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 ' • . *t e i .r.: 
 
 
 The Reason for 
 Socialism 
 
 By H. ESELL 
 
 Author of “Incentive under Capitalism,” “How Nations 
 Make Progress,” “Christianity and Some 
 Principles of Socialism,” Etc. 
 
 “Always be ready to give an answer 
 to any one who asks your reason for 
 the hope that you cherish.” 
 
 —Epistle of Peter. 
 
 MILWAUKEE 
 
 SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PUBLISHING CO. 
 344 Sixth Street 
 
 
3 3? 
 
 tS2A. 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 (rt 
 
 f 
 
 1 
 
 t 
 
 
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 V^O 
 
 The purpose of this brief work is to show that I and my fellow 
 men as well, are compelled to become Socialists by reason of forces 
 without us and beyond our control ; that Socialism is ultimately in- 
 evitable, but that at the same time by reason of our ignorance and 
 superstition we may continue to live under an organization of society 
 out of harmony with our industrial and economic development, and by 
 so doing bring untold suffering and misery upon ourselves. 
 
 There are those who may find fault with the brevity of the chapter 
 on Industrial Evolution — a Reason, owing to the great importance of 
 this force in determining the form of social organization. To them I 
 wish to say that this important determining force has been emphasized, 
 and is being emphasized by nearly all writers on Socialism, while 
 Economy — a Reason, which is almost if not quite as potent, and to 
 which I have devoted more space, has been sadly overlooked by others. 
 
 I very much fear the so-called scientific Socialist will conclude 
 that I have destroyed the good that my book might otherwise have 
 possessed by my chapter on The Christian Religion — a Reason. 
 In reference to this chapter I must say that I do not intend to imply 
 that other religions may not also be making for Socialism. 
 
 To the scientific Socialist especially I must say that his science 
 does not extend far enough. Religion in some form has always exer- 
 cised a powerful influence over humanity, yet, like everything else that 
 man knows of, it has been subject to the laws of change and evolution. 
 
 This chapter was included because I have observed those profess- 
 ing to be guided by religious convictions of some form or another, 
 whose ideas and aims are declared to be to make the world better and 
 to improve the condition of human society, antagonizing Socialists and 
 having very bitter feelings toward them, nothwithstanding these Social- 
 ists have again and again avowed 1 that it is their purpose also to make 
 these same conditions possible. 
 
 If the former understood Socialists when they speak of economic 
 determinism, the materialistic interpretation of history, the class 
 struggle, they would soon rid themselves of superstitions that are very 
 hurtful ; if the latter understood what Christ meant when he spoke 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Golden Rule, the law of the meek, of 
 
 756999 
 
the merciful, of the teachable ones, of the forgiving, of the self-sacrific- 
 ing, and so forth, the Socialist movement would not be rent so often 
 by factional strife, by personal abuse, and its speedy realization would 
 not be deferred by the inconsistency, the hate, and the selfishness of 
 its own advocates. 
 
 To bring about a feeling of respect each for the other between 
 these bands of workers for human betterment, and thereby establish 
 cooperation among them, is the purpose of the chapter in question. 
 
 January, 1908, THE AUTHOR. 
 
 4 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 PREFACE 3 
 
 I. Industrial Evolution — A Reason 7 
 
 II. The Preservation of Society — A Reason 12 
 
 III. Economy — A Reason 18 
 
 IV. Education and Increasing Intelligence — A Reason 51 
 
 V. The Christian Religion — A Reason 60 
 
 VI. Man’s Destiny — A Reason 90 
 
 Index 
 
 101 
 

CHAPTER I. 
 
 ECENTLY this plain question was put to me: “Why are you 
 so interested in Socialism? Would you be if you were a mil- 
 lionaire ?” 
 
 I can not answer the second part of the question, because 
 I have no way of knowing. There are millionaires who are Socialists. 
 But ever since this question was asked me I have had a keen desire 
 to answer the first part of it as fully, and as plainly as I could. 
 
 Industrial Evolution — A Reason. 
 
 I am living in the year 1908. This is one reason why. There 
 were no Socialists in the year 1808, because there was little or no 
 machinery to do the world’s work, and hence no factories where thou- 
 sands of toilers worked together collectively, produced in abundance 
 collectively, and handed the product over to a few to be disposed of 
 individually ; there was no such process as is today known as the divi- 
 sion of labor, by which one workman spent all his time making a 
 single part of an article, which part in itself was utterly useless to 
 him or to any one else until it was combined with probably a hundred 
 or more parts made by as many other workmen ; there were no rail- 
 roads upon which society depended for the transportation of those 
 things upon which it must live; there were no telegraph or telephone 
 lines, which society had found necessary to its comfort and existence. 
 
 There was individual production with hand tools, and all the 
 parts of every article were made and put together by the same person, 
 and when completed was owned by himself ; there was transportation 
 conducted by thousands upon thousands of individuals operating stage 
 coaches and wagons in all parts of the country; there were couriers 
 and heralds, both mounted and afoot ; every household was a miniature 
 factory, and made nearlv everything upon which the health, comfort, 
 and life of its members depended ; and with free access to an abund- 
 ance of fertile land it was impossible in 1808 for any man or set of 
 men to threaten the life or happiness of any part of society by monop- 
 olizing and withholding the necessities of life, or by forcing upon so- 
 ciety disease-infected clothing, or adulterated and health-destroy- 
 food. 
 
 7 
 
An Age When Competition Was Beneficial. 
 
 This was the age of individual competition, and in 1808 competi- 
 tion was desirable and productive of good, but whether all admit this 
 statement or not, it was the law of that period, and maintained until 
 displaced by a higher industrial development. 
 
 It was really more the nature of emulation — each individual put- 
 ting forth his best efforts in order that he might find a more ready 
 exchange for his surplus output in the very limited market of his 
 time. 
 
 The word Socialism was coined and first used about the middle 
 of the nineteenth century, about the time when our present factory sys- 
 tem was beginning to shape itself, so it must be plain to all that if I 
 had lived in the year 1808 I would not have been a Socialist either in 
 name or in fact. 
 
 The Effect of Machinery Upon the Organization of Society, and Upon 
 
 Competition 
 
 The reader may think by this time that I am trying to plead help- 
 lessness in this matter, and that I am claiming that Socialism is be- 
 ing forced upon me. If this is his guess, let him hold fast to it, let it 
 be his constant thought, for he is right, and sooner or later he will 
 find that what is true of myself will also be true of himself. 
 
 Some evidence will now be produced to show how our environ- 
 ment determines us, and how the manner in which a man gets his 
 living is responsible for his ideas and his thought. 
 
 The last half of the nineteenth century surpassed all other 
 periods of the world’s history in invention of labor-saving machinery, 
 and in reducing the mode of production of the necessities of life to a 
 system, so that there has been a total change in our industrial and 
 economic life. As a result of this change the home is no longer a fac- 
 tory in any sense of that word. There is hardly anything made in it 
 that its members use. Cloth is manufactured and clothing and shoes 
 are made at the factory on gigantic machines; not on the spinning 
 wheel and the hand loom, or at the cobbler’s bench. Plows, horse- 
 shoes, and farm implements are made by machinery on a large scale, 
 not at the farm blacksmith shop; and what is even more significant 
 the great mass of the population live in cities where they have no ac- 
 cess to the soil, and therefore can not produce a single article of 
 food by their own efforts, but are dependent entirely upon the fac- 
 tories in which expensive machinery is employed, and upon the farms 
 where it is almost suicidal to attempt to operate without machinery and 
 
 8 
 
scientific apparatus that was formerly unknown. A very small per- 
 centage of the families of these cities have any vehicle or other mode 
 of travel or transportation, and few individually own any contriv- 
 ance for communication. 
 
 Now it is utterly impossible for every individual or even any large 
 number individually to own and operate a factory with its immense ma- 
 chines and expensive equipment in 1908, as he owned and used a hand 
 tool in 1808, obviously because if every individual, or any large number 
 of individuals did so own factories there would be no one to work upon 
 the machines in these factories, for it takes thousands working together 
 collectively to do this. It is utterly impossible for every individual, or 
 for any large number individually to go into the business of railroad- 
 ing in 1908, as thousands in every part of the country could operate 
 stage coaches in 1808, obviously because if any large number of persons 
 did go into railroading and each own and operate a mile or two, and 
 cease work as the present owners do, there would be none left to op- 
 erate these roads, since it requires a large number of men working to- 
 gether collectively and systematically to operate a railroad successfully. 
 It is utterly impossible for every individual to own and operate a tele- 
 graph or telephone system in 1908 as he could dispatch a courier on his 
 own horse, or on foot in 1808. It is impossible for every family to own 
 and operate a water works system, and is becoming impractical and un- 
 sanitary in towns and cities to even have its own well or cistern in 1908 
 as it had in 1808. Only a municipality can operate a lighting plant in 
 1908, while it is becoming quite inconvenient for every family to have 
 its own tallow candles, pine knots, and kerosene lamps as it had in 1808. 
 And so on illustrations without end could be given showing that we 
 have reached an age in which competition is eliminated, and while there 
 are those who are pleading that competition is the making of the race 
 and who want to go back to the good old days of competition, and who 
 are opposed to Socialism because they say it is opposed to competition ; 
 nevertheless that form of competition which they seek is gone, having 
 committed suicide. So it matters not whether the Socialist is opposed 
 to it or whether he is not. It can not be brought back. 
 
 But the thing that is most important of all, and that is agitating 
 the gray matter in the brain of so many, and that is forcing them to 
 the same state of mind as myself is that since all these things just 
 mentioned are no longer made by myself, in my own home, but are pro- 
 duced by others and controlled by others for their private gain, I am 
 dependent on somebody for the very right to live. My comfort, my 
 pleasure, my happiness, my life is taken out of my own hands and 
 
 9 
 
placed at the mercy of a small, and ever decreasing number of men 
 whose recklessness, rapacity, and greed have by recent and numerous 
 investigations and reports been everything but comforting and assuring. 
 
 Because I may be making only a part of some article, and not 
 owning that part, or because I am engaged in working at some busi- 
 ness in which I do not produce the necessities of life, I am presented 
 day by day, week by week, month by month with bills — gas bills, light 
 bills, water bills, meat bills, grocery bills, rent bills, clothing bills, trav- 
 eling bills, entertainment bills, tax bills, and so forth, and I can not 
 meet these bills Unless I am employed constantly at the thing I know 
 how to do, but under the present private ownership of the means of 
 production and distribution, I have no power to employ myself, and may 
 therefore be dependent upon these merciless moneymongers for the 
 right to work, and they are willing to employ me only when it is prof- 
 itable for them to do so, and at such wages as they see fit, and besides 
 they do not have enough jobs to go around, or to put it more truthfully 
 they do not want to have jobs enough to go around, for they desire 
 above all things a cheap labor market, so they keep on foot even in the 
 most prosperous times an army of a million or more unemployed, and 
 thus there arises a kind of competition in 1908 that was unknown in 
 1808 — a competition for the jobs, a competition among the workers for 
 the right to work — and if this is the kind of competition which some 
 say the Socialist opposes, then the Socialist pleads guilty, but like that 
 other kind of competition which was eliminated without consulting the 
 Socialist, so this is being rapidly eliminated whether the Socialist op- 
 poses it or not, for the workers are beginning to see that whereas the 
 competition of 1808 was helpful, that of 1908 is hurtful. As evidence 
 note the purpose and effect of the labor union as a means of solidify- 
 ing labor, and teaching the spirit of fraternity and co-operation. As a 
 result of the organized labor movement, the workers are fast learning 
 that they had better accept the plan of the Socialist, which provides for 
 everyone a job and the full product of his toil. 
 
 I have said that the competition of 1908, that is the competition 
 among the workers for the jobs, is hurtful. Let me show how. It 
 makes flunkeys, lick-spittles, sycophants, and slaves of men, without 
 manly courage, or a decent pride. It causes men to lose confidence in 
 themselves, and look constantly for some leader to solve the problems 
 of life for them. It makes weaklings and cowards, and saps the foun- 
 dation of progress. 
 
 10 
 
The Progress of Evolution in the Human Mind. 
 
 Bait the point may be made that there are many other persons 
 living in the year 1908 who are not Socialists, and to this I reply : “Yes, 
 but they are not living in the year 2008.” This prompts me to draw a 
 word picture in which I am going to describe the River of Progress, as 
 the boys and girls used to describe rivers when I went to school. It 
 rises in the Mountains of Necessity, flows ever onward, and empties 
 into the Ocean of Human Destiny. It had a small beginning. Year 
 after year the current became deeper and stronger. At first the chil- 
 dren of men could play in it, and wade from one bank to another, but 
 ever and anon there are high tides and sweeping currents and about 
 the year 1908 such a current had become so strong that only those who 
 t remained in the shallows could escape its onward course. I hap- 
 pened to be caught in one of these currents that had set in during the 
 year 1902. I could not help myself. I had to take this tide at its flood, 
 or accept the doom of having “all the voyage of my life bound in shal- 
 lows and miseries.” And as I go onward, happy in the possession of the 
 truth, and of a knowledge of the laws of progress, and economic de- 
 velopments, I call to you who are still in the shallows and rocky places 
 not to be afraid to launch out ; for sooner or later the flood will be upon 
 you anyway, but if not upon you then upon your children and the gen- 
 eration of men after you, for when the truth takes possession of a per- 
 son, and compels him to fight for it, this person is no more to be 
 praised than is an ignorant, or a blind person to be blamed for the acts 
 resulting from their misfortune. So if you are living in 1908 and do 
 not believe yourself to be a Socialist, you may congratulate yourself 
 that you would feel honored to be called one if you should live in 2008. 
 
 From the foregoing the reader will gather that we are all upon 
 this River of Progress. There is no way for any of us to entirely 
 escape. We may occupy different relative positions. Some may be in 
 places where they are being hurt worse than others by reason of their 
 ignorance and prejudice, but we are all being carried onward more or 
 less by the current of events, and this causes me to say that in a sense 
 we are all Socialists, that is, being socialized whether we call ourselves 
 by the name or whether we do not. One gentleman cries out that he 
 sees no reason for our taking on Socialism. How foolish ! We are not 
 taking Socialism. Socialism is taking us. 
 
 11 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Preservation of Society — A Reason. 
 
 B UT I am not answering for others, so much as for myself ; and 
 as an additional reason why I am interested in Socialism, I 
 answer that I am compelled to be by the other members of 
 society. 
 
 Suppose that I should become thoroughly disgusted (as I am) 
 with the impure foods, adulterated drinks, shoddy, disease-infected 
 wearing apparel, and other worthless articles that the profit-seeking 
 capitalist forces upon me; suppose I should become weary (and I am) 
 of being robbed by grafters, embezzlers, bribe-givers and bribe-takers ; 
 suppose I should become sick at heart (and I am) at the sight of the 
 wretched poor, the dive-cursed, the depraved, the ignorant, the insane, 
 the criminal; and to free myself from the whole catalogue above 
 named I seek out some secluded spot between the mountains, and begin 
 life over again, going back, if possible, to the individual method of 
 producing all the necessities of life by hand; and suppose by my 
 strength and perseverance I succeed in hewing out of the wilderness 
 a beautiful and valuable estate where I believe I could enjoy life un- 
 molested by the corruption and turmoil of the capitalist system of pro- 
 duction and distribution. How long do you suppose I would be let 
 alone as an individual, and not have society thrust upon me ? It would 
 not be a year. First, the tax assessor would find me, and tell me that 
 society demands that I shall help defray the cost of government, and so 
 he puts a value on the results of my labor, and tells me that I must be 
 prepared to pay a certain per cent on that value to the tax collector who 
 will certainly visit me in a short time. The tax collector soon finds 
 his way to my retreat. He demands money of me. I explain that I 
 have no money, that I have no use for it. He tells me that my estate 
 will be sold, that I will be ejected and some one else will come into 
 possession. So I leave my secluded retreat, go out among society, sell 
 some of my product in order to get some money. Thus again I am be- 
 ing socialized. But this is not all. Compulsory education is in force, 
 and I am informed that I must send my childen over the mountain to 
 the nearest public school, because the good of society demands that 
 they be educated. Now I may not like a course of instruction that is 
 
 12 
 
capitalistic in every detail; that teaches my children a false political 
 economy; that teaches that kings and emperors are superior beings, 
 and entitled to honor and worship that do not belong to others ; that in- 
 structs them that the principles of rent, interest and profit are from 
 everlasting to everlasting, and that the progress of the nation depends 
 upon their continuance, notwithstanding I read in my Bible, Exodus 
 22 : 25, “If thou lend money to any of my people with thee that is poor, 
 thou shalt not be to him as a creditor, neither shall ye lay upon him 
 interest.” Leviticus 25 ; 36, 37 : “Take thou no interest of him, or in- 
 crease, but fear thy God ; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou 
 shalt not give him thy money upon interest, nor give him thy victuals 
 for increase.” f 
 
 A war breaks out between the government I am taxed to support, 
 and some other nation, and I am conscripted, and ordered to report at 
 the nearest military station for duty, notwithstanding I am convinced 
 that wars grow out of commercial greed, and the lust for foreign 
 markets ; that they are of no benefit to the working class who have to 
 bear the larger part of the suffering and deprivation which every 
 foreign war entails ; and so I may object to taking of the life of my fel- 
 low man and destroying his property, and much more object to being 
 a target for him and having him destroy the results of my labor. 
 
 The Necessity for Participation in Government by All the People. 
 
 j So I am once more convinced that it is useless to try to escape from 
 the current of progress, and the only hope for any citizen living under 
 any government is to demand as full and complete participation in that 
 government as any other citizen, and thus become a real part of it, so 
 that his voice may be heard and his vote may be counted on all matters 
 effecting his interests, and as all of us are subject to the same laws of 
 nature from the standpoint of our physical necessities, it stands to 
 reason that when the masses are left free to exercise their judgment in 
 these matters, the majority vote will be that which will be to the highest 
 interest of all, and in fact is the only safe way of saving all from in- 
 jury. It may give some classes, as they are constituted today, pain to 
 admit other classes to such an equal participation in the government, 
 but it is the only way to save all from suffering and destruction, and to 
 enable all to take another step in progress. 
 
 The absolute necessity for this larger and fuller democracy is not 
 to be explained by supposing that some restless, discontented person 
 hatched the idea in his own brain. It has been forced upon us by our 
 progress, and by the total change that has taken place in our industrial 
 
 13 
 
and economic life during the last half century. Discovery in every 
 field, the invention of labor-saving machinery, the reducing of produc- 
 tion to a system, have rendered every person dependent upon these great 
 forces, and hence the absolute necessity that every citizen should have 
 an equal participation in the government, if he is to save himself from 
 exploitation, yes, even annihilation. It is then not a deranged brain that 
 causes the Socialist to demand the Initiative, the Referendum, the Im- 
 perative Mandate, or the Right of Recall. The Socialist simply takes 
 notice of the necessity for these, and calls the attention of his fellow 
 citizens to this necessity. For the evils of democracy, he sees the 
 necessity for more democracy, even the democratic management of in- 
 dustry, and calls attention to it. He may not be heeded at once, but he 
 is undisturbed, knowing that sooner or later events will force all to see 
 it as he does. 
 
 It would be interesting to trace the processes of evolution that 
 have forced us to the demands just named. Space will not allow it, at 
 this time, but by way of a suggestion, let it be remembered that the 
 Right of Recall was probably not thought of in 1808. Even the elec- 
 tion of officials was comparatively new then, but as the government 
 began to go into more and more business enterprises, as public own- 
 ership became more popular, and cities and towns began to operate 
 water works, gas plants, light plants, street railways, wood and coal 
 yards, ice factories and so forth, it was found that a single petty offi- 
 cial in a small municipality could steal more from the people in a few 
 months, than a tyrant of olden times could steal in a whole reign, hence 
 the necessity for these weapons of defense to be constantly in the hands 
 of the people in these modern times. 
 
 Socialism Demanded by Natural Law. 
 
 Again I answer that the very laws of nature, and the laws of my 
 being compel me to be a Socialist. I will give just a few illustrations 
 to show how true this is. 
 
 In the past, when the earth was sparsely settled, and there was one 
 or more miles intervening between each habitation, there existed an 
 ideal condition for that kind of individualism which some unthinking 
 persons advocate for the present. At that time, when residences were 
 separated by broad acres, and densely populated cities were few, it made 
 very little difference how any particular individual conducted his 
 affairs. He might allow his premises to be a breeding place for in- 
 jurious weeds and insects destructive to crops. It would take years be- 
 fore his neighbor was injured by such negligence. He might be so in- 
 
 14 
 
sanitary and filthy in his surroundings as to endanger the health and 
 life of himself and his family, but the purifying effects of miles of sun- 
 light rendered his neighbors safe. He might allow his soil to be washed 
 away, his farm ruined, his crops wasted from year to year, and nobody 
 cared anything about it, because land was plentiful, and there was no 
 dense urban population dependent upon it for life. 
 
 In our own country such was the situation in 1808, but think how 
 different it is today, in 1908. 
 
 Insects as Promoters of Socialism. 
 
 A few months ago a gentleman of influence in public life who is 
 a fruit grower, who would feel much insulted if accused of being a 
 Socialist, appeared before the legislature of his state to present a peti- 
 tion to liave the state take up the matter of ridding the orchards of 
 San Jose scale and other pests that were threatening the entire fruit 
 industry. His chief and only argument was that it was a matter that 
 the state alone in its collective capacity could handle. He showed that 
 it made no difference how much expense and labor one man would put 
 upon his orchards and vineyards to destroy these enemies so long as 
 his neighbor was allowed to keep a few infested trees standing that he 
 cared nothing about; that the negligent and careless farmer and fruit 
 grower was a constant menace to the fruit industry of the entire state. 
 
 In this contention he was certainly right, but he overlooked some 
 very important truths. State lines are imaginary lines, and scale in- 
 sects, fungous diseases, and parasites of all kinds have no regard for 
 imaginary lines, and so, if even his state were to take up the matter as 
 he desired, and the states bordering it were not to do so, with the 
 country now so densely populated that even the farmer class can call 
 from one residence to another, there would be very little gained. He 
 must remember that the San Jose scale was not known in the United 
 States until 1870, when it appeared in California, and twenty-three 
 years later, in 1893, it had spread to the Atlantic Coast, and is now 
 threatening the fruit industry in every part of the country. So this 
 little insect, and all of its kind, these objects of nature following nature’s 
 laws, these friends (Shall I call them friends or emenies?) of man, do 
 not give rise to state questions, but to national questions ; do not drive 
 the human family toward individualism of the type that is past, but 
 toward Socialism, that is inevitable; do not incite men to fight and 
 consume each other, but to cooperate, to combine against the common 
 evil and exterminate it. 
 
 The Mexican cotton boll weevil was found to be too large a ques- 
 
 15 
 
tion for the individual, or for a single state, and was made a national 
 question. When the yellow fever was threatening the gulf coast in 
 I 9°5» states that in the past were willing to fight and die for states’ 
 rights, cried out to the national government to take charge of the 
 situation. 
 
 But our influential gentleman, who was socialistic enough to 
 have the state destroy the insects, if not to grow fruit, overlooked an- 
 other truth. He would have the state compel every citizen to either cut 
 down every infested tree, or provide himself with such spraying ma- 
 chinery as would enable him to keep his trees in a healthy condition. 
 He forgets that this would require an investment impossible for one 
 having just a few trees for his own use; that those having these few 
 trees would be taxed by the state for this service, and inspection which 
 would mostly benefit the grower on a large scale; that the great ma- 
 jority of farmers do not now use as much fruit as they should because 
 it has become almost impossible to grow it without expensive machinery 
 of all kinds ; and that the effect of all such legislation is to still further 
 concentrate such an industry into fewer hands, which becomes more 
 and more detrimental to the common good under capitalism, while at 
 the same time making for Socialism, when the same situation will be 
 of the highest benefit to all, because fruit will then be grown in 
 abundance for use, rather than for profit to a few individuals. 
 
 Socialism and the Laws of Health. 
 
 I have referred briefly to the relation of society as a whole to the 
 laws of health. No one may any longer deny that in this particular 
 society is a unit. The recognition of this unity brands every one 
 to that extent, at least, as a Socialist. However much one may advo- 
 cate the principle “Every man for himself,” in other matters, he has no 
 way of escaping that law of nature which decrees that if one member 
 of society is subjected to such conditions as to cause him to contract 
 disease, as to render him unclean, and insanitary, every other member 
 of society is endangered by this disease, and subjected to the same filthy 
 conditions. 
 
 If I persist in having the clothing I must wear made in the apart- 
 ments of the slum dwellers, and in the sweat shop where consumptives 
 expectorate, I need not think God unkind if a loved one comes to an 
 untimely death from a contagious or an infectious disease. 
 
 A colored woman who makes her living by taking in washing, 
 lives in a house of two rooms for which she pays six dollars per 
 month, and is not furnished with water from the city mains. She says 
 
 16 
 
she has to use a great deal of water and cannot afford to pay such rent, 
 and pay for the water too, so she washes with water drawn from an old 
 cistern in the back yard. She says the water smells like a carrion, and 
 if her patrons knew the truth about it they would not give her any more 
 clothes to wash. As long as we are willing to so exploit labor, we must 
 not complain when our clothing that is sent out to be cleansed, comes 
 back to us polluted, and containing vermin that carry cutaneous and 
 other diseases ; we need not wonder, as did a certain very careful 
 woman, where these vermin come from. We are not careful enough, 
 we are imposing upon ourselves when we impose upon our fellow man. 
 This is a world of compensations. Action is equal to reaction. “With 
 what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.” 
 
 I was at the home of a small farmer some time ago. Like all of 
 his class, he was very poor, and there was small chance of his bettering 
 his condition ; because on the small scale upon which he must operate 
 he could not afford any of the labor-saving machinery or other helps 
 that would render his efforts more effective and enable him to build 
 up his place, so it kept going down year after year, and his poverty be- 
 came more searching. His wife and several girls were preparing some 
 green beans for market ; their clothing apparently consisted of a single 
 garment hung from the shoulders, and was very unclean, as were their 
 bodies. Each had in her lap the vegetable they were working with, and 
 as I observed the process and reflected that the same scene was being 
 enacted in thousands of such hovels, I was again impressed with the 
 fact of the unity of the human family, and said to myself : You cannot 
 be clean yourself if your fellow man and those upon whom you depend 
 for a living are prevented from being clean. 
 
 That society is recognizing these truths more and more is shown 
 by the fact that the inspection of food products, the sanitation, and the 
 health conditions of residence sections are no longer questions for indi- 
 viduals, but have become a part of the public administration. When 
 the incentive of private gain is destroyed with the capitalist system 
 which alone perpetuates it, and the incentive of decency, of cleanliness, 
 of health, of happiness, and of life, is forced to the front by the recog- 
 nition of the brotherhood of man, then we will understand in full what 
 is now only a step in our evolution from an animal existence to a higher, 
 better, and cleaner life. 
 
 1 7 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Economy — A Reason.* 
 
 T HERE was a time when the cooperation of men among them- 
 selves was of little avail in preventing waste either of 
 materials or of effort. This was to an extent true in 1808 
 when the population was scattered over the country, when 
 production was with the hand tool by individual effort. It is 
 not true today, when production is by machinery and by collective 
 effort. The larger the scale upon which anything is done today, the 
 more economic it is, and the less waste there is. Thus it is that the big 
 packing establishments, the immense factories and mills, the department 
 stores, the bonanza farms, and so forth, can make their millions from 
 what the small competitive producers would have to throw away. Just 
 a few days ago I was told by a fruit grower whose orchards number 
 thousands of trees that it was utterly impossible to make fruit-growing 
 pay on a small scale. He explained what I already knew that the small 
 grower could not ship to advantage, could not compete in the open 
 market to advantage, could not afford the necessary investment in 
 machinery for spraying and other purposes. 
 
 It is on account of this economy in materials and labor, and this 
 prevention of waste and neutralization of effort, that the Socialist is in 
 favor of combination, and the trust method of production, and opposes 
 with all his power the reactionary who would go back to the days of 
 small things. But nothwithstanding the concentration of capital and 
 the scale upon which many of our industries are being operated the 
 
 * Since this chapteT has been published serially in the Social-Democratic Herald, President Roosevelt has had 
 his conference of the governors to discuss the conservation of our natural resources. 
 
 The conference disclosed the fact that there has been great waste of soil, of minerals, of forests, etc. John 
 Mitchell of the United Mine Workers estimated that fully twenty-five per cent of the coal in the mines already 
 developed had been wasted in mining, and a much greater percentage in use, and that one man had been killed 
 and several injured for every 190,000 tons mined. 
 
 James J. Hill gave out his usual calamity howl and showed the most wanton waste in minerals, in soil, and 
 in forest, and drew a picture of the political chaos awaiting us when all was gone. In the same way others showed 
 the wanton waste under capitalism. 
 
 I want you to recall this conference of the governors as you read this chapter on Economy — A Reason, and I 
 want you to be honest with yourself and decide in your own mind what the conference has accomplished, and 
 whether its suggestions go far enough to accomplish anything. 
 
 This much we can say. It has borne testimony to the appalling waste of capitalism. This the Socialist has 
 pointed out again and again. It has quoted the opinion of the Maine Supreme Court, and of the United States 
 Supreme Court to show that the property rights of the individual are subordinate to those of the community, but it 
 has not called your attention to the fact that to whatever extent this principle is put into practice to exactly that 
 extent you have Socialism, and that you will not do a great deal toward stopping waste and conserving our resources 
 until you realize Socialism to the fullest extent. 
 
 This question of waste is not so much a question for the governors as it is a question for the people. Until 
 the people see their danger, and take action, the work of the governors will be in vain, because most of the 
 governors profit by the waste going on. 
 
 18 
 
capitalist system is most wasteful and will continue to be until the 
 process of evolution through concentration which has begun is fully 
 merged into a system of industry collectively owned and democratically 
 administered. Then and only then will the waste, some illustrations of 
 which will here be given, be reduced to a minimum. So by the law of 
 economy, which has always had its influence upon man whenever con- 
 ditions permitted, I am forced to that system wherein it has the chance 
 of the fullest exemplification. 
 
 While the capitalist system of production in many instances makes 
 for economy, it is still criminally wasteful in the two sources of wealth, 
 namely, land and labor. It is now our purpose to show that this is true. 
 
 Waste in Land. 
 
 Go to every city, town, and hamlet in the United States and you 
 will find lying about and adjoining these, large areas of land, thrown 
 out and held for speculative purposes. I have no exact data at hand, 
 but there is no doubt that these lands aggregate millions of acres. In 
 the case of my own city I have said again and again, and it is true, that 
 if these lands were under cultivation by modern methods they 
 could easily support the population, but while this waste is thus going 
 on the population of the city is being fed from products hauled into the 
 city in wagons from distances as great as forty to fifty miles. Now who 
 can not see that the useless labor and other expense on the part of the 
 farmer who hauls these various distances must react disastrously upon 
 his own farm ? He is getting the barest living out of his farm, and as 
 a result he does not have the money to supply himself with such 
 machinery as he should have, and such fertilizers as will enable him to 
 build up his farm, so it goes down and down until it is finally 
 abandoned, and allowed to lie out and wash away as the acres near the 
 city are doing, while the farmer clears up new lands that will be for a 
 time more productive. In the country where I live there are thousands 
 of acres of this worn out land that at one time was productive. Today 
 there is scarcely a trace of vegetation upon it, but instead it is covered 
 with gullies and ravines. If when this land was abandoned it had been 
 set in forest trees, or perennial grasses, it might have been saved, but 
 such a course is hardly thought of under a system where the incentive 
 is either to eke out some sort of a mean living, or to get rich quick, and if 
 this can be done by any means, even by destroying the forest and turn- 
 ing the lumber into cash, the average man of capitalistic mind is willing 
 that the earth may become a baked clod for the generations yet to live. 
 
 The fact is that there are many times more cleared land than is 
 
 19 
 
necessary to supply the population, and yet the forests are still being 
 destroyed, and no provision is being made for reforesting. This fact 
 constitutes a source of great waste in several ways. There is the waste 
 from the soil of these cleared, but uncultivated lands being leached out 
 and washed away ; there is the waste growing out of decreased rainfall ; 
 and there is the consequent waste of human labor, causing paralysis of 
 human effort by reason of the discouraging conditions. 
 
 Before leaving this subject of lands lying about our towns and 
 cities — lands that are the especial prey of the real estate agent and 
 other classes of brokers — I want to anticipate the unthinking person who 
 is certain to come back at me, as he has done before in conversation, 
 that these lands are worth more for building sites and for commercial 
 purposes than for farming. Now whoever makes this statement has a 
 bad case of the capitalistic mind. It is a difficult state of mind to deal 
 with, and I have little hope of saving one who has long entertained such 
 views, especially if he has made a thousand or two in real estate gam- 
 bling. Nevertheless I wish to inform him that what he says is true only 
 under the capitalist system, and notwithstanding this it does not re- 
 move the fact of the criminal waste to which I have referred nor of the 
 disastrous effect upon the farming or the working class — the real 
 producers of wealth. 
 
 A person of such a mind fails signally to make a distinction between 
 the fitness or the adaptability of a thing and the price of a thing. Now, 
 if these lands are adapted to residence or factory sites (many of 
 them are not, and yet they are sold for these purposes at exorbitant 
 prices), the Socialist has nothing to say against the use of as much of 
 this land as is required for these purposes. What the Socialist forsees 
 and foretells is that the waste and speculation in these lands is only one 
 more of the things that will eventually break down the capitalist system. 
 There was no danger of such a thing in 1808, for land was plentiful, 
 there was an extensive public domain, and land for commercial purposes 
 was little thought of, but in 1908 there is a different situation. Land 
 has been unwantonly wasted by ways already mentioned, there is no 
 longer any public domain, the population has increased from six to 
 eighty millions, fabulous prices have been put on sites for residence 
 and factory. 
 
 Let us see how this works out. A commercial house pays ten, 
 twenty, fifty, or more thousands of dollars per foot front for a site to 
 do business — a total, possibly, of one hundred thousand to five hundred 
 thousand dollars for a few square feet of land upon which to place a 
 building. Upon this is figured up the interest, from six to thirty 
 
 20 
 
thousand dollars per annum which is added to the profits, already too 
 large, of the articles sold, and the bill for rent, interest, and profit is 
 sent out. Sent to whom ? There is only one place to send it ; there is 
 only one class that can make it good, that is the producing class — the 
 farming and the working class. They must pay these enormous bills. 
 But their lands are being impoverished, their bodies are being weakened, 
 there are more and more parasites demanding a living from them, their 
 ability to pay is being lessened, and real estate values are leaping sky- 
 ward. How long can they stand the strain ? Is it any wonder they get 
 so little of what they produce and live so near the border line of a mere 
 animal existence ? 
 
 They have about reached their limit, and when they do they will 
 understand that the site upon which a commercial house is built is 
 worth nothing ; that it is only a suitable place for such a building ; when 
 they do they will never give their consent for $525,000 to be paid for a 
 site upon which a $500,000 public school building is to be erected ; when 
 they do they will never live in houses that can be built for $200, but 
 which sell for $1,000, and rent for $10 per month. 
 
 But to return to the question of farm deterioration. I wish to show 
 once more how the capitalistic commercialist is the chief agent in this 
 destructive work. On page 152 of the Biennial Report of the Commis- 
 sioner of Agriculture of Tennessee (1903-4) the state chemist says that 
 acid phosphate can be made for $6.00 per ton, yet for several years I 
 have been using it, and paying $18 per ton, thus paying a tribute of 
 $12 to parasites who do not add a cent of wealth to the country, but live 
 from the profits extracted from the labor of others. The state chemist 
 asks: “Who will start the movement which will guarantee cheap acid 
 phosphate in Tennessee, and make possible the great future development 
 of agriculture in this state?” I answer. The Socialist has already 
 pointed out the way, and Socialism will start the movement you desire. 
 
 In calling attention to this criminal waste in land that has been 
 going on for years in this country, and the awful consequences that will 
 surely follow as our population increases, I disclaim any intention or 
 desire to pose as a calamity howler, but simply ask the reader to study 
 conditions in the thickly populated countries of Europe, in India, and in 
 China where access to land that will produce a living is becoming almost 
 impossible, and to observe what class of people are produced under 
 such conditions. 
 
 It is, indeed, an encouraging sign of the times that the United 
 States government is taking a hand in reclaiming the arid lands of the 
 West by irrigation. This is the line of progress and is only another 
 
 21 
 
illustration of the onward sweep of the collective idea, and in order to 
 save ourselves from famine and distress in the future we will be com- 
 pelled very soon to reclaim and build up these lands that have been 
 thrown out and wasted in all parts of our country. This is no more 
 possible by the individual in his competitive struggle with his neighbor 
 who happens to own a more fertile farm than the reclaiming of the arid 
 lands by irrigation is possible for the individual, but collectively every 
 acre can be made to blossom and bear fruit, and in time will produce as 
 much as is now made on ten acres. 
 
 In this connection it is also quite significant to recall the govern- 
 ment farms and experiment stations, the bureaus of animal industry, 
 and of soil investigation where modern methods are used, and results 
 obtained that would be utterly impossible for the individual. All these 
 advances in progress are very recent. 
 
 In a recent address before the Minnesota State Fair, Mr. James J. 
 Hill, President of the Great Northern Railroad Co., delivered an address 
 calling attention to some conclusions which he based on trustworthy 
 statistics. He says that in forty years this country will have a popula- 
 tion of more than two hundred millions. In less than twenty years, he 
 expects we will have a population of one hundred twenty-five millions. 
 Then he wants to know where are they to live ? How are they to be fed 
 and clothed ? What are they to do ? And he cannot answer these ques- 
 tions. The Socialist demands that the criminal waste in land and labor 
 be stopped, and all will be well. There will be abundance for all, and 
 fear need not dwarf the human intellect. What so scares the capitalist 
 is his ignorance and his iniquity. 
 
 Waste of Labor — As Illustrated in Small Competitive Farming. 
 
 There is such an immediate relation between the waste in land and 
 the waste of labor of the farming class that it seems best to discuss this 
 division of the subject under separate heads, and to take up the waste of 
 labor as illustrated in small competitive farming in this immediate 
 connection. 
 
 If I have not already made it sufficiently clear that whenever the 
 farmer is compelled to do unnecessary labor, whenever he is defrauded, 
 or exploited, it reacts upon his farm and causes waste there, I wish to 
 show this plainly now. 
 
 There is a limit to human endurance. The farming class is the 
 most patient, self sacrificing, and industrious class in our country. 
 Their willingness to labor incessantly, and under the most galling of 
 conditions borders upon a form of slavery. But even they who have 
 
 22 
 
been the very life of the nation have about reached the limit of 
 endurance. It has been said that farming is the most independent and 
 healthful of occupations, but this can keep no one on the farm any 
 longer than it is possible for them to get away. In many parts of the 
 country it is almost impossible to either hire farm labor, or sell farm 
 lands. In all the farmers’ conventions I have attended in the last five 
 years the subject, “How to keep the boys on the farm” has been dis- 
 cussed. In the rich farming state of Iowa the State Board of Control 
 issued the following report. “There are 278 more insane patients con- 
 fined in state hospitals than there was a year ago. The total number in 
 four hospitals is now 3,580. During the year the increase in the number 
 of suicides among the farming population has frequently been com- 
 mented upon.” 
 
 Iowa is primarily and essentially a farming state. It has no great 
 cities. The people live either upon farms or near them. The causes 
 for this suicidal mania and insanity were discussed and explained 
 variously by the special pleaders, and learned retainers of capitalism, 
 but their explanations were neither satisfactory to themselves nor to 
 others, and it was not until Mr. Charles E. Russell showed up the 
 operations of the Beef Trust that the real cause was uncovered. He 
 gave facts and figures to prove that when the farmers had put all their 
 substance, their money, and their labor into beef cattle, and then sent 
 them to market, the trust fixed the price and compelled them to sell year 
 after year at a loss, and pointing the finger at the private trust he gave 
 an explanation for the increase of suicide and insanity that all honest 
 and thinking men knew to be the correct one. 
 
 Now I want to ask. Is an insane man, or a man contemplating 
 suicide, or even a discouraged man likely to improve a farm or do any- 
 thing to bring it up to a high state of cultivation ? Reader, there is but 
 one answer to the question, and in giving that answer you are uncon- 
 sciously acknowledging that sooner or later you must take your place 
 with the Socialists or forfeit your own life and your own happiness. 
 It would seem that the losses from natural causes — flood, and drought, 
 and insects, are all that the farming class should be asked to sustain 
 even under capitalism, but we have found that this is not the case, that 
 besides all these he must be subjected to exploitation by his fellow man 
 whom he is feeding, that he must be preyed upon by parasites in his 
 own image who in turn despise him for his generosity, but by the eternal 
 laws of compensation, as the insect feeds upon the plant until it is con- 
 sumed and then dies with it, so the capitalist parasite will feed upon the 
 capitalist system of exploitation until that system is dead, and then will 
 
 23 
 
die with it. Then out of that dead system there will arise cooperation 
 wherein nothing will be left undone to aid and encourage that class 
 which produces the necessities of life, because then the welfare of one 
 will mean the welfare of all. 
 
 What a shout of rejoicing goes up today from the throats of the 
 capitalist class whenever there is a bountiful harvest and good crops. 
 The reason is plain. The slaves must be fed if they are to build more 
 sky-scrapers, more yachts, more automobiles. Yet this same capitalist 
 class does not contribute one iota toward securing these good crops, 
 and are even ignorant of how much distress a bountiful harvest and 
 good crops often bring upon the farming class. 
 
 It is important that the farming class should see the relation of 
 good crops to the financial crises which are the curse of the capitalist 
 system. This illustration may aid. Here is a salaried man who uses 
 his savings in making side investments. His living is his salary. This 
 he draws week after week, and as long as this salary is forthcoming he 
 will never be in distress even though he lose all of his savings in a bad 
 investment. Now in place of the individual substitute society, and in 
 place of the individual’s salary substitute society’s living — good crops, 
 bountiful harvests. Now society can go on gambling at a merry rate, 
 buying and selling, getting rich or losing all, it makes very little dif- 
 ference as long as the farming class is fortunate enough to keep our 
 tables well supplied, but the moment they fail to do this, distress is 
 everywhere, just as it would be if with the loss of his savings the in- 
 dividual would lose his salary. And yet, as said before, the farming 
 class is just about as well off with bad crops as with good crops. 
 
 Just a few expressions of their views will explain the situation. 
 One farmer said to me that he wished the potato beetles would become 
 so bad that they would eat up all the vines, for he had enough children 
 to keep his cleared of them, and then he would get such a price as would 
 justify him in growing them. 
 
 In the locality where I live there was a larger crop of peaches last 
 year than I have known before. I was congratulating a fruit grower 
 on this fact. He told me he was no better off this year than he was 
 last, because now they are worth nothing. 
 
 Another farmer tells me, that he is independent only as far as 
 having plenty to eat is concerned. That until he can sell his surplus and 
 turn it into money, which he often finds very difficult to do advantage- 
 ously he and his family are deprived of decent clothing, of comfortable 
 surroundings, of education, of travel, of literature, of everything that 
 goes to make one refined and respected. He goes further, and says that 
 
 24 
 
all that he raises and sells from his farm nets him little more than he 
 could earn as a day laborer, that very often when he hauls a load of 
 produce to market he just about makes the price of hauling, and that 
 if he could find constant employment for himself and his team he would 
 be as well off as he is on his farm. Then in a jocular way he added 
 that one thing that a farm did for a man was to furnish him with a 
 constant job. He also told me that while his neighbors were in favor 
 of the public ownership of a great many things especially of railroads, 
 they still clung to the idea of privately owning their little farms, but 
 that he had about come to the conclusion that instead of owning the 
 little farms, that the little farms really owned them. When I heard 
 this, I said to him: “You have grasped a really great truth — a truth 
 that shall make you free.” 
 
 When I hear of men composing that large division of the producing 
 class, the farmers, speaking this way I cannot believe that they can 
 shut their eyes much longer to the changed conditions that have taken 
 place in this country during the last half century. I cannot believe that 
 they can fail much longer to see that their interests are with the town 
 and city workers who are in factories and produce the very things they 
 need for their comfort and happiness on the farm. I cannot believe that 
 they will consent much longer to be exploited and robbed by middle 
 men, commission men, brokers, profit takers, over-rich capitalists and 
 other parasites too numerous to mention, when by an understanding 
 with the factory workers their farm products could be exchanged upon 
 the basis of labor cost and both classes of producers enjoy all the good 
 things of life without hurt or injury to any one. 
 
 Some of the benefits of such cooperation, which is possible only 
 under the collective ownership of the means of production and distribu- 
 tion will appear when I relate some incidents which I have myself 
 observed. 
 
 I have known gardeners and those who supply our markets to drive 
 all night in order to reach the market early, then to stand the greater 
 part of the day on the curb, in the scorching sun of summer, and the 
 cold and rain of winter waiting for buyers of their produce, while these 
 buyers were racing from one end of the market to the other seeking 
 where they could buy the cheapest. I have seen women and boys selling 
 from these market wagons, and the tired look on their faces showed the 
 exposure and sacrifice that they have made. I have myself made these 
 trips many, many a time, fourteen to twenty miles to market, and have 
 been so overcome from loss of sleep that I could scarcely keep awake 
 sufficiently to drive home, but it was kept up during the season for two 
 
 25 
 
and three times every week. This was wasted energy, and this waste I 
 again repeat prevents the farmer from doing for his farm what he 
 would do if this energy was expended upon it. 
 
 When the farmer has raised the crops, every facility should be 
 given him to place it where it is needed for consumption. The railroads, 
 the electric lines, the river transportation, should all be at his disposal 
 at the exact labor cost of operation. He should not be exploited in his 
 effort to feed the human family, and when his produce reaches the 
 market it should find storage at the exact labor cost of maintaining such 
 storage, until it can be distributed, which distribution should again be 
 done at the exact labor cost. In this way the farmer is relieved of his 
 greatest burden, namely turning his produce into money. In this way 
 he gets the full product of his labor, and is saved from the millions of 
 useless parasites who feed upon him, and prevent him from enjoying 
 the product of his toil. 
 
 Disadvantage of the Small Competing Farm. 
 
 Eighty-five per cent of the farms in the United States range from 
 three acres to one hundred-sixty. Most of these are too small to enable 
 the farmers to own the modern machinery or farm stock that will bring 
 out the best results. Of the larger farms mentioned, if they are rich 
 and fairly productive, this difficulty is in part overcome, but unfor- 
 tunately by far the greater number of these are poor, some very poor, 
 and so the same difficulty is encountered as with the small farms. As a 
 result instead of deep, thorough plowing, with disc or other heavy 
 plows drawn by strong horses, much of the plowing is done with light 
 plows drawn by one or two horses, which process only scratches the 
 surface so as to render heavy rains more destructive. On these small 
 farms, I have known tons of hay to stand until it was spoiled because 
 these small farmers could not hire machines to cut it when it should 
 have been cut. This is only one illustration of waste of this kind. 
 Many more could be pointed out. 
 
 Not long ago I was standing in the field where one of these small 
 farmers, poverty stricken, was plodding his way in the furrow after a 
 light plow drawn by a single horse, and that one very lean indeed. 
 After I had been talking to him for a short time, we looked out toward 
 the road, and behold a regiment of United States Cavalry on a practice 
 march. They had over five hundred of the finest, strongest draft 
 horses that the nation could supply. They had already covered one 
 hundred twenty-five miles, and were to return in a few days. All the 
 cavalry regiments of the nation were doing the same thing at the same 
 
 26 
 
time, and this they do frequently, while these small farmers scratch their 
 soil with a lean plug. This small farmer hung his head, but made no 
 comment. I could not tell what he was thinking. I am not now object- 
 ing to the maintenance of the army, or the practice marches of its 
 cavalry divisions. Until men know that they are brothers, or as I had 
 better say until they are forced by the logic of events to see that they 
 are brothers, standing armies seem toi be a necessity. 
 
 Advantage of Cooperative Farming. 
 
 What I would like to call to the attention of these small farmers is 
 that these standing armies, with their strong, able-bodied horses, and 
 their perfect equipment, are collectively owned, and if they ever hope to 
 follow their chosen occupation of farming under ideal and perfect con- 
 ditions, it must be under a system of cooperation and collective owner- 
 ship. Then instead of nullifying a man’s efforts by allowing him to 
 work with inferior equipment, every labor saving device, and every 
 thing that would promote and increase the productivity from his 
 efforts, would be placed at his disposal. Machinery of every description, 
 strong and well fed draught animals would be constantly at the service 
 of the tillers of the soil. There are those who ask how this can be done. 
 Simple enough under Socialism. The workers who invent, and make 
 the machinery, the workers who breed and raise farm animals can not 
 live upon their own products. They need the products of the farm, 
 and when they understand the benefits that will accrue to all by ex- 
 changing the product of one for the product of another on the basis of 
 labor cost the thing is done, and the non-producing parasite is elim- 
 inated. 
 
 How Capitalism Prevents Direct Exchange and Increases Waste by 
 Adulteration and Fraud. 
 
 Under capitalism the nonproducing parasite gets his living, and 
 enriches himself by the process of buying and selling, and so he cares 
 little about the qualitiy of the thing sold. As long as things are 
 produced for profit rather than for use the farmer and fruit grower 
 need not be surprised if inferior and worthless nursery stock is sold to 
 him, and if after he has planted it, and expended his labor upon it until 
 it comes to bearing, he finds he has been duped. 
 
 He need not be surprised if sooner or later he finds that in buying 
 fertilizers useless and insoluble substances such as leather and sand 
 compose the bulk of the heavy bags he hauls so many miles to his farm. 
 Of course laws are passed for his protection, and high salaried in- 
 
 27 
 
spectors are appointed to keep an eye on these dishonest fertilizer 
 manufacturers, but it is not only difficult to enforce these laws, but 
 these inspectors, and all those who are trying to enforce these laws only 
 become a new class of parasites, whom the farmer must feed. 
 
 The Department of Agriculture of the United States has issued a 
 circular for the investigation of the adulteration of orchard grass, blue 
 grass, clover, and alfalfa seed. 
 
 The department gathered seed from all parts of the United States, 
 buying in the open market, and of the seed examined about one-third 
 was found to be adulterated. The degree of adulteration varied from 
 ten to seventy-five percent. It is estimated 700,000 pounds of Canadian 
 blue grass seed are annually imported into the United States and mixed 
 with Kentucky blue grass and sold as the latter. Trefoil seed is im- 
 ported from England and mixed with alfalfa, etc. 
 
 Thus we might go on indefinitely, but what is the use to mention 
 those things which everybody knows to be true. Let us turn our 
 thoughts toward the remedy. Such things will continue as long as 
 capitalism, with is low incentive — making money — continues. 
 
 The Farming Industry of the Future. 
 
 Under a system of cooperation it would be absolutely an injury to 
 every person for any one to practice such fraud and deception upon 
 any other, for he who did so would hurt himself as much as he hurt 
 others, because he would be depriving himself of the very things he 
 needed to live upon. 
 
 Of course it is plain enough that cooperation, and human solidarity 
 can not, and will not be brought about until the producing classes them- 
 selves — the working class, and the farming class are forced by events 
 to see the necessity for it. They alone can accomplish their own 
 emancipation, by studying the laws of economic and industrial develop- 
 ment and living and acting in conformity with these laws. History 
 records many instances when the limitations of man’s mind have pre- 
 vented him from changing his social institutions, laws, customs, and 
 ideas to conform to his economic development, and as a result, the 
 records are also full of instances when man’s ignorance, superstition, 
 and fear have brought untold misery and suffering upon him, and 
 greatly interfered with his progress. 
 
 The tardiness with which the farming class takes to the collective 
 idea finds its explanation in the manner in which this class has been 
 doing its work in the past. Everything has been by individual effort. 
 Even the use of machinery has been very much restricted for reasons 
 
 28 
 
already mentioned. The farmer has worked alone, and produced with 
 simple hand tools by his own unaided efforts. As one of them puts it : 
 He has been working so long by himself that he can do nearly every- 
 thing on his farm by himself better than if he has help, but there are 
 influences now at work that are changing all this, and so the farmer 
 like all the rest of us is being determined by forces outside of himself ; 
 he is being compelled to change his mind about some things ; with him 
 like many others, it is only a question of time. 
 
 The farming industry is just as sure to be capitalized and organ- 
 ized on a large scale in the near future as the manufacturing and com- 
 mercial interests are now. The progress of the race demands it, and 
 already there are indications of it, some of which have been pointed out. 
 Intensive farming is the thing, but it will be intensive on a large scale. 
 The only question is whether this will be done by the big capitalists 
 who have already organized the manufacturing and commercial in- 
 terests of the country and thereby enriched themselves enormously, or 
 whether the 10,438,219 persons engaged in agricultural pursuits in this 
 country will organize this industry under the banner of the Cooperative 
 Commonwealth, thereby reducing the hours of their slavish toil, and 
 enjoying the full product of their labor instead of ‘"dividing up” with 
 an increasing army of useless parasites. 
 
 The only reason why the big capitalists have not already capitalized 
 the farming industry of this country is because they have not yet 
 reached it. It takes time, and must take its turn. Besides they have 
 found other enterprises that for the present serve their purpose much 
 better, such as the manipulation of stocks and bonds — high finance ; 
 the operation of the railroads and other means of transportation ; the 
 monopolizing of manufacturing and commercial pursuits ; the cornering 
 of the food supply which the ten million farmers produce. 
 
 It has been said that half a million men with modern machinery 
 and modern equipment could produce more than these ten million do 
 now on their little farms and by their old-fashioned ways of doing 
 things. This may be putting it too low, but even if that figure is 
 quadrupled, see what time would be saved to this vast body of citizens 
 for educating themselves and their families, and for fitting themselves 
 to become real factors in the progress and advancement of the race 
 instead of being merely heavy draft animals. 
 
 But the fact that the number of laborers required for this industry 
 would be reduced if it were organized, is only another reason why 
 Socialism is inevitable. Under capitalism to throw eight millions of 
 persons out of employment is a serious matter. It would make tramps 
 
 29 
 
of them or parasites of a worse nature. These are momentous ques- 
 tions for our farming population, and they should decide whether they 
 will consciously and in an orderly way develop and organize the farm- 
 ing industry so that none will be injured and all blessed and benefited, 
 or whether they will allow an irresponsible and money-crazed class 
 to do it. 
 
 Waste of Labor Power in Capitalist Industry. 
 
 In the production of wealth, whether with land, or machinery, or 
 by the laws and forces of the physical world, they are all useless until 
 touched and vitalized by human labor. 
 
 If the capitalist system of production and distribution had in it 
 any element which makes it worthy of permanence or even gives it 
 promise of an extended continuance its advocates would recognize this 
 truth. 
 
 But the fact that capitalism is criminally wasteful of the one ele- 
 ment that is effective in wealth production shows that it is only a 
 passing form in our evolution, and foretells its doom. Capitalism in its 
 mad rush to gain the whole world would actually destroy the very 
 agent upon which it depends for accomplishing its purpose, and in so 
 doing loses its own life. It may be compared to a vampire which while 
 it would ride upon the back of its victim at the same time sucks the life 
 blood; so I say it is doomed. 
 
 It is doomed because I am compelled by the law of self preserva- 
 tion to seek my own and my neighbor’s safety through the law of 
 cooperation. Waste and improvidence lead to death, but there is in 
 me the instinct — love of life, so I am compelled to oppose with all my 
 strength whatever makes for waste. This compelling influence of law 
 working itself out may not be always consciously recognized, or it may 
 only be recognized by a few, nevertheless it is at work within the whole 
 mass of the people all the time, and sooner or later, even though un- 
 consciously, it will assert itself in a higher and better civilization. 
 
 Waste of Human Labor Through Neglect, by Reason of a Desire for 
 
 More Profits. 
 
 I do not wish to make any statement that I do not have the ev- 
 idence to prove. I submit some facts. 
 
 A gentleman with whom I am personally acquainted is timekeeper 
 for large contracting firms. He told me that a number of the men under 
 him were working in a very dangerous situation. Of this fact he in- 
 formed the general superintendent, and also explained how the place 
 could be rendered safe. The superintendent, with all the energy and 
 
 30 
 
recklessness of those lieutenants of capitalism, told him to throw the 
 men into that place ; that every d one of them was insured. 
 
 Recently the press of the country published a portion of a speech 
 by Dr. Josiah Strong, in which he told of a prominent contractor who 
 had said to him that the killing of working men was cheaper than 
 protecting them. Dr. Strong also showed that nine men are killed in 
 New York every day in accidents that are for the most part avoidable ; 
 that coal mines, railroads, and factories were slaughter houses for labor- 
 ing men ; that last year there were 2,500 accidents to laboring men in 
 the city that the public knew nothing about. 
 
 Mr. W. J. Ghent has taken great pains in getting together figures 
 showing the relative number of persons killed and wounded in battle 
 each year during the Civil War and those killed and wounded each year 
 in capitalist industry, and although he finds much difficulty in securing 
 complete data for the latter, what he does have at hand shows that 
 peace under capitalism is more horrible than war. 
 
 Waste Through Disease Brought on by Impure Food. 
 
 But the most terrible waste of human labor is from disease, and 
 premature death. A health magazine publishes a statement that 37,500,- 
 000 persons die each year, most of whom are victims of preventable 
 disease; that in the United States alone 416,000 persons die annually 
 of pneumonia, 413,000 die of consumption, 144,000 die of apoplexy, 
 130,000 die of cancer — more than a million of persons dying of four 
 diseases, all of which are preventable. We look upon death from dis- 
 ease as a matter of course and stand stupidly by waiting our turn. 
 
 Waste by Reason of Poverty. 
 
 The waste through infant mortality is almost always overlooked. 
 Yet it is a fact that fifty per cent of the persons born die before they 
 reach he age of fifteen. But so blind are we under capitalism, and so 
 ignorant are we of the worth of a human being, that every means that 
 deviltry can conceive is employed to prevent conception, or to destroy a 
 life yet unborn, and not only is a child born into the majority of homes 
 considered a calamity, but parents in many cases feel that they are 
 fortunate and their friends frequently tell them as much when one of 
 these helpless little ones is taken away. The idea of a human being, as 
 a source of wealth and a factor in progress, is foreign to the capitalistic 
 mind. 
 
 31 
 
Waste by Reason of Child Labor. 
 
 And again the fact that child labor is sapping the vitality of the 
 nation, and is a source of waste that will sooner or later bring awful 
 punishment upon us does not yet move us as it surely will. The con- 
 science under capitalism is so dead that it does not perceive the awful 
 crime of making 1,750,178 boys and girls, mere children between the 
 ages of ten and fifteen, nothing but cogs in the wheels of industry. I 
 have myself gone early in the morning between five and six o’clock into 
 the section of the cities where mill operatives live, and found these 
 tender children on their way toward the factories. When the strength 
 and intelligence of our nation is gone we will then see what an awful 
 crime this child labor system has been. 
 
 The Cause of Human Suffering, and the Remedy. 
 
 Now, where shall I place the blame for those thousand killed and 
 crippled every year in accidents that are conceded by all to be avoid- 
 able ; where shall I place the blame for those millions who die every 
 year and those other millions who are rendered unfit to perform their 
 part in life every year by disease that is known by every thinking per- 
 son to be preventable ? Where ? Whom shall I charge with this awful 
 crime against society? I do not want to charge any one unjustly, and 
 I will not. It is all due to man’s inhumanity to man, born of his igno- 
 rance, his selfishness, his superstition, his fear, which find expression 
 in the industrial and economic system under which he lives. What so- 
 ciety suffers, it suffers because of itself. At first a few individuals are 
 forced to see this, and they advance a short distance beyond the mass, 
 but they can not go very far. All they can do is to stand and beckon 
 the mass on, and call atention to the things pertaining to their common 
 welfare. No power can save society, but society itself. I will not say 
 God cannot do it. I will simply say that he has established laws govern- 
 ing human relations ; that he has left men to discover and apply these 
 laws, and until they become intelligent enough to do this they are the 
 victims of their own ignorance. 
 
 There are those who have great faith that Christ can and will save 
 humanity. I will simply say that Christ was one of those whose knowl- 
 edge of the laws of human life and human relations is without parallel 
 in the history of the world. Christ was one of those individuals whose 
 whole life was given to teaching the masses the laws of right living as 
 expressed in human brotherhood, and in the solidarity of the race, and 
 although the race has made much progress in this direction, it is still 
 far from the enjoyment of its full privilege, and will never be saved 
 
 32 
 
until the laws of life which Christ pointed out are observed. But that 
 the race would eventually be compelled to observe these laws in 
 order to save itself, and to preserve civilization, Christ had not doubt, 
 and it was this that caused him to declare that “He that believeth on 
 me, the works that I do shall he also do ; and greater works than these 
 shall he do.” But of this we shall devote a later chapter. 
 
 Man Is What the Social System Makes Him. 
 
 Man is the victim of his environment. He is unconsciously deter- 
 mined by it. He is ignorant and grossly negligent of many of the laws 
 vital to his being, but he is slowly emerging from this state of ignorance, 
 and unconscious control by his environment, to a state of light and 
 conscious control of his environment, and the way to this control 
 seems to be set with class conflicts, and will be until the human 
 family is economically free, that is, free in the things upon which 
 the physical existence depends, then for the first time humanity 
 will begin to consciously control its environment, and will abolish an 
 economic system that can thrive only on the life blood of its members. 
 In fact society will be compelled to abolish it in order to save itself. 
 
 This capitalist system, as it has come to be called, can exist only 
 so long as it makes profit from the labor of others, only so long as there 
 are two> classes, profit makers and profit takers, only so long as there is 
 one class that can be exploited by another class. We have lived under 
 this system for over one hundred years, that is, since the fall of the 
 feudal system. From time to time it has been seen that it is reaching 
 its climax ; that its course is being run. Its evils have been pointed out 
 and remedies have been attempted, but with each attempt to regulate 
 these evils, the one foundation upon which it rests, namely: profit, be- 
 comes more insecure, and as a result the profit takers become more 
 desperate, and more reckless, and knowing no other way, they have 
 begun to exploit in ways not even dreamed of in the earlier years of the 
 system. For instance, in order to force men into dangerous places 
 there must be a limited number of jobs, there must be an army of un- 
 employed, there must be a competition among the workers. This army 
 varies from time to time. It is computed to be about one million in 
 our most prosperous times. It is also necessary to have this army of 
 unemployed in order to maintain cheap labor, for if all were employed, 
 labor would at once go up to its full product, and there would be no 
 profits. From this it follows that men are cheap, so cheap that they 
 scarcely count at all against dollars and cents, hence the annual 
 slaughter of thousands in mines, in factories, on railroads, hence the 
 
 33 
 
fact that under capitalism it is cheaper to kill men than to protect them, 
 hence the fact that little is done to save the millions from the ravages 
 of preventable disease, and that scarcely any one gives a passing 
 thought to infant mortality, and few care anything about the dwarfed 
 mind and body of the child slave. 
 
 Preventable Disease. 
 
 Let us at this point see what is the cause of those preventable dis- 
 eases that are such a waste of labor power. Capitalism can live only as 
 long as things are made for profit. To make that profit as great as pos- 
 sible, things must be made as cheap as possible. There must, therefore, 
 be as little expense attached to the making of them as possible, so that 
 factory sites are not located, nor constructed with reference to the 
 physical well being of those who work in them, but with the object of 
 making as great profit as possible. Therefore these factories are in un- 
 healthy situations ; they are not properly ventilated, nor heated ; nor is 
 the drainage systems from them in sanitary condition. They are not 
 kept clean, and are always crowded to the utmost capacity. Those who 
 work in them spend the most of their time in dust, and in impure 
 atmosphere, and hence those dreaded diseases, consumption and pneu- 
 monia are on the increase. But again, the houses in which these work- 
 ers live are very often as bad, if not worse than the factories in which 
 they work, for the lowest, most unclean, and most unhealthy parts of 
 the city, and the most cheaply constructed houses are all that they can 
 afford, simply because cheap labor is required in order that capitalism 
 may continue, so that the mother, and the infant in the home is doomed 
 to disease even before the latter is admitted to the factory. 
 
 In these bad conditions — this evil environment — the slums, a con- 
 stantly increasing number of the future citizens of our country are be- 
 ing born, born the victims of disease, of crime, of insanity, of poverty. 
 
 Poverty — The Parent of Crime and Disease. 
 
 In England a royal commission declares upon investigation that the 
 masses are deteriorating physically and mentally; that in London 
 60,000 children attending the schools are unfit for instruction ; that the 
 standard of efficiency in the army can no longer be maintained. In 
 America a sociologist who has spent fifteen years in studying social con- 
 ditions in the cities asserts ‘'that one-fifth of the laboring classes in our 
 larger cities live in a herded condition with insufficient room, and almost 
 wholly without facilities for securing sanitary conditions ; that boys and 
 girls are brought into closest contact with vice and dissipation as soon 
 
 34 
 
as they leave their cradles ; and that these conditions are maintained for 
 no other cause than to furnish a cheap labor market.” 
 
 Dr. S. Cohen stated before the last national charities convention 
 that low wages and high rents is one cause of consumption. 
 
 I want to ask the honest man whether he thinks this tends toward 
 the wealth and prosperity of the nation, or whether he thinks it is 
 waste for which we will sooner or later have to render an account, and 
 which we will be compelled to check or have our civilization destroyed 
 and our own lives endangered and embittered. 
 
 Profit in Buying and Selling Impure Food. 
 
 But another of the sure ways of extracting profit is by the sale of 
 the necessities of life to the people, and in order to make the profit as 
 great as possible these necessities must be produced as cheaply as pos- 
 sible, must be adulterated as much as possible. 
 
 Food Adulteration. 
 
 From the reports of the state chemists of a number of states, and 
 also from the reports of chemists employed by the national government, 
 I collected the following facts: Flour and sugar are treated with 
 
 barytes and marble dust to increase the weight; noxious foreign fats, 
 and even ferruginous earthy substances have recently been detected in 
 both cocoa and chocolate ; ultra-marine is used to give color, and glu- 
 cose to cheapen certain brands of sugar ; red lead and rice flour is sold 
 for Cayenne pepper ; flour and turmeric for mustard ; cereals, mustard 
 hulls, and peas for ginger; charcoal, cracker dust, and spent cloves for 
 allspice; burnt meal, mustard, buckwheat hulls, and dust for pure 
 pepper ; candy is colored with deadly lead chromate ; in medicines and 
 drugs acetanilid is substituted for phenacetin, notwithstanding an over- 
 dose of the former means death ; in patent medicines the method of sub- 
 stitution is a fact regarded as a business asset; honey is made in the 
 factory from dextro-glucose, water, and levo-glucose ; chemical poisons 
 such as formaldehide, salicylic acid, pyroligneous acid, benzoic acid, 
 ammonium fluoride, sulphites, boric acid, beta-naphthol, etc., were 
 found by a government chemist in such food products as bread, 
 butter, mustard, candy, jelly, pickles, preserves, canned goods, catsups, 
 pepper, chocolate, tea, vinegar, etc. 
 
 One authority who investigated this matter of impure food says: 
 “Tons of meat unfit for human consumption are disposed of daily in our 
 large cities. Rich and poor are imposed upon alike by this disgusting 
 condition of affairs. People eat the most rotten stuff on the earth in 
 the way of meats, canned soups, and potted stuffs, which are found on 
 
 35 
 
the tables in our restaurants. The proprietors of the cheap tables 
 d’hotes are notorious in the markets as purchasers of bad meat and 
 fowls. They give a number of dishes for a small price and must buy 
 very cheaply. Ripe stuff is what they are always after, and it is so 
 ripe sometimes that those who sell it to them wonder. Nothing is 
 thrown away these days. Chickens running with maggots, or with 
 perhaps the wing and breasts only remaining intact, are cleared up 
 promptly at a price. There seems to be no limit whatever to the con- 
 dition of the stuff required for this purpose. The goods are handled 
 scientifically by the firm’s chemist. First they are washed and deodor- 
 ized. Then they are cooked at an enormous temperature, and finally 
 flavored in such a way as to make them absolutely delicious.” 
 
 Says the writer of the above, “Half the sickness prevalent may be 
 traced in one way or another to this impure food. The hot term em- 
 phasizes the evil results of it.” 
 
 Transmission of Disease by Impure Food. 
 
 Charles E. Russell, who has so thoroughly exposed the beef 
 trust has this to say : “There is no way of communicating disease to the 
 human body surer than through infected meat tissue. Some of the 
 worst and most destructive bacilli that prey upon mankind are common 
 among the animals he eats for food. Cows have tuberculosis and 
 spread vast quantities of it through the human population. It is so 
 common among cows that the wise and forewarned will use none but 
 sterilized milk. What is hog cholera among swine is merely typhoid 
 fever in men. Trichinae in hogs poison human beings. Both these dis- 
 eases are common among swine. 
 
 “Worse than all these, and more deadly, is another fact that is sel- 
 dom commented upon because it is too appalling to dwell much upon. 
 What is called ‘lumpy jaw’ in cattle is simply cancer. The germs of 
 cancer are communicable. Many cattle have ‘lumpy jaw.’ Any animal 
 with ‘lumpy jaw’ is unfit for human food.” 
 
 Then follows several tables of statistics showing the increase in 
 the number of cases of cancer at the principal hospitals from 1868 to 
 the present time, and the statement that cancer is not an inherited dis- 
 ease but is due to an active agent taken in some way into the system. 
 
 When these facts are considered in connection with the exposures 
 made in “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair, and in the report of the 
 Neill-Reynolds commission, appointed by President Roosevelt, showing 
 how these diseased animals are disposed of, and how filthy are the con- 
 ditions about the packing houses, we have accounted for those diseases, 
 
 36 
 
consumption, cancer, pneumonia, and apoplexy, which take off one mil- 
 lion of our people every year. 
 
 Other disease germs are carried by means of clothing made in the 
 homes of the poor where there are contagious diseases, in shoddy 
 goods, and in other articles of exchange as already pointed out, for no 
 man lives unto himself, but when one member of society is thus injured 
 all are injured. 
 
 The Relation of Mind to Health. 
 
 But, besides all this, the question of disease has another aspect. 
 Health is to a large degree dependent upon the mind. When there is 
 anxiety, fear, and unrest ; when there is uncertainty of making a living ; 
 when there is lack of employment and fear of tomorrow, the mind is 
 kept in such a perturbed state that there is neither time nor will to 
 think of health, strength and happiness, and so disease and insanity 
 take hold easily. The parent transmits a fretful and melancholy dis- 
 position to the off-spring, and the mental strength of the race is en- 
 dangered. 
 
 I want to ask the honest man whether I have placed the blame for 
 all these conditions where they justly belong, and, if so, whether he has 
 taken the time to so inform himself that he may not stand in the way 
 of society when it is ready to move on to a higher civilization and to 
 cast aside that which is causing its own injury. 
 
 Other Ways by Which Labor Is Wasted. The Unemployed. 
 
 There are two classes of persons, each class constituting an im- 
 mense army, and each class able and capable of performing labor and 
 thereby becoming powerful factors in the world’s achievements and 
 progress, who are under our capitalist system clogs and hindrances. 
 The first we will call the army of the unemployed. To it reference has 
 already been made. 
 
 Besides those who cannot find employment, the million or more of 
 unemployed, even when we are said to have general prosperity, is made 
 up of tramps, vagrants, “gentlemen/’ “ladies,” “sports,” criminals, 
 cripples, unfortunates, those who have had wealth thrust upon them 
 by accident of birth or otherwise, and many others. 
 
 Waste of Labor in Useless Employment. 
 
 The other class is the army of the uselessly employed. It reaches 
 the vast number of over seven millions of able bodied persons who 
 work hard to avoid hard work, but with all their exertion add not one 
 cent to the wealth of the nation, but are simply consumers of wealth 
 
 37 
 
who live upon the labor of others. This army is made up of politicians, 
 speculators, promoters, gamblers, real estate agents, brokers, bankers, 
 merchants, salesmen, agents, lawyers, bookkeepers, clerks, officers, po- 
 licemen, soldiers, and others too numerous to mention. There is quite 
 a tendency for these classes to increase in proportion to the increased 
 productivity of useful labor by reason of the machine, and this propor- 
 tion would maintain if useful labor would only be good and not demand 
 more and more of the product. But as it is there arises a very severe 
 strife between the two classes, and among the members of this uselessly 
 employed class for as much of the wealth as possible after it is pro- 
 duced, and it is becoming more and more difficult for many of them 
 to make a living by their wits. Yet they cling to this precarious means 
 of making a living because useful work is looked upon as dishonorable, 
 and besides is very often as unprofitable and uncertain as what they 
 are doing, because under capitalism it also depends upon the will of an- 
 other. When all these classes become convinced of the advantages of 
 Socialism by which they will all be guaranteed regular and useful em- 
 ployment at its full product with reasonable hours, there will not be a 
 one who will be willing to be disgraced by living the life of a parasite 
 as he does now. Then the tables will be turned. It will be dishonor- 
 able to be uselessly employed. 
 
 I want to examine into these matters still more closely. There is 
 not a healthy, normal person who has passed the age of ten years, even 
 though he be blind, or deaf, or crippled, who, with our modern method 
 of production by means of machinery, is not able to produce more than 
 enough to maintain himself, provided he is furnished such useful work 
 as is adapted to his particular case. Instead of such persons being so 
 employed our capitalistic society prefers to allow them to become beg- 
 gars and paupers, unclean and unsightly, a veritable curse to themselves 
 and to all about them. There is useful work that every person who is 
 not totally disabled can do, and would be a thousand times better off 
 for doing. Even the child should have its regular task at useful work 
 so as to learn how to work from its earliest years, but in making this 
 statement I am advocating nothing like child labor as it is practiced 
 today, which simply makes the child a slave and does not render him 
 even a decent living in return for his labor. I am advocating those 
 manual training schools and work shops for children where they are 
 taught to actually make things for use, and not for play, and I am ad- 
 vocating that they receive full compensation for their work. 
 
 38 
 
Waste by Diverting Useful Work. 
 
 
 A noted educator, in speaking of schools of this kind, says that the 
 reason why they have not accomplished what they should have done is 
 because they have been made play houses instead of actually doing 
 things for some useful purpose, and the reason why they have not done 
 the latter is because of the opposition of the manufacturing interests of 
 the country who control the schools, as they control the pulpits, the 
 press, the bar, and everything else. They oppose this step in progress 
 for the same reason that they will not, or cannot furnish suitable em- 
 ployment to the unfortunate. There are too many others to take the 
 job who can make more profits for them. 
 
 Under capitalism we find even the labor unions opposing the es- 
 tablishment of trade schools for fear the young men will take the places 
 of the older ones. These unions did this very thing this year in Phil- 
 adelphia; and we find these same labor unions limiting the number of 
 apprentices to avoid too large a number of workmen in any trade. So 
 it comes to pass that young men must grow up, and be compelled to 
 enlist in one or the other of the two armies — the unemployed, or the 
 uselessly employed. 
 
 A most pitiful case came to my attention not long ago. A young 
 man of good family, whose inclinations were of a mechanical turn, was 
 very anxious to become a machinist. He applied to every shop he 
 could hear of, went to several large cities, tramped from place to place, 
 but was everywhere turned down, with the “none but experienced help 
 wanted.” Worn out and discouraged, he wrote to his mother that he 
 had about decided to commit some crime so they would put him into the 
 penitentiary and then they would have tO' teach him a trade. When I 
 heard this, I thought “My God, what a civilization we have. And are 
 there none who are touched and moved to action by such incidents as 
 these which are taking place every day about us? Is it possible that 
 society is so debased that it will not notice this young man until he 
 makes good this threat?” 
 
 But I have illustrations of another type. 
 
 One of the most energetic and self sacrificing persons I know is a 
 young man whose mind is weak. He seems to lack initiative and judg- 
 ment, but when put at a thing under orders he does it with dispatch and 
 precision that is wonderful. He seems nearer being a machine of 
 flesh and blood than anything I have ever seen. He is truly useful if 
 handled properly, as my experience with him proves, but through the 
 impatience and cruelty of unsympathetic employers he has been driven 
 from one thing to another until he has become an object of pity. The 
 
 39 
 
last time I saw him on the street he was weeping bitterly. These 
 are the persons whose labor is wasted by a cold unsympathetic system. 
 
 The Saving Grace of the Machine. 
 
 Such a person put to work on a machine where little mind was 
 needed would become a happy and contented citizen, a blessing to him- 
 self and all about him. Thus the machine will, under Socialism, be- 
 come the power of God for the salvation of all. It becomes sight to 
 the blind, and strength to the halt and lame. All that stands in the way 
 of its accomplishing this saving work is the devil of man’s ignorance, 
 selfishness, superstition and fear. But the devil has always been routed 
 in the end, and today he is up against the machine, and this machine 
 will annihilate him, and in his place give economic freedom, human 
 solidarity, and the greatest progress yet achieved. 
 
 The Blessing of Regular Work. 
 
 There is nothing that will produce such a crop of tramps, vagrants, 
 “gentlemen,” mistresses, sports, politicians, and criminals as uncertain 
 and irregular employment, at uncertain and discouraging compensation. 
 If you want to make a person industrious and a wealth producer, let 
 him be put to work — regular, useful work. Let him know each day 
 that there is another day’s work for him tomorrow. Let society see to 
 it that he learns how to do some useful thing when he is young, and 
 then let society see to it that he has an opportunity to do this thing 
 when he grows up. Such a course alone will make a competent, use- 
 ful workman. Such a course will develop those qualities that win. 
 Such a course will be the disbanding of the armies of the unemployed 
 and the uselessly employed and stop the waste for which they are re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 Waste in Advertising. 
 
 But I have something more to say of the uselessly employed. 
 Every person so employed increases the waste of labor. I shall use but 
 a few of the many illustrations at hand, and in doing so will call the 
 attention of the reader to the fact that all this waste, this terrible drain 
 upon the energy of the people grows out of the competition which still 
 survives in the capitalist system. 
 
 Let us take first the matter of advertising. There are those who 
 are proud to boast that in America we spend each year one billion of 
 dollars for this purpose. Just think of that — one thousand million of 
 dollars representing energy and labor thrown away, while the great 
 mass of our people live in hovels and are destitute of the necessities of 
 
 40 
 
life, and those things which would make them self-respecting, and fit 
 them for real progress. 
 
 How is this vast sum spent and for what purpose. Let those 
 speak who know. Merrill A. Teague has recently been exposing 
 Bucket Shop Sharks. He says, “This business is a villainy which takes 
 from Americans of comparatively small earnings one hundred million 
 real, honest dollars each year. One-third goes directly into the pockets 
 of these thieves. The other two-thirds is tribute to the ostensibly re- 
 spectable accomplices of the thieves, publishers of newspapers, brokers 
 of standing in the world’s stock markets, teleghaph and telephone cor- 
 porations. For the assistance of these rogues leading daily newspa- 
 pers and periodicals freely offer advertising space — even seek their 
 patronage.” 
 
 Thomas W. Lawson in his Frenzied Finance series in show- 
 ing how these contending interests fight each other, says : 
 
 “The news bureaus my enemies owned, of course, but also 
 columns of the press were wide open to them for what ever they wanted 
 to say. My scrap books show that they said things every hour in 
 every day. I answered their accusations, but it cost me a fortune. 
 The fact is that I expended nearly three-quarters of a million dollars 
 before I knocked out their scheme.” 
 
 A news item informs us that the city of St. Louis will spend 
 $400,000 in advertising its advantages to the world, and that other 
 cities are also raising various amounts for the same purpose. 
 
 City streets and country roads are lined with plank signs, in 
 which gallons of paint, and thousands of feet of lumber are wasted, 
 to say nothing of human labor wasted in constructing them. Electric 
 signs waste millions of kilowatts of electricity on business streets 
 already lighted to excess, while the masses live in dungeons. 
 
 Advertising schemes of every description are being worked and 
 thousands are uselessly employed in this wasteful manner. Many of 
 these schemes are immoral, and flood the country with immoral pic- 
 tures and printed matter. Even the religious press is caught in the 
 excitement and is ready to bid for its share of the spoils, as this inci- 
 dent will show: 
 
 In a certain city several years ago, the Y. M. C. A. and church 
 organizations hired a noted temperance lecturer for ten lectures at ten 
 dollars each. He denounced, as injurious, and as leading to the drink 
 habit, certain patent medicines and certain drinks sold at Soda foun- 
 tains, while at the same time these medicines and drinks are being 
 advertised in the church papers, and a monthly sheet issued by the Y. 
 
 41 
 
M. C. A. Of course these papers are dependent upon the capitalist 
 system as long as it lasts, like all the rest of us, and so the incentive 
 to take money for advertising anything and everything is too strong 
 to resist. 
 
 In fact the argument is made that all this is a good thing because 
 it gives employment to labor, and under capitalism there is some truth 
 in this. Just as it is true the more destructive fires we have, and the 
 more destructive of property we are, and the more wasteful we are, 
 the more employment there is for labor, and it is more than probable 
 that many fires involving the loss of millions could find an explanation 
 here. 
 
 Waste by Litigation. 
 
 As another illustration of the waste of the uselessly employed, 
 I refer the reader to the great and increasing volume of litigation in 
 our country . 
 
 There are in the United States today over 115,000 lawyers. It is 
 estimated that this is ten times the number that would be required in 
 the Cooperative Commonwealth. It is seven times the number in Ger- 
 many and France, in proportion to the population, owing no doubt to 
 the government ownership of railroads, etc., in these countries. 
 
 The annual cost of maintaining the bar and the bench in the United 
 States is over $200,000,000, nine-tenths of which is absolutely wasted. 
 To this must be added cost of court houses, furnishings, fees, com- 
 missions, salaries, stenographers, officers, cost of writs, etc., to say 
 nothing of the time of jurors and witnesses. Witnesses have been 
 known to hang around court houses for weeks, waiting for cases in- 
 volving only a few hundred dollars. Law suits are becoming more and 
 more interminable. 
 
 The prosecution of corporations and trusts for the violation of 
 laws, taking of rebates, etc., costs millions. And all this litigation is for 
 the purpose of forcing one class of parasites to give up some of their 
 ill-gotten gains to other classes equally useless, namely the lawyers, 
 and the politicians. 
 
 A few years ago everybody was congratulating themselves that at 
 last we had solved the railroad question. Every state was to have one 
 or more railroad commissioners who were to protect the people. We 
 have suddenly found out that the railroad commissioner is only another 
 of the uselessly employed. All of his orders and decisions must be 
 fought through the courts, and be declared unconstitional. The av- 
 erage person does not know that there is such an office as railroad com- 
 
 42 
 
missioner. Only a hungry politician seeking a job knows anything 
 about it. 
 
 The same may be said of the inspectors. There is today quite a 
 body of them. Every business and trade must be inspected. There are 
 the bank inspectors, the meat inspectors, the factory inspectors, the 
 mine inspectors, building inspectors, etc., etc. Now, no one will deny 
 that this is all in the direction of progress. It is a tendency toward 
 Socialism. It shows that we do not concede that a man has a right to 
 run his business as he pleases. It shows that we recognize that it is 
 not possible for citizens to know every trade, business, and profession, 
 and for this reason need protection from the grasping and irresponsible. 
 But notwithstanding all this, I say that much of it is of no avail, because 
 our law courts are in the hands of the capitalist class, and, as a result, 
 our inspectors and legal advisers only become tools in the hands of that 
 class, and increase the army of the uselessly employed, who manage to 
 keep themselves on pay and their salaries sure by endless litigation, ap- 
 peals, stays, injunctions, arguments, briefs, new trials, reopened cases, 
 postponements, decisions of court after courts almost without end. It 
 must be clear to all that with the triumph of the working class, and the 
 elimination of profit competent workmen will be put in charge of every 
 branch of service, and the greater part of these inspectors and lawyers 
 will be discharged, and those who are retained will have no other in- 
 centive but to do their duty and serve every member of society honestly, 
 rather than a small class, to whom they now look for favors, because 
 then, by doing the former, they will be serving themselves as well. 
 
 Waste by Present Insurance Methods. 
 
 As another illustration of the waste of labor by the uselessly em- 
 ployed, take the insurance business of our country — life, fire and 
 otherwise. 
 
 I want to forestall objection and adverse criticism on what I shall 
 say on this point by admitting that in many instances insurance has 
 been a great blessing; that it is another example of what can be done, 
 and how effectively we can help each other by collective effort. At 
 the same time its benefits are restricted to those who can buy it. It is 
 like any other purchasable thing. The richer you are the more of it you 
 can buy ; but whether you buy much or little, it must all be made good 
 by labor. For instance, if a man insures his life for fifty or a hundred 
 thousand dollars, sufficient at his death to keep his wife and children 
 from work, some other man’s wife and children may be making good 
 that amount by their labor in a factory built by the first man’s 
 
 43 
 
premiums. Recently one millionaire, said to be worth millions, shoots 
 another who is described as a whited sepulcher, and, notwithstanding 
 his infidelity to his wife, leaves her one hundred fifty thousand dollars 
 in life insurance. Upon this sum she and many other idle and useless 
 parasites will feed, but the working class must never forget that in 
 reality it is their blood and toil upon whom they feed. 
 
 The latest statistics on life and fire insurance show that in one 
 year the life companies collected in premiums $540,705,170 and paid in 
 death benefits $297,318,127, leaving a profit to the companies of $243,- 
 387*° 43; the fire companies collected in premiums $238,087,473, and 
 paid in losses $112,642,821, leaving them a profit of $125,444,652. In 
 both cases the total profits reached the enormous sum of $368,831,695. 
 And what is done with this enormous fund drawn from the pockets of 
 the American people, for even the wretchedly poor contribute their 
 mite to this vast sum as is shown in the May, 1906, Bulletin of the 
 Bureau of Labor, page 613? What is done with it? The recent in- 
 vestigation held in New York throws some light upon the question pro- 
 posed. These companies pay a legislative agent $235,000; contribute 
 sums of $48,702 and upward to national campaign funds ; pay a mem- 
 ber of the legal staff sums of $65,596 and more; pay presidents $150,- 
 000 ; two vice-presidents $50,000 each ; a treasurer $50,000 ; a manager 
 $25,000; pay the astounding total of more than two and one-half mil- 
 lions in commissions to friends and relatives, and furnish them with 
 mansions to live in free of cost; pay sums ranging as high as $12,000 
 for dinners and receptions for favorite sons. What is done with these 
 vast sums collected from the people? One company wasted millions 
 in a fight between two factions of it for control. What is done with 
 these millions paid by the people as premiums ? Why the worst has not 
 yet been told. It was shown that the insurance companies were the 
 chief source for obtaining the funds necessary to carry on the gigantic 
 gambling in stocks and bonds, which goes on unchecked from year to 
 year on Wall Street. Thus the working class, in the last analysis, by 
 their toil and deprivation, furnish the means for their still further ex- 
 ploitation and robbery, and for maintaining a constantly increasing body 
 of parasites. 
 
 The only ray of hope is that all this is waste, it is opposed to the 
 law of economy, and must sooner or later break down with a crash. If 
 when that time comes, the working class has learned enough to step 
 into the breach, organize the insurance business under the Cooperative 
 Commonwealth, subject to the will of all the people, and operated for 
 their mutual protection and benefit, all will be well. 
 
 44 
 
Then will be eliminated that vast body of solicitors who waste so 
 much energy trying to sell insurance in order to get money to buy a 
 living, although producing nothing ; but by their efforts, with lying and 
 deception thrown in, maintain a body of parasites above them who feed 
 upon their exertions. How much better it will be when the whole 
 crowd is compelled to produce at first hand. There will then be such 
 an abundance, that the needy can be taken care of without a burden on 
 any one. 
 
 Then will be saved the immense cost of taking care of the business 
 written, of the waste in constructing needless buildings, and equipping 
 unnecessary offices. 
 
 The figures I have quoted from reliable statistics show that in- 
 surance under capitalism is a scheme to aid your relatives a very little 
 after your death, while its main purpose is to make millionaires and other 
 useless parasites while you live. Under Socialism this evil would be 
 avoided. Then insurance would become mutual in the true sense of 
 the word. It would be reduced to a simple pledge of brotherhood to 
 sustain and care for each other when disabled in the line of duty, or 
 for those who are dependent upon us if we are taken off while they are 
 dependent. 
 
 This must be clear to any one who will take the time to study into 
 it. Today, as said before, every insurance policy that is paid must be 
 made good by labor. It is inequality in ability to buy insurance, and the 
 fact that the great majority can not buy any, that makes any policy 
 worth its face. For example, if every person, or every head of a 
 family, was equally able to buy insurance, every such person, and every 
 head of a family would be equally obligated to make good in case of 
 loss, and under Socialism, because all would be able to buy it all would 
 find it to their interest to do so, if offered for sale, because otherwise 
 they would be carrying those who do, and voluntarily refusing its bene- 
 fits themselves, simply because the necessities of life produced by their 
 labor will be guaranteed the unfortunate, the needy, the dependent. 
 Insurance becomes mutual. 
 
 The Insurance Question Illustrated. 
 
 A case in point, and one that should make the whole matter clear, 
 is found in the fact that certain musicians are said to insure their 
 fingers or their voices for immense sums. This insurance does not 
 prevent injury or loss. The plan creates the insurance parasites, and 
 furnishes money upon which the musician lives in case of the loss of 
 his faculty. But who produces the living which the money buys ? There 
 
 45 
 
is only one class which does this — the workers — and for them it would 
 certainly be less expense to provide this for the disabled musician than 
 to provide it for both him and the insurance parasites in addition. 
 
 So, I repeat, with the profit idea eliminated, insurance as under- 
 stood today will cease, but society will mutually protect itself on a 
 larger, grander, and nobler scale than ever before. The plan will be 
 expressed in terms of the Golden Rule rather than in terms of the rule 
 of ,Gold ; it will be expressed in the philosophy of the Sermon on the 
 Mount ; it will be practiced upon the principle of Socialism — “Each for 
 all, and all for each.” 
 
 How Useful Labor Divides Up. 
 
 But there are those who are ready to ask: Does not the billion 
 spent in advertising, the millions wasted in litigation and otherwise, 
 furnish employment to labor? Yes, to the army of the uselessly em- 
 ployed. They receive a salary or wages for their services, but produce 
 nothing. Neither their money, nor their employer’s money produces 
 anything. Only useful labor produces the things upon which we live, 
 and the things we need for our culture, comfort, and pleasure, and 
 whenever such a state of wastefulness exists that the real producers 
 must divide up with the millions of unemployed and uselessly employed, 
 it should not require much brain power to understand why the mass of 
 the people are getting such a small proportion of the good things of 
 life. They are dividing up with too many others who are producing 
 nothing, but they have been deceived all these years because they have 
 been receiving some money for what they parted with. They have not 
 yet learned that money, as used today, is nothing but a bait to catch 
 labor, and until they see the sharp, cruel hook under the bait they will 
 continue to be caught, and they will continue to divide up until their 
 ignorance is turned into knowledge. Then they shall know the truth, 
 and the truth shall make them free. 
 
 Waste by Unnecessary Business. 
 
 But it will be impossible in this volume to describe at length all 
 the sources of waste resulting from the competition still at work among 
 us. I can only refer to a few of them briefly. In the city in which I 
 live, with a population of about 40,000 there are 217 grocery stores, 36 
 clothing, 60 meat stalls, 30 drug stores, 36 dry goods and notions, 36 
 wood and coal yards, 25 boot and shoe, 15 furniture, 100 saloons, 10 
 banks, and so on in proportion. It is probable that one large depart- 
 ment store would supply all the needs of the people of this city and turn 
 the hundreds loose for useful work, and turn the labor wasted in con- 
 
 46 
 
structfng miles of business block, to building beautiful homes for all 
 the people. 
 
 Waste by the Drink Habit. 
 
 It is said that the saloon and drink habit cost the people of the 
 United States one billion five hundred million dollars (that is, one 
 thousand and five hundred millions) and 600,000 lives every year, be- 
 sides the number whose minds are impaired and whose time is wasted 
 in the drunken state. And yet this waste will continue as long as there 
 is a demand for intoxicants by reason of overworked bodies and minds, 
 and as long as the profits in this business furnishes a living for the 
 550.000 men engaged in it. Let societv see to it that this wing of the 
 army of the uselessly employed is also furnished with useful work at 
 its full product, and this staggering waste and awful crime of the 
 nation will cease without further heartaches of the good women com- 
 posing the temperance societies. To them I say plainly, it will not cease 
 before. 
 
 Another Illustration of Waste — The Sewage Question. 
 
 There are many things which competing individuals can not do, 
 which should be done if great loss is to be avoided. One of these things 
 is the utilizing of the sewage of cities. This is a source of waste that 
 posterity will have to' pay dearly for, simply because a law of nature is 
 being grossly and persistently violated. That which was intended to 
 refertilize and enrich the earth is made to pollute the streams and water 
 courses. Individuals have tried to solve this question, but they have 
 always failed because they came into contact with other individuals 
 who happened to feel that they were injured in one way or another; 
 while one city in the United States, Passadena, Cal., is now deriving a 
 revenue of thousands from its sewage which used to prove a burden- 
 some tax for its disposal. 
 
 Waste by Modern Business Methods. 
 
 Our credit system and installment plan of making purchases are 
 both wasteful, and are opposed to honesty and morality. I was taught 
 by my parents when young to save my money. Save, save, that was the 
 advice. So I saved, and when I had several hundred dollars I pur- 
 chased some building and loan stock that all the business men said was 
 perfectly reliable. A few years later the association was in the hands 
 of a receiver, and it was five years after that before I realized anything, 
 and then only in small payments, all of which netted me less than fifty 
 per cent of my earnings. At another time my savings were cut in two 
 by a bank failure. Of course that bank was said by all to be perfectly 
 
 47 
 
safe. Still again I lost all I had in a business venture, because of the 
 sharp competition I encountered. But my ability to work was still an 
 asset, and I kept on plodding, making at least a living, and exposing 
 my surplus to the greed of money-mongers, shrewd business men, and 
 thieves of all kinds, while depriving myself of life, soul growth, and 
 strength by enjoying my earnings, which should have been the full 
 product of my toil. 
 
 Both my grandfathers were said to be public spirited men, as was 
 my father, and when a certain railroad was to be built, all three con- 
 tributed to their full ability, but behold, when the railroad was ready to 
 be operated their investment soon dropped to one-tenth of what they 
 put in, while I walked twelve miles a day to school, and was deprived 
 of many things that I should have had to make my education what it 
 should have been. Several of my brothers and sisters did not get even 
 the advantage that I had, and yet my parents had lost enough money 
 in the game just referred to', to have educated every one thoroughly. 
 
 I can somewhat appreciate what my loss has been. So can others, 
 and when the majority of the people understand that their labor is their 
 life ,and that they should enjoy all it produces, and use it to develop all 
 their capacities, — intellectual, physical, moral, social, spiritual, to the 
 fullest degree, this loss and waste will cease, and every individual born 
 into the world will become a real factor in the world’s development and 
 progress, rather than a hindrance to it. 
 
 Investigators of the United States Bureau of Labor have this to 
 say of the installment plan of purchasing: “The bad features of the 
 installment system are so obvious that they hardly need mention. The 
 overcharges for installment bought articles are of themselves enough 
 to condemn the system financially. How great these overcharges are 
 it is difficult to determine with accuracy, yet it is certain that they are 
 very heavy and that they result in appalling losses to the poor. A dol- 
 lar or more is lost on a coarse blanket, two or three dollars on an al- 
 most worthless rug, five or ten dollars on a stove, twenty or thirty dol- 
 lars on a sewing machine. As bad as the installment system is finan- 
 cially it is equally bad morally. Under its workings to be in debt be- 
 comes the normal condition of life, and to buy without paying passes 
 from custom to habit. The housewife, knowing that the things in the 
 house are not really her own, and growing more and more callous as 
 to the matter of their removal, learns to deal double with the collector. 
 Instead of meeting him with the money, she meets him with a lie and 
 saves the money to give to another installment man who will come on 
 another day.” (See Bulletin No. 64, p. 615.) 
 
 48 
 
And yet no one can deny that under capitalism, from the very 
 nature of the situation it would be impossible for these people to secure 
 the things they need any other way, and impossible for the people as 
 a whole to get on without the credit system. 
 
 The Tendency of Big Business. 
 
 So by a law growing out of the complex organization of society it 
 is coming to pass that all these enterprises — building and loan associa- 
 tions, banks, business, railroads, manufacturing, mining, insurance — 
 are too great for competing individuals, or for single states, and, like 
 some other questions already mentioned, must become national, and 
 under the administration of the entire people for the benefit of all, for 
 the growth and development of all, and so that no one can defraud an- 
 other, nor any one suffer because of the incompetence, or failure, or 
 greed of another. 
 
 Competition Responsible for the Waste of War. 
 
 I feel that I must close this chapter, but not until I leave with the 
 reader a thought. We have reached a stage in the evolution of society, 
 when competition for the necessities of life is hurtful to all, and only 
 results in awful waste and injury. This waste and injury is illustrated 
 by our frequent strikes, lockouts, labor wars, walking delegates, pickets, 
 Pinkertons, riots, dead-lines, injunctions, strike-breakers, armed guards, 
 special strike deputies, and militia called out to shoot citizens. Further- 
 more, this internal strife is constantly taking the form of wars between 
 nations. For no one of intelligence now denies the fact that all modern 
 wars result from competition between nations for commercial ad- 
 vantages. 
 
 The cost of these conflicts cannot be stated in dollars alone, and yet, 
 as an illustration, it is worth remembering that the coalminers’ strike 
 of 1902 caused a loss of $100,000,000; the teamsters’ strike in Chicago, 
 $50,000,000; from 1881-1886, the total for strikes and lockouts to em- 
 ployes was $64,403,035; to employers, $34,163,814. (19th Annual Re- 
 port, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor.) Since then the 
 loss from various strikes has been proportionally larger. The Crimean 
 war cost the five powers concerned $1,700,000,000; the Franco-Rus- 
 sian war cost $1,000,000,000; Mr. Edward Atkinson has shown that 
 from 1898 to 1905 the American people will have spent in war and war- 
 fare $1,200,000,000; for the fiscal year 1903-4 the war budgets of the 
 nineteen European states show a total normal expenditure of $1,300,- 
 000,000; that of the United States, $217,991,512 ; that of Japan $29,- 
 544,600; while the recent Russo-Japanese war cost $1,000,000 every 
 
 49 
 
day it lasted, and snuffed out the lives of 570,000 human beings be- 
 sides. And yet there are those who will contend that competition for 
 the necessities of life is the very making of society. To all such I de- 
 clare that competition is in reality strife, and strife is war, and war is 
 hell, and hell breeds anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, malice, disappoint- 
 ment, chagrin, worry, fear, which poison our vital forces, producing 
 disease and continual unhappiness, producing insanity, and driving to 
 suicide, and rendering society unfit for progress and preventing it from 
 taking the next step toward its manifest destiny. 
 
 This is law. It may be violated for a time, but sooner or later 
 every transgressor will pay the penalty. The loss he suffers, the waste 
 his violation has caused will compel him to accept the principles of 
 Socialism, and live under them. 
 
 50 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Education and Increasing Intelligence — A Reason. 
 
 As a fourth reason in answer to the question: Why I am a So- 
 cialist, I reply that my education — not only that received in the public 
 school, which is itself a socialistic institution, and in the college and 
 university — but also that of everyday experience and observation, and 
 extensive reading, has forced me to it. 
 
 Economic Determinism and Education. 
 
 Of course, in referring to the part that education plays in the 
 tendency toward Socialism, I am not unmindful of the law of economic 
 determinism, nor of the fact that the capitalist class completely controls 
 the university and the public school, the pulpit and the press, the arts 
 and literature, by making them all economically dependent upon itself ; 
 and that as a result this class can have taught what best serves its own 
 interests, and have omitted what the working or producing class should 
 know. I myself have been refused the privilege of placing high-class 
 Socialist magazines on the reading tables of public libraries on the 
 same terms accorded other publications. 
 
 Therefore, in what follows, I am using the word education in 
 its widest sense, that is, developing the mind so the individual may 
 think for himself rather than filling the mind with the ideas of others. 
 This ability to think is working wonders with that class which we may 
 call the educated proletariat. This class is greatly on the increase. It 
 is seeking honorable jobs, the learned professions, but as shown before, 
 many of these jobs are no longer bringing in the kind of living that is 
 desired, and so the gray matter in these brains is beginning to be 
 agitated. 
 
 The Educated Proletariat. 
 
 One of these educated proletarians who is studying the law says : 
 “My practice shall be with the rich only, because if you want to make 
 money you must deal with the class that has money.” But he adds, “It 
 is so hard to secure their clientage.” Ah, that’s the rub, that’s it 
 exactly. Why so hard ? Because the class that has money is becoming 
 smaller, and the class of the educated proletariat is becoming larger. 
 Lawyers, teachers, doctors, preachers, agents, clerks, fakirs, book- 
 
 51 
 
keepers, politicians, and so on, are multiplying by the thousands, all 
 trying to deal with the rich. 
 
 So persistent and shrewd is this class that they do extract many 
 dollars from the rich, but it is becoming such a struggle that many 
 are beginning to waver and think, and this thinking will make them 
 know the truth, and the truth will make them free. 
 
 Evolution of the Public School System. 
 
 History reminds me that there was a time when none but the chil- 
 dren of the rich could be educated, because only the rich father could 
 hire a tutor to come into his family to teach. Then the masses were as 
 unlearned as were the beasts of the field, and progress was slow and 
 painful. 
 
 A system of public education administered by representatives of 
 the people was unknown. When such a system was finally thought of 
 and an attempt was made to put it into operation, it met with all the 
 opposition that Socialism is meeting with today, and even some of us 
 now living can recall the bitter prejudice against the public school, and 
 the fact that the rich and aristocratic classes held aloof from it for 
 many years after it became an established fact. Well do I remember 
 the contention of these classes, and of rich bachelors, and childless 
 couples in my own neighborhood, that they were unjustly taxed to 
 support a system of schools that they could not patronize. 
 
 The Law of Inheritance. 
 
 This opposition has passed and we scarcely hear it mentioned 
 today. It gave way before the argument that education is a debt due 
 from present to future generations ; that education is a part of the in- 
 heritance that the present generation must bequeath to the next. 
 
 This latter idea is made very clear in the following words from 
 Dr. W. H. Payne, Chancellor of the University of Nashville, in his 
 work, “The Genesis of Knowledge in the Race “It will be granted 
 that in knowledge, as in wealth, the race has made progress from age 
 to age, and even from generation to generation. Now progress is pos- 
 sible only under this condition : Inheritance supplemented by individual 
 acquisition. Without inheritance there can be no progress; for then 
 each generation must start where the preceding started, and progress 
 is quite as impossible without individual acquisition; for in this case 
 each generation would stop where the preceding generation stopped. 
 To accept no part whatever of capitalized experience is an impossibility. 
 In climate, in society, in language, in means of communication, in 
 heredity, in a thousand ways that might be eneumerated, we are in- 
 
 52 
 
voluntary heirs of all past ages, and to renounce this inheritance, and to 
 start even within a thousand years of where the race started is an abso- 
 lute impossibility. The law of inheritance is involved in the division 
 of labor, for in the life time of our benefactors we partake of the re- 
 sults of their industry and skill. Can any man produce even a tenth of 
 what he needs to support the conditions of the life into which he is 
 born? As it is impossible to produce the environment even of the gen- 
 eration immediately preceding, much less of the early generations, it is 
 absurd to talk of beginning where the race began and of repeating its 
 experience.” 
 
 Now I am chiefly interested in this because it admits and proves 
 the law of inheritance, that if we are to make progress the present gen- 
 aration must inherit the attainments of the past. 
 
 The educator of today is using all his powers to have every per- 
 son born into the world enjoy to the fullest extent of his time, means, 
 and capacity all the progress of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual 
 kind that has been bequeathed to us, but the educator falls far short of 
 realizing his noble aim because this law of inheritance is not allowed to 
 extend to its logical conclusion. For example, much effort is being put 
 forth to compel every person to accept his full share of the inheritance 
 in knowledge, and in moral and spiritual progress, while at the same 
 time as much and possibly more effort is wasted in preventing the grea-; 
 mass of the people from receiving their full share of the inheritance of 
 material wealth, and because the masses are so prevented they lack 
 time, means, and capacity for progress, and as a result not only them- 
 selves but the whole world is the loser thereby. 
 
 The Lucky Combination That Unlocks the Door of Progress. 
 
 The educated and intelligent mind, directing the trained hand en- 
 gaged in actual work, with leisure for experiment is the combination 
 that counts in progress. Who can conceive of an ignorant person who 
 has been shown simply how to mechanically run an engine improving 
 or inventing one? Who can conceive of a person, however learned, 
 who has never worked with an engine or about it, improving or in- 
 venting one ? 
 
 To have a large percentage of illiterates, or a mass of poverty- 
 stricken people among our population means more than that there are 
 so many who can neither read nor write. It means that all these per- 
 sons are shut out from the active, upward life of the race, and their 
 presence in the body politic is a hindrance all the time. The rest may 
 go ahead for a while, but they must sooner or later come back to the 
 
 53 
 
mass, and make another effort to carry them along. All our educators 
 see this fact, they see that we are burdened by this ignorant, poverty- 
 stricken mass today, but many of these educators are still ignorant of 
 the remedy, or are unwilling to teach economic freedom, being them- 
 selves blinded by gold, because the capitalist has made even the edu- 
 cator dependent upon him for existence. Many of these educators see 
 and know that Socialism is inevitable, but for fear of losing standing 
 in their profession they teach to please the masters. 
 
 Personally, I am convinced that when the law of inheritance is 
 made to apply' in full to all wealth and progress, the race will make 
 such advancement as is today undreamed. 
 
 This must necessarily be true because the first requisite for success 
 and progress is proper equipment, which means an opportunity to se- 
 cure proper food, clothing, education, and enough leisure to develop the 
 aptitudes and talents peculiar to each individual. Until such equipment 
 is guaranteed to all, we may expect partial and one-sided progress, 
 shared only by a minority. 
 
 The Class That Can Not See the Truth. 
 
 Now I ask, who is it that cannot see this great truth? Not the 
 intelligent, educated man, although for reasons already given he may 
 kept his light under a bushel. The man who cannot see it, is 
 the man whose class is in power today — the business man. His eco- 
 nomic position in life, and the low and only incentive that moves him, 
 namely: making money, have blinded his eyes to all the changes that 
 are taking place around him, or have prevented him from investigating 
 even when his attention was called to these matters. I have talked to 
 many persons of this class, and the free admission of one serves for all. 
 He says: “I am too busy a man to investigate these great questions,” 
 and his total ignorance as shown by conversation proved that he had 
 told the truth at least as far as his knowledge was concerned. It is 
 the high financier, the commercialist, and their minions, the low poli- 
 tician, and the parasite generally, whose minds are utterly incapable 
 of any vision of this next stage upon which society in its evolution is 
 surely tending. 
 
 The Class That Is Awakening. 
 
 The industrial classes, open-hearted and responsive, better edu- 
 cated than ever before, will be compelled to see it in order to save them- 
 selves from the most abject slavery. 
 
 The most advanced scholars and thinkers of the century see the 
 truth, and are beginning to speak it out. More and more literary men 
 
 54 
 
and women are seeing it. For instance, recall such men as Karl Marx, 
 Frederick Engels, Alfred Russell Wallace, Charles Robert Darwin — 
 men whose intellect and foresight will be the admiration of all suc- 
 ceeding time. They were the pioneers who first called attention to this 
 next stage of the evolution of society. Being men of intellectual attain- 
 ments, and with vast scientific knowledge, their conclusions were care- 
 fully reached, and .have come to be accepted as authoritative. 
 
 Here in the United States scientific men and scholars who deny 
 being Socialists, are constantly publishing books on the subject of their 
 study which confirm every contention of the Socialist, and furnish him 
 no end of satisfaction. To some of these we will now refer. Take for 
 example the historian, P. V. N. Myers, President of Belmont College, 
 who says: “Now, the student of the last two epochs of history will not 
 fail to note that this labor problem bears exactly the same relation to 
 industrial society that the old religious and political questions bore to 
 the Church and the State. The great problem of the first era was the 
 proper distribution of authority in religious matters ; that of the second 
 era was the distribution of power in the State ; that of this new epoch 
 is the equitable distribution of the products of industry .” (Mediaeval 
 and Modern History, p. 717.) 
 
 The political economist, Thorstein Veblen, of Chicago University, 
 whose books, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” and “The Theory of 
 Business Enterprise,” would, in fact, make fairly good propaganda for 
 the Socialist, concludes the latter book with these words : “It seems pos- 
 sible to say this much, that the full dominion of business enterprise is 
 necessarily a transitory dominion. It stands to lose in the end whether 
 the one or the other of the two divergent cultural tendencies wins, be- 
 cause it is incompatible with the ascendency of either.” What more 
 could the Socialist ask ? It is what he has contended all the while, and 
 what is more, Prof. Veblen practically shows that Socialism is in- 
 evitable. 
 
 The sociologist, Prof. Albion W. Small, of Chicago University, in 
 his recent work, “General Sociology,” accepts the doctrine of the class 
 struggle and the materialistic interpretation of history. For their hold- 
 ing to these two laws of the development of society, Socialists have in 
 the past been fiercely denounced. Says Prof. Small : “Sociology might 
 be said to be the science of human interests and their working under 
 
 all conditions, the conspicuous element in the history of the race 
 
 so far as it has been recorded is universal conflict of interests.” How 
 much this reads like Marx. “The whole history of mankind has been a 
 history of class struggles.” In recognizing the materialistic interpreta- 
 
 55 
 
tion of history he is equally clear. For example, he says : “Every so- 
 cial question, from electing a Pope down to laying out a country road, 
 is in the last analysis a question of what to do in the face of grudging 
 soil, and cruel climate, and the narrow space of the region from which 
 we get our food,” and “If we should pass in review all the social theo- 
 rizings of the last century no more frequent vice would be in evidence 
 than some form of virtual denial that social conduct must square with 
 the requirements of physical surroundings.” He even declares that, 
 “We might find also that the crusades were less inspired by piety than 
 by poverty, and that this poverty was primarily the correlate of out- 
 raged physical law.” 
 
 All these men are college men, filling chairs in their departments in 
 our colleges and universities, and now, after I have been engaged on 
 this work for several months, my attention has been called to another 
 of them, Sidney A. Reeve, a professor of steam engineering in the 
 Worcester Polytechnic Institute, whose book, “The Cost of Competi- 
 tion,” has given me considerable confidence in some of the conclusions 
 I had reached before I heard of it. He shows the disastrous results of 
 competition in business, and lays down this law: “Barter is a process 
 parasitical upon the exchange so destructive to the latter and with it to 
 the production dependent upon exchange, and to the Life engaged in 
 both and dependent upon them for support, that it limits their existence 
 and activity to the minimum which will afford a supporting food supply 
 to the barter which preys upon them. This minimum is slightly greater 
 than the productivity possible without either exchange or barter, but is 
 vastly less than that possible with pure exchange.” .... “It is not the 
 profit which is extorted from the consumer which does him the most 
 harm ; it is the profit-keeping, the time spent by the barterer in antagon- 
 ism and failure which undermines his neighbors’ purchasing power 
 and which robs the rich and poor alike of their natural heritage in a 
 new continent : material welfare, peace on earth, and good will to men. 
 It is not gold, but the legalized strife for gold which is the root of all 
 evil.” 
 
 To avoid all this Prof. Reeve suggests a central office to determine 
 the cost of every product, so that there may be economic justice, and 
 each individual secure the full value of what he produces. By this 
 plan he declares “that every barterer, every purely commercial man in 
 the country would find himself out of a job and without an income.” 
 
 All this the Socialist has pointed out again and again, and Prof. 
 Reeve has only added his weight of testimony. 
 
 56 
 
The Muck-Rakers.* 
 
 But there is another class of educated men who likewise do not 
 call themselves Socialists, but who have been forced to the socialist posi- 
 tion by conditions which confronted them. These are the popular maga- 
 zine writers, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, David Graham 
 Phillips, Thomas W. Lawson. These men are either careful not to use 
 the terms which the Socialist uses, or they do not know these terms. 
 They are constantly referring to the “System” and the “Interests” and 
 “Big Business” as opposed to the people without mentioning conflict- 
 ing classes. They are contributing a mass of material that has become 
 known as “the literature of exposure,” which shows how rapidly capi- 
 talism is decaying. In all this they are simply giving concrete examples 
 of that which the Socialist has been declaring in a general way all the 
 while. 
 
 Experience and Observation as Teachers. 
 
 But my education is not confined to that derived from books, or in 
 the schools. Experience and observation have been my most effective 
 teachers. 
 
 I observe that whenever the existence of any form of life, whether 
 it be animal or human, is threatened, there is recourse to cooperation. 
 Zoology is full of illustration of that kind. Every one has noticed how 
 the individual members of a family, or of a class, or of a nation are 
 protected by the other members whenever there is danger ahead. It is 
 said that the calamity caused by the recent earthquake at San Fran- 
 cisco completely obliterated all distinctions of wealth, or race, or class. 
 
 Time and again in the history of the human family, the happiness, 
 yes, the very life of man has been threatened by his own achievements. 
 My observation compels me to see that just such a condition confronts 
 us today. 
 
 The inventive genius of man has placed in his hands gigantic ma- 
 chines, which are capable of producing abundantly ; some of these ma- 
 chines, it is safe to say, are doing the same work in a given time that 
 formerly required from one thousand to ten thousand men. This vast 
 product, instead of being produced for the use of those who produce it, 
 is made for the enrichment of the few who privately own these great 
 machines. 
 
 As a result, this product is only allowed to administer to the comfort, 
 convenience, and happiness of the producing class when it brings a 
 profit to the owning class ; and when, after a time, so much is produced 
 
 * It was by this term that Pres. Roosevelt, in one of his speeches, referred to these men who are uncovering 
 the rottenness of capitalism. 
 
 57 
 
that the working class is unable to buy it back because their wages are 
 kept as near the mere existence point as possible, there comes a period 
 of depression and industrial paralysis, and the working class is con- 
 fronted with the privilege of starving, wearing rags, and suffering 
 every inconvenience, because they have produced too much. Such a 
 panic is now upon us, having struck the entire country in Novem- 
 ber, 1907. 
 
 The Foreign Market No Longer a Safety Valve. 
 
 In the past it has been possible to keep this surplus somewhat re- 
 duced by what has been known as the “foreign market.” 
 
 For instance, here in our own country we have boasted because 
 we have led the world in the volume of our exports, but few of us have 
 reflected that while doing that, millions have been suffering and starv- 
 ing at home. But my observation shows me that the time has about ar- 
 rived when the foreign market no longer exists. On June 22, 1905, 
 there was an article published in “The New York Christian Advocate,” 
 entitled, “Christian Civilization of the West Beholds Itself in the Russo- 
 Japanese War of the East,” in which the author showed that Christian 
 civilization of the West had circled the globe in quest of a foreign 
 market, that with the triumph of the East that market no longer exists, 
 that the fight for commercial supremacy is at an end, that the Kingdom 
 of Heaven is at hand. Were these predictions in this matter correct? 
 Let us see. In October, 1906, our consuls in the East report as follows : 
 “A marked characteristic of the export trade of the United States in re- 
 cent months is the reduction in the value of exports to China and 
 Japan. The total value of merchandise exported to China in the eight 
 months ending August, 1906, is but twenty-two millions against forty- 
 two millions for the corresponding month of 1905, and to Japan twenty- 
 one millions against thirty-nine millions for the same months of 1905, 
 while to the whole of Asia the exports are but fifty-eight millions 
 against ninety-five millions in the corresponding month of 1905.” The 
 cause for all this is not hard to see. 
 
 The entire nation of Japan has formed itself into a trust to manu- 
 facture every article that is needed for home consumption, and to sup- 
 ply the trade of the East. In other words Japan is setting an example 
 to the other nations in the matter of government ownership. 
 
 Just a few months ago, the Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. Leslie 
 M. Shaw, made a speech before the students of Chicago University in 
 which he said : “The time is coming when our manufacturers will out- 
 grow the country, and men may be turned out of the factories. One 
 
 58 
 
of these fine days we are going to have an excess of manufacturers. 
 Then the world will not come after our manufactures. The factories 
 are multiplying more rapidly than our trade, and we are going to have 
 a surplus shortly. Then we will turn these men out of the factories. 
 Then will come the great danger to the country, for these men will be 
 hard to deal with. The last century was the worst in the world’s his- 
 tory in wars. I look to see this century bring out the greatest conflict 
 ever waged in the world. It will be war for the markets. God grant 
 there may be no bloodshed.” 
 
 Now I ask, what is to be done with the products that these nations 
 as trusts, produce in such abundance when there is no foreign market 
 wherein they can be sold, and when the people see that these products 
 are hoarded while they are starving? Is it too much to expect that the 
 people in every country will sooner or later demand that these things 
 shall be made for use, not for profit ; that commerce shall consist only 
 in exchanging such articles as can be produced in one country but not in 
 another ; that every worker shall have the full product of his toil ; that 
 none shall benefit by a profit system which enables some to live by the 
 toil of others? This is indeed the Kingdom of Heaven, wherein the 
 laborer cannot be oppressed — this is what Socialism stands for and 
 teaches. 
 
 Has the Socialist any warrant for expecting that such a plan can be 
 made operative? Yes, his observation compels him to note that the 
 United States postoffice is an illustration that cannot be misunderstood. 
 Every citizen has identically the same privileges, and no one makes 
 profit off of any other. But this is not all ; there are many other illus- 
 trations ; the public school, the public highways, public parks, fire and 
 police departments, etc. If these work so well in actual experience, 
 why not those industries in which the very necessities of life, and the 
 happiness and comfort of all the people are involved. These latter will 
 work equally well under the ownership of all the people, and the only 
 reason why they are not so operated is that somebody wants to profit 
 by the necessities of the people, and the people have been too selfish and 
 too ignorant to prevent it. 
 
 Education will enlighten them and compel them to save them- 
 selves. 
 
 59 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Christian Religion — A Reason. 
 
 A fifth time I answer, I am compelled to be a Socialist, because 
 I believe in the principles and laws of life as taught by Christ. My 
 home was Christian, and I was early instructed in those principles and 
 laws, and at the age of seventeen I became a member of the church. 
 I took a very active part in all church work, and became so zealous that 
 many of my friends severely criticized me, telling me that I unneces- 
 sarily intruded my religion upon people. If I erred in this or any other 
 way, it was because I was in deep sympathy with suffering humanity, 
 and longed to do something to help my fellow man to make progress 
 and to reach up to a higher and better life. It was during a time when 
 my whole mind and soul was intent on advancing the cause of human 
 betterment and uplifting, that I was led step by step along the lines in- 
 dicated in this work, and finally up to the conclusions I have herein set 
 forth. I came to believe that the church was false to the ideals of Christ 
 and I could not understand why one thing was taught and another 
 practiced. I began a close and systematic investigation, by personal 
 heart to heart talks with preachers, Sunday School workers and church 
 members; by correspondence with the highest functionaries in the dif- 
 ferent churches; and by every other means that occurred to me from 
 time to time. In the course of this part of my discussion I will give the 
 substance of these interviews, and this correspondence. At present I 
 will simply say that my investigation has shown me that the great ma- 
 jority of church members, and those who call themselves Christians, 
 look upon Christianity as a mystic religion to be preached about and 
 talked about, and not as a law of life to be lived and practiced. This 
 discovery once made, I began to take less interest in that part of the 
 church work which pertains to saying, and more in that part which 
 means doing. 
 
 I was forced to the conclusion that the principles taught by Christ 
 were law — law as old as the universe — and that men will never obey 
 these laws because the preachers tell them to do so to escape hell, but 
 will only obey them when they are compelled to do so in order to make 
 the most progress, and enjoy the most of life here upon earth; that they 
 are being forced to obey them more and more every day, because of 
 
 60 
 
economic and industrial development, because of the increase of density 
 of population, and because of changed conditions brought about by 
 man’s progress toward a higher and more complex civilization; that 
 they continue to violate them because of their superstition and igno- 
 rance, because they are blind to the real meaning of Christ’s words, be- 
 cause they believe that they can only be saved after death, and because 
 they do not know that Christ taught a salvation here and now in the 
 flesh, that he came to bring more life, more happiness, more comfort, 
 more joy here upon earth. 
 
 It is my purpose to do the utmost to clear away these old ideas 
 which are causing so much injury and suffering to the human family, 
 for, as said before, history shows me that this is not the first time that 
 the limitations of man’s mind have prevented him from changing his 
 social institutions, laws, customs, and ideas to conform to his eco- 
 nomic and industrial development, and so this is not the first time when 
 man’s superstition, ignorance, and fear have brought untold misery and 
 suffering upon him, and greatly interfered with his progress. 
 
 How Violation of Law Affects the People of India. 
 
 To make my meaning clear let me refer to the social system of 
 India, known as caste. All who have studied this system pronounce it 
 the most pernicious and harmful that could be conceived. We are in- 
 formed that it is the cause of the awful poverty of the country, that this 
 in turn is the cause of the terrible plague which annually sweeps one 
 million of the people into untimely graves, that this system alone ex- 
 plains how a mere corporal’s guard of British troops suppressed the 
 rebellion of 1857, how 140,000 foreigners can today rule 296,000,000 
 natives, why India has always been subject to foreign domination, and 
 yet we are told that however much an Indian may resent the yoke of a 
 foreign lord, he would rather submit than join hands with his inferior. 
 In other words, he is not much different from the average American 
 citizen, preferring to suffer unto death rather than give up an old idea, 
 custom, or superstition. 
 
 Christ Lays Down the Laws of Life. 
 
 Yet time works its changes, and little by little man makes progress 
 by the conflict of class with class, which will continue until he becomes 
 intelligent enough to make progress consciously; by education when 
 the opportunity is given more and more of the people to receive it. 
 
 The scope of this brief work will not permit me to go as deeply 
 into a discussion of the laws and principles of Christ’s teaching as I 
 
 61 
 
would like. I can only select certain great unchangeable laws — laws 
 of life, laws of human relations — laws upon which my very being de- 
 pend. A number of such are found in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 At the very beginning of this remarkable utterance Christ makes 
 mention of the Kingdom of Heaven, or, to make it an exact literal 
 translation, the Kingdom of the Heavens. It is impossible to under- 
 stand the laws and principles which Christ taught without a clear un- 
 derstanding of what he meant to convey by these words, the Kingdom 
 of the Heavens, or as sometimes stated, the Kingdom of God. Without 
 counting those expressions where the meaning is the same in all four 
 gospels, there are about fifty distinct references to it. The interpreta- 
 tion placed upon these words in the past by the theologian has in- 
 variably been that they refer to a future state, the blessed state of the 
 dead who die in Christ, the future abode of the soul, and in making this 
 interpretation they confound it with Heaven. Christ himself never used 
 the two interchangably. 
 
 The error of the past is being overcome. In the light of the pres- 
 ent day an increasing number of thinkers are getting at the real mean- 
 ing of Christ, and there is no longer any doubt that the Kingdom of 
 the Heavens, or the Kingdom of God is to be established here upon the 
 earth and is to be a state in which the souls of men can grow and ex- 
 pand and become fit entities for the spirit life ; it is to be a state of so- 
 ciety in which men, having acquired a true knowledge of the laws and 
 principles upon which their life and being are founded, have become 
 convinced that the human family is a unit, and that if any member is 
 injured, defrauded, maltreated, or in any way prevented from develop- 
 ing all his capacities — moral, intellectual, physical, social, spiritual — 
 to the greatest possible degree, each individual and the entire race is in 
 the last analysis affected to the same extent as this injured one. It is 
 the unchangeable law of action equal to reaction, and now for the first 
 time man can appreciate what the Golden Rule really means, and in- 
 stead of saying it is impractical, he sees that it is law, unchangeable, 
 unrelenting law; that he must practice it, or forfeit his happiness and 
 his life. 
 
 The Golden Rule. 
 
 “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
 so unto them.” This is the Golden Rule. Our preachers, our priests, 
 and Sunday school teachers have told us that if we want Christ to love 
 us, and if we want to go to heaven we must practice it, and we have 
 gone away and have not practiced it. Christ would have us to under- 
 stand that we must obey it or suffer the consequences. Whenever I 
 
 62 
 
violate the Golden Rule I injure myself to the same extent as those I 
 offend. 
 
 How can I make this plain? Let me try this plan. Every one 
 knows that uncertainty and fear and suspense are the great destroyers 
 of life and happiness. Uncertainty of making a living, uncertainty of 
 employment, uncertainty of health, uncertainty of wealth and so forth. 
 Now, if by any act of mine, or by my failure to act, or by my influence, 
 I permit a condition of poverty, then I know not what hour poverty 
 may be my portion ; if I permit excessive wealth, I know not when its 
 debasing and degrading influences may deluge me and mine ; if I per- 
 mit filthy and unsanitary conditions so that diseases like smallpox, or 
 fever, or the plague attack any of the people, they may at any moment 
 claim me; if I permit conditions that breed vice, or crime, or saloons, 
 or gambling houses, or other unclean places, I know not the day when 
 my life, or those near to me may be darkened by them. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln said, “This is a world of compensations, and he 
 who would not be a slave must have no slave.” Emerson said : “If you 
 will trace the chain that fetters the slave you will find the other end 
 around the master.” 
 
 The Golden Rule then is a clear statement of the law. In dif- 
 ferent words, with the penalty for violation also; clearly stated, this 
 same principle is given at another place in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 “For with what measure you mete, it shall be measured unto you.” He 
 who violates any law of the relation of man to man brings upon himself 
 his own sure punishment here and now in proportion to the gravity and 
 duration of the offense, and from it there is no more escape than there 
 would be from injury if he violated the law of his being by hurling him- 
 self from some height. His injury would be in proportion to the de- 
 gree of his violation. It is true he may not be conscious of it. He may 
 feel that he is not hurt, but like many a person who violates the laws 
 of health, he is daily paying the penalty, even though he may be ig- 
 norant of it. Who has not noticed the coarse, the low, the base souls 
 with perverted tastes and blunted sensibilities, whose instincts are no 
 higher than the greed for gold, or the gratification of the animal appe- 
 tites, who are incapable of enjoying or appreciating music, or art, or 
 literature, or the beauties of nature, or the love and esteem of their fel- 
 lows, or the lofty ideals of justice and mercy and truth? These persons 
 are dead to all appreciation of the joy there will be to live when all 
 have an opportunity to become educated, and are properly fed and 
 clothed, and when all will be willing to help beautify the earth, and 
 make it a fit dwelling place for man. These persons who violate these 
 
 63 
 
laws of the relation of man to man as taught by Christ, have such har- 
 dened natures that they are unmoved by human suffering, while their 
 own lives are consumed by lust, hatred, envy, jealousy and greed. Such 
 is the penalty we pay for our violation of the laws of human solidarity. 
 
 Some Illustrations. 
 
 A few concrete illustrations wiil serve to convey the idea more 
 clearly. 
 
 A judge in instructing a jury on a noted peonage case points out 
 that the man who holds another in subjection and slavery not only de- 
 stroys the manhood, the courage, and every noble virtue in his victim, 
 but at the same time becomes imbruted and soulless himself, incapable 
 of mercy, or compassion, or of any noble or lofty virtue. 
 
 The Christian and temperance people of a certain city were mak- 
 ing a desperate fight to rid the place of the saloon and of the liquor 
 traffic. They were defeated at the ballot-box because the votes of the 
 lower classes, and those who made their living out of the business could 
 be bought for one or two dollars each. These lower classes were in 
 ignorance and poverty, and one or two dollars for their vote meant more 
 to them than the saving of an entire city from intemperance and de- 
 bauchery. Now who was to blame for this fact? These classes were 
 what they were, not by choice, but because they had been made so by 
 society, and by the system under which they were living, and when so- 
 ciety begins to see the effect upon itself of a law violated, its attempt at 
 reform without complete repentance and restitution is a failure. 
 
 In one of Maxim Gorky’s brief descriptions, entitled, “The Road 
 to Shame,” he tells us of the punishment that a peasant meted out to 
 his offending wife that was so ferocious in its cruelty that it must al- 
 most make the blood of a demon run cold. Now the peasant is exer- 
 cising his authority, and meting out what he calls justice. Behold how 
 it is measured unto him again when he is beaten by his landlord until 
 near death’s door, and how this measuring continues until the Russian 
 nation was scourged by a terrible war, and its official head is in con- 
 stant danger of his life. 
 
 But let no one suppose that Japan was the divinely appointed re- 
 venger of the violation of this law. Japan was measuring. Japan has 
 before her eyes the full measure that she wiill sooner or later receive. 
 And let us not excuse ourselves by saying that this is the Old World, 
 and miss the application of this law here at home. I was prompted 
 to relate this by hearing a person who called himself a Christian say 
 of a certain class of God’s people that they were inferior, and should 
 
 64 
 
be content to receive such treatment as their station in life entitled them 
 to. By the law first quoted this person is making the measure which is 
 to be used in returning judgment upon himself, for right above him 
 there are those who are saying of him what he said of this so-called in- 
 ferior class. When, and where, and how, is this thing to end? “What- 
 soever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so unto them.” 
 “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.” Here is 
 the law, we obey it, or take the consequences. 
 
 The ruling class in Russia has for years meted most cruelly to 
 those in subjection. The hands of this class are stained with the blood 
 of innocents, and the cofifers are kept full by robbing the people of the 
 very necessities of their existence. But this ruling class has been 
 measured unto in exactly the same proportion. Press dispatches tell 
 us that the officials of Russia are simply dying of fright. One promi- 
 nent general with the drums of both ears destroyed, is in a state of im- 
 becile collapse ; another with one leg blown off is wasting his life in a 
 state of melancholy; others are preparing to leave the country and 
 spend the rest of their days in foreign lands ; while the Czar, who per- 
 sists in being called the emperor of a nation of ignorant, sodden 
 beasts, rather than living as a man among men, in true comradeship, 
 is practically spending his life as a prisoner, constantly surrounded by 
 three concentric crescents of sentinels, but even these he can no longer 
 fully trust. 
 
 Or, take the illustration already referred to — caste as enforced- 
 in India. Every person, even those of the highest caste is subjected to 
 the danger of the plague, to the humiliation of foreign domination, to 
 the debasing sight of hordes of poverty stricken, and diseased people. 
 Writers tell us that human sympathy, and love, and the spirit of 
 brotherhood is utterly dead in that country — all because the human 
 family is a unit, and “with what measure you mete it shall be measured 
 unto you.” 
 
 The richest man in the United States, if not of the world, has re- 
 cently complained that what has been said of him, hurts. That he longs 
 for human sympathy and to be in closer touch with the mass of the 
 people, but he has violated the law of human unity and solidarity, and 
 nothing can save him from the penalty for this violation. 
 
 There are those who are crying out that certain classes and races 
 shall not have the same rights and privileges as other classes and races. 
 To all such persons I can do nothing more than once again remind 
 them of that unalterable law — “with what measure you mete, it shall be 
 measured unto you.” 
 
 65 
 
The Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 But before discussing these great laws further, it will be neces- 
 sary to return to our discussion of the Kingdom of Heaven, and fix 
 in mind the meaning of that term as Christ used it. It is not strange 
 that the theologians and early translators should have misinterpreted 
 it. In teaching these great truths, Christ was often compelled to use 
 expressions that conveyed a double meaning, or that so expressed his 
 real meaning as to prevent his merciless persecutors from “catching 
 him in his words.” As another illustration of this note his parables. 
 
 We have already stated that the Kingdom of Heaven refers to a 
 condition of human society on this earth. It is now our purpose to pre- 
 sent the proof of this, and to show that the laws of life, and principles 
 taught by Christ can be, and will be practiced by men only as this King- 
 dom of Heaven is step by step established. Moreover, it is a mistaken 
 idea that all men must be made good before it can be established, or 
 before they will obey the laws operative in it. The process works just 
 the other way. The Kingdom of Heaven must be established before 
 men can be made good, or before they will obey its laws, and what is 
 still more strange its establishment does not depend alone upon men 
 themselves, so much as the forces, the conditions, and the processes of 
 evolution and development outside of men. 
 
 To establish this fact recall these words : “The Kingdom of Heaven 
 is like unto a drag-net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every 
 kind/’ As the Kingdom of Heaven comes little by little upon us, all 
 are in a sense included in it, and partake more or less of its benefits. 
 There are those who are utterly unable to either understand or appre- 
 ciate the principles of human solidarity, and yet as this spirit takes hold 
 upon men they too are included, and blessed in spite of themselves until 
 their opposition is finally overcome, and in the consumation of the age 
 they will finally be “destroyed,” that is men of their class will no longer 
 exist. Man is what his environment makes him. He reflects the spirit 
 of the age in which he lives. All that any man can do to help his fel- 
 low man into the light is to point out the changes that take place from 
 time to time in that environment, to show the progress and development 
 made in industrial and economic life, and, if possible, induce him to 
 change his ideas, customs, and laws to conform to these new conditions. 
 If these changes are made all is well again for a time, if not misery and 
 suffering ensue, and progress is checked. 
 
 66 
 
John the Baptist and the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Let us see now if this will in any wise agree with the teaching of 
 Christ on this subject. We find this expression used for the first time 
 by John the Baptist in Matthew 3 : 2, “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is at hand.” Now what did he mean? The world was never 
 darker than at this time. There never had been such misery and suf- 
 fering, and despair as when John the Baptist began his preaching. “Re- 
 pent ye,” (the Greek is metanoeite, which means to change one’s views 
 and purpose) and that is exactly what he meant. Change your ideas, 
 your effete customs, your pernicious laws to conform to the progress 
 and development of the times. The preachers tell us that “to repent” 
 means to be sorry. These people to whom John the Baptist was preach- 
 ing were sorry unto despair, but it did not, and could not help them, 
 and so in this year 1908 after Christ you may be sorry for your lives 
 blasted by gold, your poverty and your distress until your eyes turn 
 to tears you cannot be helped until you change your ideas about things, 
 your customs, your laws to conform to the changed mode of producing 
 things, and to the advance made in progress and civilization. Until you 
 do this you may expect the increase of crime, of suicide, and of in- 
 sanity ; the extension of poverty on the one hand and the concentration 
 of wealth on the other; the spread of ignorance, intemperance, and 
 vice, and the continuation of cruel wars of conquest. 
 
 But John the Baptist further says, “the Kingdom of Heaven is at 
 hand.” Yes it was at hand then, it is at hand now. A knowledge of 
 the laws and principles that are to govern in it, permit its establishment 
 at any time, and from that time to this it has made advance more and 
 more toward the ideal of Christ. Little by little by means of man’s in- 
 ventive skill, by the operation of the laws of progress, by teaching, by 
 the struggle of class with class a constant advance has been uncon- 
 sciously made toward this ideal. Today we are expectant, we are pre- 
 paring to make another advance, and from now on much of our prog- 
 ress will be made consciously and without the awful cost of life and 
 shedding of blood that has marked the past. 
 
 Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 The second time that the expression the Kingdom of Heaven is 
 used in the gospels is in Matthew 4: 17, where Jesus uses it himself, 
 and in exactly the same sense in which John the Baptist used it, and 
 the same explanation will apply. 
 
 Jesus understood that its establishment would be by the slow 
 process of evolution, as the following will plainly show : “The Kingdom 
 
 67 
 
of Heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three 
 measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” Matt. 13: 33. 
 
 “So is the Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the 
 ground, and should sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should 
 spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth 
 fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, after that the fall corn in 
 the ear; but when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth 
 in the sickle, because the harvest is come.” Mark 4 ; 26-29. 
 
 “Whereunto shall we liken the Kingdom of God or with what com- 
 parison shall vte compare it ? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, 
 when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds which be in the 
 earth, but when it is sown it groweth up and becometh greater than all 
 herbs, and shooteth out great branches, so that the fowls of the air may 
 lodge under the shadow of it.” Mark 4 ; 30-32. 
 
 The Advance of the Kingdom of Heaven Hindered. 
 
 Here Mark tells us that “with many such parables spake he the 
 word unto them, as they were able to hear it.” So we are led to be- 
 lieve that his hearers were like many of today, rather inclined to be im- 
 patient, and that their minds were unable to grasp this part of Christ’s 
 message. He saw too far ahead for their limited vision. On one oc- 
 casion he spake a parable because they thought the Kingdom of God 
 should immediately appear. See Luke 19; 11-27. This parable implies 
 that period of time is required for its complete fulfillment. At another 
 time the Pharisees demanded of him when the Kingdom of God 
 should come. Whereupon he answered : “The Kingdom of God cometh 
 not with observation ; neither shall they say Lo here, or there ; for the 
 Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!” Luke 17; 20. That is, it is 
 upon the earth within the power of the people. In all of this Jesus was 
 trying to show that the Kingdom of God is not a thing that can be 
 pointed out so as to be seen or heard or perceived by the five senses, 
 but that it comes quietly, and just as fast as men conform to the laws 
 of their being, and permit the laws of love, justice, and truth to operate 
 among them. This refutes the old, worn-out idea that the Kingdom of 
 God is a state or condition of the spirit life only. These words of 
 Christ announce that it is already among us, and its benefits increase, 
 and the significance of its laws broaden, and their application become 
 more and more necessary as man evolves from one state to another, and 
 as he makes greater progress in material things. This is especially true 
 if the masses of the people are left free to adjust themselves to these 
 new conditions. If they are not left free to do so, much harm results 
 
 68 
 
by man running counter to the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven, and 
 this explains why there is much suffering today. 
 
 Christ even foresaw this, and boldly denounces those who are 
 guilty, “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because 
 ye shut the Kingdom of Heaven against men ; for ye enter not in your- 
 selves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to enter.” Matthew 
 23; 13. If Christ were on earth today, he would only have to substi- 
 tute, “But woe unto you high financiers, low politicians, commercialists, 
 demogogues, mammon worshippers, hired editors, and preachers, be- 
 cause ye shut the Kingdom of Heaven against men; for ye enter not 
 in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to enter.” Equal- 
 ly well could it be said of these as Christ said of the lawyers, “For ye 
 load men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch 
 not the burdens with one of your fingers.” Luke 1 1 ; 46, and of those 
 who are today pretending to teach people, “Woe unto you for ye have 
 taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and 
 them that were entering in ye hindered.” Luke 1 1 ; 52. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven and This World. 
 
 But there are those who urge that the Kingdom of Heaven could 
 not mean a state of society here, because Christ said : “My Kingdom is 
 not of this world.” These people are confused because they do not un- 
 derstand the difference in the words used by Christ. The word here 
 used for world is the Greek word “ kosmos ” and means the “affairs of 
 this life, the present existence, customs and practices of men, human 
 society, public affairs and occupations.” If the Kingdom of Heaven was 
 to be of the character of the world in which Christ lived, it is not likely 
 that any person living today would care to have anything whatever to 
 do with it, for the world then was evil beyond our ability to conceive. 
 As we have already explained, there has been an advance toward 
 Christ’s ideal, but if he were to come to the earth today he would still 
 have to declare, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” for he would still 
 see much evil which cannot possibly exist when that Kingdom of the 
 Heavens is perfected, and mark you he would still say to you and to me, 
 “After this manner, therefore, pray ye : Thy Kingdom come (on earth), 
 Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” This very prayer that 
 Christ gave to his disciples shows what he thought concerning the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. And this word for earth is the Greek “ge” 
 When Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” he referred to 
 the nature of the kingdom, and the source of the authority upon which 
 
 69 
 
it was to stand. When he taught his disciples how to pray he referred 
 to the location. 
 
 Christ himself found many who were very dull of comprehension, 
 and he could not make the idea of human brotherhood clear to them, 
 although he used every illustration possible, and put the explanation to 
 them in many different ways. Some of the most learned of that day 
 seemed to be the most obtuse. For instance Nicodemus. Nicodemus 
 had, no doubt, noticed that there were some movements that, although 
 they did not please him nor his class, still they could not be overthrown. 
 These he concluded were of God, or as he might have said, they were 
 in conformity with law. This was true of Christ’s miracles and teach- 
 ing. Christ tells him that the trouble is not with the new movement, but 
 that “except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” 
 In this Christ meant exactly what John the Baptist meant when he said 
 “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” 
 
 “Ye must be born anew.” That is, you must change your mind 
 and your way of looking at things ; you must turn around, so to speak, 
 so as to be in harmony with the law of life as laid down by Christ, 
 and your mind and soul must be nourished by the inspiration of a new 
 organization of the social, intellectual and spiritual life. You must be 
 made good by a new order of things. (For the entire narrative see 
 John 3 :i — 21, and especially note in verse twelve that Jesus says he is 
 speaking of things that have to do with us here and now.) 
 
 The Kingdom of God and the Rich Man. 
 
 But there are many other truths that help us in this advanced age 
 to understand Christ’s meaning. For instance, he says, “It is easier 
 for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter 
 into the Kingdom of God.” Plainly this has no reference to a future life, 
 or to the spirit life of the rich man. That he will die a physical death 
 is plain enough. It is not our purpose to say what effect his riches will 
 have upon him in this future life. If the laws and customs under which 
 he lived here permitted him to amass these riches, or forced them upon 
 him, and then idolized him because of it, he can hardly be held respon- 
 sible for his possession of them. What Christ meant to teach was that 
 in the Kingdom of God where there was justice, where all men would 
 be economically free, where each would do his just share of the world’s 
 work, and receive therefor the full product of his toil, where industry 
 was so organized that no man could be deprived of the opportunity to 
 work, and where none could make a profit from the labor of others, it 
 would be utterly impossible for a rich man to enter. The rich man may 
 
 70 
 
admire the Kingdom of Heaven, he may be so well pleased at the happy 
 state of the people composing it, that he would like to enter it himself, 
 and he may decide to do so, but behold the moment he passes the border 
 line between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Gold, his riches 
 are gone forever and he is no longer a rich man. This man has entered 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, but he is not a rich man. In the Kingdom of 
 Heaven his riches would be of no use to him if even he would bring 
 them with him, for he could not hire any one so as to make a profit, 
 and he could not buy anything unless he did his share of the work, and 
 so instead of being a rich man he would simply be one of the number 
 composing the Kingdom of God, happy in the enjoyment of the fra- 
 ternal spirit of “each for all, and all for each.” 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven and the Workers. 
 
 Or, take the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. Matt. 20: 
 1 -16. “For the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that was a 
 householder, who went out early in the morning to hire laborers into 
 his vineyard.” This parable settles the question of employment and 
 also that of pay. All are to be employed because none can live without 
 work, unless they live on the labor of others ; all are to receive compensa- 
 tion according to their needs, provided they are not responsible for 
 their condition. And so the world is just beginning to learn what 
 Christ really meant when he taught men to pray: “Give us this day 
 our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven 
 our debtors ;” it is just beginning to learn that Christ knew that a soul 
 could not live, much less expand and grow in a starved and naked 
 body, when he said : “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righte- 
 ousness and all these things — food, raiment, shelter, education and so 
 forth — shall be added unto you.” 
 
 Christ says : “Do not be over-anxious about what ye shall eat, or 
 what ye shall drink,” that is, do not live in a state of suspense. Christ 
 was not unmindful of the difficulties of making a living then, or is it 
 to be inferred that such difficulties do not exist now. But he was 
 above all things trying to enforce the thought that when the Kingdom 
 of God was fully established it would be the right of every individual 
 to have the opportunity of securing all these things, and he was trying 
 to show how delightful such a state would be, and what peace of mind 
 it would give. In Luke 12: 30, he assures us that any other condition 
 is the result of our own ignorance and weakness, as shown by the fact 
 that the Gentile or heathen nations compete for the necessities of life, 
 each seeking these things for himself, forgetting that unless the individ- 
 
 7 1 
 
ual considers the rights of all he will in the end be a victim of this 
 anxiety and suspense that is such a destroyer of life and happiness. 
 The Father knows that we have “need of all these things.” We know 
 that he has provided them in abundance, that there is a sufficiency for 
 all ; but until we have wisdom enough to distribute them for the good 
 of all, the Father himself cannot help us. We must help ourselves, so 
 Christ says : “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” that is, see to it that all 
 are employed, that all are producing wealth, cease fighting each other 
 for what is already produced, cooperate with each other for the good 
 of all, and then, “All these things shall be added unto you.” Inci- 
 dentally, it might be well to note that this is another incontrovertible 
 argument, that the Kingdom of God is a state of men here in the flesh 
 for “all these things,” food, raiment and so forth are not required by 
 spirits. Besides, we know that in the case of fire, or flood, or earth- 
 quake, or famine, if the people had been as good as angels, and would 
 have prayed day and night without ceasing they would not be saved 
 from starvation and distress except for the fact that something of the 
 spirit of love and brotherhood that is to prevail in the Kingdom of 
 Heaven has already taken hold upon the hearts of men. 
 
 The Socialist and the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 It is for the complete application of this law of cooperation that 
 the Socialist stands. The Cooperative Commonwealth, or the Indus- 
 trial Democracy that he talks about so much, and that inspires his hours 
 of toil by day, and is the subject of his dreams by night, are only other 
 names for the Kingdom of the Heavens, or the Kingdom of God which 
 Christ lived and taught, and yet the Cooperative Commonwealth, or 
 Industrial Democracy, or the Kingdom of the Heavens is not so much 
 the product of man’s mind alone, as it is the result of the industrial and 
 economic forces that are determining man. These latter, as has been 
 shown all through the former part of this work, are compelling men to 
 cooperate, are compelling them to live the Golden Rule, are compelling 
 men to recognize the unity and solidarity of the race, and nothing but 
 man’s ignorance and superstition will stand in his way, and cause him 
 to continue to bring injury and suffering, both physical and mental, upon 
 himself and upon his fellows. The machine is here to lighten man’s 
 burden, by doing his work, and thus enable man to become educated, 
 refined, civilized, and to go on and on toward his manifest destiny. The 
 machine is here in accord with the law of industrial progress to uplift 
 and bless, provided man is wise enough to use it aright, but it is also 
 here to curse and blight and destroy until such time as man does acquire 
 
 72 
 
that wisdom necessary to direct the power it gives. That power is so 
 great that no individual can be intrusted with it. Only the entire people 
 under the laws of life as taught by Christ to be applied in the Kingdom 
 of Heaven, and as demanded by the Socialist to be applied in the Co- 
 operative Commonwealth or the Industrial Democracy will ever be able 
 to use such power aright, so that all will be benefited and none in- 
 jured by it. 
 
 Jesus and the Cooperative Idea. 
 
 It is not strange that this cooperative idea, this government by 
 the entire people, should have reached its perfection in the mind 
 of Christ, when we remember that “The Hebrews were the chief orig- 
 inators and conservators of what is now known and advocated in the 
 name of Socialism;* and their weird life, peculiar language, laws, 
 struggles and inextinguishable nationality scintillate through many of 
 the obscurities of history in a manner to command the wonder, if not 
 the awe, of all lovers of democratic society. The Pentateuch that re- 
 cords the great Jewish law quite sufficiently explains that absolute 
 liberty, or relative social equality, was a law of Moses. Under no 
 other code of laws have equal rights of man with man been possible 
 among other contemporaneous nations or tribes ; because the ethics of 
 the family, the city and state (of these Gentile nations) were ground- 
 ed upon the competitive, rather than the cooperative or mutual, prin- 
 ciple. Their (the Jews) peace-loving traits within their own ranks pre- 
 vailed over warlike ones. But it appears very certain that Jewish 
 monotheism, together with the social or mutually protective habits of 
 this people and their comparatively mild laws, made them the object of 
 hatred among the more competitive, and consequently fiercer, nations 
 with whom they came in contact. It is not, then, from this Semitic 
 branch of the human family that our struggling, warlike and competi- 
 tive characteristics are derived. Two distinct ideas have been con- 
 tended for from the dimmest remoteness, either of the provable or the 
 conjectural history. One is the cooperative, which means the mutually 
 protective or socialistic, the other the competitive or warlike and ag- 
 gressive. Through thousands of ages men have vigorously contended 
 for these antipodal results, especially in Europe. They have contended 
 for them through religious beliefs, through social inculcation and phi- 
 losophy, through rigid scholastic training, and through the most implac- 
 able hatreds, bloody persecutions and race wars ever recorded in the an- 
 nals of mankind. Until we become better acquainted with the history 
 
 * Of course, differing from the meaning of that term today, as compared with the industrial and economic 
 progress of that time. 
 
 73 
 
of the poor classes and divest ourselves of clouds that have hitherto ob- 
 scured the visions of all historians ; until we study the past, especially 
 the somber life and strange career of the Semitic family, from a stand- 
 point of development or evolution, and analyze their strangely tena- 
 cious and persistent views, unbiased by the views through which we are 
 still taught to regard others ; until we can catch the practical advantages 
 of cooperation, mutually one with another, and thoroughly see the sav 
 age nature of competitive life, must we remain blind to the true object 
 which inspired the greatest advent to this world, the visit and labors 
 at Palestine, and the movement whose undying germs there planted 
 the world still loves and cultivates. 
 
 “These words are expressed preliminarily to announcing facts which 
 have perhaps never before been observed and certainly never enough 
 considered — that the Aryan or Indo-European branch of the human race 
 has always, in private and public life, in religions, in social convention- 
 alism, in methods of reasoning, and in its political economy, been com- 
 petitive, whilst the Semitic branch has ever been cooperative. For 
 thousands of years these two great families have lived over and against 
 each other, sometimes mixed, sometimes by themselves, have struggled 
 and fought, have built up and torn down, each with its own inexorably 
 fixed notions ; and never, as we shall prove, did they show anything like 
 a fusion, or even a conciliation, of the two systems until three hundred 
 years after the death of Christ. They are warring still ; and the direct 
 causes of this warfare, as well as its direct results, are the great labor 
 movements of today. We hope in these pages to show that the natural 
 bent of the lowly majority of mankind is toward cooperation ; that race 
 hatreds ran so high that it became necessary to have an Intercessor or 
 Meditator to act between the two races and their two ideas, in order to 
 bring about a mutually cooperative system under which the large ma- 
 jorities, including working people, could better subsist. It became nec- 
 essary to have this Intercessor, not merely to arrange a religion based 
 upon salvation of the soul, or immortal principle, but more likely, as our 
 train of evidence goes to prove, to introduce an organized method for 
 the economic salvation of the downtrodden and realize practically the 
 promised ‘Heaven on earth’.” (The Ancient Lowly, by C. Osborne 
 Ward, Vol. I, pages 39-41.) 
 
 These paragraphs explain Christ’s words : “For all these things 
 (meaning the necessities of life) do the nations of the world seek after.” 
 Luke 12: 30. 
 
 74 
 
The Great Man in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 “But Jesus called them unto him and said : Ye know that the rulers 
 of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority 
 over them. Not so shall it be among you ; but whosoever would become 
 great among you shall be your servant, and whosoever would be first 
 among you shall be your servant.” Matt. 20 : 25-27. Here, then, is the 
 spirit of democracy declared for by Christ, to be the rule of action in 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, and as he gave the keys — that is, a knowledge 
 of the laws governing therein — to Peter, so also he gave the keys to all 
 the disciples (Matthew 18: 18), and also to you and to me, through 
 his word and through the open book of nature and progress. 
 
 “Whosoever would become great among you shall be your serv- 
 ant.” When the Kingdom of Heaven is fully established in men’s 
 hearts this will be the truth indeed. The man who invents a labor- 
 saving machine ; the man who improves the strain of wheat or corn, or 
 creates a new and lifegiving vegetable, or fruit, or flower ; the man who 
 produces a work of art, or of literature, is serving humanity, and should 
 be considered the truly great man, rather than he who exploits his fel- 
 low man to amass gold, or he who marshals armies to murder his fel- 
 low man for ambition’s sake. 
 
 War and the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 This seems to be an appropriate place to study the words of Christ 
 on this subject of war, and its relation to the Kingdom of God. It is 
 remarkable how men have misunderstood his teaching. I have talked 
 to many about the reign of universal peace among men and the general 
 view is about as follows: “Wars and human conflicts are ordained of 
 God. God takes sides with that nation which is in the right. Wars are 
 justified in Christ’s gospel, because he said: ‘Nation shall rise against 
 nation,’ etc., and this will continue until the end.” For, as one person 
 explained, just as soon as there are no more wars the earth will be 
 destroyed. Now what manner of men must we be who can believe in a 
 God that delights in slaughter and bloodshed, and the moment his 
 creatures learn to live in peace and brotherhood he will destroy them ? 
 Yet this is the view of many good people who believe that they are 
 Christians, and who think they understand Christ’s words. 
 
 Let me give a concrete illustration of this view. In the spring of 
 1906, a disastrous earthquake visited San Francisco and the western 
 coast of California, and there were many who immediately quoted the 
 scriptures to show that it was a warning to men that the end of the 
 world was at hand. The following, taken from the public press, is a 
 general statement of the views of these people : “Suggesting that pas- 
 
 75 
 
sage of scripture which refers to the second coming of Christ on earth, 
 to be preceded by ‘wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famine, pest- 
 ilence and great terrors,’ a prominent gentleman at one of the hotels 
 last evening took for his text the calamity that has befallen San Fran- 
 cisco and the surrounding country. Said he: ‘We have certainly had 
 wars and rumors of wars, plagues have destroyed crops and produced 
 famine in large sections of the world. A famine exists in Japan today 
 over a wide area. Cholera has raged, the bubonic plague has killed 
 thousands. In our own country yellow fever and smallpox have carried 
 off thousands. A tidal wave swept away Galveston, and thousands have 
 been killed by volcanic eruptions in the islands of the sea. Mt. 
 Vesuvius has recently erupted and hundreds are dead, and millions of 
 dollars’ worth of property has been destroyed. Now the great western 
 city of San Francisco has been laid low by earthquake and fire. Surely 
 events in the past few years, even in the past few weeks, should be a 
 warning to men to prepare for the end’.” 
 
 The passages of scripture above referred to are found in the gospel 
 by Matthews, chapter 24; by Mark, chapter 13; and by Luke, chapter 
 21. The reader would do well to study these, for it is now our purpose 
 to show as clearly as possible what Christ meant by the end of the 
 world. 
 
 On the occasion which gave rise to Christ’s discussion of this ques- 
 tion his disciples asked him “What shall be the sign of they coming, 
 and of the end of the world?” (The Greek word for coming is parusia, 
 meaning presence ; that is, what shall be the sign of thy presence ? The 
 Greek word for end of the world is aion, meaning the consummation of 
 the age.) 
 
 In the popular mind the “end of the world” suggests the destruc- 
 tion of the earth, but in the scriptures the Greek word for earth is ge , 
 and for world is kosmos. Now kosmos, as already explained, means 
 “the affairs of this life, the present existence, customs and practices of 
 men, human society, public affairs and occupations.” The average per- 
 son, failing to make this distinction, is constantly confronted with con- 
 tradictions. 
 
 This now brings us to the point where we can show the relation 
 between earthquakes, wars, etc., and the establishment of the Kingdom 
 of God, the establishment of which means the second coming of Christ, 
 because it is only in such a state of society that the power and spirit of 
 the teaching of Christ can and will prevail, and his presence be felt. If 
 the reader will refer to Luke, chapter 21, he will see that all these 
 calamities, both from natural causes and from man’s own ignorance, 
 
 76 
 
superstition and fear, are named: Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, 
 famine, pestilence, terrors, signs, persecution, prisons, unfaithfulness 
 of friends and relatives. Then, out of the terribly dark picture there 
 drawn, the reader is encouraged and advised to “look up and lift up 
 his head ; because his redemption draweth nigh, when these things begin 
 to come to pass.” Luke 21 : 28. And if he will include verse 31 he will 
 see as follows: “Even so ye also, when ye see these things coming to 
 pass, know ye that the Kingdom of God is nigh.” 
 
 Does God then send earthquakes and so forth to teach men the 
 unity of the race? No. They proceed from natural causes; but, as 
 Christ pointed out, their continued occurrence will sooner or later drive 
 this truth into the unreasoning minds of men. Does God institute com- 
 petition, strife, contentions, wars, persecution among men so as to force 
 the Kingdom of the Heavens upon them? No. These are class struggles 
 growing out of man’s ignorance and the animal nature that still clings 
 to him ; but, as Christ pointed out, “these things must needs come to 
 pass” in order to convince men of their uselessness and the injurious ef- 
 fects upon all, and today seven million Socialists of the world are con- 
 vinced and subscribe to the following declaration regarding war: “As 
 soon as a situation shall be presented which, openly or secretly, may 
 give rise to any apprehension of a conflict between two or more gov- 
 ernments and render a war between them possible or probable, the 
 Socialist parties of the countries concerned should at once, and 
 upon the invitation of the International Socialist Bureau, enter 
 into direct communication with a view to determine upon a con- 
 certed mode of action on part of Socialists and workingmen of 
 the interested countries in order to prevent the war. At the 
 
 same time the parties of the other countries should be ad- 
 
 vised by the secretary of the bureau, and a meeting of the International 
 Socialist Bureau shall be held as soon thereafter as possible, for the 
 purpose of devising the most appropriate measures to be taken by the 
 entire International Socialist movement and the organized working 
 class to prevent the war.” Socialists have recently prevented two con- 
 flicts in Europe. 
 
 The press dispatches state that the destruction and suffering by 
 the earthquake at San Francisco caused all social, financial and racial 
 distinctions to be wiped out. The human mind acts slowly, but it is 
 
 only a step in the mental process to arrive at the truth that if the wip- 
 
 ing out of distinctions means the common good in such a calamity it 
 means the common good at all times, because there are millions of per- 
 sons who are beginning to see that not only in the earth’s crust are there 
 
 77 
 
eruptions and upheavals, but also in our industrial, social and political 
 life there are changes taking place day by day that are more destruc- 
 tive of life and property than any earthquake that history has ever 
 recorded. A new machine is invented, displacing millions of dollars’ 
 worth of capital invested in an old and inferior process, and throwing 
 out of employment millions of workingmen. Their suffering is intense, 
 both of body and mind, but they suffer as individuals here and there; 
 and, because it is not so concentrated at one point as was the destruction 
 of life and property at San Francisco, there is a tendency to overlook 
 it, but it cannot be continually disregarded, for this increasing poverty 
 and the consequent destruction of life and happiness is beginning to sap 
 the very foundations of human society, and men everywhere are begin- 
 ning to see the cause for it. A few more wars, a few more earthquakes, 
 a few more famines, a few more prisons, a little more persecution, a 
 little more unfaithfulness of friends, “and this gospel of the Kingdom 
 shall be preached in the whole earth for a testimony unto all nations; 
 and then shall the end come.” Not the destruction of the earth, but 
 THE END OF THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM, which is, as we 
 have said before, contention and strife, and war and hell; and in its 
 place shall arise the Cooperative Commonwealth, which is peace and 
 progress and the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Economic Determinism and the Priestly Class. 
 
 Just at this point, while referring to the wrong and hurtful ideas 
 than many people hold regarding some of Christ’s teachings, let me 
 say that much of this has grown out of false interpretations put upon 
 Christ’s words by that class in society known as the priestly class. 
 They have always been a parasitic class, and this position has caused 
 them to incline always toward the rich from whom they supposed 
 their livino- came. That Christ never intended such a class to interpret 
 or spread his gospel is evidenced by the fact that he selected working- 
 men, those of the same class as himself, to be his disciples, and, in- 
 deed, they are the only class who can interpret it aright. This ac- 
 counts for the new and changed views concerning Christ’s words, es- 
 pecially when we take into consideration that workingmen are better 
 trained to think today than ever before, ihat the large majority of them 
 can read and write, and hence are not so dependent upon the priest for 
 intellectual food as they were in former times. 
 
 The Poor and the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 But these old ideas that have been taught in the past are difficult 
 to remove, and many still cling to them and use them as stock argu- 
 
 78 
 
ments to oppose all effort for human uplifting and betterment. For 
 instance, if you try to show such a person that in this age of inven- 
 tion and machinery it is possible for everyone to have all of the 
 comforts of life, as Christ promised them when he said, “Seek ve first 
 the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be 
 added unto you,” he will at once turn upon you as though he really did 
 not want such a happy state to exist, and he will tell you that such a 
 thing is impossible because Christ said, “Ye have the poor always 
 with you.” This has been quoted to me so often by preachers, sis- 
 ters of charity, slum workers and good people generally, to whom I 
 was trying to show the benefits of co-operative industry, that I at last 
 concluded that as the Bible is interpreted today by the priest class it 
 has become a book of damnation of the people rather than the way of 
 their salvation; that Christ, instead of bringing them glad tidings of 
 good news, has brought them a curse ; and that if what these say is 
 true, if Christ came and doomed the great majority to poverty and 
 disease and suffering when there is an abundance on every hand, held 
 by the rich, for satisfying their own greed, then Christ’s coming was 
 a curse and not a blessing. 
 
 Fortunately, Christ did not mean what these people say he did. 
 In the plan of Christ the strong, able-bodied, willing worker was never 
 intended to be poor, or in need, or out of employment. He was speak- 
 ing to Judas, and such men as Judas — thieves, covetous persons, mur- 
 derers. To such men and such a society he said: “Ye have the poor 
 always with you,” and it is a significant thing for us to consider that 
 since poverty is on the increase in our time we can picture to ourselves 
 what Christ would think of us if he were on earth today. 
 
 There is a class of poor, those accidentally hurt in the line of 
 duty, and unfortunates from causes over which man has no control, 
 whom we will always have with us, but in the Kingdom of Heaven 
 they will be cared for as well as anyone else, as Christ shows in his 
 parable of the laborers in the vineyard. 
 
 But there is another way to look at these words of Christ about the 
 poor, which some of our good people do not take into consideration. 
 Christ rebuked Judas and those of his kind bv telling him that he and 
 such men as himself would have the poor always with them, of course, 
 to curse them, but mark you, it is nowhere stated that Christ ever 
 said to the poor ye will always be here. Though he did say, “Blessed 
 are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” 
 
 “Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.” “Seek 
 
 79 
 
ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things 
 (food, raiment, shelter, education, etc.) shall be added unto you.” 
 
 “ft is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than 
 for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” 
 
 So if the lowly are to possess the Kingdom of Heaven, and in- 
 herit the earth, and are to have all things needful for their comfort 
 and happiness, and besides, no rich main can enter to exploit, or rob, 
 or oppress, it does not look as though there would be much chance for 
 poverty. We are told that one millionaire makes a thousand tramps, 
 so, as there will be no millionaires in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 neither will there be any tramps. 
 
 But, after all, this question of poverty is not decided by what 
 any one says or does not say about it. It is a question for the poor 
 themselves to decide. They alone can abolish it. As long as they are 
 too ignorant, or superstitious, or selfish, to do this it will remain and 
 curse them ; when they are wise enough, prosperity and abundance 
 will bless them and their children. Christ’s gospel shows men how 
 to live the perfect life, and permits them to do so if they will. Ma- 
 terial development and industrial progress compels a readjustment 
 of human affairs, and with each readjustment more and more of his 
 teaching finds expression, not because this teaching is in the Bible or 
 because Christ said so, but because it is law, and men, sooner or later, 
 learn that it is better for them to obey the natural laws under which 
 they must live and upon which their being and happiness depend. 
 
 Believe and Be Saved, Believe Not and Be Damned. 
 
 It is the mind that enslaves, and the reason that humanity as a 
 whole has not advanced more rapidly to the full realization of the joys 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven is due largely to the limitations of man’s 
 mind. I want to report here a conversation I had with a most respect- 
 ed citizen, who was also a leading member of the church, educated 
 and intelligent, as those terms are understood today. He was also ex- 
 ceedingly popular among his fellow men, as is evidenced by the fact 
 that at the last election he was elevated to one of the most responsible 
 and important offices in the county in which he lived. I report it, not 
 simply because of this particular conversation, but because it reveals 
 an opinion prevalent among the best of people, and because until such 
 opinions are forced out of their minds their enslavement, both physical 
 and mental, will continue. 
 
 This gentleman was much disturbed because of the increase of 
 crime on every hand, the dishonesty and thieving propensities of our 
 
 80 
 
high officials, the tendency to adulterate all our food products, and 
 thus poison the very fountains of our physical existence for profit. I 
 tried to explain to him that these things were the result of a condition 
 confronting us, namely: the struggle for an existence, rather than evi- 
 dence of man’s increasing depravity ; that the machine had taken the 
 place of hand labor, and that all the necessities of life were held by the 
 owners of the machine, by which condition money is made to stand be- 
 tween men and life ; that men must have money or give up the ghost, 
 and that even the rich must continue to increase their holdings or lose 
 what they have; that useful productive work is not only looked upon 
 as dishonorable, but is unprofitable, and as a result the increasing 
 parasitic class is compelled to resort to very low measures in order to 
 obtain money ; and finally, that the only way to correct all the evils that 
 he so much regretted, is for society to see to it that every man is 
 employed at some useful productive work, and that everyone so em- 
 ployed receives the full product of his work; that by such a plan alone 
 could the Golden Rule be lived and men become brothers in the true 
 meaning of that term. 
 
 Imagine now for a moment my utter astonishment when he 
 turned upon me fiercely, and said, “That will never be; when such a 
 state exists, we will have the Millenium.” 
 
 “Well,” said I, “do you not want it?” “Are you afraid of it?” 
 
 To which he replied, “Oh, when that time comes the earth will 
 be destroyed.” 
 
 Now think of professing Christians who entertain such ideas of 
 God. It implies that God takes delight in unutterable misery of his 
 creatures ; for the moment that they advance to such a state in which 
 life becomes a joy and a blessing that moment God will destroy them 
 and the place he has provided for them. 
 
 Incentive and the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 
 Why, these good people of our churches neither believe in the 
 goodness nor wisdom of God, or of men. It has only been a short time 
 since I was speaking to a presiding elder and trying to show him how 
 much greater would have been our progress spiritually, morally and 
 intellectually, and also in material blessings, if all would have always 
 felt secure in the necessities of life as Christ intended they should 
 when he said “Seek ve first the Kingdom of God,” instead of so often 
 being placed at the mercy of a class made greedy and grasping by 
 our competitive system. 
 
 He strongly opposed my position, saying that men have to have 
 
 81 
 
an incentive to do great things. I admitted that an incentive might 
 be necessary, and then asked what kind of incentive and what great 
 things he had in mind. He replied : “Oh, the accumulation of riches.” I 
 must confess that when I heard this, coming from the source it did, 
 it staggered me. I was asked to believe that the only thing that 
 moves men to action is Gold, and yet I read in Luke 16: 13: “Ye 
 cannot serve both God and Gold.” When I further questioned this 
 good man whether the time would never come when the uplifting of 
 humanity, the joy of seeing all happy and comfortable, the love of jus- 
 tice, the passion for knowledge, the satisfaction which talent and genius 
 find in expressing themselves, and suchlike incentives would take the place 
 of the love of gold, he replied : “Possibly in the next thousand years.” 
 Which reply rekindled my ardor to labor on for the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 However, I have more faith in the increasing wisdom of men and the 
 compelling force of events, and I see that it is our competitive, capi- 
 talistic svstem that gives Gold such a place in the affections of mem, be- 
 cause man's physical necessities are dependent upon Gold and not upon 
 his willingness or ability to do useful work. Make men free eco- 
 nomically, and all such high and noble incentives as those mentioned 
 above will energize the human family to accomplishments that today 
 are not even thought of. 
 
 This same preacher, in a sermon some weeks later, proclaimed in 
 a very earnest manner: “There is no stimulus that causes me to put 
 forth more effort to do my best than the ‘Well done, cood and faithful 
 servant’ of my Master,” yet in conversation on a- week day he thinks 
 that monev is the only incentive that will move men to action. We 
 might charge this man either with inconsistency or with self-righteous- 
 ness, in that he alone is moved to do his best by the “well done,” 
 while all others must have sordid gold; but we will make no such 
 charge. The fact is that men do not always mean what they say, but 
 seeing a certain condition prevailing, and not knowing how to over- 
 come it, they make an effort to justify things as they are, especially 
 if the majority are in accord with them. 
 
 More Gods Than One Under Capitalism. 
 
 In the presence of one of the most zealous church members I have 
 ever known, I made the statement that the performance of useful work 
 should be the only requirement necessary to guarantee a person all the 
 necessities and comforts of life that this great age affords and that 
 money which represents other men’s labor should not procure these 
 things. Before I had scarcely finished he broke in by declaring that 
 
 82 
 
such an idea was perfect nonsense, and that it was impossible to make it 
 operate unless one could make a contract with the Almighty to keep 
 him in health, secure him from injury while at work and guarantee 
 him a certain number of years to live on the earth. 
 
 Now, unless I mention that this good man is the general manager 
 of a sick-benefit, accident and life insurance company; that he is one 
 who lives by the activity of insurance agents, who in turn live by the 
 labor of the productive classes, the reader will not be able to appreciate 
 his objection to my position, but when the business of this partcular 
 good man is known then the reader can begin to understand what the 
 Socialist means by economic determinism. 
 
 I have already said enough in another chapter on the insurance 
 question to show that I consider it a benefit to humanity, even as now 
 administered, so that my purpose is not to find any fault with this busi- 
 ness here. It is rather the opinions of this man biased by his business 
 that we wish to analyze, and in doing so we shall find that he has more 
 gods than one. 
 
 In his reference to a contract with the Almighty he was implying 
 that such a contract was absurd, and he considered it the quintessence 
 of foolishness to try to contract with the Almighty to keep one in 
 health, secure him from injury or guarantee him a specified period of 
 years to live. But while he argues that the Almighty is too feeble to 
 undertake a contract of such immense proportions, he is at the very 
 same time daily issuing contracts entered into by himself and other 
 men in the name of Gold to do what he says even God cannot do. That 
 is, you can make a contract with Gold to aid you in sickness and mis- 
 fortune, and to care for your family in case of your untimely taking- 
 off, but with God such an arrangement is out of the question. 
 
 The Socialist has been accused of being atheistic, but anyone who 
 has read and understood the pages preceding this must know that the 
 Socialist has never accused God of being so impotent as this good, pro- 
 fessing Christian would make him appear. On the other hand, the So- 
 cialist declares that it is God, the law of God, the law of man’s being, 
 that has been all these ages forcing and compelling mankind to pledge 
 each to the other his aid and assistance in every such time of need, and 
 if any man or nation neglects or refuses to do so then God is disobeyed, 
 the law of God — the law of man’s being — is violated, and the offender 
 brings the same injury upon himself as he inflicted upon his brother. 
 This has already been fully explained in discussing the Golden Rule, 
 and to that the reader is referred. Why, this very system of sick-bene- 
 fit, accident and life insurance, imperfect as it is, which our brother is 
 
 83 
 
pushing, is an unconscious effort toward the fulfilling of this law. In 
 the next few years it is destined to undergo radical changes which will 
 make it conform more to man’s need and be more in accord with the law 
 of God. All this has already been pointed out. 
 
 One God — the Supreme Being. 
 
 While our minds are on this subject of more gods than one, it is 
 proper to point out that the human family has been step by step coming 
 to recognize one God — the Supreme Being — the Creator and Father of 
 us all — until this idea is well-nigh universal. This fact in itself is very 
 significant, in that it points out unerringly that we are tending more 
 and more toward the unity and solidarity of the human family. 
 
 Formerly every nation had its own gods, and all phenomena were 
 attributed to some deity. The gods took sides in human conflicts, and 
 led men against each other in mortal combat. But through the process 
 of evolution in economic and industrial life, in thought, and with the 
 advancement in science and learning, came the idea of the common 
 fatherhood of God, which can mean nothing else than the brotherhood 
 of man. So then if there is one God, and the human family is a unit, 
 we are all subject to the same laws — laws of nature, laws of our being. 
 This destroys the idea of caste, the idea of master and servant, because 
 these ideas are incompatible with the idea of brotherhood. 
 
 One of the last of the many gods which must be dethroned before 
 the one true God can be fully enthroned is Gold. I have seen men 
 crawl at the feet of and worship, with tearful eyes, this false god. I have 
 seen men the servile tools and sycophants of the priests of the god Gold. 
 I have seen these priests dictate the terms upon which men might live 
 upon earth, and I have seen the servants of Gold and their victims all 
 equally degraded and cursed, simply because in neither case was there 
 an opportunity for building character or for finding peace and rest 
 within. 
 
 Some Additional Principles of the Law of Life. 
 
 There is more evidence every day that men are coming to recog- 
 nize that their only hope lies in the intelligent study of man’s relation to 
 man, and as their knowledge of this increases there will be an advance 
 toward a higher and nobler civilization, in which it will be found that 
 those basic principles taught by Christ nearly two thousand years ago 
 are as unalterable as any law of the physical world. 
 
 Man has somewhat overcome the superstition that formerly domin- 
 ated him, and is not satisfied now unless a thing is reasonable and scien- 
 
tific. For example, take some of those principles which Christ pro- 
 claimed in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 Recall what is commonly known as the first beatitude. Probably a 
 better designation would be the law of the teachable ones, or the law 
 of those who realize their need. The Kingdom of Heaven is not 
 theirs, nor are they blessed because of these words of Christ, nor be- 
 cause these words are found in the Bible, but because by the very 
 law controlling in all such cases, unless anyone is teachable, unless 
 he realizes his need and empties himself of prejudice and ignorance, 
 he can not appreciate the Kingdom of Heaven, come into it, or 
 be happy. A new idea can find no place in a head already full of old 
 and worn-out ideas. 
 
 Take the third beatitude, or the law of the meek. They shall in- 
 herit the earth because they are gentle and unassuming. They resist 
 not evil, do not become entangled with it, and finally, when those who 
 are warring and fighting among themselves, and who are running 
 counter to the laws of their being, have destroyed themselves, the meek 
 alone will be left. Those possessing this characteristic are the only 
 ones that can survive. This law has been proven even in the animal 
 world. The ferocious, flesh-eating animals which are always making 
 war upon other animals, or upon each other, are becoming extinct, 
 while the gentler animals alone survive. 
 
 Take the fifth beautitude, or the law of the merciful. The old theory 
 was that if you were merciful to your fellow man here God would be 
 merciful to you hereafter. This is not the meaning of the law. Its 
 meaning is brought out very clearly by using the translation given in 
 the Twentieth Century New Testament. “Blessed are the merciful, for 
 it is. they who will have mercy shown them.” By their very act they 
 have disarmed cruelty. Even in that inhuman state called war men 
 have learned how this law works. It used to be “Neither ask, nor give 
 quarter, execute vengeance on prisoners,” and as a result both sides 
 fought until one or the other was practically exterminated. Today the 
 army that is most merciful, that shows most kindness to its prisoners, 
 has the advantage, because the other will not hold out when it sees the 
 day is lost, and by ceasing to fight saves its antagonist from further 
 slaughter. This law operates in this manner in every contest between 
 man and man, whether it be in military, industrial or political affairs. 
 
 If the space allotted to this volume would permit, it would be quite 
 interesting to apply this point of view to a number of these laws. As it 
 is one more must suffice. Let it be the law of judging others. See Matt. 
 •7: 1, 2. According to the usual interpretation of this law, it was sup- 
 
 85 
 
posed that if you judged your neighbor, or measured falsely to him, 
 God would judge you and mete out punishment to you. This would 
 make God as bad as you were, but happily this was not what Christ 
 was trying to teach. 
 
 He was trying to show that the disposition to look unfavorably 
 upon the character and actions of others invariably tends to rash, un- 
 just and uncharitable opinions, and when one gives way to it, this, in 
 itself, is cause for our own condemnation. Not that some one else will 
 condemn us, for this is not necessary, but that this evil practice will 
 dwarf and stunt our souls until it blinds us to all good in our fellow 
 men, and causes us to dwell on what we think is evil in them until all 
 beauty, and loveliness, and sweetness in life is destroyed as far as we 
 are concerned, and, as a result, we have our punishment for violating 
 this law. 
 
 If we, by any act, or a failure to act, use a certain measure, or per- 
 mit it to be used, then, by the law of compensation, we will receive in 
 kind what was given. If society does, or permits to be done, anything 
 that injures or dwarfs the individual, then society is injured. 
 
 Of course, this law does not forbid the passing of judgment on 
 conditions, nor of condemning the ignorance that still lurks in men’s 
 minds. This ignorance and these mistakes ought to be condemned, but 
 not the men themselves. They always have, and will again respond 
 to an improved environment just as soon as the spell of darkness and 
 ignorance is broken. For instance, we might condemn blindness in a 
 man, and if we were doing all in our power to aid such an one, we could 
 not be in error, but we would certainly violate this law and bring upon 
 ourselves hardness of heart and a cruel nature if we unkindly judged 
 or treated the blind man. 
 
 What a glad day for humanity it will be when men come to un- 
 derstand that Christ’s gospel is not a fancy of the imagination, but a 
 law to be lived. 
 
 Human Perfection. 
 
 A friend of mine was telling me of a conversation he had had with 
 a society lady who was very fond of entertaining and being entertained 
 at social functions of all kinds. He was holding before her the teach- 
 ing of Jesus on this point: “But when thou makest a feast, bid the 
 poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.” At length she became very 
 much exasperated, and finally said: “Oh, of course, that is all very 
 well for Jesus. He was divine. It was never intended to be prac- 
 ticed by human beings. It would be absurd for us to invite into our 
 homes those people who are not congenial, but are utterly repugnant.” 
 
 86 
 
Some weeks after this incident was related to me I said to a min- 
 ister of the gospel : “How many people do you know who practice the 
 Golden Rule?” 
 
 “There are none,” he replied. “It is impractical in this life. God 
 does not require it. Faith in Christ saves us in spite of these divine 
 laws.” 
 
 And now, as if to cap the climax, comes the minister of one of 
 the big churches of New York City, the worshiping place of many 
 millionaires, and in a sermon at Mandel Hall, University of Chicago, 
 says : “If all Christians tried to copy Christ’s life, all business, science, 
 commerce and agriculture would cease, and an era of disintegration 
 would ensue. It would be the greatest calamity possible.” Thus, at 
 one stroke, he hurls down an ideal that has been taught for neariy 
 two thousand years. 
 
 It is to these three -expressions of opinion that I invite thought 
 with a view to arriving at the truth of the position held bv Jesus, and 
 preventing from being turned to their own injury the Good News 
 which he brought to men. 
 
 The human animal is exceedingly resourceful, and so, whenever 
 he comes up against any phenomena that he does not understand, any 
 proposition that he does not like, or any teaching that he sees no way 
 of putting into practice, he has recourse to superstition, charges the 
 whole thing off to the gods, and transfers his knotty problems to the 
 other world, where he fancies he will have more time in which to untie 
 the knots. In this way man places those who point out the laws of his 
 being, without and above himself, so that he may find it convenient to 
 refuse obedience, or that he may have an excuse, if he can not see his 
 way clear to obey. This was not the method of Jesus, and he never 
 uttered a word that excused any man from doing the will of God as 
 perfectly as he himself did it. Those theories of absolution by 
 faith and other methods are the work of the theologians later on. 
 
 If the reader will turn to the fifth chapter of Matthew he will find 
 the following: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is 
 in heaven is perfect.” Here is as plain a command as any that the 
 Bible records — as positive as “Thou shalt not kill.” Man’s happiness 
 on earth demands that it be no less obeyed. It shows what men must 
 ultimately become, for they, being in God’s image, must sooner or later 
 reflect and manifest God’s nature. The word “therefore” calls our at- 
 tention to the fact that this is a conclusion from something said before, 
 and we should note some of the things in which this perfection con- 
 sists. They are found throughout this fifth chapter, the opening chap- 
 
 87 
 
ter of the Sermon on the Mount, but especially in verses 43-47, and 
 may be stated in four words : “The Brotherhood of Man,” which, a 
 little further on m tne same discourse, is framed into the law commonly 
 called the Golden Rule. This has already been discussed. 
 
 But let us at this point see what Jesus could have meant when he 
 said, “But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the 
 lame, the blind.” Is this teaching to be applied to human relations 
 here and now? Is it not possible there is some mistake about it? No, 
 no, there is no mistake. Jesus meant what he said, and our Phar- 
 isaical society men and women will have to draw their clean robes 
 closer to them from day to day, and pass oftener from one side of the 
 street to the other to avoid these unclean and unsightly ones, for they 
 are increasing by the thousands, and will continue to increase until we 
 obey this law. When we come to know that this teaching of Jesus is 
 a law touching every individual, and begin to invite the poor, the 
 maimed, the lame, the blind, we will then for the first time see how real- 
 ly hideous all these conditions are, and to save ourselves (“For with 
 what measure you mete, it shall be measured unto you”) we will find 
 out there is a cause for all these conditions, and instead of standing in 
 the way of its removal we will help to remove it, and behold, our ban- 
 quet halls will be filled with congenial friends and brothers, and there 
 will be none on the streets and byways to offend and make the heart 
 sick. 
 
 Once more I refer to the fact that in the past, when the earth 
 was sparsely settled, and all labor was done with the hand tool by the 
 individual, and nearly everything used by society was produced in the 
 home and on the farm where it was used, these laws could be violated 
 with more impunity, and the violation did not react so disastrously 
 upon society. But our society has become exceedingly complex, our 
 entire system of production and distribution has changed. If, there- 
 fore, the laws of human solidarity, unity and brotherhood which Jesus 
 taught are thwarted by those drunk with power and excessive wealth, 
 society as a whole suffers and travails in pain until a new order is 
 born. 
 
 History is repeating itself, and we are standing on the thresh- 
 old of change today. There are many things that remind us of the 
 days when Jesus made his advent. The powerful and privileged 
 classes are interpreting all moral and religious teaching to subserve 
 their own interests, but greater than all that they can do is the law of 
 progress, the law of industrial development, the law of the machine, 
 the law of God ; for these, like all other laws, are God’s laws, intended 
 
 88 
 
by him to produce wealth abundantly for all, for the good of all in 
 order that all may take the next step in man’s manifest destiny toward 
 human perfection. 
 
 Thus the light having dawned upon me, I can see where my life 
 has not been full. My soul’s growth has been hampered. I am not 
 what I should or could have been, had I enjoyed economic freedom and 
 lived in that environment to which I am so earnestly directing the at- 
 tention of my fellows. I know that as long as there is a class to be 
 exploited there will be exploiters, and as long as there are exploiters 
 there will be tyrants and inhuman beings, and so long both exploited 
 and exploiters will be equally hurt, and for this reason all must sooner 
 or later recognize the solidarity of the human family and work with 
 might and main for the full realization of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 This, then, is Christianity as Christ would have it practiced upon 
 earth. It is a rule of action for men in their relations with each other. 
 It is good religion. It is the ideal of the Socialist. It has been said that 
 the human family is incurably religious. It is just as well that this 
 is so, but religion, like everything else, has passed through its evolu- 
 tions, and the great working class is no longer dependent upon a cor- 
 rupt priesthood for the interpretation of religious truths ; but in the 
 spirit of Jesus, who was a worker himself, his class is interpreting his 
 gospel as he intended they should, and as they alone can. 
 
 A few months ago a leading Buddhist magazine of Japan con- 
 tained the following : “The world is agreed that religion has two main 
 objects in view: one subjective — the imparting of faith and comfort to 
 each individual who possesses it; the other objective — the improve- 
 ment of society generally.” The publications of the Christian world 
 gave assent and considered this the most remarkable statement ever 
 coming from a so-called heathen. 
 
 But this is what Christianity put into practice will do. For nearly 
 two thousand years we have been taught that Christianity is the hope 
 of the world. “All right, then,” says the Socialist, “let us be logical ; 
 let us be consistent ; let us put it into practice.” This is the thought 
 that inspires him, that holds him steady amid all opposition, all abuse, 
 all disappointments ; for upon such a rock foundation he is sure of his 
 position and simply waits. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Man’s Destiny — A Reason. 
 
 For the sixth and last time, I answer that the possibilities of the 
 human family and the manifest destiny of man compel me, as they are 
 compelling every thoughtful person, to stand for the unity and soli- 
 darity of the race. This is not a matter that we may push aside at will. 
 Man is by nature so constituted that when the light dawns upon him he 
 is involuntarily drawn toward it. When he becomes conscious of a new 
 vision of better things, or of a larger freedom, he is dominated by them. 
 When an idea enters his mind that means to him the betterment of his 
 own and his neighbor’s condition he is at once dominated by it. To 
 use the words of Heine : “W e do not take possession of our ideas ; but 
 are possessed by them. They master us and force us into the arena, 
 where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.” This is one of the 
 marks of distinction between men and the lower orders of animals, and 
 the more intelligent the type of man the more intense it becomes. 
 
 The New Freedom — Economic. 
 
 This fact explains why the civilized nations has successively de- 
 manded and obtained freedom of conscience, fredom of speech, freedom 
 of the press, political freedom, and why the nations of the world are 
 today organizing for the overthrow of industrial despotism and the uni- 
 versal establishment of economic freedom — when there will be neither 
 master nor slave, but all will be workers together for the good of all. 
 Those who have looked into these problems are convinced that as it 
 was impossible in the past for the race to advance toward its high mis- 
 sion while its most intelligent and cultured members were being burned 
 at the stake, or were rotting in prison cells, or while a tyrant and des- 
 pot was torturing humanity to amuse himself, so now it is also impos- 
 sible for humanity to do its best when men are denied the necessities, 
 the opportunities, the privileges of life unless they pander to the evil 
 designs of the few to whom the ownership of the means of life have 
 been transferred by circumstances over which the majority had no 
 control. 
 
 This new freedom — economic freedom — the vision that inspires 
 the Socialist, will transform the earth from a cesspool of reeking pu- 
 
 90 
 
tridity into a place fit to be the dwelling of man. In the past there have 
 been a few glimpses of such a state. Athens, in the Age of Pericles, 
 is one. Here, for the free population, the problem of making a living 
 was solved, and time could be given to higher things than drudgery. 
 In that age there were produced athletes, artists, poets, sculptors and 
 philosophers such as have never yet been excelled in any age. Today, 
 with the machine to take the place of the slave population of Athens, 
 we have the opportunity to again inaugurate such an era, and this again 
 is the vision that dominates the Socialist and compels him to strive to 
 engage the attention of his brother who is bowed down with unneces- 
 sary toil that is crushing out his life and keeping him from entering 
 upon his rich heritage. For the Socialist knows that as soon as this 
 vision dawns upon a man, whether he be master or slave, he will from 
 that moment, in his mind at least, cease to be either and become a 
 worker for a better order of things. 
 
 The Ignorant Excused. 
 
 I desire to emphasize this last statement, for it shows that I blame 
 no one for his ignorance. In a sense, a person is no more to be 
 blamed for not seeing a truth than another is to be congratulated for 
 seeing it. The only thing that could be charged against anyone is 
 the refusal to investigate, to be taught, or a determination to oppose 
 a thing of which he is ignorant. The mind of man is the result of evo- 
 lution, through natural law. That is, our way of looking at things 
 is determined largely by forces outside of ourselves. Truths that are 
 dawning upon us today were impossible of comprehension to our fore- 
 fathers. Therefore it is absurd — yes, it is hurtful — to try to compel 
 humanity to live under the same customs and ideas that prevailed one 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 A Few Examples of Ignorance. 
 
 Only a few months ago I was in conversation with a lawyer who 
 was considered quite an intelligent man ; he was popular, had a paying 
 practice, was a member of a church, and was looked upon as an ex- 
 emplary citizen. During our conversation I made the point that they 
 who do the world’s really useful and productive work enjoy the least 
 of life, live under the meanest conditions, and have few or none of those 
 things which make for refinement and the development of the higher 
 capacities of man — for instance, books, musical instruments, works of 
 art, means of travel, and so forth. At this he broke out in a very hearty 
 
 9i 
 
laugh : “Ha, ha ! What do they want with all such things ? All they 
 care for is food for their children.” Now what is the real meaning of 
 this opinion of this lawyer? Simply this: There is a certain class 
 
 whose sole purpose in life is to produce and raise children to do the 
 world’s work and create wealth for another class who, like himself, 
 do nothing but consume. This low view proposes to make the mass 
 of humanity little more than working and breeding animals. 
 
 Some weeks later, identically the same view was expressed by a 
 business man to whom I volunteered the information that the Socialist 
 program proposed to give to every worker the full product of his toil, 
 because it is by the withholding of the greater part of the wealth pro- 
 duced by the useful workers that our millionaires are made. He said : 
 “How foolish! Suppose you Socialists could do as you say, can’t you 
 see they would not know what to do with it ? They have such low con- 
 ceptions of life that there is no capacity for enjoying the things that so 
 much money would procure, and as a consequence they would waste it 
 in idleness and in drunkenness. The work that many of them do is of 
 the very lowest type and must be planned by others, just as you would 
 plan the work of a horse or a mule. Now, a horse or a mule produces 
 many times more than it costs to feed it, and yet no one would think of 
 wasting more than that on it, because it has no capacity for anything 
 higher, and all it requires is food and shelter.” 
 
 Along this same line was the argument made by one of the German 
 nobility, when he said that it made no difference to him whether his 
 wealth came from the animal which drew the plow or from the one that 
 followed after and called out “whoa.” 
 
 “I notice,” says a good, sober employer of many workmen, “that 
 if you keep laboring men at work ten to twelve hours per day they will 
 be quiet and peaceful and remain at their homes, but if you work them 
 half-time they will be boisterous and loaf about saloons, and spend 
 what they make in gratifying their passions.” 
 
 A minister of the gospel declares that waste and sloth are the 
 cause of the poverty of the working class. 
 
 Now, all of these opinions are from the highest sources, as some 
 think, and it might be difficult to disprove them. In fact, I myself have 
 been pained and sickened at heart many times by hearing working men 
 themselves admit all that the lawyer and the business man said of them ; 
 but, as I told the minister and the employer, Christianity and advancing 
 civilization is opposed to waste, sloth and drunkenness, and as a result 
 man is destined to overcome these sooner or later. And now I say to all 
 who agree with the lawyer and the business man that the human family 
 
 92 
 
is on the upward trend; that it is no longer satisfied to live a life in 
 which only the appetites are gratified; that these animal appetites will 
 more and more give way to the pleasures of intellectual pursuits and 
 the joys of spiritual growth, and that as time advances there will be a 
 change in the organization of society to encourage, rather than dis- 
 courage, these higher ideals. 
 
 The Citizen Yet to Come. 
 
 The man of the future will be too great to continue to be a wor- 
 shiper of Gold. The possibilities of the race, and the destiny marked 
 out for humanity, forbid that he shall continue to exploit, oppress and 
 murder his brother man. The man of the future will seek life and 
 everything that makes for life. To enforce this view, I desire to use 
 the following words of Christ, but in doing so I want to strip them of 
 the superstition that has prevented them from being understood. I 
 want them to mean what Christ intended them to mean, and not what 
 some theologian of the misty past thought they meant. To accomplish 
 my purpose, I use the text as given in the latest and most approved re- 
 visions of the New Testament, and wish the reader to place especial 
 emphasis upon the word “man:” “For what doth it profit a man , to 
 gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what should a man 
 give in exchange for his life?” 
 
 The greedy, the covetous, the unenlightened, the savage, those 
 who delight in seeing others suffer, and those who delight in an abund- 
 ance so as to make a distinction between themselves and their neigh- 
 bors, the insane (for love is the only sanity), those beings called men, 
 but not having much larger souls than the animal that roams over the 
 earth, those whose souls have been dwarfed or destroyed by strife and 
 butchery — all these may find gratification in trying to gain the whole 
 world, but a man , he who is made in the image of God, and who must 
 ultimately attain to the perfection of God (see Matt. 5: 48 and Lev. 
 19: 2) — a man values life more than gold, more than the whole world. 
 
 “We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; 
 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 
 We should count time by heart throbs; he lives most 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.” 
 
 The destiny of the race decrees that, sooner or later, we shall learn 
 that “a man’s true life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth” ; that generosity, fraternity, cooperation and peace 
 expand and develop the soul, and that these must become the rule of 
 action if man would enjoy life in its fullness. 
 
 93 
 
Dwarfed by Competition. 
 
 When we see these truths, when the real meaning of them dawns 
 upon us, no man will be content to spend all his time upon that which 
 pertains to the mere animal necessities, thus allowing no time for those 
 deeds in which the soul really delights, no time for noble thoughts, no 
 time for the play of our real feelings. But, under capitalism, under the 
 system of private business, under competition, there can be no time for 
 these things, for unless you are intent every moment upon securing 
 these necessities your competitors will deprive you of them. 
 
 I have in mind a manufacturer (and there are hundreds more like 
 him) who leaves his home every morning at 6 o’clock to go to his fac- 
 tory, takes a lunch with him, and returns at 6 o’clock in the evening. 
 He makes one trip on Sunday to see that everything is safe. He has 
 been doing this for ten years, ever since I knew him. In that time he 
 has never developed his intellect, nor made any discovery in the arts, 
 or in science, or in invention; nor has he developed a taste for art, 
 music, or literature. He has never even left his home for a visit, except 
 one time for two days, and then he told me he had no enjoyment for 
 fear all would not go well at the factory. 
 
 I have in mind professional men — lawyers, doctors and others — 
 who tell me they can never take a vacation in order to refresh themselves 
 and permit their souls to expand, because if they do their practice would 
 suffer. They say this close application to their work is necessary to 
 their success. What they here mean by success is making a living, or 
 making a fortune. Suppose they do succeed according to these stan- 
 dards: By the time they do it they will be ready for the grave — and 
 
 what have they accomplished? They are mere clods, with no soul, with 
 no sense of the beauty or joy of living. They have been a failure in 
 the end.. They have done no more than the animal which left free to 
 itself, goes about from day to day seeking its food and after a season 
 of such an existence dies. They have not made the progress toward a 
 higher and nobler humanity that should have and could have been made. 
 I do not deny the fact, however, that they have been subject to the law 
 of their environment, and all that I or anyone can ask of them (and 
 we ask it for their own good) is that they do not oppose economic free- 
 dom, which means their emancipation. 
 
 Recently, in passing over one of our great trunk lines, I beheld 
 scenes that made my soul sick. In the mining regions, at the coke 
 ovens, at the railroad camps, in the factory towns, I saw on every hand 
 whole families living in houses of one or two rooms. At the doors and 
 
 94 
 
windows of these stables (for that is all they are, as there is no archi- 
 tectural beauty, no paint, no home comforts, nothing to elevate the oc- 
 cupants) old hags in filth and dirt, little children in rags, and old, worn- 
 out men whom modern commercialism had thrown upon the junk heap, 
 appeared. As the train passed the old men and women stood mute and 
 motionless, staring vacantly, while the children, full of the activity of 
 youth, gave the well-known passing salute by vigorously waving 
 their hands. 
 
 I looked at these people, and this thought came into my mind : These 
 old hags and these old, worn-out laborers show us the inevitable doom 
 of these children. Under capitalism they are doomed to be merely 
 beasts of burden, with no opportunity for a higher life, or for a broader 
 outlook. But, until the imagination is dead and hope forever destroyed, 
 destiny decrees that the vision of a brighter day shall spring up in the 
 hearts of every generation. This explains why the editor of London 
 Truth declares: “To better the lot of the 42,000,000 people of the 
 British Empire is my sole aim. I would exchange our whole empire 
 for the knowledge that there will be fewer suffering from want in the 
 British Isles and that the toiling millions of which our population is 
 mainly composed will find life better worth living.” 
 
 Some Things Indicating the Trend of Man’s Destiny. 
 
 Among some of the things that indicate the direction of human 
 destiny is the fading away of race hatred and the jealousy of nations. 
 
 The transcontinental express train, the swift ocean steamship, the 
 telegraph, the telephone, the submarine cable, the wireless system of 
 communication, have practically annihilated distance, thus rendering 
 intercourse easy and increasing travel enormously. All these will soon 
 make the whole earth as a single city and all the people as neighbors — 
 thus again showing how invention compels the unity and solidarity of 
 the race. 
 
 Those now living, but whose ideas and instincts belong to the past, 
 who are going about preaching race hatred and defending a decompos- 
 ing organization of society that breeds class strife, are only bringing 
 a curse upon themselves and still further dwarfing the very small souls 
 they may possess. Their efforts to drive humanity into fraticidal strife 
 is destined to miserable failure, for the trend of society is not in that 
 direction. 
 
 With humanity thus merged into one great family, not only in 
 name but in fact, comes the need and the desire for a simple, easy means 
 of communication, a universal language. Several attempts have been 
 
 95 
 
made in this direction in the past. They have not proved the success 
 that was hoped for them. But this very failure means that success will 
 sooner or later come. Temporary failure is a part of the process that 
 man must go through on his way to success. This has been true of 
 everything that he ever did, and of every success that he ever achieved 
 that was worth while. 
 
 In this matter of a universal language, the period of failure seems 
 to have been passed and from indications on every hand, we have at 
 last a language that is destined to become a vehicle of thought and com- 
 munication for the whole world. This is the invention of Dr. Zamenhof 
 of Warsaw, Russia. Leading scholars, educators, scientists and phi- 
 lologists the world over are studying it and recommending it as a means 
 of intercommunication between learned men, and as being of advantage 
 in scientific research and in invention. Those interested in missionary 
 work and in the advance of the gospel should easily see how much it 
 means to them in this direction. 
 
 Of this language the North American Review has this to say : “As 
 a result of painstaking inquiries made personally in France and in 
 England, and through agents in Germany and in Switzerland, we have 
 become convinced that Esperanto will soon be recognized the world 
 over as a language capable of universal use, and that it will be generally 
 adopted and acquired. The primary cause of its success undoubtedly 
 may be found in the ease with which it can be acquired.’’ 
 
 What a long step this will be toward the unity and solidarity of the 
 human family. Difference in language has always been a cause for di- 
 vision among the peoples of the earth. In many instances conquerors 
 have ruthlessly stamped out native tongues in order to more thoroughly 
 subjugate. In fact, it was the bitter race hatred existing between the 
 Jew and the Slav, both living in Warsaw, but each speaking a language 
 that the other could not understand, that first suggested to Dr. Zamen- 
 hof the idea of working out and publishing this means of universal 
 communication. With the human family possessed of the means of un- 
 derstanding each other by a common language, and with mechanical 
 devices for flashing thought over ocean and over mountain summit, and 
 with economic and industrial freedom established in every nation, there 
 will exist a condition for the advancement of science, learning, inven- 
 tion, and for the upward march of the race, that has never entered the 
 mind of even the wildest dreamer. 
 
 And, as might have been expected, along with this progress comes 
 the most significant thing of all — the growing spirit of unity among the 
 working and the produucing classes. As Socialists interpreting history 
 
 96 
 
in the light of reason, and from the scientific standpoint, we have been 
 compelled to point out that in the past all history has been a series of 
 class struggles — the triumphant class establishing for a time such a form 
 of government as best subserved its own interests, and maintaining it 
 until another class became powerful enough to threaten or overthrow it, 
 when there came a period of reform, partial progress, and finally total 
 change. But with the rise of the working class the whole social struc- 
 ture is elevated ; the stigma and degradation today imposed upon this 
 class is abolished ; class distinctions are wiped out ; class struggles cease ; 
 all become workers together for the common good ; and, as there is no 
 class below the working class, there can be no return to any form of 
 slavery, but opportunity will be open and equal to all. 
 
 A truth of this kind assuming the proportions of a world move- 
 ment is something hitherto unknown, and it is pregnant with possibili- 
 ties. It means that war must cease ; that slavery of all forms must be 
 forever banished from men’s minds ; that unconscious, haphazard, par- 
 tial progress will give way to an intelligent, conscious probing into the 
 future, so that society will be forearmed and forewarned of the effects 
 of any and all changes that will result from new inventions, new labor- 
 saving devices and changed and changing social relations. As a re- 
 sult, instead of society being injured and shaken to its very foundations 
 by its own achievements, and then set back for decades (perhaps cen- 
 turies) until this injury is healed or outgrown, it will peacefully adjust 
 itself to these changes and go right on to the next stage of development 
 toward its manifest destiny. 
 
 But, still another thing that indicates the trend of man’s destiny is 
 the insistence of more and more of the people to have a part in all that 
 pertains to the good of the community. They insist upon such oppor- 
 tunities as will enable them to fit themselves for service in all useful 
 occupations. They insist upon stimulating the spirit of service in these 
 occupations. The weak, puerile ideas that dominate some full-grown 
 persons — that they, and certain others like them, are incapable of taking 
 part in questions of public policy, or of industrial progress — are being 
 held by a number that will rapidly decrease as time goes on. There is 
 no doubt that political freedom has made this the greatest nation of the 
 world, nor is there any doubt that economic freedom will save the world 
 from a return to barbarism and decay. We have passed through all 
 the stages of evolution of government from the one-man idea — the 
 king, absolutism — and have come along by the way of representative 
 government, until we are now ready for direct legislation by all the 
 people, in their collective capacity. This, pushed to its logical conclu- 
 
 97 
 
sion, means ultimately the wiping out of national boundaries, except 
 for administrative purposes, and the realization of the dream of the 
 ages — the confederation of the world. 
 
 It will not be denied that the people, in their collective capacity, 
 may, under any form of freedom, make mistakes; that there will still 
 be differences of opinion; that even the majority may be wrong; but 
 men will, by the logic of events, have grown to such greatness that the 
 minority will see the reasonableness of submitting to the will of the ma- 
 jority without strife and bloodshed, allowing time to show whether or 
 not the majority have proven wise, and knowing that there is always 
 going to be an opportunity to correct an error — a thing that cannot be 
 said so confidently under present conditions. The people, as a whole, 
 will be quick to correct any condition that is injuring them, when they 
 are free to do so, and when they see the truth. Men always settle their 
 differences according to the ethics and economics of the age in which 
 they live. The brute age is nearly gone, for there are many whose 
 souls are shocked at the slaughter of men for mastery; the age of 
 legalized theft is passing, and there are millions who are ready to give 
 it up as soon as they can ; the age of life, in its fullness, has appeared 
 upon the horizon. 
 
 The Inevitable. 
 
 About the time I was finishing this work, I was asked by the 
 editor of a labor paper why I took such an interest in this movement, 
 especially since he could not see how I was benefiting myself, and might 
 injure myself with my friends and neighbors if I did not keep quiet. 
 In answer to him, I must conclude as I began. I am compelled to be 
 interested. It is less a question of being hurt if I do than of being 
 hurt if I do not. As to remaining quiet, if he will explain to me why 
 Socrates did not remain quiet, why Christ did not, why Galileo did 
 not, why all who have ever made for progress and righteousness in the 
 world did not, then I shall be able to explain why I do not. 
 
 But he tells me that God has not brought about this heaven on 
 earth which I am advocating; that Christ could not do it; and that a 
 handful of Socialists cannot do it. To all of which I freely assent. 
 God has not done it, but God’s law has stood unchanged and unalter- 
 able, and whenever man has suffered enough and paid the penalty 
 sufficiently for his violation of this law he has taken a step toward the 
 light; Christ could not do it, but Christ pointed out this law in plain, 
 unmistakable terms, and then rested his case, knowing that whenever 
 humanity has endured all it can bear it has always taken a step toward 
 
 98 
 
the light ; a handful of Socialists cannot do it, because this is a question 
 for the whole people, but a handful of Socialists can point out the total 
 change that has taken place in our industrial and economic life during 
 the last half-century, and when the whole people are convinced that 
 their life is rendered miserable, and their souls dwarfed by their failure 
 to advance from a lower to a higher stage of civilization, they will 
 advance another step toward the goal which destiny has decreed for 
 them. 
 
 99 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Absolution, 87. 
 
 Acid Phosphate, 21. 
 
 Adulteration of food, 35, of seed, 
 28. 
 
 Advertising, 46. 
 
 Aged, The, 95. 
 
 Agents, life insurance, 83. 
 
 Anxiety, 71. 
 
 Appetites, animal, 93. 
 
 Apprentices, number limited by 
 Trade Unions, 39. 
 
 Army of unemployed, 37, of use- 
 lessly employed, 37. 
 
 Artists, 91. 
 
 Athens, 91. 
 
 Atkinson, Edward, 49. 
 
 B 
 
 Beatitudes, 85. 
 
 Beef cattle, 23; — Trust, 23. 
 Beggars, 38. 
 
 Bible, The, 79. 
 
 “Big Business,” 49. 
 
 Bills, 10, 48. 
 
 Brotherhood of man, 17, 88, laws 
 of, 88. 
 
 Brute age, 98. 
 
 Bucket shops, 41. 
 
 Business, 55, 56, “Big Business,” 
 57, modern, 47; — men, 47, 54, 
 92; — unnecessary, 46. 
 
 C 
 
 Cancer, 36, increase of, 36. 
 Capitalism, 30, opposed to the 
 common good, 16. 
 
 Capitalist class, 43, 51; — system, 
 19 , 33, regulation of, 33. 
 
 Caste, 84, system of, 65. 
 
 Cavalry march, 26. 
 
 Chicago University, 55. 
 
 Child labor, 32. 
 
 China, exports to, 58. 
 
 Christ, 32, 60, 93, 98; — example 
 of copied, 87; — second coming 
 of, 76. 
 
 Christian civilization, 58. 
 
 Christianity, 60, genuine, 89; — 
 practised, 89. 
 
 Christians, 60, 81; — • professing, 83. 
 
 Church, The, 60; — members, 60, 
 80, 82. 
 
 Cities, population of, 8. 
 
 Citizens of future, 93. 
 
 Civilization, Our, 39. 
 
 Classes, 13, 65, inferior, 64. 
 
 Class consciousness, 61, 95. 
 
 Class struggle, 55, 61, 67, 77, 97, 
 end of, 97. 
 
 Cleanliness, 17. 
 
 Clerks, 51. 
 
 Clothing, 8, 16, 17, 54, 71. 
 
 Cobbler’s bench, 8. 
 
 Collective idea, 22, progress with 
 farming class, 28. 
 
 College men, 56. 
 
 Commercialist, 54, 56, 69. 
 
 Communication, means of, 9. 
 
 Compensation, law of, 17, 37, 62, 
 64, 65, 86, 89. 
 
 Competition, 8, 9, 10, 40, 48, 50, 
 cause of waste, 46, cause of war, 
 49; — The cost of, 56; — 
 dwarfed by, 94. 
 
 Confederation of the world, 98. 
 
 Consumption, 16, 31, 36, cause 
 
 of, 35 - 
 
 Contracts with Gold, 83. 
 
 Cooperation, 28, 57, 72, 93, law of, 
 72, in farming, 27, benefits of, 25, 
 trend towards, 73. 
 
 Cooperative idea, 73; — Common- 
 wealth, 29, 42, 44, 72. 
 
 Cotton boll weevil, 15. 
 
 Couriers, 7, 9. 
 
 Courts of law, 43. 
 
 101 
 
Covetous person, The, 79. 
 
 Credit system, 47. 
 
 Crime, 63, increase of, 67, 80. 
 
 Criminals, 37, 40. 
 
 Crises, financial, 24. 
 
 Crops, bad, 24, good, 24. 
 
 Czar of Russia, 65. 
 
 D 
 
 Darwin, Charles Robert, 55. 
 
 Debt, 48. 
 
 Democracy, a larger, 13; — spirit 
 of, 75 - 
 
 Despotism, industrial, 90. 
 
 Destiny, 95, man’s, 90, of race, 
 93; — trend of, 95. 
 
 Determinism, economic, 29, 51. 
 
 Devil, The, 40; — up against the 
 machine, 40. 
 
 Direct legislation, 97. 
 
 Disease, 16, 63, preventable, 31; — 
 cause of, 34; — by impure 
 food, 36. 
 
 Dishonesty, 80. 
 
 Distance annihilated, 95. 
 
 “Dividing up,” 29, 46. 
 
 Doctors, 94. 
 
 E 
 
 Earthquakes, 57, 72, 75, 76. 
 
 Economic determinism, 51, 72, 83, 
 and priest class, 78. 
 
 Economy in production, 18; — 
 law of, 44; — Political, 55. 
 
 Editors, hired, 69. 
 
 Education, 51, 54, 61, 67, 71, efforts 
 for wasted, 53. 
 
 Educated men, 57. 
 
 Educator, The, 53, 54. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 63. 
 
 Employment, compensation for, 
 40; — uncertainty of, 40; — for 
 all, 72. 
 
 Engels, Frederick, 55. 
 
 England, condition of masses, 34. 
 
 Environment, 8, 33, 66, 86, 94. 
 
 Esperanto, 96. 
 
 Evolution, 66, 67, progress of in 
 mind, 11, industrial, 7, 84, law 
 of, 80. 
 
 Exchange direct prevented by 
 capitalism, 27. 
 
 Experience, 57. 
 
 Existence, struggle for, 71, 81. 
 Exploitation, 14. 
 
 Exploiters, 89. 
 
 Exports, 58. 
 
 Exposure, literature of, 57. 
 
 Express train, 95. 
 
 F 
 
 Factory, The, 8, 9,; — towns, 94. 
 Factories, conditions of, 34, as 
 slaughter houses for men, 31. 
 Faith in Christ, 32. 
 
 Faith, power of, 80. 
 
 Farm, boys on, 23, deterioration 
 of, 21, implements of, 8; — labor, 
 23; — losses, 23; — organiza- 
 tion, 29; — population, 29. 
 Farmer, 16, careless, 15, small, 
 17, conditions of, 24, deprivation 
 of, 25, exploitation of, 23, inde- 
 pendence of, 24. 
 
 Farmer class, 22, 24; — and in- 
 sanity, 23. 
 
 Farming, modern, 29; — condi- 
 tions changed, 25; — concentra- 
 tion of, 16. 
 
 Farms, The, 8, small, 26; — capi- 
 talization of, 29. 
 
 Fear, 61. 
 
 Feast, The, 88. 
 
 Fever, typhoid, 36, yellow, 76. 
 Finance, high, 29. 
 
 Financier, high, 54, 69. 
 
 Fire Departments, 59. 
 
 Fires, 72, destructive, 42. 
 
 Fitness of things, 20. 
 
 Floods, 72. 
 
 Food, 71, impure, 35, proper, 54; 
 
 — adulterateration of, 35, 81. 
 Fraud, practised on farmers, 27; 
 
 — under Socialism, 28. 
 
 Freedom, economic, 40, 54, 70, 82, 
 
 89, 90, 94, 97; — of conscience, 
 90; — of press, 90; — of speech, 
 
 90. 
 
 Frenzied finance, 41. 
 
 Fruit growing, 18; — for use, 16. 
 
 102 
 
G 
 
 Galileo, 98. 
 
 Gamblers, 38. 
 
 Gambling, 24, 44. 
 
 Gentile nations, 71. 
 
 “Gentlemen”, 37, 40. 
 
 Ghent, W. J., 31. 
 
 God, 16, 32, 75, 98, power of, 40, 
 law of, 83; — ideas concerning, 
 81. 
 
 Gods, many under capitalism, 82. 
 Gold, 46, 56, a god, 82, 84, wor- 
 ship of, 93, kingdom of, 71; — 
 greed for, 63; — as an incentive, 
 82; — lives blasted by, 67; — 
 to be dethroned, 84. 
 
 Golden Rule, 46, 62, 72, 80, 83, 87, 
 88, violated, 17. 
 
 Good men, 66. 
 
 Gorky, Maxim, 64. 
 
 Gospel, benefits of, 80. 
 
 Government, collectively admin- 
 istered, 97, participation in, 13. 
 Great man, The, 70, 75. 
 
 Greedy, The, 93. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hand tools, 9. 
 
 Happiness, 9. 
 
 Health, 16, 37, law of, violated, 63. 
 Heathen, The, 89. 
 
 Hebrew race, 73. 
 
 Heine, Heinrich, 90. 
 
 Hell, 50. 
 
 Heralds, 7. 
 
 Hill, James J., 18, 22. 
 
 History, 55, materialistic interpre- 
 tation of, 55, revelation of, 61. 
 Home, The, 9, a factory, 8. 
 
 Homes for the people, 47. 
 
 Honest man, The, 37. 
 
 Honesty, 48. 
 
 Human family, a unit, 62. 
 
 Human relations, laws of, 32, 50, 
 62, 63, 98. 
 
 I 
 
 Ideas, 90. 
 
 Ignorance, 28, 61, 67, 71, examples 
 of, 91. 
 
 Ignorant, The, 91. 
 
 Illiterates, 53. 
 
 Imperative mandate, 14. 
 
 Incentive, 17, 81, of capitalism, 28, 
 42. 
 
 India, 61, 65. 
 
 Individuality, 72. 
 
 Individualism, 14, 15. 
 
 Industrial democracy, 72. 
 
 Industrial development, law of, 88. 
 Infant mortality, 31. 
 
 Inheritance, law of, 52, 53 ,54. 
 Inhumanity, man’s, 32. 
 
 Initiative, 14. 
 
 Insanity, 23, 37. 
 
 Insects, 15, 23. 
 
 Inspectors, 28, 43. 
 
 Inspection of food, 17. 
 
 Installment plan, 47, 48. 
 
 Instincts, human, 63. 
 
 Insurance, 44, among the poor, 44; 
 
 — basis of, 45; — life, 44; — be- 
 coming mutual, 45; — surplus, 
 waste of, 44. 
 
 Intelligence, increasing, 51. 
 Intelligent, The, 54. 
 
 Interest, 13, 20. 
 
 “Interests,” The, 57. 
 
 Inventions, 8, 57, 67, advance of, 
 96, effects of, 97. 
 
 Irrigation, 21. 
 
 J 
 
 Japan, 58, 64, exports to, 58. 
 
 Jesus, 67; — and the new birth, 70; 
 
 — and the co-operative idea, 73; 
 
 — and the feast, 86; — • method 
 of, 87. 
 
 Job, constant, 25. 
 
 Jobs, 10, 33, honorable, 51. 
 
 John the Baptist, 67. 
 
 Judas, 79. 
 
 Judging others, law of, 85. 
 
 Jungle, The, 36. 
 
 K 
 
 Kingdom of God, 62, 68, 71, law of, 
 68; — and the rich man, 70. 
 Kingdom of Heaven, 58, 59, 62, 66, 
 67> 75, spirit of, 72, advance of 
 hindered, 68, evolution of, 67; 
 growth of, 68; — and this world. 
 
6 g; — shut against men, 69; — and 
 the workers, 71; — and great 
 men, 75; — and the poor, 78; 
 
 — keys of, 75; — why not re- 
 alized, 80; — and incentives, 81. 
 
 L 
 
 Labor cost, 25, 26, 27. 
 
 Labor, division of, 7, 53, import- 
 ance of, 30; — life of, 48; — full 
 product of, 26, 56, 59; — waste 
 of, 40, 45; — movement, 73; • — 
 producing necessities of life, 46. 
 
 Labor market, 10, 33, 35. 
 
 Labor Union, 10, opposing trade 
 schools, 39. 
 
 Lamps, kerosene, 9. 
 
 Land, scarcity of, 20, speculation 
 in, 19, value of, 21, waste of, 19, 
 arid, 21. 
 
 Language, a universal, 95. 
 
 Law, 60, 63, violated, 87, violation 
 of in India, 61, of the teachable 
 ones, 85. 
 
 Laws, unity of controlling man, 84. 
 
 Lawson, Thomas W., 41, 57. 
 
 Lawyers, 38, 42, 51, 91, 92, 94, bene- 
 fited by strife, 44. 
 
 Leaders, 32. 
 
 Learning, advance of, 96. 
 
 Learning, a trade, 39. 
 
 Leisure, 54. 
 
 Libraries, public, 51. 
 
 Life, 93, industrial, 8; — destroyers 
 of, 63; — dependent on money, 
 81; — the fullness of, 98; — love 
 of, 30; — laws of, 61, 70; — in- 
 surance officials, 44. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 63. 
 
 Liquor traffic, 64. 
 
 Litigation, 42, 46. 
 
 Living, making a, 45, by wits, 38. 
 
 Lumpy jaw in cattle, 36. 
 
 Lying, 48. 
 
 M 
 
 Machine, The, 57, 72, 81, increasing 
 productivity of, 38, law of, 88; 
 
 — the power of God, 40; — saving 
 grace of, 40. 
 
 Machinery, 8, labor saving, 17, 
 spraying, 16. 
 
 Majority, will of, 98. 
 Manufacturing for use, 59. 
 Manufactures, surplus of, 59. 
 Market, The, 8, foreign, 58, strug- 
 gle for, 59. 
 
 Marx, Karl, 5. 
 
 Masses, freedom of, 68. 
 
 Master and servant, 84. 
 
 Meats, decayed, 35. 
 
 Meek, The, 79, law of, 85. 
 
 Men, value of, 33. 
 
 Merchants, 38. 
 
 Merciful, law of, 85. 
 
 Middle men, 25. 
 
 Militia, 49. 
 
 Millenium, 81. 
 
 Millionaires, 7, 44, 45, 80, 87, how 
 made, 92. 
 
 Mind, capitalistic, 20; — relation to 
 health, 37. 
 
 Money, 46, a bait, 46, demand for, 
 12; — making, 54; — and life, 81. 
 Monopoly, 8. 
 
 Mt. Vesuvius, 76. 
 
 Muck-rakers, 57. 
 
 Myers, P. V. N., 55. 
 
 N 
 
 Needy, caring for, 45. 
 Neill-Reynolds Commission, 36. 
 New birth, The, 70- 
 News Bureaus, 41. 
 
 New Testament, 93. 
 
 Nicodemus, 70. 
 
 O 
 
 Observation, 57. 
 
 Officials, petty, 14. 
 
 Ownership, government, 58. 
 
 P 
 
 Panics, 24, of 1907, 38. 
 
 Parables of Christ, 66, of the drag 
 net, 66, of the laborers in vine- 
 yard, 71, of the leaven, 67, of the 
 mustard seed, 68, of seed cast in 
 ground, 68. 
 
 Parasites, 28, 38, 42, 44, 45, 54. 
 Parks, public, 59. 
 
 104 
 
R 
 
 Pasadena, Calif., 47. 
 
 Paupers 38. 
 
 Payne, Dr. W. H., 52. 
 
 Peace, 93, on earth, 56, universal, 
 75, capitalistic more horrible 
 than war, 31. 
 
 Penalty for violation of law, 64. 
 Peonage, 64. 
 
 Perfection, human, 86. 
 
 Pericles, Age of, 91. 
 
 Pestilence, 76. 
 
 Phillips, David Graham, 57. 
 Philosophers, 91. 
 
 Plague, The, 61. 
 
 Poets, 91. 
 
 Police departments, 59. 
 
 Politicians, 38, 40, 42, 52, 54, low, 
 69, corrupt, 44. 
 
 Poor, The, 78, a curse, 79. 
 Population, increase of, 22. 
 
 Post office, U. S., 59. 
 
 Poverty, 17, 31, 53, 63, increase of, 
 67, parent of crime, 34, of India, 
 61, question of, 80, sorrow for, 67. 
 Prayer, Lord’s, 69. 
 
 Preachers, 51, 69, 79, 82, 92. 
 Premiums, life insurance, 44. 
 
 Press, The religious, 41. 
 Priesthood, The, 89. 
 
 Privileged classes, 88. 
 
 Producing classes, 21. 
 
 Production for profit, 57. 
 
 Profit, 13, 16, 21, 33, 39, 44, 56, 
 
 idea, 46, takers, 33, iniquity of, 
 
 34, in impure food, 35, elimina- 
 tion of, 43. 
 
 Progress, 40, 50, conscious, 67, 
 
 economic, 66; — interfered with, 
 28; — door of unlocked, 53; — 
 industrial, 66; — River of, 11. 
 Proletariat, educated, 51. 
 
 Property, destruction of, 42. 
 
 Public ownership, 59. 
 
 Public school, 12, 59. 
 
 Public spirited, 48. 
 
 Punishment, 63. 
 
 Q 
 
 Questions, national, 16, state, 16. 
 
 Railroad camps, 94, commissioners, 
 42. 
 
 Railroading, 9, 48. 
 
 Real estate agents, 20. 
 
 Recall, right of, 14. 
 
 Reeve, Sidney A., 56. 
 
 Referendum, 14 
 Rent, 13, 1 6, 21. 
 
 Religion, 89, defined, 89, the Chris- 
 ian, 60. 
 
 Repentance, 67. 
 
 Rich, The, 51; — man, 70. 
 
 Riches, accumulation of, 82. 
 Roosevelt, President, 18, 36. 
 Russell, Charles Edward, 23, 36, 57. 
 Russia, ruling class of, 65. 
 
 S 
 
 Saloon, The, 47, 63, 64, for work- 
 ers, 92. 
 
 San Francisco, 76. 
 
 San Jose scale, 15. 
 
 Savings, 47, banks, 47. 
 
 Schools, The public, 51, 52, 59; — 
 manual training opposed by cap- 
 italism, 39; — public and Social- 
 ism, 52. 
 
 Science, advance of, 96. 
 
 Seed adulteration, 28. 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, 46, 62, 88. 
 Servant, 75. 
 
 Sewage, 47. 
 
 Shaw, Leslie M., 58. 
 
 Signs, advertising, 41. 
 
 Sinclair, Upton, 36. 
 
 Sites, building, 21. 
 
 Slave, The, 63. 
 
 Slavery, 63, mental, 80, banished, 
 97 - 
 
 Sloth, 92. 
 
 Slums, The, 34. 
 
 Small, Albion W., 55. 
 
 Social conditions in America, 34. 
 Socialism, 8, 15, 46, what it is, 59, 
 inevitable, 11, 54, 55, 98, demand- 
 ed by natural law, 14, result of 
 evolution, 50. 
 
Socialist, ideal of, 89; — and King- 
 dom of Heaven, 72; — and war, 
 775 — not atheistic, 83; — work 
 of, 99. 
 
 Society, debasement of, 39; — lady, 
 86; — preservation of, 12. 
 Sociology, 55. 
 
 Socrates, 98. 
 
 Solidarity, human, 32, 40, 62, 90, 95, 
 96, of race recognized, 72. 
 
 Souls of men, 62. 
 
 Stage coach, 7, 9. 
 
 State lines, 15. 
 
 States’ rights, 16. 
 
 Steffens, Lincoln, 57. 
 
 St. Louis, advertising, 41. 
 
 Stocks, depreciation of, 48. 
 
 Strife, 50, between useful workers 
 and parasites, 38. 
 
 Strikes, 49, cost of, 49. 
 
 Strong, Dr. Josiah, 31. 
 
 Success, 40. 
 
 Suffering, human, 28, 66, 69, cause 
 of, 32. 
 
 Suicide, 67, among farmer class, 23. 
 Superstition, 28, 61, 87. 
 
 Sycophants, 10. 
 
 “System,” The, 57 - 
 
 T 
 
 Talents, individual, 54. 
 
 Tallow candle, 9. 
 
 Tax collector, 12. 
 
 Teachers, 51. 
 
 Teague, Merrill A., 41. 
 
 Telegraph system, 9. 
 
 Temperance societies, 47. 
 
 Theft, legalized, 98. 
 
 Theologians, 62, 87. 
 
 Tramps, 40, 80. 
 
 Transportation, 9. 
 
 Travel, 95. 
 
 Trust, a national, 58. 
 
 Truth, The, 46, 52, 54; — London, 
 95 - 
 
 Truths, new, 91. 
 
 U 
 
 Uncertainty, 63. 
 
 Unemployed, The, 33, 46. 
 
 Unity, 95, of human family, 16, 17, 
 77 , 96, natural law of, controlling 
 mankind, 84, of race in belief, 84, 
 of workers, 96. 
 
 Upheavals, 77, industrial, 77. 
 
 Useful work looked upon as dis- 
 honorable, 38, unprofitable, 38. 
 Uselessly employed, 43, 46, 47, in- 
 crease of, 38 
 
 V 
 
 Vagrants, 40. 
 
 Veblen, Thorstein, 55. 
 
 Vice, 63. 
 
 Vote, The majority, 13. 
 
 W 
 
 Wallace, Alfred Russell, 55. 
 
 Wall street, 44. 
 
 “Wanted” experienced help, 39. 
 War, 13, 49, 59, 75, 76, 85, cost of, 
 49, cost of in life, 50, of con- 
 quest, 67, waste of, 26, Russo- 
 Japanese, 58; — and the King- 
 dom of Heaven, 75; — end of, 97. 
 Wash woman, 16. 
 
 Waste, 30, 34, 92, in land, 21, on 
 farm, 22, 26, of energy, 25, of 
 labor, 30, 31, 40, by diverting 
 effort, 39, by insurance methods, 
 43, through poverty, 31, by use- 
 less employment, 37, by un- 
 employment, 37, by advertising, 
 40, by litigation, 42, by unneces- 
 sary business, 46, by modern 
 business, 47, by adulteration and 
 fraud, 27; • — by war, strikes, etc., 
 49; — -sewage, 47; — • by the sa- 
 loon, 47; — preventation of, 18. 
 Weak-minded, The, 39. 
 
 Wealth, concentration of, 67, ex- 
 cessive, 63; — producers, 20. 
 Weevil, cotton boll, 15. 
 
 Welfare, material, 56. 
 
 Work, regular, 40, right to, 10, use- 
 ful, 38, 40, 81, for the child, 38. 
 Workers, The, 10, 46, 71, 91, homes 
 of, 34 - 
 
 Working class, 44, 51, 54, rise of, 
 97, triumph of, 43, relation of to 
 cooperation, 28. 
 
 106 
 
Workmen, injury to, 30; killing 
 of, 31. 
 
 Working men as interpreters of 
 gospel, 78. 
 
 World, confederation of, 98, end 
 of, 76. 
 
 Worth of things, 20. 
 
 Y 
 
 Yellow fever, 16. 
 
 Z 
 
 Zamenhof, Dr. L. L., 96. 
 Zoology, 57. 
 
 107