But this is a tough old world and politics is a science too human to be put into books. The economists take no account of "human cussedness" or the instinct to do anything except what the wise of the world say that we should do. No matter how beneficent your theory may be, we will have none of it--and a good thing it is for the world that we will not. Still, the correspondence-school statesmen and economists are so much a part of the life of to-day, with its agitations and movements and tiresome futilities, that one must give them some attention. The mildest of these world-shapers are clamoring for the nationalization of everything from railroads to cranberry bogs. Indeed, I have met with thinkers to whom all this would be merely a preliminary step. I have heard it gravely suggested, or rather vehemently suggested, that things will not be right in this world until all the inequalities due to education and variations of brain power are also wiped out. This would give us equality with a vengeance: the kind of blessed equality we have in the stable at home, where the cattle are all chained so that the energetic red cow cannot get more than her share of the food. The simple fact is that in the new world social theories are being reduced to an absurdity, even before being applied. This is the land of violent contrasts, and the programme I laid out for myself has enabled me to see some of these contrasts at their sharpest. I have made it a point to hunt up friends of my youth who have either grown up with the country or have gone down under its progress. In one city on the Canadian prairies I found a friend so prosperous that he was living in the almost sybaritic luxury of a great hotel of the kind that show how railroading pays in Canada. Another friend was "down and out" in the same city, and lending an attentive ear to the wildest kind of propaganda. Being an old friend, the rich man poured forth the story of his prosperity and his wrath against those who are hampering capital and threatening to put an end to progress. Moved by the same bond of sacred friendship, the poor man told of the greed and rapacity of which he had been the victim. The poor man had lacked what another friend called "the monetary clutch," and while he had seen wealth all about him, had been unable either "to have or to hold." How would it be possible for any one to hold the scales between these two men? I didn't try. I passed on to another city, where the same condition developed in another way. An old friend took me to his club, where I enjoyed luncheon with a number of men who were prosperous and satisfied. A few hours later I accidentally found myself at a gathering of city employees who were preparing for a strike. They advocated direct action with guns. "Why not?" they asked. "The Governments of the world are settling their differences with guns and high explosives and why shouldn't the down-trodden use the same method?"