Economic justice is being constantly and quite often innocently violated. You may say that it is the economic condition which makes mankind what it is; or you may say that it is mankind that makes the economic condition what it is. You will find many claiming that it is the economic system which makes men what they are. They blame our industrial system for all the faults which we behold in mankind generally. And you will find other men who say that man creates his own conditions; that if the economic, industrial, or social system is bad, it is but a reflection of what man himself is. What is wrong in our industrial system is a reflection of what is wrong in man himself. Manufacturers hesitate to admit that the mistakes of the present industrial methods are, in part at least, their own mistakes, systematized and extended. But take the question outside of a man's immediate concerns, and he sees the point readily enough.
No doubt, with a less faulty human nature a less faulty social system would have grown up. Or, if human nature were worse than it is, a worse system would have grown up—though probably a worse system would not have lasted as long as the present one has. But few will claim that mankind deliberately set out to create a faulty social system. Granting without reserve that all faults of the social system are in man himself, it does not follow that he deliberately organized his imperfections and established them. We shall have to charge a great deal up to ignorance. We shall have to charge a great deal up to innocence.
Take the beginnings of our present industrial system. There was no indication of how it would grow. Every new advance was hailed with joy. No one ever thought of "capital" and "labour" as hostile interests. No one