on this point. 
 
 1 Origin of Civilization , chap. x. 
 
 2 Sociology, Vol. II. §§ 451, 473, 478. 
 
DEFENSIVE WAR. 
 
 45 
 
 Most writers seem to take it for granted that 
 government should protect life and property; it 
 is a kind of first principle with them; they have 
 no reasoning to offer. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 hardly differs from the rest; radical political 
 thinker that he is, he seems almost as implicitly 
 as any school-boy to take for granted that gov¬ 
 ernment should protect life and property. And 
 yet if we ask, Why? — if we press for reasons, 
 — we are brought, I think, into a circle of con¬ 
 ceptions of far-reaching importance, conceptions 
 that throw light on the problem of government 
 in all its phases, conceptions that tend to under¬ 
 mine those narrow mechanical notions of the 
 province of government, with which the name 
 of Mr. Spencer, among others, is associated. 
 What I have in mind, I shall endeavor to make 
 clear in the next chapter. 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN 
 PROTECTING LIFE AND 
 PROPERTY. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN PROTECTING LIFE 
 
 AND PROPERTY. 
 
 We have seen that government — social 
 action, along with its incidents of compulsion 
 on unwilling members — is justified in defend¬ 
 ing a society against the unjust attack of an 
 enemy. But when the society is no longer 
 in danger, why should it not leave individuals 
 entirely to themselves ? Why should it inter¬ 
 fere in their private quarrels ? Why should 
 it make a private injury a public wrong? If, 
 indeed, quarrels become so widespread as to 
 threaten the life of society, it might act to 
 prevent or settle them for the same reason 
 that it acts as a body against an external foe . 1 
 
 1 An ordinance was issued in France in 1296 prohibiting 
 “ private wars and judicial duels so long as the king is engaged 
 in war ” — implying, then, that at other times they were not for¬ 
 bidden. The question is why should they be, when they do 
 not endanger the life of the community? 
 
 E 49 
 
50 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 But when the situation is not so grave and 
 is nowise different from what we ordinarily 
 meet with in human societies, — where there 
 are simply occasional thefts, assaults, robberies, 
 murders, and the like,—why should the society 
 interfere ? Primitive societies often do not, 
 conceiving that each individual should be his 
 own protector or that his blood relatives 
 should come to his aid. Why should modern 
 societies ? Why should they not restrict them¬ 
 selves absolutely to matters of public concern 
 — and, if the society is not threatened from 
 without, allow government to fall into disuse, 
 leaving all private wrongs to be dealt with 
 by individuals themselves ? 
 
 The question turns at bottom on what we 
 mean by society or, more accurately speaking, 
 a society. A society, if we stop to think of 
 it, is a peculiar phenomenon. It is made up 
 of individuals, and yet any number of individ¬ 
 uals do not of themselves make a society. It 
 is not one individual and another and another 
 and so on — but these conceived of as some¬ 
 how fitting together, making a unity, a body, 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 51 
 
 an organism . 1 In any physical body there are 
 the same chemical elements as might exist 
 separately, detached, or, as we say, in a free 
 state, outside — but the body is not simply the 
 sum of these elements, any more than a house 
 is simply the sum of its bricks. A body is a 
 peculiar combination of its elements; and it is 
 bricks going together in such a way as to make 
 one object that constitutes the house. So with 
 a society. It is not simply a lot of individuals, 
 but these individuals conceived as making up 
 a whole, with ties to one another and more or 
 less conscious of them, feeling that in some 
 sense they belong to one another, that they are 
 not mere units , but members together of a some¬ 
 what beyond their individual selves. Such is 
 the characteristic mark of a society. 
 
 What the circumstances and forces are that 
 lead to formation of societies is another ques¬ 
 tion . 2 It is enough for our present purpose 
 
 1 For extended analysis and criticism of the idea of organ¬ 
 ism, as applied to a society, see Prof. J. S. Mackenzie’s An Intro¬ 
 duction to Social Philosophy, chap, iii., “The Social Organism.” 
 
 % This inquiry might be said to belong to the province of the 
 sociologist (cf. such works as Bagehot’s Physics and Politics , 
 Morgan’s Ancient Society , Ward’s Dynamic Sociology , and par- 
 
52 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that we find them,—groups of people who feel 
 that in some sense they are one, — classes, 
 tribes, races, peoples, nations, and the like. 
 
 Wherever such units exist, it is not true to 
 fact to say that the members of them are 
 individuals merely; the ties may be weak or 
 they may be strong, the consciousness of be¬ 
 longing to a larger whole may be faint or it 
 may be vivid and clear, but where there are 
 no ties, where there is no social conscious¬ 
 ness, properly so called, there is no society, 
 however many individuals more or less cogni¬ 
 zant of one another there may be. Mr. Spencer 
 tells us of certain Asiatic savages that they are 
 “like tigers—two of them cannot dwell in one 
 den ” ; “ their houses are scattered singly or in 
 groups of two or three .” 1 It is plain that 
 such people are a tribe in only a very limited 
 sense of the word. It is the sense of belonging 
 to one another that makes a tribe. 
 
 On the other hand, even though the aggre- 
 
 ticularly, Prof. Franklin H. Giddings’ just published The Prin¬ 
 ciples of Sociology ); but the student of politics may take societies 
 for granted — they are the starting-point of his specific inquiries. 
 
 1 The “Abors”; see Sociology , Vol. II. § 449. 
 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 53 
 
 gates be very large, there may be more or less 
 of a tribal or social consciousness. Englishmen 
 or Germans, for example, do not feel that they 
 are merely their own private selves; even an 
 American, conglomerate nationality as we are 
 over here, feels more or less dimly that he is 
 a part of a larger whole, and when, whatever 
 our old-world descent, we say to ourselves, 
 “We are all Americans,” we have an indescrib¬ 
 able sense of unity. 
 
 But if I have correctly stated the meaning 
 of a society, the line between public interests 
 and private interests can hardly be called an 
 absolute one. If in a society the individuals 
 composing it are not mere individuals, but 
 members of the society, then does not only 
 whatever affects the society affect them, but 
 whatever affects them affects the society. If 
 any one of them is injured, the society is 
 injured, on the supposition that it is a real 
 social body. The essential idea is as old as 
 Paul — and older. The Apostle gave utter¬ 
 ance to it in a passage that has become clas¬ 
 sical, having in mind the new Christian society 
 that was forming in his time : 
 
54 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 “ And whether one member suffer, all the 
 members suffer with it .” 1 
 
 Plato expressed the thought (with the usual 
 political reference) in the following language: 
 
 “Is not that the best ordered state . . . 
 which most nearly approaches to the condition 
 of the individual—as in the body, when but a 
 finger is hurt, the whole frame, drawn towards 
 the soul, and forming one realm under the ruling 
 power therein, feels the hurt, and sympathizes 
 all together with the part affected, and we say 
 that the man has a pain in his finger.” 2 
 
 In other words, just as the man, though not 
 the finger, feels the pain of the finger, so the 
 state, though not the individual, feels the inju¬ 
 ries or sufferings of the individual. There is no 
 absolute line between them; the one is simply 
 the whole of which the other is the part — and 
 an injury to the part is an injury to the whole, 
 a wrong to the part is a wrong to the whole. 
 
 In the light of this conception the question 
 of how a private injury becomes a matter- of 
 public concern may be said to answer itself. 
 
 1 I Corinthians, xii. 26. 
 
 2 Republic, 462. (Jowett’s translation.) 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 55 
 
 It would hardly be going beyond the bounds 
 to say that a society in which this was not 
 the case would not be a real society. If a 
 wrong to any one individual excites no resent¬ 
 ment in the minds of the rest, there is not 
 properly a society, but simply an aggregate 
 of individuals — the social bond does not exist. 
 The imperfect protection (or absence of protec¬ 
 tion) of individuals in primitive societies sim¬ 
 ply proves that while up to a certain point 
 (e.g. when the life of the society is threat¬ 
 ened) there may have been a consciousness 
 of solidarity, beyond that there was a feeble 
 social consciousness or else none at all. Men 
 felt that they were one in time of danger; but 
 at other times they had a feeble consciousness 
 of unity or none. 
 
 To whatever extent, then, there is a true social 
 consciousness in a group or society of people, to 
 that extent there must be an interest on the part 
 of the whole society in the good or ill fortunes 
 of any member. It may be difficult to develop 
 such a consciousness, — many causes may stand 
 in the way, the bigness of the territory which a 
 
56 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 society inhabits, the incoming of new elements, 
 the lack of common descent or of a common 
 religion, the variety of manners ; 1 but this is 
 only saying that true social wholes are not 
 made offhand, — and I am only arguing that to 
 whatever extent there is a true social whole, a 
 real society or community, to that extent, inter¬ 
 est, public interest, in individuals, in whatever 
 happens to them, and especially if it be an 
 injury, is natural, legitimate, indeed inevitable. 
 
 And yet let us not fail to realize all that 
 this means and involves. If a society does 
 make private injuries a matter of concern to 
 itself,-—if it undertakes to protect the lives 
 and property of its members,—it does to a 
 certain extent interfere with that struggle for 
 
 1 Herodotus mentions four ties that bound together the 
 Hellenic aggregate: i. Fellowship of blood; 2. Fellowship 
 of language; 3. Fixed domiciles of Gods and sacrifices common 
 to all; 4. Like manners and dispositions. {Hist. viii. 144; 
 cf. Grote’s comments, History of Greece, Part II. chap, ii.) 
 Professor J. W. Burgess defines a nation as “ a population 
 having a common language and literature, a common tradition 
 and history, a common custom, and a common consciousness 
 of rights and wrongs.” ( Political Science and Constitutional 
 Lazo, Vol. I. p. 2.) 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 57 
 
 existence between individuals which is some¬ 
 times thought to be the method and main¬ 
 spring of progress in the race. If a society 
 supplements with its own strength the strength 
 of its weaker members, it does to that extent 
 help to perpetuate in existence those who 
 otherwise might be crowded out of existence. 
 
 If the supreme principle is, as is sometimes 
 maintained, a fair field and no favors, each 
 one prospering or failing in life, according to 
 his natural endowments, then is government, 
 so far as it is a means of giving protection to 
 those who might not be able to defend them¬ 
 selves, an interference with this principle, 
 since it puts on an equality, as regards the 
 security of their persons and property, people 
 of unequal natural endowments. The power¬ 
 ful, the capable, can generally defend them¬ 
 selves ; it is the less gifted persons who look 
 to some one else to defend them —as in the 
 Sandwich Islands it is an injured person 
 too weak to retaliate who appeals to the king 
 or principal chief . 1 
 
 v 1 Spencer, Sociology , Vol. II. § 522. 
 
58 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 And the logical implication of the views 
 of some thinkers would seem to be that gov¬ 
 ernment, in this aspect of it, is an interfer¬ 
 ence with a kind of natural justice. Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer is one whom I have in mind 
 — not that he would say this, but that he 
 has a general mode of thought from which 
 this would not be an illegitimate inference. 
 He, for example, objects, in common with 
 many others, to taxes that fall in more than 
 due proportion on those whose greater power 
 have brought them greater means, only to give 
 to citizens of smaller powers more benefits than 
 they have earned; he calls this a burdening the 
 better for the benefit of the worse . 1 
 
 He would have it, on the contrary, that 
 each one should gain “ neither more nor less 
 of benefit than his activities normally bring.” 2 
 “The superior,” he says, should “have the 
 good of his superiority; and the evil of his 
 inferiority,” and he would put a “veto on all 
 public action which abstracts from some men 
 
 
 1 Sociology , Vol. II. § 581. 
 
 2 Ibid. Vol. II. § 575. 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 59 
 
 part of the advantages they have earned, and 
 awards to other men advantages they have not 
 earned.” 1 
 
 This is indeed his fundamental rule of jus¬ 
 tice and injustice. Mr. Spencer gives particular 
 instances of what he means — he condemns 
 public libraries and public museums and public 
 schools, since these mean the taxation of the 
 more well-to-do for the benefit of the less well- 
 to-do, and every one, he maintains, should have 
 all the benefits of his exertions to himself, and 
 none should have more benefits than his own 
 exertions entitle him to . 2 True, he does not 
 “ condemn aid given to the inferior by the 
 superior” voluntarily , but it is difficult to see 
 why he should not, since this involves an inter¬ 
 ference with the principle of benefit purely in 
 proportion to merit as truly as public aid does. 
 
 In other words, Mr. Spencer believes that each 
 individual should stand on his own legs and 
 
 that the fittest should survive — he holds to the 
 
 1 Ibid . Vol. II. § 567. 
 
 2 “The Sins of Legislators” and the “Great Political Su¬ 
 perstition,” in The Man versus The State. Cf. Sociology , Vol. 
 II. § 569. 
 
6o 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 beneficence of the struggle for existence in the 
 human world as truly as in the animal world, and 
 says that government (or the corporate action of 
 society) should not interfere with the struggle. 
 
 But the question is, whether government for 
 the protection of life and property is not itself 
 an interference with this principle. Mr. Spen¬ 
 cer does not say so ; he rather recognizes the 
 legitimacy of government for the protection of 
 life and property; but it is difficult to see how 
 he can do so in consistency with the language 
 which I have just quoted. He always guards 
 himself by saying that individuals should not 
 “aggress ” against one another — he would have 
 the struggle for existence go on, but says that 
 it must go on “without violence .” 1 
 
 But why without violence ? Suppose the lower 
 orders of creation were interdicted from using 
 violence in their mutual struggles. Suppose ani¬ 
 mals, birds, fishes, were forbidden to “ aggress ” 
 against one another and could heed the command. 
 What would be the consequence ? Is not a 
 part of the very meaning of the struggle in the 
 1 “ The Sins of Legislators ” in The Man versus The State. 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 6 X 
 
 animal world violence and aggression ? And 
 Spencer tells us the process is beneficent; he 
 recounts how carnivorous animals remove from 
 herbivorous herds individuals past their prime, 
 and weed out the sickly, malformed, and the 
 least fleet and powerful . 1 Why should not the 
 same process go on with equal beneficence 
 among men ? Mr. Spencer indeed once says that 
 “the poverty of the incapable, the distresses that 
 come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the 
 idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak 
 by the strong, which leave so many in shallows 
 and in miseries, are decrees of a large, far-seeing 
 benevolence.” 2 
 
 But what is the line which separates these 
 innocent, justifiable, “shoulderings aside of 
 the weak by the strong” from the aggressions 
 that are objectionable? Why is not outwitting 
 a man in a bargain if we are clever enough, 
 or failing to keep a contract with him if we 
 
 can brave the consequences, or even taking 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 2 Social Statics , reaffirmed with approval (save as regards 
 its teleological implications), in “The Sins of Legislators,” 
 The Matt versus The State. 
 
62 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 his property or enslaving him, if we are strong 
 enough-—why may not all this be justifiable, 
 since it is only the weaker and the less capable 
 members of the community who will be the 
 sufferers, and the stronger members will only 
 be thereby asserting their power and getting 
 the natural reward of their superior endow¬ 
 ments ? What would be the struggle for exist¬ 
 ence in the animal world in which deceit and 
 the right of might had no part ? 
 
 Far be it from me to assert or even suggest 
 that Mr. Spencer would sanction deceit and 
 violence in human society. Few men have 
 such an abhorrence of aggression as he. But I 
 am not now discussing his personal feelings, but 
 the logic of his philosophy. My question is 
 simply, whether, accepting the struggle for 
 existence and the survival of the fittest in 
 human society in the way he does, as not only 
 more or less natural and inevitable, but as 
 normal and desirable, he is consistent in favoring 
 government for the protection of life and prop¬ 
 erty, since this is itself an interference with the 
 struggle for existence and tends to promote the 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 63 
 
 survival of the so-called “ fit ” and “ unfit ” alike. 
 If there were complete anarchy or liberty in a 
 society, the process of natural selection might 
 go on unhindered—there would then be no 
 social check on the strong and they could have 
 the full benefit of their superior abilities, 
 whether they crowded the weak out of exist¬ 
 ence, or — what might be more sensible—made 
 slaves of them, or — what might be cheaper 
 still — left them to be “free laborers,” whom 
 they hired as they had need . 1 
 
 But with social action — that is, with a so¬ 
 ciety looking on individuals, not as individuals 
 merely, but as members of itself and hence to 
 be protected, guarded as it would its own life — 
 an end is so far put to the inter-individual strug¬ 
 gle for existence, and the strength of all is, in a 
 sense, given to each one. Plainly this takes us 
 into a different order of conceptions, from one 
 
 1 When the shade of Achilles declares that he would rather 
 have the lowest lot on earth than be king of the dead, he takes 
 as the type of the lowest earthly condition, not the slave, but 
 the free laborer. ( Odyssey , xi. 489.) Cf. Mr. Gladstone’s 
 comments on this passage. (-Studies on Homer , Vol. III. p. 
 74 -) 
 
64 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in which the “struggle for existence” plays a 
 determining part . 1 
 
 In fact, \Ve may safely say that to the extent 
 an unhindered struggle for existence goes on in 
 a society, there is no real society, and just to 
 the extent a society exists, there is co-operation 
 between all for the benefit of all, instead of a 
 competitive struggle, in which each one acts 
 for himseli alone. 
 
 Personally Mr. Spencer, as we know, favors 
 social protection of life and property; he would 
 even have civil justice, as we already have criminal 
 justice, free of cost to the citizen . 2 But for the 
 life of me I can not see how this would be equit¬ 
 able, if such things as public libraries and public 
 schools are inequitable. For if people should only 
 get what they pay for, if it is wrong that they 
 
 1 Professor Huxley says, “ The first men who substituted the 
 state of mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive 
 which impelled them to take that step, created society. But, in 
 establishing peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle 
 for existence” (Collected Essays, Yol. IX. p. 204). Again, he 
 speaks of “ that struggle for existence — the war of each against 
 all — the mitigation or abolition of which was the chief end of 
 social organisation ” {Ibid., p. 206). 
 
 2 Sociology , Yol. II. § 580. 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 65 
 
 should have the chance to “read newspapers and 
 novels for nothing / 1 why is it not equally wrong 
 that they should get justice for nothing? Why 
 should not those pay for the courts who need 
 them ? Why should the community be taxed 
 for the benefit of a few ? I think that I myself, 
 for example, have never been in a court (on 
 business, I mean) in my life; I believe that I 
 have never had occasion to invoke the aid of a 
 policeman in my life. Why then, if I take a 
 notion to stand on my rights, and to say with 
 Mr. Spencer that I ought not to have my 
 individuality trenched upon by having money 
 taken away from me that I might use for my 
 private ends , 1 may I not claim to be freed 
 from the duty of helping to support courts and 
 policemen? What justice is there — i.e., ac¬ 
 cording to this notion of justice — in my being 
 taxed for what I don’t need or use ? 2 
 
 1 Sociology , Vol. II. § 569. 
 
 2 It may be said that I may need the help of courts and police¬ 
 men in the future and that indeed I might have needed it in 
 the past — and that my tax is a sort of insurance against risk. 
 Granted. But why should I be compelled to pay for this sort of 
 insurance any more than for insurance on my house or on my 
 
66 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The answer to such questions (if there be an 
 answer) is to be found in another realm of con¬ 
 ceptions than that which Mr. Spencer makes 
 use of . 1 It is not got by asking, What do I 
 receive and therefore what shall I give, but — 
 What does the community need, and am I a 
 member of the community ? If it does need 
 courts and policemen that it may fulfil the func¬ 
 tions of a true community, and if I belong to it, 
 then in the nature of the case I should do my 
 
 life ? If I may take my risks in the latter case, why not in the 
 former ? But, in any case, it may be urged, am I not enjoying 
 the protection of police and courts by the act of living in a society 
 in which they exist, and may not the fact that I have never had 
 to call on them explicitly be urged as the best possible testimony 
 to the extent and efficiency of that protection ? If indeed my 
 act of residence in a policed society were my own choice, there 
 would perhaps be no way of meeting this argument and I should 
 have to admit that taxing me for the-support of courts and police¬ 
 men would be justified without departing from individualistic 
 premises. But as I am virtually forced to live here (or, if I go 
 elsewhere, in societies that are similarly policed), I can hardly 
 be equitably compelled to support one social arrangement when 
 I might have preferred another — that is, on the individualistic 
 or quid pro quo view of equity. 
 
 1 Mr. Spencer makes use of the conception of a society as 
 an organism, but in a very imperfect way. 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. fiy 
 
 part towards enabling it to fulfil these functions, 
 whether I get any exact personal return for my 
 contributions or not. 
 
 To sum up briefly: if we take strictly the 
 vague popular idea that each man should be the 
 architect of his own fortunes, and that success 
 or failure should depend on the intrinsic worth 
 of each individual , 1 we are conducted straight¬ 
 way to anarchy. Government should cease alto¬ 
 gether (save in time of war), and people should 
 be thrown absolutely upon their own resources 
 . to protect themselves against private aggression 
 of any kind. 
 
 If, however, we take the social standpoint, 
 if there is any meaning in the concept of a 
 society and any sense in looking at things 
 from that point of view, then may a society 
 interfere to protect the lives and property of 
 its members, — may, not because individuals 
 wish it to interfere, not because a majority 
 determine that it shall interfere, not on the 
 basis of any hocus-pocus of elections or of an 
 
 1 Cf. James Weir, Jr., M.D., in Century Magazine, October, 
 1894, p. 953. 
 
68 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 imaginary social compact , 1 but because in the 
 nature of the case it must interfere or have the 
 right to interfere, else it ceases to be a society, 
 a real whole, a true social body. A society that 
 does not repel an injury against one of its mem¬ 
 bers, or see that it is repelled, is as absurd a 
 thing as an individual man who should not 
 guard and preserve against harm any part of his 
 own body. The different parts make up, are , 
 the man on his physical side; the members are 
 the society. 
 
 Yet it must be admitted that all that has 
 been said goes only to prove what may be called 
 the right of government, in the connection con¬ 
 sidered ; whether, in addition to this^government 
 is expedient and actually advisable, is another 
 question. As, when a society is attacked from 
 without, it has the right to force its unwilling 
 
 1 It is interesting to find Mr. Spencer trying to demonstrate 
 the rightfulness of social action for the protection of life and 
 property (and also the wrongfulness of social action for any 
 further purpose), by imagining how, for example, Englishmen 
 would vote if their wishes were taken now. See “The Great 
 Political Superstition ” in The Alan versus The State and 
 Sociology , Vol. II. § 579, 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 69 
 
 1 
 
 members to lend their assistance, and yet may 
 find it practically better to use no force, but let 
 every one respond to the public need according 
 to his own free will, so in the face of wrong and 
 injuries to its individual members it is conceiv¬ 
 able that it should find it better instead of 
 remedying them itself, to leave this to be done 
 by the individuals concerned or their relatives, 
 or by associations that might spontaneously 
 arise and undertake a righting of wrongs as 
 their special function. 
 
 It is still a common notion that the industry 
 of a country prospers best when government 
 has least to do with it, that it regulates itself 
 better than society could regulate it; and it 
 is a question whether the protection of life 
 and property may not be safely left to private 
 hands, whether spontaneous regulating agencies 
 would not arise that would do better than any 
 which society could contrive. It is evident that 
 the only inherent social demand is that indi¬ 
 vidual life and property shall be protected, 
 not that this shall be done in a particular 
 manner. If a society sees that protection is 
 
70 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 given, it may be as well as if it gave the pro¬ 
 tection itself. We have really then here a 
 question of ways and means, of practical policy, 
 and not a question of ethical principle. If a 
 society had plenty of Thomas Chilsons at its 
 disposal, it could probably get along without 
 courts for the adjudication of disputes about 
 property. In the same way, if individuals of 
 means and of public spirit would give a society 
 policemen and militia-men, and so prevent or 
 punish crimes against the person, the society 
 would be spared the expense of having its own 
 armed force and its own criminal judiciary. A 
 society, a large body, always acts with difficulty, 
 and if individuals would act in its spirit and in 
 
 X 
 
 harmony with its needs, such spontaneous action 
 would make a great saving for the society. A 
 system of liberty or anarchy is always prefer¬ 
 able, if it meets social needs. 
 
 But there are difficulties with private 
 agencies, whether individual or associated. 
 In the first place, they are liable to be partial, 
 to interest themselves in some individuals 
 and not in others, while the society must 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. y x 
 
 ask for the equal protection of all its members. 
 Moreover, and for the same reason, these 
 agencies would have to extend over the 
 entire territory of a society, either by each 
 one of them taking a part of the territory 
 or by all uniting to form one agency for the 
 whole territory ; to arrange all this by private 
 agreement might not be easy. Still further, 
 they would have to avoid clashing with one 
 another, and so, while meaning to serve the 
 public, bring fresh trouble to the public; 
 yet private agencies are apt to clash with 
 one another. And, lastly, they would have 
 to proceed and act according to methods 
 and rules which should commend themselves 
 to the ethical sense of the society as a whole ; 
 and yet private agencies are always disposed 
 to wish to form their own rules and regulations. 
 
 Practically, then, I suspect that leaving 
 the protection of life and property to private 
 agencies would not work well; it might in 
 an approximately- ideal state of society, it 
 might in exceptional circumstances now; 
 but taking men as they ordinarily are, it would 
 
72 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 be apt to result in more or less of that inse¬ 
 curity, confusion, and disorder which we 
 ordinarily associate with “anarchy” and to 
 which it is the idea of government to put 
 an end. Under the rule of private agencies 
 some persons in the society would be likely 
 to be left defenceless ; the different agencies 
 would be warring more or less with one 
 another; and they would be so likely to want 
 to act their own way that society would be 
 obliged to interfere more or less and say 
 what they might and might not do. Yet 
 such regulation would itself evidently be gov¬ 
 ernment (in essence), and the private associ¬ 
 ations would not be unlike our corporations 
 for various public purposes to-day, whose 
 status, duties, functions, and methods have 
 to be more or less prescribed by law, and 
 which so far from taking the place of govern¬ 
 ment, themselves necessitate government. 
 
 Moreover, it has been taken for granted 
 that voluntary associations for the protection 
 of life and property would be forthcoming; 
 but as matter of fact, when there has been 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 73 
 
 a state of liberty or anarchy in the past, such 
 associations have not always arisen, or, if they 
 have, they have been very limited in the 
 operation, and many persons have been left 
 without any real security. Sometimes, too, 
 as in the middle ages, individuals could only 
 get security by sacrificing their freedom — 
 and the not unnatural result of anarchy or 
 liberty in large periods of human history has 
 been lords on the one hand and serfs or 
 slaves on the other . 1 
 
 1 As to the practical working of liberty apart from state 
 regulation, the following language of Professor Burgess may 
 be quoted: “ Deprive the state, either wholly or in part, of 
 the power to determine the elements and the scope of individual 
 liberty, and the result must be that each individual will make 
 such determination, wholly or in part, for himself; that the 
 determinations of different individuals will come into conflict 
 with each other; and that those individuals only who have 
 power to help themselves will remain free, reducing the rest 
 to personal subjection.” ( Political Science and Constitutional 
 Law , Vol. I. p. 55.) So Sir James Fitzjames' Stephen says: 
 “ If human experience proves anything at all, it proves that, 
 if restraints are minimized, if the largest possible measure of 
 liberty is accorded to all human beings, the result will not 
 be equality, but inequality, reproducing itself in a geometrical 
 ratio.” ( Liberty , Equality , Fraternity, Chap. IV. p. 182, 
 Eng. Ed.) An illustration of this is furnished in what 
 
74 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 By no means would I underestimate what 
 might be done under liberty or anarchy; 
 one may hope for the time, whether on this 
 earth or elsewhere, when all may be left to the 
 voluntary action of individuals and govern¬ 
 ment pass away; but at present and, I 
 suspect, for a long time to come, society 
 itself will have to act if all its members are 
 
 Lichtenstein tells us of the Bushmen, viz. that the weaker 
 among them, “ if he would preserve his own life, is obliged to 
 resign to the stronger his weapons, his wife, and even his 
 children.” (Quoted in Spencer’s Sociology, Vol. II. § 536.) 
 A very clever writer, whom no student of theoretical politics 
 should overlook, Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, urges that the 
 right of might is still in place. “ Anarchy! [he says] the 
 word has a dreadful ring about it. Why* it is opposed to 
 property; so it is urged. Not at all. The maxim of the 
 anarchist is, ‘ Let him take who hath the power; let him keep 
 who can.’ That is property, is it not? ‘ But what is to pre¬ 
 vent the strong from robbing the weak? Suppose the many, 
 finding themselves poor, take it into their heads to expropriate 
 the few, what then? ’ Why not? If it can be shown that 
 the robbery of the rich can be effected — effected with advan¬ 
 tage to the poor, I cannot see for the life of me why it should 
 not be done. It is contrary to morality? . . . But J deny 
 it. Morality is co-extensive with self-interest.” (Individu¬ 
 alism: A System of Politics , p. 257.) If Anarchy had any 
 necessary connotation of this sort, we should have to reject it 
 on principle. 
 
PROTECTING life and property. 
 
 7 5 
 
 to be properly protected, and progress will 
 only be made by strengthening its arms and 
 leading it to do more perfectly the work it 
 has already undertaken. Private effort may 
 answer for single individuals, but the only 
 instrument that can be reasonably expected 
 (as things are) to serve all — all, no matter 
 who they be or how much they pay into the 
 social fund, all simply by virtue of their mem¬ 
 bership in the society — is that which is the 
 representative of the society, made not by indi¬ 
 viduals, but by the society ; namely, government. 
 
 A man who pays not a cent of taxes 
 may yet under government, when threatened 
 with robbery or murder, have the whole 
 resources of the commonwealth to defend 
 him against the wrong. It is not a question 
 of how much he pays, but of membership 
 in the society. What voluntary association 
 could be. expected to do the like ? Even 
 the pqrson who has committed a crime can 
 not have private vengeance wreaked on him; 
 the officer of the law steps in and says 
 that the man can be punished only after due 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 trial. The individual who breaks the law has 
 rights protected by law — in modern societies. 
 
 It is sometimes said that progress is away from 
 status to contract — and there is much truth in 
 the assertion. But it is not after all, owing to any 
 contract that a member of a modern civilized soci¬ 
 ety has the protection of life and property of which 
 I am speaking; he has it simply in virtue of his 
 membership in the society; it is not a contract¬ 
 ual relation at all, but a vital, organic relation. 
 
 We must, of course, admit that modern socie¬ 
 ties perform this duty of protecting the lives and 
 property of their members very imperfectly; but 
 to say that they ought not to perform it at all, 
 that every one ought to take care of himself or 
 at least provide for himself by contracting with 
 others more powerful than he, since anything 
 else involves an interference with liberty, is to 
 go from the modern world to feudalism, from 
 civilization back to barbarism. Anarchy as an 
 expedient is debatable; it may always be a ques¬ 
 tion how far it is better, wiser, for a society as 
 such to act, and how far it is better to leave things 
 in individual hands. But anarchy as a matter 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 77 
 
 of right, anarchy based on the notion that a 
 society has no business to act, since this in¬ 
 volves an interference with the freedom of indi¬ 
 viduals,— anarchy founded on the idea that 
 each person is his own master and has an 
 inherent sacred right to do as he pleases uncon¬ 
 strained,—is, from a social point of view, 
 
 absurd . * 1 There is no individual right to act 
 against the common good ; strictly speaking, it 
 may even be questioned whether we have a right 
 to act against our own good — we may be left 
 free (whether by nature or by society) to do so, 
 but it may well be held that we have a positive 
 right to act only in consistency with our welfare 
 (to the extent we know it). So far as I can make 
 out, there is no such thing under heaven, as the 
 right to do as we please — using the phrase, “as 
 we please,” with scientific strictness . 2 
 
 1 If a distinction is made between Government and the 
 State, it may be said that anarchy as against Government is 
 debatable, but as against the State it is absurd — understand¬ 
 ing by the State the power and right of a society to act (sover¬ 
 eignty), and by Government the actual use of that power. 
 
 2 On the whole subject of individual rights, compare the 
 searching and exhaustive criticism of Professor D. G. Ritchie, in 
 his Natural Rights (London, 1895). 
 
73 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The right of government then would seem to 
 be fully made out, so far as the protection of 
 life and property is concerned, as well as for 
 purposes of defensive war. As to the expedi¬ 
 ency of government in this relation, opinions 
 may differ. For this is a question of fact: if 
 government is not necessary, no one would 
 advocate it — no one can believe in restrictions 
 on freedom on their own account; no one could 
 favor government if it did not seem, as con¬ 
 trasted with the method of liberty or anarchy, 
 the better expedient of the two. All that we 
 can say is that the experience of mankind seems 
 to point to government as the better expedient. 
 
 Yet we should not be too confident, and 
 the libertarian may have a great deal to say, 
 to which we might profitably listen, about 
 the inefficiency of present government and 
 the possibility that private enterprise might do 
 most of the things that government now does, 
 and do them equally well or better. It is a 
 mistake and a great superstition to suppose that 
 government is something that goes right of 
 itself. When government is a failure, it is in- 
 
PROTECTING LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 79 
 
 deed a more colossal failure than any private 
 enterprise could possibly be. By the very 
 greatness of its possible dignity as an agent of 
 society as a whole, is measured the depth of its 
 possible shame, —as an old Latin proverb says 
 that the worst things are the corruption of the 
 best . 1 We expect great things of the united 
 action of an entire society — we look for 
 something commensurate with the sweep and 
 vastness of the energies that are in operation, 
 and we should find it. 
 
 1 A discussion of the possibilities — and I might say of the 
 actualities — of wAgovernment would make a book by itself. 
 It must be borne in mind that I am not weighing the arguments 
 pro and con for government, as it usually exists ; I am raising 
 the more fundamental question, why government should exist at 
 all — even supposing it serves its proper ends. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN 
 PROMOTING THE HIGHER 
 ENDS OF LIFE. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN PROMOTING THE 
 HIGHER ENDS OF LIFE. 
 
 May the method of government be used 
 for other ends than those I have already men¬ 
 tioned ? May a society, as such, rightfully act 
 to procure other blessings than those of suc¬ 
 cessful defense in war, and of security for the 
 lives and possessions of its members ? I fail 
 to see why not — why not, that is, if it needs 
 to and can do 'so with success. Aristotle 
 remarked that political communities arose “for 
 the sake of life,” but that they continued for 
 “the sake of good life .” 1 It is not enough 
 for a community, or for its members, to exist; 
 they should attain some development and per¬ 
 fection of being . 2 A community may, for aught 
 
 1 Politics , i. 2 ; cf. iii. 9. 
 
 2 Logically prior to this is the consideration of the problem of 
 providing the means of subsistence, to which I devote a special 
 chapter later on (Chap. VII.). 
 
 83 
 
8 4 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 I can see, provide for the education of its 
 members, with the same right with which it 
 acts for their personal security. If it be 
 objected that people ought to provide for 
 their own education, the same thing might 
 be said with reference to public provision for 
 the security of each one’s person and posses- 
 sions. 
 
 The argument which Mr. Spencer urges 
 against public education conducts straightway to 
 a thoroughly atomistic conception of society, — 
 a conception which, if acted on, would dissolve 
 society. All the same a society might leave 
 education in private hands as a matter of 
 policy. It might be better that it should, if 
 individuals of means and public spirit were 
 forthcoming who would meet the entire public 
 need. The only justification of social action 
 is that individuals are not likely to do so, 
 that some portions of the community may be 
 unprovided for; the positive reason for soci¬ 
 ety’s action is simply that the needs of all 
 (whether as regards themselves or their chil¬ 
 dren) may in some measure be met — just as 
 
PROMOTING THE HIGHER ENDS OF LIFE. §5 
 
 the reason for social action for the protection 
 of life and property is that this blessing may 
 not depend on an accident or a contract, but 
 may come to each one as an organic right. 
 
 So with training in the sense of the beauti¬ 
 ful. I see not how a person can be said to 
 have any natural right to put up an ugly build¬ 
 ing in the community. It may be less bother¬ 
 some to let him have his own way; but, on 
 the other hand, if a community, feeling that a 
 certain amount of order and symmetry in the 
 architecture on its streets is desirable for the 
 sake of the training in the appreciation of 
 beautiful things which this would give to the 
 citizens, proceeds to make certain legislative 
 requirements to that effect, I can discover no 
 rightful liberties that are curtailed by so doing. 
 By spectacles also, by celebrations and noble 
 amusements, a community may provide for the 
 aesthetic training of its members, as certain 
 of the Greek cities used to do. All depends, 
 of course, on whether the community needs to 
 act for these ends and can act with advantage; 
 for if individuals of their own motion would 
 
86 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 do all that was required, this would be simpler 
 and better. 
 
 In a similar way, a society may encourage 
 the sort of family life which experience proves 
 to be the best for the interests of the society, 
 namely, by giving public sanction to that type 
 of marriage and refusing it to any other. So 
 it might even act to encourage the best type 
 of religion, if it could be conceived to know 
 enough to be able to say which is the best 
 type. I do not mean that it should act in this 
 realm ; rather I am certain that under present 
 circumstances and perhaps under any circum¬ 
 stances likely to be actual, it should not. But 
 I can discover no reason for contesting its 
 abstract right to act in this manner, in certain 
 conceivable circumstances. 
 
 The position of John Stuart Mill seems the 
 reasonable one, who held it inadmissible to 
 say that “the protection of persons and that 
 of property” were “the sole purposes of gov¬ 
 ernment.” “The ends of government,” he said, 
 “are as comprehensive as those of the social 
 union. They consist of all the good, and all 
 
PROMOTING THE HIGHER ENDS OF LIFE. gy 
 
 the immunity from evil, which the existence 
 of government can be made either directly or 
 indirectly to bestow .” 1 In other words, no line 
 of principle can be drawn as to how far a soci¬ 
 ety may go, and where it must stop, in securing 
 social welfare . 2 We can only say that it may 
 go as far as it needs to go and can go. If it 
 does not need to do this or that, since private 
 
 1 Principles of Political Economy , Book V. chap. ii. sec. 2. 
 
 2 I am aware that as a matter of practical policy Mill urged 
 that “letting alone should be the general practice,” and “that 
 every departure from it, unless required by some great good, 
 is a certain evil.” ( Principles of Political Economy , Book V. 
 chap, xi.) But the fact that he says, “ unless required by some 
 great good,” shows how far removed he was from those who 
 regard laisser faire as an absolute principle. The presump¬ 
 tion might be said to be in the same way against government 
 interference for the protection of life and property; it is only 
 because this is “required by some great good,” that the pre¬ 
 sumption is overridden. This also seems to have been ad¬ 
 mitted by Professor W. S. Jevons (with special reference to 
 industrial problems), who regarded laisser faire as, in gen¬ 
 eral, a sound practical rule, but not as a principle. Cf. the 
 language of the Preface to his The State in Relation to Labor. 
 “The all-important point is to explain if possible why, in 
 general, we uphold the rule of laisser faire , and yet in large 
 classes of cases invoke the interference of local or central 
 authorities.” 
 
88 
 
 AiVARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 individuals are able and willing to do the same, 
 surely it should not; or, even if it would be 
 better that it should do a certain thing, it 
 should not attempt the task, if it is not really 
 equal to it. Liberty or anarchy is always sim¬ 
 pler and better if it will meet social require¬ 
 ments. 
 
 The question then of how far practically a 
 society should go at any given time and in the 
 midst of any given set of circumstances, is 
 not a question that can be determined by 
 abstract considerations. It is a question, not 
 for theorists, but for practical men of affairs, 
 — for those who know the circumstances, 
 and who by their experience and training are 
 fitted to judge about them. Here is the field 
 of statesmanship, and one man, acquainted with 
 history and in touch with the tendencies of his 
 time and the actual stream of events, is worth a 
 dozen closet philosophers. Political philosophy 
 itself can not take the place of political training 
 and the best service such philosophy can render 
 the statesman is to help him get rid of false 
 
PROMOTING THE HIGHER ENDS OF LIFE, gg 
 
 principles and of superstitions , 1 to assist him 
 to an open, plastic mind, and make him free to 
 act in view of the circumstances that confront 
 him. 
 
 1 If careful ethical and political thinking tends to dissipate 
 superstitions about government, it equally tends to dissipate 
 superstitions about rights against government. 
 

ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN 
 THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 4 
 
 f 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT IN THE INDUSTRIAL 
 
 REALM. 
 
 I now take up a question of peculiar difficulty. 
 In the realm of industry, which is better — 
 the method of liberty or the method of gov¬ 
 ernment ? All our instinctive feelings and pre¬ 
 possessions are in favor of liberty. This is as 
 it should be, for government always requires 
 special justification. Let us, however, look into 
 the matter. 
 
 Mr. Spencer says, “The continued existence 
 of a society implies, first, that it shall not be 
 destroyed bodily by foreign foes, and implies, 
 second, that it shall not be destroyed in detail 
 by failure of its members to support and propa¬ 
 gate themselves.” 1 This latter presupposition 
 brings before us what may be broadly called 
 
 1 Sociology , Vol. II. § 563. 
 
 93 
 
94 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the industrial problem. How shall a society 
 proceed, to the end that its members may not 
 fail to support and propagate themselves ? — 
 this is the industrial problem from the social 
 point of view. 
 
 It might be said that a society does best 
 by leaving its members to provide for them¬ 
 selves, — individually or by free association; 
 that a spontaneous organization thereby arises 
 better than any that could be consciously con¬ 
 trived. This is only saying that anarchy is 
 better than government in this relation — save 
 in so far as government keeps the peace and 
 holds men to their contracts with one another. 
 But the question is one of fact and cannot be 
 determined a priori. It surely does not follow 
 of itself, because a society should preserve itself 
 against an enemy and against starvation, that 
 the only way to do the latter is to leave each 
 individual to shift for himself or to get such 
 help as he can by contracting with others. 
 The strong and capable can doubtless meet 
 their needs in this way, and many of the weak 
 might find a place of some sort in an order of 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 95 
 
 things of this description, but there can scarcely 
 be said to be a guarantee that all would — and 
 what would there be to hinder the strong from 
 taking advantage of the weak in the contracts 
 made between them ? It is conceivable, then, 
 that in place of leaving individuals to themselves, 
 a society should somehow attempt to organize 
 the industrial activity of its members, and guar¬ 
 antee subsistence and corresponding work to 
 all,—just as societies now undertake to pro¬ 
 tect all from aggression, irrespective of their 
 ability to protect themselves. 
 
 Mr. Spencer would indeed object to such 
 a method as involving inequity. For if there 
 were sociab- (i.e. governmental) action for 
 industrial ends, the strong and the capable 
 would be obliged to support a scheme for 
 which they might get no corresponding bene¬ 
 fit, and which would not, indeed, be intended 
 for their special benefit. And, on the other 
 hand, the less capable members of the society 
 might get benefits that their own individual 
 efforts would not enable them to attain. All 
 this would be inequity according to Mr. Spen- 
 
96 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 cer. And plainly, if the rule of equity or 
 justice is as he states it, namely, that “the 
 superior shall have the good of his superiority 
 and the inferior the evil of his inferiority,” or 
 that people shall “take the consequences of 
 their conduct, neither increased or decreased ,” 1 
 then is social action unjust which puts the 
 inferior anywise on an equality with the supe¬ 
 rior, even if it be only in guaranteeing to 
 them (in exchange for work) the necessaries 
 of life. But we have seen that on similar 
 grounds it might be held wrong to protect 
 the weak from the natural results of their 
 inferiority in the loss of their property or 
 life — and if the social, as opposed to the in¬ 
 dividualistic point of view, is justified in the 
 one connection, it is difficult to see any a 
 priori reason why it may not be justified in 
 the other. 
 
 The question is, of course, twofold: one 
 of fundamental principle, the other of ways 
 and means or expediency. The former runs 
 back to this: Do we wish all to live? — all, 
 
 1 Sociology , Vol. II. § 567. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 97 
 
 that is, who are willing to work and behave 
 themselves. We may not so wish ; we may 
 follow the suggestions of certain naturalists,- 
 and say that only those should live who can 
 maintain themselves in a competitive struggle 
 for existence — the robust, vigorous, self-rely¬ 
 ing, no matter if in individual cases somewhat 
 unscrupulous, members of the species. We 
 may say that the earth belongs to them, 
 and that we should not by any laws or types 
 of social organization hinder them from win¬ 
 ning the victory. This is the question of 
 principle, of fundamental ethical theory. 
 
 If we answer it in the way just indicated, we 
 are bound to oppose social interference in the 
 industrial realm, and may, if sternly logical, 
 oppose government for protecting life and 
 property as well. But if we take the ground 
 that all members of a society, unless positively 
 unworthy, somehow have claims on the soci¬ 
 ety, if we have a sense of social unity and 
 solidarity,—then we are in an absolutely dif¬ 
 ferent camp of social theory; there is no pos¬ 
 sible reconciliation that I can see between 
 
 H 
 
gg ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 those who take the individualistic 1 and the 
 social point of view. 
 
 Yet even if we take the social point of view, 
 it does not of itself follow that we shall favor 
 the social organization of industry. As in deal¬ 
 ing with the protection of life and property, 
 we saw that it was a question of expediency 
 whether a society should itself give this protec¬ 
 tion or should leave it to be provided by indi¬ 
 viduals and voluntary associations, itself simply 
 seeing that this was done, so as regards pro¬ 
 vision for the material wants of its members, it 
 may itself act with this end in view or may 
 leave it to individuals and voluntary associa¬ 
 tions to act, simply seeing that the provision 
 is actually made. In other words, we have here 
 too a question of expediency rather than of 
 ethical principle. If a society sees that none 
 
 1 1 am aware that “ individualism ” is used in various senses, 
 and on account of this vagueness I eschew the word altogether 
 in the present discussion. But the sense in which I here 
 use “ individualistic ” has been made plain by the preceding 
 paragraph. A true individualism, however, might be said to 
 be entirely reconcilable with the social point of view; for the 
 good of individuals may be held to be the final end of social 
 action. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 99 
 
 of its members suffer want (without blame of 
 their own), it is as good as if it provided against 
 that want itself. Social oversight, social right 
 of action, is involved in the very notion of a 
 society ; but whether a society shall act or no, 
 whether it has a duty to act, is in this realm, 
 as in every other, simply a question of practical 
 judgment in view of the facts and circumstances 
 at hand. 
 
 Viewing the matter in this light then, we 
 have simply to ask, How do things go when 
 individuals are left to themselves ? How does 
 liberty or anarchy work ? And more particu¬ 
 larly : Do individuals succeed when put upon 
 their own resources ? Do all who are willing to 
 work get the chance to work ? Do the stronger 
 respect the weaker and refuse to take advantage 
 of them ? Do all share in some measure in the 
 benefits, conveniences, and comforts that go to 
 make up the material basis of life ? If these 
 questions can be answered in the affirmative, 
 liberty or anarchy in this realm is surely justi¬ 
 fied. Even if social action could accomplish 
 the same result, anarchy would be better, since 
 
100 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 social action (men being what they are) involves 
 the use of more or less constraint or force, and 
 constraint, even the wisest and justest, is, in 
 itself considered, an evil. But if liberty or 
 anarchy does not work in the manner described, 
 if it leaves some members of the society unpro¬ 
 vided for (through no fault of their own), if it 
 allows the weak to be taken advantage of by 
 the strong, if it results not in trifling but in 
 great inequalities of material circumstance, then 
 it is not justified. 
 
 What are the facts ? We have them in a 
 measure before us to-day; for while anarchy or 
 liberty has passed away as regards the protec¬ 
 tion of life and property, and government is in 
 its place, we live in an order of anarchy or 
 liberty (substantially) as regards the industrial 
 needs of the community. So we can actually 
 observe. What do we see ? 
 
 A trained sociologist ought to answer this 
 question and what a layman like myself can say 
 may not have much value. But my impression 
 is that in this free industrial order in which we 
 live, a great many have hardly enough to eat, 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 IOI 
 
 and not because they are unable and unwilling 
 to work ; 1 that a great many more,—a large 
 number, — while they have enough to eat, have 
 little or no share in the comforts and decencies 
 of life; further, that there is a large, growing 
 class of the unemployed, or irregularly em¬ 
 ployed, for whom there is little or no work to 
 do, mechanical inventions tending to make 
 men’s labor more and more unnecessary (as 
 electric wires make horses to draw street cars 
 unnecessary), the human-being having, however, 
 nothing but his labor to live on; still further, 
 that the stronger members of the industrial 
 organism are apt to take advantage of the 
 weaker, to drive hard bargains with them, to 
 get their labor for as little as they can — so 
 that as a result they, the stronger, get more 
 than a fair share of the wealth that is jointly 
 produced, a result attributable not to the fact 
 that they are of superior ability, but to the fact 
 that their ability is rare (and in their rareness 
 their economic strength consists), while the 
 laborers are at a disadvantage not because it is 
 
 1 1 do not deny that some are in want through their own fault. 
 
102 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 only labor they have to sell, but because this 
 labor is plentiful (wherein consists their eco¬ 
 nomic weakness) ; and hence the division into 
 classes, the inequalities of condition and advan¬ 
 tage, the misunderstandings, the enmities, and 
 perhaps now and then public disorder and riot. 
 
 So far as I can judge, then, it would be 
 stretching a point to say unqualifiedly that 
 liberty or anarchy in industrial affairs works 
 well. What we can say is that the world 
 somehow gets along under it, that society does 
 not go to pieces without government in this rela¬ 
 tion any more than it did without government 
 for the protection of life and property; that the 
 weak suffer the natural consequences of their 
 lack of endowments and at the worst starve 
 (though they do not strictly need to, as there 
 are generally workhouses or poorhouses in 
 which they may take refuge); while on the 
 other hand the superior members of the race, 
 as Mr. Spencer would call them, get the re¬ 
 wards of their superiority, and society goes on. 
 
 Yet I doubt if any one would hold that all 
 this satisfies the social consciousness. Some- 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 103 
 
 how we say instinctively from a social point 
 of view that there ought to be an industrial 
 order in which all the able-bodied members 
 of a society should have a place, in which all 
 should contribute according to their strength 
 and varying gifts, and in which all should in 
 turn receive in not greatly unequal measure 
 from the fund of wealth produced. If it is 
 really true that this does not tend to be ac¬ 
 complished under liberty or anarchy, then 
 there would seem to be no other course than 
 for the society to see what it can do itself. 
 
 If leaving individuals to themselves results 
 not in satisfying the needs of the social body 
 or the requirements of the social conscious¬ 
 ness, but in excessive wealth on the one 
 hand, and excessive poverty on the other, in 
 social disorder and private war, and even in 
 the loss of opportunity in some cases to get a 
 living by labor at all, then would industrial 
 liberty or anarchy appear to condemn itself. 
 Of course all would be different if individuals 
 were universally moralized ( i.e . socialized in 
 thought and disposition); in that case, free- 
 
104 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 dom might bring all that social action (gov¬ 
 ernment) could bring—and more. 
 
 But before proceeding further, let us notice 
 a little more closely the peculiar conditions 
 under which the industrial problem presents 
 itself at the present time. They are not con¬ 
 ditions that have always existed. The marked 
 phenomenon of modern industrial society is 
 the extent to which the division of labor is 
 carried. Where men produce directly their 
 own means of subsistence, they of course get 
 what they produce. In primitive agricultural 
 regions this is still sometimes the case. Even 
 when an exchange of products takes place, 
 there is apt to be a substantial equivalence 
 between what is bought and what is sold. 
 But in a complicated state of industrial soci¬ 
 ety such as generally exists in modern com¬ 
 munities, no one literally gets what he pro¬ 
 duces, nor would it always be of use to him if 
 he did. The shoemaker can not live on shoes ; 
 he wants bread. The carpet weaver can not live 
 on carpets; he wants a house and clothes to 
 cover himself with. The railroad president 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 105 
 
 does not make his living, — hardly any of us 
 do,—we make or do something and in ex¬ 
 change for this, get our living. In short, 
 what one produces and what one gets are 
 two distinct things, and there seems to be no 
 necessary connection between them. 
 
 How is what one gets determined (under 
 the present system) ? Not really by the util¬ 
 ity of what one produces and has to sell, not 
 either by the cost of producing it and bring¬ 
 ing it to market; but rather by the quantity 
 of things of the same sort that happen to be 
 in the market. If there is much of it, buyers 
 can take advantage of the producer, and give 
 little; if there is little, the producer can take 
 advantage of those who wish to buy, and get 
 much. / Such is the working and meaning of 
 the so-called law of supply and demand. And 
 Mr. Spencer seems to regard this as justice. 
 “ In the average of cases,” he says, “a pro¬ 
 portioning of rewards to personal merits 
 naturally takes place under the free play of 
 supply and demand .” 1 He thinks that the 
 
 1 “ A Rejoinder to M. de Laveleye,” Contemporary Review , 
 
I0 6 anarchy or government. 
 
 only business of government, in this relation, 
 is to maintain those conditions under which 
 a free play of supply and demand is possible . 1 
 “ Interferences with the law of supply and 
 demand,” of which there have been so many 
 instances in English legislation, he roundly de¬ 
 nounces as among the “sins of legislators .” 2 
 
 Now I confess I can not see that what takes 
 place under the so-called law of supply and 
 demand has anything to do with justice (save 
 by accident). I admit that what men do get 
 ordinarily depends upon this law (and there is 
 no objection to calling it, loosely speaking, a 
 “law”), but that this has anything to do with 
 what they ought to get, I see no reason for 
 holding. It may be more than they ought to 
 
 April, 1885. Cf. the language of Professor W. G. Sumner: 
 “The distribution which takes place under the free play of sup¬ 
 ply and demand gives us our definition of justice, as applied to 
 the contribution which an individual puts into social effort and 
 the share he gets out of the social product. There is no 
 other definition of justice which can be seriously considered.” 
 (.Princeton Review , November, 1882.) This is sufficiently 
 positive. 
 
 1 Sociology, Vol. II. §§ 567, 568. 
 
 2 “ The Sins of Legislators ” in The Man versus The State. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 107 
 
 get, and it may be less — accidentally it may be 
 the same ; but in principle I do not see that 
 the things have anything in common. 
 
 Let me illustrate. In the little town of 
 Weymouth, Mass., a few summers ago, there 
 was a great scarcity of ice — almost an ice 
 famine. Strange to say, one dealer did not 
 put up his prices. “Why?” he was one day 
 asked. “Why?” he replied, “Why should I? 
 It has n’t cost me any more.” 
 
 The honest countryman was a very simple 
 individual according to the standards of our cur¬ 
 rent political economy. For, from this stand¬ 
 point, it would be said that the supply of ice 
 not being equal to the demand for it, the price 
 should rise to a point at which only a few 
 could afford to buy it, and so the ratio of supply 
 and demand be equalized again. Probably most 
 of the dealers in the neighborhood acted on 
 this principle. Whether they knew anything 
 of political economy or no, they knew their 
 chance and probably made the most of it. 
 But this one simply reasoned that the ice 
 having cost him no more than usual, he did 
 
io8 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 not need to charge more, and could sell as 
 he ordinarily had, to cover the cost and his 
 customary rate of profit. It probably looked 
 to him like taking advantage of people, to put 
 up the price. In other words, it seemed fairer 
 and squarer not to act in accordance with the 
 so-called law of supply and demand than to 
 act in accordance with it—and I suspect that, 
 looking at the matter abstractly, we should all 
 agree with him . 1 
 
 1 1 beg that my illustration of the simple-minded country¬ 
 man be taken in the way I use it. If, instead of charging as he 
 did, he had put up the price with the thought of making up 
 for losses he had sustained the previous year or of anticipating 
 losses he feared he should meet with another year, this would 
 have been nowise inconsistent with the standard of fairness he 
 had in his mind; it would simply mean that he estimated cost 
 for a term of years instead of for one year. It would, however, 
 be equally consistent with the so-called law of supply and demand, 
 to put up the price regardless of such considerations — simply 
 on the principle of charging as much as “ the traffic would bear.” 
 I am simply maintaining that “ supply and demand ” furnishes 
 no guarantee of fairness. 
 
 On the other hand, I do not forget that there may be a certain 
 economic advantage (whatever the seller’s intentions) in a rise 
 of prices in time of scarcity — that is, so far as it tends to make 
 persons (those who buy at all) less wasteful. Further, if the 
 line between those who do and those who do not buy were on a 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 IO9 
 
 Fairness, equity, justice then, instead of 
 being what takes place under a free play of 
 the law of supply and demand, may in certain 
 circumstances consist, according to one old- 
 fashioned standard, precisely in disregarding 
 that law. Yet Mr. Spencer would say that to 
 enforce justice of this sort would be wrong 
 (that it might be inadvisable, any one would 
 grant ), 1 that to interfere with free contract 
 
 basis of needs, if it could be made out that those who need the 
 article in question most would be those who could afford or, at 
 least, would be able (without grossly unequal sacrifice) to get it, 
 the objections on grounds of justice would fall away. 
 
 If I am asked what practically could take the place of the 
 regulating influence of supply and demand, I can only answer, 
 that the advisability of which in general we are here discuss¬ 
 ing— namely, some kind of social action. If there were a 
 scarcity of some necessary article, the society might give notice 
 accordingly and say that only those who really needed it should 
 have it — that, for example, ice for ice-water and for champagne 
 was not to be had, the supply being only sufficient for cases of 
 sickness. The price, however, would not need to rise beyond 
 some relation to the cost of production. In this way the less 
 well-to-do might still be able to get ice, while under a regime 
 of supply and demand it might be put quite beyond their reach 
 (save at an enormous sacrifice). Indeed the rich might want it for 
 water and champagne more effectively than others for dire need. 
 
 1 Though not necessarily, or in all circumstances, inadvisable. 
 
110 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 was vicious in principle, that society had no 
 business to do anything but maintain those 
 conditions under which an ice-dealer could put 
 up his prices to any point at which a customer 
 would (or might, because of dire necessity, be 
 obliged to) buy. It seems to me on the other 
 hand that not only has society no absolute duty 
 to keep up such conditions, not only has so- 
 called freedom of contract no inherent sanctity, 
 but that it is purely a question of expediency 
 whether a society shall in certain circumstances 
 maintain these conditions or shall interfere 
 with them; i.e. whether it shall allow or abridge 
 freedom of contract. In other words, freedom 
 of contract is not, in and of itself, a right, any 
 more than any other kind of freedom, if used 
 against social advantage. 
 
 In a complex organization of industry like 
 the present one, then, it is a matter of accident 
 whether the free play of supply and demand 
 (free contract) works what most people would 
 call justice or not. If unlimited production of 
 useful things were possible and if all men were 
 equally gifted and were situated in something 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 111 
 
 like similar circumstances, it probably would 
 — not because men meant to do justice, but 
 because they would be virtually compelled to 
 do it. But these are imaginary suppositions. 
 
 To speak of only one of them, —and the one 
 which goes to the root of all, — men are not 
 made equal. They may have equal rights, but 
 that is another matter. They are not equal in 
 fact. Those capable of organizing and leading 
 industrial enterprise are in a minority, are 
 indeed few; hence they can put a price on 
 their services which would be impossible if 
 they were many. Their services are not worth 
 more on this account, but they can get more 
 for them. Because the community needs their 
 services and cannot perhaps get along with¬ 
 out them, they can, if they like, put “famine 
 prices” on the commodity (organizing and 
 directing talent) which they have to sell; while, 
 on the other hand, those who have only labor 
 or physical skill, though they are just as neces¬ 
 sary, are many, and hence can about as readily 
 be taken advantage of as the others can take 
 advantage. 
 
112 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 These things being so, it seems idle to expect 
 (men being not unwilling to take advantage of 
 one another, as so often happens) that the free 
 play of supply and demand will work substan¬ 
 tial justice; and it may be doubted whether, 
 save in exceptional circumstances, it works 
 justice at all. It is an illusion to imagine, 
 as Mr. Spencer does, that under the free 
 action of supply and demand a person gets 
 what he gives; he gets simply what he can 
 get, which may be more and may be less than 
 he gives. The free exchange of Jacob and 
 Esau is well known. None the less does jus¬ 
 tice absolutely condemn the bargain—as every 
 child who hears the story will bear witness. 
 
 Indeed, it is a question if this sort of a 
 notion of justice is applicable in a highly 
 complex form of industrial society. It is, 
 of course, where a man works for himself 
 and exchanges finished products with another; 
 but when he works for others and is part 
 of a great industrial machine, what he gives 
 is a more or less minute part of a social prod¬ 
 uct and the value of it may be almost im- 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 113 
 
 possible to tell , 1 and what he gets may be 
 determined without the slightest reference 
 to that, but on an entirely different basis; 
 namely, by how many people there are ready 
 to do the same thing, and what is the lowest 
 any one is willing to do it for. 
 
 But in a normal type of social organization, 
 an individual gets back more than he gives; 
 he gives what he can or needs to give, and 
 in turn receives of all the benefits of social 
 organization (so far as he needs them); if 
 he needs protection for his life or possessions, 
 he may get a great deal more than he ever 
 paid for, and if he needs education for his 
 children, it is quite as little a question of a 
 quid pro quo. 
 
 As a member he simply gets whatever the 
 society, of which he is a part, is able to give ; 
 the riches of the whole go to each one, accord¬ 
 ing to his circumstances and needs. Of course, 
 
 1 Cf. Schaffle, “ The proportionate share of each in the value 
 created by a joint product can not possibly be determined in 
 associated production of any kind, whether under the capital¬ 
 istic system or in the socialistic plan which excludes private 
 capital.” ( The Impossibility of Social Democracy, p. 75.) 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 114 
 
 this is where one not only gives as a member, 
 but receives as a member. But if one received 
 only what he was able to bargain for, his share 
 in social benefits would be a matter of accident 
 and might be very small. 
 
 If, for instance, under the present organi¬ 
 zation of society, a man paid taxes according 
 to his ability, but, when it came to protect¬ 
 ing him against robbery or assault, he received 
 only as much protection as he was able to 
 bargain for or buy at the time, he might get 
 little or none, if he was poor. But this, we 
 plainly see, would do violence to our very 
 idea of a political society. For this implies 
 that when one does his duty to the society, 
 one gets from it whatever in the way of pro¬ 
 tection he needs — so that if one pays little, 
 or even nothing, the whole resources of the 
 society none the less come to his assistance 
 in time of need. This is only saying that, 
 so far as the protection of life and property 
 is concerned, the organic idea of society is 
 completely carried out; that a member is a 
 member altogether; that he receives as well 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 115 
 
 as gives an organic part of the whole, and 
 contractual relations no longer exist. 
 
 In a social organization of the industry of 
 a people the same thing, in essence, would 
 be true. Under such an arrangement one 
 would work, would cast in his contribution to 
 the fund of social wealth, but would not be 
 left to his own devices to get what he could 
 in return. He would work as a duty, and 
 receive as a right, just as he now receives the 
 protection of his person and goods as a right. 
 If a man is left to bargain for police protec¬ 
 tion, we call the society in which this hap¬ 
 pens a corrupt political society. That is, 
 in the one realm as in the other contracting 
 would so far cease to exist, and at least a 
 minimum of the necessaries and comforts of life 
 would be provided for all (save the unworthy). 
 
 I realize how great a change this would 
 involve in the industrial constitution of soci¬ 
 ety; or rather it is so great a change that it 
 is difficult to bring home to ourselves what 
 it would involve. We could perhaps only 
 find anything that could be compared to it 
 
H6 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 if we imagined a state of things now in 
 which every man was his own policeman, in 
 which the weaker were left defenceless or 
 else were driven into bargains with the 
 powerful in which they virtually lost their lib¬ 
 erty, and then that the society in which this 
 was the case awoke to the thought that this 
 insecurity, defencelessness, and enslavement of 
 many of its members were intolerable, and 
 hence that it must somehow try to organize 
 itself as a whole, as one united body, to pro¬ 
 tect the lives, liberties, and possessions of 
 all alike. This too would be a great change, 
 and if we were living in the midst of an order 
 of thorough-going anarchy of the kind de¬ 
 scribed, we might think that the change was 
 impracticable, that for the society to act as a 
 body, — to organize itself throughout its entire 
 domain, — for the ends mentioned, would be 
 too gigantic a task. 
 
 It is not strange then that we think in a 
 similar manner when we contemplate the idea 
 of society organizing itself as a whole for 
 industrial ends now. However intolerable the 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 II 7 
 
 present industrial anarchy, we may ask our¬ 
 selves, Can government successfully take its 
 place? Can such a change as has been sug¬ 
 gested be effected ? It may well be that 
 present societies are not up to the task of 
 organizing industry in the way proposed; 
 that if they essayed it, they would break 
 down, and in sheer incompetence would have 
 to leave individuals to shift for themselves. 
 It may always be that only one way out of 
 a difficulty exists, and yet that we are unable 
 to take the way, — as a man who has fallen 
 into deep water might save himself if he could 
 swim, and yet may not be able to swim. 
 
 Modern societies do not discharge their 
 present tasks so well that we can have 
 unmixed confidence as to their capacity to 
 do more. And yet some societies do better 
 than others — government is not everywhere 
 conducted in so second-rate a manner as it is 
 here in America — and perhaps all of them 
 might do better than at present. The trouble, 
 it must be remembered, is not in any irreme¬ 
 diable cause, but in the lack of public spirit, 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Eh 
 
 in the feebly developed social consciousness, 
 among the members of the societies, — some¬ 
 thing particularly true in the case of a con¬ 
 glomerate society still in the process of 
 making, like our own 
 
 Moreover, the change might be accom¬ 
 plished gradually. For a society to attempt 
 all at once to regulate the entire industrial 
 life of its members, would be folly. But if it 
 proceeded step by step, making sure of itself 
 as it went along, it might not fare so ill. We 
 must remember that most societies already 
 perform ...certn ur ~ ind nstrial—funotions. They, 
 for example, provide highways for their mem¬ 
 bers to walk or drive on, and bridges over 
 the streams or tunnels under them; they 
 ordinarily transport the letters of the mem¬ 
 bers to their destination. All this might be 
 done by private enterprise, and tolls be 
 charged for passage along the streets and 
 highways, and the charges allowed to go as 
 high as the traffic would bear. But societies 
 generally find it better to render such ser¬ 
 vices themselves, and charge simply for the 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM 
 
 1 19 
 
 cost of them — or, if they allow toll-roads 
 and toll-bridges in certain places, they regu¬ 
 late their charges and so assert control over 
 them. There seems to be no reason in the 
 nature of things why if they go so far, 
 they should not go farther — why, for instance, 
 they should not transmit our telegrams and 
 our express parcels as well as our letters 
 (England, we know, does this), why in these 
 days when rapid movement is such a neces¬ 
 sity they should not construct railways as 
 well as make streets and highways (as Ger¬ 
 many does). And as little does there seem 
 to be any absolute reason why a society 
 
 should not manage the mining of the coal 
 in its domain, or of the silver or the gold, 
 and the digging of the oil that lies within 
 its territory, and the raising of the harvests 
 and the manufacture of the goods needed 
 by its members. In fact, I see no a priori 
 
 reason why it should not do anything it can 
 
 do, if the needs of the community would 
 
 be thereby better met than they are at 
 present. 
 
120 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 This question is a practical one, not one 
 of abstract theory. What is a society able 
 to do and what does it need to do satisfac¬ 
 torily to meet the industrial wants of its mem¬ 
 bers ?— that is the essence of it. Talk about 
 the abstract rights of individuals to act as they 
 please unrestrained by law and government, 
 has about as much pertinence and value as 
 declamation against government interference 
 to curb the strong and protect the weak in 
 interests of life and property. A society has 
 as much right to act in the one realm as 
 in the other. The only question is, Can it 
 act to advantage ? In a given case — as, for 
 example, in relation to railroad transporta¬ 
 tion— the question is simply, Is there need 
 of government interference or are private 
 agencies doing already well enough, and, 
 secondly, are we sure, even if there is need, 
 that government can help matters ? 
 
 Just what form social action shall take is a 
 question of detail. Government may either 
 manage itself or may control private manage¬ 
 ment. In either case, it is social action — i.e. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 121 
 
 government and not liberty or anarchy. If a 
 society says, railways may charge only so and 
 so much a mile, or may not discriminate in their 
 charges between shippers, this is in essence 
 regulation (i.e. refusal to leave things to regu¬ 
 late themselves) as truly as if the society owned 
 the railways. It is at once seen that if gov¬ 
 ernment fixed fares, fixed wages and set a limit 
 beyond which a division of profits should not go, 
 it would be about the same as if government 
 managed the railroads ; under such circum¬ 
 stances they would hardly any longer belong 
 to the category of private business and would 
 become in effect public agencies. Something 
 like this is the case with the companies that 
 have charge of the liquor traffic in Norway and 
 Sweden according to the Gothenburg system ; 
 they are strictly regulated — they can only 
 divide profits up to a certain point, all the sur¬ 
 plus going to public purposes. It may very well 
 be that such an arrangement is better than for 
 the cities in question to attempt to conduct 
 the liquor traffic in propria persona. 
 
 Taking all things into account, I believe that 
 
122 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the sound general tendency for modern so¬ 
 cieties is to assert themselves more and more 
 in the industrial realm (whether by one specific 
 method or another). I believe that here as 
 elsewhere anarchy or liberty should more and 
 more give way to government. 
 
 If men were at heart just, — all men, —there 
 would be no need of this, or, for that matter, 
 of government at all; or if all were equal, even 
 if they were not just, there might be no need 
 of it. But as they are not equal and as many 
 are all too ready to take advantage of the rest, 
 society must act, if it conceives itself as a so¬ 
 ciety at all. It must express its sense of what 
 is reasonable and right, and make all its mem¬ 
 bers bound by it. Laws are always, at least 
 when enacted, ahead of some people (though in 
 a democratic society like ours they express the 
 average sense and conscience of the people); 
 they so far involve constraint. 
 
 It would, of course, be better if societies 
 could get along without constraint, but thus 
 far in the history of humanity they do not 
 seem to have been able to — and progress for 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 123 
 
 the present is, I believe, in the direction not 
 of less, but of more constraint . 1 No unvary¬ 
 ing rule can be laid down, but this, in general 
 and in the long run, is, I believe, the sound 
 tendency. And in my judgment this tendency 
 will not have worked itself out to its legiti¬ 
 mate result, until the whole industrial life of 
 a people conforms to the requirements of 
 the social conscience, until every able-bodied 
 person has a place in the industrial order, 
 until industrial inventions and improvements 
 become at last public property and accrue to 
 the common benefit — to the end that all the 
 
 1 Not of course for all, which would be absurd, but for the 
 few whose instincts and ambitions lead them into antisocial 
 courses of conduct. I have not perhaps sufficiently dwelt upon 
 the fact that law, while it means constraint for some, always 
 means liberty for others and possibly the only kind of liberty 
 they enjoy, and that in a democratic society, law may mean 
 liberty far more than it does constraint — liberty for the mass, 
 and constraint only for those who do not find their interests in 
 harmony with those of the mass. Liberty may in one sense be 
 said to be largely created by government — as Professor Burgess 
 has clearly shown in his distinguished work, Political Science 
 and Constitutional Law. 
 
 A fresh instance of how law may preserve or even create 
 
 liberty would be given in case corporations were forbidden to 
 
 \ 
 
124 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 members of a society alike may reap the advan¬ 
 tages (in increased enjoyment and lessened toil) 
 of advancing civilization . 1 
 
 I have said that in the long run social 
 action and regulation represent the sound 
 tendency. And yet I equally make bold to 
 say that in the still longer run, and consider¬ 
 ing not the course, but the issue of things, 
 social action will tend to become unnecessary; 
 that owing to the increasing depth and perva¬ 
 siveness of the social consciousness, the forms of 
 
 discharge employees for activity in labor organizations. Under 
 readily conceivable (and sometimes actual) circumstances, the 
 employees of a corporation may practically have little or no 
 liberty (in respect to association for the improvement of their 
 economic condition) in the absence of such a law. The Legis¬ 
 lature of Missouri passed an act to this effect in 1893; an d it is 
 interesting, as indicating the confused state of the public mind 
 in reference to the subject, that another organ of the public will of 
 this Commonwealth — the Supreme Court — has declared the act 
 unconstitutional, on the ground of its interference with the 
 right of terminating a contract. Another illustration of 
 abridging freedom to secure more freedom would be to forbid 
 the employment of women and children in factories for more 
 than a certain number of hours a day. Without the aid of such 
 legislation women and children may have no real choice in the 
 matter. But see infra , p. 158 n. 
 
 1 This may by some be called Socialism. But “ Socialism ” 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. 
 
 125 
 
 social regulation will more and more become 
 mere forms,—not that men will ever rebel 
 against them or care to undo them , 1 but that 
 they will spontaneously harmonize with their 
 requirements, just as many do with the laws 
 against robbery and murder and adultery now 
 and would, though the laws were blotted out. 
 
 I hold in perfect consistency to the two 
 ideals, — government now and an end of gov¬ 
 ernment in time to come. The social con¬ 
 sciousness, in proportion as it is real, demands 
 
 is an historical word and I have wished simply to develope my 
 own thoughts without going into the question as to how far they 
 agree with the thoughts of others. One may always have a 
 doubt how far he has the right to claim or to disclaim an historical 
 name. I hope my readers will be good enough to let my argu¬ 
 ments stand on their own merits. I must add, too, that Social¬ 
 ism like Individualism is a word that has been used in so 
 many senses that it has to be either very carefully defined or 
 else, in my judgment, avoided altogether in a scientific treatise. 
 Such definitions as Professor Flint’s, “ any theory of social organ¬ 
 ization which sacrifices the legitimate liberties of individuals to 
 the will and interests of the community,” ( Socialism , 1895) ^ eacl 
 nowhere and are simply ludicrous. For my own part I do not 
 see that a true Socialism need be anywise incompatible with a 
 true Individualism. See supra , p. 98 n. 
 
 1 By this I do not mean that many laws ought not to be 
 undone, just as no small part of political progress in the past 
 
126 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 government under existing circumstances; but 
 finally the social consciousness may be so per¬ 
 fect that government will be allowed to drop 
 away like an out-grown shell. To work for 
 the enlarging and deepening and spreading of 
 the social consciousness in the minds of our 
 American people, to increase the sense of our 
 belonging to one another, to make us feel more 
 and more that an injury to one is an injury to 
 all, is, in my judgment, one of the great ethical 
 tasks of to-day. 
 
 has been by abrogating laws that were fitted to special con¬ 
 ditions or were made in the interests of a class. I have in mind 
 now simply the principle of social regulation, when presumably 
 applied to relatively permanent conditions and in furtherance of 
 common interests. 
 
AN ILLUSTRATION: THE PULL- 
 MAN-CHICAGO STRIKE OF 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 AN ILLUSTRATION : THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO 
 
 STRIKE OF 1894. 
 
 The Pullman-Chicago strike belongs to the 
 past, but the issues involved in it do not. It 
 is even questionable if the issues are com¬ 
 monly understood. The author wishes to state 
 them, as they appear to him. 
 
 The underlying issue seems to be the same 
 as has already been stated generally; namely, 
 Should the members of a society be left to 
 themselves in pursuing industrial ends (so they 
 abstain from violence or fraud), or should the 
 society anywise interfere ? Is liberty (anarchy ) 1 
 better, or is some measure of social action (gov¬ 
 ernment) better, in this realm ? 
 
 We live in a peculiar situation to-day. Mod¬ 
 ern societies have renounced the method of 
 
 1 1 need not say that I use “ anarchy ” here simply in the 
 sense of the absence of government. 
 
 K 
 
 129 
 
130 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 liberty or anarchy in dealing with the problem 
 of protecting life and property, but hold to it 
 and even cherish it in the industrial realm. 
 They no longer leave it to individuals to pro¬ 
 tect their lives and possessions as best they 
 can , 1 but they do leave it to them to get 
 their subsistence as best they can. Societies 
 organize themselves as a whole to protect their 
 members in their personal and property rights, 
 and they are supposed to furnish this protec¬ 
 tion quite irrespective of the ability of indi¬ 
 viduals to protect themselves; they put the 
 weaker and abler members on the same level 
 in this respect. 
 
 But in dealing with the problem of subsis¬ 
 tence for their members, they are still individ¬ 
 ualistic ; they think their members should help 
 themselves (either by producing their own sub¬ 
 sistence or by contracting for it with others 
 more advantageously situated than they), and 
 that each should fare well or ill according to 
 
 1 This may be said roughly to have been the significance 
 of the feudal epoch, when individuals either protected them¬ 
 selves by the force of their own arms or got protection from 
 some one more powerful than they in exchange for services. 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 13 I 
 
 his individual merits and capacity: indeed, 
 some persons hold that to put the less capable 
 and the more capable so far on an equality 
 as to assure to both the necessaries and the 
 decencies of life, would be not only a mistake 
 of policy, but wrong in principle, — unjust . 1 
 
 From a practical point of view, however, 
 the question of anarchy (liberty) or govern¬ 
 ment in the industrial realm is purely one of 
 expediency. If it would be wrong in principle 
 to put the weak on a level with the strong 
 in the respect just mentioned, it must be 
 equally wrong to put the two on the same 
 level as regards the security of their lives 
 and possessions, — that is, modern societies, 
 even as at present constituted, are based on 
 injustice. But we have already dealt with 
 this phase of the question . 2 We have seen 
 that the very notion of a society involves a 
 
 1 So Mr. Herbert Spencer. It is interesting to notice the 
 contrast in the ideas of justice in the two cases. As regards 
 protecting life and property, it would commonly be called 
 unjust not to do as much for the weak as for the strong — 
 not to put them so far on an absolute level of equality. 
 
 2 Supra , chap. v. 
 
132 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 departure from the individualistic conception 
 of justice. 
 
 But even after the social standpoint is 
 taken, it is still an open question as to how 
 social ends may best be actually secured, — 
 whether by the method of government or by 
 the method of liberty or anarchy. The justi¬ 
 fication of government for the protection of 
 life and property is only that on the whole, in 
 average existing circumstances, it meets the 
 ends of social existence better than liberty or 
 anarchy does,—not that under other circum¬ 
 stances anarchy might not do as well or 
 better. And the only real question about 
 anarchy in the industrial realm is, How does 
 it work ? Does it meet the needs of the 
 social organism, does it satisfy the require¬ 
 ments of the social consciousness? If it works 
 well, if men succeed in meeting their needs 
 when left to themselves, if the strong do not 
 take advantage of the weak (whether from 
 motives of conscience, or of interest, or because 
 the weak tjy combination make themselves a 
 match for them), if there is thus maintained 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 133 
 
 a kind of equilibrium in the social body, so 
 that none get too much and none too little,— 
 if, I say, anarchy works well, there can be no 
 objection to it, and there is rather everything 
 in its favor, since society (as such) is thereby 
 so far saved the necessity of exerting itself, 
 and of using the compulsion, that is incident 
 to social action (government) and is always, 
 in itself considered, an evil. 
 
 But how liberty in industry actually works 
 is another matter. How it sometimes works 
 was shown not long ago in Pullman and 
 Chicago. 
 
 Far be it from me to say that events of this 
 sort are always the result of a system of liberty. 
 If we go into the country districts of New 
 England, we find government reduced almost 
 to a vanishing point. Beyond the school-house 
 and the roads and once a year the tax-collector, 
 there is scarcely a sign of government; in their 
 whole industrial life the people are left to them¬ 
 selves, and they take care of themselves — the 
 inequalities between them are of slight impor¬ 
 tance. But if we go into our great cities or 
 
134 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 manufacturing towns, what a different sight 
 presents itself! Here the many are not em¬ 
 ploying themselves, but are employed by others. 
 More and more a system of large production 
 is developing itself (made possible by the won¬ 
 derful technical advances of the age, and by a 
 more extensive use of the principle of the 
 division of labor), which means that relatively 
 fewer, as time goes on, continue to be their 
 own employers. 
 
 Even in agriculture there seems to be a 
 tendency of the same sort in the far West, 
 though whether the tendency is a permanent 
 one remains to be seen . 1 Everywhere (save 
 
 1 This is a mooted question. Some of the facts which give 
 rise to the appearance of the development of a large system of 
 agricultural production in the far West are suggested by the 
 figures of the Eleventh Census. See Abstract of the Eleventh 
 Census: iSgo (Washington, 1894), pp. 62-65. 
 
 The average size of farms has increased in certain states and 
 
 territories as follows: 
 
 ( i8 7 ° 
 
 184 (acres) 
 
 Colorado. 
 
 . .J 1880 
 
 259 “ 
 
 
 ( 1890 
 
 v» 
 
 ►H 
 
 00 
 
 
 ( l8 ?o 
 
 30 
 
 Utah.... 
 
 .J 1880 
 
 69 “ 
 
 
 ( 1890 
 
 126 “ 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 135 
 
 possibly in agricultural industry) the old era 
 of many individual producers seems to be pass¬ 
 ing away, and a system of organized, consoli¬ 
 dated production is establishing itself. There is 
 undoubtedly a saving to society, an advantage 
 to the great body of consumers, in such a system, 
 else under free conditions it would hardly arise. 
 
 But in these altered circumstances the indus¬ 
 trial problem takes on a new form. The New 
 England farmer boy who goes to the city and 
 becomes a great employer is the same human 
 
 r 1870 
 
 Montana. 3 1880 
 
 ( 1890 
 ( 1 87° 
 
 Wyoming. 3 18S0 
 
 ( 1890 
 ( 1870 
 
 Arizona. ■} 1880 
 
 ( 1890 
 
 r 1870 
 
 Nevada.. 1880 
 
 ( 1890 
 
 In both California and Oregon, however, the average size of 
 farms has diminished, and in the “ West Division” as a whole, 
 there has been a decrease from 336 to 324 acres during the 
 period in question. 
 
 164 ( 
 
 acres) 
 
 267 
 
 66 
 
 351 
 
 66 
 
 25 
 
 66 
 
 272 
 
 66 
 
 586 
 
 66 
 
 127 
 
 66 
 
 177 
 
 66 
 
 910 
 
 66 
 
 201 
 
 66 
 
 378 
 
 66 
 
 1301 
 
 66 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 136 
 
 being as before, but he has now chances that 
 he could never have had on his ancestral fields, 
 where if he wanted anybody to work for him 
 he was obliged to pay more than the man 
 could get by working on his own field. He 
 is face to face with people divorced from the 
 land and without, perhaps, any means of sup¬ 
 port, save such as he and others gifted like 
 him may provide. In other words, in an era 
 of great production masses of people become 
 dependent on their employers. They have little 
 or no alternative ; they can not employ them¬ 
 selves,— if they tried to, they could not com¬ 
 pete with those who produce on a large scale, 
 — and they must either be employed or go 
 without the means of subsistence . 1 Hence 
 they must take such terms as their employers 
 are willing to grant. If the latter are just- 
 minded (i.e. if they have something like the 
 
 1 1 do not think that I need to discuss whether this would 
 not be changed by a society’s taking the rental value of the 
 land and natural opportunities within its domain into a public 
 fund and using it for public purposes, as Mr. Henry George has 
 suggested. I believe that allowing for time in which to make 
 the change, it would be a just one — and no doubt for a 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 13 7 
 
 same regard for others which they have for 
 themselves), they will of course give as much 
 as they can, considering their own needs, the 
 needs of their business, and the competitive 
 relation to other employers in which they stand. 
 But if they think of their workmen simply as 
 means whereby they may carry on their busi¬ 
 ness and make profit for themselves, they will 
 give as little as they can—and yet have effi¬ 
 cient service. 
 
 I need not say that the ordinary notion of 
 private (as opposed to what might be called 
 public or properly political) economy — the 
 economy of the private business world, I 
 mean — is that one should pay as little for 
 services as one can get them for, just as one 
 pays as little as possible for raw materials, 
 or for tools or machinery. Here then is the 
 trouble — employers wanting to pay as little as 
 possible, workingmen wanting to get as much 
 
 while the result would be to ease the hard necessities which some 
 labor under now, since fresh opportunities for employment would 
 be opened. But that the effect would be in any way to alter 
 the system of great production or the essential facts of depend¬ 
 ence, to which I have alluded, I see no reason for believing. 
 
138 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 as possible, and employers in the nature of 
 the case being in the position of advantage, 
 since they are relatively few and the working¬ 
 men many. Hence, in the absence of outside 
 interference, workingmen are likely to be taken 
 advantage of . 1 They may check this tendency 
 somewhat by organizing themselves and com¬ 
 bining with one another, instead of each one 
 standing alone and competing against one an¬ 
 other. The success of such a device depends 
 on the completeness of the organization — since 
 those who do not enter it may always defeat 
 the efforts of those who do — and such com¬ 
 pleteness it is difficult to attain. And even 
 if the organization were complete, it would 
 hardly be possible to hold out in any demands 
 long, unless the resources of the organization 
 were beyond what workingmen are ever likely 
 to be able to make them . 2 
 
 1 1 need not say that if those capable of being employers 
 were many, and those who could perform manual labor few, the 
 situation would be reversed, and the workingmen would be those 
 who could take advantage. Sometimes even now conditions 
 may be such that they can — though rarely. 
 
 2 As showing what labor organizations can do, or least have 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 139 
 
 In other words, a system of liberty or anar¬ 
 chy, in an era of large production, means 
 large gains for a few (limited only by the 
 extent to which they compete against one 
 another ) 1 and small gains for the many; it 
 means the rise of industrial classes; and 
 whether the inferior class are contented and 
 resigned, or occasionally indulge in resent¬ 
 ment and rebellion, depends altogether on 
 the sort of men and women they happen to be. 
 
 A partial illustration of the truth of what 
 has been said has been furnished recently in 
 the town of Pullman. Mr. Pullman himself 
 is a man of exceptional talents, ability, and 
 foresight. He organized the production of 
 a commodity which the community wants 
 
 done in Great Britain, the elaborate historical study, The His¬ 
 tory of Trade Unionism by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1894), 
 may be consulted. 
 
 1 Large producers are beginning to learn that it is often 
 better not to compete, but to combine instead — those who 
 refuse to enter the combination being undersold and driven 
 out of the market. See Dr. Ernst von Halle’s Trusts (1895), 
 and Mr. Henry D. Lloyd’s Wealth against Commonwealth 
 (1894),—the latter being a detailed study of the history and 
 methods of the Standard Oil Trust. 
 
140 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 on a large scale, became a large employer of 
 labor and made correspondingly large profits. 
 A small employer, I may say, can not make 
 a great deal of money — much less a man 
 who works for and by himself. It is as a 
 great German physicist, Professor Ernst Mach, 
 said by way of illustration a few years ago 
 before the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 
 Vienna, “ A single human being, restricted 
 wholly to the profits of his own labor, could 
 never amass a fortune, but on the contrary 
 the accumulation of the labor of many men 
 in the hands of one is the foundation of 
 wealth and power .” 1 
 
 1 Address on “ The Economical Character of Physical 
 Research,” translated and printed in The Open Court, October 
 25, and November i, 1894. The whole passage is as fol¬ 
 lows: “Just as a single human being, restricted wholly to the 
 fruits of his own labor, could never amass a fortune, but on 
 the contrary the accumulation of the labor of many men in 
 the hands of one is the foundation of wealth and power, so, 
 also, no knowledge worthy of the name can be gathered up in 
 a single human mind limited to the span of a human life and 
 gifted only with finite powers, except by the most exquisite 
 economy of thought and by the careful amassment of the 
 economically ordered experience of thousands of co-workers. 
 What strikes us here as the fruits of sorcery are simply the 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE . 
 
 141 
 
 Mr. Pullman’s accumulations have gone 
 into the millions. The surplus earnings of 
 the Company of which he is President, for 
 the year ending July, 1894, — the reduction 
 of wages took place September, 1893, and the 
 strike to recover them, May, 1894, — were 
 $2,320,417 — that is, after paying the usual 
 eight per cent dividends to the stockholders, 
 and, of course, the wages to its employees. 
 The preceding year the surplus had been 
 $4,006,448. Such are the fruits of strong and 
 able business management under a regime 
 of liberty or anarchy; the superior rewards 
 of superior talent, as Mr. Spencer would say. 
 
 The wages of those employed, up to the time 
 of the reduction, had been as good as the 
 average paid to similar grades of workingmen 
 elsewhere, possibly a little better — many had 
 a few hundred dollars in the savings bank. 1 
 
 rewards of excellent housekeeping, as are the like results in civil 
 life. But the business of science has this advantage over every 
 other enterprise, that from its amassment no one suffers the least 
 loss. This, too, is its blessing, its freeing and saving power.” 
 
 1 Report on the Chicago Strike of June-July, 1894, by the 
 United States Commission, 1894, p. 28. I am indebted to this 
 report for most of the facts cited in what follows. 
 
142 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 When the pressure of the hard times began 
 to be felt in 1893, wages were reduced. Stock¬ 
 holders were not made to suffer; there is no 
 pretence that Mr. Pullman or any of the 
 officials of the Company was made to suffer 1 
 — but those who were getting least in return 
 for their labor were made to take lower returns 
 still. There is, of course, nothing to hinder 
 this under a rule of liberty or anarchy; if the 
 employees did not wish to take the lower 
 wages, they were not forced to; they could 
 stop work and go elsewhere. In May, 1894, 
 they asked for the old scale of wages, and not 
 getting them, they did stop work. There is, of 
 course, nothing to prevent this either in a 
 system of liberty where each one may, indi¬ 
 vidually or in concert with others, act as he 
 sees fit. 
 
 1 Mr. Pullman stated before the United States Commission, 
 August 27, 1894, that the salaries of himself and of the officers 
 of the Company had not been reduced. The policy of the 
 Lehigh Valley Railroad may be contrasted, the management 
 of which ordered a reduction of ten per cent in all salaries 
 of its officers over $1000 per annum to go into effect Decem¬ 
 ber 1, 1894, but left wages and salaries less than $1000 undis¬ 
 turbed. 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 143 
 
 Later on, an association of public-spirited 
 citizens in Chicago, known as the Civic Fed¬ 
 eration, urged arbitration on the Company as 
 a means of healing the differences that had 
 arisen — did so twice. In each case the Com¬ 
 pany refused the appeal. The Federation 
 asked whether at least the rents which the 
 men had to pay for their houses could not 
 be reduced to correspond with the reduction 
 in wages — for the houses which many lived 
 in belonged to the Company; but the Com¬ 
 pany replied with entire truth that rents and 
 wages were different things—and that the 
 reduction of wages constituted no reason why 
 it should lose the customary returns on its 
 houses. 
 
 It is a matter of record that some persons 
 had been given little more than enough work 
 to pay their rent, — in single instances twenty 
 cents being left over for food and clothes 
 for the family after the month’s rent was 
 deducted. 1 The Company gave a similar an- 
 
 1 Instances to this effect were given before the Grand Jury. 
 See Z. S. Holbrook in Bibliotheca Sacra , January, 1895, P 1 I ^ 3 * 
 
144 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 swer to a similar question on the part of a 
 committee of its employees. It declined to 
 receive any communication whatever on the 
 subject from the American Railway Union, 
 which many of the employees had joined; and 
 it also refused to consider arbitration when 
 solicited to do so by the Common Council 
 of Chicago and the Mayor of the City. 
 
 The Second Vice-President of the Company 
 said once, in language the distinctness of which 
 leaves nothing to be desired, “ We shall not 
 allow any one to tell us how our business shall 
 be conducted, and we shall not consent to 
 arbitration. Our business is our own private 
 affair, and we want no interference by Federal, 
 or State or any other Government.” 1 It is 
 of course the right of people under a system 
 of industrial liberty or anarchy, to talk in this 
 way; it is the very meaning of such anarchy. 
 Business or industry is conceived of, under this 
 system, as a private matter, with which the 
 public authority has nothing to do. 
 
 Then came another incident which is entirely 
 
 1 Quoted in The Outlook, 14 July, 1894. 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO S TP IKE. 
 
 145 
 
 permissible according to such a conception of 
 things. The American Railway Union — a 
 body of railroad employees with its main 
 strength in the West — decided that its mem¬ 
 bers should stop handling Pullman cars, until the 
 Company should consent to the proposed arbi¬ 
 tration. This was the Chicago strike (or boy¬ 
 cott) proper. It was a purely sympathetic strike. 
 The railroad men had no grievances; they 
 were simply led to do as they did because they 
 had a fellow feeling for their comrades in 
 Pullman. 
 
 It is astonishing to hear that men have a 
 right to act as they choose out of regard for 
 their own interests, but not when they are 
 moved by sympathy for others. Such a state¬ 
 ment is sometimes made. One who formerly 
 held high station in the Commonwealth of 
 Illinois has recently urged that while local 
 strikes should be permitted, sympathetic strikes 
 should be forbidden by law, whether violence 
 is committed or no. 1 To desire to promote 
 
 1 Ex-Governor G. Koerner, in The Open Court , November 
 
 29, 1894. 
 
146 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 another’s interests we ordinarily think is as 
 exemplary a motive as to be solicitous for 
 our own. To incur great risks, to run the 
 chance of losing the very means of life, not 
 for the sake of justice to ourselves but because 
 we wish to win it for others, would commonly 
 be thought to approach the sublime. Surely, 
 if it is permissible to strike at all, there is 
 neither logic nor common sense in denying 
 the right when it happens to be exercised for 
 unselfish ends. The strike of the American 
 Railway Union may have been headlong and 
 foolish (considering that it was so incomplete 
 an organization and so little likely to be able 
 to accomplish the end it had in view), but more 
 than this cannot be said, if we keep to the 
 standpoint of industrial liberty. 
 
 Have then a body of railroad employees, 
 it may be asked, the right to paralyze the 
 industry or commerce of a country ? It all 
 depends upon what standpoint we take. If 
 we believe that all industrial ends should be 
 secured by voluntary agencies and the free 
 play of individual interests, — that is, if we 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 take the standpoint of industrial liberty or 
 anarchy, — it is difficult to see how we can 
 deny such a right — supposing, of course, that 
 no violence is done or contract broken. Such 
 an extreme result would have to be regarded 
 as simply one of the regrettable incidents of 
 a system of liberty, which was, however, to 
 be preserved, even at this cost. And the 
 standpoint of liberty is that commonly taken 
 by Americans. At least up till now we have 
 commonly believed that the purpose of govern¬ 
 ment was simply to keep the peace and 
 enforce contracts; that to interfere in the 
 industrial world 1 and particularly to put re¬ 
 straints on any one’s freedom to act as he 
 saw fit (so long as he molested no one else) 
 was beyond its sphere. 
 
 If we adhere then to this standpoint, it is 
 difficult to see how we can question the right 
 of railroad employees to quit the service of 
 their employers for any reason that seems good 
 to them; how we can question the right of 
 
 1 Except by protecting manufacturers and others against 
 foreign competition. 
 
148 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 any number of them to do the same; how we 
 can question their right to do anything they 
 choose, just as the Pullman Company claims 
 the right to manage its business in any way 
 it chooses — anything, that is, short of breaking 
 a contract, or of violence, or of incitement 
 thereto. To unite, to combine, to do a thing 
 is no more a sin against liberty than to do 
 the thing individually — rather is it an inter¬ 
 ference with liberty to prevent men from unit¬ 
 ing, or combining. 
 
 If government is only to keep the peace, it 
 has no business to interfere with combinations 
 — whether of employers or of workingmen — 
 or with anything these combinations may do, 
 short of committing fraud or making breaches 
 of the peace. If, however, we take the ground 
 that such an industrial paralysis as the country 
 had a taste of in 1894 is intolerable,—as we 
 well may, — if we say that workingmen have 
 not the right to inflict such injuries on the 
 social organism, we do in effect and in principle 
 take a totally different standpoint from that 
 of industrial liberty and go over into the camp 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHIC AGO STRIKE. 
 
 149 
 
 of those who hold that industrial welfare is 
 not to be entrusted merely to the free play 
 of individual interests, but that society, as 
 such, may in this realm, as it already does 
 in others, act and regulate. And the simple 
 logic of events is taking many, who are reluc¬ 
 tant to part with individualist principles in 
 themselves considered, in this new direction. 
 
 But, to return. Later on, violence in con¬ 
 nection with the strike did come. To many 
 the strike and the violence in and about 
 Chicago are synonymous. If this were so, 
 there would be nothing to discuss about the 
 strike; for violence is not a subject of dis¬ 
 cussion in civilized communities. It is simply 
 something to be put down. Liberty or anarchy 
 in the industrial realm is matter for discussion, 
 but society has already passed on liberty or 
 anarchy with respect to the rights of person 
 and property and condemned it. All the force 
 used in civilized society (save for momentary 
 self-defence) is used by society itself and its 
 appointed agents. Private war, private re¬ 
 dress of wrongs, is forbidden — society by 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 150 
 
 its police and its courts undertakes to stand 
 guard over personal and property rights: and 
 despite its halting and unsatisfactory perform¬ 
 ance, we think it on the whole better that 
 society should so act than that there should be 
 a regime of liberty or anarchy. To dally with 
 violence or with threats to violence is, in this 
 age of the world, a mistake. The working¬ 
 men, so far as they are inclined this way 
 should be taught by hard experience that it is 
 not the true way in which to proceed. It is 
 salutary in the long run for them, as well as 
 needful for civilization, that plundering property 
 or assaulting persons should at once be put a 
 stop to — at whatever cost to the offender. 
 
 Yet it is fair to say that the more thought¬ 
 ful among workingmen, and, as a rule, the 
 leaders among them, are opposed to violence 
 — and that whatever violence takes place 
 ordinarily does so in spite of their earnest 
 efforts to prevent it. 1 Mr. Debs said last sum- 
 
 1 It is doubtful if the actual strikers took much part in the 
 violence in Chicago. After the force of the strike was broken, 
 the New York Times , a conservative paper, admitted as much. 
 “ Perhaps,” it said, “ the majority of the outrages in Chicago 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHIC AGO STRIKE. 
 
 15 I 
 
 mer in the midst of the strike, “I have abso¬ 
 lute confidence that we will win the battle, 
 win it without violence. I understand how 
 serious a disaster to our cause violence or 
 lawlessness would be, and I am commanding 
 upon all my lieutenants regard for the law 
 and respect for property rights.” 1 
 
 Shortly before this The Central Labor Union 
 of New York passed a resolution in this lan¬ 
 guage : “ Be it resolved, that while The Cen¬ 
 tral Labor Union denounces the action of 
 the Federal Government and the police, it 
 also places itself on record as' against all 
 incendiarism and anarchy, and it denounces 
 the fire-bugs who have brought disgrace upon 
 a fair fight of organized labor.” 2 
 
 and the neighborhood were not the work of strikers in particu¬ 
 lar, but of ‘ lewd fellows of the baser sort ’ in general, taking 
 advantage of the temporary relaxation of law and order.” (14 
 July, 1894.) President Huntington of the Southern Pacific 
 Railroad Company said, as reported in the same journal (July 
 9), “Probably a large majority of the surging and lawless 
 masses now destroying property in Chicago and other places are 
 not and never have been railroad employees.” 
 
 1 Quoted in The Outlook , July 14, 1894. 
 
 2 Quoted in New York Times , July 9, 1894. 
 
152 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The fact is, as a person of any intelligence 
 must know, that the moment a cause resorts 
 to violence to gain its ends, that moment it 
 alienates public sympathy and the people 
 who might have been for it turn against it, 
 and approve the use of the strong arm of 
 the law to put it down. 1 
 
 The graver question and the only real issue 
 connected with the events of last summer is 
 whether there is any remedy for such griev¬ 
 ances as the Pullman Company’s employees had 
 when they quitted work. I confess I do not 
 see how there is any remedy under a system 
 of liberty or anarchy such as we essentially 
 have now—that is, any other remedy than 
 the one that was tried and failed and that, 
 
 1 Whether the Chief Executive of the Nation did right 
 (legally and constitutionally) in sending troops to Chicago or 
 not, I will not presume to judge; nor whether the courts exceeded 
 their constitutional powers in issuing the much-discussed injunc¬ 
 tions (for alleged disregarding of which some of the leaders 
 have been imprisoned); but that the reign of violence and 
 terror that more or less existed in Chicago during the early part 
 of July, 1894, had to be put an end to, if not in one way then in 
 another, if not by the local authorities, then by the authority of 
 the nation itself, there can be no manner of doubt. 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 153 
 
 under the then-existing circumstances, was 
 almost bound to fail. If a corporation is not 
 just-minded in the first place, if it will not 
 confer with its men as a body in the second 
 place, and if it will not listen to suggestions 
 of reasons from the outside in the third place, 
 — these are all its rights under liberty or 
 anarchy and I do not believe that in the 
 average of cases its employees can develop 
 a sufficient amount of strength to make them 
 a match for it. 
 
 They may form their unions, and in some 
 cases help matters a little by means of them ; 
 and others may enter on sympathetic strikes 
 and boycotts to aid them; all this is possible 
 under anarchy and is indeed a necessary right 
 and the only resource under anarchy; and yet 
 so long as workingmen are many, and capable 
 employers few, the former are in a position 
 of natural disadvantage, which all such efforts 
 as I have mentioned can not make up for. 
 
 Anarchy will work with ideal employers, 
 and it may work with those who employ on 
 a small scale, whatever their character, not to 
 
154 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 say with those who work for themselves; but 
 with great employers, as we sometimes find 
 them — it means the possibility of just such 
 hard, mean, unjust treatment as the Pullman 
 Company dealt out to its employees from 
 September, 1893, to the date of the strike. 
 To my mind, such a possibility is the reductio 
 ad absurdum of anarchy, taken anywise as a 
 principle of social life. For it is the very 
 function of a society to see that its members 
 are not imposed upon, if it can help it. I do 
 not say that it should of necessity itself secure 
 justice, but it should see that justice is some¬ 
 how secured. If this can not be done, or at 
 least is not done, under liberty, then the soci¬ 
 ety should itself interfere. Herein lies the 
 only basis for interference to protect life and 
 property; namely, that private enterprise and 
 individual contracting to this end are not ade¬ 
 quate ; it is as good a basis for any other 
 form of social interference. 
 
 The justification of government is always, 
 not its abstract desirability, but its practical 
 necessity. I think that the events in Pullman 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. 
 
 and in Chicago, indeed the trend of affairs in 
 the modern industrial world generally, go to 
 show that our old system of liberty or anarchy 
 is breaking down, just as feudal anarchy broke 
 down at the beginning of the modern epoch in 
 Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
 There was not sufficient security for life and 
 property then (when individuals were left to get 
 it as they could), and it was in the name of the 
 common people that the great consolidated 
 monarchies arose that mark the beginning of 
 the modern political epoch, undertaking as they 
 did to protect every subject of them alike in 
 certain fundamental rights. 1 There seems to 
 
 1 This is possibly too abstract a statement, but its substantial 
 truth will hardly be contested. Professor Burgess says, “The 
 absolute monarchies of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth 
 centuries . . . gave liberty to the common man at the same 
 time that they subjected the nobles to the law of the state. In 
 fact they gave liberty to the common man by subjecting the 
 nobles to the law of the state.” (. Political Science and Con¬ 
 stitutional Law , Vol. I. p. 56.) As confirming this interpreta¬ 
 tion of the absolute monarchy, Professor Burgess cites Ranke, 
 Franzosische Geschielite, Bd. I. S. 34; Ranke, Englische 
 Geschichte, Bd. I. S. 97; Von Sybel, Ueber die Entwickelung 
 der absoluten Monarchic in Preussen , S. 24 ff.; Krones, Hand- 
 buch der Geschichte Oesterreichs , Bd. IV. S. 488. Professor 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 156 
 
 be no sufficient guarantee against industrial 
 injustice under a system of free contract now. 
 Somehow then society must begin itself to act 
 — must give its weaker members a strength 
 that they have not in themselves, must support 
 them, when they threaten to be worsted in a 
 contest, with its own strong arm. To leave 
 people to the tender mercies of Pullmans, 
 Carnegies, Havemeyers, and the rest will not 
 do, any more than it did to leave English- 
 
 Burgess remarks of the absolute monarchy in England, “In 
 . . the absolute monarchy of the Tudors, the people were, 
 in reality, the sovereign, the state; but, apparently, the 
 king was the state. England under the Tudors was a demo¬ 
 cratic political society under monarchic government.” (. Politi¬ 
 cal Science and Constitutional Law , I. 93.) As to France, 
 “ Louis XI. cultivated the democracy with great assiduity and 
 made the crown the bearer of its power against the aristocracy.” 
 {Ibid. I. 127. Cf. Kitchin’s History of France, Vol. II. p. 100.) 
 It is by no means asserted that the monarchs acted unselfishly 
 in this matter. Professor Lindley M. Keasbey probably states 
 the truth when he says, “Within each geographic unity some 
 Teutonic prince, actuated by personal ambition and yet sup - 
 ported for the most part by the entire peasant class, whose aim 
 was to free themselves from the exactions of the petty lords, 
 began step by step to bring under his control all the agricultural 
 fiefs of the land.” {Political Science Quarterly , Vol. VIII. 
 p. 615.) (The italics are mine.) 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE . 
 
 157 
 
 men and Frenchmen to the mercies of lords, 
 barons, and dukes in the olden time. A power 
 stronger than the strong man must arise. No 
 monarch indeed like Henry VII. or Louis XI. 
 will accomplish the change for us; it is the 
 people, the democracy, who must effect it — 
 and prove once more that a nation is mightier 
 than any individual or company of individuals 
 in it. 
 
 In just what manner the public sense of what 
 is fair and just in industrial relations shall 
 proceed to express itself, is a question of detail. 
 
 The significant thing is that modern socie¬ 
 ties are already, under one provocation or 
 another, beginning to move in this direction. 
 The rents of the Irish peasants are no longer 
 left entirely to free contract, but sometimes 
 are determined judicially. England’s factory 
 legislation all proceeds on the basis that work¬ 
 ingmen, and particularly working-women, are 
 not to be left to their own resources to bargain 
 with their employers as best as they can for 
 satisfactory sanitary conditions and hours of 
 toil, but that the nation is, on occasion, to say 
 
158 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 what is reasonable and right in these relations, 
 and make it binding on employers. 
 
 In our own country, legislation is beginning 
 to develop on the English lines. All of it is, 
 of course, a violation of the principles of pri¬ 
 vate liberty and free contract. 1 The Interstate 
 Commerce Commission that has recently been 
 established, is also an interference with freedom 
 of contract and the right of individuals or cor¬ 
 porations to manage their business as they see 
 fit. When discriminations between shippers are 
 forbidden, this is an asserting of social control 
 and an abridging of private rights. Hence the 
 practical question is simply whether modern 
 societies shall go on in the direction they are 
 going. Already many of our commonwealths 
 
 1 On this ground, the Supreme Court of Illinois has recently 
 pronounced unconstitutional an. act of the Legislature of the 
 Commonwealth, limiting the laboring day for women in factories 
 to eight hours. See also the reference to the action of the 
 Supreme Court of Missouri, supra p. 124, n. It is quite possible 
 that constitutional changes will have to be made before legis¬ 
 lation of the English type can have free and undisputed course 
 in this country. Constitutions may be temporary barriers to 
 social action, but they can not be permanent barriers among a 
 free people. 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHIC AGO STRIKE . 
 
 159 
 
 have so-called Labor Bureaus; a few years ago 
 a National Labor Bureau was established. But 
 if labor and capital are their own masters and 
 are to adjust all their relations according to 
 their own light and mutual agreement, it is 
 difficult to see the propriety of such Bureaus — 
 even for information’s sake; why should not 
 labor and capital get their own information ? 
 
 A still further step has been taken. The 
 President of the United States appointed the 
 head of the National Labor Bureau, the Hon. 
 Carroll D. Wright, and two other citizens a 
 commission to investigate the causes of the 
 late Chicago strike, hear the pros and cons 
 that might be urged about it, and make a 
 report with suggestions and recommendations. 
 The investigation was not to be directed par¬ 
 ticularly to the violence accompanying the 
 strike,—that at the time was summarily dealt 
 with at last, — but rather to the controversy 
 or dispute that led to the strike; such was 
 the language of the Chief Executive in appoint¬ 
 ing the Commission. 1 
 
 1 The exact language is as follows: “ The said Commission 
 
i6o 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Evidently this proceeds on the supposition 
 that the nation has something to do with such 
 controversies; for if it has nothing to do with 
 them, and if corporations and their employees 
 
 have a right to act as 
 
 on together or fail to get on as they see fit, 
 it is an impertinence to appoint a commission 
 to examine into their affairs. 1 I make bold 
 to say that the appointment of “The United 
 
 is hereby directed to visit the state of Illinois, and the city of 
 Chicago, and such other places in the United States as may 
 appear proper in the judgment of the Commission, to the end 
 that it make a careful inquiry into the causes of any pending 
 dispute or existing controversies and hear all persons inter¬ 
 ested therein, who may come before it.” (The italics are mine.) 
 
 1 Cf. The Nation , in discussing the report of the Com¬ 
 mission : “ Labor disputes are generally very simple, and 
 nobody can possibly settle them but the parties to them. . . . 
 The interference of outsiders, unless asked for by both sides, 
 ought to be a gross impertinence.” (22 November, 1894.) The 
 same journal says (December 13, 1894), in commenting on 
 Attorney-General Olney’s report as contrasted with that of the 
 Commission: “ Attorney-General Olney’s report brushes aside 
 the merits of the Pullman strike and takes up simply the duty 
 and activity of the Government in view of the lawlessness that 
 grew out of it. This was all that the authorities at Washington 
 had any occasion to consider carefully at any time , and it is 
 really all they need to consider now.” (The italics are mine.) 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. ifa 
 
 States Strike Commission ” was one of the 
 greatest advances away from the old ideas of 
 industrial liberty or anarchy to new concep¬ 
 tions of the rights and duties of society as 
 a whole, that this country has ever made or 
 is soon likely to make. 
 
 And now if the nation goes ahead and does 
 something on the basis of the recommendations 
 which the Commission has made, it will only 
 be taking another step along the same general 
 line. It may establish a system of arbitration 
 for the adjusting of differences between railroad 
 employees and their employers or, for that 
 matter, between any set of employers and 
 employees who do not seem to be able to get 
 along together. 1 
 
 1 The most discriminating treatment of the subject of arbitra¬ 
 tion that I remember to have seen is in an article by Mr. Charles 
 Worcester Clark in the Atlantic Monthly , January, 1891. The 
 Arbitration Bill, dealing with “ carriers engaged in interstate 
 commerce and their employees,” which was passed by the 
 House of Representatives (but not acted upon by the Senate) 
 in the spring of 1895, provides only that a controversy “ may be 
 submitted ” to an arbitrating board. Should it become a law, it 
 would remain to be seen whether advantage would actually be 
 taken of its provisions. 
 
 M 
 
1(32 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 This would not mean, as the matter is 
 sometimes absurdly misconceived, that laborers 
 would be obliged to work and employers to 
 carry on their business according to the decis¬ 
 ions of the arbitrating board, whether they 
 wished to or not, but only that if they 
 wished to continue working or doing business, 
 they would have to do so on the lines laid 
 down. 1 ’T is as with the Irish peasants : they 
 are not obliged to live on the land the rents 
 of which are judicially fixed, but if they wish 
 to live on it, they need not pay more than the 
 rent determined on — and the landowner may 
 not ask for more. 
 
 If the nation does not in some way come 
 to the assistance of those who are at a dis¬ 
 advantage in the industrial struggle, it is folly 
 to forbid them to strike. If there is no social 
 protection, it follows as a matter of course 
 that people — singly or by combination — 
 must protect themselves. It is as absurd that 
 persons, for whom society does nothing in the 
 way of securing to them what they conceive 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note I. 
 
THE PULLMAN-CHICAGO STRIKE. ^3 
 
 to be their rights, should be enjoined or for¬ 
 bidden to take peaceful means to win these 
 rights, whether it be striking, boycotting, or 
 any other means that stop short of violence 
 or fraud, as it would be to prevent people 
 from using their fists or their guns to defend 
 their lives and property, in case society pro¬ 
 vided no policemen and no courts. If peaceful 
 strikes and boycotts are to be enjoined, it 
 can be only in case the same authority, which 
 does this, says also, We will take care of your 
 rights and make resort to strikes and boycotts 
 unnecessary. 
 
 We seem to be in this country at a parting 
 of the ways. The public mind itself is per¬ 
 plexed, is not clear; and the judiciary, even the 
 highest judiciary of the land, is more or less at 
 variance with itself. 1 But it is one course or 
 the other. If it is liberty, then there must 
 be liberty all around. To say that railroad or 
 any other employees may not act as they see 
 fit (whether it be by striking, boycotting, or 
 by other procedure that involves neither vio- 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note 2. 
 
164 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 lence nor breach of contract) and yet to leave 
 their employers free to fix wages, hours of labor 
 and other conditions of employment as they 
 like, is simply monstrous. Either hands off, 
 — or hands on impartially! And I have confi¬ 
 dence enough in the American people, and in 
 the uprightness of the Judiciary of the land, to 
 believe that in the long run the right thing, 
 the equal thing, will be done. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note i (see p. 162). 
 
 On the different relatio7i 'which quasi-public corporations 
 a7id their e77ipioyees respectively sustain to the public , 
 and on the co7iseque7it unequal bearing of arbitratio7i 
 7ip07i theTn. 
 
 An exception to the statement on p. 162, relative to 
 the practical meaning of arbitration would, of course, have 
 to be made in the case of railroads and other semi-public 
 corporations, which by their charters virtually contract 
 to render the public a certain service. That such corpo¬ 
 rations have a duty of this sort is sometimes lost sight 
 of, but is clearly stated in a recent decision of Mr. Justice 
 Gaynor of the Supreme Court of New York. (In the 
 matter of the Application of Loader for a writ of manda¬ 
 mus v. the Brooklyn Heights Railroad Company, January 
 24, 1895.) The decision was on an appeal of Joseph 
 Loader, during the Brooklyn street-car strike, for a writ 
 of mandamus to compel the Brooklyn Heights Railroad 
 Company to run its cars. As the point is of great im¬ 
 portance, not only in itself, but in its bearing on the 
 practical working of arbitration, I will quote Judge 
 Gaynor’s language at length. He says: — 
 
 “ This railroad corporation is not in the position of a mere 
 private individual or company carrying on business for private 
 
 165 
 
1 66 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 gain, which may suspend business temporarily or permanently 
 at pleasure. On the contrary, it has a dual relation: a public 
 relation to the people of the state, and a private one to its 
 stockholders. It must not be forgotten here, though it may 
 seem to be growing dim, if not wholly forgotten elsewhere, that 
 in its chief aspect it is a public corporation, having duties to 
 perform to the public which transcend any obligation which in 
 its private aspect it owes to its stockholders. It has received 
 franchises of great value from the state, and had conferred upon 
 it the state’s transcendent power of eminent domain. In return 
 it took upon itself the performance of public duties and func¬ 
 tions, in the performance of which it is in law and in fact, not 
 an independent individual or entity, but the accountable agent 
 of the state. Though these principles are old, and inherent in 
 the idea of the sovereignty of the people, it would seem that 
 in the recent rapid growth of corporate power, and of the 
 tendency to use public franchises for the aggrandizement of 
 individuals first and for the service and benefit of the public 
 second, they have come to be somewhat overlooked and need 
 to be restated. They have often been declared by the highest 
 court of this state and the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 (Olcott v. The Supervisors, 16 Wall. 687, 694; Bloodgood v. 
 The Mohawk &c. R. Co., 19 Wend. 9; The People v. N. Y. C. 
 & H. R. R. Co., 28 Hun. 543.) The duty of the Company now 
 before the court is to carry passengers through certain streets 
 of Brooklyn, and to furnish, man, and run cars enough to fully 
 accommodate the public. It may not lawfully cease to perform 
 that duty for even one hour. The directors of a private business 
 company may, actuated by private greed, or motives of private 
 gain, stop business and refuse to employ labor at all unless labor 
 comes down to their conditions, however distressing; for such 
 are the existing legal, industrial and social conditions. But 
 
APPENDIX . 
 
 167 
 
 the directors of a railroad corporation may not do the like; 
 they are not merely accountable to stockholders; they are 
 accountable to the public first and their stockholders second. 
 They have duties to the public to perform, and they must 
 perform them. If they can not get labor to perform such duties 
 at what they offer to pay, then they must pay more, and as 
 much as is necessary to get it. Likewise, if the conditions 
 in point of hours or otherwise which they impose, repel 
 labor, they must adopt more lenient or just conditions. They 
 may not stop their cars for one hour, much less one week or 
 one year, to thereby beat or coerce the price or conditions 
 of labor down to the price or conditions they offer.” 
 
 Judge Gaynor quotes from a case decided upon appeal 
 by the Supreme Court of New York in 1883 , “after 
 mature deliberation.” The case arose out of the failure 
 of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad 
 Company to receive and forward freight as a common 
 carrier. The language of the court was as follows: 
 “ According to the statements of the case a body of 
 laborers, acting in concert, fixed a price for their labor, 
 and refused to work at a less price. The respondents 
 (the railroad company) fixed a price for the same work, 
 and refused to pay more. In doing this, neither did an 
 act violative of any law, or subjecting either to any pen¬ 
 alty. The respondents had a lawful right to take their 
 ground in respect of the price to be paid, and adhere to 
 it, if they chose; but if the consequence of doing so were 
 an inability to exercise their corporate franchises to the 
 great injury of the public, they (the railroad company) 
 cannot be heard to assert that such consequences must 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 168 
 
 be shouldered and borne by an innocent public, who 
 neither directly nor indirectly participated in their causes.” 
 (The People v. N. Y. C. & H. R. R. Co., 28 Hun. 543.) 
 The court in that case allowed a writ of mandamus to 
 compel the corporation to do its corporate duty. Judge 
 Gaynor further says, “ Besides, the persistence of the 
 company in failing to run its cars except as it may gradu¬ 
 ally get employees to accept its terms , being in itself unlaw¬ 
 ful, as I have shown, must necessarily by its bad example 
 tend to public disquiet, if not to some disorder. In 
 respect of the question of hours and of wages between 
 the company and its employees, its duty was to have 
 gone on, and now is to go on with its full complement 
 of employees, having the right gradually and from day 
 to day to supersede its employees if it can, by new em¬ 
 ployees who will work on its terms, or to supersede them 
 all at once when it has obtained a sufficient number of 
 new employees for that purpose ; but in such a controversy 
 it has not the right to stop its cars while it is thus grad¬ 
 ually getting other men. If the people of the state were 
 running these roads they would not thus incommode and 
 damage themselves ; and it must not be forgotten that this 
 corporation is entrusted with the running of these roads 
 as the servant of the people of the stateT 
 
 In concluding his opinion, Judge Gaynor quotes the 
 language of Mr. Justice Cullen in a similar case a few 
 days earlier: “ Each party has the right to obtain the 
 best terms it can; and as was said in the freight hand¬ 
 lers’ case [The People v. N. Y. C. & H. R. R. Co., 28 
 Hun. 543, above cited], if the company cannot get men 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 169 
 
 at the price that it thinks fair, it is bound to get them at 
 a price it may deem exorbitant, because its duty is to run 
 its roadP (The italics in the above paragraphs are my 
 own.) 
 
 It is evident that a railroad company, being in this 
 situation in the eyes of the law, can not pursue the 
 course that would be open to a private corporation, of 
 stopping its operations, rather than comply with the 
 decision of a Board of Arbitration, in case such decision 
 was displeasing to it; but it is also evident that the loss 
 of liberty not only inheres in the nature of its express 
 contract with the public, but is in a way compensated for 
 by its extraordinary privileges. In case it did choose to 
 suspend, it would in effect forfeit its charter. 
 
 On the other hand, the employees of a railroad company 
 are under no contract with the public to render continuous 
 service. They have indeed no contractual relations with 
 the public at all, but only with the company employing them. 
 If they were a part of the company, sharing in its privileges 
 and participating in its profits, they would of course have 
 a duty to the public just as the company has ; but accord¬ 
 ing to their actual status, they are simply hired by the 
 company and have not even the right of continuity of 
 employment at its hands. 1 Hence there is no reason, 
 
 1 So the Hon. Carl Schurz in discussing “ Corporations, Em¬ 
 ployes and the Public” (North American Review , February, 
 1884) : “It will scarcely be denied that, if there is a difference 
 between the two as to the degree in which they owe obligation 
 to the public, it springs from the fact that the corporations are 
 in the enjoyment of valuable public franchises which carry public 
 
ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 170 
 
 either in law or morals, why, in case they choose to give 
 up their employment rather than accept the terms of the 
 decision of a Board of Arbitration, they should not do 
 so; though they would have no right to molest others 
 who were ready to take their places on the terms laid 
 down. If this right or liberty to quit work were denied 
 or abridged by the public, this could only happen equita¬ 
 bly in case the public gave them some counterbalancing 
 advantage (in respect to their wages or the tenure of their 
 employment) and they became in effect public servants 
 rather than simply the servants of the company employ¬ 
 ing them. 1 It is true that Judge Ricks of the United States 
 Circuit Court used language at variance with this view 
 on one occasion. (Toledo, Ann Arbor & N. M. Ry. Co. v. 
 Pennsylvania Co. et al ., 34 Fed. Rep. 747.) In address¬ 
 ing an “Admonition to Accused” (locomotive engineers 
 and firemen), he said, “ Your employers owe a high duty 
 
 duties with them, while their employes are simply wage-workers 
 who, as a class, had been favored by the public or the state not 
 a whit more than other working-people in private employment.” 
 
 1 Mr. Schurz remarks as follows in the article just quoted: 
 “ The more intelligent and the more capable of logical reason¬ 
 ing he is, the more strenuously and consistently will he cling to 
 the doctrine that if, as a railroad or a telegraph employe, he is 
 to be debarred from certain means of righting his wrongs, which 
 are open to other working-men, he must be entitled to some kind 
 of protection to compensate him for this; that, if he is bound in 
 duty to the public in the matter of service, he should not be left 
 altogether at the mercy of a private corporation organized for 
 private profit in the matter of pay and treatment.” 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 171 
 
 to the public, which they are compelled to perform under 
 penalties of the law, and they have in turn a higher claim 
 upon you and your services than that due from the ordi¬ 
 nary employee!" (The italics are mine). But with all 
 respect to the learned Judge, it must be said that such a 
 “ higher claim ” is without logical warrant in the existing 
 state of law on the subject. 
 
 What I have said as to the different bearings of arbi¬ 
 tration on corporations and on their employees, applies 
 only of course to semi-public corporations. As to all 
 others, there would be equal liberty on the part of the 
 corporation to suspend business and on the part of the 
 employees to stop working, if either chose to do so rather 
 than accept the award of the Arbitrating Board. 
 
 Note 2 (see p. 163). 
 
 On varying Judicial opinio 7 i as to the rights of e?nployees 
 of quasi-public corporations. 
 
 The cases I have in mind are for the most part those 
 dealing with the rights of railroad employees. Sometimes 
 their right to stop work in a body, with or without notice, 
 is strongly asserted, so they break no contract, do no vio¬ 
 lence, and have no malicious intent. (Judge Caldwell, U. S. 
 Circuit Court, District of Nebraska, in case of Oliver Ames, 
 2d, et al. v. Union Pacific R. Co. et al ., No. 1, see Interstate 
 Commerce Reports, Vol. IV. No. 52, pp. 619-624; also 
 Justice Harlan, U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in case 
 of P. M. Arthur et al ., Intervenors, Appts. v. Thomas F. 
 Oakes et al ., see Interstate Commerce Reports , Vol. IV. 
 Nos. 61, 62, pp. 744-764.) 
 
172 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT . 
 
 Sometimes, on the other hand, this right is questioned. 
 Judge Dundy (U. S. Circuit Court, District of Nebraska), 
 for example, in answer to a petition from the Receivers of 
 the Union Pacific Railway Company, sought on January 
 27, 1894, to restrain their employees from striking, when 
 reduced wage schedules should go into effect on the 1st day 
 of March, following. (See review of the case by Judge 
 Caldwell, as cited above.) So Judge Jenkins (U. S. 
 Circuit Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin) enjoined 
 on December 19, 1893, the employees of the Receivers of 
 the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, not only from 
 combining to quit the service of the Receivers with the ob¬ 
 ject of crippling the property in their custody, but from 
 so quitting as to cripple the property, when a strike on ac¬ 
 count of reduced wages was imminent. (See Farmers 1 
 Loan and Trust Co. v. Northern Pacific R. Co. et al ., 60 
 Fed. Rep. 803; and a review and, in part, reversal, of the 
 order by Justice Harlan, as cited above.) Judge Taft (U. S. 
 Circuit Court, Northern District of Ohio, in case of Toledo, 
 Ann Arbor and N. M. Ry. Co. v. Pennsylvania Co. et al ., 54 
 Fed. Rep. 730), while admitting the right of railroad 
 employees to strike on their own behalf, denied their right 
 to quit their employment when they chose to do this 
 rather than handle the freight of a connecting road whose 
 employees had struck ; he pronounced such a sympathetic 
 or boycott strike criminal, since its aim would be to lead 
 the road against whom the strike was directed to do a 
 criminal thing, i.e. violate the Interstate Commerce Law 
 by not handling the freight of the second-named road. 
 (It is plain, I may say, that so long as e?nployees remain in 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 173 
 
 the service of a railroad company , they do a criminal act 
 in refusing to handle freight from connecting roads; but 
 that they may not quit the service rather than handle such 
 freight, without becoming guilty of criminal conduct, is 
 a novel position.) 
 
 Judge Speer (U. S. Circuit Court, Southern District of 
 Georgia, in case of Waterhouse v. Comer, 55 Fed. Rep. 
 149, 19 L. R. A. 403) went still further. He asserted that 
 “ vi any conceivable strike upon the transportation lines of 
 the country, whether main lines or branch roads, there will 
 be interference and restraint of Interstate or foreign com¬ 
 merce ” ; also, having in mind the act of July 2,1890, known 
 as the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, and the Interstate Com¬ 
 merce Act (February 4, 1887, 24 St. at Large, p. 379, and 
 amended March 2, 1889, 25 St. at Large, p. 885), coupled 
 with sec. 5440 of Revised Statutes, that it would “ be 
 practically impossible hereafter for a body of men to com¬ 
 bine to hinder and delay the work of the transportation 
 company without becoming amenable to the provisions 
 of these statutes.” 
 
 An engineer, he held, might as an individual leave 
 the service of the Receiver (the Central Railroad of 
 Georgia, about which the case arose, was in the hands 
 of a Receiver at this time), but even he could “ not do 
 so in such manner as to injure the property or impede 
 its proper management.” The same Judge uses the 
 following remarkable language: “ Organized labor, when 
 injustice has been done or threatened to its mem¬ 
 bership, will find its useful and valuable mission in pre¬ 
 senting to the courts of the country a strong and resolute 
 
1 74 
 
 ANARCHY OR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 protest, and a petition for redress against unlawful trusts 
 and combinations which would do unlawful wrong to it. 
 Its membership need not doubt that their counsel will be 
 heard, nor that speedy and exact justice will be adminis¬ 
 tered wherever the courts have jurisdiction.” 
 
 This is, of course, equivalent to saying (keeping the use 
 of language familiar to my readers) that liberty and the 
 methods of liberty, such as strikes and boycotts, should 
 give way to government and the methods of government, 
 in disposing of industrial wrongs. 
 
 And though thus far government restriction on indus¬ 
 trial liberty in this country has been rather in behalf of 
 incorporated capital than of labor, I doubt not that in the 
 long run equal justice will be done. Judge Speer, in the 
 case just mentioned, abridged the liberty of the Receiver, 
 and compelled him to recognize and treat with the em¬ 
 ployees of the road in a manner he had not wished to. 
 Justice Harlan, in the opinion cited above, suggests the 
 true and, as I believe, probable line of future develop¬ 
 ment. While indicating the rights of liberty under pres¬ 
 ent laws (or absence of laws), he declared that the evils 
 resulting from their exercise, arising in many cases, as he 
 said, “from the inconsiderate conduct of employers and 
 employees, both equally indifferent to the general welfare,” 
 were, to be “ met and remedied by legislation restraming 
 alike employees and employers so far as necessary ade¬ 
 quately to guard the rights of the public as involved in 
 the existence, maintenance, and safe management of 
 public highways.” (The italics are mine.) 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 (QUOTED OR REFERRED TO.) 
 
 Aquinas, 20 n. 
 
 Aristotle, 20 n., 83. 
 
 Bagehot, 51 n. 
 
 Bluntschli, 13 n., 30 n. 
 
 Brentano, Dr. Lujo, 17 n. 
 
 Brooks, Bishop, 14. 
 
 Bryce, Prof. Jas., 22. 
 
 Burgess, Prof. J. W., 33 n., 56 n., 
 73 n., 123 n., 155 n., 156 n. 
 
 Caldwell, Judge, 171. 
 
 Channing, 11. 
 
 Clark, Mr. C. W., 161 n. 
 Cleveland, President, 159 n. 
 Cullen, Judge, 168. 
 
 Donisthorpe, Mr. W., 74 n. 
 Dundy, Judge, 172. 
 
 Emerson, 15, 16 n., 25. 
 
 Flint, Prof. R., 125 n. 
 
 Gaynor, Judge, 165, 167, 168. 
 George, Mr. Henry, 136 n. 
 Giddings, Prof. F. H., 51 n. 
 Gillespie, J., 21 n. 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., 63 n. 
 
 Grote, George, 56 n. 
 
 Grote, John, 30 n. 
 
 von Halle, Dr. Ernst, 139 n. 
 Harlan, Justice, 171, 174. 
 
 Hegel, 20 n. 
 
 Herodotus, 56 n. 
 
 Hobbes, 6n., 13. 
 
 Hodgson, Mr. S. H., 30 n. 
 Homer, 40, 63 n. 
 
 Huxley, 12, 32 n., 64 n. 
 
 Jenkins, Judge, 172. 
 
 Jevons, W. S., 87 n. 
 
 Keasbey, Prof. L. M., 156 n. 
 Kitchin, 156 n. 
 
 Koerner, Mr. G., 145. 
 
 Krones, 155 n. 
 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, M., 17, 18 n., 29. 
 Lloyd, Mr. H. D., 139 n. 
 Lubbock, Sir John, 18, 43. 
 
 Mach, Prof. Ernst, 140. 
 Mackenzie, Prof. J. S., 51 n. 
 Mann, Mr. J. S., 20 n. 
 
176 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 11 n., 30 n., 86 n., 
 87 n. 
 
 de Molinari, M., 2411. 
 
 Morgan, Mr. L. H., 51 n. 
 
 The Nation , 160 n. 
 
 St. Paul, 53. 
 
 Pembroke, Lord, 30 n. 
 
 Plato, 54. 
 
 Ranke, 155 n. 
 
 Ricks, Judge, 170. 
 
 Ritchie, Prof. D. G., 20 n., 77 n. 
 
 Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 30 n. 
 
 Speer, Judge, 173. 
 
 Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 17, 19 n., 
 24n., 25, 44, 45, chaps, v., vi., 
 vii passim, 13 m. 
 
 Stephen, Sir J. F., 29 n., 73 n. 
 Sumner, Prof. W. G., 106 n. 
 von Sybel, 155 n. 
 
 Taft, Judge, 172. 
 
 Tucker, Mr. Benj. R., 26 n. 
 
 Wallace, Mr. A. R., 1311. 
 
 Ward, Mr. L. F., 51 n. 
 
 Salter, Rev. W., 21 n. 
 
 Schaffle, 113 m 
 
 Schurz, Mr. Carl, 169 n., 170 n. 
 Sidgwick, Prof. H., 5 n., 6 n. 
 
 de Warville Brissot, 15. 
 
 Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney, 
 139 m 
 
 Weir, Jr., Dr. Jas., 67 n. 
 
 Wright, Mr. Carroll D., 159. 
 
 
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