In that day professional labor agitators will lose their vocations, the workingman who never works will be without influence among his fellows, and the brotherhoods of beer and brawling which infest the purlieus of our larger cities, and clamor for bread or blood—meaning always somebody else’s bread or somebody else’s blood—will find occasion to disband. I do not despair of relief, I know that it must come. Whether it shall come through ‘a preserving or a destroying revolution,’ whether it shall come in wrath or in peace, is a question which the capitalists of this country must answer and answer speedily.” “John, you dear old dreamer,” said the doctor, “I know of one millionaire whose gold has not corroded his humanity. I hope there are many such, but I fear that if the world looks to its wealth owners to lead it in a crusade of unselfishness, it will wait a long, long time. But I do not diagnose the disease as you do. You resemble a boy who has stubbed his toe. To him there is no world and hardly any boy outside of that sore toe. Yet if the cure be left to nature, in time the pain will abate and the toe recover. I do not believe that any law framed by man can make a pound of flour out of half a pound of wheat, or that any scheme of government can equalize the inevitable inequalities of human life.” “Then you do not believe in the wisdom and beneficence of compelling the rapacious rich to aid the deserving poor?” “No; I believe in the wisdom and beneficence of exact justice. I believe that the skillful and rapid bricklayer is entitled to higher wages and greater opportunities of employment than his stupid and slothful associate, and that to deny the former his rightful advantage is an outrage upon justice, whether such outrage be perpetrated by an employer or a trades union. I believe that every man is fairly entitled to all the fruits of his labor, his skill, his good judgment, and his good luck. The pickerel at your feet came by chance to your hook and not mine, and therefore it is your fish and not my fish.” “But by the law of nature, doctor, there is no difference between a beggar and a king.” “There is where you are wrong, professor. The law of nature is a universal statute of equality of opportunity and inequality of result, and man distorts her purposes and violates her statutes when he places an unearned crown on the head of a king, or an unearned crust in the mouth of a beggar.” “Do you think, then, that man has no excuse for his shortcomings, doctor?”