The Forgotten Man, and Other EssaysSumner, William Graham
Science
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
Sumner, William Graham
Economics; Social sciences
power which controls in the academic community is not the voice of
authority but the voice of academic public opinion. That might root out
falsehood and violence and meanness of every kind, which no penalties
of those in authority could ever reach; and I submit that such a
public opinion would be becoming in a body of young men of good home
advantages and the best educational opportunities the country affords.
Call it high training, or culture, or discipline, or high breeding, or
what you will, it is only the sense of what we owe to ourselves, and it
is greater and greater according to our opportunities.
THE COÖPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH
NOTE BY THE EDITOR
Among Professor Sumner’s papers there turned up a curiosity which I
do not like to pass over altogether, although it is more appropriate,
perhaps, to the purposes of the biographer. Apparently Sumner amused
himself, along in the seventies or early eighties, in figuring to
himself the state of the world under a socialistic régime of the sort
which he was always ridiculing and opposing. He did this by imagining
the contents of a socialist newspaper, the _New Era_, of the date July
4, 1950, consisting of editorials, news notes, public announcements,
criminal cases, and even a book review. The whole caricatures in
high colors the phenomena attending such a régime in its period of
exuberance. “The following,” he writes, “is a complete and verbatim
copy of a [New York City] newspaper of the date given. It is printed on
a small quarter sheet of coarse paper. The printing is so bad that it
is hard to read, and the typographical errors, all of which have been
corrected, are inexcusable.”
The motto of the paper is: “Let the Rich Pay! Let the Poor Enjoy!”
The responsible editor is Lasalle Smith, and the proprietors Marx
Jones, Chairman of the New York City Board of Ethical Control, Cabet
Johnson, Chairman of the Board of Arbitration for Wages and Prices,
Babœuf Brown, Chairman of the Board of Control for Rents and Loans,
and Rousseau Peters, President of the Coöperative Bank. A notice warns
readers that “This paper is published strictly under the coöperative
rules established by the Typographical Union in our office and under
the direction of the council of the same. The Committee of Grievances
gives its assent and approval to each number before it is published.
All subscriptions are payable monthly in advance to the Treasurer of
the Typographical Union. The Typographical Union, being a member of
the organized Coöperative Commonwealth, has police powers for the
collection of all sums due to it.”
* * * * *
A special notice reads as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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