The manhood wage--a plan by which we accord to each laborer enough money to support himself, his wife and as many children as God sends to his home--is a delusion and a snare. It directly encourages improvidence and stimulates the growth of population by diverting nature's stern but benignant discipline from the unworthy to the worthy. It paralyzes thrift and temperance, and puts a premium on recklessness and vicious self-indulgence. I charge Socialism with fundamental error in preaching the doctrine of human equality. Nature abhors equality. Men vary infinitely, from the meanest degenerates to the tallest of the sons of God. They can be equal only before the law, or in the eye of the law, or as suppliants for justice. Intellectually we need patricians and noblemen to encourage us by precept and example and point out the path of progress to better things. A dollar a day, or one thousand dollars a day, never will remunerate men like Edison and Harriman for their services to a world of workers. Socialism trifles with the principles that underlie the institution of property. Even animal and sub-human ethics regard the right of the individual to his accumulated store and the home he has builded. The attitude of Socialists toward the courts of law is undemocratic. In America we must reverence the law. It is our only hope. To teach the multitude that justice is bought and sold in this country and that the judgments of our judicial tribunals are knocked down to the highest bidder is to accuse a whole nation of crime. Socialism represses individual development. It substitutes for self-direction the authority of the many. But it is in constructive Socialism that we find the greatest peril and the most monumental folly. Utopias innumerable have been conceived by the heated imagination of dreamers of all ages. The monotony of Utopia would be maddening. No moral crisis can arise in a perfect society. Charity and philanthropy, sympathy, courage and all the human virtues can have no play in such a spot. Competition is not to be decried as vicious. It is really a benignant principle. It is the supreme divine law. To competition among employers the workman looks for high wages; on competition among sellers he relies to buy what he needs at the lowest figure. * * * * * =Andrews, Martin Register.= (College Professor and Editor.) The machinery of government which the Socialists propose seems to me likely to aggravate the very evils of which they justly complain. The proposal to confiscate the homes of the farmers and work the former owners under some boss chosen by the State, as I heard advocated a few days ago, may be a blessing to the brewers, but not to the great body of workingmen. (See also "Why I Am in Favor of Socialism.") * * * * * =Allen, Alfred.= (Playwright and Author.)