of the old argument in favor of a protective tariff, ‘Gold and silver are wealth; a protective tariff, by shutting out imports while not interfering with exports, increases the gold and silver in a country; it therefore increases the country's wealth.' Assuming the truth of the premises, the conclusion does not follow, because while gold and silver are wealth they are not the only forms of wealth, and the imported gold and silver must be paid for by some other kind of wealth exported. The fallacy lies in forgetting this exported wealth-in looking at only a part of the universe or system in question.

So, many an unfortunate maintains that he has a right to a living', or to certain comforts; forgetting that such a right on his part implies a duty to provide him with these things on the part of somebody else.

The best account that I know of this fallacy of the forgotten member of the universe is to be found in the little book by Professor Sumner already quoted.

"In all jobbery the case is the same. There is a victim somewhere who is paying for it all. The doors of waste and extravagance stand open, and there seems to be a general agreement to squander and spend. It all belongs to somebody. There is somebody who had to contribute it, and who will have to find more. Nothing is ever said about him. Attention is all absorbed by the clamorous interests, the importunate petitioners, the plausible schemers, the pitiless bores. Now, who is the victim? He is the Forgotten Man. If we go to find him, we shall find him hard at work tilling the soil to get out of it the fund for all the jobbery, the object of all the plunder, the cost of all the economic quackery, and the pay of all the politicians and statesmen who have sacrificed his interests to his enemies. We shall find him an honest, sober, industrious citizen, unknown outside his little circle, paying his debts and his

taxes, supporting the church and the school, reading his party newspaper, and cheering for his pet politician.

"We must not overlook the fact that the Forgotten Man is not infrequently a woman. I have before me a newspaper which contains five letters from corset-stitchers who complain that they cannot earn more than seventy-five cents a day with a machine, and that they have to provide the thread. The tax on the grade of thread used by them is prohibitory as to all importation, and it is the corset-stitchers who have to pay day by day out of their time and labor the total enhancement of price due to the tax. Women who earn their own living probably earn on an average seventy-five cents per day of ten hours. Twenty-four minutes' work ought to buy a spool of thread at the retail price, if the American work woman were allowed to exchange her labor for thread on the best terms that the art and commerce of to-day would allow; but after she has done twenty-four minutes' work for the thread she is forced by the laws of her country to go back and work sixteen minutes longer to pay the tax-that is to support the thread-mill. The threadmill, therefore, is not an institution for getting thread for the American people, but for making thread harder to get than it would be if there were no such institution. . . . It makes a great impression on the imagination, however, to go to a manufacturing town and see great mills and a crowd of operatives; and such a sight is put forward, under the special allegation that it would not exist but for the protective tax, as a proof that protective taxes are wise. But if it be true that the thread-mill would not exist but for the tax, then how can we form a judgment as to whether the protective system is wise or not unless we call to mind all the seamstresses, washerwomen, servants, factory-hands, saleswomen, teachers, and laborers' wives and daughters, scattered in the garrets and tenements of great cities and in cottages all over the country, who are paying the tax which keeps the mill going and pays the extra wages? If the sewingwomen,

teachers, and washerwomen could once be collected over against the thread-mill, then some inferences could be drawn which would be worth something. Then some light might be thrown upon the obstinate fallacy of creating an industry', and we might begin to understand the difference between wanting thread and wanting a thread-mill. Some nations spend capital on great palaces, others on standing armies, others on iron-clad ships of war. Those things are all glorious, and strike the imagination with great force when they are seen; but no one doubts that they make life harder for the scattered insignificant peasants and laborers who have to pay for them all. They support a great many people', they make work', they 'give employment to other industries'. We Americans have no palaces, armies, or iron-clads, but we spend our earnings on protected industries. A big protected factory, if it really needs the protection for its support, is a heavier load for the Forgotten Men and Women than an iron-clad ship of war in time of peace.

"It is plain that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are the real productive strength of the country. The Forgotten Man works and votes-generally he praysbut his chief business in life is to pay. His name never gets into the newspapers except when he marries or dies. He is an obscure man. He may grumble sometimes to his wife, but he does not frequent the grocery, and he does not talk politics at the tavern. So he is forgotten. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher ought to think of before this man? If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of the Forgotten Man, he will become an unflinching advocate of strict scientific thinking in sociology, and a hard-hearted sceptic as regards any scheme of social amelioration. He will always want to know, Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, and who will have to pay for it all?" *

* Sumner, op. cit., pp. 145-149.

Since the forgotten member is always a member related to the rest of

The examples so far given have all shown a universe unduly curtailed or simplified through the neglect to consider some one or more of its essential relations

The

whole.

or members. But there are cases in which the neglected very existence of a universe of interrelated members seems to be ignored. To quote Whately once more (though here again he gave the example under another head):

66

When a multitude of particulars are presented to the mind, many are too weak or too indolent to take a comprehensive view of them; but confine their attention to each single point, by turns: and thus decide, infer, and act accordingly e.g., the imprudent spendthrift, finding that he is able to afford this, or that, or the other expense, forgets that all of them together will ruin him.

"To the same head may be reduced that fallacious reasoning by which men vindicate themselves to their own conscience and to others, for the neglect of those undefined duties, which though indispensable, and therefore not left to our choice whether we will practise them or not, are left to our discretion as to the mode, and the particular occasions, of practising them; e.g., 'I am not bound to contribute to this charity in particular; nor to that; nor to the other': the practical conclusion which they draw is, that all charity may be dispensed with."

In each of these cases the trouble lies, as Whately so clearly says, in the failure to take a comprehensive view of the universe as a whole. In the former case we forget

that when a given variable (namely, the money at one's disposal) is placed there it cannot also be placed here; in the latter we forget that if the variable (namely, charity) is not placed there, it ought to be placed here, since it ought to have a place somewhere or other in the universe.

The same failure to keep the whole universe and its relathe system, no hard and fast line can be drawn between a case of the forgotten member and a case of the forgotten relation.

tions in view accounts for what Whately calls the Fallacy of Objections, i.e., "showing that there are objections against some plan, theory, or system, and thence inferring that it should be rejected; when that which ought to have been proved is, that there are more, or stronger, objections against the receiving than the rejecting of it. . . . For there never was, nor will be, any plan executed or proposed, against which strong and even unanswerable objections may not be urged; so that unless the opposite objections be set in the balance on the other side, we can never advance a step."

This Fallacy of Objections is peculiarly characteristic of people whose energy is small but whose moral or æsthetic sensibilities are morbidly developed. They should help to pay a detective to catch a thief, and refuse because a detective's work is not straightforward and frank; they should help to hang a murderer, or should shoot a murdering burglar to secure the safety of honest people, and hold back because it is cruel; they want the liquor traffic cut down and they are convinced that a license system is the only thing that will do it, but they object to this because it makes the government a partner in sin'; they should wash their clothes, but they are afraid of soiling their fingers. Perhaps there is some relation in life in which each of us strains for

ever at gnats and swallows camels. We see the gap in the universe, but there is no ideal material at hand, so we let it go unfilled:

"Our common problem, yours, mine, every one's,

Is, not to fancy what were fair in life

Provided it could be, but finding first

What can be, then find how to make it fair

Up to our means; a very different thing."