Complete. From “Concord Days.”

OURS can hardly claim to be the Golden Age, but of Bronze and Iron rather. If ideas are in the ascendant, still mind is fettered by mechanism. We scale the heavens to grade the spaces. Messrs. Capital & Co. transact our business for us the globe over. Was it in the Empire News that I read the company’s advertisement for supplying mankind with gas at a penny per diem annually? And then, proceeding to say, “that considering the old-time monopoly in the heavenly luminary, the corporation has constructed at fabulous cost their Brazen Cope to shut down upon the horizon at daybreak punctually, and so graduate to each customer’s tube his just allowance, else darkness for delinquents the year round.”

  Certainly a splendid conception for distributing sunbeams by the Globe Corporation, if the solar partner consent to the speculation. Had Hesiod the enterprise in mind when he sung,—

“Seek virtue first, and after virtue, coin”?

Or Saint Paul, when writing concerning labor and capital: “For I would not,” he says, “that other men should be eased and you burdened, but by an equality that now at the time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance may also be a supply for your want, that there may be an equality, as it is written, He that had gathered much, had nothing over, and he that had gathered little, had no lack. If any man will not work, neither shall he eat.”

  Any attempt to simplify and supply one’s wants by abstinence and self-help is in the most hopeful direction, and serviceable to the individual whether his experiment succeed or not, the practice of most, from the beginning, having been to multiply rather than diminish one’s natural wants, and thus to become poor at the cost of becoming rich. “Who has the fewest wants,” said Socrates, “is most like God.”

“Who wishes, wants, and whoso wants is poor.”

  Our “Fruitlands” was an adventure undertaken in good faith for planting a Family Order here in New England, in hopes of enjoying a pastoral life with a few devoted men and women, smitten with sentiments of the old heroism and love of holiness and of humanity. But none of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart, some returning to the established ways, some soured by the trial, others postponing the fulfillment of his dream to a more propitious future.

  I certainly esteem it an inestimable privilege to have been bred to outdoor labors, the use of tools, and to find myself the owner of a garden, with the advantage of laboring sometimes besides my faithful Irishman, and comparing views of men and things with him. I think myself the greater gainer of the two by this intercourse. Unbiased by books, and looking at things as they stand related to his senses and simple needs, I learn naturally what otherwise I should not have known so well, if at all. The sympathy and sincerity are the best part of it. One sees the more clearly his social relations and duties; sees the need of beneficent reforms in the economics of labor and capital by which the working classes shall have their just claims allowed, the products of hand and brain to be more equitably distributed, a finer sympathy and wiser humanity prevail in the disposition of affairs. No true man can be indifferent to that great productive multitude, without whose industry capitalists would have nothing in which to invest; the callings and the professions lack bread and occupation alike. Heads and hands best co-operate in this interplay of services. Every gift, besides enriching its owner, should enrich the whole community; opportunities be opened for the free exercise of all; the golden rule stand for something beside an idle text. Every one is entitled to a competence, provided he employ his gifts for the common good. It seems but right that the gifted should return to the common treasury in the ratio of their endowments; be taxed at a higher rate than those to whom like advantages have been denied. Indeed, it is questionable whether the man who is poor by no fault of his should be taxed at all; give him citizenship rather as an inborn right, as a man, not as a mere producer. Men are loyal from other considerations than self-interest. One would not check the spirit of accumulation, but the monopoly of the gift for the sole benefit of the oppressor. A competence, including every comfort, and even harmless luxuries, is what all men need, all desire, all might have, were there a fair distribution of the avails of labor, opportunities for labor of head or hand for all,—the right to be educated and virtuous included, as the most important. The poor man cannot compete, practically, successfully, with the rich man, the laborer with the capitalist, the ignorant with the instructed,—all are placed at unequal odds, the victims of circumstances which they did not create, and which those who do may use to their injury if they choose. The laborer is broken on the wheel his necessities compel him to drive, feeling the while the wrong done him by those whom he has enriched by his toil.

  No tradition assigns a beginning to justice, but only to injustice. Before the Silver, the Brazen, the Iron, comes the Golden Age, when virtue is current, and man at his highest value. It is when man is degraded that virtue and justice are dishonored, and labor deemed disreputable.

  Poverty may be the philosopher’s ornament. Too rich to need, and too self-respecting to receive benefits, save upon terms which render the receiver the nobler giver, he revenges upon fortune by possessing a kingdom superior to mischance and incumbrance.

	“The gold alone but gold can buy,
	Wisdom’s the sterling currency.”