Chapter 15

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

Equality of opportunity, as an abstract demand, is in an abstract sense just; but it changes its character when applied to a world of unequal individuals.

Equality of opportunity in the human race-course. To multiply competitors is to multiply failures.

Educational opportunity. Unequal students soon make opportunities unequal.

Opportunity in industrial life. Socialistic promises of equal industrial opportunities for all. Each "to paddle his own canoe."

These absurd promises inconsistent with the arguments of socialists themselves.

A socialist's attempt to defend these promises by reference to employés of the state post-office.

Equality of industrial opportunity for those who believe themselves possessed of exceptional talent and aspire "to rise."

Opportunities for such men involve costly experiment, and are necessarily limited.

Claimants who would waste them indefinitely more numerous than those who could use them profitably.

Such opportunities mean the granting to one man the control of other men by means of wage-capital.

Disastrous effects of granting such opportunities to all or even most of those who would believe themselves entitled to them.

True remedy for the difficulties besetting the problem of opportunity.

Ruskin on human demands. Needs and "romantic wishes." The former not largely alterable. The latter depend mainly on education.

The problem practically soluble by a wise moral education only, which will correlate demand and expectation with the personal capacities of the individual.

Relative equality of opportunity, not absolute equality, the true formula.

Equality of opportunity, though much talked about by socialists, is essentially a formula of competition, and opposed to the principles of socialism.