While I think I have shown you that Socialism is not what it pretends to be--a certain remedy for all the social evils of our day--and that it is utterly impossible for Socialism to keep its promises by making this world over into a veritable kingdom of God on earth, we must not make the mistake of dismissing all the contentions of the Socialists as so many exhibitions of mental aberration. There is madness in some of their doctrines--it is a crazy kind of a future that they have planned for us; but behind all their absurdities there is a well-justified protest against a series of social and industrial abuses from which the great body of humanity is suffering, as from so many hideous sores. Mind you, John, I do not say that Socialists never exaggerate existing conditions. We have already seen how prone they are to try to make us put the most gloomy construction on the social outlook, and how ready they are to twist statistics into all kinds of strange contortions to make them fit their theories, in an endeavor to prove that the evils which exist are ever so much more glaring than they really are. But the evils exist. The worker does not get an adequate share of the wealth which he contributes to produce. The problem of unemployment cries for solution from one end of the world to the other. In every State and country the evils of child labor demand a remedy. Everywhere numbers of men and women work under conditions that are a disgrace to our boasted civilization, and in all parts of the land workers are compelled to live in an environment and under circumstances that absolutely preclude the attainment of the ideals toward which humanity is supposed to be tending. In a word, we cannot deny that something is radically wrong with the world. So far we may go hand in hand with the Socialist. To the extent that he demands reform measures which shall give to the worker greater opportunities for development and happiness, we must heartily concur. But is the Socialist right when he asserts that these wrongs are the inevitable result of the system which he calls “capitalism”? Is it impossible, as he insists, that these wrongs may be righted except by the overthrow of our present system and the substitution of collective ownership of all means of production for our privately-owned competitive method of managing things? When the Socialist tells us that Individualism is responsible for all these evils, he is right. When he tells us that these evils are inherent in the system which permits individual ownership of productive properties, he is wrong. It is not the competitive system that is responsible for all our social and industrial abuses. These unjust features of modern life are the direct result of the vicious practices which selfish and cruel individuals have adopted in their relations to their fellow-men, but which do not necessarily have any place in the system itself.