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THE COMMON SENSEOF SOCIALISM

A SERIES OF LETTERS ADDRESSED TOJONATHAN EDWARDS, OF PITTSBURG

BY

JOHN SPARGO

Author of "The Bitter Cry of the Children, " "Socialism: ASummary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles, ""The Socialists: Who They Are and What TheyStand For, " "Capitalist and Laborer, "Etc. , Etc. , Etc. 

CHICAGOCHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY1911

Copyright 1909BY CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

TO

GEORGE H. STROBELL

ASA TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVETHIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 1

II WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH AMERICA? 4

III THE TWO CLASSES IN THE NATION 12

IV HOW WEALTH IS PRODUCED AND HOW IT IS DISTRIBUTED 26

V THE DRONES AND THE BEES 44

VI THE ROOT OF THE EVIL 68

VII FROM COMPETITION TO MONOPOLY 81

VIII WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT 94

IX WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT--_Continued_ 118

X THE OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM ANSWERED 136

XI WHAT SHALL WE DO, THEN? 170

APPENDICES:

I A SUGGESTED COURSE OF READING ON SOCIALISM 175

II HOW SOCIALIST BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED 179

THE COMMON SENSE OF SOCIALISM

I

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

 Socialism is undoubtedly spreading. It is, therefore, right and expedient that its teachings, its claims, its tendencies, its accusations and promises, should be honestly and seriously examined. --_Prof. Flint. _

_My Dear Mr. Edwards_: I count it good fortune to receive such lettersof inquiry as that which you have written me. You could not easilyhave conferred greater pleasure upon me than you have by the charmingcandor and vigor of your letter. It is said that when PresidentLincoln saw Walt Whitman, "the good, Gray Poet, " for the first time heexclaimed, "Well, he looks like a man!" and in like spirit, when Iread your letter I could not help exclaiming, "Well, he writes like aman!"

There was no need, Mr. Edwards, for you to apologize for your letter:for its faulty grammar, its lack of "style" and "polish. " I am notinsensible to these, being a literary man, but, even at their highestvaluation, grammar and literary style are by no means the mostimportant elements of a letter. They are, after all, only like theclothes men wear. A knave or a fool may be dressed in the most perfectmanner, while a good man or a sage may be poorly dressed, or evenclad in rags. Scoundrels in broadcloth are not uncommon; gentlemen infustian are sometimes met with. 

He would be a very unwise man, you will admit, who tried to judge aman by his coat. President Lincoln was uncouth and ill-dressed, but hewas a wise man and a gentleman in the highest and best sense of thatmuch misused word. On the other hand, Mr. Blank, who representsrailway interests in the United States Senate, is sleek, polished andwell-dressed, but he is neither very wise nor very good. He is agentleman only in the conventional, false sense of that word. 

Lots of men could write a more brilliant letter than the one you havewritten to me, but there are not many men, even among professionalwriters, who could write a better one. What I like is the spirit ofearnestness and the simple directness of it. You say that you have"Read lots of things in the papers about the Socialists' ideas andlistened to some Socialist speakers, but never could get a very clearnotion of what it was all about. " And then you add "Whether Socialismis good or bad, wise or foolish, _I want to know_. "

I wish, my friend, that there were more working men like you; thatthere were millions of American men and women crying out: "WhetherSocialism is good or bad, wise or foolish, _I want to know_. " For thatis the beginning of wisdom: back of all the intellectual progress ofthe race is the cry, _I want to know_! It is a cry that belongs towise hearts, such as Mr. Ruskin meant when he said, "A little group ofwise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools. " There are lotsof fools, both educated and uneducated, who say concerning Socialism, which is the greatest movement of our time, "I don't know anythingabout it and I don't want to know anything about it. " Compared withthe most learned man alive who takes that position, the least educatedlaborer in the land who says "I want to know!" is a philosophercompared with a fool. 

When I first read your letter and saw the long list of your objectionsand questions I confess that I was somewhat frightened. Most of thequestions are fair questions, many of them are wise ones and all ofthem merit consideration. If you will bear with me, Mr. Edwards, andlet me answer them in my own way, I propose to answer them all. And inanswering them I shall be as honest and frank with you as I am with myown soul. Whether you believe in Socialism or not is to me a matter ofless importance than whether you understand it or not. 

You complain that in some of the books written about Socialism thereare lots of hard, technical words and phrases which you cannotproperly understand, even when you have looked in the dictionary fortheir meaning, and that is a very just complaint. It is true that mostof the books on Socialism and other important subjects are written bystudents for students, but I shall try to avoid that difficulty andwrite as a plain, average man of fair sense to another plain, averageman of fair sense. 

All your other questions and objections, about "stirring up classhatred, " about "dividing-up the wealth with the lazy and shiftless, "trying to "destroy religion, " advocating "free love" and "attackingthe family, " all these and the many other matters contained in yourletter, I shall try to answer fairly and with absolute honesty. 

I want to convert you to Socialism if I can, Mr. Edwards, but I ammore anxious to have you _understand_ Socialism. 

II

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH AMERICA?

 It seems to me that people are not enough aware of the monstrous state of society, absolutely without a parallel in the history of the world, with a population poor, miserable and degraded in body and mind, as if they were slaves, and yet called freemen. The hopes entertained by many of the effects to be wrought by new churches and schools, while the social evils of their conditions are left uncorrected, appear to me utterly wild. --_Dr. Arnold, of Rugby. _

 The working-classes are entitled to claim that the whole field of social institutions should be re-examined, and every question considered as if it now arose for the first time, with the idea constantly in view that the persons who are to be convinced are not those who owe their ease and importance to the present system, but persons who have no other interest in the matter than abstract justice and the general good of the community. --_John Stuart Mill. _

I presume, Mr. Edwards, that you are not one of those persons whobelieve that there is nothing the matter with America; that you arenot wholly content with existing conditions. You would scarcely beinterested in Socialism unless you were convinced that in our existingsocial system there are many evils for which some remedy ought to befound if possible. Your interest in Socialism arises from the factthat its advocates claim that it is a remedy for the social evilswhich distress you--is it not so?

I need not harrow your feelings, therefore, by drawing for youpictures of dismal misery, poverty, vice, crime and squalor. As aworkingman, living in Pittsburg, you are unhappily familiar with theevils of our present system. It doesn't require a professor ofpolitical economy to understand that something is wrong in ourAmerican life today. 

As an industrial city Pittsburg is a notable example of the defectiveworking of our present social and industrial system. In Pittsburg, asin every other modern city, there are the extremes of wealth andpoverty. There are beautiful residences on the one hand and miserable, crowded tenement hovels upon the other hand. There are people who areso rich, whose incomes are so great, that their lives are mademiserable and unhappy. There are other people so poor, with incomes sosmall, that they are compelled to live miserable and unhappy lives. Young men and women, inheritors of vast fortunes, living lives ofidleness, uselessness and vanity at one end of the social scale aredriven to dissipation and debauchery and crime. At the other end ofthe social scale there are young men and women, poor, overburdenedwith toil, crushed by poverty and want, also driven to dissipation anddebauchery and crime. 

You are a workingman. All your life you have known the conditionswhich surround the lives of working people like yourself. You know howhard it is for the most careful and industrious workman to properlycare for his family. If he is fortunate enough never to be sick, orout of work, or on strike, or to be involved in an accident, or tohave sickness in his family, he may become the owner of a cheap home, or, by dint of much sacrifice, his children may be educated andenabled to enter one of the professions. Or, given all the conditionsstated, he may be enabled to save enough to provide for himself andwife a pittance sufficient to keep them from pauperism and beggary intheir old age. 

That is the best the workingman can hope for as a result of his ownlabor under the very best conditions. To attain that level of comfortand decency he must deny himself and his wife and children of manythings which they ought to enjoy. It is not too much to say that noneof your fellow-workmen in Pittsburg, men known to you, your neighborsand comrades in labor, have been able to attain such a condition ofcomparative comfort and security except by dint of much hardshipimposed upon themselves, their wives and children. They have had toforego many innocent pleasures; to live in poor streets, greatly tothe disadvantage of the children's health and morals; to concentratetheir energies to the narrow and sordid aim of saving money; tocultivate the instincts and feelings of the miser. 

The wives of such men have had to endure privations and wrongs such asonly the wives of the workers in civilized society ever know. Miserably housed, cruelly overworked, toiling incessantly from morntill night, in sickness as well as in health, never knowing the joysof a real vacation, cooking, scrubbing, washing, mending, nursing andpitifully saving, the wife of such a worker is in truth the slave of aslave. 

At the very best, then, the lot of the workingman excludes him and hiswife and children from most of the comforts which belong to moderncivilization. A well-fitted home in a good neighborhood--to saynothing of a home beautiful in itself and its surroundings--is out ofthe question; foreign travel, the opportunity to enjoy the rest andeducative advantages of occasional journeys to other lands, islikewise out of the question. Even though civic enterprise providespublic libraries and art galleries, museums, lectures, concerts, andother opportunities of recreation and education, there is not theleisure for their enjoyment to any extent. For our model workman, withall his exceptional advantages, after a day's toil has little timeleft for such things, and little strength or desire, while his wifehas even less time and even less desire. 

You know that this is not an exaggerated account. It may be questionedby the writers of learned treatises who know the life of the workersonly from descriptions of it written by people who know very littleabout it, but you will not question it. As a workman you know it istrue. And I know it is true, for I have lived it. The best that themost industrious, thrifty, persevering and fortunate workingman canhope for is to be decently housed, decently fed, decently clothed. That he and his family may always be certain of these things, so thatthey go down to their graves at last without having experienced thepangs of hunger and want, the worker must be exceptionally fortunate. _And yet, my friend, the horses in the stables of the rich men of thiscountry, and the dogs in their kennels, have all these things, andmore!_ For they are protected against such overwork and such anxietyas the workingman and the workingman's wife must endure. Greater careis taken of the health of many horses and dogs than the most favoredworkingman can possibly take of the health of his boys and girls. 

At its best and brightest, then, the lot of the workingman in ourpresent social system is not an enviable one. The utmost good fortuneof the laboring classes is, properly considered, a scathingcondemnation of modern society. There is very little poetry, beauty, joy or glory in the life of the workingman when taken at its verybest. 

But you know very well that not one workingman in a hundred, nay, notone in a thousand, is fortunate enough never to be sick, or out ofwork, or on strike, or to be involved in an accident, or to havesickness in his family. Not one worker in a thousand lives to old ageand goes down to his grave without having known the pangs of hungerand want, both for himself and those dependent upon him. On thecontrary, dull, helpless, poverty is the lot of millions of workerswhose lines are cast in less pleasant places. 

Mr. Frederic Harrison the well-known conservative English publicist, some years ago gave a graphic description of the lot of the workingclass of England, a description which applies to the working class ofAmerica with equal force. He said:

 "Ninety per cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of a week, have no bit of soil, or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind except as much as will go in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destruction that a month of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism. "[1]

I am perfectly willing, of course, to admit that, upon the whole, conditions are worse in England than in this country, but I am stillcertain that Mr. Harrison's description is fairly applicable to theUnited States of America, in this year of Grace, nineteen hundred andeight. 

At present we are passing through a period of industrial depression. Everywhere there are large numbers of unemployed workers. Poverty isrampant. Notwithstanding all that is being done to ease their misery, all the doles of the charitable and compassionate, there are stillmany thousands of men, women and children who are hungry andmiserable. You see them every day in Pittsburg, as I see them in NewYork, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, and elsewhere. It iseasy to see in times like the present that there is some great, vitaldefect in our social economy. 

Later on, if you will give me your attention, Jonathan, I want you toconsider the causes of such cycles of depression as this that we areso patiently enduring. But at present I am interested in getting youto realize the terrible shortcomings of our industrial system at itsbest, in normal times. I want to have you consider the state ofaffairs in times that are called "prosperous" by the politicians, thepreachers, the economists, the statisticians and the editors of ournewspapers. I am not concerned, here and now, with the _exceptional_distress of such periods as the present, but with the ordinary, normal, chronic misery and distress; the poverty that is always soterribly prevalent. 

Do you remember the talk about the "great and unexampled prosperity"in which you indulged during the latter part of 1904 and the followingyear? Of course you do. Everybody was talking about prosperity, and astranger visiting the United States might have concluded that we werea nation of congenital optimists. Yet, it was precisely at that time, in the very midst of our loud boasting about prosperity, that RobertHunter challenged the national brain and conscience with thestatement that there were at lease ten million persons in poverty inthe United States. If you have not read Mr. Hunter's book, Jonathan, Iadvise you to get it and read it. You will find in it plenty of foodfor serious thought. It is called _Poverty_, and you can get a copy atthe public library. From time to time I am going to suggest that youread various books which I believe you will find useful. "Readingmaketh a full man, " provided that the reading is seriously and wiselydone. Good books relating to the problems you have to face as a workerare far better for reading than the yellow newspapers or the sportingprints, my friend. 

When they first read Mr. Hunter's startling statement that there wereten million persons in the United States in poverty, many peoplethought that he must be a sensationalist of the worst type. It couldnot be true, they thought. But when they read the startling array offacts upon which that estimate was based they modified their opinion. It is significant, I think, that there has been no very seriouscriticism of the estimate made by any reputable authority. 

Do you know, Jonathan, that in New York of all the persons who die onein every ten dies a pauper and is buried in Potter's Field? It is apity that we have not statistics upon this point covering most of ourcities, including your own city of Pittsburg. If we had, I should askyou to try an experiment. I should ask you to give up one of yourSaturday afternoons, or any day when you might be idle, and to takeyour stand at the busiest corner in the city. There, I would have youcount the people as they pass by, hurrying to and fro, and every tenthperson you counted I would have you note by making a little cross on apiece of paper. Think what an awful tally it would be, Jonathan. Howsick and weary at heart you would be if you stood all day counting, saying as every tenth person passed, "There goes another marked for apauper's grave!" And it might happen, you know, that the fateful countof ten would mark your own boy, or your own wife. 

We are a practical, hard-headed people. That is our national boast. You are a Yankee of the good old Massachusetts stock, I understand, proud of the fact that you can trace your descent right back to thePilgrim Fathers. But with all our hard-headed practicality, Jonathan, there is still some sentiment left in us. Most of us dread the thoughtof a pauper's grave for ourselves or friends, and struggle againstsuch fate as we struggle against death itself. It is a foolishsentiment perhaps, for when the soul leaves the body a mere handful ofclod and marl, the spark of divinity forever quenched, it really doesnot matter what happens to the body, nor where it crumbles into dust. But we cherish the sentiment, nevertheless, and dread having to fillpauper graves. And when ten per cent, of those who die in the richestcity of the richest nation on earth are laid at last in pauper gravesand given pauper burial there is something radically and cruellywrong. 

And you and I, with our fellows, must try to find out just what thewrong is, and just how we can set it right. Anything less than thatseems to me uncommonly like treason to the republic, treason of theworst kind. Alas! Alas! such treason is very common, friendJonathan--there are many who are heedless of the wrongs that sap thelife of the republic and careless of whether or no they are righted. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference, 1886, p. 429. 

III

THE TWO CLASSES IN THE NATION

 Mankind are divided into two great classes--the shearers and the shorn. You should always side with the former against the latter. --_Talleyrand. _

 All men having the same origin are of equal antiquity; nature has made no difference in their formation. Strip the nobles naked and you are as well as they; dress them in your rags, and you in their robes, and you will doubtless be the nobles. Poverty and riches only discriminate betwixt you. --_Machiavelli. _

 Thou shalt not steal. _Thou shalt not be stolen from. _--_Thomas Carlyle. _

I want you to consider, friend Jonathan, the fact that in this andevery other civilized country there are two classes. There are, as itwere, two nations in every nation, two cities in every city. There isa class that lives in luxury and a class that lives in poverty. Aclass constantly engaged in producing wealth but owning little or noneof the wealth produced and a class that enjoys most of the wealthwithout the trouble and pain of producing it. 

If I go into any city in America I can find beautiful and costlymansions in one part of the city, and miserable, squalid tenementhovels in another part. And I never have to ask where the workerslive. I know that the people who live in the mansions don't produceanything; that the wealth producers alone are poor and miserablyhoused. 

Republican and Democratic politicians never ask you to consider suchthings. They expect you to let _them_ do all the thinking, and tocontent yourself with shouting and voting for them. As a Socialist, Iwant you to do some thinking for yourself. Not being a politician, buta simple fellow-citizen, I am not interested in having you vote foranything you do not understand. If you should offer to vote forSocialism without understanding it, I should beg you not to do it. Iwant you to vote for Socialism, of course, but not unless you knowwhat it means, why you want it and how you expect to get it. You see, friend Jonathan, I am perfectly frank with you, as I promised to be. 

You will remember, I hope, that in your letter to me you made theobjection that the Socialists are constantly stirring up class hatred, setting class against class. I want to show you now that this is _nottrue_, though you doubtless believed that it was true when you wroteit. I propose to show you that in this great land of ours there aretwo great classes, the "shearers and the shorn, " to adopt Talleyrand'sphrase. And I want you to side with the _shorn_ instead of with the_shearers_, because, if I am not sadly mistaken, my friend, _you areone of the shorn_. Your natural interests are with the workers, andall the workers are shorn and robbed, as I shall try to show you. 

You work in one of the great steel foundries of Pittsburg, Iunderstand. You are paid wages for your work, but you have no otherinterest in the establishment. There are lots of other men working inthe same place under similar conditions. Above you, having theauthority to discharge you if they see fit, if you displease them oryour work does not suit them, are foremen and bosses. They are paidwages like yourself and your fellow workmen. True, they get a littlemore wages, and they live in consequence in a little better homesthan most of you, but they do not own the plant. They, too, may bedischarged by other bosses above them. There are a few of the workmenwho own a small number of shares of stock in the company, but notenough of them to have any kind of influence in its management. Theyare just as likely to be turned out of employment as any of you. 

Above all the workers and bosses of one kind and another there is ageneral manager. Wonderful stories are told of the enormous salary hegets. They say that he gets more for one week than you or any of yourfellow workmen get for a whole year. You used to know him well whenyou were boys together. You went to the same school; played "hookey"together; bathed in the creek together. You used to call him "Richard"and he always used to call you "Jon'thun. " You lived close to eachother on the same street. 

But you don't speak to each other nowadays. When he passes through theworks each morning you bend to your work and he does not notice you. Sometimes you wonder if he has forgotten all about the old days, aboutthe games you used to play up on "the lots, " the "hookey" and theswimming in the creek. Perhaps he has not forgotten: perhaps heremembers well enough, for he is just a plain human being likeyourself Jonathan; but if he remembers he gives no sign. 

Now, I want to ask you a few plain questions, or, rather, I want youto ask yourself a few plain questions. Do you and your old friendRichard still live on the same street, in the same kind of houses likeyou used to? Do you both wear the same kind of clothes, like you usedto? Do you and he both go to the same places, mingle with the samecompany, like you used to in the old days? Does _your_ wife wear thesame kind of clothes than _his_ wife does? Does _his_ wife work ashard as _your_ wife does? Do they both belong to the same social "set"or does the name of Richard's wife appear in the Social Chronicle inthe daily papers while your wife's does not? When you go to thetheater, or the opera, do you and your family occupy as good seats asRichard and his family in the same way that you and he used to occupy"quarter seats" in the gallery? Are your children and Richard'schildren dressed equally well? Your fourteen-year-old girl is workingas a cash-girl in a store and your fifteen-year-old boy is working ina factory. What about Richard's children? They are about the same ageyou know: is his girl working in a store, his boy in a factory?Richard's youngest child has a nurse to take care of her. You saw herthe other day, you remember: how about your youngest child--has she anurse to care for her?

Ah, Jonathan! I know very well how you must answer these questions asthey flash before your mind in rapid succession. You and Richard areno longer chums; your wives don't know each other; your children don'tplay together, but are strangers to one another; you have no friendsin common now. Richard lives in a mansion, while you live in a hovel;Richard's wife is a fine "lady" in silks and satins, attended byflunkeys, while your wife is a poor, sickly, anĉmic, overworkeddrudge. You still live in the same city, yet not in the same world. You would not know how to act in Richard's home, before all theservants; you would be embarrassed if you sat down at his dinnertable. Your children would be awkward and shy in the presence of hischildren, while they would scorn to introduce your children to theirfriends. 

You have drifted far apart, you two, my friend. Somehow there yawnsbetween you a great, impassable gulf. You are as far apart in yourlives as prince and pauper, lord and serf, king and peasant ever werein the world's history. It is wonderful, this chasm that yawns betweenyou. As Shakespeare has it:

 Strange it is that bloods Alike of colour, weight and heat, pour'd out together, Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off In differences so mighty. 

I am not going to say anything against your one-time friend who is nowa stranger to you and the lord of your life. I have not one word tosay against him. But I want you to consider very seriously if thechanges we have noted are the only changes that have taken place inhim since the days when you were chums together. Have you forgottenthe Great Strike, when you and your fellow workers went out on strike, demanding better conditions of labor and higher wages? Of course youhave not forgotten it, for that was when your scanty savings were allused up, and you had to stand, humiliated and sorrowful, at the reliefstation, or in the "Bread Line, " to get food for your little family. 

Those were the dark days when your dream of a little cottage in thecountry, with hollyhocks and morning-glories and larkspurs growingaround it, melted away like the mists of the morning. It was the dreamof your young manhood and of your wife's young womanhood; it was thedream of your earliest years together, and you both worked and savedfor that little cottage in the suburbs where you would spend thesunset hours of life together. The Great Strike killed your beautifuldream; it killed your wife's hopes. You have no dream now and no hopefor the sunset hours. When you think of them you become bitter andtry to banish the thought. I know all about that faded dream, Jonathan. 

Why did you stay out on strike and suffer? Why did you not remain atwork, or at least go back as soon as you saw how hard the fight wasgoing to be? "What! desert my comrades, and be a traitor to mybrothers in the fight?" you say. But I thought you did not believe inclasses! I thought you were opposed to the Socialists because they setclass to fight class! You were fighting the company then, weren't you;trying to force them to give you decent conditions? You called it afight, Jonathan, and the newspapers, you remember, had great headlinesevery day about the "Great Labor War. "

It wasn't the Socialists who urged you to go out on strike, Jonathan. You had never heard of Socialism then, except once you read somethingin the papers about some Socialists who were shot down by the Czar'sCossacks in the streets of Warsaw. You got an idea then that aSocialist was a desperado with a firebrand in one hand and a bomb inthe other, madly seeking to burn palaces and destroy the lives of richmen and rulers. No, it was not due to Socialist agitation that youwent out on strike. 

You went out on strike because you had grown desperate on account ofthe wanton, wicked, needless waste of human life that went on underyour very eyes, day after day. You saw man after man maimed, man afterman killed, through defects in the machinery, and the company, throughyour old chum and playmate, refused to make the changes necessary. They said that it would "cost too much money, " though you all knewthat the shareholders were reaping enormous profits. Added to that, and the fact that you went hourly in dread of similar fate befallingyou, your wife had a hard time to make both ends meet. There was atime when you could save something every week, but for some timebefore the strike there was no saving. Your wife complained; yourcomrades said that their wives complained. Finally you all agreed thatyou could stand it no longer; that you would send a committee tointerview the manager and tell him that, unless you got better wagesand unless something was done to make your lives safer you would goout on strike. 

When you and the manager were chums together he was a kind, good-hearted, generous fellow, and you felt certain that when theCommittee explained things it would be all right. But you weremistaken. He cursed at them as though they were dogs, and you couldscarcely believe your own ears. Do you remember how you spoke to yourwife about it, about "the change in Dick"?

You went out on strike. The manager scoured the country for men totake your places. Ruffianly men came from all parts of the country;insolent, strife-provoking thugs. More than once you saw yourfellow-workmen attacked and beaten by thugs, and then the police wereordered to club and arrest--not the aggressors but your comrades. Thenthe manager asked the mayor to send for the troops, and the mayor didas he was bidden do. What else could he do when the leadingstockholders in the company owned and controlled the Republicanmachine? So the Republican mayor wired to the Republican Governor forsoldiers and the soldiers came to intimidate you and break the strike. One day you heard a rifle's sharp crack, followed by a tumult and theytold you that one of your old friends, who used to go swimming withyou and Richard, the manager, had been shot by a drunken sentry, though he was doing no harm. 

You were a Democrat. Your father had been a Democrat and you "justnaturally growed up to be one. " As a Democrat you were very bitteragainst the Republican mayor and the Republican Governor. You honestlythought that if there had been a good Democrat in each of thoseoffices there would have been no soldiers sent into the city; thatyour comrade would not have been murdered. You spoke of little else toyour fellows. You nursed the hope that at the next election they wouldturn out the Republicans and put the Democrats in. 

But that delusion was shattered like all the rest, Jonathan, when, soon after, the Democratic President you were so proud of, to whom youlooked up as to a modern Moses, sent federal troops into Illinois, over the protest of the Governor of that Commonwealth, in defiance ofthe laws of the land, in violation of the sacred Constitution he hadsworn to protect and obey. Your faith in the Democratic Party wasshattered. Henceforth you could not trust either the Republican Partyor the Democratic Party. 

I don't want to discuss the strike further. That is all ancienthistory to you now. I have already gone a good deal farther afieldthan I wanted to do, or than I intended to do when I began thisletter. I want to go back--back to our discussion of the great gulfthat divides you and your former chum, Richard. 

I want you to ask yourself, with perfect candor and good faith, whether you believe that Richard has been so much better than you, either as workman, citizen, husband or father, that his presentposition can be regarded as a just reward for his virtue and ability?I'll put it another way for you, Jonathan: in your own heart do youbelieve that you are so much inferior to him as a worker or as acitizen, so much inferior in mentality and in character that youdeserve the hard fate which has come to you, the ill-fortune comparedto his good fortune? Are you and your family being punished for yoursins, while he and his family are being rewarded for his virtues? Inother words, Jonathan, to put the matter very plainly, do you believethat God has ordained your respective states in accordance with yourjust deserts?

You know that is not the case, Jonathan. You know very well that bothRichard and yourself share the frailties and weaknesses of our kind. Infinite mischief has been done by those who have given the strugglebetween the capitalists and the workers the aspect of a conflictbetween "goodness" on the one side and "wickedness" upon the other. Many things which the capitalists do appear very wicked to theworkers, and many things which the workers do, and think perfectlyproper and right, the capitalists honestly regard as improper andwrong. 

I do not deny that there are some capitalists whose conduct deservesour contempt and condemnation, just as there are some workingmen ofwhom the same is true. Still less would I deny that there is a veryreal ethical measure of life; that some conduct is anti-social whileother conduct is social. I simply want you to catch my point that weare creatures of our environment, Jonathan; that if the workers andthe capitalists could change places, there would be a correspondingchange in their views of many things. I refuse to flatter the workers, my friend: they have been flattered too much already. 

Politicians seeking votes always tell the workers how greatly theyadmire them for their intelligence and for their moral excellencies. But you know and I know that they are insincere; that, for the mostpart, their praise is lying hypocrisy. They practice what you call"the art of jollying the people" because that is an important part oftheir business. The way they talk _to_ the working class is verydifferent from the way they talk _of_ the working class amongthemselves. I've heard them, my friend, and I know how most of themdespise the workers. 

The working men and women of this country have many faults andfailings. Many of them are ignorant, though that is not quite theirown fault. Many a workingman starves and pinches his wife and littleones to gamble, squandering his money, yes, and the lives of hisfamily, upon horse races, prize-fights, and other brutal and senselessthings called "sport. " It is all wrong, Jonathan, and we know it. Manyof our fellow workmen drink, wasting the children's bread-money andmaking beasts of themselves in saloons, and that is wrong, too, thoughI do not wonder at it when I think of the hells they work in, thehovels they live in and the dull, soul-deadening grind of their dailylives. But we have got to struggle against it, got to conquer thebestial curse, before we can get better conditions. Men who soak theirbrains in alcohol, or who gamble their children's bread, will never beable to make the world a fit place to live in, a place fit for littlechildren to grow in. 

But the worst of all the failings of the working class, in my humblejudgment, is its indifference to the great problems of life. Why isit, Jonathan, that I can get tens of thousands of workingmen inPittsburg or any large city excited and wrought to feverish enthusiasmover a brutal and bloody prize-fight in San Francisco, or about abaseball game, and only a man here and there interested in any degreeabout Child Labor, about the suffering of little babies? Why is itthat the workers, in Pittsburg and every other city in America, areless interested in getting just conditions than in baseball games fromwhich all elements of honest, manly sport have been taken away; brutalslugging matches between professional pugilists; horseraces conductedby gamblers for gamblers; the sickening, details of the latest scandalamong the profligate, idle rich?

I could get fifty thousand workingmen in Pittsburg to read long, disgusting accounts of bestiality and vice more easily than I couldget five hundred to read a pamphlet on the Labor Problem, on thewrongfulness of things as they are and how they might be made better. The masters are wiser, Jonathan. They watch and guard their owninterests better than the workers do. 

If you owned the tools with which you work, my friend, and whateveryou could produce belonged to you, either to use or to exchange forthe products of other workers, there would be some reason in yourFourth of July boasting about this

 Blest land of Liberty. 

But you don't. You, and all other wage-earners, depend upon thegoodwill and the good judgment of the men who own the land, the mines, the factories, the railways, and practically all other means ofproducing wealth for the right to live. You don't own the rawmaterial, the machinery or the railways; you don't control your ownjobs. Most of you don't even own your own miserable homes. Thesethings are owned by a small class of, people when their number iscompared with the total population. The workers produce the wealth ofthis and every other country, but they do not own it. They get justenough to keep them alive and in a condition to go on producingwealth--as long as the master class sees fit to have them do it. 

Most of the capitalists do not, _as capitalists_, contribute in anymanner to the production of wealth. Some of them do render services ofone kind and another in the management of the industries they areconnected with. Some of them are directors, for example, _but they arealways paid for their services before there is any distribution ofprofits_. Even when their "work" is quite perfunctory and useless, mere make-believe, like the games of little children, they get paidfar more than the actual workers. But there are many people who ownstock in the company you work for, Jonathan, who never saw thefoundries, who were never in the city of Pittsburg in their lives, whose knowledge of the affairs of the company is limited to the stockquotations in the financial columns of the morning papers. 

Think of it: when you work and produce a dollar's worth of wealth byyour labor, it is divided up. You get only a very small fraction. Therest is divided between the landlords and the capitalists. Thishappens in the case of every man among the thousands employed by thecompany. Only a small share goes to the workers, a third, or a fourth, perhaps, the remainder being divided among people who have done noneof the work. It may happen, does happen in fact, that, an oldprofligate whose delight is the seduction of young girls, a wantonwoman whose life would shame the harlot of the streets, a lunatic inan asylum, or a baby in the cradle, will get more than any of theworkers who toil before the glaring furnaces day after day. 

These are terrible assertions, Jonathan, and I do not blame you if youdoubt them. I shall _prove_ them for you in a later letter. 

At present, I want you to get hold of the fact that the wealthproduced by the workers is so distributed that the idle and uselessclasses get most of it. People will tell you, Jonathan, that "thereare no classes in America, " and that the Socialists lie when they sayso. They point out to you that your old chum, Richard, who is now amillionaire, was a poor boy like yourself. They say he rose to hispresent position because he had keener brains than his fellows, butyou know lots of workmen in the employ of the company who know a greatdeal more about the work than he does, lots of men who are clevererthan he is. Or they tell you that he rose to his present positionbecause of his superior character, but you know that he is, to say theleast, no better than the average man who works under him. 

The fact is, Jonathan, the idle capitalists must have some men tocarry on the work for them, to direct it and see that the workers areexploited properly. They must have some men to manage things for them;to see that elections are bought, that laws in their interests arepassed and not laws in the interests of the people. They must havesomebody to do the things they are too "respectable" to do--or toolazy. They take such men from the ranks of the workers and pay themenormous salaries, thereby making them members of their own class. Such men are really doing useful and necessary work in managing thebusiness (though not in corrupting legislators or devising swindlingschemes) and are to that extent producers. But their interests arewith the capitalists. They live in palaces, like the idlers; theymingle in the same social sets; they enjoy the same luxuries. And, above all, they can invest part of their large incomes in otherconcerns and draw enormous profits from the labors of other toilers, sometimes even in other lands. They are capitalists and their wholeinfluence is on the side of the capitalists against the workers. 

I want you to think over these things, friend Jonathan. Don't beafraid to do your own thinking! If you have time, go to the libraryand get some good books on the subject and read them carefully, doingyour own thinking no matter what the authors of the books may say. Isuggest that you get W. J. Ghent's _Mass and Class_ to begin with. Then, when you have read that, I shall be glad to have you readChapter VI of a book called _Socialism: A Summary and Interpretationof Socialist Principles_. It is not very hard reading, for I wrote thebook myself to meet the needs of just such earnest, hard-working menas yourself. 

I think both books will be found in the public library. At any rate, they ought to be. But if not, it would be worth your while to save theprice of a few whiskies and to buy them for yourself. You see, Jonathan, I want you to study. 

IV

HOW WEALTH IS PRODUCED AND HOW IT IS DISTRIBUTED

 It is easy to persuade the masses that the good things of this world are unjustly divided--especially when it happens to be the exact truth. --_J. A. Froude. _

 The growth of wealth and of luxury, wicked, wasteful and wanton, as before God I declare that luxury to be, has been matched step by step by a deepening and deadening poverty, which has left whole neighborhoods of people practically without hope and without aspiration. --_Bishop Potter. _

 At present, all the wealth of Society goes first into the possession of the Capitalist.... He pays the landowner his rent, the labourer his wages, the tax and tithe-gatherer their claims, and keeps a large, indeed, the largest, and a constantly augmenting share of the annual produce of labour for himself. The Capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the wealth of the community, though no law has conferred on him the right of this property.... This change has been effected by the taking of interest on Capital ... And it is not a little curious that all the lawgivers of Europe endeavoured to prevent this by Statutes--viz. , Statutes against usury. --_Rights of Natural and Artificial Property Contrasted_ (_An Anonymous work, published in London, in 1832_). --_Th. Hodgskin. _

You are not a political economist, Jonathan, nor a statistician. Mostbooks on political economy, and most books filled with statistics, seem to you quite unintelligible. Your education never included thestudy of such books and they are, therefore, almost if not quiteworthless to you. 

But every working man ought to know something about political economyand be familiar with some statistics relating to social conditions. So I am going to ask you to study a few figures and a little politicaleconomy. Only just a very little, mind you, just to get you used tothinking about social problems in a scientific way. I think I can setthe fundamental principles of political economy before you in verysimple language, and I will try to make the statistics interesting. 

But I want to warn you again, Jonathan, that you must use your owncommonsense. Don't trust too much to theories and figures--especiallyfigures. Somebody has said that you can divide the liars of the worldinto three classes--liars, damned liars and statisticians. Some peopleare paid big salaries for juggling with figures to fool the Americanpeople into believing what is not true, Jonathan. I want you toconsider the laws of political economy and all the statistics I putbefore you in the light of your own commonsense and your own practicalexperience. 

Political economy is the name which somebody long ago gave to theformal study of the production and distribution of wealth. Carlylecalled it "the dismal science, " and most books on the subject aredismal enough to justify the term. Upon my library shelves there aresome hundreds of volumes dealing with political economy, and I don'tmind confessing to you that some of them I never have been able tounderstand, though I have put no little effort and conscience into theattempt. I have a suspicion that the authors of these books could notunderstand them themselves. That the reason why they could not writeso that a man of fair intelligence and education could understand themwas the fact that they had no clear ideas to convey. 

Now, in the first place, what do we mean by _Wealth_? Why, you say, wealth is money and money is wealth. But that is only half true, Jonathan. Suppose, for example, that an American millionaire crossingthe ocean be shipwrecked and find himself cast upon some desertisland, like another Robinson Crusoe, without food or means ofobtaining any. Suppose him naked, without tool or weapon of any kind, his one sole possession being a bag containing ten thousand dollars ingold and banknotes to the value of as many millions. With that money, in New York, or any other city in the world, he would be counted arich man, and he would have no difficulty in getting food andclothing. 

But alone upon that desert island, what could he do with the money? Hecould not eat it, he could not keep himself warm with it? He would bepoorer than the poorest savage in Africa whose only possessions were abow and arrow and an assegai, or spear, wouldn't he? The poor kaffirwho never heard of money, but who had the simple weapons with which tohunt for food, would be the richer man of the two, wouldn't he?

I think you will find it useful, Jonathan, to read a little book byJohn Ruskin, called _Unto This Last_. It is a very small book, writtenin very simple and beautiful language. Mr. Ruskin was a somewhatwhimsical writer, and there are some things in the book which I do notwholly agree with, but upon the whole it is sane, strong and eternallytrue. He shows very clearly, according to my notion, that the merepossession of things, or of money, is not wealth, but that _wealthconsists in the possession of things useful to us_. That is why thepossession of heaps of gold by a man living alone upon a desert islanddoes not make him wealthy, and why Robinson Crusoe, with weapons, tools and an abundant food supply, was really a wealthy man, though hehad not a dollar. 

In a primitive state of society, then, he is poor who has not enoughof the things useful to him, and he who has them in abundance is rich, or wealthy. 

Note that I say this of "A primitive state of society, " Jonathan, forthat is most important. _It is not true of our present capitaliststate of society. _ This may seem a strange proposition to you atfirst, but a little careful thought will convince you that it is true. 

Consider a moment: Mr. Carnegie is a wealthy man and Mr. Rockefelleris a wealthy man. They are, each of them, richer than most of theprinces and kings whose wealth astonished the ancient world. Mr. Carnegie owns shares in many companies, steelmaking companies, railwaycompanies, and so on. Mr. Rockefeller, owns shares in the Standard OilCompany, in railways, coal mines, and so on. But Mr. Carnegie does notpersonally use any of the steel ingots made in the works in which heowns shares. He uses practically no steel at all, except a knife ortwo. Mr. Rockefeller does not use the oil-wells he owns, nor ahundred-millionth part of the coal his shares in coal-mines represent. 

If one could get Mr. Carnegie into one of the works in which he isinterested and stand with him in front of one of the great furnaces asit poured forth its stream of molten metal, he might say: "See! thatis partly mine. It is part of my wealth!" Then, if one were to ask"But what are you going to do with that steel, Mr. Carnegie--is ituseful to you?" Mr. Carnegie would laugh at the thought. He wouldprobably reply, "No, bless your life! The steel is useless to _me_. Idon't want it. But somebody else does. _It is useful to otherpeople. _"

Ask Mr. Rockefeller, "Is this oil refinery your property, Mr. Rockefeller?" and he would reply: "It is partly mine. I own a bigshare in it and it represents part of my wealth. " Ask him next: "But, Mr. Rockefeller, what are _you_ going to do with all that oil? Surely, you cannot need so much oil for your own use?" and he, like Mr. Carnegie, would reply: "No! The oil is useless to me. I don't want it. But somebody else does. _It is useful to other people. _"

To be rich in our present social state, Jonathan, you must not onlyown an abundance of things useful to you, but also things useful onlyto others, which you can sell to them at a profit. Wealth, in ourpresent society, then consists in the possession of things having anexchange value--things which other people will buy from you. So endethour first lesson in political economy. 

And here beginneth our second lesson, Jonathan. We must now considerhow wealth is produced. 

The Socialists say that all wealth is produced by labor applied tonatural resources. That is a very simple answer, which you can easilyremember. But I want you to examine it well. Think it over: askyourself whether anything in your experience as a workingman confirmsor disproves it. Do you produce wealth? Do your fellow workers producewealth? Do you know of any other way in which wealth can be producedthan by labor applied to natural resources? Don't be fooled, Jonathan. Think for yourself!

The wealth of a fisherman consists in an abundance of fish for whichthere is a good market. But suppose there is a big demand for fish inthe cities and that, at the same time, there are millions of fish inthe sea, ready to be caught. So long as they are in the sea, the fishare not wealth. Even if the sea belonged to a private individual, asthe oil-wells belong to Mr. Rockefeller and a few other individuals, nobody would be any the better off. Fish in the sea are not wealth, but fish in the market-places are. Why, because labor has beenexpended in catching them and bringing them to market. 

There are millions of tons of coal in Pennsylvania. President Baersaid, you will remember, that God had appointed him and a few othergentlemen to look after that coal, to act as His trustees. And Mr. Baer wasn't joking, either. That is the funny part of the story: hewas actually serious when he uttered that foolish blasphemy! There arealso millions of people who want coal, whose very lives depend uponit. People who will pay almost any price for it rather than go withoutit. 

The coal is there, millions of tons of it. But suppose that nobodydigs for it; that the coal is left where Nature produced it, or whereGod placed it, whichever description you prefer? Do you think it woulddo anybody any good lying there, just as it lay untouched when theIndian roved through the forests ignorant of its presence? Wouldanybody be wealthier on account of the coal being there? Of coursenot. It only becomes wealth when somebody's labor makes it available. Every dollar of the wealth of our coal-mining industry, as of thefishing industries, represents human labor. 

I need not go through the list of all our industries, Jonathan, tomake this truth clear to you. If it pleases you to do so, you caneasily do that for yourself. I simply wanted to make it clear that theSocialists are stating a great universal truth when they say thatlabor applied to natural resources is the true source of all wealth. As Sir William Petty said long ago: "Labor is the father and land isthe mother of all wealth. "

But you must be careful, Jonathan, not to misuse that word "labor. "Socialists don't mean the labor of the hands only, when they speak oflabor. Take the case of the coal-mines again, just for a moment:There are men who dig the coal, called miners. But before they canwork there must be other men to make tools and machinery for them. Andbefore there can be machinery made and fixed in its proper place theremust be surveyors and engineers, men with a special education andcapacity, to draw the plans, and so on. Then there must be some men toorganize the business, to take orders for the coal, to see that it isshipped, to collect the payment agreed upon, so that the workers canbe paid, and so on through a long list of things requiring _mentallabor_. 

Both kinds of labor are equally necessary, and no one but a fool wouldever think otherwise. No Socialist writer or lecturer ever said thatwealth was produced by _manual labor_ alone applied to naturalresources. And yet, I hardly ever pick up a book or newspaper articlewritten against Socialism in which that is not charged against theSocialists! The opponents of Socialism all seem to be linealdescendants of Ananias, Jonathan!

For your special, personal benefit I want to cite just one instance ofthis misrepresentation. You have heard, I have no doubt, of theEnglish gentleman, Mr. W. H. Mallock, who came to this country lastyear to lecture against Socialism. He is a very pleasant fellow, personally--as pleasant a fellow as a confirmed aristocrat who doesnot like to ride in the street cars with "common people" can be. Mr. Mallock was hired by the Civic Federation and paid out of funds whichMr. August Belmont contributed to that body, funds which did notbelong to Mr. Belmont, as the investigation of the affairs of the NewYork Traction Companies conducted later by the Hon. W. M. Ivins, showed. He was hired to lecture against Socialism in our greatuniversities and colleges, in the interests of people like Mr. Belmont. And there was not one of those universities or colleges fairenough to say: "We want to hear the Socialist side of the argument!" Idon't think the word "fairplay, " about which we used to boast as oneof the glories of our language, is very much liked or used in Americanuniversities, Jonathan. And I am very sorry. It ought not to be so. 

I should have been very glad to answer Mr. Mallock's silly and unjustattacks; to say to the professors and students in the universities andcolleges: "I want you to listen to our side of the argument and thenmake up your minds whether we are right or whether truth is on theside of Mr. Mallock. " That would have been fair and honest and manly, wouldn't it? There were several other Socialist lecturers, the equalsof Mr. Mallock in education and as public speakers, who would havebeen ready to do the same thing. And not one of us would have wanted acent of anybody's money, let alone money contributed by Mr. AugustBelmont. 

Mr. Mallock said that the Socialists make the claim that manual laboralone creates wealth when applied to natural objects. _That statementis not true. _ He even dared say that a great and profound thinker likeKarl Marx believed and taught that silly notion. The newspapers ofAmerica hailed Mr. Mallock as the long-looked-for conqueror of Marxand his followers. They thought he had demolished Socialism. But didthey know that they were resting their case upon a _lie_, I wonder?That Marx never for a moment believed such a thing; that he went outof his way to explain that he did not?

I don't want you to try to read the works of Marx, my friend--atleast, not yet: _Capital_, his greatest work, is a very difficultbook, in three large volumes. But if you will go into the publiclibrary and get the first volume in English translation, and turn topage 145, you will read the following words:

"By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood theaggregate of those _mental and physical_ capabilities existing in ahuman being, which he exercises when he produces a use-value of anydescription. "[2]

I think you will agree, Jonathan, that that statement fully justifiesall that I have said concerning Mr. Mallock. I think you will agree, too, that it is a very clear and intelligible definition, which anyman of fair sense can understand. Now, by way of contrast, I want youto read one of Mr. Mallock's definitions. Please bear in mind that Mr. Mallock is an English "scholar, " by many regarded as a very clearthinker. This is how he defines labor:

"_Labor means the faculties of the individual applied to his ownlabor. _"

I have never yet been able to find anybody who could make sense out ofthat definition, Jonathan, though I have submitted it to a good manypeople, among them several college professors. It does not meananything. The fifty-seven letters contained in that sentence wouldmean just as much if you put them in a bag, shook them up, and thenput them on paper just as they happened to fall out of the bag. Mr. Mallock's English, his veracity and his logic are all equally weak anddefective. 

I don't think that Mr. Mallock is worthy of your consideration, Jonathan, but if you are interested in reading what he said aboutSocialism in the lectures I have been referring to, they are publishedin a volume entitled, _A Critical Examination of Socialism_. You canget the book in the library: they will be sure to have it there, because it is against Socialism. But I want you to buy a little bookby Morris Hillquit, called _Mr. Mallock's "Ability, "_ and read itcarefully. It costs only ten cents--and you will get more amusementreading the careful and scholarly dissection of Mallock than you couldget in a dime show anywhere. If you will read my own reply to Mr. Mallock, in my little book _Capitalist and Laborer_, I shall not thinkthe worse of you for doing so. 

Now, let us look at the division of the wealth. It is all produced bylabor of manual workers and brain workers applied to natural objectswhich no man made. I am not going to weary you with figures, Jonathan, because you are not a statistician. I am going to take the statisticsand make them as simple as I can for you--and tell you where you canfind the statistics if you ever feel inclined to try your hand uponthem. 

But first of all I want you to read a passage from the writings of avery great man, who was not a "wicked Socialist agitator" like yourhumble servant. Archdeacon Paley, the great English theologian, wasnot like many of our modern clergymen, afraid to tell the truth aboutsocial conditions; he was not forgetful of the social aspects ofChrist's teaching. Among many profoundly wise utterances about socialconditions which that great and good teacher made more than a centuryago was the passage I now want you to read and ponder over. You mightdo much worse than to commit the whole passage to memory. It reads:

 "If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap, reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse, keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst, pigeon of the flock, sitting round and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men. 

 "Among men you see the ninety-and-nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one (and this one, too, oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the set, a child, a woman, a madman or a fool), getting nothing for themselves, all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own industry produces; looking quietly on, while they see the fruits of all their labor spent or spoiled; and if one of their number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him, and hanging him for theft. "

If there were many men like Dr. Paley in our American churches to-day, preaching the truth in that fearless fashion, there would be somethinglike a revolution, Jonathan. The churches would no longer be emptyalmost; preachers would not be wondering why workingmen don't go tochurch. There would probably be less show and pride in the churches;less preachers paid big salaries, less fashionable choirs. But thechurches would be much nearer to the spirit and standard of Jesus thanmost of them are to-day. There is nothing in connection with modernreligious life quite so glaring as the infidelity of the Christianministry to the teachings of Christ. 

A lady once addressed Thomas Carlyle concerning Jesus in this fashion:"How delighted we should all be to throw open our doors to him andlisten to his divine precepts! Don't you think so, Mr. Carlyle?" Thebluff old puritan sage answered: "No, madam, I don't. I think if hehad come fashionably dressed, with plenty of money, and preachingdoctrines palatable to the higher orders, I might have had the honorof receiving from you a card of invitation, on the back of which wouldbe written, 'To meet our Saviour. ' But if he came uttering his sublimeprecepts, and denouncing the pharisees, and associating with publicansand the lower orders, as he did, you would have treated him as theJews did, and cried out, 'Take him to Newgate and hang him. '"

I sometimes wonder, Jonathan, what really _would_ happen if theCarpenter-preacher of Gallilee could and did visit some of ourAmerican churches. Would he be able to stand the vulgar show? Would hebe able to listen in silence to the miserable perversion of histeachings by hired apologists of social wrong? Would he want to driveout the moneychangers and the Masters of Bread, to hurl at them histerrible thunderbolts of wrath and scorn? Would he be welcomed by thechurches bearing his name? Would they want to listen to his gospel?Frankly, Jonathan, I doubt it. A few Socialists would be found innearly every church ready to receive him and to call him "Comrade, "but the majority of church-goers would shun him and pass him by. 

I should not be surprised, Jonathan, if the President of the UnitedStates called him an "undesirable citizen, " as he surely would callArchdeacon Paley if he were alive. 

I wanted you to read Paley's illustration of the pigeons before goinginto the unequal distribution of wealth. It will help you tounderstand another illustration. Suppose that from a shipwreck onehundred men are fortunate enough to save themselves and to make theirway to an island, where, making the best of conditions, they establisha little community, which they elect to call "Capitalia. " Luckily, they have all got food and clothing enough to last them for a littlewhile, and they are fortunate enough to find on the island a supply oftools, evidently abandoned by some former occupants of the island. 

They set to work, cultivating the ground, building huts forthemselves, hunting for game, and so on. They start out to face theprimeval struggle with the sullen forces of Nature as our ancestorsdid in the time long past. Their efforts prosper, every one of thehundred men being a worker, every man working with equal will, equalstrength and vigor. Now, then, suppose that one day, they decide todivide up the wealth produced by their labor, to institute individualproperty in place of common property, competition in place ofco-operation. What would you think if two or three of the strongestmembers said, "We will do the dividing, we will distribute the wealthaccording to our ideas of justice and right, " and then proceeded togive 55 per cent. Of the wealth to one man, to the next eleven men 32per cent. And to the remaining eighty-eight men only 13 per cent. Between them?

I will put it in another way, Jonathan, since you are not accustomedto thinking in percentages. Suppose that there were a hundred cows tobe divided among the members of the community. According to the schemeof division just described, this is how the division would work out:

 1 Man would get 55 Cows for himself 11 Men would get 32 Cows among them 88 Men would get 13 Cows among them

When they had divided the cows in this manner they would proceed todivide the wheat, the potato crops, the land, and everything elseowned by the community in the same unequal way. I ask you again, Jonathan, what would you think of such a division?

Of course, being a fair-minded man, endowed with ordinary intelligenceat least, you will admit that there would be no sense and no justicein such a plan of division, and you doubt if intelligent human beingswould submit to it. But, my friend, that is not quite so bad as thedistribution of wealth in America to-day is. Suppose that instead ofall the members of the little island community being workers, allworking equally hard, fairly sharing the work of the community, oneman absolutely refused to do anything at all, saying, "I was the firstone to get ashore. The land really belongs to me. I am the landlord. Iwon't work, but you must work for me. " And suppose that eleven othermen said in like manner. "We won't work. We found the tools, webrought the seeds and the food out of the boats when we came. We arethe capitalists and you must do the work in the fields. We willsuperintend you, give you orders where to dig, and when, and where tostop. You eighty-eight common fellows are the laborers who must do thehard work while we use our brains. " And suppose that they actuallycarried out that plan and _then_ divided the wealth in the way I havedescribed, that would be a pretty good illustration of how the wealthproduced in America under our existing social system is divided. 

_And I ask you what you think of that, Jonathan Edwards. How do youlike it?_

These are not my figures. They are not the figures of any rabidSocialist making frenzied guesses. They are taken from a book called_The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States_, by the lateDr. Charles B. Spahr, a book that is used in most of our colleges anduniversities. No serious criticism of the figures has ever beenattempted and most economists, even the conservative ones, base theirown estimates upon Spahr's work. It would be worth your while to getthe book from the library, Jonathan, and to read it carefully. 

In the meantime, look over the following table which sets forth theresults of Dr. Spahr's investigation, Jonathan, and remember that thecondition of things has not improved since 1895, when the book waswritten, but that they have, on the contrary, very much worsened. 

SPAHR'S TABLE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES

==========+============+=======+==========+=================+======= | No. Of | Per | Average | Aggregate | PerClass | Families | Cent | Wealth | Wealth | Cent----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------Rich | 125, 000 | 1. 0 | $263, 040 | 32, 880, 000, 000 | 54. 8Middle | 1, 362, 500 | 10. 9 | 14, 180 | 29, 320, 000, 000 | 32. 2Poor | 4, 762, 500 | 38. 1 | 1, 639 | 7, 800, 000, 000 | 13. 0Very Poor | 6, 250, 000 | 50. 0 | | |----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------Total | 13, 500, 000 | 100. 0 | $4, 800 | $60, 000, 000, 000 | 100. 0----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------

Now, Jonathan, although I have taken a good deal of trouble to laythese figures before you, I really don't care very much for them. Statistics don't impress me as they do some people, and I would farrather rely upon your commonsense than upon any figures. I have notquoted these figures because they were published by a very ablescholar in a very wise book, nor because scientific men, professors ofpolitical economy and others, have accepted them as a fair estimate. Ihave used them because I believe them to be _true and reliable_. 

But don't you rest your whole faith upon them, Jonathan. If some fineday a Republican spellbinder, or a Democratic scribbler, tries toupset you and prove that Socialists are all liars and false prophets, just tell him the figures are quite unimportant to you, that you don'tcare to know just exactly how much of the wealth the richest one percent. Gets and how little of it the poorest fifty per cent. Gets. Afew millions more or less don't trouble you. Pin him down to the onefact which your own commonsense teaches you, that the wealth of thecountry _is_ unequally distributed. Tell him that you _know_, regardless of figures, that there are many idlers who are enormouslyrich and many honest, industrious workers who are miserably poor. Hewon't be able to deny these things. He _dare_ not, because they are_true_. 

Ask any such apologist for capitalism what he would think of thefather or mother who took his or her eight children and said: "Hereare eight cakes, as many cakes as there are boys and girls. I am goingto distribute the cakes. Here, Walter, are seven of the cakes for you. The other cake the rest of you can divide among yourselves as best youcan. " If the capitalist defender is a fair-minded man, if he isneither fool nor liar nor monster, he will agree that such a parentwould be brutally unjust. 

Yet, Jonathan, that is exactly how our national wealth is divided up. One-eighth of the families in the United States do get seven-eights ofthe wealth, and, being, I hope, neither fool, liar nor monster, Idenounce the system as brutally unjust. There is no sense and nomorality in mincing matters and being afraid to call spades spades. 

It is because of this unjust distribution of the wealth of modernsociety that we have so much social unrest. That is the heart of thewhole problem. Why are workingmen organized into unions to fight thecapitalists, and the capitalists on their side organized to fight theworkers? Why, simply because the capitalists want to continueexploiting the workers, to exploit them still more if possible, whilethe workers want to be exploited less, want to get more of what theyproduce. 

Why is it that eminently respectable members of society combine tobribe legislators--_to buy laws from the lawmakers!_--and to corruptthe republic, a form of treason worse than Benedict Arnold's? Why, forthe same reason: they want to continue the spoliation of the people. That is why the heads of a great life insurance company illegally usedthe funds belonging to widows and orphans to contribute to thecampaign fund of the Republican Party in 1904. That is why, also, Mr. Belmont used the funds of the traction company of which he ispresident to support the Civic Federation, which is an organizationspecially designed to fool and mislead the wage-earners of America. That is why every investigation of American political or business lifethat is honestly made by able and fearless men reveals so muchchicanery and fraud. 

You belong to a union, Jonathan, because you want to put a check uponthe greed of the employers. But you never can expect through the unionto get all that rightfully belongs to you. It is impossible to expectthat the union will ever do away with the terrible inequalities in thedistribution of wealth. The union is a good thing, and the workersought to be much more thoroughly organized into unions than they are. Socialists are always on the side of the union when it is engaged inan honest fight against the exploiters of labor. 

Later on, I shall take up the question of unionism and discuss it withyou, Jonathan. Meanwhile, I want to impress upon your mind that _awise union man votes as he strikes_. There is not the least bit ofsense in belonging to a union if you are to become a "scab" when yougo to the ballot-box. _And a vote for a capitalist party is a scabvote, Jonathan. _

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Note: In the American edition, published by Kerr, the page is186. 

V

THE DRONES AND THE BEES

 Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufactures, and others, to make large fortunes. --_John Stuart Mill. _

 Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but as a rule it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York with brains enough to own five millions of dollars. Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. --_R. G. Ingersoll. _

 Is it well that, while we range with Science, glorying in the time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in City slime? There, among the gloomy alleys, Progress halts on palsied feet, Crime and Hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street. There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread, There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead; There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, In the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor. --_Tennyson. _

When you and I were boys going to school, friend Jonathan, we wereconstantly admonished to study with admiration the social economy ofthe bees. We learned to almost reverence the little winged creaturesfor the manner in which they

 Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower. 

We were taught, you remember, to honor the bees for their hatred ofdrones. It was the great virtue of the bees that they always drove thedrones from the hive. For my part, I learned the lesson so well that Ireally became a sort of bee-worshipper. But since I have grown tomature years I have come to the conclusion that those old lessons werenot honestly meant, Jonathan. For if anybody proposes to-day that weshould drive out the drones from the _human_ hive, he is at oncedenounced as an Anarchist and an "undesirable citizen. "

It is all very well for bees to insist that there must be no idleparasites, that the drones must go, but for human beings such a policywon't do! It savors too much of Socialism, my friend, and isunpleasantly like Paul's foolish saying that "If any man among youwill not work, neither shall he eat. " That is a text which is out ofdate and unsuited to the twentieth century!

 "Allah! Allah!" cried the stranger, "Wondrous sights the traveller sees; But the greatest is the latest, Where the drones control the bees!"

Every modern civilized nation rewards its drones better than itrewards its bees, and in every land the drones control the bees. 

I want you to consider, friend Jonathan, the lives of the people. Howthe workers live and how the shirkers live; now the bees live and howthe drones live, if you like that better. You can study the matter foryourself, right in Pittsburg, much better than you can from books, forGod knows that in Pittsburg there are the extremes of wealth andpoverty, just as there are in New York, Chicago, St. Louis or SanFrancisco. There are gilded hells where rich drones live and squalidhells where poor bees live, and the number of truly happy people issadly, terribly, small. 

_Ten millions in poverty!_ Don't you think that is a cry so terriblethat it ought to shame a great nation like this, a nation morebounteously endowed by Nature than any other nation in the world'shistory? Men, women and children, poor and miserable, with not enoughto eat, nor clothes to keep them warm in the cold winter nights; withplaces for homes that are unfit for dogs, and these not their own;knowing not if to-morrow may bring upon them the last crushing blow. All these conditions, and conditions infinitely worse than these, arecontained in the poverty of those millions, Jonathan. 

If people were poor because the land was poor, because the country wasbarren, because Nature dealt with us in niggardly fashion, so that allmen had to struggle against famine; if, in a word, there was democracyin our poverty, so that none were idle and rich while the rest toiledin poverty, it would be our supreme glory to bear it with cheerfulcourage. But that is not the case. While babies perish for want offood and care in dank and unhealthy hovels, there are pampered poodlesin palaces, bejeweled and cared for by liveried flunkies and waitingmaids. While men and women want bread, and beg crusts or standshivering in the "bread lines" of our great cities, there are monkeysbeing banqueted at costly banquets by the profligate degenerates ofriches. It's all wrong, Jonathan, cruelly, shamefully, hellishlywrong! And I for one, refuse to call such a brutalized system, or thenation tolerating it, _civilized_. 

Good old Thomas Carlyle would say "Amen!" to that, Jonathan. Lots ofpeople wont. They will tell you that the poverty of the millions isvery sad, of course, and that the poor are to be pitied. But they willremind you that Jesus said something about the poor always being withus. They won't read you what he did say, but you can read it foryourself. Here it is: "For ye have the poor always with you, and_whensoever ye will ye can do them good_. "[3] And now, I want you toread a quotation from Carlyle:

 "It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die, --the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt-in with a cold universal Laissezfaire: it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and remains forever intolerable to all men whom God has made. "

"Miserable we know not why"--"to die slowly all our lifelong"--"Imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice"--Don't thesephrases describe exactly the poverty you have known, brother Jonathan?

Did you ever stop to think, my friend, that poverty is the lot of the_average_ worker, the reward of the producers of wealth, and that onlythe producers of wealth are poor? Do you know that, because we dieslowly all our lives long, the death-rate among the working-class isfar higher than among other classes by reason of overwork, anxiety, poor food, lack of pleasure, bad housing, and all the other illscomprehended in the lot of the wage-worker? In Chicago, for example, in the wards where the well-to-do reside the death-rate is not morethan 12 per thousand, while it is 37 in the tenement districts. 

Scientists who have gone into the matter tell us that of ten millionpersons belonging to the well-to-do classes the annual deaths do notnumber more than 100, 000, while among the very best paid workers thenumber is not less than 150, 000 and among the very poorest paidworkers at least 350, 000. To show you just what those proportions are, I have represented the matter in a little diagram, which you canunderstand at a glance:

 [Illustration: DIAGRAM Showing Relative Death-Rate Among Persons of Different Social Classes. ]

There are some diseases, notably the Great White Plague. Consumption, which we call "diseases of the working-classes" on account of the factthat they prey most upon the wearied, ill-nourished bodies of theworkers. Not that they are confined to the workers entirely, butbecause the workers are most afflicted by them. Because the workerslive in crowded tenement hovels, work in factories laden with dust anddisease germs, are overworked and badly fed, this and other of thegreat scourges of the human race find them ready victims. 

Here is another diagram for you, Jonathan, showing the comparativemortality from Consumption among the workers engaged in six differentindustrial occupations and the members of six groups of professionalworkers. 

 [Illustration: DIAGRAM Showing Relative Mortality From Tuberculosis. 

 Deaths per 100, 000 living in the same occupation

 Marble and stone cutters. 540 Cigar makers and tobacco workers. 476 Compositors, printers, pressmen. 435 Barbers and hairdressers. 334 Masons (brick and stone). 294 Iron and steel workers. 236 Physicians and Surgeons. 168 Engineers and Surveyors. 145 School teachers. 144 Lawyers. 140 Clergymen. 123 Bankers, brokers, officials of companies, etc. 92]

I want you to study this diagram and the figures by which it isaccompanied, Jonathan. You will observe that the death rate fromConsumption among marble and stone cutters is six times greater thanamong bankers and brokers and directors of companies. Among cigarmakers and tobacco workers it is more than five times as great. Ironand steel workers do not suffer so much from the plague as some otherworkers, according to the death-rates. One reason is that only fairlyrobust men enter the trade to begin with. Another reason is that agreat many, finding they cannot stand the strain, after they havebecome infected, leave the trade for lighter occupations. I thinkthere can be no doubt that the _true_ mortality from Consumption amongiron and steel workers is much higher than the figures show. But, taking the figures as they are, confident that they understate theextent of the ravages of the disease in these occupations, we findthat the mortality is more than two and a half times greater thanamong capitalists. 

Now, these are very serious figures, Jonathan. Why is the mortality somuch less among the capitalists? It is because they have better homes, are not so overworked to physical exhaustion, are better fed andclothed, and can have better care and attention, far better chances ofbeing cured, if they are attacked. They can get these things only fromthe labor of the workers, Jonathan. 

_In other words, they buy their lives with ours. Workers are killed tokeep capitalists alive. _

It used to be frequently charged that drink was the chief cause of thepoverty of the workers; that they were poor because they were drunkenand thriftless. But we hear less of that silly nonsense than we usedto, though now and then a Prohibitionist advocate still repeats theold and long exploded myth. It never was true, Jonathan, and it isless true to-day than ever before. Drunkenness is an evil and theworking class suffers from it to a lamentable degree, but it is notthe sole cause of poverty, it is not the chief cause of poverty, it isnot even a very important cause of poverty at all. 

It is true that intemperance causes poverty in some cases, it is alsotrue that drunkenness is very frequently caused by poverty. They actand react upon each other, but it is not doubted by any student of oursocial conditions whose opinion carries any weight that intemperanceis far more often the result of poverty and bad conditions of life andlabor than the cause of them. 

The International Socialist Congress which met at Stuttgart lastsummer very rightly decided that Socialists everywhere should do allin their power to combat alcoholism, to end the ravages ofintemperance among the working classes of all nations. For drunkenvoters are not very likely to be either wise or free voters: we needsober, earnest, clear-thinking men to bring about better conditions, Jonathan. But the Socialists, while they adopt this position, do notmistake results for causes. They know from actual experience thatSolomon was right when he attributed intemperance to ill conditions. Hunt out your Bible and turn to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 31, verse 7. There you will read: "Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. "

That is not very good advice to give a workingman, but it is exactlywhat many workingmen do. There was a wise English bishop who said afew years ago that if he lived in the slums of any of the greatcities, under conditions similar to those in which most of the workerslive, he would probably be a drunkard, and when I see the conditionsunder which millions of men are working and living I wonder that wehave not more drunkenness than we have. 

A good many years ago, "General" Booth, head of the Salvation Army, declared that "nine-tenths" of the poverty of the people was due tointemperance. Later on, "Commissioner" Cadman, one of the "General's"most trusted aides, made an investigation of the causes of povertyamong all those who passed through the Army shelters for destitute menand women. He found that among the very lowest class, the "submergedtenth, " where the ravages of drink are most sadly evident, depressionin trade counted for much more than drink as a cause of poverty. Thefigures were:

 Depression in trade 55. 8 per cent. Drink _and Gambling_ 26. 6 per cent. Ill-health 11. 6 per cent. Old Age 5. 8 per cent. 

Even among the very lowest class of the social wrecks of our greatcities, who have long since abandoned hope, depression in trade wasfound to count for more than twice as much as drink and gamblingcombined as a producer of poverty. 

That is in keeping with all the investigations that have ever beenmade in a scientific spirit. Professor Amos Warner, in his valuablestudy of the subject, published in his book, _American Charities_, shows how false the notion that nearly all the poverty of the peopleis due to their intemperance proves to be when an intelligentinvestigation of the facts is made. 

Dr. Edward T. Devine, of Columbia University, editor of _Charities andthe Commons_, is probably as competent an authority upon this questionas any man living. He is not likely to be called a Socialist byanybody. Yet I find him writing in his magazine, at the end ofNovember, 1907: "The tradition which many hold that the condition ofpoverty is ordinarily and as a matter of course to be explained bypersonal faults of the poor themselves is no longer tenable. Strongdrink and vice are abnormal, unnatural and essentially unattractiveways of spending surplus income. " Dr. Devine very frankly and bravelyadmits that poverty is an unnecessary evil, "a shocking, loathsomeexcrescence on the body politic, an intolerable evil which should cometo an end. " What else, indeed, could a sane man think of it?

As a conservative man, I say without reservation that accidentsincurred in the course of employment, and sickness brought on byindustrial conditions, such as overwork accompanied by undernourishment, exposure to extremes of temperature, unsanitary workshopsand factories and the inhalation of contaminated atmosphere, are farmore important causes of poverty among the workers than intemperance. Every investigation ever made goes to prove this true. I wish thatevery one who seeks to blame the poverty of the poor upon the victimsthemselves would study a few facts, which I am going to ask you tostudy, without prejudice or passion. They would readily see then howfalse the belief is. 

Last year there was a Committee of very expert investigators in NewYork which made a careful inquiry into the relation of wages to thestandard of living. They were not Socialists, these gentlemen, or Ishould not submit their testimony. I am anxious to base my caseagainst our present social system upon evidence that is not in any waybiased in favor of Socialism. Dr. Lee K. Frankel was Chairman of theCommittee. He is Director of the United Hebrew Charities of New YorkCity, an able and sincere man, but not a Socialist. Dr. Devine, another able and sincere man who is by no means a Socialist, was amember of the Committee. Among the other members were also suchpersons as Bishop Greer, of New York, Reverend Adolph Guttman, president of the Hebrew Relief Society, Syracuse, New York, Mrs. William Einstein, president of Emanu El Sisterhood, New York; Mr. Homer Folks, Secretary State Charities Aid Association and ReverendWilliam J. White, of Brooklyn, Supervisor of Catholic Charities. TheCommittee was deputed to make the investigation by the New York StateConference of Charities and Corrections, and made its report inNovember, 1907, at Albany, N. Y. 

I think you will agree, Jonathan, that it would be very hard toimagine a more conservative body, less inoculated with the virus ofSocialism than that. From their report to the Conference I note thatthe Committee reported that as a result of their work, after goingcarefully into the expenditure of some 322 families, they had come tothe conclusion that the lowest amount upon which a family of fivecould be supported in decency and health in New York City was abouteight hundred dollars a year. I am quite sure, Jonathan, that there isnot one of the members of that Committee who would think that eventhat sum would be enough to keep _their_ families in health anddecency; not one who would want to see their children living under thebest conditions which that sum made possible. They werephilanthropists you see, Jonathan, "figuring out" how much the "Poor"ought to be able to live on. And to help them out they got ProfessorChapin, of Beloit College and Professor Underhill, of Yale. ProfessorUnderhill being an expert physiological chemist, could advise them asto the sufficiency of the expenditures upon food among the familiesreported. 

But the total income of thousands of families falls very short ofeight hundred dollars a year. There are many thousands of families inwhich the breadwinner does not earn more than ten dollars a week atbest. Making allowance for time lost through sickness, holidays, andso on, it is evident that the total income of such families would notexceed four hundred and fifty dollars a year at best. Even the workerwith twenty dollars a week, if there is a brief period of sickness orunemployment, will find himself, despite his best efforts, on thewrong side of the line, compelled either to see his family suffer wantor to become dependent on "that cold thing called Charity. " And Dr. Devine, writing in _Charities and the Commons_, admits that thecharitable societies cannot hope to make up the deficit, to add to thewages of the workers enough to raise their standards of living to thepoint of efficiency. He admits that "such a policy would tend tofinancial bankruptcy. "

Taking the unskilled workers in New York City, the vast army oflaborers, it is certain that they do not average $400 a year, so thatthey are, as a class, hopelessly, miserably poor. It is true that manyof them spend part of their miserable wages on drink, but if they didnot, they would still be poor; if every cent went to buy thenecessities of existence, they would still be hopelessly, miserablypoor. 

The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics showed a few years ago, whenthe cost of living was less than now, that a family of five could notlive decently and in health upon less than $754 a year, but more thanhalf of the unskilled workers in the shoe-making industry of thatState got less than $300 a year. Of course, some were single and not afew were women, but the figures go far to show that the New Yorkconditions are prevalent in New England also. Mr. John Mitchell saidthat in the anthracite district of Pennsylvania it was impossible tomaintain a family of five in decency on less than $600 a year, butaccording to Dr. Peter Roberts, who is one of the most conservative ofliving authorities upon the conditions of industry in the coal minesof Pennsylvania, the _average_ wage in the anthracite district isless than $500 and that about 60 per cent. Receive less than $450 ayear. 

I am not going to bother you with more statistics, Jonathan, for Iknow you do not like them, and they are hard to remember. What I wantyou to see is that, for many thousands of workers, poverty is aninevitable condition. If they do not spend a cent on drink; never givea cent to the Church or for charity; never buy a newspaper; never seea play or hear a concert; never lose a day's wages through sickness oraccident; never make a present of a ribbon to their wives or a toy totheir children--in a word, if they live as galley slaves, workingwithout a single break in the monotony and drudgery of their lives, they must still be poor and endure hunger, unless they can get othersources of income. The mother must go out to work and neglect her babyto help out; the little boys and girls must go to work in the dayswhen they ought to be in school or in the fields at play, to help outthe beggars' pittance which is their portion. The greatest cause ofpoverty is low wages. 

Then think of the accidents which occur to the wage-earners, makingthem incapable of earning anything for long periods, or evenpermanently. At the same meeting of the New York State Conference ofCharities and Corrections as that already referred to, there werereports presented by many of the charitable organizations of the statewhich showed that this cause of poverty is a very serious one, and onethat is constantly increasing. In only about twenty per cent. Of theaccidents of a serious nature investigated was there any settlementmade by the employers, and from a list that is of immense interest Itake just a few cases as showing how little the life of the averageworkingman is valued at:

 _Nature of Injury. _ _Settlement_

 Spine injured $ 20 and doctor Legs broken 300 Death 100 Death 65 Two ribs broken 20 Paralysis 12 Brain affected 60 Fingers amputated 50

The reports showed that about half of the accidents occurred to menunder forty years of age, in the very prime of life. The wages weredetermined in 241 cases and it was shown that about 25 per cent. Wereearning less than $10 a week and 60 per cent. Were earning less than$15 a week. Even without the accidents occurring to them these workersand their families must be miserably poor, the accidents only plungingthem deeper into the frightful abyss of despair, of wasting life andtorturous struggle. 

No, my friend, it is not true that the poverty of the poor is due totheir sins, thriftlessness and intemperance. I want you to rememberthat it is not the wicked Socialist agitators only who say this. Icould fill a book for you with the conclusions of very conservativemen, all of them opposed to Socialism, whose studies have forced themto this conclusion. 

There was a Royal Commission appointed in England some years ago toconsider the problem of the Aged Poor and how to deal with it. Of thatRoyal Commission Lord Aberdare was chairman--and he was a mostimplacable enemy of Socialism. The Commission reported in 1895: "Weare confirmed in our view by the evidence we have received that ... Asregards the great bulk of the working classes, during their lives, they are fairly provident, fairly thrifty, fairly industrious andfairly temperate. " But they could not add that, as a result of thesevirtues, they were also fairly well-to-do! The Right Honorable JosephChamberlain, another enemy of Socialism, signed with several others aMinority Report, but they agreed "that the imputation that old agepauperism is mainly due to drink, idleness, improvidence, and the likeabuses applies to but a very small proportion of the workingpopulation. "

Very similar was the report of a Select Committee of the House ofCommons, appointed to consider the best means of improving thecondition of the "aged and deserving poor. " The report read: "Casesare too often found in which poor and aged people, whose conduct andwhose whole career has been blameless, industrious and deserving, findthemselves from no fault of their own, at the end of a long andmeritorious life, with nothing but the workhouse or inadequate outdoorrelief as the refuge for their declining years. "

And what is true of England in this respect is equally true ofAmerica. 

Let me repeat here that I am not defending intemperance. I believewith all my heart that we must fight intemperance as a deadly enemy ofthe working class. I want to see the workers sober; sober enough tothink clearly, sober enough to act wisely. Before we can get rid ofthe evils from which we suffer we must get sober minds, friendJonathan. That is why the Socialists of Europe are fighting the drinkevil; that is why, too, the Prussian Government put a stop to the"Anti-Alcohol" campaign of the workers, led by Dr. Frolich, of Vienna. Dr. Frolich was not advocating Socialism. He was simply appealing tothe workers to stop making beasts of themselves, to become sober sothat they could think clearly with brains unmuddled by alcohol. Andthe Prussian Government did not want that: they knew very well thatclear thinking and sober judgment would lead the workers to the ballotboxes under Socialist banners. 

I care most of all for the suffering of the innocent little ones. WhenI see that under our present system it is necessary for the mother toleave her baby's cradle to go into a factory, regardless of whetherthe baby lives or dies when it is fed on nasty and dangerousartificial foods or poor, polluted milk, I am stirred to my soul'sdepths. When I think of the tens of thousands of little babies thatdie every year as a result of these conditions I have described; ofthe millions of children who go to school every day underfed andneglected, and of the little child toilers in shops, factories andmines, as well as upon the farms, though their lot is less tragic thanthat of the little prisoners of the factories and mines--I cannot findwords to express my hatred of the ghoulish system. 

I should like you to read, Jonathan, a little pamphlet on _UnderfedSchool Children_, which costs ten cents, and a bigger book, _TheBitter Cry of the Children_, which you can get at the public library. I wrote these to lay before thinking men and women some of theterrible evils from which our children suffer. _I know_ that thethings written are true. Every line of them was written with thesingle purpose of telling the truth as I had seen it. 

I made the terrible assertions that more than eighty thousand babiesare slain by poverty in America each year; that some "2, 000, 000children of school age in the United States are the victims of povertywhich denies them common necessities, particularly adequatenourishment"; that there were at least 1, 750, 000 children at work inthis country. These statements, and the evidence given in support ofthem, attracted widespread attention, both in this country and inEurope. They were cited in the U. S. Senate and in Europe parliaments. They were preached about from thousands of pulpits and discussed froma thousand platforms by politicians, social reformers and others. 

A committee was formed in New York City to promote the physicalwelfare of school children. Although one of the first to take thematter up, I was not asked to serve on that committee, on account ofthe fact, as I was afterwards told, of my being a Socialist. Well, that Committee, composed entirely of non-Socialists, and includingsome very bitter opponents of Socialism, made an investigation of thehealth of school children in New York City. They examined, medically, some 1, 400 children of various ages, living in different parts of thecity and belonging to various social classes. If the results theydiscovered are common to the whole of the United States, theconditions are in every way worse than I had declared them to be. 

_If the conditions found by the medical investigators for thiscommittee are representative of the whole of the United States, thenwe have not less than twelve million school children in the UnitedStates suffering from physical defects more or less serious, and notless than 1, 248, 000 suffering from malnutrition--from insufficientnourishment, generally due to poverty, though not always--to such anextent that they need medical attention. _[4]

Do you think a nation with such conditions existing at its very heartought to be called a civilized nation? I don't. I say that it is a_brutalized_ nation, Jonathan!

And now I want you to look over a list of another kind of shamefulsocial conditions--a list of some of the vast fortunes possessed bymen who are not victims of poverty, but of shameful wealth. I take thelist from the dryasdust pages of _The Congressional Record_, December12, 1907, from a speech by the Hon. Jeff Davis, United States Senatorfrom Arkansas. I cannot find in the pages of _The CongressionalRecord_ that it made any impression upon the minds of the honorablesenators, but I hope it will make some impression upon your mind, myfriend. It is a good deal easier to get a human idea into the head ofan honest workingman than into the head of an honorable senator!

Don't be frightened by a few figures. Read them. They are full ofhuman interest. I have put before you some facts relating to theshameful poverty of the workers and their pitiable condition, and nowI want to put before you some facts relating to the pitiable conditionof the non-workers. I want you to feel some pity for the millionaires!

THE RICHEST FIFTY-ONE IN THE UNITED STATES. 

"When the average present-day millionaire is bluntly asked to name thevalue of his earthly possessions, he finds it difficult to answer thequestion correctly. It may be that he is not willing to take thequestioner into his confidence. It is doubtful whether he reallyknows. 

"If this is true of the millionaire himself, it follows that whenothers attempt the task of estimating the amount of his wealth theresults must be conflicting. Still, excellent authorities are notlacking on this subject, and the list of the richest fifty-one personsin the United States has been satisfactorily compiled. 

"The following list is taken from Munsey's Scrap Book of June, 1906, and is a fair presentation of the property owned by fifty-one of thevery richest men of the United States. 

 =====+=======================+================+================ Rank | Name. | How Made. | Total Fortune. -----+-----------------------+----------------+---------------- 1 | John D. Rockefeller | Oil | $600, 000, 000 2 | Andrew Carnegie | Steel | 300, 000, 000 3 | W. W. Astor | Real Estate | 300, 000, 000 4 | J. Pierpont Morgan | Finance | 150, 000, 000 5 | William Rockefeller | Oil | 100, 000, 000 6 | H. H. Rogers | do | 100, 000, 000 7 | W. K. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 100, 000, 000 8 | Senator Clark | Copper | 100, 000, 000 9 | John Jacob Astor | Real Estate | 100, 000, 000 10 | Russell Sage | Finance | 80, 000, 000 11 | H. C. Frick, Jr. | Steel and Coke | 80, 000, 000 12 | D. O. Mills | Banker | 75, 000, 000 13 | Marshall Field, Jr. | Inherited | 75, 000, 000 14 | Henry M. Flagler | Oil | 60, 000, 000 15 | J. J. Hill | Railroads | 60, 000, 000 16 | John D. Archbold | Oil | 50, 000, 000 17 | Oliver Payne | do | 50, 000, 000 18 | J. B. Haggin | Gold | 50, 000, 000 19 | Harry Field | Inherited | 50, 000, 000 20 | James Henry Smith | do | 40, 000, 000 21 | Henry Phipps | Steel | 40, 000, 000 22 | Alfred G. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 40, 000, 000 23 | H. O. Havemeyer | Sugar | 40, 000, 000 24 | Mrs. Hetty Green | Finance | 40, 000, 000 25 | Thomas F. Ryan | do | 40, 000, 000 26 | Mrs. W. Walker | Inherited | 35, 000, 000 27 | George Gould | Railroads | 35, 000, 000 28 | J. Ogden Armour | Meat | 30, 000, 000 29 | E. T. Gerry | Inherited | 30, 000, 000 30 | Robert W. Goelet | Real Estate | 30, 000, 000 31 | J. H. Flager | Finance | 30, 000, 000 32 | Claus Spreckels | Sugar | 30, 000, 000 33 | W. F. Havemeyer | do | 30, 000, 000 34 | Jacob H. Schiff | Banker | 25, 000, 000 35 | P. A. B. Widener | Street Cars | 25, 000, 000 36 | George F. Baker | Banker | 25, 000, 000 37 | August Belmont | Finance | 20, 000, 000 38 | James Stillman | Banker | 20, 000, 000 39 | John W. Gates | Finance | 20, 000, 000 40 | Norman B. Ream | do | 20, 000, 000 41 | Joseph Pulitzer | Journalist | 20, 000, 000 42 | James G. Bennett | Journalist | 20, 000, 000 43 | John G. Moore | Finance | 20, 000, 000 44 | D. G. Reid | Steel | 20, 000, 000 45 | Frederick Pabst | Brewer | 20, 000, 000 46 | William D. Sloane | Inherited | 20, 000, 000 47 | William B. Leeds | Railroads | 20, 000, 000 48 | James P. Duke | Tobacco | 20, 000, 000 49 | Anthony N. Brady | Finance | 20, 000, 000 50 | George W. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 20, 000, 000 51 | Fred W. Vanderbilt | do | 20, 000, 000 | | +---------------- | Total | | $3, 295, 000, 000 -----+-----------------------+----------------+----------------

"It will thus be seen that fifty-one persons in the United States, with a population of nearly 90, 000, 000 people, own approximately onethirty-fifth of the entire wealth of the United States. TheStatistical Abstract of the United States, 29th number, 1906, preparedunder the direction of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor of theUnited States, gives the estimated true value of all property in theUnited States for that year at $107, 104, 211, 917. 

"Each of the favored fifty-one owns a wealth of somewhat more than$64, 600, 000, while each of the remaining 89, 999, 950 people get $1, 100. No one of these fifty-one owns less than $20, 000, 000, and no one onthe average owns less than $64, 600, 000. Men owning from $1, 000, 000 to$20, 000, 000 are no longer called rich men. There are approximately4, 000 millionaires in the United States, but the aggregate of theirholdings is difficult to obtain. If all their holdings be deductedfrom the total true value of all the property in the United States, the average share of each of the other 89, 995, 000 people would be lessthan $500. 

"John Jacob Astor is reputed to have been the first Americanmillionaire, although this is a matter impossible to decide. It isalso claimed that Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, the greatgrandfather of Congressman Longworth, was the first man west of theAllegheny Mountains to amass a million. It is difficult to proveeither one of these propositions, but they prove that the age of themillionaire in the United States is a comparatively recent thing. In1870 to own a single million was to be a very rich man; in 1890 itrequired at least $10, 000, 000, while to-day a man with a singlemillion or even ten millions is not in the swim. To be enumerated asone of the world's richest men you must own not less than$20, 000, 000. "

I am perfectly serious when I suggest that the slaves of riches arejust as much to be pitied as the slaves of poverty. No man need envyMr. Rockefeller, for example, because he has something like sixhundred millions of dollars, an annual income of about seventy-twomillions. He does not own those millions, Jonathan, but they own him. He is a slave to his possessions. If he owns a score of automobiles hecan only use one at a time; if he spends millions in building palatialresidences for himself he cannot get greater comfort than the man ofmodest fortune. He cannot buy health nor a single touch of love formoney. 

Many of our great modern princes of industry and commerce are goodmen. It is a wild mistake to imagine that they are all terrible ogresand monsters of iniquity. But they are victims of an unjust system. Millions roll into their coffers while they sleep, and they areoppressed by the burden of responsibilities. If they give money awayat a rate calculated to ease them of the burdens beneath which theystagger they can only do more harm than good. Mr. Carnegie givespublic libraries with the lavishness with which travellers in Italysometimes throw small copper coins to the beggars on the streets, buthe is only pauperising cities wholesale and hindering the progress ofreal culture by taking away from civic life the spirit ofself-reliance. If the people of a small town came together and said:"We ought to have a library in our town for our common advantage: letus unite and subscribe funds for a hundred books to begin with, " thatwould be an expression of true culture. 

But when a city accepts a library at Mr. Carnegie's hands, there is aninevitable loss of self-respect and independence. Mr. Carnegie'smotives may be good and pure, but the harm done to the community isnone the less great. 

Mr. Rockefeller may give money to endow colleges and universities fromthe very highest motives, but he cannot prevent the endowments frominfluencing the teaching given in them, even if he should try to doso. Thus the gifts of our millionaires are an insidious poison flowinginto the fountains of learning. 

Mind you, this is not the claim of a prejudiced Socialist agitator. President Hadley, of Yale University, is not a Socialist agitator, buthe admits the truth of this claim. He says: "Modern Universityteaching costs more money per capita than it ever did before, becausethe public wishes a university to maintain places of scientificresearch, and scientific research is extremely expensive. _Auniversity is more likely to obtain this money if it gives theproperty owners reason to believe that vested rights will not beinterfered with. _ If we recognize vested rights in order to secure themeans of progress in physical science, is there not danger that weshall stifle the spirit of independence which is equally important asa means of progress in moral science?"

Professor Bascom is not a Socialist agitator, either, but he alsorecognizes the danger of corrupting our university teaching in thismanner. After calling attention to the "wrongful and unflinching way"in which the wealth of the Standard Oil magnate has been amassed, heasks: "Is a college at liberty to accept money gained in a manner sohostile to the public welfare? Is it at liberty, when the Governmentis being put to its wits' end to check this aggression, to rank itselfwith those who fight it?"

And the effect of riches upon the rich themselves is as bad asanything in modern life. While it is true that there are among therich many very good citizens, it is also perfectly plain to any honestobserver of conditions that great riches are producing moral havoc anddisaster among the princes of wealth in this country. Mr. Carnegie hassaid that a man who dies rich dies disgraced, but there is evengreater reason to believe that to be born rich is to be born damned. The inheritance of vast fortunes is always demoralizing. 

What must the mind and soul of a woman be like who takes her toyspaniel in state to the opera to hear Caruso sing, while, in the samecity, there are babies dying for lack of food? What are we to think ofthe dog-dinners, the monkey-dinners and the other unspeakably foolishand unspeakably vile orgies constantly reported from Newport and otherplaces where the drones of our social system disport themselves? Whatshall we say of the shocking state of affairs disclosed by thedisgusting reports of our "Society Scandals, " except that unearnedriches corrode and destroy all human virtues?

The wise King, Solomon, knew what he was talking about when he criedout: "Give me neither poverty nor riches. " Unnatural poverty is bad, blighting the soul of man; and unnatural riches are likewise bad, equally blighting the soul of man. Our social system is bad for bothclasses, Jonathan, and a change to better and juster conditions, whileit will be resisted by the rich, the drones, with all their might, will be for the common good of all. For it is well to remember that intrying to get rid of the rule of the drones, the working class is nottrying to become the ruling class, to rule others as they have beenruled. We are aiming to do away with classes altogether; to make aunited and free social state. 

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Mark 14:7. 

[4] Quar. Pub. American Statistical Association, June 1907. 

VI

THE ROOT OF THE EVIL

 All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in all ages to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. --_Adam Smith. _

 Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding! Know the rights and the rights are won. Wrong shall die with the understanding, One truth clear, and the work is done. --_John Boyle O'Reilly. _

 The great ones of the world have taken this earth of ours to themselves; they live in the midst of splendour and superfluity. The smallest nook of the land is already a possession; none may touch it or meddle with it. --_Goethe. _

I have by no means exhausted the evils of the system under which welive in the brief catalogue I have made for you, my friend. If it werenecessary, I could compile an immense volume of authentic evidence tooverwhelm you with a sense of the awful failure of our civilization toproduce a free, united, healthy, happy and virtuous people, which Iconceive to be the goal toward which all good and wise men shouldaspire. But it is dreary and unpleasant work recounting evilconditions; constantly looking at the sores of society is a morbid andsoul-destroying task. 

I want you now to consider the cause of industrial misery and socialinequality, to ask yourself why these conditions exist. For we cannever hope to remove the evils, Jonathan, until we have discovered theunderlying causes. How does it happen that some people are thrifty andvirtuous and yet miserably poor and that others are thriftless andsinful and yet so rich that their riches weigh them down and make themas miserable as the very poorest? Why, in the name of all that is fairand good, have we got such a stupid, wasteful, unjust and unlovelysocial system after all the long centuries of human experience andtoil? When you can answer these questions, my friend, you will knowwhither to look for deliverance. 

You said in your letter to me the other day, Jonathan, that youthought things were bad because of the wickedness of man's nature. Lots of people believe that. The churches have taught that doctrinefor ages, but I do not believe that it is true. It is a doctrine whichearnest men who have been baffled in trying to find a satisfactoryexplanation for the evils have accepted in desperation. It is thedoctrine of pessimism, despair and wild unfaith in man. If it weretrue that things were so bad as they are just because men were wickedand because there never were good men enough to make them better, weshould not have any ground for hope for the future. 

I propose to try and show you that the wickedness of our poor humannature is not responsible for the terrible social conditions, so thatyou will not have to depend for your hope of a better society upon thevery slender thread of the chance of getting enough good men to makeconditions better. Bad conditions make bad lives, Jonathan, and willcontinue to do so. Instead of depending upon getting good men first tomake conditions good, we must make conditions good so that good livesmay flourish and grow in them naturally. 

You have read a little history, I daresay, and you know that there isno truth in the old cry that "As things are now things always havebeen and always will be. " You know that things are always changing. IfGeorge Washington could come back to earth again he would be amazed atthe changes which have taken place in the United States. Going furtherback, Christopher Columbus would not recognize the country hediscovered. And if we could go back millions of years and bring tolife one of our earliest ancestors, one of the primitivecave-dwellers, and set him down in one of our great cities, the mightyhouses, streets railways, telephones, telegraphs, wireless telegraphy, electric vehicles on the streets and the ships out on the river wouldterrify him far more than an angry tiger would. Can you think howastonished and alarmed such a primitive cave-man would be to be takeninto one of your great Pittsburg mills or down into a coal mine?

No. The world has grown, Jonathan. Man has enlarged his kingdom, hispower in the universe. Step by step in the evolution of the race, manhas wrested from Nature her secrets. He has gone down into the deepcaverns and found mineral treasuries there; he has made the angrywaves of the ocean bear great, heavy burdens from shore to shore forhis benefit; he has harnessed the tides and the winds that blow andcaught the lightning currents, making them all his servants. Betweenthe _lowest_ man in the modern tenement and the cave-man there is agreater gulf than ever existed between the beast in the forest and the_highest_ man dwelling in a cave in that far-off period. 

Things are not as they are to-day because a group of clever butdesperately wicked men came together and invented a scheme of societyin which the many must work for the few; in which some must have morethan they can use, so that they rot of excess while others have toolittle and rot of hunger; in which little children must toil infactories so that big strong men may loaf in clubs and dens of vice;in which some women sell themselves body and soul for bread whileother women spend the sustenance of thousands upon jewels for petdogs. No. It was no such fiendish ingenuity which devised thecapitalistic system and imposed it upon mankind. It has _grown_ upthrough the ages, Jonathan, and is still growing. We have grown fromsavagery and barbarism through various stages to our presentcommercial system, and the process of growth is still going on. Ibelieve we are growing into Socialism. 

There have been many forces urging mankind onward in this longevolution. Religion has played a part. Love of country has played apart. Climate and the nature of the soil have been factors. Man's evergrowing curiosity, his desire to know more of the life around him, hashad much to do with it. I have put the ideals of religion andpatriotism first, Jonathan, because I wanted you to see that they wereby no means overlooked or forgotten, but in truth they ought not to beplaced first. It is the verdict of all who have made a study of socialevolution that, while these factors have exerted an importantinfluence, back of them have been the material economic conditions. 

In philosophy this is the basis of a very profound theory upon whichmany learned volumes have been written. It is generally called "TheMaterialistic Conception of History, " but sometimes it is called"Economic Determinism" or "The Economic Interpretation of History. "The first man to set forth the theory in a very clear and connectedmanner was Karl Marx, upon whose teachings the Socialists of theworld have placed a great deal of reliance. I don't expect you to readall the heavy and learned books written upon this subject, for many ofthem require that a man must be specially trained in philosophy inorder to understand them. For the present I shall be quite satisfiedif you will read a ten-cent pamphlet called _The Communist Manifesto_, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and, along with that, the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of my book, _Socialism_, about a hundredpages altogether. These will give you a fairly clear notion of thematter. I shall not mention the hard, scientific name of thisphilosophy again. I don't like big words if little ones will serve. 

If you enjoy reading a good story, a novel that is full of romance andadventure, I would advise you to read _Before Adam_, by Jack London, aSocialist writer. It is a novel, but it is also a work of science. Hegives an account of the life of the first men and shows how theirwhole existence depended upon the crude weapons and tools, stickspicked up in the forests, which they used. They couldn't livedifferently than they did, because they had no other means of gettinga living. How a people make their living determines how they live. 

For many thousands of years, the scientists tell us, men lived in theworld without owning any private property. That came into existencewhen men saw that one man could produce more out of the soil than heneeded to eat himself. Then, when they went out to war with othertribes, the members of a tribe instead of trying to kill theirenemies, made them captives and used them as slaves. They did notcease killing their foes from humane motives, because they had grownbetter men, but because it was more profitable. 

From our point of view, slavery is a bad thing, but when it firstcame into existence it was a step upward and onward. If we take thehistory of slave societies and nations we shall soon find that theirlaws, their customs and their institutions were based upon the mode ofproducing wealth through the labor of slaves. There were two classesinto which society was divided, a class of masters and a class ofslaves. 

When slavery broke down and gave way to feudalism there were new waysof producing wealth. The laws of feudal societies, their customs andinstitutions, changed to meet the needs brought about through the newmethods of making things. Under slavery, the slaves made wealth fortheir masters and were doled out food enough to keep them alive. Theslave had no rights. Under feudalism, the serfs produced wealth forthe lords parts of the time, working for themselves the rest of thetime. They had some rights. The bounds of freedom were widened. Underneither of these systems was there a regular system of paying wages inmoney, such as we have to-day. The slave gave up all his product andtook what the master was pleased to give him in the way of food, clothing and shelter. The serf divided his time between producing forthe owner of the soil and producing for his family. The slave producedwhat his owner wanted; the serf produced what either he himself or hislord wanted. 

There came a time, about three hundred years ago, when the feudalsystem broke down before the beginnings of capitalism, the systemwhich we are living under to-day, and which we Socialists think isbreaking down as all other social systems have broken down before it. Under this system men have worked for wages and not because theywanted the things they were producing, nor because the men whoemployed them wanted the things, _but simply because the things couldbe sold and a profit made in the sale_. 

You will remember, Jonathan, that in a former letter I dealt with thenature of wealth. We saw then that wealth in our modern societyconsists of an abundance of things which can be sold. At bottom, we donot make things because it is well that they should be made, becausethe makers need them, but simply because the capitalists seepossibilities of selling the things at a profit. 

I want you to consider just a moment how this works out: Here is aworkingman in Springfield, Massachusetts, making deadly weapons withwhich other workingmen in other lands are to be killed. We go up tohim as he works and inquire where the rifles are to be sent, and hevery politely tells us that they are for some foreign government, saythe Japanese, to be used in all probability against Russian soldiers. Suppose we ask him next what interest he has in helping the Japanesegovernment to kill the Russian troops, how he comes to have an activehatred of the Russian soldiers. He will reply at once that he has nosuch feelings against the Russians; that he is not interested inhaving the Japanese slaughter them. Why, then, is he making the guns?He answers at once that he is only interested in getting his wages;that it is all the same to him whether he makes guns for Christians orInfidels, for Russians or Japs or Turks. His only interest is to gethis wages. He would as soon be making coffins as guns, or shoes ascoffins, so long as he got his wages. 

Perhaps, then, the company for which he is employed has an interest inhelping Japan defeat the troops of Russia. Possibly the shareholdersin the company are Japanese or sympathizers with Japan. Otherwise, why should they be bothering themselves getting workpeople to makeguns for Japanese soldiers to kill Russian soldiers with? So we go tothe manager and ask him to explain the matter. He very politely tellsus that, like the man at the bench, he has no interest in the matterat all, and that the shareholders are in the same position of beingquite indifferent to the quarrel of the two nations. "Why, we are alsomaking guns for Russia in our factory, " he says, and when we ask himto explain why he tells us that "There is profit to be made and thefirm cares for nothing else. "

All our system revolves around that central sun of profit-making, Jonathan. Here is a factory in which a great many people are makingshoddy clothing. You can tell at a glance that it is shoddy and quiteunfit for wearing. But why are the people making shoddy goods--whydon't they make decent clothing, since they can do it quite as well?Why, because there is a profit for somebody in making shoddy. Here agroup of men are building a house. They are making it of the poorestmaterials, making dingy little rooms; the building is badlyconstructed and it can never be other than a barracks. Why this"jerry-building?" There is no reason under the sun why poor housesshould be built except that somebody hopes to make profit out of them. 

Goods are adulterated and debased, even the food of the nation ispoisoned, for profit. Legislatures are corrupted and courts of justiceare polluted by the presence of the bribe-giver and the bribe-takerfor profit. Nations are embroiled in quarrels and armies slaughterarmies over questions which are, always, ultimately questions ofprofit. Here are children toiling in sweatshops, factories and mineswhile men are idle and seeking work. Why? Do we need the labor of thelittle ones in order to produce enough to maintain the life of thenation? No. But there are some people who are going to make a profitout of the labors which sap the strength of those little ones. Hereare thousands of people hungry, clamoring for food and perishing forlack of it. They are willing to work, there are resources for them towork upon; they could easily maintain themselves in comfort andgladness if they set to work. Then why don't they set to work? Oh, Jonathan, the torment of this monotonous answer is unbearable--becauseno one can make a profit out of their labor they must be idle andstarve, or drag out a miserable existence aided by the crumbs of coldcharity!

If our social economy were such that we produced things for use, because they were useful and beautiful, we should go on producing witha good will until everybody had a plentiful supply. If we foundourselves producing too rapidly, faster than we could consume thethings, we could easily slacken our pace. We could spend more timebeautifying our cities and our homes, more time cultivating our mindsand hearts by social intercourse and in the companionship of the greatspirits of all ages, through the masterpieces of literature, music, painting and sculpture. But instead, we produce for sale and profit. When the workers have produced more than the master class can use andthey themselves buy back out of their meagre wages, there is a glut inthe markets of the world, unless a new market can be opened up bymaking war upon some defenseless, undeveloped nation. 

When there is a glut in the market, Jonathan, you know what happens. Shops and factories are shut down, the number of workers employed isreduced, the army of the unemployed grows and there is a rise in thetide of poverty and misery. Yet why should it be so? Why, simplybecause there is a superabundance of wealth, should people be madepoorer? Why should little children go without shoes just because thereare loads of shoes stacked away in stores and warehouses? Why shouldpeople go without clothing simply because the warehouses are burstingwith clothes? The answer is that these things must be so because weproduce for profit instead of for use. All these stores of wealthbelong to the class of profit-takers, the capitalist class, and theymust sell and make profit. 

So you see, friend Jonathan, so long as this system lasts, _peoplemust have too little because they have produced too much_. So long asthis system lasts, there must be periods when we say that society_cannot afford to have men and women work to maintain themselvesdecently_! But under any sane system it will surely be considered themaddest kind of folly to keep men in idleness while saying that itdoes not pay to keep them working. Is there any more expensive way ofkeeping either an ass or a man than in idleness?

The root of evil, the taproot from which the evils of modern societydevelop, is the profit idea. Life is subordinated to the making ofprofit. If it were only possible to embody that idea in human shape, what a monster ogre it would be! And how we should arraign it at thebar of human reason! Should we not call up images of the million ofbabes who have been needlessly and wantonly slaughtered by the MonsterIdea; the images of all the maimed and wounded and killed in the warsfor markets; the millions of others who have been bruised and brokenin the industrial arena to secure somebody's profit, because it wastoo expensive to guard life and limb; the numberless victims ofadulterated food and drink, of cheap tenements and shoddy clothes?Should we not call up the wretched women of our streets; the bribersand the vendors of privilege? We should surely parade in pitiableprocession the dwarfed and stunted bodies of the millions born tohardship and suffering, but we could not, alas! parade the dwarfed andstunted souls, the sordid spirits for which the Monster Idea isresponsible. 

I ask you, Jonathan Edwards, what you really think of this "buy cheapand sell dear" idea, which is the heart and soul of our capitalisticsystem. Are you satisfied that it should continue?

Yet, my friend, bad as it is in its full development, and terrible asare its fruits, this idea once stood for progress. The system was astep in the liberation of man. It was an advance upon feudalism whichbound the laborer to the soil. Capitalism has not been all bad; it hasanother, brighter side. Capitalism had to have laborers who were freeto move from one place to another, even to other lands, and that needbroke down the last vestiges of the old physical slavery. That was astep gained. Capitalism had to have intelligent workers and manyeducated ones. That put into the hands of the common people the key tothe sealed treasuries of knowledge. It had to have a legal system tomeet its requirements and that has resulted in the development ofrepresentative government, of something approaching politicaldemocracy; even where kings nominally rule to-day, their power is buta shadow of what it once was. Every step taken by the capitalist classfor the advancement of its own interests has become in its turn astepping-stone upon which the working-class has raised itself. 

Karl Marx once said that the capitalist system provides its owngravediggers. I have cited two or three things which will illustratehis meaning. Later on, I must try and explain to you how the great"trusts" about which you complain so loudly, and which seem to be thevery perfection of the capitalist ideal, lead toward Socialism at apace which nothing can very seriously hinder, though it may bequickened by wise action on the part of the workers. 

For the present I shall be satisfied, friend Jonathan, if you get itthoroughly into your mind that the source of terrible social evils, ofthe poverty and squalor, of the helpless misery of the great mass ofthe people, of most of the crime and vice and much of the disease, isthe "buy cheap and sell dear" idea. The fact that we produce thingsfor sale for the profit of a few, instead of for use and the enjoymentof all. 

Get that into your mind above everything else, my friend. And try tograsp the fact, also, that the system we are now trying to change wasa natural outgrowth of other conditions. It was not a wickedinvention, nor was it a foolish blunder. It was a necessary and aright step in human evolution. But now it has in turn becomeunsuitable to the needs of the people and it must give place tosomething else. When a man suffers from such a disease asappendicitis, he does not talk about the "wickedness" of the vermiformappendix. He realizes, if he is a sensible man, that long ago, thatwas an organ which served a useful purpose in the human system. Gradually, perhaps in the course of many centuries, it has ceased tobe of any use. It has lost its original functions and become a menaceto the body. 

Capitalism, Jonathan, is the vermiform appendix of the socialorganism. It has served its purpose. The profit idea has served animportant function in society, but it is now useless and a menace tothe body social. Our troubles are due to a kind of socialappendicitis. And the remedy is to remove the useless and offendingmember. 

VII

FROM COMPETITION TO MONOPOLY

 It may be fairly said, I think, that not merely competition, but competition that was proving ruinous to many establishments, was the cause of the combinations. --_Prof. J. W. Jenks. _

 The day of the capitalist has come, and he has made full use of it. To-morrow will be the day of the laborer, provided he has the strength and the wisdom to use his opportunities. --_H. De. B. Gibbins. _

 Monopoly expands, ever expands, till it ends by bursting. --_P. J. Proudhon. _

 For this is the close of an era; we have political freedom; next and right away is to come social enfranchisement. --_Benjamin Kidd. _

I think you realize, friend Jonathan, that the bottom principle of thepresent capitalist system is that there must be one class owning theland, mines, factories, railways, and other agencies of production, but not using them; and another class, using the land and other meansof production, but not owning them. 

Only those things are produced which there is a reasonable hope ofselling at a profit. Upon no other conditions will the owners of themeans of production consent to their being used. The worker who doesnot own the things necessary to produce wealth must work upon theterms imposed by the other fellow in most cases. The coal miner, notowning the coal mine, must agree to work for wages. So must themechanic in the workshop and the mill-worker. 

As a practical, sensible workingman, Jonathan, you know very well thatif anybody says the interests of these two classes are the same it isa foolish and lying statement. You are a workingman, a wage-earner, and you know that it is to your interest to get as much wages aspossible for the smallest amount of work. If you work by the day andget, let us say, two dollars for ten hours' work, it would be a greatadvantage to you if you could get your wages increased to threedollars and your hours of labor to eight per day, wouldn't it? And ifyou thought that you could get these benefits for the asking you wouldask for them, wouldn't you? Of course you would, being a sensible, hard-headed American workingman. 

Now, if giving these things would be quite as much to the advantage ofthe company as to you, the company would be just as glad to give themas you would be to receive them, wouldn't it? I am assuming, ofcourse, that the company knows its own interests just as well as youand your fellow workmen know yours. But if you went to the officialsof the company and asked them to give you a dollar more for the twohours' less work, they would not give it--unless, of course, you werestrong enough to fight and compel them to accept your terms. But theywould resist and you would have to fight, because your interestsclashed. 

That is why trade unions are formed on the one side and employers'associations upon the other. Society is divided by antagonisticinterests; into exploiters and exploited. 

Politicians and preachers may cry out that there are no classes inAmerica, and they may even be foolish enough to believe it--for thereare lots of _very_ foolish politicians and preachers in the world! Youmay even hear a short-sighted labor leader say the same thing, but youknow very well, my friend, that they are wrong. You may not be able toconfute them in debate, not having their skill in wordy warfare; butyour experience, your common sense, convince you that they are wrong. And all the greatest political economists are on your side. I couldfill a volume with quotations from the writings of the most learnedpolitical economists of all times in support of your position, but Ishall only give one quotation. It is from Adam Smith's great work, _The Wealth of Nations_, and I quote it partly because no betterstatement of the principle has ever been made by any writer, andpartly also because no one can accuse Adam Smith of being a "wickedSocialist trying to set class against class. " He says:

 "The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labor.... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of a reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals.... Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution. "

That is very plainly put, Jonathan. Adam Smith was a great thinker andan honest one. He was not afraid to tell the truth. I am going toquote a little further what he says about the combinations ofworkingmen to increase their wages:

 "Such combinations, [i. E. , to lower wages] however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether these combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and journeymen. 

 "But though in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage, there is however a certain rate, below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labor. 

 "A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. "

Now, my friend, I know that some of your pretended friends, especiallypoliticians, will tell you that Adam Smith wrote at the time of theAmerican Revolution; that his words applied to England in that day, but not to the United States to-day. I want you to be honest withyourself, to consider candidly whether in your experience as a workmanyou have found conditions to be, on the whole, just as Adam Smith'swords describe them. I trust your own good sense in this andeverything. Don't let the politicians frighten you with a show ofbook learning: do your own thinking. 

Capitalism began when a class of property owners employed other men towork for wages. The tendency was for wages to keep at a level justsufficient to enable the workers to maintain themselves and families. They had to get enough for families, you see, in order to reproducetheir kind--to keep up the supply of laborers. 

Competition was the law of life in the first period of capitalism. Capitalists competed with each other for markets. They were engaged ina mad scramble for profits. Foreign countries were attacked and newmarkets opened up; new inventions were rapidly introduced. And whilethe workers found that in normal conditions the employers were in whatAdam Smith calls "a tacit combination" to keep wages down to thelowest level, and were obliged to combine into unions, there weretimes when, owing to the fierce competition among the employers, andthe demand for labor being greatly in excess of the supply, wages wentup without a struggle owing to the fact that one employer would try tooutbid another. In other words, temporarily, the natural, "tacitcombination" of the employers, to keep down wages, sometimes brokedown. 

Competition was called "the life of trade" in those days, and in asense it was so. Under its mighty urge, new continents were exploredand developed and brought within the circle of civilization. Sometimesthis was done by means of brutal and bloody wars, for capitalism isnever particular about the methods it adopts. To get profits is itsonly concern, and though its shekels "sweat blood and dirt, " to adapta celebrated phrase of Karl Marx, nobody cares. Under stress ofcompetition, also, the development of mechanical production went onat a terrific pace; navigation was developed, so that the ocean becameas a common highway. 

In short, Jonathan, it is no wonder that men sang the praises ofcompetition, that some of the greatest thinkers of the time lookedupon competition as something sacred. Even the workers, seeing thatthey got higher wages when the keen and fierce competition created anexcessive demand for labor, joined in the adoration of competition asa principle--but among themselves, in their struggles for betterconditions, they avoided competition as much as possible and combined. Their instincts as wage-earners made them keen to see the folly ofdivision and competition among themselves. 

So competition, considered in connection with the evolution ofsociety, had many good features. The competitive period was just as"good" as any other period in history and no more "wicked" than anyother period. 

But there was another side to the shield. As the competitive struggleamong individual capitalists went on the weakest were crushed to thewall and fell down into the ranks of the wage workers. There was nosystem in production. Word came to the commercial world that there wasa great market for certain manufactures in a foreign land and at oncehundreds and even thousands of factories were worked to their utmostlimit to meet that demand. The result was that in a little while thething was overdone: there was a glut in the market, often attended bypanic, stagnation and disaster. Rathbone Greg summed up the evils ofcompetition in the following words:

"Competition gluts our markets, enables the rich to take advantage ofthe necessity of the poor, makes each man snatch the bread out of hisneighbor's mouth, converts a nation of brethren into a mass ofhostile units, and finally involves capitalists and laborers in onecommon ruin. "

The crises due to this unregulated production, and the costliness ofthe struggles, led to the formation of joint-stock companies. Competition was giving way before a stronger force, the force ofco-operation. There was still competition, but it was more and morebetween giants. To adopt a very homely simile, the bigger fish ate upthe little ones so long as there were any, and then turned to astruggle among themselves. 

Another thing that forced the development of industry and commerceaway from competitive methods was the increasing costliness of themachinery of production. The new inventions, first of steam-power andlater of electricity, involved an immense outlay, so that many personshad to combine their capitals in one common fund. 

This process of eliminating competition has gone on with remarkableswiftness, so that we have now the great Trust Problem. Everyonerecognizes to-day that the trusts practically control the life of thenation. It is the supreme issue in our politics and a challenge to theheart and brain of the nation. 

Fifty years ago Karl Marx, the great Socialist economist, made theremarkable prophecy that this condition would arise. He lived in theheyday of competition, when it seemed utter folly to talk about theend of competition. He analyzed the situation, pointed to the processof big capitalists crushing out the little capitalists, the union ofbig capitalists, and the inevitable drift toward monopoly. Hepredicted that the process would continue until the whole industry, the main agencies of production and distribution at any rate, would becentralized in a few great monopolies, controlled by a very smallhandful of men. He showed with wonderful clearness that capitalism, the Great Idea of buy cheap and sell dear, carried within itself thegerms of its own destruction. 

And, of course, the wiseacres laughed. The learned ignorance of thewiseacre always compels him to laugh at the man with an idea that isnew. Didn't the wiseacres imprison Galileo? Haven't they persecutedthe pioneers in all ages? But Time has a habit of vindicating thepioneers while consigning the scoffing wiseacres to oblivion. Fiftyyears is a short time in human evolution but it has sufficed toestablish the right of Marx to an honored place among the pioneers. 

More than twenty-five years after Marx made his great prediction, there came to this country on a visit Mr. H. M. Hyndman, an Englisheconomist who is also known as one of the foremost living exponents ofSocialism. The intensity of the competitive struggle was most marked, but he looked below the surface and saw a subtle current, a drifttoward monopoly, which had gone unnoticed. He predicted the coming ofthe era of great trusts and combines. Again the wiseacres in theirlearned ignorance laughed and derided. The amiable gentleman who playsthe part of flunkey at the Court of St. James, in London, wearingplush knee breeches, silver-buckled shoes and powdered wig, amarionette in the tinseled show of King Edward's court, was one of thewiseacres. He was then editor of the _New York Tribune_, and hedeclared that Mr. Hyndman was a "fool traveler" for making such aprediction. But in the very next year the Standard Oil Company wasformed!

So we have the trust problem with us. Out of the bitter competitivestruggle there has come a new condition, a new form of industrialownership and enterprise. From the cradle to the grave we areencompassed by the trust. 

Now, friend Jonathan, I need not tell you that the trusts have got thenation by the throat. You know it. But there is a passage, a question, in the letter you wrote me the other day from which I gather that youhave not given the matter very close attention. You ask "How will theSocialists destroy the trusts which are hurting the people?"

I suppose that comes from your old associations with the DemocraticParty. You think that it is possible to destroy the trusts, to undothe chain of social evolution, to go back twenty or fifty years tocompetitive conditions. You would restore competition. I havepurposely gone into the historical development of the trust in orderto show you how useless it would be to destroy the trusts andintroduce competition again, even if that were possible. Now that youhave mentally traced the origin of monopoly to its causes incompetition, don't you see that if we could destroy the monopolyto-morrow and start fresh upon a basis of competition, the process of"big fish eat little fish" would begin again at once--_for that iscompetition_? And if the big ones eat the little ones up, then fightamong themselves, won't the result be as before--that either one willcrush the other, leaving a monopoly, or the competitors will joinhands and agree not to fight, leaving monopoly again?

And, Jonathan, if there should be a return to the old-fashioned, free-for-all scramble for markets, would it be any better for theworkers? Would there not be the same old struggle between thecapitalists and the workers? Would not the workers still have to givemuch for little; to wear their lives away grinding out profits for themasters of their bread, of their very lives? Would there not be glutsas before, with panics, misery, unemployed armies sullenly paradingthe streets; idlers in mansions and toilers in hovels? You know verywell that there would be all these, my friend, and I know that you aretoo sensible a fellow to think any longer about destroying the trusts. It cannot be done, Jonathan, and it would not be a good thing if itcould be done. 

I think, my friend, that you will see upon reflection that there aremany excellent features about the trust which it would be criminal andfoolish to destroy had we the power. Competition means waste, foolishand unnecessary waste. Trusts have been organized expressly to do awaywith the waste of men and natural resources. They represent economicalproduction. When Mr. Perkins, of the New York Life Insurance Company, was testifying before the insurance investigating committee he gaveexpression to the philosophy of the trust movement by saying that, inthe modern view, competition is the law of death and that co-operationand organization represent life and progress. 

While the wage-workers are probably in many respects better off as aresult of the trustification of industry, it would be idle to denythat there are many evils connected with it. No one who views thesituation calmly can deny that the trusts exert an enormous power overthe government of the country, that they are, in fact, the realgovernment of the country, exercising far more control over the livesof the common people than the regularly constituted, constitutionalgovernment of the country does. It is also true that they canarbitrarily fix prices in many instances, so that the natural law ofvalue is set aside and the workers are exploited as consumers, aspurchasers of the things necessary to life, just as they are exploitedas producers. 

Of course, friend Jonathan, wages must meet the cost of living. Ifprices rise considerably, wages must sooner or later follow, and ifprices fall wages likewise will fall sooner or later. But it isimportant to remember that when prices fall wages are _quick_ tofollow, while when prices soar higher and higher wages are very _slow_to follow. That is why it wouldn't do us any good to have a lawregulating prices, supposing that a law forcing down prices could beenacted and enforced. Wages would follow prices downward withwonderful swiftness. And that is why, also, we do need to become themasters of the wealth we produce. For wages climb upward with leadenfeet, my friend, when prices soar with eagle wings. It is always theworkers who are at a disadvantage in a system where one class controlsthe means of producing and distributing wealth. 

But, friend Jonathan, that is due to the fact that the advantages ofthe trust form of industry are not used as well as they might be. Theyare all grasped by the master class. The trouble with the trust issimply this: the people as a whole do not share the benefits. Wecontinue the same old wage system under the new forms of industry: wehave not changed our mode of distributing the wealth produced so as toconform to the new modes of producing it. The heart of the economicconflict is right there. 

We must find a remedy for this, Jonathan. Labor unionism is a goodthing, but it is no remedy for this condition. It is a valuable weaponwith, which to fight for better wages and shorter hours, and everyworkingman ought to belong to the union of his trade or calling. Butunionism does not and cannot do away with the profit system; it cannotbreak the power of the trusts to extort monopoly prices from thepeople. To do these things we must bring into play the forces ofgovernment: we must vote a new status for the trust. The union is forthe economic struggle of groups of workers day by day against themaster class so long as the present class division exists. But that isnot a solution of the problem. What we need to do is to vote the classdivisions out of existence. _We need to own the trusts, Jonathan!_

This is the Socialist position. What is needed now is the harmonizingof our social relations with the new forms of production. When privateproperty came into the primitive world in the form of slavery, socialrelations were changed and from a rude communism society passed into asystem of individualism and class rule. When, later on, slave laborgave way before serf labor, the social relations were again modifiedto correspond. When capitalism came, with wage-paid labor as itsbasis, all the laws and institutions which stood in the way of thefree development of the new principle were swept away; new socialrelations were established, new laws and institutions introduced tomeet its needs. 

To-day, in America, we are suffering because our social relations arenot in harmony with the changed methods of producing wealth. We havegot the laws and institutions which were designed to meet the needs ofcompetitive industry. They suited those old conditions fairly well, but they do not suit the new. 

In a former letter, you will remember, I likened our present sufferingto a case of appendicitis, that society suffers from the trouble setup within by an organ which has lost its function and needs to be cutout. Perhaps I might better liken society to a woman in the travail ofchildbirth, suffering the pangs of labor incidental to the deliveranceof the new life within her womb. The trust marks the highestdevelopment of capitalist society: it can go no further. 

 The Old Order changeth, yielding place to new. 

And the new order, waiting now for deliverance from the womb of theold, is Socialism, the fraternal state. Whether the birth of the neworder is to be peaceful or violent and painful, whether it will beushered in with glad shouts of triumphant men and women, or with thenoise of civil strife, depends, my good friend, upon the manner inwhich you and all other workers discharge your responsibilities ascitizens. That is why I am so anxious to set the claims of Socialismclearly before you: I want you to work for the peaceful revolution ofsociety, Jonathan. 

For the present, I am only going to ask you to read a little five centpamphlet, by Gaylord Wilshire, called _The Significance of the Trust_, and a little book by Frederick Engels, called _Socialism, Utopian andScientific_. Later on, when I have had a chance to explain Socialismin a general way, and must then leave you to your own resources, Iintend to make for you a list of books, which I hope you will be ableto read. 

You see, Jonathan, I remember always that you wrote me: "WhetherSocialism is good or bad, wise or foolish, _I want to know_. " The bestway to know is to study the question for yourself. 

VIII

WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

 Socialism is industrial democracy. It would put an end to the irresponsible control of economic interests, and substitute popular self-government in the industrial as in the political world. --_Charles H. Vail. _

 Socialism says that man, machinery and land must be brought together; that the toll gates of capitalism must be torn down, and that every human being's opportunity to produce the means with which to sustain life shall be considered as sacred as his right to live. --_Allan L. Benson. _

 Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to their creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together; and that all opportunities shall be open and equal to all men. --_National Platform of the Socialist Party, 1904. _

 Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor. 

 Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their neighbors better than themselves, and who never need to work unless they wish to. --_Robert Blatchford. _

By this time, friend Jonathan, you have, I hope, got rid of the notionthat Socialism is a ready-made scheme of society which a few wise menhave planned, and which their followers are trying to get adopted. Ihave spent some time and effort trying to make it perfectly plain toyou that great social changes are not brought about in that fashion. 

Socialism then, is a philosophy of human progress, a theory of socialevolution, the main outlines of which I have already sketched for you. Because the subject is treated at much greater length in some of thebooks I have asked you to read, it is not necessary for me toelaborate the theory. It will be sufficient, probably, for me torestate, in a very few words, the main principles of that theory:

The present social system throughout the civilized world is not theresult of deliberately copying some plan devised by wise men. It isthe result of long centuries of growth and development. From ourpresent position we look back over the blood-blotted pages of history, back to the ages before men began to write their history and theirthoughts, through the centuries of which there is only fainttradition; we go even further back, to the very beginning of humanexistence, to the men-apes and the ape-men whose existence science hasmade clear to us, and we see the race engaged in a long struggle to

 Move upward, working out the beast And let the ape and tiger die. 

We look for the means whereby the progress of man has been made, andfind that his tools have been, so to say, the ladder upon which he hasrisen in the age-long climb from bondage toward brotherhood, frombeing a brute armed with a club to the sovereign of the universe, controlling tides, harnessing winds, gathering the lightning in hishands and reaching to the farthest star. 

We find in every epoch of that long evolution the means of producingwealth as the center of all, transforming government, laws, institutions and moral codes to meet their limitations and theirneeds. Nothing has ever been strong enough to restrain the economicforces in social evolution. When laws and customs have stood in theway of the economic forces they have been burst asunder as by somemighty leaven, or hurled aside in the cyclonic sweep of revolutions. 

Have you ever gone into the country, Jonathan, and noticed an immenserock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by themight of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and Inever see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as anillustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by thewind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stoodfor thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it asan emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun andthe rain wake the latent life in the acorn; the shell breaks and afrail little shoot of vegetable life appears, so small that an infantcould crush it. Yet that weak and puny thing grows on unobserved, striking its rootlets farther into the crevice of the rock. And whenthere is no more room for it to grow, _it does not die, but makes roomfor itself by shattering the rock_. 

Economic forces are like that, my friend, they _must_ expand and grow. Nothing can long restrain them. A new method of producing wealth brokeup the primitive communism of prehistoric man; another change in themethods of production hurled the feudal barons from power and forcedthe establishment of a new social system. And now, we are on the eveof another great change--nay, we are in the very midst of the change. Capitalism is doomed! Not because men think it is wicked, but becausethe development of the great industrial trusts compels a new politicaland social system to meet the needs of the new mode of production. 

Something has got to give way to the irresistible growing force! Achange is inevitable. And the change must be to Socialism. That is thebelief of the Socialists, Jonathan, which I am trying to make youunderstand. Mind, I do not say that the coming change will be the_last_ change in human evolution, that there will be no furtherdevelopment after Socialism. I do not know what lies beyond, nor towhat heights humanity may attain in future years. It may be thatthousands or millions of years from now the race will have attained tosuch a state of growth and power that the poorest and weakest man thenalive will be so much superior to the greatest men alive to-day, ourbest scholars, poets, artists, inventors and statesmen, as these aresuperior to the cave-man. It may be. I do not know. Only a fool wouldseek to set mete and bound to man's possibilities. 

We are concerned only with the change that is imminent, the changethat is now going on before our eyes. We say that the outcome ofsociety's struggle with the trust problem must be the control of thetrust by society. That the outcome of the struggle between the masterclass and the slave class, between the _wealth makers_ and the _wealthtakers_, must be the victory of the makers. 

Throughout all history, ever since the first appearance of privateproperty--of slavery and land ownership--there have been classstruggles. Slave and slave-owner, serf and baron, wage-slave andcapitalist--so the classes have struggled. And what has been theissue, thus far? Chattel slavery gave way to serfdom, in which theoppression was lighter and the oppressed gained some measure of humanrecognition. Serfdom, in its turn, gave way to the wages system, inwhich, despite many evils, the oppressed class lives upon a far higherplane than the slave and serf classes from whence it sprang. Now, withthe capitalists unable to hold and manage the great machinery ofproduction which has been developed, with the workers awakened totheir power, armed with knowledge, with education, and, above all, with the power to make the laws, the government, what they will, cananybody doubt what the outcome will be?

It is impossible to believe that we shall continue to leave the thingsupon which all depend in the hands of a few members of society. Nowthat production has been so organized that it can be readilycontrolled and directed from a few centers, it is possible for thefirst time in the history of civilization for men to live together inpeace and plenty, owning in common the things which must be used incommon, which are needed in common; leaving to private ownership thethings which can be privately owned without injury to society. _Andthat is Socialism. _

I have explained the philosophy of social evolution upon which modernSocialism is based as clearly as I could do in the space at mydisposal. I want you to think it out for yourself, Jonathan. I wantyou to get the enthusiasm and the inspiration which come from arealization of the fact that progress is the law of Nature; thatmankind is ever marching upward and onward; that Socialism is thecertain inheritor of all the ages of struggle, suffering andaccumulation. 

And above all, I want you to realize the position of your class, myfriend, and your duty to stand with your class, not only as a unionman, but as a voter and a citizen. 

As a system of political economy I need say little of Socialism, beyond recounting some of the things we have already considered. Agreat many learned ignorant men, like Mr. Mallock, for instance, arefond of telling the workers that the economic teachings of Socialismare unsound; that Karl Marx was really a very superficial thinkerwhose ideas have been entirely discredited. 

Now, Karl Marx has been dead twenty-five years, Jonathan. His greatwork was done a generation ago. Being just a human being, like therest of us, it is not to be supposed that he was infallible. There aresome things in his writings which cannot be accepted withoutmodification. But what does that matter, so long as the essentialprinciples are sound and true? When we think of a great man likeLincoln we do not trouble about the little things--the trivialmistakes he made; we consider only the big things, the noble things, the true things, he said and did. 

But there are lots of little-minded, little-souled people in the worldwho have eyes only for the little flaws and none at all for the big, strong and enduring things in a man's work. I never think of thesecritics of Marx without calling to mind an incident I witnessed two orthree years ago at an art exhibition in New York. There was placed onexhibition a famous Greek marble, a statue of Aphrodite. Many peoplewent to see it and on several occasions when I saw it I observed thatsome people had been enough stirred to place little bunches of flowersat the feet of the statue as a tender tribute to its beauty. But oneday I was greatly annoyed by the presence of a critical woman who haddiscovered a little flaw in the statue, where a bit had been brokenoff. She chattered about it like an excited magpie. Poor soul, she hadno eyes for the beauty of the thing, the mystery which shrouded itspast stirred no emotions in her breast. _She was only just big enoughin mind and soul to see the flaw. _ I pitied her, Jonathan, as I pitymany of the critics who write learned books to prove that the economicprinciples of Socialism are wrong. I cannot read such a book but avision rises before my mind's eye of that woman and the statue. 

I believe that the great fundamental principles laid down by Karl Marxcannot be refuted, because they are true. But it is just as well tobear in mind that Socialism does not depend upon Karl Marx. If all hisworks could be destroyed and his name forgotten there would still be aSocialist movement to contend with. The question is: Are the economicprinciples of Socialism as it is taught to-day true or false?

_The first principle is that wealth in modern society consists in anabundance of things which can be sold for profit. _

So far as I know, there is no economist of note who makes anyobjection to that statement. I know that sometimes politicaleconomists confuse their readers and themselves by a loose use of theterm wealth, including in it many things which have nothing at all todo with economics. Good health and cheerful spirits, for example, areoften spoken of as wealth and there is a certain primal sense in whichthat word is rightly applied to them. You remember the poem by CharlesMackay--

 Cleon hath a million acres, ne'er a one have I; Cleon dwelleth in a palace, in a cottage I; Cleon hath a dozen fortunes, not a penny I; Yet the poorer of the twain is Cleon, and not I. 

In a great moral sense that is all true, Jonathan, but from the pointof view of political economy, Cleon of the million acres, the palaceand the dozen fortunes must be regarded as the richer of the two. 

_The second principle is that wealth is produced by labor applied tonatural resources. _

The only objections to this, the only attempts ever made to deny itstruth, have been based upon a misunderstanding of the meaning of theword "labor. " If a man came to you in the mill one day, and said: "Seethat great machine with all its levers and springs and wheels workingin such beautiful harmony. It was made entirely by manual workers, such as moulders, blacksmiths and machinists; no brain workers hadanything to do with it, " you would suspect that man of being a fool, Jonathan. You know, even though you are no economist, that the laborof the inventor and of the men who drew the plans of the various partswas just as necessary as the labor of the manual workers. I havealready shown you, when discussing the case of Mr. Mallock, thatSocialists have never claimed that wealth was produced by manual laboralone, and that brain labor is always unproductive. All the greatpolitical economists have included both mental and manual labor intheir use of the term, that being, indeed, the only sensible use ofthe word known to our language. 

It is very easy work, my friend, for a clever juggler of words toerect a straw man, label the dummy "Socialism" and then pull it topieces. But it is not very useful work, nor is it an honestintellectual occupation. I say to you, friend Jonathan, that whenwriters like Mr. Mallock contend that "ability, " as distinguished fromlabor, must be considered as a principal factor in production, theymust be regarded as being either mentally weak or deliberateperverters of the truth. You know, and every man of fair sense knows, that ability in the abstract never could produce anything at all. 

Take Mr. Edison, for example. He is a man of wonderful ability--one ofthe greatest men of this or any other age. Suppose Mr. Edison were tosay: "I know I have a great deal of _ability_; I think that I willjust sit down with folded hands and depend upon the mere possession ofmy ability to make a living for me"--what do you think would happen?If Mr. Edison were to go to some lonely spot, without tools or food, making up his mind that he need not work; that he could safely dependupon his ability to produce food for him while he sat idle or slept, he would starve. Ability is like a machine, Jonathan. If you have thefinest machine in the world and keep it in a garret it will producenothing at all. You might as well have a pile of stones there as themachine. 

But connect the machine with the motor and place a competent man incharge of it, and the machine at once becomes a means of production. Ability is likewise useless and impotent unless it is expressed in theform of either manual or mental labor. And when it is so embodied inlabor, it is quite useless and foolish to talk of ability as separatefrom the labor in which it is embodied. 

_The third principle of Socialist economics is that the value ofthings produced for sale is, under normal conditions, determined bythe amount of labor socially necessary, on an average, for theirproduction. This is called the labor theory of value. _

Many people have attacked this theory, Jonathan, and it has been"refuted, " "upset, " "smashed" and "destroyed" by nearly every hackwriter on economics living. But, for some reason, the number of peoplewho accept it is constantly increasing in spite of the number oftimes it has been "exposed" and "refuted. " It is worth our while toconsider it briefly. 

You will observe that I have made two important qualifications in theabove statement of the theory: first, that the law applies only tothings produced for sale, and second, that it is only under normalconditions that it holds true. Many very clever men try to prove thislaw of value wrong by citing the fact that articles are sometimes soldfor enormous prices, out of all proportion to the amount of labor ittook to produce them in the first instance. For example, it tookShakespeare only a few minutes to write a letter, we may suppose, butif a genuine letter in the poet's handwriting were offered for sale inone of the auction rooms where such things are sold it would fetch anenormous price; perhaps more than the yearly salary of the Presidentof the United States. 

The value of the letter would not be due to the amount of laborShakespeare devoted to the writing of it, but to its _rarity_. Itwould have what the economists call a "scarcity value. " The same istrue of a great many other things, such as historical relics, greatworks of art, and so on. These things are in a class by themselves. But they constitute no important part of the business of modernsociety. We are not concerned with them, but with the ordinary, everyday production of goods for sale. The truth of this law of value isnot to be determined by considering these special objects of rarity, but the great mass of things produced in our workshops and factories. 

Now, note the second qualification. I say that the value of thingsproduced for sale _under normal conditions_ is determined by theamount of labor _socially necessary_, on an average, for theirproduction. Some of the clever, learnedly-ignorant writers onSocialism think that they have completely destroyed this theory ofvalue when they have only misrepresented it and crushed the image oftheir own creating. 

It does not mean that if a quick, efficient workman, with good tools, takes a day to make a coat, while another workman, who is slow, clumsyand inefficient, and has only poor tools, takes six days to make atable that the table will be worth six coats upon the market. Thatwould be a foolish proposition, Jonathan. It would mean that if oneworkman made a coat in one day, while another workman took two days tomake exactly the same kind of coat, that the one made by the slow, inefficient workman would bring twice as much as the other, eventhough they were so much alike that they could not be distinguishedone from the other. 

Only an ignoramus could believe that. No Socialist writer ever madesuch a foolish claim, yet all the attacks upon the economic principlesof Socialism are based upon that idea!

Now that I have told you what it does _not_ mean, let me try to makeplain just what it _does_ mean. I shall use a very simple illustrationwhich you can readily apply to the whole of industry for yourself. Ifit ordinarily takes a day to make a coat, if that is the average timetaken, and it also takes on an average a day to make a table, then, also on an average, one coat will be worth just as much as one table. But I must explain that it is not possible to bring the production ofcoats and tables down to the simple measurement. When the tailor takesthe piece of cloth to cut out the coat, he has in that materialsomething that already embodies human labor. Somebody had to weavethat cloth upon a loom. Before that somebody had to make the loom. And before that loom could make cloth somebody had to raise sheep andshear them to get the wool. And before the carpenter could make thetable, somebody had to go into the forest and fell a tree, after whichsomebody had to bring that tree, cut up into planks or logs, to thecarpenter. And before he could use the lumber somebody had to make thetools with which he worked. 

I think you will understand now why I placed emphasis on the words"socially necessary. " It is not possible for the individual buyer toascertain just how much social labor is contained in a coat or atable, but their values are fixed by the competition and higglingwhich is the law of capitalism. "It jest works out so, " as an oldnegro preacher said to me once. 

I have said that competition is the law of capitalism. All politicaleconomists recognize that as true. But we have, as I have explained ina former letter, come to a point where capitalism has broken away fromcompetition in many industries. We have a state of affairs under whichthe economic laws of competitive society do not apply. Monopoly priceshave always been regarded as exceptions to economic law. 

If this technical economic discussion seems a little bit difficult, Ibeg you nevertheless to try and master it, Jonathan. It will do yougood to think out these questions. Perhaps I can explain more clearlywhat is meant by monopoly conditions being exceptional. All throughthe Middle Ages it was the custom for governments to grant monopoliesto favored subjects, or to sell them in order to raise ready money. Queen Elizabeth, for instance, granted and sold many such monopolies. 

A man who had a monopoly of something which nearly everybody had touse could fix his own price, the only limit being the people'spatience or their ability to pay. The same thing is true of patentedarticles and of monopolies granted to public service corporations. Generally, it is true, in the franchises of these corporations, nowadays, there is a price limit fixed beyond which they must not go, but it is still true that the normal competitive economic law has beenset aside by the creation of monopoly. 

When a trust is formed, or when there is a price agreement, or what ispolitely called "an understanding among gentlemen" to that effect, asimilar thing happens. We have monopoly prices. 

This is an important thing for the working class, though it issometimes forgotten. How much your wages will secure in the way ofnecessities is just as important to you as the amount of wages youget. In other words, the amount you can get in comforts andcommodities for use is just as important as the amount you can get indollars and cents. Sometimes money wages increase while real wagesdecrease. I could fill a book with statistics to show this, but I willonly quote one example. Professor Rauschenbusch cites it in hisexcellent book, _Christianity and the Social Crisis_, a book I shouldlike you to read, Jonathan. He quotes _Dun's Review_, a standardfinancial authority, to the effect that what $724 would buy in 1897 ittook $1013 to buy in 1901. 

I know that I could make your wife see the importance of this, myfriend. She would tell you that when from time to time you haveannounced that your wages were to be increased five or ten per cent. She has made plans for spending the money upon little homeimprovements, or perhaps for laying it aside for the dreaded "rainyday. " Perhaps she thought of getting a new rug, or a new sideboard forthe dining-room; or perhaps it was a piano for your daughter, who ismusical, she had set her heart on getting. The ten per cent. Increaseseemed to make it all so easy and certain! But after a little whileshe found that somehow the ten per cent. Did not bring the covetedthings; that, although she was just as careful as could be, shecouldn't save, nor get the things she hoped to get. 

Often you and I have heard the cry of trouble: "I don't know how orwhy it is, but though I get ten per cent. More wages I am no betteroff than before. "

The Socialist theory of value is all right, my friend, and has notbeen disturbed by the assaults made upon it by a host of littlecritics. But Socialists have always known that the laws of competitivesociety do not apply to monopoly, and that the monopolist has anincreased power to exploit and oppress the worker. That is one of thechief reasons why we demand that the great monopolies be transformedinto common, or social, property. 

_The fourth principle of Socialist economics is that the wages of theworkers represent only a part of the value of their labor product. Theremainder is divided among the non-producers in rent, interest andprofit. The fortunes of the rich idlers come from the unpaid-for laborof the working class. This is the great theory of "surplus value, "which economists are so fond of attacking. _

I am not going to say much about the controversy concerning thistheory, Jonathan. In the first place, you are not an economist, andthere is a great deal in the discussion which is wholly irrelevant andunprofitable; and, in the second place, you can study the question foryourself. There are excellent chapters upon the subject in _Vail'sPrinciples of Scientific Socialism_, Boudin's _The Theoretical Systemof Karl Marx_, and Hyndman's _Economics of Socialism_. You will alsofind a simple exposition of the subject in my _Socialism, A Summaryand Interpretation of Socialist Principles_. It will also be well toread _Wage-Labor and Capital_, a five cent booklet by Karl Marx. 

But you do not need to be an economist to understand the essentialprinciples of this theory of surplus value and to judge of its truth. I have never flattered you, Jonathan, as you know; I am in earnestwhen I say that I am content to leave the matter to your own judgment. I attach more importance to your decision, based upon a plain, matter-of-fact observation of actual life, than to the opinion of manya very learned economist cloistered away from the real world in amusty atmosphere of books and mental abstractions. So think it out foryourself, my friend. 

You know that when a man takes a job as a wage-worker, he enters intoa contract to give something in return for a certain amount of money. What is it that he thus sells? Not his actual labor, but his power andwill to labor. In other words, he undertakes to exert himself in amanner desired by the capitalist who employs him for so much an hour, so much a day, or so much a week as the case may be. 

Now, how are the wages fixed? What determines the amount a man getsfor his labor? There are several factors. Let us consider them one byone:

First, the man must have enough to keep himself alive and able towork. If he does not get that much he will die, or be unfit to work. Second, in order that the race may be maintained, and that there maybe a constant supply of labor, it is necessary that men as a ruleshould have families. So, as we saw in a quotation from Adam Smith inan earlier letter, the wages must, on an average, be enough to keep, not only the man himself but those dependent upon him. These are thebottom requirements of wages. 

Now, the tendency is for wages to keep somewhere near this bottomlevel. If nothing else interfered they would always tend to thatlevel. First of all, there is no scientific organization of the laborforce of the world. Sometimes the demand for labor in a particulartrade exceeds the supply, and then wages rise. Sometimes the supply isgreater than the demand, and then wages drop toward the bottom level. If the man looking for a job is so fortunate as to know that there aremany places open to him, he will not accept low wages; on the otherhand, if the employer knows that there are ten men for every job, hewill not pay high wages. So, as with the prices of things in general, supply and demand enter into the question of the price of labor in anygiven time or place. 

Then, also, by combination workingmen can sometimes raise their wages. They can bring about a sort of monopoly-price for their labor-power. It is not an absolute monopoly-price, however, for the reason that, almost invariably, there are men outside of the unions, whosecompetition has to be withstood. Also, the means of production and theaccumulated surplus belong to the capitalists so that they cangenerally starve the workers into submission, or at least compromise, in any struggle aiming at the establishment of monopoly-prices forlabor-power. 

But there is one thing the workers can never do, except by destroyingcapitalism: _they cannot get wages equal to the full value of theirproduct_. That would destroy the capitalist system, which is basedupon profit-making. All the luxury and wealth of the non-producers iswrung from the labor of the producers. You can see that for yourself, Jonathan, and I need not argue it further. 

I do not care very much whether you call the part of the wealth whichgoes to the non-producers "surplus value, " or whether you call itsomething else. The _name_ is not of great importance to us. We careonly for the reality. But I do want you to get firm hold of the simplefact that when an idler gets a dollar he has not earned, some workermust get a dollar less than he has earned. 

Don't be buncoed by the word-jugglers who tell you that the profits ofthe capitalists are the "fruits of abstinence, " or the "reward ofmanaging ability, " sometimes also called the "wages of superintendence. "

These and other attempted explanations of capitalists' profits aresimply old wives' fables, Jonathan. Let us look for a minute at thefirst of these absurd attempts to explain away the fact that profit isonly another name for unpaid-for labor. You know very well thatabstinence never yet produced anything. If I have a dollar in mypocket and I say to myself, "I will not spend this dollar: I willabstain from using it, " the dollar does not increase in any way. Itremains just a dollar and no more. If I have a loaf of bread or abottle of wine and say to myself, "I will not use this bread, or thiswine, but will keep it in the cup-board, " you know very well that Ishall not get any increase as a result of my abstinence. I do not getanything more than I actually save. 

Now, I am perfectly willing that any man shall have all that he cansave out of his own earnings. If no man had more there would be noneed of talking about "legislation to limit fortunes, " no need ofprotest against "swollen fortunes. "

But now suppose, friend Jonathan, that while I have the dollar, representing my "abstinence, " in my pocket, a man who has not a dollarcomes to me and says, "I really must have a dollar to get food for mywife and baby, or they will die. Lend me a dollar until next week andI will pay you back two dollars. " If I lend him the dollar and nextweek take his two dollars, that is what is called the reward of myabstinence. But in truth it is something quite different. It is usury. Just because I happen to have something the other fellow has not got, and which he must have, he is compelled to pay me interest. If he alsohad a dollar in his pocket, I could get no interest from him. 

It would be just the same if I had not abstained from anything. If, for example, I had found the dollar which some other careful fellowhad lost, I could still get interest upon it. Or if I had inheritedmoney from my father, it might happen that, so far from beingabstemious and thrifty, I had been most extravagant, while the fellowwho came to borrow had been very thrifty and abstemious, but stillunable to provide for his family. Yet I should make him pay meinterest. 

As a matter of fact, my friend, the rich have not abstained fromanything. They have not accumulated riches out of their savings, through abstaining from buying things. On the contrary, they havebought and enjoyed the costliest things. They have lived in finehouses, worn costly clothing, eaten the choicest food, sent their sonsand daughters to the most expensive schools and colleges. 

From all of these things the workers have abstained, Jonathan. Theyhave abstained from living in fine houses and lived in poor houses;they have abstained from wearing costly clothes and worn the cheapestand poorest clothes; they have abstained from choice food and eatenonly food that is coarse and cheap; they have abstained from sendingtheir sons and daughters to expensive schools and colleges and sentthem only to the lower grades of the public schools. If abstinencewere a source of wealth, the working people of every country would berich, for they have abstained from nearly everything that is worthwhile. 

There is one thing the rich have abstained from, however, which thepoor have indulged in freely--and that is _work_. I never heard of aman getting rich through his own labor. 

Even the inventor does not get rich by means of his own labor. Tobegin with, there is no invention which is purely an individualundertaking. I was talking the other day with one of the world's greatinventors upon this subject. He was explaining to me how he came toinvent a certain machine which has made his name famous. He explainedthat for many years men had been facing a great difficulty and otherinventors had been trying to devise some means of meeting it. He had, therefore, to begin with, the experience of thousands of men duringmany years to give him a clear idea of what was required. And that wasa great thing to start with, Jonathan. 

Secondly, he had the experiments of all the numerous other inventorsto guide him: he could profit by their failures. Not only did he knowwhat to avoid, because that great fund of others' experience, but healso got many useful ideas from the work of some of the men who wereon the right line without knowing it. "I could not have invented itif it were not for the men who went before me, " he said. 

Another point, Jonathan: In the wonderful machine the inventor wasdiscussing there are wheels and levers and springs. Somebody had toinvent the wheel, the lever and the spring before there could be amachine at all. Who was it, I wonder! Do you know who made the firstwheel, or the first lever? Of course you don't! Nobody does. Thesethings were invented thousands of years ago, when the race still livedin barbarism. Each age has simply extended their usefulness andefficiency. So it is wrong to speak of any invention as the work ofone man. Into every great invention go the experience and experimentsof countless others. 

So much for that side of the question. Now, let us look at anotherside of the question which is sometimes lost sight of. A man invents amachine: as I have shown you, it is as much the product of other men'sbrains as of his own. It is really a social product. He gets a patentupon the machine for a certain number of years, and that patent giveshim the right to say to the world "No one can use this machine unlesshe pays me a royalty. " He does not use the machine himself and keepwhat he can make in competition with others' means of production. Ifno one chooses to use his machine, then, no matter how good a thing itmay be, he gets nothing from his invention. So that even the inventoris no exception to my statement that no man ever gets rich by his ownlabor. 

The inventor is not the real inventor of the machine: he only carrieson the work which others began thousands of years ago. He takes theresults of other people's inventive genius and adds his quota. But heclaims the whole. And when he has done his work and added hiscontribution to the age-long development of mechanical modes ofproduction, he must depend again upon society, upon the labor ofothers. 

To return to the question of abstinence: I would not attempt to denythat some men have saved part of their income and by investing itsecured the beginnings of great fortunes. I know that is so. But thefortunes came out of the labor of other people. Somebody had toproduce the wealth, that is quite evident. And if the person who gotit was not that somebody, the producer, it is as clear as noonday thatthe producer must have produced something he did not get. 

No, my friend, the notion that profits are the reward of abstinenceand thrift is stupid in the extreme. The people who enjoy theprofit-incomes of the world, are, with few exceptions, people who havenot been either abstemious or thrifty. 

But perhaps you will say that, while this may be true of the peoplewho to-day are getting enormous incomes from rent, interest or profit, we must go further back; that we must go back to the beginning ofthings when their fathers or their grandfathers began by investingtheir savings. 

To that I have no objection whatever, provided only that you arewilling to go back, not merely to the beginning of the individualfortune, but to the beginning of the system. If your grandfather, orgreat-grandfather, had been what is termed a thrifty and industriousman, working hard, living poor, working his wife and little ones inone long grind, all in order to save money to invest in business, youmight now be a rich man; that is, supposing you were heir to theirpossessions. 

That is not at all certain, for it is a fact that most of the men whohave hoarded their individual savings and then invested them have beenruined and fooled. In the case of our railroads, for example, thegreat majority of the early investors of savings went bankrupt. Theywere swallowed up by the bigger fish, Jonathan. But assume itotherwise, assume that the grandfather of some rich man of the presentday laid the foundation of the family fortune in the manner described, don't you see that the system of robbing the worker of his product wasalready established; that you must go back to the beginning of the_system_?

And when you trace capital back to its origin, my friend, you willalways come to war or robbery. You can trace it back to the forcibletaking of the land away from the people. When the machine came, bringing with it an industrial revolution, it was by the wealthy andthe ruthless that the machine was owned, not by the poor toilers. Inother words, my friends, there was simply a continuance of the oldrule of a class of overlords, under another name. 

If the abstinence theory is foolish, even more foolish is the notionthat profits are the reward of managing ability, the wages ofsuperintendence. Under primitive capitalism there was somejustification for this view. 

It was impossible to deny that the owner of a factory did manage it, that he was the superintendent, entitled as such to some reward. Itwas easy enough to say that he got a disproportionate share, but whowas to decide just what his fair share would be?

But when capitalism developed and became impersonal that idea of thenature of profits was killed. When companies were organized theyemployed salaried managers, _whose salaries were paid before profitswere reckoned at all_. To-day I can own shares in China and Australiawhile living all the time in the United States. Even though I havenever been to those countries, nor seen the property I am ashareholder in, I shall get my profits just the same. A lunatic mayown shares in a thousand companies and, though he is confined in amadhouse, his shares of stock will still bring a profit to hisguardians in his name. 

When Mr. Rockefeller was summoned to court in Chicago last year, hestated on oath that he could not tell anything about the business ofthe Standard Oil Company, not having had anything to do with thebusiness for several years past. But he gets his profits just thesame, showing how foolish it is to talk of profits as being the rewardof managing ability and the wages of superintendence. 

Now, Jonathan, I have explained to you pretty fully what Socialism iswhen considered as a philosophy of social evolution. I have alsoexplained to you what Socialism is when considered as a system ofeconomy. I could sum up both very briefly by saying that Socialism isa philosophy of social evolution which teaches that the great forcewhich has impelled the race onward, determining the rate and directionof social progress, has come from man's tools and the mode ofproduction in general: that we are now living in a period oftransition, from capitalism to Socialism, motived by the economicforces of our time. Socialism is a system of economics, also. Itssubstance may be summed up in a sentence as follows: Labor applied tonatural resources is the source of the wealth of capitalistic society, but the greatest part of the wealth produced goes to non-producers, the producers getting only a part, in the form of wages--hence theparadox of wealthy non-producers and penurious producers. 

I have explained to you also that Socialism is not a scheme. Thereremains still to be explained, however, another aspect of Socialism, of more immediate interest and importance and interest. I must try toexplain Socialism as an ideal, as a forecast of the future. You wantto know, having traced the evolution of society to a point whereeverything seems to be in transition, where a change seems imminent, just what the nature of that change will be. 

I must leave that for another letter, friend Jonathan, for this isover-long already. I shall not try to paint a picture of the futurefor you, to tell you in detail what that future will be like. I do notknow: no man can know. He who pretends to know is either a fool or aknave, my friend. But there are some things which, I believe, we maypremise with reasonable certainty These things I want to discuss in mynext letter. Meantime, there are lots of things in this letter tothink about. 

_And I want you to think, Jonathan Edwards!_

IX

WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

(_Continued_)

 And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. --_Isaiah. _

 But we are not going to attain Socialism at one bound. The transition is going on all the time, and the important thing for us, in this explanation, is not to paint a picture of the future--which in any case would be useless labor--but to forecast a practical programme for the intermediate period, to formulate and justify measures that shall be applicable at once, and that will serve as aids to the new Socialist birth. --_W. Liebknecht. _

At the head of this letter I have copied two passages to which I wantyou to give particular attention, Jonathan. The first consists of apart of a very beautiful word-picture, in which the splendid oldHebrew prophet described his vision of a perfect social state. In hisUtopia it would no longer be true to speak of Nature as being red oftooth and claw. Even the lion would eat straw like the ox, so thatthere might not be suffering caused by one animal preying uponanother. Whenever I read that chapter, Jonathan, I sit watching thesmoke-wreaths curl out of my pipe and float away, and they seem tobear me with them to a land of seductive beauty. I should like to livein a land where there was never a cry of pain, where never drop ofblood stained the ground. 

There have been lots of Utopias besides that of the old Hebrewprophet. Plato, the great philosopher, wrote _The Republic_ to giveform to his dream of an ideal society. Sir Thomas More, the greatEnglish statesman and martyr, outlined his ideal of social relationsin a book called _Utopia_. Mr. Bellamy, in our own day, has given ushis picture of social perfection in _Looking Backward_. There havebeen many others who, not content with writing down their ideas ofwhat society ought to be like, have tried to establish idealconditions. They have established colonies, communities, sects andbrotherhoods, all in the earnest hope of being able to attain theperfect social state. 

The greatest of these experimental Utopians, Robert Owen, tried tocarry out his ideas in this country. It would be well worth your whileto read the account of his life and work in George Browning Lockwood'sbook, _The New Harmony Communities_. Owen tried to get Congress toadopt his plans for social regeneration. He addressed the members ofboth houses, taking with him models, plans, diagrams and statistics, showing exactly how things would be, according to his idea, in theideal world. In Europe he went round to all the reigning sovereignsbegging them to adopt his plans. 

He wanted common ownership of everything with equal distribution;money would be abolished; the marriage system would be done away withand "free love" established; children would belong to and be rearedby the community. Our concern with him at this point is that hecalled himself a Socialist and was, I believe, the first to use thatword. 

But the Socialists of to-day have nothing in common with such Utopianideas as those I have described. We all recognize that Robert Owen wasa beautiful spirit, one of the world's greatest humanitarians. He was, like the prophet Isaiah, a dreamer, a visionary. He had no idea of thephilosophy of social evolution upon which modern Socialism rests; noidea of its system of economics. He saw the evils of private ownershipand competition in the fiercest period of competitive industry, andwanted to replace them with co-operation and public ownership. But hispoint of view was that he had been inspired with a great idea, thanksto which he could save the world from all its misery. He did notrealize that social changes are produced by slow evolution. 

One of the principal reasons why I have dwelt at this length upon Owenis that he is a splendid representative of the great Utopia builders. The fact that he was probably the first man to use the word Socialismadds an element of interest to his personality also. I wanted to putUtopian Socialism before you so clearly that you would be able tocontrast it at once with modern, scientific Socialism--the Socialismof Marx and Engels, upon which the great Socialist parties of theworld are based; the Socialism that is alive in the world to-day. Theyare as opposite as the poles. It is important that you should graspthis fact very clearly, for many of the criticisms of Socialism madeto-day apply only to the old utopian ideals and do not touch modernSocialism at all. In the letter you wrote me at the beginning of thisdiscussion there are many questions which you could not have askedhad you not conceived of Socialism as a scheme to be adopted. 

People are constantly attacking Socialism upon these false grounds. They remind me of a story I heard in Wales many years ago. In one ofthe mountain districts a miner returned from his work one afternoonand found that his wife had bought a picture of the crucifixion ofJesus and hung it against the wall. He had never heard of Jesus, sothe story goes, and his wife had to explain the meaning of thepicture. She told the story in her simple way, laying much stress uponthe fact that "the wicked Jews" had killed Jesus. But she forgot tosay that it all happened about two thousand years ago. 

Now, it happened not long after that the miner saw a Jew peddler cometo the door of his cottage. The thought of the awful suffering ofJesus and his own Welsh hatred of oppression sufficed to fill him withresentment toward the poor peddler. He at once began to beat theunfortunate fellow in a terribly savage manner. When the peddler, between gasps, demanded to know why he had been so ill-treated, theminer dragged him into his kitchen and pointed to the picture of thecrucifixion. "See what you did to that poor man, our Lord!" hethundered. To which the Jew very naturally responded: "But, my friend, that was not me. That was two thousand years ago!" The reply seemed todaze the miner for a moment. Then he said: "Two thousand years! Twothousand years! Why, I only heard of it last week!"

It is just as silly to attack the Socialism of to-day for the ideasheld by the earlier utopian Socialists as beating that poor Jewpeddler was. 

Now then, friend Jonathan, turn back and read the second of thepassages I have placed at the head of this letter. It is from thewritings of one of the greatest of modern Socialists, the man who wasthe great political leader of the Socialist movement in Germany, Wilhelm Liebknecht. 

You will notice that he says the transition to Socialism is going onall the time; that we are not to attain Socialism at one bound; thatit is useless to attempt to paint pictures of the future; that we canforecast an immediate programme and aid the Socialist birth. Thesestatements are quite in harmony with the outline of the Socialistphilosophy of the evolution of society contained in my last letter. 

So, if you ask me to tell you just what the world will be like whenall people call themselves Socialists except a few reformers and"fanatics, " earnest pioneers of further changes, I must answer youthat I do not know. How they will dress, what sort of pictures artistswill paint, what sort of poems poets will write, or what sort ofnovels men and women will read, I do not know. What the income of eachfamily will be I cannot tell you, any more than I can tell you whetherthere will be any intercommunication between the inhabitants of thisplanet and of Mars; whether there will be an ambassador from Mars atthe national capital. 

I do not expect that the lion will eat straw like the ox; I do notexpect that people will be perfect. I do not suppose that men andwomen will have become so angelic that there will never be any crime, suffering, anger, pain or sorrow; I do not expect disease to beforever banished from life in the Socialist regime. Still less do Iexpect that mechanical genius will have been so perfected that humanlabor will be no longer necessary; that perpetual motion will havebeen harnessed to great indestructible machines and work become athing of the past. That dream of the German dreamer, Etzler, willnever be realized, I hope. 

I suppose that, under Socialism, there will be some men and women farwiser than others. There may be a few fools left! I suppose that somewill be far juster and kinder than others. There may be some selfishbrutes left with a good deal of hoggishness in their nature! I supposethat some will have to make great mistakes and endure the tragedieswhich men and women have endured through all the ages. The love ofsome men will die out, breaking the hearts of some women, I suppose, and there will be women whose love will bring them to ruin and death. I should not like to think of jails and brothels existing underSocialism, Jonathan, but for all I know they may exist. Whether therewill be churches and paid ministers under Socialism, I do not know. Ido not pretend to know. 

I suppose that, under Socialism, there will be some people who will bedissatisfied. I hope so! Men and women will want to move to a higherplane of life, I hope. What they will call that plane I do not know;what it will be like I do not know. I suppose they will be opposed andpersecuted; that they will be mocked and derided, called "fanatics"and "dreamers" and lots of other ugly and unpleasant names. Lots ofpeople will want to stay just as they are, and violently oppose themen who say, "Let us move on. " But I don't believe that any saneperson will want to go back to the old conditions--back to ourconditions of to-day. 

You see, I have killed lots of your objections already, my friend!

Now let me tell you briefly what Socialists want, and what theybelieve will take place--_must_ take place. In the first place, theremust be political changes to make complete our political democracy. You may be surprised at this, Jonathan. Perhaps you are accustomed tothink of our political system as being the perfect expression ofpolitical democracy. Let us see. 

Compared with some other countries, like Russia, Germany and Spain, for example, this is a free country, politically; a model ofdemocracy. We have adult suffrage--_for the men_! In only a few statesare our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters allowed to vote. In mostof the states the best women, and the most intelligent, are placed onthe political level of the criminal and the maniac. They must obey thelaws, their interests in the well-being and good government of thenation are as vital as those of our sex. But they are deniedrepresentation in the councils of the nation, denied a voice in theaffairs of the nation. They are not citizens. We have a class belowthat of the citizens in this country, a class based upon sexdistinctions. 

To make our political system thoroughly representative and democratic, we must extend political power to the women of the nation. Furtherthan that, we must bring all the means of government more directlyunder the people's will. 

In our industrial system we must bring the great trusts under the ruleof the people. They must be owned and controlled by all for all. I saythat we "must" do this, because there is no other way by which thepresent evils may be remedied. Everybody who is not blinded to thereal situation by vested interest must recognize that the presentconditions are intolerable--and becoming worse and more intolerableevery day. A handful of men have the nation's destiny in their greedyfingers and they gamble with it for their own profit. Something mustbe done. 

But what? We cannot go back if we would. I have shown you prettyclearly, I think, that if it were possible to undo the chain ofevolution and to go back to primitive capitalism, with its competitivespirit, the development to monopoly would begin all over again. It isan inexorable law that competition breeds monopoly. So we cannot goback. 

What, then, is the outlook, the forward view? So far as I know, Jonathan, there are only two propositions for meeting the evilconditions of monopoly, other than the perfectly silly one of "goingback to competition. " They are (1) Regulation of the trusts; (2)Socialization of the trusts. 

Now, the first means that we should leave these great monopolies inthe hands of their present owners and directors, but enact variouslaws curtailing their powers to exploit the people. Laws are to bepassed limiting the capital they may employ, the amount of profitsthey may make, and so on. But nobody explains how they expect to getthe laws obeyed. There are plenty of laws now aiming at regulation ofthe trusts, but they are quite futile and inoperative. First we spendan enormous amount of money and energy getting laws passed; then wespend much more money and energy trying to get them enforced--and failafter all!

I submit to your good judgment, Jonathan, that so long as we have arelatively small class in the nation owning these great monopoliesthrough corporations there can be no peace. It will be to the interestof the corporations to look after their profits, to prevent theenactment of legislation aimed to restrict them and to evade the lawas much as possible. They will naturally use their influence to securelaws favorable to themselves, with the inevitable result of corruptionin the legislative branches of the government. Legislators will bebought like mackerel in the market, as Mr. Lawson so bluntly expressesit. Efforts will be made to corrupt the judiciary also and the powerof the entire capitalist class will be directed to the capture of ourwhole system of government. Even more than to-day, we will have thegovernment of the people by a privileged part of the people in theinterests of the privileged part. 

You must not forget, my friend, that the corruption of the governmentabout which we hear so much from time to time is always in theinterests of private capitalism. If there is graft in some publicdepartment, there is an outcry that graft and public business gotogether. As a matter of fact the graft is in the interests of privatecapitalism. 

When legislators sell their votes it is never for public enterprises. I have never heard of a city which was seeking the power to establishany public service raising a "yellow dog fund" with which to bribelegislators. On the other hand, I never yet heard of a private companyseeking a franchise without doing so more or less openly. Regulationof the trusts will still leave the few masters of the many, andcorruption still gnawing at the vitals of the nation. 

We must _own_ the trusts, Jonathan, and transform the monopolies bywhich the few exploit and oppress the many into social monopolies forthe good of all. Sooner or later, either by violent or peaceful means, this will be done. It is for the working-class to say whether it shallbe sooner or later, whether it shall be accomplished through thestrife and bitterness of war or by the peaceful methods of politicalconquest. 

We have seen that the root of the evil in modern society is the profitmotive. Socialism means the production of things for use instead offor profit. Not at one stroke, perhaps, but patiently, wisely andsurely, all the things upon which people in common depend will be madecommon property. 

Take notice of that last paragraph, Jonathan. I don't say that _all_property must be owned in common, but only the things upon whichpeople in common depend; the things which all must use if they are tolive as they ought, and as they have a right to live. We have asplendid illustration of social property in our public streets. Theseare necessary to all. It would be intolerable if one man should ownthe streets of a city and charge all other citizens for the use ofthem. So streets are built out of the common funds, maintained out ofthe common funds, freely used by all in common, and the poorest manhas as much right to use them as the richest man. In the nutshell thisstates the argument of Socialism. 

People sometimes ask how it would be possible for the government underSocialism to decide which children should be educated to be writers, musicians and artists and which to be street cleaners and laborers;how it would be possible to have a government own everything, decidingwhat people should wear, what food should be produced, and so on. 

The answer to all such questions is that Socialism would not need todo anything of the kind. There would be no need for the government toattempt such an impossible task. When people raise such questions theyare thinking of the old and dead utopianism, of the schemes whichonce went under the name of Socialism. But modern Socialism is aprinciple, not a scheme. The Socialist movement of to-day is notinterested in carrying out a great design, but in seeing society getrid of its drones and making it impossible for one class to exploitanother class. 

Under Socialism, then, it would not be at all necessary for thegovernment to own everything; for private property to be destroyed. For instance, the State could have no possible interest in denying theright of a man to own his home and to make that home as beautiful ashe pleased. It is perfectly absurd to suppose that it would benecessary to "take away the poor man's cottage, " about which someopponents of Socialism shriek. It would not be necessary to take away_anybody's_ home. 

On the contrary, Socialism would most likely enable all who so desiredto own their own homes. At present only thirty-one per cent. Of thefamilies of America live in homes which they own outright. More thanhalf of the people live in rented homes. They are obliged to give uppractically a fourth part of their total income for mere shelter. 

Socialism would not prevent a man from owning a horse and wagon, sinceit would be possible for him to use that horse and wagon withoutcompelling the citizens to pay tribute to him. On the other hand, private ownership of a railway would be impossible, because railwayscould not be indefinitely and easily multiplied, and the owners ofsuch a railway would necessarily have to run it for profit. 

Under Socialism such public services as the transportation anddelivery of parcels would be in the hands of the people, and not inthe hands of monopolists as at present. The aim would be to serve thepeople to the best possible advantage, and not to make profit for thefew. But if any citizen objected and wanted to carry his own parcelfrom New York to Boston, for example, it is not to be supposed for aninstant that the State would try to prevent him. 

Under Socialism the great factories would belong to the people; thetrusts would be socialized. But this would not stop a man from workingfor himself in a small workshop if he wanted to; it would not preventa number of workers from forming a co-operative workshop and sharingthe products of their labor. By reason of the fact that the greatproductive and distributive agencies which are entirely social weresocially owned and controlled--railways, mines, telephones, telegraphs, express service, and the great factories of variouskinds--the Socialist State would be able to set the standards of wagesand industrial conditions for all the rest remaining in private hands. 

Let me explain what I mean, Jonathan: Under Socialism, let us suppose, the State undertakes the production of shoes by socializing the shoetrust. It takes over the great factories and runs them. Its object isnot to make shoes for profit, however, but for use. To make shoes asgood as possible, as cheaply as good shoes can be made, and to seethat the people making the shoes get the best possible conditions oflabor and the highest possible wages--as near as possible to the netvalue of their product, that is. 

Some people, however, object to wearing factory-made shoes; they wantshoes of a special kind, to suit their individual fancy. There arealso, we will suppose, some shoemakers who do not like to work in theState factories, preferring to make shoes by hand to suit individualtastes. Now, if the people who want the handmade shoes are willing topay the shoemakers as much as they could earn in the socializedfactories no reasonable objection could be urged against it. If theywould not pay that amount, or near it, the shoemakers, it isreasonable to suppose, would not want to work for them. It wouldadjust itself. 

Under Socialism the land would belong to the people. By this I do notmean that the private _use_ of land would be forbidden, because thatwould be impossible. There would be no object in taking away the smallfarms from their owners. On the contrary, the number of such farmsmight be greatly increased. There are many people to-day who wouldlike to have small farms if they could only get a fair chance, if therailroads and trusts of one kind and another were not always suckingall the juice from the orange. Socialism would make it possible forthe farmer to get what he could produce, without having to divide upwith the railroad companies, the owners of grain elevators, money-lenders, and a host of other parasites. 

I have no doubt, Jonathan, that under Socialism there would be manyprivately-worked farms. Nor have I any doubt whatever that the farmerswould be much better off than under existing conditions. For to-daythe farmer is not the happy, independent man he is sometimes supposedto be. Very often his lot is worse than that of the city wage-earner. At any rate, the money return for his labor is often less. You knowthat a great many farmers do not own their farms: they are mortgagedand the farmer has to pay an average interest of six per cent. Uponthe mortgage. 

Now, let us look for a moment at such a farmer's conditions, as shownby the census statistics. According to the census of 1900, there werein the United States 5, 737, 372 farms, each averaging about 146 acres. The total value of farm products in 1899 was $4, 717, 069, 973. Now then, if we divide the value of the products by the number of farms, we canget the average annual product of each farm--about $770. 

Out of that $770 the farmer has to pay a hired laborer for at leastsix months in the year, let us say. At twenty-five dollars a month, with an added eight dollars a month for his board, this costs thefarmer $198, so that his income now stands at $572. Next, he must payinterest upon his mortgage at six per cent. Per annum. Now, theaverage value of the farms in 1899 was $3, 562 and six per cent. Onthat amount would be about $213. Subtract that sum from the $572 whichthe farmer has after paying his hired man and you have left about$356. But as the farms are, not mortgaged to their full value, supposewe reduce the interest one half--the farmer's income remains now $464. 

Now, as a general thing, the farmer and his wife have to work equallyhard, and they must work every day in the year. The hired laborer gets$150 and his board for six months, at the rate of $300 and board peryear. The farmer and his wife get only $232 a year each and _part_ oftheir board, for what is not produced on the farm they must _buy_. 

Under Socialism the farmer could own his own farm to all intents andpurposes. While the final title might be vested in the government, thefarmer would have a title to the use of the farm which no one coulddispute or take from him. If he had to borrow money he would do itfrom the government and would not be charged extortionate rates ofinterest as he is now. He would not have to pay railroad companies'profits, since the railways being owned by all for all and not runfor profit, would be operated upon a basis of the cost of service. The farmer would not be exploited by the packers and middlemen, thesefunctions being assumed by the people through their government, uponthe same basis of service to all, things being done for the use andwelfare of all instead of for the profit of the few. Under Socialism, moreover, the farmer could get his machinery from the governmentfactories at a price which included no profits for idle shareholders. 

I am told, Jonathan, that at the present time it costs about $24 tomake a reaper which the farmer must pay $120 for. It costs $40 to sellthe machine which was made for $24, the expense being incurred bywasteful and useless advertising, salesmen's commissions, travellingexpenses, and so on. The other $54 which the farmer must pay goes tothe idlers in the form of rent, interest and profit. 

Socialism, then, could very well leave the farmer in full possessionof his farm and improve his position by making it possible for him toget the full value of his labor-products without having to divide upwith a host of idlers and non-producers. Socialism would not deny anyman the use of the land, but it would take away the right of non-usersto reap the fruits of the toil of users. It would deny the right ofthe Astor family to levy a tax upon the people of New York, amountingto millions of dollars annually, for the privilege of living there. The Astors have such a vast business collecting this tax that theyhave to employ an agent whose salary is equal to that of the Presidentof the United States and a large army of employees. 

Socialism would deny the right of the English Duke of Rutland and LordBeresford to hold millions of acres of land in Texas, and to levy atax upon Americans for its use. It would deny the right of theBritish Land Company to tax Kansans for the use of the 300, 000 acresowned by the company; the right of the Duke of Sutherland and SirEdward Reid to tax Americans for the use of the millions of acres theyown in Florida; of Lady Gordon and the Marquis of Dalhousie to anyright to tax people in Mississippi. The idea that a few people can ownthe land upon which all people must live in any country is a relic ofslavery, friend Jonathan. 

So you see, my friend, Socialism does not mean that everything is tobe divided up equally among the people every little while. That iseither a fool's notion or the wilful misrepresentation of a liar. Socialism does not mean that there is to be a great bureaucraticgovernment owning everything and controlling everybody. It does notmean doing away with private initiative and making of humanity a greatherd, everybody wearing the same kind of clothes, eating the same kindand quantities of food, and having no personal liberties. It simplymeans that all men and women should have equal opportunities; to makeit impossible for one man to exploit another, except at that other'sfree will. It does not mean doing away with individual liberty andreducing all to a dead level. That is what is at present happening tothe great majority of people, and Socialism comes to unbind the soulof man--to make mankind free. 

I think, Jonathan, that you ought to have a fairly clear notion now ofwhat Socialism is and what it is not. You ought to be able now todistinguish between the social properties which Socialism wouldestablish and the private properties it could have no object in takingaway, which it would rather foster and protect. I have tried simply toillustrate the principle for you, so that you can think the matterout for yourself. It will be a very good thing for you to commit thisrule to memory. --

_Under Socialism, the State would own and control only those thingswhich could not be owned and controlled by individuals without givingthem an undue advantage over the community, by enabling them toextract profits from the labor of others. _

But be sure that you do not make the common mistake of confusinggovernment ownership with Socialism, friend Jonathan, as so manypeople are in the habit of doing. In Prussia the government owns therailways. But the government does not represent the interests of allthe people. It is the government of a nation by a class. That is notthe same thing as the socialization of the railways, as you will see. In Russia the government owns some of the railways and has a monopolyof the liquor traffic. But these things are not democratically ownedand managed in the common interest. Russia is an autocracy. Everythingis run for the benefit of the governing class, the Czar and a host ofbureaucrats. That is not Socialism. In this country we have a nearerapproach to democracy in our government, and our post-office system, for example, is a much nearer approach to the realization of theSocialist principle. 

But even in this country, government ownership and Socialism are notthe same thing. For our government is a class government too. There isthe same inequality of wages and conditions as under capitalistownership: many of the letter carriers and other employees aremiserably underpaid, and the service is notoriously handicapped byprivate interests. Whether it is in Russia under the Czar and hisbureaucrats, Germany with its monarchial system cumbered with theremnants of feudalism, or the United States with its manhood suffragefoolishly used to elect the interests of the capitalist class, government ownership can only be at best a framework for Socialism. Itmust wait for the Socialist spirit to be infused into it. 

Socialists want government ownership, Jonathan, but they don't want itunless the people are to own the government. When the governmentrepresents the interests of all the people it will use the things itowns and controls for the common good. _And that will be Socialism inpractice, my friend. _

X

OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM CONSIDERED

 I feel sure that the time will come when people will find it difficult to believe that a rich community such as our's, having such command over external nature, could have submitted to live such a mean, shabby, dirty life as we do. --_William Morris. _

 Morality and political economy unite in repelling the individual who consumes without producing. --_Balzac. _

 The restraints of Communism would be freedom in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race. --_John Stuart Mill. _

I promised at the beginning of this discussion, friend Jonathan, thatI would try to answer the numerous objections to Socialism which youset forth in your letter, and I cannot close the discussion withoutfulfilling that promise. 

Many of the objections I have already disposed of and need not, therefore, take further notice of them here. The remaining ones Ipropose to answer--except where I can show you that an answer isunnecessary. For you have answered some of the objections yourself, myfriend, though you were not aware of the fact. I find in looking overthe long list of your objections that one excludes another very often. You seem, like a great many other people, to have set down all theobjections you had ever heard, or could think of at the time, regardless of the fact that they could not by any possibility be allwell founded; that if some were wise and weighty others must befoolish and empty. Without altering the form of your objections, simply rearranging their order, I propose to set forth a few of thecontradictions in your objections. That is fair logic, Jonathan. 

First you say that you object to Socialism because it is "the clamorof envious men to take by force what does not belong to them. " That isa very serious objection, if true. But you say a little further on inyour letter that "Socialism is a noble and beautiful dream which humanbeings are not perfect enough to realize in actual life. " Either oneof the objections _may_ be valid, Jonathan, but both of them cannotbe. Socialism cannot be both a noble and a beautiful dream, toosublime for human realization, and at the same time a sordid envy--canit?

You say that "Socialists are opposed to law and order and want to doaway with all government, " and then you say in another objection that"Socialists want to make us all slaves to the government by puttingeverything and everybody under government control. " It happens thatyou are wrong in both assertions, but you can see for yourself thatyou couldn't possibly be right in both of them--can't you?

You object that under Socialism "all would be reduced to the same deadlevel. " That is a very serious objection, too, but it cannot be wellfounded unless your other objection, that "under Socialism a fewpoliticians would get all the power and most of the wealth, making allthe people their slaves" is without foundation. Both objections cannothold--can they?

You say that "Socialists are visionaries with cut and dried schemesthat look well on paper, but the world has never paid any attentionto schemes for reorganizing society, " and then you object that "theSocialists have no definite plans for what they propose to do, and howthey mean to do it; that they indulge in vague principles only. " And Iask you again, friend Jonathan, do you think that both theseobjections can be sound?

You object that "Socialism is as old as the world; has been tried manytimes and always failed. " If that were true it would be a very seriousobjection to Socialism, of course. But is it true? In another placeyou object that "Socialism has never been tried and we don't know howit would work. " You see, my friend, you can make either objection youchoose, but not both. Either one _may_ be right, but _both_ cannot be. 

Now, these are only a few of the long list of your objections whichare directly contradictory and mutually exclusive, my friend. Some ofthem I have already answered directly, the others I have answeredindirectly. Therefore, I shall do no more here and now than brieflysummarize the Socialist answer to them. 

Socialists do propose that society as a whole should take and use forthe common good some things which a few now own, things which "belong"to them by virtue of laws which set the interests of the few above thecommon good. But that is a very different thing from "the clamor ofenvious men to take what does not belong to them. " It is no more to beso described than taxation, for example is. Socialism is a beautifuldream in one sense. Men who see the misery and despair produced bycapitalism think with joy of the days to come when the misery anddespair are replaced by gladsomeness and hope. That _is_ a dream, butno Socialist rests upon the dream merely: the hope of the Socialist isin the very material fact of the economic development fromcompetition to monopoly; in the breakdown of capitalism itself. 

You have probably learned by this time that Socialism does not meaneither doing away with all government or making the government masterof everything. Later, I want to return to the subject, and to thecharge that it would reduce all to a dull level. I shall not wastetime answering the objections that it is a scheme and that it is not ascheme, further than I have already answered them. And I am not goingto waste your time arguing at length the folly of saying thatSocialism has been tried and proved a failure. The Socialism of to-dayhas nothing to do with the thousands of Utopian schemes which men havetried. Before the modern Socialist movement came into existence, during hundreds of years, men and women tried to realize socialequality by forming communities and withdrawing from the ordinary lifeof the world. Some of these communities, mostly of a religious nature, such as the Shakers and the Perfectionists, attained some measure ofsuccess and lasted a number of years, but most of them lasted only ashort time. It is folly to say that Socialism has ever been triedanywhere at any time. 

And now, friend Jonathan, I want to consider some of the more vitaland important objections to Socialism made in your letter. You objectto Socialism

 Because its advocates use violent speech Because it is "the same as Anarchism" Because it aims to destroy the family and the home Because it is opposed to religion Because it would do away with personal liberty Because it would reduce all to one dull level Because it would destroy the incentive to progress Because it is impossible unless we can change human nature. 

These are all your objections, Jonathan, and I am going to try tosuggest answers to them. 

(1) It is true that Socialists sometimes use very violent language. Like all earnest and enthusiastic men who are possessed by a great andoverwhelming sense of wrong and needless suffering, they sometimes uselanguage that is terrible in its vehemence; their speech is sometimesfull of bitter scorn and burning indignation. It is also true thattheir speech is sometimes rough and uncultured, shocking the sensitiveear, but I am sure you will agree with me that the working man orwoman who, never having had the advantage of education and refinedenvironment, feels the burden of the days that are or the inspirationof better days to come, is entitled to be heard. So I am not going toapologize for the rough and uncultured speech. 

And I am not going to apologize for the violent speech. It would bebetter, of course, if all the advocates of Socialism could master thedifficult art of stating their case strongly and without compromise, but without bitterness and without unnecessary offense to others. Butit is not easy to measure speech in the denunciation of immeasurablewrong, and some of the greatest utterances in history have been hard, bitter, vehement words torn from agonized hearts. It is true thatSocialists now and then use violent language, but no Socialist--unlesshe is so overwrought as to be momentarily irresponsible--_advocatesviolence_. The great urge and passion of Socialism is for the peacefultransformation of society. 

I have heard a few overwrought Socialists, all of them gentle andgenerous comrades, incapable of doing harm to any living creature, inbursts of tempestuous indignation use language which seemed to incitetheir hearers to violence, but those who heard them understood thatthey were borne away by their feelings. I have never heard Socialistsadvocate violence toward any human beings in cold-bloodeddeliberation. But I _have_ heard capitalists and the defenders ofcapitalism advocate violence toward Socialists in cold-bloodeddeliberation. I have seen in Socialist papers upon a few occasionsviolent utterances which I deplored, but never such advocacy ofviolence as I have read in newspapers opposed to Socialism. Here, forexample, are some extracts from an editorial which appeared January, 1908, in the columns of the _Gossip_, of Goldfield, Nevada:

 "A cheaper and more satisfactory method of dealing with this labor trouble in Goldfield last spring would have been to have taken half a dozen of the Socialist leaders in the Miners' Union and hanged them all to telegraph poles. 

 "SPEAKING DISPASSIONATELY, AND WITHOUT ANIMUS, it seems clear to us after many months of reflection, that YOU COULDN'T MAKE A MISTAKE IN HANGING A SOCIALIST. 

 "HE IS ALWAYS BETTER DEAD. 

 "He, breathing peace, breathing order, breathing goodwill, fairness to all and moderation, is always the man with the dynamite. He is the trouble-maker, and the trouble-breeder. 

 "To fully appreciate him you must live where he abounds. 

 "In the Western Federation of Miners he is that plentiful legacy left us from the teachings of Eugene V. Debs, hero of the Chicago Haymarket Riots. 

 "ALWAYS HANG A SOCIALIST. NOT BECAUSE HE'S A DEEP THINKER, BUT BECAUSE HE'S A BAD ACTOR. "

I could fill many pages with extracts almost as bad as the above, alltaken from capitalist papers, Jonathan. But for our purpose one is asgood as a thousand. I want you to read the papers carefully with aneye to their class character. When the Goldfield paper printed theforegoing open incitement to murder, the community was alreadydisturbed by a great strike and the President of the United States hadsent federal troops to Goldfield in the interest of the master class. Suppose that under similar circumstances a Socialist paper had comeout and said in big type that people "couldn't make a mistake inhanging a capitalist, " that capitalists are "always better dead. "Suppose that any Socialist paper urged the murder of Republicans andDemocrats in the same way, do you think the paper would have beentolerated? That the editor would have escaped jail? Don't you knowthat if such a statement had been published by any Socialist paper thewhole country would have been roused, that press and pulpit would havedenounced it?

Socialists are opposed to violence. They appeal to brains and not tobludgeons; they trust in ballots and not in bullets. The violence ofspeech with which they are charged is not the advocacy of violence, but unmeasured and impassioned denunciation of a cruel and brutalsystem. Not long ago I heard a clergyman denouncing Socialists fortheir "violent language. " Poor fellow! He was quite unconscious thathe was more bitter in his invective than the men he attacked. Ofcourse Socialists use bitter and burning language--but not more bitterthan was used by the great Hebrew prophets in their sterndenunciations; not more bitter than was used by Jesus and hisdisciples; not more bitter than was used by Martin Luther and othergreat leaders of the Reformation; not more bitter than was used byGarrison and the other Abolitionists. Men with vital messages cannotalways use soft words, Jonathan. 

(2) Socialism is not "the same as Anarchism, " my friend, but its veryopposite. The only connection between them is that they are agreedupon certain criticisms of present society. In all else they are asopposite as the poles. The difference lies not merely in the fact thatmost Anarchists have advocated physical violence, for there are someAnarchists who are as much opposed to physical violence as you or I, Jonathan, and it is only fair and just that we should recognize thefact. It has always seemed to me that Anarchism logically leads tophysical force by individuals against individuals, but, logical or no, there are many Anarchists who are gentle spirits, holding all lifesacred and abhorring violence and assassination. When there are somany ready to be unjust to them, we can afford to be just to theAnarchists, even if we do not agree with them, Jonathan. 

Sometimes an attempt is made by Socialists to explain the differencebetween themselves and Anarchists by saying that Anarchists want todestroy all government, while Socialists want to extend government andbring everything under its control; that Anarchists want no laws, while Socialists want more laws. But that is not an intelligentstatement of the difference. We Socialists don't particularly desireto extend the functions of government; we are not so enamoured of lawsthat we want more of them. Quite the contrary is true, in fact. If wehad a Socialist government to-morrow in this country, one of the firstand most important of its tasks would be to repeal a great many of theexisting laws. 

Then there are some Socialists who try to explain the differencebetween Socialism and Anarchism by saying that the Anarchists aresimply Socialists of a very advanced type; that society must firstpass through a period of Socialism, in which laws will be necessary, before it can enter upon Anarchism, a state in which every man will beso pure and so good that he can be a law unto himself, no other formof law being necessary. But that does not settle the difficulty. Ithink you will see, friend Jonathan, that in order to have such asociety in which without laws or penal codes, or government of anykind, men and women lived happily together, it would be necessary forevery member to cultivate a social sense, a sense of responsibility tosociety as a whole. Each member of society would have to become sothoroughly socialized as to make the interests of society as a wholehis chief concern in life. And such a society would be simply aSocialist society perfectly developed, not an Anarchist society. Itwould be a Socialist society simply because it would be dominated bythe essential principle of Socialism--the idea of solidarity, ofcommon interest. 

The basis of Anarchism is utopian individualism. Just as the oldutopian dreamers who tried to "establish" Socialism through the mediumof numerous "Colonies, " took the abstract idea of equality and made ittheir ideal, so the Anarchist sets up the abstract idea of individualliberty. The true difference between Socialism and Anarchism is thatthe Socialist sets the social interest, the good of society, above allother interests, while the Anarchist sets the interest of theindividual above everything else. You could express the differencethus:

 Socialism means _We_ -ism Anarchism means _Me_ -ism

The Anarchist says: "The world is made up of individuals. What iscalled "society" is only a lot of individuals. Therefore theindividual is the only real being and society a mere abstraction, aname. As an individual I know myself, but I know nothing of society; Iknow my own interests, but I know nothing of what you call theinterests of society. " On the other hand, the Socialist says that "noman liveth unto himself, " to use a biblical phrase. He points out thatin modern society no individual life, apart from the social life, ispossible. 

If this seems a somewhat abstract way of putting it, Jonathan, justtry to put it in a concrete form yourself by means of a simpleexperiment. When you sit down to your breakfast to-morrow morning taketime to think where your breakfast came from and how it was produced. Think of the coffee plantations in far-off countries drawn on for yourbreakfast; of the farms, perhaps thousands of miles away, from whichcame your bacon and your bread; of the coal miners toiling that yourbreakfast might be cooked; of the men in the engine-rooms of greatships and on the tenders of mighty locomotives, bringing yourbreakfast supplies across sea and land. Then think of your clothing inthe same way, article by article, trying to realize how much you aredependent upon others than yourself. Throughout the day apply the sameprinciple as you move about. Apply it to the streets as you go towork; to the street cars as you ride; apply it to the provisions whichare made to safeguard your health against devastating plague, theelaborate system of drainage, the carefully guarded water-supply, andso on. Then, when you have done that for a day as far as possible, askyourself whether the Anarchist idea that every individual is adistinct and separate whole, an independent being, unrelated to theother individuals who make up society, is a true one; or whether theSocialist idea that all individuals are inter-dependent upon eachother, bound to each other by so many ties that they cannot beconsidered apart, is the true idea. Judge by your experience, Jonathan!

So the Socialist says that "we are all members one of another, " to useanother familiar biblical phrase. He is not less interested inpersonal freedom than the Anarchist, not less desirous of giving toeach individual unit in society the largest possible freedomcompatible with the like freedom of all the other units. But, whilethe Anarchist says that the best judge of that is the individual, theSocialist says that society is the best judge. The Anarchist positionis that, in the event of a conflict of interests, the will of theindividual must rule at all costs; the Socialist says that, in theevent of such a conflict of interests, the will of the individual mustgive way. That is the real philosophical difference between the two. 

Anarchism is not important enough in America, friend Jonathan, tojustify our devoting so much time and space to the discussion of itsphilosophy as opposed to the philosophy of Socialism, except for thebearing it has upon the political movement of the working class. Iwant you to see just how Anarchism works out when the test ofpractical application is resorted to. 

Just as the Anarchist sets up an abstract idea of individual libertyas his ideal, so he sets up an abstract idea of tyranny. To him Law, the will of society, is the essence of tyranny. Laws are limitationsof individual liberty set by society and therefore they aretyrannical. No matter what the law may be, all laws are wrong. Therecannot be such a thing as a good law, according to this view. Toillustrate just where this leads us, let me tell of a recentexperience: I was lecturing in a New England town, and after thelecture an Anarchist rose to ask some questions. He wanted to know ifit was not a fact that all laws were oppressive and bad, to which, ofcourse, I replied that I thought not. 

I asked him whether the law forbidding murder and providing for itspunishment, oppressed _him_; whether _he_ felt it a hardship not to beallowed to murder at will, and he replied that he did not. I citedmany other laws, such as the laws relating to arson, burglary, criminal assault, and so on, with the same result. His outcry aboutthe oppression of law, as such, proved to be just an empty cry aboutan abstraction; a bogey of his imagination. Of course, he could citebad laws, unjust laws, as I could have done; but that would simplyshow that some laws are not right--a proposition upon which mostpeople will agree. My Anarchist friend quoted Herbert Spencer insupport of his contention. He referred to Spencer's well-known summaryof the social legislation of England. So I asked my friend if hethought the Factory Acts were oppressive and tyrannical, and hereplied that, from an Anarchist viewpoint, they were. 

Think of that, Jonathan! Little boys and girls, five and six yearsold, were taken out of their beds crying and begging to be allowed tosleep, and carried to the factory gates. Then they were driven to workby brutal overseers armed with leather whips. Sometimes they fellasleep at their tasks and then they were beaten and kicked and cursedat like dogs. Little boys and girls from orphan asylums were sent towork thus, and died like flies in summer--their bodies being secretlyburied at night for fear of an outcry. You can find the terrible storytold in _The Industrial History of England_, by H. De B. Gibbins, which ought to be in your public library. 

Humane men set up a protest at last and there was a movement throughthe country demanding protection for the children. Once a member ofparliament held up in the House of Commons a whip of leather thongsattached to an oak handle, telling his colleagues that a few daysbefore it had been used to flog little children who were mere babies. The demand was made for legislation to stop this barbarous treatmentof children, to protect their childhood. The factory owners opposedthe passing of such laws on the ground that it would be aninterference with their individual liberties, their right to do asthey pleased. _And the Anarchist comes always and inevitably to thesame conclusion. _ Factory laws, public health laws, educationlaws--all denounced as "interferences with individual liberty. "Extremes meet: the Anarchist in the name of individual liberty, likethe capitalist, would prevent society from putting a stop to theexploitation of its little ones. 

The real danger in Anarchism is not that _some_ Anarchists believe inviolence, and that from time to time there are cowardly assassinationswhich are as futile as they are cowardly. The real danger lies firstin the reactionary principle that the interests of society must besubordinated to the interests of the individual, and, second, inholding out a hope to the working class that its freedom fromoppression and exploitation may be brought about by other thanpolitical, legislative means. And it is this second objection which isof extreme importance to the working class of America at this time. 

From time to time, in all working class movements, there is an outcryagainst political action, an outcry raised by impetuous men-in-a-hurrywho want twelve o'clock at eleven. They cry out that the ballot is tooslow; they want some more "direct" action than the ballot-box allows. But you will find, Jonathan, that the men who raise this cry havenothing to propose except riot to take the place of political action. Either they would have the workers give up all struggle and dependupon moral suasion, or they would have them riot. And we Socialistssay that ballots are better weapons than bullets for the workers. Youmay depend upon it that any agitation among the workers against theuse of political weapons leads to Anarchism--and to riot. I hope youwill find time to read Plechanoff's _Anarchism and Socialism_, Jonathan. It will well repay your careful study. 

No, Socialism is not related to Anarchism, but it is, on the contrary, the one great active force in the world to-day that is combatingAnarchism. There is a close affinity between Anarchism and the idea ofcapitalism, for both place the individual above society. The Socialistbelieves that the highest good of the individual will be realizedthrough the highest good of society. 

(3) Socialism involves no attack upon the family and the home. Thosewho raise this objection against Socialism charge that it is one ofthe aims of the Socialist movement to do away with the monogamicmarriage and to replace it with what is called "Free Love. " By thisterm they do not really mean free _love_ at all. For love is always_free_, Jonathan. Not all the wealth of a Rockefeller could buy onesingle touch of love. Love is always free; it cannot be bought and itcannot be bound. No one can love for a price, or in obedience to lawsor threats. The term "Free Love" is therefore a misnomer. 

What the opponents of Socialism have in mind when they use the term israther lust than love. They charge us Socialists with trying to doaway with the monogamic marriage relation--the marriage of one man toone woman--and the family life resulting therefrom. They say that wewant promiscuous sex relations, communal life instead of family lifeand the turning over of all parental functions to the community, theState. And to charge that these things are involved in Socialism is atonce absurd and untrue. I venture to say, Jonathan, that thepercentage of Socialists who believe in such things is not greaterthan the percentage of Christians believing in them, or the percentageof Republicans or Democrats. They have nothing to do with Socialism. 

Let us see upon what sort of evidence the charge is based: On the onehand, finding nothing in the programmes of the Socialist parties ofthe world to support the charge, we find them going back to theutopian schemes with communistic features. They go back to Plato, even! Because Plato in his _Republic_, which was a wholly imaginarydescription of the ideal society he conceived in his mind, advocatedcommunity of sex relations as well as community of goods, thereforethe Socialists, who do not advocate community of goods or community ofwives, must be charged with Plato's principles! In like manner, thefact that many other communistic experiments included either communismof sex relations, as, for example, the Adamites, during the Hussitewars, in Germany, and the Perfectionists, of Oneida, with their"community marriage, " all the male members of a community beingmarried to all the female members; or enforced celibacy, as did theShakers and the Harmonists, among many other similar groups, is urgedagainst Socialism. 

I need not argue the injustice and the stupidity of this sort ofcriticism, Jonathan. What have the Socialists of twentieth centuryAmerica to do with Plato? His utopian ideal is not their ideal; theyare neither aiming at community of goods nor at community of wives. And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the firstfact to challenge attention is that the communities which establishedlaws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamicfamily, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, asin Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all_religious_ communities. In a word, all these experiments whichantagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of variousinterpretations of the Bible and the efforts of those who acceptedthose interpretations to rule their lives in accordance therewith. Inevery case communism was only a means to an end, a way of realizingwhat they considered to be the true religious life. In other words, myfriend, most of the so-called free love experiments made in thesecommunities have been offshoots of Christianity rather than ofSocialism. 

_And I ask you, Jonathan Edwards, as a fair-minded American, what youwould think of it if the Socialists charged Christianity with beingopposed to the family and the home? It would not be true ofChristianity and it is not true of Socialism. _

But there is another form of argument which is sometimes resorted to. The history of the movement is searched for examples of what is calledfree love. That is to say that because from time to time there havebeen individual Socialists who have refused to recognize theceremonial and legal aspects of marriage, believing love to be theonly real marriage bond, notwithstanding that the vast majority ofSocialists have recognized the legal and ceremonial aspects ofmarriage, they have been accused of trying to do away with marriage. Our opponents have even stooped so low as to seize upon every casewhere Socialists have sought divorce as a means of undoing terriblewrong, and then married other husbands and wives, and proclaimed it asa fresh proof that Socialism is opposed to marriage and the family. When I have read some of these cruel and dishonest attacks, oftenwritten by men who know better, my soul has been sickened at thethought of the cowardice and dishonesty to which the opponents ofSocialism resort. 

Suppose that every time a prominent Christian becomes divorced, andthen remarries, the Socialists of the country were to attack theChristian religion and the Christian churches, upon the ground thatthey are opposed to marriage and the family, does anybody think that_that_ would be fair and just? But it is the very thing which happenswhenever Socialists are divorced. It happened, not so very long ago, that a case of the kind was made the occasion of hundreds ofeditorials against Socialism and hundreds of sermons. The facts werethese: A man and his wife, both Socialists, had for a long timerealized that their marriage was an unhappy one. Failing to realizethe happiness they sought, it was mutually agreed that the wife shouldapply for a divorce. They had been legally married and desired to belegally separated. Meantime the man had come to believe that hishappiness depended upon his wedding another woman. The divorce was tobe procured as speedily as possible to enable the legal marriage ofthe man and the woman he had grown to love. 

Those were the facts as they appeared in the press, the facts uponwhich so many hundreds of attacks were made upon Socialism and theSocialist movement. Two or three weeks later, an Episcopal clergyman, not a Socialist, left the wife he had ceased to love and with whom hehad presumably not been happy. He had legally married his wife, buthe did not bother about getting a legal separation. He just left hiswife; just ran away. He not only did not bother about getting a legalseparation, but he ran away with a young girl, whom he had grown tolove. They lived together as man and wife, without legal marriage, forif they went through any marriage form at all it was not a legalmarriage and the man was guilty of bigamy. Was there any attack uponthe Episcopal Church in consequence? Were hundreds of sermons preachedand editorials written to denounce the church to which he belonged, accusing it of aiming to do away with the monogamic marriage relation, to break up the family and the home?

Not a bit of it, Jonathan. There were some criticisms of the man, butthere were more attempts to find excuses for him. There were thousandsof expressions of sympathy with his church. But there were no attackssuch as were aimed at Socialism in the other case, notwithstandingthat the Socialist strictly obeyed the law whereas the clergyman brokethe law and defied it. I think that was a fair way to treat the case, but I ask the same fair treatment of Socialism. 

So far, Jonathan, I have been taking a defensive attitude, justreplying to the charge that Socialism is an attack upon the family andthe home. Now, I want to go a step further: I want to take anaffirmative position and to say that Socialism comes as the defenderof the home and the family; that capitalism from the very first hasbeen attacking the home. I am going to turn the tables, Jonathan. 

When capitalism began, when it came with its steam engine and itspower-loom, what was the first thing it did? Why, it entered the homeand took the child from the mother and made it a part of a greatsystem of wheels and levers and springs, all driven for one end--thegrinding of profit. It began its career by breaking down the bondsbetween mother and child. Then it took another step. It took themother away from the baby in the cradle in order that she too mightbecome part of the great profit-grinding system. Her breasts might befull to overflowing with the food wonderfully provided for the childby Nature; the baby in the cradle might cry for the very food that wasbursting from its mother's breasts, but Capital did not care. Themother was taken away from the child and the child was left to get onas best it might upon a miserable substitute for its mother's milk. Hundreds of thousands of babies die each year for no other reason thanthis. 

There will never be safety for the home and the family so long asbabies are robbed of their mothers' care; so long as little childrenare made to do the work of men; so long as the girls who are to be thewives and mothers are sent into wifehood and motherhood unprepared, simply because the years of maidenhood are spent in factories thatought to be spent in preparation for wifehood and motherhood. Here iscapitalism cutting at the very heart of the home, with Socialism asthe only defender of the home it is charged with attacking. ForSocialism would give the child its right to childhood; it would givethe mother her freedom to nourish her babe; it would give to thefathers and mothers of the future the opportunities for preparationthey cannot now enjoy. 

I ask you, friend Jonathan, to think of the tens and thousands ofwomen who marry to-day, not because they love and are loved in return, but for the sake of getting a home. Socialism would put an end to thatcondition by making woman economically and politically free. Think ofthe tens of thousands of young men in our land who do not, dare not, marry because they have no certainty of earning a living adequate tothe maintenance of wives and families; of the hundreds of thousands ofprostitutes in our country, the vast majority of whom have been drivento that terrible fate by economic causes outside of their control. Socialism would at least remove the economic pressure which forces somany of these women down into the terrible hell of prostitution. I askyou, Jonathan, to think also of the thousands of wives who aredeserted every year. So far as the investigations of the charityorganizations into this serious matter have gone, it has been shownthat poverty is responsible for by far the greatest number of thesedesertions. Socialism would not only destroy the poverty, but it wouldset woman economically free, thus removing the main causes of theevil. 

Oh, Jonathan Edwards, hard-headed, practical Jonathan, do you thinkthat the existence of the family depends upon keeping women in theposition of an inferior class, politically and economically? Do youthink that when women are politically and economically the equals ofmen, so that they no longer have to marry for homes, or to standbrutal treatment because they have no other homes than the men afford;so that no woman is forced to sell her body--I ask you, when women arethus free do you believe that the marriage system will be endangeredthereby? For that is what the contention of the opponents of Socialismcomes to in the last analysis, my friend. Socialism will only affectthe marriage system in so far as it raises the standards of society asa whole and makes woman man's political and economic equal. Are youafraid of _that_, Jonathan?

(4) Socialism is not opposed to religion. It is perfectly true thatsome Socialists oppose religion, but Socialism itself has nothing todo with matters of religion. In the Socialist movement to-day thereare men and women of all creeds and all shades of religious belief. Byall the Socialist parties of the world religion is declared to be aprivate matter--and the declaration is honestly meant; it is not atactical utterance, used as bait to the unwary, which the Socialistssecretly repudiate. In the Socialist movement of America to-day thereare Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Spiritualists andChristian Scientists, Unitarians and Trinitarians, Methodists andBaptists, Atheists and Agnostics, all united in one great comradeship. 

This was not always the case. When the scientific Socialist movementbegan in the second half of the last century, Science was engaged in agreat intellectual encounter with Dogma. All the younger men weredrawn into the scientific current of the time. It was natural, then, that the most radical movement of the time should partake of theuniversal scientific spirit and temper. The Christians of that daythought that the work of Darwin and his school would destroy religion. They made the very natural mistake of supposing that dogma andreligion were the same thing, a mistake which their critics fullyshared. 

You know what happened, Jonathan. The Christians gradually came torealize that no religion could oppose the truth and continue to be apower. Gradually they accepted the position of the Darwinian critics, until to-day there is no longer the great vital controversy uponmatters of theology which our fathers knew. In a very similar manner, the present generation of Socialists have nothing to do with theattacks upon religion which the Socialists of fifty years ago indulgedin. The position of all the Socialist parties of the world to-day isthat they have nothing to do with matters of religious belief; thatthese belong to the individual alone. 

There is a sense in which Socialism becomes the handmaiden ofreligion: not of creeds and theological beliefs, but of religion inits broadest sense. When you examine the great religions of the world, Jonathan, you will find that in addition to certain supernaturalbeliefs there are always great ethical principles which constitute themost vital elements in religion. Putting aside the theological beliefsabout God and the immortality of the soul, what was it that gaveJudaism its power? Was it not the ethical teaching of its greatprophets, such as Isaiah, Joel, Amos and Ezekiel--the stern rebuke ofthe oppressors of the poor and downtrodden, the scathing denunciationof the despoilers of the people, the great vision of a unified worldin which there should be peace, when war should no more blight theworld and when the weapons of war should be forged into plowshares andpruning hooks? Leaving matters of theology aside, are not these theprinciples which make Judaism a living religion to-day for so many?And I say to you, Jonathan, that Socialism is not only not opposed tothese things, but they can only be realized under Socialism. 

So with Christianity. In its broadest sense, leaving aside all mattersof a supernatural character, concerning ourselves only with therelation of the religion to life, to its material problems, we find inChristianity the same great faith in the coming of universal peace andbrotherhood, the same defense of the poor and the oppressed, the samescathing rebuke of the oppressor, that we find in Judaism. There isthe same relentless scourge of the despoilers, of those who devourwidows houses. And again I say that Socialism is not only not opposedto the great social ideals of Christianity, but it is the only meanswhereby they may be realized. And the same thing is true of theteachings of Confucius; Buddha and Mahomet. The great social idealscommon to all the world's religions can never be attained undercapitalism. Not till the Socialist state is reached will the GoldenRule, common to all the great religions, be possible as a rule oflife. No ethical life is possible except as the outgrowing of just andharmonic economic relations; until it is rooted in proper economicsoil. 

No, Jonathan, it is not true that Socialism is antagonistic toreligion. With beliefs and speculations concerning the origin of theuniverse it has nothing to do. It has nothing to do with speculationsconcerning the existence of man after physical death, with belief inthe immortality of the soul. These are for the individual. Socialismconcerns itself with man's material life and his relation to hisfellow man. And there is nothing in the philosophy of Socialism, orthe platform of the political Socialist movement, antagonistic to thesocial aspects of any religion. 

(5) I have already had a good deal to say in the course of thisdiscussion concerning the subject of personal freedom. The common ideaof Socialism as a great bureaucratic government owning and controllingeverything, deciding what every man and woman must do, is whollywrong. The aim and purpose of the Socialist movement is to make lifemore free for the individual, and not to make it less free. Socialismmeans equality of opportunity for every child born into the world; itmeans doing away with class privilege; it means doing away with theownership by the few of the things upon which the lives of the manydepend, through which the many are exploited by the few. Do you seehow individuals are to be enslaved through the destruction of thepower of a few over many, Jonathan? Think it out!

It is in the private ownership of social resources, and the privatecontrol of social opportunities, that the essence of tyranny lies. Letme ask you, my friend, whether you feel yourself robbed of any part ofyour personal liberty when you go to a public library and take out abook to read, or into one of our public art galleries to look upongreat pictures which you could never otherwise see? Is it not rather afact that your life is thereby enriched and broadened; that instead oftaking anything from you these things add to your enjoyment and toyour power? Do you feel that you are robbed of any element of yourpersonal freedom through the action of the city government in makingparks for your recreation, providing hospitals to care for you in caseof accident or illness, maintaining a fire department to protect youagainst the ravages of fire? Do you feel that in maintaining schools, baths, hospitals, parks, museums, public lighting service, water, streets and street cleaning service, the city government is takingaway your personal liberties? I ask these questions, Jonathan, for thereason that all these things contain the elements of Socialism. 

When you go into a government post-office and pay two cents for theservice of having a letter carried right across the country, knowingthat every person must pay the same as you and can enjoy the sameright as you, do you feel that you are less free than when you go intoan express company's office and pay the price they demand for takingyour package? Does it really help you to enjoy yourself, to feelyourself more free, to know that in the case of the express company'sservice only part of your money will be used to pay the cost ofcarrying the package; that the larger part will go to bribelegislators, to corrupt public officials and to build up huge fortunesfor a few investors? The post-office is not a perfect example ofSocialism: there are too many private grafters battening upon thepostal system, the railway companies plunder it and the great mass ofthe clerks and carriers are underpaid. But so far as the principles ofsocial organization and equal charges for everybody go they aresocialistic. The government does not try to compel you to writeletters any more than the private company tries to compel you to sendpackages. If you said that, rather than use the postal system, youwould carry your own letter across the continent, even if you decidedto walk all the way, the government would not try to stop you, anymore than the express company would try to stop you from carrying yourtrunk on your shoulder across the country. But in the case of theexpress company you must pay tribute to men who have been shrewdenough to exploit a social necessity for their private gain. 

Do you really imagine, Jonathan, that in those cities where the streetrailways, for example, are in the hands of the people there is a lossof personal liberty as a result; that because the people who use thestreet railways do not have to pay tribute to a corporation they areless free than they would otherwise be? So far as these things areowned by the people and democratically managed in the interests ofall, they are socialistic and an appeal to such concrete facts asthese is far better than any amount of abstract reasoning. You are nota closet philosopher, interested in fine-spun theories, but apractical man, graduated from the great school of hard experience. Foryou, if I am not mistaken, Garfield's aphorism, that "An ounce offact is worth many tons of theory, " is true. 

So I want to ask you finally concerning this question of personalliberty whether you think you would be less free than you are to-dayif your Pittsburg foundries and mills, instead of belonging tocorporations organized for the purpose of making profit, belonged tothe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and if they were operated for thecommon good instead of as now to serve the interests of a few. Wouldyou be less free if, instead of a corporation trying to make theworkers toil as many hours as possible for as little pay as possible, naturally and consistently avoiding as far as possible the expenditureof time and money upon safety appliances and other means of protectingthe health and lives of the workers, the mills were operated upon theprinciple of guarding the health and lives of the workers as much aspossible, reducing the hours of labor to a minimum and paying them fortheir work as much as possible? Is it a sensible fear, my friend, thatthe people of any country will be less free as they acquire more powerover their own lives? You see, Jonathan, I want you to take apractical view of the matter. 

(6) The cry that Socialism would reduce all men and women to one dulllevel is another bogey which frightens a great many good and wisepeople. It has been answered thousands of times by Socialist writersand you will find it discussed in most of the popular books andpamphlets published in the interest of the Socialist propaganda. Ishall therefore dismiss it very briefly. 

Like many other objections, this rests upon an entire misapprehensionof what Socialism really means. The people who make it have got firmlyinto their minds the idea that Socialism aims to make all men equal;to devise some plan for removing the inequalities with which they areendowed by nature. They fear that, in order to realize this ideal ofequality, the strong will be held down to the level of the weak, thedaring to the level of the timid, the wisest to the level of the leastwise. That is their conception of the equality of which Socialiststalk. And I am free to say, Jonathan, that I do not wonder thatsensible men should oppose such equality as that. 

Even if it were possible, through the adoption of some system ofstirpiculture, to breed all human beings to a common type, so thatthey would all be tall or short, fat or thin, light or dark, accordingto choice, it would not be a very desirable ideal, would it? And if wecould get everybody to think exactly the same thoughts, to admireexactly the same things, to have exactly the same mental powers andexactly the same measure of moral strength and weakness, I do notthink _that_ would be a very desirable ideal. The world of humanbeings would then be just as dull and uninspiring as a waxwork show. Imagine yourself in a city where every house was exactly like everyother house in all particulars, even to its furnishings; imagine allthe people being exactly the same height and weight, looking exactlyalike, dressed exactly alike, eating exactly alike, going to bed andrising at the same time, thinking exactly alike and feeling exactlyalike--how would you like to live in such a city, Jonathan? The cityor state of Absolute Equality is only a fool's dream. 

No sane man or woman wants absolute equality, friend Jonathan, for itis as undesirable as it is unimaginable. What Socialism wants isequality of opportunity merely. No Socialist wants to pull down thestrong to the level of the weak, the wise to the level of the lesswise. Socialism does not imply pulling anybody down. It does notimply a great plain of humanity with no mountain peaks of genius orcharacter. It is not opposed to natural inequalities, but only toman-made inequalities. Its only protest is against these artificialinequalities, products of man's ignorance and greed. It does not aimto pull down the highest, but to lift up the lowest; it does not wantto put a load of disadvantage upon the strong and gifted, but it wantsto take off the heavy burdens of disadvantage which keep others fromrising. In a word, Socialism implies nothing more than giving everychild born into the world equal opportunities, so that only theinequalities of Nature remain. Don't you believe in _that_, my friend?

Here are two babies, just born into the world. Wee, helpless seedlingsof humanity, they are wonderfully alike in their helplessness. Onelies in a tenement upon a mean bed, the other in a mansion upon a bedof wonderful richness. But if they were both removed to the samesurroundings it would be impossible to tell one from the other. It hashappened, you know, that babies have been mixed up in this way, thechild of a poor servant girl taking the place of the child of acountess. Scientists tell us that Nature is wonderfully democratic, and that, at the moment of birth, there is no physical differencebetween the babies of the richest and the babies of the poorest. It isonly afterward that man-made inequalities of conditions andopportunities make such a wide difference between them. 

Look at our two babies a moment: no man can tell what infinitepossibilities lie behind those mystery-laden eyes. It may be that weare looking upon a future Newton and another Savonarola, or upon agreater than Edison and a greater than Lincoln. No man knows whatinfinitude of good or ill is germinating back of those little puckeredbrows, nor which of the cries may develop into a voice that will setthe hearts of men aflame and stir them to glorious deeds. Or it may bethat both are of the common clay, that neither will be more than anaverage man, representing the common level in physical and mentalequipment. 

But I ask you, friend Jonathan, is it less than justice to demandequal opportunities for both? Is it fair that one child shall becarefully nurtured amid healthful surroundings, and given a chance todevelop all that is in him, and that the other shall be cradled inpoverty, neglected, poorly nurtured in a poor hovel where pestilencelingers, and denied an opportunity to develop physically, mentally andmorally? Is it right to watch and tend one of the human seedlings andto neglect the other? If, by chance of Nature's inscrutable working, the babe of the tenement came into the world endowed with the greaterpossibilities of the two, if the tenement mother upon her mean bedbore into the world in her agony a spark of divine fire of genius, thesoul of an artist like Leonardo da Vinci, or of a poet like Keats, isit less than a calamity that it should die--choked by conditions whichonly ignorance and greed have produced?

Give all the children of men equal opportunities, leaving only theinequalities of Nature to manifest themselves, and there will be noneed to fear a dull level of humanity. There will be hewers of woodand drawers of water content to do the work they can; there will bescientists and inventors, forever enlarging man's kingdom in theuniverse; there will be makers of songs and dreamers of dreams, toinspire the world. Socialism wants to unbind the souls of men, settingthem free for the highest and best that is in them. 

Do you know the story of Prometheus, friend Jonathan? It is, ofcourse, a myth, but it serves as an illustration of my present point. Prometheus, for ridiculing the gods, was bound to a rock upon MountCaucasus, by order of Jupiter, where daily for thirty years a vulturecame and tore at his liver, feeding upon it. Then there came to hisaid Hercules, who unbound the tortured victim and set him free. Likeanother Prometheus, the soul of man to-day is bound to a rock--therock of capitalism. The vulture of Greed tears the victim, remorselessly and unceasingly. And now, to break the chains, to setthe soul of man free, Hercules comes in the form of the Socialistmovement. It is nothing less than this; my friend. In the lastanalysis, it is the bondage of the soul which counts for most in ourindictment of capitalism and the liberation of the soul is the goaltoward which we are striving. 

It is to-day, under capitalism, that men are reduced to a dull level. The great mass of the people live dull, sordid lives, theirindividuality relentlessly crushed out. The modern workman has nochance to express any individuality in his work, for he is part of agreat machine, as much so as any one of the many levers and cogs. Capitalism makes humanity appear as a great plain with a few peaksimmense distances apart--a dull level of mental and moral attainmentwith a few giants. I say to you in all seriousness, Jonathan, that ifnothing better were possible I should want to pray with the poetBrowning, --

 Make no more giants, God-- But elevate the race at once!

But I don't believe that. I am satisfied that when we destroy man-madeinequalities, leaving only the inequalities of Nature's making, therewill be no need to fear the dull level of life. When all the chains ofignorance and greed have been struck from the Prometheus-like humansoul, then, and not till then, will the soul of man be free to soarupward. 

(7) For the reasons already indicated, Socialism would not destroy theincentive to progress. It is possible that a stagnation would resultfrom any attempt to establish absolute equality such as I have alreadydescribed. If it were the aim of Socialism to stamp out allindividuality, this objection would be well founded, it seems to me. But that is not the aim of Socialism. 

The people who make this objection seem to think that the onlyincentive to progress comes from a few men and their hope and desireto be masters of the lives of others, but that is not true. Greed iscertainly a powerful incentive to some kinds of progress, but thehistory of the world shows that there are other and nobler incentives. The hope of getting somebody else's property is a powerful incentiveto the burglar and has led to the invention of all kinds of tools andingenious methods, but we do not hesitate to take away that incentiveto that kind of "progress. " The hope of getting power to exploit thepeople acts as a powerful incentive to great corporations to deviseschemes to defeat the laws of the nation, to corrupt legislators andjudges, and otherwise assail the liberties of the people. That, also, is "progress" of a kind, but we do not hesitate to try to take awaythat incentive. 

Even to-day, Jonathan, Greed is not the most powerful incentive in theworld. The greatest statesmanship in the world is not inspired bygreed, but by love of country, the desire for the approbation andconfidence of others, and numerous other motives. Greed never inspireda great teacher, a great artist, a great scientist, a great inventor, a great soldier, a great writer, a great poet, a great physician, agreat scholar or a great statesman. Love of country, love of fame, love of beauty, love of doing, love of humanity--all these have meantinfinitely more than greed in the progress of the world. 

(8) Finally, Jonathan, I want to consider your objection thatSocialism is impossible until human nature is changed. It is an oldobjection which crops up in every discussion of Socialism. People talkabout "human nature" as though it were something fixed and definite;as if there were certain quantities of various qualities and instinctsin every human being, and that these never changed from age to age. The primitive savage in many lands went out to seek a wife armed witha club. He hunted the woman of his choice as he would hunt a beast, capturing and clubbing her into submission. _That_ was human nature, Jonathan. The modern man in civilized countries, when he goes seekinga wife, hunts the woman of his choice with flattery, bon-bons, flowers, opera tickets and honeyed words. Instead of a brute clubbinga woman almost to death, we see the pleading lover, cautiously andearnestly wooing his bride. And that, too, is human nature. TheAfrican savages suffering from the dread "Sleeping Sickness" and thepoor Indian ryots suffering from Bubonic Plague see their fellowsdying by thousands and think angry gods are punishing them. All theycan hope to do is to appease the gods by gifts or by mutilating theirown poor bodies. That is human nature, my friend. But a greatscientist like Dr. Koch, of Berlin, goes into the African centres ofpestilence and death, seeks the germ of the disease, drains swamps, purifies water, isolates the infected cases and proves himself morepowerful than the poor natives' gods. And that is human nature. Outside the gates of the Chicago stockyards, I have seen crowds of menfighting for work as hungry dogs fight over a bone. That was humannature. I have seen a man run down in the streets and at once therewas a crowd ready to lift him up and to do anything for him that theycould. It was the very opposite spirit to that shown by the brutish, snarling, cursing, fighting men at the stockyards, but it was just asmuch human nature. 

The great law of human development, that which expresses itself inwhat is so vaguely termed human nature, is that man is a creature ofhis environment, that self-preservation is a fundamental instinct inhuman beings. Socialism is not an idealistic attempt to substitutesome other law of life for that of self-preservation. On the contrary, it rests entirely upon that instinct of self-preservation. Here aretwo classes opposed to each other in modern society. One class issmall but exceedingly powerful, so that, despite its disadvantage insize, it is the ruling class, controlling the larger class andexploiting it. When we ask ourselves how that is possible, how ithappens that the smaller class rules the larger, we soon find that themembers of the smaller class have become conscious of their interestsand the fact that these can be best promoted through organization andassociation. Thus conscious of their class interests, and actingtogether by a class instinct, they have been able to rule the world. But the workers, the class that is much stronger numerically, havebeen slower to recognize their class interests. Inevitably, however, they are developing a similar class sense, or instinct. Uniting in theeconomic struggle at first, and then, in the political struggle inorder that they may further their economic interests through thechannels of government, it is easy to see that only one outcome ofthe struggle is possible. By sheer force of numbers, the workers mustwin, Jonathan. 

The Socialist movement, then, is not something foreign to humannature, but it is an inevitable part of the development of humansociety. The fundamental instinct of the human species makes theSocialist movement inevitable and irresistible. Socialism does notrequire a change in human nature, but human nature does require achange in society. And that change is Socialism. It is perhaps thedeepest and profoundest instinct in human beings that they are foreverstriving to secure the largest possible material comfort, foreverstriving to secure more of good in return for less of ill. And in thatlies the great hope of the future, Jonathan. The great Demos islearning that poverty is unnecessary, that there is plenty for all;that none need suffer want; that it is possible to suffer less and tolive more; to have more of good while suffering less of ill. The faceof Demos is turned toward the future, toward the dawning ofSocialism. 

XI

WHAT TO DO

 Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute. What you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Only engage and then the mind grows heated; Begin, and then the work will be completed. --_Goethe. _

 Apart from those convulsive upheavals that escape all forecast and are sometimes the final supreme resource of history brought to bay, there is only one sovereign method for Socialism--the conquest of a legal majority. --_Jean Jaurès. _

When one is convinced of the justice and wisdom of the Socialist idea, when its inspiration has begun to quicken the pulse and to stir thesoul, it is natural that one should desire to do something to expressone's convictions and to add something, however little, to themovement. Not only that, but the first impulse is to seek thecomradeship of other Socialists and to work with them for therealization of the Socialist ideal. 

Of course, the first duty of every sincere believer in Socialism is tovote for it. No matter how hopeless the contest may seem, nor how fardistant the electoral triumph, the first duty is to vote forSocialism. If you believe in Socialism, my friend, even though yourvote should be the only Socialist vote in your city, you could not betrue to yourself and to your faith and vote any other ticket. I knowthat it requires courage to do this sometimes. I know that there aremany who will deride the action and say that you are "wasting yourvote, " but no vote is ever wasted when it is cast for a principle, Jonathan. For, after all, what is a vote? Is it not an expression ofthe citizen's conviction concerning the sort of government he desires?How, then can his vote be thrown away if it really expresses hisconviction? He is entitled to a single voice, and provided that heavails himself of his right to declare through the ballot box hisconviction, no matter whether he stands alone or with ten thousand, his vote is not thrown away. 

The only vote that is wasted is the vote that is cast for somethingother than the voter's earnest conviction, the vote of cowardice andcompromise. The man who votes for what he fully believes in, even ifhe is the only one so voting, does not lose his vote, waste it or useit unwisely. The only use of a vote is to declare the kind ofgovernment the voter believes in. But the man who votes for somethinghe does not want, for something less than his convictions, that manloses his vote or throws it away, even though he votes on the winningside. Get this well into your mind, friend Jonathan, for there arecities in which the Socialists would sweep everything before them andbe elected to power if all the people who believe in Socialism, butrefuse to vote for it on the ground that they would be throwing awaytheir votes, would be true to themselves and vote according to theirinmost convictions. 

I say that we must vote for Socialism, Jonathan, because I believethat, in this country at least, the change from capitalism must bebrought about through patient and wise political action. I have nodoubt that the economic organizations, the trade unions, will help, and I can even conceive the possibility of their being the chiefagencies in the transformation in society. That possibility, however, seems exceedingly remote, while the possibility of effecting thechange through the ballot box is undeniable. Once let theworking-class of America make up its mind to vote for Socialism, nothing can prevent its coming. And unless the workers are wise enoughand united enough to vote together for Socialism, Jonathan, it isscarcely likely that they will be able to adopt other methods withsuccess. 

But as voting for Socialism is the most obvious duty of all who areconvinced of its justness and wisdom, so it is the least duty. To castyour vote for Socialism is the very least contribution to the movementwhich you can make. The next step is to spread the light, to proclaimthe principles of Socialism to others. To _be_ a Socialist is thefirst step; to _make_ Socialists is the second step. Every Socialistought to be a missionary for the great cause. By talking with yourfriends and by circulating suitable Socialist literature, you can doeffective work for the cause, work not less effective than that of theorator addressing big audiences. Don't forget, my friend, that in theSocialist movement there is work for _you_ to do. 

Naturally, you will want to be an efficient worker for Socialism, tobe able to work successfully. Therefore you will need to join theorganized movement, to become a member of the Socialist Party. In thisway, working with many other comrades, you will be able to accomplishmuch more than as an individual working alone. So I ask you to jointhe party, friend Jonathan, and to assume a fair and just share of theresponsibilities of the movement. 

In the Socialist party organization there are no "Leaders" in thesense in which that term is used in connection with the politicalparties of capitalism. There are men who by virtue of long service andexceptional talents of various kinds are looked up to by theircomrades, and whose words carry great weight. But the government ofthe organization is in the hands of the rank and file and everythingis directed from the bottom upwards, not from the top downwards. Theparty is not owned by a few people who provide its funds, for theseare provided by the entire membership. Each member of the party pays asmall monthly fee, and the amounts thus contributed are dividedbetween the local, state and national divisions of the organization. It is thus a party of the people, by the people and for the people, which bosses cannot corrupt or betray. 

So I would urge you, Jonathan, and all who believe in Socialism, tojoin the party organization. Get into the movement in earnest and tryto keep posted upon all that relates to it. Read some of the paperspublished by the party--at least two papers representing differentphases of the movement. There are, always and everywhere, at least twodistinct tendencies in the Socialist movement, a radical wing and amore moderate wing. Whichever of these appeals to you as the righttendency, you will need to keep informed as to both. 

Above all, my friend, I would like to have you _study_ Socialism. Idon't mean merely that you should read a Socialist propaganda paper ortwo, or a few pamphlets: I do not call that studying Socialism. Suchpapers and pamphlets are very good in their way; they are written forpeople who are not Socialists for the purpose of awakening theirinterest. So far as they go they are valuable, but I would not haveyou stop there, Jonathan. I would like to have you push your studiesbeyond them, beyond even the more elaborate discussions of thesubject contained in such books as this. Read the great classics ofSocialist literature--and don't be afraid of reading the attacks madeupon Socialism by its opponents. Study the philosophy of Socialism andits economic theories; try to apply them to your personal experienceand to the events of every day as they are reported in the greatnewspapers. You see, Jonathan, I not only want you to know whatSocialism is in a very thorough manner, but I also want you to be ableto teach others in a very thorough manner. 

And now, my patient friend, Good Bye! If _The Common Sense ofSocialism_ has helped you to a clear understanding of Socialism, Ishall be amply repaid for writing it. I ask you to accept it forwhatever measure of good it may do and to forgive its shortcomings. Others might have written a better book for you, and some day I may dobetter myself--I do not know. I have honestly tried my best to set theclaims of Socialism before you in plain language and with comradelyspirit. And if it succeeds in convincing you and making you aSocialist, Jonathan, I shall be satisfied. 

APPENDIX I

A SUGGESTED COURSE OF READING ON SOCIALISM

The following list of books on various phases of Socialism ispublished in connection with the advice contained on pages 173-174relating to the necessity of _studying_ Socialism. The names of thepublishers are given in each case for the reader's convenience. Charles H. Kerr & Company do _not_ sell, or receive orders for, booksissued by other publishers. 

(_A_) _History of Socialism_

The History of Socialism, by Thomas Kirkup. The Macmillan Company, NewYork. Price $1. 50, net. 

French and German Socialism in Modern Times, by R. T. Ely. HarperBrothers, New York. Price 75 cents. 

The History of Socialism in the United States, by Morris Hillquit. TheFunk & Wagnalls Company, New York. Price $1. 75. 

(_B_) _Biographies of Socialists_

Memoirs of Karl Marx, by Wilhelm Liebknecht. Charles H. Kerr &Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer, by Eduard Bernstein. CharlesH. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price $1. 00. 

Frederick Engels: His Life and Work, by Karl Kautsky. Charles H. Kerr& Company, Chicago. Price 10 cents. 

(_C_) _General Expositions of Socialism_

Principles of Scientific Socialism, by Charles H. Vail. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price $1. 00. 

Collectivism, by Emile Vandervelde. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles, byJohn Spargo. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price $1. 25, net. 

The Socialists--Who They Are and What They Stand For, by John Spargo. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

The Quintessence of Socialism, by Prof. A. E. Schaffle. Charles H. Kerr& Company, Chicago. Price $1. 00. This is by an opponent of Socialism, but is much circulated by Socialists as a fair and lucid statement oftheir principles. 

(_D_) _The Philosophy of Socialism_

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. In paper at 10 cents. Also superior editionin cloth at 50 cents. 

Evolution, Social and Organic, by A. M. Lewis. Charles H. Kerr &Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, by L. B. Boudin. Charles H. Kerr &Company, Chicago. Price $1. 00. 

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, by F. Engels. Charles H. Kerr &Company, Chicago. Price 10 cents in paper, superior edition in cloth50 cents. 

Mass and Class, by W. J. Ghent. The Macmillan Company, New York. Pricepaper 25 cents; cloth $1. 25, net. 

(_E_) _Economics of Socialism_

Marxian Economics, by Ernest Untermann. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price $1. 00. 

Wage Labor and Capital, by Karl Marx. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 5 cents. 

Value, Price and Profit, by Karl Marx. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

Capital, by Karl Marx. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Twovolumes, price $2. 00 each. 

(_F_) _Socialism as Related to Special Questions_

The American Farmer, by A. M. Simons. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. An admirable study of agriculturalconditions. 

Socialism and Anarchism, by George Plechanoff. Charles H. Kerr &Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

Poverty, by Robert Hunter. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price 25cents and $1. 50. 

American Pauperism, by Isador Ladoff. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. 

The Bitter Cry of the Children, by John Spargo. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price $1. 50, illustrated. 

Class Struggles in America, by A. M. Simons. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 50 cents. A notable application of Socialist theory toAmerican history. 

Underfed School Children, the Problem and the Remedy. By John Spargo. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago. Price 10 cents. 

Socialists in French Municipalities, a compilation from officialreports. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago Price 5 cents. 

Socialists at Work, by Robert Hunter. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price $1. 50, net. 

APPENDIX II

HOW SOCIALIST BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED

Nothing bears more remarkable evidence to the growth of the AmericanSocialist movement than the phenomenal development of its literature. Even more eloquently than the Socialist vote, this literature tells ofthe onward sweep of Socialism in this country. 

Only a few years ago, the entire literature of Socialism published inthis country was less than the present monthly output. There wasBellamy's "Looking Backward, " a belated expression of the utopianschool, not related to modern scientific Socialism, though itaccomplished considerable good in its day; there were a couple ofvolumes by Professor R. T. Ely, obviously inspired by a desire to befair, but missing the essential principles of Socialism; there were acouple of volumes by Laurence Gronlund and there was Sprague's"Socialism From Genesis to Revelation. " These and a handful ofpamphlets constituted America's contribution to Socialist literature. 

Added to these, were a few books and pamphlets translated from theGerman, most of them written in a heavy, ponderous style which theaverage American worker found exceedingly difficult. The greatclassics of Socialism were not available to any but those able to readsome other language than English. "Socialism is a foreign movement, "said the American complacently. 

Even six or seven years ago, the publication of a Socialist pamphletby an American writer was regarded as a very notable event in themovement and the writer was assured of a certain fame in consequence. 

Now, in this year, 1908, it is very different. There are hundreds ofexcellent books and pamphlets available to the American worker andstudent of Socialism, dealing with every conceivable phase of thesubject. Whereas ten years ago none of the great industrial countriesof the world had a more meagre Socialist literature than America, to-day America leads the world in its output. 

Only a few of the many Socialist books have been issued by ordinarycapitalist publishing houses. Half a dozen volumes by such writers asGhent, Hillquit, Hunter, Spargo and Sinclair exhaust the list. Itcould not be expected that ordinary publishers would issue books andpamphlets purposely written for propaganda on the one hand, nor themore serious works which are expensive to produce and slow to sellupon the other hand. 

The Socialists themselves have published all the rest--the propagandabooks and pamphlets, the translations of great Socialist classics andthe important contributions to the literature of Socialist philosophyand economics made by American students, many of whom are the productsof the Socialist movement itself. 

They have done these great things through a co-operative publishinghouse, known as Charles H. Kerr & Company (Co-operative). Nearly 2000Socialists and sympathizers with Socialism, scattered throughout thecountry, have joined in the work. As shareholders, they have paid tendollars for each share of stock in the enterprise, with no thought ofever getting any profits, their only advantage being the ability tobuy the books issued by the concern at a great reduction. 

Here is the method: A person buys a share of stock at ten dollars(arrangements can be made to pay this by instalments, if desired) andhe or she can then buy books and pamphlets at a reduction of fifty percent. --or forty per cent. If sent post or express paid. 

Looking over the list of the company's publications, one notes namesthat are famous in this and other countries. Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lassalle, and Liebknecht among the great Germans; Lafargue, Devilleand Guesde, of France; Ferri and Labriola, of Italy; Hyndman andBlatchford, of England; Plechanoff, of Russia; Upton Sinclair, JackLondon, John Spargo, A. M. Simons, Ernest Untermann and MorrisHillquit, of the United States. These, and scores of other names lessknown to the general public. 

It is not necessary to give here a complete list of the company'spublications. Such a list would take up too much room--and before itwas published it would become incomplete. The reader who is interestedhad better send a request for a complete list, which will at once beforwarded, without cost. We can only take a few books, almost atrandom, to illustrate the great variety of the publications of thefirm. 

You have heard about Karl Marx, the greatest of modern Socialists, andnaturally you would like to know something about him. Well, at fiftycents there is a charming little book of biographical memoirs by hisfriend Liebnecht, well worth reading again and again for its literarycharm not less than for the loveable character it portrays sotenderly. Here, also, is the complete list of the works of Marx yettranslated into the English language. There is the famous _CommunistManifesto_ by Marx and Engels, at ten cents, and the other works ofMarx up to and including his great master-work, _Capital_, in threebig volumes at two dollars each--two of which are already published, the other being in course of preparation. 

For propaganda purposes, in addition to a big list of cheap pamphlets, many of them small enough to enclose in a letter to a friend, thereare a number of cheap books. These have been specially written forbeginners, most of them for workingmen. Here, for example, one picksout at a random shot Work's "What's So and What Isn't, " a breezylittle book in which all the common questions about Socialism areanswered in simple language. Or here again we pick up Spargo's "TheSocialists, Who They Are and What They Stand For, " a little book whichhas attained considerable popularity as an easy statement of theessence of modern Socialism. For readers of a little more advancedtype there is "Collectivism, " by Emil Vandervelde, the eminent BelgianSocialist leader, a wonderful book. This and Engels' "SocialismUtopian and Scientific" will lead to books of a more advancedcharacter, some of which we must mention. The four books mentioned inthis paragraph cost fifty cents each, postpaid. They are well printedand neatly and durably bound in cloth. 

Going a little further, there are two admirable volumes by AntonioLabriola, expositions of the fundamental doctrine of Socialphilosophy, called the "Materialist Conception of History, " and avolume by Austin Lewis, "The Rise of the American Proletarian, " inwhich the theory is applied to a phase of American history. Thesebooks sell at a dollar each, and it would be very hard to findanything like the same value in book-making in any other publisher'scatalogue. Only the co-operation of nearly 2000 Socialist men andwomen makes it possible. 

For the reader who has got so far, yet finds it impossible toundertake a study of the voluminous work of Marx, either for lack ofleisure or, as often happens, lack of the necessary mental trainingand equipment, there are two splendid books, notable examples of thework which American Socialist writers are now putting out. While theywill never entirely take the place of the great work of Marx, nevertheless, whoever has read them with care will have acomprehensive grasp of Marxism. They are: L. B. Boudin's "TheTheoretical System of Karl Marx" and Ernest Untermann's "MarxianEconomics. " These also are published at a dollar a volume. 

Perhaps you know some man who declares that "There are no classes inAmerica, " who loudly boasts that we have no class struggles: just geta copy of A. M. Simon's "Class Struggles in America, " with itsstartling array of historical references. It will convince him if itis possible to get an idea into his head. Or you want to get a goodbook to lend to your farmer friends who want to know how Socialismtouches them: get another volume by Simons, called "The AmericanFarmer. " You will never regret it. Or perhaps you are troubled aboutthe charge that Socialism and Anarchism are related. If so, getPlechanoff's "Anarchism and Socialism" and read it carefully. Thesethree books are published at fifty cents each. 

Are you interested in science? Do you want to know the reason whySocialists speak of Marx as doing for Sociology what Darwin did forbiology? If so, you will want to read "Evolution, Social and Organic, "by Arthur Morrow Lewis, price fifty cents. And you will be delightedbeyond your powers of expression with the several volumes of theLibrary of Science for the Workers, published at the same price. "TheEvolution of Man" and "The Triumph of Life, " both by the famous Germanscientist, Dr. Wilhelm Boelsche; "The Making of the World" and "TheEnd of the World, " both by Dr. M. Wilhelm Meyer; and "Germs of Mind inPlants, " by R. H. France, are some of the volumes which the presentwriter read with absorbing interest himself and then read them to alot of boys and girls, to their equal delight. 

One could go on and on talking about this wonderful list of bookswhich marks the tremendous intellectual strength of the AmericanSocialist movement. Here is the real explosive, a weapon far morepowerful than dynamite bombs! Socialists must win in a battle ofbrains--and here is ammunition for them. 

Individual Socialists who can afford it should take shares of stock inthis great enterprise. If they can pay the ten dollars all at once, well and good; if not, they can pay in monthly instalments. And everySocialist local ought to own a share of stock in the company, if forno other reason than that literature can then be bought much morecheaply than otherwise. But of course there is an even greater reasonthan that--every Socialist local ought to take pride in thedevelopment of the enterprise which has done so much to develop agreat American Socialist literature. 

Fuller particulars will be sent upon application. Address:

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, (Co-operative)118 West Kinzie street, Chicago

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