Again, if the baker is thought of as a mere convenience for baking bread, all demands he may make beyond those which will enable him to produce good bread, will be fiercely contested. The conditions under which the bread is baked are a paltry incident, provided they do not in any way discommode the consumer, and the claim made by the journeyman baker for opportunity and means to realize the God-given ambitions of his manhood, ambitions which perchance have nothing to do with baking bread, is scouted in much the same way that a request to decorate a machine with gold trimmings would be scouted. Of course it is as wrong to ignore the former's claim, as it would be right to ignore the demand for expensive and useless embellishments for a piece of machinery; for one is a person and the other is a thing. It is because men have been thought of as things, that there are such plague-spots on the social body as sweatshops. All movements that compel the attention of the consumer to a recognition of his relation to the producer as a person, are worthy of the most careful study and the highest commendation. Preferential dealing, that is to say, dealing preferably with such merchants as we know to have humane regard for those who produce and handle the goods offered for sale, is merely a passing phase of the attempt to recognize as persons those who, though far removed from us, yet touch our lives and minister to our necessities; and the movement deserves support and encouragement because of the principle which actuates it. When life was less complex than at present, and the _entrepreneur_ and middleman did not exist to obscure the relationship between consumer and producer, it was easier to realize the responsibility of the one toward the other than it is now. However, it is of elementary necessity that men should learn that the accident which hides one section of society from the easy observation of another, does not lessen one whit the mutual responsibility which each bears towards the other. Nor does the difficulty of gathering information afford an excuse. In these days of pertinacious investigation and organized experience, there is no set of conditions so complex as to baffle ultimately the determined investigator of social phenomena, or to escape satisfactory adjustment.