The higher ranks are “lifted up in pride.” It is they who “return railing for railing.” This “railing” is, in the edition of Webster’s dictionary current in Joseph Smith’s day, “Clamoring with insulting language; uttering reproachful words: Expressing reproach; insulting; as a railing accusation.” As I read Mormon’s description, the wealthy engaged in public insults and mutual accusations, railing against each other. Responding to the railing, in fact, “proved” that both parties considered themselves to be social equals.
The poor and humble, in contrast, had to submit to insults from the wealthy without responding. To be sure, Mormon praises the behavior of the poor as righteous humility, which it may very well have been; but in social terms, their humility did not manifest personal righteousness as much as humiliation and powerlessness. They perceived themselves as lacking the personal value possessed by the higher-status person insulting them. This is one of the dangers of the social hierarchies. Two people who are equal in the sight of God become dramatically and unfairly unequal in the eyes of society. A society dominated by those of higher status continues to define the rules of society in their own favor.
It is significant, in this context, that Mormon equates the “humble and railed upon” with “the righteous.” It suggests that believers in the Nephite gospel continued to subscribe to the egalitarian ideal and that the pressures for social hierarchies came most strongly from those willing to abandon the Nephite gospel. This differentiation in social hierarchy was likely accompanied by a differentiation in the religious beliefs of the two groups and increasing tension between the two philosophies, both in religion and social order.