Two boys, A and B, one living at Whitstable, the other in London, are quite unequal in gifts, ancestral tradition, build and tastes. Nevertheless, it is desired to give them an equal opportunity, say, of earning £1,000 a year when they are forty. The father of A wishes A to have the same opportunities as B, and B’s father holds the same view about B in his relation to A. Very well, A, having learnt the art of oyster fishing, which is the principal industry of Whitstable, is sent to London to learn to be a clerk, and B is sent from London to Whitstable, after training as a clerk, in order to have an opportunity of being an oyster fisherman. Meanwhile, A’s father has heard that B is also studying agriculture at a school of agriculture somewhere near Whitstable. A, after having trained as a clerk, is therefore recalled to Whitstable and made to undergo a course of agriculture, and B having acquired a knowledge of oyster-fishing and agriculture, is sent back to London to learn French, which A acquired there. Ultimately, however, A’s father, remembering that a brother of his did extremely well as an engineer, prevails upon B’s father to consent to the plan of sending both boys A and B to Armstrong & Whitworth’s or to Vickers. We can imagine both A’s father and B’s father dying long before A and B had had every opportunity that society now offers [p71] to the aspirant for success; we can also picture A and B themselves becoming grey-haired octogenarians before they finally settled down. No, says the objector. That is not what opportunity egalitarians mean. They mean not that everybody should have an equal chance of succeeding in all the careers that lie open, but that they should have an opportunity of succeeding in life. But what is meant by success here? Does it consist in becoming Prime Minister of England, or Commander-in-Chief in India, or Lord Mayor, or Editor of _John Bull_? In any case opportunities for becoming any one of these four cannot be made equal. Perhaps success consists in becoming a millionaire? But who is going to determine the equality of opportunity for this achievement? Pullitzer, one of the most powerful American millionaires of the first decade of this century, crawled ashore in America as a penniless fugitive, after having swum from the ship that had conveyed him as an emigrant from Europe! Moreover, supposing that a boy’s opportunity-egalitarianism extends beyond the shores of his native land, and he says: I wish to have the same opportunity as the Frenchman, or the Canadian, or the Chinaman. What then? Is there any valid reason why opportunity-egalitarianism should be confined to a single country, or even to a single continent? What, then, is left of this cry for equality of opportunity? Simply the sting of resentment which gives rise to it; and this we shall now proceed to examine. [p72]