It’s hard to be a conscious consumer. Like great things, cheap things also seem to be mostly made from slave labor and poor working conditions. Even if you religiously buy fair trade coffee and shop organic, it’s impossible to not indirectly support some of the practices. Clothing, fish, chocolate, and other items have been linked to terrible working conditions in other countries that essentially amounts to slavery.

In “The Ultra Moral Reformer”, the slavery was a lot closer to home. Perhaps the proximity to the negative realities is what convinces the ultra moral reformer, Mr. Mallory, to firmly adhere to the threefold missions of teetotaling, abolitionism, and non-resistance.

Hypocrisy lies at one end of the spectrum, and Mr. Mallory at the other. He attempted to remove himself from any association with the respective “evils” of the world, an impossible task.

In today’s world of awareness and outrage, it isn’t too hard to image trying to avoid anything corrupted, and failing, much in the same way that Mr. Mallory did. The only way to remove yourself from potential exploitation is to remove yourself from capitalism altogether, and in America that leaves almost no place to go.

We all try to some extent to be responsible consumers. It’s impossible to control for every potential source of corruption though. As the story itself points out, “the only difference is in degree.”

In today's world, Mr. Mallory might have ended up a freegan, avoiding all buying of good. And while it’s easy to deride or think of him as insane, it’s worth remembering there is a hidden, human cost in what we buy.

As the reader learns from the story of Mr. Mallory, in the end, trying to go outside of the system has little effect on the system and a huge effect on your life and happiness