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natural equality. No society can maintain itself if it is divided into classes having distinct or antagonistic interests. Equality of opportunities and freedom of development of the faculties tend to produce an equality which is wholly consistent with variety. But governments set men against men and classes against classes by their favoritism, system of privileges, and special opportunities. This artificial inequality gives rise to class prejudices, jealousy, hatred, and discord. It tempts and forces some to commit crimes, while it reduces others to abject slavery. Thus it gradually undermines society. Soon comes revolution, and a civilization is in ruins. The modern conflict between the rich and the poor would not exist but for the State, which feeds on strife and is strengthened in war. A solution of the labor problem would involve a dissolution of the State. For all that is required to such solution is State non-interference. Labor would reap its full reward, if the State did not furnish a special class of people with weapons and means whereby the latter is enabled to enslave and plunder the former. The State produces nothing and possesses nothing. If it is seen to give something to anybody, that must have been taken forcibly or fraudulently from somebody else. In a state of freedom, nothing would command a price except labor, and the fact that idlers and non-producers find it possible to deprive labor of its due through rent, interest, and profits, which, being a reward of capital, could not exist under freedom, is sufficient to indicate to logical minds the real source of the labor troubles as well as their efficient cause.
Most of our eminent political and sociological writers, alive to the organic evils of government, concur in the opinion that the State ought to be deprived of all power to regulate industry, commerce, and morals, and restricted solely to the func-
