except from the old-fashioned moral--or, if you please,
imaginative--point of view.

Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us when they
touch moral government. So long as labor is a chattel to be bought and
sold, so long, like other commodities, it follows the condition of
supply and demand. But if, for his misfortune, an employer considers
that he stands in human relations toward his workmen; if he believes,
rightly or wrongly, that he is responsible for them; that in return for
their labor he is bound to see that their children are decently taught,
and they and their families decently fed and clothed and lodged; that he
ought to care for them in sickness and in old age,--then political
economy will no longer direct him, and the relations between himself and
his dependents will have to be arranged on quite other principles.

So long as he considers only his own material profit, so long supply and
demand will settle every difficulty; but the introduction of a new
factor spoils the equation.

And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low motives and noble
emotions; in the struggle, ever failing yet ever renewed, to carry truth
and justice into the administration of human society; in the
establishment of states and in the overthrow of tyrannies; in the rise
and fall of creeds; in the world of ideas; in the character and deeds of
the great actors in the drama of life, where good and evil fight out
their everlasting battle, now ranged in opposite camps, now and more
often in the heart, both of them, of each living man,--that the true
human interest of history resides. The progress of industries, the
growth of material and mechanical civilization, are interesting; but
they are not the most interesting. They have their reward in the