The deepest cleavage in our modern society is the cleavage between the rich and the poor -- a wide gash which cuts straight down through humanity ... .

We have learned, after centuries of experiment, that this social trouble is too deep to be cured by the easy methods of flinging alms to poor beggars, or by systems of organized charity. The millionaire who, in his business, fosters iniquitous social conditions and turns men into cogs in the vast machinery of industry, and then tries to wash his soul and his reputation by enormous gifts to charity, philanthropy and education, is not solving the problem. The woman who gives freely to vagrants and to public charity, and then does nothing to show her own personal interest in those who labor and are heavy laden in the circle of her own neighborhood, is not helping to solve the problem.

But we must not take the short cut and shipwreck on the shoals of abstract theories ... . No system of sharing goods, or of sharing profits, in itself, will accomplish the end in view; nothing short of the sharing of life, the spirit of love and brotherhood, the personal consecration, not only of our wealth but of ourselves, to our fellows, will make a good society.