YOUR PAY ENVELOPE

BY

JOHN R. MEADER
EDITOR OF “THE COMMON CAUSE”

NEW YORK
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
437 FIFTH AVENUE
1914

Copyright, 1914, by
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY

CONTENTS

YOUR PAY ENVELOPE

CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM STATED

Dear Mr. Smith,

I am glad that you have asked me if the soap-box orator told the truth when he said that all the arguments against Socialism are either “lies” or “foolish misrepresentations.”

The soap-box orator wants you to believe that all the wise men in this world are Socialists, and that those who do not accept the teachings of Karl Marx are either ignoramuses or wicked men.

You tell me that your “common sense” teaches you that “there are two sides to every question.” This statement shows that you are an honest and a practical man. You say that you are a worker, a trade unionist, a Christian—all of which means that you are a good citizen. These frank statements are the best introduction you could offer. It is this kind of man who insists upon having “facts,” and who is not likely to be carried away by theories—even by plausible theories. He insists upon knowing that there are plenty of “facts” to back up the theories before he accepts them.

Hence, I am going to write to you at some length—to you and to all the rest of the John Smiths. In these letters I shall express myself as simply and as clearly as possible. I shall give you plenty of facts—“the hardest of hard facts”—and a mass of cold, logical reasons that cannot fail to appeal to “robust common sense” and the “love of fair play.”

As you have said, there are two sides to every question, and the question of Socialism is no exception to this rule. The reason that the soap-box orator attracts so large a crowd is because he tells the people who listen to him a lot of things which they know are true.

He tells them, for example, that wages and the expense of living have not kept equable pace with each other—that the smaller rate of wage which the worker received fifteen or twenty years ago may really have been a higher rate of wage because the man who got it was able to buy more with it. He tells us that it is a bad thing that children should be compelled to work for a living at an age when they ought to be in school or playing the games which nature intends children shall play. He points to the employer as he rides by in his $4,000 touring car, and he asks how long it has been since you have had a ride in an automobile. He reads to you the newspaper report of an elaborate dinner given by “society women” to their poodle dogs, and supplements it with another item, from the same paper, telling the number of people who have died of starvation during the past six months. With eloquent words, vibrant with sympathy, he paints a picture that makes your blood boil with indignation, and the worst of it is that the things he describes are true.

Every man, if his heart is in the proper place, knows that things are not right. He knows that there are plenty of workers to-day who do not earn money enough to enable them to live decently. He knows that workingmen do not make their wives and children toil in the factories for the mere joy of knowing that they are not idle. The worker is not so blind to the advantages of education, that he does not want to see his children well-educated. If he insists upon their going to work instead of to school, it is because he needs the few dollars which they can earn to supplement somewhat his own too meagre wage.

The worker is justified in not being satisfied with his lot. If a man is treated unjustly, he has a moral right to protest; and I am the last person who would wish to deny him that right. At the same time, I am going to take exception to one statement that the soap-box orator makes. He tells us that Socialism is the one and only solution of all the industrial and social evils of the world. He asserts that, if enough of us will vote the Socialist ticket, we can get the industries away from their present owners and own them ourselves, paying ourselves for our labor by taking all the profits that now go to the men who furnish the capital to carry on the business.

If this were true—and that were all there was to it—I might be a Socialist. It is because it is impossible for it to be true that I am writing these letters; and, before I have finished, I think you will admit that I shall have proved that the soap-box orator is talking “through his hat.”

I do not ask you to reject the teachings of Socialism because they are new or untried. Every good thing was new once, and I am not so foolish as to imagine that every possibly-good thing has been tried. Indeed, a great many ideas and inventions that have proved of the greatest advantage to the world were once denounced as impracticable. The telephone is one of them. I can remember the time when the best business men laughed at the idea of anybody’s buying stock in a telephone company; they admitted that people could talk over the wire, but it was impossible to make them believe that the instrument could be made strong enough to carry the sound of the human voice more than a few blocks. They said it was all right as a “toy,” but that it had no “commercial utility”—which meant that they did not think they could make any money out of it.

To tell the truth, some of the basic ideas in Socialism are not at all new. They are very, very old; but, if they were as old as a dozen Methuselahs, this fact would not make them any more true. It is not the age of a theory that makes it true; it is the principle underlying it. And I propose to show you that, instead of being the combination of all wisdom, the principles of Socialism are so unreasonable that it is difficult to understand how any thinking man can accept them.

To prove this, I shall resort chiefly to facts and very little to theoretical argument. I shall not ask you to believe that a thing is so, merely because I say that it is so. When I present an argument, I shall explain all the facts upon which it is based, and you may consider the argument on its own merits.

In doing this, I must ask you to forget yourself. A prominent Socialist writer has told us that it is necessary to “get out of the body to think.” As he explains, “that means that when a problem is before you, you should not let any personal prejudice, or class feeling, come between that problem and your mind; that you should consider a case upon the evidence alone, as a jury should.”

I shall be satisfied if you will follow this advice. I can ask you to do no more than to forget your own condition, your own troubles, your own life-problems, and consider this question simply as a man—as a jury-man, if you will. If you were asked to figure how much you can earn in three days and two hours and fifteen minutes at your present rate of wage, you would not think whether you were a Republican or a Democrat, would you? You would simply apply the rules of arithmetic to your sum, and I ask you to read my letters and decide, by the same kind of unbiased judgment, whether I am right or wrong.

By way of anticipation, let me assert that it is possible for us to solve every problem that confronts us to-day without resorting to the proposed “remedy” of Socialism. We have here a country, big enough and productive enough to give all the people plenty of room and all they want to eat. There are facilities to supply all the children with a good education and ample opportunities for recreation. The fact that so many of the people do not succeed in securing plenty, shows that something is wrong. But, is the “wrong” in our system of industry, or are we ourselves—and, when I say “we,” I mean the whole people, not you and me alone—to blame for these conditions? That is the important question.

Socialism promises that it will right all wrongs and asserts that this cannot be done in any other way. I do not believe that Socialism could “make good,” and it is here my task to prove it.

CHAPTER II
WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND ISN’T

Dear Mr. Smith,

Before beginning our investigation of Socialism, we must define our subject. To talk intelligibly about Socialism, I must first know that you understand what Socialism is and what it isn’t.

You may say that the soap-box orator has made all this very clear to you, but you mustn’t be too certain about that. The soap-box orator may know what Socialism really is, and what it proposes to accomplish, and he may not. I have known soap-box orators who knew so little about Socialism as to contend that it was nothing more than a political movement which proposed to institute some much-needed reforms along purely economic lines. And, there are other soap-box orators who, while fully qualified to tell you all about Socialism, wouldn’t dream of doing it for fear of frightening you.

It may be true that all Socialists agree to some extent upon a few basic principles; but they disagree about so many things that it is almost impossible to pin them down to anything definite. If a Socialist is cornered in an argument, he will try to elude you by asserting that Socialists are “not agreed” upon the answer to the question you have asked, or that “the issue is purely a matter of private opinion.”

Have you noticed how cleverly Socialists can do this?

A Socialist agitator is out on a still hunt for converts. He meets John Jones and asks him why he does not join the Socialist party.

“No,” says John, “I will not join the Socialist party, because it stands for industrial unionism and I believe in the policy of the American Federation of Labor.”

“That’s all right,” replies the Socialist agitator. “There are plenty of prominent Socialists who are enthusiastic members of the A. F. of L.,” and he reels off the names of a dozen or more. Of course, John Jones is persuaded that he was mistaken in his opinion of the Socialist party, and he joins.

Going a block or two further, the Socialist agitator meets Bill Brown, and asks him why he does not carry a red card. Bill replies that he is opposed to the Socialist party because of its friendliness for the A. F. of L.

“I am opposed to violence, but I am an industrial unionist,” he asserts, “and shall have nothing to do with an organization that stands for craft unionism.”

What does the Socialist agitator do? From his pocket he extracts a pamphlet written by Eugene V. Debs, in which Mr. Debs expounds the doctrines of industrial unionism and shows that it is impossible for a Socialist to be a conscientious craft unionist. So, realizing that, as Socialism’s foremost advocate, Eugene V. Debs ought to know what Socialism means, Bill Brown signs up.

A few moments later, our Socialist agitator comes face to face with Joe Black.

“Come, Joe,” he says, as he grasps his hand, “you are a good Radical. Why aren’t you in the Socialist party?”

But Joe shakes his head.

“Not for mine!” he asserts, emphatically. “I want nothing to do with a party that is opposed to direct action. How is the worker to get what he wants unless he takes it? I believe in The Revolution, but not in the milk-and-water kind of revolution the Socialist party preaches.”

“That’s where you are mistaken, Joe,” replies the Socialist agitator. “Why, some of our leading Socialists believe just exactly as you do. Here”—and the agitator draws from his pocket a copy of the Haywood-Bohn pamphlet on “Industrial Unionism”—“take this with you and read it. It will show you how we Socialists stand on the question of the industrial revolution.”

So Joe Black lines up, too.

I might continue in this strain indefinitely, for there is scarcely a question at issue upon which Socialists do not disagree so widely that those who preach Socialism can manage to be all things to all people.

But, you ask, what does Socialism mean?

Let me answer your question by first telling you what Socialism does not mean. In this way, we shall more quickly get to the real meaning of the term.

I have met Socialists who told me that Socialism means absolutely nothing but the promotion of a reform program: that it means shorter hours and better pay, the elimination of child labor, the government ownership of inter-state industry, the municipal ownership of municipal utilities, and so on.

If you read the program of “Immediate Demands” in the Socialist platform, you may get the idea that this definition of Socialism is a correct one. But you would be mistaken. The “Immediate Demands” of the Socialist party are not Socialism, and no real Socialist pretends that they are. Indeed, in the platform of 1908, the Socialists themselves repudiated this idea. Let me quote the closing paragraph of this program:

“Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance.”

Think the matter over calmly, John. Measures of relief that are nothing more than “preparations” for an object cannot by any possibility be that object itself—can they?

Then, too, there are plenty of Socialists who have not the slightest use for a program of “Immediate Demands.” The Socialist party has found these demands useful in persuading people to vote for its candidates, and, for this reason, it goes right on talking about “Immediate Demands,” as if these “sops” to social reform were simon-pure Socialism.

The absurdity of this position is well pointed out by H. G. Wells:

“You cannot change the world and at the same time not change the world,” he says. “You will find Socialists about, or at any rate those calling themselves Socialists, who will pretend that this is not so, who will assure you that some odd little jobbing about municipal gas and water is Socialism.... You might as well call a gas jet in the lobby of a meeting house the glory of God in heaven!”

If anybody should tell you that H. G. Wells is merely one Socialist out of many millions, and that he does not know what he is talking about, ask him if Wilhelm Liebknecht knew his Socialism any better. If your Socialist is honest, he will have to admit that Wilhelm Liebknecht knew what he was talking about, whether Wells does or not.

Assuming this to be true, listen to what Liebknecht says:

“The laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class and ... effectual reforms which will put an end to class government and class exploitation are impossible” (quoted by Ejayh in Weekly People, June 17, 1911).

If your Socialist still insists that Liebknecht is not sufficiently good authority, you can refer him to Karl Marx himself, for it was he who said:

“The working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady.... Instead of the conservative motto: ‘A fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage,’ they ought to inscribe on their banners the revolutionary watchword: ‘Abolish the wages system’” (quoted in Appeal to Reason).

In brief, to quote Liebknecht again (The Revolt, May 6, 1911), “pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and the desire to remove it, ... condemnation of wealth, and respect for poverty,” government ownership or municipal ownership, an agitation for a shorter work-day, the demand for a more equitable wage, an extension of the suffrage—not one, nor all of these things is Socialism.

And if not, what is Socialism?

Socialism is an indictment of the whole system of modern civilization, a plan to overthrow it, and a scheme to set up in its place a system of society in which all means of production, distribution and exchange shall be owned collectively and operated collectively.

To attain this end—to effect the overthrow of all existing institutions that the “more perfect” institutions of Socialism may take their place—Socialists preach a gospel of class consciousness, by which they hope to incite so strong a feeling of class hatred in the heart of the worker that he will rise in revolt against his employer and take from him all the means of production and distribution—by the peaceful method of the ballot, if he can do it in that way; if not, by violence and with bloodshed—the bloodshed Victor Berger threatened when he advised the worker to “be prepared to back up his ballot with his bullets.”

This is what Socialists mean when they talk about The Revolution. This is the method by which they hope to attain their goal, the Co-operative Commonwealth, in which, if the plan of Socialism does not miscarry, there will be but one class—the working class—and all human beings will actually love one another so much that they will dwell together in peace and harmony ever after.

It is a beautiful picture—this idea of the lion and the lamb lying down together. It is so enticing a promise that I might almost be willing to go through a wee bit of a revolution myself in order to attain it, if I could only believe that everything would work out in the way Socialists predict that it will.

It is right here, John, that I am compelled to part company with the Socialists for good and all. I am just as thoroughly enamoured peace and harmony as Debs or Haywood or Hillquit. Not one of these gentlemen would welcome a world without social evils and social miseries more heartily than I. But, when I sit down and start to figure out the problem logically, I find that the evidence against Socialism accumulates rapidly. Between you and me, John, Socialism could not do what it promises to accomplish even if it had the chance. You don’t see why it couldn’t? Well, I’ll show you.

CHAPTER III
THE WORKER’S WAGE

My dear Mr. Smith,

If you stop at the street corner to listen to a soap-boxer, there are two things that he is pretty certain to tell you: first, that you are a “wage slave,” and, second, that you are being “robbed” every day you work.

With a flood of words, carefully prepared to appeal to men in your position, and with stories that are supposed to illustrate the points he wants to make, the man on the street-corner will try to persuade you that labor is the sole factor in wealth production—that the workers produce all the wealth of the world—and that this wealth belongs rightfully to those who made it.

The agitator will tell you—what you already know—that there is a part of the product of your toil that goes to your employer. This should not surprise you. When you consented to work for three dollars a day, it was with a clear understanding that you would do enough more than three dollars’ worth of work a day to give your employer a fair return upon his investment. I’ll wager, you never suspected that he had no right to this share, but, instead, was stealing it from you, until the soap-box orator began to tell you that you were being “robbed.”

If you question the speaker as to the extent of this “robbery,” you will get little satisfaction. Socialists all agree that the worker is “robbed,” but they disagree very materially as to the amount of which he is “robbed.” One Socialist (I. L. P. pamphlet, “Simple Division”) tells you that the worker receives only one-seventh of what he produces. Another (Hazell, “A Summary of Marx’s ‘Capital’”) asserts that labor obtains one-fifth of its product. Still another (Victor Grayson, Speech, June 4, 1908) announces that the worker takes one-quarter of what he really earns. Another English Socialist (author of “The Basis and Policy of Socialism”) proves by statistics that one-third of the total product goes to the man who ought to have it all. A more reasonable individual (Chiozza-Money, “Riches and Poverty”) estimates the worker’s share as a “trifle more than one-half,” while Suthers, who makes a specialty of answering objections to Socialism, figures that the returns to labor represent two-thirds of the amount that the worker ought to receive (“Common Objections to Socialism Answered”).

You see what a hazy idea the Socialists have upon this question, how chaotic and self-contradictory their statements are; yet it is upon such “facts,” that the contentions or claims of Socialism depend.

The soap-box man’s statements about the “robbery” of the worker are based upon a principle that is taken from Karl Marx’s book, “Capital,” which is the Bible of all real Socialists. Karl Marx said that “labor is the source of all value,” and it is upon the truth of this statement that the whole economic structure of Socialism rests. If it is true that labor is the source of all value, it is possible to argue that the laborer is entitled to all he produces. If labor is not the sole source of value, the laborer is not entitled to all he produces and it is nonsense to say that he is. Thus, the whole question of the fairness of the principle upon which the modern wage system is based stands or falls with this “law” of value.

I suppose it is safe for me to assume that you have never read “Capital.” I suppose it is just as safe to assume that you never will read the three bulky tomes in which Marx has expounded the economic system that we call “Socialism.” You needn’t be ashamed to admit this fact. There are lots of others like you. Even the soap-boxer, who quotes Marx so fluently and who upholds his theories so energetically, has no advantage over you in this respect. It is a safe hundred to one shot that he also has never read—and never will read—“Capital.”

The German poet Heine tells us that when Hegel, the well-known philosopher, lay on his death-bed, he declared: “Only one has understood me.” But, immediately after, he added, irritably: “And he did not understand me, either.”

If this story had been told of Marx instead of Hegel, I should be quite as ready to believe that it is true. If the soap-box orator should attempt to explain the Marxian theory of value, he would have no audience in five minutes. It is because he explains the effects of this “law,” and not the principles supposed to underlie it, that he finds so many people willing to listen to him. Nobody wants to be “robbed,” and, when the Socialist orator asserts that all workers are constantly being “robbed” of the larger portion of their earnings, we are interested at once.

So, if I am to make you understand the reason that this theory of the Socialists is false, if I am to prove to you that you are not “robbed” (at least not in the way the Socialists say you are), I must avoid the technical words and often unintelligible expressions that have made Marx’s “law of value” so difficult to comprehend. I must appeal strictly to your common sense. Then, if you want to go more deeply into the intricate detail in which Marx has framed his economic theories, there are several books that will give you all the information you can possibly digest. One of these is “Socialism: A Critical Analysis,” by Professor Oscar D. Skelton of Queens University, Canada; another is “Socialism” by Cathrein-Gettelmann. You will find them in any good library.

Marx separated value into two classes: value in use and value in exchange. “Use-value” means the value that an article has in satisfying some human need. “Exchange value” means the value that an article has when we come to exchange it for something else—for money or for other articles. Thus, an article may be very valuable for use and still have no value in exchange. For example, both water and air are necessary to human life and so are very useful, yet, should we desire to exchange them for clothes or fuel, we should find it a difficult matter to make such a bargain, simply because water and air are usually free to all.

Articles that have exchange value are those for which men are willing to give something “in exchange,” but as the articles we can’t sell are frequently just as useful as those for which we can get a price in the market, Marx argued that there must be something in one that the other does not contain—some one factor upon which exchange-value depends—and he decided that this common element is human labor (“Capital,” p. 4).

Was Marx right in this assumption? Is it “labor that makes value”?

When you go to the store to buy an article, you do not ask what it cost the manufacturer to produce it, do you? You don’t care whether the man who made this article has profited by its manufacture or not. It doesn’t occur to you to ask how many hours of labor were put into it, or how much the workers who made it were paid. The question uppermost in your mind is: “How badly do I want it?” If you want it so badly that you would rather own it than spend the same amount of money for something else, you purchase it and take it away with you. If you prefer to spend the money in other ways, you go away without buying this article.

Now, what is the principle that influences you to make this decision? It is what this article is worth to you for your own use, is it not?

Has labor anything to do in making you form this decision? Neither capital nor labor has anything to do with the question. If the article has cost the manufacturer ten times as much as you are asked to pay for it, if ten times as much labor had been expended in making it, you wouldn’t give one penny more than it is worth to you for its use, would you?

Let us take another illustration:

Marx points out that labor—and he measures the value of labor by the time necessary to perform a given piece of work—is the sole source of exchange-value. As a result, Socialists propose to substitute what they call labor certificates for our present system of money, so that a man who spends four hours making cigars can buy with his labor certificates anything that represents a proportionate amount of labor.

Would this be a fair basis of exchange?

Would it be fair if a man working four hours in making cigars were to exchange the product of his labor for the gold or the diamonds that it had taken some other man four hours to extract from the earth? And is there no difference in the value of a silk dress and a cotton dress, if both kinds of cloth take the same time and skill in the making? Would it be fair to figure the value of any article on the amount of labor-time expended in producing it? There are mines in which gold is produced at a cost of less than $5 an ounce, and there are other mines where it costs so much to extract the gold that there is no profit in mining it. Is anybody so silly as to believe that the labor-time spent in one mine is as productive of value as the time expended in the other?

Any farmer will tell you that it is impossible to make the varying costs of agricultural products harmonize with the theories of Marx. In raising wheat, or potatoes, a great deal depends upon the quality of the land. If the land is very good, wheat may be grown at a cost of 50 cents a bushel, and with much less labor than the farmer would expend in raising wheat oh poorer land, though the latter crop might cost from 75 cents to a dollar a bushel to raise, if not more.

It is not the cost of an article that determines its value. Its value is based primarily upon its capacity to satisfy human wants. A useless article has no exchange-value, no matter how much it has cost. An article that has gone out of fashion possesses comparatively little value, in spite of the fact that it represents the expenditure of capital as well as actual labor which was “necessary labor” at the time it was performed. The Socialists have to admit this fact—Marx also admitted it (“Capital,” p. 189)—yet they do not seem to see the inconsistency of saying that the value of an article is affected by its loss of utility, while, at the same time, asserting that “a useful article has value only because human labor ... has been embodied in it.” If they told the truth they would say, “an article upon which labor has been expended has value only because it is useful.” But this would be to admit that their whole scheme is built upon a foundation of sand.

A commodity has value, not only because it has cost time and skill to produce it, and therefore is difficult of attainment, but also for the reason that it holds the one common property of all valuable articles—utility. It is true that articles of value are seldom produced without labor. It is not true that it is labor that makes them valuable. In confessing this, Socialism acknowledges that the law of Marx is contradicted by experience. Are we Simple Simons not to see this very obvious contradiction?

Take the commodity timber—because the woods which we use in building houses and those which are used in making furniture possess radically different values.

If you were to go to a primitive country, John, you would find plenty of trees that you could cut down, without asking anybody’s permission and without paying anybody for the privilege. Suppose that you were to take a gang of men into such a forest and were to cut down a lot of trees. If you took no pains in selecting these trees, but cut various kinds of wood, you would get different prices for the timber, and these prices would not in any way depend upon the cost of production (cutting down the trees) or the expense of transportation. As you know, there is a market price for every kind of wood, yet one wood costs practically no more than another to produce, and one may be transported as cheaply as another. What does this price depend upon? Upon utility, does it not? It is the use-value of the wood that ultimately fixes its price.

Then, too, you may take the products of the arts—the books we read and the paintings we admire. Does the amount of labor-time expended in the making fix the value of these commodities? An author may devote years to writing a novel, and yet see it fall still-born from the press, whereas another novelist, in a few months, may produce a story that nets him $25,000. Does labor-time count as a factor in determining the value of our books, our pictures, our musical compositions, or our scientific discoveries?

There is still another factor to be considered, John, and that is the productive power of thought. Marx, as you would see were you to analyze the first pages of his book, “Capital,” starts off with the idea that all labor is common, manual labor. Later on, he encounters the difficulty that labor when undirected is usually unproductive. A thousand men, working without direction, will produce nothing proportionate to the amount of physical strength they expend. Put a man with brains and knowledge over them, and he will show them how to make their labor fully productive.

Even Marx recognized the fact that he must make some provision for “skilled” and “mental” labor, so he grudgingly bridged over the gap by stating that “skilled labor counts only as unskilled labor, a given quantity of skilled labor being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labor” (“Capital,” p. 11).

Socialists to-day try to deny that Marx intended to imply that the term “labor” means “average manual labor.” They will tell you, if you question them closely, that the term “labor” includes industrial effort of every kind—mental as well as physical labor. This is a worse absurdity than to say that manual labor is the source of all value. If we are to admit that “labor” includes every kind of effort, the assertion that all wealth should go to the laborers who produced it simply means that all wealth ought to go to the human race. And so it does. The only question remaining is: How can it be distributed more fairly?

This would take the very cornerstone away from the Socialist’s structure and bring it tumbling about his ears. If we do this, there is practically no room for argument left, for the number of persons who in no way contribute to the industrial progress of the world—the inheritors of wealth who are literally and positively idle—is so small that there is no reason why we should give them much serious consideration.

CHAPTER IV
HOW THE “ROBBING” IS DONE

My dear Mr. Smith,

After asserting that labor produces all value, and “showing” that the laborer receives but a very small portion of the value which he produces, Marx tells us that this unpaid-for labor—the labor-strength and time of which the worker is robbed—is used by the Capitalist Class (Marx’s term for the employer) in the further robbery of the worker. This unpaid-for labor Marx calls “surplus value,” and he includes under this term everything that the worker does not get in his own pay-envelope—dividends, interest, rents and profits of all kinds.

Of course, nobody will deny that “surplus value”—or, more correctly, profit—may exist in industry. If the employer could not reap more from the industry than the mere equivalent of wages paid, it would not be to his interest to keep on paying wages. But the “surplus value” to which I refer, and the thing that Marx means when he talks about “surplus value,” are entirely different.

To admit that Marx is right in his definition of surplus value, we must first come to the conclusion that the worker is entitled to all the value that is produced, and, as we have already seen, this is not so. If it is not so, what has become of Marx’s surplus-value theory? There may be industrial injustices; there are many instances in which employers fail to pay those who work for them a just wage. I am willing to admit that there are numerous cases of this kind. If I thought it would add to the strength of my argument to particularize, I could name many unjust employers. But it would do no good. Between the abuses committed by individual capitalists and the “awful crimes of capitalism” which Socialism depicts, there is a difference as great as the distance from pole to pole.

According to Marx’s theory, if a laborer can produce something equal to the amount of his wage in six hours of work, the value of the product which he turns out during the other six hours in his work-day is stolen from him. “The extra six hours,” says Marx, “I shall call surplus labor, which realizes itself in a surplus product having a surplus value” (“Capital,” p. 178).

Have I made this clear, John? Do you see what Marx is driving at—that, when you are helping your employer to pay his rent, the interest on the money he has borrowed that he might keep you at work, the dividends to his stockholders, or the profit to himself, you are helping him to rob you—actually contributing to the robbery of yourself?

The soap-box orator will talk to you by the hour about surplus value. He will tell you that it makes no difference how much money there is in your pay-envelope. So long as it does not contain every cent of your employer’s profit, you are being “robbed.” “No wage can ever be fair compensation for a day’s work!” he shouts. “Before there can be justice on earth, the making of goods for profit must come to an end, for this is the ‘tap-root’ from which all the evils of Society develop. No dividends! No Interest! No Rents! No Profits! In a word, no Surplus Value!”

Marx, like the soap-boxer on the corner, includes all profits in the category of robbery and exploitation. He admits that labor can do nothing without capital, but he contends that capital itself is the product of past labor and, therefore, ought rightfully to belong to the laborers of the present day. “Capital,” he says, “is dead labor, that, vampire-like, lives by sucking living labor” (“Capital,” p. 134).

In this we have the assumption that all labor is performed by “laborers” of the propertyless class, and that all capital is owned by “capitalists.”

This, as you know, is not true.

There are plenty of laborers who have a respectable little store of capital laid by for the proverbial rainy day, and many of them own stock in the very concern that employs them. Not every man who lives by the labor of his hands is existing on the verge of starvation, as Socialists would have you believe, nor is it true that all labor is performed by the “laboring class.” Many so-called “capitalists” are truly sons of toil, the performers of manual labor and the producers of wealth, even as Marx would define a “producer.”

But, let us stop generalizing, and get down to cases.

Marx says that all profit is robbery and exploitation. As an example of the utter absurdity of this theory, let me cite an illustration which Mr. G. W. de Tunzelmann once used in a debate with a prominent English Socialist.

He took the case of a man who buys a diamond for $498,000. The man pays $2,000 to the diamond-cutter for cutting the stone, and, finally, sells it for $550,000, making a 10 per cent. profit upon his outlay. If Marx argues rightly, this sum of $50,000 was obtained by robbery, but—who was robbed? Was it the diamond-cutter who was defrauded of a portion of his wages? Should the entire $52,000 have gone to him for his part in the transaction, while the capitalist got nothing?

The Socialist who was debating with Mr. de Tunzelmann found it impossible to answer this question intelligibly. “If the $50,000 did not come from the diamond-cutter’s wages, where did it come from?” was all he could say, and, John, it is all that any Socialist can say!

Then, here is an illustration from my own experience:

I have a friend who bought a painting from a young artist, paying $300 for it. This was a very fair price to pay for the picture. The artist was well satisfied with his bargain and my friend felt that the work of art was well worth $300 to him. Several years passed, and the comparatively obscure artist became a famous artist—so famous that there were lots of people who wanted to buy his pictures, and my friend found that he could sell his painting and get $2,000 for it.

May we again ask: Who was robbed? The man who painted the picture received its full value at the time; the man who bought the picture from my friend was satisfied that he got good value for his money. If Marx is right, my friend robbed somebody to the extent of $1,700. But whom did he rob?

As we have already seen, the value of an article is chiefly a matter of utility as adfected (raised or lowered) by difficulty of attainment—not the worker’s “difficulty of attainment,” not the time and effort he had to expend to produce this article, but your “difficulty of attainment,” or the effort you must make to secure it. The part that the worker plays in the production of a commodity is of minor importance when compared with the other factors which operate in determining its value. It is the employer, and not the worker, who assumes all the risk. It is the directing genius, and not the mere physical force used in operating the industry, that determines whether it shall succeed or fail. If this were not true, every business enterprise would be a success, for it would be nothing more than the proposition of getting money and men together and setting them to work. But you know that this is not what happens in real life.

Mr. Hyndman, the celebrated English Socialist, attempts to say that such a thing is possible. In his manual of Socialism he asks us to believe that a man who has $50,000 would find it a very simple matter to live permanently by robbing other men of part of the products of their labor. This man, he tells us, merely buys a mill of some kind—doesn’t it matter what kind of a mill he buys?—employs a manager and the necessary number of operatives, and then sits down and lets the wheels go round. Don’t smile, John, for this is precisely what Mr. Hyndman tells us the man does. “He has nothing to do but sit still and watch the mill go,” he asserts, naively (see Mallock’s “Socialism,” p. 13).

Do you believe this? Socialists do. As a practical man, do you imagine that any one method of employing capital will be just as successful as any other? If the laborer produces all value, and an article is valuable simply because of the labor there is in it, Mr. Hyndman and his master, Karl Marx, and the soap-box orator, who is telling you how to solve all of life’s problems by voting for the candidates on the Socialist ticket, are right. If this is not true, they are wrong, and you can’t get away from this conclusion. One might as well argue that an engine is sufficient unto itself and needs neither working capital in the form of fuel nor the directing hand of the engineer.

There is another class of “capitalists” who receive comparatively little attention from the Socialists. These are the employers who make no profits upon their investment, who purchase material and pay their workers’ wages and who do not earn enough to reimburse themselves for their outlay. The commercial agencies which report business conditions have records of many such cases. Men go into business and fail; people put their money into stock companies and never receive dividends. The work is done; the labor is performed; but there is no surplus value of which the worker may be “robbed.” In this case are we to assume that the unfortunate investors are robbed by their workmen?

Marx maintains that all capitalists are robbers. Are we therefore to believe that all capitalists are successful? We cannot deny that capital, and even the product of labor, may be transferred by the process of robbery. Before there can be any robbery, however, the capital or the value of the product must exist, and it is beyond the power of labor to call either capital or value into being.

CHAPTER V
YOUR OWN PAY ENVELOPE

My dear Smith,

Having seen that the Marxian theories of value are not the sanely “scientific” laws that Socialists declare them to be, but are utter absurdities that run counter to all laws of logic and even contradict human experience, we shall now get down to your own individual pay envelope, for that is the thing which most interests you. But, please don’t imagine that, because we have stopped talking about Marx’s theories for the moment, we have reached the end of our list of Socialist fallacies. To tell the truth, we have just begun to enumerate them. Silly as these ideas are in theory, they do not begin to attain the full limit of their absurdity until we attempt to apply them to the practical affairs of life.

Last night I stood at the street corner and heard the soap-box orator “educate” the crowd. He told them that the average earnings of every worker in America was $2,500 a year—a trifle more than $48 a week—and he asked the men if they had found any such sum of money in their pay-envelope recently.

You can imagine the answer he received to this question, John. Yet, the soap-boxer still asserted that this was the amount each worker had earned, and insisted that the difference between $48 and the sum he had received represented the amount of which his employer was “robbing” him. From the look on the faces of some of the men, I felt that the agitator had made an impression upon them. He reeled off his statistics so glibly that you really couldn’t blame them for believing him.

Of course, he also told them that, under Socialism, nothing of this kind could happen—that they would get their $2,500 a year, and more, too, and that they would have to work only half as long a time each day in order to earn this amount of money. “We must change the ‘system,’” he cried. “We must stop the making of goods for profit! Then, and then only, will you put an end to the exploitation that is the cause of all your poverty and misery. It is the only way you can throw the parasite-capitalist off your back. You are being robbed of four-fifths of your wages, and you’re not allowed to keep even the little you get, because capitalism, after robbing you by taking four-fifths of the money you earn, puts the prices of everything you buy higher and higher until there isn’t a penny of your earnings left for yourself, and you don’t get a chance to live decently, at that.”

You have heard this kind of talk. You may have thought that there was some truth in it. You—like all the rest of us—are confronted with the problem of the cost of living, and—like most of us—you wish that you could earn more money. “Is it possible,” you ask, “that I am earning four times as much as I get, and that I am being ‘robbed’ of the greater part of it?”

If you listen to the Socialists you will come to believe that this is just what is happening. A Socialist paper published in Kansas has spent a lot of money to advertise the fact that, when Socialism triumphs and you get what you actually earn, you will be paid $2,000 a year for six hours a day.

This is a very conservative estimate—for a Socialist. As you may have learned by this time, the writers and speakers who undertake to tell the worker what is to happen to him under Socialism do not agree about the amount of money he will get and the length of time he will have to work in the Co-operative Commonwealth, any more than they do when they try to estimate the extent of the “robbery” from which he is suffering.

Usually, the rate of payment is fixed at $2,500 for four hours’ work a day. A writer in a popular magazine fixes the sum the worker will be paid at $5,000. Suthers, the English Socialist, promises the equivalent of $10,000 a year, and there is a band of “comrades” on the Pacific Coast who can demonstrate “scientifically” that a 3-hour day affords sufficient time in which to earn a decent living and even the luxuries of life.

Well, do you believe any of these statements? I hope you are not such a simpleton as to be fooled by the bald assertion of any speaker or writer when you have, within your reach, the facts from which you can learn the truth for yourself.

Let us pursue this more rational method. Certainly, the Socialists cannot object if we check off their calculations and find out if they have made any mistakes in their figuring.

According to the last United States Census report—and that ought to be good enough authority for anybody—the total value of all the goods manufactured in this country during the year 1909 was $20,672,052,000 and the number of persons employed in making these goods was 7,405,513. If we divide one by the other, we find an earning capacity of more than $2,700 per man; but, unfortunately, that is not the way things work out. There are certain expenses of manufacture that have to be deducted from the “gross value” before we can even begin to calculate the earning capacity of the worker. One little item we mustn’t forget is called “Cost of Materials.” Another item is known as “Miscellaneous Expenses.” After you have received your wages, you are perfectly willing that your employer shall deduct these “expenses” before figuring his own profits, are you not?

In 1909, the “cost of materials” alone represented the tremendous sum of $12,141,291,000 and the “cost of miscellaneous expenses” was $1,945,676,000. When we subtract these two charges from the “gross value,” we have $6,585,085,000 left, and if we divide this sum by the number of workers, we find that the average product of the worker was but $889.23.

What did the worker actually get? The “cost of labor and salaries,” in 1909, was $4,365,613,000, and, if we divide this by the number of workers, we learn that the average is $589.52.

This is quite different from the story the Socialists tell us. Had all the industries in America been owned and operated collectively, in 1909, the worker, at the best, could have received but $299.71 more than he did, for, as you must admit, such factors as “cost of materials” and “miscellaneous expenses” must needs be considered, even under the collective system of industry. Certainly, the worker in the textile mills could not produce the cotton and wool and silk, and the shoe-worker could not raise the animals and prepare the leather, even were Socialism to bring about all the marvelous changes it has promised.

Yet, this is precisely what the Socialists do when they commence to quote “facts.” It is useless for them to deny the charge, for there is no other method by which they can figure an average earning capacity of $2,500 for each worker. To do this it would be necessary for the employer to get his cotton for nothing, his leather for nothing, and everything he uses in making his product, for nothing. Moreover, it presupposes that he can procure free fuel, free light, and, what is still more improbable, that he has to pay nothing for new machinery or for repairing the old. Do you think that the Socialist is showing himself the “friend” of the worker when he fills his mind with such “dope” as this?

And, even, the figures we have worked out are not fair—to the employer. He does not make a profit of more than $299 upon the labor of each of his workers—not by any means! Out of the $299 must come the cost of selling and transportation, bad debts, taxes, interest, etc., so that, when we have deducted all these charges, we can scarcely question Willey’s justification for the assertion (“Laborer and the Capitalist,” p. 22) that capital actually receives no more than 6 per cent net profits on its product. Moreover, as The American Federationist points out (July, 1905), the census figures fall short of giving us the actual cost of manufactures, as the original “gross value” upon which our calculations are based is itself “arrived at by a constant duplication of value, owing to the fact that the finished products of one plant become the material of some other factory, in which they are changed into some higher form and again included in the value of products.”

I will admit that it is practically impossible to compile statistics that will take such facts as these into consideration, and the Socialists do not act fairly when they lead us to assume that all these conditions have been considered in their figures. How many times do you suppose the value of the same piece of leather is computed from the time it becomes a hide until it is turned out, a finished product, from the shoe factory. Yet, as we have seen, every time the value of this material is included in the value of products it gives the manufacturer credit for a sum of money that never reached him.

Let us suppose that we were running all our industries under just such a collective form of government as the Socialists propose to establish, and that, as a result, we were bound to see that every worker got the $5,000 a year he has been promised. Do you see what that would mean? Figure it out for yourself—multiply the 7,405,513 workers in the industrial plants by the $5,000 that each would have to be paid, and then remember that the seven millions of workers represent only a small proportion of the workers to whom this sum of money must be given by the Co-operative Commonwealth. Even counting the seven millions alone, we have a total of $37,027,505,000—almost twice as much as the “gross value” of all manufactured products in this country to-day.

It is true that we do not know just how many men, women and children of working age there are who would have to be given a place in the collective pay-roll. In view of the total population of the United States, I do not think that any Socialist will accuse me of overstating the case if I assert that there would be 30,000,000 people to be provided for.

What would this mean? Merely an annual pay-roll of $150,000,000,000—that’s all.

Easy, isn’t it! At present, we manufacture less than $21,000,000,000 worth of goods—the consumable wealth produced in the United States is estimated by Socialists to be but $30,000,000,000 (Appeal to Reason, October 5, 1912); yet they ask us to get busy and undertake to meet a pay-roll that is at least fully five times greater than the total product to-day. And, if you want to be as conservative as the most conservative Socialist statistician who is dreaming these dreams, and allow that labor under Socialism will be rewarded with a meagre $2,000 a year, you will still have a pay-roll of $60,000,000,000 to provide for, or twice as much as we make. How are you going to meet it? As a practical man, John, I ask you: How? Certainly not from the $21,000,000,000 produced each year in manufactures. If we add to this the total wealth represented by the agricultural, mining and fishing interests of this country, we shall still fall far short of the sum we require. How is it to be done?

Absurd as all these promises are, we have not yet reached the limit—far from it! For example, we are told that in the Co-operative Commonwealth we shall have to work only half as long as we do now. In other words, the man who works eight hours a day now, will get along swimmingly by working four hours, and still receive the income promised—from $2,000 to $5,000 a year—for his effort.

Are we to understand from this that, though the worker, with the best machinery and the most scientific management now possible, succeeds only in turning out less than $900 worth of goods in a year, he will be able, under collective management, to turn out from two and one-half to five times as great a product, while working just half as many hours?

You know that this couldn’t be done. You know that, if you worked half as many hours as you do now, some other man would have to put in the other half of the day or only about half the usual product would be manufactured. If, therefore, we entirely disregard the fact that Socialists are promising to pay the individual worker more money every year than several workers are now able to produce, we are still confronted by a problem that defies solution. A certain amount of work must be done to keep the needs of Society supplied. To do this work, a certain amount of effort must be exerted, and, to exert this effort, a certain amount of time is necessary. Yet, the Socialists want us to assume that all of these appeals to common sense are absurd—that once the making of goods for profit has ceased, there will be no difficulty in meeting the industrial pay-roll, no matter how enormously its proportions may have increased.

And this leads up to still another very interesting phase of the situation. We are told by the Socialists that the making of goods for profit is to end, and that, in the Co-operative Commonwealth, such problems as the high cost of living will trouble us no longer. Once let the Socialists get control of our industries and we shall be compelled to pay no more than a commodity is actually worth.

Do you see into what a maze of absurdities the Socialists have led you? They tell us that we are to get anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 a year. An English Socialist promises the workers $10,000 a year, for what does a few paltry thousands matter when a great army of voters are to be fooled into casting their ballots for the Socialist ticket! In addition, you are assured that your work-day is to be cut in half, and you are further informed that, with the culmination of the profit system, you will be able to purchase everything you want at materially lower prices than are charged for such commodities to-day.

Will you tell me, John, where the Socialists are going to get the money to meet this enormous pay-roll, if they stop making goods for profit? Wages are to be increased out of all proportion to the present schedule; hours of labor are to be reduced to a minimum, and yet, despite all this, the prices of all commodities are to be cheapened, too.

You don’t see how they are going to do it? No more do I! Suppose you ask that wise little man on the street-corner. Maybe he can tell you!

CHAPTER VI
YOU “WAGE SLAVES”!

My dear Smith,

If you were to tell the soap-boxer that Socialism is an impracticable scheme, and that it couldn’t “make good” whether we all wanted it or not, he would become very indignant and would probably call you a “blind fool,” if he did not shower upon you still more vituperative epithets. If you ever find yourself in such a position, don’t let the soap-boxer place you on the defensive. When you talk about the impracticability of Socialism you put the Socialist just where he doesn’t want to be, and, if you follow up your attack consistently and strenuously, you will have him on the run before you know it. Socialists like to theorize. They like to talk to people who don’t ask for too many details, but they have little liking for the man who demands definite plans and accurate specifications.

You have a little house in a new suburban section. It is a small house and it has a mortgage on it, but you are paying for it gradually and it won’t be many years before it will be all your own. Even now the payments and all the charges together call for a smaller monthly expenditure than would be required if you rented a home not nearly as comfortable as this one.

Now, John, suppose I were to come to you and tell you that if you would let me tear down your house I would build you another somewhere else. Wouldn’t you be likely to ask me where the new house was to be located, and what guarantee I would give you that it would be a more satisfactory place of abode than the one which you now occupy? No matter how well you may know me—no matter how much confidence you may have in me as an individual—unless you are a very careless or a very stupid person, you will refuse to consent to any change in your domestic arrangements until you are certain that the proposition will be advantageous to you.

Such caution is entirely reasonable; this is the attitude you should take; yet Socialism asks you to disregard all such conditions. It expects you to believe that, when everything that represents modern civilization has been thrown into a vast melting-pot called “The Revolution,” something will come out of it that will be very much to your profit. They won’t tell you how this is to be brought about. They themselves have a vague idea in regard to what kind of a society we are to evolve into, and they try to describe it to you under the general terms of the “Co-operative Commonwealth.” As a matter of fact, however, it is almost impossible to find any two Socialists who will agree, even as to the main points of their program, and some of the socialistic leaders are honest enough to admit that there is a poor chance that they would be able to carry out this program successfully, even if given the best of opportunities. For example, Edward Bernstein, who is a sufficiently good Socialist to be selected to represent his party in the German Reichstag, admits that, “Socialism could not keep its promise if it were placed in power to-morrow.”

Remember this the next time the soap-box orator calls you a “wage slave.” Ask for specifications. Insist upon his telling you if Socialism would not introduce as hopeless a form of slavery as the world has ever known, and—if not, why not?

It is a catchy phrase, the term “wage slave.” It is a telling taunt that does good service for Socialism wherever there are people simple enough to be imposed upon. Yet if you, who are not a Socialist, will study this question you can easily turn the tables upon the limber-tongued agitator in a way to make him very unhappy.

In the first place, the use of the term “wage slave” would naturally lead us to suppose that, under Socialism, men will no longer work for a wage; that they will become their own masters, employing themselves and paying themselves the full product of their labor; in a word, that each will be free with a freedom such as man has never before experienced.

Knowing that this is the plan proposed by many prominent Socialist thinkers, it is somewhat surprising to find publications purporting to represent Socialism still promising the worker a “wage.” It is true that they have greatly increased the amount of his remuneration until they promise him anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 a year, but they combine to talk about the “wages” he will get.

What does this mean? Simply that under Socialism he will still be a wage earner. He may receive labor checks instead of United States currency—or something equivalent in value—but, if such a system were to be carried out, he could have no more freedom than he enjoys to-day and from every indication it is not impossible that he might have considerably less. A man is no less a wage slave because he works for 90,000,000 and himself, than he is when he is employed by a single individual. This is a fact that Socialism overlooks.

Under the present system a man is free to choose his own method of livelihood. If he does not like one trade, he can learn another. If he wants to get out of the industrial sphere altogether and enter upon a professional career, there are methods of accomplishing this purpose within his reach, if he is willing to work hard enough to attain that end. It is true that there are certain restrictions under existing labor conditions—the area of selection is not as wide as it might be, yet there is a great deal more scope for the development of individual preference to-day than there could possibly be under Socialism.

Let us see for ourselves.

Socialism provides for the collective ownership of all means of production, distribution and exchange. This means that the State—using the term as “collective” State, of course—would organize all these industries and would operate them upon a collective, which means a democratic, basis. Under such conditions it is doubtless true that every man would have an equal opportunity to earn a living, but it is absurd for anybody to assert that this equality of opportunity would also mean absolute freedom of choice.

If you want evidence in support of this statement, you can get it—and Socialist testimony at that.

In 1906, the Fabian Society of London—an organization composed of absolutely orthodox Socialists—issued a leaflet entitled, “Socialism and Labor Policy.” Let us see what they have to say about the freedom of choice we shall have under the collective régime.

“Everybody should have a legal right to an opportunity of earning his living in the society in which he has been born,” we read, “but no one should or could have the right to ask that he should be employed at the particular job which suits his peculiar taste and temperament. Each of us must be prepared to do the work which Society wants doing, or take the consequences of refusal.”

Again, Sydney Webb, in his “Basis and Policy of Socialism” (p. 71), says:

“Instead of converting every man into an independent producer, working when he likes and where he likes, we aim at enrolling every able-bodied person directly in the service of the community, for such duties and under such kind of organization, local or national, as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. In fact, so far are we from seeking to abolish the wage system, so understood, that we wish to bring under it all those who now escape from it—the employers, and those who live on rent or interest—and so make it universal. If a man wants freedom to work or not to work just as he likes, he had better emigrate to Robinson Crusoe’s island, or else become a millionaire. To suppose that the industrial affairs of a complicated industrial State can be run without strict subordination and discipline, without obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for maintenance is to dream not of Socialism, but of Anarchism.”

And Sydney Webb is not alone in these conclusions. Ramsay MacDonald, who is certainly one of the most conservative of Socialists, expresses the same spirit when he tells us that “trade must be organized like a fleet or education system” (“Socialism and Society,” p. 172); while Suthers answers this particular “objection” by expressing the most genuine contempt for those who would protest against the kind of slavery that collectivism would introduce. He reminds us that the people themselves would then be masters. Who would oppress the people? The people themselves? Like so many other Socialists, he will not see that slavery is slavery under whatever guise it may operate.

The only attempts to escape this proposition have been most utopian in character. Bebel, for example, asks us to believe that, in a Socialist State, disagreeable work will be accomplished chiefly by means of mechanical devices and that such undesirable tasks as remained, and which could be performed only by personal action, would be freely undertaken, as an effect of the unselfish spirit which will prevail among the workers of the future. He even suggests that it will be possible to inaugurate a kind of changing-off system so that each member of society may in his turn submit to assignment to the performance of the more disagreeable duties.

While this suggestion may be equitable in theory, it is of no practical value. Picture to yourself what kind of a community we should have if each individual was compelled to submit himself by a changing-off system to the most disagreeable avocations that you can imagine. Can you say that “freedom” could exist under such a régime? Do you think that such a system is possible outside of the penitentiary?

Of still greater absurdity is Bebel’s promise (“Woman,” p. 271) that the members of the social body shall become so perfectly developed that, “without distinction of sex,” they “shall undertake all functions” of society. As Cathrein says (p. 289), “this statement can hardly be said to deserve a refutation.”

“Let us only imagine what such industrial and technical ability supposes,” he continues. “Every individual in his turn undertakes all social functions. For instance, in a factory he is director, foreman, fireman, bookkeeper, a simple laborer or hod-carrier; then he turns to some other branch of industry or social calling—becomes editor, compositor, telegrapher, painter, architect, actor, farmer, gardener, astronomer, professor, chemist, druggist. With such a program is any thorough knowledge of anything possible?”

You know, John, that the efficient worker is the man who has mastered a trade thoroughly, and you also know that the maintenance of his efficiency depends upon his constant attention to the ever-changing details of his particular trade. This means the application of a lifetime, yet Socialists tell us that, merely by the adoption of the collective system, all men will become so perfectly proficient in everything that they will be fitted to undertake every kind of work.

No, John, this is not a joke! I did not find it in Puck or Judge. It is Bebel and other equally bright lights of the Socialist philosophy, who are responsible for these assertions. Even Marx himself endeavors to prove (“Capital,” p. 453) that the “separate individual” will be replaced by the “totally-developed individual,” and this development will confer upon the workman “absolute availability” for everything. If this is not a flight of imagination worthy of our old friend Baron Munchausen, what is it? Even Professor Paulsen, who cannot be called an anti-Socialist, protests in his “System of Ethics” (Vol. II, p. 437) against the equalizing tendencies shown by those who are trying to picture the future Co-operative Commonwealth.

“In the society of the future,” he says, “the self-same individual will be letter carrier to-day; to-morrow he must perform the duties of a post-office clerk; on the third day he must act as postmaster-general—but why use a title?—in short, he must undertake all that business which at present the director of the national post-office has in hand—he must prepare programs for international post-office congresses, etc.; and on the fourth day he must again return to the counter; on the fifth he condescends to be letter-carrier once more but this time not in the metropolis, but in some out-of-the-way place, for it is but meet that the sweets of city life should fall to the lot of all in their turn. Thus it would be also with the railroad department, in the mining and military department and in every common factory. To-day the member of the socialistic State descends into the bowels of the earth as a collier, or hammers at the anvil, or punches tickets; to-morrow he wields the quill, balances accounts, makes chemical experiments, drafts designs for machines or issues general edicts on the quantity and quality of the social productions.”

So, you “wage slaves,” you have been told what is in store for you. The utopian promises of some Socialist apologists are too ridiculous to be credited by a sane individual. The only thing that remains is the course which Sydney Webb and Ramsay MacDonald have outlined. The worker will still work for a wage. The officials of the new State will sanction the selection of his employment. He may take it or leave it, live or starve to death, for there will be but one master to whom he can turn for a job—the omnipotent State. It is the State that will tell him what he is permitted to do, and he will have no right save that of strict obedience.

As the author of “The Case Against Socialism” says (pp. 290-1): “A man might desire to be an electrical engineer. ‘No vacancies,’ says the State. ‘Ah, but I am sure that I can prove myself to be a much better man than some whom you have chosen,’ replies the applicant. ‘No outside competitions allowed,’ says the State. ‘We want masons, and a mason you must be.’ ‘But have I no personal freedom?’ replies the man. The answer is that he belongs to the State, and, if the official is in the mood to graciously explain matters further, the man will probably be told that it is difficult enough to organize labor at all, and that the attempt would become impossible if anyone was so selfish as to consider such a trivial matter as his own inclinations.”

What chance could a worker have under such circumstances? If he was not satisfied, he would simply have to pocket his dissatisfaction and make the best of it. What do you think of a body of men who, while planning this fate for the American worker, have the nerve to talk to him about “wage slavery”! Could anything be worse than this slavery with the State as a master?

CHAPTER VII
YOUR BOSS UNDER SOCIALISM

My dear Smith,

Having seen what the condition of the “wage slave” will be under Socialism, it is only fair that we should give a little attention to that other class in the Co-operative Commonwealth, the “bossing class.” The Socialist speaker on the street-corner assures us that, when the Socialist ideal is realized, everything in society will be democratically managed. It is in this way, they say, and in this way alone, that true liberty can be realized. The fact that they do not make clear is that, if you accept their definition, “liberty” means liberty to do just as we are told and nothing more.

And there will be no lack of people with power to tell you what to do.

As Laurence Gronlund states in “The Co-operative Commonwealth” (p. 115), while the Commonwealth “guarantees suitable employment,” it certainly cannot “guarantee a particular employment to everybody,” and this, as your own good judgment must tell you, opens the way for the creation of an army of state controllers in numbers hitherto undreamt of.

The theory that efficient work can be performed without direction is so utopian that it has been discarded, even by the majority of Socialists. The most that they are trying to do to-day is to develop a plan whereby the actual worker and the army of bosses may exist without continuous warfare.

This brings us to the question: How are these bosses to be selected? For of course, so many will want to be bosses that some definite mode of selection must be resorted to.

Some socialistic prognosticators assert that the candidates for the directive positions will undergo a kind of civil service examination. Other authorities state that they will be chosen by drawing lots; but, as one writer has said, “in point of impracticability there is little to choose between the two suggestions.”

The favorite theory, however, is that the choice of bosses will be made by popular election, and such a course would be eminently socialistic in that it cynically and entirely ignores the claims of individual efficiency.

We know how inadequate a system of election may be, especially when popularity becomes the important factor in the choice of a candidate. It is not easy to imagine the complications that will ensue when every question of management of social affairs must be determined by the vote of the people.

In “Two and Two Make Four” (p. 230), Bird S. Coler, a most practical man of affairs, presents a sample of the questions upon which the people might be called upon to vote, thus giving us an opportunity to see how wisely we may be governed under Socialism:

“Boris Humphiak says puddling is a hot, hard job, and he doesn’t see why he should blister and sweat while Reginald Carnegie just sits in a cool office talking to a stenographer. Comrade Carnegie explains to Comrade Humphiak that the Carnegie labor is necessary, directive labor, and can be performed in the office, while the Humphiak labor is manual labor and must be performed in the puddling room. Comrade Humphiak cannot see it. He says each man ought to take his turn at puddling and at superintending. Let us vote on it. There are a thousand puddlers, one superintendent. The vote is a thousand to one for the Humphiak proposition. Comrade Carnegie goes down to the puddling room, tries to puddle, to the intense joy of the other puddlers who cease labor in order to enjoy his weak and inefficient attempts to puddle; and, when blinded and exhausted, he overturns a vat of molten metal, those who survive are sorry and those who do not, among whom is Comrade Carnegie, do not care any more. Meanwhile, Comrade Humphiak goes into the office, lights a cigar and neglects to give some orders, as a result of which forgetfulness on his part, the mill burns down.”

There is nothing absurd in the picture which Mr. Coler has drawn. Complications just as serious would arise were the questions of direction left to a popular vote; yet, if such matters are not settled by the ballot, how are they to be adjusted?

“Some kind of organization labor must have,” says Herbert Spencer (“A Plea for Liberty,” p. 10), “and if it is not that which arises by agreement under free competition it must be that which is imposed by authority.... Without alternative, the work must be done, and without alternative the benefit whatever it may be must be accepted.”

Socialists like to talk about abolishing class distinction. They know that this is one of the most attractive proposals that they can dangle before the envious and the ignorant. Yet what have we here but the establishment of two distinct classes—the directing or “bossing” class, and the obeying or working class? That Socialism would institute changes, there can be no doubt, but it would be a change in bosses, not a change in methods. As Professor Flint has said (“Socialism,” p. 373), “it would place the masses of mankind completely at the mercy of a comparatively small and highly centralized body of organizers and administrators entrusted with such power as no human hand can safely and righteously wield.”

Hobhouse in “Democracy and Reaction” (p. 228), clearly defines what this must mean:

“As the ‘expert’ comes to the front and ‘efficiency’ becomes the watchword of administration, all that was human in Socialism vanishes out of it. Its tenderness for the losers in the race, its protests against class tyranny, its revolt against commercial materialism,” all the sources of the Socialist doctrines are gone like a dream, and “instead we have the conception of society as a perfect piece of machinery pulled by wires radiating from a single centre, and all men and women are either ‘experts’ or puppets.”

It is thus that humanity, liberty and justice must vanish under Socialism, for the ultimate result, said Mr. Spencer (“A Plea for Liberty,” p. 26), “must be a society like that of ancient Peru ... in which the mass of the people, elaborately regimented in groups of 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000, ruled by officers of corresponding grades and tied to their districts, were superintended in their private lives as well as in their industries, and toiled hopelessly for the government organization.”

Not in practice alone, but in theory as well, the Socialist form of government is nothing short of absolute despotism. The very fact that the citizens of a nation—or of the world, should International Socialism become possible—are divided into the two classes of controllers and controlled necessarily provides for inequality in rank and an unequal enjoyment of the right of liberty. Socialists urge that, because the controlling class will derive their rights from the voluntary act of the controlled, such a condition of affairs will be freely undertaken. This may be possible in the beginning. It is quite probable that those destined to be controlled may, through their whole-hearted belief in Socialism, co-operate in the establishment of the new régime. But, later, it would begin to be a different story. Once having experienced the privilege of directing, it is quite beyond the bounds of reason to suppose that the director will consent freely to take his place in the servient class. A member of the official class, once that class has become firmly established, would strenuously resist any act threatening his position, and it would be doing an injustice to Socialists to assume that some of them have not seen this necessary consequence of their system. What would happen were such a move contemplated is frankly stated by Professor Karl Pearson. “Socialists,” he says (“Ethics of Free-thought,” p. 324), “have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the State short shrift and the nearest lamp-post.” As Professor Flint remarks, such a sentiment “gives expression to the thought which animated the first tyrant.”

If you were to read the works of the prominent Socialist writers, John, you would find that Professor Pearson does not stand alone in his opinion. Robert Blatchford, in his popular presentation of Socialism (“Merrie England,” p. 75), goes just as far in asserting that man has no right to demand any other freedom than that which the majority may be willing to permit him to have. “Just as no man can have a right to the land, because no man makes the land, so no man has a right to his self, because he did not make that self.”

In spite of the crudeness and illogical character of this statement, it expresses only too forcibly the claim for the deification of the Socialist State at the cost of the complete suppression of the individual.

What does all this mean? In the last analysis it means that, if there is to be a servient class and a bossing class, it really is immaterial whether the worker belongs to the minority or to the majority. In either case, if he is selected as one to be bossed, such will be his fate, for the only people who will actually count at all are the officials who have been chosen, by one means or another, to become the bosses. What will make the conditions of the worker under Socialism infinitely worse than it is to-day, is the absence of any means of associated action for redress. Under no circumstances could such an existence be tolerable save in an ideal State in which benevolence reigns supreme—a State where envy, hatred, tyranny, ambition, indolence, folly and vanity no longer exist; a State where there are only wise and good men; and in such a State even law and direction might logically become unnecessary.

The human race, John, is not fitted for such a State. Untold centuries will pass before this ideal millennium can even remotely be realized. In the meantime we are trying to improve conditions with the material which we have at hand. With such material, even were all the theories of Marx to be put into operation, human nature must be considered as a factor, and it takes no prophet to foresee what a hopeless muddle we should make of things if we tried to run society upon the principles which Socialism proposes. Even John Spargo admits that “there is no such thing as an ‘automatic democracy,’ and eternal vigilance will be the price of liberty under Socialism, as it has ever been” (“Socialism,” p. 217).

Mr. Spargo is right as far as he goes, but he does not go far enough. He does not tell us that under Socialism vigilance would no longer be possible because it would not be tolerated; that with all trades and industries in the hands of the government, with all men and women dependent on the government for daily bread and compelled to do the work assigned to them, the State will consist of two classes only—state functionaries and ordinary people, controllers and controlled, masters and slaves. In what manner could man protect the rights of liberty under such a régime? What remedy could he have against oppression when he would always be pitted against “the State”—a State which would be placed in a position of being able to do no wrong.

“Wage slavery,” John? Isn’t this infinitely worse than any “wage slavery” of which you have ever dreamt?

CHAPTER VIII
SOME MORE “EQUALITY”

My dear John,

If you want to see how mad a man can get and still live, ask the soap-box orator if Socialism proposes to pay all kinds of workers the same wage. Tell him that you have heard that, in the Co-operative Commonwealth, there will be absolute equality of remuneration.

If you put this question to the street-corner agitator, I’ll promise that you will get all that you bargained for and more. But don’t be frightened by his torrent of wrath and indignation. Quietly but persistently press the question home. Have your quotations where you can get at them easily, and be sure that they are strictly “scientific”—that you have the right page of the book from which they have been taken. If you will do this, and maintain your equanimity, you can very soon take the wind out of the soap-boxer’s sails, because, whatever some Socialists say to the contrary, equality of remuneration is the only possible outcome of the socialistic system, and there are plenty of simon-pure Marxists who admit as much.

In my last letter I told you what Socialism means by “equality of opportunity,” and I proved the truth of my statements by citing quotations the authenticity of which no Socialist can deny. Not one of these quotations was “torn from its context,” or otherwise mutilated, though there may be some Socialists who will tell you that this is what has happened.

Having seen that “equality of opportunity” means merely the opportunity to do the things that meet the approval of the bosses, we will now consider the question of equality of reward; and again we shall let the Socialists themselves tell us what Socialism really means to do towards “solving” the wage problem.

In the first place, let us refer to Karl Marx, for his orthodoxy is probably above suspicion. We find that the great master of the socialistic philosophy is a little uncertain as to what may happen during the transitional period between capitalism and the realization of the Socialist ideal. At this stage, he says, there may be inequalities in rights, including remuneration, but about the ultimate effect of collectivism, he has no such doubt. “In a higher phase of communist society,” he says, “after the slavish subordination of the individual under divisions of labor and consequently the opposition between mental and bodily work has disappeared ... after the individual has become more perfect in every respect ... then only ... society may inscribe on its banner: ‘From each one according to his abilities, to each one according to his needs.’” (“Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms.”)

It is difficult to construe this statement of Marx to mean anything except that the end of Socialism is practically complete equality in matters of reward. Certainly this is the idea which Mr. Spargo has formed from his study of the Marxist philosophy, for he tells us very definitely in his book, “Socialism” (p. 233), that “it may be freely admitted that the ideal to be aimed at ultimately must be approximate equality of income.”

George Bernard Shaw, the eminent English Socialist, also admits that equality is the ultimate aim of Marxism. In a paper read before the Fabian Society, in 1910, and published in the Fabian News (January, 1911), Mr. Shaw defines Socialism as “a state of society in which the income of the country would be divided equally among the inhabitants, without regard to character, industry or any other consideration except that they were human beings.”

And, that there might be no misunderstanding about his attitude toward this question, Mr. Shaw, talking to an interviewer for The Labor Leader, said (March 31, 1912): “Socialism is the system of society where all the income of the country is to be divided up in exactly equal portions; every one to have it, whether idle or industrious, young or old, good or bad ...; anyone who does not believe that, is not a Socialist.... Those are the conditions on which I say I am a Socialist. Those are the conditions on which Society should stand. The point is not whether they are reasonable conditions or not. They are the only workable conditions.”

Mr. Shaw seemed to think it necessary to disarm possible criticism by admitting that the conditions he proposes might be called “unreasonable.” His fears are groundless. We do not dub his proposition “unreasonable”—indeed, it embodies the only reasonable conditions under which Socialism could be operated. The only unreasonable thing about it is that it absolutely defies any attempt to bring it into harmony with that other working proposition of Marxism: that every worker shall receive the full products of his labor. If all are to get the same reward, whether idle or industrious, whether valuable or valueless to the community, it necessarily follows that some portion of the proceeds of the industrious workers’ labor must go to the worker whose labor has been profitless.

Discouraging as such a system of payment would be to industry and initiative, it still is, as a matter of fact, the only system that Socialism can adopt if it is to show any regard for the preservation of the collective character of the State.

If all workers are paid alike, it is possible that a certain degree of equality may be maintained. If, as Blatchford says in “Merrie England” (p. 103), “the only difference between a Prime Minister and a collier would be the difference of rank and occupation,” the mere worker may feel that he is living in a State in which class distinction has been largely eliminated. If, on the other hand, workers are to be paid according to the nature and value of their productions, how long do you think it will be before a new set of class distinctions will be created? How long will it be before the skilled workman who draws the fattest pay envelope will become the aristocrat, or, at least, will assume a class distinction mid-way between the bossing class and the class of unskilled laborers?

The Socialists themselves have recognized the danger that the problem of remuneration presents, and have tried to anticipate some of its difficulties by suggesting possible solutions. The sophists among them, of course, have sought to evade the issue, thus leaving the inquirer to imagine that this question, like all the other difficulties that confront the Collectivist, will settle itself when the moment of emergency arises. The more honest and consistent Socialists, however, are quite frank in their admission that equality of reward is the inevitable consequence of Collectivism. Even Spargo, in the quotation already referred to, admits that class formation must take place and the old problems incidental to economic inequality reappear under anything less than an “approximate equality of income.”

Mrs. Annie Besant, who is a much-quoted Socialist, takes the same stand. “Controversy,” she says (“Fabian Essays,” pp. 163-164), “will probably arise as to the division: shall all shares be equal, or shall the workers receive in proportion to the proposed dignity or indignity of their work? Inequality would be odious.... The impossibility of estimating the separate value of each man’s labor with any really valid result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies which would be provoked, the inevitable discontent, favoritism, and jobbery that would prevail; all these things will drive the Communal Council into the right path—equal remuneration of all workers.”

And yet as early as 1830—years before Marx and Engels had begun to prepare their “Communist Manifesto”—the French Communists addressed a manifesto to the Chamber of Deputies in which it was stated that the equal division of property would constitute “a greater violence, a more revolting injustice, than the unequal division which was originally effected by force of arms, by conquest.”

The Socialist of the present day may well learn wisdom from the logic of his French predecessors. It is a self-evident fact that production must be most disastrously effected by equality of distribution. Where is the incentive to come from if the industrious or the highly skilled man is to be mulcted of a share of his earnings that it may be used to equalize things with the “work-shy,” who happens to be indisposed to earn a living for himself? As one writer suggests, “it is to be no longer a question of ‘Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost,’ but we are to go to the opposite extreme and endeavor to establish an equally false doctrine of ‘Every man for his neighbor, and the devil take the foremost.’”

Marx seemingly attempts to provide for this contingency by preaching the doctrine embraced in the formula, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Apparently, he recognizes that it will be impossible to evade the inequalities naturally existing between different individuals, and he endeavors to neutralize these natural advantages by supposing that each is to produce “according to his ability.”

But, my dear John, you mustn’t be deluded by the suggestion that there is a difference in these propositions. In both cases, the neutralizing profits are to be taken from the most efficient producers and given to those who are less efficient. If this were done there would soon be an end to the Socialist promise that every worker is to get the full product of his labor. If this rule of remuneration were to become operative, the surplus product needed to supply the bad or idle worker with the means of securing a reward “according to his needs,” would be stolen from the proceeds of the industry of the more capable “comrades.”

Yet H. M. Hyndman, the prominent English Socialist, sees no objection to this arrangement. In a letter contributed to the London Daily Telegraph (October 14, 1907), Mr. Hyndman wrote:

“Socialism will recognize no difference as to the share of the general product between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ workman, but will give both every opportunity to make themselves more valuable citizens and comrades. Good and bad will alike be doing their social best for the community, and will be entitled to their full participation in the enjoyment of the wealth created by the work of the whole body.”

Mr. Hyndman seems to assume that, under such a system of production, there would be enough to go round—enough to satisfy all the wants of every member of the community. Do you think this possible?

Suppose that Socialism were adopted to-morrow, and that you, knowing that your livelihood was assured, were working side by side with a man who was producing about half as much as you. Would the fact that his sloth and incapacity did not count against him inspire you to do your best work, especially when you realized that the surplus product of your toil was fated to compensate him for his failure to “make good”?

It makes little difference from what point of view Socialism attempts to solve its problem of remunerating the worker. No matter which course it pursues, it courts disaster. Whether it rewards all equally or continues to recognize the existence of natural inequalities, it remains a system under which freedom is impossible.

Do you like the prospect, John?

CHAPTER IX
A FEW “MINOR” DETAILS

My dear John,

When the Socialists promise to see that you get the full product of your labor, there are a few minor details which they overlook. Not the least of these is the detail as to how they are going to do it.

If you should ask your friend, the soap-box man, where he gets the figures which he reels off so glibly when he is talking to you about the way you are robbed, he may find it difficult to answer; but the difficulty he encounters when confronted with such a question is nothing in comparison to that which he will experience if you ask him to inform you how the Socialist bosses are going to figure out your labor value in a way to assure you against robbery. It is easy for him to say that under Socialism you will get all you produce, but don’t let him get away with the idea that he can make such statements without being called upon to prove them.

It is a beautiful promise, this assurance of Socialism that every worker in the Co-operative Commonwealth will get every penny that is represented in his labor. It is a beautiful promise; but lots of people have made beautiful promises and haven’t kept them. Can it be possible that the bright little promiser who talks to you at the street corner is one of the “four-flushers,” too?

Ask him the next time he invites questions. Tell him that you are a practical man, and that you want more definite details.

Do you know what he will tell you? He will use a lot of words rounded out into more or less eloquent periods, but, when you attempt to analyze what he has said, you will find that all his wisdom could have been expressed in a single sentence. In plain English, he tells you that your request for details is nothing more or less than “a mark of ignorance.” He wants you to believe that Socialism’s plan will be all right for everybody, because, as the old negro said, “it jes’ works out so.”

Well, perhaps it will! Let us see.

To test the truth of this theory, we must tackle one of the most difficult problems that we shall be called upon to consider. But I think, if we are patient, we shall be able to get to the bottom of Marx’s complicated methods of reasoning, and so show that even the promise to ascertain the full value of the worker’s labor—to say nothing of the detail of giving it to him afterwards—is one of the most glaring absurdities in the whole Socialist scheme.

Marx tells us that value is determined by labor.

What does he mean?

He means that the value of a commodity is fixed by the labor that is put into it. This is all right as far as this statement goes, but it does not help us very much in determining the value of a particular commodity. Before we can know what a commodity is worth, we must know (according to Marx) what it cost to produce the mental and physical energy that was used in making it. To do this, we must first know the total cost of all the commodities which the worker consumed during the period when he was performing this particular task.

You know the old problem of the hen and the egg—which was first? The Socialist’s labor-value puzzle is much more perplexing, because, in addition to a lot of other things, you are called upon to find out which was first, the worker or the commodity which he consumed—the clothes he wore, the food he ate, the bed in which he slept while acquiring the strength for the work that produced this commodity.

If you were called upon to answer this question, to fix the value of even a single article, you would find the task anything but an easy one. Can you imagine what will happen when the government functionaries sit down to figure out this problem for every kind of article that is sold—anywhere in the world?

But, don’t imagine that their task ends here. When they have once succeeded in getting this puzzle solved, they will next be called upon to find out how many persons have contributed their labor toward the production of each and all of the commodities that have entered into the transaction.

Benedict Elder, in exposing this particular absurdity of Socialism in The Common Cause (September, 1912), illustrated his argument by showing the difficulties that the Socialist statisticians will face when they are called upon to find the value of the labor necessary in producing an ordinary pin. As it is difficult to obtain a more striking example, we may well follow Mr. Elder’s calculations.

To find the value of the labor of making a pin, it is necessary to begin by getting the exact time expended by every person who has contributed a necessary part towards the production of the pin. This includes the time of the man who sells the pin to you over the counter—for, of course, there will have to be salesmen under Socialism—the time spent by the miner who dug the metal from the earth and by every other individual who has had anything to do in handling it. Talk about tracing your ancestry back to the days of William the Conqueror—that would be a “cinch” compared to this kind of mental gymnastics!

Yet our Socialist statisticians are not finished with their work, even yet! Before they can tell the cashier how much to pay the worker so as to give him the full value of his labor in producing the pin, they must also determine how much labor-power each man spent in doing his part of this work and how many commodities, and how much of each, the man consumed to produce the labor-power necessary to complete the task assigned to him.

“Here,” says Mr. Elder, “we have indeed a monumental undertaking, one that staggers the mind to contemplate, one that challenges a combination of figures to express. Yet we are not fairly started at our task.... We have taken but one commodity where the number of commodities is practically infinite. We cannot follow the Socialists many steps; their range becomes so vast, their intricacies so bewildering, their complications so overwhelming, the throne of reason would be threatened by the stupendous scale of thought demanded almost at the outset. It is said that a German scientist once undertook to figure out the number of possible moves on a chess-board. He reached a point where the combination of figures required could no longer be expressed in any known language, and then his mind unhinged. On the chess-board there are just thirty-two pieces to be moved on sixty-four spots.”

The Socialist program may seem very plausible and extremely attractive when the Socialist propagandist is describing it in broad generalities and you do not examine its details too critically; but, when you get down to cases, John, and begin to try to find out how all these magnificent promises are to be kept, you will begin to feel that you are in danger of joining the German scientist whose “mind unhinged.”

Just for the sake of argument, let us admit that the Socialist functionaries have finally succeeded in performing the apparently impossible task of ascertaining exactly how much your labor-time has been worth to the community. This fact equitably determined, the worker would probably be given labor checks, for which he could secure other things of equal value with his labor. For example, if it required 1,000,000 days’ labor to provide this year’s shoes for the community and 2,000,000 pairs of shoes were made in that time, we can imagine that a check for one day’s labor might exchange for two pairs of shoes.

It is easy to see that it would require no small amount of book-keeping to keep even this matter of detail adjusted fairly, especially when we remember what intricate calculations are necessary to find out how many persons contributed to the production of these shoes, and how the value of the time of each worker must be figured. But the same difficulty would present itself with every kind of commodity in any way dependent upon the labor-power of man.

If the labor checks that each worker receives are to be of real value, they must be exchangeable for articles which the worker himself needs or thinks he needs. In other words, our Socialist officials are also to be called upon to ascertain what the public may be expected to demand. This does not mean merely the articles that are necessary to life—food, clothing, fuel, etc.—but everything that must be placed at the disposal of a man if he is to enjoy unrestricted freedom of choice as to the character of the articles which he purchases. Even the smallest thing must be considered—the boy’s jumping-Jack and the button-boots for the doll baby; for it is not admitted that any wants of man—however small or great—are to be prohibited by the government.

The ordinary playthings of the child represent a demand upon raw material, and each of these demands must be considered in calculating the total production for which arrangements must be made in advance.

To accomplish this result the statistical expert will be compelled to ascertain the actual needs of every family—indeed, of every individual from one end of the country to the other, if not throughout the entire world, since, of course, there would still be an interchange of products between the various lands. A statistical estimate based upon present conditions would be of little avail. To overcome the difficulty, an accurate schedule of every article that will be needed to meet the demands of the purchaser must be made.

The taking of a census is a long and laborious task, and to its completion years are devoted. Yet the census which the United States government takes is mere child’s play compared with the schedules which will have to be filled out, arranged and digested, if all the small commodities which people want to buy, and which they buy to-day, are to be ascertained and tabulated in preparation for production.

As Cathrein points out (“Socialism,” p. 270), it will be necessary to consider “the numerous articles of food which are required even in the humblest family, the supplying of the kitchen with fuel and cooking utensils, the fitting up of the drawing-room and bedrooms with furniture and ornamentation, the lighting and heating, the stocking of the pantry, etc., besides the necessary repairs. There must be included the mending of clothes, furniture, etc.... The authorities will have to supply needle and thread to replace the missing shirt-button. All these items must be tabulated for the determination of the demand upon which the great system of production is to be based. And all this would have to be done not for one family alone, but for the millions of families which constitute a modern State and for everyone of their members.... Even a cursory glance at the immense department stores of our large cities with their thousands of different articles, will convince anyone of the great variety of modern requirements.

“Moreover, the social demand is not at all constant; it varies from month to month, from week to week, even from day to day. Many requirements cannot be foreseen in the least; suddenly and unexpectedly they make their presence felt. Weekly or even daily inquiries would become necessary, or at least there would be needed numerous offices where lists of requirements could be filed.

“However, it would not suffice to provide for single families. The needs of society at large, all the public requirements, would also have to be satisfied. In the first place would come the arrangements for transportation: streets and roads, bridges, railways, canals, vehicles of all kinds. The care of all this would be incumbent on the paternal State. What an amount of daily exertion to supply a large city with meat, milk, fruit, vegetables, etc. Private hotels would also be abolished. It would become the functions of public officials to provide shelter, food, and service for every comer, unless travelling is to be forbidden in the Socialist commonwealth. Then, again, the whole of the building business will be in the hands of the State. Public and private edifices, dwellings, schools, hospitals, insane asylums, storehouses, theatres, museums, public halls, post and telegraph offices, railroad stations, would have to be erected and kept in repair, or enlarged as necessity required. And these buildings could not be handed over to contractors as is generally done nowadays; the State alone could take care of drawing up the plans and specifications, of gathering the necessary materials and workmen, of directing and supervising the erection. If the State is supposed to do all this systematically, without squandering an immense amount of labor and materials, the extent and quality of the requirements in the entire commonwealth must be ascertained long beforehand by some responsible authority.

“What the different cities and town administrations are doing now, and as a rule through private contractors, in the matter of streets, public health, water supply, lighting, baths, etc., would fall to the care of the State. Physicians, surgeons, druggists, nurses, midwives, would have to be appointed, and it would be incumbent upon the State to provide for the professional education of a sufficient number of people for all these offices. The State would have to find ways and means to take care of education, of the press, literature, arts, theatres, museums, etc.... To this would have to be added the management of the farms, vineyards, vegetable gardens, cattle and stock raising, the forests and fisheries, mining, smelting, and other industrial processes. In all these departments, the requirements would have to be accurately ascertained before there would be any question of a systematic regulation of production.”

There are several important items that have been omitted, but it does not seem necessary to enumerate them. Enough has been shown to demonstrate that, to perform all this work and to compile such an overwhelming amount of statistical labor alone, a huge army of public officials will be required, and they must be public officials of such capability and integrity as not to be subject to the human weaknesses that are responsible for so many of the blunders in work of this kind—blunders that might prove fatal to the entire system of production and even threaten the very existence of the nation.

Do you think that human intelligence is equal to such a task? The soap-box orator may call your attention to the fact that this work is being done to-day. Yes, it is being done, but, as the Socialist so very often asserts, many of our worst evils are due to the fact that the work is being done so badly.

The Socialist also assures us that he will remedy all these evils, which means that Socialism will do the work much better than it is being performed at the present time. Do you think that this is possible? Do you believe that so gigantic a system of State machinery can be organized and made to operate without a hitch? Is it possible that a system of collective government composed of human units, all subject to human frailties, can perform what private enterprise, with its vast resources and its boundless ambition, has never been able to accomplish, especially when no hope of extra recompense stimulates these human units in the performance of their appointed tasks?

CHAPTER X
LABOR’S FULL PRODUCT

My dear Smith,

There is a good reason why the Socialists are unwilling to tell you just what their State will be, or how it will work. They themselves do not know.

You can divide the present-day Socialists into two classes. The best of them are utopian dreamers—theorists who hope that things will work out all right, and who are willing to take a chance. The worst of them are mere office-seekers, eager for place or pelf, and willing to become special pleaders for the oppressed in return for their votes.

There was a time when the Socialists were actuated by a high and unselfish ideal. It was a fallacious ideal, it is true. They were fighting for principles that would have worked the ruin of the nations had they been put into practice. But, as you know, a man can be both sincere and wrong at the same time. The early Socialists were sincere, even though they were wrong. But those Socialists of to-day who have turned the philosophy of Socialism into a purely political movement, and who do not ask you to believe as they do so long as you vote as they want you to vote, have neither high ideals nor good principles. They are just as bad political grafters as have ever been harbored by any of the old political parties.

If the Socialists do not know much about the practical operations of their utopian commonwealth, however, we can work out the problem for ourselves. All that it is necessary to do, John, is to collect the different pieces of the Socialist program and fit them together, just as you did the jig-saw puzzles with which you used to amuse yourself when a boy.

For example, let us take still another phase of the Socialist promise to see that every man shall get the full product of his labor.

The Socialists have been quick to realize that this fallacy is the best vote-catching device that they have yet invented. “You make it all,” they explain, “and it is all yours.”

“Yes, it is all yours!” they declare, “but do you get it? No, you do not begin to get all of your earnings. If you are very lucky you may get one-third of what you earn; if you are less lucky, you have to be content with one-fifth. It is only under Socialism that you will get all your earnings.”

This is the promise that Blatchford makes in “Merrie England” (p. 189). It is this that countless Socialist writers have promised. It is this promise that is used as a text by practically every soap-box orator in this country—or in any other, for that matter. “The right to the entire product of labor and capital together!” That is the main tenet of the gospel of Socialism.

Now, John, I am willing to admit for the sake of argument that there is considerable justice in the worker’s demand for a larger portion of the output of his industry. Of course, we cannot admit that he is entitled to the entire output of labor and capital combined; but this point need not delay us long, since he never will get it. He can’t expect to have the full product now, and he needn’t expect to have it, even if Socialism triumphs and the modern system of private ownership is buried six feet underground. Neither Socialism nor any other system of production will ever be able to make this promise good.

Do you see what this means? It simply shows that the Socialist is trying to fool you with promises that can never be kept. He tells you that he will give you the entire value of the product. He does not tell you how he is going to find out how much it is, and he is also very careful to conceal the fact that, even if he knew exactly how much the value of your labor-time amounted to, he couldn’t give you the full amount that you produce. He couldn’t do it to-day, nor a hundred years from to-day, nor a million years from to-day, simply because it is a proposition that is just as impossible as to make 2 plus 2 equal 5.

While the great mass of Socialist writers and speakers are so unscrupulous that they continue to agree to espouse a policy which they know they can never fulfil, there are other Socialists who are more honest and who frankly admit that this program is entirely impracticable. The latter are not the Socialists whose writings are exploited for the instruction of possible converts, however. When a man has caught Socialism and caught it bad, it is safe for him to read what they have written; but, for the beginner, it is best to feed him on the pre-digested and carefully censored output of the propaganda committees.

The soap-box orator informs you that under Socialism all industry will be owned collectively and will be conducted in the interests of the workers exclusively. What does the worker imagine that this means? He pictures himself as a part owner of the factory in which he works. He sees himself dividing the profits of that manufacturing concern with the 50 or 100 or 500 persons now constituting the working force of the establishment. Believing that this is what Socialism promises to do for him, he becomes interested immediately. Naturally the soap-box orator doesn’t try to correct this impression.

Sydney Webb, however, tells a different story. He knows that Socialism does not intend to do anything of this kind. Turn to “Fabian Tract No. 51” (p. 16), and you will read the following:

“The whole of our creed is that industry should be carried on, not for the profit of those engaged in it, whether masters or men, but for the benefit of the community. We recognize no special right in the miners as such to enjoy the mineral wealth on which they work. The Leicester boot operatives can put in no special claim to the profits of the Leicester boot factory, nor the shop-man in the co-operative store for the surplus of its year’s trading. It is not for the miners, bootmakers, or shop-assistants, as such, that we Socialists claim the control and the profits of industry, but for the citizens.”

This is quite a different proposition, isn’t it? Socialism doesn’t mean that you are to be permitted to turn the factory in which you work into a profit-producing concern for your own benefit. It does mean, however, that the profit produced by all the concerns in the entire country shall be lumped together, and, after all the losses and necessary charges have been deducted, the sum left shall be divided among all the people—a system under which you would receive one-fifty, one-seventy or one-ninety millionth part, according to the population of the nation.

This puts the matter in a less attractive light, but we have by no means fully disclosed the iniquity of those who are trying to fool the voters with false promises. Let us now try to find out what charges must be deducted from the total profits before this division can be made.

Not all businesses are to-day successful. Some of them fail because the people do not buy the articles which it was expected they would buy, and it is quite possible that such mistakes might be made under Socialism. It is entirely probable that some kind of mistakes would be made, and that there would be approximately as great a proportion of losses with collective management as we now have under individual management. These items would, of course, have to be deducted before the division of profits could be effected.

The Socialists claim that a large part of the profits of which the worker is robbed, goes to meet the expenses of rent and interest, two factors that would not have to be considered in the Co-operative Commonwealth. They do not seem to take into account the fact that the money applied to rent, interest and profit is not stored away, or otherwise taken out of circulation, even to-day. The greater part of this sum finds its way back to industry by providing for extensions in business, renewals of machinery, enlargements of factories, and the establishment of new industries.

There are items of expense that we cannot dodge even under Socialism. Factories and machinery do not last forever. New methods must constantly be adopted. An ever-increasing popular demand necessitates an extension of manufacturing facilities. Do the Socialists expect us to believe that, on the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth, everything will be income and there will be no outlay—all profit and no expenses?

Then we must provide for the payment of the huge army of Socialist officials, for there will be practically no end to the number of overseers, superintendents, clerks, bookkeepers, auditors, cashiers, and statisticians—to say nothing of the host of minor officials—all of whom will have to be paid at the same rate, to say the least, as the laborers.

In talking about this kind of workers to-day, the Socialist agitator is very apt to dub them a “non-producing class.” If you will examine Socialist statistics carefully, you will find that the statisticians almost invariably omit to consider the amount paid such workers as an item of expense; that they are even likely to include the sum represented by these salaries in the profits of the employing class. Should the time ever come when the Socialists themselves are called upon to provide the pay-roll for the nation, they will discover that the directive and executive workers, and all the persons employed to carry out their part of the program, will call for the expenditure of a tremendous sum of money. Tremendous as this amount would be to-day, however, the present outlay for this purpose would be but a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the system that Socialism would have to establish.

Let us see what the Socialists themselves—the more frank and honest kind of Socialists—have to say about this matter.

Deville in “Socialism, Internationalism and Revolution,” says: “After deducting from the product a portion to take the place of taxes, a portion to replace the labor consumed, one to extend the scale of production, one to insure against disasters, as floods, winds, lightning, etc., one to support the incapable, one for administration, one for sanitation, one for education, etc., the producers of both sexes will distribute the balance among themselves in proportion of the quantity of ordinary labor respectively furnished.”

Mrs. Besant, in “Fabian Essays” (p. 163), has very similar ideas upon this point. She says:

“Out of the value of the communal produce must come rent of land payable to the local authorities, rent of plant needed for working of industries, wages advanced and fixed in the usual way, taxes, reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other charges necessary for the carrying on of the communal business. All these deducted, the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a ‘bonus.’”

A “bonus”? Yes, but would there be any bonus? These who are familiar with the history of the labor movement in France will naturally recall Louis Blanc’s unfortunate experiment with the National workshops.

In 1848 the Provisional Government issued a proclamation engaging to guarantee work to all citizens and promising to put an end to the sufferings of workmen by decreeing the formation of a permanent Commission for the workers.

Louis Blanc, who was at the head of this movement to abolish all profits of capital and to establish the perfect equality of all workers “without considering skill or activity,” developed the National Workshops scheme. At first the workmen threw themselves into the project with great heartiness, even working overtime; but this was merely a temporary condition. To aid the great tailoring workshop, the government gave it an order to provide 25,000 uniforms for the National Guard. The building in which the work was conducted was provided absolutely free of cost and the government advanced all the capital required in the experiment. The price agreed upon was to be eleven francs per uniform. Each of the 1,500 workmen was given two francs a day as “subsistence money,” and was promised his pro rata share in the profits.

But there were no profits. Instead, the uniforms actually cost, when finished, sixteen francs apiece, and the government had to stand the loss. You may read the whole story of the commercial disaster which the attempt to introduce collective ownership brought upon France. The experiment ended in a panic such as the nation had never known, and the revolt of the workmen which followed was suppressed by the troops only after 10,000 persons had been killed or wounded.

Don’t you think that I am right when I say that it will take something more than the mere assertion of a Deville or an Annie Besant to persuade a sane and sensible people that collective ownership is more practical to-day than it was some sixty years ago?

The admissions that these Socialists have made seem conclusively frank; yet Richardson, in “Industrial Problems” (p. 179), gives us a concrete example that may throw an additional sidelight upon the situation. He says: