nifMliM;iW}l;!;> 6^f CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY :IC . t, "lUy. >PtU^-*^^, DATE DUE AN^<196 ^ GBBJVT, William Jq, fort, Ind., Apr. S9, IM Elizabeth (Palmer).' G,'] gaylc high schs. ; m. Amy 'ft York City, July It'S positor and proof-JBaqer in various cities and lub-editor of vdtiims trade jpaperS ..in New » Si, 'York. Aided late S^uel Mj^fii^qO'bl'eap, 'f* as lit. mgr. of mayoralf.y''arta %ubwffiit'orpt«i^«. campaigns of 1899. , Eegumc?WtK?''TO The \ Independent, New York, siniJe 1900; pccasional contbr. to various pubis.; editor American blan, 1897-8. One of the founders SociallJ form Club, New Yoik, 1S94. Sec. RandScf Social Science from its foundingrJuly, iSf Dec, 1909; pres. EandSci,,-Bec., igog-Mafl, MUi sec. to Victor CrSerg crT Mar.. '1911-July,'191Z. Otvitm: X, Authbrs . Author: Our BerievoiteBft FfeudaUsm. 191)2; Mass and Class, 1904; Social- ism and Success, 1910. Address: 627 Belmont ■A v., Los Angeles, Cal. TED IN U.S.A. The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032589404 SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS SOME UNINVITED MESSAGES By the Same Avihor OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM MASS AND CLASS Socialism and SUCCESS^^^ SOME UNINVITED MESSAGES By W. J. Ghent NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMX Copyright, 1910, by JoHK Lanb Compant 5 ^4^"Mj ^l^'/ls.^t .Jj^es PUBLISHERS PKINTING COMPANY NBW YORK Afr PREFACE A CONSIDERABLE part of the substance of the following pages has been published in periodicals. But excepting the " Retainers ' ' chapter and the greater part of the "Re- formers" chapter, the essays have been entirely recast and rewritten. Acknowl- edgment is due Success and The Independ- ent for permission to reprint parts of "To the Seekers of Success"; to The Independ- ent for permission to reprint "To the Re- tainers," and to the Journal of the Amer- ican Social Science Association (1907) for like permission regarding the main part of " To the Reformers." " To Some Social- ists" is rewritten from a number of con- troversial articles that have appeared in [5] PREFACE The Worker (New York) and the New York Daily Call. The basis of "To Mr. John Smith, Workingman," is a pamphlet printed and circulated by the Socialist party o^ New York City some four years ago. " To the Skeptics and Doubters" has not before been printed. W. J. G. New York City, September 28, 1910. [6] CONTENTS CHAPTER I. To THE Seekers of Success II. To THE Reformers III. To the Retainers rV. To Some Socialists V. To Mr. John Smith, Wobkingman VI. To the Skeptics and Doubters PAGE 9 45 96 129 177 207 [7] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS CHAPTER I TO THE SEEKEES OF SUCCESS You hunt and strive for success. You that are religious pray for it, and you that are unreligious woo it and entreat it with a devotion that transcends the fervency of prayer. The teachers instruct you, the editors urge you, even the preachers exhort you, to go forward and win. They tell you not only that you should win, but that you can win. They tell you that no matter how fierce the strife, no matter what ob- stacles front you, no matter how many suitors throng the gates, you can, through courage and persistence and fortitude and [9] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS abstinence and thrift, attain the goal. Some of them tell you that you can attain it by merely thinking it, provided only that you think hard enough and directly enough and constantly enough; that thoughts are material things, and that the flower-like idea of success, well cultivated, brings of itself the fruit of realization. Many roads lead to the goal. There is room at the top for everybody. Make haste, rest not, sleep not; but like a star in its course speed on- ward, and the victory is yours. And what is it that the exhorters mean by success .P One and all, this is what they mean: the attainment, or the state of attain- ment, of high place and rich rewards. No definition less material of aim or less opulent of promise would be thought by the instruc- tors of the multitude to be worth while; nor, indeed, would any other satisfy the common desire or the common understanding. This is an age of material achievements, and the meaning of the word necessarily takes on the form and pressure of the age. Never was the counsel to win success so [10] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS loud-voiced and so insistent as now. Never was there such a multitude of counselors. The pursuit of success has been transformed into a sort of religion, and a horde of priests and oracles interpret its dogmas and dis- seminate its practical precepts. They tell you what things to do and what not to do. They tell you how to win the smile of the Success god when he is indulgent; how to gain his attention when he is listless or indifferent; how to propitiate his anger when he frowns. The press pours forth a stream of volumes, revealing to you the hidden lore. They do not differ in degree greatly from the "past performance" sheets of the racing ex- perts, or the dream-books from which our Ethiopian brothers learn how to invest in lot- tery or policy, or from those writings so deft- ly blending piety and Mammonism which fascinate the Christian Scientists. They in- terpret for you the signs, the portents, the mystic meanings of things, and they furnish you with the approved litanies and forms of service. No matter who or what you are, salvation is within your reach. The Suc- [11] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS cess god is merciful. You can, by easily learned rites and practices, "Break your birth's invidious bar. And breast the blows of circumstance," wresting from a reluctant world the crown of triumph. Under this incessant goad you strive and hasten, though often with drooping spirits and flagging strength. You seek to trip or to overbear those nearest you, that by eliminating your closest competitors you may multiply your chances. By all means which the law permits, and by many which it does not, you bear your part in the inter- minable struggle. Occasionally, some rebel- lious spirit, separating himself from the throng, and pausing by the roadside to watch the mad scramble, asks himself, "What is the use of all this.? What, at best, are my real chances.? Is this, in any event, the rightful activity of mankind, and is the goal which it seeks a reality or a delusion?" Ordinarily, he has no answer; or if he has, it is profitless, for the sound [12] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS of the tumult and the hope of victory impel him to engage again in the great battle. You may have noted that the priests and oracles of success are not invariably examples of the efficacy of their own pre- cepts. Though some of them go clothed in splendor, the greater number seem still to be waiting the fulfillment of their prayers and the reward of their devotional practices. You may have noted that the greater num- ber of the followers seem also to have halted this side the earthly paradise. Effort there has been — aspiration and striving, the keeping of faith, the rigid observance of revealed precepts. Who is there that can- not picture the tragedy of the thousands of men and women, of boys and girls, who have toiled and dreamed and dared, who have renounced leisure and peace and pleasure and honor, in their devotion to the god of Success.? They have failed, most of them; they have found circumstances so formidable that neither an ardent wish- ing them away nor an active battling against them has sensibly cleared the pathway. All [13] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the heroic eflfort of these aspiring beings has been expended on a vain quest. They are to-day, most of them, where they were when they started. The guide-books have been conned, the directions have been fol- lowed, the seekers have wearily trudged and striven along the indicated way. They have found it to be something else than a highway. Toll-places it has, where the toll of blood and tears and hopes and ethical principles is remorselessly taken up; but it has turned out to be not a turnpike, but an elongated treadmill, where every footing returns to its appointed place. Perhaps the cult of success is yet too new and nebulous to justify us in expecting so much from it; perhaps its creed has yet to be rounded out and made a coherent whole; perhaps some of its precepts need revision, or at least adjustment to time and circumstance; perhaps its mahatmas and yogis are of varying degrees of adeptness and cannot with equal skill point the way and the manner; or perhaps its followers have dwelt too strongly upon the letter of [14] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS the law rather than upon its spirit, and have thus failed in discipleship. Somewhere there is fault. The word of promise is broken to our ear as well as to our hope. What is it that the oracles of success specifically tell you.? It would take some- thing more than a five-foot shelf to contain all the recent volumes dedicated to the pur- pose of aiding you in breasting the blows of circumstance and in breaking the invid- ious bar of your birth. Let us begin with that fountain-head of the success religion — that "innocent corrupter of youth," Dr. Orison Swett Marden. There is something about that name which suggests the prayer- ful attitude of the seeker of success — some- thing which suggests the morning offertory of the devotee to the opulent god. And what the name suggests his volumes reveal. The deity who could withstand the de- votional entreaty, or betray the trustfulness, or disdain the fervent piety based upon the sense of favors to come, that everywhere wells up in these pages, would deserve to be ranked with the malignant gods of some [15] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS cannibal tribe. Take such a volume as Peace, Power and Plenty. You are told therein that poverty is unnecessary, that the creator did not intend it; that "there is no providence which keeps a man in poverty, or in painful or distressing cir- cumstances." You are told that "poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought. It is the conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal." You are told that "if we can conquer inward pov- erty, we can soon conquer poverty of out- ward things, for, when we change the mental attitude, the physical changes to corre- spond." The economic framework of society, the necessary divisions of labor, the enormous numerical preponderance (inevitable under the present system) of hard and ill-paid tasks, the mathematical impossibility that any considerable number of persons should escape therefrom — all this is serenely waved aside. Defects in the situation are admitted — great obstacles to preferment and dis- tinction, but yet nothing that need greatly [16] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS trouble the strong of soul and the resolved of heart. Listen: " I do not overlook the heartless, grinding, grasping practices of many of the rich, or the unfair and cruel conditions brought about by unscrupulous political and finan- cial schemers; but I wish to show the poor man that, notwithstanding all these things, multitudes of poor people do rise above their iron environment, and that there is hope for him. The mere fact that so many continue to rise, year after year, out of just such conditions as you may think are fatal to your advancement, ought to convince you that you also can conquer your environ- ment." So that, no matter whether you are a McKees Rocks mill-worker or a South Carolina factory operative, you can rise. "All our limitations," you are told, "are in otu- own minds. . . . We starve ourselves in the midst of plenty, because of our strang- ling thought. The opulent life stands ready to take us into its completeness, but our ignorance cuts us off." Then comes the individual counsel: 2 [17] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS "If you want success, abundance, you must think success, you must think abun- dance. Stoutly deny the power of adversity or poverty to keep you down. Constantly assert your superiority to your environment. Believe that you are to dominate your sur- roundings, that you are the master and not the slave of circumstances. Resolve with all the vigor you can muster that since there are plenty of good things in the world for everybody, you are going to have your share, without mjuring anybody else or keeping others back. It was intended that you should have a competence, an abundance. It is your birthright. You are success organized, and constructed for happiness, and you should resolve to reach your divine destiny." There are other oracles than Dr. Marden. Of course all the oracles do not tell you the same things. The virtues commended, the vices condemned, the methods approved by one, may be slighted by the next, and an emphasis put upon other factors. But one and all, they neglect to tell you the mathe- matical and logical chances. Like the agents of a great lottery, they appeal to [18] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS your gambling instinct: they tell you of the big winning made by Brown or Sniggle- fritz, and they inspire you to believe that what these men have done you can duplicate. They are not even as fair as the lottery agent; they do not tell you how many grand prizes there are, and how many secondary prizes and tertiary prizes, and so on down to the least reward that can possibly be considered a prize. Nor do they tell you the number of blanks. They inflame your imagination till it sees the whole world richly hung with prizes, and you a certain winner. tJnder even favored conditions of birth and train- ing, with innate energy, native capacity and agreeableness of personality, there may still be enormous chances against you; in certain states and conditions of life not one of you in ten thousand can reasonably hope for a prize. Yet you suffer the Arabian Nights tale of fabulous riches within attainable grasp to possess you and to con- trol your thoughts and actions. They differ on many points, these oracles. But one and all they declare, with tireless [19] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS iteration, that the chances of success are greater than ever before. Like most orac- ular utterances, the declaration is sus- ceptible of a number of meanings. Do they mean, for instance, that there are more prizes to be won; or that with fewer prizes, or relatively the same number of prizes as before, some are richer prizes? Either or both propositions are true, according to the inspired oracle who happens to reply to you; and he will be echoed by any num- ber of those successful ones who have at- tained the earthly paradise. Yet despite the oracles and the winners, there are grave reasons for doubt. That the numerical chances of success have increased is improb- able, almost impossible; and though among the exceptional prizes some are richer, their number is smaller than the oracles assert or the devotees believe. The matter of numerical chances of suc- cess is really one of statistics, if only the statistics could be had. It ought to be readily ascertainable, from authenticated figures, if the number of high places, with [20] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS rich rewards attached, has increased in greater ratio than the proportion and num- ber of subordinate places. Unfortunately, these figures, in an adequate measure of comprehensiveness and detail, are not to be had. Our government statistics are, in some respects, a blessing. To glean and prepare them furnishes work for a great number of men, and diffuses good wages among a large part of the population. But as valuable and accurate contributions to the sum of human knowledge, a word so favorable can not invariably be said of them. Yet occasionally they give forth gleams of real information, and from these one may bring light to bear on some puzzling prob- lem. The census figures of 1900 on gainful occupations are helpful — at least, such of them as are gathered on schedules identical with those of 1890 — and enable us roughly to compare the proportion of chances. If these figures indicate anything, it is that the number of workers and aspirants has increased, along with a great increase in the number of subordinate places, and that [21] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the number of richly rewarded places has not kept the pace. Despite the annual paean chanted by Secretary Wilson, there are few rich prizes in agriculture. Even if there were, the chances of success are dwindling. The independent or employing farmer increased by seven per cent., but the farm laborers by twenty-three per cent. There are of course no rich prizes in domestic and personal service, and here again is a growth in numbers. As for the professions, a liberal interpretation of the word success might allow some few instances of its attainment. A fortunate corporation lawyer, a popular historical novelist, a "yellow" journalist beating the drums and sounding the cymbals in his own honor, or a physician attached in personal service to a magnate, might each be considered as dwelling about the purlieus of the garden of success. But these are few indeed, and the host of briefless attorneys, jobless journalists and "unavailable" liter- ary persons — all of them constantly increas- ing in numbers — ^bears witness to the fact [22] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS that there is no numerical increase in the great opportunities in the professions. It is in trade and transportation that you may get the most significant figures on the numerical chances. The increase in the number of mercantile underlings is, in some cases, enormous. Stenographers and type- writers have increased by two hundred and thirty-six per cent.; salesmen and sales- women, one hundred and thirty-one per cent. ; packers, shippers, porters and helpers one hundred and thirty per cent.; book- keepers and accountants, sixty per cent.; messengers and errand and oflSce boys, forty per cent. On the other hand whole- sale merchants have increased by thirty- six per cent., and retail merchants, by nineteen and five-tenths per cent. Those presumably affluent persons, the bankers and brokers, have increased one hundred and one per cent.; but since nearly all of this increase is of money and stock brokers, as distinguished from commercial brokers, and since it includes persons from every variety of the transient, "get-rich-quick" [23] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS and other unstable concerns, it indicates little more than the current rage for specula- tion and the eagerness of the metropolitan sharpers to accommodate a Barnumized public. The figures for officials of banks and companies are not comparable with those of 1890, owing to a difference in the schedules. As given, they show a large increase; but a proper discount, taken on the basis of fraudulent and parasitic com- panies in the market, would sensibly dimin- ish their volume. Whatever the foregoing figures may be held to indicate regarding "room at the top," it is undeniable that they show a generous and growing spaciousness of room at the bottom. They give no warrant whatever for the promise of in- creased opportunities. Indeed, this lesson is exactly what one learns in looking about the big mercantile concerns. Combination has proceeded al- most steadily since 1897; and, though the growth of independent companies has, to a small extent, operated as an offset, the con- sequence, as a whole, has been a lessening [24] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS of the number of secure and well-paid places. The future American Dickens, when he wants material for a story that in Francis Bacon's words "comes home to men's business and bosoms," may profitably seek out some of the individual tragedies that have resulted from any of these com- binations. One instance in particular is that of the union of three enormously rich metropolitan companies in one of the textile branches some few years ago. Day after day, month after month, for three years, throughout the clerical and managerial forces of the three establishments, discharges from employment were steadily made until one man in every four was dismissed. These places have never been restored, and of the persons discharged not one in fifty, it is estimated, has ever succeeded in gaining an equally remunerative place. Perhaps to the petty business man more than to any other is success a vision by day and a dream by night. It is only the excep- tional retailer who does not see in his little store the potential beginning of a great [25] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS mercantile house, and only the exceptional petty manufacturer who does not regard himself as a possible captain of industry. Yet every month and every day the great wheels of capitalism move onward like the car of Juggernaut. The little businesses are crushed, and an added wealth and power comes to the few. From him that hath not is taken away even the little that he hath. Yet in numbers, the oracles say, the little businesses persist. So, as to numbers, do the evanescent bubbles in a mountain stream persist. But the bubble of a moment ago is no more, even though its place has been taken by another. The little businesses form and then vanish. The temptation to "go into business for oneself" is always alluring. The pains and drudgery of wage-earning labor, the subordination and routine of salaried labor, are a known quantity; and so is the yearly recompense, at least in any trade or calling where employ- ment is steady. But the possible revenues from a business enterprise are unknown, and the imagination runs free in picturing [26] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS them. So, though failure and liquidation and bankruptcy attend the attempt, the horde of shopkeepers and petty manufac- turers persists. There are no such strivers for success as these; they follow, in the main, the hallowed precepts of the oracles; and yet the earthly paradise is denied all but an infinitesimal few of them. There is then the promise of richer re- wards for the few. That the very rich — ^the gleaners of rent, interest and profit — have increased in numbers, both abso- lutely and relatively, seems evident from the census figures. There is a larger annual harvest from the labor of men's hands and the planning of men's brains; and there is a larger body of claimants for the surplus. That one result of combination has been the creation of a number of highly paid places is not to be doubted. But these are not many, and their creation has but coincided with the abolition of other well-paid places in the original companies that have entered into combination. Whether the salaries of these desirable places in the bosom of the [27] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS trusts equal the salaries formerly paid by the original companies is a matter for dis- pute. In one corporation they will be greater, in another less, and the average no man knows. Outside of the trusts there are still highly paid places, and there are still opportunities for individual initiative. But there is one fact bearing upon this phase of the subject which is too often lost sight of. The present-day aspirant for success on his own initiative labors amid a different host of circumstances from those which surrounded the industrial magnate in his earlier days. Through the assiduous — and, as some think, pestilent — interfereiice of legislatures and Congress, it has become impossible to do some of the things which in the past days were proper and even emula- tory. The magnates of to-day laid the basis of their fortunes in a golden age when "liberty" was but slightly restricted — when a man could do what he willed not only with his own, but also with his neighbor's. The progress of civilization, according to Huxley, has been attended by a constant setting of [28] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS limits to the fratricidal struggle; and our legislators, doubtless impressed with the idea that civilization here in America has not yet reached its zenith, have contributed a large share of these restrictions. The sprightly activities directed to the wiping out of competitors, which Mr. Lloyd re- counts in his Wealth Against Common- wealth as usual twenty years ago, have had their day. With good counsel, large resources and a friendly or financially inter- ested judge, the aspirant toward an indus- trial dukedom may yet, at certain times and in favored places, repeat some of the tactics then common. But, even so, there are limits, for the old order has changed, yielding place to a new one, and in general he must conduct his campaign according to the statutory restrictions. Even to the "arriving" magnate, therefore, the richer rewards are promised in vain. Prizes com- mensurate with those of the recent past are not to be had. The assumption that in paid service supe- rior intelligence and energy win greater [29] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS relative reward than of old is at least un- proved, and is for many reasons doubtful. What the oracles mean by this is that a Napoleon or an Alexander of industry can, within certain limits, set his own price for his services. But in industry, as well as in war and in statecraft, this has always been so, and there is nothing whatever novel about it. Whether it will continue to be so in the near future cannot be said. But no generalizations based upon such extraor- dinary exceptions will serve for the matter in hand. What the rapt youths clustering about the altar rail of success want to know is whether or not the much- vaunted "brains and hustle," of which we now hear so much, are more richly paid, relative to the results achieved, than of old. The assurances are many and positive; but they are based, for the most part, on the most superficial guess- work. The monopolies, though benevolent, are not prodigal; and outside the monop- olies a sharp competition still reigns; the wage-earners, through their unions, demand an increased share of the returns; the [30] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS leeches of rent, interest and depreciation are ever at work; and miscellaneous ex- penses and the cost of material (in most cases) are rising. Thus the keenest and most practical intelligence applied to an established business may be productive only of slight savings and a slight increase in sales. Where the added recompense to genius is to come from it is hard to deter- mine. With the exceptional growth of a business, genius is sometimes increasingly rewarded, but the increase is almost cer- tainly incommensurate with the results achieved. It is the young men, say the oracles, who have all the chances. There is small doubt of this, and it may be conceded at once. As Nature's darling is the strong, so Capital's darling is the young. The combat grows fiercer — on the part of the independent companies against one another, and on the part of the monopolies against society — and only the young can bear the brunt of the struggle. The young are plastic and tractable, still capable of an adjustment to [31] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS fit their surroundings. In them can be developed just that extra length or finer curve of beak or claw by which to gouge or eviscerate rivals, whereas the talons of the old have been dulled and worn away. Whatever, therefore, the future holds, is theirs. The middle-aged and the old are sent to the rear, while the youths are hurried to the front, inspired by the promise of infinite glories in a finite and not too remote future. The oracles, it has already been said, always neglect to tell you the numerical chances. They do not deal with the hard facts of life. They are the founders pf a new school of fiction — ^the materialist school. Let us examine their promises on the basis of a single industry and see how they work out. Let us take, for instance, the interstate railroads. Of the 1,458,244 employes in the United States (1908) how many can hope ever to be numbered among the 5,767 general oflicers.'^ You are an employe, we shall say; and in mere numbers you have about one chance in 252 of reaching [32] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS your goal. No matter how efficient you become, no matter what hours you give to study and plan and jfit yourself for "higher" things, it is not likely that the number of general officers will be greatly increased. If you and all of your fellows became the executive equals of the 5,767 general officers, there would still be places for only one in 252 of you. Then, too, probably only about one-half of the general staif come up from the ranks — the other half coming from the sons and nephews and retainers of rich and influential men — and so your numerical chances are really not more than one in 500. But the proportion of mere numbers is not enough. There are other factors to consider. In many of the branches of rail- road service the qualities needed for ef- ficiency are not the qualities needed in "higher" places. You may be an expert track-layer, a brave and skilful locomotive engineer. Your expertness in these lines fits you rather for continuance in your pres- ent work than for translation to other 3 [33] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS spheres, and you will find your special ex- cellence a bar to advancement. Then, too, there are casualties to account for, and thus there is a further qualifying of the numerical chances. Suppose you are a trainman. Every year about one in eight of you is wounded; about one in 133 is killed. You have thus a much better chance of achieving wounds or death than of achiev- ing success. Even if you happen to be em- ployed in some of the safer branches of the industry, there may be numberless chances against you. You may have had to begin work as a boy and therefore to forego an education. Your mother-tongue may not be English, and that fact is a handicap of no mean importance. You may have few friends and be without the rare faculty of making them. Then, too, you may have ethical scruples against taking advantage of men and occasions, and in critical times the observance of these scruples will block your advancement. The oracles cannot help you; the guide-books cannot give you light. The lure of success may draw you, [34] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS but you will ultimately find it a vain lure. Or perhaps you are not a railroad em- ploye, but a factory worker in a mill town. From childhood you have been taught to do one thing only, and to do it over and over again. Perhaps you are fortunate above some of your fellows in that you have a "four-motion" job instead of a monotonous "three-motion" job. A right-hand move- ment left, a left-hand movement right, both hands up and then both hands down — and this over and over again, five hours in the morning, five hours in the afternoon, six days in the week, four and a fraction weeks in the month, and whatever number of months in the year your master chooses to employ you. Your every faculty has been hardened about this one task, unfitting you for any other. Your meager earnings just suffice to keep you and your dependents alive. You cannot move from your en- vironment. Your life and the life of others depends upon the work-place to which you are attached. What other thought can you [35] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS possibly have than the "poverty thought " ? Would it, if it were possible, avail you aught to have any other? What possible mes- sage can the oracles have for you? What possible degree of success is conceivably \^ithin your grasp ? There is another thing the oracles neglect to tell you. In the vast and complex scheme of things, the "lower" places are just as necessary as the "higher" places. The 1,452,477 railroad men other than general officers are not employed through philan- thropy. They are not employed by reason of the rich man's pleasure in paying wages to the poor man. They are employed because, upon a hard, unsentimental, cash basis, it takes that many men to do the work. It cannot be done by machinery nor by thought transference. It must be done by muscle and brain. No matter how efficient and masterful you become, these places would still have to be filled. You never heard, did you, that any of these places went begging? No matter how many men, according to the oracles, have [36] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS scaled the walls of the earthly paradise, the common work has still to be done, and there is ever an eager army pleading for the chance to do it. How shall it be done if all listen to the oracles of success ? Again the rebellious spirit stops by the wayside to think it over and to wonder what it is all about. "What is the abiding result," he may ask, " of this exhortation to struggle, and of all this tremendous trumpet- ing of success.'*" The result, he reflects, surely cannot be efficiency, for the efficient labor for the joy and pride of their work. It can have no kinship with the social feel- ings, for he that concerns himself about sympathy, fellowship and justice has given hostages to fortune which he can never ransom. Nor can it have any kinship with ethics; for, indeed, an ardent pursuit of success involves an almost entire avoidance of ethical precepts. The ethical element rarely or never enters into the exhortations. "Get money!" "Get ahead!" and "Forge to the front ! " are the slogans. The stirring words of a popular song, [37] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS "Swamp 'em, swamp 'em. Get the wampum!" reflects the common mind. And so the frantic devotees wrestle and climb, with small thought of other considerations; and so, too, the rebellious spirit by the wayside is again swept on by the surging tide. The fault is not that of the individual, except secondarily. It lies in the inevitable stresses and impulsions of the conflict by man against man for the means of life. In such a conflict the common ideal must necessarily be one of triumph over one's fellow-man, and the modes of warfare must be those of one's rivals. He that would live among armed men must bear arms. "The rigid chain of competition," writes Mr. Otis Kendall Stuart in The Independ- ent, " literally binds him [the business man] to use all the desperate means of his busi- ness rival, . . . the same refined mendacity and mountainous exaggeration. In many lines the exaggeration and mendacity are as necessary tools of trade as the improved machinery and the automatic methods. [38] TO THE SEEKERS OP SUCCESS They are planned with consummate art, are perfectly systematized, and might easily be classified by a political economist." No, the pursuit of material success solves nothing in this world worth solving. It is a cult which deceives and demoralizes and ruins, which blinds men to their actual situation in life and which evades or ignores the real solution of poverty. Instead of fostering co-operation, the natural tendency of social man, it foments strife. It dooms the multitudes to stumble about in privation and ignorance, led by a false light and a vain hope. By joining hands for a com- mon purpose, you might achieve a material success in which all would share — one which would be the enduring basis of a higher success, a success of the social instincts and feelings, a success of moral and intel- lectual endeavor. By striving for individual material gain, you but wreck your own and others' opportunities. There is thus another success than that taught by the oracles — a success often characterized by a chain of apparent defeats. [39] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS It is a success which scorns poverty; or which, though sensible of its bhght and pain, accepts it unflinchingly in its quest of higher things. It is the success of a Jesus, a Mazzini, a Marx. It is the success of thousands of lesser men in all times, whose deeds are unchronicled, and whose names, long forgotten, can never be resur- rected. It is the success which, though generally uncrowned in the lifetime of the individual, achieves its crown in the social advancement of the race. Is this too re- mote or barren a reward for which to strive ? But barren or remote as it may seem to the being nursed in the environment of fratricidal strife and of material gain, it bears its immediate guerdon to the individ- ual life. There is a luminous passage in Prof. Karl Hilty's little work on Happiness which you might well memorize and make a part of you : " One of our own contemporaries, Thiers, a man who had in high degree attained success, and who at certain points in his life pursued it with excessive zeal, once [40] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS made this striking remark: 'Men of prin- ciple need not succeed. Success is necessary only to schemers.' In other words, a genu- ine victory over the world is not to be achieved through that kind of success which the French call succds, and which for many men makes the end of effort. He who plays the game of ambition may as well abandon the hope of peace of mind or of peace with others, and in most cases he must forfeit outright his self-respect." Success, then, in its ordinary meaning, in the meaning of the oracles, is not victory, either over the world or over yourself; it is too often defeat and impoverishment. It is the sacrifice of what is best in man for a trumpery prize. Whether, as with the overwhelming mass of mankind, by whom the goal can never be attained, or whether, as with the few, by whom it is attained in some measure, the rage of pursuit inevitably means the hardening of the social feelings, the extinguishment of the spirit of brother- hood, the clouding and darkening of the social vision by which a people live and become great. It obliterates all inward [41] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS peace and sets the heart and faculties at war with creatures of your own kind. In its fiercer promptings it might, rather than physical lust, have been the theme of the great 129th sonnet of Shakespeare. The lust of success "Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame. Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust." It is as a swallowed bait, which makes the taker mad — "Mad in pursuit, and in possession so: Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved a very woe. Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream." And even in its more moderate promptings it differs from this not in kind, but only in degree. We must have conflict, say the Individual- ists, who stand as the philosophical sponsors of the oracles of success. We must have obstacles to war against in order to bring out and develop the sturdy virtues. But the estimable qualities which the Individ- ualists tell us are developed only by conflict [42] TO THE SEEKERS OF SUCCESS can still find nurture and growth even though the rage of success be calmed and the war of each against all be ended. Says Prof. David G. Ritchie, in his Darwinism and Politics: "If we are still reminded that only through struggle can mankind attain any good thing, let us remember that there is a struggle from which we can never altogether escape — the struggle against nature, in- cluding the blind forces of human passion. There will always be enough to do in this ceaseless struggle to call forth all the energies of which human nature at its very best is capable." In the strife for worldly success you waste energies which would enrich the world. You rob yourself and all men. However poor in nature you may be, you can yet contribute to the real success of mankind. There is everything to do. What though the event men call defeat forever recurs to you ? In an ill-adjusted world, where bru- tality and cunning and selfishness triumph, there is no humiliation in the thing called [43] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS defeat, so only that the goal striven for is the common good. The humiliation is rather in the consciousness of the misuse of our fellows for our own material gain, in the obstructing and halting of the onward march of mankind. Though the oracles rave, and their followers imagine a vain thing, be it yours to emulate rather than to compete, to help rather than to harm, to struggle for and with rather than against mankind, to forego the lure of what men of the modern jungle call success, and to seek the success of one in the success of all. [44] CHAPTER II TO THE REFORMERS You are hopeful men, you reformers. Though you want and demand some of the things that Socialists want, you distrust and oppose Socialism. You expect, by eternally patching the weak and threadbare places in the present order, to make it last while time lasts. The augmentation of charity, the increase of benevolences, the extension of "welfare work," the occasional and guarded experimentations with regula- tive legislation, and the furthering of what- ever is meant by that unctuous modern phrase, " constructive and preventive philan- thropy "—these are your means for remedy- ing acknowledged evils. More than these you say is dangerous. One evil at a time, you say, though a thousand evils throng about us. We must not be in a hurry. [45] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS Though pain and privation are everywhere, too sudden a cure, you say, may be harmful ahke to individual and to society. The pinch of want does not touch you; you are secure from harm. You can therefore afford to wait. And what you can afford, you narrowly think that mankind can afford. There is an opposite attitude to yours, as you know. It will be set down here, that the contrast may be kept in mind as we go along. It is the attitude of Socialism. Socialism aims to abolish the acknowl- edged evils of to-day by transferring the social means of production and distribution from private to collective ownership. Its methods in attaining this aim are to organ- ize, educate and discipline the class of wage-earning workers, the class which suf- fers most under the prevailing system, and which has most to hope for under the pro- posed system; to hold this disciplined body separate and apart from other bodies, and to prompt it to win, hy its own force, from the owning class, whatever immediate con- [46] TO THE REFORMERS cessions it can without in any manner compromising its ultimate aim. It strives by all efforts in its power to increase its vote at the ballot-box. It believes that by this increase the attainment of its goal is brought ever nearer, and also that the menace of this increasing vote induces the capitalist class to grant concessions in the hope of preventing further increases. It criticises non-Socialist efforts at reform as comparatively barren of positive benefit and as tending, on the whole, to insure the dom- inance of the capitalist class and to continue the graver social evils now prevalent. No doubt you censure and denounce this uncompromising attitude of Socialism. You want what you call "practical results," and you believe that these results are best obtained by opportunist methods. Social evolution, you say, must be gradual and uniformitarian, as you imagine physical evolution to be. You appeal to history, too, in an attempt to show that most reforms have come by moderate and gradual changes. The extension of manhood suffrage, the [47] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS general abolishment of the property quali- fication for oflfiee-holding, the growth of factory legislation, the increase of wages, the shortening of the work-day — all are instanced by you as advances made by means of a policy directly opposed to the separatist and thoroughgoing policy of the Socialist party. Step-at-a-time is your motto, and compromise and appeals to the better nature of the ruling class are your means of action. Small Latin and less Greek, and some- thing less than an encyclopedic holding in social science, are needed by the Socialists to question such assertions and to reject such methods. Long before De Vries and Burbank came to our aid with their proof of mutations in the physical world, we knew out of history that social evolution has other movements than those of gradual and uniformitarian transformations. Violent and revolutionary changes are made. French revolutions, English and American civil wars, abolitions of feudal privileges and of chattel slavery, interrupt the peace- [48] TO THE REFORMERS ful progress of society, just as Krakatoa and Mont Pelee accompany the age-long erosion of the Grand CaSon of the Colorado or the washing down of the detritus of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. Evo- lution makes use of all forms of motion. She multiplies her effects by infinitesimal gradations, but when this multiplication reaches the allotted sum she overturns, in the twinkling of an eye, states and systems, as she explodes mountains and uplifts valleys. As social evolution is not universally gradual, neither is it universally pacific. On the contrary, its main impulse has ever been a conflict of interests. Classes have opposed classes in all historic times. The efforts of the possessing classes to hold and of the non-possessing to acquire have deter- mined, in large part, the social order. The common illusion that the acknowledged ad- vances toward democracy and well-being have been caused by a spread of altruistic ideas and the breaking of class lines is dispelled when we look seriously at the 4 [49] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS contemporary economic and political con- ditions. Altruism is rather an effect than a cause. Moreover, though certain social advances benefit all classes, the conflict of interests grows apace. When England granted the reforms of 1832 she did it not out of an expansion of democratic sentiment, but to avert a civil war. The rising class of manufacturers and traders pressed heavily against the ruling class of nobility and gentry for a share of political power, and would not be dissuaded. To win their point they enlisted, for the moment, the support of the working class. The first factory acts were passed not because of a humanitarian interest on the part of the "upper classes" (except in rare individual cases), but because the rapid annihilation of the peasantry and proletariat jeoparded the existence of the English army, and because the nobility, jealous of the rival class of manufacturers and traders, were willing, even eager, to clip their powers and profits. When Bismarck gave manhood suffrage to Germany it was not through devotion [50] TO THE REFORMERS to an abstract principle of democracy. He recognized the force of the particularist patriotism binding men to their various little kingdoms and principahties; and to oppose that force he sought to create a tie binding men by a dominant interest to the Empire. To this day Germany dis- plays the anomaly of a nation electing its national representative body by manhood suffrage, but electing its various state and municipal bodies by the grossest forms of property suffrage. The winning of the suffrage in America is another case in point. Had altruism or the consciousness of a classless society determined the matter, surely the men who wrote the democratic generalizations of the Declaration of Inde- pendence would have conceded the suffrage to working-men. But they did not; their economic interests opposed manhood suf- frage, and it had to be wrested from the rulers by a long series of attacks by the working class. There is thus, as society is now consti- tuted, an enduring conflict of interests; [51] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS and it is force, actual or potential, that wins advances. But it is force directed in par- ticular ways, according to the issue and the political and economic environment. The reforms here instanced were incidental and partial; they had to do, for the most part, with political rather than economic matters, and they did not in themselves menace the supremacy of capitalism. Indeed, they may be held to have conserved, to have strengthened capitalism; for they have fur- nished what has been so far a peaceful and harmless outlet for popular dissatisfaction. As they did not jeopard the system of cap- italism, the question of granting them could, and often did, divide and array against one another the various factions of the wealth- owning class. Far clearer is the situation with regard to industrial reforms — ^reforms which, in- tended to safeguard the health and lives of the workers, do in effect lessen the profits of capitalists and curtail the powers of capitalism. Against such reforms all the various sections of the wealth-owning class [52] TO THE REFORMERS are usually united. And yet it is in regard to just such reforms that you criticise the Socialist method and seek to better the con- dition of the workers by paltry philanthro- pies, by petty amendments to legislation, or by trifling administrative reforms — always by and through co-operation with the wealth- owning class or individual owners of wealth. The obvious, the apparent argument is confessedly with you in your reformism, your opportunism. When you give coal to the fireless or medicine to the ill, you can of course see an immediate benefit. No one can doubt that charity relieves a multitude of hungry stomachs. The sympathetic in- terest, the kindly care, dispensed at some of the settlements is a helpful, and some- times a lasting, benefit to the poor children of the tenements. Or, passing from benev- olence to reform, one can see at least a pos- sibility of benefits in laws ordering seats for shop-girls, reducing the hours of women in the factories, or in international agreements to promote labor legislation. One may even see, though doubtless more dimly, such [53] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS possibility in laws aiming at the curtail- ment of graft, or the regulation of issues of stocks and bonds, or in the creation of public utilities commissions. But there is, as Lester Ward tells us in his Pure Sociology, an optical aberration known as the " illusion of the near." " If we magnify any object sufficiently," he writes, "it loses its character." To be seen rightly, it must be seen in relation to other things. These immediate and incidental benefits, seen too closely and seen also under the magnifying influence of a sense of your personal share in achieving them, may take on a size and importance wholly out of their reality. For these things, even when real benefits, may be gained at a sacrifice of greater benefits. It is nothing at all of permanent social advantage to have a few hundred children welcomed and schooled at the settlements, if at the same time several hundred thousand children in the nation are added to the army of wage-earners. It is nothing to pass a few laws in behalf [54] TO THE REFORMERS of the industrial workers, if every year the lot of thousands of wage-earners becomes more wretched. A general safety-appliance law is a delusive thing to boast of, if proof can be shown that the ratio of railway casualties increases year by year. Nor is it anything to be able to chronicle a step here and a step there toward municipal ownership, if constantly the concentration of wealth be- comes more accentuated. Every one, even the most extreme revolutionist, is able to see petty changes for the better now and then. But what is needed is a clear- sighted estimate of these benefits in their relation to social progress as a whole. Now the Socialist policy is not to disdain concessions from the owning or capitalist class, but to consider always the character of such concessions and the mode by which they are gained. The Socialist party never permits itself to forget that the working class may accept charity, or legislative or administrative gifts, at the sacrifice of its discipline, of its integrity, and in jeopardy of the attainment of its ultimate rights. A [55] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS notable part of its function is perpetually to warn the working-class Esau not to sell his birthright for a bad meal. In legislative bodies its representatives always vote for those measures believed by them to be of advantage to the working class. But they concern themselves very little with those trumpery measures which in increasing number are introduced in our legislatures, and sometimes in our reform conventions — measures which reveal the dying struggles of the so-called "middle class," and its desperate clutching at any- thing which may keep it for another moment above water. The rank and file of the Socialist party, however, take upon them- selves the obligation not to vote for the men or measures of any other party. Of course, you denounce this policy. But even the most republican army of which any one can conceive would hardly permit the relax- ation of its discipline to the point where the soldiers in the ranks could dicker with the enemy. And it is as members of a social army that the units of the Socialist party [56] TO THE REFORMERS regard themselves. A ministerial function, hedged in and sharply bounded by dem- ocratic authority, is given to its legislative representatives, but the ranks themselves maintain a disciplined unity. The rank and file, then, sanction in their representatives the voting for beneficial measures, but they keep these legates ever charged with the duty of not forgetting the ultimate aim. It is the fashion just now to ridicule, or to try to ridicule, so-called extreme views, and to lay stress upon so-called practical action. Separated some decades from the time and having no personal interests at stake, you can now all of you honor and extol the extremists of the American Revo- lution, and in a somewhat lesser degree, because nearer in point of time, the ex- tremists of the Abolition movement. But you denounce the men who, in our own time, are carrying these former revolutions to their inescapable conclusions. These men are troubling the general complacency, they are jarHng mankind from the "trance of every-day life," and they are disturbing [57] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the "interests." Everywhere one hears this chorus of exhortation to be practical; to shun the misguided, the unbalanced, the visionary Socialist, and to "get things done." "We Socialists," said Bebel once, "have no dogmas. We are a party of learners." If any doctrine or contention of ours can be shown to be unfounded, we are eager to have proof. Just now we are clamorous for an itemized account regarding the gen- eral and enduring benefits of the step-at- a-time policy. The supporters of a policy alleged to be so practical ought to be able to show a ledger with many and important entries on the credit side, and few and less weighty entries on the debit side. We want it shown to us that by reason of some ten or twenty years of grave discussions by economists, by reason of the activity of city clubs, of reform associations, of non- partisan citizens' movements, of Democratic "radicals" or Republican "insurgents," of committees of one sort and another formed for the purpose of obtaining some immediate good, any general enduring good has been [58] TO THE REFORMERS gained. We want it shown that by the operation of these methods wealth has been more equitably distributed, the lot of the industrial worker has been bettered; the number of industrial casualties has been diminished; pauperism, insanity and crime have been sensibly lessened; political and commercial graft has been curtailed; the equality of rich and poor before the law has been advanced; employment has been made more secure; general opportunities have been extended, or, in a word, any general progress worthy of the name toward a more ideal state of society has been achieved. It is with almost jaunty confidence that the Socialists challenge the production of such a ledger. Many reformers may no doubt have bettered their own condition in ten or twenty years, and now, seeing life through the roseate colors of happier surroundings, may easily translate their own progress into that of the world in general, causing them to dower the most wretched of their fellows with imagined blessings. [59] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS But something more than the personal equation applied to guesswork is demanded in this place. This is a specific demand, with a definite time period. It would be idle to deny that in decades or centuries many kinds of progress have been made. Society is always in a state of instability, and is ever seeking, consciously or unconsciously, to adjust it- self to the changing mode of producing and distributing goods — ^to the economic process upon which it is founded. These adjust- ments, however, in so far as they are real adjustments, are things with which you reformers have little to do. In the earlier period of an economic system they are generally spontaneous and unconscious, and in the later period they are conscious, being the result of the growing power of an advanc- ing class. They are adjustments with which you reformers have about as much to do as had the proverbial fly in raising the cloud of dust about the chariot wheel. You must show, then, not merely that by your methods you have caused to be done [60] TO THE REFORMERS this thing or that, but that the thing done was worth the doing— that it has made some observable betterment of social conditions. We have a period in the history of this country wherein such a test can fairly be applied. The Henry George uprising oc- curred in the summer and fall of 1886. It marked the beginning of a crusade of op- portunist endeavor. In the twenty-four years following that time we have had every imaginable sort of effort at correcting evils. We have had many conventions of econo- mists and publicists, we have instituted labor bureaus, passed innumerable labor and railroad laws in the States, while the nation has given us among other things an anti- trust law, a contract-labor law, an interstate commerce law and a safety-appliance law. Benefactions have grown more princely, we have more than doubled the number of our benevolent institutions, we have enormously increased our charities, we have transformed many of our colleges and universities from cottages into palaces, we have laid out parks and playgrounds, and we have dotted the [61] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS cities with settlements. Surely, after so much practical endeavor, after so great achievement, the social state of the country should be well-nigh ideal. There should be no poverty, no luxury, little crime. There should be peace and plenty, just administration of law, honesty alike in public and private service, and each man should be able to sit unafraid in the shadow of his vine and fig-tree, and as he remembers with scorn the wild denunciations and the visionary proposals of the foolish Socialists, contemplate with rapture the blessings gained for him by practical, step-at-a-time effort. Let us see what are some of these wonder- ful social gains in the last ten or twenty years. We are paying, as a nation, on the authority of Professor Charles J. Bushnell, $6,000,000,000 annually for our charities and corrections. These figures are appall- ing, and it is hard to say just how they are to be confirmed by data now available. But Professor Bushnell, in a sharp reply to his critics, reiterates them, and indicates [62] TO THE REFORMERS sources from which, he maintains, they can be sustained. If they are correct, they show a constant and growing deficit in our ac- counts as a nation. For in the four years 1900-04, at least the latter part of this period having been graced with a truly wonderful degree of so-called "prosperity," the national wealth increased, according to the census, at the rate of only $4,646,000,000 yearly. We should thus be gaining four and three- quarter billions yearly, and paying it all, and a billion and a quarter besides, to square the account with the victims. Anyway, we are gaining now at the rate of four and three-quarter billions a year. From 1880 to 1900 our wealth increased from forty-three to ninety-five billions. But who got the increase.'' Is wealth any more widely distributed to-day than it was twenty-five years ago ? There are a number of prosperous persons, and others who through their subservience hope to be pros- perous, who say so. But it is doubtful if any considerable number of the unprosperous take them seriously. There are the savings- [63] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS bank statistics, of course— the first and last refuge of the optimistic statistician. It is almost needless to say, however, that in this day no one whose judgment counts for much accepts savings-bank figures as an index of working-class conditions. And there is nothing else that can be even juggled into indicating increased prosperity among the wage- workers. Unfortunately, we have had very little work on the distribution of wealth in 1880. But with 1890 we have the computations of Mr. Lucien Sanial, Mr. George K. Holmes and Dr. Charles B. Spahr. Mr. Thomas G. Shearman's computation was made in 1889, but it differs in only minor particulars from Mr. Sanial's. All of these estimates are in fairly close agreement — a remarkable fact, considering the different methods by which they were reached. They show, averaging them, that not less than 51 per cent, of the nation's wealth was owned by not more than 1 per cent, of the people. But by 1900 this concentration had be- come greatly accentuated. Mr. Sanial's [64] TO THE REFORMERS estimate for that year puts the plutocratic class at nine-tenths of 1 per cent, of the numbers engaged in gainful occupations, and gives it 70.5 per cent, of the total wealth. But the plutocratic class as a whole con- tains many persons of wealth who are not engaged in gainful occupations; and an estimate for this additional wealth brings the aggregate for 1900 to 75 per cent, of the total. To-day we have to account for ten more years of this uninterrupted move- ment of concentration, in a time of great wealth production. We shall not go far astray in estimating an addition to the wealth of this 1 per cent, of the population which brings its present possessions to 85 per cent, of the total. The workers, as a class, got little, if any part, of this increase. The nominal wages of the skilled workers are higher, the actual wages of all workers, skilled and unskilled, are lower than they were in 1890, probably lower on the whole than they were in 1886. No one will accuse the statisticians of the Labor Bureau of an undue pessimism. But 5 [65] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the best they can do in the Bulletin for July, 1908, is to show an average weekly wage in.l907 of 21.2 per cent, above that of 1890. This, mark you, is for the manufacturing industries, including the most skilled and the best organized workers. No one sup- poses the common laborers, clerks and the like to have made any such gain. It is a matter of common observation that the wages of clerks are rather less than more than they were twenty years ago. The same thing is true of salesmen in stores, and is probably true of common laborers. But this increase of wages, restricted as it is to but a part of the working class, must suffer a considerable reduction. The same issue of the Labor Bulletin gives the increase in the retail prices of food, weighted ac- cording to family consumption, as 17.8 per cent, for the same time. Since then prices have been almost steadily rising. Brad- street's for December 11, 1909, stated that the increase since June 1, 1901, had been 23 per cent. The figures do not of course include rent, which has risen enormously, [66] TO THE REFORMERS nor certain other necessities. The showing does not accord with the theory of increased distribution of wealth among the workers. There has been no such increased distribu- tion. There has been, instead, increased concentration. The census figures on paupers in alms- houses show an absolute increase, though a relative decrease, in twenty years. But, as the census bulletin remarks, the figures indicate very little regarding the extent of privation. The better classification of de- pendents, which now distributes many of them to institutions other than almshouses; the differing provisions regarding paupers in the various States; and the general effect of private charity, which saves a great many paupers from institutions — are factors which make comparisons of these figures futile. The figures on farm mortgages, farm tenantry and proletarian unemployment are also indecisive. The movement of farm mortgages is not a final indication of any- thing. Some men mortgage their property because they are poor, and some because [67] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS they want to buy more property. It may be conceded, too, that the frightful showing of unemployment in the 1900 census has been corrected to some extent by increased employment (except during the panic time, 1907-08) since then. But it is not so easy to concede the contention made by Dr. Henry C. Taylor, in his work on Agricul- tural Economics, that the great increase of farm tenantry is rather an indication of prosperity than the reverse. To consider all these figures adequately would take us too far afield. It is sufficient to point out that, on the showing of data about which there is less dispute, the practical things done by you these last twenty years have not per- ceptibly impeded the tide of wealth con- centration or lightened the general lot of the poor. Well, there are the railroads. No prob- lem of to-day has been so constantly a sub- ject of discussion, of private proposals and of legislative enactments. Twenty-three years ago the Interstate Commerce Com- mission was established, and since that [68] TO THE REFORMERS time the subject of railroads has been almost uninterruptedly before every legislature, every Congress and every social and eco- nomic convention. One of the main objects always aimed at was the abolition of dis- criminating rates against the "little fellows." And what has been the result ? The report of the United States Industrial Commission (1901) declares: "There is a general con- sensus of opinion among practically all witnesses, including members of the Interstate Commission, representatives of shippers, and railway officers, that the railways still make discriminations between individuals, and perhaps to as great an extent as before." And again: "It is thought generally that there has been a considerable improvement in the situation during 1899. . . . Many witnesses, however, including representatives of the railroads, think that the improvement is only tempo- rary, and that, when the present rush of traffic has ceased, discriminating rates will be granted more and more." Professor Frank Parsons, in his The Heart of the [69] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS Railway Problem (1906), comments upon this declaration as follows : " The investiga- tions of the last five years show that these witnesses were right in thinking the cessation of hostilities to be only a temporary truce." The Interstate Commerce Report for 1905 is still complaining about violations of the law, declaring that rebates are unquestion- ably paid and that unjust preferences are given by other methods. Since then it has been oflicially asserted that the giving of rebates has practically ceased. Is the assertion true? Men who claim to know the situation declare that the only change is in the greater subtlety by which the law is evaded. And has the creation of the Commission resulted in benefiting the small shipper.? A prominent independent oil re- finer said to me recently that probably not a single person has ever complained to the Commission without subsequently regretting his action. For what the railroads and the Standard Oil Company did to the aggrieved person previous to his complaint was mere child's play to what they did afterward. [70] TO THE REFORMERS Is the railroad situation more satisfactory in its other phases? Is the manipulation of railroad properties less easy or less frequently resorted to? Is the watering of stocks to the saturation point less common ? Have the abuses of the private car graft been curtailed ? He would be an optimistic person who would answer "yes." How is it with railroad casualties ? The interstate roads reported for the year ended June 30, 1909, 8,722 persons killed and 95,626 injured. This is not their highest record, but it will do for comparison. This casualty list, it should be noted, is greater in the number killed than that suffered by both contending armies at both the bloody battles of Stone River and Gettysburg, and greater in the number wounded than that suffered by both armies at Antietam, Freder- icksburg, Stone River, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg combined. Though the ten-year period, 1895-1905, witnessed an almost steady increase in the ratio of casualties to passengers carried, a marked improvement has been shown in [71] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS figures for 1908 and 1909. But the casualty rate for employes is steadily worse. In 1895 one employe was killed for every 433 employed; the average for the three- year period, 1906-08, was 1 in 393. In the earlier year one was wounded for each 31 employed; the average for 1906-08 was 1 in 19; the figure for 1908, 1 in 17. Or take the employes known specifically as train- men. The safety-appliance act was passed for their benefit, and in 1908 it had been to some degree in operation for fifteen years. Yet in the earlier year one trainman was killed for each 155, as against one for each 133 in 1906-08, and one wounded for each 11 in the earlier year as against one for each 8 in the later period. It would thus not appear that any of your multifarious efforts toward reform has greatly lessened the ratio of casual- ties among railroad employes. How is it, then, with general industrial casualties? Unfortunately, we have here less reliable figures for comparison. We are beginning to learn something about the number of [72] TO THE REFORMERS casualties to-day, but our comparison with the past decade or two is largely confined to guesswork. We have the undeniable record of increased killing and maiming on the railroads; and a general though not uniform increase in the mines. The in- crease of general industrial casualties is hardly an arguable point, since no one regardful of his reputation would dispute it. We know that to-day we are destroying lives at a rate about the same as that main- tained during the Civil War. The com- putation of Mr. Frederick L. Hoffman, the statistician of the Prudential Life Insur- ance Company, estimates a fatal-accident rate in the United States of from 80 to 85 in 100,000. On a basis of 90,000,000 popu- lation, this would mean from 72,000 to 76,500 killings. The serious woundings he puts at 1,600,000. But the fatal-accident rate for the entire registration area as given in the census of 1900 is 90.3. This would mean 81,270 killings yearly. Admitting that not more than 80 per cent, of these should come under the head of industrial [73] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS accidents proper, we should still have a yearly total of 65,016. The Civil War did but little, if any, worse than this in actual killings and mortal woundings, while in maimings and in disablements through dis- ease it furnished a record that is paltry in comparison with that made by our present industrial system. It would seem that we shall have to look elsewhere for evidence of the solid progress made toward more ideal social conditions by following the practical policy of one step at a time. Where else shall we look? Something has indubitably been done in reducing the death-rate. This is a doubtful gain if social conditions are to remain as they are. For no philosopher who includes happiness in his list of goods desirable for humanity can deem it well that a child should be rescued from death in order to drag its wretched being through the hell of industrial life as we know it to-day. Yet let us take this thing as a gain, and see what it is. As Dr. John Shaw Billings points out, the improvement is almost wholly due [74] TO THE REFORMERS to the better nourishing of children and the better treatment of their diseases. The reduction is marked in tuberculosis, of course; and persons of all ages have tuber- culosis. But the losses from pneumonia, cancer, heart disease, apoplexy and other diseases of adulthood and senescence are generally greater. It is a virtual consensus among life-insurance actuaries that in fifty years there has been no prolongation of adult life. In other words, all the benefits of science, all the benefits of an increasing observance of conmion sense in physical conduct — ^the application of India rubber to clothing, the improvement of food, the bettering of ventilation, the greater addic- tion to life in the open air — all these changes, and others besides, have been counterbal- anced by the increased strain and danger of modern competitive life. This fiercer battle certainly increases the number of the insane. Much has been done for these unfortunates: better treatment is accorded them, and an increasing number of hospitals is built for their accommoda- [75] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS tion. But the number of the insane in- creases at a frightful rate. We had 40,942 insane in 1880, we had 74,028 in 162 hos- pitals in 1890, 150,151 in 328 hospitals in 1900. The total insane in and out of hospitals was 170 per 100,000 in 1890; the total in hospitals only, 186.2 per 100,000 in 1900. In fifty years the increase has been 300 per cent. There has been some progress in reducing illiteracy. But this, too, is a questionable good, if other social conditions are to remain as they are. It cannot be any advantage, in any tolerable scheme of things, to educate a child only to make it more conscious of its inescapable misery. But, even assuming education to be a good in all times and under all circumstances, the figures are hardly encouraging. Their clearest indica- tion is that illiteracy is decreasing most largely through the dying-oflF of the negro slaves, who were rarely permitted to learn to read, and that in their place is an increas- ing number of negro children who can barely read. [76] TO THE REFORMERS It is true there has been in twenty years a marked reduction relative to population in native white illiterates. Yet in ten years illiteracy has increased relative to population in the large cities of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Oregon, and in the small cities and country districts of Arizona, Connecticut, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota, Okla- homa and Wyoming. There are still 6,180,869 persons at least ten years of age who are illiterate — a number only 59,889 less than that of twenty years ago. But the real figures are missing from the census tables — ^the figures which would show the extent and degree of education. Those who have investigated the matter of the ages at which children leave the public schools know that there is a relative loss in the amount of schooling given to the children of the working class. The figures of the average daily attend- ance in the Chicago schools for the year 1902-03 show 44,623 pupils for the first year. Every year there is a drop of about [77] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS 5,000, only 10,928 being found in the eighth year. And how many do you suppose are found in the twelfth year — that is, the fourth year of the high school? A poor remnant of 1,306. Making all allowances for the smaller number of children in the first grade twelve years earlier, there would still be a falling away of about 95 per cent. These children who dropped out did not die. The mortality rates for children from six to seventeen show that death could not have claimed more than 4,500 of them. They dropped out to go to work. The figures of other cities, in so far as they can be gathered, show the same conditions. In 1903-04, in 46 cities, there were 196,506 children in the first grade; there were but 8,232 in the twelfth. The figures are eloquent with meaning as to the progress of education. Under the stress of the prevailing struggle the children of the workers are forced out of the schools to become wage-earners. Child labor becomes a greater and greater menace. Here is another field wherein a [78] TO THE REFORMERS thousand activities have engaged to correct a great evil. National, State and local committees have been formed, funds have been raised, appeals to the Christian spirit of the people have been made, and an onlooker would be led to think that the employment of children would speedily be terminated. But in 1880 the 1,118,356 child workers formed 16.8 per cent, of the child population, while in 1900 the 1,750,178 workers formed 18.2 per cent, of the child population. The 1905 census of manufac- tures shows a slight decrease in the number of child workers, it is true. But manufac- tures proper include but a very small part of the fields wherein children are employed. And the reduction here, in all likelihood, is for a cause analogous to that which brought about the decline of chattel slavery in the Northern States — the decreasing profit, in certain occupations, of child labor. The number of women in industry also increases. The increase since 1880 has been 2,479,642, or 105.3 per cent. Women workers formed 16 per cent, of the total [79] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS female population above sixteen years of age in 1880; in 1900, 20.6 per cent. It is notable that the largest share of the increase in the last decade from the standpoint of race and nativity was in the class of native white women of native parentage. These increased in number 514,542, or 39.3 per cent. Married women in industry increased by 260,800, or 50.4 per cent.; widows, by 227,665, or 36.1 per cent. These figures mean, of course, an increasing disintegra- tion of family life. It cannot be said, either, that on the whole the lot of women in indus- try has been lightened. There has been considerable factory legislation and some legislation aimed at the department stores. But the factory legislation has been largely futile, and the refusal of the courts to pro- tect women in the matter of hours of work has increased their burdens. Moreover, no one at all conversant with the department stores in New York City, for instance, will dare to assert that since the passage of the Andrews bill in 1895 the treatment accorded women employes has as a whole improved. [80] TO THE REFORMERS The difficulty of organizing industrial women makes possible the heaping upon them of a thousand abuses; and nothing that you reformers have done or can do in the matter is likely to better their condition. Try, if you will, the task of organizing a campaign in behalf of women employes in department stores. Right at the start you will find yourselves obstructed by the ab- solute refusal of every metropolitan news- paper to mention, under any circumstances, anything in the remotest way tending to discredit these stores; and if, in spite of this obstacle, you attempt to proceed, you will find yourselves obstructed along a hundred paths by powers commercial, legal, juridical, social, and possibly even ecclesi- astical. If general social conditions have improved under the cumulative effects of your earnest efforts these last twenty years there should be less need for benevolent institutions. Yet in the thirteen years 1890-1903, 2,004 of these were founded — an increase of very nearly 100 per cent. It can hardly be 6 [81] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS contended that they were founded and have been maintained solely to give employment to mechanics and attendants; and the only other cause for this increase is that it reflects what is considered to be a rapidly growing social need. Then, too, if you practical men have added anything in the last twenty years to the joys of living, the 9,000 or 10,000 per- sons who will destroy themselves during the coming year would doubtless be glad to hear of it. And, if you have added any- thing to the security of human life from deliberate attack, the news will be exceed- ingly welcome to the 8,000 or 9,000 persons destined to be murdered within the next 365 days. According to the careful figures of the Chicago Tribune, the number of suicides increased from 1885 to 1903 more than five times as fast as the population. The yearly average for the three years 1881-83 was 688; for the three years 1904- 06, 9,782, or fourteen times as great. Mur- ders and homicides have also increased at a frightful rate. The mean for the three [82] TO THE REFORMERS years 1881-83, was 1,477; for the three years 1904-06, 9,015. Some of this increase may be apparent only, due in some degree to the less eflScient news service of the Tribune twenty-five years ago. But the increase from a later time, say 1890, is, with the exception of four abnormal years, 1894-97, rapid and fairly regular. The computable benefits of your policy are hardly observable here. Where, then, must we look for evidence? Frankly, it would be difficult to say. You have insti- tuted the initiative and referendum in a number of places, but the results in im- proved legislation and in the elimination of graft have not been wholly convincing. You have passed some inheritance laws, but their effect on the poverty of the mass and on the concentration of wealth eludes the sharpest eyes. You have passed a national contract-labor law, and it is violated all the time. The successive irrigation and reclama- tion measures have doubtless been more fruitful of observable benefits to a part of the people and a part of the country than [83] SOCIAI.ISM AND SUCCESS any other work that has been done; but whatever local blessings have come from them, it remains to be proved that they have had the slightest degree of influence on the general state of social conditions. Some general social benefit has indubitably been gained from the passage of the pure-food law. We are not so elaborately poisoned to-day as we were four years ago. But a pure-food law is one of those fundamental necessities which come, like manhood suf- frage and popular education, because they cannot be withheld. The poisoning of food and drink is an evil from which all suffer — workers, retainers, "middle class," and to some extent magnate class. The struggle for a pure-food law does not involve a con- test solely between working class and capital- ist class; and the enactment of such a law has therefore been possible. No one sup- poses this law to be as rigorous or as com- prehensive as it should be; and no one supposes that it is being enforced as it should be. As a matter of fact, it is to a considerable extent violated and evaded all [84] TO THE REFORMERS the time. But the law itself may be con- ceded to be a positive social gain. And that is about the record of reformation, as far as is to be seen. In his recent work on Pragmatism, the late William James quotes with approval a passage from Mr. Gilbert K. Chester- ton, as follows: "There are some people — and I am one of them — ^who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe." And Professor James adds, addressing one of his audiences: "You each have a philos- ophy. . . . The most interesting and im- portant thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several ^orlds." We, too, say, "The most interesting and important and practical thing about you is your view, not of the universe, but of the planet — ^your philosophy of history — ^your interpretation of social events, past and present." You may have a purely ideal- istic philosophy — ^you may think that social changes are the result of notions got from [85] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS heaven knows where of what should be and what should not be. You may have the great-man theory, that social changes are the result of the interposition of wise or forceful men in the affairs of people and nations; and you may, in the midst of your very practical efforts, lq,y the flattering unction to your souls that you are yourselves among the great and wise. You may have any one of a half-dozen such interpretations, and whatever one you cling to will of course affect your attitude and your conduct with regard to social changes. But one social interpretation alone ex- plains the riddles of history. The solution of the problems of physical science accords no more closely with the hypothesis of evolution than does the solution of social problems accord with this hypothesis. It is the economic interpretation of history, with its inescapable corollary of the class struggle. The futility of your efforts these many years is explained by this interpreta- tion, and it is explained by no other. Year after year you devote your labors to [86] TO THE REFORMERS one after another of many specific aims. But you are unable to show visible results for your toil. Thwarted in one endeavor, you as eagerly turn to another. But always and everywhere the results for you are about the same. You succeed in few, if any, in- stances in adding a single good to the gen- eral mass of mankind. And why are your efforts so uniformly barren of achievement .? They are futile because you refuse to recognize the terms and conditions of the social struggle. The struggle fundamentally is not against indi- viduals, no matter how evil they may be. It is not fundamentally a struggle to termi- nate this or that incidental privilege or power which certain individuals or groups have seized. It is a struggle against a class as the representative and chief support of a brutal economic system, and its meaning is the abolition of that system. The nature of the struggle is for the time somewhat obscured by the desperate protest of the "middle class" against extinction. But the real underlying factors of that struggle are [87] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the movement of general economic proeesses to their culmination, the awakening aggres- sion of the working class against private ownership, and the stubborn determination of the ruling class to yield no point. The chimeras which you insist upon fighting, and which you name variously, each man after his wont, as Monopoly or Special Privilege or Discrimination, are merely the projected shadows of this great power, the ruling class. It is a class fortified in ma- terial possessions, in law, in administration, in ecclesiastical and educational institutions, and yet more in the awe and terror which it inspires and the subservience which it compels in ministers, educators and poli- ticians, as *well as in the common mass. It cannot be successfully combated by guerrilla attacks waged against shadows. From its well-nigh impregnable fortifica- tions it laughs at your desultory warfare. A Socialist vote of one million in a national election would jar it to its inmost recesses, and cause it to oflFer a hundred concessions of one sort or another. But nothing that [88] TO THE REFORMERS you are likely to do or say will cause it to offer a single concession. To what it has it holds on with an iron grip, and it means never to let go. The capitalist class can be successfully combated only by another class overmatching it in numbers, in unity and in determination. When we say this capitalist class can be overthrown only by another class, we mean a class opposed to it in instincts, in interests and in aims. The poor, demoralized and disintegrating faction popularly known as the "middle class," which is now in active rebellion against its more successful piartners, cannot do it. It has not the numbers, it has not the material power, it has not the funda- mental opposition of interests. This class is suffering a constantly narrowing scope of action and a decrease of revenue. It blindly protests against the increasing dom- inance of the big capitalists, and it wants instituted a measure of restriction upon wealth-getting which will give it a better chance to compete. But the members of this class, however [89] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS they may oppose trusts and corporations, are a unit on the preservation of the reigning order. They have an equal appetite to that of the magnates for rent, interest and profit; and in opposing the magnates they reveal only a desire for a larger share of the surplus. In defense of the existing system the petty trader will shed his heart's blood, or in extremity even his money, as freely as will the greatest of magnates. He will con- sent gradually to municipal ownership, and even to national ownership, only as he becomes firmly convinced that any share in the 'private ownership of utilities is impossi- ble to himself and his fellows. But all the other avenues of exacting rent, interest and profit, he wants left open, that he may batten upon them at will. The reform for which he clamors is the putting of a handi- cap on the man who plays his own game more successfully than can he. The source of virtually all opportunist measures is this "middle class," or the individuals or groups hanging upon its flanks and accepting its ethical standards. [90] TO THE REPORMERS Every such measure is doomed to failure, just as the class itself is doomed to extinction. The inexorable processes now at work, which in spite of unceasing clamor and of heroic opposition have lodged virtually nine- tenths of the nation's wealth in the hands of a class numbering with its families less than a million persons, will go on to their culmi- nation of a complete absorption of wealth, unless checked by the working class, fight- ing under the banner of Socialism. Those processes cannot be stayed, they cannot be broken down, by your desultory attacks upon so-called "lines of least resistance." There are no points of least resistance in the fortifications of this class; what seem so are merely the ambushes or quicksands into which you are lured and wherein your efforts are swallowed up and lost. There are no short cuts, there is no royal road, to the goal. The Socialist way is the long way, but it is the only way. And in per- petually seeking by-paths to victory instead of taking places in the ranks, you are but repeating the actions of those unprosperous [91] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS adventurers of the early days on this Conti- nent who sought the North-west Passage in every creek and inlet, or who loaded their vessels with iron pyrites for gold, when they should have been aiding in the work of building up the colonies. This giant power, the capitalist class, has its ramifications everywhere. At some time, at some place, in your efforts, you come squarely against it in one form or another, and you cannot make a further move. You are checkmated, and you wonder why. It is because this power, sure of itself and unapprehensive of harm from you, is de- termined to concede to you nothing that is of value to itself. What it concedes, exam- ine, and you will find a Greek gift. You think you have won a victory when you have succeeded in passing some trifling measure of restriction. But a year or five years later you find that the very evils you had supposed corrected have continued unchecked. The measures of reform which you sometimes enact it immediately turns to its own advantage. Or when in those [92] TO THE REFORMERS rare cases, by the kindly interposition of Providence, some measure of yours is per- mitted actually to stop a certain form of exaction, you find that new and greater exactions have broken out in a score of other places. This power is greater than legislatures or courts, greater than even the most strenuous of executives. It is insatiate in its desire, and it has no fear of anything in heaven or on earth but the Socialist movement. The class destined to overthrow this capitalist class is already on the field, and is slowly forming itself into militant array. We Socialists are its va^iguard and its drill-masters, and carefully, earnestly, but, alas! not always patiently, we are bringing it forward and whipping it into shape for its appointed work. Unfortunately, it is cursed with ignorance, timidity and moral inertia. It is unsophisticated, and is sus- ceptible alike to the wiles of cajolery and to the panic of fear. Its instincts are just, but it is as yet too timorous to trust fully the validity of its instincts. It still mistakes [93J SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS benevolence for justice. It still looks to its smooth-spoken enemies and to its faint- hearted friends for advice. Its mood alter- nates between credulity and suspicion, for it is attracted by false lights and it is usually betrayed. But this class, for all its present defects, has vast latent powers of self-reformation and upbuilding. It learns by experience — a thing the ruling class rarely does; and its experiences in this day of capitalist supremacy are of a sort which tend ever to give it a better understanding of its environ- ment, a closer unity, a greater determination and a higher ideal of its mission. From every repulse it returns upon itself, gaining new strength and a riper knowledge. Year by year it sees more clearly the futility of its earlier modes of warfare and comes more generally to accept the tactics of its Socialist vanguard. There are moment- ary reactions from this tendency here and there, but the whole movement of the work- ing class throughout the civilized world is increasingly toward Socialism. [94] TO THE REFOHMERS It is now time that you men of earnest purposes and of great energies, who have yet spent your lives in endeavors barren of result, should recognize these truths. You may find it pleasanter to dwell in the palace of illusions, and to think that efforts such as yours must be efficacious, no matter what the unalterable records say. But, if you are willing to face the facts, and willing also to place yourselves where your efforts will count for most; if you are willing to re- nounce the praise of capitalist retainers that you, as opposed to the visionary Social- ists, are "safe, sane and conservative," then you will forswear your past affiliations, and enlist with this great international movement, the arbiter of the future. [95] CHAPTER III TO THE RETAINERS You retainers and servitors of the men of wealth — you who from rostrum, pulpit and sanctum, from bar and bench, defend the existing regime and oppose the struggles of the working class for a better life; you whose business it is to find a practical, a juridical, an ethical and even a spiritual sanction for things as they exist, and who voice the cheap moralities which are the reflex of the interests of the class that em- ploys you — ^there is a word to say to you which needs to be spoken. Upon those who take part in the forward movement of the time no more pressing duty is laid than that of telling you in plain words what millions of men are thinking of you. You are honest in that your expressions are the direct results of your means of ma,k- [96] TO THE RETAINERS ing a living. You serve, as your intellectual forebears have ever served, as the expound- ers of the special moralities which the ruling class has ever sought to impose upon the ruled. But you are dishonest in that you do not acknowledge the class character of your teachings, and in that you seek to give a social and general sanction to what is purely an expression of the needs of your employers. "Wherever," says John Stuart Mill, "there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of supe- riority." And as your predecessors formu- lated the interests of feudal baron or slave- holder into ethical precepts binding upon villein or slave, so do you formulate the interests of the capitalist class into an ethical code binding upon wage-earners. Yours is a servile ethics — an ethics handed down to you from above, to be disseminated among those below. You do not make discoveries in morality. Such discoveries are made for you. It is not until, in the gradual flux of conditions, the teaching [97] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS of a special morality comes to be necessary to the ruling class, that you learn what is moral and what immoral. How many of you ever realized that the "open shop" was eternally bound up with the True, the Good and the Beautiful until the recent collective reaction of the employ- ers against trade-unions forced it upon your attention ? Might not the " heroism of the scab" have remained to you an unappre- hended virtue, a moral flower "born to blush unseen," if the general warfare against the unions these last few years had not forced you to a recognition of the strike- breaker's value to the factory lords? You extol, in fervid phrase, the "right to work," and protest against its infringement. But does the real "right to work" ever touch your consciousness.'' That in 1900 6,468,964 workers in gainful occupations were unemployed for more than one month; that nearly half of these were unemployed for from one to three months, and three- eighths of them for from four to six months, is small part of your distress. You have 1 98 J TO THE RETAINERS discovered only the evil of the unemploy- ment of that infinitesimal fraction who are prevented from displacing union men. The enormous volume, the intense degree, of privation which these figures reveal have little or no meaning for you. That millions of human beings may sicken and die through want of the barest comforts of existence is a consideration you leave to others. You are troubled only by that minor part of the problem which touches adversely the interests of your employers. You prate, too, of "violence." The frightful violence, indirect though it be, by which every year more than 60,000 beings are hurled to death and some 1,600,000 seriously injured, is not what you mean. That the butchery of the Civil War is being repeated, year after year, throughout the industrial plant of the nation, does not move you. You preach no homilies upon this form of violence; you do not talk of it to your classes in economics; you give it small mention, if any, in your platitudinous editorials and in your pious sermons. Nor [99] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS are you moved by that other form of violence — ^though still more indirect, yet still more fatal — the forcing of human beings to work at tasks which kill slowly by poison, by disease or torture, instead of mercifully at a blow, and which annually claims an uncomputed army of victims. All this you pass by as the necessary and inevitable fortune of the poor, to be borne by them in patience. That is, when you notice it at all; for many, if not most of you, habitu- ally shut your eyes and ears to the sufferings and cries of outraged humanity. But when you see or hear of a union workman attacking the man who has taken his job, all your latent indignation is awak- ened; you cry out in horror, and demand "a wall of bayonets from Washington to Wilkesbarre," or some other mode of instant and rigorous repression. The robbery, the torture and the slaughter of a race mean little to you, because these are the price which must be paid for the rent, interest and profit of the class which keeps you going. But the incidental violence of the striker means [100] TO THE RETAINERS to you a crime against humanity, against the Almighty. Did you ever dig down into your inner selves to try to discover the reason why your indignation is spontaneously awak- ened by the one thing and not by the other ? It is safe to say that you never did. For then you would have discovered that it is because you have not developed a social conscience. You have only a servile class conscience. You absorb and reflect the interests, the instincts and the feelings of the class from which you draw your sus- tenance. And whenever the interests of that class are trenched upon, as when a workman is prevented from working more cheaply than another, you are shocked as by an electric current. You were long in awakening to the evil of child labor. Many of you are not yet awakened. Your forebears in England were equally obtuse, and they busied them- selves for years in inventing grave objec- tions to the proposed reforms. Nothing was better for young persons than work, they said. Education was on the whole harm- [101] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS ful for the children of the working class, because it tended to unfit them for the station which God and the factory lords had ordained for them. And idleness, even for the very young, was worse, since it made them the prey of vicious habits and engendered in them an ungodliness of heart. Many of you who live in the factory regions of the South are to-day repeating these old inanities. And for those of you who live in the North, you had best look and see if an economic cause is not back of your sud- den awakening. Until the needs of man- ufacturers in the North (where child labor has been restricted largely by the influence of labor unions upon legislation) demanded an interference with the cheaper production of the South, how many of you had ever troubled yourselves regarding this frightful evil.'' Not many, and for that matter, not many of you are worrying about it even now. For, to the manufacturers and traders of the North the restriction of child labor is not an unmixed blessing. What is wanted is just enough legislation to bring about [102] TO THE RETAINERS an equilibrium between the cost of pro- duction in each of the two sections. It may go too far and seriously inconvenience the gleaning of profits. And so long as this is so, there is abundant motive for many of you keeping quiet. To such of you the whole industrial world may turn, pivoted upon a child's heart, while you, your "glassy essence" reflecting only the interests of your employers, remain serenely oblivious. No, you have small need and less inclina- tion to prosecute discoveries in social moral- ity. Your trade is rather to excuse or sanction the thing that is, to allay the unrest of the masses, and to denounce the " wicked agitators" who would fain awaken the people to a sense of their power. It is a good world, you say. Cautiously you admit that it is not what it might be; but if all would invariably do the right and proper thing, you say, all would be well. And so, by tongue and pen, you coax and persuade the toilers to keep at their plodding tasks, to bear with patience hunger and cold, illness and wounds, and the thousand priva- [103] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS tions which are their inescapable lot. Your employers must reap their rent, interest and profit. And how can they reap unless the masses sow? The seditious and subversive agitators stir them to complain. But for each complaint you have a ready specific. Is life, as they say, under the sway of the prevailing regime, merely a game, a lottery, a universal Monte Carlo? Then "beat the game," you say. From your university chairs, your rostrums, your pulpits and your editorial desks, you blandly tell us, just as do the runners and "cappers" of a faro bank, that this or that plan or "system" will assuredly "do the trick." Now it is Morality, and now So- briety, now it is Faithfulness, and now Hard Work; now Thrift and now Efficiency. And though many of you know in your hearts that none of these things will do, yet still you proflfer these counsels to the generations that toil and suffer and pass away and find no answer to the painful riddle of life. Not in Morality, as you preach it, does the working class find its salvation. For [ 104 ] TO THE RETAINERS even in the best ages the sleets and snows of misfortune have fallen alike upon evil and good; while in the worst ages, given up to competitive and fratricidal strife, morality becomes a hostage given to for- tune, leaving the victory to be won only by the unscrupulous, the strong and the inhuman. Nor is Sobriety other than a trumpery counsel which blinds men's eyes to real wrongs. That men, and especially workingmen, might all desist from strong drink is a hope which all may justly hold. But that such abstinence would have other than the slightest effect upon the present distribution of the world's goods is delusion, or something worse. Faithfulness, as you mean it — an unquestioning devotion of the worker to the interests and aims of his employer — is not only not a virtue, but a vice. For it makes men partners in their own exploitation; it blinds them to the funda- mental antagonism of interest between them- selves and their employers. Let, indeed, the workman play the game fairly, as the game is played ; let him render a fair sum of efficient [105] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS toil for a prevailing rate of wages. Under the rules of the game he must always pro- duce by his toil a far greater value than he receives in wages, else capitalism could not endure for a moment. And the worker must accept the rules or he cannot take part. But to ask him to merge his interest in that of his employer is to ask of him a subservience which lowers him from the status of a free man to that of a serf. Nor is it by means of Efficiency, as you call it, that the salvation of the working class is to come. For by it you mean, not social efficiency, the ordering and regulating of the processes of production to make them most fruitful. You mean individual ef- ficiency, the sharpening of beak and claw for a more intensive and cruel warfare. Surely, though, this remedy has all the hollowness and futility of the others. Is efficiency possible to but a part of the race ? It must be so, since yo-u are ever declaiming about the incompetent, who have none but themselves to blame for their poverty. Then efficiency can promise but a Presby- [106] TO THE RETAINERS terian sort of salvation — to the elect. Or is it attainable by virtually all? If so, what change would it work in the inequalities and privations of life ? Small change, in- deed; for were we all the efficient equals of Mr. Morgan or Mr. Rockefeller, the rough work of the world would still have to be done, and the doers would have to be those who rightly, according to the doctrine, should be doing something better. And then did you ever consider the enor- mous and increasing disparity of numbers between wage-earners and bosses ? There are, for instance, more than 1,450,000 rail- way men, and not 6,000 of these are general officers. If the 1,444,000 developed an efficiency equal to that of their superiors, would they then all become general officers ? Where are the places for them, and who would do the hard work ? Your " efficiency " is only a lure which you use to keep alive in the worker the credulous hope of individ- ual success. Nor is Thrift, nor is Hard Work, the way out. Millions of men have toiled faithfully [107] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS all their lives, and other millions have both toiled and saved, only to die in poignant want. The product of men's toil, and no less of their thrift, is drawn into other hands, and the workers close their lives in poverty. In London, where the processes of the capitalist system are allowed a virtual free play, one person in every four of the entire population dies on some form of public charity. In New York, where the struggle is in some measure modified, one person in every seven is buried in Potter's Field. And were it not for the intervention of private charity, of benevolent societies, of labor unions, and of political leaders, it is possible that the number of pauper burials would approximate that of London. To preach toil to men who have always toiled when they could, and who see before them only the pauper's grave, is a shameless mockery. And then did you ever stop to inquire where the work which you urge men to do is to come from? Do you not know that the needs of the present system require an ever-increasing army of the un- [108] TO THE RETAINERS employed ? And do you not know that the figures show incontestably this growing army? Or are you too fatuous in your service to your masters to study the figures and to learn their lesson ? No, none of the proffered "systems" will beat the game of the great industrial Monte Carlo. They have all been played, over and over again, and though here and there an individual winning is made, the masses remain plundered and poor. And the most conspicuous result of your ex- hortation and advice is to aid in keeping them so. Is life not only a game, but in its fiercer phases a battle, as the agitators say ? Is it true that thousands are struck down in death and hundreds of thousands put out of the fighting by wounds and disease.? Then, say you, seek a safer place in the battle, exercise your freedom of choice, and avoid those occupations that are dangerous. Did you ever, even for a moment, put yourself in the worker's place that you might consider the degree of his choice ? Do you not know [109] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS that such is the pressure upon him that he must seek work where he can get it, what- ever the conditions? That for the bare chance of earning his bread he must often face hazards of maiming and death vastly greater than those of a soldier in the blood- iest of wars ? And if your own tasks were equally dangerous, could you meet the question with such easy complacence? If during every year 1 out of every 8 of you were wounded, and 1 out of every 133 killed, would you not see the matter in a different light? These are the average figures of casualties among trainmen for the three years, 1906-08. Or suppose that only 1 in every 19 of you were wounded, and only 1 in every 393 killed, would it not still be a lively question with you ? These are the average figures for the million and a quar- ter railway employes for the same period. If you had to spend your working hours amidst unguarded machinery; if you were forced to breathe air clouded with metallic dust, or the fluff of cotton, silk or flax, or [110] TO THE RETAINERS the fumes of molten white lead, would you not find something seriously at fault with the existing regime of industry ? Doubtless you would not strike. For you have small sense of a community of interests with your fellows of like tasks, since virtually the whole range of your ethical feeling is but a reflex of the interests of the class above you. Nor would you have the moral courage for such an act. For you have a haunting fear of privation. The specter of poverty which the worker knows so well, which appears at his cradle and follows him all his days, and which he learns by familiarity to jest with and provoke, is to you a monster to be kept at the remotest distance. And so you would not tempt privation by a strike or by wild talk of social revolution. But you would humbly beg for better things. Did you ever pause to think of the debt you owe the workers.? In a million fields, in a multitude of factories, in mines and forests, men, women and even little children are reaping and sowing, hammering and planing, gathering and piecing together the [111] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS products which make the wealth of the world. From some part of this wealth, a little from each worker, are taken and as- sembled the mites that make the enormous fund which society puts aside for your maintenance. Though the state or the mag- nates are your immediate paymasters, you are in reality the pensioners of the working class. The workers toil at hard and bitter tasks that you may be employed at tasks which are light and congenial. They strive at toil which slowly warps and disfigures their bodies or poisons their veins; or with a frolic welcome they brave chances greater than those of a soldier in the field — and all that you may follow your pleasant vocations, well clad, well housed and secure from harm. Multitudes are chained to a deadening monotony of labor, rob- bed of all opportunity of initiative and of creative expression — labor which slowly darkens their minds and benumbs their souls — while to you are given the tasks in the products of which you may en- shrine what is best in you. They grow [112] TO THE RETAINERS old before their time, and they die at half your age. Each of you will have seen, before you have passed your intel- lectual prime, two generations of toilers descend to the grave. The fruit of their toil has been gleaned by others, and to you has been given a bounteous share. All that you have is from them, and what return do you make for it.? They do not begrudge you your easier lives, so long as they feel that you are render- ing a service to the race. The patient en- durance of the poor is no more the marvel of the world than is their devoted sacrifice. The workers realize, as none others can realize, what has been denied them, and they seek to secure it for their children. Every instinct which develops in them as a necessary outgrowth of their lot pleads for an infinite extension of social service. And wherever the instincts or ideals of the work- ing class have found expression through government, they have manifested them- selves in the amplest provisions for learning and the arts. "The republic has no use 8 [113] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS for savants" was an apothegm of the petty bourgeoisie, never of the proletariat. But when they find you soothed with the "execrable complacence of your prosperity" and proud of your subservience to your capitalist masters, turning upon them and rewarding their toil for you with sleek counsels to be patient and to endure, their indignation bursts forth in a torrent. They hate, they despise you. Because you can be happy in your creative work, you counsel them to find pleasure in their monotonous and joyless tasks. Because in fashioning the things in which you may embody your heart and soul, and no less your material interests, you can work long hours, you urge them to give to their masters long hours at tasks in which they can feel no interest and which rob them of health and life. You do this because it is needful to your capitalist masters that you do it. So wholly are you centered in your tasks of serving your masters that you are in- hibited from developing a sympathetic im- agination. You cannot put yourselves in [114] TO THE RETAINERS the workers' places. You cannot compre- hend their lot, nor can you even apprehend their feeling. You are thus enabled in the same moment to disavow the debt you owe them and to "Insult, exult, and all at once. Over the ■wretched." What Lear felt on the wild heath, as he thought of the "poor, naked wretches," whose "houseless heads," whose "unfed sides," whose " loop'd and window'd ragged- ness" made them the sport and prey of the elements, never comes to you. The hum- bled king could moan out, "Oh, I have ta'en Too little care of this!" But you, complacent alike in your pros- perity and your subservience, can only turn upon them with angry impatience and counsel them to go to work and keep quiet. With what eager impulse and with what compliant will do you make yourselves the defenders of the present scheme of things and the assailants of the coming order! Now [115] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS that in every civilized land the working class, sick of the reign of cruelty and wrong, is awakening to a consciousness of its power, and to a determination to ordain a fairer life, you take upon yourselves the mission to ridicule its aims and ideals, and to dis- credit its leaders. It is only the unsuccessful, you say, who attack our existing institutions. You can- not understand, such is your subservient complacence, that multitudes among this revolutionary working class are proud of their unsuccess and wear it as a badge of honor. Pray you, under the existing scheme of things, how many and what quality of men achieve "success," and what must they not do to achieve it? It is not, except in rare cases, probity, nor truthfulness, nor humaneness, nor fellow service, that wins this fallacious good. It is, in the majority of cases, grafting and lying, fawning and cringing, selfishness and brutality, restrained only by that Chinese ethical standard, the necessity of "saving your face," that give victory in the struggle. And the men who [116] TO THE RETAINERS are seeking the overthrow of this system disdain to make use of these means. They leave the function to you. They do not, like your bishops, lend their presence to Chambers of Commerce at banquet, and give to the gamblers in the world's wealth the benediction of divine favor. They do not, like your Boards of Foreign Missions, solicit the profits of law-breaking and theft for their propaganda, and promise an inter- cession at the throne of grace. They do not, like your college heads, prescribe the dainty punishment of "social ostracism" for the world's robbers, and then accept the fruits of the robbery, crying out from their gables, "Bring on your tainted money!" Nor do they, like your journalists, make themselves the servile lackeys of the ruling class; nor, like your economists, constitute themselves the secular priests- of capital, perpetually renewing their character of "pests of society and persecutors of the poor." Many of them might be "success- ful" if they chose to do these things. Rather they choose, like Francis of Assisi, [117] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the bride Poverty, instead of the harlot Suc- cess. And so you are right in your statement. But you utter your own condemnation when you speak it. The thing which, as the structural basis of a fairer life, these men strive for — ^the common ownership of the means of pro- duction — you assail with sweeping con- demnation. Few of you, save for a select group among the teachers, have ever so much as considered the proposal. The identity of your thought, the virtual identity of your language, when you speak of it, shows unmistakably that you draw your pabulum from a common source. Most of you would, of course, assail it with equal virulence if you knew more about it; for your instincts and beliefs reflect the instincts and beliefs of your employers, and you feel and see as they. But knowing the subject no better than you do, you have only a com- mon stock of phrases which you employ in its condemnation. You prate of the folly and sin of "divid- ing up," willfully ignorant of the fact that [118] TO THE RETAINERS what these men propose is to terminate the enforced dividing up which everywhere prevails to-day, and to substitute the hold- ing of productive property in common. You prate of a certain "menace to woman," blinding yourselves to the fact that the salvation of woman is to be found alone in her economic security, and that under our present system, whether in wedlock or prostitution, women are bought in the open market like potatoes. Actually or feignedly you distress yourselves with the thought of the " coming destruction of the home," oblivious of that visible present devastation of the home, moral as well as material, that goes on increasingly and inevitably under the processes of capitalist accumulation. You are tenderly solicitous of liberty, too, and fearful that this revolutionary working class may ordain a universal slavery. What liberty has any part of the working class to- day? And what liberty, pray, have you, except the liberty of saying and doing what is expected of you by your masters.? Few of you have any real concept of liberty. [119] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS You look upon it as only the absence of governmental restraint. The myriad re- straints upon freedom of belief, speech and action, and upon self-development, which are the inescapable results of an economic system wherein one small class owns all the machinery of production, do not occur to you. You make a fetish of the abstraction of liberty; the substance of liberty you do not know. You cannot see or understand that real liberty is a power, a capacity, mutually exercised and mutually secured. It is not a shadow, but a substance. " The restraints of Communism," as the younger Mill well said — and he was at the time no over-friendly judge — "would be freedom in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race." You are fearful, too, of the assertion by the working class of the equal dignity of labor. You find beautiful beyond expres- sion the sentiment of Pippa's song: "All service ranks the same with God." Only you want all service to rank the [120] TO THE RETAINERS same, not with man, but with God alone. The mere suggestion that it should so rank with men is to you seditious and subversive of our glorious institutions. You are fear- ful no less of "confiscation." Yet now that chattel slavery has been abolished you can thrill — such of you as yet retain some resid- ual emotion and are not held to the mere "passionless pursuit of passionless intelli- gence" — at the sentiment of Emerson's lines : "Pay ransom to the owner, And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner ? The slave is owner And ever was. Pay him!" ' But these words, as you take care to know, express an ethical verdict on a past age. The economic sanction for the rob- bery of the slave has gone, and with it the moral sanction. No slave-holding class now dictates to you the special moralities which it is needful that you inculcate to the robbed. But let some irreverent person substitute the word "toiler" for the word " slave," and instantly you are shocked with [121] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS horror. "Confiscation!" you shriek, and every instinct of antagonism within you awakens. And why? Because, though there is no longer a slave-holding class to dictate to you your ethics, there is a ruling class of capitalist owners of the means of production, holding to you the relation of masters, and by the interests of that class your ethical standards are necessarily formed. For your lighter hours you have recourse to tawdry phrases that have grown thread- bare through eager handling. " You cannot ipake men rich by legislation," "you cannot make men good by legislation," "you will destroy initiative," "you will eliminate indi- vidual responsibility," "you will reduce everybody to a dead level," are some of these collocations of words. And how you plume yourselves upon your superior " culti- vation" as you look upon the "lower strat- um of society" and tell it what is good for it and what to avoid! You do not choose to remember that in every age "cultivation," as manifested by your class, has been the [122] TO THE RETAINERS lackey of privilege and oppression; and that tlie learning which was made possible for you by the toil and sacrifice of the workers, you have ungratefully used against them. You choose to forget that in every age your class has framed just the sort of formulas for reproof and exhortation which best accorded with the interests of the ruling class. The hoUowness of your present phrases is but a characteristic of all the hortatory phrases of your class since first men enslaved their brothers and called upon priest and teacher to sanction the act. How solicitous you are regarding the maintenance of initiative! As if the whole progress of civilization had not been at- tended by a setting of bounds to the range of men's lower initiatives and the opening of fields for initiative on higher planes. And as if, furthermore, the impulse to action could never be anything else than the ex- pectation of getting something from your neighbor! The Levantine pirate, when piracy was abolished, felt just the sense of outrage from the restriction of his [123] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS freedom of action that the factory lord of to-day feels over a restriction in the hours of child workers. Initiative is born with man, as hunger and thirst and aspi- ration are born with him. The closing of the opportunity for initiating methods of plundering one another of the means of life will but set free the incentives of men to a wider range of nobler initiatives. You may notice, also, when you take time to think of it, that throughout this period of the restraining of men's initiatives the sense and degree of men's personal respon- sibility has steadily increased. And, then, how childish is your stock phrase regarding goodness and legislation. You seem not to understand how far from the purposes of the revolutionary working class is "legislation," as you mean it, order- ing men to be "good." But waiving this, your phrase evades the truth of what we know and you know, to be operative even within the untoward environment of a system that prompts men to do evil for gain. That small body of law which has a really [124] TO THE RETAINERS social function — that body of law which sets new restraints upon the brutal and fratricidal struggle among men — is assuredly one of the decisive factors in moral develop- ment. For the restraints imposed by the law in one age become a basis of conscience in the next age. To at least this extent, if to no further, men are indubitably " made good by legislation." And last, you would do well, for at least two reasons, not to harp too assiduously on that other and twin phrase regarding legislation and riches. First, because it is not, as you seem to think, an argument against the aims of the workers, since they do not propose to "make men rich by legislation"; and, second, if you will but look more closely you will discover on every hand abundant proofs that under the present order thou- sands upon thousands of men are con- stantly being made rich by legislative pro- tection or connivance, and that among the direct beneficiaries of this legislative wealth- making are yourselves. And now, finally, how can you keep your [125] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS way, week by week, mouthing the phrases inspired in you by your masters, and forget- ful of your obligations to those who toil ? Do you never feel a consciousness of in- gratitude when you think upon those by whose patient striving you are fed? Does an inner voice never speak to you of your subservience? Do you never start and draw back, if only for a moment, from your forced labor of mending your phrases, year by year, to make them accord more nearly with the newer needs of your masters ? When, twenty years ago, you preached unrestricted competition because that was the thing your masters demanded, you did not divine that among their needs to-day would be a moral and economic sanction for the limiting of competition, as in trusts and companies. Did you, when it came to making the shift, make it freely and gladly, without a qualm, or did you palter and hesitate, as one who would avoid an enforced duty ? And do you never grow tired with it all, and look upon it as a burden from which [126] TO THE RETAINERS you would be free ? Is it an always pleas- ant lot to be doing only that which your masters desire of you? Do you recall Rossetti's "Jenny," and the question he asks of her and answers in the same breath: "For sometimes, were the truth confessed. You're thankful for a little rest, — Glad from the crush to rest within From the heart-sickness and the din. From shame and shame's outbraving, too. Is rest not sometimes sweet to you ? " Do you not sometimes tire of it all, and look out wistfully into that larger com- munion of life where service is not a mere- tricious and degraded pandering to the privilege and luxury of a few, but a render- ing of good to the human race? Do you not recognize that in the purposes of the master class, in so far as it takes any notice of you at all, you are but as the pathetic little Jenny in the hands of her master, "Who having used you at [its] will. Thrusts you aside, as when I dine, I serve the dishes and the wine " ? [127] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS Do you not sometimes wish to break clean from it all, and to merge yourselves in that universal movement that makes straight for the goal of human emancipa- tion? There is room for you when you shall have awakened to your better selves. [128] CHAPTER IV TO SOME SOCIALISTS "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam." — ^Milton: Areopagitica. You do not like criticism, you hard-and- fast Socialists of a certain sort. That is, criticism directed against yourselves. You are somewhat overfond of criticism directed against others, and in this you indulge yourselves freely. Indeed, so much is there of sweeping and indiscriminate denuncia- tion in common Socialist print and speech that one might very well be led to define Socialism as a "criticism of life." But of self-criticism you are not fond; while of other persons' criticism you are generally resentful. Some forms of it you tolerate: One individual censures another, and one 9 [129] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS group or faction exchanges with another the liveliest animadversions upon its con- duct or tactics. These interchanges of amenities you take as a matter of course. But the movement as a whole, with its ulti- mate aim, with its theories and assumptions, often with even its personal composition and its purely incidental and temporary features, you are prone to regard as sacred, and therefore beyond criticism. A Chris- tian devotee or a Mohammedan zealot could hardly be more unquestioning in his faith; and neither of these could more passionately resent the calling in question of the things of his belief. You speak of yourselves, with pride and assurance, as "scientific" Socialists. But is the spirit of rapt faith, of intolerance of disbelief and of resentment over criticism quite in accord with the scientific temper? Is not the scientific spirit more in accord with the eternal questioning of truth; the constant turning back upon conclusions already formed for new tests of their validity; the hospitable welcoming of criticism from [130] TO SOME SOCIALISTS all quarters; the swallowing up of regret at the destruction of cherished beliefs in the joy of new discoveries? No doubt faith and strong partisanship may accom- pany the inquiring mind. So thorough a scientist as Huxley could be an ardent advocate and propagandist of a cause. But such ardency is a reasoned ardency — a fervency of conviction based upon an un- biased questioning of realities; and when the realities show an altered meaning, faith changes with them and attaches itself to the new meanings. This is not your kind of faith. Yours is rather that theological cast, which having been dispossessed of its super- natural deities and dogmas, sets up material- istic ones in their stead. It is a faith which has its holy words and its fetishes and its taboos. It is a faith which fixes itself upon set terms, upon iron-bound phrases, from which it refuses to be dislodged, and the questioning of which it regards as a sort of sinning against the light. Now astronomers and chemists and math- ematicians are formed of the same poor [131] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS clay as ourselves; and yet they analyze and compare, they disagree and criticise, they overturn and destroy the achievements of one another in their eternal questioning of truth. But they seek and strive in com- parative tranquillity of spirit. No astron- omer quarrels with another for developing some new detail in spectrum analysis; no mathematician assails the orthodoxy of another for working out a hitherto baffling problem; and no chemist feels the truth blasphemed at the discovery by another of a new element. Each of these achieve- ments may have overturned or made un- stable some generalization previously ac- cepted as law; and yet each achievement is hailed as a contribution to the world's knowledge, and resentment against the investigator would be regarded as madness. These workers follow the scientific method. You do not. In your partisan fervor, though taking the scientific name, you forget its meaning and its obligations. No doubt the tendency of a propagandist movement must ever be to hold fast to [132] TO SOME SOCIALISTS certain dogmas, as well as to traditional forms and practices. The converts are won by telling them that such and such things are eternally and unalterably true, and it is an embarrassing duty in after times to have to tell them that such things have been found to be not true, and that other things in their stead are true. There is an instinctive fear that the recasting of particular beliefs in the minds of the con- verts may undermine faith in the creed as a whole. Also, there are tired and limited brains to consider, which having laboriously learned one thing by rote, cannot well learn another. For the sake of the numer- ical integrity of the movement it is best to leave them with what they have rather than to risk a change. A hardening process sets in, and a supreme value attaches to orthodoxy and constancy of belief as the basis of the movement. The distrust of criticism is thus natural; the turmoil in the ranks of the German Social Democracy which followed the appearance of Eduard Bernstein's little book is a classic instance [133] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS of its manifestation. But though an ad- herence to dogma and a distrust of criticism are to some extent inevitable, they will, unless recognized and guarded against to the full, invariably result in retrogression. There must be free thought and free expres- sion, else the movement declines. And as for you, you must follow the scientific method, or renounce the scientific name. You forget that method, and you involve yourselves in many contradictions and absurdities of speech and action. You re- vive old fallacies and old shibboleths, and transforming them to your needs, -make them an integral part of your creed. You denounce the jingoism of a nation, but you exalt the jingoism of a party and a class. The sentiment of fanatical patriotism, " My country, right if possible, but anyhow my country," you reject with scorn; but you substitute for "my country" the terms "my party" or "my class," and the jingo phrase becomes your slogan. You ridicule the sentiment of party "regularity" when it is held by Republicans and Democrats [134] TO SOME SOCIALISTS and Prohibitionists, but you make it an ethical standard for Socialists. You recog- nize that when it is held by others it is a sentiment fraught with the grossest evil — that it means in effect the condoning and sanctioning, "for the good of the cause," of every vicious act that a group of design- ing men may commit. But for yourselves you transform it and make it a sacred prin- ciple. You ridicule the rapt devotion of Mor- mons and Mohammedans and Christians to the literal reading of their holy books, written many years ago; and you give your- selves with a greater devotion to a belief in the inerrancy of the words of a German prophet whom you sparely, if ever, read. You have learned to deride as " Utopian" certain views of the early Socialists as to the character and the methods of attaining the ideal state; and yet the Socialist state of your imagination you are prone to endow with utterly Utopian and preposterous fea- tures. Against all the teachings of experience [1S5] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS you not infrequently exalt fanaticism — so only that it is your kind of fanaticism — as a means of advancing your cause and therefore a moral good. Though you set great store by rigid and uncompromising tactics in your strife with the non-Socialist world, you are too prone to indulge in compromising tricks and devices in your factional strife within the movement. Though in your public appeals you some- times extol education, too often you mean by the word no more than conversion to party Socialism. More often you belittle real education as useless or even harmful; when it suits your purposes you incite proletarian against "intellectual"; you ap- peal to the lowest stratum of ignorance, and you insinuate and encourage a sus- picion of education and of educated men. You extol free thought and free speech, but often you deny that freedom in your own ranks. You have scornful and derisive words for what you call "capitalist moral- ity," forgetful that though each economic system develops its superficial code, the [136] TO SOME SOCIALISTS fundamental ethical standards are an evo- lution through all time, and are no more the product of capitalism than they are of tribal communism or of feudalism, or of those intermediate systems known as house- hold economy and town economy. In your wholesale denunciation of capitalism you forget the lessons of history, and you ascribe to a passing economic system the prevalence of defects and evils in human nature which have persisted throughout the life of the race. You denounce the capital- ist class for its ruthless exercise of might, and yet in your message to the working class you often appeal, not to its sense of social justice, but merely to its consciousness of numbers and power. Not seldom you forget that Socialism is not merely for the Socialists, but for all men; and you distort the meaning of the class struggle into that of a medieval peasants' war — a revolt of one class to despoil and dominate another. You cannot achieve a millennial revolution by holding such concepts and employing such means. You are as one on a wrong [137] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS road, on a dark night, miles and miles from home, and headed the wrong way. You will need to dismiss your many fallacies, to harmonize your many contradictions be- tween precept and practice, you will need to orient yourselves and to retrace your steps before you can make headway toward your goal. Fortunately, in np place in the American movement are you often in the majority. More often, in most places, you are an inconsiderable minority. One who has been for more than twenty years in or about the movement cannot fail to bear testimony to the intelligent devotion, the disillusioned zeal and the reasonableness of attitude and conduct to be found within the ranks. But some of you are always present everywhere. You have always been present. The his- tory of the movement in America, with its frequent shifts and turnings, its factions, its warring at cross purposes, its heresy trials, its breakdowns and reorganizations, sometimes its bombastic declarations, its visionary efforts and its illusory aims, only [138] TO SOME SOCIALISTS too truly pictures your presence at all times. It was evidently the belief of Horace Greeley, whose years of experience in the cause in its earlier days entitle his judgment to respect, that you would always be present in the future. Summing up the failure of the Fourierite communities, this is what he said: "A serious obstacle to the success of any Socialistic experiment must always be con- fronted. I allude to the kind of persons who are naturally attracted to it. Along with many noble and lofty souls, whose impulses are purely philanthropic, and who are willing to labor and suffer reproach for any cause that promises to benefit mankind, there throng scores of whom the world is quite worthy — ^the conceited, the crotchety, the selfish, the headstrong, the pugnacious, the unappreciated, the played-out, the idle, and the good-for-nothing generally; who, finding themselves utterly out of place and at a discount in the world as it is, rashly con- clude that they are exactly fitted for the world as it ought to 6e.* These may have failed again and again, and been protested at * Italics mine. — ^W. J. G. [139] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS every bank to which they have been pre- sented; yet they are sure to jump into any new movement as if they had been born ex- pressly to superintend and direct it, though they are morally certain to ruin whatever they lay their hands on. Destitute of means, of practical ability, of prudence, tact and common sense, they have such a wealth of assurance and self-confidence that they clutch the responsible positions which the capable and worthy modestly shrink from; so responsibilities that would tax the ablest are mistakenly devolved on the blindest and least fit. Many an experiment is thus wrecked, when, engineered by its best mem- bers, it might have succeeded." It is not necessary to accept Greeley's sweeping judgment in all its implications. The Socialist movement is a movement of the oppressed. It welcomes as no other organization, spiritual or secular, welcomes, all those that labor and are heavy laden and weary of heart — all those who have felt most keenly the brutalizing effects of the present system and who yet retain a spirit of resistance. It would welcome as well the proletariat of the slums, but in them — [ 140 ] TO SOME SOCIALISTS the most brutalized victims — ^the spirit is extinguished, and no appeal reaches them. Though, however, the Socialist movement seeks out and welcomes the disinherited and the dispossessed and the wrecks and cripples of this ghastly fratricidal war — the beings who might have been whole and sound under a better system — it ought to have no welcome for the unsocial — ^for the factious, the fanatical, the jealous, the selfish and the treacherous. Perhaps every movement has had its self-seekers, its dis- turbers, its fanatics and its demagogues. But it is the business of this most modem movement, this "heir of all the ages" in enlightenment, not to have them. This movement is not one for fostering individual self-interest, and it therefore has no place for self-seekers. It is a movement for peace and order and system and mutual restraint, and it therefore has no place for faction- breeders and disturbers. It is not a move- ment headed by some divinely inspired Mahdi with a supernatural message, and it therefore has no place for fanatics. It [141] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS is a movement not for flattering the pro- letariat, but for disciplining and educating the proletariat — for fitting it for power, in Marx's phrase — and it therefore has no place for demagogues. Yet in spite of its character and its mission, some of these men drift to it; and a good part of the time they exert an appreciable influence. You know all this, though you do not want the fact spoken abroad — though you want it only whispered among ourselves, or at most published only in our own period- icals, where, ridiculously enough, every interested person can read it just as well as if it had appeared in some capitalist periodical. But you forget that our move- ment, though in its narrower sense a class movement, is an appeal to man's sense of social justice. It is an appeal to all men — to the capitalist as well as to the workman; and though we do our main work among the working class, it is not because we are unwilling that the capitalist who accepts our principles should come to us, but because we believe that in most cases the [142] TO SOME SOCIALISTS rich man's material interest blinds him to a sense of social justice. Our appeal is to all men, and our contest is carried on "in the open." We have no secrets, and we ought to have none, for we are best protected by having none. In proportion as our movement is open to the world the power of a capitalist organization to cripple it through spies and informers is lessened. It is possible that there are men in this movement who are put there and paid for being there by a capitalist organization. If so, however, they are not there because of secret information to be got, but because of their power to foment discord; and half the times you permit yourselves to become wildly excited over some fraudulent issue or some silly charge, it may be that you are playing the part of dupe to a capitalist agent. To repeat, we have no secrets. We cannot hurt our movement by describing it in plain terms to all men; we can hurt it most by ignoring its defects or by turning with blind and savage resentment against those that tell us the truth about ourselves. [143] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS There is that "demagogy of ignorance" upon which from time to time you play, or with which you are played upon — that in- citement of proletarian against "intellect- ual," that scarcely disguised praise of fanatical ignorance. It will have to be extirpated, root and branch, and burned with fire, that its poisonous growth may no more be possible. How widespread is this demagogy, how harmful it is to the movement, may be indicated by quotations from two men who know the situation. The first is from the honored and beloved stand- ard-bearer of the Socialist party in America — Mr. Debs. It is taken from an article by him on the death of Thomas McGrady, published in the Appeal to Reason, Dec. 14, 1907, and afterward reproduced in Mr. Debs' book. McGrady was a man who gave up the church for Socialism, and was afterward virtually hounded to his death — ^by men calling themselves Socialists. He had intellect, he had sympathy for the poor, he had enthusiasm for the cause. All that he had he gave. It was not enough, [144] TO SOME SOCIALISTS "Certain 'leaders,'" writes Mr. Debs, "whose narrow prejudices were inflamed by the new agitator's success and increasing popularity in the movement, began to turn upon him and sting him with venomous innuendo or attack him openly through the Socialist press. . . . The cry was raised, 'the grafter must go!' It was this that shocked his tender sensibilities, silenced his eloquent tongue and broke his noble and generous heart." Continuing, Mr. Debs writes: "There is a deep lesson in the melancholy and untimely death of Comrade Thomas McGrady. Let us hope that so much good may result from it that the cruel sacrifice may be softened by the atonement and serve the future as a noble and inspiring example. " While it is the duty of every member to guard the movement against the impostor, the chronic suspicion that a man who has risen above the mental plane of a scavenger is a 'grafter' is a besetting sin, and has done incalculable harm to the movement. The increasing cry from the same source that 10 [ 145 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS only the proletariat is revolutionary and that ' intellectuals' are middle-class reaction- aries is an insult to the movement, many of whose stanchest supporters are of the latter type. Moreover, it would imply by its sneering allusion to the 'intellectuals' that the proletariat are a brainless rabble, reveling in their base degeneracy and scorn- ing intellectual enlightenmeiiC'^ "Many a fine spirit . whp- -would have served the movement as an effective agitator and po-v|eir|iul advocattey^'lBilhg to the quick by the^Mif lash in the hand of a^ ' comrade,' has Jjdi^epped inta Ifilence sfffd faded into obscurity. ' S^ , ' ' Fortunately the ^Jniffueiace of these;, self- appointed censors is . waning. The move- ment is no longei; a mere fanatical sect. It has outgrown tKkt period in spite of its sentinels and' doorkeepers. "Between' watchful devotion, which guards against impostors and chronic heresy- hunting, which places a premium upon dirt and stupidity and imposes a penalty upon brains and self-respect, there is a difference . wide as the sea. The former is a virtue which cannot be too highly commended, the latter a vice which cannot be too severely condemned." I 146 ,] TO SOME SOCIALISTS The other quotation is from Mr. John Spargo, a Socialist who, in the service of the party, has traveled over the greater part of the United States, and whose writings are more widely read than those of any other American Socialist. It ap- peared in the New York Daily Call, Nov. 14, 1909: " One of the most pernicious and deplor- able things in connection with the present situation in the party is the fact that self- seeking demagogues, with more or less suc- cess, make it their business to create artificial divisions in our ranks, and to foster hatred and suspicion where comradeship and trust are so necessary. Take, for example, the attempt to range the proletariat against the so-called 'intellectuals' in the party: Not- withstanding the^ fact that our capitalist enemies enlist all the best trained intellects procurable to serve their interests, especially by poisoning the fountains of knowledge and confusing the minds of the wage- workers, and the fact that their activity can only be met by equally well trained intel- lects devoted to the Socialist cause, there are many in our ranks who would deprive the [147] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS Socialist cause of this service. They would keep out every man or woman who ventures to place superior education and mental train- ing at the disposal of the party. Has a comrade written a book which has pene- trated beyond the circumference of the Socialist circle, or does he or she occupy a position in professional life which compels attention from the press and the public, and makes it impossible for these to remain indifferent, then, instead of rejoicing at the fact, these narrow schismatics and sec- taries cry out in protest. Fearful lest they be overshadowed and no longer acknowl- edged as leaders, they resort to all the arts of knavery and demagoguery to destroy those whom they regard as rivals. That they rob the movement of great and vitally necessary services is to them nothing — they 'place their petty ambitions above the interests of the cause." * You cannot deny that the blessedness of ignorance, the contempt of knowledge, has been elevated into a doctrine in the Socialist movement in America. It is not always ingenuously put forth. Most often * Italics mine. — W. J. G. [148] TO SOME SOCIALISTS it is ingeniously disguised. But it is held, and somewhat widely held, and its manifes- tations are frequent. It is a doctrine which at the present time probably does more harm to the Socialist movement than any other factor. It keeps from the ranks thousands of able men who might be of inestimable help. On the other hand, it is not accept- able to the real proletariat, and it keeps them also from the ranks. To them it is a fan- tastic aberration. Furthermore, it tends to give common-sense men of whatever class who might be sympathetic toward the cause a totally false impression of the Socialist state and of Socialist civilization. Then, too, it cripples the movement in its primary work of educating the masses in social science; it defeats the purposes of the schools and study classes, and it limits the circulation of the press. While it does not altogether prevent the election of able men to the highest places in the gift of the party, it does unquestionably operate, in all the larger cities of the nation, to throw the local party machinery into the hands [ 149 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS of crafty men and to modify the tactics and spirit of the movement. The doctrine is not a doctrine of scientific Socialism. It is an old doctrine of the church, but it has been largely superseded even in the church. It is a curious anomaly to find it coming forth in the utterances of men who belong to the most advanced movement of the time — ^the movement of which Lassalle exultantly boasted that it was "armed with the complete culture of the century." Yet it is not a novel manifestation. It has appeared from time to time throughout the history of modern Socialism. Marx realized its danger sixty years ago. He had met with the same attitude, and he rebuked it in strong lan- guage. What the proletariat needed, he said, was to change themselves and make themselves worthy of power. Resigning from the Central Committee of the Com- munist Society in September, 1850, he wrote: "While we say to the working people: ' You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and wars between [150] TO SOME SOCIALISTS nations not only to change existing condi- tions but to change yourselves and make yourselves worthy of political power,' you, on the contrary, say, ' We ought to get power at once, or else give up the fight.' . . . Just as the democrats made a sort of fetish of the words 'the people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.' Like them you sub- stitute revolutionary phrases for revolu- tionary evolution." The Communists and Socialists of Europe learned better in time. There, in the hard battles of the last sixty years with the owning class, it was found that every mental gift and faculty that could possibly be drawn into the service of the workers was needed. And the result is that to-day in Europe intelligent and able men are at the head of the Socialist movement. It is not a proletarian doctrine. That is, it is not a doctrine commonly held by the working class of the world. Democracy increasingly makes provision for education; it increasingly gives leadership to men of education and ability. It could not do these things if hostility to education were [151] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS common among the proletariat. Only in the Socialist party, and then, for the most part, only here in America, where the move- ment is new and crude, does this doctrine develop. In its latent form, it comes largely as a consequence of the cult of ultra-pro- letarianism. The notion that the manual working class solely by itself, is, by some hocus-pocus method, to overthrow and dis- possess the capitalist class, leads easily, in untrained minds, to the notion that education is of little value. The doctrine is further fostered by that unfortunate dualistic use of the term "working class" which nine out of ten Socialists habitually, and for the most part innocently, employ. When they speak of production and ex- change-value and ethical recompense, they include in the term "working class" every one who renders useful service to society, or at least every one who in any way assists in the production and distribution of com- modities; but when they talk of organiza- tioji and education and discipline and revo- lution, they mean by the term only the class [152] TO SOME SOCIALISTS of manual workers employed at wages. It is the emphasis put upon this latter meaning that causes so much of the difficulty. This latent hostility to education may be sub-conscious or half -conscious; but it is real and abiding for all that. It may lie dormant for a long time. But it is a feeling easily roused into consciousness by dema- gogues, and demagogues are ever ready for their own purposes to incite the proleta- riat. The demagogues are themselves usu- ally professional men — men of more or less education. Sometimes they are men who feel that they have not been honored as their transcendent merits deserve. Inev- itably such men fall back upon the pro- letariat for support. Their demagogy is deliberate. They seek to prove that they are more proletarian than the working class itself. To the unthinking there is something attractive in the false humility of the educated or partly educated person who minimizes education. To discredit one's own possessions tends to put one on a level with the non-possessing; and the [153] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS pride that apes humility wins an easy victory. In other cases, the demagogy is less conscious. An educated man coming into a movement so avowedly proletarian inevitably feels himself on the defensive; he feels himself in the presence of a per- petual challenge. Almost insensibly he is led to take what he innocently imagines to be the proletarian attitude. Usually he knows nothing about the working class; he is conscious of a sense of detachment from his new allies; and like an alien guest he must flatter his host. He comes, in time, to speak the same language as does the disgruntled seeker of honors and power. Wherever one traces this ultra-proletarian view, with its sneer at education and at educated men, he finds its development not among the real proletarians, but among this group of "professional proletarians" — of men who profess to be something other than what they are. It takes strange forms at times, and utters itself in rich absurdities. In its blind obliv- iousness to the facts of life it taboos the [ 154 ] TO SOME SOCIALISTS words "leader" and "leadership" in the Socialist movement and assumes the equal intellectual and moral influence of the most unlettered man with the most gifted. " We are not followers; we need no leaders," is the slogan one sometimes hears from men who never move but when led. A phrase binds them, and a demagogue leads them. Men who look life in the face are not afraid of the word "leader." All men who honor intelligence and probity are proud to call themselves the followers of men wiser and better than themselves. Look back a third of a century, when the scientific movement was a propaganda movement as the Socialist movement now is, and recall the illustrious men who were proud to call themselves the followers of Darwin. Think of Huxley and Tyndall and Frankland and Grant Allen and Alfred Russel Wallace, men of the first grade of intelligence, honor and manliness, and note with what pride they accepted the word "follower." Are you better or wiser than they ? And how do you accommodate your disavowal of leaders and your denial [155] • SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS of leadership with your professed rigid allegiance to Karl Marx ? Then, too, at times, it utters itself in con- fident predictions regarding the place of "intellectuals" in the Socialist republic. "Under Socialism," says one very certain prophet of a semi-official sort, "there will be no ' intellectuals ' and no manual laborers. You [addressing an inquirer] seem to have forgotten the fundamental aim of Socialism, the abolition of classes. In a society in which everybody works and no one appro- priates the fruit of other people's labor, everybody is free to develop his intellectual powers." In other words, a reversion to barbarism. And this is a picture of the ideal Socialist state, "armed with the complete culture of the century"! The tragedy of the matter is, not that an occasional writer will make such a demagogic utterance, but that to numbers of men it appeals as a satisfactory picture of an ideal state. Socialism, it ought not to be forgotten, is social evolution; it is not a free-hand drawing made by an [156] TO SOME SOCIALISTS obliging prophet for the benefit of men an- gry, like Shakespeare's Jack Cade, that other men should be more learned than them- selves. As it climbs to far heights and attains its dominance, it discards what is outgrown and unfit, but it retains what is best — ^what men have sacrificed for and striven for through all ages. At all costs it will retain learning. Those students of Socialism who sincerely fear that the victory of the proletariat will mean a return of the dark ages, may find some confirmation of their fears in such utterances. But they can find none in the actual tendencies of things — in those living tides and currents by which intelligent Socialists test their estimates of a future state. The statement that Socialism involves the abolition of classes means no more than that Socialism involves the abolition of economic classes — of divisions of men whose material interests are so confiicting that necessarily they must fight for material advantage. It does not mean that Social- ism involves the abolition of specialized [157] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS kinds of occupation, intellectual and manual. No one who bases his picture of Socialism on observed facts and tendencies, rather than on Utopian dreams, can doubt that Socialism will bring about a greater and more widely prevalent specialization of function than we know to-day. Socialism means efficiency and progress — intellectual and moral progress as well as progress in the methods of producing commodities. No doubt it involves a greater mobility of labor — a greater and more varied effi- ciency of manual and even directive labor, so as to provide for readier transition from one occupation to another. But there are thousands of occupations useful to social life for efficiency in which even a lifetime of training is hardly sufficient; there are occupations the practice of which requires the uninterrupted time of individuals, and there are innate differences in men which fit some for one occupation and some for another. The naive notion of a society in which a Darwin would be compelled to manipulate [158] TO SOME SOCIALISTS a linotype machine for five hours a day; or a Marx to handle a street-sweeper's broom for, say, four hours a day; or a Burbank, or a Pasteur, or a Metchnikoff, or a Huxley, or any one of tens of thousands of lesser scientific men to sell goods in a state or municipal department store, is a notion which excites among normal men either derision or disgust. "A man of science," says John Fiske, "should never be called upon to earn a living, for that is a wretched waste of energy in which the highest intellectual power is sure to suffer serious detriment and runs a risk of being frittered away into hopeless ruin." A so- ciety that should harness its men of genius to the treadmill of routine labor would bring about the immediate decay of scientific research and investigation, the dismantling of our laboratories and museums and observatories and the dumping into the scrap-heap of most, if not all, the triumphs of intellectual endeavor. Is it not, on the whole, likely that under Socialism we shall have an enormous in- [159] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS crease of social and intellectual service? Is it not true that most of this service can be rendered only by men specially set apart to do it ? Is it not likely that we shall have muscular men who can load a steamship or fell a tree better than they can paint a Sistine Madonna; skillful men who can run a locomotive or put together the delicate parts of a machine better than they can compose a Moonlight Sonata; deft and nim- ble-fingered men who can ply the productive arts better than they can formulate a theory of physical evolution or a theory of economic influences upon history? Will it not be best that they should do these things to the exclusion of other things, and is it not likely that a society based upon the foster- ing of the common good will so ordain? And will not the thousands and hundreds of thousands of men and women so set apart be "intellectuals" as differentiated from manual laborers? They will be; and no one doubts it in his sober moments. It is only when an evil purpose is to be served by a demagogic plea that any Socialist [i6o:i TO SOME SOCIALISTS writer or speaker pretends to believe other- wise; or when roused by a fanatical spirit that a Socialist follower does actually believe it. It ought to be readily seen that in no movement is intelligence so indispensable, and in no movement is demagogy so harm- ful as in the Socialist movement. Intelli- gence, discipline and ability to organize— these, according to Karl Kautsky, in his Social Revolution, are "the psychological prerequisites for a Socialist society." He reiterates this over and over again. There can be no Socialism, there cannot even be a powerful Socialist movement, without these. "The proletariat will require," he says, "high intelligence, strong discipline, perfect organization of its great masses; and these must, at the same time, have become most indispensable in economic life if it is to obtain the strength sufficient to overcome so formidable an opponent." Well, has the proletariat generally this high intelligence ? Is not the chief Socialist activity — that of educating the non-Socialist . 11 [161] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS workers — ^based upon the assumption that the proletariat generally has not this needed intelligence? Do you not admit this in declaring that the Socialist part of the proletariat is the most intelligent part of it? Why do you tell the non-Socialist proletariat that what it most needs is en- lightenment; why do you call upon it to read and think, and why do you bombard it with books and pamphlets ? Because in spite of your proneness now and then to play the demagogue, or to listen to demagogues, you really value intelligence as the lever by which the proletariat is to be emancipated. And as you value intelligence so also do you value, at least in your more sober moments, the men who have this intelligence, and you advance them to the places of responsibility and trust in your movement. The Socialist movement needs not only a constantly increasing intelligence in the mass, but the exceptional intelligence of individual men. It does not matter whether this intelligence is that of individuals from [162] TO SOME SOCIALISTS the proletariat's own ranks, or of individuals from other classes who give themselves to the workers' cause. Theoretically, it might be better that this intelligence should be developed within the ranks of the manual working class, rather than imported from the professional class. It would seem, in- deed, on first thought, that the fundamental tactic of the Socialist movement, that of uncompromising class conflict, could have originated only among the manual workers. And yet it is a fact which the whole history of the movement affirms, that this tactic has come to the movement from outside — ^that the philosophy of it and the reasons for it have been given by educated men. The very nature of the . industrial worker's toil prompts him to seek an immediate minor advantage even at the expense of an ultimate greater advantage. Why else is it that in this nation there are approximately 2,000,000 members of organized labor and only 53,000 members of the Socialist party P You forget your own principle of the economic interpretation of history; you for- [163] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS get that the manual worker is, by the nature of his environment and occupation, an opportunist. You forget also that it is the prime distinction of the so-called "intel- lectuals" who have come into the move- ment that they have given the workers such concepts as those of class consciousness, of the class struggle and of uncompromising tactics. Between these men and the uninstructed proletariat there is naturally little antagon- ism. In general, whatever suspicion has been created, whatever antagonism has been awakened, has been accomplished through demagogy working for evil ends. It needs to be said plainly that there is no more shameless misleader of the Socialist proletariat than the demagogue who tries to create antagonism against the educated men in the movement. In the bourgeois world, the man of high intellectual gifts is too frequently a retainer of the capitalist class, and is thus an agent employed against the workman. But in the Socialist move- ment he plays no such part. He is simply [164] TO SOME SOCIALISTS a soldier in the Socialist army, who happens to be furnished with better weapons for use against the common foe. The very use of the term "intellectual" as a name here in America is ignorant and absurd. In France, where numbers of educated men have come into the movement for the sake of personal advancement, there is some justification for using the term in a depreciatory sense. It was there that the term was first so employed, and it is the meaning given there that the demagogue has vaguely in mind when he uses it here. But there is no justification for its use in that sense in America. The movement here is as yet too small to draw men with that motive. Nor would the name ever have been so used here but for the presence in the movement of numbers of crafty men, who have made it a means of awakening prejudice against others more useful than themselves. Can you imagine what the Socialist movement would be without its educated men.'* Can you imagine where it would [165] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS be to-day without its Marx, its Engels, its Lassalle, its Liebknecht, its Kautsky, its Adler and Labriola and a hundred others who could be named? What would the movement in Russia be without its " in- tellectuals " ? Where would the demagogues themselves have got the few ideas and the few phrases which constitute their mental and vocal machinery? Could any man working at the forge or bench have written Das Kapital? Who are they who formulate the inarticulate instincts of the working class, who carry its cause into the public arenas, who define its mission, who point out its goal, who warn it what gifts and lures to reject and what demands to insist upon, who tell it that its salvation is to come only by carrying on its combat without compromise ? Are they the workers themselves ? Rarely. The men who do these things are the "intellectuals" — ^the men of intelligence and ability who come into the movement from other classes. The proletariat is for the most part unin- structed; and just to the extent that it is [166] TO SOME SOCIALISTS uninstructed it is the sport and plaything of its political and economic masters. It fights their battles, it permits itself to be robbed and starved and beaten, it throws itself to the support of adventurers and dem- agogues. Only as it is instructed by trained intelligence does it learn how to protect itself, or advance toward its eman- cipation. The Socialist movement is of necessity a working-class movement. It will remain that, no matter what any one wishes or fears. But the working class is something greater and broader than the aggregate of persons who do manual labor. And the Socialist movement is even greater and broader than the working class. There is no more place for class distinctions in that movement than there will be in the Socialist republic. There is no room in that move- ment for the demagogue. There is no room for the plea that ignorance is better than intelligence, that incompetency is better than efficiency, that the man who works with his hands is by reason of the nature [167] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS of his employment better than the man who writes or teaches or organizes or plans, or who does any other useful service to society. To a real Socialist, it is a humilia- tion to feel the necessity of uttering these words. But until you learn them, until you also learn to put down with contempt every manifestation of the fetish-worship of ignorance, you are waging a futile struggle in the dark. You are battling, not against Capitalism, but against Socialism. So much for the matter of proletarian vs. "intellectual." If I have dwelt overlong upon it, I have done so because it seems to me the most serious subject of present concern to the movement. But the other matters I have mentioned need also your conscientious thought. What profits it that you learn to deride the jingoism of a nation, if you exalt the jingoism of a party and a class ? Is it well to forswear your individual judgment of right and wrong and servilely to bind yourselves to accept as right the momentary caprice and misjudgment of numbers ? Is it not a better proof of loyalty [168] TO SOME SOCIALISTS to your cause to reject the conventional jingo phrase, and to say, with Carl Schurz, "My nation [or party or class], when right, to be kept right; when wrong to be set right"? And is it well or wise, for a trumpery appearance of momentary gain, with all its evil consequences in the future, to make yourselves parties to the wrongful acts of your fellows? In accepting as a sacred principle the sentiment of undeviat- ing party regularity, you are called upoi^ to do just that thing. Is it well, either, to accept the too com- mon conviction in the Socialist movement that all needful truth has been discovered, and that most of it is to be found within the pages of Karl Marx? With what face can you laugh at religious zealots when they appeal to their holy books? In Marx you find what you find in the Christian apostles : though at times he deprecates undue faith in the immediacy of great changes, yet the refrain, "The time is at hand!" is reiterated throughout his work. He failed in some of his prophecies; he wrote in a formative [169] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS time when no man could possibly measure all the current tendencies; there is much in his pages which, if not absolutely con- tradictory, at least furnishes the material for contradictory schools of Marxists. Yet the orthodox are asked to accept his literal words as the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. No more Socialist books should be written, say some; what is needed is the learning of Marx by rote. To every voicing of inquiry or doubt comes the Mohammedan response, "It is written," or " There is no god but the Allah of Eco- nomic Force, and Karl Marx is his prophet." If the substance is in the Koran, what is newly written is unnecessary; if not there, it is false, and in neither case is it to be tolerated. Do history and science make possible the sustaining of any such assump- tion of infallibility? And yet belief in that infallibility you seek to make a Socialist article of creed. What profits it, too, that you are taught to look with tolerant scorn upon Owen and Fourier and Saint-Simon as " Utopians," [170] TO SOME SOCIALISTS if in your imagination of the Socialist state you endow it with conditions of bliss which even a Mohammedan dervish or a Christian hermit hesitates to picture in his imagined heaven? To hear your rhapsodies, one might think that under Socialism pain would be eliminated, that strife would cease, and that pride and anger and self-seeking and jealousy and hate and treachery would no more be known, and that every one would be learned and kind and just. One sort of utopianism you may have outgrown; but in its place you have developed one that is more at variance with the facts of life than was that of the early Socialists. We may rightly expect that under Socialism vast changes in human conditions will take place. We may rightly expect the elimina- tion of poverty, the widening of opportu- nities for self-development, the realization of greater freedom. And for these expecta- tions and ideals men nobly give themselves to the cause, to live for it and to die for it. But men are still men, under whatever economic system they live. The fratricidal [171] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS struggle for the means of life may be termi- nated, and men may still reveal the ape and the tiger. In the Socialist movement the economic motive for internal strife is but rarely, if ever, present. And yet who will care to say that strife has therein been eliminated, or that the conduct of Socialists toward one another differs in any material degree from that of the members of other parties ? You will do well to confine your dreams within scientific bounds. Fanaticism has always been a curse to the race, and the employment of ill means for supposedly good ends a greater one. Yet how often you sanction the one and condone the other. That in a movement professing to be scientific there should be the slightest tolerance for that mad violence of the emotions, that dethronement of reason, which we know as fanaticism, is an anomaly. Yet perhaps everywhere, outside Milwaukee, in the Socialist party* of America there is always that degree of latent fanaticism which makes it possible at any moment, by the raising of a false issue or [172] TO SOME SOCIALISTS the making of a false charge, to foment a bitter and prolonged strife. How many utterly needless controversies have been waged these last ten years ! Though some of them arose spontaneously, many were deliberately planned for evil ends. And yet few of them could have arisen, or could have been fought with such flaming anger, but for the latent fanaticism in the ranks. But fanaticism, evil as it is, is less of a violation of a scientific creed than is Jesuitry. After all, we cannot be sure about our goals — about the ends for which we strive. Every end for which man has striven has been found, when achieved, or partly achieved, a disappointment. Every politi- cal or social or religious cause, from the triumph of which men have expected so much, has been found in victory to be less than the thing imagined. Often it has been found to be the opposite of what men desired. Socialism itself will prove a disappointment to its devotees. But every advancement of ethical standards has been a permanent gain. Every moralization of the means [173] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS which men employ in their contests — whether in war, or poHtics or religion — has lifted up the race. Shall we not say then, with Prof. Felix Adler, that means are the important thing and that ends are the less important thing .-^ Let us with might and main strive for the ideal which possesses us; but let us do it with a willing- ness to suffer an endless chain of defeats rather than compromise the means which we employ — knowing that the sanctioning of fanaticism or the condonation of Jesuitry invariably reacts upon our cause. Let us also be tolerant in our own ranks of that freedom of thought and of speech which we so insistently claim for ourselves against the ruling powers. Let us further- more be careful about ascribing to capital- ism such prevailing ethical standards as happen not to please us — standards which often have a life history contemporaneous with civilized man. Let us be equally careful not to ascribe to capitalism vices innate in human nature and from which mankind has never been free. An indict- [174] TO SOME SOCIALISTS ment is best drawn when most exact; and the capitalist system, with its record of blood and oppression, has enough in its history to warrant conviction and the death sentence without swelling the indictment with unprovable charges. Let us further- more remember always that the appeal to the working class to awaken to a conscious- ness of its numbers and power — -to a sense of its brute strength — is a futile appeal, at once barbarous and ineffective; that it is only by an appeal to its sense of justice that an effective response is gained; and that even if the fact were otherwise the result would be fatal to the Socialist ideal. And lastly, let us remember that the enlightened class struggle of to-day is not a medieval peasants' revolt, but the struggle of a class which in the main identifies its interests with the ultimate interests of all men; and that in so far as it does this it makes for the Socialist republic, and in so far as it fails to do this it makes for reaction and chaos. This Socialist movement is slowly, almost imperceptibly, but surely day by day, [175] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS molding and making " a noble and puissant nation" — a natidn that develops internation- ally within and despite the many political states that now separate men from their fellows; a nation that welds the conflicting wills and prejudices of men into a common spirit and that presages a commonwealth which shall know not race nor class nor frontier or boundary. In the "mighty youth" of this nation there must inevitably arise many evils and confusions — strivings at cross purposes, a babel of voices about the work in hand; in the minds of the build- ers wild illusions and false estimates, and in their hearts fierce prejudices and bitter hates. We may conveniently blind our- selves to these evils; we may nurture a false pride which forbids their recognition, or their mention when recognized. But we do so to the loss of the movement and of the nascent nation of which the movement is the directing force. For the flaws and faults built into the foundation weaken the super- structure for all time. Be it our mission so to build that the structure shall endure. [176] CHAPTER V TO MR. JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN They tell me, Mr. Smith, that you are not a Socialist. Why aren't you.? Is it because your preacher, or your local poli- tician, has told you that Socialism isn't at all "the right thing"? Or have you read somewhere the statement of some college head that Socialism won't do.? Or has the great Theodore himself in- fluenced you by means of one of his pro- nouncements regarding undesirable citizens and undesirable social systems .? Or are you merely indifferent to other than your immediate concerns ? They tell me, also, that you are a member of the union in your trade. So far, so good. You recognize at least a part of your interests as against those of your employers. As a member of your union you are engaged 12 [177] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS in a struggle for better conditions, shorter hours and higher wages. Or if it happens that the conditions, hours and wages in your trade are about as favorable as you can for the time expect, you are at least engaged in a contest to maintain them at their present level. You recognize a common interest with your fellows in your own trade. Isn't it about time now to consider a wider and fuller community of interest — a oneness of interest with all men who work for wages? Trade-unionism is the first manifestation of this sense of oneness of interest among the workers. Long before the workmen have reached a sense of the need of a reor- ganized social system, their immediate needs in the matter of wages, hours and conditions prompt them to associate for offense and defense against their employers. Have you any employer in your union? Certainly not — not even the best of the "good" employers. Common sense tells you that the employer has one set of interests, while you have a diflferent set of interests. Con- sequently you do not think it best for the [ 178 ] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN welfare of your union to include employers in its membership. That difference of interest, John, is one that runs throughout all the processes of modern society. You will realize the fact when you stop to think about it. The trouble is, you haven't thought much about it. You go along from day to day, looking up for counsel and wisdom to this or that statesman or preacher or editor or college dignitary. These are all very profound men, no doubt, but the trouble for you is that they all live in a different world from yours; they do not do the kind of work you do or get the kind of pay you do; they do not see life from your standpoint; and consequently the things they tell you to believe and to do are pretty apt to be bad for you. You know, for instance, without any one telling you, that your employer's interests in the matter of hours, wages and conditions in your particular trade are antagonistic to your own interests. Yet you permit yourself to be persuaded by plausible advisers from your employer's [179] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS class that in a thousand other matters you have identical interests with your employer; that you may, without loss, vote for his candidates for the legislature, Congress and the Presidency. That word "class" may trouble you somewhat. For perhaps you have heard that it is a wicked and seditious word, used only by disturbers of the peace and fomenters of hatred. But it ought not to trouble you, no matter what warnings you have heard. For it expresses a very manifest and concrete thing in this life of ours. A class — that is, an economic class — is an aggregate of persons whose specific eco- nomic functions and interests are similar. We may all have similar general interests; we may all desire peace, health and plenty; but our specific interests vary and conflict in accord with the different methods by which we make a living. We call those aggregates of persons whose functions and interests differ but in degree, and not in kind, economic groups or sections; but those larger divisions, founded upon funda- [180] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN mental differences in modes of getting a living, we call economic classes. Your employer, for instance, whose inter- ests you recognize as different from your own, is an owner of machinery and tools, up- on which you work for a wage. You make goods for him, which he sells in the market, paying you a part of their value and keeping a part for himself. Or he may be the owner of a store or a transportation system or a help-employing farm. We call this man a member of the owning or the capitalist class. He may be a small employer — ^that is, he may be a comparatively poor man and own very little machinery or a very small store; we should then call him a middle- class man, or a petty manufacturer or petty dealer. Or he may be a great employer — an owner of very much machinery, or a very large store, and we should then call him a magnate. But middle class and magnate class are after all only two groups of the great owning class, or capitalist class, and their fundamental in- terests are the same. You, on the other hand, who have no machinery or no business plant, [181] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS and must therefore, in order to live, work for the capitahst, we call a working-class man, or a wage-earning producer, or a proletarian. No matter what the Eminent Persons tell you, the fact of economic classes is something you cannot afford to lose sight of for a single moment. I said that you allow yourself to be per- suaded that in a thousand matters outside your immediate trade you have interests iden- tical with those of your employer. Let us see if you have such identical interests. To look into the matter we shall have to take some account of this organization of things we call society, and particularly of that division of it known as the working class. Every social state, any time and any- where, is based upon certain arrangements for producing and distributing goods. The sum of these arrangements in any particular time is known as an economic system. Every economic system builds up a super- structure of law, custom and administra- tion. In other words, any particular social system, including the general form of govern- [182] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN ment, will be found to be a reflex of the economic system that underlies it. A slave system produces one sort of society and government, a serf system another, and a wage system another yet. Sometimes, as in the United States previous to the Civil War, the anomaly is shown of two widely different societies, founded upon radically different economic systems, existing side by side under one general government. The anomaly was rendered possible only by State autonomy, which permitted political forms and institutions in the Southern States to accord with the slave system and political forms and institutions in the North- ern States to accord with the wage system. No wonder that Abraham Lincoln spoke of the nation as a house divided against itself and declared that it could not stand. On the other hand, political forms may for a time differ somewhat in two countries or among two peoples with like economic systems. But in the main, even though one nation may be headed by a powerless king and the other by a powerful president, the [183] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS general social structure, the code of laws, the mode of administration, the standards of right and wrong, in the one nation will re- semble those of the other nation just about in proportion as the underlying economic sys- tems of the two nations resemble each other. The economic system under which we live, as you are aware, John, is known as the capitalist system. It is not an old system, as systems go, dating back only about 150 years. That is, its infancy began about that long ago. But it was a good- while in its infancy; and the time is short, say a few decades, since it reached any- thing like its present power. No one is criminally responsible for it. Like Topsy, it just grew, for it couldn't help growing. It got its start when the first great inventions were made and when steam was applied to factory work. The result of these changes was to take the workman away from his tools and to lodge him in a factory or machine shop, where he had to work upon machines owned by other men. He had to do this or starve. He had to give [184] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN over the home work which before he had done with his own tools, and take the wages offered him by the owner of the machines. The advantage of this mode of producing goods was very soon apparent. That is, the advantage to the owner. The advantage to the worker was not so marked. But facto- ries increased in number, capital gradually became concentrated, and there was soon created a large class of workers owning little or nothing and having no means of making a living except by working for others. This class has persisted to the present time, constantly increasing its numbers relative to the whole population. It now numbers, in the United States, some 20,234,000 persons out of some 29,073,000 persons engaged in gainful occupations. It is the class to which you belong, John, even though you are not wholly aware of the fact — even though you are inclined to take the words of a Strenuous and Distinguished Person that you are just as good as anyone else, and that nothing else than the Square Deal is ever dealt out to you. [185] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS Let us now consider somewhat the situa- tion and composition of this class. First, we want a definition, and that is a hard thing to frame, because different persons mean very different things when they speak of the working class. Roughly, the term may be said to mean the aggregate of persons employed for wages at more or less common tasks. Uncommon tasks, requir- ing exceptional training, or education, or ability to manage men or affairs, are of course outside the working-class province. Perhaps we may better say that the term means the aggregate of persons who have nothing to barter for a livelihood but their muscle power and manual skill, and who are employed for wages at common tasks set by other men. This class thus com- prises the toilers in the more common cleri- cal and distributive tasks in trade and transportation, the manual toilers in the manufacturing, mechanical and mining in- dustries, in personal and domestic service and miscellaneous day labor, and hired persons in agriculture and the other rural [186] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN industries. Mr. Lucien Sanial, the well- known statistician, makes their number in 1900, 20,393,137. My own figures are almost identical. Rearranging the census groups in order to separate, in so far as may be done, employer from employed, the numbers of the groups in this class and their rate of increase from 1890 to 1900 appear as follows: THE WORKING CLASS. Per cent, of increase No. 1900 1890 Clerical and distributive workers 48.4 23.8 26.3 44.7 37.4 3,825,875 6,538,147 2,618,910 4,623,157 2,629,262 2,578,087 Mechanical, mfg. and mining workers Personal and domestic workers 5,279,586 2,072,540 Farm and rural workers . General workers *3,194,073 1,913,373 Total 34.4 20,234,851 15,037,659 * The officials of the census of 1900 believe that approx- imately 582,522 children engaged in farm labor were omitted from enumeration in 1890. [187] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS You will notice that the clerical and distributive workers show the greatest per- centage of increase. The fact is a striking illustration of the increasing importance of trade and transportation as compared with mere production. Fewer men are needed in making things, and more men are needed in selling and advertising and deliv- ering things. The productive workers in shop and factory not only show the lowest rate of increase among the workers, but among the total of gainfully occupied per- sons their proportion has actually fallen off. They formed 23.2 per cent, of this total in 1890, but in 1900 they formed but 22.5 per cent. Production has enormouslyi increased, but the number of producers advances by a rate only slightly greater than that of the population. Consolidation of industries and the perfecting of machinery and of trade processes have worked their way with a savage relentlessness, displacing many men. The extent of this displace- ment is in many industries enormous. In flouring and grist mills and in the manu- [188] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN facture of dye-stuflfs and extracts it is 22 per cent.; in canning and preserving fruits and vegetables, 27 per cent. ; in brick- and tile-making and in the manufacture of wool hats, 40 per cent. ; in the manufacture of wrought pipe, 52 per cent.; of billiard tables and materials, 55 per cent.; of cut and wrought nails, 73 per cent., and of wire, 80 per cent. In 22 of the specific census groups of manufacturing, mechan- ical and mining workers, employing 1,658,526 workers in 1890, there was a decrease of 100,000 by 1900. Other branches of production partly com- pensate for this loss. But these gains have been mostly among the new and developing industries. The older and more stable industries generally reveal but slight, if any, increases. This tendency toward dis- placement, moreover, does not promise to lessen. Consolidation is as yet but in its dawn, and the possibilities of the machine would seem to be almost infinite. Every day sees some improvement in mechanism, and were it not for the thousands of inven- [189] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS tions securely locked up for fear that they will make useless some of the machinery now in use, the rate of improvement would be much greater. The growth in the number of personal and domestic workers is also but slight. Yet the increase of luxury is notorious. Perhaps never since the days of the Caesars has there been such wasteful expenditure as now. One would expect to find a tremen- dous growth of personal service, yet the total number of domestic and personal workers has failed to hold its own relative to the other groups. It has gained 26.3 per cent, in actual numbers, but its proportion of the whole body of occupied persons has fallen slightly, being but 9.01 per cent., as against 9.12 per cent, in 1890. Here again, though to a slighter extent, is concentration at work. There is a growth of collective personal service instead of individual per- sonal service. The modern rush from individual homes to hotels and apartment houses results in applying the services of a few servants to many families. One [190] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN servant does service for many masters, and twenty servants in a modern hotel probably do the work which would employ one hun- dred in a society living in individual homes. The farm and rural workers numbered one-fifth of the total, and apparently they in- creased in numbers by 44.7 per cent. But if the surmise of the census officials is correct, and it probably is, that nearly 600,000 workers were omitted in the preceding census— the increase would be less than 23 per cent. Last come the general laborers, with an increase of 37.4 per cent. From numbering 8.4X per cent, of all occupied persons in 1890, they now number 9.04 per cent. The burden and hardship of the pres- ent order rests most heavily upon these workers. TooUess, unskilled, unorganized, overworked and underpaid, the first sufferers from a depression in business and the last to benefit by better times, they are pecul- iarly the victims of the capitalist system. This working class numbers nearly 70 per cent, of the total of gainfully occupied persons. While two of its larger groups — [191] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS those of the factory and shop workers and of personal and domestic workers — increase but slowly, actually declining proportion- ately, the class as a whole increases steadily at the expense of every other class. Though it is commonly called the "working class," a more scientific designation would be the "workable" class. For its units, no matter how eager they may be for employment, are worked only when capital so determines, and capital so determines only when it sees a probable profit ahead. The workers have no means of creating or controlling opportunities for employment; they must depend entirely upon capital, which owns the tools and other means of production; and they must therefore suffer long periods of enforced idleness, with the inevitable consequence of privation and suffering. The statistics of unemployment grow more ghastly. For the census year 1900 no less than 6,468,964 persons were idle for periods of from one to 12 months. This number is nearly one-fourth of the total of occupied persons in the nation. Here are the figures : [192] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN UNEMPLOYMENT— 1900. 1 to 3 mos. 4 to 6 mos. 7 to 12 moa. Total. Males 2,593,136 584,617 2,069,546 485,379 564,790 171,496 5,227,472 1,241,492 Females Total 3,177,753 2,654,925 736,286 6,468,964 The rate of unemployment, moreover, increased greatly from 1890 to 1900. Out of 140 occupation groups specified for males, 125 show decreased percentages of employ- ment since 1890, while out of 63 groups specified for females, 56 show decreased per- centages. Even among the 22 exceptions, eight groups show virtually no increase. There are thus, out of 203 occupation groups, only 14 that show a sensibly in- creased rate of employment when compared with 1890. They tell you sometimes — ^the Eminent Persons whose trade it is to defend and excuse the present system — ^that much of this unemployment is voluntary; that it is caused by the action of the workers them- 13 [ 193 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS selves in leaving their jobs. These retainers could not make this statement with sincerity if they studied the figures; but, then, of course, it is not their business to study the figures. As a matter of record, strikes have hardly an appreciable effect upon the general tables of unemployment. Let us take an extreme case — ^the great building trades strike of six years ago in New York City. This strike, according to the State Labor Commissioner, was responsible for 10,593 workers being idle at the end of September, 1904. But, according to the census, there were, in 1900, with no general strike to swell the record, 257,012 persons in New York City idle for more than one month, 26,021 of whom were idle for more than seven months. Unusually great as was this number of voluntary idlers from the building trades in 1904, it represented but 4 per cent, of the number unemployed during the normal year of 1900. For the State of New York it represented but one per cent., and for the nation only an infini- tesimal fraction of one per cent. [194] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN This, then, is that working class to which you belong, with something of its composi- tion, of its relation to the prevailing system, and of the tendencies that govern it. It grows in numbers, both absolutely and relatively, but the demand for its service fails to increase sufficiently to keep the toilers at work. The cheaper production that comes from consolidation and improved machinery does not provide the displaced workers with other jobs. Recurring periods of stoppages of work are an inevitable part of the capitalist system; and as that system develops, with increasing numbers seeking the labor that a lessening number can per- form, the volume of unemployment must necessarily grow. This working class has, in the main, no productive property of its own. Some of its members have deposits in savings banks, and these deposits are loaned to owners of businesses; but this remote and indirect mode of ownership does not give the workers any share in the control of these properties. Having no ownership, they must work upon the [195] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS terms dictated by the owners. They must, in the main, work for low wages, for long hours, under hard conditions. They must brave danger, they must suffer hurt, they must endure unhealthful surroundings, they must undergo long periods of impoverish- ment due to shut-downs which they cannot prevent. It would seem — would it not.-* — that something ought to be done about it all; and that society, in its organized form, the state, which professes to be the guardian of every man's welfare, should ordain a fairer order. But social and governmental systems, John, are not run for the benefit of the working class. It does not make any differ- ence (except in degree) whether this working class is a slave class, a serf class or a wage- earning class. The social structure that arises upon the foundations of an economic system is always one that accords as fully as possible with the interests of the owning class. Of course the owning class cannot have everything, particularly in a society wherein the workers have the ballot. But it takes [196] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN everything it can get and safely hold. Some- times, in its fatuous will to seize more than it can safely hold, it will even jeopard all its possessions and its very existence. It matters little to you if there should be temporary fights between factions of the owning class. Just now you may observe, John, a very spirited conflict, though fre- quently degenerating into sham battle and farce, between the middle class and the magnate class. Both of them call to you for help. The middle class warns you against the enormous acquisitions of wealth and power by the magnate class, and the magnate class in turn warns you against any disturbance of the sacred relations of business. One tells you that the other, if allowed to go on, will soon own every- thing while you own nothing, and the other tells you that unless you allow it to go on and acquire everything it wants, you will have no work and wages. But both of them really want the same system of things. That is, they both want rent, interest and profit to continue; they want the perpetua- [197] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS tion of the wage system and of competition in the means of Ufe. But the middle class wants some restraint put upon the magnate class. It likes the game, but it wants the rules changed so that the best players can- not make all the winnings. It is all one to you, John. Whichever wins, your share will be about the same. Both are but fac- tions of the great owning class ; they are con- cerned with their own interests, and they are not concerned with yours. When you take sides with either against the other you only sacrifice your own interests. It is this great owning class which in the main determines what laws shall be passed, what judges, governors, legislators. Con- gressmen and Presidents shall be elected, and what persons shall go to jail. Of course the two factions do not always agree about the laws and the governors and judges. Indeed, they sometimes differ very widely. But they take pains that the en- acted law and the elected person shall be "safe" from the standpoint of capitalism. Very rarely do they so far forget themselves, [198] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN in their mutual rivalries, as to let a radical working-class law get on the statute books or a radical working-class man get into office. You may have noted also that this owning class, for all its powers, does not poll all the votes. It polls, in fact, very few of them. Neither does it jfight the battles in times of war. It doesn't have to. It has something better. It calls upon your class to vote its ballots and to fight its battles — and you cheerfully and often enthusiastically comply. You wouldn't if you knew better. But there's the rub — ^you don't know any better. Just as far as the economic con- flict is perceived by you — ^that is, to just the extent that the wages, hours and con- ditions in your workshop may be influenced by united action against your employer — ^you are awake. But though this phase of the economic conflict is the most per- ceptible one — ^the one easiest for a near- sighted man to see — it is not the most important phase. Beyond a certain point, John, even as you are beginning to see, your union cannot [199] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS better your hours, wages or conditions. It cannot in any case save you from panics and unemployment. The other men have the machinery, the railroads, the steam- boats, the coal-lands and about everything else worth while. They are able to defeat you and your comrades in the majority of your strikes. From the army of out- of-works, even in these most "prosperous" times, they can readily fill every place vacated by you. What matters it if you need food, clothing and a thousand com- forts for yourselves, your wives and your children.'* They also need things — silks, wines, automobiles, country estates, city palaces. They need other things — legisla- tors. Congressmen, judges, editors and the like, and some of these things are expensive. And their needs come first. If they gave up to your needs, there wouldn't be so much left for themselves. Their first duty is to themselves, as they see it, and besides they have the power — which you haven't — of saying who shall be served first. They own and you work. They deter- [200] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN mine the rules oi the game. You obey, or you don't play. Their will is dominant throughout all the processes of law and administration. It will be so as long as they own the machinery of production. A like dominance will prevail as long as any one part of the community owns this machinery. It would not matter if to- morrow every present member of the own- ing class were dislodged from ownership, so long as a new set of owners were put in their places. Only by society as a whole assuming the ownership of the means of production and distribution will it be pos- sible for you to get your rightful share of the product of your toil. Only so will it be possible for you even to be sure of the opportunity of toil when you want it. But you cannot bring about any such result so long as you may be persuaded that under the private ownership of the social means of production your own and your employers' interests are identical. In a collectivist society your interests would indeed be the same as those of other men; [201] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS and it is this ideal of an ultimate identity of all men's interests that impels your clearer-sighted brothers to wage warfare against a class. The Union men in the Civil War waged such a conflict: they were inspired by the ideal of a stronger and fairer union in the future, but they knew such a union was impossible until the powers of a sectional class were subdued. The crying of "Peace!" when there was no peace they held to be copperheadism ; they knew that acquiescence in peace with- out victory for the Union side meant the continuance of intolerable evils ; they recog- nized a present duty of warfare to insure an ultimate unity. Their memorable struggle was a political warfare; this is an economic and a social warfare. So long as you can be aifected by the cry of "Peace!" the contest proceeds haltingly and confusedly; just so long your employer and his fellow-employers will arrange among themselves, directly or in- directly, the conditions under which you work and live. They do not, as you know, [ 202 ] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN want the same things that you do. They want to pay low wages, and you want to receive high wages. They want you to work long hours, and you want to work short hours. The time you want to your- selves for leisure or amusement or culture they want you to spend in producing more goods for them. They want you to com- pete against one another for jobs, and you want to agree among yourselves about jobs and wages and to bargain collectively. They want a large share of what you produce, and you want the full value of your product. You realize all this as between yourself and your immediate employer, but you do not realize it as between all employers and all workmen. You do not realize that if you and your fellow-workers were so minded, you might vastly better your lot. You are numerous enough. But you lack that sense of oneness of interest with all workers as against all employers which would impel you to unite with your fellows to bring about a social change. Yet that social change is coming, and [203] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS coming through you and your fellows. You cannot forever hesitate and hold back. You cannot forever accept the plausible arguments of those who would keep you divided. Nor can you, as your conscious- ness awakens to a sense of what might be on this planet, remain satisfied with the mean lot and the narrow horizon of the average worker's life. Neither can you fail to see, as the contest between capital and labor becomes more pronounced, and as its issues are carried into legislatures and the courts, that it is capital's control of governmental powers which ultimately de- feats you. So seeing, you cannot fail to act; you cannot fail to strive in union with your fellows for the conquest of the political powers. You may delight in the plausible arguments of the retainers; you may even wish always to be so pleasantly deluded. But forces mightier than your wish make for your liberation. Association in toil at like tasks; a growing realization of the impossibility of "rising to another sphere"; a frank acceptance of a working-class [204] JOHN SMITH, WORKINGMAN career; daily training in mutual helpfulness and mutual sacrifice, breed in you and your fellows the sense of a oneness of interest among all workers and a collectivist ideal of life. Against your will you are led to Socialism, as millions of your fellows have been led. You take your place in the ranks and become one in the great army of progress. What matters it that in the Socialist movement you see grave faults? Is your own union free from them.? Has not each movement — each organization of men — faults peculiar to itself.? If an ideal and a purpose too fiercely held produce suspicion and hatred and fanaticism — ^those sur- vivals of primitive man — does not a vague ideal and an indefinite aim produce sloth and cowardice and weakness? But were the faults of the Socialist movement many times greater than they are, the remedy is yet with you. For it is your movement; it has no interests other than yours; it asks your co-operation, and you may make it what you will. It has, of course, its definite [205] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS foundation principles, and you cannot wrench it from these; it will not permit itself to be warped from its revolutionary purpose of transforming a fratricidal so- ciety of warring states and classes into an international fellowship. And unless you accept these principles and this purpose and until you have given over your sub- servience to the men who mislead you, you have no place within its ranks and no power to affect it. But within these bounds you can make it your medium for winning a world. Divided among yourselves, and fighting a few desultory skirmishes with the antiquated weapons of the strike and the boycott, you are defeated and pressed back. United, disciplined and equipped, and made conscious of your oneness of inter- est with all other workers, you may move forward to victory. [206] CHAPTER VI TO THE SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS You doubt Socialism, and you reject it. Though you recognize the monstrous evils of the present system, and though you wish for a fairer life than this, you do not believe that Socialism points the way. Sometimes you would like to believe so, but cannot; and at other times you do not even want to believe so. Many objections come to your mind. How could Socialism do this thing ? and. How could it prevent that thing.? you ask. You cast up quickly, and you reply. It could neither do the one thing nor prevent the other. And so for the moment, until the "obstinate questionings" come to you again, you conclude, No, Socialism is impossible. You hear from preacher and teacher and editor the stock arguments; and their in- [207] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS fluence, consciously or unconsciously, lies heavily upon you. True, you are not greatly impressed by the stupid assertion that Socialism means "dividing up"; nor unless you are easily gullible does the "menace-to-the-family" phrase seriously bother you. You see, if you have good eyes, more menace to the family under the present system than you can well imagine under any other. The "tyrannous-bureau- cracy" phrase no doubt to some extent awakens your apprehension; but even this you learn to discount. For in the first place, you are not unacquainted with "tyrannous bureaucracy" under our present system; and in the second place both you and all other men except anarchists and magnates, if only you have some aspiration toward social justice, would be willing to risk a certain measure of bureaucratic tyranny if it promised an amelioration of want and suffering. But other questions recur. How against such stupendous forces can Socialism pos- sibly win? and. How, even if it could win, [208] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS could it possibly work? you ask. What incentive would men have for exertion? How could useful initiative be expected of them? What would become of liberty? You take up Schaeffle's Impossibility of Social Democracy, and you repeat after him still other objections. How can a democracy effect collective production? How can Socialism unite all branches of industry with uniform labor time? How can it increase the net result of production ? How can it apportion recompense — either, on the one hand, according to the exact value of one's product, or on the other hand, according to one's needs ? How can it end the exploitation of labor power? How can it abolish the wage-system and private service ? No, you say, Socialism is impossible. It cannot establish itself, and even if it could the problems which it promises so readily to solve are in the main unsolvable. And so let us eternally patch and mend the thing we have, confident that some improvement will come, rather than run the risk of some- 14 [209] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS thing new and strange. No more Utopias! No more millennial anticipations! It is a poor world, and we must make the best of it. Yet though your judgment seems settled, it is not wholly futile to seek speech with you. You may consciously reject all we offer; and yet some single phrase of it may linger sub-consciously, to sprout in aftertime as the seed of new interpretations; and these new interpretations may lead to altered convictions. Often the single word, though carelessly put forth, acts as a switch- lever on the train of thought and carries it along new courses to new goals. This great living, breathing, complex thing called Socialism has its myriad aspects and its myriad points of approach. Perhaps even now some hitherto unapprehended phase of it may arrest your attention and dis- quiet your certainty. But whether it does or not, we cannot forbear to speak our faith in the face of skepticism. First, let it be said that we Socialists, save for some few sanguine and over-imag- inative souls in the ranks, have no utopia, [210] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS no glorified plan or process, no Atlantis or City of tlie Sun. Instead, we have an inter- pretation of the present and the past, and a theory, based upon that interpretation, of the future. We are concerned to know that certain things have been, that certain other things now are, and that according to our understanding of the rules of sequence certain other things very probably will be. We see, or think we see, very plainly at this time, certain presages of a coUectivist social order. We see everywhere an irresistible movement toward the concentration of all those industries which produce general commodities. It does not matter that cer- tain small industries, producing highly spe- cialized commodities, increase somewhat in number. Those industries which supply the common needs, and even many of the uncommon needs of mankind, are rapidly being welded together. The last census bulletin of manufactures (1905) shows that out of 216,000 factories in the United States, 1,899, or considerably less than one per cent., produce 38 per cent, of the value of [211] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS the manufactured product. Against such a fact as this, the increase in number of certain petty industries has relatively no importance. We thus say that production becomes all the time more and more social, and therefore that it comes to be in greater and greater disharmony with the mode of ownership, which is individual and con- fined to relatively but a small part of the population. Along with this increase of social produc- tion, comes necessarily an increasing organ- ization of the workers. The socialization of production necessarily socializes the men who do the work. Everything which makes more efficient and rapid the means of com- munication and transportation also brings the workers more closely together, and makes for a greater homogeneity of their instincts and their purposes. Thus with the steady growth of this process the workers' consciousness of a community of interest becomes clearer and clearer to them. Now the workers have always felt the burdens and the oppressions of their lot; also they [m] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS have always felt the weakness of their posi- tion. But with this growth of the sense of community of interest, with their increasing exercise of collective action in trade disputes and legislative matters, they come all the time to a fuller sense of their powers. First their instincts, later their convictions, develop in them the ideal of a collective organization of society, in which the instruments of pro- duction, instead of being owned by a few men, and used for the purposes of making profit, shall be collective property, owned by society as a whole, and operated for the purpose of securing an equitable distribu- tion. This growing class consciousness of the workers, joined with its corollary, an awak- ening sense of their powers, promises, we say, a reorganization of society. This is not all. Capitalism fails to render a satisfactory account of its stewardship. It has no concern and it makes no provision for the well-being of the workers. To the feudal baron, the serf was generally a thing of intrinsic value, and it was to the interests of the baron to see that his serf had food [213] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS and comfort. To the slave-holder, too, the slave was a thing of intrinsic value, and it was to the interests of the slave-holder that the slave should be kept in a state of physical efficiency. But to the modern capitalist the worker is valuable only when he is producing profits. The capitalist recognizes no obli- gation whatsoever to keep the worker in comfort. Under capitalism there are al- ways, and must necessarily be, numbers of idle workmen, and should one die or be maimed or fall sick, there is always another to take his place. Divorced from the tools of production, the worker in order to make a living must compete with his fellows for the privilege of using the tools owned by other men. Under this competition, his wages, unless artificially bettered by the action of his union, or in certain cases by the action of the state, tend generally to keep to a line just about that of the cost of maintenance. Year by year the worker becomes more conscious of these facts and less acquiescent in the continuance of them, and so year by year his threat against the [214] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS existence of capitalism becomes more men- acing. Nor is the wage-worker the only member of modern society who threatens the exist- ence of capitalism. The so-called "middle class," composed of those merchants and manufacturers who own small establish- ments, suffer a constantly increasing press- ure through the power of the big concerns. In a sense, they read the handwriting on the wall. They know that something is the matter with them, though they do not know exactly what, and they are up in arms against those they feel are injuring them. Most of the political turmoil of the present time is due to the revolt of the "middle class" against the magnates. All of the attempts at freight-rate regulation, reduction of passen- ger rates, the movement for municipal ownership and like movements, are expres- sions of this "middle-class" revolt rather than of a revolt of the workers. The "middle-class" men are of course capitalists and presumably interested in the mainte- nance of capitalism; and yet their constant [215] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS assaults on the system as it prevails to-day can hardly do else than weaken its position. Then, too, the state, urged on by the demands of proletarian and farmer and "middle-class" man, is constantly assuming new functions and modifying and restricting the economic methods of individuals. It does not, as a rule, do these things sponta- neously; it does them long after their need has been generally felt, and as a result of a pressure that cannot be withstood. The state is thus constantly, though haltingly, adapting itself to the changes going on in the world of industry. In all these phenomena Socialists see presages of the breakdown of the capitalist regime. It has served its purpose, and it must fall, as feudalism fell and as slavery fell. In some way, possibly by slow and hardly "perceptible changes, possibly by a cataclysm, the existing order will pass to its death and a new order will begin. The order which will emerge will be Socialism. It will be Socialism because of these tendencies, and because there will be no alternative. [216] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS To Socialists, therefore, the question. How against such stupendous forces can Socialism possibly win? seems readily an- swerable with the statement that Socialism is winning all the time. It is winning in at least four ways :'^ by the increasing socializa- tion of production and distribution; ^by the increasing exercise on the part of the state and its subordinate branches of new func- tions;') by the growth of economic organiza- tions of labor, "^ and by the growth of the political movement which has for its aim the co-operative commonwealth. The emergent order, we say, will thus be Socialism. Socialism is the collective owner- ship and democratic management of the social means of production for the common good. Not all the means; for it is entirely prob- able that many of the smaller industries may justly, and with due regard for social efficiency, be left in private hands. Socialism seeks the perfecting of the industrial plant that the product may be vastly increased; and it further seeks to distribute that prod- uct equitably among all the units that have [217] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS contributed in the work. It postulates an industrial system in which there is neither robbed nor robber as a necessary basis to further intellectual and moral progress; for though Nature may sporadically develop intelligence and morality under a vicious industrial order, they are not, to use a figure from biology, her normal growths in such environment, but her accidents and" sports." Socialism seeks, not individual efficiency, the sharpening of the claws and beak for war- fare, but social efficiency. It does not mean the abolition of private property, nor does it mean absolute state ownership, or absolute parity of pay, or the mandatory allotment of tasks, or the creation of a tyrannous bureau- cracy, or the death of freedom, or the crush- ing of incentive, or the disruption of the family. It means an extension, thoroughgo- ing and revolutionary, of social control over the economic life of the race. It means de- mocracy applied to the methods of producing goods and of apportioning rewards. It means industrial democracy not as an end, but as a basis of racial progress. [218] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS All very plausible and optimistic, you say, but how will it work? We have no biograph of the Socialist state, and we do not know how it will work. Nor did George Washington or Thomas Jefferson know how democracy would work in the colonies when they carried on their contest against Great Britain. As a matter of fact, it worked for a time very badly. And so for a time may Socialism work very badly. But it is to be observed that mankind, when it passes over from monarchy to democracy and finds the new scheme of things running awkwardly, instead of reverting to monarchy sets itself the task of perfecting its mechan- ism. We may expect the future society to do a like thing. We may expect that after having toiled so long and sacrificed so much in its struggle for a new order, man- kind will suffer any momentary ills rather than return to the old. Freed from the shackles that now hamper its proper growth, the progress of society may be expected to consist largely in constant attempts at adjustment. That process has no con- [219] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS ceivable end. The social revolution will but furnish the working conditions and the principle of action; under those conditions and in the light of that principle the process can be carried on eternally. But must there not then be a powerful machine to guide and control this work? Very likely there must, and that machine is the state. To anarchists, "philosophical individualists" and to certain Socialists of the "industrial" type, the thought is re- volting; even to the great magnates the thought of a state with other powers than those of preserving order and of enforcing contracts is disquieting. But the state is, in spite of theories. It is an evolution from old time, and it waxes stronger through all the changes in political forms. To all who propose the weakening or elimination of the state, there is this reply: the state is eternal, and cannot be put aside. Like Wordsworth's River Duddon, " The form remains, the function never dies." It exists out of the necessity of things, and [220] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS the more efficient and highly organized the industrial system becomes, the greater must be the power and efficiency of the state. But when we speak of state and govern- ment under Socialism, we mean a vastly different entity from the thing which is called the state to-day. The present-day state, while professing to be the organ of all society, is, as a matter of fact, an organ — ^not solely, but largely — of the ruling class; and what the state determines upon doing, and what it decides to be justice, are in large part but reflexes of the needs and standards of the class of capitalist owners, small or large. Under Socialism the state would be the embodiment of the needs and aims of all society — of a society without antagonistic classes. We may look to see a Socialist state as the father of num- berless institutions of social welfare, the di- rector of labor — to a large extent the guide in production and the determiner of what shall be produced and how. The state will determine the range and volume of the most needful commodities to be pro- [221] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS duced. The workers will be regimented, that is, organized; but the regimentation will be by their own will and for their own purposes. This regimentation, which is so frightful a bugbear to the persons who clamor for so-called social freedom, will be seen to lose half its terrors when it is recognized how and to what end it is made. It will bear small likeness to the present regimentation of the anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania, or to that of the factory workers in Massachusetts or Alabama — social phenomena to which the defenders of the present regime are so wilfully blind. Nor will it bear any resemblance to the regimentation which Bellamy pictures. It will be the regimentation of volunteers as against the present regimentation of con- scripts. Under this system we may expect to see administrative bodies, by a statistical study of supply and demand, determining what is wanted, and by gradations in the hours of toil drawing bodies of free workers now to this occupation and now to that, and by [222] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS the same means withdrawing them from occupations that are glutted with help. No doubt this expectation argues a mobility and a versatility of labor quite unknown to-day. And yet even to-day the time lost by the workers in forced unemployment could be utilized, were capitalism so minded, in training an army skilled to work in varied industries. Under a system wherein the general mobility of labor will be recognized as necessary, there will be no dijB&culty in providing it. We may also expect to see the state return to the worker an equitable, though not necessarily an equal, share of the value of the product. The dividend to labor is something most likely to be determined by general administrative bodies. To suppose an economic body rather than a political body as the unit of power is to suppose anarchy, and a very unjust and inequitable anarchy at that. It would mean a continuation of the competitive struggle for the means of life, more fierce and deadly and wasteful than now, because waged among groups instead of among individuals. [ 223 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS The arbitrament of justice in all its forms must lie with the power representing all society and not some fraction of it, and that power will be political. We look, then, to a more concentrated form of production, to the elimination of the waste of competitive effort, to an ex- tension of social service, and we look to society in its organized form, the state, as the medium by which all this would be brought about. Government, under Social- ism, would thus be largely the administration of the organs of social welfare and of the labor forces of the nation. The vast and complex structure of institutional machinery built up for the defense of property and the punishment of the violators of property rights, would fade "like an unsubstantial pageant." But how, you ask with Schaeffle, could a democracy effect collective production.? Autocracies might do so, as indeed Peru, under the Incas, so effectually did. But how can 90,000,000 beings of differing wills so unify their efforts? Well, so far [ 224 ] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS as history is concerned, there is no decisive evidence for or against the assumption. Certainly no democracy has yet attempted a systematized operation of its entire in- dustrial plant. But what evidence we have of democratic assumption of specific enter- prises tends to the Socialist conclusion. And after all, Schaeffle's objection is purely theoretical. It is an instance of what Lord Bacon would call the "humor of a scholar." His work, it should be remembered, was written twenty-six years ago, before any of the striking modern experiments in the collective operation of industries had been made. Everywhere democracy is reaching out and assuming an increased control of industry. Doubtless the movement is at- tended with many mistakes and some fail- ures. But the significant thing is, that democracy is everywhere so satisfied with its present advances that the movement, far from halting or retreating, steadily pro- gresses. The New Zealand and Australian democracies successfully operate many in- dustrial enterprises; and a multitude of 15 [ 225 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS those petty democracies, the municipaUties, in all countries, are steadily taking over new activities. This very democracy — al- beit an exceedingly plutocratic one — of the United States of America is now operating in its navy yards, in the reclamation service and in the Canal Zone, enterprises which Schaeffle would have denied it the possibility of conducting. It builds ships, it builds and operates mills for the manufacture of con- crete, and in Panama it digs a gigantic canal, it runs a railroad and a steamship line and it efficiently furnishes a community of more than 50,000 souls with almost every needful comfort. The denial of the power of democracies to manage their economic affairs is merely a survival from a past age of a prejudice that denied to democracies the capacity to manage their political affairs. Well, then, assuming for the time dem- ocracies to be thus capable, there is the unsolvable problem of recompense. How can a community endure if the basis of recompense is merely need ; and if the basis [226] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS is service, how can recompense be rightly apportioned, and what shall be done with the needy? We do not have to solve the problem in theory, for it is one of those problems that will be adjusted by the pressure of necessity, with small regard for theories. Still, there are two radically dif- fering ideals regarding recompense widely held; and it may be well to consider them. One is the ideal of rewards on the basis of needs, and one is the ideal of rewards based on service. The former may be called a Communist ideal, the latter an Individual- ist-Socialist ideal. It is not to be denied that each ideal, and furthermore, every possible gradation between these two ex- tremes, are held by different men who call themselves, and rightly. Socialists. But there is, after all, a norm of these varying beliefs or ideals. The opinion may be hazarded that most Socialists all over the world believe that need as a sole basis of rewards is a standard utterly impracticable among men as we now know them. So long has mankind been prompted to its tasks [227] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS by the desire for individual gain that this motive is for the time ingrained; and a division of products proportioned to needs without reference to service would be re- jected by every community on the planet. But this ideal, though acknowledged to be impracticable of fulfillment in the near future, is one which is generally held to be possible of ultimate fulfillment. Socialists hold, then, that the matter of rewards shall be determined by the class which has most right to a voice in the matter — the produc- ing class — and that the basis shall be that which does most to insure the efficiency and well-being of society. Mankind has been trained for countless generations to hope for a reward proportioned to service. It has never got a reward so proportioned, as all know, and it never will get it under competitive industry. But this hope has been implanted in it, and this standard, though everywhere violated, is for the time fixed in the human consciousness. And so this standard will most likely be adopted under Socialism. But it is one which must [228] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS suffer a constant and increasing modification by that other standard of need. With what face can any upholder of the present regime criticise the growing recognition of this standard? It is one which every humane man adopts in his own family; and it is one to which society itself pays greater heed year by year. The modern state, capitalistic though it is, in many ways foreshadows the state which is to follow it. Our asylums for the blind, the deaf and the dumb, and for defectives of various kinds; our hospitals, our schools even, are all instances of a distribution of benefits based solely upon needs, and they are all of them anticipations of a state in which this principle will be carried to degrees unapprehended to-day. But there is more to this pay problem, you say; will there be uniform labor time and equal recompense, hour for hour.? Who can say? And yet the answer may be made that parity of pay is no necessary part of Socialist doctrine. It would seem quite likely that a Socialist society would [229] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS pay unequally for different kinds of work. Inequality of recompense is another of those customs to which mankind has become habituated through generations of expe- rience, and one which will take years to outgrow. But if it is asked how unequal these rewards are to be, one can say with confidence that they will show no such disparity as is shown in the commercial world to-day; and with almost equal con- fidence that they will not show even the moderate disparities which are found in the departments at Washington, wherein some dim approaches to an ethical standard are made, and where the range of recompense between that for a clerk and that for a cabinet minister is not more than from 1 to 7, or from $1,200 to $8,000. Money re- wards are not the only rewards for which men strive, even under a regime wherein the size of this reward is exalted into a standard of social worth. But, you say, no men of ability will work for mean pay; and if Socialism wants to bring out the best talents of inventor, ad- [ 230 ] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS ministrator and even laborer, material re- wards must be proportional, and the recom- pense of the highest ability must be vastly greater than that of common labor. Then, too, you say, this brings up another problem. For this proportionate remuneration is totally incompatible with democratic equal- ity. With this proportionate reward, there- fore, we cannot have equality, and without it we cannot have adequate production. Not so fast and sweeping, Mr. Doubter. Your first alternative is an error. There is no necessary inconsistency between mod- erate inequality of possessions and equality of social and political rights and status. Any one familiar with life in those new com- munities wherein differences of economic function, and consequently classes, have so far not arisen, is aware of this truth. The settlers of the Middle and the Far West were men and women of very great degree of difference in possessions. Many went West with sufficient means to acquire large holdings of land, while others were virtually penniless. Yet for a long time in these [231] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS communities social equality was an assured fact. To a very considerable extent it is even yet so. Only after economic processes had settled down, and differences of eco- nomic function had become marked and enduring — some persons becoming large owners of the means of production and others becoming mere sellers of labor power — did social equality begin to decline. It is certain — if anything can be certain — ^that in a social republic wherein economic classes have been abolished, and wherein the pres- ent stigma attaching to the performance of manual work is no longer known, very considerable differences of possession may harmonize with perfect social equality. So- cial inequalities are a result, not so much of disparities of fortune, as of disparities of economic function. Your other alternative involves the ques- tion of incentive. Here of course is ground that is debatable, and that will always be debated until an overwhelming mass of proof is given by long experimentation with facts. Men will not give their best [ 232 ] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS labors, you say, unless promised a material reward proportioned to their service. And yet it is certain that three-fifths of mankind to-day are constantly toiling with no rational ground for believing that they will ever be so rewarded. But, you say, with Mal- lock, these are the common mob, who are lashed to their work by the whip of neces- sity. It is the intellectual aristocracy, the inventors, the managers, the administrators, the men who plan and carry forward enter- prises of great pith and moment, who must be rewarded generously in order to bring out what is best in them. Certainly these men must be rewarded. So should all other men be rewarded in order to bring out what is best in them. And that the amount of this reward should be determined with some reference to the relative amount of service rendered, may also be cheerfully conceded. But what standard of reward-value shall be used.? Is it necessary that it should be a money standard exclusively ? History and descriptive sociology give an [333] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS emphatic denial to any such contention. In all societies, in all ages, men seek their rewards according to the current standards of valuation. The Indian youth, who is forbidden to marry or to sit in the councils of the warriors until he has lifted the hair of a certain number of victims, takes his reward in scalps. His best powers of cun- ning and strategy, bravery and endurance are brought out and kept employed in the tasks which promise this reward. In the age of chivalry men take their reward in their records of victories in tournaments or on the field of battle. In ages dominated by regard for learning or the arts men seek rewards in intellectual or artistic achieve- ment; in ages dominated by religious fer- vor men take their rewards in a conscious- ness of exceptional piety, or at least in a reputation for it. It is only in a commercial age that men insist upon a proportional reward in money. And even in such ages this standard is by no means unexceptional. In this very time, when all the world seems given up to a mad scramble for material [234] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTEJIS gain, the best men, the most useful men, give their lives to services that promise only a mean and scanty, if any, material reward. They are taking their larger pay in another coin. It is an unimaginative criticism of the Socialist state to assert that when great material rewards have been abolished, natural ability will content itself with common tasks, refusing to exert itself in tasks of invention and direction. Nothing is so false to history, so false to human nature. Ability always seeks to manifest itself, and generally it asks no other reward than "going wages." The consciousness of achievement, the esteem of one's fellows, the pride of sharing in leadership, will draw from the men of ability a quantity and character of performance which even the hope of material gain cannot bring forth to-day. Well, you reply, this may possibly be true for the exceptional man, but it is cer- tainly not true for the average man. Noth- ing but the grind of personal need will hold him to his task. Most men are indolent by [235] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS nature. Socialism is the lazy man's utopia — a leafy and flowery paradise wherein he may lie down and "take the count." Truly a whimsical view to take of a world of such momentous energy, in the face of the eternal striving and achieving of myriads of men! And a yet more whimsical view of the industrious man's ideal of a common- sense arrangement of his economic relations! In the light of all that has been achieved on this planet in the brief period of man's his- tory, are we not rather justified in assuming that all men have the impulse to exertion ? They do, indeed, seek to avoid disagreeable work. They seek to avoid work which is socially contemned — work the performance of which places them in an inferior class. And they seek to avoid dangerous work and monotonous work and meanly paid work — work which drains them of health and joy for no adequate return. There is no sweated seamstress or factory spool- tender, no stoker, or miner or street-sweeper who would not prefer to be idle rather than to work at his or her daily task. And yet [236]. SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS probably there are very few of these per- sons but would work willingly and energeti- cally at the making of things in which they could enshrine something of their heart and soul. They have not now the opportunity. Only the more fortunate workers, as indus- try is now constituted, are enabled to do the kind of work which they most wish to do or are best capable of doing. As boys or girls we are started in certain occupations, not because we have an instinctive inclina- tion toward them, but because opportunities therein are open. The "grind of personal need," far from impelling us to do the best labor, compels us to do the kind of labor for which there is a demand and which is nearest to us. No one with an instinct of workmanship cares to be employed in the making of shoddy clothing, or collapsible furniture, or imitation food or Buddensiek buildings. Yet under the present organiza- tion of society there is a demand for these commodities, and men must work upon them. Look over a list of common occupa- [237] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS tions, and note how many of them are carried on in dirt or filth, note in how many is the ever-present danger of infection or maiming or death, how many are crushingly monotonous, how many are wholly wanting in any possibility of self-expression, how many are meanly paid and how many are socially contemned. Look these over and consider them, and you will find a truer cause for the wish to escape work than in native indolence. We may reasonably expect, under Social- ism, a better mechanism for fitting the work to the man and the man to the work. We may expect freer opportunities for the work- er to find the task he can best perform. Under Socialism each unit is a part owner in the whole industrial plant of the nation. We can hardly suppose that under such circumstances there will be any production of fraudulent commodities, for people do not make such commodities for themselves. We can hardly suppose that people will delib- erately set themselves to dangerous tasks when those tasks can be made safe, or to [238] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS disagreeable tasks that can be made agree- able, or to monotonous tasks the monotony of which can be reUeved. Nor can we sup- pose that in a society where all are useful workers, a social stigma will attach to any kind of useful work. There would still be disagreeable tasks to do — ^that is, tasks disagreeable in themselves; and yet men would perform them, as many men do many such tasks to-day, willingly and proudly. Who more than the physician is called upon to do tasks of sometimes re- volting disagreeableness ? But honor at- taches to his work, and goodly recompense follows it, and he does it with zealous pride. The task disagreeable in itself is thus made, if not always agreeable, at least tolerable, by the bonus of honor or pay. It is an old rule — older than Nineveh or Karnak; and the business of a Socialist society will be to apply it to all men and to all occupations instead of to a few. Nothing seems theoretically simpler than to create, by gradations in honor and worktime and pay, a uniform agreeability or tolerability of [239] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS tasks ; and though theories sometimes main- tain a stubborn nonconformist attitude in the presence of practice, this one may stand as sustained by every application so far made of it. The agreeable task is weighted; the disagreeable task lightened, the task at which no one will work at a wage which society can afford to pay will cease to be done or be done by machinery. Even to- day vast categories of repulsive tasks would pass over to the domain of machinery were it not that capital finds more profit in the exploitation of the most wretched part of the population. With greater freedom of opportunity, with more attractive tasks, with juster recompense, with an equal inter- est on the part of every one in the sum of production, you need have no fear that men will not work. Nor need you fear that the basic motive of personal need will be removed. It will not. He that can work and will not, shall not eat. The primary motive of personal need will always be present. But there is another motive which usually shares with [240] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS it in exertion, and would always do so under freer conditions of labor. That is the joy of achievement. It has two aspects — or rather two manifestations — ^the one of im- mediate satisfaction in creating something and the other of winning the regard of our fellows. There is no normal being who does not — or who would not, under reasonable conditions — ^take pride in the work of his head or hand. Nor, except in the stress of fratricidal struggle, is there one who does not seek expression in fellow-service. Even under the present regime, when the test of a man's success is so commonly held to be the amount of money he can amass, thousands of men give over their chance of winning pecuniary rewards in order to devote themselves to a social ideal. We see this in the labor and social movements of all countries, in the revolutionary move- ment in Russia, the co-operative movement in England and Belgium, and often in government service. An impulse like this, appearing even under the unfavorable con- ditions of the present regime, could not but 16 [ 241 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS flower under Socialism— under a system wherein the common good rather than the individual good would be the accepted ideal. The common man is made of the same clay as is the exceptional man; though his facul- ties are less intense, and his skill is less plastic, his nature is the same; and it needs only the humanizing of the conditions of his employment to cause him to give to his simple tasks like energies and impulses. And how about production in the mass? Granted, for the moment, that men would work under this visionary scheme of things, how much would they work and with what result.? For surely the sum of production must be greater than now if the increased comforts promised by the Socialist leaders are to flow to all. With the present stimuli to exertion in large part removed, would the new stimuli more than make up the deficit.'' Look at the clerks in our public offices. Are these a sample of what we may expect under the co-operative com- monwealth ? You skeptics and doubters make over- [242] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS much of this matter, do you not? To many of you it has become the last refuge after all your other positions have been driven in. We Socialists, on the other hand, find it exceedingly difficult to regard the problem seriously. For, in the first place, processes already at work indicate the means of a vast augmentation of production. The trust, in its anticipation of the Socialist state, steadily points the way. The material power of froduction is increasing enormously all the time. Work is being concentrated in the larger and better factories, improved methods are being introduced, competition and the duplication of products are being curtailed, and waste is to some extent being eliminated. Who can say to what ends these processes may not be carried when the motive that governs will be the common good rather than the advantage of a few ? When not merely such improved processes as happen to be immediately profitable to particular interests, but all possible improved processes, are introduced; when not merely a few, but all, of the com- [243] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS petitive wastes are abolished; when the production of fraudulent and luxurious and useless commodities is discontinued, and production is carried on with an eye single to the needs of mankind ? You draw an erroneous analogy between co-operative workers under Socialism and municipal and state and federal employes under capitalism. No doubt many of the latter are lazy and inefficient, and some of them are dishonest. Though public ser- vants, they are a product of the competitive strife for personal advantage, and they are governed, as a rule, by its standards; they get their appointments largely as political favors; and even when appointed through the civil service examinations, there is little or nothing to cause them to look upon pub- lic service as different from private service. As a rule, the conditions about them cause them to see in government just what a franchise-grabber or a contractor or a dealer sees in it — an alien organization out of which they can extract something of advan- tage to themselves. Yet though this is a [244] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS rule, it has its notable exceptions; for a high sense of social service is not infre- quently found among public employes. And that such a sense should develop in any case under the conditions is a happy augury for Socialism — a promise of the spirit that will govern men when partnership in pos- session creates in all of them a sense of social obligation. Do you stop to consider, when nursing your apprehension of a Socialist lack of production, the prevalent idleness of mil- lions of men ? They are willing to produce wealth if only the opportunity is given them. But capitalism will not and cannot assume the task of providing them the opportunity. The yearly loss in the volume of production due to unemployment is enormous. The census figures for 1900 show that 3,177,753 persons were idle for from 1 to 3 months, 2,554,925 for from 4 to 6 months, and 736,286 for from 7 to 12 months. This frightful total of 6,468,964 persons is some- what more than one-fifth of the total of gainfully occupied persons for that year. [245] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS Under a rational system of industry each of these persons might have produced four or five times the value of his maintenance. Socialism would guarantee opportunities for work for everybody. The Socialist ad- ministration that could not keep that pledge would be compelled to give way to another that could. Would not setting these millions to work increase the sum of production ? Is it not also to be supposed that men will produce in greater volume and in better value when the products are their own than when the products are another's.'' Is it not, in the words of the Rev. Franklin M. Sprague, "inherently probable that pro- duction would be vastly greater when men assisted and encouraged each other than when they opposed each other.?" With improved conditions in the work-places, with greater immunity from wounds and infection, with better nourishment, sturdier health, a greater satisfaction with life and a higher hope for the future, is the belief altogether visionary that the workers would do more and better work.? Is it quite [ 246 ] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS visionary, either, to believe that in the removal of the social stigma from toil; in the elimination of the cause for the work- man's sense of indignity and wrong in the forcible taking of the products of his toil; in the mutual watchfulness, mutual criti- cism and mutual emulation inseparable from co-operative labor and in the spontane- ous growth of standards of social usefulness and devotion — ^that in and under this con- dition men will strive more earnestly and fruitfully than they do to-day? It is not a visionary belief. It is a logical expecta- tion. There is another objection which you men of little faith bring against Socialism. That is, that the Socialist promise of an abolition of the wage- system and of the exploitation of labor cannot be fulfilled. Socialism does indeed promise the aboli- tion of wages and the system under which they are paid; but it does not promise an abolition of payments for work done. The word "wages" has to Socialists a meaning specifically related to capitalism; wages are [247] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS that fraction of the value produced by the worker which is left in his possession after the machine-owner has taken what he can for the use of his machine. Unfortunately, there is no word' to designate what Social- ists mean by the individual worker's recom- pense under Socialism. It might be called a quota or a share or a labor-dividend. It is, in fact, a dividend of the joint product of all labor, less the necessary cost of ad- ministration. Very likely, payments will be made as wages are now paid; but though the form will be similar, the substance will be entirely different. Socialism does indeed also promise the definite ending of the exploitation of labor; but the promise does not mean that the worker will get for his individual use the full product of his toil. The setting apart of wealth for the production of new wealth, the costs of administration, and the costs of all those social services to which civilized mankind is becoming accustonaedj will subtract from this dividend. But this subtraction is not exploitation. In the na- [248] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS tion's collective capital, if we may use that term for a thing so different from what we know as capital to-day, the workers will be equal partners; and they will be equal sharers in all those benefits which flow from the institutions and social services which mankind has gradually developed. In other words, the share of the product that is to- day withheld from the workers by the charge which capital makes for itself, is an ex- ploitation by private persons for their own benefit; what is withheld from the workers under Socialism is an addition to the com- mon wealth, in which every human being is an equal sharer. And now a brief word for liberty. To hear you speak of it as you sometimes do, one might suppose that all men now had this blessing, and that certain persons known as Socialists proposed to take it away from them. Who in truth has it now? Pos- sibly, in Falstaff's words, "he that died o' Wednesday"; for certainly no other has it — not even Mr. Rockefeller or Nicholas II. or Mr. Roosevelt. There is not a single [ 249 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS industrial act of any individual nor even an expression of opinion, that is not conditioned and bound by many factors. This un- attainable abstraction has been differently defined by every generation of men. The generation in which Socialist thought has permeated every branch of learning dis- misses as illusory the medieval notion — though still held by anarchists and orthodox economists — of liberty as the absence of governmental restraint. Liberty so defined is a negation. Real liberty, in the words of T. H. Green, is a "positive power or capacity" which each man exercises or holds "through the help or security given him by his fellow-men, and which he in turn helps to secure for them." The legal liberty to do things which economic conditions absolutely prohibit gives a word of promise to the ear only to break it to the hope. It is a liberty in phrase, but a subjection in substance. The liberty for which men now strive is a mutually exercised and mutually restrained power to do. You speak of the Socialists as though they were deliberately [250] SKEPTICS AND DOUBTERS forging shackles for their own limbs. Why, these men and women love liberty as much as you do. But they have learned the hoUowness of the medieval notion of liberty, and in its stead they have conceived a notion of liberty as a power for social achieve- ment. The ordered restraints of Socialism will endow mankind with a liberty which it has never before known. In these brief considerations, imperfectly set forth, there may be little or nothing to shake your skepticism, or to awaken a willingness to reopen your inquiry. If so, so be it. Yet in spite of doubt and hesitancy and antagonism, the mighty phenomenon that in the end will resolve all doubts is every day more evident. That is the inter- national Socialist movement. It is idle to say that for this or that theoretical reason Socialism is impracticable, just as a hundred and fifty years ago it was idle to say that democracy was impracticable. Socialism, in its practical form, is a world-wide move- ment for industrial democracy; in other words, it is a carrying forward of that [ 251 ] SOCIALISM AND SUCCESS movement which during the last century transferred poHtical power from kings and nobles to elected representatives of the people — a carrying forward of that move- ment to the realm of industry. Doubtless this movement has made many mistakes, doubtless its leaders have made wrong postulates, wrong deductions from particu- lar sets of facts. But the movement itself, in spite of blunders and defeats, goes on toward its goal. The certainty of its ulti- mate triumph lies in the inexorable processes of economic evolution, and in the will of man, which though shaped and directed by its material environment, yet constantly reacts upon that environment and molds it to the shape of the ideal. [252] BERNARD SHAW AS ARTIST-PHILOSOPHER BY RENEE M. DEACON Cloth. 16mo. $1.00 net. Postage 10 cents *#* A brief account of the Shavian philosophy, in which the main trend of Bernard Shaw's thought is clearly indicated, and his attitude toward life is revealed. *** "Perhaps the best examination of Bernard Shaw that has been published in English." — Dundee Advertiser. Full of quick and suggestive ideas. Many will gain a new and perhaps a truer view of Shaw, his work and his in- tentions, through this thoughtful work." — Chicago Record-Herald. SOCIALISM AND SUPERIOR BRAINS BY BERNARD SHAW Cloth, 16mo. 75 cents net. Postage 10 cents Portrait frontispiece by the author. A new book by Bernard Shaw, dealing with the following topics : The Able Author. The Able Inventor. Ability at Supply-and-Demand Prices. The Ability that Gives Value for Money. Waste of Ability and Inflation of Its Prices by the Rich. Artificial Rent of Ability. Artificial Ability. How Little Really Goes to Ability, etc., etc. "Written with that matchless virility for which Mr. Shaw is so famous. Socialism has never had, and probably never will have, a better and abler exponent and defender." — Dundee Advertiser. REBEL WOMEN BY EVELYN SHARP Cloth. 16mo. $1. 00 net. Postage 10 cents A clever, brilliantly interesting and amusing series of stories and sketches illustrative of the modern vi^oman' s move- ment, by one of its best-known writers, putting the sufFragette case in a fresh and convincing manner. A Timely Book on the Woman Question of the Day CONTENTS: The Woman at the Gate To Prison While the Sun Shines Shaking Hands with the Middle Ages Filling the War Chest The Conversion of Penelope's Mother At a Street Corner The Crank of All Ages Patrolling the Gutter The Black Spot of the Constituency "Votes for Women — Forward!" The Person Who Cannot Escape The Daughter Who Stays at Home The Game that Wasn't Cricket MODERN WOMAN AND HOW TO MANAGE HER BY WALTER M. GALLICHAN Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 net. 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" — San Francisco Bulletin. GILBERT K. CHESTERTON "Always entertaining." — Neiv York E'vening Sun. "Always original. "—CA/Va^o Tribune. Heretics 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 12 cents "His thinking is as sane as his language is brilliant." — Chicago Record-Herald. Orthodoxy, Uniform with " Heretics." 12mo. $1.50 net. Postaze 12 cents "A work of genius." — Chicago Evening Post. All Things Considered Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 net. Postaze 12 cents " Full of the author's abundant vitality, wit and unflinching opti- mism." — Book Netvj. George Bernard Shaw. A Biography CIotA. 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 12 cents "It is a facinating portrait study and I am proud to have been the painter's model." — George Bernard Shaw in The Nation (London). The Napoleon of Notting Hill. A Romance. With Illustrations by Graham Robertson Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 ' ' A brilliant piece of satire, gemmed with ingenious paradox. Every page is pregnant with vitality." — Boston Herald. The Ball and the Cross Ckth. 12mo. $1.50 ' ' The most strikingly original novel of the present season. It is studded with intellectual brilliants. Its satire is keener than that of Bernard Shaw. Behind all this foolery there shines the light of Truth. A brilliant piece of satire — a gem that sparkles from any point of view the reader may choose to regard it. ' ' — San Francisco Bulletin.