The occupation of the scarlet woman is said to be “the oldest profession.” If so, the robbery of man by man is the oldest trade. It is as old as the human race. It had its origin in the difficulty of producing enough of the material necessities of life. The earth was lean. Man was weak. Never was there enough food for all. Many must suffer. Some must starve. What wonder that man robbed man? Self-preservation is the first law of nature. We have always fought and shall always fight for those things that are scarce and without which we should die. If water were scarce, we should all be fighting by the brookside. If air were scarce, we should all be straining our lungs to take in as much as we could. But what wonder, also, that the robbed should resist those who robbed them? The robbed, too, have the instinct of self-preservation. They, too, want to live. All through the ages, they have fought for the right to live. By the sheer force of numbers, they have driven their exploiters from pillar to post. Again and again, they have compelled their exploiters to abandon one method of robbery, only to see them take up another. And, though some men no longer own other men’s bodies, some men still live by the sweat of other men’s brows. The question is: Must this go on forever? Must a few always live so far from poverty that they cannot see it, while the rest live so close to it that they cannot see anything else? Must millions of women work in factories at men’s work, while millions of men walk the streets unable to get any work? Must the cry of child-labor forever sound to high heaven above the rumble of the mills that grind their bodies into dividends? Must the pinched faces of underfed children always make some places hideous? No man in his senses will say that this situation must always exist. Human nature revolts at it. The wrong of it rouses the feelings even before it touches the intellect. Something within us tells us to cry out and to keep crying out until we find relief. We have tried almost every remedy that has been offered to us, but every remedy we have tried has failed. The hungry children are still with us. The hungry women are still with us. The hungry men are still with us. Never before was it so hard for most people to live. Yet, we live at a time when men, working with machinery, could make enough of everything for everybody. Your radical Republican recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. Your Democratic radical recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. Your Rooseveltian Progressive also recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. But if you will carefully listen to these gentlemen, you will observe that none of them believes much is the matter. None of them believes much need be done to make everything right. One wants to loosen the tariff screw a little. The others want to put a new little wheel in the anti-trust machine.