If you were to study the development of political economy, you would discover that the marked degradation of the workers, as well as much of the callousness of the prosperous to the sufferings of the poor are the direct result of the economic ideas promulgated by the Liberal philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “Liberty, fraternity and equality,” are terms to conjure with; but, once we apply these principles to the practical affairs of life, we have started society upon a downward course which can be checked only by a complete reversal of such ideas. The French Deists sought to remove all trammels from man that he might follow nature without restraint. They, and the economists who followed them--Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bentham, Mill, and others--saw no room for morality, religion, or even ethics, in political economy. The natural effect of such principles was to foster the selfish impulses of man rather than enforce conformity to the standards of conduct which are embodied in the eternal laws of justice. These principles taught men that the matter of prime importance was self-interest; they encouraged cruelty and greed; they opened the way for the practice of unregulated competition and stultified the Christian ideals of self-renunciation and human brotherhood. A political economy without ethics, without a rule of right except as set down in man-made law, can have none of the elements of justice save, possibly, through sheer accident. Legal morality and the morality for which Christianity has always stood are as opposed as the two poles in many particulars. Where the principles of true morality are recognized, there is no inherent antagonism between capital and labor. They have interests that are mutual, and there is no excuse for turning the industrial world into a battleground upon which strength and cunning usurp the place of love and justice. The moment that the higher ideals of life are subordinated to the passion of greed, the degradation of the weaker and less cunning becomes inevitable.