are not at fault, for long before Goldsmith wrote of the time "When wealth accumulates and men decay," keen eyed observers had connected a general laxity of morals with the abundance and diffusion of wealth. The failure of intertropical countries to furnish high grade men of morals and intellect, Doctor Draper attributes, not more to the enervating influence of heat, than to the ease with which human beings supply themselves with the necessaries of life. Coming down to the present period, it is common knowledge—the expanding profligacy and criminality of the mining camps where men could obtain extravagant wages in gold for services which in other pursuits would yield them a scanty living.
Probably from such lump comparisons and crude observations, under complex conditions, have arisen two schools of social economists, one whose principal and primary aim is to abolish poverty as the chief obstacle in the way of human progress, and the other whose purpose is not definitely stated, but which conservatively clings to the laissez faire doctrine of letting every man's condition depend upon his individual exertion; and as so far, in the world's history, poverty has been the condition of the great mass of mankind, in spite of individual exertion, the anti-poverty school of necessity, must resort to collective or state control of the industries of men, and thus relieve them from want and the fear of want, which are thought to be so depressing upon their energies.
Just how or to what extent the state is to interfere with the individual's management of himself, or to what extent or in what manner he shall be relieved when he has failed to provide for his own wants and the wants of those depending upon him, are at present outside of any satisfactorily practical programme, and hence collectivism may be held to include all socialistic schemes from Bellamy up or down.
