doing this thing and no other thing as my share of the social effort, and I do not mean to do this thing except on such and such terms." He therefore proposes to make a contract with his fellow-men and to dictate the terms of it. Any man who can do this must be in a very exceptional situation; he must have a monopoly of the service in question, and it must be one of which his fellow-men have great need. If, then, the telegraphers could have succeeded in advancing their wages fifteen per cent simply because they had agreed to ask for the advance, they must have been far better off than any of the rest of their fellow-men.
Our fathers taught us the old maxim: Cut your coat according to your cloth; but the popular discussions of social questions seem to be leading up to a new maxim: Demand your cloth according to your coat. The fathers thought that a man in this world must do the best he could with the means he had, and that good training and education consisted in developing skill, sagacity, and thrift to use resources economically; the new doctrine seems to be that if a man has been born into this world he should make up his mind what he needs here, formulate his demands, and present them to "society" or to the "state." He wants congenial and easy occupation, and good pay for it. He does not want to be hampered by any limitations such as come from a world in which wool grows, but not coats; in which iron ore is found, but not weapons and tools; in which the ground will produce wheat, but only after hard labor and self-denial; in which we cannot eat our cake and keep it; in which two and two make only four. He wants to be guaranteed a "market," so as not to suffer from "overproduction." In private life and in personal relations we already estimate this way of looking at things at its true value, but as soon as we are called upon to deal with a general question, or a phenomenon of industry in
