Page:Social Justice without Socialism.djvu/56

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briefest outline is that it is practicable to create in complex modern life the most essential condition of this primitive life—its tendency toward justice. In the Scriptures the primitive Eden was a garden, but the New Jerusalem is a city. What we have before us for study is a vast centralized economic system suggesting the city; and we have to see what can be made of it.

It is something extremely good. The late Edward Atkinson was fond of saying that, if improvements are allowed to do their best, the time will come when, as he expressed it, “it will not pay to be rich.” The workers will be so comfortable that the care of a great capital will more than offset any additional comfort