Here we are, as helpless before the poor as before the rich, facing both of them with the same query, “Can you not see that your own concession, call it poverty, or call it poverty of will, is one element of this oppression?” The difference between the poor and the financial classes is one of spiritual complexity. The promoters are well-to-do because their minds have been able to grasp and utilize the complex forces made up of the minds of their simpler fellow-beings. And this astuteness leaves them less open to unselfish emotions than the laboring man. His nature is more intact. He is a more emotional and instinctive being. It is for this reason that moral reforms have come from the lower strata of society. The people have as much to lose as the bankers, but they are more ready to lose it. The head of moral feeling in the community has got to grow strong enough to force the financier to take his clutch off the laboring man, before you can reach the laboring man. And yet labor itself will contribute more than its share towards this head of moral feeling; and therefore you must go among the laboring classes with your ideas and your propaganda. But beware lest you give him a stone for bread. You can do no more for a man because you call yourself a “politician” than if you were a mere philanthropist. A man’s standards of political thought are but a small fraction of his general standards, and unless your sense of truth is as sharp as a sword you had better not come near the laboring man. The point here made is--and it is of great importance--that we candidly acknowledge at every instant the nature of our undertaking and the nature of our power, for in so far as we mistake them we weaken our practical utility.