Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM

BY

ALLAN L. BENSON

Author of “The Usurped Power of the Courts,” “The Growing Grocery Bill,” “Socialism Made Plain,” etc.

NEW YORK

B. W. HUEBSCH

1913

Copyright, 1912

By The Pearson Publishing Co.

Copyright, 1913

By Allan L. Benson

First printing, February, 1913

Second printing, March, 1913

Third printing, May, 1913

CONTENTS

The Truth About Socialism

CHAPTER I
TO THE DISINHERITED

I am going to put a new heart into you. I am going to put your shoulders back and your head up. Behind your tongue I shall put words, and behind your words I shall put power. Your dead hopes I shall drag back from the grave and make them live. Your live fears I shall put into the grave and make them die. I shall do all of these things and more by becoming your voice. I shall say what you have always thought, but did not say. And, when your own unspoken words come back to you, they will come back like rolling thunder.

This country belongs to the people who live in it.

The power that made the Rocky Mountains did not so make them that, viewed from aloft, they spell “Rockefeller.”

The monogram of Morgan is nowhere worked out in the course of the Hudson River.

Nothing above ground or below ground indicates that this country was made for anybody in particular.

Everything above ground and below ground indicates that it was made for everybody.

Yet, this country, as it stands to-day, is not for everybody. Everybody has not an equal opportunity in it. A few do nothing and have everything. The rest do everything and have nothing.

A great many gentlemen are engaged in the occupation of trying to make these wrongs seem right. They write political platforms to make them seem right. They make political speeches to make them seem right. They go to Congress to make them seem right. Some go even to the White House to make them seem right. But no mere words, however fine, can make these wrongs right.

The conditions that exist in this country to-day are indefensible and intolerable. This should be a happy country. It should be a happy country because it contains an abundance of every element that is required to make happiness. The pangs of hunger should never come to a single human being, because we already produce as much food as we need, and with more intelligent effort could easily produce enough to supply a population ten times as great.

Yet, instead of this happy land, we have a land in which the task of making a living is constantly becoming greater and more uncertain. Everything seems to be tied up in a knot that is becoming tighter.

You do not know what is the matter.

Your neighbor does not know what is the matter.

Why should you know what is the matter?

You never listen to anybody who wants you to find out. You listen only to men who want to squeeze you out. Their word is good with you every time. You may not think it is good, but it is good. You may not take advice from Mr. Morgan, but you take advice from Mr. Morgan’s Presidents, Congressmen, writers, and speakers. You may not take advice from Mr. Ryan, but you take advice from the men whom Mr. Ryan controls. If you should go straight to Mr. Ryan you would get the same advice. What these men say to you, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Ryan say to them. You listen as they speak. You vote as they vote. They get what they want. You don’t get what you want. But you stick together. You seem never to grow tired. You were with them at the last election. Many of you will be with them at the next election. But you will not be with them for a while after the next election. They will go to their fine homes, while you go to your poor ones. They will take no fear with them, save the fear that some day you will wake up; that some day you will listen to men who talk to you as I am talking to you. But you will take the fear of poverty with you, and it will hang like a pall over your happiness.

If you have lost your hope of happiness, get it back. This can be a happy nation in your time. This country is for you. It is big. It is rich. It is all you need. But you will have to take it, and the easiest way to take it is with ballots.

CHAPTER II
WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHY IT IS

The occupation of the scarlet woman is said to be “the oldest profession.” If so, the robbery of man by man is the oldest trade. It is as old as the human race. It had its origin in the difficulty of producing enough of the material necessities of life. The earth was lean. Man was weak. Never was there enough food for all. Many must suffer. Some must starve.

What wonder that man robbed man? Self-preservation is the first law of nature. We have always fought and shall always fight for those things that are scarce and without which we should die. If water were scarce, we should all be fighting by the brookside. If air were scarce, we should all be straining our lungs to take in as much as we could.

But what wonder, also, that the robbed should resist those who robbed them? The robbed, too, have the instinct of self-preservation. They, too, want to live. All through the ages, they have fought for the right to live. By the sheer force of numbers, they have driven their exploiters from pillar to post. Again and again, they have compelled their exploiters to abandon one method of robbery, only to see them take up another. And, though some men no longer own other men’s bodies, some men still live by the sweat of other men’s brows.

The question is: Must this go on forever? Must a few always live so far from poverty that they cannot see it, while the rest live so close to it that they cannot see anything else? Must millions of women work in factories at men’s work, while millions of men walk the streets unable to get any work? Must the cry of child-labor forever sound to high heaven above the rumble of the mills that grind their bodies into dividends? Must the pinched faces of underfed children always make some places hideous?

No man in his senses will say that this situation must always exist. Human nature revolts at it. The wrong of it rouses the feelings even before it touches the intellect. Something within us tells us to cry out and to keep crying out until we find relief. We have tried almost every remedy that has been offered to us, but every remedy we have tried has failed. The hungry children are still with us. The hungry women are still with us. The hungry men are still with us. Never before was it so hard for most people to live. Yet, we live at a time when men, working with machinery, could make enough of everything for everybody.

Your radical Republican recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. Your Democratic radical recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. Your Rooseveltian Progressive also recognizes these facts and says something is the matter. But if you will carefully listen to these gentlemen, you will observe that none of them believes much is the matter. None of them believes much need be done to make everything right. One wants to loosen the tariff screw a little. The others want to put a new little wheel in the anti-trust machine.

Socialists differ from each of these gentlemen. Socialists say much is the matter with this country. Socialists say much is the matter with any country, most of whose people are in want or in fear of want, and some of whose people are where want never comes or can come. Some such conditions might have been tolerated a thousand years ago. Socialists will not tolerate them to-day. They say the time for poverty has passed. They say the time for poverty passed when man substituted steam and electricity for his muscles and machinery for his fingers.

But poverty did not go out when steam and electricity came in. On the contrary, the fear of want became intensified. Now, nobody who has not capital can live unless he can get a job. In the days that preceded the steam engine, nobody had to look for a job. Everybody owned his own job. The shoemaker could make shoes for his neighbors. The weaver could weave cloth. Each could work at his trade, without anybody’s permission, because the tools of their trades were few and inexpensive. Now, neither of them can work at his trade, because the tools of his trade have become numerous and expensive. The tools of the shoemaker’s trade are in the great factory that covers, perhaps, a dozen acres. The tools of the weaver’s trade are in another enormous factory. Neither the shoemaker nor the weaver can ever hope to own the tools of his trade. Nor, with the little hand-tools of the past centuries, can either of them compete with the modern factories. The shoe trust, with steam, electricity and machinery, can make a pair of shoes at a price that no shoemaker, working by hand, could touch.

Thus the hand-workers have been driven to knock at the doors of the factories that rich men own and ask for work. If the rich men can see a profit in letting the poor men work, the poor men are permitted to work. If the rich men cannot see a profit in letting the poor men work, then the poor men may not work. Though there be the greatest need for shoes, if those in need have no money, the rich men lock up their factories and wave the workers away. The workers may starve, if they like. Their wives and children may starve. The workers may become tramps, criminals or maniacs; their wives and their little children may be driven into the street—but the rich men who closed their factories because they could see no profit in keeping them open—these rich men take no part of the responsibility. They talk about the “laws of trade,” go to their clubs and have a little smoke, and, perhaps, the next week give a few dollars to “worthy charity” and forget all about the workers.

Now, the Socialists are extremely tired of all this. Their remedy may be all wrong, but they are tired of all this. Put the accent upon the tired all the time. They say it is all wrong. Not only do they say it is all wrong, but they say they know how to make it all right. They do not propose to do any small job of tinkering, because they say that if small jobs of tinkering were enough to cure the great evil of poverty, we should have cured it long ago. They say we have been tinkering with tariffs, income taxes and the money question for a hundred years without reducing either want or the fear of want. They say we have made no progress, during the last hundred years, in reducing want and the fear of want, because we have never hit the grafters where they live. By this, they mean that we have never cut the tap root upon which robbery grows. The serfs cut off the tap root when they threw off chattel slavery, but another tap root has grown and we have not yet discovered where to strike.

The Socialists say they know where to strike.

“Strike at the machinery of the country,” they say, “by having the people, through the government, own the machinery of the country.”

“Cut out the profits of the private owners,” they say. “Let the people own the trusts and make things because they want the things, instead of because somebody else wants a profit, and there will never again be in this country either want or the fear of want.”

This sounds like a nice, man-made program, cooked up late at night by some zealous gentleman intent upon saving his country. It may be a foolish program, but if it is, it is not that kind of a foolish program. It is not man-made, any more than Darwin’s theory of evolution is man-made. Darwin observed present animal life and thereby explained the past. Socialists observe past and present industrial life and thereby forecast the future. Paradoxically, then, the Socialist remedy is not a Socialist remedy. If it is anything, it is the remedy that evolution is bringing to us. Socialists see what evolution is bringing and proclaim it, much as a trainman announces the coming of a train that he already sees rounding a curve.

Let me tell a story to illustrate this point:

Seventy years ago, Socialist writers predicted and accurately described the trusts as they exist to-day. Nobody paid much attention to the predictions or the descriptions. Nowhere in the world was there a single trust. Nowhere in the world was any one thinking of forming one. The first trust was not formed until almost forty years later.

The trusts were predicted because the steam engine had been invented and brought with it machinery. The invention did not mean much to most people. It meant everything to these early Socialists. They saw its significance. They saw that it meant a transformed world. Never again would the world be as it had always been. Never again would the amount of wealth that man could create be limited by his weak muscles. Steam and machinery had come to do, not only what he had been doing, but what he had never dreamed of doing.

The only lesson that the rich men of the day learned from steam was that it meant more money for them. The rich men of the day, by the way, were in need of a new method of exploitation. Serfdom had just gone down in the Napoleonic wars, and some men were no longer able to exploit other men by claiming to own the other men’s bodies. Exploitation, through the private ownership of land, still continued, it is true, but a man working by hand cannot be much exploited because he cannot make much. What I mean by this is that he cannot be exploited of many dollars. Of course, he can be exploited of so great a percentage of his product that he is left starving, but the man who exploits him will not be much richer. That is why there were no great fortunes, as we now know them, in the days before the machinery age. Wealth was too difficult to make.

But, to return to our story. The invention of the steam engine gave the rich men of the early eighteenth century the opportunity of which they stood much in need. Factories cost money. The workers did not have any. The rich men did. The rich men built factories. That is to say, they thought they were only building factories. As a matter of fact, they were taking over, from the hands of evolution, the poor man’s tools. Never again were working men to own the tools of their trades. Their tools had gone down in the struggle in which the survivors must be the fittest. For centuries, the world had starved because of their old hand-tools. They could not, for a moment, exist after steam and machinery came. It was right that the hand-tools should go. It was unfortunate for the workers only that the successors of hand-tools were too expensive for individual ownership, and that they were also unsuited to such ownership. No man can run a whole shoe factory, even if he owns one. Many men are required to run many machines, and many machines are required to make the labor of men most productive.

All of this, the early Socialists saw or reasoned out. They saw the rich men of the day building factories. They saw those who were not quite so rich joining together to build factories. Little co-partnerships were springing up all over the world. Everybody competed with everybody else in his line. Manufactures multiplied, and it became the common belief that “competition was the life of trade.”

Stick a pin here. The roots of Socialism go down somewhere near this point.

The early Socialist writers who predicted the trusts did not believe competition was the life of trade. They believed the inevitable tendency of competition was to kill itself. Their reasoning took this form:

Manufacturers engage in business, not because they want to supply goods to the public, but because they want to make profits for themselves.

Inasmuch as the question of who shall make the profits depends upon who shall sell the goods, manufacturers will compete with each other to sell goods.

Manufacturers will be able to compete and still make a profit so long as the demand for goods far exceeds the supply.

But the demand for goods will not always far exceed the supply. The opportunity to make profits will tempt other capitalists to create manufacturing enterprises. The market will become glutted with goods, because more will have been produced than the people can pay for.

Competition among manufacturers will then become so fierce that profits will first shrink and eventually disappear.

Manufacturers, to regain their profits, will then cease to compete. The strongest will buy out or crush the weakest. Monopolies will be formed, primarily to end competition and save the competitors from themselves, but, having been formed, they will also be used to rob the people.

Mind you—this reasoning is not new. It is seventy years old. It sounds new only because it has so recently come true. Nobody whose eyes are open now believes that competition is the life of trade. The phrase has died upon the lips of the very men who used to speak it. The late Senator Hanna was one of the many who used to believe that good trade could not be where competition was not. But, when the great trust movement of 1898 was under way, Senator Hanna said: “It is not a question of whether business men do or do not believe in trusts. It is a question only of whether business men want to be killed by competition or saved by coöperation.”

However, the existence of the trusts is ample verification of the Socialist prophecy that they would come. And the trusts came in the way that the early Socialists said they would come.

We may now proceed to consider what those early Socialist writers thought of the trusts that they so accurately described before they came, what they believed would become of them and what they believed would supplant them.

No Socialist was ever heard finding fault with a trust simply for existing. A Socialist would as soon find fault with a green apple because it had been produced from a blossom. In fact, Socialists regard the trusts as the green apples upon the tree of industrial evolution. But they would no more destroy these industrial green apples that are making the world sick than they would destroy the green apples that make small boys sick. They pause, first because they are evolutionists, not only in biology, but in everything; second, because they recall that the green apples that make the boy sick will, if left to ripen, make the man well. In short, Socialists regard trusts, or private monopolies, as a necessary stage in industrial evolution; a stage that we could not have avoided; a stage that in many respects, represents a great advance over any phase of civilization that preceded it, yet a stage at which we cannot stop unless civilization stops. Therefore, Socialists take this position:

It is flying in the face of evolution itself to talk about destroying, or even effectually regulating the trusts.

Private monopolies cannot be destroyed except as green apples can be destroyed—by crushing them and staying the evolutionary processes that, if left alone, will yield good fruit.

Private monopolies cannot be effectually regulated because, so long as they are permitted to exist, they will regulate the government instead of permitting the government to regulate them. They will regulate the government because the great profits at stake will give them the incentive to do so and the enormous capital at their command will give them the power to do so.

In other words, Socialists say that the processes of evolution should go on. What do they mean by this? They mean that the good elements of the trust principle should be preserved and the bad elements destroyed. What are the good elements? The economies of large, well-ordered production, and the avoidance of the waste due to haphazard, competitive production. And the bad elements? The powers that private monopoly gives, through control of market and governmental policies, to rob the consumer.

Socialists contend that the good can be saved and the bad destroyed by converting the private monopolies into public monopolies—in other words, by letting the government own the trusts and the people own the government. This may seem like what the foes of Socialism would call a “patent nostrum.” It is nothing of the kind. It is no more a patent nostrum than the trusts are patent nostrums. Socialists invented neither private monopolies nor public monopolies. Socialists did not kill competition. Competition killed itself. Socialists simply were able to foresee that too much competition would end all competition and thus give birth to private monopoly.

And, having seen thus far, they looked a little further and saw that private monopoly would not be an unmixed blessing. They saw that under it, robbery would be practised in new, strange and colossal forms. They knew the people would not like robbery in any form. They knew they would cry out against it as they are crying out against the trusts to-day. And they believed that after having tried to destroy the trusts and failed at that; after having tried to regulate the trusts and failed at that, that the people would cease trying to buck evolution, and get for themselves the benefits of the trusts by owning them.

This may be an absurd idea, but in part, at least, it has already been verified. It has been demonstrated that private monopoly saves the enormous sums that were spent in the competitive era to determine whether this man or that man should get the profit upon the things you buy. The consumer has absolutely no interest in the identity of the capitalist who exploits him. But when capitalists were competing for trade, the consumer was made to bear the whole cost of fighting for his trade.

Private monopoly has largely done away with the cost of selling trust goods, by doing away with the individual competitors who were once struggling to put their goods upon the market. Private monopoly has also reduced the cost of production by introducing the innumerable economies that accompany large production.

What private monopoly has not done and will never do is to pass along these savings to the consumers. The monopolists have passed along some of the savings, but not many of them. What they have passed along bears but a small proportion to what they have kept. That is what most of the trouble is about now. The people find it increasingly difficult to live. For a dozen years, it has been increasingly difficult to live. Persistent and more persistent has been the demand that something be done about the trusts.

The first demand was that the trusts be destroyed. Now, Mr. Bryan is about the only man in the country to whom the conviction has not been borne home that the trusts cannot be destroyed. The rest of the people want the trusts regulated, and the worst of the trust magnates sent to jail. Up to date, not a single trust has been regulated, nor a single trust magnate sent to jail. Officially, of course, the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company and the Coal Trust have been cleansed in the blue waters of the Supreme Court laundry and hung upon the line as white as snow. But gentlemen who are not stone blind know that this is not so. They know the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company and the Coal Trust have merely put on masks and gone on with the hold-up business. Therefore, the Socialist predictions of seventy years ago have all been verified up to and including the inability of any government either to destroy or regulate the trusts.

So much for what Socialists believe Socialism, by reducing the prices of commodities to cost, would do for the people as consumers. Socialists believe Socialism would do even more for the people as workers. Behold the present plight of the workingman. He has a right to live, but he has not a right to the means by which he can live. He cannot live without work, yet, ever he must seek work as a privilege—not as a right. The coming of the age of machinery has made it impossible to work without machinery. Yet the worker owns no machinery and can get access to no machinery except upon such terms as he may be able to make with its owners.

Socialists urge the people to consider the results of this unprecedented situation. First, there is great insecurity of employment. No one knows how long his job is destined to last. It may not last another day. A great variety of causes exist, any one of which may deprive the worker of his opportunity to work. Wall Street gentlemen may put such a crimp in the financial situation that industry cannot go on. Business may slow down because more is being produced than the markets can absorb. A greedy employer may precipitate a strike by trying to reduce the wages of his employees. Any one of many causes may without notice step in between the worker and the machinery without which he cannot work.

But worse than the uncertainty of employment is the absolute certainty that millions of men must always be out of work. Times are never so good that there is work for everybody. Most persons do not know it, but in the best of times there are always a million men out of work. In the worst of times, the number of men out of work sometimes exceeds 5,000,000. The country cries for the things they might produce. There is great need for shoes, flour, cloth, houses, furniture, and fuel. These millions of men, if they could get in touch with machinery, could produce enough of such staples to satisfy the public demand. If they could but work, their earnings would vastly increase the amount of money in circulation and thus increase the buying power of everybody. But they cannot work, because they do not own the machinery without which they cannot work, and the men who own it will not let it be used, because they cannot see any profits for themselves in having it used.

Socialists say this is an appalling situation. They are amazed that the nation tolerates it. They believe the nation would not tolerate it if it understood it. Some things are more easily understood than others. If 5,000,000 men were on a sinking ship within swimming distance of the Atlantic shore and the employing class were to prevent them from swimming ashore for no other reason than that the employing class had no use for their services—the people would understand that. Socialists believe the people will soon understand the present situation.

Here is another thing that Socialists hope the people will soon understand. The policy of permitting a few men to use the machinery with which all other men must work or starve compels all other men to become competitors for its use. If there were no more workers than the capitalists must have, there would not be such competition. But there must always be more workers than the capitalists can use. The fact that the capitalist demands a profit upon the worker’s labor renders the worker incapable of buying back the very thing he has made. Under present conditions, trade must, therefore, always be smaller than the natural requirements of the people for goods. And since, with machinery, each worker can produce a vast volume of goods, it inevitably follows that only a part of the workers are required to make all of the goods that can be sold at a profit. That is why there is not always work for all.

With more workers than there are jobs, it thus comes about that the workers are compelled to compete among themselves for jobs. Only part of the workers can be employed and the struggle of each is to become one of that part. The workers who are out of employment are always willing to work, if they can get no more, for a wage that represents only the cost of the poorest living upon which they will consent to exist. It therefore follows that wages are always based upon the cost of living. If the cost of living is high, wages are high. If the cost of living is low, wages are low. In any event, the worker has nothing left after he has paid for his living.

Socialists say this is not just. They can understand the capitalist who buys labor as he buys pig-iron, but they say labor is entitled to more consideration than pig-iron. The price of labor, they declare, should be gauged by the value of labor’s product, instead of by the direness of labor’s needs. They say the present situation gives to the men who own machinery most of its benefits and to the many who operate it none of its hopes. Now. as of old, the average worker dare hope for no more than enough to keep him alive. Again and again and again the census reports have shown that the bulk of the people in this country are so poor that they do not own even the roofs over their heads.

The purpose of Socialism is to give the workers all they produce. And, when Socialists say “workers” they do not mean only those who wear overalls and carry dinner pails. They mean everybody who does useful labor. Socialists regard the general superintendent of a railroad as quite as much of a worker as they do the man on the section. But they do not regard the owners of railway stocks and bonds as workers. They regard them as parasites who are living off the products of labor by owning the locomotives, cars and other equipment with which the workers work. And, since the ownership of machinery is the club with which Socialists say capitalists commit their robberies, Socialists also declare that the only way to stop the robberies is to take away the club. It would do no good to take the club from the men who now hold it and give it even to the individual workers, because, with the principle of private ownership retained, ownership would soon gravitate into a few hands and robbery would go on as ruthlessly as ever. Socialists believe the only remedy is to destroy the club by vesting the ownership of the great machinery of production and distribution in the people, through the government.

Such is the gist of Socialism—public ownership of the trusts, combined with public ownership of the government. Gentlemen who are opposed to Socialism—for what reasons it is now unnecessary to consider—lose no opportunity to spread the belief that there are more kinds of Socialism than there are varieties of the celebrated products of Mr. Heinz. This is not so. There are more than 30,000,000 Socialists in the world. Not one of them would refuse to write across this chapter: “That is Socialism,” and sign his name to it. Every Socialist has his individual conception of how mankind would advance if poverty were eliminated, but all Socialists agree that the heart and soul of their philosophy lies in the public ownership, under democratic government, of the means of life. And, as compared with this belief, all other beliefs of Socialism are minor and inconsequential. Public ownership is the rock upon which it is determined to stand or fall.

Socialists differ only with regard to the means by which public ownership may be brought about. A handful of Socialists, for instance, believe that in order to bring it about it is necessary to oppose the labor unions. All other Socialists work hand in hand with the labor unions.

Also, there is a difference of opinion among Socialists as to how the government should proceed to obtain ownership of the industrial trusts, the railroads, telegraph, telephone and express companies and so forth. Some Socialists are in favor of confiscating them, on the theory that the people have a right to resort to such drastic action. In a way, they have excellent authority for their position. Read what Benjamin Franklin said about property at the convention that was called in 1776 to adopt a new constitution for Pennsylvania:

“Suppose one of our Indian nations should now agree to form a civil society. Each individual would bring into the stock of the society little more property than his gun and his blanket, for at present he has no other. We know that when one of them has attempted to keep a few swine he has not been able to maintain a property in them, his neighbors thinking they have a right to kill and eat them whenever they want provisions, it being one of their maxims that hunting is free for all. The accumulation of property in such a society, and its security to individuals in every society, must be an effect of the protection afforded to it by the joint strength of the society in the execution of its laws.

“Private property is, therefore, a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society whenever its necessities require it, even to the last farthing.”

But one need quote only the law of self-preservation to prove that if any people shall ever become convinced that their lives depend upon the confiscation of the trusts that such confiscation will be justified. When men reach a certain stage of hunger and wretchedness they pay scant attention to every law except the higher law that says they have a right to live.

I believe that most Socialists twenty years ago, were in favor of confiscation. The trend now is all toward compensation. Not that Socialists have changed their minds at all about the equities of the matter. They have not. But they are coming to see that compensation is the easier and quicker way. Victor Berger, the first Socialist congressman, introduced in the House of Representatives an anti-trust bill in which he proposed that the government should buy all of the trusts that control more than forty per cent. of the business in their respective lines, and pay therefor their full cash values—minus, of course, wind, water and all forms of speculative inflation. In short the differences in the Socialist party upon the question of compensation are not unlike the differences which once existed with regard to the best means by which the negroes might be emancipated. Years before the Civil War, Henry Clay proposed that the government should buy the negroes at double their market price and set them free. He said this would be the cheapest and quickest way of settling the troubles between the North and the South. The slave owners would not consent, and, eventually Lincoln freed their slaves without paying for them.

When Socialists speak of buying the trusts, they naturally invite the inquiry as to where they expect to get the money to pay for them. They expect to get the money out of the profits of the trusts. That is the way that Representative Berger provided in his bill. It is a poor trust that does not pay dividends upon stock and interest upon bonds that do not aggregate at least ten per cent. of the capital actually invested. Most of them pay more, and some of the express companies occasionally spring a fifty or a 100 per cent. dividend.

The Socialist proposal is that the government pay for the trusts with two-per cent. bonds, and that each year, enough money be put into a sinking fund to retire the bonds in not more than fifty years. The burden of purchasing the trusts would thus be spread over a little more than two generations, but Socialists say the burden would be a burden only in name, since the prices of trust goods could be radically reduced, even while the trusts were being paid for, and upon the retirement of the bonds, all prices could be reduced to cost.

Those who know little or nothing about Socialism believe that Socialists also differ as to the advisability of using violence to bring about Socialism. Never was there a greater mistake. Above all others, the Socialist party is the party of peace. When Germany and England, in 1911, were ready to fly at each other’s throats, it was the Socialist party of Germany that assembled 200,000 men in Berlin one Sunday afternoon and declared that if there were a war, the Socialists of Germany would not help fight it. It was generally admitted, at the time, that the attitude of the German Socialists, more than anything else, was responsible for the avoidance of war.

Socialists are equally pacific when considering the best means by which Socialism may be brought about. Socialists are, first, last and all the time in favor only of political action and trade-union action. Wherever there is a free ballot, they believe in using it, to the exclusion of bombs and bullets. Socialists realize that they can win only by converting a majority of the people to their belief. That is why they begin one campaign the next morning after the closing of another. They are busy with the printing press and their tongues all the while. For them, there is no closed season.

Socialists realize that Socialism can be reared only upon understanding, and that the use of dynamite would turn the minds of the people against them for a hundred years. Any Socialist who believes otherwise is the same sort of a potential criminal that can be found in any other party—and equally as rare. The Republican party had its Guiteau and its Czolgosz, but it repudiated neither of them more quickly than the Socialist party would repudiate one of its own members who should commit a great crime.

Socialists, as a party, stand for violence only in the same way that Abraham Lincoln stood for it. If the Socialists should carry a national election in this country, and, the capitalists, refusing to yield, should turn the regular army at them, the Socialists would use all the violence they could muster. While they are in a minority, they are obeying the laws that the capitalists make, but when the Socialists become a majority, they will insist, even with bullets, that the capitalists obey the laws that the Socialists make.

CHAPTER III
THE VIRTUOUS GRAFTERS AND THEIR GRAVE OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM

It is an old saying that the tree that bears the best apples has the most clubs under it. Enough clubs are under the tree of Socialism to stock a wood-yard. Some of the clubs bear the imprints of honest men. Some do not. The great grafters of the present day are the most persistent foes of Socialism. The great grafters say, not only that Socialism is anti-religious, but that it would destroy the family. The grafters also say that Socialism stands for free love.

It may be amusing to hear a grafter oppose Socialism on the ground that it is against religion. It may be diverting to hear gentlemen with Reno reputations charge that Socialism would establish free love and thus destroy the family. But such charges cannot be dismissed by laughing at those who make them. Honest men and women want to know the truth.

The truth is that there is no truth in the charge that Socialism is against religion. Socialism is purely an economic matter. It has no more to do with religion than it has to do with astronomy. It is no more against religion than it is against astronomy. Men of all religious denominations are Socialists, and men of no religious denomination are Socialists. Nor is there any reason why this should not be so. The very pith and marrow of Socialism is the contention that the people, through the government, should own and operate, for their exclusive benefit, the great machinery of production and distribution that is now owned and operated by the trusts. Either this contention is sound or it is not. Whether it is sound or not, a man’s religious beliefs cannot possibly have anything to do with what he thinks of it.

But while Socialism is in no sense anti-religious, it is in one sense pro-religious. So good an authority as the Encyclopedia Britannica declares that “the ethics of Socialism and the ethics of Christianity are identical.” One of the concerns of Christianity is to establish justice upon earth. The only concern of Socialism is to establish justice upon earth. Socialism seeks to establish justice by giving each human being an equal opportunity to labor, while depriving each human being of the power to appropriate any part of the product of another human being’s labor. If the Socialist program contains a word of comfort for either grafters or loafers, neither the grafters nor the loafers have found it.

Nor does the Socialist program contain a word of comfort for the Reno gentlemen. Socialists beg leave frankly to doubt the sincerity of certain wealthy men who profess to believe that Socialism would destroy the family by bringing about free love. Socialists say the best proof that these men believe nothing of the kind is that they do not make application to join the Socialist party. The wives of some of them certainly make enough applications for divorce.

Addressing themselves to the members of the capitalist class, Socialists therefore speak as follows:

“If the preservation of the family depends upon you, God help the family. If the preservation of womanly women depends upon you, God help the women. You are not all bad, but you are all doing bad. Some of you are doing bad without knowing it; some of you are doing bad though knowing it. But, whether you know it or not, all of you are doing bad because your capitalist system is bad. Your system makes those of you who would do good do bad. It makes you fatten upon the labor of children, because your competitors are fattening upon the labor of children. It makes you fatten upon the labor of women, because your competitors are fattening upon the labor of women. It makes you fatten upon the labor of men because your competitors are fattening upon the labor of men. It makes you keep men, women and children poor, because in no other way could you become rich.

“And you are the ones who are so fearful lest Socialism shall destroy the home. Why do you not worry a little lest the poverty caused by capitalism shall destroy the home? Why are you so slightly stirred by the spectacle of little children torn from their firesides and their schools to work for starvation wages in factories and department stores? Why are you so well able to control your grief when the census reports tell you that more than 5,000,000 women and girls have been compelled to become wage earners because their husbands and fathers receive so little wages that they cannot support their families? Why are you so well able to bear up when the white-slave dealer gets the little girl from the department store?

“None of these facts, nor all of these facts seem to suggest to you wealthy gentlemen who are opposing Socialism that the conditions under which you have become rich are doing anything to disrupt the family or to bring about free love. But you profess to be stunned to a stare when Socialists present a program that is devoted to the single purpose of preventing you, who do no useful labor, from robbing those who do it all. If you have other grounds for opposing Socialism, state them. But in the name of common decency, don’t come forward as the protectors of women and children. Your hands are not clean.”

Socialists contend that Socialism would do more to purify, glorify and vivify the family than capitalism has ever done or can do. Their reasoning takes this form:

Unless poverty is good for the family, capitalism is not good for the family, because capitalism means poverty or the fear of poverty for all but a few and can never mean anything else. Capitalism can never mean anything else because capitalism is essentially parasitical in its nature. It lives and can live only by preying upon the working class.

If plenty for everybody, without too much or too little for anybody will purify, glorify and vivify the family, Socialism will purify, glorify and vivify it. Socialism will place all of the great machinery of modern production in the hands of the people, to be used fully and freely for nobody’s advantage but their own.

Of course, the family cannot be improved without changing it. Upon this obvious fact is based the whole capitalist attack upon Socialism as a destroyer of the home. Socialists believe that freedom from poverty would have a profound effect upon domestic relationships. And Socialist writers have tried to picture the world as it will be when all of the hot hoops of want have been removed from the compact little group that is called the family.

They have pictured woman standing firmly upon her feet, with the ballot in one hand and the power under the law to live from her labor with comfort and self-respect, either inside or outside of her home. But no Socialist has ever pictured a world in which woman would be compelled to work outside her home if she did not want to. Such a picture is reserved for capitalism in the present day. Socialists merely contend that Socialism would make women economically independent, by guaranteeing to them the full value of their labor. No woman would be compelled to marry to get a home. No woman who had a home would be compelled by poverty to stay in it if she were badly treated. For the sake of her children, she might do so if she wished, but she could not be compelled to do so. She would simply be free to act as her judgment might dictate—to profit from a wise choice or to suffer from an unwise one.

Briefly, such is the Socialist picture of the Socialist world for women. No Socialist contends that it is a picture of a perfect world. A perfect world could contain neither fools, hotheads, nor vicious persons. The hard conditions of the present world, and the harder conditions of those long past have created too many fools, hotheads and vicious persons to justify the hope that all such persons can quickly be made wise, cool and good. Socialists, with all their optimism, are not so optimistic as that. They have absolutely no program, patented or otherwise, for making people good.

Their only contention is that they have a program under which people can be good if they want to. They know, only too well, that with the coming of Socialism, everybody will not suddenly want to be good. They expect to have to deal with the bad man and the bad woman. But they do not expect to have to deal with so many bad men and bad women as we now have to deal with. They do not expect to have to deal with any men or women who have been made bad by poverty or the fear of poverty. They do not expect to have to deal with women who have been forced into prostitution because there seemed to be no other way to keep soul and body together. Socialists say that if there are any prostitutes under Socialism they will be women who deliberately choose prostitution as a vocation. Perhaps women, better than men, can judge how many such women there are likely to be.

It is this picture of economically independent womanhood that is hailed by the wealthy detractors of Socialism as the sign that the Socialists plan to destroy the home and supplant it with free love. Socialists say that such conclusions can be based only upon these assumptions:

That nothing but poverty keeps women from being “free-lovers.”

That if women were given the power to support themselves decently and comfortably outside of the home, they would at once desert their children, their husbands and “destroy the family.”

Socialists believe women can safely be trusted with enough money to live on. Yet the word “trust,” as here used, is not quite the word. Socialists do not believe it is within their province either to trust or to distrust women. Socialists believe economic independence is a right that women should demand and get, rather than a privilege that man should grant or deny, as he may see fit. If women do well with economic independence, well and good. If they do ill with it, still well and good. If they have not yet learned to use economic independence, they cannot begin learning too quickly, nor can they learn except by trying to use it.

In any event, Socialists do not claim the right of guardianship over women. They do not believe any human being, regardless of sex, has a right to coerce another when that other is not invading the rights of some other. They believe that women to-day are being coerced. Coerced by poverty. Coerced by fear of poverty. Coerced by men who presume upon their own economic independence and the economic dependence of women. They cite, as proof of their beliefs, the growing number of divorces, together with the fact that women are the applicants for most of the divorces.

And, the astounding circumstance about all of this is that because Socialists hold these views, they are denounced by rich grafters and their retainers as “destroyers of the family,” and “free-lovers.”

The Socialists have said no more than Herbert Spencer said about the folly of trying to promote happiness with coercion. They say that weakness pitted against strength and dependence against independence invite coercion—no more in a family of nations than in a family of individuals; that a woman whose economic dependence prevents her from doing what all of her instincts call upon her to do is coerced. Here is what Herbert Spencer says in Social Statics (p. 76):

“Command is a blight to the affections. Whatsoever of beauty—whatsoever of poetry there is in the passion that unites the sexes, withers up and dies in the cold atmosphere of authority. Native as they are to such widely-separated regions of our nature, Love and Coercion cannot possibly flourish together. Love is sympathetic; Coercion is callous. Love is gentle; Coercion is harsh. Love is self-sacrificing; Coercion is selfish. How then can they co-exist? It is the property of the first to attract, while it is that of the last to repel; and, conflicting as they do, it is the constant tendency of each to destroy the other. Let whoever thinks the two compatible imagine himself acting the master over his betrothed. Does he believe that he could do this without any injury to the subsisting relationship? Does he not know rather that a bad effect would be produced upon the feelings of both by the assumption of such an attitude? And, confessing this as he must, is he superstitious enough to suppose that the going through of a form of word will render harmless that use of command which was previously hurtful?”

Nobody ever called Spencer a “destroyer of the home,” or a “free-lover” for that. Yet, if Spencer meant anything, he meant that coercion is primarily wrong because it deprives the individual of the right to be guided by his own judgment. Socialists contend that women have a right to be guided by their own judgment, even if they make mistakes. Men do so. Women rebel against the denial of their equal right. They rebel against the coercion that is worked against them by their inability to earn decent, comfortable livings outside of their homes. Socialists say the family can never be what it might be or what it should be so long as this warfare continues. They say that since the weak never coerce the strong, there should be no economically weak members of the community. Men and women should both be economically independent. Each is likely to treat the other better if they are so.

Francis G. Peabody, Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard, has been as fortunate as Spencer in escaping the charge of being a “destroyer of the family” and a “free-lover.” The professor is quoted in the press as follows:

“One thing is certain, the family is rapidly becoming disorganized and disintegrated.... Divorces are being granted at an ever-increasing rate. It may be computed that if the present ratio of increase in population and in separation is maintained, the number of separations of marriage by death would at the end of the twentieth century be less than the number of separations by divorce....

“Owing to industrial life, the importance of the family is already enormously lessened. Once every form of industry went on within the family circle, but as the methods of the great industry are substituted for work done in the home, the economic usefulness of the family is practically outgrown.”

Then, painting a picture of the world to come, as he sees it, the professor said:

“Thus with the coming of the social state, family unity will be for a higher end. The wife, being no longer doomed to household drudgery, will have the greater blessing of economic equality. Children will be cared for by the community under healthful and uniform conditions, and we shall arrive at what has been called the happy time when continuity of society no longer depends upon the private nursery.”

But what Professor Peabody has said, or what Socialists have said with regard to the next step in the evolution of the family is a little beside the point, and is mentioned so at length only because the detractors of Socialism make so much of it. The point is: Ought the world if it can, to get rid of poverty, and will Socialism do it? If Socialism will rid the world of poverty, ought we to retain poverty to keep women good? Who knows that economic independence would make women bad? The grafters intimate that they know. But who believes the grafters? The grafters say the present status of the family is so good that we should be content to remain poor in order to preserve it. Professor Peabody says the present status of the family is so bad that it is falling to pieces. The professor has proof of his statement in every divorce court. The grafters have proof of their statement in no court, nor anywhere else.

Besides, the testimony of the grafters is properly subject to suspicion. If Socialism would remove poverty it would also remove the grafters. If Socialism would not remove poverty or the grafters, but would bring about free love, do you believe the grafters would oppose it? Is it not more likely that the grafters believe Socialism would remove both poverty and themselves and that they are trying to throw a scare into the people by howling about the threatened destruction of the family? If not, why do not the grafters themselves do something to stop their own destruction of the family? A $100 bill will make more happiness in a home than a sermon against Socialism. Why don’t they give up their dividends and let the workers have what they produce? Why don’t they drum Professor Peabody out of Harvard? If the Socialists are free-lovers, Professor Peabody is a free-lover. Why don’t they put him out? Is it because he does not also advocate Socialism?

“Ah,” say the grafters, “but the lives of Socialists do not bear out their protestations of devotion to the family. Look at the ‘affinities’ that some of them have had.”

“Quite true,” say the Socialists, “but one affinity does not make a fire, nor do two make a forest. What if one or two Socialists of more or less prominence have been divorced? Are affinities and divorces unknown among Democrats and Republicans? Is the percentage of divorces greater in Socialist families than it is in Democratic or Republican families? Where is your proof? What have you got on Debs? What have you got on Berger? What have you got on Seidel, the former Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee? These men are in the limelight. If they should make a mismove, you would blazon it. What do you know against them?”

The foregoing pretty well sums up the situation, so far as the free-love and destroying-the-family charges are concerned. There is nothing in them. Socialists are trying to eradicate poverty now. They have no other immediate concern. If the eradication of poverty should send the world to hell, the Socialists, if they can, will send the world to hell. They do not believe anything that can be kept only with poverty is worth keeping. Their observation has taught them that poverty is always and everywhere a curse. They believe no other curse is nearly so great except the curse of excessive riches.

Let us now pass to objections to Socialism that are both pertinent and honest. It is the common belief of those who do not understand Socialism that, under a Socialist form of government, the government would do everything and the people could therefore do nothing; that “everybody would be held down to a dead level,” and that as a consequence of the individual’s inability to rise, nobody would have an incentive to work.

Here are several kindred objections rolled into one. Let us pick them to pieces and see what is in them.

Let it be conceded that under Socialism the government would own and operate all of the great industries. What of it? The people would do precisely what they are doing now, except that they would do it through the government for themselves, instead of through capitalists for themselves and the capitalists. The people are now engaged in useful labor. A small body of parasites are appropriating much that the people produce. Under Socialism, the parasites will have to go to work. The people will simply continue to work, though under better conditions and for a greater return than they now receive.

Now, let us see just what is meant by “keeping everybody upon a dead level.” As the world stands to-day, people differ chiefly as to wealth and to intellect. If one person is not on a “dead level” with another it is because he is more intelligent or more stupid than that other, or because he is richer or poorer. Nobody, of course, believes that Socialism or anything else could put Edison on a dead level with the boss of Tammany Hall. If Socialism is to establish a dead level, it must therefore be by establishing equality as to wealth.

Capitalism has pretty nearly done that already. The great bulk of the world is poor, living from hand to mouth, worrying about the increased cost of living, and going to the grave as empty-handed as when it came into the world. Only a few have any money, beyond their immediate needs, and as a rule that few is composed of men who perform no useful labor. Here and there is a man who combines a little useful labor with a great deal of cogitation as to how he can appropriate something that somebody else has produced. He may have enough to cause him to mortgage his house to buy an automobile, and to make a little pretence of affluence. But financially he is a faker and he knows it. On the other hand, the men who are not financial fakers are not workers. That is to say, either they do no work that is useful to society, or the work they do that is useful justifies but a small part of their incomes.

To illustrate: The owner of a great industry devotes his time to the management of that industry. So far as his managerial activities pertain to the production and distribution of his product, they are socially useful. So far as they pertain to obtaining a profit for himself upon that product they are not socially useful. The value of the socially useful part of his activities may be approximately measured by what he would pay another man for managing the manufacturing and distributing end of his business. The extent to which he is a parasite upon the community may be approximately measured by the difference between his net income from the industry and the sum he would pay another man to manage the manufacturing and distributing end of his business. A hired manager might receive $5,000 a year. The capitalist proprietor may receive $50,000 a year or he may receive nothing—he is in a gambler’s game and must take a gambler’s chances. If he receives $50,000 a year $45,000 of it is because he owns the machinery. If he did not own the machinery, he himself would be compelled to hire out as a manager at $5,000 a year. In other words, $45,000 a year is the price that the workers pay the capitalist for the privilege of working with his machinery. Socialists therefore contend that we are already on a dead level of wealth, except as to the fact that we have permitted a few who do little or no useful labor to rise above those who do nothing else.

Socialists, however, are not opposed in principle to the economic dead level, and they do not believe anybody else is. If it were desirable that each human being should have a billion dollars, and, by pressing a button, each human being could have a billion dollars, Socialists do not believe there would be an extended Alphonse and Gaston performance over the ceremony of pressing the button. Socialists are opposed only to a dead level that is so nearly level with the hunger line. They want to raise the level to the point where it will comfort, not alone the stomach, but the heart and the brain.

Now, mind you, Socialists have no patented wage scales that they intend to force upon the people. If Socialism stands for anything, it stands for the expression of popular will, and therefore it will be for the people to say, when Socialism comes, whether the manager of a railway system shall receive greater compensation than a train conductor on that system. I do not fear contradiction when I say almost every Socialist believes extraordinary ability should be rewarded with extraordinary compensation—not $10,000 a month for the manager of a railway system that pays its conductors $100 a month, but enough more than the conductor to show that the manager’s services are appreciated at their worth. Socialists would also give garbage men and sewer diggers extraordinary wages, on the theory that their work is vitally necessary to everybody else and extremely disagreeable to themselves.

But to satisfy those who want the dead level objection analyzed to the bone, suppose everybody were to receive equal compensation? Should we not have less injustice in the world than we have now? Should we have any suffering from hunger and cold? Should we have so many crimes due to poverty? Should we have any women forced into prostitution by poverty? Should we have a single human being upon the face of the earth haunted by the constant fear that he could not get work and could not get food?

We have all of these evils now. Are they worth thinking about? Are they serious enough to justify us in trying to be rid of them? Granted, for the sake of argument, that we cannot get rid of them without doing an injustice to the railroad manager who would be paid no more than a conductor—is it not better to do injustice to an occasional person who would still be treated as well as any of the others, than to compel all the others to endure present conditions? If not, the “good of the greatest number” is a fallacy, and majority rule is a crime.

But would anyone question either the right or the expediency of such action if the situation were reversed? Suppose that the present system under which a few men own almost everything had made almost everybody rich. Suppose the few who were not rich—corresponding in numbers to the present capitalist class—were to demand that the rules of the game be so changed that they could be made rich by making everyone else poor. Let us suppose, even, that the few were to say that the present system, while it worked satisfactorily for everybody else, worked an injustice to them. Let us go farther and say that the mere handful of objectors were right in such contention. Would the 95 per cent. of the people who were prospering under the system nevertheless voluntarily overturn it and impoverish themselves merely that 5 per cent. might become wealthy?

But there is still another side to the “dead level” objection. Is not enough enough? Who but a glutton wants more food than he should eat? Who but a fop wants more clothing than he needs to wear? Who but a man who has been pampered with riches, or spoiled by the envy that riches so often produce, wants more than a comfortable, roomy, sanitary house in which to live? Does the possession of more things than these make the few who have them happier?

Socialists doubt it. If they did not doubt it, they would still be against conditions that give such advantages to a few who are not socially useful while denying even ordinary comforts to everyone else. And, right here, Socialists again ask these questions: “Even if such luxuries be conceded as advantages, are we not paying too great a price to give them to a few? Is it well that so many should have no home in order that a few should have many homes? And, if there is to be any difference in homes, ought not the difference to be in favor of those who are most useful instead of those who are the most predatory?”

Socialists contend that under Socialism, everybody could not only have work all the time, but that everybody could live as well as now does the man whose income is $5,000 a year. They point to the fact that the man who now spends $5,000 a year on his living, does not consume the products of very much human labor. He has a comfortable house, but comfortable, sanitary houses are not hard to build. Machinery makes almost all of the materials that go into them, and makes them cheaply. And a house properly built lasts a lifetime.

The $5,000–a-year man and his family also eat some food. But the flour is made with machinery at low cost, as are also many other articles. The raw materials come from the earth at the cost of human labor, but the profits that are added to them by capitalists represent no sort of labor.

So is it with clothing, furniture and everything else that the $5,000–a-year man and his family consume. Everything is made cheaply and rapidly with machinery. The workers who make these things get little. The consumer pays much. The difference between the cost of making and the selling price is what eats up a large part of the $5,000. Socialists believe that by cutting out all of this difference and cutting out enforced idleness, everybody could live as well as the $5,000–man now lives. This is only an approximation, of course.

Now we come to the question of rising. What chance would a man have to rise under Socialism?

Let us see, first, what is meant by rising. A man can rise with his fellows or he can rise without them. I am speaking now, of course, only of rising in the financial scale. Habits of thought have been inculcated in us which too often prevent us from thinking of rising in any other way. When we think of bettering our condition, we usually think in terms of money. We seldom think in terms of greater leisure and greater freedom to do the things that make life really worth while; knowing that rich men are usually the slaves of their money, we nevertheless want to be slaves.

Socialism is not intended to help the man who wants to rise financially above his fellows. It throws out no bait to him. A few men will undoubtedly rise a little above their fellows during the early stages of Socialism, but they will not rise very much and there will not be very many of them. Socialism is for all, not for a few. It is devoted to the task of raising the financial standing of everybody who does useful labor and lowering the financial standing of everybody who does not. Socialists say that if Socialism were otherwise, it would be no better than the lottery which is provided by the capitalist system. Socialists do not believe in the lottery principle. They have observed that the gentlemen who run lotteries, rather than the ones who play them, wear the diamonds. Nor does the fact that an occasional washerwoman draws $22,000 with which she knows not what to do, change their minds about the game.

See what a game it is that we are now playing. We teach our small boys that this is a country of glorious opportunities. In picturing the possibilities before them, we know no bounds. We go even to the brink of the ultimate and look over. Away in the distance, we see the White House, and point to it. “There,” we say to our boys, “there is where you may some day be. Each of you has a chance to be President. And, if you should not be President, each of you has a chance to be a Rockefeller or a Carnegie. Carnegie began as a bobbin boy. Rockefeller began as a clerk in an oil store. If you are honest and industrious, perhaps you can do as much.”

Now, what are the facts? Not one of those boys has much more chance of becoming the President than a ring-tailed monkey has of becoming Caruso. It is not that the boys are worthless—they may have in them better timber than any past President ever contained. But unless we shorten the Presidential term, and shorten it a good deal, we cannot accommodate very many of the lads with the use of the White House. During the next eighty years, even if no President shall serve more than one term, there can be no more than twenty Presidents. During the same time—if we go on repeating such foolishness—perhaps a billion boys will be solemnly assured that each of them has a chance to be President, though, as a matter of fact, only twenty boys can cash in on their chances.

Do we never consider how ridiculous we make ourselves? Do we never fear the crushing question that some bright boy some day will ask: “Dad, just how much do you think twenty chances in a billion are worth?”

I mention this only to show at what an early age we begin to hold out to our boys false hopes of the future. I cannot attempt to explain the fact that no boy asks his father why, in such a country of glorious possibilities as this, he contents himself with driving a truck—but that does not matter. The point is that we go on fooling the boys until they are old enough to know better. They are not very old when this time comes. The world teaches them young. It is the exceptionally stupid young man who does not know, at the age of twenty-five, that the chances against him in playing for a Presidency, a Rockefellership, or a Carnegieship are infinitely greater than would have been the chances against him, if he had lived two generations earlier and played the Louisiana Lottery. Beside such a prospect, the chance of winning a fortune at the race track looks like a certainty. Yet we drove the Louisiana Lottery from the country because it was such a delusion that it amounted to a swindle, and we are beginning to drive the race tracks out of the country for the same reason.

Socialists believe it would be better not to promise so much and to perform more. They believe it would be better to promise each industrious man approximately the present comfort-equivalent of $5,000 a year and give it to him, than to hold out to him the hope of great riches and give him, instead, great poverty or great uneasiness because of the fear of poverty.

The Socialists may be wrong in all of this, but they cheerfully place the burden of proof that the world is well upon those who make the claim that it is well. They ask the capitalists to find more than the exceptional, rare man who has realized more than a fraction of the promises that were held out to him in his youth. For every such man that the capitalists may produce, the Socialists will undertake to find twenty men who are living from hand to mouth, either in poverty or in the fear of poverty.

Such is the Socialist position with regard to “rising” in the world. So far as Socialists are able to discover, all of the rising that most persons do is done in the early morning—about an hour before the 7 o’clock whistle blows.

“Early to bed and early to rise” is not in violation of the Socialist constitution, but Socialists respectfully contend that the rising should be made worth while. And, they also contend that if the people must be promised something to make them rise, it is better, in the long run, to promise something and give it to them than to promise more and not give it to them. The best that can be said for the latter plan is that it has been a long time tried and until recently has worked satisfactorily for those who made the promises they failed to keep.

CHAPTER IV
WHY SOCIALISTS PREACH DISCONTENT

Rich men tell poor men to beware of Socialism because Socialists preach discontent. Rich men also tell poor men to beware of Socialism because Socialists “preach the class struggle,” and try to “array class against class,” politically.

It is all true. Socialists do these things. They make no bones about doing them. They say they would feel ashamed of themselves if they did not do them. If they had a thousand times the power they have, they would do these things a thousand times harder than they do. Just so rapidly as they gain power, they are doing these things harder.

What is it that they do? Let us see.

Socialists preach discontent. Discontent with what? Discontent with home? Discontent with children? Discontent with friends? Discontent with honest labor? Discontent with ambition? Discontent with life as a whole? Why, nothing of the kind.

Socialists preach discontent only with poverty that is made by robbery, and the ills that follow in its wake.

The Hon. Charles Russell, of England, said in 1912 that 12,000,000 of England’s 45,000,000 population were on the verge of starvation—shall we be satisfied with that?

A recent investigation into the causes of the shockingly high rate of infant mortality in Germany[^[1]] shows that “the children of poverty hunger before they are born. They come into the world ill-developed, weaker than the children of plenty, and with such low resistant powers that infant mortality rages in their ranks like an epidemic.” Shall we be satisfied with that?

[1]. “The Proletarian Child,” by Albert Langon, published in Berlin.

Here in the United States millions of men cannot get work, while millions of men, women and children are compelled to work for starvation wages. Shall we be satisfied with that?

The census reports show that most people do not own the roofs over their heads, having nothing but the clothes upon their backs and their meager furniture. Shall we be satisfied with that?

We are creating wealth rapidly, but what we make is concentrating into so few hands that a few men hold us as in the hollow of their hands, telling us whether we may work, telling us what wages we shall receive if we work, telling us how much we shall pay for meat, sugar, lumber, clothing, salt and steel. Shall we be satisfied with that?

The Stanley Steel Committee’s investigations showed that, by a system of interlocking directorates, eighteen men control thirty-five billions of industrial property—a third of the entire national wealth. Shall we be satisfied with that?

In times of industrial depression more than 5,000,000 men who want to work are refused the right to do so, because the few men who control everything cannot see a profit for themselves in letting 5,000,000 men work to support themselves. Shall we be satisfied with that?

The cost of living, mounting higher and higher, is crowding an increasing number of unorganized workers into the bottomless pit in which men, women and children suffer the tortures of hell. Shall we be satisfied with that?

Mr. Morgan, with the tremendous money-power that is behind him, is a greater power in this country than the President of the United States, or the Congress of the United States. Shall we be satisfied with that?

Some gentlemen are satisfied with these facts, but Socialists are not. They are preaching discontent. Should we not be worthy of your scorn and contempt if we did not preach discontent? If such discontent is wrong, contentment with the facts against which Socialists cry out must be right. Who has both the candor and the effrontery to say that contentment with such facts is right? Should we be contented with the woolen mill owners of New England who, fattening upon high Republican tariffs, starve men, women and little children with low wages? Should we be contented with the cotton-mill owners of the South, who, under the protection of Democratic state administrations, fill both their mills and the graveyards with little children? Should we be contented with a world in which a few own everything and the rest do everything—a world in which the worker is but a fleeing fugitive from inevitable fate, owning neither his job, nor the roof over his head?

The cry of this wronged worker has come down through the ages, but never was his hold upon the means of life so slight as it is to-day.

“Every creature has a home home—

But thou, oh workingman, hast none.”

So Shelley sang before machinery came. And, oh, the truth of it—the truth of it still! And the pity of it! In these days the inexcusability of it! Yet when we Socialists cry out against it—when we try to awaken the workingman to a realization that a new world was born when the steam engine was born, and that this new world may be and should be for him—we are rebuked by the capitalists because we are “preaching discontent.”

Of course we are preaching discontent. We are going to preach it, if present conditions persist, so long as we have breath with which to preach. We respectfully decline to permit capitalists, as such, to tell us what we may or may not preach. We preach what we please without their leave. They preach what they please without our leave. At intervals, they preach a good deal, through some of the magazines, about religion. Big capital is behind the “Men and Religion Forward” movement, and some other similar movements. These gentlemen who are living in luxury off what they take from us tell us to take religion from them in the magazines and be happy. “In the sweet by and by” we are to get our own, while they get their own now. Socialists are willing to stand in on all of the sweet by and by they can get by and by, but they are also determined to make a prodigious fight for the sweet here and now.

Socialists regard poverty, in this day, as nothing less than a scandal. Before the age of machinery there was reason for some poverty. Now there is none. We can make all the wealth we need and more. We could cut our workday in two and still make all we need. Yet poverty is scourging the world as wars never scourged it. In Germany, England, the United States—wherever capitalism has reached a high state of development—men, women and children are pursued to the grave by poverty or the fear of poverty.

Some gentlemen believe this is all right. They believe this is as it should be. With such gentlemen Socialists do not hope to make headway. With such gentlemen Socialists do not seek to make headway. They belong to the rich class who are grafting off the working class. From them Socialists expect no quarter, nor will they give any. The conflict must go to a finish. There will be no surrender upon the part of the Socialists. The Socialist party will never fuse with any of their parties. If the Socialist party were standing still, instead of going ahead, it would stand still alone for a thousand years before it would go a foot with any capitalist party.

Make no mistake. This is all true. You saw the Greenback party wither and blow away. You saw the Populist party swallowed by the Democratic party. But you will never see the Socialist party wither, nor will you ever see it swallowed. Its members are not composed of material that withers or fuses. Right or wrong, they are actuated by the highest ideal that can move a human being—the ideal of human justice. And they are going down the line on their ideal, regardless of the length of the line or of the obstructions that may be placed in their way. After a man has seen Socialism, he can never thereafter defend capitalism. That is to say, he cannot if he is honest. Two or three out of a million are not. Such persons, not infrequently, are hired by capitalists to “expose” Socialism.

But while Socialists do not hope to make any progress among the rich, they do hope to make progress among the working class. Again, I must explain that Socialists do not consider the working class to be exclusively composed of those who wear overalls. Socialists include in the working class all of those who do useful labor. It matters not whether such labor be done by the digger in the ditch or by the general superintendent of a railroad. Socialists place all of those who do useful labor in the working class. Workers are creators of wealth. Creators of wealth differ from capitalists in this: workers make; capitalists take. Capitalists are profit-seekers. The small merchant takes a profit, but it is not the kind of a profit that the big capitalist takes. The small merchant’s profit represents only his labor, and is, therefore, really wages. The big capitalist’s profits represent no sort of labor. It is such profits that set capitalists and workers at war, because the profits come out of the workers. Socialists call this war the class struggle.

Socialists are opposed to class war. Socialists believe there should be no classes. There would be no classes if everybody worked at useful labor and took no more than belonged to him. But if some men will not work at useful labor, choosing, instead, to make war upon those who are working, who is to blame? Certainly not the workers. They are trying to get nothing that belongs to anyone else. They have never yet been able to keep what belonged to them.

Socialists recognize these facts. They say a class struggle is in progress. Anybody who denies their statement must necessarily know nothing of the existence of trusts, labor unions, courts, lobbyists, crooked legislators, millionaires, paupers, overworked workers, or men who are underworked because they can get no work. Anyone who recognizes the existence of these things cannot well deny either the existence of classes or the existence of a struggle. The dead of this warfare are upon every industrial battlefield, where the fierce desire for profits sends workers to their doom for lack of the safeguards that would have saved their lives. The wounded are in every poverty-stricken home.

Either these statements are true or they are not. If they are true, is it wiser to recognize their truth, or, ostrich-like, to stick our heads in the sand and deny both the existence of classes and the class struggle? Socialists believe it is wiser to recognize the existence of the facts. They deplore the existence of the class struggle, but they can see only harm in closing our eyes to it. If their contention is correct a small body of capitalists are robbing the great working class. If the working class has not found out who is robbing it it cannot find out too quickly. Nor can the working class find out too quickly the methods by which it is being robbed.

It is the advocacy of these ideas that has caused the Socialists to be censured by the rich for trying to “array class against class.” If one class is being robbed by another ought not the class that is being robbed to be politically arrayed against the class that is robbing it? Do we not array those whose houses are broken into by burglars against the burglars? Is not the existence of police forces sufficient proof that we do? If capitalists, working through laws they have made, are robbing the workers of thousands, where burglars take cents, why should not the workers be politically arrayed against the capitalists even more solidly than they are arrayed against burglars?

The workers, either singly or collectively, as in their unions, are already arrayed against the capitalists, so far as fighting for more wages is concerned. Without any help from Socialists, we thus have here class arrayed against class. Socialists seek only to extend this conflict to the ballot-box. They ask the worker to remember when he votes as well as when he strikes that he belongs to the working class. They point out to him that he is robbed under the forms of law and that the robbery cannot be stopped until the operations of capitalist laws are stopped. The operations of capitalist laws cannot be stopped until working men stop them. Working men can stop them only by uniting at the ballot-box and wresting from the capitalist class the control of the government.

In this way only do Socialists try to “array class against class.” They do not try to array men against men. They do not try to engender hatred of Mr. Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller, or any other great capitalist. Socialists have nothing against any rich man individually. They regard all great capitalists as the natural and inevitable products of the capitalist system. If the great capitalists are sometimes bad, it is because the capitalist system makes them bad. If the particular capitalists who are bad had never been born, the capitalist system would have made others do the same bad acts. Therefore Socialists are opposed to the system that makes man bad rather than to the men who have been made bad by the system. If every capitalist in the world had gone down with the Titanic, Socialists would have expected absolutely no improvement in conditions, because the capitalist system would still have remained. Other men would simply have taken their places, and the wrongs would have gone on. Therefore, Socialists leave it to Democratic and Republican politicians to point out “bad men” and say if this man or that man were in jail we should have no more robbery. The slightest reflection should reveal the fallacious character of such comment. Where are all of the “bad men” of the last two generations? Where are William H. Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, E. H. Harriman and the others? They are not simply in jail—they are dead. But who noticed the slightest abatement of robbery when they died? Who will note the slightest improvement of conditions when the “bad men” of the present day are dead? Then how ridiculous it is to say that if Mr. Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller and some others were in jail we should have no more robbery. So long as we have a system that makes men bad we shall have bad men.

Let us now inquire what it is about the capitalist system that makes men bad. We shall not have far to look. It is the private ownership and control, for the sake of private profits, of the means of life. Think how gigantic is this power! All of our food, clothing and shelter is made with machinery. A few own the machinery. The others cannot use it without permission. And, if permission be given, it can be used only upon such terms as the owners offer. Those terms are always the lowest wages for which anybody can be found to work.

Is it any wonder that the few who control this machinery go mad with the desire to accumulate wealth? Is it any wonder that they press their advantage to the limit? Are you sure you would have done less if you had been placed in the same circumstances? I am not sure I should have done less. In fact, I am quite sure I should have done as much, or more, if I could. I say this because I take into account the tremendous power of habit and environment.

An environment of money makes those whom it surrounds forget men. The Titanic was not raced through icebergs to her doom because her owners were indifferent to the loss of human life. The Titanic was raced to her doom because her owners forgot human life. They thought only of the money that would come from the advertisement of a quick trip across the Atlantic. If they had not been made mad by this thought they would at least have remembered their ship, with its cost of $8,000,000. But in their money-madness they forgot not only their passengers, but their own ship. Yet, if the manager of the company had been sailing the ship for the government, without thought of profit, he would have thought of the passengers, the crew, the ship and the icebergs. And if the trusts were owned by the government, the men in charge of them would think of the workers when they fixed wages and of the consumers when they fixed the prices of finished products.

So easy is it to dispose of the argument that Socialism is impracticable because it could not be made to work “without changing human nature.” Some men believe we must forever go on grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, while others go on starving, starving, starving. Human nature will “change” just so rapidly as conditions are changed. If one sits on a red-hot stove, it is “human nature” to arise. But if the stove be permitted to cool, one who sits on it will not arise until other reasons than heat have made him wish to do so. Yet, the human nature of the man in each case is the same. It has in no wise changed. It is only the stove that has changed.

Precisely so will the actions of men change when the production of the necessities of life by the government has demonstrated that no one need ever fear the lack of the means with which to live. The very knowledge that the stomach is taken for granted—that with free opportunity to labor, the material necessities and comforts of life are as assured as the air itself—will destroy the incentive to accumulate more wealth than is needed. Even the richest now consume and waste but a fraction of the wealth they possess. Yet they are spurred on to seek still further accumulations, because it is only so recently, comparatively, that the whole race was fighting for the means of life, that the madness for money is still in the air.

The madness for money will not always be in the air. Human nature is wonderfully adaptive. As soon as the workers take control of the government for the benefit of their class, and demonstrate the perfect ease with which enough wealth can be produced to enable everybody to live as well as the $5,000 a year man now lives, the scramble for wealth will quickly subside. It will not subside instantly, but it will subside. A few may grumble, as their industries are bought and taken over by the government, but they will have to take it out in grumbling. They will not even have to work if they don’t want to. They will have enough money obtained from the sale of their plants to enable them to live without working. But none of their successors will ever be able to live without working, because no opportunity will exist for anyone to obtain the products of another’s labor. Goods will be made and sold by the government at cost. No capitalist will stand between producers and consumers. The people will be their own capitalists, owning their own industrial machinery and managing it through the government.

Those who are opposed to Socialism ask what assurance we have that, under Socialism, the people would be able to manage their government. Others ask why we should not be as likely to have grafters in office under Socialist government as we are now under Democratic or Republican government? Still others believe that a Socialist government would inevitably become tyrannical and despotic, destroying all individual liberty and eventually bringing down civilization in a heap.

Let us answer these objections one by one. And let us first inquire why the people are not now able to manage and control their government.

In the first place, our form of government does not permit the people to control it. The rich men who made our constitution—and they were rich for their day; not a working man among them—purposely made a constitution under which nothing could be done to which the rich might object. That is why the United States senate was created. It was frankly declared in the constitutional convention that the senate was intended to represent wealth. The house of representatives was to represent the people, but the senate was to represent wealth, and the house of representatives could enact no legislation without the consent of the senate. Moreover, the United States supreme court, over which the people have absolutely no control, was created to construe the laws made by congress.

That is the first reason why the people do not now control their government—the framers of the constitution did not intend that they should control it, and the rich men of our day are taking advantage of their opportunity to control it themselves. The second reason is that the capitalist system, based, as it is, upon private profits, makes it highly profitable for the capitalist class to control the government. The robberies of capitalism are committed through laws, and control of the government is necessary to obtain and maintain the laws.

Socialists would abolish the senate, thus vesting the entire legislative power in the house of representatives. They would take from the President the power to appoint justices of the supreme court, and give the people the right to elect all judges. They would take from the United States supreme court the usurped power to declare acts of congress unconstitutional, and give to the people the power to say what acts of congress should be set aside. They would make the constitution of the United States amendable by majority vote, and they would make every public official in the country, from President down, subject to immediate recall at any time, by the vote of the people.

Socialists respectfully offer these reasons, among others, for believing that under Socialism, the people would be able to control their government. Another reason is that, under Socialism, there would be no trust senators or representatives, no representatives of great private banking interests or other aggregations of private capital, because there would be no such private interests.

The reasons are equally plain why, under Socialism, we should not be as certain to have Socialist grafters in office as we are now to have Democratic and Republican grafters. But not one of these reasons is that Socialists believe themselves to be more nearly honest than anyone else. Socialists have no such delusion. Socialists simply point to the fact that all of the present grafting is to secure private profits. When the profit system is abolished, and goods are made for use instead of for profit, nothing will be left to graft for. Public officials could still steal, of course; they could falsify pay-rolls, and probably in many other ways rob the people. But, in the first place, public officials now do little of this sort of clumsy stealing, and, in the second place, whatever stealing of this sort that may be done under Socialism will be punished in precisely the same way that it now is, except more vigorously. Moreover, Socialists do not believe there will be much such stealing, or that it will long continue. And so far as grafting is concerned, when the private profit system that makes grafting is abolished, grafting will be abolished along with it.

Let us now examine the charge that a Socialist government would become tyrannical, despotic, destroy individual liberty, and thus destroy civilization itself.

With all legislative power vested in the house of representatives which is elected by the people, all judges elected by the people and the United States supreme court shorn of its usurped power to declare laws unconstitutional, it is difficult to see how the government could become tyrannical. It is still more difficult when it is considered that, under the Socialist government, the people would have these additional powers:

The power to recall, at any time, any official.

The power to enact, by direct vote, any laws that their legislative bodies might refuse to enact.

The power, by direct vote, to repeal any law that their legislative bodies had enacted.

And the power, by direct vote, to amend their constitutions, both federal and state, any time they wished to do so.

If there could be any tyranny or despotism under such a form of government, gentlemen who profess to believe so are entitled to make the most of it.

Many good persons believe, however, that if Socialism were to come, all individual liberty would be lost. Such persons lack, not only a knowledge of Socialist plans, but a sense of humor. They assume that we now have individual liberty. They do not seem to realize that the average boy, as soon as he is old enough to work, if not before, is grabbed off by necessity and chucked into the nearest job at hand. The boy may have preferred to work at something else; perhaps even he is better fitted for something else. But the pinch of necessity both compels him to work and to take what he can find. He may rattle around in two or three occupations before he finds one in which he stays for life, but the other occupations, like the first one, are not of his choosing. He takes each of them simply because he must have work.

If Socialism would enable the head of every family to earn as good a living as the $5,000–a-year man now gets, the head of no family would be compelled to send his children out to work until they had completed, at least, the high school course. If boys were not compelled to go to work so young, does it not seem likely that, with added years, they would be better able to choose an occupation that would be more nearly suited both to their tastes and their abilities? And if we should destroy the power of poverty to push boys into the occupation nearest to them, should we be justly subject to the charge that we had destroyed, or even impaired, the boys’ individual liberty?

Persons who derive their knowledge of Socialism from capitalist sources have strange, and sometimes awful, ideas of what Socialism is setting out to do. They are told, and many of them believe, that under Socialism, the individual would be a mere puppet in the hands of the government, not arising in the morning until the ringing of the governmental alarm clock, doing during the day whatever odd jobs might be assigned to him by a governmental boss, and going to bed at night when the boss told him to.

Suppose we shake up this trash and let the wind blow through it.

Who would thus tyrannize over the people? “The Socialists,” it is answered. But who, at that time, will the Socialists be? They will constitute at least a majority of the people, will they not? The Socialists will never gain control of the government until they become a majority—the Milwaukee coalition plan of the old capitalist parties can be depended upon to prevent that. Then what you are asked to believe is that a majority of the people will deliberately go about it to create and afterwards maintain a form of government and industry under which the majority as well as the minority will be slaves.

Remember this: Socialism will never do anything that at least a majority of the people do not want done. This is not a promise, it is fact. A Socialist administration could do nothing to which a majority of the people objected. If such an act were attempted, the majority would instantly recall the administration, wipe out its laws, and assert its own will.

And, also, remember this: If the Socialists, after the next election, were to control every department of the government there would be no upheaval, no paralysis of industry. Everybody would go to work the next morning at his accustomed task. The business of socializing industry would proceed in an orderly, deliberate manner. One industry at a time would be taken over. Perhaps the railroads would be taken over first. A year might be required to take them over. But not a wheel would stop turning while the laws were being changed.

Gentlemen who talk about the blotting out of individual liberty under a Socialist government make this fatal mistake. They assume that a minority would control a Socialist government, precisely as a minority now controls this government. And having made this error they naturally easily proceed to the next error—the assumption that if Socialists were to establish such a crazy government, they would not suffer from it as much as anyone else, and, therefore, would maintain it against the will of the others.

There is absolutely no foundation for this “tyranny-loss-of-individual-liberty” charge. A government controlled by the people cannot tyrannize over the people, nor can the abolition of poverty curtail, under democratic government, the individual liberties of the people. Who now has the most individual liberty—the man who is poverty-stricken or the man who isn’t?

Yet Socialists make no pretense of a purpose to create a world in which the worker may blithely amble up to the governmental employment office and demand a job picking a guitar. The worker may amble and demand, but he will not get the job unless there is a guitar to pick. In other words, Socialists expect to exercise ordinary common sense in the conduct of industry. Broadly speaking, the man who is best fitted to do certain work will be given that work to do. It would be absurd to plan or promise anything else. At the same time, the destruction of poverty, and the multiplication of the mass of manufactured goods that will follow the satisfaction of all of the people’s needs, will give the workers greater freedom in exercising their discretion in the choice of an occupation.

At this point in the proceedings somebody always inquires, “Who will do the dirty work?”

Socialists do not expect ever to make the cleaning of sewers as pleasant as the packing of geraniums. They do expect, however, to offer such extraordinarily good compensation for this extraordinarily unpleasant work that the sewers will be cleaned. Why should anyone expect that plan to fail, since the present plan does not fail? We now offer very poor wages for this very unpleasant work, yet the sewers do not go uncleaned. Is it to be supposed that the same men who are now doing this dirty work for low wages would refuse to do it for high wages? Most certainly the government would be compelled to offer wages high enough to get the dirty, but important, work done. It is lack of work that now makes men take dirty work at dirty wages. Under Socialism there can be no lack of work, because the people will own their own industrial machinery and will be free to use it. Furthermore, machinery is now doing much of the dirty work, and, as time goes on, will do more of it.

Socialists are often asked what they will do with the man who will not work. If facetiously inclined, they usually reply that one thing they will certainly not do with him is to make him a millionaire. But, really, the question is absurd. What do the opponents of Socialism believe a Socialist government would do with the man who would not work? Do they believe such a man would be given a hero medal, or be pensioned for life? What is there to do with such a man, but to let him starve? I mean a man having the ability to work and having work offered to him, who would nevertheless refuse to work.

But, outside the ranks of criminals, there is no such man, nor will there ever be. Socialists would punish thieves precisely as capitalists punish them, except for the fact that Socialists would not discriminate in favor of the biggest thieves. To answer the question in a single sentence, Socialists would depend upon the spurs afforded by the desires for food, clothing and shelter, to keep most of the people at work, and the odd man who might choose to steal would be treated in the ordinary way—imprisoned.

But the question, “What will you do with the man who will not work?” reveals a strange belief that is held by those who do not hold much of a clutch upon the facts of life. I have a very dear old aunt who believes from the bottom of her honest heart that the great mass of unemployed are either drunkards or loafers. In discussing the problem of the unemployed with gentlemen who are living upon the sunny side of the street, they almost invariably fire this question, “Why don’t those fellows get out into the country where the farmers are crying for help and can’t get any?”

I was brought up on a farm, and I still remember that not much farming was done in winter. The great demand for extra help comes in mid-summer, when the crops are harvested. During six or eight weeks there is a demand from the farms for more help than they can get. But what man who has a family in the tenements of New York or Chicago can afford to pay his railroad fare to Iowa, Nebraska, or even Ohio, to get six weeks’ work?

In the first place, they have not the money with which to pay their fare. These men live from hand to mouth in the city, running in debt during the week, and paying their debt with the wages they receive Saturday night. If their fares were advanced by the farmers who wanted to hire them they would have little or nothing left from what they might earn on the farms, and, in the meantime, their families in the cities would be starving. Furthermore, farm-work is a trade of which these city workers know nothing. They could learn the trade of farming, of course, but they could not learn it in six weeks. At any rate, in panic times there are more than 5,000,000 out of work in this country, and in no conceivable circumstances is it possible that any considerable part of this number could find work upon the farms even six weeks of the year.

The fact is that the conditions of modern industrial life are so hard that an increasing number of unorganized workers are barely able to live, even when they work. The constantly increasing cost of living, brought about by the trusts through their control of markets and prices, robs these men to the limit, and they have no labor unions to increase their wages. Still, they do not refuse to work, even for a bare, miserable living. On the contrary, they are eager to work. So are the great bulk of the unemployed eager to work for a miserable living.

If, under these horrible conditions, men are willing to work, what reason have we to suppose that any great number would refuse to work under a Socialist government for compensation that would enable each of them to live as well as the $5,000–a-year man now lives? Gentlemen who want to worry about this may worry about it. Socialists are not worrying. If, under Socialism, a few dyed-in-the-wool loafers should appear, Socialists are prepared to deal with them. They do not propose to cease their attempts to rid the world of poverty, merely because of the possibility of the appearance of an occasional loafer.

CHAPTER V
HOW THE PEOPLE MAY ACQUIRE THE TRUSTS

Most men are not interested in private profits, because they don’t get any. Profits are only for capitalists, and the number of capitalists bears but an insignificant proportion to the whole number of people. Most men are wage-workers, of one sort or another, or small farmers.

Yet we are living under a system that makes private profits the basis of business. If profits are good, business is good. If profits are only fair, business is only fair. If profits are bad, business is bad. And, when business is bad, the whole country suffers, though the country has the men, the machinery and the land with which business might be made good.

Socialists liken the present business edifice to an inverted pyramid resting upon its point—the point of private profits. Socialists have observed that the steadiest pyramids do not rest upon their points. They do not believe the pyramids of Egypt would have stood as long as they have if they had not been right side up. Socialists therefore propose that the pyramid of business shall be turned right side up. They believe it would stand more nearly steady if placed upon the broad basis of the people’s needs than it now does upon the pivot-point of private profits.

That is all that Socialists mean when they talk about the “revolutionary” character of their philosophy. They want to make a revolutionary change in the basis of business. They want goods produced solely to satisfy the public need for goods, rather than to satisfy any man’s greed for profits. They do not see how business can be thus revolutionized, so long as a few men own all of the great machinery with which goods are produced. Socialists, therefore, propose that the ownership of all the great machinery shall be acquired by the people, by purchase, and thus transferred from a few to all.

Those who are not in favor of this program may be divided into two classes. One class, desiring to cling to the private profit system, is opposed, upon principle, to the Socialist program. The other class, while eager enough, perhaps, to be rid of present conditions, does not believe the Socialist plan is practicable. The reason why so many men believe the Socialist plan is impractical is because so many men do not know what the Socialist plan is. The newspapers, owned as they are by capitalists, do not take the pains to tell the people much about the plans of Socialism. Even so great a trust lawyer as Samuel Untermyer of New York, apparently did not know much about the plans of Socialism until he debated Socialism in Carnegie Hall with Morris Hillquit. Mr. Untermyer, in his opening statement, made the colossal mistake of declaring that the Socialists had no definite plan for transferring the industries of the country from private to public ownership; that no one knew whether they meant to take over all industries, or whether they meant to take over only the trusts, while leaving the small concerns that are now fighting the trusts to compete with the government. In short, Mr. Untermyer left the impression that in the matter of putting their program into practice the Socialists were whirling around in a fog.

Let us see who was whirling around in a fog.

Victor L. Berger, the Socialist congressman from Milwaukee, introduced in the House of Representatives a bill embodying the following features:

The government shall immediately proceed to take over the ownership of all the trusts that control more than 40 per cent. of the business in their respective lines.

The price to be paid for these industries shall be fixed by a commission of fifteen experts, whose duty it shall be to determine the actual cash value of the physical properties.

Payment for the properties shall be proffered in the form of United States bonds, bearing 2 per cent. interest payable in 50 years, and a sinking fund shall be established to retire the bonds at maturity.

In the event of the refusal of any trust owner or owners to sell to the government his or their properties at the price fixed by the commission of experts, the President of the United States is authorized to use such measures as may be necessary to gain and hold possession of the properties.

A Bureau of Industries is hereby created within the Department of Commerce and Labor to operate all industries owned by the government.

Mind you, this is but the barest skeleton of the Berger bill. The bill itself may have no sense in it. But that is not the point. Samuel Untermyer, great trust lawyer and presumably well-read man, said that the Socialists had no definite plan for taking over the industries of the country. He made this statement in Carnegie Hall before thousands of people. And there was not one word of truth in it. If he had taken the slightest pains to inform himself, he might easily have learned that the Socialists have an exceedingly definite plan for taking over the ownership of the nation’s industries.

But Mr. Untermyer took no pains to inform himself. Ignorant as an Eskimo of the Socialist program, he just went to Carnegie Hall and talked. What he did not know, he guessed. What he could not guess right, he guessed wrong. He could guess almost nothing right. Mr. Hillquit made him look ridiculous. He was ridiculous. He was more than ridiculous. He was an object for pity. A great lawyer, having a great reputation to sustain, discussing a great subject of which he had only the most meager knowledge!

Mr. Hillquit riddled him, of course, but he did not riddle much because, speaking Socialistically, Mr. Untermyer is not much. But, unfortunately, only the 5,000 or 6,000 who heard the debate knew that Mr. Untermyer had been riddled. Millions of New Yorkers who read the capitalist newspapers the next morning received the impression from the headlines that Untermyer had riddled not only Hillquit but Socialism. “Socialists have no definite plans for doing the things they want to do” was the parroted charge. The charge was not true, but the public did not know the charge was not true. The capitalist newspapers would not let the public know. The newspapers had good reasons for not letting the public know. The newspapers are owned or backed by millionaires who are interested in maintaining present conditions. Socialism would interfere with these newspaper millionaires as much as it would interfere with any other millionaires. Yet it is from such sources that the public receives most of its information with regard to Socialism. It is because of this fact that the public knows so much about Socialism that is not so.

It emphatically is not so that the Socialists have no definite plan for taking over the management and control of the industries of the country. They know precisely what they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it. They have not drafted all of the laws that would be required under a Socialist republic for the next 500 years, but they have formulated certain general principles that, once established, will endure for centuries. I shall endeavor to make these general principles plain.

Socialists want to end class warfare. They want to prevent one class from robbing any other class. They do not see how class warfare can be ended so long as a small class controls the means of life of the great class. The means of life is the machinery and materials with which men work. Socialists, therefore, purpose that the means of life shall be owned by all of the people, through the government.

If this program be put into effect, a start must be made somewhere. Socialists purpose that the start be made with the trusts. They propose that the start be made with the trusts because the trusts have advanced furthest along the road of evolution. The trusts have already sloughed off the multitude of primitive, competitive managers. They are concentrated. Only the slightest shift will be necessary to concentrate the managements a little more and vest them in the government. Besides, the trusts control the bulk of the production of the great necessaries of life. Get the trusts and we shall have life. We shall have food. We shall have clothing. We shall have shelter. We shall have all of these things, because we shall have the machinery with which we may make all of these things.

Long before Congressman Berger’s bill was drafted, the cry of the Socialists was “Let the nation own the trusts.” Among Socialists, this cry was as insistent and as common as the cry of “Let us stand pat” was insistent and common among the Hanna Republicans of 1896 and 1900. That Socialist cry showed where the Socialists planned to begin. Congressman Berger’s bill only echoed the cry and made it more definite. The Socialist cry was “Let the nation own the trusts.” Congressman Berger’s bill told what trusts were, within the meaning of Socialist demands, and how to get them. Berger’s bill declared that a trust should be construed to mean any industry or combination of industries that controlled 40 per cent. or more of the national output of its product. And, Berger’s bill also laid down the principle that the easiest way to acquire the trusts is to buy them. Moreover, his bill also sought to provide the governmental machinery and the money with which to do it.

Never mind whether Berger’s bill was wise or foolish. Never mind whether the Socialist program is wise or foolish. We are now considering the charge that the Socialists have no definite program. That is what Mr. Untermyer said. That is what a thousand others say. Is it not plain that they are all wrong? Who can doubt that if the Berger bill were enacted into law, the trusts could and would be taken over? The Berger bill is plainer than any tariff bill that was ever written. Any man of common sense can understand it. No man can understand a tariff law. Yet tariff laws are administered. They are definite enough to accomplish what the protected manufacturers really want accomplished. Even those who oppose high tariff laws do not contend that they should be repealed because they lack definiteness.

The simple fact is that the Socialists want to take the trusts first, because they are the most important and the best adapted to immediate ownership by the people. For the time being, small competitive manufacturers would be compelled to compete with the government. If the Socialist theory of production is a fallacy, the small competitive producers would demonstrate it by providing better working conditions for their employees and selling goods more cheaply than the government. In that event, Socialism would fall of its own weight and the nation would restore present conditions.

If the Socialist theory of production is not a fallacy, the competitive producers would be driven out of business and sell their plants to the government for what they were worth. They would be driven out of business, because they could not afford to do business without a profit. They could get no profit without appropriating part of the product of their workers, and if they appropriated part of the product of their workers, the workers would shift over to the national industries where no products were appropriated.

In short, if the national ownership of trusts were a success, the day of the competitive manufacturer would be short. He could not afford to do business with a competitor who sought no profits. And this is precisely what Socialists believe would take place. They believe the national ownership of the trusts would be quickly followed by the national ownership of every industry that is now owned by some to skim a profit from the labor of others.

This does not mean, however, that peanut stands would be owned by the government. It does not necessarily mean that farms would be owned by the government. The Socialists are not fanatics over the mere principle of government ownership. They appeal to the principle only to accomplish an end. The end is the destruction of the power of some to rob others. If there is no robbery, there is no occasion for the application of the principle. The ownership of a peanut stand gives the owner no power to rob anybody. A man who tills his own farm is robbing nobody. Neither the ownership of the peanut stand nor the ownership of the farm gives the owner the power to rob anybody, because neither owner profits from the labor of an employee. But if tenant farming should ever become a serious evil in this country—and it is increasing all the while—the Socialists, if they were in power, would take over the ownership of all tenant farm lands. They would take over the tenant farms for the same reason that they now want to take over the trusts—because the landlords were using the power of ownership to appropriate part of the products of the tenants.

Let this do for the critics who say that Socialists have no definite program for taking over the ownership of the nation’s industries. There is another set of critics who say that, if Socialists should ever take over the industries, they could not run them. They say that the change from private to public ownership would bring chaos, that the government, as a manager of industry, would break down, that red revolution would sweep the world and that civilization would probably go down with a crash.

I shall pause a moment to comment upon the lack of humor that these gentlemen betray. They take themselves so seriously. If they were called upon to attend a dog beset with fleas, they would doubtless counsel the dog to prize the fleas as it prized its life.

“Don’t bite off one of those fleas, my dear dog,” we can hear them say. “You don’t know it, but they are doing you good. Each flea-bite increases the speed with which you pursue game. If fleas were not biting you all the time, you might become so comfortable that you would lie down in the sun, go to sleep, forget to eat, and thus starve to death. Remember, the fleas are your friends!”

Of course, the great capitalists who are opposing Socialism are not to be likened to fleas, except as to the facts that they are exceedingly agile and are working at the same trade. But in a season of national mourning over the high cost of living, is it not unseemly for these gentlemen to provoke us to laughter by telling us that, if we were to lose them, we ourselves should be lost? We who work can never save ourselves. We can be saved only by those who work us.

Let us get down to brass tacks. If the Socialists were to gain control of this government to-morrow, probably the first thing they would do toward carrying out their program would be to call a national convention to draft a twentieth century constitution to replace our present eighteenth century one. The convention would abolish the senate, vest the entire legislative power in the house of representatives, destroy the United States Supreme Court’s usurped power to declare acts of congress unconstitutional, make all judges elective by the people and establish the initiative, the referendum and recall. Socialists would not attempt to establish Socialism without first clearing the ground so that the people could control their government absolutely.

The work of the convention having been approved by the people, perhaps the first trust that would be taken over would be the railroad trust. It would be a big job. It would be so big a job that no other similar job would be undertaken until the completion of the railroad job was well under way, and the railroad job might require a year or two. I mention this fact to show that it would not be the purpose of a Socialist administration to rip this country up from Maine to Southern California within twenty-four hours from the fourth of March. In fact, there would be no ripping or jarring, as I shall soon show. Everything would proceed in an orderly, lawful manner.

I say there would be no ripping or jarring, because there would be no cessation of industry. Let us suppose, for instance, that the ownership and control of the railroads had been transferred from the present owners to the government. What would happen? Absolutely nothing in the nature of a jar. What happens now when one group of capitalists sell a railroad to another group of capitalists? Nothing, of course. The new owners tell the general manager to keep on running trains, as usual, or if they install a new general manager, they tell him to keep on running trains. The trainmen, if they did not read the newspapers, would not know the road had changed hands.

The transition from private to public ownership would be accomplished precisely as smoothly. The only change would be in the orders that a Socialist administration would give to the chief executive officer of the railroads. That order, in substance, would be: “Don’t try to make any profits out of the railroads. Run them at cost. Give the men more wages and shorter hours, and give the public the best possible service at the lowest possible rate and with the least possible risk to human life.”

If you can manufacture a riot out of such ingredients, go to it. If you can figure out how such a proceeding would disrupt civilization, proceed at your leisure.

The cards are all down. You now know what the Socialists want to do. Where is the danger?

“Oh,” the capitalist gentlemen say, “but you Socialists are not business men, and business men are required to manage industries. A Socialist government would therefore fail.”

Mayor Gaynor expressed much the same thought in a statement about Socialism that he prepared for the New York Times. Mr. Gaynor’s attitude toward Socialism is tolerant—almost sympathetic—yet he asked:

“Who would run your Socialistic government? Where would you get honest and competent men? Would the human understanding and capacity be larger then than it is now?”

Wherever Socialism is discussed, such questions are asked. They are evidently regarded as insuperable obstacles to Socialism. As a matter of fact, they serve only to show how little the questioners know of Socialism.

Socialists do not purpose to establish hatcheries for the breeding by special creation, of a class of super-men to administer government and manage industry. They will depend upon the regular run of the human race for material with which to work out their ideas. But they will approach the subjects of government and industry from a different point of view. The capitalist’s conception of honest and efficient government is that sort of government that will best protect him in the enjoyment of the unjust advantages that he has over the rest of the people. The capitalist’s conception of honest and efficient business management is that sort of business management that will yield him the most profits upon the least capital. The Socialist’s conception of the best government is that which gives no man an advantage over another, while giving every man the greatest opportunity to exercise his faculties, together with the greatest degree of personal liberty that is consistent with the liberty of everybody else. And, the Socialist’s conception of honest and efficient business management is that sort of management that produces the most product under the best working conditions at the least cost and distributes it among the people without profit.

In answer to Mayor Gaynor and others, Socialists therefore make these replies:

Capitalists are now able to get honest men who are competent to administer the government in the interest of the capitalist class. Why, then, should you doubt that Socialists will be able to get honest men who will be able to administer the government in the interest of the working class? In either case, it is simply a matter of executing the orders of the employer. Capitalism’s employees obey its orders. Socialism’s employees will, for the same reason, obey its orders. You tell your employees to maintain the advantage that the few have over the many, and they obey you. We shall tell our employees to destroy the advantage that the few have over the many. We believe they will obey us. If they do not, we shall recall them. That is more than you can now do.

Mayor Gaynor and others also ask if the “human understanding and capacity” would be larger under Socialism than they are now. Positively not. But we respectfully beg leave to suggest that it is not a matter of understanding or capacity. It is a matter of purpose and intention. Men “understand” what they are given to understand. If a man is told to understand the problem of grinding human beings down to push dividends up, he devotes his mind to this task and to no other. If the same man were told to grind dividends down to the vanishing point and hoist human beings high and dry above the poverty point, he would probably understand that, too. And, so far as capacity is concerned, we already have the capacity for great productive effort. We simply are not permitted to exercise enough of it to keep us in comfort. Socialism would not increase the capacity of the human mind, but it would give the nation an opportunity to exercise the capacity it has.

To simmer the whole matter into a few words, Socialism would endeavor to place government and industry in the hands of men who would consider every problem and every opportunity from the point of view of the working class. It is the reverse of this method against which Socialists complain. Capitalists are compelled to consider the working class last in order that they may consider themselves first. The interests of the capitalist class and the working class, instead of being “identical,” are hostile. The capitalist class seeks a maximum of product for a minimum of wages. The working class seeks a maximum of wages for a minimum of product. The two classes are at war with each other for the possession of the values that the working class creates.

And, since capitalists control both government and industry, it is but natural that the interests of capitalists should be considered first and the interests of workingmen last.

A little thought is enough to dissipate the fear that a Socialist government would fail, “because Socialists are not business men, and business men are required to manage industry.” Let us first inquire, what is meant by a “business man”? Is he not, first and foremost, a man who is expert in the squeezing out of profits? Of course, he is. If he can produce enough profits to satisfy his stockholders, he need know nothing about the mechanics of the business itself. And, so long as business is conducted upon the basis of private profits, it is obvious that the men in charge of it must be “business” men—men who understand the business of extracting profits.

But, with business established upon a basis of public usefulness, with no thought of private profits, of what use would be such a business man? His executive and organizing ability would be of the greatest value, but his ability as a mere profit-getter would be of no value.

For purposes of illustration, let us consider Judge Gary, the chief executive official of the United States Steel Corporation. Judge Gary probably knows about as much about making steel as you do about making Stradivarius violins. He was educated as a lawyer, practised law and was graduated to the bench. He knows a steel rail from a gas tank, but, to save his life, he could not make either. He is a lawyer—plus. A lawyer with a business man’s instinct for profits. A lawyer with a business man’s instinct for organization and administration.

Back of Judge Gary sits a cabinet of Wall Street directors who, in a general way, tell him what to do. But, like Judge Gary, these Wall street directors know nothing about the making of steel. They are expert only in the making of profits.

Now, a simple old person who had just dropped down here from another planet might tell you that such men could not possibly manage a great business like that of the steel trust. Such a simple old person might tell you that, under the management of such men, the plants of the steel trusts would be as likely to turn out bologna sausages or baled hay as steel. But we know, as a matter of fact, that, under the management of such men, the steel trust turns out nothing but steel. And why? Simply because, below these managers are thousands of highly trained men and hundreds of thousands of wage-workers who, collectively, know all that is known about the making of steel.

Here, then, comes this crushing question. If the Socialists were to gain control of this government, and upon behalf of the government, buy out the steel trust, what would prevent the Socialist President from writing such a letter as this to the chief executive officer of the steel trust:

“Dear Judge Gary: Until further notice stay where you are and do as you have been doing, except as to these particulars: Instead of consulting with J. Pierpont Morgan and your Wall Street cabinet, consult with me and my cabinet. Instead of making steel for profit, make it solely for use. It will not be necessary for you to make steel rails that break in order to keep steel stock from breaking on the market. Make everything as good as you can, sell everything you make at cost, increase the wages of your workingmen and shorten their hours. Do everything you can, in fact, to make the lot of the steel-worker as comfortable as may be.”

Would such a letter create a riot? Would Judge Gary indignantly resign and the workers flee?

Would the production of steel be interrupted for a single moment?

Yet, in no more violent way than this would the Socialists take over the ownership and control of any industry. The men now in charge would be left in charge—at least until better men could be found to take their places. Probably, here and there, a man would have to be changed. Not every man who can squeeze out profits is good for anything else. But the men who could forget profits and make good in usefulness—the men who could look at their problems solely from the point of view of the public—such men would be let alone. They would not only be let alone, but they would be given a better opportunity than they now have to make good. Profits ever stand in the way of making good in the real sense. Steel rails that break and kill passengers are not made poor because the steel trust officials do not know how to make them better. They are made poor because it would decrease profits to make them better. Every intelligent manager of industry knows of many things that he might do to increase the worth of his product, but most of this knowledge goes to waste because it would interfere with profits.

Let no man fear that Socialism, if tried, would crumple up because the government would be unable to find competent managers of industry. Every industry will continue to produce men who are competent to take charge of its technical work. The matter of executive heads is of secondary importance. The Postmaster General of the United States, who, almost invariably, is a mere politician, is at the head of one of the greatest enterprises in the world, yet the mails go on. The men who sort letters must know their business. The Postmaster General need not know his. It would be better if he did, of course, but even if he does not the mails go on. So much more important, collectively, are the real workers of the world than any man who figureheads over them.

When E. H. Harriman died the Harriman heirs found a man to head the Harriman system of railroads. The man they found—Judge Lovett—is not even a railroad man, but the Harriman lines go on. The Vanderbilts, Goulds, Rockefellers and Morgans also find men to manage their railroads and other industries. What these capitalists have done, the President, his cabinet and congress, will probably have little difficulty in doing.

Opponents of Socialism make ridiculous statements about the slavery that they declare would exist if the people, through the government, owned and operated their own industries. The workingman is told that, under Socialism, he would be ordered about from place to place as if he were a child.

This charge is no more ridiculous than another charge that is sometimes made, by which it is represented that, under Socialism, the blacksmith would burst into an opera house, demand the job of leading the orchestra, and start a revolution if he were denied the job. The fact is that, under Socialism, industry would proceed, so far as these matters are concerned, in much the same manner that it now proceeds. The workers would be free to apply for the kinds of work for which they regarded themselves as best fitted. So far as the necessities of industry would permit, the applications of the workers would be granted. But, in the long run, the workers would have to work where they were needed, precisely as they now have to work where they are needed, and, then as now, particular tasks would be given to those who were best fitted to perform them. Under Socialism, the worker would have to apply for work, at this place or that place, precisely as he does now. The only difference would be that he would always get work somewhere, that he would work fewer hours, under better conditions, for more pay, and, that, as a voter, he would have a voice in the management of all industry.

Such are the replies made by Socialists to the chief objections that are launched against Socialism. There is another charge—not an objection—that should also be considered. It is the charge that Socialists are dreamers, striving to establish a Utopia. Nothing could be more absurd. Socialists are evolutionists. They do not believe in Utopias, because they do not believe there is or can be such a thing as the last word in human progress. They believe the world will always continue to go onward and upward, precisely as it has always gone onward and upward. Much as they are devoted to Socialism, they have not the slightest belief that the world will stop with Socialism. They believe Socialism will some day become as outgrown and burdensome as capitalism now is, and that, when that day comes, Socialism should and will give way to something better.

The chief contention of Socialists is that Socialism is the next step in civilization, that it represents a great advance over capitalism, that it will end poverty and industrial depressions, and that Socialism must come unless civilization is to go backward.

CHAPTER VI
THE “PRIVATE PROPERTY” BOGEY-MAN

Socialists want the people, through the government, to own and operate the country’s great industries. In making this proposal, however, they always specify that they also want the people to own and operate the government.

Upon this slight basis rests the charge that Socialists oppose the right of the individual to own private property. Gentlemen who own much private property—hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth—energetically try to frighten gentlemen whose holdings of private property are chiefly confined to the clothes they stand in and the chairs they sit in.

“Beware of those Socialists,” say these gentlemen. “They are your worst enemies. They would deprive you of the right to own private property. They would have everybody own everything jointly, thus permitting nobody to own anything individually. Look out for them.”