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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032565099 
 
THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW yore: ■ BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DAU.AS 
 ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limiied 
 
 LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMH-LAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 BY 
 HARRY F. WARD 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN ETHICs"lN UNION TBEOLOGICAI. 
 SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1919 
 
 'All rights reserved 
 
 J. 
 
A4fc\=\l 
 
 COPSRIGHT, 1919 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The background of this discussion is the conviction, which 
 has been maturing through the years, that a new order of 
 social living is necessary for both the practical and the spirit- 
 ual iaterests of humanity. The events of the last few years 
 have intensified that conviction and have added to it the 
 judgment that the beginnings of a new order are already with 
 us, that here and there parts of it may be seen breaking 
 through the shell of the old, which has long been nourishing 
 the embryo. This does not mean that state socialism is go- 
 ing to be universally adopted or that the world is going Bol- 
 shevik. Still less does it mean that the organization of a 
 League of Nations wUl inaugurate the miUenium. The signs 
 are dear, however, that we have arrived at one of those con- 
 junctions of economic pressure and idealistic impulse, which 
 occasion fimdamental changes in the organization of life. It 
 was so when slavery was abandoned as the economic base of 
 civilization and again when monarchy was rejected as a mode 
 of government. Now, the economic order which superseded 
 production by slavery and came to its fruition with the mass 
 production of the machine era is beginning to give way to 
 some other form. This transformation necessarily involves 
 changes in the form of government that superseded mon- 
 archy, also far-reaching alteration and developments in the 
 entire social structure, in the habits and customs of society 
 and in its vital forces. This is more generally vmderstood in 
 Europe than in the United States, where the present economic 
 order is yoimger and more vigorous on account of its later 
 development and the extent and richness of the natural re- 
 sources that nourish it. Here too there prevails a simple 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 faith that the formulae of the democratic state will solve all 
 the social problems of humanity, even though their applica- 
 tion be limited and hindered by an autocratic economic order. 
 
 This book views the new order as a process of growth, with 
 its roots in the past. It therefore discusses the principles 
 round which it is forming, and then attempts to analyze in 
 the light of them the main programs for social change that 
 have been recently offered. It deals both with the vital forces 
 and with the form and structure of the new order. It holds 
 that certain principles or ideals — they will be called social or 
 moral or religious according to the point of view, — ^which have 
 developed in the past experience of man as the expression of 
 both his practical needs and his spiritual aspirations, are now 
 being consciously accepted by multitudes of people as the 
 guiding stars of life and the working principles of a new social 
 order. These principles are viewed not as finished products, 
 but as still, and possibly forever, in process of development. 
 They are "both building and builded upon." 
 
 The discussion proceeds from the standpoint of a teacher 
 of Christian ethics. The principles here considered are ger- 
 minal in the teaching of Jesus. With him they were an his- 
 toric development, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, 
 the embodiment of the past experience of his race. They 
 have been an historic development ever since and will con- 
 tinue to be. It is because they are an epitome of imiversal 
 experience and aspiration that they have authority to in- 
 creasingly challenge the generations of men to fulfill and apply 
 them according to their need and light, and then to pass them 
 on to others for further development. The new order is fun- 
 damentally a task for religion as well as for economic and social 
 science and practical organization. It involves a spiritual 
 transformation or it cannot be. 
 
 In form, the discussion is an attempt to summarize the na- 
 ture and chart the direction of impending social change. The 
 
PREFACE VU 
 
 discussion of the various programs is by no means complete; 
 it is limited to their relationship to the principles which have 
 been expounded. Those who are familiar with this field will 
 find nothing new here, unless it be the religious aspect of the 
 discussion, for sometimes the spiritual significance of well- 
 known things escapes the wise as weU as the prudent. 
 
 In the nature of the material presented, I am indebted for 
 information and suggestion to nximerous sources and I have 
 chosen not to incumber the text with notes by referring to 
 them. 
 
 Because of the extent of the field covered, it is inevitable 
 that the issues involved should appear to be oversimplified. 
 It is not for lack of appreciation of their complexity, but their 
 details do not lie within the province of the present discussion. 
 Moreover, it is concerning the weightier matters of the law, 
 justice and judgment and mercy, that the forces of religion 
 need now to make up their mind. The tithes of mint and 
 anise and cmnmin can be considered in less urgent times, 
 after the main outlines of the form the molten world is to 
 take have been determined. 
 
 Harry F. Ward. 
 New York City, 
 
 July, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 
 Chapter Page 
 I. The Natdke of the New Order 3 
 
 PART I 
 PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW ORDER 
 
 n. Equality 35 
 
 m. Universal Service 76 
 
 IV. EFEICIENCy 121 
 
 V. The Supremacy of Personality 131 
 
 VI. SOUDASITY 154 
 
 PART n 
 
 PROGRAMS FOR THE NEW ORDER 
 
 Vn. The British Labor Party 185 
 
 Vm. The Russian Soviet Republic 225 
 
 DC The League of Nations 272 
 
 X. Some Movements in the United States 289 
 
 XT. The Churches 328 
 
 IN CONCLUSION 
 Xn. The Trend of Progress 355 
 
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 
 
 During the Great War, many men talked and still more 
 thought of the days that were to come after. They endeavored 
 to assess the tasks that awaited mankind when the fighting 
 should be done. They spoke of "reconstruction" or "a new 
 world" according to their several temperaments and points 
 of view. With every month that passes since the Armistice 
 was signed, it becomes increasingly clear that the task which 
 now calls mankind is something more than reconstruction. 
 The term indicates a job of repairs, or at the most, the re- 
 placing or rebuilding of something that has been destroyed. 
 Reconstruction technically means the restoration of the 
 communities devastated by the conflict, and the readjust- 
 ment of those dislocations of life which the war has occasioned 
 throughout the world. To restore the activities of htunanity 
 to a normal peace basis is the strict reconstruction task. 
 
 This alone is a tremendous undertaking. It must needs 
 be on a scale comparable to that of the war. As the war was 
 titanic so reconstruction must be colossal. War is necessarily 
 organized and concentrated destruction and the recent con- 
 flict siunmoned to that purpose all the knowledge and ener- 
 gies of a scientific era. It is a commonplace of life that to 
 construct is always a longer and more difficult imdertaking 
 than to destroy. The work of many men, through many 
 years, or the fruition of centuries of collective effort may be 
 smashed ia a moment by the shell from a great gun or the 
 finger of a careless child. When the destruction is social, as 
 in the case of war, it requires a better organization and more 
 
 3 
 
4 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PEXNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 energy to repair than to make the damage. To wage the war 
 reqmred a tremendous concentration of the will of the na- 
 tions. To make good the social waste of the struggle, indeed 
 to prevent it from being fruitful and multiplying throughout 
 the earth, will require a still greater exercise of the collective 
 will and there is now no stimulus of an immediate danger 
 to arouse the necessary energy. No generation following 
 a great war has ever yet been able to fully recover from it. 
 Having given free rein to the primitive passion of destruc- 
 tion, civilization now stands like a child in the midst of its 
 broken toys, finding that some will not go together again 
 and cannot be replaced. Some other institutions besides 
 kings and kaisers have recently been smashed past hope of 
 repair or cracked beyond possibihty of use. Still others 
 have been so badly damaged that it may prove cheaper 
 to make new ones than to repair the old. If the old gar- 
 ment wiU not carry the new cloth, why waste labor on the 
 patch? 
 
 To the effect of the war upon inherited institutions must 
 be added its effect upon the temper, purpose and knowledge 
 of the common people, particularly in Europe. In the final 
 event, they will decide whether it is to be repair or rebuilding 
 of the social structure. Such evidence of their point of view 
 as is now available, indicates that any attempt to rebuild 
 the world on the old foundation is doomed to final failure. 
 Too much has been swept away in Europe, too much of the 
 authority and social sanction of what remains has been 
 undermined, to make that foundation much longer safe. 
 It is by this time perfectly clear that the war in its ending 
 is challenging the economic order in Europe, as in its devel- 
 opment it challenged the political order of the central powers. 
 This challenge caimot be confined to Europe and the answer 
 to it caimot long be delayed. Even though there is little 
 change in the mode of life after the Peace Conference ad- 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 5 
 
 joums, nevertheless the good old days for the people of power 
 and privilege are not coming back. No ruling class any- 
 where in the earth will ever again be able to sit secure and at 
 ease in the seats of the mighty. The concentration of eco- 
 nomic power is to be challenged as the concentration of mili- 
 tary power has been challenged. The people throughout the 
 world who toil for a mere living, a little less or a little more, 
 are not going to remain quiescent in a subordinate and in- 
 ferior social status. They have been taught the effective- 
 ness of mass action. Many of them worn and weary, will 
 sink back to the old inertia. They will be like the miner 
 who found his old job underground waiting for him but the 
 mule with which he had worked for years had been replaced 
 by another. A few days with the new animal was all he could 
 stand. Then he struck, refusing to return to work imtil the 
 familiar mule, the comrade of years of toU, was restored to him. 
 But the attitude toward life of the returned soldier is better 
 revealed by that large number of men who stay in the city 
 instead of going back to the farm or the small town. They 
 have found the former place of life too straight for them, 
 the earlier environment too restricted. At a meeting of a 
 Soldiers', Sailors' and Workmen's Council in Philadelphia a 
 soldier made the following report: "I have interviewed per- 
 sonally 365 men who have been in the army and navy. I have 
 recorded their opinions closely and carefully. There were 191 
 who told me they were ready for an immediate revolution and 
 the overthrow of the Capitalist system. Of this number 168 
 were oversea men and 23 had been in the army here. Then 
 there were 104 who wanted a revolution but of a somewhat 
 nuld sort, one like the Ebert-Scheidemann revolution in Ger- 
 many, the rise to power of the moderate socialist party. Of 
 this number 78 were oversea men; 26 were home service men. 
 Of the 365, but 61 wanted a more moderate change of govern- 
 ment, a gradual mitigation and removal of current industrial 
 
6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 evils. And 8 of the men interviewed were satisfied with pres- 
 ent conditions, while a ninth was so thoroughly contented 
 he said he would willingly fight the Bolsheviks if conscripted 
 for Siberian service." 
 
 The revolutionary force of the war is not yet spent. The 
 fury of the elements it let loose upon the house of humanity 
 is not yet exhausted. Fourteen wars, in which big artillery 
 was used, were in progress in Europe during the Peace Ses- 
 sion, one for each of the Fourteen Points, the men of the old 
 order cynically declared. Strike after strike shakes the eco- 
 nomic foundation of the great industrial nations, each one 
 revealing the acquisition of new power and purpose by the 
 toilers. It is the day of judgment for all social and govern- 
 mental institutions. In open court, before the assembled 
 multitudes, each one must show its moral authority and its 
 practical efl&ciency. In a world in which so much has been 
 destroyed and abandoned, everything must justify its right 
 to remain. So much of our old-fashioned social machinery 
 proved inadequate for the tasks of war, liiat it is now com- 
 pelled to answer the questioning of the common people con- 
 cerning its adequacy for the tasks of peace. What a war- 
 time censorship could not do in concealing the inefficiency of 
 the prevailing mode of political and economic organization, 
 cannot in the end be accomplished by bureaucratic burrowing 
 or publicity propaganda. Moreover, the complete effect of 
 the war as a force for social change will not have been realized 
 until the common people who did the bulk of the fighting face 
 the full bill for the imdertaking. As always in times past, 
 collection is to be attempted from them. But this time there 
 is a difference. The people are now becoming able to audit 
 the accounts. Before long they will check them up to the 
 last item. When that day comes, they will decide who shall 
 pay and who shall collect, and their decision will be enforced. 
 They have been magnificently fooled for the time being by 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER ^ 
 
 some skillful political juggling, but already the omens declare 
 that the process is becoming apparent to the audience. The 
 political showmen are soon due to find out that the period 
 during which the people can be fooled becomes progressively 
 shorter, as each succeeding method of deception gets under- 
 stood. 
 
 The conservative forces apparently have only one answer to 
 the increasing demand for a new social order, and that is 
 the old futile word of repression. Jails and machine guns are 
 apparently their only resource and these have never proved 
 adequate weapons against the human spirit. They are the 
 poorest of substitutes for ideas, the final evidence of the 
 bankruptcy of an order which must depend on them. Those 
 who think to restore the solvency of the present order by the 
 currency or credit of coercion had better remember that the 
 primitive blood lust of the common people has not yet retired 
 into those Hi'tti and secret caverns of their being from which it 
 was conjured by the recent carnage. They too are still domi- 
 nated by the philosophy and the propaganda of hate so sed- 
 ulously cultivated for war purposes; they too have learned 
 that life and property are not so valuable as they had been 
 taught; they have discovered that the decalogue is not ab- 
 solute; they have been taught that no hardship, danger, or 
 sacrifice is too great to be endured in defense or pursuit of an 
 ideal. 
 
 The increasing intelligence of the common people is the most 
 significant fact to reckon with in trying to determine the 
 nature and extent of pending social change. They have 
 suffered many things vmder the present order without knowing 
 how nor why. They are gradually finding out how the ma- 
 chinery of life works and where it needs to be changed, which 
 is what most of the people to whom the present order is kind 
 have neither the motive nor the conscience to discover. What 
 those who would mamtain the present order, either from self- 
 
8 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 interest or conviction, have to face, is an awakening working 
 class the world over, intent on changing its social status, 
 determined to have a redistribution of power, and continually 
 gaining in knowledge. In their need of social change they are a 
 majority. Increasingly they assert that nothing short of a 
 new order will meet their needs. When their purpose is 
 clarified and their methods chosen they will claim the recog- 
 nized right of a majority. 
 
 Lest the work of their hands should presently come to 
 naught, those who recognize the need of social change but 
 would confine it to reform measures, those who think of 
 reconstruction in terms of the repair or rebuilding of the broken 
 house of humanity, will do well to consider whether the old 
 house is big enough for the peoples of the earth to live in. 
 If now, mankind demands a roomier habitation, is it sufficient 
 to make some changes to the old house or must we start afresh 
 with new plans and specifications? 
 
 As a matter of fact, the figure is inadequate. It is a new 
 mode of life that humanity seeks and not merely a new house 
 to Uve in. The changes that are now taking place in the social 
 order are not mechanical but vital. What is going on is no 
 mere tinkering with the machinery of human society but one 
 of those tremendous upheavals which mark a new period in 
 human living. One of the great migrations of history is 
 happening. It is not, as in days past, a people swarming out 
 to find new pastures and new lands to till; it is a movement of 
 the race in search for more space for the development of the 
 human spirit. 
 
 The social order is not a framework external to humanity; 
 it is composed of humanity itself. It is the thought and life, 
 the customs and habit of the people; it is not a machine but 
 a living organism, composed of personalities welded together 
 in vital association. Its forms and institutions are not only 
 expressions of life; they are life itself. The family, the school, 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 9 
 
 the church, the State, industry, are all composed of people. 
 At times static as institutions, they are neverUieless throbbing 
 with the lives of the individuals who make them. Occasionally 
 they furnish the means for their constitutent members to 
 express their discontent with the existing state of life and 
 their determination to attempt something better. At present, 
 everyone of these institutions is dynamic with the spirit of 
 change. The extraordinary activity of the human race at the 
 present time is not merely because humanity is busy trying to 
 make a new home, but because it is passing into a new stage 
 of development. One of the points in social evolution has 
 been reached at which epochal changes occur, and from which 
 vital developments proceed. 
 
 The outstanding fact of the present situation is that hu- 
 manity is now seeking to come together as a whole, is be- 
 coming conscious of itself as an organic unity and is striving 
 to organize its life upon that basis. The social order is forming 
 upon a world scale. This process involves not simply a new 
 world order but new life; not merely change in organization 
 but in spirit and purpose, in ideal and motive. The dynamic 
 forces of himian association are developing new power. The 
 urge for a new life is greater among the masses of the people 
 than among the ruling classes. The leaders of the nations 
 have failed to organize a new order because they have been 
 unable or tmwiUing to trust the new life that surges through- 
 out the world. Its first manifestation is the universal faith 
 and hope that a new order of things was about to come. It is 
 doubtful if any period of human history, unless it was that 
 immediately preceding the birth of Jesus, has known such a 
 imiversal expectancy of the dawn of a new day. A great 
 disappointment has fallen upon the earth because the men 
 in power were more concerned to hold back the new life of the 
 people than to lead it to fulfillment. If the vision of a new 
 day is now to leave the earth cold and dull, it will be because 
 
lO THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the people themselves are without the capacity to realize 
 their hope and translate their faith into works. That they 
 will attempt it, is quite evident. 
 
 When the general longing for a new world attempts to 
 translate itself into fact, it is seen that the task bears a two- 
 fold aspect. The nature of the change required in world 
 organization and world living is seen most graphically in the 
 development of the Peace Conference. In hope and ideal this 
 gathering began as a parliament of men dealing with the 
 future of mankind more than with the past. As a fact, it 
 dwindled into a secret session of a few men adjusting the 
 world on the basis of the old order, its powers and privileges. 
 The work which the Peace Conference started to do in obe- 
 dience to the ideals of humanity wais generalized xmder the 
 term "democracy." There was to be more democracy in the 
 world as a result of the war. The situation was complicated 
 because democracy in the modem world has a twofold aspect. 
 To most of the idealists who were enjoying the major priv- 
 ileges of the present economic order, it meant the extension 
 of political democracy to subject nationalities and backward 
 peoples; to some other idealists of the privileged classes and 
 to millions of toilers, it meant the appUcation of democracy 
 to the economic Ufe, its development to cover the whole in- 
 dustrial and social activities of mankind. The situation was 
 still further complicated because there was a necessity to 
 unfold both these meanings at one and the same time. Before 
 political democracy had completed itself, either in Germany 
 and Russia, or in Great Britain and the United States, the 
 demand for social democracy pressed hard upon the govern- 
 ment. One reason for the war was that political democracy 
 had not developed in Eastern and Central as in Western 
 Europe. The same reason accounts very largely for the form 
 and nature of the Russian Revolution. The world suddenly 
 found itself torn apart by a twofold struggle; the attempt to 
 
THE NATXJRE OF THE NEW ORDER II 
 
 apply democratic principles on the one hand to national 
 ambitions and desires, and on the other hand to the interests 
 of classes. In Central and Eastern Europe, while the upper 
 and middle classes are set for self-determination, the peasants 
 and the workers are equally set on self-realization. The one 
 endeavor means only a change in the form of govenmient; 
 the other means a changed form of govenmient united with a 
 different form of economic organization. 
 
 The twofold aspect of the task now confronting humanity 
 is seen again in the debate over the League of Nations. Will 
 it be a League of Contract to conciliate and mediate the dis- 
 putes of free and independent sovereign States separately 
 pursuing their economic necessities and ambitions, or will it 
 be a League of Service, in which the Nations will gradually 
 grow together into one body mutually ministering to their 
 common economic necessities and promoting the common 
 development of hiunanity? Its value as an instrument of the 
 new order is determined by the answer to this question. If 
 the League is to be a combination of the same kind of govern- 
 ments that existed before the war, pursuing the same objec- 
 tives, the world will receive from it no new spirit and not even 
 a new form, only an enlargement of the old. For a new life 
 there must be a new purpose. 
 
 The measure of value for the League of Nations is not its 
 worth as a regulative agency in international affairs, but the 
 degree to which it positively embodies the desire and purpose 
 of mankind to find a better way of living together, in which 
 there shaU be more honesty and justice, more kindness and 
 service. It is the spirit of man that has to be satisfied, as well 
 as the practical necessities of a situation in which the indis- 
 pensable business of mankind can no longer be adequately 
 carried on. It must be remembered that before the war broke 
 there was a widespread revolt of the human spirit against the 
 existing order, which has been accentuated and increased by 
 
12 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the experience of the conflict. The central characteristic of 
 the general dissatisfaction with modem civilization is a growing 
 perception of the need for a change in the purpose and form of 
 economic organization. This is crystallizing into a widespread 
 conviction that the spirit of man can find no full expression 
 until the necessary business of life is a matter of common 
 concern and service. For millions of people the world over, 
 this is the essence of a new order of living. How then can this 
 situation be met by an agreement between governments which 
 do not believe that the basic activities of every day living are 
 matters of common interest and service, but are to be pxirsued 
 for private gain, and that it is the main function of government 
 to protect the winners, not simply in their own interests but 
 in the interest of those who hope to win in the future? Be- 
 tween such governments an agreement or understanding con- 
 cerning economic issues, which are the root of the matter, wiU 
 take one of two forms: it will be an attempt to set up legal 
 machinery to prevent or adjust disputes, or it wiU be a pooling 
 of interests for the mutual profit of those who have found 
 competition to be unprofitable. In either case, it constitutes 
 only a new piece of political machinery and not a new order of 
 Ufe. As a means of mediation and conciliation its service 
 would be to prevent the disruption of the processes that are 
 making for a common life, to furnish a breathing space for 
 those who wished by common experiment and discussion to 
 discover how to organize life aroimd a new purpose. As a 
 pooling of the economic interests of the greater powers it 
 would mean the consolidation and strengthening of the cap- 
 italistic form of economic organization and of the financial 
 imperialism which is its supreme expression. This mode of 
 economic activity has grown up in the machine age side by 
 side with the democratic state, which it has used as its political 
 instrument and expression. Consequentiy, the idealistic at- 
 tempt to spread political democracy all over the earth may 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 1 3 
 
 turn out to be the last stage of our present political and eco- 
 nomic order, corresponding to the filial world-wide period of 
 the Roman Empire. When it reaches the point where there 
 are no more worlds to conquer, any system is then doomed to 
 decadence. What those who reject poHtical democracy, as the 
 governmental expression of economic autocracy, have failed to 
 see, however, is that the democratic spirit in government is 
 continually instigating revolt against an autocratic economic 
 order, is constantly inciting such changes in government as 
 win enable and express democracy in economic relations. 
 Confined to the formal pohtical reahn, democracy becomes 
 the servant, then the slave and at last the victim of the 
 economic oligarchy that is fastening its grip upon the whole 
 world. It can save itself and bring a new order to mankind 
 only by securing an economic expression. 
 
 An international oligarchy of the financial interests of the 
 great powers, using the international pohtical machinery to 
 control the undeveloped resources and the labor power of the 
 world for the profit of the owners of concentrated wealth in 
 the great industrial nations, is one of the possibihties of the 
 present situation. There are sufficient people to be reckoned 
 with, as the Paris Conference has shown, to whom making the 
 world safe for democracy means capitalizing the earth that 
 their descendants may draw perpetual interest, to whom the 
 extension of civilization means fastening our type of industrial 
 organization upon every one of the "backward peoples," 
 regardless of their wishes, ideals and aspirations. To these 
 people the League of Nations is merely an opportunity to 
 organize loot on a grander scale, to avoid inconvenient quar- 
 rels concerning the divisions of the spoils and to maintain the 
 arrangement by combined force. If the international interests 
 of finance should prove sufl&ciently compelling to accomplish 
 such an outcome to the present event, the capitalistic order 
 in its culmination will have dealt a mortal blow to the concept 
 
14 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 of the absolute sovereignty of the nations. The constituent 
 members of a League of High Finance would have to agree 
 to certain limitations of power for the sake of the profits 
 involved, just as in national industry when the financiers 
 show a group of manufacturers that it is no longer profitable 
 to fight each other and organize them into a combination 
 which by mutual agreement limits the separate rights and 
 powers of its members for their separate profit. Similarly, on 
 the international as on the national scale, such a combination 
 prepares the way for democracy by developing the means and 
 capacity for big scale organization which can later be used 
 democratically to cooperative ends. 
 
 An American banker, who has seen at first hand, the misery 
 and industrial collapse of Europe has urged that the United 
 States should provide the raw materials and credit which 
 would start the cycle of production in the suffering countries. 
 This he does because he knows that more misery wiU follow 
 unless industry and agriculture can begin to function and 
 also because he sees that the continuance of the present situa- 
 tion threatens the institution of private property and the 
 maintenance of the capitalist order the world over. It is a 
 mixed motive and by mixed motives the ordinary progress 
 of the world is achieved, but not its salvation in a supreme 
 crisis. That requires a single motive; it demands sacrifice. 
 The capitalist order can only prove its ability to save the 
 world by being wilUng, if need be, to lose itself. That the law 
 of its own being will not permit it to meet the supreme test is 
 manifest by what it gave and what it made in wartime, by its 
 influence upon the negotiations at Paris, and now by its recep- 
 tion in this country of this proposal that it shovild risk some- 
 thing to save Europe and itself. It would appear that the 
 poison of its central principle of self-interest as the motive of ac- 
 tion has so weakened its system that it caimot even accomplish 
 as much united action as is necessary to prolong its own life. 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 15 
 
 If the immediate result of the war should turn out to be not 
 the beguming of a new order but the consolidation of the old, 
 an international trust avoiding wasteful and destructive 
 competition but making profits larger and more certain, it 
 will not be because it was so planned, but because economic 
 forces were not understood by those whose duty it was to 
 imderstand them and show the people how to control them. 
 It will not be for lack of ideals but for lack of knowledge to see 
 whither ideals lead and of courage to follow the path. More- 
 over, such a consolidation and increase of the forces of power 
 and privilege in the industrial nations would not be malicious 
 or malevolent but sternly assured of its own righteousness, 
 claiming the sanction of democracy and the blessing of Chris- 
 tianity and receiving a considerable portion of both. It 
 would, moreover, in many respects, be very benevolent. 
 Welfare work and philanthrophy would be its pride and in- 
 deed its joy. It would provide the people with more com- 
 forts and educational opportunities but by its very nature 
 and constitution it could not be willing to give self-determina- 
 tion and self-realization on equal terms to all classes and all 
 races. But with nothing less than this, will the people of the 
 earth now be satisfied. 
 
 The difficulties that have developed at Paris between the 
 Allies, indicate how doubtful it is that an International Hold- 
 ing Company can be formed to underwrite the economic 
 exploitation of the more primitive peoples for the benefit 
 of the privileged classes of the industrial nations. The in- 
 terests to be adjusted are much more complex and the com- 
 mon interest of the separate exploiters is harder to perceive 
 than in the case of a national trust. But if it can be done, it 
 has but a short course to run. Leaving out of account the 
 spirit of revolt it would arouse when its nature and operations 
 were perceived, the probabilities are that it would defeat it- 
 self. In smaller circles such agreements are hard to maintain. 
 
l6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 It takes a good deal of diplomacy to keep the peace within a 
 trust or even a trade association. As one business man said 
 "we get together in our trade and talk harmony and make 
 agreements and draw up rules. Then we go outside and get 
 up against the game and forget those rules and look out for 
 our own advantage." If the game is grab, it is hard to 
 make rules to keep order. If life is to be a prize ring there can 
 be certain rules to check unfair fighting, but the very rules 
 guarantee that somebody will be the loser and when the stakes 
 are sufficiently large the contest becomes crooked. The at- 
 tempt to unite the nations on the basis of the capitalistic 
 order faces another difficulty. There are certain economists 
 who insist that monopoly will eventually correct itself, that 
 the trusts do not need regulation because they can never get 
 beyond a certain point. After that point it becomes profit- 
 able for competitors to arise. They successfully compete with 
 and destroy the monopoly and the process begins over again. 
 If this be a statement of fact it shows that an economic or- 
 ganization dependent mainly upon the appeal to the acquisi- 
 tive instinct can avoid stagnation and inertia only at the cost 
 of constant and wasteful conflict. As long as life is organized 
 as a contest it is inevitable that " youth will be served," that 
 no man can maintain the championship in the prize ring for- 
 ever, that no consoHdation of forces can retain vigor enough 
 to permanently hold power. If this be true, the statesmen who 
 are seeking the combination of nations based upon power 
 rather than service are pursuing an illusion, they are simply 
 preparing for future conflicts. So long as the life of the world 
 is a contest to control the opportunities for the enormous 
 wealth to be gathered from the development of the resources 
 of the earth and the control of its undeveloped labor, the 
 statesmen who are trying to devise rules to prevent war and 
 tyranny are not likely to succeed even to the point of modify- 
 ing a free for all fight into a contest in which certain prac- 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 1 7 
 
 tices are disallowed as foul. Fighting has never been kept 
 dean after it became commercialized. 
 
 Even though there could be performed a binding combina- 
 tion of nations, each of which was more concerned with its 
 own economic necessities and advantage than with the com- 
 mon interest, it would still leave unsolved the sharp conflict 
 between the classes which the present order has developed 
 and which increasingly becomes international in its scope 
 and organization. So deeply has this class conflict cut into 
 and under national lines that even during the war it was very 
 difficult in all European nations to keep intact the national 
 unity. The organization of an international financial im- 
 perialism railin g itself a League of Nations would simply 
 accentuate and bring to a head the world-wide class struggle. 
 It would be considered by the self-conscious working class, 
 as in economic and moral fact it would be, a declaration of 
 class war. Altogether apart from the intent and purpose of 
 its organizers, if the League of Nations should in its operation 
 turn out to be an instnmient for the perpetuation of the 
 capitalist order and not the approach to a new mode of 
 economic activity, it will stand in the same position before 
 the workers of the world as though it were fashioned for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Something of the nature of the change in human life that 
 is now necessary may be gathered by observing the fact that 
 while the men of the old order, the men in place and power, 
 have been debating, the men of the new order, the men of the 
 rank and file, have been actmg. In Russia, before the political 
 revolution is accompUshed, it becomes a social upheaval, 
 establishing in place of the rule of the aristocracy the rule of 
 the proletarians inaugurating a new economic order. In 
 England the men of the basic industries compel the govern- 
 ment to call an industrial parliament and to promise to carry 
 out the recommendations of a commission which recommends 
 
l8 THE NEW SOCUL ORDER: PRINCIPtES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 a fundamental change in the institution of property as it 
 affects the ownership of mines. In North Dakota the farm- 
 ers, through political means, put their hands upon the control 
 of their product and the credit necessary to the carrying on of 
 their occupation. In these and numerous other instances is 
 the evidence of the rise to power of the class that is engaged 
 in the basic economic production of society. Behind this 
 struggle to control political power is something more. Funda- 
 mentally it is an attempt to organize society around a differ- 
 ent principle. The aristocratic form of human society was 
 organized around war — it was the rise to power of the fighting 
 class and it enlarged and glorified the instinct for combat. 
 PoUtical democracy has been organized around the struggle 
 for capital. It was the rise to power of the trading and manu- 
 facturing class. It enlarged and glorified the instinct for 
 possession. It perpetuated in another form the fundamental 
 principle of the aristocratic society. It failed to form a dem- 
 ocratic community. Now comes the working class to power, 
 attempting to organize a social democracy aroimd the prin- 
 ciple of productive labor, desiring to enlarge and glorify the 
 instinct for comradeship, proposing to exalt service above pos- 
 sessions and to make such changes in the institutions of pri- 
 vate property as will cause it to enlarge and not diminish the 
 development of all the people, taken both individually and 
 collectively. 
 
 In this they are Joined by the idealists of other classes and 
 by all who know the economic necessity of the present sit- 
 uation. If the attempt succeeds it will indeed inaugurate a 
 new order of life. If will organize a world family ministering 
 to the common need and development just as the original 
 family grew into permanance around the necessity of joiat 
 labor and care to meet the needs of the young, beginning with 
 food. We have reached the stage of social development where 
 such joint service on a world scale is possible, as the economic 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 1 9 
 
 organization of the allied nations in the war amply proves. 
 This ancient principle of action, long subdued and repressed 
 in our western competitive individualism, is now struggling 
 for expression, is attempting to fashion and fit to itself some 
 adequate form in a world which is spiritually starved for lack 
 of it and has abundant technical capacity to organize it on 
 a scale never before possible. While most of the intellect in 
 the world of privilege is engaged upon plans to stabilize the 
 old order, its very basis is being undermined by the dynamic 
 force of the working principle of the new order, the principle 
 of mutual service. While the forces which control the old 
 order are seeking to repress by terrorism all movements 
 tending to social and political change, millions of human 
 atoms the world over are moving together to their respec- 
 tive places in a great coordinated organism to thus pro- 
 mote the common life and their own largest good. Aim- 
 less and blind in large part is this great movement of the com- 
 mon life, but rapidly gaining vision and discernment. It is 
 here, in the yearnings and strivings of the millions and not in 
 the bargainings of the elder statesmen, that the signs of a 
 new order are to be discovered. It is the conscious associa- 
 tion for the common good of the creative forces of civilization 
 which will indeed constitute a new form of human living ani- 
 mated by a new spirit. 
 
 If the situation in which the world now finds itself requires 
 not merely reforms but a basic change in economic organiza- 
 tion, involving a still deeper change in the moral and spiritual 
 foundations of life, it is very plain that there are some serious 
 obstructions across the path of progress. The new order 
 will not come simply by wishing and praying. It is not to 
 be secured merely by applauding high ideals or writing sound 
 principles. It is not to be brought in by rubbing an Aladdin's 
 lamp some night and finding that our dreams, in the morning, 
 have somehow turned into solid fact. 
 
20 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Even the lesser of the possible gains which humanity might 
 realize at this present moment, namely a confederation of the 
 nations for the abatement of international conflict and the 
 mutual benefit of the ruling classes of the great powers, even 
 that minimum step in progress, is very seriously threatened 
 by powerful forces of opposition. There is being created out 
 of the war a group of new nations — some American humorist 
 has described the process as not one of self-determination 
 but selfish-determination — and unfortunately, there is a little 
 more than humor to that phrase. This new-bom nationalism 
 is vigorously self-assertive. The reaction from a long period 
 of injustice and oppression is bringing with it some dis- 
 agreeable qualities and the ambitions of several of these 
 new-bom nations are being expressed in the old terms of 
 territorial greed. They are still thinking that the acquisition 
 of fiurther territory is the way to become a great state. They 
 have even been occupying territory by force of arms while the 
 Peace Conference was sitting, and in some cases their armies 
 have been sent into alien territory by the great powers to 
 fight new formed socialist republics, whose self-determination 
 was not authorized at Paris. As if this were not enough to 
 complicate the situation, in the backgroimd is the economic 
 imperialism of the great powers, constantly creating suspicion, 
 jealousy and antagonism between them. This is the newer 
 form of the lust for power. It is the predatory spirit grown 
 older and more sophisticated since the days when it sought 
 to acquire new territory for glory. That was the primitive 
 form of national greed ; this desire for special economic privilege 
 in other parts of the earth is the educated form of national 
 selfishness on the part of nations who have learned something 
 of the cost of holding and administering subject territory, and 
 who have found it more profitable to be able, through control 
 of invested capital, to dominate markets and labor and un- 
 developed resources in other parts of the earth. Either or 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 21 
 
 both of these forms of national selfishness must be controlled 
 much more vigorously than at present or any agreement be- 
 tween the nations wiU soon be reduced to impotence. This is 
 a matter of ideals not machinery, of moral forces not organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 The democratic ideaUsm of the United States is throwing 
 its passion for freedom, its deep sense of justice, its yearning 
 for brotherhood against the spirit of imperialism both at home 
 and abroad. But it is now stiff from the fetters of war time 
 restriction, it is handicapped by its ignorance of the demo- 
 cratic forces of Europe, it is limited in its understanding of 
 economic reaUty because it has been free from the economic 
 pressure which is upon the nations of Europe. Scarcely 
 aroused out of its splendid isolation, it does not quite realize 
 that the world has made certain gains in science, in industry, 
 in social organization, which make possible at this time, if 
 men would do it, something more than a mere negative League 
 of Nations to endeavor to suppress war and to arbitrate dis- 
 putes. It is a tragedy for poUtical democracy, challenged I 
 on the one hand by economic imperialism and on the other by 
 the dicatorship of the proletariat, that it has no leaders who , 
 show any understanding of the economic realities and the 
 economic possibilities of the modem world. If the present 
 situation could be met by the expansion of political democracy 
 to other peoples who have not yet enjoyed it, or to other 
 classes within the nations where it has partially obtained, 
 the present or available leadership of democracy would be 
 adequate, for to that situation the formulae which have been 
 worked out by political experience can be applied. That is 
 exactly what this nation has been trying to do. There is a 
 tremendous missionary force in its democracy. It is pro- 
 foimdly convinced that it has enjoyed the very best form of 
 government yet devised by humanity and that all that is 
 needed for the ills of mankind is to extend this form of govern- 
 
22 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 ment over the whole earth. It is a good thing for any religion 
 or political or economic system that it still has life enough to 
 have missionary desire and force; but it is not good for human- 
 ity if that missionary force takes the form of an expression 
 of the universal desire to play God to the rest of the world. 
 We all like to do it: first the kmgs, then the statesmen, then 
 the capitalists; now the professors and next the working men. 
 One class after another, they think that they know enough 
 and are good enough to be a kindly providence to the remainder 
 of mankind. For that reason we cannot imderstand why the 
 Russians should have preferred a Soviet to a Constituent 
 Assembly, and in the same way the Bolsheviki caimot imder- 
 stand why liberals should be satisfied with our form of political 
 democracy. They too, are quite sure that they have the best 
 form of organization the world has ever yet devised and are 
 anxious to extend it throughout the earth for the good of 
 mankind. The missionary spirit is valuable to the world as 
 long as it leads to a comparison and interchange of systems. 
 It becomes a hindrance when it assumes the infallibility, and 
 immutability of its propaganda. 
 
 If the idealists of democracy are to make their full con- 
 tribution to the new order they will have to recognize that the 
 industrial needs of mankind require something more than the 
 political formulae of the past. It is a time for invention but 
 inventors are always misimderstood and their inventions 
 usually get smashed to begin with, or else rejected. But the 
 workers who smashed the new machines at the beginning of 
 the industrial revolution hurt their own cause without knowing 
 it just as much as they hurt anybody else. That is still more 
 true in the field of social invention. Society is constantly 
 smashing machines just because they are new, and imprison- 
 ing men because they have discovered that the world does go 
 round. The consequence is the general injury, and the peril 
 is the suicide of society. When the new order is considered 
 
THE NATXJKE OF THE NEW ORDER 23 
 
 as something more than an expansion in size of our democratic 
 arrangements, when it is viewed as an attempt to change the 
 institution of property so as to abolish economic class dis- 
 tinctions, we find that it faces a much deeper spirit of combat 
 than resides in international jealousies and antagonisms, which 
 may indeed turn out to be the parent of them. In the class 
 conflict we have the combative instinct imduly enlarged and 
 glorified by the instinct for acquisition and the desire to de- 
 fend the possessions that have been gained. Hence, any 
 proposal to change the economic order in general is met at 
 once by the property class, not with reason in the field of dis- 
 cussion, but by repression in the field of physical force. 
 It is so much easier to shoot your opponent than to convert 
 him, though it may prove to be a great deal more disastrous 
 in the long nm to the very institutions you are trjong to de- 
 fend. The blind passion of the imthinking crowd is a fruitful 
 theme for social moralists. There is also some wisdom to be 
 gathered from considering the blind passion of the property 
 owning class which is reputed to be intelligent. 
 
 There is only one answer from below to the spirit of re- 
 pression and that is to declare it a fight to the finish. When 
 the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations was sitting 
 in the City of Seattle there appeared before it a representative 
 of certain associated employing interests. He was a typical 
 two-fisted, aggressive American business man of the west. He 
 informed the Commission that all that body was accomplish- 
 ing was the promotion of unrest and discontent, that there 
 was only one thing to do with the organized workers and that 
 was to subdue them. "The fight has to go to a finish and for 
 myseK," said he, as he squared his vigorous physique,^"! 
 am glad that I am living in the day when we can fight it to 
 the end and lick those fellows to a frazzle." The next witness 
 happened to be an ofl&cial of the I. W. W. and he said in brief: 
 "Why gentlemen, you are simply wasting your valuable time; 
 
24 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 this thing has gone far beyond investigation; about all you 
 can do is to hold a post-mortem on the corpse and report the 
 results. You know we fellows have this thing all settled; 
 all that the capitalists have got left to do now is to find a soft 
 place to fall on." If this spirit of combat continues to grow 
 between the classes, the spiritual qualities that the new order 
 needs because it is to be a cooperative order, will be so weak- 
 ened and distorted in the struggle as to make impossible for 
 several generations any healthy and wholesome development of 
 life or much improvement in the manner of living. The 
 American labor movement has suffered incalculably in moral 
 and intellectual vigor because it has had to spend the greater 
 part of its energies in resisting the aggressive attack of Ameri- 
 can capital. Violence has developed and increased in Russia 
 in proportion to the attacks of the counter-revolutionists upon 
 the Soviet government and in proportion as those attacks 
 have been encouraged and strengthened by the support of 
 the Allies. The idealism at the bottom of society which is 
 making for a new order, is mixed with selfishness and brutality 
 just as it is at the top, and if the issue is to be turned into the 
 field of force the worst elements in the nature of the people 
 will be let loose to the infinite destruction of our social re- 
 sources. 
 
 With this possible outcome to the present conflict of in- 
 terest between the classes, which the daily news shows to be 
 rapidly coming to a head even in the newer lands — the United 
 States, Canada, Australia, South America — a heavy respon- 
 sibility falls upon the intellectuals of the middle class, the 
 intelligentsia as they are called in Europe. Nowhere else is 
 this class as large or as well equipped to serve society as in the 
 United States. One result of the free economic opportunity 
 of the early life of this nation was an intellectual and idealistic 
 middle class, the joint product of our large economic resources, 
 our educational system and the nature and teachings of our 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 25 
 
 religion. Therefore the American middle class, a powerful 
 social group, ought to have some distinct contribution to 
 make, both to the matter and the manner of the new order. 
 Its pioneer spirit ought to put it in the vanguard of those 
 seeking a new world. Its ideals are those around which in 
 time a new order will crystallize, whether it follows or forsakes 
 them. Those ideals are freedom, justice, fraternity. It was 
 these standards that America followed in the world war and 
 the banners were upheld by the intellectuals. Will they now 
 carry them in a more difficult situation? They are called 
 upon at the present time to decide whether the existing 
 political and economic organization expresses these ideals 
 better than the new order which is being proposed and already 
 has been partly worked out. Because they have the technical 
 equipment which is necessary to both orders and have there- 
 fore a measure of economic independence, they are more free 
 to make this judgment than those who are tied to the present 
 machine as mere wage earuers or property holders. Upon 
 their intelligence in deciding that question and upon their 
 courage in following that judgment, the immediate course 
 of events in no small degree depends. 
 
 As to their main direction the choice is now limited. It 
 is either the beginning of a new order or general disaster. 
 The compromise paths in between have been tried far enough 
 to show that they lead only back to the old road. Unless there 
 can now be organized a real Family of Nations, unless the 
 class struggle can be ended by a process of reason and orderly 
 progress, the world is doomed to the devastation of universal 
 conflict. If there is no adequate change, the old house we have 
 been living in will come down. Too many of the timbers are 
 rotten, and if the roof does not fall in there is a blind Samson 
 grinding com downstairs in the cellar and his arms are already 
 arovmd the foimdation pillars. Ferrero, the Italian historian, 
 points out that there are present in our modern European 
 
26 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRmCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 civilization all the elements which led to the decay and dis- 
 solution of the Roman Empire, and that they are constantly 
 increasing, particularly the concentration of wealth and power. 
 The war has increased these forces of social dissolution. 
 Additional evidence of the presence of decay in the present 
 order lies in the fact that its defenders insist upon the use 
 of force rather than reason. When any order gets to the point 
 that it needs to use physical force as its first argument, it is 
 thereby giving inherent eAddence of its own weakness. It 
 has lost confidence in the moral power of its cause, which in 
 earher days it was willing to submit to the franchise of human- 
 ity. It is only when it gets old and ripe for falling that it 
 turns at once to the use of the means of suppression in order 
 to maintain its existence. That it fears for itself is a sign of 
 failing vitahty. 
 
 A stm further indication of the same condition is the fact 
 that already the formulae of justice are being used to work 
 injustice and then to defend it.. The Roman Empire again 
 offers an historic parallel. When the imperial court began to 
 break down the liberties of the Roman people, it used the 
 Senate, the ancient defender of those Hberties, to carry out 
 its plans under the ancient formxilae of justice and freedom. 
 After it had suborned and prostituted the State the next step 
 was to use the military forces drawn from the provinces to 
 overthrow the Senate and establish completely the arbitrary 
 imperial power. To enslave a free people, the forces of im- 
 perialism must deceive them by cloaking their deeds in the 
 phrases of freedom. Exactly this has recently been done to 
 the free peoples under the guise of war-time necessity. 
 
 Any impartial study of the judicial and administrative 
 processes of the war period that touch upon class interests 
 will have to come to the conclusion that the phrases and forms 
 of democracy have been used to express a class will, to sus- 
 tain class dominance and so to destroy liberty and justice. 
 
tHE NATIJRE OF THE NEW ORDER 27 
 
 It has been so declared concerning the wholesale convic- 
 tion of the I. W. W. in Chicago, in a letter to the President 
 from the military intelligence officer who reviewed the case, a 
 lawyer who confesses to the ordinary capitalist prejudice 
 against the defendants. It is devoutly to be hoped that such 
 proceedings will prove to be only a temporary obsession of 
 democracy, a symptom of the disease of war, because when 
 any order gets to continuously mouthing the fundamental 
 principles of a sound social order while practically accom- 
 plishing their overthrow, it is giving evidence either of in- 
 curable corruption or of the blindness of senility. 
 
 One of the wisest of the elder statesmen of Japan, said 
 during the European war that the East was watching the 
 exhaustion and destruction of western civilization. Sir Edward 
 Grey, the man who probably knows most about the inner 
 workings of the forces which led to the present conflict and 
 which are likely to defeat or make abortive the present at- 
 tempt at the League of Nations, wrote during the war that 
 what was involved in the conflict was the very existence of 
 western civilization £ind that if ways and means are not foimd 
 to bind the nations together, civilization must proceed to its 
 decay. It cannot recover from the effects of another conflict 
 on the present scale. It is also evident that the same conse- 
 quence follows the failure to prevent a general class war. 
 If the class conffict develops in all the industrial nations to 
 the full extent of its possibility, it will mean the complete 
 exhaustion of civilization and the wasting of all its resources. 
 Older civilizations have perished from the shock of lesser 
 conflicts. The universal world upheaval of the present hour 
 means nothing less than that an old order is on its deathbed 
 and a new order is struggling for birth. If the struggle is 
 imduly prolonged, the new order will be stillborn and darkness 
 will descend upon the earth. 
 
 This is one of the sober possibilities of the situation. It 
 
28 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 is therefore imperative to find a safe deKverance for the new 
 world that is seeking for life. It is impossible to believe that 
 the possibilities of existence upon this planet are limited to 
 the alternative of a social order which has become intolerable 
 to millions of human beings and the destruction of aU that has 
 been gained since the days of barbarism in the attempt to 
 change it. There must be another way and it is the business 
 of those who call themselves educated to find it. To them 
 comes the cry of the people, who must have knowledge lest 
 they perish. It is necessary to know how much of the old 
 must remain to nourish for a time the fife of the new as well 
 as how much needs to be buried in the great graveyard of 
 the war with no hope of resurrection. 
 
 Because there is never any absolute break between one era 
 of human life and another, it seems to many people that to 
 talk about a new order is mere rhetorical exaggeration or at 
 least a lazy use of terms. This is one result of the tmiversal 
 understanding or misunderstanding of the evolutionary na- 
 ture of hiunan development. A generation ago the evolu- 
 tionary view of life was one of the indisputable marks of 
 radicalism; to-day it is one of the chosen shelters of the con- 
 servatives where they can sleep with a sense of security. 
 There are no breaks in the course of progress, the old and the 
 new intermingle imtil change is accomplished insensibly, so 
 the formula nms. But those who thus comfort themselves 
 overlook the fact that in the evolutionary process there occur 
 new kinds as well as new forms of life and that sometimes the 
 old must die to bring forth the new. A new order may involve 
 then a new kind of social Uving, a sharp break from the past. 
 The lesser changes in human organization are the further 
 applications of principles already accepted and operating, as 
 for example the extension of the suffrage. The greater changes 
 are the acceptances of principles which have not previously 
 been organized into action, as for example the establishment 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 29 
 
 of a republic. In either case a new order begins for those 
 affected by it. Its significance is not diminished because it 
 must necessarily carry over much from the past, in institution 
 as well as in habit and custom. The Pilgrim Fathers brought 
 much from Europe besides seeds and tools, but they fashioned 
 as well as found a new world. The Russian Socialist Republic 
 is compelled to caU into service men and methods of capitalist 
 industry, but it is nevertheless beginning a new economic 
 order. The degree in which a new order must break from the 
 past will naturally be determined by the nature and extent 
 of the social relationships that it changes, and also by the 
 degree to which its central principles have previously been 
 recognized and organized. The economic revolution in Russia 
 is much more significant and far-reaching within and without 
 that country than the political revolution. The latter meant 
 a new order for Russia whose principles and practice had long 
 been accepted elsewhere; the former proposes principles and 
 establishes a practice which would mean a new order for the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 A new order is conceived when a sufl&cient number of people 
 consciously accept a principle or a set of principles that 
 require a significant change in political or economic organiza- 
 tion. It is bom when they gather enough adherents to or- 
 ganize its principles into social action. It may be bom in a 
 night with great travail and tumult or it may come imper- 
 ceptibly to life and consciousness through long days of slow 
 and patient striving. In either event its further development 
 is a process of the gradual perception of the meaning and 
 necessary appUcation of its inherent principles. It took a 
 long time for it to become apparent that the principles which 
 brought men to these shores to escape the tyranny of a state 
 church also required them to rebel against the British crown. 
 It has taken a long time to make it clear that the principles 
 which required a democratic state also require a democratic 
 
30 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 form of economic organization. The Kingdom of God upon 
 the earth is the gradual outworking and organization of the 
 Kingdom of God that is within or among us, according to 
 whether we are thinking in individual or social terms. The 
 new order is flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone and heart of 
 our heart, but it is also a new life. It is such stuff as dreams 
 are made of, gradually taking to itself the form and substance, 
 the vitality and action of the waking world. It is constantly 
 coming and never here, but there are times and seasons when 
 a perceptible gain is made in its realization, and this is one of 
 them. 
 
 In magnitude, nature and consequences, one of the greatest 
 changes in human history is now occurring, involving all 
 humanity and all the institutions of society and its customs. 
 Men everywhere are seeking a way to live together so that the 
 nations may never again be drawn into war, so that there 
 shall be freedom and development for all peoples. This means 
 changing the political status of the subject peoples and the 
 social status of the working class, and such changes would 
 make a new order in a very vital sense. But the present 
 purpose of mankind does not stop even at that point. There 
 are literally millions of men and women for whom life has 
 been more limited than it has for others, or than it needs to be, 
 who are bent not only upon changing the social status of their 
 class or race but upon fashioning a social order in which no 
 class or race shall be condemned to an inferior position. That 
 is indeed a far-reaching purpose. The present rough stratifica- 
 tion of society into three classes has existed at least since the 
 days of Babylon and how much earlier no man knows. It 
 has survived all intervening political and economic develop- 
 ments. The organization of the French and American Repub- 
 lics shook it a little but left it still upon a firm foundation. 
 The industrial revolution occasioned by the invention of the 
 power machine changed the constituency of the classes some- 
 
THE NATURE OF THE NEW ORDER 3 1 
 
 what but left the line between them, if anything, sharper than 
 before. Yet the advent of poUtical democracy and the in- 
 dustrial revolution made inevitable the final overthrow of 
 the class system by exalting the principle of brotherhood and 
 supplying both the technical capacity and the power of mass 
 organization which make possible its realization in daily living. 
 In recent times the democratic peoples have been attempting 
 to order their Hves by certain principles whose meaning and 
 implications have been but partially perceived. The very 
 impetus of their previous manner of life now necessitates the 
 further extension and application of those principles. In 
 form, the new order will be the application of the principles of 
 hberty, equality and fraternity to economic organization. 
 The organization of economic democracy will constitute a 
 greater change in hiunan affairs than the development of 
 poHtical democracy, because it touches more of the relation- 
 ships of life and touches them more intimately. It affects the 
 sources and means of nourishment for aU social institutions, for 
 the family, education and rehgion; it has also to do with their 
 natiu-e and purpose. It is the whole maimer of doing the1 
 work of the world and of Uving together that is in vital respects 
 to be changed if democracy is to complete itself in economic 
 relations. 
 
 This can only be accompUshed by common agreement and 
 choice concerning the way of life. It involves governmental 
 and economic organization to carry out the common choice 
 in cooperative, harmonious action. It goes deeper and in- 
 volves changes in the nature as well as the form of life. It 
 requires that life be animated by the spirit of comradeship 
 instead of the spirit of selfishness, that it be driven by the 
 will to serve instead of the wiU to power, that it seek a higher 
 end than the laying up of treasures upon the earth. Here 
 is the core of the matter. Social progress is at heart a moral ~ 
 and religious process. It proceeds from conduct that is 
 
32 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 purely instinctive to conduct that is the result of a reasoned 
 choice of ends and of the means to attain them. In its social 
 conduct hitherto, mankind has mainly followed the line of 
 least resistance. Its choice of ends and of means has been 
 largely determined by immediate self-interest. With the 
 choice of following those of its instincts which led in the 
 direction of antagonism and conflict or those which led toward 
 mutuality and fraternity, it has listened most to the former 
 and has been misled. Therefore its reason has been con- 
 tinually defeated by the acquisitive and combative instincts 
 which have led it to a social policy of laying up treasures and 
 fighting to defend and even to acquire them. This policy has 
 led to disaster and an impossible situation. The way out is to 
 follow another motive than that of self-interest, to enlarge the 
 power of the instinct for mutual aid which has ever been 
 challenging the instincts of acquisition and combat to become 
 its yoke fellows, to develop and apply those principles of 
 social action by which with infinite difficulty man has achieved 
 such measure of common action and such degree of fellowship 
 as now obtains. The new order involves a conscious choice 
 of the highest, most difficult end for human life. Its goal must 
 be the unfolding of personality; its form the democratic 
 cooperation of life through which it will continually approach 
 its goal and express its spirit, in and through fellowship in all 
 the imdertakings of Ufe to the widest possible extent between 
 all people and with the Eternal Spirit of the Universe, whom 
 men have ever sought to know and with whom they have 
 ever desired to work. 
 
PART I 
 PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW ORDER 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 EQUALITY 
 
 The charter of modem democracy contains two immortal 
 phrases. One of them was the slogan of the French Revolu- 
 tion, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The other was the 
 deUberate declaration of the American Revolution that "all 
 men have equal rights to Ufe, liberty and the pursuit of 
 happiness." These proclamations have never yet become 
 reality. They stiU challenge us as great expressions of the 
 imperishable ideals of humanity. Mankind will stiU move 
 towards them. Governments which call themselves democ- 
 racies are therefore dedicated to the realization of their ideals 
 and must continually be examined in the light of them. 
 There has recently been much shouting for democracy, but 
 nevertheless it is evident that the Declaration of Independence 
 is not so popular as it used to be in the United States. In 
 the agricultural regions on the fourth of July it is still quoted, 
 but in the large centers of wealth, in those circles of power and 
 prestige which call themselves "the better classes," the 
 constitution, which limits the rights set forth in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, is a good deal more popular. There, 
 equality of rights is not infrequently denied as dangerous in 
 theory and impossible in practice. Fortimately, however, the 
 financial and social inequalities which imdermine the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual foundations of democracy at one end of 
 the social scale operate to strengthen them at the other. As 
 long as there are any nmnber of people who do not find them- 
 selves able to secure "equal rights to life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness," those people, whose number is still 
 
 35 
 
36 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 "legion," will give to the principle of equality not a senti- 
 mental approval but an inflexible determination. They wiU 
 continue to change not only the machinery of government 
 but also the nature of the social order in the direction of this 
 common ideal. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence, like the French slogan of 
 democracy, is first of all an announcement of political emanci- 
 pation, and the great principles therein set forth have therefore 
 been carried to partial expression in the field of political 
 action. Liberty, for the men who established the republics 
 of France and the United States, meant freedom from external 
 control. It meant the right to determine their own political 
 destiny, to constitute their own government, to choose their 
 own ofl&cials. But this political freedom also carried with 
 it the hope of a larger measure of equality in the social order. 
 Behind those movements for poHtical freedom there was also 
 the desire and aspiration to develop a form of society in which 
 there should not be the gross inequahties which characterized 
 the life of Europe and which have been a feature of every 
 advanced civilization in every period of the world's history. 
 Political democracy was to be a means to this end. It is today 
 quite obvious that the means and the end are inseparable, 
 that the achievement of a greater degree of social equality 
 throughout mankind depends upon the achievement of political 
 freedom and political equality, and also that the further 
 development of political freedom depends upon the removal 
 of existing social inequalities. 
 
 The development of democracy makes increasingly clear 
 the interdependence and indeed the organic luiion of liberty 
 and equality and fraternity. Only free men are equal, and 
 only men who in many important respects are equal can ever 
 be completely free or fraternal. Those who have unequal 
 rights and privileges will necessarily control, or patronize, or 
 "welfare" the others. When the passion for freedom moves 
 
EQUALITY 37 
 
 men, it sends them in the direction of equality and fraternity. 
 Democracy now finds that it cannot stop with the achieve- 
 ment of political freedom. It discovers that the content of 
 freedom continually enlarges itself, that it means not only 
 freedom from restraint but freedom of development; the 
 opportunity for the positive expression of personality in 
 the direction of a chosen ideal. Under the necessary limita- 
 tions of life in an ordered society, or indeed in any social 
 group, this must always be an elusive goal. But at least 
 there may be equaUty of limitation and of opportimity, if 
 not absolute, yet in infinitely greater degree than any social 
 order has yet achieved. And it is in this direction that hu- 
 manity now moves. 
 
 The ancient passion for liberty is again stirring the souls of 
 men throughout the world, and this time it is conscious as 
 never before that freedom involves equality. This is to be 
 seen in the demand of the smaller nations, the subject na- 
 tionaHties and the undeveloped peoples for self-control and 
 self-expression, both in matters governmental and economic. 
 They do not desire to be either subject or inferior to the 
 "Great Powers." The same fact is to be seen again in the 
 demands of the industrial and agricultural workers. They 
 are seeking to free themselves from the control of others over 
 their conditions of work and the disposition of the fruits of 
 their toil. They are seeking also a development for their 
 children more nearly equal to that of other classes in the com- 
 mimity. The spirit of freedom led our forefathers long ago 
 to have done with monarchy and to organize a republic. If 
 it should presently appear that the desire of men for the newer 
 freedom involving more social equaUty cannot be reasonably 
 satisfied imder our present form of government, the spirit of 
 freedom will proceed once again to develop another form. 
 This win be only an incidental part of its task of creating a 
 new social order. 
 
38 THE NEW SOCIAL OIIDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 The long and arduous struggle for political freedom has 
 achieved a very large measure of human liberty. It is now the 
 fashion in some quarters to depreciate the gains secured by 
 political democracy. But the achievement of equality of 
 political rights is basic for future progress. If that be not 
 granted or secured, there can be no further extension of equal- 
 ity. The political doctrine of equal rights, broadly speaking, 
 maintains the equal right of all peoples to determine their 
 own government, the equal right of all citizens to express and 
 seek to give effect to their poUtical choices, the right to equality 
 of treatment under the common law, both for nations and 
 individuals. Behind this political doctrine is the philosophy 
 of natural rights, which teaches that the rights which men 
 sought to organize in a democratic form of government were 
 inherent to human nature, men are bom with them. This 
 teaching later developed into the poUtical philosophy of the 
 eighteenth century — that men contracted together in society 
 and in govermnent to observe and secure their natural rights. 
 This is the contract theory of government which Rousseau 
 expressed most vigorously, which was the formative philos- 
 ophy of the French and American Revolutions, and which has 
 powerfully influenced the whole course of modem democracy. 
 
 The first appearance of the philosophy is in the teachings 
 of the Stoic school, who derived their doctrine of natural rights 
 from Socrates. The later Stoics of Rome expressed very 
 clearly their conviction that men have certain natural rights 
 and that there is a natural law which requires the mutual 
 observance of these rights. From that presupposition there 
 followed the conclusion that the state should express and 
 maintain this natural law. Therefore the Roman Stoics 
 taught that slavery was an interference with natural rights. 
 The teaching of the Stoics was the first great blow that slavery 
 received. Jesus carried this teaching still further. He taught 
 the supreme value of personaUty, which of course underlies 
 
EQUALITY 39 
 
 the theory of natural rights, in a sense unknown to the Greeks 
 or Romans. He taught "the infinite worth of the downmost 
 man." The Greek philosophers who taught a theory of 
 natural rights, ignored the great body of slaves. The Roman 
 Stoics saw that slavery was the negation of this teaching; but 
 Jesus' principle was that the bottom man in society had claim 
 to all the rights which anybody else enjoyed, both in his rela- 
 tions to his feUow man and in his relations to God. 
 
 This is a positive teaching with immeasurable constructive 
 force. It ever stimulates the desire of all humanity, and es- 
 pecially of the people at the bottom of society, to realize their 
 inherent rights, to make privilege imiversally possible. It 
 calls them on the one hand to develop their personaHties imtil 
 they become the kind of people which Jesus said they might 
 be, and on the other hand to secure such governmental and 
 social arrangements as will not limit their opportunity to 
 become the kind of people which they themselves feel they 
 could be. 
 
 When modem democracy thus recounts the debt it owes to 
 Socrates and to Jesus, it will do weU to remember that they 
 were both rebels and martyrs, both of them put to death by 
 estabhshed society for teachings which were said to be con- 
 trary to its foimdations. In the hght of this fact democracy 
 may well examine its attitude toward the rebels of to-day. 
 The teachings of the Stoics and of Jesus concerning the 
 natural rights and values of mankind came in due time to 
 northern and western Europe. There they united with the 
 natiural independence of tribes to whom freedom was the very 
 breath of their nostrils; people who were not used to call 
 anybody "master"; who long refused to accept or acknowl- 
 edge the sway of the Roman Empire. Their unconquerable 
 spirit of freedom has been strengthened and made construc- 
 tive by this teaching which they came to accept and are still 
 trying to carry out. 
 
40 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 From these natural and philosophical backgrounds has 
 developed a great and growing ideal of equality; shared alike 
 by philosophers and teachers of religion it has become the 
 heritage and the goal of millions of common people the 
 world over, an irresistible compulsion to far-reaching, social 
 changes. 
 
 Before considering the present development in this ideal, 
 its next expressions in human organization, it is necessary 
 to briefly summarize its political application. There is al- 
 ways a negative as well as a positive effect from any great 
 principle. While on the one hand it stirs people to endeavor 
 to realize it, on the other hand it stirs them to attack its op- 
 posites. Consequently when the great teachings of natural 
 equality and the supreme worth of personaHty were let loose 
 in the ancient world in which slavery was the basic fact, it 
 meant at once that slavery was brought to judgment. Gradu- 
 ally, there came the emancipation of the slaves and the re- 
 moval of the disabilities which had formerly attached to them. 
 Of course there were other forces at work to remove slavery 
 from the world besides this religious and philosophic teaching. 
 There was a gradual change of economic and social structure 
 which made slavery unnecessary and improfitable. Then 
 there came into the situation the social practices of Chris- 
 tianity; for while the Stoic philosophers taught the equal 
 rights of man, Christianity proceeded to realize them in some 
 measure, by bringing together the slave and the master to eat 
 a common meal at a common table. By this simple religious 
 custom the new religion continually deUvered a powerful blow 
 against the prestige and validity of the institution of slavery 
 against which its principles were also continually, if indirectly, 
 operating. Finally the basic social inequality of the ancient 
 Roman Empire, which was the distinction between freemen 
 and slaves, was removed in the western world by the abolition 
 of chattel slavery. The process however is more complete 
 
EQUALITY 41 
 
 in the world of ideas than in the world of facts. In the United 
 States, both in the north and the south, the colored people 
 still suffer from the uiheritance of their previous condition 
 of servitude. StiU others of the disabiUties of the slaves 
 have been transferred to their industrial descendants, the 
 wage earners. The same ideal which called the American 
 people to remove the inequality of slavery, now calls them to 
 remove the inequalities of other indxistrial and sodal institu- 
 tions that have descended from the same ancient world in 
 which slavery was organized. 
 
 The next significant expression of the ideal of equality was 
 the attempt to secure equality before the law. When the 
 conummity first began to democratize justice, it took the con- 
 trol of punishment out of private hands; it began to make 
 some rules of universal apphcation. The process of the democ- 
 ratization of justice has been the continuous and expanding 
 restraint of the strong by common control; first the slayer, 
 then the avenger, then the autocratic head of the family, 
 and then the stronger classes, who, time and time again have 
 used the established procedirre of law and justice in order to 
 enforce their will upon weaker social groups. 
 
 In large degree the development of law has been the result 
 of the struggle of inferior groups to limit the power of their 
 superiors and win equality. These long and tragic struggles 
 constitute a large part of the history of democracy. They 
 began in the old Roman Empire before the Stoics taught 
 or Jesus preached, when the slaves by hundreds of thou- 
 sands organized themselves for rebellion and in the great 
 slave wars flung themselves against the might of the imperial 
 legions. The same motive appeared in the western world 
 when the nobility began to limit the power of the kings. The 
 barons wrote the Magna Charta, not because they loved the 
 common people, but because they did not like to have the king 
 Umit their rights. It was the inevitable next step that the 
 
42 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 peasants should revolt against the barons and that the mer- 
 chants should later demand and secure equaHty under the law 
 with the nobility and that this should in time be demanded 
 of the trading class by the wage earners. It is equally in- 
 evitable that the wage earners should gain the rights which 
 other classes have successively secured. 
 
 The greatest single step in equaHty mider the law was 
 taken when it was provided that a man imperiled of his 
 liberty or life should be tried by a jury of his peers. The 
 theory of justice is to develop a common code and to form 
 the jury of all classes. This is the nearest approximation to 
 equaUty of right in a class divided society. In cases involving 
 class interests a packed jury is almost inevitable because 
 different classes interpret the common code according to their 
 class interest. If a jury of nobles tried a merchant or a jury 
 of merchants tried a serf, it was not a jury of equals. That 
 right at first applied only to the nobility. A man was tried 
 by his class according to the code of his class. But until a 
 common code is estabUshed it is inequaUty and injustice for 
 a jury of one class to try a member of another. If there are 
 distinct classes between whom there is prejudice, antagonism 
 and conflict, it is obvious that there cannot be a jury of one's 
 peers if it is composed entirely of folk of another class. That 
 is why we have been getting results which are not only less 
 than justice, but in contradiction to justice ia some recent 
 prosecutions of Socialists and I. W. W.'s. The juries have 
 been hopelessly prejudiced; they have in some cases been 
 deliberately composed of an entirely different class from the 
 person who is imder trial; a class with other iuterests and con- 
 victions. 
 
 For a long time it has been a familiar criticism of our courts 
 that inequahties of wealth destroy equality under the law. 
 It is a matter of common knowledge that it is not possible 
 for the rich and the poor to have the same kind of defense in 
 
EQUALITY 43 
 
 the courts. The delays of the law, the personal and social 
 ties of ofi&cials are all on one side. It is not possible for rich 
 and poor to have even the same standing before the law. The 
 poor man's son in the tenement district will be arrested for 
 something for which the poUceman in the suburbs would not 
 think of arresting the son of a prominent business man. The 
 same thing occasionally applies to the fathers. The boast of a 
 democracy that it guarantees equality under the law has to 
 face a more fundamental fact than the effect of wealth direct 
 and indirect, upon its officers and processes of law and justice. 
 It must consider whether it is possible to achieve equality 
 before the law in a class divided society whose social inequali- 
 ties are now a matter of contest between the classes. In such 
 a case does law and order become the weapon of the class which 
 can control it? Recently a national labor convention met to 
 demand a new trial for Thomas Mooney, a labor leader 
 of San Francisco, sentenced to death and commuted to life 
 I'mprisfmment on the charge of exploding a bomb during a 
 preparedness parade. The major testimony was later shown 
 to be perjured. The presiding judge, the state's highest law 
 officer and a presidential commission have all recommended 
 a new trial. It requires the amendment of the Constitution 
 of the state. The controlling class refuses. At the convention 
 the western delegates declared very emphatically that after 
 two years of trying to get a square deal they had now lost all 
 hope ia legal procedure and wanted to try other methods. 
 Mr. Bourke Cochran, the New York lawyer who appeared for 
 Mooney, his first labor case, is on record as saying that "the 
 most powerftil propaganda of anarchism and Bolshevism ever 
 let loose on this earth is the condemnation of Mooney and 
 his continuous imprisonment obtained by methods so ab- 
 horrent to justice that the conscience of Christendom should 
 be shocked by it." The dangerous result of this and similar 
 recent events is their effect on the attitude of those who will 
 
44 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 presently remake our legal machinery to the historic process 
 out of which it has developed. 
 
 The issue goes deeper than a defect of machinery or the 
 influence of wealth. It is the question of whether, in a society 
 in which the classes are in conflict, any justice is possible ex- 
 cept class justice. The two orders clash in the courts. It is 
 like the barons trying the peasants, or the peasants trying the 
 barons. The workers trying the capitalists would not be 
 hkely to make any better job of it than the capitalists have 
 made in trying the workers. Those who still believe that 
 equality of rights before the law is essential to the stabihty 
 and progress of human society are now confronted with a 
 situation in which they must consider what are the causes of 
 the class antagonism that appears to make equality imder 
 the law impossible, and how these causes may be removed. 
 
 The next approach of political democracy toward equality, 
 after its endeavor to guarantee equality of rights before the 
 law, was in the matter of the suffrage. This has been con- 
 tinuously extended on the principle that everybody should 
 have equal rights in choosing the government. The philo- 
 sophical formula is that everybody should count as one and no- 
 body as more than one. Conceiving the political world in 
 mathematical terms, universal suffrage and majority rale is 
 an infallible device for securing political equality. But the 
 device works automatically only in a mathematical world 
 in which all people are theoretically of equal political weight 
 and value. Such people going to the ballot box at stated 
 times, with unfettered opportimity for political discussion, 
 would have equal political rights. Each would be able to 
 count as one in making or changing the will of the majority. 
 But fortimately or otherwise, the world is not logic nor math- 
 ematics, and in those countries which have the widest ex- 
 tension of the franchise many people do not count at all in 
 political decisions and others continually count a great deal 
 
EQUALITY 45 
 
 more than one. It becomes necessary then to look beyond the 
 popular panacea of universal equal suffrage if political equality 
 is to be secured either for individuals or for classes. 
 
 The political idealism of the people of the great middle class 
 in the United States roots in a profound faith in the value of 
 imiversal suffrage. Giving as the reason for their belief the 
 accomplishments already achieved under it in this country 
 and in other parts of the world, they believe that the future 
 development of human life is to be secured by extending it to 
 regions where it has not yet been allowed to obtain. This 
 is probably what most of them meant by seeking to make the 
 world "safe for democracy." Having met the autocrats of the 
 old world on this issue, they must now meet the growing army 
 of idealists among the working class who contend that political 
 democracy is totally inadequate to meet the needs of the 
 present situation; that it is powerless to remove the social 
 inequalities created by the prevailing mode of economic 
 organization, that its own dearly won bill of rights is by them 
 continually limited and even abrogated. It is time for the 
 champions of political democracy to consider wherein it does 
 and wherein it does not afford " equal rights to aU." 
 
 For some years our political scientists have been busy point- 
 ing out certain particulars in which the machinery of political 
 democracy does not produce the things for which it was iq- 
 tended and of which it boasts. Their main contention is 
 that we now have a delegated instead of a representative 
 government, because the people have permitted, at many 
 points, decisions concerning their welfare to pass into the 
 hands of officials who are not chosen by them and over whom 
 their control is so indirect as to be ineffective. For instance, 
 who does the Postmaster-General represent or the State 
 Department, or the local assessor? The other aspect of the 
 question is that the representative portions of our government 
 often represent neither the average citizen nor the will of the 
 
46 THE NEW SOCIAL OKDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 majority. Who does the controlling faction in the Senate 
 represent for example? The trail of the muck raker and of 
 the investigator has long been broad in the land and the records 
 of their explorations are piled high in our Ubraries. They 
 tell a sufficient story of the control of councils, legislatures 
 and courts to demonstrate the fact that our present machinery 
 of legislation and law enforcement gives to powerful minori- 
 ties an unequal opportunity to control or defeat the will and 
 purpose of the majority. 
 
 The famihar exhortations to good citizenship contribute 
 little to the situation. The popular denunciations of corrupt 
 politicians and the unidentified "men higher up" are equally 
 ineffective. More is to be gained from the wisdom of the 
 political scientist concerning the inadequacy for our present 
 complex mode of life of governmental machinery devised in a 
 simple state of society. Still more Hght and leading wiU come 
 from a true understanding of the relation of class interests to 
 pohtical power. Recently the street railway company on 
 whose Unes I ride two or three times a week, raised its fare 
 from five to seven cents by order of the PubHc Service Com- 
 mission. I had no opportunity, equal to that of the stock- 
 holders of the company to register my judgment on that 
 matter, so vital to the well-being of many families. I could 
 not even get at the facts necessary for judgment. The 
 directors of that company have found it easy to get at the 
 pohtical machinery which dealt with that situation, while for 
 me it was a practical impossibihty. It is not sufficient to tell 
 me to "get busy and be a good citizen." If I attend to my 
 civic duties ever so rigorously can I get equal representation in 
 matters of pubHc service with the investors in the corporations 
 that carry them on for a profit? Recently a sub-committee of 
 the United States Senate conducted what purported to be an 
 investigation into the situation in Russia under Soviet rule. 
 As the proceeding developed it became evident that it was 
 
EQUALITY 47 
 
 being directed in part by another department of the govern- 
 ment which naturally desired to have its own judgment and 
 policy sustained, and for the class interests of the committee, 
 which would be affected by the success of a socialist govern- 
 ment. Therefore most significant testimony concerning con- 
 structive developments in Russia was ignored and refused a 
 hearing. Who then is represented in the report of that com- 
 mittee? What representation is there for the people who are 
 vitally concerned to know whether or not there is anything of 
 constructive value in the Soviet program? 
 
 A poKtical journalist writes from Washington concerning 
 the opening of congress after the war: "Labor will have no 
 voice ia its deliberations. A body largely made up of lawyers 
 and local politicians will be called upon to debate and solve the 
 deepest economic problems in the history of the land. The 
 Congress quite definitely is a class Congress, and in the present 
 situation its legislation wiU deal largely with the class which it 
 does not represent. This of course has been true of any con- 
 gress since the substantial growth of industrialism; but to-day 
 the whole industrial movement has been suddenly and vio- 
 lently precipitated by the war." 
 
 A part of the trouble is that the machinery of life itself has 
 become too comphcated to enable all the people to get equal 
 expression and representation through our present political 
 methods. There are poUtical disabilities attached automatic- 
 ally to certain occupations, for lack of time to use the ma- 
 chinery of government and lack of influence with those who 
 operate it. Broadly speaking these attach to an entire class, as 
 do the corresponding privileges. So that I cannot be equal 
 with another man merely by having my vote counted equally 
 with his. If I belong to a limited class in the community — • 
 the class which is financially and socially and intellectually 
 powerful — my interests get automatically protected by the 
 government whether I am politically active or not. But if 
 
48 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 I belong to the larger class whose power and prestige is not so 
 great, I have to be very active indeed to get any particular 
 representation in the government and even then I may not 
 be able to get as much representation as automatically goes 
 to the members of the more powerful group. In a recent 
 letter urging employers to attend a session of the Illinois 
 Legislature, at which an anti-injunction bill was voted upon, 
 the Secretary of the Illinois Manufacturers Association wrote: 
 "Union labor will be there in force and the influence of one 
 manufacturer is equal to the influence of twenty-five shop 
 men." We are touching here, of course, not only one of the 
 root defects of pohtical democracy but of any system of gov- 
 ernment. We are touching what has been called the "original 
 depravity of state nature"; that is, an inherent defect in the 
 nature of the state itself from which the most democractic 
 form of it can never be exempt. In any form of himian associa- 
 tion that can be devised some wiU count more than others. In 
 many respects it is important to see to it that none counts 
 more than one. In many respects it is equally important to 
 see to it that each counts for all that he is worth. The prob- 
 lem for democracy is to make each count for aU that is in him 
 for the common good and to prevent any from counting more 
 than one to the limitation of the development of others. That 
 the present political machine enables quite often the minority 
 to rule does not therefore mean that it is hopelessly defective. 
 But if it is true that equal rights are approximated only when 
 the majority can rule, we ought at least to be able to get such 
 political perfection out of a machine erected for that par- 
 ticular purpose that the majority and not the minority shall 
 actually control the direction of affairs most of the time. 
 
 In the attempt to limit the control of minority groups, 
 many reform measures have in recent years been advocated 
 and some of them adopted. But the ax has not yet been 
 laid to the root of the tree. The fundamental question is not 
 
EQUALITY 49 
 
 whether our political machine enables a corrupt minority 
 or a special privileged class to direct our affairs, but whether 
 our present social order does not make it inevitable that a 
 minority should control, if not the minority which has the 
 most economic power then the minority which is the best 
 educated, the best able to determine both what it wants and 
 how to get it. The ultimate question is not whether the bad 
 people, beiag presumably a minority, are going to direct us; 
 but whether the good people, if in the minority, are going to 
 control the rest. That is the question that the Soviet in 
 Russia and the Constitution of the United States alike have 
 to face. No matter what may be decreed in the nature of 
 institutions designed to give equality of rights to all citizens 
 and to all groups and classes, it is inevitable rnider our present 
 social order, and indeed as long as its inequalities remain in 
 the blood and bone of the race, that a minority should con- 
 trol. Therefore there is to-day something more fundamental 
 than a political machine to be reformed; if the goal of equality 
 is to be further pursued, it is the entire social structure that 
 has to be changed, and finally the very constitution of human 
 natiue. Those who accept the ideal will not shirk the task it 
 lays upon them. 
 
 Whatever its defects, the democratic state continually makes 
 a vital contribution to human progress by challenging men 
 to pursue the ideal of equality of rights. It thus contains the 
 healing for its own ills. If equality is impossible, what is 
 life worth apart from the pursuit of the impossible? If there 
 is an incurable weakness in humanity, making it inevitable 
 that some should be stronger than others and that any in- 
 stitution devised for equality of rights should sooner or later 
 fall into the control of the strong, then one of the real meanings 
 of life is to be found in the perpetual struggle against this 
 autocratic tendency of human nature and human institutions. 
 If this be true, then it must be remembered that society has 
 
50 THE NEW SOCIAL OEBER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 now developed to the point where a somewhat general educa- 
 tion makes the control of reason widely prevalent, so that 
 nations and communities no longer act solely from instinctive 
 motives but quite generally by reasoned processes. It is at 
 least true that the principle of democracy, having been de- 
 veloped largely by instinctive process has now been generally 
 approved by the reason of mankind. The great need now is 
 for action and organization and extended application rather 
 than for further definition. And of course if the people of 
 intelligence accept the principle of democracy and then do 
 not go to work to perfect it, their intelligence soon ceases to 
 fimction and their idealism becomes sterile. 
 
 Some people offer the suggestion that the reason for the 
 failure of our political machine to more truly represent the ma- 
 jority is because it has become the means of economic exploita- 
 tion and the means of economic repression for those who are 
 skillful enough to thus use it. The familiar phrase of certain 
 economists is that the state has become the "political means of 
 economic aggregation" — that instead of adequately represent- 
 ing the political desires and actions of the people, it comes 
 nearer representing the economic desires and purposes of a 
 limited group of property holders. The people who hold this 
 view trace the situation back to the fact that society in the 
 modern period has been organized aroimd property, and 
 government and law have therefore become to a large extent 
 the mere protector of property. They point, for example, to 
 the different values attributed by the courts to the dividends 
 of investors and the health of wage earners, and to the failure 
 to enforce social legislation after it has been won by a great 
 struggle. After the political machine has proved adequate 
 for the will of the majority to be recorded in progressive legis- 
 lation, then special mterests are able to block the enforcement 
 of that legislation. A notable example was the Colorado coal 
 strike where five out of seven of the miners' demands had 
 
EQUALITY 51 
 
 been already ordered by the laws of the state, but could not 
 be secured by the miners in the actual administration of the 
 industry. Then those who hold this point of view argue that 
 as long as we have our present economic order it is inevitable 
 that the state should become a class institution and should 
 reflect the will of the group having economic power. That is 
 one of the difficulties which those statesmen at Paris who were 
 genuinely anxious to rid the world of militarism and redeem 
 the people of the future from the curse of war, have had to face. 
 How can they do that without solving the problem of the 
 reconstruction of the economic order, without organizing 
 society for a different purpose than the acquisition of posses- 
 sions, which is now its main objective. The two problems 
 they wrestled with were the question of reparation and the 
 danger to the future peace of the world from an aggressive 
 nation. Would not these two questions have been easier of 
 solution if the economic order were readjusted to a search 
 for the general welfare instead of a struggle for gain? The 
 question is whether the world has now enough energy left, 
 and sufficient capacity for social organization, to commence 
 that task, more fimdamental than a League of Nations; and 
 whether, having these capacities, it has nerve enough at pres- 
 ent to try the undertaking. 
 
 In any event those who bear in their bodies and spirits the 
 burden of our present inequalities have manifestly deter- 
 mined not any longer to acquiesce in them. They are minded 
 not to transmit them to their children, at least without a 
 struggle. They are seeking how to extend to other spheres 
 of life such equality as political democracy has guaranteed 
 them at the ballot box and they now raise the question of 
 social demoaacy. Political democracy rests upon the prin- 
 ciple of equal rights for all; social democracy shouts the slogan 
 of equal opportunities for all, and thereby gives a new worth 
 and a new challenge to the democratic state. Our modern 
 
52 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 peoples struggling after democracy are interested in political 
 equality as a means to secure wider equality of social living. 
 They seek some general level of cultural advantages for all the 
 people; not a dead level, but some better average than we 
 have yet been able to show. It must be remembered that 
 when our political democracy was adopted, the Tories were 
 also here, and their descendants are yet with us. So that along 
 with our widespread belief in democracy, we also have, in 
 many quarters, a pretty general acceptance of the traditions 
 of aristocracy. Our educational institutions have perhaps 
 been our most potent force in maintaining and extending a 
 certain tradition and spirit of social democracy in their as- 
 sertion of the open door policy in regard to higher education. 
 But they need now to examine themselves very closely as to 
 whether theoretically and practically their education is not 
 after all aristocratic rather than democratic; as to whether 
 they are educating a few of the people rather than all of the 
 people; as to whether they really want the same opportimities 
 for all the people that are now being given to the few. The 
 real test of the democracy of our educational system is its at- 
 titude to whatever economic changes may be found necessary 
 to maintain the open door poUcy in education, now that the 
 limitation of financial opportunity through the prior claim 
 of the first comers and their descendants upon our national 
 resources is continually pushing shut the door of educational 
 opportunity. 
 
 We have evidence of an ideal of social democracy in the 
 admiration of the American people for the achievements of 
 energy and toil. We have it again in the common contempt 
 for mere wealth and luxury which is still the dominant sen- 
 timent of the American people apart from a few financial 
 centers and their parasitic appendages. The same thing can 
 be seen in contradictory terms even among the plutocratic 
 would-be aristocracy when they insist upon ignoring the fact 
 
EQUALITY 53 
 
 and consequence of the class distinctions so obvious in our 
 city life. In those parts of the country which are a little 
 farther removed from the debihtating influence of inherited 
 wealth and European contacts, even in the circles which pride 
 themselves upon their social leadership, it amounts to high 
 treason to say that there are class distinctions in America. 
 The very people who pride themselves on superiority, who 
 insist upon deference from "trades-people" and "servants" 
 will yet maintain that class distinctions do not exist in the 
 " home of the brave and the land of the free." It is interesting 
 to remember that when railroads were first organized in this 
 country the conductors refused to wear uniforms because 
 they would not be marked as a separate servant group. We 
 still react against the degradation of "tips." True, the tradi- 
 tion that it is un-American to accept tips is fading fast, but its 
 existence is an evidence that in the early days we had a tradi- 
 tion of social as well as political democracy. One of the minor 
 manifestations of the new life which the spirit of social de- 
 mocracy is now finding ia old lands is the fact that the waiters 
 in the hotels and restaurants of Soviet Hungary proudly re- 
 fuse to accept tips from those whom they serve. 
 
 The most vital expression of the American ideal of social 
 democracy has been its provision of opportunities for higher 
 education for women and for the children of those who in 
 Europe are called "the working classes," and are there almost 
 imiversally denied such opportunities. In Europe the pos- 
 session of a university degree and even the attainment of 
 "secondary education" is almost without exception a badge 
 of class distinction. Another striking evidence of our ideal of 
 social democracy is our foreign missionary activity. One of 
 the strongest motives in that endeavor has been the desire 
 to extend equal opportunity for development to the back- 
 ward peoples, that they might share with us in whatever cul- 
 tural advantages had come our way. 
 
54 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Professor Walter Rauschenbush used to say that the best 
 example of democracy he knew (and the best approach to the 
 Utopia that so many people fear) was the small college town of 
 the Middle West, where the fimdamental American ideals 
 dominate, where there is not any great wealth but a general 
 average of income and a high general average of intelligence, 
 cultural attainment and religion. Where in the world is there 
 to be found a more dehghtful, democratic conununity than 
 in some of those small college towns? But what makes that 
 condition possible? A somewhat general average of financial 
 resources with its corresponding average of educational op- 
 portunity. The same thing holds true in a somewhat lesser 
 degree for the general small town of the Middle West; but 
 just as soon as that small town gets dominated by any group 
 much richer than the rest, democracy begins to break and 
 class differences and distinctions come in. It is then a general 
 average of income and wealth that makes possible the general 
 average of attainment and this general democracy of life 
 that we like to think of as typically American. In like manner 
 a great inequality of income and wealth makes impossible 
 the attainment of as much social democracy as this country 
 has developed, which is far more its distinction than any of 
 its political forms and institutions. 
 
 The spirit of the American people is essentially idealistic 
 and they dearly love the illusions of their ideals. But if their 
 ideal of social democracy is to remain active, they must pierce 
 the illusion that their ideal is self-supporting in mid-air. 
 They must now see that it has always rested upon the economic 
 fact of immense natural resources, undeveloped, unappropri- 
 ated. Now that these resources have been largely appropri- 
 ated it becomes impossible to maintain under our present 
 order of affairs that measure of social democracy which has 
 heretofore been the pride and glory of many of our communi- 
 ties. The middle class of the United States is becoming a 
 
EQUALITY 55 
 
 class of privilege even as the aristocracy of Europe. Therefore 
 the middle class, even in our smaller, more democratic com- 
 munities, had better begin to ask themselves whether their 
 degree of equality does not rest on an economic basis that 
 means deprivation for others. They had better not sit down 
 now in their abode of comfort on a lately discovered and de- 
 veloped continent, thanking God that their lives have been 
 cast in pleasant places and ignoring the fact that there are 
 children of tenant farmers nearby, who are getting less educa- 
 tion than the labor of an earlier generation upon the soil made 
 possible, because the rent has to go to the family that is living 
 in the town. Also they will do well to consider what it means 
 for the development of social democracy if they are drawing 
 income from industries where conditions are such that the 
 children of workers can never get the kind of health and edu- 
 cation which their own children enjoy. 
 
 The commonly accepted definition of social equality is 
 equal opportunity for the full development and expression of 
 the capacities of all the people. If we could ever secure a 
 social order in which every child that was born would have an 
 equal opportimity with every other child for the development 
 and expression of all the capacities that were inherent within 
 that child, we would have reached this ideal of social de- 
 mocracy. But there would still remain something more to 
 be done, if the full content of the concept of equality is to be 
 vmfolded. Already our social idealism demands, and our social 
 science and social organization attempts, the removal of in- 
 herited limitations. There are certain inequalities of capacity 
 which have been proved by science to be possible of removal; 
 for example, the inherited weaknesses due to preventable dis- 
 eases, imder-nourishment, fatigue or immoralities of parents. 
 Therefore society cannot rest content even when it has 
 achieved a measure of equal opportunity after birth. It must 
 then try and secure a greater level of equality at birth through 
 
56 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the removal of inherited limitations. This attempt leads into 
 the ahnost unexplored field of the possible improvement of 
 the human species through better parentage. Thus does the 
 ideal of equality continuously challenge the himaan spirit. 
 A dead level of capacity is both vmdesirable and apparently 
 contrary to nature. But as long as inequalities exist, the 
 democratic conscience is challenged to find out whether they 
 are inevitable. It has been discovered that certain differ- 
 ences of intelligence among children are absolute. But the 
 spirit of democracy declines to accept these differences as 
 fhial and irreducible for the future until it has discovered 
 their relation to a long-transmitted wrong environment or 
 wrong parentage or both. With a universe which provides 
 for the permanent production of the specially able we have 
 no quarrel. A imiverse that necessitates the permanently 
 deficient is one that we refuse to accept. Mankind will chal- 
 lenge it or die rebelling against it. 
 
 Meantime the present effort toward equality is an attempt 
 to remove certain gross inequaUties. It is imdeniable that 
 in the United States, with all our poHtical democracy and 
 with our still vigorous tradition of social democracy, we still 
 have present with us many social inequalities which apparently 
 are gaining in strength. The "equal right to life, liberty and 
 the pursuit of happiness," is not to be achieved at the ballot 
 box. The vote of the man who has to work ten hours a day at 
 exhausting or monotonous toil will count as much in the ballot 
 box as mine, but he has not the same opportunity for life that 
 I have because the conditions of his work and his home limit 
 his health; his children wiU not have the educational and 
 financial opportmiity that mine wiU have. Increasingly the 
 intellectual and social and even the moral achievement of a 
 certain section of our population depends not upon their wiU 
 or desire, but upon what we used to call the accident of birth; 
 which, of course, ought not to be an accident. The possibil- 
 
EQUALITY 57 
 
 ity of development for the individual now depends in many 
 cases, not so much upon himself, but upon what the old-world 
 phrase ignorantly and irreligiously calls "that station in life 
 to which it has pleased God to call him." The better and the 
 lower classes so called, are increasingly marked off from one 
 another. While we never cease to congratulate ourselves 
 upon having escaped the inherited class system of feudal 
 Europe, yet nevertheless our industrial development is bring- 
 ing with it a gradation of classes which is already taking the 
 same rigid form that obtains in the older world. There is 
 increasingly a greater difference between the life of the small 
 town and the life of the great city, and as long as these differ- 
 ences exist, political equality seems to our workmen to be a 
 somewhat barren achievement. There are sections of our 
 cities where the Declaration of Independence is but " soimding 
 brass." If it is to be fulfilled, it is necessary to secure for in- 
 dividuals an even start in the race of life with no handicaps 
 and no obstructions placed before some that are not placed 
 before others. It is the children of the working class in 
 particular who are now handicapped, and therefore it is that 
 class which is interested in finding out where the present 
 inequalities of life are rooted. 
 
 This raises the question of class privilege. What is it? 
 If we Jisk which class is it that exercises the larger proportion 
 of control in our poHtical affairs, that has a larger influence 
 for good or for ill in our courts and our legislatures, that gets 
 superior advantages for its children, the answer is perfectly 
 simple and obvious. It is the people with a certain degree 
 of income and a certain proportion of ownership in the wealth 
 of the country. Here is the fact of power; it is economic. The 
 strong man won it, perhaps by superior ability to begin with, 
 and his rights then became intrenched in custom, in law and 
 in the very constitution of society. The process will later be 
 examined, but the fact will not be disputed that a limited 
 
58 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER : PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 natural inequality to begin with, selfishly used, leads later 
 to a widespread artificial inequality, maintained by "law and 
 order." Some youth of exceptional vigor comes from a farm 
 or a small town to the city, gains business or professional 
 eminence, with or without great wealth, and achieves what we 
 call "distinction." This becomes established in his family 
 and is for his descendants a transmitted privilege with all 
 that it involves in easy access to the means of development. 
 The result of his difference from the rest of folk enables others, 
 in later generations, who may not have that difference, to 
 have certain privileges which the common run of people do 
 not get. 
 
 Such a situation is only another form of the social cleavage 
 that obtains in Europe where these privileges have become 
 intrenched in a caste system. They began first of all in the 
 ability of the strong man to carve out for himseK with the 
 sword a certain ownership of the land, and on that economic 
 basis he "founded a family." By means of the wealth that 
 accrued from its land that family secured privileges in educa- 
 tion and other means of development and became what is 
 called "the aristocracy," supposed to have more ability and 
 often actually possessing it, supposed to have more responsi- 
 bility and not infrequently endeavoring to meet the obligation. 
 
 The noteworthy fact is, that instead of trying to remove 
 the natural inequalities between folk, we increase them by 
 giving special privileges to the strong as the reward of their 
 strength. Inequalities of social condition rest mainly on in- 
 equalities of income. When these inequahties of social con- 
 dition reach a certain point, then future inequality of income 
 and therefore of attainment, rests not so much on the differ- 
 ence in abihty as on the difference in economic power. Pos- 
 session of undue economic power tends to make an inequality 
 of ability because it condemns the people deprived of their 
 share of economic control to less of the means for the develop- 
 
EQUALITY 59 
 
 ment of life and therefore their children become less able; 
 whereas the possessors of economic power, able to get more 
 than the necessary means for the development of life, tend to 
 become more able except in so far as excess leads to luxury 
 and degeneration results. This latter possibility has been 
 the salve for the conscience of those who have found it hard 
 to reconcile the inequaUties of our economic order with the 
 profession of equality which their faith in democracy re- 
 quires. But the theory of "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 
 three generations" has been overworked. In any event it 
 does not help the general situation if new rulers climb to the 
 thrones of those who have fallen. As a matter of fact those 
 who acquire and transmit and receive wealth and economic 
 power are constantly learning how to prevent its dissipation. 
 A benevolent, conscientious aristocracy or plutocracy is like 
 to prove more dangerous than one which is tyrannous and 
 licentious. It involves just as much social deprivation for 
 others and is more difficult to dislodge. 
 
 In our class privilege we have the vicious fact that one 
 man's strength finally makes many weak and perpetuates 
 that weakness. This is the social policy approved by those 
 who say that differences of class are bom with some and not 
 with others. One of our cabinet officers recently said to a well- 
 known journalist: "You cannot help the rich being rich and 
 the poor being poor; the fimdamental reason that I have 
 more than some others is that God gave me brains and did 
 not give them to the other poor fellow." The beautiful sim- 
 plicity of the statement still leaves us wondering whether 
 that man's religion, if it can be called that, wiU hold when his 
 argument goes to its logical conclusion; when for example, 
 some other man is wise enough and clever enough to take 
 away the worthy statesman's possessions by due process of 
 law and order. It is a common-place in the financial world. 
 WiU he then admit that the Lord gave the other man more 
 
6o THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 brains than himself? Or suppose that the "poor people" 
 whom the Lord loved so much that he left them without an 
 adequate supply of brains but to make up for it constituted 
 them a great majority, should suddenly become aware of that 
 fact and using the sound doctrine of majority rule should by 
 constitutional process decide to expropriate this statesman's 
 large land ownings. Will his piety still hold, and lead him to 
 say, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed 
 be the name of the Lord "? 
 
 As a matter of fact, that ofl&cial, being an orthodox church- 
 man, might stop to consider what has been done by organized 
 religion to disprove the fallacy of natural inequalities, in its 
 education of the children of the slums and of the backward 
 races. When time and time again it has been said that these 
 people could not possibly be raised to the same level as others, 
 a process of education and the proper environment has re- 
 moved their so-called natural deficiencies. The change has 
 shown that these inequalities were very largely due to en- 
 vironment — to social heredity and not simply to biological 
 heredity; to the effect upon human life of a situation which 
 was within human control and could be changed. The jus- 
 tifiable inference of what has already been accomplished in 
 the removal of so-called inherited inequalities is that if we 
 were to remove the artificial inequalities of class privilege, 
 the natural inequalities could very much be lessened. While 
 children would never be bom equal in health or ability, there 
 would be much less disparity than now obtains, and those who 
 deal in the science of Eugenics would have us believe that 
 there are scientific laws in that field which can be applied to 
 still further lessen the so-called natural inequalities. 
 
 Those who are troubled by the impossibility and undesir- 
 ability of any dead level of social equality may well consider 
 whether in the last analysis the removal of inequality is not 
 even more a matter of sentiment than of practical adjustment. 
 
EQUALITY 6 1 
 
 As long as there are not too great financial inequalities there 
 is not much class feeling or class distinction. The working- 
 man does not feel it much that another has more than himself 
 if, when they meet in business or in church, or even in politics, 
 they are man to man and they treat each other as such. He 
 does not bother much that the other has a better house or more 
 money; but when the difference gets so marked that there is 
 not this mutual sentiment, when they do not stand on the 
 same plane and talk together, when one looks down on the 
 other and draws his children apart from the other's children, 
 then comes class consciousness and finally class hatred. It 
 appears that the possibility of maintaining the sentiment of 
 equality, an elusive thing, depends ultimately upon securing 
 the smallest possible margin of financial difference. If this 
 gets too great there is no feeling of equality at all. But the 
 feeling of equahty, and as much of the fact as really counts, 
 may obtain without having any dead level of economic 
 resources or of social conditions. 
 
 There is a certain fallacy in that objection to this fimda- 
 mental principle of democracy which talks a good deal about 
 the monotony of equality. It is used mostly by those who have 
 secured a special privilege in one way or another. It would 
 seem obvious that we could stand a great deal less inequaUty 
 than we now have without over-much monotony in life. It 
 appears that the deprivation of multitudes of people of both 
 the stimulus and the means to development through the arti- 
 ficial inequalities of the present order occasions a considerable 
 amoimt of monotony at both ends of society. There is more 
 variety in the middle, where there is less inequahty of income. 
 I thin]; it is open to demonstration that the middle class has 
 developed a much greater degree of variety in individuals 
 than is now to be foimd at either extreme of society. The 
 people who are afraid of the monotony that might come from 
 more equality in income and economic power will need to 
 
62 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 reckon with the fact that there is a terrible amount of monot- 
 ony above the luxury Une and below the poverty line. Folks 
 run pretty true to type and form in both of these groups. The 
 reason probably is that the people below the poverty line 
 have to a large extent been deprived of the hope as weU as 
 the opportunity for any marked self-development. It is 
 as if somebody had taken and chpped off the whole popula- 
 tion like a hedge at a dead level and said, "above this you 
 cannot go." On the other hand, the people above the luxury 
 line also are deprived of much of the incentive to develop- 
 ment; too much is easily within their reach and grasp; too 
 much comes without asking or seeking. If variety of individual 
 development is wanted, if it is desired to bring out all the 
 possibilities of human nature, it would seem as though gross 
 inequalities of income must be removed. 
 
 Consider the middle class family with educational ideals 
 and high ethical and religious standards; the family whose in- 
 come enables it to provide all its children equally with all 
 needed means of development and give a guarantee of sup- 
 port during the educational period, and see what happens. 
 There is not much monotony of type among the children — 
 they are not like peas in a pod. Are they as much alike as the 
 pleasure-seeking children of the idle rich, or the early-working 
 children of the over-driven poor? They are given equal 
 means for equal development up to a certain point, but what 
 occurs in the final result depends of course upon the individual 
 initiative and energy in taking hold of the opportunities for 
 higher educational training that are thus put within reach. 
 The point at which self-help should come in is open to argu- 
 ment. It is probably variable according to temperament 
 and kind of abihty. In getting a college education for example, 
 the golden mean lies between having to make one's way en- 
 tirely and having a large family income at command. If 
 things work out this way in the family, why would it not be 
 
EQUALITY 63 
 
 beneficial in society at large for equal means for development 
 up to a certain point to be provided for all and progress after 
 that point made dependent upon individual initiative, the 
 means being accessible on reasonable terms. Would not 
 society be likely to get everjrwhere the variety that is now 
 foimd in the American middle class group which is demon- 
 strably a much greater variety than is found either among 
 the idle rich or the submerged poor? 
 
 It would also seem as though nature was not very much 
 afraid of monotony; nature seems to furnish about the same 
 opportunities for development to aU members of the same 
 species in the same locality. If there is a shortage of rain, all 
 trees go short; if there is enough, they aU get about the same 
 chance at it. There is in nature a good deal of equality in the 
 means of subsistence or the lack of them and yet not much 
 monotony as the result of that. The concept of equality that 
 involves a dead level of monotony is absolutely strained and 
 artificial. If it were desirable, it could never be reaUzed. It 
 is certain that the inequalities which debar many from the op- 
 portunity for adequate nourishment and education can be 
 removed without getting anything of a deadening effect in 
 the commimity. A lot of leveling-up in the direction of equal- 
 ity can be done without at all endangering the variety of life. 
 
 Our theory of social democracy has been that we would 
 give everybody an equal opportunity to climb to the top. How 
 much does that theory xmderlie our educational system? 
 Men who are supposed to be able to think still glorify the 
 possibility of a newsboy becoming President. Not only our 
 successful men of affairs, but most of our middle class idealists 
 stiU cherish the illusion that the door to the temple of Fame 
 and Power is wide open to all. They are still living in the 
 United States of a generation ago. They have never stopped 
 to think that the more complex our social organization be- 
 comes, the less possible is it to give everybody an equal op- 
 
64 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AIJD PROGRAMS 
 
 portunity to climb up. They have never completed their 
 social scheme. Their dream of equality in terms only of op- 
 portunity has never shown itseK to them in its final perfect 
 form of an inverted pyramid, crowded at the top with people 
 of station occupying positions of power and influence with no 
 support for society at the bottom because the basic activities 
 of life have all been abandoned in the ascent of the equally 
 strong. 
 
 Here we touch the root of class privilege and social inequal- 
 ity; an undue worship of strength and the giving of tindue 
 power to the strong. This became so obvious in the old world 
 that the people had to take certain kinds of power from the 
 strong; they did not let them exercise to the full their mili tary 
 power for example. And what the world is now minded to do 
 is to remove the unequal control of economic power. It 
 used to be considered the right and correct thing for the strong- 
 est to take what he could and keep what he had taken by the 
 exercise of his strength. This process was restrained gradually, 
 but it still is proper for a strong man to carve his way to eco- 
 nomic power, to get as much capital as possible, and a good 
 deal of our legal procedure gives him the right to keep what 
 he has thus obtaiaed. But the world is now beginning to 
 restrain the acquisition of economic power. This is the cen- 
 tral struggle of the modem democratic movement — the strug- 
 gle for the control of the means of life, of the resources of 
 the earth and of labor power. 
 
 This issue is not to be settled by any magic formula of the 
 equal right to vote at certain times of the year. The free 
 peoples are after more than the extension of political democ- 
 racy to the subject peoples and the reform of their own political 
 procedure. One of the greatest conflicts of history is now on; 
 the climax of a long series of struggles for the diffusion of 
 power. The common people are determined to secure the 
 abohtion of class privilege, and to get equality of oppor- 
 
EQUALITY 65 
 
 tunity, for development, by putting economic power, as 
 political power has been put, into the hands of all the people 
 through democratic processes. 
 
 When our political democracy was established, economic 
 power was not recognized as a factor in government and in 
 society as it has since been recognized; indeed it did not exist 
 to the same extent, for the simple reason that there was no 
 such aggregation of wealth as now obtains in this country. 
 There was, on the contrary, a very general distribution of a 
 somewhat moderate income. There was not in existence the 
 enormous amount of economic power that has come with the 
 development of machinery and with the increase of capital. 
 Consequently our political democracy was worked out with- 
 out due recognition of the relation of economic power to gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 There is to-day a twofold recognition of economic power 
 and its place in society and the state; on the one hand by the 
 political scientists and political philosophers, and on the other 
 hand by the working people, who are now finding out what 
 more they must do in order to achieve that which our govern- 
 ment in its beginnings guaranteed to them. 
 
 The struggle for the democratization of economic power 
 has not yet taken its full form, but certain of its aspects are 
 already rather clearly defined. Economic power is of two 
 kinds, labor and capital; and the struggle is for the democratic 
 control of both these factors. Shall the force of labor be con- 
 trolled by the workers or by the capitalists, or shall it be con- 
 trolled by the democratic process in which they both partici- 
 pate? Shall the capital and the credit upon which the very 
 life of the people depends, be controlled by a minority or by 
 the majority? Already measures are being worked out in 
 three ways: the attempt to secure a democratic control of the 
 distribution of income; the attempt to secure a democratic 
 control of the process of industry and agriculture, of the work- 
 
66 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 shop, the farm and the market; the attempt to secure a demo- 
 cratic control of the natural resources from which wealth 
 is developed by labor. 
 
 Because the common people have come to see the fact that 
 the degree of income determines very largely the degree of 
 social development, they have come forward time and time 
 again with their demand for an increased wage. Also a large 
 part of our social science is directed toward the abolition of 
 poverty in order to secure greater equality of living. Both 
 social workers and scientists see clearly that this is only part 
 of the issue. The question of the amount of income for the 
 wage earners depends absolutely upon the question of the 
 control of the working processes and of the resources upon 
 which those processes depend. Upon this depends the amount 
 and nature of their productivity. The economic fact is also 
 a spiritual fact. It involves the question of whether one group 
 of people shall be able to control the means of Hfe for others 
 and thereby shall be able to control the life of others. It is 
 the old question of slavery in a new form. Its clearest mani- 
 festation is in the question of who is going to control the jobs. 
 A large part of the army of labor goes to its work as a con- 
 script army, unwilling and sullen, because it has no choice in 
 the matter. It must go or starve, and then the wills and minds 
 of others control the manner in which the work shall be done. 
 The next application, therefore, of the democratic process to 
 economic power, is the attempt to get equal representation in 
 the control of work. That is attempted at the present time 
 in the western countries through representative methods copy- 
 ing those of political democracy in what is called "collective 
 bargaining" through representatives of capital and labor 
 with delegated powers. But just as political democracy has 
 not succeeded altogether in making the representative method 
 work satisfactorily, neither has labor organization; and there 
 are now pending certain changes in industrial management 
 
EQUALITY 67 
 
 which will carry democracy in the control of industry into 
 another form than that of joint representation. At the same 
 time that the world is thus moving forward, a substantial 
 body of American employers, the rear guard of the old order 
 in the iudustrial world, is vigorously opposing the giving 
 to labor of any share in the determination of the conditions of 
 industry. The coimtry which prides itself on being the great 
 example and exponent of democracy is in its industrial life 
 the most autocratic of aU the great industrial nations. 
 
 It is quite evident that one of the severest struggles in the 
 development of democracy will occur in the endeavor to secure 
 a wider control of the economic resources upon which the 
 national as weU as the individual weU-being depends. That 
 struggle has already begun over both the sources of economic 
 power — the working capacity of mankind and the natural 
 resources of the earth out of which the common energy pro- 
 duces subsistence and all the comforts and luxuries of 
 civilization. If any group of men can control these natural 
 resources to a certain degree, if in addition they can con- 
 trol any large proportion of the capital and credit which is 
 necessary for the carrying on of industry, labor is practically 
 deprived of its economic power and its economic opportimity. 
 It must either obey the group which has the control of the 
 things upon which the very life of the working people depends, 
 or it must accomplish a change in the situation. 
 
 The masters of economic power in our modem civilization 
 have reaUy a greater dominion over men than was achieved by 
 the emperors of old. By their decisions concerning the prices 
 of products, the wages, and indeed the whole terms and course 
 of industry, they are not only able to take toll and tribute from 
 the productive labor of a nation or of several nations, but 
 they can indirectly determine the course of life and the op- 
 portunities of life for unnumbered people. The extent to 
 which that has happened is pointed out by Professor W. I. 
 
68 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 King, in his book "The Distribution of Wealth and Income in 
 the United States." He points out that while on the one 
 hand we have been getting a much wider distribution of 
 income, on the other hand, we have also been getting a 
 much greater concentration of wealth ownership. He says 
 many people wiU argue that all is weU with democracy be- 
 cause of the wider distribution of income. On the contrary, 
 he affirms, for the wide distribution of income does not repre- 
 sent a corresponding distribution of power, but a concentration 
 of power, both economic and political. The historic residts 
 of any such inequalities are open for the world to read, most 
 particularly in the case of the Roman Empire. There are 
 obviously but two possible outcomes to a gross inequality 
 in the ownership of wealth and the control of power; either 
 the decadence of the nation in which it exists, from luxury 
 and autocracy at one end and poverty and slavery at the 
 other, or revolt on the part of the people to change the condi- 
 tion and remove the causes that brought it about. 
 
 It is quite easy to see what effect the concentrated control 
 of economic resources has upon educational opportunity. It 
 is quite obvious that the educational opportimity for any sec- 
 tion of the population decreases with its removal from owner- 
 ship in the economic resources of the country and from a share 
 in their control. In the earHer stages of this coimtry's develop- 
 ment the people who lived on the land were owners, and there- 
 fore had direct control of a certain amoimt of economic power. 
 Most of them were able to give more of the available educa- 
 tional opportunity to their children than is possible for either 
 the tenant farmer or the industrial wage earner to-day. As 
 the grip of these latter classes upon the economic resources 
 becomes slighter and looser, so does the educational oppor- 
 timity that is available to them decrease. That degree of 
 equality of control of the land which existed in this coimtry 
 in the early period of its history, brought about a pretty gen- 
 
EQUALITY 69 
 
 eral average of income for the large agricultural population. 
 There were no such gross disparities as now obtain. Neither 
 was there any such inequality of educational development 
 as now obtains where tenant farming is the rule. Nor has 
 there since been any such contribution to national leadership 
 in vigor and variety from the population on the soil as came 
 in the days of somewhat equal control of the land. 
 
 It would appear then that a rich and varied intellectual 
 development in any community depends upon a certain gen- 
 eral level of economic condition. However that may be, and 
 within a generation or two the point will be determined by 
 experiment, the obvious fact is that the nations have come 
 again to a point where a redistribution of power is taking 
 place. Again power passes from the few to the many. PoUtical 
 democracy may content those of us who have social and educa- 
 tional opportimity, but it is no longer adequate for those who 
 are unable to get these opportunities and increasingly they 
 know it. Increasingly also they are discovering the economic 
 causes of their deprivation and the essential nature of the 
 needed economic changes. Knowledge has been given the 
 toilers by the partial democratization of education. It is a 
 world-changing fact of the first order that for the first time 
 in history the suffering masses are coming to tmderstand the 
 causes of their suffering. The tool of historic and scientific 
 knowledge is now about to be used for the first time by the 
 working classes. With it they will add to the present ma- 
 chinery of democracy, by some means or other, whatever is 
 necessary to enable them to realize the same measure of de- 
 velopment that now obtains among the people who sometimes 
 caU themselves their betters. Too much approach to the ideal 
 of democracy has already been made by humanity at large, 
 there has been too much democracy let loose in the earth, to 
 make it possible to keep permanently vmdeveloped races or 
 classes. The world is moving up to a greater degree of real 
 
70 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 social equality, an equality in access to the means of develop- 
 ment. The immediate step about to be taken is the democrat- 
 izing of economic power. In this movement the world forces 
 have yet to feel the impact of the accession of the American 
 workers who are just awakening to economic understanding. 
 They bring to the common cause of the people everywhere a 
 passion for social equality which has been fed both by ideaUsm 
 and economic advantage, together with a spirit which has 
 not been broken or softened by an inherited class system. 
 
 This new movement toward equality through the wider 
 distribution of economic power has a very vital relation to the 
 international situation. The political struggle which led to 
 the world war was, in a very large degree, a contest between 
 the great nations for the right to develop the backward re- 
 gions of the earth and use the undeveloped peoples for profit. 
 Is that process now to be accomplished by the joint control 
 of the big nations under a gentlemen's agreement to observe 
 certain rules and to share the proceeds? Is it now to be, as 
 one group of British hberal thinkers proclaimed, equality of 
 access to the cheap labor of the backward peoples? And for 
 these backward peoples is it simply to be a change of masters, 
 from one nation to a group of nations? Or is it to be the be- 
 ginning of equality of development for these peoples many of 
 whom have long been subject to alien control and so, through 
 no primary fault or lack of their own, have remained unde- 
 veloped? Are they now to be considered entitled to equal 
 social opportunities with those nations who have been some- 
 what arrogantly considering themselves as the trustees of 
 civilization? 
 
 It is upon the answer to these questions, as well as to the 
 question of equality of opportunity of development for what 
 we call the lower classes, that the future peace of the world 
 depends. The big nations may settle the conflict between 
 themselves by arranging somewhat equal rightsi to the ex- 
 
EQUALITY 71 
 
 ploitation of the undeveloped economic resources of the earth, 
 but the fundamental world issue will not be settled that way; 
 it will be raised the next time by an amalgamation of the 
 exploited classes or races. Therefore there is incumbent 
 upon the joint forces of education and religion a very heavy 
 task in this particular matter of the extension of equaUty of 
 opportunity. These forces have a joint and common interest 
 in the present situation, for the present aspiration and struggle 
 of the so-called lower classes and undeveloped peoples toward 
 a greater degree of development is largely the creation of our 
 modem education and the missionary aspect of our reUgion. 
 There is no use disguising, and nothing to be gained by blink- 
 ing, the fact that both education and religion are forces of 
 social imrest, properly and wisely so. They have been teach- 
 ing higher standards of living, they have been teaching great 
 ideals of democracy. Therefore they have created the desire 
 for these standards and ideals among the peoples of the earth 
 and the more they spread their doctrines, the more do the 
 people want aU the values of the democracy that education 
 and reUgion constantly presuppose and proclaim. It is one 
 of the tasks of education to proclaim the ideals and create 
 the unrest that will, by proper methods, remove injustice and 
 inequahty. It must be remembered that in both the Jewish 
 and the Christian teaching of religion, there is what may be 
 called a proletarian strain. That religion began in the eman- 
 cipation of a group of slaves in Egypt and when it is truly 
 taught to-day, in China or Japan, or in the United States, 
 it fosters something of the same aspirations and ideals that 
 led the Hebrew people to revolt against Pharaoh, the proph- 
 ets to thmider against the tyranny and exploitation of the 
 ruling classes of Israel, and Jesus and James to declare judg- 
 ment upon the oppressors of the poor. It causes subject 
 peoples and classes to long for liberty and for a greater de- 
 velopment in Ufe. It teaches universaHty of rights and priv- 
 
72 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PEINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 ileges. It never defends or condones injustice; it is not con- 
 tent with an ideal of life that is limited to a few people, but 
 ever the privileges of life, its benefits and ideals, are pro- 
 claimed as the common right of all. It proclaims the pull- 
 ing down of the mighty from their seat; it declares that the 
 meek shall inherit the earth. 
 
 It is disgracefully true that the organizations that have 
 embodied the teachings of the Jewish and Christian scriptures 
 have at times taught contentment with injustice and inequal- 
 ity, have urged the people to endure their lot in submission, 
 have at times allied themselves with the forces of repression. 
 But the spirit and ideal of their faith has ever broken through 
 the forms that confined and distorted it. A religion which pro- 
 claims equality of spiritual rights, as do the Jewish and Chris- 
 tian faiths, which proclaims that aU men are equal before God, 
 inevitably stimulates the desire for equaHty of pohtical and 
 education opportunity, inevitably urges all the people to seek 
 after the social and economic privileges which have ever been 
 confined to the few. Under the inspiration and the teaching 
 of such a rehgion, not a few people have moved up very ap- 
 preciably iti the scale of human hfe. If this reUgion is now 
 true to its central principles, it will not be content with in- 
 spiring a certain number of people to reach the higher ranges 
 of hfe, it will not be satisfied with having, directly and in- 
 directly, provided the means of development and education for 
 certain neglected sections of mankind. What gains it has been 
 able to secure for some people through its own institutions of 
 education and through its inspiration of the state to provide 
 much wider means of education, it will now imceasingly de- 
 mand for all the people; it will also urge the removal of those 
 economic inequalities which now prevent the extension of the 
 means of educational development to the people at the bottom 
 of our industrial society. 
 
 It is quite evident that in the regions where political de- 
 
EQUALITY 73 
 
 mocracy is worshiped there is much need of a vigorous and 
 plain teaching of equality of cultural opportunity and eco- 
 nomic power. What place is there in a democracy for the 
 divine right of plutocrats and captains of industry any more 
 than for the divme right of kings and priests? What place is 
 there also for the divine right of professors and preachers? 
 There can be no special privilege and no special power in a 
 true democracy, not even in educational and religious serv- 
 ice; they must be open on equal terms to all the people. The 
 tendency of a democracy which glorifies education, without 
 much understanding of the nature and imphcations of either 
 democracy or education, is to revert to the principle of the 
 aristocracy of intellect. This wels the peril which the great 
 Greek philosophers bequeathed to the Western world in their 
 supremacy of the men of reason. That teaching is still exer- 
 cising a dangerous effect upon our educational and political 
 life as it justifies and sanctifies special privilege and power in a 
 democratic state to a limited educated minority. The Greeks 
 were right that reason rules and should rule. Only so can 
 democracy be safe. But democracy is destroyed in the inevit- 
 able control of reason, if the development of reason be con- 
 fined to a section of the population. The only safety for de- 
 mocracy is to enable aU the people to share in the control of 
 reason, to develop and train aU of them so that it will not be 
 a few exceptionally wise people who are controlling but it will 
 be the common reason of the common people, trained to exer- 
 cise itself in soxmd intellectual and moral judgments. The 
 great Greeks coiild not see the possibility of any such intel- 
 lectual democracy and so the necessity of the control of reason 
 in human life became the buttress of an aristocratic state and 
 social system. To-day the means for the development of a 
 geniiinely democratic society are at hand. 
 
 The gospel of democracy to which the Western peoples 
 have already given consent, clearly involves the universal de- 
 
74 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 velopment of the people up to a certain point, to be achieved 
 through the joint control of economic power. In order that 
 this gospel of democracy shall reach its completion and shall 
 not be checked by the weight of a mere sentimental applause, 
 there wiU have to be added to the teaching of its principles a 
 passion for their application in life. Only so can they grow. 
 The test of the democratic character of education and religion 
 is first of all the willingness to share them on equal terms with 
 aU the rest of the people, but it is more than that. It is a will- 
 ingness to help others to get their benefits. This kind of de- 
 mocracy also involves teaching the people to give equal rights 
 as weU as to seek them, and that is a much harder matter. 
 The desire for special privilege is naturally ingrained; if we 
 know some one in ofl&ce who can give us a seat of advantage 
 to watch the parade, while our friends must stand, we are 
 going to ask for it, are we not? The degree of wiUingness to 
 give equal rights to others is the final test of democracy. There 
 is a twofold duty now for the intellectuals of the middle class. 
 One of their obligations is to yield special privilege, to seek 
 the way to share it with others imtil it becomes a vmiversal 
 privilege. If they do not do this, they can coimt upon having 
 their privilege taken from them in due time. Their other 
 obligation is to teach the working class now coming to pre- 
 ponderant control in society to seek not power but equality 
 for their children and for all others. If the people now coming 
 up from below are seeking only to get their hands on economic 
 power, because they now see that this is the means to equality 
 of cultural opportunity, they will in the end be betrayed by 
 the instinct for dominance and give the world but another 
 form of inequality. If, however, their dominant desire is to 
 permanently distribute equality of opportunity for develop- 
 ment throughout the community and the world-family, they 
 will become the pioneers of a state of democracy which the 
 world has not yet known. 
 
EQUALITY 75 
 
 To diffuse economic power throughout a community is not 
 sufl&cient. It is only a part of the next step toward equality. 
 It simply clears the road for social development. There re- 
 mains to be developed the discipline of education and the 
 spirit of good will which will make effective this diffusion of 
 power in general standards of living. There remains also to 
 be achieved the general xmderstanding of hfe as a process of 
 imceasing development. If education and rehgion can in- 
 terpret life to the people so that they will seek their mutual 
 development instead of mastery over each other, then they 
 will move forward on the endless path toward the ideal of 
 equality. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 UNIVERSAL SERVICE 
 
 The development of democracy raises the question of unity, 
 the question of how the democratic community is going to 
 stay together. Is the democratic community nothing but a 
 large number of free and equal individuals who have achieved 
 their liberty and gained a measure of equality, all seeking 
 their own rights by their own power, aU endeavoring in their 
 own way to work out their development? Is the democratic 
 world only a group of nations created by the principle of self- 
 determination and then turned loose to grow in their own 
 way, to seek their own destiny, to work out their own desires? 
 What kind of a world is going to result in either case? WiU 
 these multitudes of individuals within the nation or these 
 groups of nations seek to go their separate ways independ- 
 ently and apart? And as they go their separate ways will 
 they find their interests conflicting, their desires crossing, and 
 wiU they be drawn into friction, jealousy and antagonism? 
 Or will they necessarily be drawn, both by the destructive 
 effect of the conflict of their self-interests and their inherent 
 desire for fellowship into a much closer association than is 
 implied in the principle of freedom or self-determination? 
 
 The question then is whether a democratic community or 
 a democratic world can be achieved by the principles of 
 liberty and equality alone. This involves the question of 
 whether it is possible to secure the full content of either of these 
 ideals apart from the development of another principle in 
 which they are both involved. Can final freedom or the largest 
 possible measure of equality be realized for individuals in a 
 
 76 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 77 
 
 democracy whose major emphasis is upon liberty? Will the 
 principle of self-determination really give to the smaller na- 
 tions and the backward peoples that freedom and equality 
 for which they follow it? The fact that Umitations are im- 
 posed upon the principle of self-determination in the course 
 of its own operation, is evident by the conflict that continually 
 obtains in a democratic community where democracy is still 
 expressed in terms of individuahsm. All the warfare between 
 individuals and groups in the field of industry and finance 
 that characterized the early period of the commercial de- 
 velopment of this country is tj^jically illustrative of the in- 
 adequacy of the principle of self-determination to bind to- 
 gether the life of a commimity. Then, as political democracy 
 develops, we find that it is no freer from the conflict of classes 
 than in those nations where the democratic principle is not so 
 acclaimed or appUed. In the United States, at this time, and 
 in some of the South American republics, the conflict between 
 classes becomes increasingly acute and is apparently on the 
 way to reach the same stage of severity that it has attained in 
 the older monarchical countries of Europe. The inadequacy 
 of self-determination to make a cohesive world is illustrated 
 again in the antagonisms which are developing between the 
 nations now concerned in adjusting the present world situa- 
 tion. Each plans for its own economic development, they at 
 once find that their interests conflict and dissension begins 
 between the allies, which is bound to become more acute in 
 the future unless the leaders of the nations perceive that 
 something more is needed than a mutual guarantee of self- 
 development, which means for the great powers economic 
 expansion. 
 
 Is it not clear then that democracy is not simply a matter 
 of individual freedom or equality of opportunity, or mutual 
 attempts to guarantee these rights, but is also a matter of 
 inter-dependent development? Is it not a fact that the degree 
 
78 THE 2SrEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 to which any of us or all of us can secure our recognized 
 rights depends as much upon cooperation as upon our own 
 initiative? The Western peoples have taken to liberty quite 
 eagerly; they are going to take to equality a little more soberly; 
 but fraternity is still considered a beautiful sentiment, a very 
 delightful ideal with which to beguile idle moments, but 
 dismissed from the world of daily affairs as impractical. Are 
 we now to discover that it is one of the vital forces of de- 
 mocracy, which must find practical expression in organiza- 
 tion if freedom is to remain and equality is to be advanced? 
 
 Democracy is now faced with the necessity of making up 
 its mind as to what is the cohesive force of society; what is 
 able to hold and to bind people together either into a local 
 community, into a federation of states or a commimity of 
 nations? If humanity is now going to build a new house to 
 live in, it is a vital question as to what kind of cement wiU 
 hold the structure together; if there is to be a new organism 
 now taking form in the earth, what is the dynamic power that 
 shall vitalize it and make its separate members parts of one 
 body? The task before humanity, if it would really make a 
 world democracy, is to discover and develop the laws of hu- 
 man association. Here is the great field of investigation for 
 the future. The great unchartered region for scientific dis- 
 covery is the realm of human living. We have really only 
 begun to gather together the knowledge gained by the past 
 life of mankind as to the laws and principles by which our 
 associated life has been developed and by which it can be 
 carried forward. The science of society is still in its infancy 
 and its central task is to clearly outline and analyze the funda- 
 mental principles of human association that they may then 
 be applied to the increasing activities of mankind. This is 
 the great adventure of to-morrow. 
 
 Very definite answers have been offered in the past to these 
 questions concerning the nature of the force that binds society 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 79 
 
 together. These answers need now to be examined in the 
 light of our increasing knowledge of the course and manner of 
 human progress. Autocracy is very positive in its reply. 
 It has no doubt whatever upon the matter, and if doubt 
 arises in the minds of the people concerning its answer, then 
 autocracy promptly applies its principle and calls into play 
 "the drumming guns that have no doubts." For autocracy 
 insists on the efl&cacy of coercion and declares that physical 
 force and the fear of it is, in the last analysis, the compelling 
 power of human association. It believes that no government 
 can maintain itself, and no society can be held together, unless 
 there is a ruling class to possess and constantly use the means 
 of compulsion. Autocracy is therefore the organized and 
 transmitted power of the strong man, the man who was able 
 to master his feUows, to begin with because he had the stronger 
 right arm and the greater skill in using the weapon. That man 
 finally made empires and entailed them to his descendants 
 and their satellites to nile. The strong man is the founda^ 
 tion and the philosophical justification of aU ruling classes; 
 the warrior for the ruling classes of Europe, the pioneer cap- 
 tain of industry and finance for the ruling classes of an in- 
 dustrial civilization. Along with his power, the strong man 
 transmits to the ruling class which falls heir to it the method 
 of coercion by which he attained it, sanctified by its success. 
 They therefore receive it with a justified faith in its potency, 
 which becomes finally a genuine faith in its divine origin and 
 its necessity and virtue for society. When their power is 
 challenged, they maintain themselves and insist that they are 
 maintaining the social structure, by the use of machine 
 gims and jails. So intrenched is this belief in the validity of 
 coercion by physical means that even the church, professing 
 the rule of love, has in times passed practiced compulsion and 
 sought to quell dissent by the rack, the thumb screw and the 
 stake, and endeavored to extend its faith by force of arms. 
 
8o THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 It is true that the principle of coercion as the cohesive force 
 of society has been discredited very considerably in national 
 affairs by the progress of democracy and its use very con- 
 siderably limited. Yet how many people to-day are talking 
 of anything but physical repression for social and political 
 dissent? Whenever people indicate their belief in the neces- 
 sity for a "strong government," they are reviving this ancient 
 principle of coercion which democracy abandoned in its forma- 
 tion. With the extension of inteUigence and its gradual domin- 
 ance over brute force in the determination of human affairs, 
 the principle of coercion takes another form. It becomes the 
 coercion of intellectual and moral judgment by the ruling 
 class and lately by the administration, through the control and 
 influence of the agencies of education and publication. This 
 coercion of the mind and conscience of democracy, through 
 the distortion and suppression of news, is used to subvert 
 democracy into the use of the autocratic means of physical 
 coercion to carry out the policy of the administration or to 
 suppress those who would break the power of the ruling class. 
 Democracy must free its public opinion or perish. The primi- 
 tive fear aroused by the world war and the desire of adminis- 
 trations to vindicate their policies and maintain themselves 
 in power carried the democratic coimtries back to the use of 
 the princple of coercion for which they formerly overthrew 
 autocracy. This was carried far beyond the necessity of 
 rational self-preservation, into such repression of minority 
 expression as endangers national health. The poison thus en- 
 gendered in the body politic is now robbing this nation of 
 sanity. It is attempting to meet a situation which calls for 
 more democracy with a denial of democracy and a reliance 
 upon the root principle of autocracy — coercion by physical 
 means. 
 
 But while the principle of coercion has been somewhat dis- 
 credited in national affairs, it still characterizes international 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 8l 
 
 relationships, and that is one of the fundamental reasons that 
 the world is now in its present misery. The old order of di- 
 plomacy before the war was an order which rested everything 
 in the discussion upon the possession of superior force. This 
 was the last word. Apparently that type of mind has not been 
 changed by the world agony. Recently the Minister of War 
 for Great Britain said in the House of Commons that, after 
 all, the best pressure for peace was a powerful army. This is 
 either an example of the automatic reflexes of the somnolent 
 bureaucratic mind or it is a clear declaration of the intent 
 of the ruling class of a democratic nation, controlling its 
 foreign policy for their particular profit, to maintain the prin- 
 ciple of autocracy in international relations. 
 
 If it be true that physical coercion is the cohesive force in 
 international relations, if in that realm of life we cannot trust 
 the appeal to reason or to justice, then we shall continue 
 to have an armed world and all the misery that it means. 
 Then democracy will be deceived and destroyed by the same 
 intellectual and moral fallacy that deceived and destroyed the 
 Prussian state. Democratic diplomacy, just like that of the 
 autocracies, has too often used the final argument of the pos- 
 session of superior force. The final appeal to democracy for 
 great armies and great navies is that they are not intended for 
 use, but simply to be kept in the backgroimd as an evidence 
 to the other nations that we can back up what we say, if 
 necessity requires. This means that democratic diplomacy 
 is to triimiph, not because it is reasonable or right, but because 
 it possesses the means of coercion, because it can put the fear 
 of its might into other peoples when it carmot convince them 
 of its justice. This is a complete acceptance of the auto- 
 cratic principle that society is to be held together by coercion. 
 Does the case stand any different with a League of Nations, 
 which relies solely or mainly upon the combined force of its 
 more powerful members? 
 
82 THE SOCIAL NEW ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 If the world is to have an international democracy, it is 
 necessary at once to remove the principle of physical coercion 
 from international relations at least to the degree that we have 
 partially removed it from our national relations. Indeed it 
 may be possible and necessary to secure the next limitation of 
 coercion within the nation by an advanced step in that direc- 
 tion in international affairs, for while political democracy 
 weakened the reliance upon physical force in governmental 
 affairs, the principle has been revived and given a new lease 
 of life by our industrial development. The gospel of abso- 
 lutism and the principle of coercion is stiU preached and prac- 
 ticed as the only possible means of securing iinity in our in- 
 dustrial Hfe. It usually begins at the top of society and 
 promptly spreads at the bottom. Too many people in the 
 property-owning class continually blurt out that the way to 
 deal with strikes is to break a few heads or call out the 
 troops. That is the increasing tendency; the statement was 
 common in the more developed industrial regions of the East 
 even before the war. The West prefers vigilance committees, 
 deportations, and an occasional hanging or shooting. After a 
 time bombs come from anarchist circles and increasingly sober 
 men in labor and radical circles discuss whether violence is 
 not the only way out. Finally both sides are more willing to 
 trust the arbitrament of physical force than the rule of reason. 
 This is the natural result in due process of time, of an un- 
 restrained and glorified competitive system of economic 
 production and distribution because the competitive system 
 justifies the right of the strong, asserts and guarantees it by 
 custom and law, and then enforces it. 
 
 When democracy challenged the principle of coercion and 
 proclaimed in its place the rule of reason, it first defined and 
 appHed the rule of reason in terms of an absolute individualism. 
 It saw of course that there would be selfishness and antago- 
 nism, but believed that there was enough reason in humanity 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 83 
 
 SO that in the end these antagonisms would adjust themselves 
 for the general good, the conflicting selfishnesses would more 
 or less modify each other and finally work out for the common 
 weal; gradually there would come about the dominance of the 
 rule of reason for the welfare of all. This principle of an en- 
 lightened selfishness, consciously as well as unconsciously 
 mutually checking its several excesses, was trusted in the in- 
 dustrial as in the political world; just as in the field of diplo- 
 macy it was also beheved that the balance of power would be 
 sufficient to keep the peace in international affairs. Gradu- 
 ally there came about more and more regulation of conflicting 
 selfishness by legislation and more and more mutual agree- 
 ments between competing capitaKst groups and then between 
 capital and labor. But with all this modification, there is 
 still the appeal to force in the economic situation. It is not 
 so much now the appeal to physical force, despite present 
 hysterics. It tends increasingly to take to another field as in 
 the political world it becomes the use of the printing press 
 rather than the use of armies. The trade agreement between 
 organizations of employers and employed is an appeal to rea- 
 son instead of proceeding by strike or lockout to fight the issue 
 through sheer force, economic and physical. But in that trade 
 agreement there is still reKance upon the superior economic 
 force which either group can exert. In the outcome neither 
 group is liable to get very much beyond what the balance 
 of economic forces affords. Each group will at the end of the 
 conference usually stand just about at the point to which it 
 has sufficient economic strength to carry itseh. If the em- 
 ployers can get other workers they will not yield beyond a 
 certain point. If the men can sufficiently control the labor 
 supply tiiey can carry their demands further. So the appeal 
 to reason has in this case really transferred the principle of 
 force from the physical to the economic field, or, to speak more 
 accurately, our use of the method of reason in the settlement 
 
84 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDEE: PRINCII'LES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 of industrial controversy tends to eliminate the element of 
 naked physical force and to settle the issue by economic 
 power alone so that the casualties are neither so numerous 
 or noticeable. Still more of a gain lies in the fact that through 
 pubUcity and the consequent pressure of public opinion, other 
 considerations tend to hmit the use of economic power on 
 both sides. The same thing is true of course when the or- 
 ganized groups of trade and finance confront the consumer. 
 They can and usually do fix prices at the point of their eco- 
 nomic power; it is mostly a case of "what the traffic will 
 bear." While we appeal to reason constantly through our 
 various commissions and boards, yet nevertheless a larger part 
 of our economic life is still adjusted by the principle of coer- 
 cion; prices, wages and conditions of industry, the distribu- 
 tion of product and the acquisition of capital are stiU mostly 
 determined by the possession of superior power. 
 
 In one very important field, the administration of democ- 
 racy has to a large extent abandoned the principle of coercion. 
 That is in the field of justice and punishment. In the last 
 ten years there has been a notable change ra our dealings with 
 delinquents and even criminals. There has been less reliance 
 upon physical punishment, and more and more reliance upon 
 the appeal to reason, the sense of justice and the desire for 
 reformation and reconciliation. Physical force has been put 
 into its proper place as a means of restraint for the defense of 
 the community. Unfortunately we are now unable to carry 
 over into international affairs the principles and methods 
 proved to be valid in criminology and penology, because we 
 must needs approach the great issue of justice and punish- 
 ment between nations in the aftermath of a criminal world 
 war. And of course one of the after-effects of war is a tend- 
 ency to overestimate the place of physical force in community 
 hfe. That is necessarily always more of a danger with the 
 victor than with the vanquished. Especially is it a danger 
 
tINIVERSAL SERVICE 85 
 
 if the victorious cause has been just. The very fact that a 
 just cause has been able to make a successful use of physical 
 force to defend itself against aggression is liable to lead its sup- 
 porters into an overestimate of the place and value of coer- 
 cion in a democracy. That is misleading France just now 
 in adjusting her relationship to Germany in the future. It is 
 naisleading the property class in this country in its relation 
 to labor. 
 
 It is time for democracy to ask whether the rule of reason 
 has worked out better than coercion in the development of a 
 state. Has the democratic state achieved a greater degree 
 of harmony than has been secured by autocratic rule? It 
 is true that there is still the growing bitterness of the class 
 struggle throughout the democratic states; it is true that they 
 stiU have "economic serfdom" and inequality of circumstance 
 and opportimity; it is true that not yet have the democratic 
 peoples fovmd a common aim and purpose, nor has any demo- 
 cratic nation yet ioxaxd a common goal for its living; but when 
 all these qualifications are granted, it is also undoubtedly true 
 that there is a far greater degree of harmony, and finally a 
 greater power of cohesion in the democratic than in the auto- 
 cratic state. Such degree of unity as does exist is natural 
 because chosen and not enforced, is therefore rooted in the uni- 
 iymg principle of freedom of choice and is bound to grow with 
 the expression of that principle beneath all its surface differ- 
 ences. The philosophy of the autocratic state fails to per- 
 ceive the essential nature of unity as embodied in democracy. 
 One significant piece of evidence as to its vahdity is the way 
 in which the democratic peoples withstood the shock of the 
 war. The autocratic armies and states, foimded on the prin- 
 ciple of coercion and apparently more coherent to begin with, 
 have gone to pieces; the democratic peoples have voluntarily 
 held together. It appears then that the welding power of a 
 common purpose voluntarily chosen or accepted, is greater 
 
86 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 than a purpose superimposed and maintained by coerdon. 
 If this be true, then democracy can only find its way and grow 
 into organic unity by trusting to the full the principle of free- 
 dom, by rejecting absolutely the method of physical coercion, 
 by continually extending opportunities, for the open and un- 
 trammeled determination and execution of the chosen purposes 
 of the people. 
 
 There is still another answer to the question of what is the 
 cohesive force in human relations. It is not exhausted by the 
 reply of autocracy or the present answer of democracy. If 
 there were no principles available for social action but those 
 which have so far been discussed, we might have reason for 
 doubting the future of mankind because of their obvious limi- 
 tations. If there were nothing else to depend upon but co- 
 ercion or the rule of reason, or both judiciously mixed, we 
 might perhaps conclude that there was no future for humanity 
 but the rule of class and that the successive struggles of de- 
 mocracy would simply replace one class with another. But 
 there is a principle which has been taught by religion and 
 philosophy as the dominant and fundamental principle of 
 human association. It has variously been called love, fra- 
 ternity, good will. It is the distinctive teaching of Jesus, 
 both in the emphasis which he placed on it and the degree to 
 which he carried it. It is the core of his social ethics. It 
 was the central and supreme obligation that he laid upon his 
 followers. It was defined in his teaching in terms of cooper- 
 ative service and was not simply upheld as an abstract prin- 
 ciple or a fine sentiment. His followers were to be distinct 
 from other peoples, not simply because they loved each other, 
 but because they served each other and sought together the 
 common welfare. 
 
 With that went another fundamental principle which will 
 later be discussed — that they were to seek for something 
 more in Hfe than the increase of material goods. This 
 
UimrERSAL SERVICE 87 
 
 principle of fraternity and good will, defined and applied in 
 terms of service, is the great working principle for democracy. 
 The full development of freedom and the greatest degree of 
 equality in opportimity of development are to be secured by 
 mutual helpfulness. Democracy therefore is to be a cooper- 
 ative imdertaking. One of the distinctive features of Jesus' 
 attitude to the future is that he is willing to trust his cause 
 entirely to this principle. He will permit no coercion in his 
 name, he will appeal to the franchise of humanity. Will we? 
 Is democracy thus willing to commit itself to the good will 
 and the reason of the peoples of the earth? 
 
 I do not intend even to hint for a moment that Jesus def- 
 initely taught the principle of mutual service as the bond of 
 society in the scientific sense of the term. He taught it as the 
 obligation for the fellowship of his followers and he saw that 
 fellowship in the future filling the earth. To justify this faith 
 is the fact that the desire to serve is undoubtedly deeply im- 
 bedded in the heart of the common people, and in so far as 
 the fimdamental instincts of humanity are uncorrupted by 
 organized greed, it is found that the principle of fraternity 
 expressed in mutual service is a dominant factor in human 
 association. The common need of the people at the bottom 
 of society makes for their solidarity and makes for the in- 
 crease of the principle of fraternity. It comes out again and 
 again in the familiar fact that what the poor do for each other 
 is more than the rich do for them. It comes out in such a 
 fact as this: that during the war many of the peasants of 
 Russia, before they went to bed, would put out on the window 
 siU of the cottage a candle and a piece of bread, in case some 
 escaped German from the prison camp should be passing that 
 way and need food. 
 
 This instinct of fraternity, this attempt at and desire for 
 mutual service, has been developed into a consciously ac- 
 cepted principle of social organization and has been so taught 
 
88 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPtES AISTD PROGRAMS 
 
 in several forms, all of them having more or less relation to 
 the Christian religion, both historically and philosophically. 
 It can be found in the social propaganda which insists that 
 cooperation in social organization should replace competi- 
 tion. It can be found as democracy develops from a merely 
 passive "live and let Kve" policy into an active mutual help- 
 fulness, for the development of western democracy during the 
 last generation has been in the direction of a constantly in- 
 creasing constructive service on the part of the citizenship 
 toward each other and toward the common Hfe. It can be 
 seen in the government departments dealing with education, 
 health, recreation and labor; all are activities of a positive, 
 cooperative democracy as against a negative, individualistic 
 democracy. They attempt to promote the common hfe 
 instead of merely preventing individuals from hindering its 
 development. They constitute a movement in the direction 
 of collectivism, which sees the necessity of ordering the com- 
 mon Hfe of mankind in the direction of some common pur- 
 pose and plan and makes fraternity the dominant principle. 
 It uses coercion only to prevent the disruption of the fraternal 
 community by those who would attack it for predatory pur- 
 poses; but to restore offenders to the common hfe and to hold 
 together and carry forward the common life, democracy in- 
 creasingly trusts the principle of good wiU. The extreme 
 form of the principle of good will worked out in a social 
 scheme is the doctrine of the philosophic anarchists who 
 are utterly distinct from the anarchists who beUeve in the 
 use of physical force to accomplish a new social order. 
 These philosophical anarchists are gentle idealists whose 
 chief condemnation in a practical world is that they persist 
 in thinking that other people are as good as they and are 
 therefore under Hfe sentence to bear the baimer of a common 
 ideal far ahead of the procession. They beHeve that society 
 can be held together without restraint of any kind save in- 
 
tJNTVERSAL SERVICE 89 
 
 dividual good will, its respect for others' rights and aid for 
 others' needs being in their judgment the surest of social bonds. 
 
 Unquestionably one of the great ideals of humanity, gath- 
 ering force and power of expression and organization through 
 many ages, in many peoples, is that the life of mankind in the 
 community, the nation, and the world, should be held to- 
 gether in mutual service by the principle of good will. The 
 question now, of supreme interest to a world in which a form 
 of social organization based upon selfishness has broken down, 
 is will this ideal work? Is it something impossible of achieve- 
 ment in a world where interests naturally conflict, a mag- 
 nificent dream but always to remain imrealized? What is 
 the relation of this ideal to the laws of social progress? No 
 new social order is coming down from heaven, nor is it to be 
 developed merely by fine feeling and enthusiasms for an ideal. 
 There are certain definite and ascertainable laws of social 
 development; the question that must be determined is whether 
 the ideals that now claim the allegiance of the people are in 
 harmony with the course of human progress hitherto. Or 
 does the universe constantly defeat man? Do the universal 
 spiritual longings of humanity simply mock and deceive and 
 lead in the end to disiUusiomnent, despair and destruction? 
 This question is finally to be settled by the appeal to the facts 
 and tendencies of social evolution; there is no going behind 
 or beyond that court. To that tribimal the advocates of 
 coercion have already carried their case. They have appealed 
 to Caesar and the idealists of democracy now welcome the op- 
 portimity to have the case settled before the supreme au- 
 thority where the decision is irrevocable. Both the militar- 
 ists and the industrial imperialists, all the forces of special 
 privilege who desire to maintain themselves through the use of 
 coercion and the possession of physical force, now proclaim the 
 philosophy of social Darwinism. 
 
 That philosophy says briefly that force is the determining 
 
9© THE NEW SOCIAL OIIDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 factor in progress; that social progress comes by the develop- 
 ment and use of superior force by certain individuals and 
 groups; that competition is not only the law of trade, but the 
 law of life, that the race goes to the swift, the battle to the 
 strong, and the prizes and the spoils to the victor. The "sur- 
 vival of the fittest" is the catch-word of the hour of this school. 
 It is an attempt to philosophically justify the rule of the 
 strong, which is even declared to be for the benefit of the 
 world because by the process of ruthless competition the weak 
 are eliminated. However much such a doctrine may outrage 
 our sentiments of compassion and benevolence, if it be a fact 
 we have no escape from it. If this is the law of human prog- 
 ress there is nothing more to be said or done but to accept it. 
 This philosophy is a product of the domination of the con- 
 cept of evolution in the thinking of the modem world. The 
 word evolution has come to have an authority which is almost 
 unchallenged; it has almost acquired the power to generate 
 fear, become one of the ghost-words. In certain circles to say 
 a thing is proved by evolution is to make an impUed demand 
 that it be accepted, whether or no, without any further veri- 
 fication or investigation of the facts of the evolutionary 
 process. Thus do scientists as well as theologians, substitute 
 dogma for truth and demand allegiance to their interpreta- 
 tions of things. The theory of social Darwinism was unques- 
 tionably made in Germany, but it has been distributed in 
 almost every university of the Western world for the last 
 generation, so that the scholars of Germany do not properly 
 incur all the burden of facing its consequences and sustaining 
 its truth. The theory begins in the realm of biology. It 
 starts with a supposed interpretation of the Darwinian hy- 
 pothesis concerning the origin of species: that species originate 
 and change by a process of natural selection in the course of 
 their reaction to their environment. By the originators of 
 the theory of social Darwinism this process of natural selec- 
 
tmrVERSAL SERVICE ^I 
 
 tion was then interpreted and described simply as a process 
 of struggle. Nature was described as an arena where all 
 creatures fought with tooth and claw and the universe was 
 painted red with blood; conflict was said to be the one uni- 
 versal and dominant factor. Only those survived who were 
 the strongest fighters. This interpretation and description was 
 then transferred to the field of human development and the 
 progress of man was said to be the continuing result of the sur- 
 vival of the strongest in the everlasting struggle between the 
 classes and the nations. Nietzsche aided in developing the 
 theory, though not with the one-sidedness of some others of 
 its protagonists and on the basis of it he attacked Christianity 
 as perfect folly because through its teaching and application 
 of compassion, it meant the saving of the unfit and their 
 eventual dominance. This of course was a total miscon- 
 ception, because the final result of Christian compassion is 
 not the survival of the unfit but the removal of the causes 
 of unfitness, and therefore the elimination of the unfit by 
 means beneficial to them as well as to society. It reaches 
 therefore the status of health and strength for all society de- 
 sired even by Nietzsche, by very much soimder and more benef- 
 icent processes than that of the extermination of the weak. 
 
 This theory of the survival of the fittest was then applied 
 to politics and economics. In politics it meant the absolute 
 dominance of the nation by the upper classes, those being 
 the super-men who had proved their right to survive by fight- 
 ing their way to the top. In the world at large it meant the 
 dominance and supremacy of the strongest nations, which 
 in like fashion had proved their right to leadership. And 
 therefore, along with this theory came not only the philo- 
 sophic justification of physical force, but the absolute glori- 
 fication of it. It developed into the religion of the warrior 
 caste using either arms or economic weapons, which of course 
 was the religion of the Prussian state. There is another part 
 
92 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 of the picture which was not painted by these enthusiasts for 
 physical strength and combat. They left the lower part of 
 their canvas empty. When it is filled in, it contains a world of 
 subject peoples and subject classes, exploited, repressed, and 
 inevitably rebellious. Consequently this theory of social 
 progress presupposes and indeed requires a world of perpetual 
 strife, a continued prize ring in which one champion ever suc- 
 ceeds another. 
 
 This theory is now being challenged not on groimds of sen- 
 timent, but on groimds of fact. The case is being argued in 
 the court whither the social Darwinists have carried it. There 
 has arisen a new school of biologists and sociologists who in- 
 sist on carrying the argument to a conclusion by surveying 
 and comparing all the facts of social progress. Their first 
 challenge is that social Darwinism does not correctly interpret 
 the process of evolution in the animal world. Darwin him- 
 self, before he died, denied absolutely that the shouters for 
 the survival of the fittest were correctly interpreting his hy- 
 pothesis or his evidence. In fact he said, before he died, as he 
 saw what was being done with his work, "I must have been 
 a very bad explainer." Later came the studies of Kropotkin 
 in "Mutual Aid." From his observations of the animal 
 world he concludes that struggle is a imiversal law of nature 
 everywhere to be found in operation, but it is not the dominant 
 fact or factor; and that to determine its proper place, and its 
 value as analogy for human progress, its nature and its limits 
 need to be defined. He points out that the struggle in nature 
 is a struggle between individuals and not an organized con- 
 flict between species. Also it is mainly a conflict between in- 
 dividuals of different species for individual purposes, which is 
 not proved to eliminate or even weaken any other species. 
 There is no such thing in nature as the organized warfare of 
 one nation against another nation, both of the same species. 
 It was Fabre, the great insect investigator of France, who de- 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 93 
 
 dared that in the insect world there is no such predatory at- 
 tack upon the acquired possessions of the same species as is 
 made by man in his predatory wars for example, or in his 
 economic exploitation. The main struggle in the animal 
 world is for food and while this may lead to a conflict between 
 individuals of the same species, yet usually when one animal 
 suffers in the necessary struggle for food, he usually suffers 
 at the hands of an animal of another species altogether. 
 
 Also the struggle for food in the animal world is not mainly 
 a struggle between animals, but a struggle against nature; an 
 endeavor to overcome the environment of nature in so far as it 
 is hostile. This is a mutual necessity, in the course of which it 
 is pointed out, cooperation develops as well as struggle. First 
 the sexes cooperate, and then organized bands of animals, in 
 providing food for the yoxmg and in the care for the weak. 
 In that mutual interest of overcoming nature, organized co- 
 operation LQcreasingly develops and the individual who finally 
 has the best chance to survive is not necessarily the best fighter, 
 but the one who is protected by the most cooperative group. 
 In the same way the surviving species is that which is able to 
 develop the greatest degree of cooperation in the attack on 
 nature. 
 
 Therefore it is concluded that the dominant factor in the 
 animal world is mutual aid, that it is the law of progress, and 
 that the development of society is the increase of the capacity 
 for cooperation. So it is only a part of the truth to say that 
 self-preservation is the first law of nature. Service and sacri- 
 fice also are primal instincts of humanity, with an ancient 
 lineage in the animal world. It is instinctive for the mother in 
 the animal world as in the human species, to protect and de- 
 fend her young, just as it is for her to get food for herself; 
 and in the case of the confhct between these two instincts, 
 the mother will lose her own life in order that her young may 
 be saved and the species perpetuated. The individual has an 
 
94 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 instinct for perpetuation not only for self but also for the 
 species. 
 
 This instinct for the preservation of the species has been 
 subdued and overlaid in human society in the struggle for the 
 acquisition of goods and power. The possessive and mastery 
 instincts have been unduly developed in civilization at the 
 expense of the instinct to serve and sacrifice. Yet time and 
 time again the class differences and the class selfishnesses that 
 develop in the struggle of the human race for private posses- 
 sions and special power and privilege will disappear in some 
 great emergency of human need. The instinct for service and 
 sacrifice will then leap to the front. A man suddenly seeing 
 a child in danger, without a second's thought risks his Hfe to 
 save the child. There appears the instinct for mutual aid, for 
 the preservation of the species as against the preservation of 
 the individual, developed and reinforced by a social code. 
 After the San Francisco earthquake and fire, the people had to 
 go out and camp in the parks and share discomfort together, 
 and everyone commented on the marked degree of brother- 
 hood that was present. The differences of class were suddenly 
 eliminated. They were simply human beings whose primary 
 need was food and shelter, and so, as in the days of the early 
 social group, they helped each other to attain these elemental 
 necessities. In the sinking of the Titanic, it was "women and 
 children first," an ancient law of the sea for Anglo-Saxons. 
 In it the instinct for the preservation of the species, not of the 
 individual, has been disciplined into a code and custom of con- 
 duct. It was not simply a display of the deliberate bravery 
 of men; that bravery is in part a creation of the powerful 
 instinct for the perpetuation of the species. 
 
 The social Darwinians are next challenged as to their state- 
 ment of the facts of the development of human society. The 
 preliminary work in this field was done by Henry Drummond, 
 the latest and best statement of the case for the English-speak- 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 95 
 
 ing world by Nasmyth: "Social Progress and the Darwinian 
 Theory." This is an exposition and enlargement of the work 
 of Novikov, a Russian sociologist. It is significant that so 
 much of the work in this field has come from Russian sources. 
 Witness the world-wide influence of Tolstoy in extending the 
 gospel of fraternal living. It is probably because the Russian 
 habit of life has been cooperative and even communistic. 
 In their agricultural methods they have retained their instinct 
 for service and sacrifice longer than the more individualistic 
 nations and have widely organized it into cooperative societies. 
 Darwin's early exponents, particularly Huxley and Wal- 
 lace, agreed that the law of progress in the animal world was 
 the survival of the fittest. But when they came to the human 
 world they were puzzled to find a different principle obtain- 
 ing. They said, does it mean that we have a different kind of 
 evolution in the human than in the animal world? Finally, 
 in order to account for the difference, they said that there 
 must be a new ethical factor that comes in with the develop- 
 ment of man which makes for a different process of evolution. 
 But Darwin himself was more consistent. He found mutual 
 aid the chief factor in the struggle of the animal world against 
 nature and he found this same factor developing in the human 
 race into intelligent cooperation, as the fight to overcome the 
 physical imiverse became very much more cooperative than 
 in the animal world. He foimd, for example, that the minute 
 man began to organize his economic life and to secure food 
 from nature in organized fashion, there began a process of 
 ever-iucreasing cooperation. It reaches from the day when 
 the first family began to work together to get a stock of food 
 for the winter, until the present time when we organize our 
 production and distribution for a world market. He found 
 the same fact ia the domain of thought, that as the human 
 mind became increasingly able to attack the problem of 
 nature, it developed a cooperative process in which knowledge 
 
96 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 was shared and organization became increasingly cooper- 
 ative, until modem science is a cooperative commonwealth 
 of mental endeavor. As human life expanded, it was found 
 that the strife between individual human beings, then be- 
 tween tribes and clans and finally between nations became 
 increasingly Umited by the necessity for cooperative activity. 
 As the progress of organized cooperation increased, the prin- 
 ciple of strife and struggle became correspondingly weaker 
 and less important in human affairs. 
 
 Darwin found the spiritual law in the natural world. It 
 is, as Henry Drummond pointed out in his exposition of "The 
 Greatest Thing in the World," that as humanity progresses, 
 the principle of unselfish service takes the prior place and 
 selfishness takes the second place. Struggle and fight are still 
 there, but struggle and fight, instead of being the chief factors, 
 become the secondary and incidental things in the law of 
 progress; the dominant factor in the advance of human ac- 
 tivity becomes organized cooperation, Just as mutual aid is 
 the dominant factor in the evolution of the animal world. 
 Also the principle of struggle takes a different form. As so- 
 ciety develops in cooperative life, the struggle of man be- 
 comes increasingly a bloodless and even a helpful struggle. 
 It becomes the struggle of ideas. A group of scientists is 
 working on the same problem in the spirit of competition. 
 But it is a spirit of friendly rivalry in mutual service to the 
 common good. The one who wins and makes the discovery 
 confers as much benefit upon the others as upon himself. 
 Whoever wins, humanity is the chief gainer, while the exact 
 opposite is true concerning the struggle of war. 
 
 It is thus in the upward climb of the race that the fact and 
 principle of struggle iacreasingly passes over from the field of 
 mutual destruction into the field of mutual helpfuhiess and 
 in this process physical force becomes secondary and finally 
 unnecessary. Increasingly intelligence and morals count more 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 97 
 
 and more in the determination of progress, and instead of 
 coercion, reason and good will come to dominate community 
 life. It is out of the struggle against nature, not from war 
 between men and nations, that intelligence and morals are 
 developed to strengthen human association and to aid prog- 
 ress. Out of the family affection which has developed through 
 the joint acceptance and performance of the economic tasks 
 of the family there gradually comes the "dear love of com- 
 rades" that enables and ennobles the wider associations of 
 man. Out of the necessary mutual obligations of the common 
 cooperative tasks there develops the moral sense. Out of 
 the moral sense comes the moral law, the code of the family and 
 the state, and finally the power of self-government. Mutual 
 aid, organized into effective forms of conscious cooperation, 
 becomes the most important factor in social evolution and 
 finally determines the survival of groups and of nations. The 
 simplest statement of this law of social progress is the prin- 
 ciple of reciprocity which was taught in the Sermon on the 
 Mount. "Love others as you love yourself." Darwin well 
 calls this the social law of gravitation, for it expresses the 
 essential power which holds society together and makes human 
 progress possible. Increasingly applied in the organized ac- 
 tivities of human Hfe, this principle constantly checks, and 
 finally controls in the service of the common good, the spirit 
 of selfishness which if left alone would destroy humanity. 
 Thus do biology and social science in their imfolding of the 
 course of animal and human development, support the judg- 
 ment of ethics and the faith of religion that the highest ex- 
 pression and realization of life is to be found in cooperative 
 service. 
 
 It is then apparent that the further progress of humanity 
 and particularly the immediate development of western democ- 
 racy is to be achieved through the spread of conscious co- 
 operation, which is the organized form of the instinct for 
 
98 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRiNCtftES AND PROGRAM^ 
 
 mutual aid. Cooperation disciplines this instinct of mutual 
 aid and applies it consciously to chosen social ends. It re- 
 places warfare between men with a common struggle against 
 environment and social ills; it harnesses the competitive 
 spirit to the common load and promotes emulation in service, 
 and thus subordinates the quality of self-seeking to the ad- 
 vancement of the common interest. 
 
 In the modem state and particularly in the modem economic 
 organization, there has been a great exaltation of the principle 
 of self-interest. One of the greatest faults of democracy has 
 been that its emphasis upon individual freedom has in many 
 respects been an emphasis upon individual selfishness. At 
 least autocracy in its modern form can claim this merit, that 
 it did discipline self-seeking individuals and groups in the 
 interest of the autocratic overhead state. It has been the 
 weakness of democracy that so often it has let individual 
 selfishness go its own way and even organize itself into class 
 self-seeking. That is largely because democracy has been 
 misled by an inadequate science and an imperfect philosophy. 
 Its doctrine for the state has been nationahsm — vmrestrained 
 and xmhindered, with its underlying philosophy of the abso- 
 lute sovereignty of the individual, self-sufficient state. Its 
 philosophy in economics as in poUtics has been the Laissez- 
 faire philosophy — let things alone, do not interfere with in- 
 dividual or group activity any more than is necessary to keep 
 the public peace. The best government, we were told for a 
 generation, was that which did the least and interfered the 
 least with its citizens. Somehow we were told unlimited 
 economic self-seeking would work out for the common good; 
 it would tend mutually to modify its excesses and finally 
 would result in a balance of economic power for the common 
 welfare. 
 
 As a matter of fact the only thing that saved the democratic 
 organization from being absolutely anarchic as the result of 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 99 
 
 this letting loose of individual selfishness was the fact that it 
 became to the interest of various groups to subdue their in- 
 dividual selfishness in relation to each other and to organize 
 it into an effective group selfishness in relation to the rest of 
 society. When it became evident to the big men in certain 
 lines of business that absolute, unrestrained individual com- 
 petition meant the ruin of many and imcertainty for aU, they 
 organized their combinations and sometimes their monopoly 
 control. They limited individual selfishness against each other 
 but they made it very much more powerful and effective 
 against the community. The same thing has been done in 
 certain forms of labor organization. If it were not for the 
 organization of seK-interest into group and class forms, the 
 principle of unrestrained selfishness would have worked more 
 disintegration than it has in the modem industrial society, 
 because it is manifestly the separating force in human rela- 
 tions. But while it has thus afforded automatically some 
 rehef from the disorders and disruption of an anarchic com- 
 petitive struggle, as its defenders foresaw, nevertheless the 
 principle of self-seeking is continually dividing the commmiity 
 into conflicting class interests and conflicting group interests 
 within the classes. It is now making for society a universal 
 class warfare, unless it can be replaced by the principle of 
 cooperative service. 
 
 Fortvmately the process of cooperation becomes increas- 
 ingly extended and complex in other realms of human en- 
 deavor. In the field of intellectual discovery it has long be- 
 come evident that the best results are to be attained by com- 
 bination and cooperation. When any branch of science be- 
 comes a cooperative endeavor on the part of its devotees in 
 all coimtries, it contributes very much more to human welfare 
 than when it is the lonely task of isolated investigators. The 
 ever-increasing co-operative nature of the common intellec- 
 tual life is constantly affecting the realm of economic activity. 
 
lOO THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Gradually the world finds out that the wider its cooperation 
 becomes the greater is both its economic production and the 
 development of its higher life, each being dependent upon the 
 other. 
 
 The development of humanity in modem times has been 
 through an increase of cooperative action; in the family imtU 
 it has resulted in the democratic participation of the children 
 in family affairs; in education until it has resulted in measures 
 of self-government in educational institutions; in the state, 
 until government, instead of becoming an overhead matter 
 to levy taxes, maintain order and protect against external 
 enemies, has gradually become a cooperative activity for 
 mutual welfare, looking after the health, education, recreation, 
 and industrial conditions of the people. In the economic or- 
 ganization it has been discovered that competition is not the 
 life of trade but the weakening of it by a constant waste of 
 energies and resources, and if it be imrestrained, finally the 
 death of it. 
 
 In the economic function of distribution, the general method, 
 and indeed the ideal, has been a free-for-all fight, until com- 
 bination was necessary to prevent the mutual destruction of 
 individual distributors. A certain trade organization now 
 endeavors, as one of its objects, to prevent any individual 
 member from being wiped out of business by inefficient 
 methods. Half a generation ago, the average business man of 
 that trade would have exulted to have a competitor wiped 
 out. But the new associations of business men recognize that 
 this is a mutual risk and a common loss to the entire trade. 
 So they see to it that the less able men in that trade are edu- 
 cated to the point of economic efficiency, they endeavor to 
 maintain certain standards for the trade. The same thing is 
 true to a still greater degree concerning certain organizations 
 of producers, particularly in agriculture. 
 
 But none of these associations yet take into account the 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE lOI 
 
 vital interests of the consumer; there still remains almost un- 
 restrained competition between producer and distributor and 
 between both of them and the consumer. Where conflicting 
 interests get together in a measure of cooperation, as capital 
 and labor sometimes do, it is often a mutual hold-up of the 
 consumer. When it comes to the relationships of buyer and 
 seller, the transaction usually takes place on the basis of war: 
 "let the buyer beware" is the maxim. This voices the an- 
 cient oriental policy from the first days of merchandising. 
 "If the buyer gets stxmg," our vernacular says, "it's up to 
 him and nobody else — ^he should keep his eyes open." But 
 the warfare of trade begins to be modified. The big stores 
 now give your money back if you are not satisfied. This 
 maxim also becomes the watch word of wholesale selling, and 
 manufacturers are beginning to take the same attitude. 
 
 Evidently even the business world is raising and facing the 
 question of what is the place of competition in our organized 
 life. What is the price that this great incentive to action is 
 worth? How can we preserve the stimulative value of com- 
 petition and eliminate its destructive consequences? It will 
 be recognized that the most destructive consequences of a 
 competitive organization of economic activity are not to-day 
 fovmd in competition between individuals. The casualties of 
 competitive trade have been much reduced by prevailing 
 methods of combination. There is not so large a percentage 
 of business failures as resulted from the fierce competition of a 
 generation ago. The destructive competition now troubling 
 us is that between the classes. It is at the bottom a struggle 
 for social advantage. Its continually recurrent symptoms are 
 nmnerous conflicts for immediate financial benefits between 
 capital and labor, and between organized producers and dis- 
 tributors. Its deeper aspects, which are not yet fully ap- 
 parent nor clearly analyzed, are the warfare between pro- 
 ducers and consumers, whose scars most men carry in their 
 
I02 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 own bodies, and the conflict between producers, consumers 
 and financiers, whose marks not a few also bear in their own 
 persons. So is the house of humanity divided against itself 
 by our present economic arrangements. 
 
 The competitive struggle between buyer and seller, capi- 
 talist and wage earner, involves the desire of each to secure 
 an advantage over the other. Therefore it involves the 
 principle of injustice. Instead of being an attempt to ex- 
 change mutual services on something of an equal basis, the 
 underlying desire is to make something additional to the value 
 of the service exchanged. The naked law of barter, and con- 
 sequently the naked law of a labor market carried on by the 
 principle of barter, is to get as much and give as little as pos- 
 sible. The world of employment and investment considers 
 the application of this principle by labor to be immoral but on 
 its own part to be good business. So labor considers the ap- 
 plication of the principle of taking what the market will afford 
 to be, on the part of capital, merciless exploitation, but on its 
 own part, justifiable self-defense. Neither side has sufficiently 
 discovered that their difficulty roots in the common principle 
 of action, but both are becoming aware that the naked law of 
 barter, like the stark principle of competition, has proved im- 
 profitable. One of the great department stores of the coun- 
 try has for years advertised "The only justification for Profits 
 is Service." Therefore, instead of trying to get as much out of 
 the consumer as possible, regardless of the service rendered, 
 which of course is one way to make money quickly, but not 
 continuously, the proposition now is to give the purchaser 
 the best possible service in order that profits may in the long 
 run be larger and more secure. It is the same ethical code that 
 declares honesty to be the best pohcy. The principle of mu- 
 tuality obtains only to the degree that it makes for more 
 profit, and there are obvious limits in that direction. Some 
 day we shall learn that the only justification for business is 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE I03 
 
 service, which will be altogether another advance, requiring 
 the annullment of the law of barter and not merely its amend- 
 ment. 
 
 While the impetus and gains of our present economic ar- 
 rangements in the direction of cooperative service need to be 
 recognized and credited, the fact needs to be fully weighed that 
 these gains occur on either side of the line that separates the 
 main economic interests of society. As long as the economic 
 life is carried on for private gain, producer and consumer, 
 capitalist and wage earner, have in the last analysis an irrec- 
 ondleable antagonism, no matter how much it may be modi- 
 fied by truce and laws of war. It is significant that the limit- 
 ing of the competitive struggle so far has been more in the 
 nature of class combinations for class interests than in the 
 nature of common cooperation for the common interest. 
 They involve the limiting of selfishness in the smaller field, 
 but the strengthening and solidifying of it in the larger field. 
 To carry the limitation of selfishness across the line of class in- 
 terests is a more strenuous task than to carry it across the lines 
 of conflicting individual interests. That the smaller under- 
 taking has been in some measure accomplished affords groimd 
 of hope that the larger venture may some day be achieved; 
 but not unless it is perceived and taught that to organize co- 
 operative service throughout the entire economic life requires 
 a complete abandonment of selfishness as a principle of eco- 
 nomic action. Yet in no other way can the world be saved the 
 disastrous effects of universal class warfare which is now 
 rapidly developing. There is no prevention of that warfare 
 except the abandomnent of the present competition between 
 the classes. The only way out is to make economic relation- 
 ships a conscious mutual exchange of services for mutual bene- 
 fit, not for the advantage of any class, but for the social wel- 
 fare of all. Then men are boimd together, instead of being 
 separated, by their economic interest. The spirit of competi- 
 
104 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PEINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 tion is not destroyed but transferred to another field. It 
 becomes then a competition not for selfish advantage but a 
 competition in the rendering of service. 
 
 If the principle of competition is to make for mutual bene- 
 fit instead of mutual destruction, it must be directed towards 
 a common end. It leads those who are struggling for their 
 own selfish ends to weaken and destroy each other but it 
 leads those who are striving together in service to a jointly 
 chosen cause to an ever strengthening comradeship, as the 
 fellowships of science and religion have proved. The real 
 problem before the world in seeking to prevent war is to find 
 some other expression for the competitive instinct than mu- 
 tual destruction. If the warrior spirit can be applied to a 
 common end, it wiU bind all humanity together in life and not 
 alone in death, as now. 
 
 What is needed then is not to eliminate competition but to 
 reverse its place in the present scheme of things. Humanity 
 has been struggling up in its long process of development by 
 subordinating selfishness and modifying self-interest. Further 
 progress depends upon ability to put cooperation in the fore- 
 ground and make it the chief factor in organized life, keeping 
 competition as a stimulus to cooperation. So that the new 
 social order wiU be as the British Labor Party says, a social 
 order based not on fighting but on fraternity; not simply be- 
 cause fraternity is the highest concept of humanity, not simply 
 because a cooperative fraternal life is the highest ideal of 
 human living, but because the spirit and method of coopera- 
 tion is the scientific law of human progress. The scientific 
 man who has been sneering at the idealist, needs to take 
 the measure of his ignorance and discover wherein he has not 
 sufl&ciently known science. He was not aware that the prin- 
 ciple of mutual aid, developed into the law of cooperative 
 service, was the central law of animal and human associa- 
 tion. The business man who has been laughing at the dream- 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE IO5 
 
 ers who were fooKsh enough to talk about the golden rule in 
 economic activities, needs now to discover wherein his mirth 
 was the product of a Hmited understanding of the world in 
 which he lives. He has not known that his glorified selfish- 
 ness was limiting his economic functions and destroying his 
 economic efficiency. Neither the scientific man nor the busi- 
 ness man who have been ruling the ideal of fraternity out of 
 the world, has been aware of the fact which even the cynical 
 Bismarck found out, that there are certain imponderables in 
 the universe against which blood and iron are after aU im- 
 potent. What are we now finding out is that these impond- 
 erables are also at the heart of scientific truth. The universe 
 is with the idealist and not against him. At. its heart is not 
 the disintegrating force of selfishness, but the cohesive force 
 of good will, constantly operating to unite and bind humanity 
 together in a larger, truer life. 
 
 If a new order of human living is to begin, this force of good 
 will needs now to be more consciously and efficiently organized 
 in forms of universal service. Democracy has been of necessity 
 emphasizing equal rights, for they have been, and are, denied 
 and refused. But it is an axiom that equal rights involve 
 equal obligations. A world in which individuals, and classes, 
 and nations are simply struggling to obtain their own rights, 
 is a world in which selfishness, with all its disintegrating and 
 destructive consequences, is constantly stimulated. Equal 
 rights and equal opportunities are only the first part of the 
 charter of democracy. The completion of the charter is equal 
 obligation and universal service. Here are the two comer 
 stones for democracy, either within or between the nations; 
 on the one hand equaUty of rights, on the other hand equality 
 of obUgation. The latter has been neglected to the point of 
 danger imtil the democratic state is hard to put it both to keep 
 its house together and to prevent the control of it falling into 
 the hands of one class or another. The natural result of the 
 
lo6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 theory of states rights and absolute sovereignty in the political 
 world is such a conflict as has recently waged between nations 
 and now threatens between classes. 
 
 I once read that statement which has been called "the 
 Social Creed of the Churches" to a gathering of colored preach- 
 ers. The first section says, "equal rights for aU men in aU 
 stations of life," and one of the colored men at once asked this 
 question: "I would like to know if that applies between the 
 black men and the white men or simply between the white 
 men. Also does that mean equal rights to skin each other?" 
 Unless along with it is put the principle of universal service, 
 the demand of equal rights is likely to strengthen the process 
 of mutual skinning. Because the war has magnified the de- 
 mand for equal rights and set free a lot of new nations, it is 
 necessary now to emphasize the principle of equal obligation 
 and to find its proper expression in forms of imiversal service. 
 The more freedom, the more points of conflict between ia- 
 dividuals and classes and nations. If the ideal of democracy 
 is limited to equality of right and opportunity, it contains 
 within itself the seeds of its own death. The future course of 
 democracy depends upon whether the people can now develop 
 the will to serve and embody it throughout the whole of the 
 social organism. 
 
 It is evident that there has been a great extension of the 
 application of the service motive in the war experience of the 
 nation. It was universally accepted that everybody should 
 "do their bit" in some form or other and many people who 
 never before had recognized any community obligation ac- 
 cepted for the duration of the war the validity of the obliga- 
 tion for universal service. In some states it became the law 
 that you must either work or fight. Public speakers found a 
 large part of their audiences engaged in the occupation of 
 knitting. It is questionable how many of those people, now 
 that the need of the war is over, will feel any obligation to knit 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 107 
 
 for the improperly clothed in their own community, but the 
 principle of universal service having been accepted and es- 
 tablished, we ought to be able to carry it in some measure into 
 the ordinary activities of peace times. The result would be to 
 extend the enlargement of hfe that came to many people in 
 war work. A certain acquaintance of mine said, regarding 
 some of the "dollar a year men" at Washington, "Some of 
 my business friends whose main object in life formerly was 
 business success and the making of money, have recently 
 been serving their country and humanity for a dollar a year 
 and I have been surprised to notice the change in their feel- 
 ings. They have a sense of freedom and of joy that I had not 
 observed before in their Uves." 
 
 It was noticeable that the principle of universal service oper- 
 ated in many instances to reduce industrial friction. Consider 
 for example, the settlement of the controversy over hours and 
 wages on the railroads with the similar situation before the war. 
 The matter was very easy to adjust imder the pressure of the 
 principle of universal service. But before the war it was a mat- 
 ter of conflict between those whose interest and duty were the 
 making of profit in order to pay dividends and those whose in- 
 terest and duty were to secure wages in order that proper 
 standards of living might be maintained for their families. 
 That conflict of interests then plunged the country into turmoil 
 and finally had to be settled by congressional action. But dur- 
 ing the war, when the same question was raised, the director 
 general of railroads called in the heads of the respective rail- 
 road workers' organizations and said in effect: "Now gentle- 
 men, we are all engaged in helping the boys at the front; I 
 have appointed the following commission which will see to it 
 that you get a square deal in the matter of wages. We want 
 you now to ask your men to work whatever time is necessary 
 in order to meet the necessity of the nation in this crisis." It 
 was only a few minutes before those same men, who a year 
 
I08 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 or two before had contested a similar action through weeks of 
 bitter conflict, were on the way to the telephone to call up 
 their respective lieutenants throughout the country and say 
 that overtime "went without limit." And it did go without 
 hmit. A railroad man at a station west of New York, at the 
 bottle-neck which the freight of the country had to pour 
 through to get to the shipping points, said, "I have been 
 many years in railroading, but I have never see freight move 
 as it is now." It was a result of the appHcation of the principle 
 of universal service. The question now is, will that spirit 
 pass with the passing of the national emergency, or will it 
 continue to be the dominating principle of our organized life? 
 
 During the war, there was not only recognition of the vaHd- 
 ity of the principle of universal service, but there was a re- 
 quirement to some degree of equaUty of service. That is, 
 there was a sharp protest against any disproportion of serv- 
 ice or of gain and if it was shown that any group of capitalists 
 or workers were evading their proportion of the needed serv- 
 ice for the hour, or that they were unduly seeking profits 
 instead of service, the public condemnation was instant and 
 severe. Not a little of the friction in the industrial organiza- 
 tion that is now troubhng us ia this coxmtry and in Great 
 Britain is due to the feeling that there was in some instances 
 an inequality of service during the war. 
 
 It ought to be evident that if the principle of universal 
 service is needed in time of war, it is needed still more in time 
 of peace, because the needs of peace time are very much more 
 complex and difficult to meet. Yet in attempting to meet 
 them, our economic life continually obeys the motive of profit 
 before it answers the call of service. It wiU not be denied that 
 the great social evils of poverty, disease and vice constitute 
 more difficult foes to deal with than a hostile nation, require 
 an even greater degree of concentration of activity and of re- 
 sources. Against these common enemies of mankind there can 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE I09 
 
 be no final victory without the acceptance of the principle 
 of universal ser\'ice. To defeat them, society must overcome 
 the opposition that nature, inanimate and animate, continually 
 offers to human progress. In the daily struggle to maintain 
 its life against a natural environment which is in many re- 
 spects hostile, in the conflict which must be waged against its 
 own nature if life is to be advanced in the direction of its 
 ideals, mankind will need all its material and spiritual re- 
 soxirces and aU its capacity for social mobilization. 
 
 It is also quite evident that it is very much more difficult 
 to secure international cooperation in the joint tasks of peace 
 time than in the war time struggle of one group of nations 
 against another group. This is because, as long as our eco- 
 nomic life is organized on the basis of competition, as long as 
 men and nations continue to seek possessions, there is in their 
 daily mode of life the incentive to, and the motive for, interna- 
 tional friction, so that their economic necessity so conceived, 
 continually defeats their ideal of cooperation. How is it 
 possible to secure lasting international cooperation in a 
 League of Nations except the nations obey the obligation for 
 universal service to the common interests of humanity in all 
 their activities? 
 
 It is time to ask to what extent does the law of universal 
 service already obtain, where in our present social arrange- 
 ments is it accepted as a continuous obligation? It appears, 
 in what to home spun democrats will be an unexpected quarter. 
 It is to be seen in the aristocratic section of society in Europe, 
 at least among those who can be called Tories, and not Bour- 
 bons. These terms are often used without due discrimination, 
 for there is a large distinction between the Bourbons and the 
 Tories. The Bourbons claim only privilege and accept no 
 obligation; the Tories accept the obligation of feudal chivalry, 
 the imperative of "noblesse oblige." The motto of the Prince 
 of Wales, heir to the EngHsh throne, and head of the ^.ristog- 
 
no THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 racy of Great Britain is, "Ich dien" — "I serve." This code 
 is at once the pride, and the strength, and the only excuse of an 
 aristocratic group in society. And according to their lights 
 the English landed aristocracy, as a class, did serve and 
 trained their sons to serve. True, their service was to take 
 place within the area of privilege, it was to be the service of a 
 governing class carefully trained to rule by certain standards, 
 but still the concept of service was there as it has not yet ob- 
 tained among the newer Bourbons of the plutocratic section 
 of an industrial society. The " nouveaux riche," having fought 
 their way to the top, for the most part claim the spoils and 
 do not sense any obUgation of service. Democracy has yet 
 some virtues to learn from an aristocratic class which has had 
 a long function in the social order, and may still have it for 
 some time to come. 
 
 The aristocratic principle of "noblesse oblige," which was 
 the contribution of the knightly order of chivalry to me- 
 diaeval Europe, and was its outstanding virtue, has been ex- 
 pressed and organized in modem times in the so-called learned 
 professions. In the old days of classical education, the law, 
 medicine and the ministry were supposed to be the only vo- 
 cations open to gentlemen who did not follow the calling of 
 arms or government. This was largely because they embodied 
 the aristocratic spirit of service and were not carried on for 
 gain. This spirit has been carried over into the newer pro- 
 fessions which have come out of the development of science; 
 if scientific education is to save itself from the social sterility 
 which has to some degree come upon the older education of 
 classical days, its product must be trained groups of public 
 servants who will consider it a violation of their professional 
 code in any degree to seek profit rather than the service of 
 humanity. Moreover, an education which is to be democratic 
 and help to produce and maintain a democratic society, must 
 train the entire citizenship to live by the spirit of service 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE III 
 
 which has been the saving principle of aristocracy and the 
 life-giving principle of the professions, as the very breath of 
 its being. 
 
 There has come up recently a special order of service to the 
 community; it comprises various philanthropic, humanitarian 
 and religious organizations, under the general head of social 
 service. But in a normal community there would be no need 
 nor justification for even the existence of that phrase, let alone 
 of a special group set part for social service. In the normal 
 community, the obligation of this professional group to serve 
 humanity would motivate every function of society. It is 
 apparent that a large area of society is not yet dominated by 
 the principle of service, when it becomes necessary to set 
 apart specialized social servants. The larger part of this neces- 
 sity roots in the fact that not service but profit is the dominant 
 motive of economic action; that economic activity, which in- 
 creasingly affects the rest of our living, has been dominated 
 by the predatory spirit. It is carried on largely as a conflict, 
 by methods that belong to the days of barbaric warfare be- 
 fore chivalry tried to make the service of arms a knightly 
 service to humanity. It is perhaps because the spirit of com- 
 bat has received new stimulus in the field of industrial ac- 
 tivity that this arena still resists the influence of that spirit 
 of service which has come to actuate other relationships in 
 society. The economic function is still carried on more from 
 the motive of gain than from the motive of service. That 
 was one reason for the social discredit of the trading classes 
 in a feudal system, which stiU holds over to some extent in 
 those countries where there is still aristocracy of birth. It is 
 partly because the trader follows gain as the dominant motive 
 of his activity that the aristocratic order, in Japan for example, 
 looks upon trade as something discreditable and even immoral, 
 because not subject to the same ethical rule of service that 
 binds the nobility to the state. 
 
112 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 The business world is now attempting to uphold a double 
 standard: for capital, profit; for labor, service. Many people 
 who do not accept the law of service in their own lives are 
 yet insisting that labor shall answer to that law. They openly , 
 declare that the function of wage earners is to produce, to 
 give values to the community without stint, they tacitly 
 af&rm, and in practice insist, that it is the privilege of the 
 property owners to seek private adventure and gain, and that 
 without restraint, if restraint can be averted or avoided. 
 During the war, because of the necessity of getting a maximum 
 production in the shortest possible time, the double standard 
 of economic morals was sharply challenged. The obligation 
 of service was largely extended and accepted in the industrial 
 field. It remains to be seen if industry will now go back to 
 the unashamed pursuit of private gain, whether its strong 
 men will insist on being exempt from the law of universal 
 service. 
 
 That is really the main question now before the house of 
 himianity. Is the world of economic activity going to accept 
 the law of universal service from top to bottom? There is a 
 constant clash between the will to power and the will to serve 
 both within and between men. This originates mostly in 
 the matter of property rights and duties, that is, in the field 
 of economic action. Here then is where democracy must 
 protect itself by extending the obligation to serve, since its 
 future depends upon its ability to secure the vmiversal service 
 of its members. 
 
 There are two fields for the expression of this principle of 
 tmiversal service in the new order. One is the field of mutual 
 helpfulness. This is a volimtary obKgation and is accepted 
 by all right-minded men. They regard it as their duty and 
 privilege to help their neighbor in their neighbor's need. Such 
 a spirit leads the woodsman to leave his cabin open for the 
 needs of the traveler; actuates all neighborly service and 
 
tJNIVERSAl SERVICE II3 
 
 organized philanthropy; leads the strong nations to feed 
 starving peoples in other lands. It is only under the voluntary 
 acceptance of this principle of mutual obligation that a 
 brotherly community can be developed. Such a community 
 existed for a little while in the City of Jerusalem in the be- 
 giiming of what we call the Christian era. There, a little band 
 of folk, imder the impetus of a great teaching embodied in a 
 life, considered the obhgation of service to be the imperative 
 rule of life, helped each other's need and saw that none lacked 
 what the common resource was able to supply. Such an 
 attitude exists at this day on the frontier where men and 
 women have to fight the battle against nature in its sharpest 
 form, and with the least equipment. There anybody's need 
 is everybody's need and everybody serves it at any cost of 
 hardship, toil or danger. 
 
 But when people get isolated in the crowd of the city, 
 then the common needs of aU individuals tend to become the 
 immediate, personal concern of nobody but themselves, every- 
 body's business is indeed nobody's business. But gradually 
 the things that the members of the family do for each other, 
 meeting the common obligations of food and health, the things 
 that the neighbors always do for each other in simpler com- 
 mimities, become organized in the city into a system and get 
 done by paid workers and boards and institutions and gov- 
 enmient. This is the only way they can be done effectively 
 under the abnormal and imnatural conditions of certain parts 
 of our city life. Everybody's business must be done by every- 
 body acting together. But there still exists the universal 
 obligation on the part of the individual citizen to perform any 
 service to meet any neighbor's need that comes imder his 
 vision; and imless that be recognized and met, all the machin- 
 ery for social service becomes so much mechanics against 
 which even the people that are being benefited finally revolt 
 in bitterness. If then we want to have a brotherly community 
 
114 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 extended throughout the world, we must continue to extend 
 this family and neighborhood tie of mutual helpfulness which 
 is the real and vital bond of the natural commimity. We 
 must discipline the members of our more sophisticated society 
 in the duty of helping each other. 
 
 There is a great difference between the service of democratic 
 mutual helpfulness and the service of a governing class, fine 
 as the latter may be. There is all the difference in the world 
 between "my Lady Bountiful" in an English village making 
 her visits to the cottages of laborers, carrying her fruits and 
 other comforts for the sick, and the interchange of such serv- 
 ices in a small American community between people who 
 may have a difference of income and intellectual development, 
 but who nevertheless have been accustomed to look upon 
 each other as equals and are in fact equals in so far as their 
 status under the govermnent is concerned. When democracy 
 accepts the principle of "noblesse oblige," it presupposes 
 equality and then moves in that direction; it does not attempt 
 to sustain the existing stratification of society by merely 
 ameliorating the lot of 'the lower classes." Of course the 
 subtlest temptation to inequality after all is the temptation 
 to claim and exercise a privilege of special service. There is 
 no severer test of a democracy than the nature and spirit of 
 its social service. Is it merely an attempt to help the inferior; 
 is it merely the old type benevolence, or is it mutual helpful- 
 ness? If it is to strengthen and not weaken democracy, it 
 must involve the attempt to raise the general level, until the 
 weaker who are being helped and the ignorant who are being 
 taught shall ultimately be raised to the plane of those helping 
 and teaching. If democracy is to realize itself, eventually all 
 the services that are now done by the people above to the 
 people below, from the stronger to the weaker, will be finally 
 a mutual exchange between equals. That wiU hold true for 
 nations as well as for individuals and classes. 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE 1 15 
 
 The other field in which universal service needs to be ex- 
 tended in the democratic state, is the field of economic organi- 
 zation. In the last four years democratic communities have 
 apparently accepted the principle of the universal obligation 
 of citizens for the military defense of the state. How many 
 people who therein proclaimed it and accepted it will now 
 accept it in so far as civic duties are concerned? How many 
 people who fill out their income tax blanks and send in their 
 checks will do so with the feeling that they are discharging a 
 service to the state equivalent to that which the state called 
 upon them to render in the time of war, and how many will 
 do it with a grouchy feeling of having to give up something 
 they would rather hold on to? Yet if the principle of imiversal 
 service is vaJid in military affairs, it is also valid in civic 
 affairs. If the state may call upon me in its need to offer my 
 body for its defense, it may also caU upon me in its need to 
 offer my last doUar for the maintenance of its life. Yet the 
 latter obligation is strenuously denied where the former is 
 cheerfxilly accepted. The measure of that denial may be 
 taken by considering the report of the Treasury Department 
 cftnceming the amount received from the income tax and the 
 amoimt which should have been received from the known 
 income of those subject to the tax. 
 
 It is plain that the most difficult application of the law of 
 service will be in the field of economic activity. It involves a 
 change in the concept of the very nature of business. It 
 means further that social service will no longer be considered 
 a matter extraneous to the main functions of Ufe, but the 
 whole enterprise of Hfe, its total activity, will be viewed and 
 imdertaken as social service. If the teacher and the preacher, 
 the doctor and the soldier are servants of the community in 
 all their activities, why are not the financier, the manufacturer, 
 the wage earner and the farmer? If the economic enterprise 
 must operate for the good of the community rather than for 
 
Il6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 personal gain in time of peril from war, why should it not so 
 operate in other days? There is good grotmd for the con- 
 tention that modem society caimot secure economic efl&ciency 
 except through a more cooperative organization and the ex- 
 tension of mutual service. It was law and custom in the 
 primitive and tribal family for each member to accept the 
 obligation that fell upon him in securing the common food 
 supply. We have hardly yet outgrown the ancient tradition; 
 for in the United States the idle rich still have to apologize 
 for their existence. If we are to be true to the course of social 
 development and the national tradition concerning useful 
 labor, we shall now find a way to rigorously apply the prin- 
 ciple of universal service to the fundamental economic organi- 
 zation of the community life. That raises the question of who 
 are the parasites. And some of us will have to defend our 
 existence, because we have looked down so long upon the 
 folk who work with their hands as an inferior group, who could 
 even be dispensed with if it would not be so inconvenient to 
 have to do their work. But we are the important people, 
 the intelligent folk, the ones who run society, without whom 
 it could not get along. Consequently they have developed 
 a similar idea concerning us; they are beginning to think 
 that they can, if need be, get along without us, and some 
 of them are trying to do it even now. As soon as the 
 claim is made that society should require of everybody 
 some useful labor, each group of workers rises to assert that 
 it is the most useful. If we apply the principle of democracy, 
 that dispute will ultimately be settled by the majority; 
 and the majority can be trusted to find out what is good for 
 it in a little while. The people will not finally go astray. 
 Goaded by hardship and suffering, contempt and oppression, 
 they may react wrongly for a while, but Ufe will teach them 
 very speedily what are the real values. They will soon come 
 to know that while economic activities are absolutely basic. 
 
UNIVERSAL SERVICE I17 
 
 that without them there can be no society, there are also 
 other activities essential to the well-being of the community, 
 without which it cannot develop out of the animal stage. 
 
 When we get to that point, and we may get there more 
 quickly than some of us think, there will be one of two things 
 for the iatellectuals to do. They will either have to help the 
 other workers adjust economic functions to other intellectual 
 activities so that the two can be done by the same person 
 without fatigue and limitation of either general economic or 
 other personal productivity, or else they will have to be 
 exempted from certain of the economic functions of society 
 because of the value of their services in another field. In 
 this connection a production engineer says: "I have been 
 imable to prove, imder existing systems, that I can reduce the 
 working hours to less than six a day and make it pay, but I 
 have been able to demonstrate to my satisfaction that if we 
 could remove certain hindrances and objections, I could re- 
 duce them to four and make a profit to the community, and do 
 this on an economically sound basis. Furthermore, we shall 
 be able to do it in two hours before very long." And the inter- 
 viewer said: "What, socialism?" "No," said he, "simply 
 engineering." 
 
 If that is true, and if the engineers can do it quickly enough, 
 there is hope for some of us who are now apart from the basic 
 economic activities of society that we may yet be able to live 
 without knowing that other people, who are overburdened 
 with economic activities, feel that we are parasites carried on 
 their backs. It is evident of course that there are certain 
 other services which are as absolutely necessary to society as 
 the economic function, and which cannot now, and perhaps 
 ever, be carried on along with economic activities by the same 
 persons, so that those rendering these other services must be 
 exempt from certain kinds of economic activity. That raises 
 the question of conscription. 
 
Il8 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Does it comport with our democratic principle of freedom 
 to conscript people for universal service in any functions nec- 
 essary for the life of the community? If it can be done in 
 time of war why not in time of peace? Of course the state 
 which proposes such a policy is under obligation to prove that 
 the activities for which it conscripts its citizens are essential 
 to the ongoing of the life of the community and that the life 
 of the community is best advanced by doing this on some co- 
 ordinated, regulated plan. It must also prove that more free- 
 dom will result for personal expression in the higher reaches 
 of human activity. The latter question may be assumed to 
 be answered when a state democratically choses universal 
 service in economic activity. The issue of conscientious ob- 
 jection is not involved in universal economic service as it is in 
 universal military service. It occurs in the form of the ex- 
 ternal question of the authority of the community over the 
 individual. This question is on the road to settlement as 
 fast and as far as the state becomes the cooperative organiza- 
 tion of community life and ceases to be a merely regulative 
 institution. In any form of state, the conscientious objector 
 is needed occasionally to keep its soul alive, but the need and 
 the occasion for him lessens as the vital functions of life come 
 imder the common, direct control of the people, through the 
 simplest and easiest forms for the unhampered expression and 
 execution of their choices. Even the anarchist concedes the 
 necessity for the common organization of essential commimity 
 functions. He only demands that it shall be a matter of 
 voluntary choice. Of course, under such a situation there 
 would be the possibihty of maladjustments and maladmin- 
 istration, of the principle of universal service coming to be 
 used for the good and profit of certain groups. In that case 
 we should need at once our conscientious objectors to protest 
 and refuse to serve a special interest, but I doubt if anybody 
 who is physically able can make a case for decUning to serve 
 
insrU'^ERSAL SERVICE 1x9 
 
 in some sort the fundamental needs of our community life, 
 without which he himself could not exist. 
 
 Those who incline toward an aristocratic form of society, 
 usually without knowing it, at once raise the question what 
 becomes of the strong men? If, as the final expression of the 
 principle of fraternity, universal service in some form or other 
 is to be required of every member of the community, will 
 society stop developing the strong men who are now supposed 
 to be the most efl&cient leaders, and whose capacity for leader- 
 ship is supposed to be developed by certain rewards of priv- 
 ilege and power? It is pertinent to remember that it now ap- 
 pears to be the concensus of opinion of an increasingly large 
 majority of the people all over the world that they do not 
 want to be ruled by the strong, and if that be so of course they 
 are not going to be troubled very much by a system which 
 does not develop the strong to be rulers, at the cost of con- 
 cessions which make burdens for the rest. 
 
 But a democratic community has particular need and place 
 for those of special ability. It wiU give them special service 
 and even special exemption from functions that would limit 
 their usefulness to the cormnon life. That is the habit of 
 democratic organizations, as the history of the labor movement 
 demonstrates. Not even a "Red" army can afford to risk 
 the Uves of certain men in the front-line trenches. But such 
 exemption must be democratically determined on the ground 
 of the common good. What the people now object to is that 
 many of the most fit are now automatically or autocratically 
 exempted from some of the more dif&cult, arduous and mo- 
 notonous obhgations of hfe, not for the purposes of service 
 but for the purpose of special privilege in exploitation. 
 
 In a genuine democracy, the principle of universal service 
 would continually call for the strong as leaders and not as 
 rulers; as servants and not as masters. The democratic com- 
 munity which shuts the door against the possibiUty of mastery 
 
I20 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 and privilege by those of special ability will open another 
 door still wider in the opportunity for leadership. Does not 
 this constitute a greater challenge to human ambition? Does 
 not democracy fling out a greater stimulus to the development 
 of the individual, to the training and use to the fullest extent 
 of his capacities, because it offers him the highest expression 
 of them in service and the highest application of them in the 
 common pursuit of the common good? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EFFICIENCY 
 
 If the new order is to satisfy the modern spirit, it must not 
 only reach out after the supreme ideals, it must not only be 
 actuated by the highest motives, but its operation must be 
 as nearly perfect as is possible. Certainly, its mechanism must 
 run a great deal easier and truer than does the machinery of 
 our present sodal organization. The word efficiency is a 
 product of the mechanical era. In many circles to-day it is 
 a phrase to conjure with. Originating in the business world, 
 it is now being applied to aU sorts of organizations. Those of 
 us who have so far evaded the efficiency experts wiU sooner 
 or later find ourselves under their tutelage. Education and 
 religion are now being sm-veyed and their programmes charted 
 by efficiency methods. The gist of the demand for efficiency 
 is that the sdenti&c method, which in the modern era has 
 worked such a revolution in the world of thought, is now being 
 applied to the world of economic and social organization. 
 That, in a nut shell, is what is meant by the term efficiency: 
 applying the scientific method rigorously to human organiza- 
 tion. The aim of the efficiency movement becomes perfec- 
 tion in sodal mechanics. In a modern industrial plant, ma- 
 chines are constantly tested in regard to their efficiency, to 
 determine whether they are deUvering the full amount of 
 power of which they are capable to the task for which they 
 were contrived, and in the easiest possible way. 
 
 So now men want to know whether the world is getting the 
 best results from its human machinery; whether it is develop- 
 ing all the power of which it is capable; whether it is applying 
 
122 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 that power to the tasks which humanity needs to get done; 
 whether it is running with the least possible friction. This is 
 the contribution of science to the idealism that makes for a 
 new order, as it leads men to reach after perfection in the 
 mechanics of social organization in order that humanity may 
 accomplish its chosen purposes with the least ejcpenditure of 
 effort, and the largest possible results. 
 
 The phrase efficiency is most familiar to us as it has been 
 used in commercial and industrial organization by those who 
 have developed what is called scientific managemeint. Of this 
 school of industrial thought and practice Mr. F. W. Taylor 
 was the founder. The center of his teaching was the proclama- 
 tion that the energy of human workers, Hke the power of 
 machinery, is subject to law. His endeavor was to discover 
 that law and get it followed in industrial management. He 
 demonstrated, by a number of experiments in specific opera- 
 tions, that it was possible to discover how the highest degree 
 of energy could be attained by a worker, and the largest pos- 
 sible output secured, without fatigue. On the basis of these 
 individual experiments, a factory was organized so that its 
 maximum output could be secured with the minimum of 
 energy and expense. 
 
 The principle of scientific management has been limited, 
 its prestige impaired and its methods distorted, by the profit 
 makers. It gains in value and strength as it is applied to those 
 activities of Hfe which are not organized for private gain. At 
 least it challenges society as a whole to examine its workings 
 and discover the relation of its means to its ends. It raises 
 the question of social eflSciency; what is it, and how may it 
 be attained? 
 
 The philosophical definition of eflSciency would be "the 
 best adaptation of means to ends." But that impUes the power 
 to choose ends. One of the constant activities of human 
 thought and endeavor is to discover in any field of hfe the 
 
EFFICIENCY 1 23 
 
 means that are best adapted to the securing of the chosen end. 
 The course of progress lies in the acquisition of power to 
 choose ends and adapt means to them in ever-widening fields 
 of action and forms of association. But so far mankind has 
 not yet reached that stage of social consciousness where it 
 can consciously choose the ends of its associated living, can 
 agree as to what society is driving at, and whither it should 
 be guided. One of the significant features of our present 
 situation is the striving of the whole human race to get some 
 common consciousness of the ends of hmnan living. The 
 ability to adapt the whole means of hiunan living, the whole 
 complex machinery of hiunan life, in the best possible manner 
 to the securing of chosen ends, depends upon the nature of 
 the ends that are chosen. The efficiency engineer can get 
 better results in a factory cooperatively owned and managed 
 by its workers than in one operated for the profit of persons 
 apart from the workers. How much of the diflSculty in getting 
 efi&cient international machinery is due to the assmnption 
 that the present ends of our social organization are permanent? 
 
 Social efficiency then involves more than social engineering. 
 It depends also upon a social philosophy, a social ethics, and 
 a social religion, which will develop a common understanding 
 of the true ends of life, common moral judgments concerning 
 the means necessary to reach them, and a common capacity 
 for service and sacrifice in the undertaking. No mechanical 
 concept of efficiency in economic undertakings can be called 
 social, it cannot even develop efficiency in economic activity. 
 
 Obviously the prerequisite of social efficiency is knowledge. 
 There is a large body of so-called pure science behind any 
 particular piece of engineering or scientific management. The 
 same thing is necessarily true concerning social engineering. 
 If the path of development is by means of cooperative action, 
 society must imderstand very fully the laws of cooperative 
 activity. The whole of our modem progress in associated 
 
124 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 living rests upon science. It is true that great individual 
 minds and spirits, comparable to any that have developed 
 since, existed prior to the scientific period; but general advance 
 in standards of living and their attaiimient depends absolutely 
 upon the exact knowledge which modern science has given 
 us, both concerning the physical universe and the nature and 
 activities of man. Just as the development of transportation 
 and communication depends upon a number of physical 
 sciences, so does any advance in health depend not only upon 
 community activities for the purpose, but upon research in 
 biology and other correlated sciences. Consequently the new 
 order rests back upon educational fundamentals, upon the 
 discoveries of science, and the abiHty to utilize them. 
 
 The second element in social efficiency is the application 
 of knowledge to social organization. It is one thing to develop 
 knowledge; it is another thing to impart that knowledge suc- 
 cessfully to the people; it is still another thing to apply that 
 knowledge effectively in social organization. Take for ex- 
 ample, the question of congestion in a great city. There 
 exists exact knowledge concerning the kind of dwellings best 
 adapted to the development of family hfe. There exists exact 
 knowledge concerning the means of transportation that would 
 enable a city population to be moved to and from the territory 
 where it is possible to build the desired kind of houses. But 
 until there is more common knowledge concerning the rela- 
 tion between human values and the ownership, control and 
 use of the land, our knowledge concerning houses and means 
 of transportation is largely ineffective and futile, and must 
 remain so. When the people find out the exact relation be- 
 tween bad housing and our property system, there will be 
 effective change. Yet there is in existence a very much 
 greater body of knowledge concerning this aspect of the 
 problem than is now being appHed. There is more knowledge 
 concerning the comparative value to the nation of disease- 
 
EFFICIENCY 1 25 
 
 breeding tenements and the income derived from them, and 
 also of the means for the elimination and prevention of such 
 plague spots, than there is either the desire or the will to put 
 into action. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest factor in our present social inefficiency 
 is unused and unapplied knowledge. Consider for instance 
 the matter of taxation, the question of how the nation shall 
 pay for the war, of how it shall distribute its income in future 
 years. There is in existence in our universities a very definite 
 body of scientific knowledge on this subject that has never 
 yet been applied by our legislatures, and were it applied we 
 should at once get relief from the present situation and have 
 much more hope of social progress in the near future. Such 
 progress as we have made in government in recent years has 
 been due to the steady inroad of science in the field of legis- 
 lation and administration. Democracy can never succeed 
 merely because of its soimd ethical principles. Its ideals alone 
 have not been able to overcome the innate greed and ambition 
 of human nature. Its graft has become notorious, and has 
 been overcome only by making the scientific method the in- 
 strument of the democratic ideal in goverimaent. Efficiency 
 in government is not to be secured by heeding the cry from 
 business circles for business methods in administration, for 
 business is conducted for profit, and however much it may 
 improve the mechanics of government, wiU in the end conduct 
 it too for profit. 
 
 Efficiency in government must be scientific and not business 
 efficiency: the application of scientific knowledge by scientific 
 methods, in the scientific spirit; which is the spirit of service 
 to the common interest by which alone democracy can Hve. 
 
 The most significant evidence of present social inefficiency 
 through unused knowledge is to be found in the waste of 
 economic and vital resources in the highly organized nations. 
 The loss of energy and goods through the duplication and 
 
126 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 destruction of competitive methods is a matter of common 
 knowledge. The tremendous waste of the vital forces of the 
 community from preventable disease is also being popularly- 
 proclaimed. It is also well known that this nation is de- 
 veloping only a part of the mental efl&ciency which its ma- 
 terial wealth and educational capacity make possible. One 
 minor factor of that situation is the loss through the misfits 
 of our present industrial situation. When the nation organized 
 for war, it put the psychologists to work to select, by scientific 
 test, the men best adapted to the tasks that the army needed 
 to get done. There are a few private plants in this country 
 doing that sort of thing but, as a whole, our industrial organ- 
 ization is losing an incalculable amount of productive energy 
 because it makes no attempt to fit the worker to the task he 
 is best able to do. Still more significant is the loss of productive 
 energy in our present method of industrial ownership and 
 management due to the divided interest of capital and labor 
 and the constant friction between them, because this also 
 involves a loss of the spiritual capacity of the community, 
 as what might be the cementing force of economic cooperation 
 becomes the dividing flame of class war. 
 
 Corresponding to the waste from cross-purpose and lack of 
 coordination in economic activities is the waste that occurs 
 from a similar cause in what are called the higher activities of 
 life, though it is time to challenge that distinction. The root 
 of the difficulty is not that a number of organizations are en- 
 gaged in promoting the same or interrelated ends without 
 any relationship to each other in particular, at times pulling 
 and hauhng in different directions. That matter is being 
 remedied by federation as fast as is good for the free play of 
 initiative. The root of the matter is that there is no adequate 
 agreement as to end or method, no sufficient consciousness 
 of a common purpose between the major forces dealing with 
 the spiritual interests of society, that is, between education 
 
EFFICIENCY 1 27 
 
 and religion and again between these forces and those dealing 
 with the practical activities of life, industry and government. 
 Therefore such progress as we achieve is largely the result of 
 the blind contact or conflict of separate forces. 
 
 Our' social life is still for the most part anarchic. Within 
 the community, as within the nation, the situation is very 
 much as it was in Europe in 1914; in large part chaos, with 
 no common purpose, no coordination of activities, in the 
 most vital matters of life. If this is indeed the core of our 
 social inefl&ciency, then the central issue in the problem of 
 social efficiency is to answer the question what, is the social 
 machine running for? What is the common goal of it all? 
 
 Those who have raised the slogan of efficiency have not 
 been unmindful of this question, but dominated by an in- 
 dustrial civilization, their tendency has been to conceive the 
 question purely in terms of economic organization and to fail 
 to see that it must cover the whole social striving of man. 
 Yet the economic function covers so much of human life and 
 so vitally affects the rest that its purpose and meaning largely 
 determine the rest. The efficiency engineers are now preach- 
 ing what to them is a gospel, that the object of economic or- 
 ganization is not to make money but to secure the maximum 
 production of goods. They point out that there is a conflict 
 between commercial efficiency seeking personal gain and pro- 
 ductive efficiency seeking to supply common needs, and that 
 the outstanding reason for inefficiency in our economic or- 
 ganization is that the commercial and financial controllers 
 and directors of it have the object of making money in greater 
 degree than the object of meeting the needs of society. They 
 point out that there is now more capital expended in seUing 
 than in producing, and contend that if this process is reversed, 
 wages and standards of living will rise and make greater con- 
 sumption possible, with a consequent demand for more pro- 
 duction. They are not afraid of overproduction, declaring 
 
128 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 that we have never yet produced all the things the people 
 need, but have simply failed to make it possible for them to 
 use the things they have produced. A few months ago, there 
 was a tense effort to produce food stuffs, and coal and metals, 
 now we are shutting down our mines and our factories 
 and plants and letting them lie idle because that which has 
 been piled up cannot be consumed. The productive engineers 
 declare that this is the constantly repeated situation, that 
 more than half the machines are always idle, more than half 
 the labor power is wasted in idleness, and the rest of the ma- 
 chinery and labor power are badly used. 
 
 The objective of the production engineers is maximum pro- 
 duction. They are considering the economic machine as the 
 instrmnent of society in general, to produce the goods that 
 the community needs for its maintenance and development, 
 and not to enable a part of the community to amass wealth 
 and privilege and power. Their test of the efficiency of the 
 economic machine is the relation of the goods produced to 
 effort expended. The greater the amount of goods produced 
 with the least expenditure of energy, the more efficient 
 from their standpoint is the economic organization, and the 
 more useful to society. 
 
 So far they make their case. They are emphasizing a very 
 necessary factor in human development. Unless we do in- 
 crease our economic productivity we caimot advance our 
 general standard of living. Our figures for national income 
 and cost of Uving show that to make general throughout the 
 population a standard of living higher than the minimimi it 
 will be necessary for us to increase very much our national 
 wealth and income. Therefore, in their emphasis upon this 
 point, the production engineers are rendering a genuine service. 
 But there are some other aspects of the question. What is 
 the relation of efficiency in production to efficiency in con- 
 siunption? It is suggested by certain socialist writers that 
 
EFFICIENCY 
 
 129 
 
 along with a maximum of production must go a minimum of 
 consumption; that is, the minimum which would conduce to 
 the well-being of the individual and of society. Economic 
 efficiency is thus defined as the union of social economy in 
 consumption with maximum production by the least ex- 
 penditure of effort. 
 
 This involves the question of efficiency in distribution as 
 well as in production. The larger part of recent efforts for 
 social justice has been directed toward securing more equality 
 in the distribution of the results of the common toil. But 
 this great effort for social justice has been somewhat imder 
 an illusion regarding the social effects of justice in distribution. 
 It has failed to recognize that imless efficiency in production 
 is increased along with justice in distribution, standards of 
 living cannot be raised. Soviet Russia has found that out, 
 and it has been Lenin's constant exhortation. On the other 
 hand, if the factor of justice in distribution is neglected, no 
 efficiency scheme can carry production beyond a certain point, 
 because a sense of injustice is one of the greatest hindrances 
 to productive activity. Efficiency engineers have finally to 
 reckon with the intangible elements in the problem, those 
 factors of human relationship that we call moral and religious. 
 Both industry and social science must fully face the fact that 
 man is vastly more than a goods-producing and goods-con- 
 smning creature. They must reckon with the immortal spark 
 within him that refuses to be satisfied with material comforts, 
 that ever pursues the impossible. It is this aspect of himian 
 nature which must be given expression and development in 
 all social and economic arrangements. Professor Felix Frank- 
 furter recently declared as a result of his wide experience in 
 the adjustment of labor disputes that there were certain 
 spiritual factors which were the determining factors. From 
 the ranks of industrial managers themselves comes increasing 
 testimony that economic efficiency depends upon the securing 
 
130 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER." PRINCIPLES AND PROGILAMS 
 
 of creative, self-expression on the part of the workers, and this 
 cannot be done without ownership in the process. 
 
 It has been demonstrated that more goods can be produced 
 when conciliation and joint agreement displaces dispute and 
 friction between employer and employed. It has further been 
 demonstrated that a greater release of productive energy can 
 be secured by cooperative ownership and control. At this 
 point the solution of economic efficiency touches the larger 
 problem of which it is so large a part, the greater question of 
 efficiency for society as a whole. Maximum production is 
 secured by finding a common end, in which all the workers 
 share. Then to get complete social efficiency there must be 
 a common agreement as to the real end of society and a com- 
 mon effort to secure it. 
 
 Is the answer to the problem of efficiency in economic 
 activity the answer to the whole question? Is the maximum 
 production of goods and their equitable use the end of human 
 living, individual or social? Is all scientffic improvement 
 and all economic democracy merely for the production of 
 goods in order that these goods may be enjoyed? Or is this a 
 means to another end? After all that science can discover is 
 applied with the utmost degree of educational efficiency to 
 the social organization, are we then to be nothing better than 
 educated swine, using our goods and our knowledge and our 
 democracy for the satisfaction of the senses in time and space? 
 Or are there further ends for human endeavor, at present but 
 dimly perceived? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY 
 
 So far in our industrial society, efl&ciency has been inter- 
 preted too exclusively in terms of wealth production, and the 
 danger is that it will be so interpreted. To offset this is the 
 fact that many educators and social workers are strenuously 
 endeavoring to give social efficiency its real content, to take it 
 far beyond the field of wealth production into the wider 
 ranges of hiunan Uving. They are facing the question of the 
 end of human living in order that the means of life may be 
 truly determined. They are asking not only in what respects, 
 but for what purpose, is humanity to be efficient. 
 
 That, of course, is one of the old questions of philosophy, 
 both for individual and social Hving; but as the world life 
 becomes organized in such a way that humanity can in fellow- 
 ship choose its ends and work toward them, this question of 
 philosophy becomes a very practical issue for the common 
 people. The question of what the social organization is driv- 
 ing at is, after aU, a very concrete question. Here is a scien- 
 tific, mechanical age trying its best to get its machinery adapted 
 to certain immediate ends with the utmost possible perfection, 
 without any general vision of the final end of human endeavor. 
 So that after all the toil and struggle of social organization, 
 the spirit of humanity remains xmsatisfied and often defeated. 
 In the most advanced communities there is still much cynicism 
 and not a little despondency. 
 
 One of the outstanding things about the world war was that 
 it became the outlet for certain of the aspirations and ideals 
 of mankind which had not found expression in the ordinary 
 
 131 
 
132 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 days of peace. Multitudes of men were released from a hum- 
 drum life with httle meaning or purpose to it except to earn 
 enough to keep them and to give them an occasional good 
 time, and were thrown out into a vast undertaking with a 
 great purpose, their energies raised to the supreme point in 
 pursuit of an ideal. That fact does a little redeem the bar- 
 barism of modem scientific warfare, which is the most brutal 
 of any kind of war in history. The war did what civilization 
 in peace has failed to do for multitudes of people; it gave ex- 
 pression to some of the greatest faculties of humanity. It 
 brought to light the evident need of a greater goal for the 
 common nm of people than Ufe usually affords them, it em- 
 phasized their capacity for higher as well as lower Uving than 
 the level of their previous routine. I think it will not be ques- 
 tioned that a large proportion of the population most of the 
 time finds no spiritual meaning and no spiritual satisfaction 
 in the business of living. Unless this state of affairs can be 
 changed, history moves on to its supreme tragedy: the develop- 
 ment of all the resources of knowledge and all the powers of 
 civilization and their application to no other than material 
 needs and sensuous enjojonents on the part of the majority 
 of the people. Either humanity must find a higher goal than 
 that for its energy, or perish, either from the diseases developed 
 by the indulgence of its appetites or from the conflicts inci- 
 dent to such a mode of life. What that goal may be is not a 
 question merely of choice or of ideals, it is a matter of knowl- 
 edge; it depends upon an understanding of the past develop- 
 ment of the race. Is there any meaning evident in the social 
 progress of mankind? This is the question which must be 
 put to social science when humanity attempts to answer in a 
 practical way the old philosophical question of the end of 
 human living. 
 
 What then has science to say about the goal of human life? 
 If there is one thing that humanity needs now it is a conscious- 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY 133 
 
 ness of the direction of the process of living. That is a much 
 bigger question than to ask what is now the kind of world 
 organization for this generation to choose. And the right 
 answer to the smaller question depends upon the right answer 
 to the larger, for it determines the poUcy for which any new 
 political or social machinery is shaped. Here is this long 
 evolutionary process from the lowest and most minute form 
 of animal life up to the complex world organization of human- 
 ity, covering how long a period of time no one knows, involving 
 so many ramifications of life that it takes many branches of 
 science to describe them. Can we find out what it all means 
 by learning anything concerning its trend? Is it moving in 
 any definite direction, so that the direction will give us some 
 light upon the question of the end which humanity ought now 
 to consciously choose? Some scientists as well as philosophers 
 have asked whether there is any progress at all or whether 
 there is not merely a constant renewal of cycles one after 
 another without any evidence of advance. But as associated 
 life develops, from the early tribal community up to our mod- 
 em complex society, it is clear that there is an increasing power 
 to socially choose the ends of the common life and then to 
 work to these ends when they are chosen. In and through 
 and behind all this progress of social organization there con- 
 tinually runs this power for ever larger groups of people to- 
 gether to choose what they are living for and then to move 
 toward the chosen goal. 
 
 In the past many generations of men have worked in the 
 dark like coral insects, Hving and dying without any conscious 
 choice concerning ends, not knowing what life meant except 
 to eat and drink and beget and fight and die. But now we 
 buUd in the light. We have learned what these folks of the 
 past were doing and how they did it. We have seen how each 
 generation has moved the house of humanity a Httle nearer to 
 the light, become a httle more conscious of a plan and a little 
 
134 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 more able to work to it. And as history and social science 
 open up to us this whole process of social evolution, there is 
 an overpowering sense of the vastness of the undertaking 
 that almost overwhelms us, just as the physical universe over- 
 whehned our forgotten ancestors. But this knowledge should 
 beget faith, it is a guarantee of the possibility of consciously 
 organizing the complex world life of man. It is small wonder 
 that to those who are unfamiliar with the facts of science — to 
 the common people and even to many men of affairs — this 
 attempt to make a world organization must seem an impos- 
 sible venture. It is to them launching out into the vast un- 
 known deep, and they feel Just as their ancestors must have 
 felt, or like the first mariner when he put out his little 
 cockle shell upon the great sea. But for those who know the 
 facts, there is no excuse for fear of the unknown future. Our an- 
 cestors were compelled to fear the unknown physical universe 
 because they were ignorant of its nature and operation. 
 Something of that fear is stiU in us, but with the hght that 
 science has already thrown upon the dark places of life there 
 is no reason for this generation to fear the necessary task of 
 exploring and settling and organizing the undiscovered regions 
 of human living. 
 
 It may be argued that there has been no marked increase 
 in individual living in several thousand years. It is quite 
 possible to pick out certain great characters of the past — some 
 great Hebrew prophets, some great Greek philosophers, some 
 great patriots of ancient history — and say we have not 
 produced any better; here is as high a type of human 
 living as the race has ever seen. But suppose we compare 
 the social living of to-day with the social living of that period 
 from which these great individuals were selected, and what 
 then is the judgment? It becomes apparent that there has 
 been a development, first of the standards of social hving, and 
 second of the general average of personality. The modem 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY I35 
 
 age may not have produced any greater individuals than the 
 past, but can it be disproved that the average of human living 
 has been very greatly raised in the past few thousand years? 
 On the physical plane the vital statistics of the past century 
 offer conclusive evidence for those coimtries where public 
 health has been promoted. In the mental world there is some 
 evidence in the decrease of illiteracy. In the moral realm 
 there is evident an increased sense of the dignity and worth 
 of the common person. He counts for more in the scheme of 
 things; he expresses more of his faculties, he realizes more of 
 the values of his personality. All this is manifestly true if a 
 comparison is made between a primitive state of society and 
 that of to-day; it is also true if a shorter period of time is 
 taken and the average Hfe of to-day is compared with the 
 average Hfe of ancient civilizations or with that of the earlier 
 periods of our own western civilization. 
 
 These evident facts concerning progress, being a part of 
 the increasing power to socially choose ends and follow them, 
 throw some hght on the question of what it is all about. Of 
 course that question is not finally to be answered in time and 
 space. We do not and cannot now know aU that we are, let 
 alone all that we shall be. An imperishable part of life is the 
 great quest of the hmnan spirit for the infinite, and while all 
 that we can now do is to choose our ends for time and space, 
 yet our "homesickness for the eternal" leads us to choose 
 them in the hope and faith that they have eternal meaning 
 and value. Therefore the ends of human living in time and 
 space must be determined by this twofold test; first the evi- 
 dence of the trend of progress, and second the satisfaction 
 that they afford to the spiritual aspirations of humanity. 
 Science and religion then jointly must find the answer to the 
 question; they must together develop a social philosophy. 
 
 If, to the average person who does not know much about 
 science or history or philosophy, the question is put, "What 
 
136 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCEPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 is the most valuable thing in the universe for you?" in what 
 terms will the answer be likely to come? Will it not be in 
 terms of personality? If it happens to be a particularly self- 
 centered person it may possibly be in terms of their own exist- 
 ence, but for the ordinary run of persons it will be some other 
 person or persons who hold for them the supreme values of 
 Hfe by ties of kinship or the choice of a supreme affection; 
 some other person or persons for whom they are perfectly 
 willing at any time to lose their own life. On the train quite 
 constantly I see traveling men puU out their watches and in 
 a big majority of cases there is a photograph of a person or a 
 family group on the inside of the case, and that picture is 
 their answer to the question of supreme values. As Hfe en- 
 larges its interests and associations the estimate of value in 
 terms of personality is made in group forms; men value the 
 family more than themselves, the state more than their family, 
 and humanity above the state, because these groupings are 
 reaUy an enlargement of personality, with the power to in- 
 crease its values. 
 
 If the question of supreme values is put to human institu- 
 tions, the answer comes also in terms of personahty. Ask the 
 state and the school and the church what they are trying to 
 do, and they wiU teU you they are trying to develop people; 
 their end is to produce a certain type of individual and a 
 certain kind of associated living. One of the greatest words 
 of philosophy is that no human being must ever be treated 
 as a means, but always as an end. The greatest teacher of 
 religion asks, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul," — that is, destroy his own per- 
 sonality? He declares: "I am come that they may have life; 
 and that they may have it more abundantly." 
 
 Without the key of the meaning and value of personality, 
 the universe is an insoluble riddle and man sinks into despair. 
 With that key in his possession, he becomes, if need be, inde- 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY I37 
 
 pendent of the physical universe. For the development of 
 personality in time and space, of course, he depends upon 
 the environment of nature; but if he so will, he can defy the 
 world, he can blow it to pieces about his head and with his 
 body smashed to fragments go out into the future in a supreme 
 assertion of himself. 
 
 It does not lie within our present purpose to define per- 
 sonality, but simply to point out that the new order must 
 recognize and attempt to realize its supreme worth and value. 
 It must be said, however, that personality is increasingly de- 
 fined in social terms, its values are discovered and realized 
 in fellowship. We shall be able to add a great deal to what 
 the philosophers have told us about personahty by experi- 
 mentally discovering in social action what personality may 
 become. If there is a greater sense of the dignity and worth 
 of the common run of people to-day than there was a thousand 
 years ago, it is due to the fact that improvements in social 
 organization have developed and actually realized greater 
 values in the common run of people. Thus the process of 
 social development continually defines and enlarges the nature 
 of personality. It becomes increasingly clear that the mean- 
 ing and end of individual Ufe and of social Hving is reciprocal 
 and inter-dependent; that each feeds upon, enlarges and com- 
 pletes the other. The more the individual values the com- 
 mimity, the more he contributes to it, and thereby enlarges 
 his own life; the higher the community regards its constituent 
 members, the more it provides for their development, the 
 stronger and richer is its own life. 
 
 It follows, therefore, that the new order must seek for its 
 chosen end and goal the development of personaUty. The 
 things of the spirit and not material goods must be the ulti- 
 mate and supreme object of its endeavor. This is not simply 
 idealism, not merely a question of imagining, wishing and 
 choosing a high goal; it is also a question of understanding 
 
138 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the trend and direction of the evolutionary social process, of 
 accepting and working with it. The social order is not spirit- 
 ualized by injecting something into it, but rather by discover- 
 ing what are its inherent spiritual values and then consciously 
 developing them. This is the process of ethical and spiritual 
 development for the individual. As he comes to consciousness 
 he chooses certain values, he embraces certain ends; thus his 
 understanding of life becomes moral and his actions religious. 
 What we are now witnessing on the world stage is in one sense 
 the coming to consciousness of the race. One of the outstand- 
 ing facts of the time in which we are living is that the world 
 family is growing up and is coming to a stage of common con- 
 sciousness where it can understand itself and the universe a 
 httle, and choose its ends, both intellectual and moral. In 
 order that this may be done to the improvement of Ufe, it is 
 necessary for education and religion to teach as the funda- 
 mental principle of the new order the significance of per- 
 sonality and continually to unfold all the capacities of human 
 living for aU the people. Their duty is to estabhsh the values 
 of life in their proper degree and proportion, first things first. 
 As education and religion undertake this task, they have 
 to reckon with a situation in which a world war has affected 
 seriously the value of human life, in a wider sense than physical 
 existence. Whether the result is going to be loss or gain is 
 beyond determination at the present time. On the one hand 
 is the fact that there has been a very large recognition of the 
 value of the common man and woman. They have proved 
 themselves to possess the highest qualities. Society has re- 
 ceived a demonstration of their capacities. That ought to 
 raise their future status. It is not reassuring, however, to 
 contrast the estimate that society placed upon the life of the 
 common soldier as a fighting man and the estimate that is 
 now placed upon his life as a working man. There is at once 
 evident quite a depredation in the value which the war gave 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY 139 
 
 to the common man, not simply because he was needed, but 
 because of the heroic qualities that he everywhere showed 
 himseK to possess. Our peace-time industrial organization 
 has not yet found any demand for these heroic quahties, con- 
 sequently the working man is not worth as much to the com- 
 munity to-day as he was twelve months ago. 
 
 A more permanent social result is likely to come from the 
 increased valuation of their own lives which the war gave to 
 the common people. If the man who had never found any 
 meaning or end in life except to earn a living and enjoy what 
 he earned as best he might, was led by the war to consciously 
 offer his life as a supreme sacrifice for a great ideal, he thereby 
 put a higher value upon his own personality than he ever did 
 before. He became worth more to himself as weU as worth 
 more to the community. 
 
 The question again is, will that man retain the valuation 
 which he thus placed upon himself and to what extent the 
 community will permit or encourage him so to do. If it lets 
 him come home and become a beggar upon the street or a 
 drvmken sot carried back to camp by mili tary policemen, it is 
 certain that such men will not long retain this increased valua- 
 tion of their personalities which came to them during the war. 
 
 Over against the gains which the war brought to personality 
 there must be put some evident losses. While multitudes of 
 men got an increased idea of the worth of their own lives, 
 what attitude did they take concerning the worth of the lives 
 of other men, not antagonists, but feUow members of the 
 same army whose lives necessarily had to be spent quite freely, 
 and sometimes cheaply, if the end sought was to be achieved? 
 What effect did that necessarily ruthless and reckless expendi- 
 ture of life have upon those who witnessed it? Did it increase 
 or depredate their sense of the value of personality? That 
 question is especially pertinent because of the manner in 
 which modem warfare defiles and destroys the human body. 
 
I40 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 What permanent effect will the blasphemous and obscene out- 
 rages committed upon the human body by scientific warfare 
 have upon the men who constantly witnessed it? It wiU be 
 a different effect than comes from being exposed to such hap- 
 penings oneself. There is some evidence in the case, in the 
 effect of the expenditure of human Ufe in the war upon the 
 population at home. Does it disturb us at all to pick up the 
 morning paper and read of two hundred revolutionists shot 
 in cold blood in BerUn, or that the Poles are fighting the 
 Russians on one border and the Prussians on another? Before 
 1914 we would have been horrified by the fact that a few 
 hundreds of people are being killed every day in various cam- 
 paigns. But to-day, after the millions of lives lost in the great 
 war, the casualties of these Httle wars seem minor affairs. 
 We have lost something of our sense of the values of human 
 life. 
 
 What this finally means to the world will depend, in the net 
 result, upon two things. First, whether all this expenditure 
 of human life, with all that it cost society for development and 
 education, brings some immediate and manifest gain to the 
 world life. Whether we suffer any loss in our conception of 
 personaHty from the war will depend, in the first place, upon 
 what we now get out of it. And that answer of course rests 
 mainly with those who have the determining voice in shaping 
 the peace. If this nation, having made possible the winning 
 of the war by the aUies, now fails to secure in the peace terms 
 a marked advance in human living, then the world will suffer 
 tremendously in its estimate of the worth of human living 
 for a long time to come. 
 
 The other factor is this — whether or not the sacrifice of life 
 was voluntary and conscious of high ends. The men who 
 were driven to the line of combat ignorantly, or chose thought- 
 lessly to go with no vision of the meaning of the struggle, got 
 no increase in personality from the war, but were brutalized 
 
THE SXJPREMACY OF PERSONALITY 14I 
 
 by it; most of them are not living on as high a plane as be- 
 fore they went. It is only those who go to war with a chosen 
 purpose, for an end worth while, who gain any increase in 
 their personaKty. It is likely that from the war we shall 
 have lost for some time to come a great deal of the sense of 
 values gained in the western world through our efforts for the 
 conservation and development of human life. To restore their 
 sense of the worth of humanity, the western nations will need 
 now to throw their energy into saving and improving and en- 
 larging the hfe of aU the people; they must undertake the 
 fundamental measures of social reconstruction necessary to 
 make personahty the supreme value, and its development the 
 dominant purpose, of organized living. 
 
 In establishing the supremacy of personality in modern 
 society, a basic principle of action is that personality must 
 not be limited by institutions, either political, industrial, 
 social or religious. Democracy, in its administration, has raised 
 the world-old conflict between the individual and the group, 
 even as in its inception it raised that issue against another 
 type of administration. It is now compelled by the common 
 people to examine the effect of its institutions upon personality. 
 
 Primitive society subdued the individual to the commimal 
 thought and activity, and its supremacy of the group over the 
 individual still obtains to a large extent in the eastern world. 
 In the western world there arose the principle of individualism 
 to emancipate persons from undue group control. The power 
 of early social groups over the individual was terrific. Even 
 in the individualistic western world, a large part of that com- 
 munal power is still perpetuated in tradition, custom and law 
 which the individual violates at the peril of social ostracism. 
 But a good many of the conventional standards and laws 
 which now restrain the individual are the product of as- 
 sociations which men have created by their joint will and 
 reason; the state for instance or the church, or an occu- 
 
142 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 pational organization. Just as the primitive social groupings 
 had a very large power over the individual, so it comes about 
 in course of time that these volxmtary institutions acquire 
 dominance over the people who belong to them; with age they 
 tend unduly to limit personality and to restrain its develop- 
 ment. This acquisition of power by social institutions was 
 one of the reasons for the development of democracy. The 
 rise of democracy is very largely the attempt to secure the 
 emancipation of individuals from institutions. The men who 
 brought democracy to this country were rebels, first against 
 the church and then against the EngHsh state, because these 
 institutions were Kmiting their freedom and development. 
 Then history repeated itself and in their lifetime, those same 
 men who had rebelled against the autocratic control of the 
 English church and state over the conscience of men, exercised 
 on these shores the same despotic control over persons who 
 disagreed with them, simply because they thought that their 
 kind of institution was superior to all others, that it was 
 immutable, and that all within its reach ought to be controlled 
 by it. 
 
 The same feeling exists strongly to-day regarding the fo rms 
 of political democracy, and forms must always be distinguished 
 from principles. Principles compel allegiance for their worth, 
 but forms deserve authority only to the degree that they em- 
 body and apply the principles which they were created to 
 express. Because of the fact that institutions in which prin- 
 ciples essential to the development of personality are em- 
 bodied always sooner or later attempt to subordinate per- 
 sonality to themselves as institutions, the development of 
 democracy is a process of the continued emancipation and 
 expansion of personality. On the one hand it enlarges per- 
 sonaUty by continually extending the control of all individuals 
 over the functions of the state, on the other hand it progres- 
 sively emancipates personality by the continued overthrow of 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY I43 
 
 repressive institutions. The recent overthrow of imperial 
 government is the final adventure of democracy in the political 
 field, but it has yet to join issue with the imperial principle in 
 economic affairs. There is groimd of hope, however, that it 
 may yet achieve the emancipation of personality in economic 
 arrangements, because of its experience with chattel slavery. 
 Chattel slavery went from the British Empire and from this 
 continent because free men saw that it was repressive of the 
 personality of other men. It was not overturned by the black 
 men who suffered from it, but by white men with an ideal 
 of human life which would not permit them to endure that 
 men of any color should be held back from social development. 
 That changing economic conditions helped to develop this 
 ideal is not a denial of the growing power of the democratic 
 concept of personality, but simply a partial explanation of 
 its origin and sources of nourishment. 
 
 Now comes the turn of other repressive institutions. When- 
 ever any social institution permits one group of people to 
 limit the personality of another group, it has reached the be- 
 ginning of its decadent period; its death warrant is shortly to be 
 drawn though the execution may be long delayed. So general 
 is the conviction of the worth of the democratic principle to- 
 day that one test of the vitality of the institutions of govern- 
 ment and religion, education and industry, is whether they 
 permit one part of the people to develop at the expense of 
 another part. 
 
 There is another test, and it is particularly a test for institu- 
 tions which are democratic to the extent that they have re- 
 pudiated the principle of the control of one group by another. 
 It is this: to what extent do they, as institutions, limit the 
 personality of those who belong to them? If they are demo- 
 cratic they are volimtary. We boast of a free state and a free 
 church. Our government is supposed to exist and continue 
 because people have chosen it or consented to it. If we belong 
 
144 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 to a church, it is supposed to be because we have elected to 
 belong to it, though usually it is because we are bom in it. 
 If we participate in a form of industrial organization, it is 
 assumed to be because as free people we consent to that kind 
 of organization. This popular assxmiption rests upon the 
 soxmd principle that democratic forms of association express 
 and embody personality asserting itself in free choices. pUl 
 institutions at first embody some vital principle. In their 
 beginnings they have the missionary fervor and the propa- 
 ganda spirit. When they become inherited institutions their 
 original principle is not so vital to those who received it as 
 a sacred bequest as it was to the men who first conceived it. 
 It is now to be guarded rather than advanced. Gradually 
 the institutions become more formal, more engrossed in the 
 mere mechanics of routine, their tendency is increasingly to 
 consume a larger part of the energy of their members in keep- 
 ing the wheels turning and an ever smaller part in the exten- 
 sion and propagation of the vital principle for whose develop- 
 ment the machinery was created. 
 
 This is the inherent depravity of institutions. Originating 
 as dynamic expressions of great principles, they tend to be- 
 come static, then conservative and at last reactionaryH They 
 finally develop adherents who care more for the institution 
 than for humanity at large, or even for the principle which the 
 institution was supposed to embody; who wiU sacrifice them- 
 selves to the institution without stint, but who are not willing 
 to sacrifice that institution in any degree, either to the good 
 of humanity or to the interests of the principle around which 
 it was organized. In this coimtry just now many people are 
 fearful that the institutions of democracy are in danger of 
 being changed; yet many of those same people who profess 
 to be trying to serve and defend democratic institutions are 
 every day. denying the very fundamental principle of democ- 
 racy by refusmg the right of assembly and discussion to those 
 
THE SXTPREMACY OF PERSONALITY I45 
 
 who advocate change. If the principle of democracy were 
 more important to these people than its institutions, they 
 would not be attempting to repress aU critical discussion of 
 those institutions. The tendency, in state and church, is for 
 the institution to reach the point where it demands not only 
 complete loyalty, but even renunciation of its own principle 
 from its adherents. Made to serve men it finally masters 
 them, and in that stage of decay democratic institutions be- 
 come the instnmients of autocracy. They permit again a 
 few people, through them, to control the rest. The price of 
 preserving the institution at the expense of the principle is 
 the destruction of the principle. 
 
 How then can personaUty emancipate itself from bondage 
 to institutions? How can men prevent even those institutions 
 of their own making and choosing from repressing personality? 
 How can their value as means for the expression and enlarge- 
 ment of individuals be preserved? It is the perpetual problem 
 of human organization and the only solution appears to be 
 continual criticism, perpetual protest and recurrent re- 
 organization. When an institution reaches a certain point in 
 size or force, it woiild seem to be necessary for a break to 
 occur and for other institutions to arise, developing a new ex- 
 pression of the fundamental principle inherent in the older 
 organization. That is the way of progress, by constant change 
 if need be. That was a very hard thing to do in primitive 
 society; the penalty was ostracism or death. It is not much 
 easier to do in a more advanced society; the penalty, though 
 more refined, is not much lighter. The man who is a heretic 
 or a rebel in education or rehgion or government, even the 
 man who finds it necessary to criticise the party that he has 
 always belonged to, or the church in which he has always 
 lived, is not likely to find it an enjoyable proceeding. The 
 world will move a little faster when institutions are conceived 
 simply as the embodiment and expression of personahty and 
 
146 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 principles, when it is more generally recognized that they 
 must be changed as soon as they begin to limit personality 
 and distort principles. 
 
 Of course institutions ought to be reverenced in so far as 
 they serve to develop persons, and so make for the progress 
 of society. They have a right to loyalty in the proportion to 
 which they do these things. But the test must always be 
 the extent to which they serve the hfe of all the people and 
 not simply the degree to which they benefit those who belong 
 to them. We ought not to wait to criticise our institutions 
 imtU they begin to limit us, we ought to criticise them when- 
 ever it appears to us that they are in any degree limiting the 
 development of personaKty anywhere. In other words, our 
 institutions must be always a means and not ever an end; and 
 they must always be a means to the general good, not merely 
 to the good of a few. If they are the means to develop the 
 social whole, they will then be an instrument for the develop- 
 ment of the personaHty of those who compose them, giving 
 these persons their proper social expression and function. The 
 principle is this then, that men must serve institutions only in 
 order that institutions may serve men. Personality must ever 
 maintain itself supreme over the machinery it has created, 
 lest in these latter days, imagining itself free from all false 
 gods, it may unknowingly bind itself once again in utter 
 bondage to the work of its own hands. 
 
 If institutions are to be tested by what they do to persons, 
 if they exist for people and not people for them, then a state 
 that permits a privileged few to live off the people is like some 
 great Minotaur devouring their lives, it is a state against 
 which the people must rebel. The state does that when it is 
 the organization of a mihtary autocracy; it equally does it 
 when it is the organization of an economic autocracy. This 
 generation has concluded that the autocratic state, demanding 
 the sacrifice of the people, putting itself beyond morals and 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY 147 
 
 above God, is an outrageous blasphemy against human per- 
 sonality. But what about the tyranny of a majority in the 
 democratic state? Should it repress and coerce dissenters? 
 May not that too, become such a repression of personality as to 
 be a violation of the individual and therefore an offense against 
 the common good? If there is one thing above any other 
 which the English people have contributed to the progress of 
 humanity, it is their tradition of respect and reverence for 
 individual rights, for the sacredness of persons, even of the 
 meanest and lowest. It is the tradition of the English state 
 that their voice may be heard, their rights and liberties pro- 
 tected. But that tradition is in danger, in the development 
 of democracy. It is in danger in the increase of our social 
 organization. The spirit of democracy may be threatened by 
 mere bureaucratic routine. The state may become such a 
 great cmnbersome machine that persons are tied to the wheels, 
 even groimd up in it. The democratic state, even under the 
 development of economic democracy, may become nothing 
 but bureaucratic industrialism in which, in rigidly ordered 
 routine, the people go through their monotonous hves. The 
 problem is to make cooperation increase freedom. It is the 
 province of democracy to enlarge personaUty. This is accom- 
 plished only when the people voluntarily give their best en- 
 deavor to the collective life. Such a condition is not yet even 
 approximately approached in our industrial civilization. The 
 test for the church and for educational organization, just as 
 much as for industry is whether it is leading the people into a 
 larger life through its machinery or merely driviag them into 
 a lock step treadmill of routine. If the other social institu- 
 tions are to fully promote personality, it is necessary for the 
 institutions of education and religion to show the way. Those 
 who operate them must see that they are given a continuous 
 opportunity for the expression and development of their per- 
 sonality, that they do not become mere routine workers going 
 
148 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 through the same mechanical operations day after day like 
 those who attend an automatic machine in a factory. They 
 must see to it that these institutions reverence human life 
 as a whole and that all their operations tend to develop hxmian 
 life as a whole. The meaning and value of church and state 
 and school can be seen and measured in the last and lowest 
 child within the sphere of their influence. By what they do to 
 it; by whether they leave it neglected and dirty, weak and 
 uneducated, or whether they give it care and protection and 
 continuous unfolding, do they stand judged. This is the 
 final test. 
 
 The urgent consideration for an industrial civilization is 
 that personality must not be sacrificed to property, for in an 
 industrial order, property becomes the major interest and in- 
 creasingly determines the character and course of all the 
 associations and institutions of life. In these days personality 
 has to assert itself most of all in the conflict with property. 
 Our forefathers fought against institutions, both church and 
 state, and weU they fought for himian freedom. Our fight is 
 mainly against property, but not against property for its 
 own sake, only in so far as it limits personahty. The task 
 before us is to estabhsh the supremacy of personality in a 
 civilization that is largely given over to materialism. The 
 present order is a machine order and has produced a mechan- 
 istic mode of thought which has overlooked some of the essen- 
 tial factors and problems of life. The nineteenth century has 
 been called the wonderful century because of its discoveries 
 and inventions, but it left us the same social evils that troubled 
 Babylon and Nineveh. Because it centered human energy 
 upon the production and acquisition of material wealth, be- 
 cause, as Bertrand Russell has pointed out, it enlarged the 
 possessive at the expense of the creative instinct, it raised in 
 more crucial form than ever the old question of the choice 
 between God and Manamon. With all its gains in knowledge, 
 
THE StJPREMACY OF PERSONALITY I49 
 
 its social organization predominantly expressed a philosophy 
 of life which has no outlook and no outreach beyond the 
 things of time and space. It failed to organize civilization 
 around the infinite, measureless possibiUties of human 
 life. 
 
 The question which man has to face to-day is whether in 
 his great industrial civilization, he has made first a machine 
 to enslave him and then a God to devour him. The plain fact 
 that property enslaves people is every day to be seen. It 
 enslaves both those who have it and those who have it not, 
 and it is an open question which of them are more thrown 
 into bondage by the increased concentration of property 
 ownership. Property is to-day the goal of the strong and its 
 possession is the sign of power. In the old order, property 
 in land went to the strong in arms; in the modern order, prop- 
 erty in capital goes to the strong of brain. On the one hand 
 are many wage slaves, and the phrase is not rhetorical, held 
 in bondage to the institution of property; on the other hand 
 the owners of that property are also bound in chains, almost 
 as strong, to the things which they own. The struggle for 
 "these things," land in the old order and capital in the new, 
 is not for property's sake, but for the sake of the domination 
 over others that property gives. The miser is a rare bird, the 
 capitalist a numerous species. The acquisitive instinct be- 
 comes sodaUy dangerous as it is allied with and strengthens 
 the instinct for dominance, which finally becomes a more con- 
 suming God than the passion to hoard. Man becomes a 
 predatory being, not for the sake of gorging upon the posses- 
 sions of others, nor to wantonly destroy them, but in order 
 to exert control over others. Competitive industrialism is a 
 struggle for power just as was militarism and is therefore 
 likely to renew that ancient evil. Not long ago I picked up 
 a labor paper, an individual paper representing no large 
 movement, setting forth the fallacy that labor must foUow 
 
150 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 no vision but stick to reality, and therefore must seek things 
 and power and not ideals. Such an expression is but the echo 
 of the dominant spirit of commercialism. Property privileges 
 and power go together, always. Democracy values folks; its 
 social standards are different from the standards of aristocracy 
 or plutocracy, but what does property do to democracy? 
 There are some people of great wealth who are fundamentally 
 democrats. Are they the exception or the rule? In the sub- 
 way the other day a friend pointed to another man who was 
 hanging onto a strap. "Do you see that man?" said he, "Well, 
 he is a multi-millionaire." But how many people of wealth 
 ever travel with the crowd? One of the professors of Harvard 
 Law School said recently that the greatest advance in recent 
 years was the transfer of value from the field of property to 
 the field of human relations. This is to be seen in the social 
 legislation that tries to put people above property, that en- 
 deavors to prevent the sacrifice of the health and well-being 
 of the workers in the interests of wealth-production. We did 
 conscript wealth in war time, but not to the same extent as 
 life. There were men who would willingly let their sons go 
 to the front but who would not part with their last dollar for 
 the war. It was an exceptional man who said, "I would 
 rather lose millions in Mexico than have one United States 
 soldier die to save them for me." , 
 
 It is some years ago now since the present president of 
 Yale said that either property rights must give way to human 
 rights in this country or there would be revolution. The 
 time is now ripe. The industrial nations are now faced with 
 the necessity of determining the comparative value of property 
 rights and human rights. The effort to put property in its 
 proper place in life is the center of the struggle for economic 
 democracy. There is more to it than a conflict between the 
 classes. The determination of the people to secure a distribu- 
 tion of economic power, increasingly expressing itself in the 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY I51 
 
 attempt to secure common ownership and control of the 
 sources of wealth, does not go to the heart of the matter. 
 Under any form of economic administration the question is 
 the comparative value of property and personaHty, which is 
 the end and which the means. At once two ideals and types 
 of civilization are in conflict. That which now dominates is 
 the old aristocratic order gradually developed into an order 
 of property and contract by Roman law and organization, 
 which have formed a large part of the judicial framework of 
 Great Britain and the United States, in part for the protection 
 of common rights but largely for the maintenance of power 
 and privilege through the justification and sanctification of 
 property rights. 
 
 There is another ideal of civilization which never got ex- 
 pression in wide organization; it is contained in the teachings 
 of the Hebrew law, the prophets and Jesus. . Their ideal was 
 to form a community life in which human rights were set 
 above property rights, and property was made subordinate 
 to the development of personality. The day has now come 
 for the widespread organiiiation of that scale of values. Man- 
 kind is about to value the creator of social values above the 
 possessor, and to organize that valuation into social arrange- 
 ments. The principles which the Hebrews have laken with 
 them aU over the earth, which the Christian teaching in its 
 true form has stiU-further developed, are sooner or later going 
 to get a world-wide expression.! That will be some compensa- 
 tion to those who have long been scattered abroad and per- 
 secuted and yet have remained faithful. 
 
 The western world is about to make important changes 
 in the institution of human property in order to secure 
 a larger measure of freedom for all the people. The changes 
 must go deeper than a wider distribution of income and a 
 democratic control of the sources of income, both of which 
 are needed for the enlargement of personality. They must 
 
152 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 rest upon the social control of the acquisitive instinct, for 
 the failure to control this instinct, and not any external sys- 
 tem or class is the real cause of the subordination of the 
 people to property interests. What is needed is a true con- 
 ception of the relation of property to personality. \ It is per- 
 fectly possible, in emancipating the working class in one form 
 from the institution of property to enslave them to it in 
 another, as the property class is now enslaved. From the 
 bondage of improper production they may pass to the bond- 
 age of improper consumption. Mankind has yet to learn how 
 to make property the servant and not the master of Kfe. 
 The beginning of the lesson is the fundamental principle 
 that things are to be sought not for their own sake, not 
 for self-gratification and power over others, but for common 
 use and service. The problem of controlling the acquisitive 
 instinct is to be solved by devising those measures which 
 shall express the principle: "property for use and not for 
 power." When production is organized for this purpose, and 
 distribution democratically controlled to this end, then prop- 
 erty in its creation will express personality and in its possession 
 will develop personality, both individually and socially. Not 
 until we accept this principle of common use and service, with 
 whatever modifications are necessary to protect individuality, 
 do things become the means to the development of personality. 
 [An economic order exists to produce wealth not for wealth's 
 sake, but for the upbuilding of the peo^ei To that end, and 
 in whatever forms will best promote it, wealth production 
 and wealth ownership and distribution must be socialized; 
 they must be carried on for the common good. When they 
 are carried on for the individual good their effect is always 
 to break down and finall]^ overthrow the standard of the su- 
 premacy of personality. {But when they are safeguarded by 
 common control for the common purpose, society comes to 
 value creation above acquisition, the economic machinery is 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF PERSONALITY 1 53 
 
 adjusted to produce life, and goods only as they increase life. 
 Then the increase of personality becomes the supreme ob- 
 jective of social organization while property falls into its 
 proper place as the base upon which man stands to derive 
 from it the nourishment for his spiritual development. \ 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOLIDARITY 
 
 As we have seen before, the one thing most clearly apparent 
 about the form of the new order is that it must be a world 
 order; that it must in an increasing degree represent and ex- 
 press and associate the whole of humanity. If the present 
 very slight step in that direction proposed in Paris should 
 faU, humanity would still strive on continually imtU there 
 was some organized form of common action, for the simple 
 reason that we can no longer live apart. Those gentlemen in 
 the United States Senate v/ho want us to take our little doUs 
 and go home and play in our own back yard are absolutely 
 obHvious of the kind of world in which they are now living. 
 How many more world wars must they help to fight before 
 they will understand that any Httle event in the Balkans 
 becomes immediately the vital concern of folks out on our 
 western prairies? How many more world conflagrations do 
 they have to watch before they understand that there is no 
 safety for any until there is safety for aU? That much at least 
 concerning world solidarity ought to have been learned in the 
 kindergarten department of modem training for citizenship, 
 to say nothing of training for office. 
 
 The consequences in Europe of the lack of some world or- 
 ganization ought by now to be plain. During the war it was 
 a common rhetorical affirmation that the world was suffering 
 this agony because it had not properly organized its affairs, 
 but had permitted chaos in matters of common concern. Yet 
 after all that, international anarchy is spreading on every hand 
 in Europe, with wars and rumors of wars, while the statesmen 
 
 154 
 
SOLIDARITY 1$^ 
 
 are wrangling over the form of common control. Behind the 
 desire for a world organization of humanity, there is something 
 more than the necessity of the present hour. The present 
 situation drives us imperatively in that direction, but there is 
 something more than a momentary need or a sudden impulse 
 behind the desire to realize the solidarity of mankind in some 
 organized expression. It gives voice and plan to some per- 
 manent elements in human life. There is first of all a great 
 historic ideal which has been slowly developing. The old 
 empire builders dreamed of amalgamating mankind in one 
 subject organization over which their military might would 
 hold sway. But even while they were driving humanity to 
 battle in pursuit of that ambition, the common people were 
 beginning to dream of a world fellowship, of a democratic 
 imion of the hvmian family. This dream, lying silent in the 
 heart of the common people, broke again and again into speech 
 long before our modem poets began to sing of the parliament 
 of man and the federation of the world. The seers and the 
 prophets of many peoples in many times have continually 
 voiced, in greater or less clearness, the ideal of the rniity of 
 the human family in a common brotherhood. In the modern 
 world, this idea has been voiced and partially organized in 
 two great movements, religion and labor. 
 
 In religion it has long been a recognized truth that spiritual 
 values are to be found in human fellowship; that comradeship 
 constitutes one of the essential aspects of the rehgious Kfe. 
 It is evident that hiunan fellowship develops faith, loyalty, 
 service and sacrifice — some of the greatest qualities of religion. 
 It is also plain that the wider the association, the more worth 
 and content do these quaHties acquire. The wider the bond 
 of a man's fellowship, the deeper it usually cuts into his hfe. 
 The fullest expression of this aspect of reUgion is in the term, 
 "the brotherhood of man," without any limitation, which 
 carries with it a certain concept of God. The phrase "The 
 
156 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God" is one and 
 indivisible, connoting two aspects of one reality; and "what 
 God hath joined together let no man put asunder." This 
 phrase expresses the biggest idea which the human mind can 
 get hold of, the greatest ideal that the human spirit can strive 
 after, the loftiest and widest fellowship of which men are 
 capable. 
 
 This concept of the comradeship of all men with each other 
 and with the Great Companion is the culmination of the social 
 exposition of religion, which gradually unfolds the ideal of a 
 uidfied world life of development and mutual service for the 
 peoples of the earth. It was expressed in some degree by 
 certain of the great philosophers of Greece and Rome. It 
 found voice on the lips of one of them who declared, "nothing 
 human is foreign. te me"; thereby recognizing his kinship 
 with aU of humanity, and also at the same time glimpsing 
 the truth that the highest realization of the individual per- 
 sonality is to be found only in the widest and fullest develop- 
 ment for aU humanity. The man to whom all other human 
 beings are kin, has a much wider, deeper and higher life than 
 one whose fellowships are circumscribed in a small circle. 
 It is only as we break through first the natural and then the 
 artificial barriers of nationality, class and race, that we reaUy 
 come to the largest expression of our own personaHty. We 
 never know what our individuality may properly be imtil we 
 have found our relationships to all mankind. 
 
 This concept of a religious fellowship as wide and as lasting 
 as the universe has been a slow historic growth. Religion 
 begins in its family form and then takes its tribal and later 
 its national expression. Man has first his family gods, then 
 his tribal deities, whose blessing and protection is limited to 
 the members of the family or the tribe. Then he conceives 
 his ijational gods, whose only concern with the alien and the 
 enemy is one of curse and destruction. It is only by a long 
 
SOLIDARITY 157 
 
 process of development that mankind finally achieves a re- 
 ligion which includes all human fellowship, comes to believe 
 in a God "who hath made of one blood all the peoples of the 
 earth," who is the Father of all mankind. 
 
 The clearest development of that concept is in the history 
 of the Hebrew people and perhaps it there occurs because 
 their national consciousness originated in an experience of op- 
 pression by an imperial power. They were slaves in Egypt, 
 and their national life and religion grew out of their emancipa- 
 tion from bondage. It is not strange, therefore, to find that 
 soon thereafter, they began to recognize the needs and rights 
 of the stranger within their own gates and to develop a kindly 
 feeling for the slave, both native and alien, and that their 
 religion developed into something more than a national cult. 
 One of their great prophets, Isaiah, pictures God's house on 
 the top of a mountain and all the peoples coining into it; he 
 even sees the great military oppressors of his people finally 
 entering into that fellowship. When Jesus came fulfilling the 
 law and the prophets, he fell heir to this great vision. At 
 first he was circumscribed in his fellowships by the prejudices 
 of his times. He began like any other Rabbi, with certain 
 limitations for the circle of his" disciples. But gradually he 
 broke through the artificial social barrifers of his day. One 
 after another he opened his teaching to the women with whom 
 no other Rabbi would be seen conversing in public; the rene- 
 gade publicans to whom no orthodox teacher would speak; 
 the despised Samaritans who were ostracized by all good Jews; 
 and finally the Gentiles, hated alike by Judea ^nd Galilee, 
 who could agree upon little else. 
 
 So Jesus gradually outgrew all the social prejudices and 
 limitations of his generation, and finally announced himself 
 to be the Son of Man, declared "they shaU come from the 
 East and the West into my Kingdom," proclaimed his God 
 to be one whose sun shines alike on the evil and on the good, 
 
158 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PIONCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 whose rain falls alike on the just and the unjust, whose love 
 ever goes out seeking those who are lost. As the moral corol- 
 lary of this capacity of God to hold relationship with aU men, 
 even with evil doers, Jesus in his loftiest ethical precept urges 
 his followers to love even their enemies. So clearly did Jesus 
 teach the sohdarity of human feUowship, that the men who 
 set forth to carry his teaching throughout the Roman world 
 gradually had their religious and racial and class prejudices 
 stripped from them. Peter, who hated the Gentiles with all 
 the intensity of his fiery spirit, had to learn that there was 
 "nothing common or unclean," that no people were to be 
 shut out from the ministering feUowship of his rehgion. Paul, 
 proud Pharisee of the Pharisees and free citizen of Rome, 
 inheritor of a twofold class consciousness of a strength un- 
 surpassed in history, came to understand not only that all the 
 peoples of the earth had been made of one blood but that 
 there can be neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male or 
 female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. Thus were the social 
 barriers of the Roman Empire and the prejudices of rabinical 
 religion uprooted from the minds of these men, so that finally 
 they went out to find feUowship, if they could, with aU people. 
 The culmination of the record of their work is a vision of a great 
 city, open on four sides to aU quarters of the horizon, so that 
 aU the nations of the earth could bring their honor and their 
 glory into its great feUowship, from which the evUs that cursed 
 the Roman Empire were cast out, and men dwelt with each 
 other and God dwelt with them in aU high feUowship of purity 
 and truth, righteousness and love. 
 
 This concept of a world feUowship has constituted the 
 heart of the missionary ideal of modern Christianity. It wiU 
 be well then for the churches constantly to analyze their mis- 
 sionary work, its motives and plans, in the Kght of this 
 fundamental concept. Does it in any degree partake of the 
 spirit of Mohammed, who desired that aU peoples should be 
 
SOLrOARITY 159 
 
 subdued by the conquering faith and made to conform to it? 
 Or is it a disinterested attempt to share whatever benefits are 
 enjoyed by western Christians with those who do not yet 
 have them? Is it an attempt at spiritual democracy, an effort 
 to realize th e dem ocratic soUdarity of mankind, or does it seek 
 the impg rialis tic solidarity of an overhead religious control? 
 The extensive missionary activity of modem churches is so- 
 cially valuable in so far as it is an attempt not to get people to 
 accept dogmas and join organizations, but to spread faith, 
 hope and love, the spiritual foundations of society, and by 
 practical efforts to raise the level of life throughout the human 
 family. It finally involves and promotes a political and eco- 
 nomic as weU as a religious fellowship. Consequently, the mis- 
 sionary ideal, democratically conceived and carried out, makes 
 for the solidarity of mankind. One of its implications and 
 consequences is the organic unity of the race. The contribu- 
 tion of modem Christianity to social progress wiU depend upon 
 its fidelity to the concept of brotherhood that moved the first 
 preachers of its gospel. It cannot save the world by merely 
 getting men to feel that it will be well with them hereafter. 
 Indeed it may in that way contribute very effectively to the 
 damnation of the world. The gospel of Jesus is the power of 
 God unto salvation for the world Kfe to the degree that it re- 
 moves the class and national and racial antagonisms that are 
 now driving the race to destruction, to the degree that it can 
 help men to repent and get rid of the sins that cause these 
 antagonisms and in the reconciliation of mutual service and 
 sacrifice develop a brotherly life throughout the earth. 
 
 The ideal of solidarity has also been developing among 
 the working class in its various organized movements. Nat- 
 urally they are concerned with the economic content of the 
 ideal. As the working class comes to responsibility and power 
 in society, it brings with it some significant changes in social 
 value. The working class has been used to toil and not to 
 
l6o THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 possess, and consequently democratic society, which gives 
 the workers a larger degree of control than they have before 
 had, will assign higher rank to productive energy than to prop- 
 erty. This change in value will exert a large influence in se- 
 curing the supremacy of personality in human organization. 
 It will also enlarge and strengthen the bonds of fellowship, 
 because of the fact, which is a matter of common observ3,tion, 
 that possessions tend to separate folk while creative toil tends 
 to unite them. It can be seen in the history of many a family 
 before and after the attainment of opulence. It can be seen 
 by comparing the life of the workers of the Guild period in 
 England with that of the workers in the United States in the 
 early period of its economic development. Bertrand Russell 
 has again put this generation in his debt by showing how the 
 possessive instincts divide and the creative instincts unite 
 humanity. 
 
 As long as the workers are primarily creators and not 
 money makers, as long as they seek first production, the ten- 
 dency of their seeking will be unity; they will be brought 
 together in a common effort toward a common goal. But just 
 as soon as individuals or as classes they begin to seek 
 to possess the things that they create more than they seek 
 to create those things, they will be divided among themselves. 
 It is the hope of the world in its present desperate situation 
 that the vision and capacity for fellowship may yet be strong 
 among the workers, because they have long been engaged upon 
 production even though a commercialized industrialism has 
 done its best to destroy the creative instinct. As a matter of 
 fact that is exactly the case. With all due reckoning of the 
 missionary propaganda of the churches, nowhere in our 
 modern life has the ideal of soHdarity been preached so vig- 
 orously and proclaimed so widely as in the working class move- 
 ment. Certainly in no other circles has so much been done to 
 make it a fact. Trade Union Congresses are international 
 
SOLIDARITy l6l 
 
 in character and scope and socialists are organized in the Inter- 
 national for the purpose of developing a common program. 
 The Red Flag, which is now so abhorred and persecuted is the 
 symbol of soHdarity , in its color representing the common blood 
 of all peoples, it expresses the hope of a common life. The flag 
 of anarchy is black, the color of despair. Sometimes the 
 Red Flag represents an ideal of solidarity which unduly dis- 
 coimts the fact of nationahty, but more often it represents a 
 concept of a world family of which individual nations are mem- 
 bers, just as the separate states of this nation are loyal members 
 of the United States. In either event, legislation to suppress 
 its use is as senseless as it will prove futile. There are a thou- 
 sand ways of symbolizing a repressed cause with increasing 
 power and passion, as Ireland has shown England; and if the 
 growing world fellowship is to find form in a permanent organic 
 life, it will have to have some symbol around which the loy- 
 alty of the respective nations can gather. To cherish such an 
 emblem will not lessen loyalty to one's own flag and country. 
 On the contrary it will make that loyalty altogether more vital 
 as it gives it the meaning of service to the common world life 
 and not the meaning of selfish aggrandizement. 
 
 It was because of their long education concerning the ideal 
 and necessity of solidarity that sodaUsts in all coxmtries, even 
 in Germany, were troubled and perplexed as to their duty 
 during the war. Because they believed so deeply in the unity 
 of the working people of the world, the war was to them the 
 sundering of the common body of humanity. Apparently it 
 caused a deeper stirring and even revolt of conscience among 
 the socialists than among the churches which proclaimed and 
 sought the spiritual imity of humanity. At least the socialists 
 made more effort to get together in war time their leaders in 
 the belligerent coimtries to see if a common understanding 
 coifld be reached, than the churches did to get together for the 
 same purpose those who had accepted the commission to 
 
l62 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 preach the gospel of the Prince of Peace. This is not the first 
 time that the sociaHsts have taken their faith seriously. Some 
 years ago when Norway and Sweden were in danger of war, it 
 was the socialists of both countries that prevented mobiliza- 
 tion. When Japan and Russia were fighting, the sociaHsts of 
 Russia sent greetings to the workers in Japan. The English 
 socialists sent fraternal appeals to the Germans at the begin- 
 ning of this war, as did the socialists of Russia. During the 
 war there were several attempts to get together a conference 
 of delegates of the working people, which were prevented by 
 the respective governments. When the Russian workers over- 
 threw their own imperialism, their belief that the German 
 workers would yet prove to be brothers of mankind was the 
 kind of faith that ought to move mountains. A recent report 
 says that two regiments of French soldiers in Siberia refused 
 to fight against the Russians because, they said, they did not 
 go to war to fight against their brothers and their comrades. 
 Asked if they did not know that their refusal to fight was a 
 court-martial offense, punishable with death, they replied 
 that they could not change because of that. 
 
 The ideal of world fellowship which has been constantly 
 preached throughout the ranks of labor is of a different sort 
 than that which finds expression in the present covenant of the 
 League of Nations. An international conference of socialists 
 met at Berne while the Paris conference was in session. There 
 was a fimdamental difference of approach to the world situ- 
 ation. The Paris conference approached the situation from 
 the standpoint of separate sovereign states who have more or 
 less conflicting interests and always must have. Its attempt 
 therefore was to adjust the differences between the separate 
 entities by some arrangement which wiU enable them to get 
 along with the least possible danger of war. The Berne con- 
 ference on the other hand, approached the world situation 
 from the standpoint of the imity of all peoples, with the con- 
 
SOLIDAKITY 163 
 
 cept of the spiritual and economic solidarity of humanity. Its 
 attempt therefore was to organize that imderlying unity into 
 some form of expression to meet the common needs and de- 
 velop the common capacities. Yet this gathering too was 
 troubled by the spirit of nationalism. 
 
 The sociaHsts who put more emphasis upon economic than 
 upon poHtical reorganization emphasize even more strongly 
 the ideal of solidarity. They are now calling themselves 
 communists in Russia and in Himgary; iu this country and 
 elsewhere, "left wing socialists"; and the European syndical- 
 ists and the American I. W. W.'s really belong in this general 
 classification. They differ radically among themselves and 
 violently with the more conservative poUtical-action socialists, 
 but these various belligerents are all united when it comes to 
 the belief in the necessity and desirability of achieving a 
 world wide, working fellowship of aU peoples. The differences 
 are as to the method and manner of this fellowship. The 
 more radical groups who make a tactic as well as a dogma 
 out of the class struggle, even those who advocate the dictator- 
 ship of the proletariat to be set up and maintained temporarily 
 by force of arms, nevertheless do so in the name of universal 
 brotherhood, asserting it to be the only way to abolish present 
 class divisions and achieve the solidarity of society and 
 eventually of the race. Since the same ideal of a world wide 
 brotherhood animates both the propaganda of the labor 
 movement and of organized Christianity, there would seem 
 to be good reason for their leaders to compare the different in- 
 terpretations of the ideal given by their respective movements 
 and consider together what measures for its realization may be 
 commonly supported. The labor movement is interested in 
 the economic, and the church in the spiritual aspects of sol- 
 idarity. The synthesis of these two aspects of the one ideal 
 needs to be estabhshed. Unless it discovers the economic 
 expression of its ideal of brotherhood the church will fail to 
 
164 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 give reality to the spiritual life; unless it develops the spiritual 
 values of economic cooperation, the labor movement will be 
 unable to keep the breath of life in its attempt at solidarity. 
 It is only as they are true to their vision of universal fellow- 
 ship that either of these movements can lead humanity for- 
 ward. If either of them becomes a class movement, it can 
 only curse the world with additional conflict. 
 
 Besides having behind it an historical ideal, the present 
 emphasis on the solidarity of mankind has in it the tremendous 
 fact that humanity does increasingly grow together. Indeed 
 one of the reasons for the situation in which the nations now 
 find themselves is that there is a degree of economic unity in 
 the Kfe of mankind which is not yet recognized in the plans 
 of the statesmen. We have already seen that the story of 
 social evolution is the extension of the capacity for associated 
 action. To compare the organization of modem society with 
 that of a primitive community is like comparing a modem 
 automatic machine, that can do everything but talk, with the 
 stone axe of the stone age. What has happened is more than 
 machinery of organization, it is the growth of a body, the 
 organic development of the life of humanity with increasing 
 powers of common thought and action, gradually forming a 
 common mind and conscience and will. The outer form always 
 moves a little behind the inner fact, and the inner fact is a 
 growing solidarity. As we now look back over the history of 
 mankind, it is evident that the path we have traveled from 
 the individualism of our savage ancestors to our modem 
 international organization is a good deal longer than the path 
 that we need now to travel to reach a form of world life that 
 shall express the economic and spiritual solidarity of the 
 human race. 
 
 The trend towards unity of life throughout the world is 
 manifest in an increasing economic interdependence. During 
 the war it became glaringly apparent that no nation was suffi- 
 
SOLIDARITY 165 
 
 cient xmto itseM for its economic life, and the efforts at peace 
 are still further emphasizing that fundamental fact. The 
 writers of the treaty at Paris have been perplexed to find a 
 way to £issess economic penalties upon Germany and avoid 
 economic damage to the victors. Mr. Henry Ford said that 
 he discovered a fundamental business principle in his early 
 days; it was that if you help one you help all and if you hurt 
 one you hurt all, that business therefore could not succeed 
 by the process of hurting competitors. That is an interna- 
 tional truth. It was discovered by working people long before 
 Mr. Ford stimibled upon it. The slogan of one of the most 
 aggressive labor organizations in this country is "an injury 
 to one is an injury to all." And it would be better for the 
 world if some of our statesmen had learned that fact, because 
 they will be taught it in a somewhat unpleasant manner if 
 they persist in trying to organize our international relations 
 on the thesis that we can be economically sufi&cient unto our- 
 selves or that we can penalize other peoples in our economic 
 relations to our own ultimate profit. 
 
 It is quite evident that the adequate development of any 
 nation depends upon its access to the common labor power 
 and resources of the whole world, upon its participation in the 
 interdependent economic life of mankind. Not only is the 
 economic need interdependent, but the administration of 
 the economic hfe becomes increasingly common. Science 
 has made that inevitable. There is only one best way to 
 develop and distribute wealth and that best way must in the 
 shortest possible time be commonly used. The technical 
 processes that are discovered in one country must become 
 available to all countries. As a matter of fact, an economic 
 war between nations which is designed to protect one nation 
 at the expense of others is really self-mutilation and if it be 
 carried to the extreme becomes suicide. The primary economic 
 needs, — food, clothes and shelter — are the common needs of 
 
l66 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 mankind; the development of the intellectual and aesthetic 
 life that economic activity makes possible, after it has satis- 
 fied the primary needs, is also a common desire of mankind; 
 and if humanity could only look at this common necessity as 
 the family looks at it, endeavoring jointly to provide these 
 things for all peoples in a cormnon undertaking, as the family 
 does for its children, the common toil would become a spiritual 
 fellowship. 
 
 The other constituent element in the growing solidarity of 
 mankind is that of spiritual interdependence; and as our 
 economic interdependence becomes greater with the develop- 
 ment of science and its application to the economic life, so 
 our spiritual interdependence becomes more marked with 
 the development of education. It is a commonplace that the 
 world has to-day a unified intellectual life as one of the results 
 of the scientific method. It is a truism that science has but 
 one language, that her discoveries are common property, and 
 that education is increasingly international in its progress. 
 But perhaps the deepest element in our spiritual interdepend- 
 ence is the common sense of need. That the great needs of 
 mankind have always been shared is to us an elementary 
 fact, but the common sense of need is a slow growth which is 
 only now bearing fruit. To-day all the communities of man- 
 kind are only just becoming aware of the fact that they have 
 the same fundamental problems, roughly speaking the prob- 
 lems of hunger, education and justice, and that the community 
 organization has to find an answer of some sort or other to 
 these fundamental questions. There are the same social sins, 
 the same social blunders the world over, appearing at different 
 stages of development. The recognition of this fact is one 
 aspect of the dawning spiritual self-consciousness of the race. 
 The common effort to meet the commonly recognized needs 
 develops still further the sense of spiritual unity, as it increases 
 the qualities of faith, loyalty, service and sacrifice. The com- 
 
SOLIDARITY 1 67 
 
 mon need of the toilers, suddenly perceived, drives them to- 
 gether in the passionate solidarity of a tempestuous strike. 
 The intelligent understanding of the causes of that need and 
 the sustained effort to remove them from the common life, 
 develops a world-wide movement whose slowly forming bonds 
 will in the end prove able to resist the disintegration of self- 
 interest. 
 
 The degree of solidarity to be achieved, either of the labor 
 movement or organized religion or both together, depends 
 upon their ability to develop among all men the awareness of 
 common need. To exert its utmost power of binding men 
 together in common feeling and action, this common con- 
 sciousness must reach down to the elemental faults of human- 
 ity, it must be a common consciousness of sin. No new hfe 
 without repentance is a religious axiom. It is time for the 
 new world order. At present there is too much desire to find 
 a scapegoat to bear the burden of sins that are common — 
 the Germans, the Big Four at Paris, the capitalists, the work- 
 ing-class agitators — according to the point of view. But the 
 woe of the world is not to be removed until together mankind 
 faces the natiu-e as well as the consequences of lust and greed 
 and power. Then the ancient truth that "all have sinned" 
 wiU get a new meaning as the manner in which the universal 
 instincts of sex, acqxiisition, combat and mastery have been 
 developed into destructive social forces becomes apparent. 
 Then out of a common repentance, a larger faith, a new hope, 
 a stronger love will bind the world together in a unity of en- 
 deavor to develop the possibilities of life. 
 
 To get an estimate of the welding power of the common 
 sense of need, take a great calamity like the theater fire in 
 Chicago when several himdred people were burned, and see 
 how the sudden shock of common bereavement will, for a 
 brief period of time, break through the divisions of our class 
 and race, the common sense of loss wiU momentarily weld the 
 
1 68 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 people in a bond of sympathy. The same welding process is 
 developed in less obvious fashion as the community takes 
 common action together to meet its common needs. It is such 
 common action together with the common process of educa- 
 tion that develops community soUdarity and makes it a recog- 
 nized fact. This is also true for the world commimity as 
 social reform becomes increasingly international and not only 
 attempts to meet the same social needs all over the world 
 but to do it in the same manner. The methods, for example, 
 of repressing commercialized vice or of labor legislation, in- 
 creasingly fall into the same codes the world over. The 
 striking evidence of solidarity increases as social action is 
 aimed at larger ends. The plans for repairing the social 
 damage wrought by the war are almost identical. The pro- 
 grammes of social reconstruction now considered in different 
 countries show a marked similarity. With infinite variety of 
 application to express the temperament and genius of different 
 strains of blood and different environments, the same general 
 principles wiU guide the future development of aU peoples. 
 Humanity is finding itself. To this growing organism of the 
 intellectual, ethical and spiritual life of the world, all members 
 of the family of nations, the youngest as well as the oldest 
 brings some glory and honor. Whoever expected during the 
 Boer war, or before it, that out of South Africa would come 
 a plan for a League of Nations to be considered by the elder 
 statesmen of the larger powers desirous of making a covenant. 
 As a matter of fact there is no nation so small but what it 
 may have vast significance for the future, as increasingly 
 mankind endeavors together to meet the common needs. 
 There is no Nazareth so despised but out of it there may come 
 some force of redemption for humanity. 
 
 It is evident then that if there is to be the fullest possible 
 expansion of Ufe, either for the world or for any part of the 
 world, there must be the coordination of aU its economic 
 
SOLroARtTY 169 
 
 forces, of all its intellectual powers and all its spiritual capac- 
 ities. They must increasingly be joined together in a common 
 programme. It is a commonplace among us that we are wasting 
 imtold human resources in the slums of our great cities. They 
 never will be developed until we get more soHdarity into our 
 community life and all of us together attack the situation. 
 The same thing is true about the tmdeveloped peoples. Who 
 knows what progress is being lost to all the world because 
 those peoples remain imdeveloped? This possible progress 
 will remain unrealized until the nations are willing to con- 
 sider together the needs of the common life, instead of their 
 own advantage. As long as they are intent on saving their 
 own life, they wiU continually lose it. 
 
 The desire for solidarity and the effort to attain it, has to 
 reckon with the divisive forces that are so powerful in human 
 nature and so effective in human society. Along Asdth the 
 passion for brotherhood is the desire for mastery, along with 
 the spirit of equality is the longing for luxury and privilege. 
 The process of social development has been a process of sub- 
 ordinating the separative elements in human Kfe and giving 
 power to its cohesive elements. This has not been done 
 without a severe and constant struggle, for the selfish, dis- 
 ruptive part of human nature continually organizes itself into 
 powerful institutions. At present it faces the movement for 
 solidarity behind the barriers of class cleavage, nationalism 
 and race prejudice. 
 
 It is a fact needing neither elaboration nor argument that 
 our modem industrial system is constantly driving an iron 
 wedge through the center of society, separating the "haves 
 and the have nots," or to be more exact, those who have suffi- 
 cient to count In the control of society and to share in its 
 larger privileges, and those who do not. That some members 
 of these two sides occasionally change places does not affect 
 the fact that the two sides are constant and that their interests 
 
170 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PMNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 conflict. One side necessarily desires to maintain the status 
 quo and the other to change it. All exhortations to co- 
 operation between the classes that blink this fact are mere 
 idle words, in more senses than one. They are indeed a 
 modem adaptation of the exhortation of the old prayer book 
 to all people to do their duty in "that station in life to which 
 it had pleased God to caU them." That was written by those 
 who had a station in Hfe in which they were weU pleased to 
 remain and to assume that it was pleasing to God. And in 
 order that they might remain there they naturally desired to 
 use the influence of their God to keep others in a station with 
 which these others were not likely to be well pleased. Our 
 democratic objection to such doctrine does not change the fact 
 that in this country many people will live and die in the same 
 station in which they were born (a station with which most of 
 us are not pleased) unless changes proceed more rapidly than 
 they are now likely to proceed. In such a situation in other 
 days it was also the function of reHgion to teach these people to 
 do their duty " to their betters." Such a naked use of religion 
 for class ends rather shocks Americans who insist that there are 
 no classes. They prefer to advocate universal military train- 
 ing in order that " the people" may "learn obedience." Obe- 
 dience to the national law and the national duty, or obedience 
 to the class which desires to maintain its privileges, is the 
 question which "the people" promptly raise; and some of 
 them even want to know to what extent these apparently two 
 things may happen to be or turn out to be one and the same 
 thing. 
 
 So increasingly there is evidence here of class consciousness 
 and class divisions. Religion and education both sincerely 
 preach and practice a class-less democracy in tlais coimtry 
 to a large extent. There are constantly gathered together 
 in the schoolroom and church people of all sorts and conditions. 
 Within those circles a certain degree of solidarity exists, and 
 
SOLnJARITY 171 
 
 a growing class cleavage in this country is to that extent 
 hindered, also forces are thereby set in motion that will help 
 to remove its roots. But does the solidarity of the school- 
 room or the church extend beyond their doors? Does the 
 contact and the common atmosphere continue outside? It is 
 a fact that even the Roman Catholic Church, which has long 
 been the great examplar of the democracy of religion, gather- 
 ing in the same house of worship rich and poor alike, learned 
 and ignorant, is being compelled by class cleavage in this 
 coimtry to build churches in suburban neighborhoods in which 
 there are few if any poor people. The theory of the class war 
 as a means to a new order in which no classes shall exist to 
 defeat the passion for brotherhood is being met in this coimtry 
 as it needs to be met by argument, on intellectual and ethical 
 grounds, but meantime the fact of the class struggle proceeds 
 to develop apace. The " fimctions " of so-caUed society are as 
 loud a proclamation of class consciousness as any socialist 
 soap-box speaker can possibly make. The proclamations of 
 the American Defense Society concerning social mirest, the 
 general applause or tacit sanction of illegal acts against social- 
 ists, proposed laws to prevent discussion of social change, are 
 all declarations of class war, just the same as a general strike 
 or the advocacy of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Let the 
 class struggle proceed to a certain point and class war is in- 
 evitable, despite all preachments about democracy and 
 brotherhood. Therefore those who believe in these ideals had 
 better do more than proclaim them; they had better seek to 
 imderstand the solid hindrances to their realization in the 
 present social order. Just because the forces of education and 
 religion in this coimtry have stood vigorously against class 
 distinction, it now becomes imperative for them to discover 
 and remove the causes that make for class cleavage. 
 
 What then is the origin of classes? The term is used in two 
 senses. It is used socially to distinguish the so-called upper 
 
172 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRKfCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 classes. It is used technically by economists to distinguish 
 various subdivisions of society by certain economic standards, 
 usually of income, which they will variously apply. His- 
 torically there have always been three main classes in society 
 since it was organized on the scale that we call civilization; 
 the upper class, the middle class and the lower class. Roughly 
 speaking, these divisions have obtained in every civilization; 
 at the top the people of power, priests, philosophers, warriors, 
 financiers, according to the type of society; in between the 
 people of trade and professional service; underneath the 
 people of common toil with hand or machine. This is the 
 main social stratification. It obtained in Babylon, it obtains 
 in the United States. It has been and is being constantly 
 modified by subdivisions and changes of groups from one 
 section to another and by a continuous extension of privilege 
 throughout all classes. As the middle class, and then the 
 lower, gain in economic and poUtical power they improve 
 their social status. 
 
 The class stratification of Europe survived the economic 
 revolution which brought in economic power gradually to 
 replace miUtary power. The aristocracy, that had been formed 
 by military power and sustained by land ownership, simply 
 transferred its powers and privileges gradually to the plutoc- 
 racy. In the United States the stratification of classes imder 
 an industrial civilization can be seen very clearly because 
 it has all more or less happened here in such a short space of 
 time. To begin with there was a democratic concept and fact 
 of social sohdarity, modified in the south by a feudal aristo- 
 cratic tradition and in the north by a cult of religious aris- 
 tocracy which taught that the good, and that came to be 
 synonymous with the successful in business, acquired by 
 virtue of their character the divine right to rule. The divi- 
 sions based upon these traditions were maintained by economic 
 power, ownership of the land in the south, in New England of 
 
SOLIDARITY 1 73 
 
 capital acquired by trading. Thus a social tradition, originat- 
 ing elsewhere, was supported by economic fact, and still 
 survives the loss of the economic base by which it was 
 for a time supported in power. All along the Atlantic seaboard 
 are remnants of families who have seen better days, whose 
 sodal status has changed because society has changed its 
 nature and their tradition has lost prestige. Nevertheless 
 they still ding to it and bemoan the vulgarity of modem days. 
 
 With the opening of the West there came more social soli- 
 darity than the Atlantic seaboard had known. The common 
 need bound people together. For a time all men were free 
 and equal in the struggle to overcome and exploit nature. The 
 social traditions of the East and the South lost their meaning 
 and power. There was more of a new start for sodety, on a 
 more level base, than there had been in New England or Vir- 
 ginia. There was an even opportunity to get land, and im- 
 migrants came from the various coimtries in northern and 
 western Europe. Any family could get sufficient land to 
 provide a livelihood. For a while there was a general level 
 of development, but gradually opportimity narrowed and the 
 strong began to win; they acquired more land by better agri- 
 culture and more capital by superior skill in trade; their chil- 
 dren therefore got a little better environment and education 
 and so there developed the real aristocracy of America, what 
 in Eiirope would be the upper middle class, the intellectual 
 leaders of the professions, industry and agriculture. The 
 foimdations of the intellectual middle class in this country 
 rest upon the superior economic power of their fathers or 
 grandfathers, and is maintained by their economic abihty to 
 exact certain contributions from the workers below, either the 
 tenant farmers or the wage earners of the dties. 
 
 This is stiU more true for that section of our American pop- 
 ulation which has been permitted to acquire and transmit 
 imlimited wealth. In the first generation it acquires a good 
 
174 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 deal of the power, and in succeeding generations the customs, 
 of the ruling class in Europe, and maintains very much the 
 same relation to the people who do the common work of the 
 world. It lives off their labor and considers them its inferiors. 
 As this condition develops, there is no such possibility for the 
 educational and social development of the newer groups of 
 immigrants as for their forerunners, who like them came with 
 practically nothing but their labor power, and finding ex- 
 ceptional economic opportunity used it to create not a social 
 democracy, but a class-divided society like that of the older 
 lands. The process can be seen in miniature in a small fac- 
 tory community. One of the workers is stronger and keener 
 than the rest; he does more work than the others, makes him- 
 self more useful to his employer, is made a foreman and gets 
 a better wage. Then his wife dresses better, holds her head 
 a little above the wives of the other wage earners, gives a 
 better education to the children, considers herself, and espe- 
 cially trains the children, to be out of the working class. The 
 social break develops into a conflict of economic interest, as 
 the former wage earner acquires means and enters the capi- 
 talist class. It is thus that the conflict between capital and 
 labor, between the investing and wage earning classes develops 
 out of an estrangement of social interests, and finally a stark 
 antagonism of economic interests. Cooperation between 
 these classes can never go beyond a certain point as long as 
 this central conflict of interest remains. Such cooperation can 
 delay but not avert the class struggle as long as it is confined to 
 ameHorating conditions of toil or democratizing conditions of 
 management. It can achieve solidarity of interest only as it de- 
 velops common ownership. It is the fact of ownership or the 
 lack of it which is at the center of the class conflict. When 
 ownership is made cooperative, the present classes have a 
 common instead of a divided interest and the process of the 
 creation of classes with antagonistic economic interests ceases. 
 
SOLIDARITY 1 75 
 
 Those whose ideal is solidarity are misleading themselves 
 when they talk about cooperation between the classes unless 
 they mean, and can secure, cooperation to abolish the classes 
 to remove the divided interest in ownership which now creates 
 and maintains them. 
 
 It is clear then that class cleavage rests upon an economic 
 power and is maintained by economic means. A change of 
 social status generally speaking, depends upon getting the 
 income to support it. Because we permit society to be or- 
 ganized so that the race is to the swift and the battle to the 
 strong, we make the abUity of the strong a divisive force in 
 society instead of the uniting force which it might become. 
 Pohtical democracy has been attempting the impossible in 
 trying to maintain the ideal of a society without classes along 
 with a competitive economic organization. On the one hand 
 the popular exponents of democracy proclaim that democracy 
 knows no classes and on the other hand proclaim it to be the 
 essence of democracy to provide an open opportunity for those 
 who can go from the bottom to the top of society and to main- 
 tain them in power when there. All this is done in delightful 
 disregard of the contradiction involved, in blissful ignorance 
 of the fact that what is really advocated is the use of govern- 
 ment to maintain and perpetuate the economic process out 
 of which class divisions are formed. If democracy is to avoid 
 class cleavage, it must abandon both the theory and practice 
 of competitive individualism. It must choose as its goal the 
 development of personahty and not the acquisition of posses- 
 sions; it must organize to reach that goal under the principle 
 of universal service. Then the strong, instead of taking the 
 right to rule will accept the obligation to serve; and their 
 ability, instead of becoming the divisive force and the means 
 for forming an idle leisure class, will become a uniting force, 
 leading in the means for the development of the weak. 
 
 In the world at large, progress toward solidarity is obstructed 
 
176 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 by nationalism and race antagonism. Nationalism is dif- 
 ferent from nationality. Nationality is a natural fact; na- 
 tionalism is a cult, mainly artificial. Nationality is no in- 
 superable barrier to the solidarity of the human family, any 
 more than individuality is to the solidarity of the smaller 
 family, but nationalism is an absolute obstacle to the imity 
 of the world hfe. The facts out of which it grows are isolation 
 with its consequent ignorance, historic injustice between na- 
 tions, and the conflict of economic interests due to the compet- 
 itive nature of modern industrialism. As a cult it rests upon 
 the concept of the absolute sovereignty of the state, as a 
 separate and complete entity which can in no degree be lim- 
 ited, which must maintain itself against the interests of all 
 other states, whose dignity, honor and power must be pre- 
 served at all costs, no matter who is hurt thereby. This doc- 
 trine naturally involves the right of the sovereign state to 
 enlarge itself, formerly in territory but now mostly in eco- 
 nomic privilege, because of the assumed superiority of its 
 national culture. 
 
 Nationalism among the great powers is now pretty thor- 
 oughly commercialized and it is the inevitable conflict be- 
 tween the several commercialized nationahsms, all seeking 
 to secure economic advantage, which is now nullifying the 
 war-time ideals of the democratic peoples and frustrating the 
 attempt to fovmd a family of nations. Aiding in the dis- 
 ruption is the aggressive nationalism of the newly seK-deter- 
 roined nations, expressing itself in the more mediaeval form of 
 a desire for territory and sovereignty over ahen peoples. 
 
 Obviously there can be no world-family life imtil national- 
 ism is eliminated and nationality made to know and keep its 
 proper place as the servant of the common interests of man- 
 kind. Such a concept of nationality tends to develop soli- 
 darity within the nation, whereas an aggressive nationalism, 
 while it secures a forced unity for a time under the illusion 
 
SOLIDARtlV 177 
 
 of the benefits to be derived from it, in the end accentuates 
 class divisions because it turns out to be for the profit and 
 privilege of a limited number. The nation may learn some- 
 thing from the family in this matter. Families having undue 
 sense of their position are not only community nuisances, 
 always a divisive force in community affairs, but they usually 
 manage in the end to split themselves in quarrels arising out 
 of their enlarged sense of self-interest. But the families that 
 carry the traditions and practice of public service are the fam- 
 ilies that constantly grow together in the solidarity of serving 
 an interest larger than themselves. In like manner the at- 
 tainment of world unity and national imity are interdependent. 
 One is not likely to proceed much faster than the other. Class- 
 divided nations will maintain a divided world, and conversely, 
 the measure of the desire for a fraternal Ufe within the nation 
 is its willingness to accept the consequences of fraternity be- 
 tween the nations, as it involves both the limitation of the 
 absolute sovereignty of the state and of class privilege and 
 power. 
 
 Because of the renaissance of nationalism which the war 
 has brought about through its stimulation of the divisive ele- 
 ments in himian nature, the progress of recent years toward the 
 sohdarity of mankind wOl be halted imless the cult of national- 
 ism is vigorously opposed by propaganda for world unity. 
 The concept of the absolute sovereignty of the state needs to 
 be challenged by the concept "above all nations is hiunanity." 
 The energy that is now being used in this country to belabor 
 those extreme internationalists who over-depreciate nation- 
 ality had better be spent in trying to prevent the growth of 
 a purely selfish nationalism out of the increased military and 
 economic strength that the war has brought us. 
 
 It is true in international relations as elsewhere that those 
 who are willing to lose their life will in the end save it. Eco- 
 nomic reaUty is on the side of the yearning of the spirit of man 
 
178 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 for comradeship. The ideal and the fact run together. World 
 fellowship in economic relations on the basis of mutual serv- 
 ice will in the end provide fuller means of development for 
 any people than the aggressive seeking of its own interests. 
 Territory is not so important to nationality as freedom of 
 economic intercourse, say the ideahsts who are realists. Ter- 
 ritory is necessary not for political sovereignty but for the 
 control of economic resources say the statesmen who, boasting 
 that they are not idealists, herein prove that they have missed 
 the larger reality. Seeking national control, for purely 
 national interests, of economic resources which are needed 
 for the common use and development of all the people, they 
 lead their people toward a mirage of glory, to leave them in 
 the end struggling and d}dng in a desert without either nour- 
 ishment or brotherhood, as they have been dying by millions 
 in the past four years. The main root of divisive nationalism 
 is economic aggression. It is the same root that grows class 
 cleavage, now spread out through the soil of the world life; 
 and it will continue to grow until the soU is occupied by eco- 
 nomic cooperation. To understand others, to appreciate and 
 develop their common qualities, the people must in common 
 pursue their common interests. 
 
 If the human family in its progress toward solidarity can 
 pass the barriers of class cleavage and nationalism it wUl not 
 halt long before the obstruction of race antagonism, for that 
 is simply nationaUsm writ large. It too is compounded of 
 isolation and ignorance with their resultant prejudice and 
 assumption of superiority; it too has been enlarged by historic 
 injustice, mostly in the form of economic aggression. For 
 this evil the white race must accept most of the responsibility. 
 Its ideahsts who proclaim the gospel of world brotherhood 
 find their main obstacle in the race prejudice of their own 
 people and in their habits and practices which constantly incite 
 the antagonism of other races. Something has been heard in 
 
SOLIDARITY 1 79 
 
 times past about 'the yellow peril," and something is occa- 
 sionally heard to-day about the "the black menace"; but it is 
 an open question whether the white man is not a greater 
 danger to the solidarity of the race than either the yellow 
 man or the black man. If there is in this country to-day any 
 menace from the negro population the responsibility for the 
 situation is clearly placed by history. What economic in- 
 justice has the black race perpetrated against the white? If 
 the world is threatened with undue assertion by the yellow 
 race, how much of it is a natural consequence or imitation of 
 the white man's attitude? How much of the animosity that 
 smolders between the people of the two Americas is due to 
 the unmeasured pride and insolence of those of a little paler 
 skin than the rest? The trail of the white man throughout 
 the world is not only the trail of missions and education and 
 hospitals and sanitation and orderly govenmient; it is also 
 the trail of ruthless economic exploitation and the brutal 
 assertion of race superiority. 
 
 It is quite true that cultural differences make social solidar- 
 ity impossible either in a community or in the world; but the 
 dfficulty lies not in the natural inferiority of any class or race 
 but in differences of opportunity. These are capitalized into 
 a false assertion of innate superiority and the seizure of the 
 economic means to maintain the original advantage as a 
 divine right. Education knows nothing of inferior classes 
 or races doomed by nature to a permanently lower stage of 
 development than others. There has been suflSicient demon- 
 stration of the fact that cultural differences, in so far as they 
 broadly obtain between classes or races, can be removed in 
 one or two generations by the provision of the necessary en- 
 vironment and training. The fellowship of students of various 
 races in our higher institutions of learning proves that racial 
 differences are no barrier to the realization of the organic 
 unity of the world life. Because the common capacity for 
 
l8o THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 development is recognized and the common means of develop- 
 ment provided, race antagonisms gradually disappear in the 
 student fellowship. This process increases as the religious 
 ideal is present. If similar conditions can be extended to the 
 race as a whole,. a similar fellowship will develop. This means 
 that the life of the world must gradually be raised to the same 
 level of culture pursuing a common ideal, and that the eco- 
 nomic resources of the earth must be viewed as the means 
 for this common development and not for the special develop- 
 ment of the self-styled "great powers." 
 
 To this great and high task the forces of education and 
 religion are pledged both by their ideal and practice. They 
 are already seeking to raise all peoples to a general level of 
 life and thought. Their ideal is a commonwealth in whose 
 privileges all may share on the same terms. At this point 
 science and rehgion differ sharply from commercialism. They 
 seek the common good and no special interest. Science har- 
 nesses the man of special capacity to some common task of 
 humanity, religion demands that privileged classes and na- 
 tions accept the obligation of service to the common weal. 
 The workers of science and religion pass on this spirit of 
 service to their successors as a sacred trust, bidding them seek 
 nothing for themselves but the truth and opportunity to 
 extend and apply it. Commercialism bids the strong get aU 
 they can for themselves and then hand it on to their descend- 
 ants in the form of privilege to exempt them from the common 
 burdens. Thus commerciahsm creates a class-divided, nation- 
 alistic, racially antagonized world while the scientific spirit 
 and the religious spirit would develop a social order without 
 classes and a world life without conflicting nationalism and 
 race antagonism. 
 
 It becomes then the urgent duty of science and religion, 
 jointly and separately, continually to transmit throughout 
 the world of economic and governmental activity, now ani- 
 
SOLIDARITY l8l 
 
 mated by the spirit of commercialism, the power of their own 
 spirit of service, and to challenge that world to accept as the 
 only rational and possible end and meaning for human activity 
 that expression and enlargement of personaUty which is com- 
 prehended in the prayer of Jesus, "that they all may be one 
 even as we are one." But they will need to exorcise from the 
 body of a convulsed humanity, the spirit of economic aggres- 
 sion that is continually tearing it apart in conflicts of class 
 and nation and race. There is no guarantee, nor even hope, 
 that the economic forces that are making for the interde- 
 pendence and sohdarity of the world life can reach their goal 
 without more conscious aid and direction. They are not likely 
 to overcome the forces that are making for division and con- 
 flict unless they are reinforced by the conunon choice of the 
 ideal of solidarity under whose illumination the people may 
 come to see and understand the interdependence of their 
 economic life and so proceed to complete its unity. The eco- 
 nomic factors in the sohdarity of the world family await a 
 perception of their spiritual nature before their full power 
 can be developed. They await the intelligent use of a world 
 which desires brotherhood above all things, because it is the 
 largest freedom and the fuUest self-realization. Such a world 
 and no other will acquire the power to control its divisive 
 instincts and the institutions they have fashioned. It is plain 
 to-day that the technical capacity for cooperative living, both 
 within and between the nations, is considerably greater than 
 the desire or the wiU to use it. The Paris Conference and its 
 results, in comparison with the common activities, the com- 
 mon hopes and desires of the war, stands as the supreme 
 example of the fact that man is cursed with a fatal tendency 
 to pursue the immediate need or advantage at the expense 
 of the larger and longer good; that each division of mankind, 
 class or nation or race, is driven by the compulsion of apparent 
 necessity to pursue its own particular interest at the expense 
 
l82 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 or the neglect of the common good, blind to the fact that the 
 larger self-interest lies wrapped up in the common good and 
 can only be secured with it. It is the province of education 
 and religion continually to show mankind the larger, longer 
 good, to develop the capacity to choose, the will to pursue, 
 and the ability to achieve it. 
 
PART II 
 PROGRAMS FOR THE NEW ORDER 
 
CHAPTER Vn 
 
 THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 
 
 During the war a statement entitled " Labor and the New 
 Social Order " was issued by the British Labor Party as its 
 general program. This party was recently constituted by a 
 threefold alliance between trade unionists, socialists of dif- 
 ferent schools and members of the co-operative societies. It 
 represents between four and five million people, many of 
 whom are at one and the same time members of a trade union, 
 a socialist organization and a cooperative society. It repre- 
 sents a federation of these three forces for common political 
 action, excepting a small minority wing of both trade imion- 
 ists and socialists. In addition to the working class this pro- 
 gram also represents the "intellectuals." It calls for a party 
 composed of "workers of brain and hand." It would combine 
 for common action in the common interest all who contribute 
 or are willing to contribute socially useful labor to the common 
 welfare. Those who take no part in the necessary undertakings 
 of society cannot belong. In other words, the attempt is to 
 gather together all who are willing to pay their way in the 
 common conveyance. The dead-heads are invited to pay up 
 or else get out and walk. Notice is served on them that they 
 wiU not much longer be carried free. 
 
 The dominant influence in the drafting of the British Labor 
 Party is that of the Fabian Socialists, a group who chose their 
 name because to reach their goal they copied the tactics of the 
 famous Roman general Fabius. The leading figure of this 
 group is Mr. Sidney Webb, a writer of international repute on 
 the labor question. It has been charged that this program 
 
 i8s 
 
l86 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 is not the voice of labor because it was mainly drafted by 
 brain workers and that labor, in the old limited sense of the 
 term, accepted it for lack of an alternative. However that 
 may be, it is of little consequence beside the fact that this pro- 
 gram is being increasingly appropriated aU over the world 
 as the voice of labor and an adequate expression of the desires 
 of those who want to organize a new order on the basis of 
 common service. In harmony with its policies, the organized 
 miners of Great Britain have recently submitted to the British 
 Government a proposal for the nationalization of mines, and 
 secured its recommendation by a government commission. 
 The organized railroad men of this country have also recently 
 presented our government with a proposal for the nationaliza- 
 tion of railroads, with an operating corporation composed of 
 all those engaged in the service. The United Mine Workers 
 have just passed, through their executive committee, a similar 
 proposal concerning the mines of this country. 
 
 The first significant thing about the British Labor program 
 is its analysis of the need for a new order because of the col- 
 lapse of our present industrial civilization. Citing the state- 
 ment of Count Okuma of Japan, that the war was the death 
 of European civilization, the statement declares: 
 
 We of the Labor Party can so far agree in this estimate as to recog- 
 nize, in the present world catastrophe, if not the death, in Europe, of 
 civilization itself, at any rate the culmination and collapse of a distinctive 
 industrial civilization, which the workers will n6t seek to reconstruct. 
 
 Industrial civilization began with the industrial revolution 
 which was the effect of the invention of the power machine. 
 It has totally changed the relation of the workers to their 
 work, to the economic resources upon which it depends and 
 to the tools by which it is done, from that which existed under 
 hand industry. They cannot own the machines and they can 
 have little knowledge of or interest in the process of getting the 
 raw materials or disposing of the product, all of which func- 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 187 
 
 tions were formerly in some degree open to them. Conse- 
 quently their relation to the employers and owners and to 
 their own income has also been changed by factory organiza- 
 tion. The details are now commonly known and the process 
 may be seen in our small communities as a small business 
 grows into a large organization. Those who accept the Brit- 
 ish Labor program hold that the present type of industrial 
 civilization has ful&Ued its usefulness, that it occasions so much 
 injustice and misery that there must now come about what- 
 ever economic and political change is necessary to relieve the 
 world from its effects. 
 
 The individualistic system of capitalist production, based on the 
 private ownership and competitive administration of land and capital 
 with its reckless 'profiteering' and wage-slavery; with its glorification of 
 the unhampered struggle for the means of life and its hypocritical pre- 
 tense of the 'survival of the fittest'; with the monstrous inequaUty of 
 circumstances which it produces and the degradation and brutalization, 
 both moral and spiritual, resulting therefrom, may, we hope, indeed 
 have received a death blow. With it must go the pohtical system and 
 ideas in which it naturally found expression. We of the Labor Party, 
 whether in opposition or in due time called upon to form an administra- 
 tion, will certa^y lend no hand to its revival. On the contrary we shall 
 do our utmost to see that it is buried with the millions whom it has done 
 to death. 
 
 Concerning the justice and truth of this analysis any of the 
 later economists can be consulted. There is also the witness 
 of those who have analyzed industrial society from the moral 
 and spiritual point of view, begiiming with Ruskin and Tolstoi. 
 After that is the mass of facts and figures gathered by commis- 
 sion after commission and bureau on top of bureau in every 
 industrial country, a veritable judgment scroll of modern 
 civilization that ought to rend the walls that hide it from the 
 people. Finally there is the voice of those who are now faced 
 with the responsibility of attempting to make the present 
 economic order meet its own accepted obligation, namely, 
 to provide the needed improvement of economic goods for the 
 
1 38 THE NEW SOCIAL ORbfeR: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 development of humanity. Those men call themselves pro- 
 duction engineers and their analysis of the present order in 
 society is no less severe on grounds of practical efficiency 
 than that of the economists, the social investigators and the 
 great religious teachers. If the case is stUl not clear, there 
 remains to be considered the economic experience of the war, 
 when in order to produce and deliver the food and the goods 
 indispensable to the situation, it was necessary to adopt 
 methods and to apply principles of economic organization 
 which are entirely contrary to the fundamental presupposi- 
 tions of individuahstic capitahstic production. 
 
 In putting out this program as "a deliberately thought 
 out, systematic and comprehensive plan, for that immediate 
 social rebuilding, which any ministry whether or not it desires 
 to grapple with the problem will be driven to undertake," 
 the British Labor Party attempts to distinguish itself from 
 other political parties by declaring that "our detailed prac- 
 tical proposals proceed from certain definitely held principles." 
 They recognize that society cannot be made over in a few 
 years of "feverish reconstruction," but they propose to be 
 sure that the measures they advocate, move in the direction 
 of these principles. "What the Labor Party intends to satisfy 
 itself about is that each brick that it helps to lay shall go to 
 erect the structure that it intends and no other." They set 
 forth a common end to be pursued and they indicate that this 
 common end is to be reached by developing a common spirit. 
 
 If we in Britain are to escape from the decay of civilization itseK, 
 which the Japanese statesman foresees, we must ensure that what is 
 presently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting but 
 on fraternity; not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, 
 but on a deliberately planned cooperation in production and distribution 
 for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by brain; not on the 
 utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a systematic approach 
 towards a healthy equality of material circumstances for every person 
 born into the world; not on an enforced dominion over subject nations, 
 subject races, subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex, but, 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 189 
 
 in industry as well as in government, on that equal freedom, that general 
 consciousness of consent, and that widest possible participation in power, 
 both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy. 
 
 Here then, is a working definition of the end, the spirit and 
 the method of the new social order. As the immediate neces- 
 sary steps toward this new order the British Labor Party 
 suggests various detailed proposals. It Ukens them to the 
 upper framework of a house, supported by four main pillars 
 resting upon a common foundation. The common founda- 
 tion is "the democratic control of society in all its activities." 
 The "Four Pillars of the House" are: 
 
 " I.- The Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum. 
 2.- The Democratic Control of Industry. 
 3.- The Revolution in National Finance. 
 4.- The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good." 
 
 The basis of the demand for the Universal Enforcement of 
 the National Mimimum, is extremely significant. 
 
 The first principle of the Labor Party — in significant contrast with 
 those of the capitalist system, whether expressed by the Liberal or by the 
 Conservative party, is the securing to every member of the commimity, 
 in good times and bad alike (and not only to the strong and able, the 
 weU-bom or the fortunate), of aU the requisites of healthy life and worthy 
 citizenship. This is in no sense a 'class' proposal. Such an amount of 
 social protection of the individual, however poor and lowly, from birth 
 to death, is, as the economist now knows, as indispensable to fruitful 
 cooperation as it is to successful combination; and it affords the only 
 complete safeguard against that insidious degradation of the standard of 
 life which is the worst economic and social calamity to which any com- 
 mimity can be subjected. 
 
 And again, 
 
 Only on the basis of a universal application of the policy of the na- 
 tional mimimum, affording complete security against destruction, in 
 sickness and in health, in good times and bad alike, to every member of 
 the community of whatever age or sex, can any worthy social order be 
 built up. 
 
igO THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 The claim is made that for this proposal "the spokesmen 
 of the Labor Party have already gained the support of the en- 
 lightened statesmen and economists of the world." It is 
 pointed out that Great Britain has already adopted and is con- 
 tinually elaborating a number of social welfare measiu-es, "aU 
 of them aiming at the enforcement of at least the prescribed 
 minimum. It might have been added that the same fact holds 
 in some degree for all industrial nations; all recent legislation 
 touching labor, health and education aims at safeguarding 
 a minimum of life for the individual against the repeated 
 encroachments of the industrial system. 
 
 It is the social basis of such policy that this British pro- 
 gram emphasizes. It emphasizes the fact that the necessity 
 for the provision of a universal minimum arises out of the soli- 
 darity of society, both economic and spiritual. The ob- 
 jective is to safeguard the community against "economic 
 and social calamity." 
 
 We are members one of another. No man liveth to himself alone. 
 If any, even the humblest is made to sufier, the whole community, and 
 every one of us, whether or not we recognize the fact, is thereby injured. 
 Generation after generation this has been the cornerstone of the faith of 
 labor; it wiU be the guiding principle of any labor government. 
 
 The philosophy of natural rights, the rights to which every 
 individual is entitled because he is an individual, has become 
 a popular dogma. One of its forms is: "The world owes every 
 man a living." But this demand for a national minimiun 
 universally enforced, is not based primarily upon individual 
 rights, but upon social necessity. It is the social effects of 
 the lack of a mimimum which are pointed out as constituting 
 the imperative for its provision. These consequences amoimt 
 to the progressive decadence of community life through the 
 gradual loss of physical vigor and mental capacity. This is 
 the inevitable fate of any nation which tolerates an order of 
 things in which a section of its population lives permanently 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY IQI 
 
 below the poverty line that is, without a minimum of sub- 
 sistence. The social results of poverty are amply demonstrated 
 by aU sorts of inquiries and investigations made in the last 
 twenty-five yeaxs. The United States has been the slowest 
 of the great industrial nations to recognize the social results 
 of the failure of a section of its population to gain a minimum 
 of subsistence. But those results are now coming fast in this 
 coimtry. The reason we have been slow to realize the nature 
 of poverty as a social fact is that until recently we have 
 been able to avoid widespread misery because of our great 
 economic opportunity, due both to the extent and richness 
 of our natural resources and the degree of intelligence and skiU 
 with which they have been developed. But what we have 
 been doing is to mistake our exceptional economic opportunity 
 for individual capacity. We have been bragging a great deal 
 about the superiority of our people and our institutions, 
 whereas the subject of our boast, if boast we must, should 
 have been the extent and richness of our land, timber, miner- 
 als and water power. Now as our natural resources and our 
 economic opportxmities get controlled, poverty iucreases 
 among us, with all its consequences, and we are beginning to 
 leam that an abimdance of natural resources is no permanent 
 substitute for sound social policy. The lame and lazy are 
 not always provided for. 
 
 Finally, in resting its case for a national minimum upon 
 the injury which any personality suffers if another personality 
 is hurt, British Labor is expounding the spiritual aspects of 
 social solidarity. Expressing the ancient faith of labor in 
 the principle of mutual aid, it accepts that principle as a law 
 of social organization and as a categorical moral imperative. 
 It is, after all, the spirit of compassion and the sense of justice, 
 making it impossible for men to be content that others are 
 injured while they themselves are whole, that form the bond 
 between the strong and the weak, leading them to work to- 
 
192 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 gether and overcome the circumstances that give rise to the 
 differences between them. Such effort is a central fact in 
 family Hfe and educational development. The proposal for 
 the national provision of a universal minimum is the family- 
 principle of equality of maintenance for every member of the 
 group carried over to the national life. It is now proposed 
 that the nation assume final responsibility for the provision 
 of a portion of the means of development which the family 
 has heretofore been supposed to provide, and to provide with 
 equality. This is not true of course concerning families under 
 a system in which special rights and privileges go to the first 
 born male, but in the democratic family it is an unwritten 
 law that the children share equally in whatever means of 
 maintenance and development the family is able to provide. 
 One of the fijiest examples of the principle is the family whose 
 income will not send aU the children to college, and that under- 
 taking then becomes a cooperative enterprise. The one who 
 goes first considers it his duty on graduation to fijiandally 
 help the next in turn, and so on in succession. The sound 
 family principle is to share and share alike in the means of 
 maintenance and development. For any member of the family 
 to evade that responsibiUty is both an injury to the family 
 and a disgrace to himself. The same holds for the relations 
 between the family and the commimity. By its legislation con- 
 cerning neglected children and its provisions for their care the 
 local community recognizes the necessity for equality of main- 
 tenance up to a certain point; holds the heads of the family 
 responsible for its provision, and itself assiunes the burden of 
 their failure. To extend this responsibility of removing the 
 conditions that now make it impossible for many families 
 to meet their primary duty to their children, and to do it on a 
 national scale, is but the necessary consequence of existing 
 policies. There are two matters involved here, the ability 
 to provide a minimum of subsistence and the will to provide 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 1 93 
 
 it equally. If the family is unable to provide the minimum 
 for its members, its life breaks down. If it is able to provide 
 it and more, and fails to on equal terms, its unity is destroyed; 
 it is cleft by jealousy and rent by quarrels. 
 
 Does not the same hold true for the nation? If the nation 
 is unable to provide the means for maintenance and develop- 
 ment, its life breaks down. If it is able, and fails to do it on 
 equal terms for aU, there occur the same inevitable divisions 
 between the classes that come between the members of a family 
 if it does not carry out the democratic principle of equality 
 of maintenance. In this, the richest of lands, if we can feel 
 something of the injury to our social sohdarity that arises 
 from the fact that a certain section of people are without the 
 due and proper means of maintenance, we shall perhaps feel 
 the disgrace of such a condition and proceed to remedy it. 
 
 It is generally assumed among us that any family is able 
 to provide a minimum standard for its children if it wants to 
 and that the advilt is likewise able to meet his necessities, with 
 occasional exceptions due to unfortunate circumstances. 
 These are the accidents that must occur in the best regulated 
 f amil y and we provide for them by charitable organizations. 
 Whereas the fact is that a large section of the industrial and 
 agricultural workers are like the younger children of the family, 
 imable to develop, and a considerable number unable to se- 
 cure a TniniTniiTn of subsistence without the common help. 
 This is mainly because the economic means for their develop- 
 ment are beyond their control, because natural resources have 
 been preempted and the creation of economic privilege has 
 given special opportunities to a few with a corresponding 
 limitation for the many. There was a time in this country 
 when the minim um of subsistence was within the reach of 
 all because of equality of access to natural opportunities, but 
 for an increasing body of people that minimum is no longer 
 obtainable by individual initiative and can be secured only 
 
194 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 by social regulation. The lower classes, so called, will be just 
 as unable to develop without the social provision of this mini- 
 mum as children would be unable to develop unless the family, 
 or failing that, the community, should provide the means for 
 their nourishment and education. The same thing holds true 
 for the undeveloped races as for the undeveloped classes. 
 If the white people are going to develop the natural resources 
 of those regions where undeveloped races hve, it is morally 
 and socially essential that they should provide that every 
 possible bit of the wealth which results should be apphed to 
 the development of the peoples of those regions, that develop- 
 ment to be seK-determined. If there is a "white man's bur- 
 den," he will do well for the world and for himself to carry it 
 for the love of it and not for profit. 
 
 Is the policy of a national minimum paternalism or democ- 
 racy? Does it mean such routine or regimentation that Ufe 
 becomes one dull and dreary ordered roimd? Being individual- 
 ists bred and bom, the people of the United States are largely 
 fearful that any such policy would result in the loss of initia- 
 tive and in escape from responsibility by a large section of 
 the population. But it is noticeable that those who are so 
 afraid are mostly those who have always had the advantage 
 of a minimum, and very much more, in their own lives, or 
 those who are able to provide on that larger scale for their 
 children. These are the people who are afraid that other 
 children will suffer by being guaranteed that which they pro- 
 pose to guarantee their own children. The argument cannot 
 be saved by turning it into the destruction of adult initiative 
 and responsibility. It is in childhood and youth that the ef- 
 fect upon initiative of the guarantee of a minimum must be- 
 gin, as it is there that the social consequences of its absence 
 commence. Those who use the argument of paternalism and 
 destruction of initiative are under obligation to prove that the 
 community guarantee of conditions that would enable every 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY I95 
 
 family to provide a minimum for its children is any more de- 
 structive of initiative in the developing period of life than the 
 same guarantee resting upon a free for all struggle. They are 
 also imder obligation to prove that this guarantee can be 
 universally provided by a laissez faire policy or be open to the 
 charge of justifying and seeking to maintain special privilege. 
 One of the distinguished educational administrators of this 
 country is reported to have said in a speech on this British 
 program that it was the most dangerous proposition ever 
 given to the world because it would rob the working people of 
 their initiative. That gentleman was bom in a cultured, 
 well-to-do family which gave him freely not only the neces- 
 sities of life but the fullest opportunity for his spiritual de- 
 velopment. Did free access in youth to very much more than 
 the minimum now asked for the working people rob him of 
 energy or initiative? He has rendered some very distinct 
 services to this nation; he offers in his own person then a very 
 good argument for the guarantee of a minimum where it is 
 not now available. Is it possible that what such weU-meaning 
 people really want is that others should do for themselves 
 under great handicap what the family did for them, that they 
 are willing to take their privilege and enjoy it and leave 
 other people with no possible opportunity of ever sharing it? 
 The case is stiU worse for those self-made men who contin- 
 ually glorify the developmental value of the struggle for sub- 
 sistence and then jealously shield their children from any part 
 of that struggle. Those who believe in the doctrine of self-help 
 seem somehow to lack the courage of their convictions when it 
 comes to their own flesh and blood. Is it then fundamentally 
 a doctrine of limited salvation and vicarious suffering? 
 
 Those who are afraid that a universal national minimum 
 would destroy initiative and responsibility must consider the 
 evidence of our charity records concerning what happens to 
 those qualities when people once realize that the means of 
 
196 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 development are beyond their personal reach. The same evi- 
 dence also reveals what happens to initiative when a minimum 
 standard is lacking for several generations. It would appear 
 that even the desire for the socially necessary minimum is in 
 time obliterated. It is only when the minimum of subsist- 
 ence is to be obtained by all on reasonable terms that the 
 higher possibilities of life can have a universal appeal. The 
 weak are not pioneers in any of life's territory. They will 
 never explore the universe. Therefore the greater the number 
 of people who are kept weak, the less the universe will be 
 explored, and the longer mankind will bear the burden of 
 ignorance. If initiative is to be developed to its full capacity 
 and aU the people are to take their fuU load of responsibility, 
 it must be made possible for life to be generally lived above the 
 subsistence level, for it is the higher reaches of living that 
 develop and tax our common human nature. 
 
 Whether or not such a policy would unduly limit freedom 
 depends upon the spirit and purpose. The question at issue 
 is not whether it is paternalism but what kind of paternalism 
 is it; whether or not the paternalism of the family injures the 
 children depends upon whether the administration of the 
 family is autocratic or democratic. Benevolent but auto- 
 cratic paternalism for those who cannot take care of them- 
 selves is better than nothing, but to be of social value it must 
 be replaced by a mutual arrangement before it has weakened 
 or embittered its beneficiaries and corrupted its administra- 
 tors. The paternalism which in a democratic way provides 
 the essentials of life for those who caimot provide for them- 
 selves, stimulates both the individual and the common life 
 to reach still higher standards, just as the democratic paternal- 
 ism of the family stimulates both children and parents to 
 mutual improvement. The method is always determined by 
 the goal; if the goal is the extension of the authority and priv- 
 ilege of a ruling class over the community, the provisions 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY I97 
 
 devised presumably for the development of the people, will 
 in reality be repressive. If the goal is a fraternal community, 
 measures for the development of the handicapped will apply 
 the stimulus of cooperative endeavor to all the peoples. In 
 considering the proposal for a national minimum the demo- 
 cratic state must be clear about its purpose. Is the purpose 
 to open the way for the unhindered development of all the 
 people or is the purpose to keep some at a certain level, to 
 supply them with what they must have to be efficient workers, 
 and so enable the rest to live in comfort without being troubled 
 by the sight of misery? This is the determining question. 
 Does the provision of a minimum contemplate contented sub- 
 servience on the part of those who receive it or is it to be a 
 preparation for their fiurther development? That is the dif- 
 ference between the minimum program of the Prussian state 
 and the Trn'm'Tmnn program of the British Labor Party. The 
 Prussian state did measurably provide a minimum of sub- 
 sistence for its workers in order to keep them ef&cient and 
 contented and subservient workers and to maintain the sol- 
 idarity of the State. It failed as every such plan must fail 
 that is not inspired by the vision of full social development 
 for all the people and carried out under democratic control. 
 But with these essentials it is likely that the policy of a 
 national Tninimum would not only prevent the destruction of 
 initiative and responsibility by poverty, but would stimulate 
 and enlarge those necessary qualities through its challenge 
 to cooperate in the common undertaking and to respond to its 
 privileges. 
 
 This program of the British Labor Party suggests measures 
 designed to protect initiative. The first emphasis is upon 
 labor legislation to prevent the degradation of extreme poverty 
 by establishing the minimum wage and provisions against 
 imemployment. This legislation is only a preventive barrier 
 between the worker and the abyss of destitution. It prevents 
 
198 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 his natural initiative from being gradually destroyed by the 
 inability to get work or having found it, to earn a live- 
 lihood. The factor that is counted on most to secure a uni- 
 versal minimum is the guarantee of security of employment. 
 Concerning the demobilization of the millions of soldiers and 
 war- workers it is said: "The Labor Party insists, as no other 
 political party has thought fit to do, that the obligation to 
 find suitable employment in productive work for all these 
 men and women rests upon the government for the time 
 being." 
 
 And again: 
 
 But nothipg is more dangerous to the standard of life, or so destruc- 
 tive of those minimum conditions of healthy existence, which must in the 
 interests of the community be assured to every worker, than any wide- 
 spread or continued unemployment. It has always been a fundamental 
 principle of the Labor Party (a point on which, significantly enough, 
 it has not been followed by either of the other political parties) that, in a 
 modern industrial community, it is one of the foremost obligations of the 
 government to find, for every willing worker, whether by hand or by 
 brain, productive work at standard rates. 
 
 Also 
 
 The Labor Party moreover holds it to be the duty of the government 
 of the day to take all necessary steps to prevent the standard rates of 
 wages in any trade or occupation whatsoever, from suffering any reduc- 
 tion relating to the contemporary cost of Uving. 
 
 The measures proposed in order to provide security of 
 employment are those which have been commonly suggested 
 wherever the problem has been considered. 
 
 First, as a protective measure it is suggested that in the 
 demobilization period those soldiers should first be released 
 for whom the labor market has a demand. Then it is declared 
 to be "the duty of the goverrmient to adopt a policy of delib- 
 erately and systematically preventing the occurrence of un- 
 employment instead of as heretofore letting unemployment 
 occur and then seeking vainly and expensively to relieve the 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY I99 
 
 unemployed." This is to be done by so arranging all public 
 undertakings as "to maintain the aggregate demand for labor 
 in the whole kingdom, including that of capitalist employers 
 approximately at a uniform level from year to year," and by 
 the creation of emergency public works of various kinds. Then 
 
 to relieve any pressure of an overstocked labor market the opportunity 
 should be taken if unemployment should threaten to become widespread, 
 (a) immediately to raise the school-leaving age to sixteen; (b) greatly 
 to increase the number of scholarships and bursaries for secondary and 
 higher education; (c) substantially to shorten the hours of labor of all 
 young persons, even to a greater extent than the eight hours per week 
 contemplated in the new Education BiU, in order to enable them to 
 attend technical and other classes in the daytime. Finally, wherever 
 practicable, the hours of adult labor should be reduced to not more than 
 forty-eight without reduction of the standard rate of wages. 
 
 Social insurance against unemployment is also suggested, 
 to be administered in cooperation with the out-of-work 
 benefits of the trade unions. 
 
 In so far as the Government fails to prevent unemployment, wherever 
 it finds it impossible to discover for any willing worker a suitable situation 
 at the standard rate, the Labor Party holds that the government must 
 in the interest of the commimity as a whole, provide him or her with 
 adequate maintenance, either with such arrangements for honorable 
 employment, or with such useful training as may be found practicable, 
 accor(ing to age, health and previous occupation. 
 
 Thus the demand for a national minimiun is based upon 
 the presupposition that if only sufficient work under proper 
 conditions can be provided, the workers will very largely take 
 care of themselves. It is not a proposal to maintain people 
 by public charity, but the assertion of the public duty to pro- 
 vide a minim um of subsistence through the means of employ- 
 ment in order, not that from that basis some may go up 
 higher, but that from that common soil the entire nation 
 may acquire the power to raise its Ufe to a higher level. It is 
 frankly a proposal for equality of opportunity in the means 
 of Ufe, and particularly in the means of employment. 
 
200 THE NEW SOCIAL 0IU5ER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Is the assumption that a general advance in life would 
 follow the universal minimum a justifiable assumption? 
 Something can be gathered in answer to that question by 
 seeing what happens to our immigrant population when it 
 can get security of employment at a living wage and under 
 proper conditions. Does any immigrant nationality go up or 
 down from that point? More light can be gained by watching 
 the course of any skilled group of workers anywhere in the 
 world who, through the organized development of their 
 economic power, are able to secure for themselves security of 
 employment under good conditions. What facts we have at 
 hand indicate that a raise in the level of life follows a general 
 increase of economic opportunity. The experience of family 
 Hfe also indicates that while it may be necessary to have a 
 degree of social regimentation to secure a minimum standard, 
 it is still possible along with that to preserve and increase in- 
 dividual initiative and responsibility. The universal minimvun 
 is relied upon only to prevent the decadence of society through 
 the destruction of the individual and the family by poverty. 
 For progress, rehance is placed upon individual effort, to 
 which larger opportunity is thus to be opened. 
 
 The possibiHty of such a condition raises a question that 
 has never yet been fairly faced by modern society. What 
 happens if a nation can secure such a degree of subsistence 
 for all the people that it becomes possible for those who now 
 do the elemental work of the community to attain the cultured 
 status of those who now provide the technical and professional 
 services that civilization requires? There would then be no 
 lower class, conveniently able to do only the dirty and dis- 
 agreeable work of the community. If the enforcement of the 
 national minimum would in the course of time transform the 
 weak and inefficient members of society into strong and ca- 
 pable citizens, would they then be as disinclined to do the 
 monotonous and hazardous work of an industrial civilization 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 20I 
 
 as those who are now strong and capable. Our familiar escape 
 from the dilemna, as one group after another climbs up the 
 social scale, is to bring in still another undeveloped group. 
 We have ransacked the world for cheap labor. During the 
 War we brought the negroes up from the south and even pro- 
 posed to bring the cooKes in from China. The proposal to 
 prohibit immigration evokes the indignant query from certain 
 quarters, "What will we do for servants?" But there is an 
 end to that proceeding sooner or later. Before long we shall 
 have to do without an undeveloped, subservient class, so we 
 might as well consider while we have time whether it is not 
 possible to so organize our whole manner and method of life 
 that no section of the population will be continually consigned 
 to do what nobody really wants to do. That question is yet to 
 be answered in the futiure. What the British Labor program 
 does toward answering it is to push home upon the nation the 
 responsibility for the orderly organization of its industrial 
 affairs. It declares that the industrial army should be main- 
 tained "in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad 
 alike," exactly as a fighting army is maintained. If the pro- 
 duction of economic goods is considered a social necessity 
 and not a means for private gain, it follows both logically and 
 practically that the commimity which consciously organizes 
 itself to produce goods for social welfare will provide for the 
 constant well-being of the army of production. The effect of 
 such common organization and responsibility upon the in- 
 dividual is not likely to be as injurious as in a military or- 
 ganization, because there is more continuous and constructive 
 occupation. In some caUings there is necessarily a long period 
 of leisurely employment and then a short period of very stren- 
 uous and dangerous work, such as obtains in military life. 
 But the demoralizing possibilities of such a method of living 
 are more easily avoided under a coordinated plan than under 
 the hit or miss methods of private industry, where it may be 
 
202 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRXNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 that nobody sees or tries to avert them. The only rational 
 solution to the problem of unemployment is to accept com- 
 munity responsibility for the maintenance of industry as a 
 continuous service and to gradually organize it as a common 
 undertaking, that from it all the people may derive the means 
 for nourishment and growth and in it may find life more 
 abundantly, through the expression of their creative spirit and 
 capacity for fellowship. Increasingly we have been moving in 
 the direction of a minimmn standard in the United States 
 through short-hour, minimum wage, and workmen's compensa- 
 tion laws. It remains for the nation to accept the principle 
 and more thoroughly apply it. This is for the wage earners an 
 economic necessity; is it any less a spiritual necessity for those 
 who are in a more favored social status? 
 
 The next pillar in the new house that the British Labor 
 Party proposes to erect is the Democratic Control of Industry. 
 They then proceed to interpret industrial democracy not, as 
 we are yet doing here, simply in terms of the democratic man- 
 agement of the local workshop or collective bargaining between 
 associations of capital and labor, but at once they proceed to 
 interpret industrial democracy in national terms. 
 
 The Labor Party insists on democracy in industry as well as in 
 government. It demands the progressive ehmination from the control 
 of industry of the private capitalist, individual or joint-stock; and the 
 setting free of all who work, whether by hand or by brain, for the service 
 of the community, and of the community only. And the Labor Party re- 
 fuses absolutely to believe that the British people wiU permanently 
 tolerate any reconstruction or perpetuation of the disorganization, waste 
 and inefficiency involved in the abandonment of British industry to a 
 jostling crowd of separate private employers, with their minds bent, not 
 on the service of the community, but — ^by the very law of their being — 
 only on the utmost possible profiteering. 
 
 Industrial democracy is thus defined as the organization of 
 the industrial process under common control for the largest 
 possible service to the entire community. 
 
 Here is at once a new definition of citizenship and a new 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 203 
 
 application of industrial endeavor; it puts the will to serve 
 at the center of the new social order. Teachers, preachers and 
 doctors pride themselves that they work in service to the 
 whole community. Then why not miners and weavers and 
 railroad men? If it adds something of dignity and joy to the 
 life of the professional workers to know that they are demo- 
 cratically serving the entire community, why should that dig- 
 nity and joy be denied the worker in the mine and the mill and 
 the shop? Why should not the daily work of all men enlarge 
 their spiritual life? 
 
 The economic argument for the democratic control of in- 
 dustry in this broad sense rests upon the fact of the waste of 
 the competitive profit-seeking system. This waste is a matter 
 of common knowledge and protest. The last to raise their 
 voices against it are the production engineers. Their state- 
 ments are not biased by dogma; they have but one interest — 
 to make the industrial machine go in the best possible way — 
 and after a scienti&c diagnosis they tell us that there is so 
 much waste in our present methods that it is possible with our 
 present working capacity to increase production three times 
 over. Democratic control of industry must meet the test of 
 the need of increased production. 
 
 What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound onward in its 
 aggregate productivity. But this cannot be secured merely by pressing 
 the maniial workers to more strenuous toU, or even by encouraging the 
 'Captains of Industry' to a less wasteful organization of their several 
 enterprises on a profit-making basis. What the Labor Party looks to is a 
 genuinely scientific reorganization of the nation's industry, no longer 
 deflected by individual profiteering, on the basis of the Common Owner- 
 ship of the Means of Production; the equitable sharing of the proceeds 
 among all who participate in any capacity and only among these, and 
 the adoption, in particular services and occupations, of those systems and 
 methods of administration and control that may be found, iq practice, 
 best to promote, not profiteering, but the public interest. 
 
 Thus the Labor Party, in seeking for increased production, 
 looks on the one hand to the scienti&c method and on the 
 
204 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 other hand to the passion for service. In this respect as in its 
 other aspects, the program that is necessary for the emanci- 
 pation and development of the toUers depends upon the aid 
 and comfort of the forces of education and religion. 
 
 Because this program considers the democratic control of 
 industry as a national problem, it places the major emphasis 
 upon the nationalization of certain enterprises. It must be 
 remembered however, that this is supplementary to and in 
 extension of the other forms of democratic control which the 
 members of the British Labor Party have long been developing 
 and will continue to strengthen. They are really driving 
 three horses abreast, trade unionism, cooperative societies 
 and national ownership and administration. The first horses 
 have long been broken to harness and have proved good 
 workers in pulling the common load of labor and the com- 
 munity. The third horse is yet in the breaking. Its use is 
 largely a venture of faith. But at present the load is stalled, 
 and additional help must be secured from some source or 
 other. It is admitted by most students of the situation that 
 our present method of competitive, individualistic capitalism 
 is not accomplishing the necessary end of meeting the eco- 
 nomic needs of humanity, to say nothing of satisfying the 
 spiritual desires of mankind. Moreover it does not show sign 
 of being able to increase its productivity except at the cost 
 of increased social waste. In such a situation man is bovmd 
 to experiment with other methods if there are any, even' 
 though he may be turning from ills he knows to others he 
 knows not. In view of the lack of both science and religion 
 in the present industrial organization, people who believe 
 in both are likely to think it worth while to try a program 
 which promises to rely upon both. 
 
 The program proposes immediate nationalization of the 
 land, railroads, mines, and the production of electric power. 
 It is interesting to note that the organized workers of other 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 205 
 
 industrial countries, including our own, are increasingly voic- 
 ing the demand that coal mines and railroads be nationalized. 
 This is a natural beginning, for these are general necessities 
 which are already so widely organized on both the side of 
 capital and labor, as to make a imified national administration 
 of them a comparatively simple matter. 
 
 In the production of electricity, for cheap power, light, and heating, 
 this country has so far failed, because of hampering private interests, to 
 take advantage of science. Even in the largest cities we still 'peddle' 
 our electricity on a contemptibly small scale. What is called for, imme- 
 diately after the war, is the erection of a score of gigantic ' super-power 
 stations,' which could generate, at incredibly cheap rates, enough elec- 
 tricity for the use of every industrial establishment and every private 
 household in Great Britain; the present municipal and joint-stock elec- 
 trical plants being universally linked up and used for local distribution. 
 This is inevitably the future of electricity. It is plain that so great and 
 so powerful an enterprise, affecting every industrial enterprise and, 
 eventually, every household, must not be allowed to pass into the hands 
 of private capitaUsts. They are already pressing the Government for 
 the concession, and neither the Liberal nor the Conservative Party has 
 yet made up its mind to a refusal of such a new endowment of profiteering 
 in what will presently be the life-blood of modern productive industry. 
 The Labor Party demands that the production of electricity on the 
 necessary gigantic scale shall be made, from the start (with suitable 
 arrangements for municipal cooperation in local distribution) a national 
 enterprise, to be worked exclusively with the object of supplying the 
 whole kingdom with the cheapest possible Power, Light and Heat. 
 
 It would be a much more difficult matter to apply this pro- 
 posal here than in England because of our great territorial 
 expanse. It would be possible, however, to apply it in the 
 areas adjacent to water power and coal deposits. In the lat- 
 ter case the generation of heat and light at the mines would 
 probably affect a great saving in transmission as against the 
 cost of the transportation and local handling of coal. It is 
 not the technical problem so much as the vested rights the 
 nation has ignorantly created — by giving away its mineral 
 deposits and much of its water power — that makes such a 
 proposal very difficult of accomplishment. Incidentally, while 
 
206 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 this nation has been busy carrying on war, a group of finan- 
 cial interests have made a good deal of progress in getting 
 their hands on the undeveloped water power of the coxintry. 
 Along with this proposal to nationalize electricity and make 
 it a xmiversal servant, to lighten the burden of living for all 
 the people, for women as well as men, and so to enlarge the 
 opportimity for cultural development goes a collateral pro- 
 posal concerning the use of coal. 
 
 But with railways and the generation of electricity in the hands of 
 the public, it would be criminal folly to leave to the present 1,500 
 coUiery companies the power of 'holding up' the coal supply. These 
 are now all working under public control, on terms that virtually 
 afford to their shareholders a statutory guarantee of their swollen 
 incomes. The Labor Party demands the ipimediate nationalization 
 of mines, the extraction of coal and iron being worked as a public 
 service (with a steadily increasing participation in the management, 
 both central and local, of the various grades of persons employed) ; and 
 the whole business of the retail distribution of household coal being 
 undertaken, as a local public service, by the elected municipal or county 
 councils. And there is no reason why coal should fluctuate in price 
 any more than railway fares, or why the consumer should be made to 
 pay more in winter than in summer, or in one town than another. 
 What the Labor Party would aim at is, for household coal of standard 
 qualify, a fixed and uniform price for the whole kingdom, payable by 
 rich and poor alike, as unalterable as the penny postage-stamp. 
 
 It will take a lot of specious publicity on the part of the pri- 
 vate interests now profiting out of the coal business to make 
 the people of the United States turn down a practical proposi- 
 tion of this sort when once they get their eyes upon it and 
 imderstand that it can be done apart from the politicians. 
 During the war, the head of one of our government commis- 
 sions proposed that the price of coal should be standarized; 
 that the cost of production should be determined for dif- 
 ferent lands and areas; that these costs should be pooled and 
 on the basis of the average cost of production for the different 
 grades a standard price for the country should be fixed. The 
 returns were then to be apportioned proportionately to the 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 207 
 
 local cost of production. The author of this plan informed a 
 leading production engineer that the response of the coal 
 operators was to tell him he was crazy. The engineer replied: 
 "then I am crazy too; because that is the only scientific way 
 to fix the price of coal." In an open forum where the subject 
 of control of prices was raised, the characteristic question was 
 asked: "But how in the world can prices be determined except 
 by the law of supply and demand? " There are some gentle- 
 men in this coimtry, not professors of economics, who could, 
 if they would, give an expert answer to that question. They 
 have discovered that "the law of supply and demand," like 
 many another high sounding phrase, is a cloak for ignorance 
 and iaability. They have therefore followed an ancient cus- 
 tom and capitalized their knowledge and ability. They have 
 limited supply and checked and stimulated demand. Within 
 certain limits they have become the law that has fixed the 
 price. There is another way, the only way that science knows; 
 it is that of basing the price on the average cost of production. 
 Under production for profit this practice is being used wher- 
 ever capital is intelligent enough to protect itself from the 
 risk of loss due to ignorance in price fixing. It can be used in 
 a larger interest; it is one of the contributions of modem knowl- 
 edge which make possible the organization of production for 
 use and not for profit, substituting for profit an assured and 
 rcEisonable return for services rendered. 
 
 The British Labor Party views heat, light and power as 
 human necessities, not occasions for profit. It believes that 
 advance in social life depends upon making all necessities 
 available to all the people. There are several basic necessi- 
 ties to which the people of this country cannot get access in 
 the same degree to which they can now get access to educa- 
 tion, because there is no attempt to administer them in the 
 common interest as there is with education. 
 
 A part of the British program of common ownership is to 
 
2o8 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 be carried out through the municipalities. Such a program 
 we have already embarked upon in this country, extending 
 municipal administration to one thing after another; water 
 and light, education and recreation. The Labor Party pro- 
 poses to extend this process to include: 
 
 Other services of common utility, particularly the local supply of 
 milk, wherever this is not already fully and satisfactorily organized by 
 a cooperative society. 
 
 Now that education and water and light are no longer the 
 sacred domain of private profit, there is no vahd reason to 
 consider food as consecrated to Mammon. Why should not 
 milk as well as water be managed in the conmion interest? 
 Every household takes nulk and it is one of the vital factors 
 in determining the public health. Why then should the com- 
 munity be subject to the waste and the danger continually 
 attendant upon the two prevailing methods of nulk distribu- 
 tion, which are anarchy and organized war between competing 
 interests? 
 
 The beneficiaries of the private ownership of big-scale eco- 
 nomic enterprise and public utilities naturally point out that 
 the program of nationalization and municipalization rests 
 more upon hypothesis then experience; that it is attempting 
 the apphcation of a formula which may or may not accom- 
 plish what its proponents desire. From the standpoint of 
 religion this obligation is irrelevant because rehgion knows 
 that life never advances save by a venture of faith. In the 
 nature of the case the benefits to come from the nationalization 
 of industry are assumed; they could not be proved, they must 
 wait upon experiment. It is clear, however, that the whole 
 process of social development is a limitation of private and 
 an extension of public enterprise in the field of common neces- 
 sity. The advocates of the nationalization of industrial 
 undertakings are faced with a more serious criticism. It 
 comes not only from the advocates of private ownership but 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 209 
 
 also from the ranks of those who believe in common owner- 
 ship and control, where it is voiced in different degree by both 
 the Syndicalists and the Guild Socialists. It is the criticism 
 that nationalization as advocated by the State Socialists 
 wovdd clamp down upon industrial management the bureau- 
 cratic control of politicians, men who know nothing about 
 industrial technique and therefore cannot be efl&cient, and 
 who are likely to use industrial control for their own political 
 advantage, if not for their private profit. It is also pointed 
 out that pohtical management is far removed from the work- 
 ers; though they have the right to vote they have httle voice 
 in the state and but little share in its control. Therefore the 
 argmnent runs that the political control of industry would 
 remove the control still fvnther from the workers than the 
 absentee management of private capitalism. The Guild So- 
 cialists propose to avoid both these consequences of state 
 socialism and also the social tyranny likely to result from the 
 proposal of the Syndicalists to eliminate the political state 
 and put the control of all social fimctions in the hands of the 
 people organized as economic producers, by having a dual sys- 
 tem. They would put the administration of production into 
 the hands of the organized workers of aU capacities but make 
 them responsible to the state representing all the people and 
 taking charge of the administration of distribution and con- 
 sumption. 
 
 It must be remembered that the Labor Party program 
 deals only with political action. Those who compose it are 
 acting directly in the economic field through their trade 
 unions and cooperative societies. It merely dismisses the 
 whole question of localization of industrial democracy with 
 a phrase concerning the necessity of "increasing the partici- 
 pation of the workers in the management, both central and 
 local," without any indication of ineasures through which 
 that participation is to be worked out. The program shows 
 
2IO THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 a tendency to overwork the formula of nationalization. The 
 question of democratic control of industry is a field for experi- 
 ment and not for dogma. Democracy in industry can be ac- 
 complished only in the same way that a measure of it has 
 been realized in the state, and that is by the method of trial 
 and error. 
 
 For enterprises that are left in. private hands, the British 
 Labor Party proposes strict government regulation. It in- 
 sists that gains which have been secured during war time 
 through governmental control of industry shall not be al- 
 lowed to lapse. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, we ought not to throw away the valuable 
 experience now gained by the government in its assumption of the 
 importation of wheat, wool, metals, and other commodities, and in its 
 control of the shipping, woollen, leather, clothing, boot and shoe, 
 milling, baking, butchering, and other industries. The Labor Party 
 holds that, whatever may have been the shortcomings of this Govern- 
 ment importation and control, it has demonstrably prevented a lot of 
 'profiteering.' Nor can it end immediately on the Declaration of 
 Peace. The people will be extremely foolish if they ever allow their 
 indispensable industries to slip back into the unfettered control of 
 private capitalists, who are, actually at the instance of the Goverimient 
 itself, now rapidly combining, trade by trade, into monopolist trusts, 
 which may presently become as ruthless in their extortion as the worst 
 American examples. Standing as it does for the Democratic Control 
 of Industry, the Labor Party would think twice before it sanctioned 
 any abandonment of the present profitable centralisation of purchase 
 of raw material; of the present carefully organised 'rationing,' by 
 joint committees of the trades concerned, of the several establishments 
 with the materials they require; of the present elaborate system of 
 'costing' and public audit of manufacturers' accounts, so as to stop 
 the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency of the more 
 backward firms; of the present salutary publicity of manufacturing 
 processes and expenses thereby ensured; and, on the information thus 
 obtained (in order never again to revert to the old-time profiteering) 
 of the present rigid fixing, for standarised products, of maximum prices 
 at the factory, at the warehouse of the wholesale trader, and in the 
 retail shop. 
 
 The demand is made that the government should protect 
 the consumer as well as the producer. 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 211 
 
 It is, SO the Labor Party holds, just as much the function of Govern- 
 ment, and just as necessary a part of the Democratic Regulation of 
 Industry, to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole, and 
 those of all grades and sections of private consumers, in the matter of 
 prices, as it is, by the Factory and Trade Boards Acts, to protect the 
 rights of the wage-earning producers in the matter of wages, hours of 
 labor, and sanitation. 
 
 In the attempt to work out a democratic control of industry 
 there will have to be some checks and balances in order to 
 prevent the consumers from unduly beating down the pro- 
 ducers, and the producers from unduly exploiting the con- 
 sumers. In the last analysis this means that we will all need 
 to realize that we are in one and the same person, and in one 
 and the same group, part producer and part consumer, and 
 must therefore acquire sufficient control to prevent one aspect 
 of our lives from interfering with the other. If we can come 
 to see the soKdarity of life we shall be able better to adjust 
 the differences between these two aspects of our living. Prog- 
 ress lies in discovering and developing mutuaUty of interest, 
 not in the adjustment of conflicting interests that are then 
 allowed to remain in essential conffict. 
 
 The third piUar in the house of the new social order pro- 
 posed by British Labor is The Revolution in National Fi- 
 nance. The word revolution in this connection need not in- 
 crease the present terror at its soimd, for what is here proposed 
 is very mild in the light of what is now happening to private 
 property in other parts of Europe. This subject is approached 
 with the statement that: 
 
 In taxation, also, the interests of the professional and housekeeping 
 classes are at one with those of the manual workers. 
 
 And again: 
 
 In this matter the Labor Party claims the support of four-fifths of 
 the whole nation, for the interests of the clerk, the teacher, the doctor, 
 the minister of religion, the average retail shopkeeper and trade, and 
 
212 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 all the mass of those living on small incomes are identical with those of 
 the artisan. 
 
 Again science is called into court. 
 
 Too long has our National Finance been regulated, contrary to 
 the teaching of Political Economy, according to the wishes of the 
 possessing classes and the profits of the financiers. The colossal ex- 
 penditure involved in the present war (of which, against the protest 
 of the Labor Party, only a quarter has been raised by taxation, whilst 
 three-quarters have been borrowed at onerous rates of interest, to be a 
 burden on the nation's future) brings things to a crisis. 
 
 In this matter science does not stand with a clear record. 
 There have been teachers of political economy who have helped 
 the financiers to regulate the national finance to their profit. 
 In this country some economists informed the Treasury De- 
 partment of the social consequences to the common people 
 of a policy of war finance which depended largely upon loans. 
 Others advised in the interests of the present financial system 
 and still more were silent. No adequate protest was made 
 against the incorporation of tax exemption features into the 
 Liberty Loans by those who know well that for aU the priv- 
 ileges which the people of means thus receive, the people of 
 small income will eventually have to pay and pay rotmdly. 
 
 The report also points out how the war has rendered much 
 more acute for every nation the question of taxation. 
 
 When peace comes, capital will be needed for all sorts of social 
 enterprises, and the resources of Government will necessarily have to 
 be vastly greater than they were before the war. Meanwhile innumera- 
 ble new private fortunes are being heaped up by those who have taken 
 advantage of the nation's needs; and the one-tenth of the population 
 which owns nine-tenths of the riches of the United Kingdom, far from 
 being made poorer, will find itself, in the aggregate, as a result of the 
 war, drawing in rent and interest and dividends a larger nominal in- 
 come than ever before. Such a position demands a revolution in na- 
 tional finance. 
 
 The same facts obtain in this country in about the same 
 degree, though the large national resources of this nation and 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 213 
 
 the tremendous increase in its capital wealth derived from 
 the war make a little less threatening the question that is 
 now troubling Europe of who is going to pay the bill? Is it 
 going to be paid by those nine-tenths of the people who own 
 the one-tenth of the riches, and are the one-tenth who own 
 nine-tenths to escape their due share by means of tax-exempted 
 loans, offering them a still larger share of the national income 
 and opportunity for stiU further profit from the national ne- 
 cessity, as they have already profited from the agony of 
 Europe? The question will not long remain unanswered even 
 in this complacent country. 
 
 For its answer the British program lays down certain def- 
 inite principles. 
 
 The Labor Party stands for such a system of taxation as will 
 yield all the necessary revenue to the Government without encroaching 
 on the prescribed National Minimum Standard of Life of any family 
 whatsoever; without hampering production or discouraging any useful 
 personal effort, and with the nearest possible approximation to equality 
 of sacrifice. 
 
 Naturally these principles will seem contradictory to those 
 who own nine-tenths of the property. To draw the national 
 finance only from regions above the National Minimum 
 Standard of Life wUl seem to them inequahty. But if the 
 government is to maintain a national minimum of subsistence 
 by the aid of taxation, for to begin with it cannot be main- 
 tained without, it would be complete folly to then encroach 
 upon that minimum again by means of taxation. That would 
 be to bmld with one hand and destroy with the other. The 
 equality here contended for is an equality of sacrifice — a thing 
 not exactly popular among any class of the population, let 
 alone among the privileged one-tenth. 
 
 But whatever other kmd or degree of equality is necessary 
 to constitute a better social order, without equaHty of sacri- 
 fice it surely cannot live. A formal equality may be a tre- 
 
214 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 mendous inequaKty. If there is so much load to be carried, 
 and so many strong and so many weak to carry it, and then 
 each is required to carry his mathematical portion, formal 
 equaUty is achieved but actual equality is denied and the 
 load does not aU get moved. Proportionate equality, the 
 principle of service according to strength, is the only kind of 
 equaUty that satisfies the necessities of the case or the dictates 
 of conscience. From time immemorial the strong have con- 
 trolled civilization and government on the principle that to 
 them the battle should be, and to the swift, the race. But 
 since one came teaching the reversion of that principle, de- 
 claring that the strong should serve and not rule in propor- 
 tion to their strength, increasing numbers of men have come 
 to understand the meaning of strength and to accept its 
 obligations. Gradually Hfe gets organized on the basis of 
 equaUty of service and sacrifice. In this particular case this 
 principle clearly means that the burden of national finance 
 shall be borne by those able to carry it without injury to 
 themselves or to the common life. When the sources of in- 
 come are examined, it is seen that such a method of taxation 
 makes for equahty in a wider sense. It appears that as income 
 rises above the minimum standard an ever-increasing propor- 
 tion of the excess comes out of the common toil, is the creation 
 of common activity. Abstracted for the enlargement of a 
 few, it leaves the common Hfe so much the weaker and poorer. 
 Put back into the common Hfe from whence it came, it helps 
 to provide more equal opportunity for the development of all. 
 To maintain this principle of equaHty of sacrifice and of 
 burden according to strength, the foUowing measures are 
 proposed: 
 
 We definitely repudiate all proposals for a Protective Tariflf, in 
 whatever specious guise they may be cloaked, as a device for burdening 
 the consumer with unnecessarily enhanced prices, to the profit of the 
 capitalist employer or landed proprietor, who avowedly expects his 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 215 
 
 profit or rent to be increased thereby. We shall strenuously oppose any 
 taxation, of whatever kind, which would increase the price of food or 
 of any other necessary of life. We hold that indirect taxation on 
 commodites, whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited 
 to luxuries; and concentrated principally on those of which it is socially 
 desirable that the consumption should be actually discouraged. We 
 are at one with the manufacturer, the farmer, and the trader in ob- 
 jecting to taxes interfering with production or commerce, or hampering 
 transport and communication. In all these matters — once more in 
 contrast with the other political parties, and by no means in the 
 interests of the wage-earners alone — the Labor Party demands that 
 the very definite teachings of economic science should no longer be 
 disregarded. 
 
 "For the raising of the greater part of the revenue now required the 
 Labor Party looks to the direct taxation of the incomes above the 
 necessary cost of family maintenance; and for the requisite effort to 
 pay off the National Debt, to the direct taxation of private fortunes 
 both during life and at death. The Income Tax and Super-tax ought 
 at once to be thoroughly reformed in assessment and collection, in 
 abatements and allowances and in graduation and differentiation, so 
 as to levy the required total sum in such a way as to make the real 
 sacrifice of all the taxpayers as nearly as possible equal. This would 
 involve assessment by families instead of by individual persons, so that 
 the burden is alleviated in proportion to the number of persons to be 
 maintained. 
 
 It would involve bringing into assessment the numerous windfalls 
 of profit that now escape, and a further differentiation between essen- 
 tially different kinds of income. The Excess Profits Tax might well be 
 retained in an appropriate form; whilst so long as Mining Royalties 
 exist the Mineral Rights Duty ought to be increased. The steadily 
 rising Unearned Increment of urban and mineral land ought, by an 
 appropriate direct Taxation of Land Values, to be wholly brought into 
 the Public Exchequer. At the same time, for the service and redemp- 
 tion of the National Debt, the Death Duties ought to be regraduated, 
 much more strictly collected, and greatly increased. In this matter 
 we need, in fact, completely to reverse our point of view, and to re- 
 arrange the whole taxation of inheritance from the standpoint of asking 
 what is the minimum amount that any rich man should be permitted at 
 death to divert, by his wiU, from the National Exchequer, which should 
 normally be the heir to all private riches in excess of a quite moderate 
 amount by way of family provision. But all this will not suffice. It 
 will be imperative at the earliest possible moment to free the nation 
 from at any rate the greater part of its new load of interest-bearing 
 
2l6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 debt for loans which ought to have been levied as taxation; and the 
 Labor Party stands for a special Capital Levy to pay oflF, if not the 
 whole, a very substantial part of the entire National Debt — a Capital 
 Levy chargeable like the Death Duties on all property, but (in order to 
 secure approximate equality of sacrifice) with exception of the smallest 
 savings, and for the rest at rates very steeply graduated, so as to take 
 only a small contribution from the little people and a very much larger 
 percentage from the millionaires. 
 
 Most of these proposals have been debated in the reahn of 
 practical poUcies for some years and are being tried in some 
 measure or form. Property holders have become more or less 
 acquainted with taxes on income, excess profits and inheri- 
 tance, and in some countries with taxes on mineral rights 
 and on the "unearned increment of urban and mineral land." 
 But to propose to meet the war debt by a levy on capitial is 
 another matter. That touches the keystone of the present 
 economic structure, and will be labeled at once with the 
 sinister title " Confiscation." But before that word be loosely 
 apphed or objected to, the question must be asked whence 
 came this capital that is to be thus appropriated. If it is con- 
 stituted of profits earned out of the war itself, over and above 
 the cost of maintenance on the scale of luxury, then in the 
 name of common sense and justice why should it not be used 
 to pay off the debts of the war instead of charging them off to 
 the future as a burden upon production. If this indeed be 
 confiscation, it is quite likely, whatever may happen in the 
 United States, that in Great Britain the one-tenth who own 
 nine-tenths of the wealth will shortly have their choice between 
 this form of that remedy for national bankruptcy and one 
 that is much more drastic. 
 
 Quite recently the leader of one of the largest labor organ- 
 izations of Great Britain informed the House of Commons 
 that its members had become very much disillusioned during 
 the war concerning the efl&cacy of excess profits taxes. He 
 said that labor had discovered that what happens is that the 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 217 
 
 state, instead of the capitalist, becomes the recipient of what 
 is admitted to be an undue part of the proceeds of its toil, col- 
 lected at second hand from the employer, and used by the 
 state, in whose control labor is not adequately represented, 
 in other ways than labor would choose to use it. He then 
 served notice on the government that labor was not content 
 to have the state even indirectly appropriate the powers and 
 continue the injustices of the present system of production. 
 This argument is an amplification of the point made in the 
 Labor Party program concerning the exemption from taxation 
 of iacomes below the minimimi standard. Labor is evidently 
 getting tired of making its financial contribution to the State 
 in vicarious form. It prefers to pay directly and seeks to get 
 into the position where it will be able to do so. Those who 
 object to paying so large a share of the taxes, who grumble, for 
 example, at paying to educate the children of the poor — "let 
 them pay for their own — ^we do " — ^would do well to consider 
 the indirect taxation that gets laid upon the labor and con- 
 sumption of the poor. They might also consider that the diffi- 
 culty could be met by arranging such a distribution of prop- 
 erty and income as to enable direct taxation to be laid over a 
 wider area of the population. The spirit of a humanitarian 
 reHgion and the spirit of scientific inquiry are joined together 
 in urging the attempt. It wiU necessarily involve in the 
 transitional stage some injustices to individuals. In an im- 
 perfect world they cannot be entirely avoided, but they 
 can and must be reduced to a minimum. Our legal system 
 and ethical code so exalt the rights of private property 
 that most of us are more concerned with justice for the in- 
 dividuals who now hold title to possessions than we are with 
 justice for the multitudes who own only their labor power. 
 If this continues, the injustice to both will in the long run be 
 greater than they need be, in making the adjustment that 
 the need and the ideal alike require. The taxation question 
 
2l8 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 must be settled on the same basis as the question of the na- 
 tional minimum; the primary consideration must be the 
 social development of the entire population. This will include 
 due consideration for the beneficiaries of the present system. 
 The final pillar which the British Labor Party proposes for 
 the house of the New Social Order is the Surplus for the Com- 
 mon Good. 
 
 In the disposal of the surplus above the Standard of Life society 
 has hitherto gone as far wrong as in its neglect to secure the necessary 
 basis of any genuine industrial e£5ciency or decent social order. We 
 have allowed the riches of our mines, the rental value of the lands 
 superior to the margin of cultivation, the extra profits of the fortunate 
 capitalists, even the material outcome of scientific discoveries — which 
 ought by now to have made this Britain of ours immune from class 
 poverty or from any widespread destitution — to be absorbed by in- 
 dividual proprietors; and then devoted very largely to the senseless 
 luxury of an idle rich class. Against this misappropriation of the 
 wealth of the community, the Labor Party — speaking in the interests 
 not of the wage-earners alone, but of every grade and section of pro- 
 ducers by hand or by brain, not to mention also those of the genera- 
 tions that are to succeed us, and of the permanent welfare of the com- 
 munity — ^emphaticaUy protests. One main Pillar of the House that 
 the Labor Party intends to build is the future appropriation of the 
 Surplus, not to the enlargement of any individual fortune, but to the 
 Common Good. 
 
 It is in the proposal for this appropriation of every Surplus for the 
 Common Good — in the vision of its resolute use for the building up of 
 the community as a whole instead of for the magnification of individual 
 fortunes— that the Labor Party, as the Party of the Producers by hand 
 or by brain, most distinctively marks itself ofi from the older political 
 parties, standing, as these do, essentially for the maintenance, unim- 
 paired, of the perpetual private mortgage upon the annual product 
 of the nation that is involved in the individual ownership of land and 
 capital. 
 
 There is an assumption here whose validity must await 
 experiment. It is not that the expropriation for social purposes 
 of the wealth that is at present used to maintain luxury would 
 immediately provide a national minimum and then a surplus 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 210 
 
 for other purposes, but that it would operate to that end. One 
 of the gentlemen from Russia who is now trying to secure the 
 support of this nation for the forces that are seeking to over- 
 throw the present goverimient of that country, recently told 
 an American audience that any attempt at a new social order 
 was folly because there never was and never would be enough 
 good things to go around and therefore a few must always 
 enjoy them. Now the men who wrote the British Labor 
 Party program know the exact national income. They well 
 know that neither England nor the United States, the richest 
 coimtries in the world, are producing enough wealth to give 
 to all their people the minitniun standard. What they are 
 counting upon is that with the beginnings of a national mini- 
 mmn and the social use of the surplus wealth that now goes 
 into private fortunes there will commence a development 
 of labor power and an increase in production that will pro- 
 gressively increase like compound interest, enabling the com- 
 pletion of the program and the development of social wealth 
 and weKare such as society has not yet enjoyed. For this 
 assumption they have the justification of the results of such 
 approaches to their program as have already been made. 
 
 In England the individual appropriation for luxury pur- 
 poses of the surplus of production results largely from the 
 individual ownership of the land in the form continued from 
 feudal times. The right to coUect rent, transmitted from 
 generation to generation, creates a leisure, luxury class, de- 
 prives others of the opportunity to get a minimum standard 
 of life through their toil, and so progressively lowers the capac- 
 ity of production through generation after generation, and 
 then by stimulating luxury consumption still further limits 
 the productive process. 
 
 The people of the United States have not yet appreciated 
 the fact that those who hold the right to charge for the use of 
 the land upon which society depends for food and timber 
 
220 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 and minerals have been given the power to tax other people 
 directly and indirectly, and do indeed hold a perpetual mort- 
 gage upon the nation's life. This practice has long been held 
 imjust by the common people of Europe and by many teachers 
 of rehgion. The builders of this nation escaped from oppres- 
 sion in Europe without seeing its roots. They gave the land 
 into individual ownership as a means and guarantee of free- 
 dom. They did not foresee the later bondage into which our 
 people would come by the concentration of land ownership. 
 The basic reason for the low condition of hfe for multitudes 
 of people on the Island of Manhattan is the fact that a few 
 people can tax the life of the rest in the form of rental values. 
 The same holds true for some rural sections, where a 
 tenant population lives continually below the minimum of 
 subsistence. 
 
 The proposal of "the surplus for the common good" rests 
 upon two ethical groimds: first, the nature of its origin and, 
 second, the nature of its use. The origin is declared to be the 
 common natural resources and the associated labor power of 
 humanity. Capital wealth is declared to be the common 
 creation just as land is declared to be the common resource. 
 It is held to be not simply the joint product of the laborer 
 and the capitalist but a social product created by the develop- 
 ment and cooperation of the whole commvmity. The ques- 
 tion of its ownership and administration, whether individual 
 or common and in what degree, is continually to be deter- 
 mined by the commxmity, and all vested personal rights are 
 subject to revision by the commimity which granted them 
 and sustains them. There is a strong belief here in this coun- 
 try that every man should keep the product of his own labor. 
 Those who hold that to be valid must also grant it for society 
 at large, and should therefore see to it that the community 
 gets the product of its labor, that it does not go to individual 
 ownership. 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 221 
 
 As long as private enterprise is necessary, and it will be in a 
 large part of our industry for a long time to come and perhaps 
 always, so long will it be necessary for the community to ex- 
 propriate the surplus wealth acquired by individuals for the 
 commimity purposes, if it is going to get either the maximum 
 of production or the minimum standard of living. To attain 
 these ends, whatever is necessary to release the energies that 
 now lie dormant at the bottom of society must be done. The 
 lower layers of human life correspond to a lot of xmdeveloped 
 water power with aU its potential energy, its possible light 
 and heat and mechanical power, waiting for people to come 
 and transmute it into inmunerable benefits for mankind. It 
 is so with the undeveloped energies of the people who are only 
 half nourished, half educated, and half free. Whatever is 
 necessary and possible for their development, however large 
 a piece of the surplus at the top must be lopped off, it must 
 be done if we are to continue to believe in the right of all men 
 everywhere to life, liberty and happiness or in the duty of the 
 community to develop its maximum power. In this matter the 
 p)eople at the bottom in Europe are making it very clear that 
 the choice is now between the immediate working out of 
 some such program as that of the British Labor Party or the 
 more communistic plans of Eastern and Central Europe, which 
 win suddenly clip life off somewhere near the minimum stand- 
 ard and gamble everything on its ability by coordinated effort 
 to branch out with renewed vigor and beauty. 
 
 The case for the common use of the social surplus rests 
 finally upon the end to be achieved. On this ground, rather 
 than on the question of origia, the matter wiU finally be 
 settled. Does the private ownership of surplus wealth pro- 
 vide better for the extension of industrial enterprise than 
 common capital? Does private wealth with its enormous 
 foundations for philanthropy and education do more for social 
 development than the common administration of its surplus 
 
222 THE NBW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 by the community itself? It can be answered only by labora- 
 tory test and this the Labor Party proposes to try. 
 
 It is from this constantly arising surplus (to be secured, on the one 
 hand, by Nationalization and Municipalization and, on the other, by 
 the steeply graduated Taxation of Private Income and Riches) that 
 ■will have to be found the new capital which the community day by day 
 needs for the perpetual improvement and increase of its various enter- 
 prises, for which we shall decline to be dependent on the usury-exacting 
 financiers. It is from the same source that has to be defrayed the public 
 provision for the Sick and Infirm of all kinds (including that for 
 Maternity and Infancy) which is still so scandalously insufficient; for 
 the Aged and those prematurely incapacitated by accident or disease, 
 now in many ways so imperfectly cared for; for the education alike of 
 children, of adolescents and of adults, in which the Labor Party de- 
 mands a genuine equality of opportunity, overcoming all differences of 
 material circumstances; and for the organization of public improve- 
 ments of all kinds, including the brightening of the lives of those now 
 condemned to almost ceaseless toil, and a great development of the 
 means of recreation. From the same source must come the greatly 
 increased public provision that the Labor Party will insist on being 
 made for scientific investigation and original research, in every branch 
 of knowledge, not to say also for the promotion of music, literature and 
 fine art, which have been under Capitalism so greatly neglected, and 
 upon which, so the Labor Party holds, any real development of civiliza- 
 tion fundamentally depends. Society, like the individual, does not 
 live by bread alone — does not exist only for perpetual wealth produc- 
 tion. 
 
 The final appeal of this program is thus to the spiritual 
 aspirations of the people. What the present order does to 
 these we know and are not satisfied with it. We desire then 
 to discover what happens to the spirit of man if the develop- 
 ment of the common life in its highest reaches is made the real 
 object of industrial endeavor? Will the conflict between the 
 world of work and the world of culture be ended? WiU men 
 labor to make a surplus for the common good or only for their 
 own appropriation? Will the productive energy of mankind 
 be increased by giving the common effort the greatest goal 
 that human thought can conceive? At present the affirmations 
 in this direction are of faith, not knowledge. But that faith is 
 
THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 223 
 
 determined to discover whether it is justified. If it is doomed 
 to defeat, it at least must have demonstrated knowledge of 
 its incapacity to translate itself into action. 
 
 The British Labor program is not unmindful of interna- 
 tional relationships. It reaches out to the street of to-morrow, 
 to join hands with all peoples, and declares itself opposed to 
 all imperialism and selfish isolation. 
 
 We look for an ever-increasing intercourse, a constantly developing 
 exchange of commodities, a steadily growing mutual understanding, 
 and a continually expanding friendly cooperation among all the peoples 
 of the world. 
 
 As regards our relations to Foreign Countries, we disavow and 
 disclaim any desire or intention to dispossess or to impoverish any 
 other State or Nation. We seek no increase of territory. We disclaim 
 all idea of " economic war." We ourselves object to all Protective Cus- 
 toms Tariffs; but we hold that each nation must be left free to do what 
 it thinks best for its own economic development, without thought of 
 injuring others. We believe that nations are in no way damaged 
 by each other's economic prosperity or commercial progress; but, 
 on the contrary, that they are actually themselves mutually enriched 
 thereby. 
 
 In conclusion: 
 
 The Labor Party is far from assuming that it possesses a key to 
 open all locks; or that any policy which it can formulate will solve all 
 the problems that beset us. 
 
 Then comes the final emphasis upon the use of scientific 
 knowledge to make effective the spirit of good-wiU. 
 
 On the other hand, the Labor Party has no belief in any of the 
 problems of the world being solved by Good Will alone. Good Will 
 without knowledge is Warmth without Light. Especially in all the 
 complexities of politics, Ln the still undeveloped Science of Society, the 
 Labor Party stands for increased study, for the scientific investigation 
 of each succeeding problem, for the deliberate organization of research, 
 and for a much more rapid dissemination among the whole people of 
 all the science that exists. And it is perhaps specially the Labor Party 
 that has the duty of placing this Advancement of Science in the fore- 
 front of its political programme. What the Labor Party stands for in 
 all fields of life is, essentially. Democratic Cooperation; and cooperation 
 
224 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRENCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 involves a common purpose which can be agreed to, a common plan 
 which can be explained and discussed, and such a measure of success 
 in the adaptation of means to ends as will ensure a common satisfac- 
 tion. An autocratic Sultan may govern without science if his whim is 
 law. A Plutocratic Party may choose to ignore science, if it is heedless 
 whether its pretended solutions of social problems that may win politi- 
 cal triumphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no Labor Party can hope 
 to maintain its position unless its proposals are, in fact, the outcome of 
 the best Political Science of its time; or to fulfil its purpose unless that 
 science is continually wresting new fields from human ignorance. 
 Hence, although the Purpose of the Labor Party must, by the law of 
 its being, remain for all time unchanged, its Policy and its Programme 
 will, we hope, undergo a perpetual development, as knowledge grows, 
 and as new phases of the social problem present themselves, in a con- 
 tinually finer adjustment of our measures to our ends. If Law is the 
 Mother of Freedom, Science, to the Labor Party, must be the Parent 
 of Law. 
 
 The distinction of this program is that it combines the 
 clear, white light of science with the rich glow of a passion for 
 the development of the highest that human life can reach, that 
 is truly religious. Herein lies its appeal to the professional 
 workers, and also its challenge. Will science become the serv- 
 ant of privilege or the servant of the common people? That 
 is the question for the educated world to face to-day. Will 
 scientifically trained people devote themselves to the help of 
 their less equipped fellows and the solution of the conunon 
 social problems or will they seek personal comfort and prestige? 
 It is the day of reckoning for the people of learning. They 
 have to stand before millions of toilers the world over and 
 give answer concerning the use of their talents. They will 
 neither be acquitted nor be able to take due part in the future 
 development of mankind unless they can subordinate the 
 passion for knowledge to the passion for humanity. It is their 
 obligation and privilege to make science the servant of aU 
 mankind, ever seeking all that is now unknown and the fullest 
 use of all that is known, so that life may be continually im- 
 f olded by the hght of knowledge and nourished by the warmth 
 of good will, 
 
CHAPTER Vni 
 
 THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 
 
 The program of the British Labor Party speaks for those 
 socialists who seek to transform the existing economic order 
 gradually, and rely mainly upon political action. The pro- 
 gram of the Russian Soviet RepubUc speaks for the social- 
 ists who seek an immediate economic revolution and rely 
 mainly upon direct, industrial action. Its main features ex- 
 press the demands of the Left Wing of the socialist move- 
 ment the world over. The Soviet program also speaks 
 on certain important points for the SjnidicaHsts, who 
 are represented in the United States by the I. W. W. 
 Like the program of the British Labor Party, the Rus- 
 sian program was mostly made by the intellectuals; it 
 claims, however, to more closely represent the voice of 
 the working class of Russia because they were technically 
 in control of its formation and development. It must also 
 be remembered that it emerges out of a different stage of 
 economic and poHtical development. The Russian people 
 have had no such tra inin g in political democracy as England 
 has enjoyed. Industrial organization does not constitute so 
 large a part of their life, and a good deal of their agriculture 
 has been conducted on a communist or semi-communist basis. 
 
 In Russia the political party which at present controls the 
 Soviet Government, the Bolsheviki — ^meaning the many or 
 the majority — claims to have come to power in the swirl of 
 revolutionary forces because it represented the needs and as- 
 pirations of the overwhelming majority of the Russian popu- 
 lation, the "peasants and workers," whereas it insists that 
 
 22S 
 
226 THE iSTEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the Menshiviki or minority party spoke more truly for the 
 needs and desires of the very small middle class. 
 
 The ofi&cial title of the government of Central Russia is the 
 Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. It declares its 
 fundamental problem to be "the establishment of a socialist 
 society" and also "the victory of Socialism in all lands." Yet 
 it has been, and will be, bitterly opposed by many socialists, 
 both in Russia and in other parts of the world who wiU oppose 
 it not for its aims but for its methods. In its method, the 
 Russian Soviet Program is the voice of those who call them- 
 selves, and actually are, the dispossessed and disinherited of 
 the earth, since its natural resources upon which the common 
 life depends have passed into the control of others. These 
 people are naturally impatient for immediate social change. 
 The wonder is that they have been patient so long. The Soviet 
 program speaks for peasants in Eastern Europe who have 
 been but little better than serfs, and for industrial workers 
 who have been called swine and treated and compelled to hve 
 as swine are not in some places treated or compelled to live. 
 Also recent events in Central and Western Europe, and certain 
 tendencies in newer parts of the earth, show that the essential 
 features of the Russian program do express the needs and 
 longings of the lowest stratum of modern industrial society. 
 It is then a voice from below rudely breaking into the conven- 
 tions of the existing order. The voice of the want underneath 
 all the plenty of Hfe, which society refused to hear when it 
 cried its woes, is now speaking in such fashion that all the 
 world must listen. The present order has been too busy mak- 
 ing money to heed the voice of the people at the bottom. It 
 wiU now be very busy trying to silence or to satisfy that voice, 
 according to its wisdom. 
 
 The distinction of the Russian Soviet program, as against 
 any other program for a new order advanced from any other 
 quarter, is that in Russia it has been done. The discussion 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 227 
 
 has been taken out of the reabn of argument and put into the 
 domain of fact. Part of the program of the British Labor 
 Party, like parts of all other programs that various groups are 
 offering for a new world, has been in operation, and of course 
 only parts of the Russian Soviet program have yet been 
 carried out; but the point is that a socialist government, inau- 
 gurating a new economic order, has been established and has 
 maintained itself in central Russia for over a year, in spite of 
 an inheritance of chaos from the old regime and the further 
 disruption of economic life by continuous attack from without 
 and from within. 
 
 This was an unthinkable thing before 1914, just as the 
 world war was inconceivable. Even now it is apparentiy just 
 as impossible to the political democracies that a socialist gov- 
 ernment should successfully operate, as it was impossible to 
 monarchical Europe that revolutionary France could estab- 
 lish a Republic and make it work. But whatever happens to 
 the present Government in Russia from whatever cause, 
 whether it fail because of the tactics of those who control it or 
 because its principles are impossible, whether it be suppressed 
 from without or overthrown from within, the record is written 
 into human history that a govenmient based on a sociahst 
 economic system once hved. It is a new event and it remains 
 to teach and to change human life forever after. Because 
 this thing has been done, because the socialist theory has 
 been taken off paper and made to Hve and move and have a 
 being, all organized Hfe will be quickened by what happens 
 in Russia, by its failure or by its success, by its evil as weU 
 as by its good. 
 
 The present discussion concerns the paper program and 
 not the practical working of the Soviet government. The latter 
 question is a matter of disputed evidence on both sides and 
 its determination must await more unbiased data and his- 
 torical perspective. In judging programs for social change 
 
228 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 a distinction must be made between aim and method, also be- 
 tween method that is essential to aim and method which is 
 incidental to the situation ia which the aim is attempted. 
 What effect the Russian Socialist RepubKc wiU have upon 
 human development is, in the long run, to be determined by its 
 aim and by the methods which its programme reveals as es- 
 sential to the aim, and not by those incidents attendant upon 
 its inception which can be traced to conditioning circumstances 
 more than to the nature of the thing attempted. There is an 
 analogy, as historians have lately been pointing out, between 
 the Russian situation and the French Revolution. In one 
 the main issue was the organization of a new political order, 
 in the other it is the organization of a new economic order. 
 Both were attended by violence, crime and terrorism, in vary- 
 ing degree, determined by contingent circumstances more 
 than by aim and purpose. For this they both earned and 
 secured the moral condemnation of the Anglo-Saxon people, 
 trained in different methods and able to accompHsh their 
 purposes with less upheaval. It is interesting now to compare 
 the attitude of those who are charged with teaching the people 
 of this country, the leaders of education and rehgion, to the 
 French Revolution and to the Russian Revolution. Who of 
 them win denounce the aim and ideal of the French Revolu- 
 tion? Who of them will for a moment support the methods 
 that were in vogue in Paris in revolutionary days? With 
 historical discrimination they separate the temporary method, 
 the incidental circumstance, from the fundamental aim and 
 ideal. They do not teach that the Paris Commune had in it 
 nothing of virtue and value for human society. In proclaiming 
 the contribution of the French Revolution to the development 
 of democracy they do not even find it necessary to denounce 
 its bloody excesses. That goes without saying. Do they apply 
 the same methods to the present situation in Russia? Do they 
 face it with the same sense of obligation to discover and pro- 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 229 
 
 claim truth, which is the essential, ethical imperative of their 
 profession? Here is a situation which is vital in determining 
 the course of development for other nations, and the people 
 are at the mercy of partisan propaganda from both sides. If 
 the higher education is ever to justify itself by showing the 
 value of the trained mind, now is the opportunity. It is 
 time for the teachers and preachers and writers to demon- 
 strate that it is possible to maintain the scientific attitude 
 not only to the past but also to the present, despite the 
 storm of passion and prejudice and the subtle pressure of 
 class interests. 
 
 This issue goes far beyond the question of what is the truth 
 about Russia. There is a conflict growing in the democratic 
 nations between the poHtical state and an economic organiza- 
 tion of society. ShaU we see something of the same sort of 
 defense of the existing order as the famous, or infamous, ninety- 
 three professors in Germany made of the existing order there, 
 and for the same fimdamental reasons? Their offense was 
 not that they stood up for the Fatherland but that they were 
 false to the obligation of their profession by accepting at its 
 face value what their government chose to tell them. They 
 were traitors to science and some of them to religion. The 
 propaganda method of the German State has now become the 
 habit of the democratic governments. They will use it power- 
 fully against any proposed changes, more by suppressing part 
 of the facts than by fabrication. The persons who can get 
 the truth and tell the truth are those who have been trained 
 and set apart for this purpose. The intellectual integrity 
 of the American preaching and teaching profession is 
 absolutely at stake in the rise of the new order. If any 
 of its members do in any part the same thing here which 
 those professors did in Germany they will share their 
 ignominy. 
 
 The purposes and aim of The Russian Socialist Federated 
 
230 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Soviet Republic are set forth in Articles One and Two of 
 the Constitution as follows: ^ 
 
 ARTICLE ONE 
 
 Declaration of Rights of the Laboring and Exploited People 
 
 Chapter One 
 
 1. Russia is declared to be a Republic of the Soviets of Workers', 
 Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies. AH the central and local power 
 belongs to these Soviets. 
 
 2. The Russian Soviet Republic is organized on the basis of a free 
 union of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national Republics. 
 
 Chapter Two 
 
 3. Bearing in mind as its fundamental problem the abolition of 
 exploitation of men by men, the entire abolition of the division of the 
 people into classes, the suppression of exploiters, the establishment 
 of a Socialist society, and the victory of socialism in all lands, the third 
 AU-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' 
 Deputies further resolves: 
 
 a. for the purpose of realizing the socialization of land, all private 
 property in land is abolished, and the entire land is declared to be 
 national property and is to be apportioned among husbandmen with- 
 out any compensation to the former owners, in the measure of each 
 one's ability to till it. 
 
 b. all forests, treasures of the earth, and waters of general public 
 utility, all implements whether animate or inanimate, model farms and 
 agricultural enterprises, are declared to be national property. 
 
 c. as a first step towards complete transfer of ownership to the 
 Soviet Republic of all factories, mills, mines, railways, and other 
 means of production and transportation, the Soviet law for the control 
 by workmen and the establishment of the Supreme Soviet of National 
 Economy is hereby confirmed, so as to assure the power of the workers 
 over the exploiters. 
 
 d. with reference to international banking and finance, the third 
 Congress of Soviets is discussing the Soviet decree regarding the 
 annulment of loans made by the Government of the Czar, by land- 
 owners and the bourgeoisie, and it trusts that the Soviet Government 
 will firmly follow this course until the final victory of the international 
 workers' revolt against the oppression of capital. 
 
 •The translation is that printed by "The Nation," of New York, 
 made from an official printed text, required by law to be posted in all 
 public places in Russia. 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 23 1 
 
 e. the transfer of all banks into the ownership of the Workers' and 
 Peasants' Government, as one of the conditions of the liberation of the 
 toiling masses from the yoke of capital, is confirmed. 
 
 f. universal obligation to work is introduced for the purpose of 
 eliminating the parasitic strata of society and organizing the economic 
 life of the country. 
 
 g. for the purpose of securing the working class in the possession of 
 the complete power, and in order to eliminate all possibility of restoring 
 the power of the exploiters, it is decreed that all toilers be armed, and 
 that a Socialist Red Army be organized and the propertied class be 
 disarmed. 
 
 Chapter Three 
 
 4. Expressing its absolute resolve to liberate mankind from the 
 grip of capital and imperialism, which flooded the earth with blood in 
 this present most criminal of all wars, the third Congress of Soviets 
 fuUy agrees with the Soviet Government in its policy of breaking secret 
 treaties, of organizing on a wide scale the fraternization of the workers 
 and peasants of the belligerent armies, and of making all efforts to 
 conclude a general democratic peace without annexations or indem- 
 nities, upon the basis of the free determination of the peoples. 
 
 5. It is also to this end that the third Congress of Soviets insists 
 upon putting an end to the barbarous policy of the bourgeois civiliza- 
 tion which enables the exploiters of a few chosen nations to enslave 
 hundreds of millions of the toiling population of Asia, of the colonies, 
 and of small countries generally. 
 
 6. The third Congress of Soviets hails the policy of the Council of 
 People's Commissars in proclaiming the full independence of Finland, 
 in withdrawing troops from Persia, and in proclaiming the right of 
 Armenia to self-determination. 
 
 Chapter Four 
 
 7. The third All- Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', 
 and Peasants' Deputies believes that now, during the progress of the 
 decisive battle between the proletariat and its exploiters, the exploiters 
 can not hold a position in any branch of the Soviet Government. The 
 power must belong entirely to the toUing masses and to their plen- 
 ipotentiary representatives — the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and 
 Peasants' Deputies. 
 
 8. In its effort to create a league — free and voluntary, and for that 
 reason all the more complete and secure — of the working classes of 
 aU the peoples of Russia, the third Congress of Soviets merely estab- 
 lishes the fundamental principles of the federation of Russian Soviet 
 Republics, leaving to the workers and peasants of every people to 
 decide the following question at their plenary sessions of their Soviets: 
 
232 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 whether or not they desire to participate, and on what basis, in the 
 federal government and other federal Soviet institutions. 
 
 ARTICLE TWO 
 
 General Provisions of the Constitution of the Russian So- 
 cialist Federated Soviet Republic 
 
 Chapter Five 
 
 9. The fundamental problem of the Constitution of the Russian 
 Socialist Federated Soviet Republic involves, in view of the present 
 transition period, the establishment of a dictatorship of the urban and 
 rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry in the form of a powerful 
 All-Russian Soviet authority, for the purpose of abolishing the ex- 
 ploitation of men by men and of introducing Socialism, in which there 
 wUl be neither a division into classes nor a state of autocracy. 
 
 10. The Russian Republic is a free Socialist society of aU the working 
 people of Russia. The entire power, within the boundaries of the 
 Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, belongs to all the working 
 people of Russia, united in urban and rural Soviets. 
 
 11. The Soviets of those regions which differentiate themselves 
 by a special form of existence and national character may unite in 
 autonomous regional unions, ruled by the local Congress of the Soviets 
 and their executive organs. 
 
 These autonomous regional unions participate in the Russian 
 Socialist Federated Soviet Republic upon the basis of a federation. 
 
 12. The supreme power of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet 
 Republic belongs to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and, in 
 periods between the convocation of the Congress, to the All-Russian 
 Central Executive Committee. 
 
 13. For the purpose of securing to the toilers real freedom of con- 
 science, the church is to be separated from the state and the school 
 from the church, and the right of religious and anti-religious prop- 
 aganda is accorded to every citizen. 
 
 14. For the purpose of securing the freedom of expression to the 
 toiling masses, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic 
 abolishes all dependence of the press upon capital, and turns over to 
 the working people and the poorest peasantry all technical and mate- 
 rial means of publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc., and 
 guarantees their free circulation throughout the country. 
 
 IS- For the purpose of enabling the workers to hold free meetings, 
 the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic offers to the working 
 class and to the poorest peasantry furnished haUs, and takes care of 
 their heating and lighting appliances. 
 
 16. The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, having crushed 
 the economic and political power of the propertied classes and having 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 233 
 
 thus abolished all obstacles which interfered with the freedom of 
 organization and action of the workers and peasants, offers assistance, 
 material and other, to the workers and the poorest peasantry in their 
 effort to unite and organize. 
 
 17. For the purpose of guaranteeing to the workers real access to 
 knowledge, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic sets 
 itself the task of furnishing full and general free education to the 
 workers and the poorest peasantry. 
 
 18. The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic considers 
 work the duty of every citizen of the Republic, and proclaims as its 
 motto: "He shall not eat who does not work." 
 
 19. For the purpose of defending the victory of the great peasants' 
 and workers' revolution, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Re- 
 public recognizes the duty of aU citizens of the Republic to come to the 
 defense of their Socialist Fatherland, and it, therefore, introduces 
 universal military training. The honor of defending the revolution 
 with arms is given only to the toilers, and the non-toiling elements are 
 charged with the performance of other military duties. 
 
 20. In consequence of the solidarity of the toilers of all nations, the 
 Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic grants all political rights 
 of Russian citizens to foreigners who live in the territory of the Russian 
 Republic and are engaged in toil and who belong to the toiling class. 
 The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic also recognizes the 
 right of local Soviets to grant citizenship to such foreigners without 
 complicated formality. 
 
 21. The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic offers shelter 
 to all foreigners who seek refuge from political or religious persecution. 
 
 22. The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, recognizing 
 equal rights of aU citizens, irrespective of their racial or national con- 
 nections, proclaims all privileges on this ground, as well as oppression 
 of national minorities, to be in contradiction with the fundamental 
 laws of the Republic. 
 
 23. Being guided by the interests of the working class as a whole, 
 the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic deprives all individ- 
 uals and groups of rights which could be utilized by them to the detri- 
 ment of the Socialist Revolution. 
 
 It will be noticed that in contrast to the program of the 
 British Labor Party this program first states its aim nega- 
 tively. That is because it is the voice of the bottom crowd. 
 British Labor has worked longer at the practical aspects of the 
 problem and become more used to it. Its leaders, with a little 
 more time and ease in life, can afford to take things more dis- 
 
234 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 passionately and come at them a little more constructively. 
 But when people revolt against intolerable conditions, they 
 always first express themselves negatively. Injustice is the 
 source of moral indignation, whose social worth is proved 
 when it seeks to cleanse the temple of life. The Russian slogan 
 is abolition first of all; and abolition is always a word to con- 
 jure with, whether it is applied to slavery or the Hquor trafl&c, 
 not only because we like to smash things but because some- 
 times they need to be smashed. There are always perils in- 
 volved. Smashing things in the name of an ideal, affords an 
 expression for animal instincts as well as for reason. 
 
 The "Declaration of the rights of the laboring and exploited 
 people," which is Article One of the Constitution of the Rus- 
 sian Soviet Republic (Chapter 2, Section 3), states: 
 
 as its fundamental problem the abolition of exploitation of men by 
 men, the entire abolition of the division of the people into classes, the 
 suppression of exploiters, the establishment of a socialist society, and 
 the victory of socialism in all lands. 
 
 The same purpose is stated again in different form, in para- 
 graph D of Section 3, Chapter 2 regarding the annulment of 
 foreign loans: 
 
 The Soviet Government will firmly follow this course until the 
 final victory of the international workers' revolt against the oppression 
 of capital. 
 
 This ideal of an organization of human society in which one 
 man shall not exploit another, in which there shall be no con- 
 trolling and no inferior classes, no privileged groups and none 
 who are undeveloped, is an ideal common to aU schools of 
 socialism. Stated thus broadly and negatively in terms of 
 the abolition of exploitation, class control and class privilege, 
 it is also the ideal of many who do not call themselves social- 
 ists. It is not a modern ideal; it is an ancient dream. At 
 times it has broken out from the upper ranks of society in the 
 heart and voice of some great prophet who has always been 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 235 
 
 killed or driven out to become a leader of the many down 
 below. But ever the ideal has grown in the heart and mind 
 of the common people who are the sufferers in a class-divided 
 society in which the strong are able to control and exploit the 
 weak. Is it a vaHd ideal? Is it the climax of possible equality? 
 It does not mean an equahty of capacity for all persons, but it 
 does mean an equality of opportunity of service for all people. 
 Will anybody rise to defend a class-divided society, to defend 
 the control of some men by others to the end that the others 
 may be exploited? What affinity is there between this ideal 
 and the ideal of equality which the democratic state was or- 
 ganized to secure? The question has an immediate practical 
 bearing. If we have decided that it is worth our while to put 
 forth oiu: maximvmi effort as a nation to see that one group 
 of men shall not be able to rule the rest of the world through 
 an autocratic, militaristic state controlling and using its people 
 for the ends and purposes of its rulers, what then shall be 
 our attitude toward a condition in which small groups of men 
 are able to use the Hves of many others for their own selfish 
 ends and purposes through a form of economic organization 
 supported by a democratic state? 
 
 These questions have all been raised long before the Russian 
 Soviet Gk)vemment was organized, but they could then be 
 dismissed as the harmless questions of a few agitators and 
 impossible ideahsts, who, after all, could never get much in- 
 fluence in a matter-of-fact world. But now the case is entirely 
 different. Now the Western nations must face in the field of 
 practical organization the question of whether or not they 
 will accept or reject this ideal, and what they will do to put 
 it into effect, because having in some sort been put into effect 
 in Russia its methods begin to work their way westward. 
 Every one of our governments must declar" themselves very 
 shortly on this issue. The attempted suppression of Soviet 
 governments in Europe, and the attempted suppression of 
 
236 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the discussion of their principles in this country, shows that 
 the issue is understood in some quarters. 
 
 Having proclaimed its ideal in negative terms, the Soviet 
 Constitution proceeds to amplify its aims both destructively 
 and constructively. It attempts to remove the economic con- 
 ditions which its framers believe to be the basis of class divi- 
 sion in human society, and the occasion and opportimity for 
 the exploitation of man by man. The constructive aspect of 
 this effort is set forth in Article 5 of the Constitution, entitled 
 The Budget, Chapter 16, Section 79, concerning the financial 
 policy of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. 
 If they have to say all that every time they speak of the gov- 
 ernment over there, it is worse than having to get up every 
 time some one takes it into his head to play "The Star 
 Spangled Banner." 
 
 The financial policy of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet 
 Republic in the present transition period of dictatorship of the prole- 
 tariat, facilitates the fundamental purpose of expropriation of the 
 bourgeoisie and the preparation of conditions necessary for the equality 
 of all citizens of Russia in the production and distribution of wealth. 
 To this end it sets forth as its task the supplying of the organs of the 
 Soviet power with all necessary funds for local and state needs of the 
 Soviet Republic, without regard to private property rights. 
 
 To attempt "the preparation of conditions necessary for 
 the equality of aU citizens of Russia in the production and 
 distribution of wealth," is a much more difficult thing than 
 securing equality in the court and the voting booth. Yet it is 
 the unavoidable task that political democracy has brought the 
 industrial nations. It cannot be worked out by any one nation 
 alone. As long as there is inequality in the production and 
 distribution of wealth in any nation it will limit the attainment 
 of equality in all others, just as the existence of one subject 
 people limits freedom everywhere. Therefore as it was the 
 duty of the free peoples to complete their freedom, so is it the 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 237 
 
 part of those who have started to seek equality to go wherever 
 the road leads. 
 
 The Constitution of the Soviet Republic still further defines 
 what it means by the estabUshment of a Socialist Society. It 
 proposes to establish the "universal obligation to work" 
 (Article One, Chapter 2, Section 3 f. and Article Two, Chap- 
 ter 5, Section 18). It also proposes to give the toilers "real 
 freedom of conscience" (Article Two, Chapter 5, Section 14) 
 and freedom of expression (Ibid., Sections 14 and 15); it offers 
 to help them organize (Ibid., Section 17); assmnes "the task 
 of furnishing fuU and free general education" (Ibid., Sec- 
 tion 18); offers political rights to alien toilers (Ibid., Section 
 20); disclaims racial or national privilege or oppression (Ibid., 
 22, also Article One, Chapter 3, Section 5); and guarantees 
 local self-determination (Ibid., Chapter 4, Section 8). The 
 local organs of the Soviets are also charged to "take all steps 
 towards raising the cultural and economic standard of the 
 given territory" (Article Three, Chapter 12, Section 61 b). 
 The constructive program is fiurther set forth in a nimiber of 
 decrees and orders which cannot here be considered for lack 
 of space, but which provide for a highly articulated economic, 
 social and political organization. AH that can here be dis- 
 cussed is the fundamental principles and methods of the Soviet 
 program as it appears on paper. Some indication of the de- 
 tailed measures can be gained from the following samples, one 
 in the economic, the other in the cultural, realm: 
 
 I. All libraries found within the boundaries of the western provinces 
 and front, and belonging to munidpalities, public institutions, or 
 organizations of various sorts, or to private persons, are taken over for 
 the benefit of public educational institutions in local Soviets of Work- 
 men's, Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, and, in the city of Smolensk, 
 by the local section of public education of the provincial commissariat. 
 
 II. AH institutions, organizations, and private persons possessing 
 libraries in the city of Smolensk must, within five days following the 
 date of the publication of this order in the newspaper Sovietskaya 
 
238 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Pravda, present to the commissariat on public education exact informa- 
 tion concerning: 
 
 (i) the location of the libraries belonging to them; 
 
 (2) the number of volumes found in the libraries; 
 
 (3) the contents of the libraries (complete catalogues of the books 
 must be presented; and in case such do not exist, then general informa- 
 tion concerning the character of the books collected) ; 
 
 (4) the periodical publications subscribed to by the libraries; 
 
 (5) the number of subscribers; 
 
 (6) the rules adopted for the use of these books. 
 
 Note: This order does not affect persons who have libraries con- 
 sisting of less than 500 volumes, if these libraries are not intended for 
 public readers. 
 
 The Supreme Board of National Economy has now undertaken the 
 organization of the entire business of supplying the agricultural popula- 
 tion with agricultural machinery and implements. In order that all 
 this work may be carried out successfully, it is necessary that the 
 Supreme Board of National Economy should have at its disposal exact 
 information about all those establishments which at this moment have 
 already changed or are ready to change to the production of agricul- 
 tural machinery. Only with aU this information at hand wiU it be 
 possible to organize systematically this branch of national economy, 
 which is most important for the Russian Republic, and to avoid in the 
 future those ills which may be caused by an unorganized change from 
 war production to piece work. Moreover, all the information is neces- 
 sary for the apportionment of orders for agricultural machines and 
 implements, which the Supreme Board of National Economy will soon 
 place. 
 
 In view of what has been said, we urgently request aU factory and 
 mUl committees and manufacturers, or their organizations, to furnish 
 in writing the most complete information about their establishments 
 which have to do with the manufacture of agricultural machinery, in- 
 dicating the number of workmen, the machine equipment, and the 
 possible minimum production per month, together with a statement of 
 the machines and implements (type and patent), necessary in rural 
 economy, for which they can take orders. 
 
 In view of the exceptional importance of the matter of supplying 
 our rural economy, we respectfully request the provincial papers to 
 reprint this appeal. 
 
 It is the negative aim of the Soviet government, "the aboli- 
 tion of the exploitation of men by men, the entire abolition of 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 239 
 
 the division of tlie people into classes," which has received most 
 attention in the Western nations. Our Ambassador to Russia 
 is reported to have said on reaching Paris that the idea of 
 abolishing the exploitation of one man by another was an 
 insane conception. Such a remark is an interesting revelation 
 of the depth of the diplomatic understanding that has been 
 charged to interpret Russia to the Western world and to 
 interpret Western democracy to Russia. If to desire to end 
 exploitation and class divisions is to be crazy, truly the world 
 is fiill of madmen. This negative aim of the Russian program 
 is further defined as "the suppression of exploiters" (Article 
 One, Chapter 2, Section 3) and "elimiuating the parasitic 
 strata of society" (Ibid f.). The parasites are defined inferen- 
 tially in orthodox socialist style as those who do not work at 
 socially useful labor and so live off the labor of others. The 
 exploiters are defined inferentiaUy in that section of the Con- 
 stitution which has to do with the qualifications for suffrage, 
 as those who make profit from the labor of others. 
 
 In this part of its aim, the Russian program issues a sharp 
 challenge to the democratic nations. It is attempting to put 
 directly into law and practice an ideal which they have un- 
 questionably held in general terms and sought indirectly to 
 realize. They too have no place for idlers and no liking for 
 exploiters. That they do not approve the Russian way of 
 handling them, does not relieve them of the necessity of dealing 
 with the problem. The British Labor Party seeks to gradually 
 eliminate the parasites and exploiters by its program regard- 
 ing surplus wealth and the financial system of the nation. As 
 the various labor parties organize, all the other nations wiU 
 have to consider proposals to this effect. In a deeper sense 
 than President Wilson ever meant or has given any evidence 
 of knowing, Russia is still the add test of our democracy. Al- 
 together apart from its methods, the Soviet government has 
 raised the issue in practical politics of the difference between 
 
240 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 a society wherein all share in the burdens and privileges and 
 a society in which some are permitted special favor and special 
 exemption. There is no compromise possible here, any more 
 than there was possible a compromise with Prussian autocracy. 
 There was a conflict of ethical principles between the auto- 
 cratic state and the democratic state. They were mutually 
 exclusive. The same thing is true concerning a class-divided 
 social order split by exploitation and one which is solidified by 
 universal mutual service. The absolute conflict between the 
 ethics of strife and power, and the ethics of cooperative service 
 has long been recognized. Now the issue has been Joined ia 
 the field of action by the organization of the Soviet Govern- 
 ment, and in different forms and in var3dng time it will go to 
 a conclusion throughout the world. 
 
 The Soviet Constitution proposes to suppress the exploiters, 
 eliminate the parasites, abolish classes and secure equality in 
 production and distribution by the following methods: the 
 nationalization of the land and other natural resources, of 
 agricultural and industrial enterprise and of banks (Article 
 One, Chapter 2, Section 3, a, b, c and d) ; the expropriation of 
 private capital (Article Five, Chapter 16, Section 79); the 
 abolition of inheritance; ' the universal obligation to work 
 
 ' I. Inheritance, whether by law or by will, is abolished. After the 
 death of an owner, the property which belonged to him, whether 
 movable or immovable, becomes the property of the Government of the 
 Russian Socialistic Soviet Federated Republic. 
 
 Note: The discontinuance and transfer of rights of utilization of 
 farm lands is determined by the rules provided in the fundamental law 
 of the socialization of the land. 
 
 II. Until the issuance of a decree dealing with general social ar- 
 rangements, relatives who are in need (i. e., those who do not pwssess a 
 minimum maintenance), and who are incapable of work — such rela- 
 tives being in a directly ascending or descending line, fuU or half 
 brothers or sisters, or spouse, of the deceased — receive support from 
 the property left by the deceased. 
 
 Note i. No distinction is made between the relationship that 
 arises within wedlock and that which arises outside of wedlock. 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 24 1 
 
 (Article One, Chapter 2, Section 3 f. and Article Two, Chapter 
 5, Section 18; the exclusion of exploiters from political office 
 (Article One, Chapter 4, Section 7) and from the franchise 
 (Article Four, Chapter 13, Section 65, a, b, c, r, p) ; and finally 
 by depriving "aU individuals and groups of rights which could 
 be utilized by them to the detriment of the Sodahst Revolu- 
 tion " (Article Two, Chapter 5, Section 23). All these provi- 
 sions are to be enforced during the "transition period," by a 
 dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest 
 peasantry (Article Two, Chapter 5, Section 9) to be estab- 
 lished and maintained by arming the toilers and disarming 
 the propertied class (Article One, Chapter 2, Section 3 g). 
 
 Thus the essential methods in the Russian plan for a socialist 
 society are expropriation, nationalization and universal work, 
 in the field of economic action; and in poHtical action the 
 limitation of the franchise and the right to hold office to those 
 performing "labor that is productive and useful to society." 
 This plan differs from the British Labor Party program in 
 the degree and manner of the expropriation and nationaliza- 
 tion and in its attempt to immediately establish universal 
 service in socially useful labor under pains and penalties of 
 the loss of citizenship and food. The status of the parasite 
 and the exploiter is eliminated, they are to be transformed into 
 serviceable members of the body pohtic. 
 
 A still more fundamental difference in the realm of method 
 is the reliance placed upon coercion rather than upon reason 
 in establishing and maintaining a sociaHst society. This can 
 be traced in part to the state of mind induced by the world 
 war, but mostly to the part played by coercion in maintaining 
 
 Note 2. Adopted relatives or children and their descendants are 
 put upon the same footing as relatives by descent whether as to those 
 who adopted them or as to those who have been adopted. 
 
 in. If there is not enough of the property remaining to support a 
 spouse and all surviving relatives, as enumerated above, then the most 
 needy of them must be provided for first. 
 
242 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the old order in Russia. The general historic law seems to be 
 that the methods used in the inauguration of a new order 
 approximate in kind and degree the methods by which the 
 order it replaces was estabhshed and maintained. The doc- 
 trine of a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, to accom- 
 pUsh complete democracy by disarming and disfranchising 
 those who object, is foreign to those peoples whose rehance for 
 political and social change is upon reason rather than upon 
 force, and whose procedure permits reason to fimction mi- 
 hindered. As long as the procedure for determining and ex- 
 pressing the will of the majority through the methods of 
 political democracy remains open, the theory of the dictator- 
 ship of the proletariat, even though that class is a majority, 
 will remain foreign to the Western world because its practice 
 is unnecessary. In the event of resistance to the freely deter- 
 mined will of the majority, however, both the theory and 
 practice of democracy guarantee that such resistance would 
 be suppressed by whatever means were necessary. The only 
 persons who would then have the right to challenge such pro- 
 cedure are those who accept and practice the doctrine of non- 
 resistance. They seek what seems to them a more excellent 
 way. But those who appeal to Caesar must abide by Caesar's 
 decision. 
 
 Since we are dealing not with the conduct of the Soviet 
 Government but with its written program and its essential 
 social philosophy, we can for purposes of the discussion assume 
 the correctness of the contention of that government that it 
 represents the overwhelming majority of the population in the 
 region that acknowledges its authority. If that be so, the 
 majority has estabhshed a dictatorship over the Kves and 
 property of the minority. Leaving on one side the assertion 
 that this is an advance over a situation in which a minority is 
 enabled to exercise a dictatorship over the majority, as it did in 
 Russia, and is alleged to do in the democratic nations through 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPtTBLIC 243 
 
 economic control, the real challenge that the Russian method 
 flings at political democracy concerns the rights of the major- 
 ity. What are they in the present order; what are they in 
 the matter of changing the present order? Inasmuch as the 
 minority in a new order is not likely for a time to get any more 
 rights than a minority in the old order was allowed, even 
 though that was one of the reasons for change, — ^witness the 
 Puritans — those who desire the maintenance of the present 
 order in this country (who if they are not a majority at least 
 have not a majority against them), had better carefully con- 
 sider what are majority and minority rights in a time of social 
 change. 
 
 Is the rule of the majority necessarily a dictatorship to some 
 degree? Does even the democratic principle permit tyranny, 
 and imder what conditions? Evidently that depends upon 
 what the majority does and how it does it, upon what oppor- 
 tunity it gives the minority to express its opinions and to in- 
 fluence the decision of the majority. To prevent the imdue 
 denial of that opportunity there is held in reserve the further 
 right of rebellion, so that a minority believing the appeal to 
 reason obstructed may decide to risk its existence upon the 
 appeal to arms. Even though freedom of expression be granted 
 in the fullest possible degree, nevertheless in the long run the 
 minority is subject to a degree of coercion, in that the majority 
 will must be enforced at certain vital points if the state or 
 society is to remain an organized entity. In a democratic 
 community which consents to the principle of majority rule, 
 the minority by implication agrees to submit to that much 
 coercion and would reverse the coercion if it became the 
 majority. The reservation is that the minority retains the 
 right of conscientious objection, to be expressed in passive 
 resistance, when it believes that the policy of the majority is 
 fatal to that solidarity of the state or of society, by virtue of 
 which the right of limited coercion by the majority is claimed. 
 
244 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 With this reservation, it is generally accepted as a necessary 
 condition of democratic development that in certain emer- 
 gencies the majority may deny the minority freedom of ex- 
 pression. 
 
 That condition existed here during war time. The Espionage 
 Act suspended rights of the minority previously held essential 
 to democracy. It was justified by many of those who under 
 it surrendered their rights of democracy as a temporary meas- 
 ure, necessary for the existence of democracy itself, precisely 
 the same argument by which the BolshevHd attempt to 
 justify the temporary suppression of the minority by a dic- 
 tatorship of the proletariat until such time as the socialist 
 state is established beyond the peril of overthrow from revolu- 
 tion. This position in relation to minority groups is in essence 
 and principle that which our government took by act of 
 Congress for the duration of the war, and which it is proposed 
 in legislation pending before the national and various state 
 legislatures to continue to take now that the war is over. 
 Justification is claimed by the same necessity, namely, the 
 principle that the right of the existence of the state supersedes 
 the right of the minority or of individuals to express them- 
 selves. The argument is just as vaHd in one case as the other; 
 no more, no less. It is to be feared though that it is easier 
 for those who have any property stake in the existing order 
 to apply it on the side of the status quo than on the side of a 
 new regime. But obviously political democracy cannot have 
 it both ways. It must either take the consequence of the 
 economic application of its present doctrine of the rights of 
 the majority or else abandon or modify that doctrine. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the suppression of minority rights by 
 the Russian constitution is an undue assertion of majority 
 power as was the recent suppression of those rights in the 
 United States. It is acknowledged in one case by the use of 
 the word dictatorship, and in both cases by the claim that it 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 245 
 
 is only temporary. It is the fact that matters more than the 
 words, and the Anglo-Saxon has an international reputation 
 for concealing and evading facts by means of words. 
 
 Naturally we apply to a new program tests to which we do 
 not hold the existing order. Naturally also those who profess 
 higher ideals than the rest of mankind must submit to this 
 condition; they must give evidence of the faith within them 
 by their works. In this matter of minority rights, the Soviet 
 program is expected to show itself in advance not only of 
 previous conditions in Russia but also of those in the demo- 
 cratic nations, whose democracy it regards as incomplete. In 
 justice to this constitution, however, it must be remembered 
 that it was framed in time of upheaval and war. Whatever 
 the reason, the Soviet Govermnent has made exactly the same 
 denial of its principles in its so-called temporary proscriptions 
 as the democratic states have made in their temporary war- 
 time repression. In both cases it remains to be seen whether 
 they are temporary. We have yet to see whether in Russia 
 or in the United States more democracy can result from the 
 denial of democracy, whether it can be induced to make a 
 larger growth by cutting away a part of its root. That can 
 be done with some plants, but never beyond a certain point. 
 History has little evidence or hope to offer. The dictatorship 
 of CromweU was responsible to some extent for the extension of 
 liberties in Great Britain, but it allowed more liberty than the 
 monarchy it replaced, and at that is an exceptional case be- 
 cause there are few dictators who pursue their avowed ideal. It 
 is conceivable that the Soviet program might mean advance 
 for Russia, but delay and disaster for a nation with more dem- 
 ocratic political development. 
 
 The limitation of minority rights has a wider effect upon de- 
 mocracy. It gives unnatural power and life to the party in 
 office and finally makes it impossible to determine what reaUy is 
 the majority will. What is still more serious, it creates the re- 
 
246 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 sentment and increases the opposition which prevents the unity 
 it is supposed to guarantee. The question which the Bolsheviki 
 have yet to face is whether the power, which in the name of the 
 proletariat they have taken to themselves for a period, will not 
 in the end inevitably destroy the soHdarity which is the ideal 
 of the Soviet Constitution and the assumed justification for 
 the suppression of the poHtical rights of those who do not 
 desire it. In any event, for democratic countries who do not 
 take naturally to either the theory or practice of dictatorship, 
 the challenge of that theory and practice in Russia is that they 
 themselves shall proceed to develop more democracy instead 
 of less. It may be premised as inevitable that if our western 
 nations continue to force the growth of the proletariat until 
 it becomes overwhelming in numbers as it was in Russia, and 
 if the ruling classes continue to deprive that growing pro- 
 letariat of the means of political expression and of democratic 
 economic organization, their development wiU take another 
 course than the one it is now following. When the proletariat 
 does become overwhehningly in the majority and finds itself 
 unable to secure its rights and move toward its ideals by means 
 of poUtical action or economic organization, and in addition 
 has been taught the methods of dictatorship and the means of 
 repression by the ruling classes, it will use those means and 
 methods to establish itself in power and ruthlessly repress 
 those who have oppressed it. Because the relation of revolu- 
 tion to previous repression is like the law of physics that 
 action and reaction are equal and in the opposite direction, 
 progress must be sought by another method than conflict. 
 If pohtical democracy seeks to derive its ultimate sanction 
 from force, it will have to reckon seriously with this pro- 
 gram of dictatorship of the proletariat, secured and main- 
 tained by the force of arms. 
 
 The Russian Constitution assumes that the working class 
 are in the majority and it is on the basis of that assumption 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 247 
 
 that the right to use force to effect and maintain a new eco- 
 nomic order must be considered by those nations whose theory 
 and practice concedes the right of the majority to effect and 
 maintain their political will by whatever means are necessary. 
 The argument of the Soviet Constitution for a Red army and 
 universal military training is the famihar argument for the 
 right to defend an institution which the majority has created. 
 The class war, if it is to be, will be in theory a war of defense, 
 as the only kind of war democracy can consistently wage. It 
 soimds familiar. 
 
 If a socialist government is anjrwhere established by the 
 will of a majority, who, except the non-resisters, can deny the 
 right of that government to use whatever physical force is 
 necessary to maintain and defend itself against revolution 
 from within or attack from without? For those who assume 
 to be leaders of political democracy to claim the right to 
 forcibly assert their wiU against socialist governments or mi- 
 norities and then arraign them for using or advocating force is 
 both stupid and hypocritical. It took only the declaration of 
 a general strike in Seattle to call out the machine guns and 
 the troops because it was declared that the strike was a revolu- 
 tionary movement, and under the same assertion in Winnipeg 
 the forces of the Federal Government were used to suppress a 
 strike. It is the acknowledged right of any established govern- 
 ment to defend itself. Autocracy has preached it as a sacred 
 duty and democratic nations have answered with the claim 
 of a superior right and a more sacred duty, because their gov- 
 ernment rests upon the declared will of the majority. There- 
 fore, to defend it they would use force and yet more force. 
 Now comes the voice of the proletariat making a similar 
 assertion. 
 
 It is a significant thing that when once idealists take the 
 path of physical force there is less and less choice of means. 
 In the early days of the war, few people in this country imag- 
 
248 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PIONCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 ined that if we went to war with Germany we could use 
 poison gas. When the Bolshevists first secured control of 
 government in Russia, they announced themselves opposed 
 to capital punishment. It is an historic fact that no people 
 can be more cruel than idealists acting in defense of what they 
 believe to be the truth and the right. Did not holy church 
 torture the heretics with unspeakable cruelties for their own 
 good and for the safety of the world? Remember the excesses 
 of the French Revolution waged in the sacred name of Uberty. 
 Consider the fact that we gave Debs ten years in jail for 
 exercising the right of free speech which he believed to be 
 guaranteed by the Constitution, while autocratic Prussia gave 
 Liebneckt four years in jaU for high treason. The fact is 
 democracy cannot place its reliance upon force without de- 
 stro)dng itself. When force controls the argument, when fear 
 enters, how long is the voice of the people freely uttered? 
 How then can it be determined that those in authority are 
 representing the majority? The regime of force sooner or 
 later enables some special interest to masquerade in the cloak 
 of democracy. A pohcy that depends upon gims and jails 
 for its enforcement, whether it be in Moscow or in New York, 
 is a policy that is afraid to trust itself to the people. 
 
 The democratic state is now in the temper to meet the pro- 
 tagonists of a new economic order in the same manner that it 
 met Prussian autocracy. To the assertion that might made 
 right, it answered that right made might. The right of the 
 free peoples was a bigger right and a greater might than the 
 right of the few who controlled the might of subject peoples. 
 But the case is now different. Suppose that all over the world 
 the crowd below comes demanding what it is passionately 
 convinced is justice, and they are many more than the rest of 
 us, what then becomes of the democratic proposition that 
 the right of the many makes might? This time political 
 democracy gets its own argument flung back in its face, and 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPTIBLIC 249 
 
 it now has to deal not with a decadent autocracy with no 
 moral basis but with multitudes of people pursuing an ideal 
 that has as much moral right to be heard and tried as its own. 
 Again, political democracy caimot have it both ways. It must 
 either pursue the democratic method and permit freedom of 
 discussion and experiment for the new economic order or ac- 
 cept the consequences of the appeal to force. The same holds 
 true for the proponents of a new economic order. Before it is 
 too late, the leaders of the forces on both sides had better 
 consider well whether any other end is to be achieved by 
 throwing the issue into the field of force save a war of exter- 
 mination. 
 
 The Soviet Constitution proposes to use coercion to enforce 
 the imiversal obligation to work and quotes Scripture as its 
 authority: 
 
 The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic considers work 
 the duty of every citizen of the Republic, and proclaims as its motto: 
 " He shall not eat who does not work." (Article Two, chapter 5, 
 Section 18.) 
 
 In those Christian countries where a leisure class exists by 
 right of acquisition and inheritance, it has been customary to 
 proclaim this principle of Scripture, but to apply it only at 
 one end of society. Many of our states arrest those who are 
 without visible means of subsistence as vagrants. In some 
 Western states one of the means of providing an income for 
 certain ofl&ce holders is a Vagrancy Law, whereby they may 
 arrest any person found upon the street who has not a certain 
 sum of money in his pocket. Of course the law is judiciously 
 applied. The arresting officer is entitled to a fee for each 
 arrest made, which fee comes out of the fine to be paid or 
 worked out in JaU by the person arrested. I have personally 
 known men to be arrested for being without visible means of 
 support, a few hours after being discharged from jail where 
 they had worked out a sentence for vagrancy. Thus they 
 
250 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 were a continuous source of income to the ofl&cers. Some states 
 which acknowledge a degree of humanitarian impulse have 
 attempted to modify what has been an obvious abuse of such 
 provisions, by requiring that the arrests which any officer may 
 make in any year shall be limited to the number whose fees 
 amount to a specified salary. So the officers are vigorous in 
 enforcing the vagrancy law for the first few months of the year 
 until their stipulated salary has been thereby earned, and 
 after that the community looks in vain for protection from 
 much more serious offences than being without a certain sum 
 of money. 
 
 Thus is the principle that work is an obligation applied in 
 a democratic capitalistic society. The socialist democratic 
 society applies the principle universally and requires that the 
 vagrants at both ends of society shall perform some socially 
 useful labor. An attempt in the same direction was made here 
 through "work or fight" regulations during the war. This 
 seems to persons of private means a very unjust proceeding, 
 forgetting the fact that such an instance as I have just cited 
 and many others, seem to the proletariat very unjust proceed- 
 ings. Ethical judgments vary a good deal with the point of 
 view. I recently had read to me some parts of a letter from 
 a man occupying a very responsible position in a large cor- 
 poration, who, in order that he might better perform his 
 duties, has gone out to take his chance of work like any other 
 common laborer. He wants to find out what imemployment 
 really means to a man. The first letter he writes as a day 
 laborer seeking work gives some very different views concern- 
 ing the effect of unemployment upon a man's attitude to 
 society than he had ever before expressed in his life. 
 
 Traditionally the American people have always had a stem 
 attitude towards the leisure class, we have never had very 
 much use for them in our economy. We have a tradition of 
 the dignity of socially useful labor and an ideal of service. 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 25 1 
 
 This has been to a certain extent a saving grace against the 
 demoralizing influence of the tremendous increase of our na- 
 tional wealth under a system which concentrates that wealth 
 in the hands of a few. The result is that a very large propor- 
 tion of those who have received an undue share of the national 
 wealth and who are thereby practically exempt from the 
 necessity of any socially useful labor, do yet consider it their 
 duty to try to discover some useful labor with which they may 
 occupy their time. While some of the attempts are not with- 
 out humor, yet nevertheless they are an exhibition of a funda- 
 mentally sound social principle. If the principle of universal 
 work is approved as a traditional obhgation, what objection 
 is there to endeavoring to work it into the organization of 
 society, as long as it be done without injustice to those who 
 have heretofore been the beneficiaries of a situation which has 
 exempted them from any obligatory toil? But the word in- 
 justice must be construed in a relative sense. There have 
 been a good many tears shed in print over the sight of 
 former members of the Russian aristocracy selling papers on 
 the streets of Petrograd. It is an occasion for tears to have 
 any one selling papers on the streets of any city, but no more 
 in the case of a Russian aristocrat than that of an American 
 boy or girl who ought to be learning a constructive occupation. 
 What is justice for the idle rich must be considered and deter- 
 mined in relation to what is justice for the wrongly employed 
 poor. 
 
 Some people have been trying to support the universal obli- 
 gation to work by quoting another line of Scripture to the effect 
 that man shall "earn his bread ia the sweat of his brow." 
 That was put down as a supposed penalty for Adam's trans- 
 gression, and it is plain to see that it was written from the 
 aristocratic leisure class point of view. With all our behef 
 in the value and virtue of work, we are also victims of a tradi- 
 tion and still more of a practice, which has made the earning 
 
252 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRiNCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 of daily bread by the sweat of the brow for the most part a 
 disagreeable performance. How many people really find pleas- 
 ure in their occupation? The sooner we make work not only 
 a duty, as the Soviet Goverimient is trying to do, but a pleas- 
 urable duty, the better for all of us. There needs to be taken 
 from common labor not only the improper social stigma but 
 also its disagreeable, monotonous features. The intellectuals, 
 in some measure, have found emancipation from the monotony 
 of the daily round and common task, and have entered into 
 more pleasurable fields of activity. They cannot afford to 
 forget that there are Hterally miUions of people to whom labor 
 is a disagreeable necessity or a dull routine, who wait and 
 long for the day of their emancipation to toil for nobler ends. 
 If those who are educated object to the measures proposed for 
 this purpose, it is for them to secure such readjustment and 
 reorganization of the necessary labor of hmnan society as 
 shaU compel nobody to do unnecessarily dangerous and ar- 
 duous or monotonous toil, require all to work who are able, 
 and permit everybody to find some joy in his working. Since 
 society does not exist save by the toil of its members, since 
 it has no sustenance, let alone wealth, until productive energy 
 is applied to its natural resources, by what right and to what 
 end shaU any claim exemption from that conamon toil of mind 
 and body which is necessary to the common life? 
 
 The main measure advanced by the Soviet Constitution for 
 enforcing the universal obligation to work and thereby elim- 
 inating the "parasitic strata" of society and transforming the 
 exploiters into social servants, is the limitation of the franchise 
 and o£5ce-holding to those who maintain themselves by "labor 
 that is productive and useful to society." Practically and 
 ethically, this means of enforcing the obhgation to work rests 
 upon the same ground as the obligation itself. Since society 
 exists by virtue of the common fund of constructive effort, 
 and since the condition of the individual depends upon the 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 253 
 
 results of that common fund, why should those who bear no 
 part of the common burden of society share in its control? 
 In abstract form the proposal is sound enough, with some 
 qualifications for the incapacitated. The social value of it, 
 however, as well as its justice, will be determined by its inter- 
 pretation and application. Here are the specifications of the 
 Constitution: 
 
 ARTICLE FOUR 
 
 The Right to Vote 
 
 Chapter Thirteen 
 
 64. The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by, 
 the following citizens, irrespective of religion, nationality, domicile, 
 etc., of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, of both sexes, 
 who shall have completed their eighteenth year by the day of election: 
 
 a. AH who have acquired the means of living through labor that is 
 productive and useful to society, and also persons engaged in house- 
 keeping, which enables the former to do productive work, i. e., laborers 
 and employees of all classes who are employed in industry, trade, 
 agriculture, etc. ; and peasants and Cossack agricultural laborers who 
 employ no help for the purpose of making profits. 
 
 b. Soldiers of the army and navy of the Soviets. 
 
 c. Citizens of the two preceding categories who have to any degree 
 lost their capacity to work. 
 
 Note i: Local Soviets may, upon approval of the central power, 
 lower the age standard mentioned herein. 
 
 Note 2: Non-citizens mentioned in Paragraph 20 (Article Two, 
 Chapter 5) have the right to vote. 
 
 65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the 
 right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the categories 
 enumerated above, namely: 
 
 a. Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an 
 increase in profits. 
 
 b. Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as 
 interest from capital, receipts from property, etc. 
 
 c. Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers. 
 
 d. Monks and clergy of all denominations. 
 
 e. Employees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps, 
 and the Okhrana [Czar's secret service], also members of the former 
 reigning dynasty. 
 
254 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 f. Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or men- 
 tally deficient, and also persons under guardianship. 
 
 g. Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of 
 citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the period 
 fixed by the sentence. 
 
 It will be noticed that the housekeeping service of women 
 is specifically mentioned as a qualification for the franchise, 
 and that provision is made for the incapacitated; also that 
 those who are excluded on general principle are the "parasitic" 
 persons "who have an income without doing any work," and 
 the exploiters who "employ hired habor in order to obtain 
 from it an increase in profi.ts." The latter term indicates a 
 perception of the fact that imder the present economic system 
 a part of profits is the due return for the service of manage- 
 ment, and also that in setting up a socialist economic order, 
 some time will necessarily elapse before some other method of 
 financial return can universally obtain. The disqualifjmig of 
 "private merchants, trade and commercial brokers" may be 
 assumed to represent a judgment that their functions are 
 unnecessary to a sociahst society, while the disfranchisement 
 of monks and clergy may be assumed, along with that of the 
 former poKce, gendarme corps, secret service and former reign- 
 ing dynasty, to arise out of the former connection between 
 the Russian State and the Russian Church. Necessarily the 
 judgment as to what is "labor that is productive and useful 
 to society" will have to depend upon social experience, whose 
 services as a teacher are commonly reported to come high, 
 whereas the guidance of prejudice is both cheap to begin with 
 and easy to follow. 
 
 Some comprehension of the attitude of the Soviet Govern- 
 ment toward intellectual labor may be gathered from the 
 following extracts from one of its decrees, also by considering 
 Sections i, 2, 3, 4, 8, 15, 17, and 30 of the Regulation on 
 p. 265. 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 255 
 
 DECREE REGARDING GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS 
 
 Taking into consideration on the one hand the idleness which for 
 various reasons exists among printers, and on the other the scarcity of 
 books, the People's Commission on Education, through its literary- 
 publishing department and in cooperation with the departments of 
 education outside the schools, school departments, and departments of 
 science and art, and with the assistance of representatives of the 
 printers' imion and other interested societies, as the Commission shall 
 see fit, and of experts specially invited by it, shall immediately under- 
 take extensive publication. 
 
 First in order must come a cheap popular edition of the Russian 
 classics. Those works for which the period of authors' rights has 
 ended must be republished. 
 
 The works of all authors thus transferred from private to public 
 ownership may, by a special order of the National Commissioner on 
 Education regarding each author, be declared a Government monopoly, 
 for a period, however, not exceeding five years. The Commission is to 
 make use of this right with regard to those literary celebrities whose 
 works, in accordance with this law, become the property of the 
 people. 
 
 The publication of these works may be arranged in two series: 
 
 A complete scientific edition, the editorship of which should be en- 
 trusted to the department of Russian language and letters of the 
 Academy of Sciences (after its democratization and adaptation to the 
 new governmental and public life of Russia) ; 
 
 An abbreviated edition of selected works. Each selection is to con- 
 stitute a single, compact volume. In the selection the editor is to be 
 guided, among other considerations, by the suitability of the works to 
 the working people, for whose benefit these popular editions are in- 
 tended. Both the entire collection and separate, more important works 
 are to be accompanied by prefaces by authoritative critics, historians 
 of literature, etc. To edit these popular publications a special college 
 should be created of prominent representatives of educational, literary, 
 and scientific societies, specially invited experts, and delegates of 
 workmen's organizations. Editors, confirmed by this Commission of 
 Publication Control, must present to that body their plans of publica- 
 tion together with their commentaries of every description. 
 
 The popular edition of classics is to be sold at cost, and, if means 
 shall permit, even below cost, and may even be given free through the 
 libraries which serve the working democracy. 
 
 In order to undertake immediately this important public business 
 of the Soviet of People's Commissaries, it is proposed to appropriate 
 and place at the disposal of the Government Commission on Educa- 
 tion the sum of a million and a half rubles. 
 
256 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 The disqualification of certain classes from the right to vote 
 and to hold office at once raises the question of equality. Here 
 is a constitution proclaiming more democracy and conse- 
 quently more equality than the constitutions of politically 
 democratic states. Is it then justified, either morally or prac- 
 tically, in making this franchise limitation, either in the light 
 of its own ideals or comparatively against other democratic 
 systems? The former question would seem to be answered as 
 long as the franchise can be acquired by those who have been 
 disfranchised on equal terms with all other citizens. The 
 latter question resolves itself into asking would the Soviet 
 Constitution, accepted at its face value and honestly worked, 
 result in a wider franchise in Russia than exists in other demo- 
 cratic states, most of whom are now criticising its particular 
 franchise qualification? According to the commonly accepted 
 figures, this plan would give the franchise to about ninety per 
 cent of the population of Russia of voting age, whereas no 
 other state in the world has yet enfranchised more than about 
 seventy-five per cent of its population. A nation which dis- 
 franchises negroes, legally or practically, which disfranchises 
 a large proportion of its women, which maintains property 
 qualifications for suffrage directly or indirectly, as do the 
 governments of Great Britain and the United States in some 
 measure, cannot with good grace criticise the Soviet Govern- 
 ment for lack of democracy on this score. The reason for the 
 criticism of course, is that the Soviet Government disfranchises 
 different classes from those whom the Western democracies 
 disfranchise, classes whom they have been holding in more 
 or less regard and honor and whom the Soviet Government 
 considers not to be socially useful to a sufficient extent to 
 warrant their sharing in the control of goverimient. 
 
 In his "American Commonwealth" Bryce describes the 
 corrupt regime in New York City, and he offers the judgment 
 that one of the causes of its tremendous graft and corruption 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 257 
 
 was that the wealthy and upper classes did not have sufficient 
 interest in the government, the classes which are best equipped 
 to render intelligent and efl&cient administration. The Russian 
 Soviets reverse that judgment absolutely; they challenge it 
 as an unwarranted assumption, and proceed to demonstration, 
 one way or the other. It is then small wonder that their world 
 seems topsy-turvy to those who have always accepted without 
 question the superiority of the people who win their way to 
 the top in a class-divided society, the main goal of which is 
 the acquisition of wealth. 
 
 Among the intellectuals, the preachers appear to have a 
 special grievance against the Soviet Constitution. If the 
 disfranchisement of monks and clergy does reflect a socialist 
 judgment concerning the worth of the church and not simply 
 a Russian need to prevent ecclesiastical intrigue in poHtics, 
 it is time for the ministry everywhere to reexamine its social 
 status. Its value and authority will not be assumed and as- 
 sured in the new order as it was in the old. Its place is to be 
 won. The church is now on trial before democracy concerning 
 its social worth. In a democratic society, in which socially 
 useful labor becomes the object of distinction and the quali- 
 fication for citizenship, it is obligatory upon the preachers to 
 demonstrate to the community that their vocation is socially 
 useful. If they cannot so prove, the sooner the function of 
 the ministry is changed, the better for the preachers and for 
 society. The root of the matter is economic dependence. Is 
 the ministry better or worse off by being exempted from the 
 ordinary pursuits of life as a means of livelihood and being 
 paid for its particular vocation? It is an open question to 
 what extent prophets can truly prophesy if they must subsist 
 by their prophecy. It is significant that the really great 
 prophets of Israel did not hve by their speech, but their voice 
 came up out of some other calling. The ministry may find 
 it necessary to differentiate its teaching and service function 
 
2S8 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 from its prophetic function. The history of missions, and of 
 the relations of a few preachers with socialists who have been 
 hostile to the church, shows that the social worth of the minis- 
 try can be demonstrated to an antagonistic community by 
 the proper performance of its teaching and service functions. 
 It may then come about in a sociaHst society that the ministry 
 would, by the franchise of the community, be democratically 
 set apart from other occupations for a speci&c teaching and 
 social service function. They would live by that socially 
 useful labor rather than by their preaching. It might then 
 be that preaching would become more socially useful because 
 more prophetic, as a result of its freedom from economic 
 control. As the reduction of the hours of necessary labor 
 makes cultural pursuits more widely possible, there wiU be 
 a wider range as well as greater liberty of prophetic speech. 
 If on the other hand, the ministry continues to be dependent 
 upon financial support by voluntary organizations, it may in 
 the same maimer demonstrate its social worth and right to 
 citizenship. In any event it does not shear the preacher of 
 political influence to disfranchise him. Many of them are 
 now not making much use of the franchise. They are not 
 likely to have as much poKtical influence in the capacity of 
 voters or members of a political party as they have in the 
 capacity of preachers. If a man has a voice in a community, 
 he probably will exert that amount of political influence which 
 the social worth of his message justifies. 
 
 If society decrees that socially useful labor is the qualifica- 
 tion for citizenship, what is socially useful labor wfll have to 
 be determined in the long run by majority opinion. That the 
 majority will blunder is inevitable, particularly in its estimate 
 of the worth of intellectual processes in which the common 
 people have not participated and whose immediate bearing 
 upon social progress is not obvious. Because the mtellectuals 
 have unduly depreciated the common toil of hfe all through 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 259 
 
 the centuries, they need not be surprised if now for a time 
 the toilers fail to properly estimate tJie social value of the in- 
 tellectuals. The degree of error here is likely to be propor- 
 tionate to the degree of error the educated classes have mani- 
 fested in their attitudes toward manual and machine labor. 
 The amount of future blunder may therefore be reduced by 
 those who are now in charge of the intellectual interests of 
 society. They obviously have it in their power to shorten 
 the period of experimentation by which democracy will deter- 
 mine its scale of occupational values. We have already started 
 on that path in this country. We have decreed certain occu- 
 pations to be socially detrimental; for instance: gambling, 
 prostitution and now the liquor trafl&c. On grounds of social 
 welfare, we have outlawed, one by one, these ignoble occupa- 
 tions which in other times have been ancient and honorable 
 callings. The process is not going to be stopped at the present 
 point. It is inevitable, with the increase of social knowledge 
 and of the capacity for ethical judgments upon what human 
 welfare reaUy is, that we shaU decree certain other occupations 
 to be socially detrimental. It is necessary now for those who 
 Mve purely by speculation to attempt to justify their social 
 worth. In war-time, we distinguished between essential and 
 non-essential industries, and are likely to continue that process. 
 If not, it will some day be revived. 
 
 The significance, for political development, of the creation 
 of a service quali&cation for the franchise lies in the recogni- 
 tion of a change in social values. In the democratic nations 
 the qualification for the franchise has been either property or 
 Uteracy, or sex. The property qualification for the franchise 
 has not yet been abohshed in England; it is not yet totally 
 abolished in this country. In both countries, the dispropor- 
 tionate share of the property class in poHtical control has 
 long been a matter of common knowledge. Up to the present 
 time, the House of Commons has been elected by a franchise 
 
26o THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 which deprived millions of workmen of the right to vote. The 
 migratory workers of this country, no small army, are almost 
 universally disfranchised by our voting requirements. It is 
 evident that a society which directly or indirectly makes prop- 
 erty ownership the qualification for poUtical power and politi- 
 cal control is afl&rming its judgment that property is the most 
 desirable possession of Hfe and its acquisition the most bene- 
 ficial social function. If it is not aflfirming the value of property 
 as against productive energy, it is at least affirming the su- 
 periority of the energy that acquires property over that which 
 does not. 
 
 Now comes a new order which changes these values and 
 asserts that the most valuable and vital thing to human 
 society is not property, but productive energy. Lincoln said 
 something of the same sort when he was discussing, with that 
 prophetic vision which was his, the conflict impending in this 
 country between labor and capital. He declared that here 
 was a greater struggle for human freedom than that in which 
 he was called upon to take part, and exhorted those who love 
 democracy always to remember that labor is antecedent to 
 capital and therefore must always have the prior considera- 
 tion. Lincoln was not talking about labor organizations or 
 parties, but about the obvious social fact that, to get any 
 wealth whatever, society depends upon the productive energy 
 of mankind applied to the natural resources. Therefore in its 
 scale of values society must put personahty above things, the 
 making of people above the making of dollars, and in its 
 organization must see to it that the ability to produce social 
 values is rated higher than the ability to acquire personal 
 possessions. 
 
 It is natural that this fundamental change in social values 
 should come with the rise of the working class to power, partly 
 because they have not much property, but largely because 
 they have secured their sustenance by productive labor, and 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 26 1 
 
 their social development by continually exchanging between 
 themselves human services. Therefore, they may be able to 
 put service in its proper place in the organization of society. 
 The question is, when they get power proportionate to their 
 strength, wiU they then be suborned of their ideal and sub- 
 verted from their purpose by weaknesses common to all flesh? 
 Win the possessive instinct and the instinct for power, which 
 develop the predatory spirit, control them as they have con- 
 trolled other classes before them who have given promise of 
 emancipating society along with themselves from the bondage 
 of a selfish order? It is not fair for the hberal intellectuals to 
 leave the risuig working class to answer that question alone 
 and then condemn them both now and in history because 
 they fail to find the right answer. Manifestly those who have 
 been educated in the higher learning should know the real 
 values of life and should strenuously seek to impart that 
 knowledge to the working class. But these values cannot be 
 taught merely by words; they have to be demonstrated in 
 life and by deed. The word is life only when it becomes flesh. 
 
 The further questions raised by the general policies of the 
 Soviet Constitution are whether its program of expropria- 
 tion gives any evidence of the spirit of justice and whether its 
 program of nationalization shows any appreciation of the 
 need for efiSciency. Any serious change in the social structure 
 involves a change in property values and in vested rights to 
 income. This is called expropriation by those who benefit 
 from the process and confiscation by those who suffer. It is 
 the unwillingness to face this issue that keeps so much of our 
 social program running around in a circle from one reform 
 to another, aU with no outlet unless property interests are han- 
 dled, as for example, the matter of securing, good health and 
 housing for the tenement population. For the same reason, 
 the attempts to get a better social standard for wage-earners 
 by raising wages without touching the right to profits and 
 
262 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 dividends results only in higher prices, and the dog proceeds 
 to chase his tail. In some matters the issue has been faced. 
 We have recognized that we cannot get rid of the Uquor traffic 
 on the ground that it is not socially useful, without some inter- 
 ference with the property values of the people whose money 
 is invested in the brewing and distilUng interests and in the 
 saloons. This is plainly expropriation, and it has been 
 done. 
 
 It is required of the majority when it decides to make such 
 changes, that it shall make them with the least possible in- 
 justice to those who, in any event, must suffer by the change. 
 England expropriated by law a lot of the property of the 
 landlords in Ireland and redistributed it among the peasants 
 on certain terms. The landlords were paid for it by the State; 
 the peasants bought it on easy terms from the State. It cost 
 the State a good deal. Great Britain reimbursed the slave- 
 holders when she set free the slaves. We did not. If the 
 majority decides that it is not socially just, when all interests 
 are compared, to pay compensation for property or values 
 expropriated, it is then under obhgation to see that those who 
 are dispossessed shall have opportunity to secure a proper 
 living by socially useful toil, and if that cannot be done to 
 provide for them a proper maintenance. This is required 
 alike by the principle of proportionate equaHty and by the 
 social welfare. In all probability, in the Western world, the 
 process of expropriation which now impends in greater or less 
 degree, will proceed by a combination of both methods. There 
 wUl be some compensation for values expropriated and some 
 application of the pension plan to those deprived suddenly 
 of the means of maintenance for their leisurely existence. If 
 the training and the opportunity for useful labor can be pro- 
 vided the leisure class in the day when they are dispossessed, 
 the gain will be theirs as well as that of society. On the day 
 of change, however, it cannot be done to any further degree 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 263 
 
 than it is done before then for those who are anxious to work. 
 Therefore, the leisure class have a stake in providing now 
 against unemployment and for adequate vocational education. 
 It is practically certain that the manner and method of ex- 
 propriation in any country wUl approach the manner and 
 method with which those dispossessed have held and handled 
 their property. It will also be determined by the attitude of 
 the property interests toward the discussion of the proposed 
 change. These factors played some part in determining the 
 difference of method in settling the slavery issue between this 
 country and Great Britain. A property class that is seeking to 
 discover social justice wiU get more justice in the day of change 
 than one that has ridden rough shod and contemptuously over 
 the needs of the people. It is possible to settle even this ex- 
 plosive matter in the spirit of accommodation without serious 
 injustice. Give and take is better than take, for all concerned, 
 but it must begin at the give end. There is an essential spirit 
 of fairness in the common run of humanity which will function 
 until it is distorted by the pressure of gross injustice. Again 
 the spirit and temper of the new order wiU be conditioned by 
 the spirit and temper of the old. 
 
 The attitude of the Soviet Government toward those whose 
 property has been nationalized is to some extent indicated by 
 the following extracts from the decrees and regulations, though 
 they afford no information concerning the expropriation of 
 capital in the taking over of banks and industries except that 
 the decree for Nationalization of Banks, states: "The interests 
 of the small depositors will be safeguarded." 
 
 Article i. All property rights in the land, treasures of the earth, 
 waters, forests, and fundamental natural resources within the boundaries 
 of the Russian Sodahst Federated Soviet Republic are aboUshed. 
 
 Article 2. The land passes over to the use of the entire laboring 
 population without any compensation, open or secret, to the former 
 owners. 
 
264 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Article 8. All persons who are unable to work and who will be de- 
 prived of all means of subsistence by force of the decree socializing all 
 lands, forests, inventoried property, etc., may receive a pension (for a 
 hfetime or until the person becomes of age), upon the certification of the 
 local courts and the land departments of the Soviet power, such as a 
 soldier receives, until such time as the decree for the insurance of the 
 incapacitated is issued. 
 
 Article 14. AU citizens engaged in agricultural work are to be in- 
 sured at the expense of the state against old age, sickness, or injuries 
 which incapacitate them. 
 
 Article 15. All incapacitated agriculturists and the members of 
 their families who are unable to work are to be cared for by the organs 
 of the Soviet power. 
 
 The answer to the violence of grain owners toward the starving poor 
 must be violence toward the bourgeoisie. 
 
 Not a pood should remain in the hands of those holding the grain, 
 except the quantity needed for sowing the fields and provisioning their 
 families untU the new harvest. 
 
 If the property of the deceased does not exceed 10,000 rubles, or in 
 particular consists of a farm house, domestic furniture, and means for 
 economic production by work, in either city or village, it comes under 
 the immediate control of the spouse and relatives enumerated in Article 11 
 of the present decree, who are present. The method of control and man- 
 agement of the property is arranged by agreement between the spouse and 
 relatives, and, in case of their disagreement, by the local tribunal. 
 
 The program of expropriation formulated in Russia raises 
 a question concerning the ideal of social democracy. Is it level- 
 ing up or leveling down? We answer at once, leveling up. 
 We want the general standard of life raised, not lowered. 
 Then comes another question. In the world as it now is, can 
 there be a general leveling up without some leveling down? 
 Is a maximum as well as a minimum wage necessary? If it is 
 necessary to cut off at the top in order to buUd up at the bot- 
 tom, where must that pruning stop? The tendency of all of 
 us is to try to stop it at our level or just above. To those who 
 have one hundred thousand dollars a year it seems the height 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 265 
 
 of injustice that the maximum should be lower than that; to 
 those who have an income of ten thousand, it would seem 
 plain robbery to place the maximimi below ten thousand, 
 and to those who are trying to maintain a family in New York 
 on three thousand a year it would appear outrage as well as 
 robbery to say that none should receive more than three thou- 
 sand dollars. Yet if the universal minimmn standard is to be 
 secured, some point will have to be determined above which 
 incomes may not go. Difficult as the practical question is, the 
 real difficulty is in the spirit of approach, on both sides, and 
 particularly on the part of those who now have more than a 
 fair standard of living. To them the longing of the people 
 below that standard to get more life is a challenge to sacrifice. 
 Can any new life come without it? Service to the common 
 good which is not sacrificial, contributes no regenerating or 
 redemptive force to social endeavor. It contributes a vast 
 amoimt of necessary social improvement, but the regeneration 
 which is necessary for the new order cannot come unless 
 the service spirit touches the heights of sacrifice. Until the 
 will to sacrifice is present, service does not become redemptive. 
 If a new order is to come by force alone, it may be new in form 
 but it wiU have no new life. If it can come in part because 
 those whom the old order benefits are yet willing to pay the 
 price of the new so that others may benefit, it will indeed 
 bring new life to the world. 
 
 The degree to which the Soviet program of nationalization 
 recognizes the need for efficiency may be gathered from the 
 following extracts : 
 
 REGULATION CONCERNING THE ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 NATIONAL UNDERTAKINGS 
 
 Part I 
 
 I. The Central Administration of Nationalized Undertakings, of 
 whatever branch of industry, assigns for each large nationalized under- 
 taking technical and administrative directors, in whose hands are placed 
 
266 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the actual administration and direction of the entire activity of the under- 
 taking. They are responsible to the Central Administration and the 
 Commissioner appointed by it. 
 
 2. The technical director appoints technical employees and gives all 
 orders regarding the technical administration of the undertaking. The 
 factory committee may, however, complain regarding these appoint- 
 ments and orders to the Commissioner of the Central Administration, 
 and then to the Central Administration itself; but only the Commissioner 
 and Central Administration may stop the appointments and order of the 
 technical director. 
 
 3. In connection with the Administrative Director there is an Economic 
 Administrative Council, consisting of delegates from laborers, employees, 
 and engineers of the undertaking. The Council examines the estimates of 
 the undertaking, the plan of its works, the rules of internal distribution, 
 complaints, the material and moral conditions of the work and life of the 
 workmen and employees, and likewise all questions regarding the progress 
 of the undertaking. 
 
 4. On questions of a technical character relating to the enterprise the 
 Council has only a consultative voice, but on other questions a decisive 
 voice, on condition, however, that the Administrative Director appointed 
 by the Central Administration has the right to appeal from the orders of 
 the Coimcil to the Commissioner of the Central Administration. 
 
 7. Depending on the size and importance of the enterprise, the Central 
 Administration may appoint several technical and administrative di- 
 rectors. 
 
 8. The composition of the Economic Administrative Council of the 
 enterprise consists of (a) a representative of the workmen of the under- 
 taking; (b) a representative of the other employees; (c) a representative of 
 the highest technical and commercial personnel; (d) the directors of the 
 undertaking, appointed by the Central Administration; (e) representa- 
 tives of the local or regional council of professional unions, of the people's 
 economic coimcil, of Qie council of workmen's deputies, and of the pro- 
 fessional council of that branch of industry to which the given enterprise 
 belongs; (f) a representative of the workmen's cooperative council, and 
 (g) a representative of the Soviet of peasants' deputies of the correspond- 
 ing region. 
 
 15. For the consideration of the declarations of the Economic Adminis- 
 trative Council concerning the activity of the directors of the imdertaking 
 at the central administration of a given branch of industry, a special 
 section is established, composed one-third of representatives of general 
 governmental, pohtical, and economic institutions of the proletariat, one- 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 267 
 
 third of representatives of workmen and other employees of the given 
 industrial branch, and one-third of representatives of the directing, 
 technical and commercial personnel and its professional organizations. 
 
 17. A Central Administration [Principal Committee] for each nation- 
 alized branch of industry is to be estabUshed in connection with the 
 Supreme CoimcU of the National Economy, to be composed one-third of 
 representatives of workmen and employees of a given industrial branch; 
 one-third of representatives of the general proletariat, general govern- 
 mental, political, and economic organizations and institutions (Supreme 
 Council of National Economy, the People's Commissioners, All-Russian 
 Coundl of Professional Unions, AU-Russian Council of Workmen's 
 Cooperative Um"ons, Central Executive Committee of the Councils of 
 Workmen's Delegates) and one-third of representatives of scientific 
 bodies, of the supreme technical and commercial personnel, and of 
 democratic organizations of all Russia (Council of the Congresses of All 
 Russia, cooperative unions of consumers, councils of peasants' deputies). 
 
 30. When nationalization is iatroduced, whether of the entire branch 
 of the indvistry or of separate enterprises, the Central Administrations are 
 permitted, in order to facilitate the change, to pay to the highest techni- 
 cal and commercial personnel their present salaries, and even, in case of 
 refusal on their part to work and the imp)Ossibility of filling their places 
 with other persons, to introduce for their benefit obUgatory work and to 
 bring suit against them. 
 
 Finally there is the question of the poUtical machine whereby 
 these economic changes are to be worked out in Russia. This 
 machine gives evidence of that profound distrust of political 
 democracy which may be found in the utterances of the men 
 who designed it. One of their current phrases is that western 
 democracy is moribund, that it has not the power to contribute 
 anything further to the progress of the race. But it is inter- 
 esting to see that along with the declaration of distrust of 
 poKtical democracy there comes the creation of an extremely 
 complicated political machine. It is interesting also to note 
 that this machine corresponds in large degree to our own. 
 
 There is a series of legislative bodies, at the top of which 
 is the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, corresponding to our 
 
268 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 national Congress. This Congress elects the AU-Russian 
 Central Executive Committee, of not more than 200 members 
 which between the sessions of the Congress is the "supreme 
 legislative, executive and controlling organ" of the Republic, 
 directing all the functions that are included in our scheme of 
 political activities, and many more for the economic and cul- 
 tural development of the nation. We have nothing to parallel 
 that, unless it would be our congressional committees which 
 sometimes arrogate to themselves the power of legislation. 
 The Executive Committee forms a Council of People's Com- 
 missars, which with its departments, corresponds roughly to 
 our cabinet. This is the administrative body, but unlike our 
 cabinet it is directly under the control of the Executive Com- 
 mittee. Also the Commissars each have an advisory Com- 
 mittee, appointed by the Coundl, whose members may com- 
 plain of their decisions to the Council or to the Executive 
 Committee. 
 
 The rest of the political machine again falls very closely into 
 line with ours. Corresponding somewhat to our state legisla- 
 tures and to our county and city governments, there are con- 
 gresses of Soviets, regional, provincial, county and rural, com- 
 posed of representatives of the local Soviets. Therefore the 
 members of the congresses are not elected by the direct vote of 
 the people, but by the vote of the next lower body. It is there- 
 fore an ascending scale of delegated powers with all the perils 
 of that system from which Western democracy has been trying 
 so hard to escape. At the bottom of the pyramid are the local 
 Soviets, which differ in the basis of representation. In cities 
 there is one deputy for each 1,000 mhabitants; all other settle- 
 ments, towns, villages, hamlets, etc., of less than 10,000 in- 
 habitants receive one deputy for each 100, the total to be 
 not less than 3 nor more than 50 for each settlement. The 
 term of office is only three months. "In small rural sections, 
 whenever possible, all questions shall be decided at general 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 269 
 
 meetings of voters," which is practically the New England 
 town meeting. In the cities the deputies are elected from pro- 
 fessional and working-class organizations, so that the basis of 
 representation is occupational rather than geographical. The 
 whole scheme appears on the accompanying chart prepared 
 by Jerome Davis for some time in charge of Y. M. C. A. work 
 in Russia. 
 
 The general powers and functions of the national bodies 
 appear in the following extracts from the Constitution: 
 
 24. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is the supreme power of the 
 Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. 
 
 29. The AU-Russian Central Executive Committee is entirely re- 
 sponsible to the AU-Russian Congress of Soviets. 
 
 30. In the periods between the convocation of the Congresses, the 
 All-Russian Central Executive Committee is the supreme power of the 
 Repubhc. 
 
 31. The AU-Russian Central Executive Committee is the supreme 
 legislative, executive, and controUing organ of the Russian SociaUst 
 Federated Soviet Repubhc. 
 
 32. The AU-Russian Central Executive Committee directs in a general 
 way the activity of the workers' and peasants' Government and of aU 
 organs of the Soviet authority in the country, and it coordinates and 
 regulates the operation of the Soviet Constitution and of the resolutions 
 of the AU-Russian Congresses and of the central organs of the Soviet 
 power. 
 
 $^. The AU-Russian Central Executive Committee considers and 
 enacts aU measures and proposals introduced by the Soviet of People's 
 Commissars or by the various departments, and it also issues its own de- 
 crees and regulations. 
 
 37. The Council of People's Commissars is entrusted with the general 
 management of the affairs of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet 
 RepubUc. 
 
 This system must be judged as a machine for economic as 
 well as political administration. For that reason, if it repeats 
 the tendency of political democracy toward delegated gov- 
 
270 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 
 
 
THE RUSSIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 27 1 
 
 emment and toward over-centralization, the consequences 
 will be even more disastrous to the people. There is evidence 
 of an attempt to avoid these dangers by leaving large powers 
 to local Soviets, by the use of the recall to the extreme Kmit, 
 by the subordination of administrative officials to the legis- 
 lative bodies, and by maintaining the constant stimulus and 
 check of technical experts upon the administration, exactly 
 as was done here in war-time through numerous boards 
 organized to coordinate the industrial functions of the nation. 
 With all this, the removal of power from its source, through 
 an ascending series of delegated bodies is liable to overcome 
 the quickening effect of the enlarged control of their own 
 affairs given to the people by the local Soviet. 
 
 The significant features of the Soviet system are the re- 
 quirement of socially useful labor as the qualification for the 
 franchise, the occupational basis of representation, and the 
 fact that it is designed for economic rather than political pur- 
 poses. Associated with all the Soviet bodies are Boards of 
 National Economy, Local, Regional and National, whose duty 
 it is to coordinate and promote the economic life of the nation. 
 This system is an attempt to make political activity the ex- 
 pression of economic life rather than to superimpose govern- 
 ment upon economic affairs, which is the ordinary approach 
 of the democratic state to social reform. Whether occupa- 
 tional representation will create another set of conflicting in- 
 terests equally as disruptive as present class antagonisms is 
 an open question. Whether democracy is to develop by 
 means of a centralized federation of geographic political units 
 attempting to regulate the vital functions of the people, or by 
 the federation of a number of self-governing economic units 
 gradually acquiring the democratic control of all the functions 
 of life, is the immediate pohtical question now confronting the 
 Western peoples. The Soviet Government attempts an answer 
 to that question whose value cannot now be determined. 
 
CHAPTER DC 
 
 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 The League of Nations is the contribution of political de- 
 mocracy to the attempt to get a new world order. The political 
 idealists of the Western world saw in it the promise of a new 
 heaven and a new earth. Then they proceeded to fashion a 
 legal instrument to settle international disputes^ and to tell 
 the people that the millenimn had dawned. In this country 
 in particular, because of our incorrigible habit of thinking of 
 the affairs that are common to all the people only in terms of 
 political association, we are inclined to welcome any kind of 
 international agreement as the dawn of a new era. But new 
 life does not emanate from poHtical arrangements. They are 
 at best but an indication of its presence, one of the forms 
 through which it finds expression. What must be determined 
 then, is whether the present League of Nations is animated by 
 the spirit of the old order or the new. The extent to which it 
 is an improvement of the machinery of the old order is not 
 under discussion here. Our inquiry is whether the League of 
 Nations is the beginning of a new world order, in all the vital 
 associations of life, as well as in poHtical matters. It is of 
 course in the latter field that it must first be judged, for there 
 it has staked its claim. 
 
 It would mean a new order in international relations if the 
 spirit and method of democracy prevailed. But if the League 
 of Nations is to be the instrument of democracy in world 
 affairs, it must be a League of Peoples, not of governments; 
 it must be a universal association in which the principle of 
 equality between the peoples composing it prevails. It was 
 
 272 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 273 
 
 because the purpose and the first plans of the League of Na- 
 tions had in them the promise of a really democratic associa- 
 tion of free peoples that the labor and socialist parties of 
 Europe gave their support to the idea to attempt to embody 
 it in fact, although they had no illusions as to the amount of 
 social change to be secured by governmental arrangement. 
 But as the Paris Conference proceeded, the attitude of labor 
 and liberal opinion toward the Covenant it proposed became 
 first a question, then a suspicion and finally a judgment that 
 it was not the expression of democracy. 
 
 The present plans make no provision for a Parliament of 
 Peoples in which they might discuss the common business of 
 the nations and come to know each other and each other's 
 point of view. Instead of this there is the following arrange- 
 ment: 
 
 Membership 
 
 The members of the League will be the signatories of the covenant and 
 other States invited to accede who must lodge a declaration of accession 
 without reservation within two months. A new State, dominion, or 
 colony may be admitted, provided its admission is agreed by two-thirds of 
 the assembly. A State may withdraw upon giving two years' notice, if 
 it has fulfilled aU its international obhgations. 
 
 Secretaeiat 
 
 A permanent secretariat wiU be established at the seat of the League, 
 which will be at Geneva. 
 
 Assembly 
 
 The Assembly wiU consist of representatives of the members of the 
 League, and will meet at stated intervals. Voting wiU be by States. 
 Each member wiU have one vote and not more than three representatives. 
 
 This is plainly a long way removed from democracy and the 
 reason is not far to seek. The result of an attempt to form a 
 League of Nations could not in the nature of things be more 
 democratic than the attempt. If what the world gets from 
 Paris is not an association of free peoples it is because the 
 
274 THE ^fEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES ANB PROGRAMS 
 
 Paris Conference was not a conference of free peoples. Who 
 was represented there save the political parties who happened 
 to be in control of the allied governments at the time the war 
 was ended? Of the delegations probably the most composite 
 was the British. It contained a Liberal, a Unionist and a 
 Laborite. But the British Labor Party, representing some- 
 where near to five million voters in Great Britain, had no voice 
 at the Paris Conference. The delegation was handpicked by 
 the Prime Minister to represent the CoaUtion Government. 
 The American delegation was even less representative of 
 public opinion. Side by side with the Paris Conference there 
 met at Berne, an international labor and socialist conference 
 representing many millions of people, whose organizations 
 have developed very much more defimte programs for a new 
 order than anything which was produced at Paris. These 
 people were not represented at all in the Paris Conference. 
 There met at Moscow, while the Paris gathering was in prog- 
 ress, an international communist congress representing still 
 other millions, some of whom have already established the 
 framework of a totally new order of society. These people 
 were not represented even at the Berne Conference, let alone 
 at Paris. One thing at least is true about the new order; it is 
 going to be made in the main by the people who work at the 
 common tasks of civilization. Yet these people, who are to 
 play so large a part in the making of a new order, have had 
 no adequate voice in the making of the present League of 
 Nations. When they have spoken elsewhere they have de- 
 manded an association of peoples, not of governments. 
 
 Does this mean that present pohtical machinery was unable 
 to provide a democratic representation of the various elements 
 in the population for the most significant gathering of modern 
 times? Is it then inherently defective? Faced with its su- 
 preme task, the extension of democracy to world affairs, was 
 the democratic state unable to function democratically. As 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 275 
 
 the result of the Paris Conference could not be more demo- 
 cratic than the Conference itself, neither could the Conference 
 be more democratic than the nations from which its delegates 
 came. Indeed some of its spirit is usually lost in the transfer 
 of a principle from a smaller to a larger organization. The 
 story of the Paris gathering and its aftermath would have been 
 much different if the democratic nations had been democratic 
 enough to construct their governments by proportionate 
 representatives. 
 
 It is a political axiom that democratic arrangements can 
 develop only out of democratic discussion, and in this respect 
 the Paris Conference was notoriously less democratic than 
 the nations which profess democracy. Despite the fact that 
 the first of the famous Fourteen Articles, on the basis of which 
 the respective governments assembled at Paris agreed to come 
 together, prescribed "open covenants of peace openly arrived 
 at," from the first day the most important of the issues in- 
 volved were discussed behind closed doors in a council of 
 ten; later in a coimdl of four, and finally were discussed and 
 settled by three men. The people whose destinies were thus 
 determined were told only such things as these men wished 
 them to know. The arrangements they were asked to guar- 
 antee by a League of Nations were secretly arrived at. In 
 considering the attempt to proclaim the dictatorship of the 
 proletariat, political democracy must face the hard fact that, 
 in the day when men were bent on shaping a new order, its 
 contribution in method was the practical dictatorship of three 
 men over the conference of the nations. 
 
 Nor can political democracy escape the dilemma by pleading 
 the centralization of power due to war necessity, by pleading 
 the advantage of a war-time administration in its control of 
 army and press and in the potency of the appeal to passion. 
 If political democracy chooses to abdicate for war purposes, 
 it must accept the consequences when it comes to the estab- 
 
276 THE NEW SOCIAL OIIDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 lishing of peace. It must either admit frankly that the work- 
 ing out of a new order is a choice between two kinds of dictator- 
 ship and appeal to the world on the basis of their respective 
 merits, or repent and confess its war-time relapse from prin- 
 ciples and meet the challenge of those who want and need a 
 new order with more and stiU more democracy. Its test is 
 the Treaty and the Covenant. In this day and age, the ex- 
 cathedra decisions of three men are not long going to hold 
 the life of the world, unless in the name of democracy the free 
 peoples can be led to attempt to enforce them. If they do 
 accept them with their eyes closed, for fear of the specter of 
 anarchy or the resurrected foe, then democracy has plainly 
 lost its power to function. Perhaps it has not yet acquired 
 that power. 
 
 As a matter of fact the people are still in bondage to the 
 old ideas, holding over from the days of autocratic power. 
 When they talk of affairs in Russia they do not talk of 
 the Russian people but of Lenine and Trotsky; when the 
 papers discuss the Paris Conference they speak of Wilson, 
 Clemenceau and Lloyd George more than of the peoples behind 
 them. Does it mean that we cannot yet act democratically, 
 that the efforts for a new order are bound by the old idealogy 
 and phraseology of kingcraft? Is it one of the incurable iti- 
 firmities of human life and institutions that we must always 
 have a measure of dictatorship in the management of our 
 affairs, even in a democracy? If it is, we may be devoutly 
 thankful that God made the Irish, and some others, to protest 
 in every time and under every system that at least such a 
 measure of dictatorship as then obtains is not necessary to 
 human affairs. In particular, let us give thanks for those 
 among them on whose head a price is always set by the estab- 
 lished order and sometimes paid, yet never gets what it paid 
 for, because alive or dead they are rebels stUl; and their souls 
 go marching on, leading the rest of the world to continually 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 277 
 
 reduce what is repeatedly affirmed to be an irreducible mini- 
 mum in the control by a few of the affairs of the many. 
 
 If a League of Nations is to make for a new political order, 
 it must establish at least proportionate equality between the 
 nations. But the present covenant is primarily an alliance 
 of the five big allies and secondarily of the fourteen war allies, 
 together with such neutrals as they may themselves select and 
 invite into the League. 
 
 CotTNCIL 
 
 The Council will consist of representatives of the Five Great AUied 
 Powers, together with representatives of four members selected by the 
 Assembly from time to time; it may co-opt additional States and will 
 meet at least once a year. Members not represented will be invited to 
 send a representative when questions affecting their interests are dis- 
 cussed. Voting will be by States. Each State will have one vote and not 
 more than one representative. A decision taken by the Assembly and 
 Council must be unanimous except in regard to procedure, and in certain 
 cases specified in the covenant and ia the treaty, where decisions will 
 be by a majority. 
 
 The five " Great Powers" have five members of the Council, 
 aU others together have only four; moreover the real power is 
 concentrated in the hands of the council, which will naturally 
 represent the foreign offices of the respective nations. No 
 nation has yet democratically controlled its foreign affairs. 
 The departments of foreign relations are the least democratic 
 of any of the governmental agencies of the people. In Europe 
 they represent, and in secrecy carry out, an inherited tradition 
 of aggressive self-interest, and here the State Department is 
 practically the will or whim of the executive. 
 
 Do the people of this country know what the United States 
 has done in Hayti and San Domingo, or what it has discussed 
 with other nations concerning Mexico? Does even the Senate 
 know what operations of our financial interests in other parts 
 of the earth, in behalf of which the Congress may presently be 
 asked to declare war, the State Department has sanctioned? 
 
278 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Because the history of recent diplomacy, including the nego- 
 tiations at Paris clearly shows that lie mainspring of the 
 foreign policy of any nation is economic interest, and because 
 under the present economic order that interest is one of ag- 
 gression, or at least appears to be, there is no hope for a new 
 world, and little hope of stability for the old, in the attempt to 
 combine the foreign policies of the great powers in some sort 
 of a compromise and expect the other nations to acquiesce in 
 an agreement by which they are to furnish or guarantee the 
 profit to be derived from the undertaking. In face of the 
 overwhelming predominance of power given to the "Great 
 Powers," the Covenant can scarcely claim to be a democratic 
 arrangement. How then, did this result eventuate from an 
 attempt to make the world safe for democracy? Those who 
 assert that the Covenant is the best that could be done at the 
 present time are at least under bonds to explain why democ- 
 racy has ceased to be democratic. Is it because it has developed 
 bureaucratic machinery which will not permit democracy to 
 fimction? Or is it because, particularly in foreign affairs, it 
 is the voice and the will of an autocratic economic system? 
 
 The supreme test of the League of Nations as a political 
 instrument is what it will do to prevent war. Even though 
 in other respects it gave no signs of new life, stiU if it offers 
 some promise of ridding the world of wars, it wUl aid a new 
 order in getting bom. It was for this reason that the labor 
 and socialist parties of Europe advocated the plan, and it was 
 certainly intended by those who proposed and fiist drafted 
 the present Covenant that disarmament should be a positive 
 undertaking, that conscription should be abolished, and war 
 should be made more than unlikely. These things an inter- 
 national agreement must guarantee if it is to bring healing or 
 health or hope to the stricken world, that it may begin life 
 anew. 
 
 What then are the actual provisions of the present Covenant 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 279 
 
 in this matter? They follow the principle: "the reduction of 
 national armaments to the lowest point consistent with na- 
 tional safety having special regard to the geographical situa- 
 tion and circumstances of each case." 
 
 Armaments 
 
 The Council will fonnulate plans for a reduction of armaments for 
 consideration and adoption. These plans wiU be revised every ten years. 
 Once they are adopted, no member must exceed the armaments fixed 
 without die concurrence of the Council. AH members wiU exchange full 
 information as to armaments and programs, and a permanent commis- 
 sion wUl advise the CoimcU on mUitaiy and naval questions. 
 
 The amount of pressure for disarmament that is likely to 
 come from a League of the Governments that now rule Western 
 Europe is already evident. Introducing the draft, M. Bour- 
 geois of France said: "There are special dangers for countries 
 like France, Belgium, Serbia, and the new states in course of 
 formation" which require for them "stronger systems of de- 
 fense and possibly stronger armaments." It is the language 
 and the spirit of the old competitive armament system. It 
 manifests the same fear and distrust and the same unwilling- 
 ness to face and attempt to remove their causes. The present 
 League of Nations manifests no faith in the possibility of dis- 
 armament, and already the dominant powers in the agreement 
 are planning an increase in army or navy, or both. 
 
 What measures does the present Covenant suggest for the 
 prevention of war? 
 
 Upon any war, or threat of war, the Coundl wiU meet to consider what 
 common action shall be taken. Members are pledged to submit matters 
 of dispute to arbitration or inquiry and not to resort to war until three 
 months after the award. Members agree to carry out the arbitral award 
 and not to go to war with any party to the dispute which complies with 
 it. If a member fails to carry out the award, the Council wiU propose the 
 necessary measures. The Council will formulate plans for the establish- 
 ment of a permanent court of international justice to determine inter- 
 national disputes or to give advisory opinions. Members who do not 
 submit their case to arbitration must accept the jurisdiction of the 
 
28o THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Assembly. If the Council, less the parties to the dispute, is unanimously 
 agreed upon the rights of it, the members agree that they will not go to 
 war with any party to the dispute which complies with its recommenda- 
 tions. In this case, a recommendation, by the Assembly, concurred in 
 by all its members represented on the Council and a simple majority of 
 the rest, less the parties to the dispute, wiU have the force of a unanimous 
 recommendation by the Council. In either case, if the necessary agree- 
 ment cannot be secured, the members reserve the right to take such 
 [action?] as may be necessary for the maintenance of right and justice. 
 Members resorting to war in disregard of the covenant wiU immediately 
 be debarred from all intercourse with other members. The Council will 
 in such cases consider what military or naval action can be taken by the 
 League collectively for the protection of the covenants and will afford 
 facilities to members cooperating in this enterprise. 
 
 The measures then are publicity for disputes, delay, at- 
 tempted mediation and conciliation, with optional arbitration. 
 They are the absolute minimum that could be adopted and 
 have anything at all. They are a step in advance, but they 
 must be measured not against the past, but against the needs 
 and possibiHties of the present. The same measures have 
 proved ineffective in appreciably modifying the conflict within 
 the industrial system. Are they any more likely to be effective 
 in the international field? The degree of faitii their framers 
 have in them is shown not by their words but by their attitude 
 toward disarmament. Where there is no faith there is no 
 new life. These arrangements are the result of a purely legal 
 conception of hfe, which imagines that world peace is a matter 
 of artificial bonds to be maintained by force, whereas it is in 
 truth a matter of vital associations in the reaHties of life. 
 
 No new order can come from a negative approach to the 
 world situation and the one vigorous positive note in the 
 present covenant is in Article Ten, in wMch "the members of 
 the League undertake to respect and preserve as against ex- 
 ternal aggression the territorial integrity and existing pohtical 
 independence of all the members of the League." This makes 
 the League of Nations permanently underwrite the results of 
 the Paris Conference. It is an attempt to nail down the fron- 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 281 
 
 tiers that have there been laid. These follow pretty closely 
 the lines of the secret treaties made between the Allies during 
 the war, which represent the spirit and practice of the old 
 diplomatic system that at least was to be ended by the war. 
 If it is indeed dead, how long then are we to keep its corpse 
 in state to divert the people from the real business of life? 
 Who beUeves that the Saar Valley arrangement or the putting 
 of Silesia and East Prussia under an imperiaHstic Polish state 
 is going to make for the prevention of war? What likelihood 
 of ending war lies in attempting to guarantee the decisions of 
 the Paris Conference may be gathered by considering that of 
 the twenty-three wars now in progress in Europe, most of 
 them were originated by those decisions or in the attempt to 
 forestall them. Indeed some of the wars were instigated and 
 supported by the men who made the decisions. What was 
 done regarding China holds more of menace to the future peace 
 of the world than any agreement to talk over matters of dis- 
 pute holds of promise. The essence of what happened in re- 
 lation to China was the recognition of the economic sovereignty 
 of Japan over certain sections and also the strengthening of 
 the control which that Empire has been directly and indirectly 
 exerting over the mili tary establishment and policy of the 
 Chinese RepubKc. From this transaction some view of the 
 economic background of the Paris Conference may be gained. 
 Was it primarily economic causes that hindered that gathering 
 from doing more to prevent war and induced it to lay the fuel 
 for other conflagrations? 
 
 It has for some time been generally admitted by those who 
 have studied the matter that the main occasion of future wars 
 is the conflicting economic interests of the nations under the 
 present order. Did the Paris Conference then fail to satisfy 
 the desire of mankind for the aboUtion of war because it 
 failed to appreciate and act upon this truth? This consid- 
 eration may throw some light on the question of whether the 
 
282 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 undemocratic nature of the result of that conference was due 
 to the pressure of the present economic order. Democracy 
 and war are admittedly antithetical. It may be then for one 
 and the same reason that the present Covenant does not go 
 further in the direction both of preventing war and extending 
 democracy. If it should now appear that the main obstacle to 
 both these endeavors is an economic system which breeds 
 antagonism and promotes strife, which perpetuates and 
 strengthens the autocratic and predatory spirit, the world will 
 at least know what has to be done to get a new order; the Paris 
 Conference will at least have spread the knowledge that the 
 need of the world is the transformation of the method by which 
 it does its daily business and the finding of new ends for that 
 business. 
 
 The one open positive act of the present Covenant in the 
 field of economic action is the adoption of some standards 
 concerning labor and the establishment of an international 
 labor conference. These are the standards as reported in the 
 Official Summary of the Conference: 
 
 Nine principles of labor conditions were recognized on the ground that 
 the "well-being, physical and moral, of the industrial wage earners is of 
 supreme international importance," with exceptions necessitated by dif- 
 ferences of climate, habits and economic development. They include 
 the guiding principle that labor should not be regarded merely as a 
 commodity or article of commerce; the right of association of employers 
 and employees; a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of 
 life; the eight-hour day or forty-eight-hour week; a weekly rest of at least 
 twenty-four hours; which should include Sunday wherever practicable; 
 aboHtion of child labor and assurance of the continuation of the education 
 and proper physical development of children; equal pay for equal work as 
 between men and women; equitable treatment of all workers lawfully 
 resident therein, including foreigners; and a system of inspection in which 
 women should take part. 
 
 There is also created an International Labor Conference to 
 further consider such matters, and a permanent International 
 Labor Office with a governing board that determines the 
 
THE LEAGUE Of NATIONS 283 
 
 subjects to come before the Conference which meets annually, 
 but any government may object to the inclusion of a matter 
 for discussion. If any piece of labor legislation is passed by 
 the conference, each state agrees to bring it before its com- 
 petent body for enacting legislation within a year. The Paris 
 Conamission on International Labor Legislation drew up the 
 following agenda for the first meeting of the General Con- 
 ference in October, 191 9: 
 
 The extension of the Berne convention of 1906, which condemned the 
 emplojrment of yellow phosphorus in the match industry — a provision 
 since carried out by aU the great nations except Japan — and urged an 
 eleven-hour nightly rest for women in industry — ^likewise since generally 
 accepted; 
 
 The eight-hour day and forty-eight hour week; 
 
 Provision against unemplojrment; 
 
 Protection of women in industry — prohibition of night work and work 
 in unhealthful industries; and protection of maternity; 
 
 Protection of children — ^prohibition of night work, imhealthful work, 
 or work undertaken below a certain age. 
 
 These standards are frankly nothing but reform measures 
 designed to abate industrial warfare by making labor more 
 satisfied with the present order, and also to secure the support 
 of organized labor for the governments which offer them, but 
 at the same time those governments propose to keep the whip 
 hand. The respective delegations to the General Labor Con- 
 ference are composed of two persons representing the govern- 
 ment, one representing the employers and one the employees. 
 It is then in effect, the extension of political control over in- 
 dustrial affairs. The standards proposed are but the demands 
 of the most conservative of the labor forces and have been 
 secured by their own organizations to a considerable degree. 
 If they could be internationally enforced, of which again the 
 Paris Conference expressed its disbelief by making no attempt 
 in that direction, they would stabilize the international labor 
 market to some extent and relieve a part of the pressure upon 
 
284 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the lives of the wage-earners from present competitive condi- 
 tions. But that they mark any new order in dealing with 
 labor is an utterly preposterous claim, to be advanced only 
 by those with whom words have completely taken the place 
 of reality. That they will not satisfy labor is already certain. 
 In no significant labor body among the great industrial nations 
 can any expression of contentment with such a program 
 be found, except in official circles of the American Federation 
 of Labor. While they were being drawn, great bodies of 
 workers were demanding and securing far higher standards, 
 were actually compelling their governments to consider plans 
 not for reforms in working conditions only, but for the genuine 
 self-determination and self-realization of the workers in the 
 larger affairs of industry and the state. For instance the 
 British miners were agitating for a thirty-hour week and com- 
 pelling the government to call a conference to consider nation- 
 alization of the mines. How far this labor program de- 
 vised at Paris by a mutual self-interest compact between 
 governments and reactionary labor officials will go toward 
 estabhshing industrial peace, may be judged from the fact 
 that some of the severest and most far-reaching confficts of 
 the present time are occurring in nations where most of this 
 program has for some time been in effect and are being led 
 by those who have received the benefits of it. It is clear that 
 the forces of labor in Europe are in no mood to wait patiently 
 while the beneficiaries of the present system experiment to 
 see whether it can be made more tolerable and efficient by 
 means of some minor improvements. Labor is getting ready 
 to put in a new mainspring. 
 
 Concerning the other aspects of the economic life of the 
 nations, the matters of investment and trade, all that the 
 Covenant has to say is that its members bind themselves "to 
 make provision for freedom of communication and transit 
 and equitable treatment of commerce for all members of the 
 
THE LEAGXTE OF NATIONS 285 
 
 League, with special reference to the necessities of regions 
 devastated during the war." This, beside putting the League 
 in charge of the suppression of the slave trade and in control 
 of the trade in arms and ammunition where such control is 
 necessary, is the only economic agreement. This means that 
 whatever has been gained during the war in the international 
 control and allotment of raw materials is for the time being 
 lost, and that the economic life of the nations goes back to the 
 old competitive struggle. In preparation for that condition, 
 Great Britain has aheady been busy fastening her control on 
 most of the essential raw materials in the undeveloped regions. 
 The great sin of the Paris gathering is the sin of omission, 
 the failure to inaugurate some measures of economic co- 
 operation between the nations. As if that were not enough 
 in a day of economic interdependence when the ability to inter- 
 nationally organize the distribution of raw materials has been 
 amply demonstrated, that body has asked the world in the 
 name of democracy to guarantee with its Hf eblood that which 
 it has done in stark economic aggression. It is not by Japan 
 alone that the subtle game of economic imperialism has been 
 played at Paris. The larger part of the reason for turning the 
 Saar Valley and Silesia into breeding grounds for future wars 
 is the desire to control raw material. The determining sources 
 of the later developments of policy in regard to Russia are to 
 be foimd first in the foreign debt of that country and next the 
 minerals of Siberia, the timber of North Russia, the oil of 
 the Caucasus, the cotton of Turkestan. Why could no deal- 
 ings except those of force go on between Paris and the Soviet 
 governments of Russia and Himgary? Why was Mexico not 
 admitted to the League of Nations? Did her attitude toward 
 the property rights of foreign investors have anything to do 
 with her incapacity for government, in the sight of the leaders 
 of democracy? Putting together the attitude of the Paris 
 gathering toward those goverimients which would give private 
 
286 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 rights in property a different valuation than it has in the 
 prevailing economic system and the results of that Conference 
 in establishing economic imperialism in the possession of its 
 spoils, those who contend that the democratic state has be- 
 come the instrument of a competitive economic system have 
 an argument that is hard to answer. Is the League of Nations 
 then to be on the one hand a holding corporation for inter- 
 national capitalism to prevent the mutual destruction of the 
 profiteers, and on the other hand an international sheriff to 
 collect their bad debts? Is it to carry on the international 
 class war which the framers have already declared by their 
 attitude toward socialist governments, or is it to become the 
 medium through which a new international order can be 
 worked out by the mutual modification which economic inter- 
 course between those governments and the democratic states 
 would naturally bring about? 
 
 If the machinery of the present Covenant is to serve this 
 purpose, it will be necessary to develop it at once into a Par- 
 liament of the Peoples where their real representatives can 
 talk to each other about the things they need to do together 
 and all the rest can hear everything that is said. If the Cov- 
 enant is to stand as the guarantee of the Paris treaty its value 
 as the first agreement of the nations to discuss their differences 
 is more than counterbalanced by what it does to internationally 
 guarantee economic privileges that have been secured by 
 strength and cunning, without regard to the common need. 
 It proposes to do internationally by law what has long been 
 done nationally, namely, secure the spoils to the strong by the 
 conunon watch and ward. When wrong has once been turned 
 into right by custom and sanction and upheld by law and 
 order, it takes centuries to undo it. The miners of Great 
 Britain are now trying to get a better standard of life. Across 
 their path they find the vested right of a few families to take 
 toll before the coal under the ground can be worked. They 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 287 
 
 have proved by historic documents that one of these families 
 acquired thousands of acres of land because centuries ago 
 one of its members took advantage of a place of trust to get 
 the signature of a boy king put to the dociunent that gave 
 away miles on nules of the land which was the common heritage 
 of the people of England. That document is a symbol of the 
 sacred right of private property. To declare it invalid means 
 a revolutionary change in Great Britain. Those who now tell 
 us that something must now be conceded to the aggressors in 
 order to get any kind of a covenant, and that without it there 
 may be world upheaval, had better consider how much more 
 of an upheaval it takes to redress wrongs after they have be- 
 come intrenched. History has honor for men who, fighting 
 for an ideal, met forces too strong for them and went down 
 to defeat with their banner flying to the last; but it has no 
 renown for men who led their time to be content with less of 
 change than its possibilities afforded. There is a Scripture 
 the statesmen seldom use, perhaps it belongs only to the 
 prophets to know its truth, and they are not always sure of it: 
 "According to your faith it shall be done unto you." 
 
 To multitudes of men the world over, the results of the 
 Paris Conference are an abortion of the hope that was con- 
 ceived in the dread hour of war, a defeat of the ideal that 
 was bom in the agony of the great struggle. The political 
 idealists who planned a League of Nations that would really 
 prevent war and begin a new order, were defeated by a com- 
 bination of forces, chief of which was harsh economic reality. 
 They were trying to impose world peace upon the earth by a 
 political superstructure without due regard to the underpin- 
 ning of the common life. That is why so many federations, 
 from churches to nations, turn out to be only additional ma- 
 chinery. Solidarity is a matter of life, not organization. The 
 things federated must have a common aim, purpose and mo- 
 tive, and their desire to seek the common good must be greater 
 
288 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 than the desire to serve themselves. If they are after all 
 essentially rivals, no articles of agreement can bring unity of 
 life. All these can do is to furnish rules for the struggle. This 
 the legalists were trying to do for the nations without due 
 regard to the economic nature of international rivalry. Mean- 
 time the forces of the old order were strengthening themselves 
 in the economic field and planning to use the new political 
 organization as their defense and protection, quieting the ap- 
 prehensions of the idealists with the plea of economic neces- 
 sity. But there was another aspect of economic reality lying 
 ready to the hand of political democracy as the instrument 
 wherewith to fashion a new order, had its leaders but known 
 it. That tool is the cooperative nature and possibiHty of the 
 machine age. There is no need for political democracy to 
 fall into the grave with capitalism. It yet has a name to live, 
 and can find renewed strength by following its principles into 
 the economic field, where they will create an international 
 organization that will be positive not negative, that will "be 
 based not on fighting but on fraternity," that wiU not seek to 
 guarantee the privileges of the strong but to promote the 
 common weKare by mutual service. 
 
 Before the peoples can come together in such a family of 
 nations they must order their national life with a new spirit 
 and purpose. The spirit of the present Covenant for a League 
 of Nations is stiU the spirit of the old order, of a world which 
 has not yet been born again. In the old order the nations 
 look upon the rest of the earth as a field for gain, and other 
 peoples as a source of profit. In the new order all the nations 
 will view the earth as the common resource to be cooperatively 
 administered for the maintenance of the common life, they 
 will consider all other peoples as beings of infinite worth and 
 wiU seek to find that worth in fellowship together. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 What contribution has the United States to offer to the 
 programs for a new social order that have been crystallized 
 by the war? Is there in this country any conviction concern- 
 ing the need of social change, and if so, is it being formulated 
 in definite terms? It is to be supposed that there would not 
 be in this country any such crystallization of conviction or 
 judgment as there is in Europe concerning the essential ele- 
 ments of a new order, because the social problem is not yet so 
 acute, owing to exceptional economic opportunity. It is com- 
 monly observed among those whose business it is to consider 
 comparative social conditions that the United States, alone 
 among the industrial nations, is at the present time still 
 trusting in the past, looking back to its constitution for guid- 
 ance, pinning its faith to a form which was devised for another 
 day and not seeking to develop its underlying principles. 
 
 In very broad outline we will first consider certain political 
 platforms or programs, drawn up during the world war, 
 looking towards the reconstruction period, which assume 
 to represent in this country "the toilers of hand and brain 
 alike," as do the British and Russian programs already 
 considered. We will take first the principles and demands of 
 the Socialist Party as expressed in its Congressional Pro- 
 gramme for 1918, which begins with the following declaration: 
 
 Before the war the industrial hfe of every great nation was controlled 
 by private individuals for private gain. A rapidly increased cost of living, 
 widespread poverty among the wage workers, meagre incomes for the 
 professional class, and the concentration of immense wealth in the hands 
 
 289 
 
290 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER : PRtNCIPLES AlSTD PROGRAMS 
 
 of a comparative few — these were the natural results of a world run in the 
 interest of big business. 
 
 Every civilized nation was split into two warring camps; the non- 
 producers who owned, and the producers who served. 
 
 Then war came. It has challenged the domination of our economic 
 Ufe by private enterprise. Private operation and competition are being 
 found totally unequal to the strain of war. The interests of the state 
 become supreme. 
 
 Underlying all the problems of international reconstruction is the 
 greatest of all issues with which the world stands faced. The state is 
 dominating industry. Who shall dominate the state? On the answer to 
 this question depends the future of mankind. 
 
 Already the lines are forming. 
 
 In every beUigerent country, friend and foe alike, the men of power in 
 commerce and industry are laying their plans openly to capture the 
 trade of the world. 
 
 Already these men seek to erJist the active support of their govern- 
 ments in these schemes of conquest to follow peace. The future of the 
 world for them is a super-struggle for wealth and power; but in that game 
 no mere individuals, but nations and governments themselves would 
 be the pawns. 
 
 Opposed to this, the ranks of labor are taking form. Within the 
 belligerent nations the mass of the workers are gathering strength. The 
 toilers, of hand and brain alike, are building a new brotherhood in the 
 unity of their demands. 
 
 "No forcible annexations, no punitive indemnities, self-determination 
 of all nations." To the famous formula is now added: "No economic 
 nationaKsm, no war after the war." 
 
 True to its historic mission, the Socialist Party of the United States 
 seeks to prepare the workers of America to take their part in the new 
 fraternity of labor. 
 
 The Socialist Party comes before the people pledged to the service of 
 democracy. Democracy in government, democracy in industry, democ- 
 racy in education — during the war as well as after the war, the state, the 
 industries, and education, all three must be owned and managed by the 
 people, with no thought of profit. 
 
 It should be observed that the analysis "every civilized 
 nation was split into two warring camps: the non-producers 
 who owned and the producers who served" is a little too simple. 
 In the United States, more than in Europe, there is an inter- 
 mingling of these groups; there are many producers who serve 
 and also who own in greater or less degree. Of these, a large 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 291 
 
 proportion now find themselves shut out from any vital share 
 in the control of the wealth or the productive enterprise of the 
 nation. The part they wiU play in social change is likely to 
 depend upon whether they conclude that their interests both 
 as owners and producers alike demand a new order. If these 
 interests conflict, ownership tying them to the old order and 
 productive service leading them to the new, then the question 
 is whether they will develop enough passion for- the common 
 good and a sufficient spirit of sacrifice to make them workers 
 for a new world. 
 
 It should also be noted that behind the demand that "the 
 state, the industries and education — all three, must be owned 
 and managed by the people with no thought of profit," there is 
 the same assimiption involved in the program of the British 
 Labor Party, namely, that state ownership and state manage- 
 ment of these three functions would give true democracy. 
 This remains to be demonstrated. There have been serious 
 questions raised concerning it by the organized workers of 
 Great Britain and the United States as a result of the partial 
 state ownership and state control of some of these functions 
 during the war. 
 
 The Congressional Platform of the Socialist Party is di- 
 vided into two major divisions; International Reconstruction 
 and National Reconstruction. The international point of 
 emphasis is a Federation of Peoples. 
 
 We call for a Federation of the Peoples of the World, neutrals as well 
 as present belligerents, and that this federation be organized at the time 
 of the peace conference. 
 
 A positive aim and purpose for this federation is set forth as 
 against what is declared to be the necessary negative aim of 
 a federation of present governments: 
 
 Under the control of capitalist nations such a Federation would, of 
 course, be used mainly for the purpose of making rules to govern the 
 international struggle for the markets of the world and to aid the cap- 
 
292 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 italist powers of different nations to keep down their own working classes 
 whereas the SociaUst Party desires a federation of socialized nations for 
 the purpose of coordinating the affairs of the world and establishing 
 universal brotherhood. 
 
 In method, this proposal is more true to the principles of 
 political democracy than the Paris Conference or its League 
 of Nations. Evidently considering a transitional stage to be 
 necessary between the democratic and the socialistic world 
 order, this program demands democratic representation and 
 discussion: 
 
 To minimize this danger, we demand as a first requisite to success, an 
 adequate representation of labor and socialist groups, women and sup- 
 pressed races and nationalities, in each belligerent nation at the peace 
 conference and in all departments of the permanent Federation of 
 Peoples. 
 
 In the matter of disarmament, the socialists propose that 
 humanity keep faith with itself and follow its hopes rather 
 than its fears: 
 
 We demand that the Federation take measures looking to the reduction 
 of armaments to the point of eventual elimination. If the will to peace 
 is there, economic pressure wiU be an adequate weapon against recal- 
 citrants. 
 
 In the field of Internal Reconstruction the first question 
 raised is Industrial Control and the proposals are similar to 
 those of the British Labor Party: 
 
 The private domination of industry for private gain has brought such 
 disastrous consequences both among and within the nations of the world 
 as to make pubHc ownership for pubUc service the first necessity in any 
 forward-looking plan of reconstruction both national and international. 
 
 The Socialist Party, therefore, demands that all public utilities and 
 basic industries of the United States be taken over by the people, and 
 that this process shall be undertaken as speedily as is consistent with 
 public order and security, and allowing for the utmost possible degree of 
 local autonomy. 
 
 In the accomphshment of these ends the Sociahst Party demands that 
 compensation, if any, paid to the owners in no case exceed the original 
 cost of the physical property taken by the people; that such compensa- 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 293 
 
 tion be paid as far as possible out of taxation and operating revenues; 
 that the unit of ownership — federal, state or city — should coincide as 
 closely as possible with the scope of the industry concerned; and that the 
 operation of all public services be on a strictly cost basis after allowing 
 suitable reserves for depreciation, retirement of debts and new construc- 
 tion. 
 
 It is proposed to immediately nationalize the Railroads 
 and Express Service, Steamships and Steamship Lines, Tele- 
 graph and Telephone, and Power, defined as "the coordina- 
 tion of coal mines, water power and the generation of elec- 
 tricity mider national ownership and control," as proposed 
 by the British Ministry of Reconstruction. This would pro- 
 mote "economy" and efficiency of pubUc service and the 
 prevention of fuel famine," so that "every household in the 
 nation as well as every industrial establishment and farm 
 could be supplied with electrical energy at almost incredibly 
 low rates." It is also declared that 
 
 Every large scale essential industry whose operations extend beyond 
 the borders of a single state must eventually be owned and operated by 
 the Federal Government at cost, for the benefit of the people as a whole. 
 
 But 
 
 Government ownership without democratic management may become 
 a greater menace to the world than the system of private ownership and 
 exploitation which is passing away. Without the control of industry a 
 democratic government may be a menace to the liberty of the individual. 
 The addition of the immense power over public pohcy, and over the 
 happiness of the masses, inddent to industrial domination, intensifies the 
 menace a thousand-fold. 
 
 It is quite evident from recent strikes of state and municipal 
 employees in France, England, Canada and the United States, 
 that the workers do not propose to permit the democratic 
 state as it goes into industry to become an autocratic master. 
 It is also evident that both the state and the workers will have 
 to consider whether democracy in industry can be secured by 
 state control of production, under either a capitalist or social- 
 ist economic system. 
 
294 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Then come demands concerning a national policy of em- 
 ployment, of the same nature as those already described in 
 the program of the British Labor Party. These are followed 
 by a demand for a change in the structure of government: 
 
 The present structure of government is totally inadequate to assume 
 the additional burden of industrial control. 
 
 Organized on the theory of a separation of powers and constrained by a 
 rigid constitution, the President, two houses of congress, and the courts 
 have been checks and balances upon one another that have destroyed 
 efficiency, and made ineffective the will of the people. Only by the 
 domination of the executive and the servility of Congress has any effective 
 action been secured. But the loss to democracy has been immense. 
 
 The dictates of both efficiency and democracy demand a flexible con- 
 stitution and a urufied form of government. The President and the 
 courts must be responsible to Congress and its members elected by the 
 people without regard to sex and subject to their continual control. 
 
 The Sociahst Party, therefore, demands: 
 
 1. That amendments to the United States Constitution be made upon 
 the recommendation of a majority vote of Congress and ratification by a 
 majority of the voters of the nation, or by initiative of the people. 
 
 2. The aboHtion of the Senate, and the election of members of Con- 
 gress by proportional representation subject to recall. Democratization 
 of Congressional procedure, the terms of congressmen to begin soon 
 after their election. The election of federal judges by the people subject 
 to recall. 
 
 3. The direct election of the President and the Vice-President subject 
 to recall, and the abolition of the veto power. 
 
 4. The aboHtion of the usurped power of the courts to declare acts of 
 Congress unconstitutional. 
 
 5. Responsibihty of the President and his cabinet to Congress through 
 the power of interpellation. 
 
 6. Self-government for the District of Columbia. 
 
 7. The initiative and referendum appHed to federal legislation. 
 
 8. The immediate passage of the amendment to the Constitution of 
 the United States estabHshing the right of women to the franchise, and 
 adequate representation of women in legislative, judicial and adminis- 
 trative fields of government, that the interests of women may be the 
 better safeguarded. 
 
 "To meet the needs of the national finance" and at the same 
 time solve the ever menacing problem of wealth concentration, 
 this platform favors: 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 295 
 
 1. The imposition of an excess profits tax approximately 100%. No 
 one should be permitted to secure profit from this war, while others are 
 enduring untold sacrifice. 
 
 2. A progressive income tax, aiming at the abolition of all incomes 
 above the needs of a comfortable and secure Hvehhood. 
 
 3. A progressive inheritance tax, rising to 100% in large estates. 
 
 4. Taxation of the unearned increment of land; all lands held out of 
 use to be taxed at full rental value. 
 
 5. A more adequate corporations tax. 
 
 It is also vu^ed that "the government must completely and 
 democratically control its banks and credit system" through 
 the following means: 
 
 The Socialist Party demands: 
 
 That aJl banks essential to the conduct of business and industry be ac- 
 quired by the government and incorporated in a unified pubhc banking 
 system. 
 
 2. As the government acquires ownership of industries, it shall sub- 
 stitute for metallic money and the present form of paper money an 
 increasing proportion of notes redeemable in the service and commodities 
 furnished by the government, thereby ultimately eliminating entirely the 
 necessity of maintaining a gold reserve, except for international trade 
 relations. 
 
 This platform also proposes to introduce a new order in 
 agrictilture, and the measures it suggests are similar to those 
 which organizations of farmers are now carrying out: 
 
 1. Collective ownership of elevators, warehouses, flour mills, stock- 
 yards, packing houses, creameries, cold storage plants, and factories for 
 the production of agricultural implements. 
 
 2. Pubhc insurance against diseases of animals, diseases of plants, 
 insect pests, haU, flood, drought, storm and fire. 
 
 3. TTie leasing of farm machinery by pubhc bodies at cost. 
 
 4. The encouragement of cooperative societies for agricultural pur- 
 poses. 
 
 5- The appHcation of the land values tax to land held for speculation 
 and exploitation; exemption of farm improvements from taxation. 
 
 6. The retention by the national, state and local government of all 
 land owned by them, and the continuous acquirement of other land by 
 reclamation, purchase, condemnation, taxation or otherwise, such land 
 to be organized as rapidly as practicable into socially operated farms. 
 
 7. Encouragement of imions of agricultural workers. 
 
296 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 8. Extension of labor laws to agriculture and the securing to agricul- 
 tural laborers of minimum standards requisite for a healthy life and 
 worthy citizenship. 
 
 9. We also call attention to the fact that the elimination of farm 
 tenantry and the development of socially owned and operated agriculture 
 resulting from the foregoing measures will open new opportunities to the 
 agricultural wage-worker and free him from dependence on the private 
 employer. 
 
 The Socialists are not unmindful of the race problem which 
 hinders the solidarity of the United States and makes a new 
 social order here a more difficult problem than it is in Europe. 
 
 The negroes are the most oppressed portion of the American population 
 of which they form one-ninth. They are the victims of lawlessness, in- 
 cluding hanging and burning; widespread pohtical disfranchisement, and 
 loss of civil rights. They are especially discriminated against in economic 
 opportunity. 
 
 We therefore demand: 
 
 1. That the negroes be accorded full benefits of citizenship, political, 
 educational and industrial. 
 
 2. That Congress shall enforce the provisions of the 14th Amendment 
 by reducing the representation in Congress of such states as violate the 
 letter or spirit of the amendment. 
 
 The conclusion of this program is of particular significance: 
 
 In offering the above program, the Socialist Party warns the masses 
 that it has reference to a dying social order. Our program is designed 
 to assist in the passing of this bankrupt system of capitahsm, not as a final 
 substitute for it. No security can be had from imperiaUsm, trade and 
 investment rivalries, reactionary diplomacy, intrigues against backward 
 lands and peoples, militarism, and exploitation of the masses, without 
 a complete transformation of capitaHst society. Anything short of this 
 complete transformation, any program that leaves industry, finance, 
 transportation and natural resources in the hands of exploiting groups, 
 wiU perpetuate the causes of international discord and lead to another 
 world tragedy. The main struggle of the masses is to secure control of 
 these basic institutions and this requires an education of the people to 
 the necessity of such control. 
 
 In this work of education we invite the cooperation of all who recognize 
 the opportunities for re-building the world on a basis of equity, democ- 
 racy and fraternity for all. 
 
 Here is a different point of view from that evidenced in the 
 programs of the British Labor Party and the Russian Soviet 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 297 
 
 RepubKc. It is avowedly a program for a transition period, 
 rather than for a new order. Compared with the European 
 programs, it is the expression of a different stage of eco- 
 nomic development. It is a frank recognition of the fact that 
 the people of this comitry are not yet ready, intellectually or 
 practically, for such changes as may be now secured in eco- 
 nomic or poUtical organization in Europe, that they have 
 not yet recognized the necessity of the democratic control of 
 economic activity. From this point of view the United States 
 is among the backward peoples, whose chief need is education. 
 The nation which cheerfully assumed to teach the world 
 democracy needs now patiently to discover what democracy 
 means. The emphasis upon education with which this pro- 
 gram closes gives ground for hope. What needs always to 
 be remembered is that the educational method of the new or- 
 der is not the transmission of dogma, but discussion and ex- 
 periment. 
 
 Another reconstruction program was formulated by the 
 Social Democratic League which is a secessionist group of 
 "intellectuals" who split off from the SociaHst Party because 
 of its opposition to the war. This group was one of the con- 
 stituent elements in the "National Party" and its members 
 are active in the present attempt to secure the political or- 
 ganization of "liberals." Their program runs very largely 
 side by side with the main features of the program just 
 considered. It declares that 
 
 after the war socialism will be at once freer, more democratic, more 
 radical and more practical than pre-war socialism. 
 
 It points out that 
 
 Socialists will continue to advocate labor legislation and government 
 ownership along the lines established by the international labor move- 
 ment, 
 
 but 
 
298 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 govemmentalized industry as well as private industry, no matter how 
 much regulated by labor legislation, stand in the need of direct dem- 
 ocratic control. Nor can a genuine democratic international program 
 be built upon the basis of economically separate and self-sufficient and 
 independent nations. The time has arrived to put into practical effect 
 that economical intemationahsm which has been so long exphcit but 
 forgotten in Socialist hterature. 
 
 The two main theses of this program are thus, that industry 
 under government operation must have a democratic control 
 and that economic hfe must be internationally organized. 
 
 The measures relied upon for the democratic control of 
 industry are as follows: 
 
 Either under government ownership or under the system of govern- 
 ment control contemplated for most industries for the reconstruction 
 period we must have governing bodies largely or whoUy under a combined 
 government and labor control — the very substance of industrial democ- 
 racy when labor and the producing classes generally come to predominate 
 over private property and capitalist interests in the government — as 
 they may do in every democratic nation if the producing classes use their 
 new power efficiently in national and in international affairs. 
 
 The next step is to demand the direct participation of labor in the 
 other radical economic measures affecting labor not by industries but 
 nationally, measures initiated by the war and hkely to be continued in 
 various forms and degrees. 
 
 The direct representation of labor and other producing classes on in- 
 dustrial boards must be supplemented moreover, by a radical democ- 
 ratization of all political and constitutional machinery as already partially 
 developed in politically advanced communities in the United States and 
 several other nations. It is chiefly through such poKtical democracy 
 national and local, that the producing classes express their desires in their 
 capacity of consumers, though the consumers, whenever cooperatively 
 organized, may also be given direct representation. 
 
 The national program advocates national action for eco- 
 nomic well-being and society welfare in ways that have al- 
 ready been sufficiently discussed. It has this to say concerning 
 equality of opportunity for cultural development: 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS DSf THE UNITED STATES 299 
 
 Every child is entitled both to a broad cultural education and to a 
 specialized occupational training. Half-time and continuation schools 
 cannot accomplish this double object. The minimum school age must be 
 raised to eighteen. A large proportion of our youthful population — 
 including all those who develop special gifts or aptitudes whUe in school — 
 must be maintained throughout the higher technical schools and colleges 
 at public expense. Industrial education should be harmonized with the 
 system of apprenticeship advocated by organized labor, which should 
 have a voice in the conduct of industrial schools. At the same time the 
 quality of our public educational institutions must be improved in every 
 direction. The number of common-school teachers must be approxi- 
 mately doubled in order that classes may be smaller, their pay and train- 
 ing must be improved and teachers for special and higher dasses must be 
 even more largely increased in number. AU this, together with better 
 equipment, means a Tninimiim increase in school expenditures of several 
 hundred per cent. 
 
 The aim of physical and mental education in a social democracy is 
 to give aU children equal educational opportimities so that they may 
 meet on equal terms in aU occupations — and to enlarge their capacities to 
 the maximmn of which they are capable for both social service and for 
 individual development — taking into due account the economic and 
 educational resources which the community has at its disposal. Indeed 
 this defines the larger part of the duty of a social democracy towards the 
 individual citizen. 
 
 Equality of opportunity must be provided in part by revolutionary 
 improvements in the educational system, and in part — as the American 
 Federation of Labor demands — by such improvements in wages that all 
 citizens may be able to keep their children in school as long as their 
 progress promises results corresponding to the parents' sacrifice — or as 
 long as parents are willing for any reason to continue this sacrifice. At 
 the same time it is the duty of society to maintain in school at public 
 expense all children and youths of exceptional abilities — for as long a 
 period as their promise of exceptional social services seems to justify. 
 
 This program also emphasizes the relation of cooperative 
 societies to the development of a new order. 
 
 The international program emphasizes economic intema- 
 tionaHsm as the only possible basis of permanent peace: 
 
 The older remedies against war, based upon individuahsm among 
 the nations, have become obsolete. They are founded upon the prin- 
 ciple of unlim ited national competition and belong to the period of 
 laissez-faire in government and unlimited competition in industry. 
 
300 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRrNCIPLES AND PROGRAilS 
 
 In order that there may be no economic war after the war — ^leading 
 towards another military holocaust — in order that a permanent economic 
 peace may be established, the present defensive economic cooperation 
 of the Entente nations and America against Germany must be made the 
 basis for a constructive and permanent economic cooperation for the 
 purpose of preserving peace, improving the economic relations of the 
 nations and removing the economic causes of the war. 
 
 The specific measures set forth for economic cooperation 
 between the nations are: the internationalization of interna- 
 tional capital for the development of the backward regions, 
 internationalization of international transportation, interna- 
 tional cooperation in international trade, particularly in the 
 control and distribution of raw materials. In conclusion it is 
 afi&rmed: "This organized cooperation of the democratic na- 
 tions is an indispensable preparation for their political federa- 
 tion," whereas political federation in the League of Nations 
 is being attempted on the basis of economic competition. In 
 this matter, as well as in its emphasis upon the necessity for 
 democratic control of state industry by the workers, the 
 program of the Social Democratic League recognizes that 
 political organization must correspond to economic reality, 
 that it must embody and express the interdependence and 
 vital associations of industrial civilization, that instead of 
 being an overhead regulative agency for industry and agri- 
 culture, it must be the medium through which their respective 
 functions may achieve a better coordination for the common 
 social well-being. 
 
 Platforms have also recently been formulated by Inde- 
 pendent Labor Parties in different parts of this country in the 
 hope that the movement may become national in scope with 
 an organization in every city and state. The two strongest 
 organizations at present are in the State of Illinois and City 
 of Chicago, and again in Greater New York. The Chicago 
 platform, which follows, is practically the program of the 
 other organizations. 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS EST THE UNITED STATES 30I 
 
 LABOR'S FOURTEEN POINTS 
 
 The Platform of an Independent Labor Party Launched bv the 
 Chicago Federation of Labor 
 
 Right to Organize 
 
 1. The unqualified right of workers to organize and to deal collectively 
 with employers through such representatives of their unions as they 
 choose. 
 
 Democratic Control of Industry 
 
 2. Democratic control of industry and commerce for the general 
 good by those who work with hand and brain, and the elimination of 
 autocratic domination of the forces of production and distribution either 
 by selfish private interests or bureaucratic agents of government. 
 
 8-HouR Day and Minimum Wage 
 
 3. An 8-hour day and a 44-hour week in all branches of industry, with 
 minimum rates of pay which, without the labor of mothers and children, 
 will maintain the worker and his family in health and comfort, and 
 provide a competence for old age, with ample provision for recreation and 
 good citizenship. 
 
 Abolition of Unemployment 
 
 4. Abolition of unemployment by the creation of opportunity for 
 steady work at standard wages through the stabilization of industry and 
 the establishment, during periods of depression, of government work on 
 housing, road-bviilding, reforestation, reclamation of desert and swamp, 
 and the development of ports and waterways. 
 
 Equal Rights for Men and Women 
 
 J. Complete equality of men and women in government and indus- 
 try, with the fullest enfranchisement of women, and equal pay for men 
 and women doing similar work. 
 
 Stop Profiteering 
 
 6. Reduction of the cost of living to a just level, immediately and as a 
 permanent poUcy, by the development of cooperation, and the elimina- 
 tion of wasteful methods, parasitical middlemen and all profiteering in 
 the creation and distribution of the products of industry and agriculture, 
 in order that the actual producers may enjoy the fruits of their toil, 
 
302 the new social order: principles and programs 
 
 Aboush Kaiseeism in Education 
 
 7. Democratization of education in public schools and universities 
 through the participation of labor and the organized teachers in the 
 determination of methods, policies and programs in this fundamental 
 field. 
 
 Extension of Soldiers' and Sailors' Insurance to All Workers 
 
 8. Continuation after the war of soldiers' and sailors' insurance; ex- 
 tension of such life insurance, by the government without profit, to all 
 men and women; and the estabHshment of governmental insurance 
 against accident and iUness, and upon all insurable forms of property. 
 
 Tax Inheritance, Incomes, and Land Values to Pay War Debt and 
 Government Expenses 
 
 9. Liquidation of the national debt by the application of aU inheri- 
 tances above a hundred thousand dollars, supplemented as may be neces- 
 sary by a direct capital tax upon all persons and corporations where 
 riches have been gained by war or other profiteering; and payment of 
 the current expenses of government by graduated income taxes, pubHc 
 profits from nationally owned utihties and resources, and from a system 
 of taxation of land values which will stimulate rather than retard pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Public Ownership of Public Utilities — ^Nationalization and 
 Development of Natural Resources to Furnish Employment 
 for Returning Soldiers and Sailors and Dislocated War- 
 Workers 
 
 10. Public ownership and operation of railways, steamships, stock 
 yards, grain elevators, terminal markets, telegraphs, telephones, and all 
 other pubHc utilities; and the nationalization and development of basic 
 natural resources, waterpower and unused land, with the repatriation of 
 large holdings, to the end that returning soldiers and sailors and dis- 
 located war workers may find an opportunity for an independent liveU- 
 hood. 
 
 Restoration of Free Speech, Free Press, and Free Assemblage 
 
 11. Complete restoration, at the earhest possible moment, of aU 
 fundamental political rights — free speech, free press, and free assem- 
 blage; the removal of all war-time restraints upon the interchange of 
 ideas and the movement of people among communities and nations; and 
 the liberation of all persons held in prison or indicted under charges due 
 to their championship of the rights of labor or their patriotic insistence 
 upon the rights guaranteed to them by the constitution. 
 
some movements est the united states 303 
 
 Labor Representation in All Departments of Government — and 
 All Governmental Agencies of Demobilization and Reconstruc- 
 tion 
 
 12. Representation of labor, in proportion to its voting strength, in 
 all departments of government and upon all governmental commis- 
 sions and agencies of demobilization and reconstruction; and recognition 
 of the principles of trade unionism in the relocation of soldiers, sailors 
 and war workers in peace pursuits, with adequate provision for the 
 support and extension of the Department of Labor as the principal 
 agency therefor. 
 
 Labor Representation in Peace Conference 
 
 13. Representation of the workers, in proportion to their numbers in 
 the armies, navies and workshops of the world, at the peace conference 
 and upon whatever international tribunals may result therefrom, with 
 the labor of this nation represented by the president of the American 
 Federation of Labor and such other delegates as the workers may demo- 
 cratically designate. 
 
 An End to Kings and Wars 
 
 14. Supplementing the League of Nations, and to make that instru- 
 ment of international democracy vitally effective for humanity, a league 
 of the workers of all nations pledged and organized to enforce the de- 
 struction of autocracy, militarism and economic imperialism throughout 
 the world, and to bring about world-wide disarmament and open di- 
 plomacy, to the end that there shall be no more kings and no more 
 wars. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 Chicago Federation of Labor. 
 E. N. NocKELS, Secretary. 
 John Fitzpatrick, President. 
 
 The American Labor Party of Greater New York prefaces 
 its platform with the following appeal: 
 
 Workers, the great cataclysm that convulsed Europe, marked the 
 birth pangs of a new social order. That new order, which will be char- 
 acterized by industrial and political democracy, can not materialize 
 without your cooperation and support. In your hands, brothers and 
 sisters, rest not only your own fortunes, but the destiny of your class. 
 As members of the American Labor Party you can usher in the dawn of a 
 new era in which democracy and brotherhood will be the guiding stars. 
 
 Join us and help the American Labor Party regenerate society. 
 
304 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 It quotes considerably from the British Labor Party pro- 
 gram and in the measures it advocates, follows closely the 
 Chicago platform. It has distinctive statements on Educa- 
 tion and Taxation as follows: 
 
 DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF EDUCATION 
 
 Education being the keystone to democracy, we favor the following: 
 (i) The creation of a department of education the head of which is to 
 be a member of the President's Cabinet. 
 
 (2) The administration of local educational systems by elective and 
 paid boards of education. 
 
 (3) College and university training free to aU who are qualified. 
 
 (4) Democratization of education in public schools and vmiversities 
 and public hbraries through the participation of labor and the organized 
 teachers and librarians in the determination of new methods, policies and 
 programs in this fundamental field and the extension of the principle 
 of free public instruction and the fumishiag of free text books to colleges 
 and universities. 
 
 (s) The war being over, we demand the elimination of aU mihtaiy 
 training from all educational institutions except the regularly established 
 government miUtary and naval schools. 
 
 TAXATION TO FINANCE INCREASED GOVERNMENTAL 
 
 ACTIVITIES 
 
 To provide sufficient revenue to Uquidate the public debt arising out 
 of the war, to carry on all pubUc works and improvements and to render 
 financial assistance to certain projects upon which the economic future 
 of the country and the well-being of the people will necessarily depend, 
 we favor (a) 100 per cent, tax on an annual individual income above 
 $100,000, and in addition, taxation to eliminate excessive inheritances, 
 (b) a progressive increase in taxes upon all profits, unearned increments 
 and incomes, (c) the use of public profits from nationally-owned utihties 
 and resources, and the use of revenue derived from a system of taxation 
 on land values which will stimulate rather than retard production. 
 
 These programs give an impression of trust in rigid for- 
 mulae, either derived from the past or borrowed elsewhere. 
 There is no sure grip upon either the economic or the poUtical 
 means at hand in this country. One has the impression that 
 the people who formulated these platforms have not yet found 
 themselves. They are an indication rather of a disturbed 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN TEDS UNITED STATES 365 
 
 state of mind than any mastery of the situation. They are 
 promise rather than performance.^ They are a distinct ad- 
 vance in that they recognize the necessity of united political 
 action by the forces of labor, which has been so vigorously 
 denied and opposed by the leaders of the American Federation 
 of Labor, in that they attempt to reach out beyond wages, 
 hours and conditions of employment to the wider economic 
 aspects of the situation, and also in that they recognize the 
 brain workers as an essential part of the army of production, 
 and there again challenge a prejudice fostered by the leader- 
 ship of the American Federation of Labor. Against that 
 leadership there is a growing revolt. American labor is feeling 
 the stimulus of the world movement for a new order. It is no 
 longer to be content with struggling for collective bargaining 
 and better conditions of work. Here and there a larger purpose 
 is forming. 
 
 At present the socialist and labor groups of the United 
 States are in the crucible; they do not fully understand their 
 situation or themselves. What will happen in the way of final 
 attitude and program wiU depend on two factors; namely, 
 upon the economic situation that develops after the war and 
 upon the attitude of the employing and propertied class in 
 this coimtry. There is material here for the development 
 of very much more far-reaching programs than those just 
 presented. Already there is a Left Wing Socialist movement 
 r unnin g several publications in different parts of the country, 
 proclaiming practically a communistic program akin to that 
 of Russia and accepting the formula of the dictatorship of the 
 proletariat as the means to secure the new order. 
 
 Perhaps the most significant steps in the direction of a new 
 order in the United States are those which have been taken 
 
 'Later developments make it clear that the labor movement of the 
 United States will in due course make its own peculiar and vital con- 
 tribution to the re-ordering of the world's economic life. 
 
3o6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 by the organized farmers. Whatever social change comes in 
 this country will have to reckon with our large agricultural 
 interests. In our past poKtical and economic history not a 
 little demand for change has come from the men of the soU. 
 They were the backbone of the anti-slavery cause. They de- 
 veloped the Greenback and Popxilist movements, which orig- 
 inated in economic grievances. These were class movements, 
 and they bore the stamp of the pioneer. They were protest 
 more than constructive action. But the American fanner is 
 no longer a pioneer. He is now not purely individualistic; 
 he is rapidly being socialized. And he has organized for him- 
 self recently a very significant national movement, the Non- 
 partisan League. 
 
 The origin of this movement is to be foimd in the dissatis- 
 faction of North Dakota farmers with marketing conditions, 
 in their conviction that in the distribution of their product 
 they were being exploited by the middle men and the specu- 
 lators. For twenty years these farmers tried to get state 
 terminal elevators for the storage and distribution of wheat. 
 Legislature after Legislature refused; finally in the referendum 
 election of 1914, 83% of the vote was cast for two state owned 
 terminal elevators and 200 farmers went to the Legislature to 
 lobby for their measure. But they found that certain financial 
 interests had a larger influence with the Legislature than the 
 people of the State, and they were told to "go home and slop 
 their hogs." Instead they started to put some rings in the 
 noses of hogs they did not own, with the result that they now 
 have the Non-Partisan League, which is organized nationally, 
 which has complete control of the government of one state 
 and a working political organization in seventeen different 
 states, which is no longer dependent for its views upon a press 
 controlled by other interests, but has sixty papers of its own. 
 This is absolutely an occupational organization. Farmers 
 only may belong to it; no banker or merchant who is conduct- 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 307 
 
 ing faaming as an expensive recreation or side interest can 
 belong to the Non-Partisan League. But a genuine farmer, 
 also interested in merchandising or banking, may belong pro- 
 vided that farming is his primary means of hvelihood. 
 
 The primary purposes for which the League was formed are: 
 
 (A) Making government responsive to the will of the people; 
 
 (B) Eradicating special privilege; purifying government; improving 
 the general weKare of the people; 
 
 (C)^ Raising the standard of citizenship; disseminating knowledge of 
 the rights, powers and duties of citizens in relation to government; 
 government by the people. 
 
 These purposes are stated in terms of political rights and 
 general welfare, but the platform upon which the members of 
 the League were elected to the Legislature last November 
 (1918) calls for: 
 
 State-owned terminal elevators, flour nulls, and cold storage plants, 
 with an industrial commission to supervise their operation; a State bank 
 with a capital of $2,000,000, in which all State funds will be deposited, 
 and which, besides doing the usual banking business, wiU make first- 
 mortgage farm loans at a low rate; a State building association em- 
 powered to erect dwellings for farmers and industrial workers, payment 
 to be made on an amortization plan; State hail insurance, a matter of 
 peculiar importance in the prairie States; workmen's compensation, an 
 improved initiative and referendum, and an attack upon speculative 
 land-holding through the exemption of improvements from taxation. 
 A series of constitutional amendments to enable the State to undertake 
 these various public services was approved by overwhelming popular 
 votes at the last election; the amendments have since been ratified by 
 the Legislature; and the larger part of the legislation called for is already 
 on the statute book. 
 
 This program of State Socialism is used to enable the agri- 
 oiltiural producers to control the sale of their product, to free 
 them from the grip of the money lender, to improve their 
 methods of production and to promote social well-being. 
 
 The legislature of 19 17 passed bOls placing within the reach of rural 
 schools, school nurses and medical inspection; providing free transporta- 
 tion for children living more than two and one-fourth miles from the 
 school; raising the compulsory attendance age to seventeen for those who 
 
3o8 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 had not completed the eighth grade, and providing for the establishment 
 of evening schools in town or country for those deficient in schooling who 
 are beyond the compulsory school age. The present legislature has 
 introduced measures to provide more ample funds for country schools and 
 to improve them in other ways. 
 
 Besides a program, there is in North Dakota an actual ac- 
 comphshment. Revolutionary changes have been accom- 
 plished by due process of law. There is Httle interest in North 
 Dakota in the SociaUst Party. Without caring about the 
 name, the farmers have put through a socialistic program of 
 state ownership and control of certain economic functions, 
 rejecting state ownership of land. The League seeks to in- 
 crease the number of small landholders and increase their 
 proceeds. 
 
 There is a wider outlook and possibility to this movement. 
 During the war the Non-Partisan League held a Reconstruc- 
 tion Conference and adopted certain resolutions which in- 
 dicated that the purpose of the common people in the war, 
 the reason for the privations and services of both men and 
 women, was to establish pohtical and industrial democracy at 
 home as well as abroad, "not that they might possess its 
 benefits to the exclusion of any others, but in order that 
 equality of rights and opportunities between the nations and 
 within the nations might be established." The members of 
 the National Committee of the League pledged themselves 
 to attempt to end war by creating a world democracy, to a 
 reconstruction program providing employment for all, to 
 reduce the cost of living, maintain earnings of labor and pri- 
 mary producers, end monopoly extortion and redeem state and 
 national governments from the autocratic control of monop- 
 oUes. They want national ownership for railroads, all means 
 of transportation and communication and "all other under- 
 takings which in their nature must be either great private 
 monopoUes or pubhc enterprises." They want the national 
 war debt hquidated by "an income and inheritance tax, grad- 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 309 
 
 uated upward from $5,000 until all incomes over $100,000 a 
 year, and all inheritances above that amount shall be appro- 
 priated for that purpose untU the debt is paid; and all incomes 
 not accounted for and all income-producing properties, secu- 
 rities and inheritances not listed for this purpose shall be for- 
 feited to the government." They want to eliminate gambUng 
 and speculation in the necessities of Hfe by forbidding the use 
 of the mails, telegraphs, telephones, express companies and 
 banks for making sales of goods, properties, investments or 
 securities except for actual delivery of the things sold. Here 
 then is a movement which commits the farmer to a program 
 of reconstruction, national and international, which mobilizes 
 him with the other forces of the world that are working for a 
 new order. 
 
 The significance of this movement is not simply that the 
 farmer is in politics; the farmer of this country has always been 
 in politics. From the time when he drove his wagon for two 
 days across the prairies to hear Lincoln debate with Douglass, 
 until the time of the PopuUst movement, not a little of the 
 political thinking of this country has been done by the man 
 of the soil. But the significant thing about this present situa- 
 tion is that the farmer is in politics for economic purposes, 
 that he is trying to change the government in order to secure 
 certain changes in the economic order. The poUticians of 
 Canada are quite a Kttle worried at the present time because 
 of the attitude of the Canadian Council of Agriculture whose 
 program includes both public ownership of public utihties 
 and the nationalization of the natural resources, along with 
 other more immediate matters. This Council of fanners in 
 Canada is requiring of candidates for ofl&ce a categorical an- 
 swer, yes or no, to the question, "Do you support the plat- 
 form laid down by the Coimcil of Agriculture?" The further 
 significance of this movement is that the farmer is in politics as 
 a class-conscious occupational group, driven there primarily by 
 
3IO THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 his own economic and social interests, Just exactly as the labor 
 organizations are being driven into politics the world over. 
 As soon as he attempts to look after his own occupational and 
 social interests through legislation, the farmer finds that he 
 is met by something other than poUtical opposition. He finds 
 that he is treated to the same measures of repression which 
 have long been used in this country against the industrial 
 workers when they have sought to improve their conditions. 
 After people get over the fijst shock, their ideas get clarified 
 considerably by getting pounded over the head a few times, 
 and now that the farmers have had their meetings broken up 
 and have been driven out of towns after their organizers have 
 been beaten and imprisoned under false pretenses, they come 
 to understand pretty definitely what are the forces behind the 
 opposition to even the beginnings of a new social order in the 
 United States and how they operate. 
 
 Therefore it is quite certain that those who are attempting 
 to discourage the farmer's interest in a new order of things by 
 methods of savage repression will but increase and accen- 
 tuate it. 
 
 Another significant aspect of the farmer's program is that 
 he is in poHtics for economic purposes as a property holder or 
 at least as a man who intends to become one. This constitutes 
 a different interest in social change from that of the industrial 
 wage-earner, an interest which wUl have a very vital part to 
 play in shaping an American program for a new order, for 
 it is an essential part of the program of the Non-Partisan 
 League to join with organized labor. Here comes this class- 
 conscious, property-holding worker of the soil, with a very 
 deep sense of the value of individual property for social de- 
 velopment up to a certain point, seeking alliance with the 
 industrial workers of the cities. Already several of the State 
 Federations of Labor — CaUfornia, New Jersey and New 
 York — have adopted programs which are distinct from the 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 31 1 
 
 national program of the Federation of Labor and which are 
 very similar in main outline to the program of the British 
 Labor Party and also to that of the Non-Partisan League. 
 Also there are a number of other farmer organizations moving 
 in the same direction. All these bodies recognize for the first 
 time that there is something generally wrong in the industrial 
 order which is a matter of common concern to all of them. At 
 this point, they pass out of their specialized occupational in- 
 terest to get upon common ground and find a coromon bond 
 with the workers of other occupations, suffering under com- 
 mon evils and now endeavoring to find a common release 
 from them. 
 
 There was, for example, held at Washington during the war 
 a conference of State Granges, State Farmers' Unions, the 
 American Society of Equity — ^which is the farmers' cooperative 
 organization in the West, the Gleaners and the National Non- 
 Partisan League, which spent several days in working out a 
 poHcy for economic reconstruction in America and for inter- 
 national reconstruction, to be submitted to the farmers' or- 
 ganizations for approval. It was finally considered in a 
 Farmers' National Conference on Reconstruction held also at 
 Washington. 
 
 This policy and program for economic reconstruction has 
 some very important items in it. It starts out by indicating 
 that the farmers are not going to commit sabotage upon the 
 rest of us. 
 
 It is impossible for us to organize in militant fashion for our own 
 defense. Nothing could justify a threat on our part to refuse to produce 
 and thereby inflict himger, and we are therefore justified in demanding 
 of the Government of which we are no inconsiderable part, definite 
 action that will lead to greater production and to cheapened distribu- 
 tion. 
 
 The program comes out squarely for the nationalization of 
 the natural resources of the country; "coal, iron, copper ores, 
 water power, timber, phosphate deposits, gas and oil." 
 
312 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Such of these natural resources as are now in private ownership 
 should be acquired by the Government at the earUest possible oppor- 
 tunity, and in such acquisition no payment should be made to the present 
 owners for value given by nature, for good wiU, nor for any other intan- 
 gible element, but full payment must be made for actual prudent in- 
 vestment. 
 
 Here is the natural bias of the farmer toward the rewards 
 of individual energy and thrift. He does not propose that the 
 nation shall be robbed by the speculators and parasites, but 
 he does propose that the fruits of individual energy and thrift 
 shall be individually conserved, so long as they are not socially 
 harmful. 
 
 This program demands that the government shall place 
 farming on a sound basis by certain national methods for 
 economically marketing farm products and making credit 
 available to farming. It faces the land problem squarely. 
 
 (c) The present unrestrained system of land tenure must be termi- 
 nated. Vast holdings of productive fertUe lands in a single ownership 
 is detrimental to all legitimate agricultural interests. Tenant farming 
 should be replaced by the more responsible system of cultivation by 
 owners. Taxation should be used as a remedy to force into produc- 
 tivity idle acres held for speculation. 
 
 It is certainly high time that some steps were taken in this 
 country to force idle land into use. A late report on idle land 
 says there are four million acres of land in New York State 
 not being used and held, much of it, in large estates. There 
 are four companies whose combined holdings of land on the 
 Pacific Coast are greater in extent than was the German 
 Empire before the war. 
 
 This program also contains provisions regarding govern- 
 mentally owned elevators, the regulation of the packing in- 
 dustry, the stabilizing of prices, regulation of war finance, 
 excess profits and taxation, similar to those in the program 
 of the Non-Partisan League. Its section on education def- 
 initely aims at the development of solidarity: 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 313 
 
 Education is the basis of all progress. Rural education sets the solid 
 standards of our citizenship and our patriotism. It is here tiie ideals of 
 American government find their bulwark. New and higher standards of 
 citizenship must be set up in our rural schools to meet the test of the 
 new mtemational ethics that herald a new dawn for all humanity. Only 
 as the rural citizen of the future learns his true relationship to industry as 
 a whole, to his own country and to his fellowmen in other countries, can 
 we hope for the sohd upbuilding of our rural life which is the mainstay 
 of our civilization. As measures calculated to bring about this result 
 we favor: 
 
 _ (a) Raising the standards of teachers through higher wages and spe- 
 cial courses of instruction for rural teachers. 
 
 (b) Introducing democracy by organizing into self-governing bodies 
 as far as possible all rural schools, the children learning government by 
 governing themselves. 
 
 (c) Teaching agriculture from an inspirational viewpoint. 
 
 (d) Federal aid in scholarships for rural teachers. 
 
 (e) Teaching history, and farm economics, and marketing. 
 
 (f) Teaching a broader patriotism based upon the establishment of 
 justice in aU relationships of industry and commerce, both national and 
 international. 
 
 (g) Teaching modem cooperation and cooperative methods. 
 
 The future attitude of the American fanner to world affairs 
 may be estimated from the section on International Recon- 
 struction, which sets forth eight principles and measures that 
 are held to be " essential to prevent wars between nations in 
 the future ": 
 
 1. Recognition of the common interests of the working people of all 
 countries, regardless of the form of pohtical government under which 
 they Hve. 
 
 2. International control over international trade and international 
 investment. 
 
 3. Freedom of production, and uniform and equally free exchange 
 between all peoples. 
 
 4. Termination of all secret treaties and understandings between na- 
 tions. 
 
 5. Gradual reduction of armaments. 
 
 6. International control over the occupation and development of 
 backward countries and peoples by foreigners, subject always to the 
 right of small and backward peoples to self-determination. 
 
 7. Complete and direct control by the peoples of every established 
 country, of their own government. 
 
314 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 8. Unrestricted passage for legitimate commerce, over land and sea. 
 
 Wars in the future can be made impossible only by securing just 
 economic conditions and relations withm nations as well as between 
 nations. . . . Only for the regulation and control of international 
 relations have nations the right to combine to prevent future wars, and 
 then only to insure the establishment of democracy between nations on 
 the solid basis of equal rights for all and special privileges for none. 
 
 The farmers then, like the industrial workers, are approach- 
 ing the international problem from the standpoint of the 
 soHdarity of the workers the world over, with a desire for 
 equahty, and a recognition of the economic basis necessary to 
 the realization of these democratic principles, a totally dif- 
 ferent approach from that which the statesmen are now taking 
 imder compulsion of their assmned necessity to try and con- 
 serve the existing order. 
 
 A further indication of the attitude of agricultural workers 
 toward a new order is in the resolutions adopted by the Agri- 
 cultural Reconstruction Committee of the National Board of 
 Farming Organizations when it met in January, 1919. That 
 body stated the fundamental problem of humanity to be: 
 
 The use of the earth and its resources for the greatest good for the 
 greatest number for the longest time. 
 
 Here then is another approach to equality and solidarity: first 
 a perception of the common interest and need of the peoples 
 of the world, and second the consideration of the earth and 
 its resources from the standpoint of that common interest 
 and need, instead of the viewpoint of special advantage. The 
 committee then insists that any conception of reconstruction 
 shall have certain limits. It 
 
 shall not be limited to securing the welfare of any single class or in- 
 terest, but shall be designed to assure justice to the producer and con- 
 sumer alike and to bring safety and prosperity to all the people of our 
 common country. 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 315 
 
 Once again the workers of the soil disclaim a merely selfish 
 occupational interest and stand squarely on the broad ground 
 of the whole social welfare. 
 
 The committee states as another basic principle of recon- 
 struction: 
 
 That the labor of men's hands is prior in time and superior in right 
 to accumulations of capital. 
 
 This is an adaptation of one of Lincoln's prophetic sayings. 
 It is a fundamental economic truth upon which any sound 
 social philosophy and poUtical program must be based. It 
 is further affirmed that 
 
 government does better when it helps a poor man to make a living for 
 his family than when it helps a rich man to make more money. 
 
 and that 
 
 a community of interest exists among all workers, whether on or off 
 farms, and that it should be expressed in common action for the common 
 good. 
 
 Opposed to the common interest of the workers, there is, of 
 course, a community of interest among the idlers, who seek to 
 maintain their parasitic position. But if there can be de- 
 veloped, as the farmers desire, a common program for the 
 general weKare, supported by workers on the soil and in the 
 factories, in the mines and the mills, on the trains and in 
 shops, in the stores and the offices and the kitchens, the idlers 
 are likely soon to become a negligible factor in the community. 
 This statement also declares that 
 
 the public good comes first, that pay for services not rendered is an 
 unjust charge upon the whole community; that a monopoly used for 
 private ends is always wrong; and that the whole nation suffers when the 
 standard of Kving for any class or family falls below the level of decency, 
 efficiency and seU-respect. 
 
 A great deal has been said in times past about the isolation 
 and provinciaUsm of the farmer, but it is doubtful if there 
 
3l6 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRTNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 can be found anywhere a higher concept of, or a deeper desire 
 for, the realization of the equality and solidarity of the human 
 race than has been manifested here by the combined repre- 
 sentatives of farmers' organizations. 
 
 Undoubtedly this growing rural consciousness, this develop- 
 ing intelligence and will of the agricultural workers, will se- 
 riously modify the program of industrial reconstruction 
 worked out by our city dwellers. Things will not go here as 
 they have gone in Russia, where the industrial workers have 
 dictated the program, for this reason among others, that the 
 rural population possessed of great vigor of body and of mind, 
 is asserting itself and will take a large part in social recon- 
 struction. As these different occupational interests, the agri- 
 cultural and the industrial, come together in a common pro- 
 gram, they will check the self-interest of each other and 
 prevent it from becoming unduly predatory. They will also 
 be helped by the teachers, who are organizing and discovering 
 their social program in alhance with these other workers. 
 Undoubtedly also, the farmers who have gone into politics 
 for economic change very largely at the selling end, to protect 
 their product, before very long will use the political machine 
 for economic adjustment at the producing end. 
 
 Already the government is cooperating with the farmers in 
 this endeavor, and this cooperation was greatly increased by 
 the war-time need for great food production. Here is a typical 
 report concerning State Aid in Peimsylvania. 
 
 In Pennsylvania, we are now engaged in plowing land with a well 
 developed tractor service extending all over tlie state and numbering 
 about 40 machines generally in charge of trained operators. This tractor 
 department of which I am the Superintendent in Lehigh County, co- 
 operates with the County Farm Agent and the Chairman of the Depart- 
 ment of Equipment and Supply of the National Council of Defense. 
 The State also provides a County Farm Labor Agent, whose business 
 it is to search out labor needs and seek to provide the farmers with labor 
 of some kind during the planting and harvesting season. Thus the ma- 
 chinery for the development of cooperation between the government 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 317 
 
 and the agriculturist in Pennsylvania has already become quite com- 
 prehensive. 
 
 The increasing collectivism in agricultural production has 
 deep social significance. It means that the ancient communism 
 of the workers on the soil is to be given new life and form in 
 the conscious collectivism of the machine era, to provide a 
 new economic base for the social order and to develop in it 
 a new spirit. Agricultural cooperation and collectivism are 
 developing separately and jointly all over the world. The 
 agricultural state of Yucatan in Mexico, that benighted land 
 which certain investing iaterests in this country and in Europe 
 are now seeking to civilize, has a new constitution which 
 commits the commonwealth to a scheme of cooperative farming 
 with the government as the leader of the enterprise. The 
 land cannot be sold. The title remains with the state, and 
 individuals get a use title, which can be bequeathed, and re- 
 verts to the state if a family becomes extinct. The Govern- 
 ment advances capital for farming, provides experts to in- 
 struct the people in agriculture, and then markets the crops 
 to the greatest advantage. 
 
 One of the factors making for a new order is the point of 
 view of scientific agriculture. The tendency of government 
 departments of agriculture — state and national, and of the 
 new farmers' organizations, is to consider farming as a public 
 service rather than as a business for private profit. This 
 change of values is one of the fundamental ethical transforma- 
 tions that has to be made in all of our economic activity if 
 the world is to find new life. It is fitting that it should first 
 spread most rapidly in the basic operation of food production. 
 In his work, the farmer is dealing with one of the essential 
 primary needs of mankind; he is in constant contact with the 
 power of the imiverse. If his eyes are open, he sees the co- 
 operative nature of the scheme of things in which we find our- 
 selves. He ought then to be able to teach the rest of us a 
 
3l8 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PETNCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 great deal concerning the service functions of our daily 
 toil. 
 
 There are certain other groups in the United States whose 
 Reconstruction Programs need briefly to be noticed. The 
 American Federation of Labor, representing the workers or- 
 ganized into trade imions, has drawn up a Reconstruction 
 Program. It deals with such topics as Democracy in In- 
 dustry, Unemployment, Wages, Hours of Labor, Child Labor 
 and Workmen's Compensation and in these matters, suggests 
 nothing new. It straddles on Government Ownership, ad- 
 vocates Cooperation for the Farmer, Federal and State Regu- 
 lation of Corporations and of Land Ownership, wants the 
 government to build houses for the workers, and to impose a 
 progressive income inheritance and land value tax. There is 
 a section against militarism but there is no perception of the 
 need of any fundamental economic change, and the clearest 
 evidence of any desire for a change in social status is in the 
 section on education. 
 
 Education must be not for the few but for the people; it is essential 
 that our system of public education should offer the wage earners' chil- 
 dren opportunity for the fullest development. 
 
 The statement ends with a bit of pious traditionalism: 
 
 By the light that has been given to it the American Federation of 
 Labor has attracted to its fold over three mUHons of wage-earners and 
 its sphere of influence and helpfulness is growing by leaps and bounds. 
 By having followed safe and sound fundamental principles and policies, 
 foimded on freedom, justice and democracy, the American trade union 
 movement has achieved successes of an inestimable value to the masses of 
 toilers of our country. By adhering to these principles and policies we 
 can meet all problems of readjustment, however grave in importance and 
 difficult of solution, with a feeling of assurance that our efforts wiU be 
 rewarded by a stUl greater success than that achieved in the past. 
 
 Given the whole-hearted support of all men and women of labor our 
 organized labor movement with its constructive program, its love for 
 freedom, justice and democracy wiU prove the most potent factor in 
 protecting, safeguarding and promoting the general welfare of the great 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 319 
 
 mass of our people during this trying period of reconstruction and all 
 times thereafter. 
 
 The American Federation of Labor has attained its present position 
 of dignity and splendid influence because of its adherence to one common 
 cause and purpose; that purpose is to protect the rights and interests of 
 the masses of the workers and to secure for them a better and a brighter 
 day. Let us_ therefore strive on and on to bring into our organizations the 
 yet unorganized. Let us concentrate our efforts to organize all the forces 
 of wage-earners. Let the nation hear the united demand from the 
 laboring voice. Now is the time for the workers of America to come to 
 the stand of their unions and to organize as thoroughly and completely 
 and compactly as is possible. Let each worker bear in miud the words of 
 Longfellow: 
 
 " In the world's broad field of battle, 
 
 Li the bivouac of Life, 
 Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 
 
 Be a hero in the strife!" 
 
 This is not the voice of the rank and file of the American 
 Federation of Labor. It is the voice of its hierarchy, of long 
 established office-holders with vested rights in the institution. 
 It is the droning of the litany, which is always the same, in the 
 ecclesiastical and political convention, the assembly of college 
 and university presidents, or the United States Senate: "As it 
 was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without 
 end. Amen." Apparently in all the weary agony of world 
 war no new light has broken into the headquarters of the 
 American Federation of Labor. Its officials are still engaged 
 in repeating the formulfe which they learned many years ago. 
 They are good formulae for a certain purpose and a certain 
 time, and those men have done valiant service for the workers 
 of this cotmtry and of the world. But for the need of this 
 hour they have given no voice of leadership. 
 
 If the program of the American Federation of Labor is 
 compared with the International Charter of Labor worked 
 out by the trade union section of the Berne Conference of 
 Trade Unionists and Socialists, a fundamental difference is 
 found. The Berne charter sets forth in international form the 
 
320 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 demands for better working conditions which the craft unions 
 have long been making, yet comes out flatly with the state- 
 ment that " the emancipation of labor can be entirely realized 
 only by the abolition of the capitalistic system itself." 
 
 Under the wage system, the capitalists seek to increase their profit 
 in exploiting the workers by methods which, unless the exploitation is 
 limited by international action of the workers, would lead to the physical, 
 moral and intellectual decay of the workers. 
 
 The emancipation of labor can be entirely realized only by the 
 abolition of the capitalist system itself. Meanwhile, the resistance of the 
 organized workers can lessen the evil; thus the worker's health, his family 
 life and the possibility of bettering his education, can be protected in 
 such fashion that he may fulfil his duties as a citizen in the modern de- 
 mocracy. The capitalist form of production produces a competition in 
 the various countries which puts the backward countries in a state of 
 inferiority to the more advanced. 
 
 The Berne program advocates labor legislation and trade 
 union action simply as a means to an end, designed to give 
 the worker more of life and more of democracy that he may 
 do his part in replacing the present economic order with one 
 more efficient, both from the moral and scientific standpoint. 
 Whereas the program of those who are only craft unionists 
 is to make terms within the present order for the immediate 
 improvement of the workers; it presupposes the justice and 
 efficiency of the capitalist mode of production and merely 
 asks a larger share in the profits for the organized body of 
 labor. It was with such labor leaders that the Peace Confer- 
 ence dealt and then announced that it had given a new world 
 to labor. 
 
 A desire for a new world is manifested by the women- 
 workers, who have had to break their way into organized 
 labor as into every other section of the organized life of society. 
 The National Women's Trade Union League of America in 
 its reconstruction policies wants out and out freedom of 
 speech, and of the press; self-govermnent in industry; political, 
 legal and social equality for women: 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE XJNITED STATES 321 
 
 a single standard of morality, universal protection of motherhood and a 
 guarantee to every child of the highest possible development, physical, 
 mental and moral; 
 
 and they reaffirm their 
 
 stand in favor of the government ownership of public utilities and the 
 nationalization and development of natural resources in water power and 
 unused land. 
 
 There is a line of cleavage developing within the organized 
 workers of America, of which the organization of an inde- 
 pendent labor party in defiance of the policy and wishes of 
 the leaders of the American Federation of Labor is only one 
 evidence. Several state federations of labor have recently 
 adopted programs akin to that of the British Labor Party. 
 The California State Federation of Labor struck still another 
 note. Its reconstruction resolutions are phrased almost in 
 the words of some sections of the program of the British 
 Labor Party. Then in the final sentence it journeyed to other 
 fields and declared: 
 
 We should stand essentially for democratic cooperation and as 
 rapidly as possible the parasitic strata of society should be eliminated by 
 the imiversal obligation to work whether by hand or brain at work 
 socially needed. 
 
 A new leadership is breaking out of organized labor and 
 feeling for a fundamental program of economic and social 
 reconstruction. Inevitably this new leadership will find in- 
 creasing affiHation with the toilers of the soil and the intellec- 
 tual workers who also desire a new order. On the other hand, 
 the more conservative section of the trade union forces will 
 affiliate themselves in action with the business interests, ac- 
 cordiag to the basic theory of partnership within the capitalist 
 system on which their movement was founded. Indeed there 
 is now little to choose between their program and that of 
 the more enlightened section of our business organizations. 
 
 During the war, some Reconstruction Programs were put 
 forth by business organizations of the United States. In 
 
322 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 December, 1918, about five thousand business men, represent- 
 ing nearly four hundred industries, met at Atlantic City in a 
 congress called by the Chamber of Commerce of the United 
 States. The headings of the various resolutions indicate the 
 things with which this body concerned itself and reveal what 
 seem to its members to be the fundamental problems of the 
 United States for the after-war period: Cancellation of War 
 Contracts, Surplus Government Supplies; Removal of Re- 
 striction on Industries; Pivotal Industries — to be encouraged 
 and preserved; Industrial Cooperation — defined as the duty 
 of the govenmient to promote reasonable cooperation between 
 units of industry under proper supervision; it is the coopera- 
 tion of business enterprise that is meant here, not cooperation 
 on the part of producers or between producers and consumers. 
 In deaHng with the relations between government and com- 
 merce and industry, the demand is for private ownership and 
 protection of business interests. For example, on Railroads: 
 
 The Congress of the United States should speedily enact legislation 
 providing for the early return, under Federal charters, to their owners of 
 all railroads now being operated by this Government under Federal reg- 
 ulations permitting the elimination of wasteful competition, the pooling 
 of equipment, combinations or consolidations through ownership or 
 otherwise in the operation of terminals, and such other practices as will 
 tend to economies without destroying competition in service. 
 
 And again on Taxation: 
 
 The cession of hostitUies brings to business interests a feeHng of deep 
 concern in the matter of taxation. The problems of readjustment are 
 made more difficult through inequalities in the present law. 
 
 We believe, therefore, that in the consideration of amendments to the 
 present act, or the passage of new revenue legislation, the Congress 
 should give most careful consideration to the views expressed by or- 
 ganizations of commerce and industry. Ability to pay, inventory values, 
 and proper reserves, together with careful survey of the amount of 
 revenue required under the new conditions, are matters of vital impor- 
 tance to business interests of the Nation during this readjustment pe- 
 riod. 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 323 
 
 Indications of a wider concern than occupational interests 
 appear in a desire to help in the Relocation of Labor, in a de- 
 mand for Public Works to meet unemployment and in the 
 following statement on "International Reconstruction": 
 
 In war we have made common cause with the Allies. We should 
 likewise make common cause with them in seeking the solution of the 
 immediate problems of reconstruction which they face, because of the 
 efforts they put forth in the war. These problems peculiarly depend for 
 their solution upon commerce. 
 
 Raw materials and industrial equipment which we possess the Allies 
 urgently reqiiire that they may reconstitute their economic life. We 
 should deal generously with them in sharing these resources. 
 
 In order that we may share our materials with the Allies, we must also 
 provide them with credits through which they may make the necessary 
 payments. 
 
 Concerning Industrial Relations the Convention heartily 
 indorsed in letter and spirit the principles of the industrial 
 creed read to it by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.," without approving 
 or rejecting his particular plan or machinery." The principles 
 advanced by Mr. Rockefeller are as follows: 
 
 1. Labor and capital are partners, not enemies; their interests are 
 common interests, not opposed, and neither can attain the fullest meas- 
 ure of prosperity at the expense of the other but only in association with 
 the other. 
 
 2. The purpose of industry is quite as much to advance social well- 
 being as material well-being and in the pursuit of that purpose the 
 interests of the community should be carefully considered, the well- 
 being of the employees as respects Uving and world conditions should be 
 fully guarded, management should be adequately recognized, and 
 capital should be justly compensated, and failure in any of these par- 
 ticulars means loss to all. 
 
 3. Every man is entitled to an opportunity to earn a living, to fair 
 wages, to reasonable hours of work and proper working conditions, to a 
 decent home, to the opportunity to play, to learn, to worship, and to 
 love, as well as to toil, and the responsibility rests as heavily upon in- 
 dustry as upon government or society to see that these conditions and 
 opportunities prevail. 
 
 4. Industry, efficiency, and initiative, wherever found, should be en- 
 couraged and adequately rewarded, and indolence, indifference, and 
 restriction of production should be discountenanced. 
 
324 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 5. The provision of adequate means for uncovering grievances, and 
 promptly adjusting them, is of fundamental importance to the successful 
 conduct of industry. 
 
 6. The most potent measure in bringing about industrial harmony 
 and prosperity is adequate representation of the parties in interest; 
 existing forms of representation shovJd be carefully studied and availed 
 of in so far as they may be found to have merit and are adaptable to the 
 peculiar conditions in the various industries. 
 
 7. The application of right principles never fails to effect right rela- 
 tions; the letter kiUeth and the spirit maketh alive; forms are whoUy 
 secondary while attitude and spirit are all important, and only as the 
 parties in industry are animated by the spirit of fair play, justice to all, 
 and brotherhood, wiU any plans which they may mutually work out 
 succeed. 
 
 8. That man renders the greatest social service who so cooperates 
 in the organization of industry as to afford to the largest number of men 
 the greatest opportunity for self-development and the enjoyment by 
 every man of those benefits which his own work adds to the wealth of 
 civilization. 
 
 The realization of this set of principles would mean a very- 
 great advance in the industrial life of the United States but 
 they operate entirely within the present economic order. They 
 presuppose that identity of economic interest can be secured 
 within that system and solidarity of social weKare promoted 
 by it, whereas the swift movement of world events seems to 
 invalidate that assumption. 
 
 In the program of this business convention there is not 
 apparent any desire for a new social order; there is no evidence 
 of any understanding of the perilous condition in which the 
 present political and economic order both stand, or of the 
 determination of the common people the world over to change 
 not only their social condition but also the causes that have 
 led to that condition. What is significant in this program is 
 not the things that are said but the silences; the silences are 
 more eloquent and more pregnant for the future than the ut- 
 terances. Why is it that in the program of the business 
 interests there is no such vision of equality and solidarity, no 
 such throbbing of the passion for brotherhood as appears in 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 325 
 
 the program of the fanner? Is it because under our present 
 economic order the business interests are necessarily short- 
 sighted and self-contained? Is that the inevitable situation 
 into which the captain of industry who wants to be a public 
 servant is finally put by the capitalistic mode of production? 
 Is he continuously restricted in vision to the task of safe- 
 guarding his own economic independence, increasing his own 
 competence and making profits for others? Is it inevitable 
 that he is increasingly limited to less vmderstanding and vision 
 of the great human needs of industry and to continually in- 
 creased absorption in the material and mechanical side of his 
 service to the community? Is it because the fanner's occu- 
 pational interest deals more directly with human needs and 
 values that he has a bigger program of justice and fraternity 
 for the race? 
 
 Other programs in which business men have found ex- 
 pression do not advance beyond an attempt to work out with 
 organized labor some better industrial conditions. The Na- 
 tional Civic Federation for example, through its Reconstruc- 
 tion Committee, presents, as the ultimate object of its pro- 
 gram, trade agreements, to be worked out with the leaders 
 of the present Federation of Labor. It is good for business 
 and labor leaders to sit around the same table and consider 
 how labor and capital can get along together with the least 
 friction for their mutual advantage, but it would make for 
 more progress to utilize the opportunity to jointly consider 
 how the present order can be so modified as to give a really 
 new life to the great masses of the toilers. 
 
 The same limitation of point of view appears in the matters 
 considered in the programs of organizations that represent 
 the intellectual workers. For instance, the set of reconstruc- 
 tion principles adopted by the Illinois Chapter of the American 
 Institute of Architects deals with wages, freedom to work, 
 standards of labor, safeguards against waste, and state coun- 
 
326 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 cils to adjudicate disputes — all of them proposals to reduce 
 friction. The program of the National Municipal League 
 adopted in its Conference on Reconstruction at Rochester, 
 deals almost entirely with the advisability of continuing the 
 government control that had been exercised in war time over 
 certain economic functions. The convention of the Popular 
 Government League which met at Washington during the 
 war, did not get beyond the point of discussing the adjustment 
 of conflicts within the present order. The City Club of New 
 York in its reconstruction program deals with the condi- 
 tions of life and labor for wage-earners, advocates improved 
 housing and education; and workmen's compensation. Is it 
 then the height of our ambition to put into effect the pro- 
 gram of social welfare that was carried out in Germany be- 
 fore the war? Public service bureaus and welfare measures are 
 necessary to social progress, but all these things were imder 
 way before the war and it should be presumed that they will go 
 on. They represent no adequate outlet for the new spirit and 
 the tremendous mobilization of human energy that has been 
 developed during the world struggle. 
 
 It is significant that no principles or program for a new 
 order have been put forward by the social workers of this 
 country or by the teachers, who are social workers in the 
 broadest and truest sense of the term. Is it because they have 
 no philosophy of society, because they are so engrossed in the 
 present task? Is it an evidence of the limitation of their con- 
 cept of the nature of the work to which these social idealists 
 have given themselves, that they have now no common voice 
 and no great vision of a new order of things to give to the 
 world? Of course, within these groups as withia the business 
 group, there are a large number of individuals who have a 
 great deal to offer to the world-wide search for a new social 
 order, both ia the way of vision and of teaching. But by 
 virtue of the fact that they are social workers, there is a col- 
 
SOME MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 327 
 
 lective function for social workers to perform in bringing in 
 the new order, which they have yet to find as a body. 
 
 The war has not forced this country to think as it did 
 Europe. Its effects were not so manifest here. With the re- 
 moval of the inhibition of war time upon the processes of 
 reason and discussion, both from the goverimient and from 
 hysterical pubHc opinion, some real contribution to the world- 
 wide discussion of a new social order may be looked for from 
 this nation. Here the intellectual workers and business men 
 should be able in sympathy and understanding to fully cross 
 the lines of their occupational interests, for most of them are 
 not far removed from the farm or the workshop. Here, more 
 than anywhere else, there should develop a common focussing 
 of the ideaHsts of all occupations upon the common ground of 
 what ought to be. Here, if anywhere, intellectuals of the 
 middle class should be able to work out a common social pro- 
 gram with the rest of the workers, because of the degree to 
 which they are engaged in the technical employments of in- 
 dustry and agriculture. Unless the middle class of the United 
 States permits itself to be betrayed by the illusion of its own 
 self-interest and then seduced by the promised rewards of 
 the present order, it will make a powerful contribution to the 
 making of a new world. It has at its command an exceptional 
 amount of knowledge and of organizing ability. With all its 
 faults and despite its temporary abdication of functions during 
 the war, it has a genuine passion for democracy. If it will 
 now unite its technique and its passion, it can greatly serve 
 aU the children of men. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CHURCHES 
 
 It will doubtless be an occasion of surprise to not a few- 
 people that the churches should have any program for a 
 new social order, because of the fact that their work in this 
 country has been confined so largely, imtil very recent times, 
 to the life of the individual. They have assumed that society 
 would take care of itself if the individuals were made reHgious. 
 But during the last ten years the churches have been declaring 
 themselves concerning the relation of reHgion to the social 
 order. In 1908 the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ 
 in America, representing over thirty Protestant denominations, 
 adopted a report on the Church and Modern Industry in the 
 course of which it pledged itself to stand for a set of industrial 
 and social standards, which has since been colloquially called 
 "The Social Creed of the Churches." This statement, which 
 follows, has since been affirmed separately by the leading 
 denominations in their national gatherings, and declares that 
 the churches stand: 
 
 For equal rights, and complete justice for all men in all stations of Kf e. 
 
 For the protection of the family, by the single standard of purity, 
 uniform divorce laws, proper regulation of marriage, and proper housing. 
 
 For the fullest possible development of every child, especially by the 
 provision of proper education and recreation. 
 
 For the abolition of child labor. 
 
 For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as shall safe- 
 guard the physical and moral health of the community. 
 
 For the abatement and prevention of poverty. 
 
 For the protection of the individual and society from the social, 
 economic, and moral waste of the liquor traf&c. 
 
 For the conservation of health. 
 
 328 
 
THE CHURCHES 329 
 
 _ For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupa- 
 tional diseases, injuries and mortality. 
 
 For the right of all men to the opportunity for self-maintenance, for 
 safeguarding this right against encroachments of every kind, and for the 
 protection of workers from the hardships of enforced unemployment. 
 
 For suitable provision for the old age of the workers and for those 
 incapacitated by injury. 
 
 For the principle of conciUation and arbitration in industrial disputes. 
 
 For a release from employment one day in seven. 
 
 For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the 
 lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all, which is a 
 condition of the highest human life. 
 
 For a Uving wage as a miniTmiTn in every industry and for the highest 
 wage that each industry can afford. 
 
 For the most equitable division of the product of industry that can 
 ultimately be devised. 
 
 For the right of employees and employers aUke to organize. 
 
 For a new emphasis upon the apphcation of Christian principles to the 
 acquisition and use of property. 
 
 It vidll be noticed that most of these standards have to do 
 with the immediate improvement of social and industrial con- 
 ditions, and are the common objective, already partly realized, 
 of a number of labor, social and political organizations. At 
 several points however, — when it touches equality of rights 
 and justice, the division of the product of industry, the de- 
 velopment of the child and the acquisition and use of 
 property — this statement pledges the churches to general 
 principles which if followed to their conclusion would result 
 in a new social order. 
 
 During the war, some significant statements concerning 
 industrial and social reconstruction have been issued by sev- 
 eral chvurch bodies. These statements are the result, directly 
 and indirectly, of the development of the Social Service move- 
 ment in the churches of Great Britain and the United States. 
 The intellectual and spiritual foundation of this movement is 
 the growing conviction that religion must be founded squarely 
 upon an ethical basis, must find its fulfillment in conduct, 
 and in the conduct of society, not merely that of separate in- 
 
330 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 dividuals. This social service movement, which both marks 
 and occasions a change in the thought and life of all the 
 churches, has set for itself a twofold task. On the one hand it 
 has sought to engage the churches in those practical tasks of 
 community service which would express religion in relation 
 to all the needs and ends of commtmity life; on the other hand 
 it has been a movement for the application of the principles 
 of religion in the organization of human society. It has en- 
 deavored to analyze the present social order in the light of the 
 ideals of religion and seeks to secure whatever changes in 
 the social structure, and in its motives and spirit, may be 
 required for the expression of religious ideals. So it is, at 
 one and the same time, a call to the churches to engage in 
 practical community service and to seek the realization of the 
 ideal social order in so far as that may be obtainable in time 
 and space. It believes that when Jesus came preaching, and 
 taught his followers to pray for, the Kingdom of God upon 
 earth. He committed himself and them to seek such trans- 
 formation of human life as would bring it into harmony with 
 the eternal justice, righteousness and love. It therefore en- 
 deavors to discover what social obligations in the present 
 time are laid upon those who have accepted the principles 
 that Jesus taught. 
 
 The relation of the church to social change is twofold. It 
 is quite evident that the church has always been a conserving 
 institution in society. To many radicals that appears to be 
 its only function, a fimction of inhibition and even of repres- 
 sion. There are obvious reasons why the church will of ne- 
 cessity be a force for conservatism. As an institution it has 
 manifestly a large vested interest in the existing order. If it 
 be a state church it is automatically interested in perpetuating 
 the form of government which guarantees its revenues. If it 
 be a free church, volimtarily sustained, as it becomes older, 
 with large overhead charges and expensive machinery to 
 
THE CHXTRCHES 33^ 
 
 maintain, it tends to secure an increasing proportion of its 
 support from the people of property and therefore again ac- 
 quires a large vested interest in the existing economic order. 
 The church has not secured complete liberty by separation 
 from the state. It thereby freed itself from the repressive 
 hand of the political system, but as long as the church is an 
 organization requiring large revenues, it is in danger of sub- 
 servience to the financial system and will be more or less con- 
 trolled, directly and indirectly, by property interests. To 
 that extent it is predisposed as an institution to the main- 
 tenance of the present order. 
 
 Altogether aside from that practical fact, among all social 
 institutions the church preeminently preserves the past. Its 
 creeds and ceremonies prolong the power of the dead hand 
 with greater power than the majesty of the law. The roots of 
 religion run as far back in human living as the vital associa- 
 tions of the family, government and industry, and are inter- 
 twined with all of them. Also, they run deeper into the itmer 
 life of man, they grip the subconscious part of existence, which 
 is so powerful because so little understood. Our modem faiths 
 with their scientific attitudes run back of course to the prim- 
 itive superstitions of primitive folk, to the first attempts of 
 mankind to conquer life and the universe without any knowl- 
 edge, and this is the fvmdamental reason why the churches 
 are slow to change. They are the organized expression of the 
 instinct for fellowship with the imseen, for communion with 
 the infinite, which was forced in the begiiming to satisfy 
 itself in very primitive terms, and then became dogma almost 
 as soon as it ceased to be superstition, because it was dealing 
 with matters for which there were long no means of verifica- 
 tion. So that religion has been perhaps the least amenable 
 to the progress of science, and the slowest to profit from the 
 enlargement of knowledge, of any of the aspects of human life. 
 It was easier to apply the scientific method to the other as- 
 
332 THE NEW SOCIAL OKDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 pects of man's life, to his government or his economic en- 
 deavor than to his religion. So that the church more than 
 any other institution tends to perpetuate the ignorance and 
 fears of the past. 
 
 Yet that is only half the truth. There is another aspect 
 to the relationship of the church to social change, for religion 
 is fundamentally revolutionary as well as conservative. It 
 proclaims an ideal Ufa, therefore it constantly challenges the 
 individual to change his ways. Its central message is not to 
 "quit your meanness" but "Ye must be born again." Its 
 gospel is concerned with what ought to be, not with the main- 
 tenance of what is. Its message is of an ideal community as 
 well as an ideal individual, the one dependent upon the other, 
 to be progressively and interdependently realized. It pro- 
 claims the possibility of a better order of living for the world 
 as well as for the individual, indeed its very life depends 
 upon the continuance of its demand and the success of its 
 struggle for a new and better order of living. 
 
 So despite all the conserving influences of the church, 
 the churches have continually produced prophets because 
 the ideal element in religion will not be denied; it is a 
 revolutionary dynamic. Even more than education does re- 
 ligion create discontent with an imperfect social order, because 
 even more than education is it charged with the proclamation 
 of the ideal. The Hebrew and Christian religions imite the 
 ideal and the practical, the revolutionary and the conservative 
 elements of religion because their goal is frankly a City of God 
 established on the earth, a commimity life in which man may 
 satisfy his hunger for the eternal to some extent in time and 
 space, in which his passion for the ideal may get some satis- 
 faction while he yet lives. Hence the true leaders of the 
 church have always in greater or less degree been compelled 
 to meddle with the associated affairs of mankind, to the dis- 
 turbance of the world as well as the discomfort of their fol- 
 
THE CHURCHES 333 
 
 lowers. The churches cannot escape this duty because their 
 business is not to promise that man shall realize the best that 
 is in him in some future world, but to guarantee that in this 
 present life he shall so do by seeing to it that he makes some 
 measurable progress in the direction of his ideal. The prophets 
 in particular are disturbers of the peace, but without them there 
 would be no new order. Therefore the measure of the influence 
 of the church for social progress is the degree to which it pro- 
 duces prophets, even though it stone them, and then garnish 
 their tombs. By its vested interests as an institution, the 
 church is tied to the old order, by the nature of its gospel it is 
 bound to the new. Therefore the service the church may 
 render in a day of social change depends upon the degree to 
 which it exalts its prophetic fimction over its administrative 
 business. 
 
 In discussing this matter, it is continually assumed that 
 the churches are separate social institutions with a distinct 
 fimction apart from the other aspects of life. One of the fal- 
 lacies of our thinking is to continually conceive government 
 and religion, the state and the church, or any other institu- 
 tions, as though they were separate social entities, whereas 
 these social institutions are but forms of expression for certain 
 aspects of our living, all of them inseparable intertwined; so 
 that the same people appear at different times in the church, 
 the workshop and the polling booth. The churches are 
 simply the people in one aspect of their life. It is not really 
 correct then to ask what we expect the churches to do for a 
 new social order; we should ask what we expect the churches 
 to help us to do for ourselves. The question of what religion 
 will do to make a new world is the question of what the re- 
 ligious part of our lives is going to help the rest of our lives to 
 do. It is then broadly the question of making the whole of 
 life religious. Of course if the churches do not adequately 
 perform the function of enabling the religious aspect of Ufe 
 
334 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 to get a larger and fuller expression in all the activities of the 
 social order, some other agency will assume and perform that 
 duty. This religious side of our nature is not to be repressed, 
 subdued or denied, it will come to its own. It is an insepar- 
 able, imperishable part of human life. 
 
 The churches, seeking to make life religious, have a twofold 
 function in society. One is prophetic and the other educa- 
 tional. They are to show the future to mankind; they are to 
 proclaim what ought to be over against what is, and they are 
 to arouse the will of man to achieve what ought to be. But 
 also they are to show the way; they are to teach mankind how 
 to reach the goal of its ideal. 
 
 Therefore the task of the churches in relation to a new social 
 order, will be to proclaim and expound certain fundamental 
 principles as the basis of social organization. The three funda- 
 mental social principles of the Christian religion are the value 
 of personality, the necessity of brotherhood, the law of service. 
 It seeks the fullest possible realization of personality for all 
 individuals; it teaches that this is only to be foimd in the wid- 
 est and deepest possible fellowship of all men with all other 
 men in mutual service to the common needs and the common 
 development. It asserts that in this effort after justice and 
 righteousness and brotherhood men may find God to the 
 fullest degree, that it is possible to find Him in time and space. 
 Therefore organized Christianity must continually judge the 
 present social order by these principles. By them it must 
 test the political and economic aspects of life and declare its 
 findings without evasion or reservation, in order that the 
 world may be convinced of sin, of righteousness and of judg- 
 ment, and so seek a better way of life. The prophets and 
 Jesus were preachers of doom to those who were at ease and 
 well content with the world as it was. This unpleasant task 
 the leaders of religion may not evade, lest the world perish 
 in its suis, imagining itself to be righteous, as did the Pharisees. 
 
THE CHURCHES 335 
 
 From time to time the church must cry aloud the dread con- 
 sequence to any social order which violates the fundamental 
 principles by which alone human progress has ever been se- 
 cured. As it thus calls men separately and collectively to 
 repentance, as it challenges them to believe in and work for 
 the realization of the ideal, the church lays the foundation 
 and develops the dynamic for a new order of things. 
 
 The continuance of the constructive task of the church in 
 relation to social change is to constantly assess the measures 
 proposed in any generation for the embodying and expression 
 of the social principles it proclaims. In the main, the drafting 
 and promotion and administration of these measures lies else- 
 where, along with many aspects of the discussion of them, but 
 it is for the church to discuss all proposed measures of social 
 change in the light of the principles which it declares to be 
 eternal, not because they dropped from the sky but because 
 the test of long human experience has proved them to make 
 for the highest good of humanity and has therefore justified 
 the belief that they are the essential principles of the universe. 
 The church then discusses social questions under the aspect 
 of eternity and also imder the aspect of the universal com- 
 munity. When there is no other place in the commimity 
 where proposed social innovations may find a hearing the 
 church should provide an open fonnn for the presentation of 
 all points of view, regardless of whether or not the church 
 or the commimity likes to hear them. Manifestly the func- 
 tion of the church in matters of social change is not ended with 
 the promotion of discussion. Because its gospel proclaims a 
 new life, it must ever stimulate social experimentation for the 
 further expression of that gospel. It is bound to urge its mem- 
 bers in their social relationships to be a little ahead of their 
 times and to constantly seek methods for the more general 
 realization of their ideals. Herein is the statesmanship of the 
 church. In performing this function, organized religion be- 
 
336 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRmCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 comes a social reality and abundantly justifies itself as a social 
 institution that society cannot afford to do without. Any fonn 
 of social order must needs provide by some means or other 
 for the maintenance of religious institutions, in order that they 
 may by prophecy and teaching constantly bring life nearer to 
 the ideal. 
 
 That the churches have in some measure been attempting 
 to fulfill their social functions in the manner just described is 
 manifest from the programs and reports of their various 
 Social Service Commissions.^ It is still further apparent in 
 the following statements that have been issued during and 
 immediately after the war.^ 
 
 The first inquiry concerning these statements is whether 
 they manifest any definite conviction concerning the imme- 
 diate necessity for a new social order. That the churches 
 have long proclaimed the principles of equality, fraternity, 
 
 ' "A Year Book of the Church and Sodal Service in the United 
 States: " Federal Council of Churches, 105 E. 22nd Street, New York. 
 
 2 "Christianity and Industrial Problems," Report of Archbishops' 
 Fifth Committee of Inquiry, Church of England, 1918. MacmiUan 
 Company, New York. 
 
 "The Next Step in Social and Industrial Reconstruction," Committee 
 on War and the Social Order, London Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1917- 
 1918. The Book House, 17 N. State St., Chicago. 
 
 "Social Reconstruction," Pronouncement of Administrative Com- 
 mittee, National Catholic War Council, signed by Bishops Muldoon of 
 Rockford, Schrembs of Toledo, Hayes of Tagaste, Russell of Charleston; 
 1919; 930 Fourteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C. 
 
 "Evangelism and Social Service;" "The Church, the War, and Pa- 
 triotism," Reports adopted by General Conference, Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, Canada, 1918; Department of Social Service and Evangelism, 
 Wesley Bldgs. Toronto, Canada. 
 
 Manifesto, English Church Socialist League, published in The World 
 Tomorrow, 118 E. 28th St., New York City, January, 1919, page 19. 
 
 Report of Social Service Commission, Federal Council of Churches of 
 Christ in America, 1916 and 1919, 105 E. 22nd St., New York City. 
 
 "Christianity and Industrial Problems," Committee on the War and 
 the Religious Outlook, General War Time Commission, Federal Council 
 of Churches, 105 E. 22nd St., New York City. (In Preparation). 
 
THE CHURCHES 337 
 
 the supremacy of personality and the solidarity of the human 
 family is imdoubted. The question is to what degree have 
 they perceived that these principles require an order of living 
 other than that which we call civilization. 
 
 In referring to these statements, the abbreviated name of 
 the body that produced them will be used. 
 
 The English Church Socialist League takes a negative view, 
 declaring that the 
 
 Church as a whole is failing to maintaia the ideals and standards it 
 has so long proclaimed, and is aiming to achieve not the salvation of 
 society, but the mere 'stabihty' of the existing order. 
 
 The Church of England report believes that the time has 
 come for a change of attitude: 
 
 This summary conclusion of all the reflection and discussion and 
 prayer which we have given to the important group of subjects submitted 
 to us is the desire that a caU as of a trumpet should go forth to the Church 
 to reconsider the moral and social meaning and bearings of its faith, and, 
 having estimated afresh their importance in the full presentation of the 
 Christian message to the world, to be prepared to make the sacrifices 
 involved in acting frankly and fully upon the principles of brotherhood 
 and of the equal value of every single hmnan life. 
 
 We have neglected to attack the forces of wrong. We have been 
 content with the ambulance work when we ought to have been assaulting 
 the strongholds of evil. We have allowed avarice and selfishness and 
 grinding competition to work havoc over the broad spaces of human 
 Ufe. We want a strenuous reaffirmation of the principles of justice, 
 mercy and brotherhood as sovereign over every department of human 
 life. 
 
 The proper attitude for the Church is, not to consider what kind of 
 teaching is popular or unpopular, but to teach what is right, irrespective 
 of consequences. Nor does it escape the charge of 'tuning its pulpits' 
 merely by silence. Just as there are circumstances in which inaction is a 
 ]jjji(j — ^perhaps a wrong kind — of action, so there are circumstances in 
 which silence is a kind — perhaps a wrong kind — of teaching. It is no 
 more "unbiassed" to support a status quo than it is to work for a revolu- 
 
338 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 tion. To ignore what is wicked in industrial life is not to be impartial. 
 It is to condone wickedness. 
 
 The conclusions which we have reached are to our minds the direct 
 implications of the Creed of the Church. The call which is sounding in 
 this day of world-judgment is that we should not only hold the Faith, 
 but re-order our life, social as well as personal, in accordance with its 
 principles. 
 
 The London Friends in their report feel that: 
 
 Before steps are suggested for the removal of admitted evils there 
 should be a much more definite and far-reaching statement of the ulti- 
 mate ideals aimed at. 
 
 They therefore formulated a statement of principles "in the 
 hope that this may be adopted by the Society of Friends as 
 an expression of what may be called the Quaker Social Faith " : 
 
 1. The Fatherhood of God, as revealed by Jesus Christ, should lead 
 us toward a Brotherhood which knows no restriction of race, sex or social 
 class. 
 
 2. This Brotherhood should express itself in a social order which is 
 directed, beyond all material ends, to the growth of personality truly 
 related to God and man. 
 
 3. The fullest opportunity of development, physical, moral and 
 spiritual, should be assured to every member of tiie community, man, 
 woman and child. The development of men's fuU personality should 
 not be hampered by unjust conditions nor crushed by economic pressure. 
 
 4. We should seek for a way of living that wiU free us from the 
 bondage of material things and mere conventions, that wiU raise no 
 barriers between man and man, and wiU put no excessive burden of labor 
 upon any by reason of our superfluous demands. 
 
 5. The spiritual force of righteousness, loving kindness and trust is 
 mighty because of the appeal it makes to the best in every man, and when 
 appUed to industrial relations achieves great things. 
 
 6. Our rejection of the methods of outward domination and of the 
 appeal to force applies not only to international affairs but to the whole 
 problem of industrial control. Not through antagonism but through 
 cooperation and good-will can the best be attained for each and all. 
 
 7. Mutual service should be the principle upon which life is organized. 
 Service, not private gain, should be the motive of all work. 
 
 8. The ownership of material things, such as land and capital, should 
 be so regulated as best to minister to the need and development of man. 
 
THE CHURCHES 339 
 
 Again the Church of England report goes to the root of the 
 matter. 
 
 "Christian opinion,'' stated the Committee of the Lambeth Conference 
 of Bishops of 1897, "ought to condemn the belief that economic condi- 
 tions are to be left to the action of material causes and mechanical laws." 
 This conception of the nature of society and of the scope of religion is one 
 ■which Christians cannot accept and which would probably, indeed, be 
 repudiated by the better mind of aU who reflect upon its implications. 
 It woidd tend, if dominant, to the exclusion of Christian ethics from the 
 whole world of economic activity and of social relations, and would 
 result in the trimnph of economic Machiavellism which says that 'busi- 
 ness is business ' as some nations have said that ' war is war. ' It need not, 
 indeed, be denied that such a view of life produces results which are 
 outwardly brilliant and imposing in the world both of politics and indus- 
 try. By relieving men of the moral restraints which control the strong 
 and protect the weak, it simplifies their problems, and enables them to 
 concentrate on the organization of power, power to govern or power to 
 produce. It converts society into a potent engine for the acciunulation 
 of material wealth, because it encourages a singleminded concentration 
 on the pursuit of economic efficiency. It is the natural creed of the 
 Napoleons and Bismarcks of the world, whether their sphere be war or 
 politics or industry. That industry is a mechanism in which methods of 
 organization and social relationships are to be determined by considera- 
 tions of economic expediency — this doctrine has for a century had a wide 
 influence in moulding industrial organization and social life. Those who 
 yield to its glittering allurements have their reward. It offers them 
 power, affluence, material comfort, 'all the kingdoms of the world, and 
 the glory of them.' 
 
 T^e appeal of this conception is impressive. But, whatever spec- 
 tacular adiievements it may have to its credit, the spirit which would 
 divorce economic activity from religious considerations is distinctly and 
 peculiarly unchristian. It is iinchristian not only in its failures but even 
 more in its successes. It does not accept the ideals of the New Testa- 
 ment and fail to attain them. It has an ideal which is different, and 
 which, superficially perhaps, is more plausible. For Christianity regards 
 society, not as a machine, but as an association of men, the ultimate 
 object of which is to promote the development of the human spirit and 
 its preparation for the Kingdom of God. 
 
 We have endeavored to avoid the fallacy of ascribing to any par- 
 ticular economic order what are the faults or deficiencies of human 
 nature, or of allowing the incidental and exceptional features of industrial 
 life to prejudice our judgment with regard to its normal characteristics. 
 
340 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 But when every allowance has been made both for the good qualities 
 eUcited by the industrial system and for the incidental defects which are 
 likely to be found in any system whatever, we, nevertheless, find it im- 
 possible to resist the conclusion that, in certain fundamental respects, 
 that system itself is gravely defective. It is defective not merely in the 
 sense that industrial relations are embittered by faults of temper and 
 lack of generosity on the part of the employer, of the employed, and of 
 the general public alike, but because the system itself makes it exceed- 
 ingly difficult to carry into practice the principles of Christianity. Its 
 faults are not the accidental or occasional maladjustments of a social 
 order the general spirit and tendency of which can be accepted as satis- 
 factory by Christians. They are the expressions of certain deficiencies 
 deeply rooted in the nature of that order itself. They appear in one 
 form or another not in this place or in that, but in every country which 
 has been touched by the spirit, and has adopted the institutions, of 
 modem industrialism. To remove them it is necessary to be prepared for 
 such changes as will remove the deeper causes of which tiiey are the 
 result. 
 
 We recognize, indeed, that the large changes which are necessary 
 must be carried out gradually, in a spirit of tolerance and of mutual 
 charity and forbearance. But we think that it is precisely the general 
 economic organization of society which is, in some respects, defective; 
 that the efforts of Christians should be directed not merely to attacking 
 particular evils as they arise, but to discovering and removing the roots 
 from which they spring, and that Christian teaching suppHes a sufficient 
 motive to make practicable any change which is right. It is not enough, 
 therefore, merely to cope with those defects in our economic life which 
 have become so clamorous or sensational as to attract general attention, 
 for by the time that they are sensational they may have become almost 
 incapable of peaceful removal. It is necessary to make such changes in 
 the normal organization of society as may prevent them from arising. 
 The solution of the industrial problem involves, in short, not merely the 
 improvement of individuals, but a fundamental change in the spirit of 
 the industrial system itself. 
 
 As these various church bodies analyze the modem social 
 order from the standpoint of ethical and religious ideals there 
 appears a general conviction that the prime reason for its 
 violation of those ideals lies in its economic arrangements, 
 their manner and their motive. The English Church Socialist 
 League urges: 
 
THE CHtTRCHES 34 1 
 
 the redemption of the mass of the people from exploitation and 
 economic servitude, 
 
 and protests against attempting to adjust: 
 
 the industrial future of Britain on "principles of reconstruction" 
 which assume as their basis an identity of aim and interest between 
 capital and labor. We affirm that no such identity as regards funda- 
 mentals either does or ought to exist. The wage system involves a 
 spiritual subjection of the worker which is a denial ot "the essential claims 
 of human personality. Every increase of social authority and economic 
 power gained by the controllers of capital — whether financiers, mer- 
 chants, or manufacturers — renders that subjection more permanent and 
 more complete. We call on aU Churchmen to oppose and reject any 
 imagined "settlement" of industry, however described, which per- 
 p)etuates the spiritual degradation of the worker by treating him as a 
 tool for the purposes of others. 
 
 The Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church have re- 
 cently said: 
 
 It is increasingly manifest that there must be progress away from 
 selfish competition to xmselfish cooperation in that struggle for daily 
 bread which is the largest single fact in the life of the majority of men in 
 any commimity. If this progress is to be orderly and not violent we must 
 leave behind us the evils which lead to deplorable violence or counter 
 violence by either party. If Christianity is a driving force, making for 
 democracy, we cannot put a limit upon the extension of democracy; we 
 must recognize the inevitability of the application of democracy to in- 
 dustry. WhUe we rejoice in the adoption of all such ameliorative meas- 
 ures as better housing and various forms of social insurance, we call for 
 the more thoroughgoing emphasis on human freedom, which will make 
 democratic progress mean tiie enlargement and enrichment of the life 
 of the masses of mankind through the self -directive activity of men them- 
 selves. 
 
 We favor an equitable wage for laborers, which shall have the right of 
 way over rent, interest and profits. 
 
 We favor collective bargaining, as an instrument for the attainment of 
 industrial justice and for training in democratic procedure. 
 
 And we also favor advance of the workers themselves through profit 
 sharing and through positions on boards of directorship. 
 
 The American Catholic statement says: 
 
 Nevertheless, the present system stands in grievous need of considera- 
 ble modifications and improvement. Its main defects are three: Enor- 
 
342 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 mous ineffidency and waste in the production and distribution of com- 
 modities; insufficient incomes for the great majority of wage-earners, and 
 unnecessarily large incomes for a small minority of privileged capitalists. 
 Above and before aU, he (the employer) must cultivate and strengthen 
 within his mind the truth which many of his class have begun to grasp 
 for the first time during the present war; namely, that the laborer is a 
 human being, not merely an instrument of production; and that the 
 laborer's right to a decent Kvehhood is the first moral charge upon in- 
 dustry. The employer has a right to get a reasonable living out of his 
 business, but he has no right to interest on his investment until his 
 employees have obtained at least living wages. l/£his is the human and 
 Christian, in contrast to the purely commercial and pagan, ethics of 
 industry. 
 
 The Canadian Methodists declare that 
 
 the present economic system stands revealed as one of the roots of 
 war 
 
 The war has made more clearly manifest the moral perils inherent 
 in the system of production for profits; condemnation of special individ- 
 uals seems often imjust and always futile. The system, rather than the 
 individual, calls for change. 
 
 The ethics of Jesus demand nothing less than the transfer of the 
 whole economic hfe from the basis of competition and profit to one of 
 cooperation and service. 
 
 The Church of England report says: 
 
 If it is true — and who can doubt it?— that the sanctity of personality 
 is a fundamental idea of Christian teaching, it is evident that Christians 
 are bound to judge their industrial organization by that principle and to 
 ask whether in modem industry hxunan beings are regarded always as 
 ends and never as means. 
 
 It would not be unfair to say that large numbers of working people 
 are at the present time employed on terms which suggest that they are 
 means to the production of wealth rather than themselves the human 
 end for whom wealth is produced. They too often have cause to feel 
 that they are directed by an industrial autocracy, which is sometimes, 
 indeed, both kindly and capable, but which is repugnant to them pre- 
 cisely because it is an autocracy, and because, in so far as it controls their 
 
THE CHURCHES 343 
 
 means of livelihood, it also, not the less certainly because often uncon- 
 sciously, controls tiieir lives. The conditions of their work may be 
 determined not by them, but for them, and may be determined by the 
 financial interests of persons who are responsible neither to them nor to 
 the community and whose primary interest may not be the welfare of 
 the workers but the profitableness of the business. 
 
 Industry exists for man, not man for industry, and we cannot be- 
 lieve in the stabiHty of any society, however imposing its economic tri- 
 umphs, if it cripples the personality of its workers or if it deprives them 
 of that control over the material conditions of their own hves which is 
 the essence of practical freedom. Christianity above all religions has 
 fostered a keen sense of the value of every individual, and Christians 
 cannot acquiesce in the undue subordiuation of himian beings to the 
 exigencies of any mechanical or economic system." 
 
 The fundamental evil of modem industrialism is that it encourages 
 competition for private gain instead of cooperation for public service. 
 
 The conception of industry as a selfish competitive struggle is im- 
 christian. Industry ought to be regarded primarily as a social service, 
 based on the effort of every individual to discharge his duty to his neigh- 
 bor and to the commmiity. 
 
 The duty of service is equally obligatory upon aU. There is no moral 
 justification for the burden upon the community of the idle or self- 
 indulgent, or for social institutions which encourage them, and no in- 
 herited wealth or position can dispense any member of the Christian 
 society from establishing by work his claim to maintenance, on the 
 principle laid down by St. Paul. 
 
 It appears then that both the profit and the wage system, 
 the two basic elements in the present economic order, are held 
 by competent judges to be at variance with the ideals of the 
 Christian religion. The same verdict also appears concerning 
 the place of private property in the present order. 
 
 The Canadian Methodists: 
 
 The obligation under which we live in dealing with such vital issues 
 as land tenure, taxation, housing, city planning, systems of insurance, 
 and industrial, economic, and fiscal control, etc., demand that the life 
 
344 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 interests of the mass of the people must in every case transcend the class 
 of an individual, or group of individuals, in profits or property. 
 
 We condemn speculation in land, grain, food-stuffs, and natural 
 resources, as well as the frequent capture of unearned wealth through 
 over-capitalization of commercial enterprises, We place the principle 
 of the Golden Rule before the man who seeks wealth by investment, and 
 then endeavors to escape impending loss by unloading upon others. 
 These are dangerous forms of economic injustice in which we caimot 
 engage without sin. Is there not in our Church a wide-spread call for 
 repentance and confession of sin in this regard? 
 
 The Church of England: 
 
 We would urge our fellow Christians to ask themselves once more 
 whether an economic system which produces the striking and, as we 
 think, excessive, inequalities of wealth which characterize our present 
 society is one which is compatible with the spirit of Christianity or in 
 which a Christian commimity ought to acquiesce. 
 
 The pursuit of wealth as an end in itself creates an atmosphere in 
 which right social relations are hardly attainable, and in which it is 
 difficult not only for the rich, but for all classes, to enter the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. For, whether it results in the selfishness which prefers the hfe 
 of individual self-advancement to the hfe of fellowship, or the parsimony 
 which grudges expenditure on all but utilitarian purposes, or the ex- 
 travagance which diverts human energy from fruitful labor to the 
 multiplication of luxuries, it fosters the spirit which justifies, too often, 
 indeed which glorifies, the subordination of human beings to considera- 
 tions of material success. 
 
 In particular, the doctrine sometimes advanced, that a man is free 
 to do what he likes with his own, that all men are justified in following 
 their own pecvmiary interests to the fullest extent allowed by law, and 
 that social well-being wiU incidentally, but certainly result from their 
 efforts to further their own self-interest, is definitely anti-Christian. 
 
 It need not be denied, indeed, that this spirit has given a strong 
 impetus to productive efficiency. It would appear, however, to be alien 
 to the teaching of Christianity. If this is so, the Church, whose function 
 it is not to show society how to be rich but to show it how to be Chris- 
 tian, ought not to be dazzled by imposing material achievements into 
 distrusting its own creed. It is possible that society may have to choose 
 
THE CHURCHES 345 
 
 between being Christian and being rich, as in other ages men have had to 
 choose between Christianity and prosperity, comfort, or life itself. 
 
 It is important for it (the church) to insist, for example, that the 
 duty of personal work is incumbent on all, that idleness, and institutions 
 which encourage idleness, whether among rich or poor, are wrong, that 
 the primary function of industry is social service, not merely personal 
 gain, that a man is bound to judge his economic activities not by the 
 profits which they bring to himself, but by the contribution which they 
 make to the well-being of others; that it is wrong to take advantage of 
 the necessities of the public or of private individuals to drive a hard and 
 profitable bargain; that it is wrong to adulterate goods or to charge 
 exorbitant prices for them; that an industry which can only be carred on 
 by methods which degrade human beings ought not to be carried on at 
 all; that property is not held by absolute right on an individual basis, 
 but is relative to the good of society as a commonweal; that if an in- 
 stitution is socially harmful no vested interest is a valid plea for main- 
 taining it. 
 
 The London Friends: 
 
 In the ideal state of Society we believe that aU property, with the 
 exception of such things as are necessary for personal and household 
 use, should be owned communally. This conclusion is based on the 
 following principles, which we hold to be true: 
 
 (i) Tte chief purpose of life is the creation of spiritual values. 
 
 (2) This purpose is interfered with, both in tieir own lives and in 
 those of others, when men's efforts are directed to the acquisition, pro- 
 tection and extension of private property. 
 
 (3) This purpose is furthered when men's efforts are directed to the 
 service of the common weal. 
 
 With regard to interest we believe that if property were held by the 
 commimity it would be right to make a fixed charge for its use by individ- 
 uals. 
 
 The American Catholics: 
 
 Nevertheless, the full possibilities of increased production will not be 
 realized so long as the majority of the workers remain mere wage-earners. 
 The majority must somehow become owners, or at least in part, of the 
 instruments of production. They can be enabled to reach this stage 
 gradually through cooperative productive societies and co-partnership 
 arrangements. In the former, the workers own and manage the Indus- 
 
346 THE NEW SOCIAL OSDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 tries themselves; in the latter they own a substantial part of the cor- 
 porate stock and exercise a reasonable share in the management. How- 
 ever slow the attainment of these ends, they will have to be reached 
 before we can have a thoroughly eflScient system of production, or an 
 industrial and social order that will be secure from the danger of revo- 
 lution. It is to be noted that this particular modification of the exist- 
 ing order, though far-reaching and involving to a great extent the ab- 
 ohtion of the wage system, would not mean the abohtion of private 
 ownership. The instruments of production would stiU be owned by 
 individuals, not by the State. 
 
 The laborer must come to realize that he owes his employer and society 
 an honest day's work in return for a fair wage, and that conditions cannot 
 be substantially improved until he roots out the desire to get a maximiun 
 of return for a minimum of service. The capitaUst must likewise get a 
 new viewpoint. He needs to learn the long-forgotten truth that wealth is 
 stewardship, that profit-making is not the basic justification of business 
 enterprise, and that there are such things as fair profits, fair interest and 
 fair prices. 
 
 But why a different ethical principle for the laborer than 
 for the capitalist? Why should not the capitalist also learn 
 that he must not expect to get the maximum return for the 
 minimum service? The wrong motive that is here charged 
 off entirely to the wage-earner should be charged off to the 
 profit system whose aim it is to get the maximum return for 
 the minimum service. This is modified only in so far as it 
 becomes apparent that service is so meager as to prevent the 
 long run maximum return. What capitalist and wage-earner 
 alike must learn is that all men must be subject to the law of 
 maximum service, and then the return will take care of itself. 
 
 In addition to some tmanimity of judgment concerning the 
 unchristian features of the present order, and concerning the 
 main principles around which a Christian order would develop, 
 it further appears that the churches have also come to a meas- 
 ure of agreement concerning some of the general policies neces- 
 sary to the expression in society of the Christian ideal. They 
 are largely agreed concerning the necessity of industrial 
 
THE CHtJRCHES 347 
 
 democracy, that it involves the right of the workers to share 
 ra the management of industry and finally requires the co- 
 operative organization of the industrial process. 
 The American Protestants: 
 
 Christian democracy applied to industry means the development of 
 cooperative relations to the fullest possible extent. The church should 
 therefore clearly teach the principle of the fullest possible cooperative con- 
 trol and ownership of industry and the natural resources upon which 
 iadustry depends, in order that men may be spurred to develop the 
 methods that shall express this principle. 
 
 When all who participate in industry shall become cooperators with 
 each other and coworkers with God in the service of humanity, using the 
 materials which he has provided for the common good, and not for 
 selfish advantage, then will industry become a religious experience 
 developing mutual service and sacrffice, the expression in economic 
 terms of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. 
 
 The American Catholics: 
 
 The right of labor to organize and to deal with employers through 
 representatives has been asserted above in connection with the discussion 
 of the War Labor Board. It is to be hoped that this right wiU never 
 again be called in question by any considerable number of employers. 
 In addition to this, labor ought gradually to receive greater representa- 
 tion in what the Enghsh group of Quaker employers have called the 
 "indvistrial" part of business management. 
 
 The London Friends: 
 
 Fellowship is the very essence of our Christian profession, and its 
 practical expression in industry involves the fullest measure of demo- 
 cratic control. In industry, as at present organized, this will mean a 
 progressive devolution of responsibility upon every grade of employee 
 and wide opportunity for those who show special qualifications to occupy 
 the more responsible positions, not as autocrats, but in the spirit of 
 service, and as interpreters of the common will. 
 
 We recognize, however, that society is composed of consumers. The 
 sovereignty of the corporate organization of consumers must therefore 
 be maintained for the purpose of adjusting the relations between pro- 
 ducers and consumers and between different sets of producers, and en- 
 suring production for use and not for profit. 
 
348 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 The English Church Socialist League: 
 
 It is only upon the activities of a reconstructed and developed trade 
 unionism that a democratic socialist community can base its economic 
 life. The process of attaining this goal will involve a struggle against 
 those " having great possessions" and the vested interests of wealth and 
 power. But the Church Socialist League, so far from deploring such a 
 struggle, sees in it an essential aspect of that conflict with the " world" 
 to which at his baptism every child of God is called. 
 
 The Church of England: 
 
 That the true life of man is the life of brotherhood, not of strife; that 
 the true wealth of a body politic consists in the persons composing it, to 
 whom the use of all forms of property should be subservient; that indus- 
 try rightly conceived is a social service, not a selfish competitive struggle; 
 that all men who labor have the right to live honorably by their labor, 
 and all men the duty to labor in order to live; that there is no moral jus- 
 tification for the burden upon the community of the idle or self-indulgent, 
 or for social institutions which encourage them; that the resources of a 
 Christian community must be used to provide necessaries for all, before 
 they are applied to providing luxuries for a few; these truths we hold for 
 self-evident, and we believe that the economic life of a Christian society 
 must be based upon them. 
 
 Cooperation for Public Service, not Competition for Private Gain, the 
 true principle of Industry. 
 
 We cannot believe that what is at best a too exclusive concentration 
 upon material gain, and at worst a selfish individualism, can be the last 
 word of man's social development, or that the inevitable consequence of 
 economic progress must be the excessive predominance in society of 
 economic motives which exists to-day. The purpose of industry, which 
 is the conquest of nature by skill and science and enterprise for the 
 service of man, is fundamentally a noble one. Its spirit should be as 
 noble. It should be one of cooperation rather than of intense and some- 
 times embittered rivalry. It should find room in the quahdes which it 
 demands for something of the chivalrous self-sacrifice of the soldier, of 
 the disinterested devotion of the scientist, or doctor, or administrator, 
 of the temper of loyalty and mutual confidence which springs from a 
 life of corporate endeavor and achievement, and should appeal at once 
 to the artistic faculties of the craftsman and to the statesmanship of the 
 organizer. 
 
THE CHURCHES 349 
 
 Industry is a social function, and is carried on to serve the community. 
 
 It should, in short, be social in purpose and cooperative in spirit. 
 
 There is also some conviction evident among the churches 
 that the application of the principles of democracy and of 
 Christianity to economic affairs require some measures of 
 nationalization. 
 
 The English Church Socialist League: 
 
 State control, as at present exercised, leaves the capitalist in possession, 
 and may even be the means of establishing a legally recognized system of 
 State capitalism confirmed by treaty between profiteer and bureaucrat. 
 Socialists at least must continue to press for a complete socialization of 
 the means of production, distribution, and exchange by which ownership 
 passes to the community, while at the same time they accept as the only 
 ground for withdrawal of State control over an industry the assumption 
 of control on the part of the workers concerned in that industry. 
 
 The Canadian Methodists: 
 
 We are in favor of the nationalization of our natural resources, such 
 as mines, water-powers, fisheries, forests, the means of communication 
 and transportation, and pubHc utilities on which aU the people depend. 
 
 The London Friends (following their declaration concerning 
 the limitation of private property) : 
 
 We do not yet see fuUy how this ideal is to be put into practice, but 
 we are convinced that it is our duty to work towards it strenuously and 
 fearlessly. One method of advance is the extension of State and munic- 
 ipal enterprises that minister to common needs. Municipal undertak- 
 ings, in particular, afford opportunities for public service in their man- 
 agement, and are a practical method of concentrating property in the 
 hands of the commimity, and of equalizing the share of individuals in the 
 products of industry. 
 
 The principles underlying the attitude of these statements 
 toward the institution of property and measures of national- 
 ization is that the natural resources of the earth are needed 
 for the nourishment of the common life. "The earth is the 
 
350 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER! PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 Lord's and the fullness thereof." It is further assumed to be 
 the divine purpose that the earth should be used in common 
 service for the common need. This is indeed a spiritual con- 
 cept of nature and of the use of natural resources. It means 
 that God is to be found in nature not only by assthetic appre- 
 ciation, not alone by scientific perception of the nature and 
 workings of the eternal energy, but most of all by conscious 
 harmony with the eternal moral law in the use of this physical 
 universe for the common development of the common spiritual 
 capacities of mankind. 
 
 These statements which the various church bodies have 
 recently been formulating (and several other denominational 
 statements might have been quoted), involve serious changes 
 within as well as without, the church. The meaning of these 
 programs has not yet been perceived by millions of persons 
 belonging to the organizations which have written them. 
 When the people do become aware of the nature and amount 
 of the change required in the existing order of things by the 
 principles of the religion they profess, they wiU divide on the 
 issue as church members about as they will in the capacity of 
 citizens of the State and participants in the economic organ- 
 ization of society. It remains to be seen whether the old skins 
 can hold the new wine, which is working powerfully. After 
 all, that is a minor issue compared with the great fact that 
 religion is becoming a force for social progress to a degree 
 before unknown. 
 
 Social change arises from various sources: the practical 
 breakdown of a system; the needs of the people who are op- 
 pressed by the existing order; the impulsion of science through 
 its analysis of the deficiencies of the present order and their 
 causes; the pull of great ideals which have been proclaimed 
 until they have become the common property of a large 
 number of people. The last named source is now becoming 
 powerful. There is being thrown into the great stream of 
 
THE CHURCHES 351 
 
 social change a current of religious dynamic, the power of 
 great ideals consciously applied. 
 
 An increasing section of the leadership of the churches is 
 accepting the responsibility which develops upon organized 
 religion in a day when multitudes of men and women are 
 longing for a new order of life. In such a day it is clearly the 
 fvmction of organized religion to make clear to the common 
 people what is the true end and the only sufl&cient motive of 
 human living. The churches are further charged with the re- 
 sponsibility of urging and teaching the people, as they seek 
 the true ends of life, to apply the knowledge and the social 
 power gained in the past. Men look to their church to develop 
 the faith, the courage and the sacrificial spirit, without which 
 no advance in Hving is ever achieved. Mankind must believe 
 in a new order if it ever is to come. It is not enough to say, 
 "Grod wills it and therefore it shall be." It caimot be unless 
 man wills it too, and is willing to pay the price for it. On 
 these terms religion affirms the possibility of a new social 
 order, submits its affirmation to the test of the scientific 
 method and claims the cooperation of science in realizing the 
 possibilities revealed by the history of man. Science has 
 neither the last nor the controlling word concerning the nature 
 and end of society. There is within mankind an unconquer- 
 able and imperishable spirit to which nothing is finally im- 
 possible. Humanity wiU not be denied the realization of its 
 passion for the ideal. As it has refused to be thwarted by the 
 physical universe, so wiU it decline to be defeated by the 
 supposedly imconquerable defects of its common nature. We 
 shall subdue them by the aid of science, inspired and guided 
 by the faith, the courage, and the love which are the mani- 
 festations within us of the eternal spirit. In time and in 
 eternity man will pursue the ideal social order of which he 
 ever dreams and which increasingly he fashions into reality. 
 
m CONCLUSION 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE TREND OF PROGRESS 
 
 It is apparent that the various programs which have 
 been proposed for a new order have a number of measures in 
 common. There are certain matters with which they all at- 
 tempt to deal. They all endeavor to provide for the better 
 protection and development of the wage earners and for their 
 representation in the control of industry. In some form of 
 regulation or ownership they attempt to extend the control of 
 the state over the economic process. They all involve some 
 modification of the right of private property. There is a 
 general agreement that the approach to the removal of present 
 inequalities of ownership is through the limitation of income 
 and inheritance by taxation. The concensus of opinion seems 
 to be that progress lies in the extension of the common control 
 over matters which have heretofore been held to be private 
 domain. It is the cooperative aspect of life that is now to be 
 consciously cultivated. Indeed while these programs were 
 being drafted, life w£is moving apace in that direction. In 
 every belligerent nation the war brought an increase of col- 
 lective bargaining between capital and labor and a coordina- 
 tion of the management of political and economic affairs. 
 The state and industry came into more vital contact, in the 
 common mobilization of economic forces. In addition, one 
 of the strangest phenomena of the war was the large increase 
 in the membership and activities of cooperative societies in 
 every country where they were in existence. This indicates 
 the widespread need and capacity for the development of a 
 new mode of economic action. 
 
 355 
 
356 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 It is increasingly apparent that the new order both in 
 plan and in experiment is forming around certain definite 
 principles. Men everjrwhere are seeking for a larger measure 
 of equality and for the realization of fraternity in universal 
 service to each other. They are more and more determined 
 to make the social machinery an efl&cient means to the highest 
 ends of human living. It is becoming manifest that the de- 
 velopment of personality is to supersede the acquisition of 
 goods as the goal of social activity and that the fullest develop- 
 ment of personality is to be found in the effort to realize the 
 solidarity of the hmnan family. 
 
 These developments of the present hour make it still clearer 
 that the principles around which the new order is forming are 
 an historical development, that they did not drop suddenly 
 out of the sky, were not merely conceived in the imagination 
 of great men, but have their roots in social necessity. They are 
 the historic imf olding of the spiritual possibiUties of the human 
 race out of the environment in which mankind has successively 
 found itself and which it has progressively conquered. Their 
 development and enlargement indicate very clearly that 
 there is in all history a stream of progress. It by no means 
 always flows straight forward; sometimes it eddies and its 
 main currents turn upon themselves, the whole stream bends 
 and flows backward for a space, but in the long run there is 
 progress. 
 
 One of the incalculable factors making for progress in the 
 present situation is the universal dissemination of knowledge. 
 Whether or not this has brought any increase of intelligence, 
 it has imdoubtedly increased the capacity for common con- 
 scious action. The deliberative and organizing ability of 
 mankind has expanded rapidly in the modem period. Our 
 time is marked by the increase of conscious social control. 
 It is true that man is master of his fate, and captain of his 
 soul, individually and collectively, just as far as he acquires 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 357 
 
 knowledge to justify his faith and to aid his will to attain 
 the objects of his desire. As man has learned to understand 
 and then to conquer the physical universe, so is he learning 
 to understand himself and so to overcome his own nature. 
 Increasingly mankind makes up its mind ia which direction 
 it wants to go. Formerly, if we are to believe the sociologists, 
 hmnanity went forward following its instincts, not knowing 
 whither it went. The ideals that have played so great a part 
 in the shaping of human history came out of what might be 
 called natural causes, were bom of hunger and pain and the 
 necessity of work and fellowship, but gradually reason re- 
 flected upon the habits of men and developed the good of 
 custom into ideals that are consciously chosen and carried 
 forward. The common intelligence is now so far developed 
 through the spread of education and the means of inter- 
 communication that the nations can, if they will, determine 
 the coiirse of the future by reasoning together. The question 
 is whether their iateUigence will be deceived and defeated by 
 the subtie influence of instinctive self-interest, or whether 
 reason is powerful enough to discern the larger, longer good 
 and choose the path of unselfishness. Ever and again human- 
 ity makes its great choices. Time and time again men will 
 cry "give me liberty or give me death"; and then proceed to 
 achieve freedom no matter how many die for it. In like man- 
 ner, mankind wiU choose between comforts or brotherhood, 
 and there is no doubt of the final outcome. Whatever struggle 
 or pain or sacrifice is involved, brotherhood will be achieved. 
 The principles and ideals which the peoples of the earth 
 are gradually choosing as the center of a new order constitute 
 a rational religion, the religion of democracy. They are not 
 dogmas to be defended, but principles recognized as germinal 
 and accepted in order to be developed and applied. The world 
 has been rapidly educated in the last five years to an under- 
 standing of the necessity of applying these principles if the 
 
3S8 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 race is to live in the future. Many of the plain people are com- 
 ing now to understand something of the origin and develop- 
 ment of society, to get some inkling of how its customs and 
 authority, its beliefs and ideals have arisen in the past. As 
 this knowledge becomes diffused, the goal of social develop- 
 ment will become clearer not only to the seers and philos- 
 ophers, but also to the common folk. That goal is, in broad 
 terms, a fraternal world commimity, the great loving family 
 of mankind, knit together by common needs but most of all 
 by loyalty to common ideals, and by the power of its common 
 love efficiently directing and controlling its common life. To 
 the aid of love there comes wisdom as well as knowledge. 
 Those who have lived with the plain people know that they 
 are acquiring the capacity to direct their common affairs. 
 Either by intuitive ideahsm or hard common sense or both, 
 they are learning to discard the advice of a controlled press 
 and thiak and act for themselves. Socrates long ago remarked 
 that the toilers had a knowledge of adapting their means to 
 their ends which the philosophers lacked. It may be that 
 they will carry this capacity over into public affairs, that the 
 simple wUl discern what has been hid from the wise. It is 
 worth remembering that the rail-splitter was the biggest 
 statesman the modem period has produced. 
 
 Unquestionably the common mind of humanity is fo rmin g, 
 imder the influence of modern education whose principles and 
 methods are increasingly followed the world over. The Re- 
 port of the Committee on Adult Education, written by some 
 of the most distinguished educators of Great Britain, after 
 describing the strenuous efforts made by some working men 
 to secure education, affirms that: 
 
 The motive which impels men and women to seek education 
 arises from the desire for knowledge, for self-expression, for the satisfaction 
 of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual needs, and for a fuller life. They 
 demand education in the hope that the power which it brings wUl enable 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 359 
 
 them to understand and help in the solution of the common problems of 
 human society. 
 
 Unquestionably a common longing for a new form of life 
 develops under the pressure of universal industrialism. Unless 
 civilization is to fall back into anarchy and chaos, the nations 
 win move in the same direction with more or less concert. 
 Indeed, the conquest of distance, that miracle of modern 
 civilization, makes a measure of common progress inevitable. 
 When once men are able to think together, when once they 
 become aware of their conmion necessities and their common 
 ideals, they will fashion a common program. Even now it 
 appears that self-determination caimot be confined to those 
 peoples who have been emancipated from the German Empire, 
 but India and China and the Isles of the Sea insist that they 
 too shall have the benefit of that principle. Also while the 
 economic revolution proceeds apace in Europe and in the 
 United States, it appears in Japan and Argentina. The life 
 of the world is one, and with many variations of form, it 
 slowly crystallizes aroimd the same principles. Democracy 
 spreads the world over, in government and in economic life. 
 Men said in the past that it meant freedom, we are learning 
 to-day that it means also cooperation, that there is no freedom 
 that does not involve service and no true service that is not 
 free. In the balance of things, compulsory service brings no 
 gain to mankind, whether enforced by Prussian autocracy or 
 the biureaucracy of the so-called democratic state. In the new 
 order, service is the chosen privilege of free men who agree 
 that they will seek the common development and jointly 
 control themselves and the universe to that end. 
 
 It is quite evident that the course of that common develop- 
 ment of humanity, which is the desire of all lovers of their kind, 
 involves at this present time the emancipation of a class from 
 bondage. The people who have from time immemorial done 
 the common work of the world have always been denied many 
 
360 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 of its privileges. It is written of old that they sow and do not 
 reap; they build and do not inhabit. Without their titanic 
 labor, the vast wealth of the modem world had never been. 
 Yet millions of them in the richest two nations of the earth 
 are without sufficient food, clothes and shelter to maintain 
 physical fitness. Upon their broad back has rested whatever 
 of civilization there has been in any age. Its superstructure 
 of art and literature and science is based upon the lives of the 
 men and women who have always done the everyday tasks 
 of the homes and the fields, the mines and workshops and 
 highways of the world. Yet little of art, or Hterature or science 
 has come down to them. Their capacity to enjoy it has been 
 left undeveloped, their power to create it has been repressed. 
 But in the modern world education has been penetrating 
 downward, and step by step the people at the bottom of so- 
 ciety have been pushing themselves upward to a new level. 
 They are no longer content that human society should be like 
 one of Pharaoh's pyramids, a magnificent monument but 
 covering the bodies of the forgotten slaves who toUed to erect 
 it. The General Secretary of the National Union of Railway- 
 men of England recently told the Industrial Conference called 
 by the government to find some remedy for the growing social 
 unrest, that 
 
 the workers have resolutely set their faces toward some order of 
 society which will improve their hves and conditions in accord with the 
 new valuation they have set upon themselves. No longer are they 
 prepared to content themselves with every wage advance being thrust 
 upon the consumer and consequently cancelling every improvement 
 instantly and automatically. Rent, interest, and profits are not in- 
 violate. 
 
 Statesmen of every party must make up their minds that there is 
 going to be a drastic change. Wise men will allow and provide for it. 
 Others will be convinced only by the compelling power of events. 
 
 Most of the benefits of political democracy have gone to 
 the middle class. It brought that class more freedom, educa- 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 361 
 
 tion and social control. Economic democracy will complete 
 the emancipation of the working class, which political democ- 
 racy began but could not continue, because of the amount of 
 power which the capitaKst order concentrated again at the 
 top of society. One outstanding effect of the war has been 
 to strengthen the demand of the working class for freedom. 
 Whatever may be the effect of the world conflict in revealing 
 the value of the toilers to the rest of society, what it has done 
 in revealing them to themselves will long be felt in social de- 
 velopment. The war has also enabled them to gauge their 
 economic power and they are now bound to apply that power 
 to improve their situation, which, because of the manifest 
 inequality of their relationship to the other classes, has be- 
 come intolerable not only to them but to all men with a social 
 conscience. Moreover, the arrangements in which the war 
 terminated have taught the wage-earners to trust themselves 
 and not look to another class for leadership. They now know 
 beyond dispute the value of the promises of a new day made 
 to them during the war by the leaders of poKtical democracy. 
 They now imderstand that there is no effective aid and Uttle 
 comfort for them from the idealistic democracy of the middle 
 class, as long as it evades economic reality and assumes the 
 sanctity of the capitalistic order. Hereafter, for good or ill, 
 they are likely to insist upon working out their own salvation. 
 They have taken the measure of those who, with or without 
 sufficient pressure, will do anythiag for them except let them 
 do things for themselves. 
 
 The growing power of the working class is beyond dispute 
 the outstanding fact in human relationships. The question 
 now is whether this self-conscious, self-dependent working 
 class is going to seek only freedom and power for itself or 
 whether it will seek the emancipation and development of 
 all humanity. No man may yet answer that question. Will 
 the toilers prove to be the healers and with their constructive 
 
362 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 capacity weld together what the rulers have broken and can- 
 not now mend? This is now their purpose, but can they hold 
 to it? Will they be deceived by evil or ignorant leaders, 
 cheated by the shibboleths of yesterday, duped by the cun- 
 ning of the powers that be, betrayed by their own passions, 
 defeated by immediate self-interest? This much is certain, 
 if they are misled into the path of self-seeking, there will be 
 no progress for humanity for a long time to come, but the 
 stream of hfe will turn back upon itself. If they are able to 
 follow truly both their necessities and their ideals, a mighty 
 current arising out of new springs in the subsoU of humanity 
 will carry life forward. 
 
 The hope of the future lies in the great undeveloped capac- 
 ities at the bottom of human society. It is perfectly clear 
 from the arrangements made at Paris and the discussion of 
 them in political circles, that there is neither healing nor 
 health nor hope for the world at the hands of those who are 
 statesmen by trade. It is evident, that the old order cannot 
 produce a new way of Kfe, that its vital impulses are so im- 
 moral and unfraternal that any attempt at unselfish idealism, 
 no matter how sincere, is doomed to failure. It was essential 
 for the healing of the world that there should be a peace which 
 would not only convey to the German people such punishment 
 as would lead them to shun the paths of evil but also such rec- 
 onciliation as would induce repentance and draw them into 
 ways of righteousness. Instead of doing that, the present 
 arrangements are more likely to confirm the German people 
 in their fundamental immoralities, because they will convince 
 them that in the day of their power the professedly democratic 
 states were actuated by pure self-interest, and self-interest 
 therefore is the only reality. It was essential for the health of 
 the world that there should be such economic readjustments 
 that the nations could proceed in fraternity to develop the re- 
 sources for their mutual life. But the present covenant leaves 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 363 
 
 the world joined in bitter economic warfare and offers no means 
 to avert it. It was essential for the hope of the world that a 
 pact should be written which would make war impossible, or at 
 least less Ukely, by ridding the people of the burden of arma- 
 ments. The present compact attempts to guarantee by force 
 adjustments which its makers admit to be unjust, which al- 
 ready are inciting war, so that it is ofl&dally announced that 
 Great Britain and the United States have an understanding to 
 increase their military establishment to four times the size of 
 pre-war times. It was also essential for the hope of the world 
 that the great burden of national debts, mostly created by past 
 wars, should be lifted from the productive labor of the future. 
 But the present arrangement attempts to validate all the na- 
 tional and international finance of the old order, regardless of 
 the consequences to human life. 
 
 It is not then to be wondered at if the simple people of the 
 soil and the factory conclude that such a settlement shows the 
 hand of the investing class, that the rulers of the democratic 
 capitalistic state are of essentially the same moral caliber as the 
 ruling class of imperialistic militarism, and bear a similar, sinis- 
 ter relationship to the future welfare of the common folk. How- 
 ever this may be, and regardless of the degree to which such a 
 conclusion is justi&ed, the working class are attempting toman- 
 age their own affairs, which turn out to be a very large part of 
 the affairs of society at large. The doctrine of self-help has been 
 preached for a long time by those who are at the head of things 
 in this coimtry. Their teaching is now going to be taken in a 
 way they did not imagine or intend, and will not like. They 
 have been preaching self-help in terms of individual achieve- 
 ment but they are now to see what changes in life will result 
 from the collective seK-help of the people who form the bottom 
 strata of the present social order. The degree in which that 
 self-help will become mutual aid for all the people will depend 
 upon the degree to which those in other social strata who seek 
 
364 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDEE: PRTNCXPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 a better day for all people, can cooperate with the working 
 class. 
 
 The individualistic democracy that we have so glorified, by 
 its conjunction with the capitahstic economic order made the 
 strong to become the rulers and their descendants the parasitic 
 oppressors of the common run of mankind, according to the 
 ancient fashion of autocracy. If humanity, let alone de- 
 mocracy, is now to be saved, the strong are called to sacrifice. 
 Who shall preach that gospel to the working class in the day 
 of their new-found power? Will the educated idealists of the 
 middle class sacrifice anything for the development of the 
 workrag class? Industry and education and religion have been 
 directly and indirectly urging the fittest of the toilers to get 
 out of their class, to aspire to "something higher." Will edu- 
 cation and religion now reinforce the passion for brotherhood 
 that rises where human need is greatest, and instead of the 
 social doctrine that the survivors of the struggle of life are to 
 be enlarged by education and culture, teach that all are to be 
 developed and all handicaps removed, no matter how long 
 or complex the undertaking? Since the leaders of education 
 and religion are not slow to demand that the leaders of the 
 working class give allegiance to this doctrine, will they them- 
 selves practice as well as preach it? 
 
 If the rising working class is indeed to bring a new order of 
 life to the world and not another more extended tyranny, it 
 must perpetuate the spirit of sacrifice which now binds it to- 
 gether in its common need and struggle. It goes without say- 
 ing that in any order of life, no matter how democratic, the 
 strong will always exert control proportionate to their strength. 
 Democracy is safe then only when the strong exercise their 
 strength for the common good, when they are leaders and not 
 masters. But both the common good which the strong seek 
 and the manner of their leadership must be commonly ap- 
 proved and continually subject to the common confirmation 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 365 
 
 and rejection. The leadership of the strong is safe only when 
 it is democratically chosen and democratically sustained, upon 
 the basis of proven disinterested service. Education and re- 
 ligion are essentially aristocratic when they teach that the 
 strong have a divine right of dismterested leadership, to be 
 individually determined. They are democratic only when 
 they teach that the disinterestedness of the leadership of the 
 strong is to be determined not only by their own inner voice, 
 but also by the franchise of the people, when it is so demon- 
 strable that it requires no other influence than its program 
 to sustain it. When the strong so lead, the effect of their 
 strength, by abjuring all privilege except the privilege of 
 extra service, will be to level Hfe upward. 
 
 Through the equalization of social environment and edu- 
 cational opportimity, society moves toward the equalization 
 of power. By these means, in conjimction with measures to 
 prevent the inheritance of crippling disability, capacity will 
 be spread more and more throughout the whole population, 
 so that the results that now foUow from select mating will 
 become more general. The range of choice for marriages that 
 conform to eugenic standards will become gradually wider, 
 imtil it might come about that any other kind of marriage 
 would be the exception. In such a day the differences of 
 capacity would not be so great as to imperil the democratic 
 principle. Indeed, democracy is not likely to be defeated by 
 such differences of capacity as now exist, provided that it 
 removes the opportimity for their imdue expression. 
 
 The change in the social status of the toilers of the earth 
 that is now proceeding necessarily invokes other serious 
 changes in social organization. Of these, the central and most 
 far-reaching is the transformation of the character of the 
 present mode of production and distribution. The complete 
 emancipation of the working class waits upon the abohtion 
 of the capitalistic economic order. If the ideal of democracy 
 
366 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES ANB PROGRAMS 
 
 and the programs of education and religion look forward to 
 the development of all backward peoples and subject classes 
 it is apparent that the capitalistic mode of production and 
 distribution stands clear across the path of progress. It can- 
 not provide adequately for the world as it now is, let alone 
 afford the means for universal cultural development. The 
 reason, as Veblen has pointed out, is that it is forced by its 
 own nature continually to commit sabotage upon itseK, that 
 is, it must continually hinder the productive process by va- 
 rious devices, conscious and automatic, in order to hold up 
 prices and maintain dividends. Therefore the extent of its 
 possibility for increased production is limited to the profitable- 
 ness of that increase to the controlling owners of the enterprise, 
 which does not at all measure up to either the needs or capac- 
 ities of society as a whole. 
 
 The capitalist order might be forgiven for failing adequately 
 to supply the goods that the world needs, and humanity would 
 doubtless be willing to give its owners time to tinker up the ma- 
 chine in hopes of making it go, but it must meet another test. 
 The deep general dissatisfaction with the present economic sys- 
 tem is because of what it does to the spirit of man. Admittedly 
 it gives little joy in their work to those whom it coimts its great- 
 est beneficiaries, while many who profit by it continually suffer 
 the refined tortures of an uneasy conscience. When they try to 
 improve it, they so alter its essential parts — the wage system 
 and the profit system — that the result belongs to another order 
 altogether, working from different motives to different ends. 
 
 The war showed that the profit-seeking system could not 
 produce the goods nor evoke the services needed by mankind, 
 the peace shows that it cannot aid in developing the spiritual 
 unity which is still more essential to the human race. With 
 all the increasing interdependence of the economic life of the 
 world, the capitahst order yet divides the economic forces 
 against themselves, manager against worker, producer against 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 367 
 
 consumer. It so enlarges the competitive elements of life 
 as to make them divisive and destructive. It leads the nations, 
 even while they covenant together, to plan economic warfare 
 against each other. It was enabled lirough the aid of the 
 moral depravity of the German state to conceal the degree of 
 its responsibility for the world war; it will not be so well able 
 to conceal its actions during the war and its part in the adjust- 
 ments with which the war termiaated. The capitalist order has 
 yet to face the conscience of mankind when the common in- 
 telligence has fully grasped the significance of the fact that in 
 every nation war profits far exceeded those of peace, that the 
 war occasioned the greatest increase of private fortimes ever 
 known. This fact fully reveals the moral nature of a system 
 which makes profits even out of death and dishonor, which 
 capitalizes the supreme tragedy of the world as it capitalizes 
 its laughter and its joy, which proposes to draw interest for- 
 ever on the millions of youth who now lie in the battlefields 
 of Europe when they might be helping to make a new world. 
 
 Along with this fact must be put another. Of the several 
 forces which operated to defeat the hope of those who saw a 
 new international order coming out of the war, not the least 
 was the unconscious influence of the present financial system 
 and the actual intrigues of its chief manipulators and bene- 
 ficiaries. On the one hand was the predatory attitude of na- 
 tions whose economic life is organized around the principle of 
 aggression, whose leaders were face to face with the necessity 
 of answering to the common people for the promises they had 
 made concerning the benefits to be derived from victory. On 
 the other hand was the need of collecting the interest on inter- 
 national debts and maintaining the sanctity of the right of 
 the money lender to have his pound of flesh. To these two 
 necessities the interests of humanity were sacrificed. When 
 the plain people understand what lies behind the terms of the 
 settlement in regard to China, when they comprehend the 
 
'368 THE NEW SOCIAL OIU5ER: PRINCrPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 real meaning and causes of the policy of the Allies in Eastern 
 Europe and the Near East, if they do not then reject the 
 capitalist order as a corrupter and destroyer of humanity, 
 there is indeed small hope for the future. 
 
 The capitalist order is passing, not because of defects in its 
 machinery, but because its power is giving out. It is doomed 
 because its central principle is selfishness, which is the funda- 
 mental immorahty, and simply will not work. When any 
 system is subjected to as much questioning as the present 
 mode of production and distribution, both from those who 
 benefit from it and those who suffer by it, it is a certain sign 
 that the day of its dissolution is not far distant. Another in- 
 dication of its approaching demise is the progressive abandon- 
 ment in the colleges of that system of poKtical economy which 
 deluded itself and the rest of us into believing that it was dis- 
 covering inexorable and immutable economic law when it was 
 only analyzing and revealing the workings of a competitive 
 capitalistic mode of production and distribution. The recog- 
 nition of this fact will relieve society of a great incubus, men- 
 tally, spiritually and practically. It is imder the shelter of 
 the cloak of the orthodox economists that the present order 
 takes refuge when it is hard put to it to show that it is either 
 moral or efl&dent. It is the aid of the economists, directly and 
 indirectly given, which enables the beneficiaries of the present 
 industrial and financial system when faced with its ineffi- 
 ciencies and immoralities to stiU maintain that selfishness is 
 scientific. But the war has so shaken the authority of the 
 capitalist order, and the peace has so revealed its moral bank- 
 ruptcy even to its own defenders, that not any support it 
 may secure in the world of science or of religion can restore it 
 to power. 
 
 Because the present economic order is quite generally ad- 
 mitted to be inadequate for both the spiritual and practical 
 needs of human society, it does not follow that it is straightway, 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 369 
 
 or ever, to be totally wiped out. Such an event does not occur, 
 not even in Russia. That order has contributed invaluable 
 tools to human effort, which will be retained. Many of its 
 forms will remain, as the forms of the autocratic state have 
 remained, to be used by democracy. It will be abandoned 
 gradually and progressively. But it is essential that the con- 
 cepts aroimd which it has formed should be definitely re- 
 nounced. What economic order is to presently replace the 
 capitalist system, does not yet appear. The matter is still 
 in the stage of experimentation, with the probability that the 
 result in form will be composite. But if the world is to move 
 forward, its economic life must be organized aroimd different 
 ethical principles than those which dominate in the present 
 system. No change of machinery will restore the world or 
 satisfy the hopes and longings of humanity. The change that 
 is needed in the economic order goes deeper; it involves a 
 transformation of motive and end, of spirit and purpose. The 
 spirit of the capitalist order is far older than the industrial 
 system. It has deep roots in human nature and a long course 
 of development in hmnan history. Its abandonment is no 
 small matter. It involves the substitution of the spirit of 
 cooperative service for the spirit of strife and conquest, and 
 the choosing of the promotion of the common welfare of 
 humanity as the end of life iostead of the pursuit of wealth 
 and power. 
 
 The working class is becoming aware of the fact that to 
 secure its emancipation and development it must transform 
 the economic system. There is also an increasing agreement 
 among the intellectuals that such a change is necessary in 
 the interests of everybody. But there is much more than a 
 new mode of economic organization involved in the present 
 pursuit of freedom. If the rise of the working class and the 
 abandonment of the capitalist order is to lead man out into 
 broader fields of life, these changes must bring freedom from 
 
370 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the complex machinery of modern existence, which has well- 
 nigh enslaved man not only in the factories but in the whole of 
 his life. There is a conflict to-day, in the centers of education 
 and religion as well as in the workshops, between a machine 
 system and the spirit of man, which longs to move out into 
 new fields of adventure and achievement. Can we mobilize 
 for service in the machine age and yet preserve the freedom 
 of the individual? Here is one of the perennial conflicts be- 
 tween society and the individual, never so acute as in the 
 day of the machine. It remains yet to be seen whether the 
 machine has become the master, not only of the working 
 people, but also of the human spirit. 
 
 Moreover, if the freedom and joy of a new order of life are 
 to come to the world, man must master himself as weU as the 
 machinery of social organization. The war has shown to us 
 that no matter what man has done in the subduing of nature, 
 he has not subdued himself. He has still the old brute in- 
 stincts and when he looks them in the face he knows that he 
 is yet a naked, painted savage in spite of all his claims to 
 science and religion, and that his barbaric inheritance may 
 yet destroy him. A new order, then, means the mastery by 
 man of his animal instincts, particularly the instincts of sex 
 and possession and combat, all of them either life-giving or 
 destructive according to their use and direction. The more 
 man eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the more is the 
 necessity laid upon him of controlling these instincts, of mak- 
 ing them push his wagon, while the stars to which he has 
 hitched it also pull. 
 
 In the past, the conscious effort to control the animal in- 
 stincts has been mostly the individual struggle of separate 
 souls, who have been aided or defeated very largely according 
 to the collective arrangements of their time in the state and 
 in industry. But if humanity is to go on living, the struggle 
 to control the primeval instincts must now be a common 
 
THE TREND OP PROGRESS 37I 
 
 effort, carried on together by all of the community and by all 
 of ma n kind. The only possible means of victory in the long 
 fight is to direct these instincts toward the common ends of 
 human living; the instinct of sex toward the development of 
 the family in its highest form, the instinct of possession to- 
 ward the development of those common resources and that 
 common wealth by which man must commonly live, and the 
 instinct of combat toward the joint conquest of nature and 
 of the evil that is within man. 
 
 If then, the main course of progress is clear, what are the 
 means by which advance is to be made? We are faced with 
 two choices: one of them is in the realm of organization. The 
 debate now proceeding in the House of the People is on the 
 question whether the emancipation of the working class and 
 the cooperative organization of society is to be effected by 
 political or industrial means. Is the state of the future to be 
 organized around economic functions rather than geographical 
 divisions and to enable the people directly to control their 
 associated activities? Unquestionably the war has lowered 
 the authority of political democracy. It suspended parlia- 
 mentary discussion. In every belligerent nation it substituted 
 for the legislative assembly an oligarchic bureaucracy. Its 
 climax was three men behind closed doors attempting to ar- 
 range the destinies of millions of people, and dispensing terri- 
 tories as a tradesman hands out goods. The war has taught 
 the people that the vital processes of human society are not 
 governmental but economic. It was industrial mobilization 
 that decided the issue. Before long the people will apply that 
 lesson to the tasks of peace, for there has long been evident 
 a growing distrust of the political state. It has failed in the 
 hour of crisis to do what most of the people wanted done, and 
 they are abready beginning to try some other tools. The 
 Labor Memorandum presented to the British Industrial Con- 
 ference, contained the following sentences: 
 
372 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 These root causes (of labor unrest) are two-fold; first, the breakdown 
 of the existing capitalistic system of industrial organization, in the sense 
 that the mass of the working class is now firmly convinced that produc- 
 tion for private profit is not an equitable basis on which to build, and 
 that a vast extension of public ownership and democratic control of 
 industry is necessary; (and, second, the fact that) the workers can see no 
 indication that either the Government or the employers have realized 
 the necessity for any fundamental changes or that they are prepared even 
 to make a beginning of industrial reorganization on more democratic 
 principles. 
 
 Throughout the British Dominion and in the United States, 
 the war has not only shaken the authority of the democratic 
 state among the hosts of labor, but also the authority of those 
 labor leaders who have been acting in conjunction with the 
 state during the war. Everywhere the workers are seeking 
 new forms of organization, and finding new leaders. Shop 
 Committees, the Shop Steward Movement, the One Big 
 Union propaganda, are all signs of the serious breakdown of 
 constituted authority. Among the Latin and Slavic popula- 
 tions this tendency proceeds at still greater pace. It is all a 
 part of the process by which mankind in general is finding 
 itself and its powers and ceasing to be dependent upon a few 
 leaders. 
 
 The last message to Congress discussed the necessity of 
 coordinating the electric means of communication and pro- 
 posed that a congressional committee investigate the matter. 
 But the people have Httle confidence in legislative committees. 
 They regard them as a performance of pohtical ritual. They 
 are beginning to understand that such a piece of work as co- 
 ordinating one of the vital functions of modem society is a 
 job for technicians and administrators and laborers, not for 
 politicians who know nothing about it and whose object in a 
 democratic state is to please as many and offend as few as 
 possible, to adjust all matters by a process of compromise in 
 which the intrenched, financial interests usually get the ad- 
 vantage. As they come to understand the nature and work- 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 373 
 
 ings of the present political process, and through their par- 
 ticipation in the industrial process come to know the kind of 
 management it requires, the people of this country, concludmg 
 that economic functions must be commonly controlled, are 
 Ukely to look elsewhere than the political state for the form of 
 control. 
 
 They are boimd to discover, however, that if the common 
 control of industrial organization is to succeed it must proceed 
 upon the principles, and to some degree the methods, which 
 pohtical democracy has developed and established. The 
 experience of the war has heavily discounted among the 
 workers that rigid state socialism which would set the political 
 machine to run the economic Hfe. What is more likely to 
 develop is an amalgam of political and industrial organization, 
 working together in a joint control of the vital processes of 
 society. The principles of democracy demand direct control 
 of each economic function by all those directly engaged in it, 
 but coordinating control of all the fimctions by all of the 
 people. The former will be worked out both by operating 
 guilds or unions of all those engaged in a particular function, 
 deriving their powers from the state and answering to it for 
 their stewardship, and also by cooperative societies. The 
 general control will be worked out by the development of 
 political organization for the formulation and guidance of 
 general economic policies. In the contiauous discussion of 
 the policies involved in both cases, the parliamentary method 
 will take on new life and worth. 
 
 But the democratic state will have hard work to recover 
 from the wounds it has recently inflicted upon itself. In a 
 day when hvunanity needs to trust in the moral values of 
 democracy as never before, the leaders of the Western nations 
 have been demonstrating before all the peoples of the earth 
 that the present political state cannot be trusted to maintain 
 democracy. The result is likely to be not only disillusionment 
 
374 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 concerning the efficacy of political machinery, but distrust of 
 the democratic process itself. This would mean that men 
 would lose faith in each other and in themselves, for upon 
 such faith democracy is based and by such faith it grows. How 
 can men live together without faith in each other? Organized 
 religion, which assumes the duty of increasing faith among men 
 in order that they may find their way in the universe, had 
 better reckon with the fact that a generation weary and 
 strained by the great conflict, facing results which are so 
 much less than its hopes, may become absolutely cynical. 
 Therefore organized religion, especially in the country which 
 has suffered least from the war, will need to consider how the 
 faith of men in each other is to be restored. 
 
 The democratic state is capable of adjusting itself ia an 
 amalgam with industrial organization, rniless its possibilities 
 of change be unduly obstructed by those who are now en- 
 trenched in power and privilege. An indication of this possi- 
 biUty, in both directions, is furnished by a recent happening 
 in North Dakota. There forty-two taxpayers brought suit 
 to restrain the state ofi&cials from establishing a state bank 
 and state-owned elevators, mills and packing houses, a policy 
 which is the result of a program of political education and 
 action since the year 191 1 . This suit was based on the ground 
 that a citizen who is compelled to pay taxes for such purposes 
 is deprived of his property without due process of law in 
 violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Charles F. 
 Amidon of the United States District Court, overruled the 
 contention and dismissed the suit. In the course of his de- 
 cision he pointed out that: 
 
 What may be done by the State to protect its people and promote 
 their welfare cannot be declared by a priori reasoning. New evils arise 
 as a result of changing conditions. If the State remains static while the 
 evils that afflict society are changing and dynamic, the State soon be- 
 comes wholly inadequate to protect the public. The State must be as 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 375 
 
 free to change its remedies as the evils that cause hiunan suffering are to 
 change their forms. 
 
 If the State can be kept thus free, industrial readjustment will 
 proceed by due process of accommodation between political 
 and economic power. 
 
 This also holds true for the international situation. While 
 there is an absolute ethical conflict between an economic 
 order consciously organized for the common welfare and one 
 organized for the pursuit of private property and power, just 
 as there is between democracy and autocracy, nevertheless 
 it is possible for states whose economic life is organized co- 
 operatively for common use and welfare to exist side by side 
 with those whose economic life is competitively organized for 
 private gain. There wiU be degrees of cooperation and of 
 competition in both cases. The course of progress would then 
 be mutual modification by the process of discussion and ex- 
 perimentation. The world needs to listen to all propaganda 
 for a new order that does not advocate or involve the use of 
 violence. If political democracy is afraid of the competition 
 of ideas it thereby confesses that its case rests upon coercion, 
 that it is not democracy at all, but something else masquerad- 
 ing under that name. It is governments and ruhng classes 
 that have an interest in preventing international propaganda 
 for social change. The interest of the people lies m another 
 direction, in order that their choice may be based upon due 
 and sufficient knowledge of the whole issue. Of course if 
 the propaganda is one for the overthrow of the existing order 
 by physical force, the matter takes on a different complexion. 
 If, on the one hand the people of the democratic states are to 
 be called to mamtain an armed dictatorship of the proletariat 
 in the name of justice and humanity, and on the other hand 
 are to be called m the name of democracy and religion to an 
 armed crusade against every government that limits private 
 property and the earning power of foreign capital, the future 
 
376 THE NEW SOCIAL OEDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 before mankind is indeed dark. In that case the League of 
 Nations will be the mobilization of capitalist states to fight 
 the Communist International founded by the Russian Bol- 
 sheviki, with which the Itahan and Swiss socialist parties are 
 already aflBHated, while the French, German and Austrian 
 SociaUsts are moving in the same direction. 
 
 This possibihty raises the second choice concerning the 
 means of progress. Is it to be secured by force or by reason, 
 by methods of peace or the ways of war? It is plain that no 
 significant change in human history has occurred without 
 violence and therefore in the present situation some violence 
 is inevitable. The question is whether warfare is to be the 
 main method of advance. 
 
 The choice before us in the matter of means is usually put 
 in the form of a contrast between evolution and revolution. 
 It is also usually assumed that revolution is identical with 
 violence, whereas if the term is used in contrast with evolution 
 it should relate to the nature and extent of change rather 
 than to its manner. The Declaration of Independence recog- 
 nizes the right of revolution in certain contingencies, and since 
 its signers were undoubtedly justifying before history the 
 action of the American colonies, it may be assimied that a 
 change in government effected by physical force was by them 
 held to be justified under the conditions specified. But those 
 conditions are of the essence of democracy, therefore the 
 democratic state if it is true to itself, keeps open other chan- 
 nels of change and removes both the occasion, the necessity 
 and the justification for the use of physical force. When the 
 term "revolutionary" is dissociated from connection with 
 violence there is no occasion to be fearful of its use. It used 
 to be quite respectable in this country. Only those who desire 
 to maintain the present order without regard to its right, 
 reason or justice need be afraid to consider proposals of change 
 which in their nature and degree, and not in their manner of 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 377 
 
 execution, are revolutionary. As a matter of fact the contrast 
 between evolution and revolution is not justified. There is 
 no such sharp antithesis. The evolutionary process, particu- 
 larly in human society, at certain points develops such re- 
 markable changes that they are in deed and truth revolution- 
 ary. We have now come to such a point, but that does not 
 imply that such changes as now impend need occur by the 
 catastrophic method. Whether or not the new forms of life 
 that now and again appear in the evolutionary process unduly 
 rend or destroy the old forms out of which they came, depends 
 upon the degree of obstruction to their development. Revo- 
 lutionary steps in the process of social evolution have in the 
 past generally occurred by revolutionary methods, they may 
 occur by evolutionary methods, which is what democracy 
 makes possible and ought to guarantee. 
 
 K democracy does not make a way for economic change 
 without class war, Western civilization is headed for complete 
 and overwhelming disaster. There is little hope that it could 
 stirvive another great international conflict. The social con- 
 sequences of this present war have not yet been assessed nor 
 faced. The resultant diseases may permanently impair the 
 vitality of Europe. However that may turn out, the nature 
 of modem warfare is such as to raise the question whether 
 its total social destructiveness is not greater than any benefits 
 than can possibly be achieved by it. Whatever any war 
 may have done for progress in the past, it is abnost practically 
 certain that the imiversal war of modem times, both in its 
 extent and in its nature, is humanity committing suicide. It 
 means that aU the intellectual gains and all the moral advance 
 of the race are turned to its destmction, the one to achieve 
 and the other to justify the ends for which the stmggle is 
 waged. This is particularly tme of the international class 
 war. Those who now preach that progress cannot be attained 
 without such a conflict had better reckon with the fact that 
 
378 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRlNCtPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 there is an extremely slight possibility that it could ever be 
 attained by it. 
 
 Yet despite the fact that it would sound the doom of the 
 Western world, such conflict wiU come if the temper now 
 manifested among certain of the forces on both sides of the 
 economic conflict should prevail. In the Western world 
 there is only one answer to the armed dictatorship of the pro- 
 letariat on the one hand or the forcible repression of all orderly 
 attempts at fundamental economic change by the ruUng class 
 on the other, and that is a war of extermination. To neither 
 tyranny will men of Anglo-Saxon blood, who dissent from the 
 order it seeks to support, submit while they can breathe. 
 Among the people of this race, the decision concerning the 
 means of progress lies in the main with those who are now in 
 power. The workers are peaceful and patient, and are not 
 likely to follow any theory or plan of violence. History in- 
 dicates that they are not to be provoked to upheaval except 
 by some long continued injustice suddenly made intolerable 
 by an act or policy of incredible folly and oppression on the 
 part of the ruling powers. Whether or not economic readjust- 
 ment in the British Empire and the United States is to come 
 by gradual and orderly change is for the people of property to 
 say. If they put their trust in force they will finally meet 
 force; if they rest their case on reason and justice they will 
 be dealt with in reason and justice. Action and reaction are 
 apparently equal in the moral imiverse. That is why evil 
 can be overcome with good and never with evil. 
 
 At present the attitude of those who constitute the class 
 of privilege toward any proposed change in the economic 
 order does not give much hope of progress by accommodation 
 rather than coercion. Before a Government Commission, one 
 after another the men who derive large incomes from the 
 mining royalties on thousands of acres of land in Great Britain, 
 which was given their ancestors by long-dead kings, aimounced 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 379 
 
 their determined opposition to any policy for the nationaliza- 
 tion of mines. In Canada, the Federal government ends a 
 strike by sending federal troops to throw the leaders into 
 prison. In the United States the socialists are denied meeting 
 places and mobbed mider the inciting influence of the mis- 
 representations of the press, and laws are being passed to 
 prevent revolutionary propaganda in such terms that they 
 can be and are administered to repress all organized discussion 
 of fimdamental political, social and economic change. Nor 
 is the situation more hopeful in the world at large. The 
 peoples approach the problem of economic readjustment with 
 the blood lust aroused by the world war still boiling within 
 them, still suffering from that madness which leads humanity 
 to devour itself. Those who seek in Eastern and Central 
 Europe to bring in a new order are frankly trusting in the 
 power of mailed might. The governments of France and 
 Great Britain speak fair words to the forces of labor and 
 meantime seek to mobilize the army against possible industrial 
 revolution. A war to end war results in multiphed wars and 
 threats of war, and occasions increased armaments in the 
 democratic states. 
 
 At Paris the elder statesmen made decisions which im- 
 changed wiU involve the world in two future struggles both 
 greater than the war just finished. In giving to Japan terri- 
 tory and econonaic power in China, in violation of all the prin- 
 ciples professed by the leaders of democracy and even of the 
 accepted law of nations, they have turned four himdred mil- 
 lion people, the greatest single reservoir of human power on 
 earth, toward militarism and " real-pohtik." For the present 
 they have thrown that imdeveloped human energy into the 
 hands of the one imperialistic ruling class still left in the world 
 and thereby weakened the democratic forces within its own 
 land that might have lessened its menace to the rest of man- 
 kind. Unless there is enough democracy left in the earth to 
 
380 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 undo that shameful deed, a long and bitter retribution waits 
 upon the Western world. 
 
 Another decision at Paris invites the world-wide class war. 
 It is reported by reputable correspondents that during April 
 (19 19) the Soviet Government of Russia made overtures to the 
 Allies, offering to cease fighting, to withdraw all its troops 
 from every part of Russia not accepting its authority, to 
 permit every part of Russia to decide by free franchise what 
 kind of goverimient it wanted and to abide by the decision, 
 on condition that the Allies do likewise and resume economic 
 relations with Russia. The only answer to that offer which 
 the world has heard has been the sending of further aid to the 
 forces attacking the Russian Soviet Government and the 
 sending of the Rumanian army into Hungary to attack the 
 Soviet Government there. This decision is tantamount to a 
 declaration of class war by the forces of capitalism, using the 
 democratic state as its mouthpiece and instrument. If the 
 leaders of the old order believed in democracy they would 
 challenge the people of the earth to disband the armies and 
 navies, to destroy the armaments or convert them into instru- 
 ments of production, and let the economic controversy be 
 settled by discussion and experiment. Are they blind like 
 those who sat behind the doors of the palaces of Petrograd 
 in absolute ignorance of the storm rising among the common 
 people of Russia? Does immediate economic self-rnterest so 
 blind them that they cannot see the consequences to the 
 present structure of property and credit of trying to maintain 
 it by force of arms? Yet because of the nature of that struc- 
 ture it dare not trust its future to the reason and justice of 
 the common people. It therefore compels those of its chief 
 priests and rulers who seek peace to put their trust in force. 
 
 The decisions at Paris make abundantly clear to the way- 
 faring man the amount of pressure which the present economic 
 order exerts upon political arrangements, and its consequences. 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 38 1 
 
 It is dear that unless economic reorganization can be secured 
 there is no hope of peaceful progress. But the reorganization 
 whidi is required to throw the influence of the economic ac- 
 tivities of man on the side of fraternity rather than on the 
 side of strife, involves certain far-reaching and general spiritual 
 changes. The economic order is roughly speaking the stomach 
 of the social system, it is the nutritive process on which all 
 other functions of the body politic depend and by which they 
 are conditioned, reflecting in their weakness or strength their 
 sickness or health, the manner in which it performs its tasks. 
 This is not to say that economic conditions absolutely de- 
 termine the entire social order. By the head and by the 
 heart, the stomach can be controlled; by the former for the 
 good of its owner and by the latter for the good of others. 
 And if this be indeed the boasted age of reason, then the 
 economic process can now be consciously controUed in the in- 
 terest of the common ideals of mankind. If the economic 
 process is to remain instinctive it will follow self-interest 
 blindly and involve mankind in the destruction that ever waits 
 upon such a course when long enough continued. If it be ra- 
 tionally controlled in the direction of consciously chosen ends, 
 the economic process becomes one of the means in the spiritual 
 development of mankind. 
 
 In reality the relation between economic and spiritual devel- 
 opment is an interlocking relationship. Neither can progress 
 without the other. But to make the economic organization a 
 means for the increase of fraternity requires that it be shaped 
 arotmd certain concepts and ideals. It requires the general 
 recognition of the equality of need and right of all mankind, 
 and the universal acceptance of the obligation of service. It 
 demands adherence to the truth "above all nations is hu- 
 manity" and the development of supreme loyalty to the world- 
 wide human family above all loyalties to class or nation or race. 
 The moment one individual attempts advantage over another, 
 
382 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 the community life begins to split, the instant one nation 
 seeks privilege and power beyond others, or one race assimies 
 superiority over another, the world begins to divide into hos- 
 tile camps. A condition of the achievement of brotherhood 
 of man is intelligent acceptance of the ideals of equality and 
 solidarity and imf altering devotion to the task of translating 
 them into social organization. 
 
 It is also obvious that no reorganization of the economic 
 order will aid mankind to realize equality and solidarity unless 
 it seek a higher end than the accxmiulation of material goods 
 and their enjoyment. As long as men seek mainly to lay up 
 treasures upon earth they will faU to quarreling in the under- 
 taking. Therefore the avoidance of the supreme disaster of 
 continued and universal class war depends also upon the 
 general recognition of the fact that man does not live by 
 bread alone, and the acceptance of the development of per- 
 sonahty as the end of human activity and of the universe. 
 
 When an attempt is made to define the development of per- 
 sonality it appears that the last word is with religion. Science 
 and art and economic productivity do not complete the 
 process of personal development. It is more than self-culture. 
 The teaching of religion, drawn from all of hiunan experience, 
 is that the fuU realization of personality is to be found only 
 in fellowship and service, wherein self-culture is utilized and 
 completed. Religion further declares that personality reaches 
 its highest expression when its fellowship and service embrace 
 all mankind and when it develops the sacrificial spirit. That 
 is why war has been glorified. In the common course of Hfe 
 most people follow only a dull routine with no glory in it. 
 They eat and drink and beget, earn their living or make their 
 fortune, with no call to heroic endeavor. Even the power 
 of family life to develop the higher expressions of personality 
 is dulled and deadened by the monotonous character of their 
 daily toil. Then comes war and lifts these people to the plane 
 
THE TREND OF PROGRESS 383 
 
 of service and sacrifice for a cause. What war affords for the 
 expression of personality in the course of daily duty for pur- 
 poses of mutual destruction, must some day be provided in 
 the ordinary routme of Hfe. The daily rovuid and common 
 task must lead men continuously to service and on due oc- 
 casion to sacrifice, that men may be great in work as they are 
 great in war, because they greatly serve the common good. 
 If rehgion seeks the development of personality through the 
 spirit of sacrifice, it must needs help the world to secure an 
 economic order operated for the common good rather than 
 for private advantage, whose very nature will constantly 
 require the exercise of the spirit of sacrifi.ce as well as the 
 spirit of service. 
 
 If the new order is to be animated by the spirit of sacrifice 
 it cannot come into being without that spirit. Coercion can- 
 not bring it, any more than coercion can prevent it. If it 
 comes by war, it comes in mutilated form, with the old tyran- 
 nies partly remaining. If it can come because those who now 
 have more of life than others are willing to sacrifice whatever 
 is necessary to open up the path of development to all, the 
 new order will come with power. The chief contribution 
 then that religion can make to the new order is to develop 
 the sacrificial spirit. Christianity preaches the gospel of re- 
 demption and regeneration through sacrifice. Can it now get 
 its followers to practice that gospel, as individuals, as classes, 
 as nations? It is infinitely harder to develop the sacrificial 
 spirit in the nation than in the individual. During the war 
 England signed papers which turned the destinies of milhons 
 of people into alien hands. She had no shadow of moral 
 right to make such disposition of others. But her situation 
 was desperate and her statesmen were actuated by the desire 
 to save the nation from defeat. If the spirit of the simple 
 Englishmen who died on Flanders Field because "of their 
 own free will, they came to help their fellowmen in trouble," 
 
384 THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER: PRINCIPLES AND PROGRAMS 
 
 had possessed the national body, England would have said 
 "we will die if we must but we will not buy life at the cost of 
 the liberties of others." This is what men have said as in- 
 dividuals and thereby lived forever. The nation that learns 
 to say it will never perish from the earth. 
 
 Whatever form the new order may take, its vital breath is 
 the sacrificial spirit. Lacking that, it will not be. The spirit 
 of life is the spirit of sacrifice even vmto death. That spirit is 
 stirring in the earth to-day. Over against the callous and 
 shameless selfishness, the ruthless brutality and sordid ma- 
 terialism that stand out to-day in the high places of the earth 
 must be set the capacity for sacrificial service which millions 
 of plain people have manifested in these last years. It is evi- 
 dence sufficient of the presence and power of the instinct for 
 sacrifice, which, like the instinct of the homing pigeon or the 
 migratory birds, wiU lead man to his desired haven of world- 
 wide brotherhood when the artificial barriers that now ob- 
 struct its passage are removed. The instinct to serve and to 
 suffer has been mostly bred out and trained out of the classes 
 of privilege in the capitalist order, save as they turn to war 
 for its expression. Nevertheless, that on due occasion all 
 classes can yet answer to the call of human need, the self- 
 forgetfulness of war-time has made manifest. If that spirit 
 can be kept alive and turned to the larger ends of world-wide 
 good, it wiU soon bring a new day upon the earth. Whether 
 the new order desired by multitudes will now appear, depends 
 finally upon whether those multitudes have sufficient capacity 
 for sacrifice to send new life coursing through the exhausted 
 veins of hxunanity. 
 
 Printed la th« United SUtes of America