domestic workshop. The impossibility of a reversion to the older régime in these respects is manifest. No, the demand of the discontented of the present age is not for a return of the conditions of any former time. The feeling rather is that, taking conditions as they are, the distribution of rewards, economic or other, which actually obtains should be modified so as to accord more nearly with current conceptions of fairness and right. As long as this feeling prevails, the stability of our social and economic order cannot be guaranteed. Reforms that ameliorate the conditions of the more unfortunate classes may prevent acute trouble, but, until the people generally are able to see at least a substantial realization of the principles which they believe to be just, there cannot be obtained that harmony between popular thought and objective institutions upon which a permanent social order must rest. It is to be emphasized, moreover, that this harmony can only be obtained by satisfying current conceptions of right, in so far as they are essentially valid. It well behooves the social reformer, therefore, to consider carefully which of the popularly alleged canons of distributive justice have in them the elements of truth and rationality. In so far as they are found valid, the way will be pointed out for reforms that will be permanently effective. In so far as they are found invalid, not only will warning be given to those who might be tempted to ill-advised innovations, but the directions indicated along which the economic and ethical education of the people must proceed. The general character of the inquiry which we are to undertake has been suggested in the preceding paragraphs. Its form and scope may be more particularly indicated as follows: The second chapter will be devoted to an analysis of the idea of Justice as an abstract conception. This principle determined, we shall, in the subsequent chapters, apply it to the concrete problems of our social life. There is, or should be, an ethical justification for every social fact, but to attempt specific justifications will be obviously impossible. It will be possible, however, to examine those features of our industrial and political life which are distinguished, either by their paramount importance, or by the ethical controversies that have been waged around them. In so doing we shall, moreover, be rendering more explicit the principles in accordance with which all other and less important social facts are to be judged. In mapping out this work, it becomes evident that the problem of social justice may be grouped under two general heads: the proper distribution of economic goods; and the harmonizing of the principles of liberty and law, of freedom and coercion. Examining first the subject of distributive justice, we shall consider the extent to which the principle of Equality should play a part. Next we shall undertake the definition of the concept "Property," which will involve a critical examination of the various theories that have been brought forward to justify its existence. This done, we shall be ready to consider the general canons of desert that should govern distribution of rewards. The chief theory considered under this head will be that which bases the right to private ownership wholly upon labor performed. As a subdivision to this inquiry, but, because of its importance, demanding treatment in a special chapter, will be the right to private property in land. The other and less important canons of distributive justice will be treated in still another chapter. The second of the chief problems of which we have spoken above, the harmonizing of freedom and coercion, will be treated under the three heads, "The Right of Coercion," "The Ethics of the Competitive Process," and "Punitive Justice." CHAPTER II JUSTICE THERE is one problem which, by its importance, dwarfs all other subjects of human inquiry; one principle which, if discovered and reduced to definite statement, will furnish the key to unlock the doors which have hitherto barred the way to the solution of the greatest questions that have agitated the minds of men in their efforts to adjust their social conduct to the highest standards of right. This problem is the determination of the true canon or canons of distributive justice. As soon as the sense of moral obligation is felt, the idea of desert necessarily makes its appearance, and with the emergence of this idea comes the need for standards in accordance with which individual merit may be measured. In the earliest stages of religious development this need was not strongly felt. Still, the need was there, and to some extent consciously recognized. As regards the relations of men and the gods the authority expressed by the latter, though often viewed as arbitrary in the extreme, was yet held to be determined in the main by the merit of those ruled. As regards the relations between man and man, the arbitrary element, at least from the modern standpoint, seems to have entered. Existing institutions and conditions, political as well as economic, if not given in these earlier times an explicit sacrosanct character, were at least seldom subjected to critical examination as to their social value. Tradition, the commands of the priesthood, or the orders of the ruling political classes were accepted as necessarily obligatory; and, though there may have been occasional bewailings of lot, little attempt was made to ascribe economic or political hardships to the operation of wrong principles of distributive justice. As intellectual development advanced, however, men began to reflect more seriously regarding themselves, and the nature of the world in which they lived and the forces by which they were surrounded. At first this inquiry went little farther than an attempt to explain the purely phenomenal world, and resulted only in the formulation of crude and fantastic cosmologies. Thus philosophy, in its metaphysical sense, took its rise. Next, however, extending their inquiry to themselves as living, thinking beings, men attempted to seek out, in a speculative way, the meaning of life, and to analyze their relations toward one another and the cosmos. Examining actual social and political conditions, a quo warranto was demanded of them. Thus ethical philosophy began. This stage of thought was reached in Greece in the Sophistic period. By the Sophists, the so-called teachers of wisdom, all currently accepted rules of morality were fearlessly examined, and declared founded upon no general principles of right. In |