350 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
at once are incurring grave responsibility for reckless use of half-truths.
Third : The professional champions of the poor, who cater to the impression that slow pace in social progress is due to the faults of the rich, are robbing Peter of precious reputation to pay Paul with irredeemable expectations. While I have never had a relative, so far as I know, who could be classified as rich, I have from boyhood been on terms of intimacy with rich men and their families, from those called rich in a country town to some so rated in Chicago. I have not known a very large proportion of the rich people in the United States, to be sure, any more than I have known a large proportion of the poor. So far as my acquaintance with rich men has gone, however, it has brought me into personal contact with just two individuals to whom I would be willing to apply any of the terms of opprobrium which so many social agitators feel at liberty to fling freely at rich men in general. My own observation leads me to the conclu- sion that rich men, as a rule, have a conscience that is quite as active as the conscience of the poor. Rich men, as I have known them, feel their social responsibilities, and are as genuine as their poorer neighbors in desire to discharge them. Indeed, my own personal complaint against rich men, as a class, is that they feel too much responsibility, and often stand in the way of progress by assuming that they are the only capable judges and executors of what is good for the people, while the people cannot be trusted to decide what is good for themselves. Ill-balanced social agi- tators confirm this tendency in rich men when they rouse the masses to chimerical sentiments.
It is a false analysis which divides men, in connection with social progress, into the rich and the poor. That is not the real line of cleavage. Men are sagacious and foolish. Men are unselfish and selfish. My acquaintance with rich men makes me believe that the unselfish among them are in the vast majority. There should be, not suspicion, but mutual understanding and sympathy between the wise and generous rich and the wise and generous poor.
Fourth : I am perfectly aware that certain of those who are
