It does not mean that if a quick, efficient workman, with good tools, takes a day to make a coat, while another workman, who is slow, clumsy and inefficient, and has only poor tools, takes six days to make a table that the table will be worth six coats upon the market. That would be a foolish proposition, Jonathan. It would mean that if one workman made a coat in one day, while another workman took two days to make exactly the same kind of coat, that the one made by the slow, inefficient workman would bring twice as much as the other, even though they were so much alike that they could not be distinguished one from the other.

Only an ignoramus could believe that. No Socialist writer ever made such a foolish claim, yet all the attacks upon the economic principles of Socialism are based upon that idea!

Now that I have told you what it does not mean, let me try to make plain just what it does mean. I shall use a very simple illustration which you can readily apply to the whole of industry for yourself. If it ordinarily takes a day to make a coat, if that is the average time taken, and it also takes on an average a day to make a table, then, also on an average, one coat will be worth just as much as one table. But I must explain that it is not possible to bring the production of coats and tables down to the simple measurement. When the tailor takes the piece of cloth to cut out the coat, he has in that material something that already embodies human labor. Somebody had to weave that cloth upon a loom. Before that somebody had to make the loom. And before that loom could make cloth somebody had to raise sheep and shear them to get the wool. And before the carpenter could make the table, somebody had to go into the forest and fell a tree, after which somebody had to bring that tree, cut up into planks or logs, to the carpenter. And before he could use the lumber somebody had to make the tools with which he worked.

I think you will understand now why I placed emphasis on the words "socially necessary." It is not possible for the individual buyer to ascertain just how much social labor is contained in a coat or a table, but their values are fixed by the competition and higgling which is the law of capitalism. "It jest works out so," as an old negro preacher said to me once.

I have said that competition is the law of capitalism. All political economists recognize that as true. But we have, as I have explained in a former letter, come to a point where capitalism has broken away from competition in many industries. We have a state of affairs under which the economic laws of competitive society do not apply. Monopoly prices have always been regarded as exceptions to economic law.

If this technical economic discussion seems a little bit difficult, I beg you nevertheless to try and master it, Jonathan. It will do you good to think out these questions. Perhaps I can explain more clearly what is meant by monopoly conditions being exceptional. All through the Middle Ages it was the custom for governments to grant monopolies to favored subjects, or to sell them in order to raise ready money. Queen Elizabeth, for instance, granted and sold many such monopolies.

A man who had a monopoly of something which nearly everybody had to use could fix his own price, the only limit being the people's patience or their ability to pay. The same thing is true of patented articles and of monopolies granted to public service corporations. Generally, it is true, in the franchises of these corporations, nowadays, there is a price limit fixed beyond which they must not go, but it is still true that the normal competitive economic law has been set aside by the creation of monopoly.

When a trust is formed, or when there is a price agreement, or what is politely called "an understanding among gentlemen" to that effect, a similar thing happens. We have monopoly prices.

This is an important thing for the working class, though it is sometimes forgotten. How much your wages will secure in the way of necessities is just as important to you as the amount of wages you get. In other words, the amount you can get in comforts and commodities for use is just as important as the amount you can get in dollars and cents. Sometimes money wages increase while real wages decrease. I could fill a book with statistics to show this, but I will only quote one example. Professor Rauschenbusch cites it in his excellent book, Christianity and the Social Crisis, a book I should like you to read, Jonathan. He quotes Dun's Review, a standard financial authority, to the effect that what $724 would buy in 1897 it took $1013 to buy in 1901.

I know that I could make your wife see the importance of this, my friend. She would tell you that when from time to time you have announced that your wages were to be increased five or ten per cent. she has made plans for spending the money upon little home improvements, or perhaps for laying it aside for the dreaded "rainy day." Perhaps she thought of getting a new rug, or a new sideboard for the dining-room; or perhaps it was a piano for your daughter, who is musical, she had set her heart on getting. The ten per cent. increase seemed to make it all so easy and certain! But after a little while she found that somehow the ten per cent. did not bring the coveted things; that, although she was just as careful as could be, she couldn't save, nor get the things she hoped to get.

Often you and I have heard the cry of trouble: "I don't know how or why it is, but though I get ten per cent. more wages I am no better off than before."

The Socialist theory of value is all right, my friend, and has not been disturbed by the assaults made upon it by a host of little critics. But Socialists have always known that the laws of competitive society do not apply to monopoly, and that the monopolist has an increased power to exploit and oppress the worker. That is one of the chief reasons why we demand that the great monopolies be transformed into common, or social, property.

The fourth principle of Socialist economics is that the wages of the workers represent only a part of the value of their labor product. The remainder is divided among the non-producers in rent, interest and profit. The fortunes of the rich idlers come from the unpaid-for labor of the working class. This is the great theory of "surplus value," which economists are so fond of attacking.

I am not going to say much about the controversy concerning this theory, Jonathan. In the first place, you are not an economist, and there is a great deal in the discussion which is wholly irrelevant and unprofitable; and, in the second place, you can study the question for yourself. There are excellent chapters upon the subject in Vail's Principles of Scientific Socialism, Boudin's The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, and Hyndman's Economics of Socialism. You will also find a simple exposition of the subject in my Socialism, A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles. It will also be well to read Wage-Labor and Capital, a five cent booklet by Karl Marx.

But you do not need to be an economist to understand the essential principles of this theory of surplus value and to judge of its truth. I have never flattered you, Jonathan, as you know; I am in earnest when I say that I am content to leave the matter to your own judgment. I attach more importance to your decision, based upon a plain, matter-of-fact observation of actual life, than to the opinion of many a very learned economist cloistered away from the real world in a musty atmosphere of books and mental abstractions. So think it out for yourself, my friend.

You know that when a man takes a job as a wage-worker, he enters into a contract to give something in return for a certain amount of money. What is it that he thus sells? Not his actual labor, but his power and will to labor. In other words, he undertakes to exert himself in a manner desired by the capitalist who employs him for so much an hour, so much a day, or so much a week as the case may be.

Now, how are the wages fixed? What determines the amount a man gets for his labor? There are several factors. Let us consider them one by one:

First, the man must have enough to keep himself alive and able to work. If he does not get that much he will die, or be unfit to work. Second, in order that the race may be maintained, and that there may be a constant supply of labor, it is necessary that men as a rule should have families. So, as we saw in a quotation from Adam Smith in an earlier letter, the wages must, on an average, be enough to keep, not only the man himself but those dependent upon him. These are the bottom requirements of wages.

Now, the tendency is for wages to keep somewhere near this bottom level. If nothing else interfered they would always tend to that level. First of all, there is no scientific organization of the labor force of the world. Sometimes the demand for labor in a particular trade exceeds the supply, and then wages rise. Sometimes the supply is greater than the demand, and then wages drop toward the bottom level. If the man looking for a job is so fortunate as to know that there are many places open to him, he will not accept low wages; on the other hand, if the employer knows that there are ten men for every job, he will not pay high wages. So, as with the prices of things in general, supply and demand enter into the question of the price of labor in any given time or place.

Then, also, by combination workingmen can sometimes raise their wages. They can bring about a sort of monopoly-price for their labor-power. It is not an absolute monopoly-price, however, for the reason that, almost invariably, there are men outside of the unions, whose competition has to be withstood. Also, the means of production and the accumulated surplus belong to the capitalists so that they can generally starve the workers into submission, or at least compromise, in any struggle aiming at the establishment of monopoly-prices for labor-power.

But there is one thing the workers can never do, except by destroying capitalism: they cannot get wages equal to the full value of their product. That would destroy the capitalist system, which is based upon profit-making. All the luxury and wealth of the non-producers is wrung from the labor of the producers. You can see that for yourself, Jonathan, and I need not argue it further.

I do not care very much whether you call the part of the wealth which goes to the non-producers "surplus value," or whether you call it something else. The name is not of great importance to us. We care only for the reality. But I do want you to get firm hold of the simple fact that when an idler gets a dollar he has not earned, some worker must get a dollar less than he has earned.

Don't be buncoed by the word-jugglers who tell you that the profits of the capitalists are the "fruits of abstinence," or the "reward of managing ability," sometimes also called the "wages of superintendence."

These and other attempted explanations of capitalists' profits are simply old wives' fables, Jonathan. Let us look for a minute at the first of these absurd attempts to explain away the fact that profit is only another name for unpaid-for labor. You know very well that abstinence never yet produced anything. If I have a dollar in my pocket and I say to myself, "I will not spend this dollar: I will abstain from using it," the dollar does not increase in any way. It remains just a dollar and no more. If I have a loaf of bread or a bottle of wine and say to myself, "I will not use this bread, or this wine, but will keep it in the cup-board," you know very well that I shall not get any increase as a result of my abstinence. I do not get anything more than I actually save.

Now, I am perfectly willing that any man shall have all that he can save out of his own earnings. If no man had more there would be no need of talking about "legislation to limit fortunes," no need of protest against "swollen fortunes."

But now suppose, friend Jonathan, that while I have the dollar, representing my "abstinence," in my pocket, a man who has not a dollar comes to me and says, "I really must have a dollar to get food for my wife and baby, or they will die. Lend me a dollar until next week and I will pay you back two dollars." If I lend him the dollar and next week take his two dollars, that is what is called the reward of my abstinence. But in truth it is something quite different. It is usury. Just because I happen to have something the other fellow has not got, and which he must have, he is compelled to pay me interest. If he also had a dollar in his pocket, I could get no interest from him.

It would be just the same if I had not abstained from anything. If, for example, I had found the dollar which some other careful fellow had lost, I could still get interest upon it. Or if I had inherited money from my father, it might happen that, so far from being abstemious and thrifty, I had been most extravagant, while the fellow who came to borrow had been very thrifty and abstemious, but still unable to provide for his family. Yet I should make him pay me interest.

As a matter of fact, my friend, the rich have not abstained from anything. They have not accumulated riches out of their savings, through abstaining from buying things. On the contrary, they have bought and enjoyed the costliest things. They have lived in fine houses, worn costly clothing, eaten the choicest food, sent their sons and daughters to the most expensive schools and colleges.

From all of these things the workers have abstained, Jonathan. They have abstained from living in fine houses and lived in poor houses; they have abstained from wearing costly clothes and worn the cheapest and poorest clothes; they have abstained from choice food and eaten only food that is coarse and cheap; they have abstained from sending their sons and daughters to expensive schools and colleges and sent them only to the lower grades of the public schools. If abstinence were a source of wealth, the working people of every country would be rich, for they have abstained from nearly everything that is worth while.

There is one thing the rich have abstained from, however, which the poor have indulged in freely—and that is work. I never heard of a man getting rich through his own labor.

Even the inventor does not get rich by means of his own labor. To begin with, there is no invention which is purely an individual undertaking. I was talking the other day with one of the world's great inventors upon this subject. He was explaining to me how he came to invent a certain machine which has made his name famous. He explained that for many years men had been facing a great difficulty and other inventors had been trying to devise some means of meeting it. He had, therefore, to begin with, the experience of thousands of men during many years to give him a clear idea of what was required. And that was a great thing to start with, Jonathan.

Secondly, he had the experiments of all the numerous other inventors to guide him: he could profit by their failures. Not only did he know what to avoid, because that great fund of others' experience, but he also got many useful ideas from the work of some of the men who were on the right line without knowing it. "I could not have invented it if it were not for the men who went before me," he said.

Another point, Jonathan: In the wonderful machine the inventor was discussing there are wheels and levers and springs. Somebody had to invent the wheel, the lever and the spring before there could be a machine at all. Who was it, I wonder! Do you know who made the first wheel, or the first lever? Of course you don't! Nobody does. These things were invented thousands of years ago, when the race still lived in barbarism. Each age has simply extended their usefulness and efficiency. So it is wrong to speak of any invention as the work of one man. Into every great invention go the experience and experiments of countless others.

So much for that side of the question. Now, let us look at another side of the question which is sometimes lost sight of. A man invents a machine: as I have shown you, it is as much the product of other men's brains as of his own. It is really a social product. He gets a patent upon the machine for a certain number of years, and that patent gives him the right to say to the world "No one can use this machine unless he pays me a royalty." He does not use the machine himself and keep what he can make in competition with others' means of production. If no one chooses to use his machine, then, no matter how good a thing it may be, he gets nothing from his invention. So that even the inventor is no exception to my statement that no man ever gets rich by his own labor.

The inventor is not the real inventor of the machine: he only carries on the work which others began thousands of years ago. He takes the results of other people's inventive genius and adds his quota. But he claims the whole. And when he has done his work and added his contribution to the age-long development of mechanical modes of production, he must depend again upon society, upon the labor of others.

To return to the question of abstinence: I would not attempt to deny that some men have saved part of their income and by investing it secured the beginnings of great fortunes. I know that is so. But the fortunes came out of the labor of other people. Somebody had to produce the wealth, that is quite evident. And if the person who got it was not that somebody, the producer, it is as clear as noonday that the producer must have produced something he did not get.

No, my friend, the notion that profits are the reward of abstinence and thrift is stupid in the extreme. The people who enjoy the profit-incomes of the world, are, with few exceptions, people who have not been either abstemious or thrifty.

But perhaps you will say that, while this may be true of the people who to-day are getting enormous incomes from rent, interest or profit, we must go further back; that we must go back to the beginning of things when their fathers or their grandfathers began by investing their savings.

To that I have no objection whatever, provided only that you are willing to go back, not merely to the beginning of the individual fortune, but to the beginning of the system. If your grandfather, or great-grandfather, had been what is termed a thrifty and industrious man, working hard, living poor, working his wife and little ones in one long grind, all in order to save money to invest in business, you might now be a rich man; that is, supposing you were heir to their possessions.

That is not at all certain, for it is a fact that most of the men who have hoarded their individual savings and then invested them have been ruined and fooled. In the case of our railroads, for example, the great majority of the early investors of savings went bankrupt. They were swallowed up by the bigger fish, Jonathan. But assume it otherwise, assume that the grandfather of some rich man of the present day laid the foundation of the family fortune in the manner described, don't you see that the system of robbing the worker of his product was already established; that you must go back to the beginning of the system?

And when you trace capital back to its origin, my friend, you will always come to war or robbery. You can trace it back to the forcible taking of the land away from the people. When the machine came, bringing with it an industrial revolution, it was by the wealthy and the ruthless that the machine was owned, not by the poor toilers. In other words, my friends, there was simply a continuance of the old rule of a class of overlords, under another name.

If the abstinence theory is foolish, even more foolish is the notion that profits are the reward of managing ability, the wages of superintendence. Under primitive capitalism there was some justification for this view.

It was impossible to deny that the owner of a factory did manage it, that he was the superintendent, entitled as such to some reward. It was easy enough to say that he got a disproportionate share, but who was to decide just what his fair share would be?

But when capitalism developed and became impersonal that idea of the nature of profits was killed. When companies were organized they employed salaried managers, whose salaries were paid before profits were reckoned at all. To-day I can own shares in China and Australia while living all the time in the United States. Even though I have never been to those countries, nor seen the property I am a shareholder in, I shall get my profits just the same. A lunatic may own shares in a thousand companies and, though he is confined in a madhouse, his shares of stock will still bring a profit to his guardians in his name.

When Mr. Rockefeller was summoned to court in Chicago last year, he stated on oath that he could not tell anything about the business of the Standard Oil Company, not having had anything to do with the business for several years past. But he gets his profits just the same, showing how foolish it is to talk of profits as being the reward of managing ability and the wages of superintendence.

Now, Jonathan, I have explained to you pretty fully what Socialism is when considered as a philosophy of social evolution. I have also explained to you what Socialism is when considered as a system of economy. I could sum up both very briefly by saying that Socialism is a philosophy of social evolution which teaches that the great force which has impelled the race onward, determining the rate and direction of social progress, has come from man's tools and the mode of production in general: that we are now living in a period of transition, from capitalism to Socialism, motived by the economic forces of our time. Socialism is a system of economics, also. Its substance may be summed up in a sentence as follows: Labor applied to natural resources is the source of the wealth of capitalistic society, but the greatest part of the wealth produced goes to non-producers, the producers getting only a part, in the form of wages—hence the paradox of wealthy non-producers and penurious producers.

I have explained to you also that Socialism is not a scheme. There remains still to be explained, however, another aspect of Socialism, of more immediate interest and importance and interest. I must try to explain Socialism as an ideal, as a forecast of the future. You want to know, having traced the evolution of society to a point where everything seems to be in transition, where a change seems imminent, just what the nature of that change will be.

I must leave that for another letter, friend Jonathan, for this is over-long already. I shall not try to paint a picture of the future for you, to tell you in detail what that future will be like. I do not know: no man can know. He who pretends to know is either a fool or a knave, my friend. But there are some things which, I believe, we may premise with reasonable certainty These things I want to discuss in my next letter. Meantime, there are lots of things in this letter to think about.

And I want you to think, Jonathan Edwards!



IX

WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

(Continued)

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.—Isaiah.

But we are not going to attain Socialism at one bound. The transition is going on all the time, and the important thing for us, in this explanation, is not to paint a picture of the future—which in any case would be useless labor—but to forecast a practical programme for the intermediate period, to formulate and justify measures that shall be applicable at once, and that will serve as aids to the new Socialist birth.—W. Liebknecht.

At the head of this letter I have copied two passages to which I want you to give particular attention, Jonathan. The first consists of a part of a very beautiful word-picture, in which the splendid old Hebrew prophet described his vision of a perfect social state. In his Utopia it would no longer be true to speak of Nature as being red of tooth and claw. Even the lion would eat straw like the ox, so that there might not be suffering caused by one animal preying upon another. Whenever I read that chapter, Jonathan, I sit watching the smoke-wreaths curl out of my pipe and float away, and they seem to bear me with them to a land of seductive beauty. I should like to live in a land where there was never a cry of pain, where never drop of blood stained the ground.

There have been lots of Utopias besides that of the old Hebrew prophet. Plato, the great philosopher, wrote The Republic to give form to his dream of an ideal society. Sir Thomas More, the great English statesman and martyr, outlined his ideal of social relations in a book called Utopia. Mr. Bellamy, in our own day, has given us his picture of social perfection in Looking Backward. There have been many others who, not content with writing down their ideas of what society ought to be like, have tried to establish ideal conditions. They have established colonies, communities, sects and brotherhoods, all in the earnest hope of being able to attain the perfect social state.

The greatest of these experimental Utopians, Robert Owen, tried to carry out his ideas in this country. It would be well worth your while to read the account of his life and work in George Browning Lockwood's book, The New Harmony Communities. Owen tried to get Congress to adopt his plans for social regeneration. He addressed the members of both houses, taking with him models, plans, diagrams and statistics, showing exactly how things would be, according to his idea, in the ideal world. In Europe he went round to all the reigning sovereigns begging them to adopt his plans.

He wanted common ownership of everything with equal distribution; money would be abolished; the marriage system would be done away with and "free love" established; children would belong to and be reared by the community. Our concern with him at this point is that he called himself a Socialist and was, I believe, the first to use that word.

But the Socialists of to-day have nothing in common with such Utopian ideas as those I have described. We all recognize that Robert Owen was a beautiful spirit, one of the world's greatest humanitarians. He was, like the prophet Isaiah, a dreamer, a visionary. He had no idea of the philosophy of social evolution upon which modern Socialism rests; no idea of its system of economics. He saw the evils of private ownership and competition in the fiercest period of competitive industry, and wanted to replace them with co-operation and public ownership. But his point of view was that he had been inspired with a great idea, thanks to which he could save the world from all its misery. He did not realize that social changes are produced by slow evolution.

One of the principal reasons why I have dwelt at this length upon Owen is that he is a splendid representative of the great Utopia builders. The fact that he was probably the first man to use the word Socialism adds an element of interest to his personality also. I wanted to put Utopian Socialism before you so clearly that you would be able to contrast it at once with modern, scientific Socialism—the Socialism of Marx and Engels, upon which the great Socialist parties of the world are based; the Socialism that is alive in the world to-day. They are as opposite as the poles. It is important that you should grasp this fact very clearly, for many of the criticisms of Socialism made to-day apply only to the old utopian ideals and do not touch modern Socialism at all. In the letter you wrote me at the beginning of this discussion there are many questions which you could not have asked had you not conceived of Socialism as a scheme to be adopted.

People are constantly attacking Socialism upon these false grounds. They remind me of a story I heard in Wales many years ago. In one of the mountain districts a miner returned from his work one afternoon and found that his wife had bought a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus and hung it against the wall. He had never heard of Jesus, so the story goes, and his wife had to explain the meaning of the picture. She told the story in her simple way, laying much stress upon the fact that "the wicked Jews" had killed Jesus. But she forgot to say that it all happened about two thousand years ago.

Now, it happened not long after that the miner saw a Jew peddler come to the door of his cottage. The thought of the awful suffering of Jesus and his own Welsh hatred of oppression sufficed to fill him with resentment toward the poor peddler. He at once began to beat the unfortunate fellow in a terribly savage manner. When the peddler, between gasps, demanded to know why he had been so ill-treated, the miner dragged him into his kitchen and pointed to the picture of the crucifixion. "See what you did to that poor man, our Lord!" he thundered. To which the Jew very naturally responded: "But, my friend, that was not me. That was two thousand years ago!" The reply seemed to daze the miner for a moment. Then he said: "Two thousand years! Two thousand years! Why, I only heard of it last week!"

It is just as silly to attack the Socialism of to-day for the ideas held by the earlier utopian Socialists as beating that poor Jew peddler was.

Now then, friend Jonathan, turn back and read the second of the passages I have placed at the head of this letter. It is from the writings of one of the greatest of modern Socialists, the man who was the great political leader of the Socialist movement in Germany, Wilhelm Liebknecht.

You will notice that he says the transition to Socialism is going on all the time; that we are not to attain Socialism at one bound; that it is useless to attempt to paint pictures of the future; that we can forecast an immediate programme and aid the Socialist birth. These statements are quite in harmony with the outline of the Socialist philosophy of the evolution of society contained in my last letter.

So, if you ask me to tell you just what the world will be like when all people call themselves Socialists except a few reformers and "fanatics," earnest pioneers of further changes, I must answer you that I do not know. How they will dress, what sort of pictures artists will paint, what sort of poems poets will write, or what sort of novels men and women will read, I do not know. What the income of each family will be I cannot tell you, any more than I can tell you whether there will be any intercommunication between the inhabitants of this planet and of Mars; whether there will be an ambassador from Mars at the national capital.

I do not expect that the lion will eat straw like the ox; I do not expect that people will be perfect. I do not suppose that men and women will have become so angelic that there will never be any crime, suffering, anger, pain or sorrow; I do not expect disease to be forever banished from life in the Socialist regime. Still less do I expect that mechanical genius will have been so perfected that human labor will be no longer necessary; that perpetual motion will have been harnessed to great indestructible machines and work become a thing of the past. That dream of the German dreamer, Etzler, will never be realized, I hope.

I suppose that, under Socialism, there will be some men and women far wiser than others. There may be a few fools left! I suppose that some will be far juster and kinder than others. There may be some selfish brutes left with a good deal of hoggishness in their nature! I suppose that some will have to make great mistakes and endure the tragedies which men and women have endured through all the ages. The love of some men will die out, breaking the hearts of some women, I suppose, and there will be women whose love will bring them to ruin and death. I should not like to think of jails and brothels existing under Socialism, Jonathan, but for all I know they may exist. Whether there will be churches and paid ministers under Socialism, I do not know. I do not pretend to know.

I suppose that, under Socialism, there will be some people who will be dissatisfied. I hope so! Men and women will want to move to a higher plane of life, I hope. What they will call that plane I do not know; what it will be like I do not know. I suppose they will be opposed and persecuted; that they will be mocked and derided, called "fanatics" and "dreamers" and lots of other ugly and unpleasant names. Lots of people will want to stay just as they are, and violently oppose the men who say, "Let us move on." But I don't believe that any sane person will want to go back to the old conditions—back to our conditions of to-day.

You see, I have killed lots of your objections already, my friend!

Now let me tell you briefly what Socialists want, and what they believe will take place—must take place. In the first place, there must be political changes to make complete our political democracy. You may be surprised at this, Jonathan. Perhaps you are accustomed to think of our political system as being the perfect expression of political democracy. Let us see.

Compared with some other countries, like Russia, Germany and Spain, for example, this is a free country, politically; a model of democracy. We have adult suffrage—for the men! In only a few states are our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters allowed to vote. In most of the states the best women, and the most intelligent, are placed on the political level of the criminal and the maniac. They must obey the laws, their interests in the well-being and good government of the nation are as vital as those of our sex. But they are denied representation in the councils of the nation, denied a voice in the affairs of the nation. They are not citizens. We have a class below that of the citizens in this country, a class based upon sex distinctions.

To make our political system thoroughly representative and democratic, we must extend political power to the women of the nation. Further than that, we must bring all the means of government more directly under the people's will.

In our industrial system we must bring the great trusts under the rule of the people. They must be owned and controlled by all for all. I say that we "must" do this, because there is no other way by which the present evils may be remedied. Everybody who is not blinded to the real situation by vested interest must recognize that the present conditions are intolerable—and becoming worse and more intolerable every day. A handful of men have the nation's destiny in their greedy fingers and they gamble with it for their own profit. Something must be done.

But what? We cannot go back if we would. I have shown you pretty clearly, I think, that if it were possible to undo the chain of evolution and to go back to primitive capitalism, with its competitive spirit, the development to monopoly would begin all over again. It is an inexorable law that competition breeds monopoly. So we cannot go back.

What, then, is the outlook, the forward view? So far as I know, Jonathan, there are only two propositions for meeting the evil conditions of monopoly, other than the perfectly silly one of "going back to competition." They are (1) Regulation of the trusts; (2) Socialization of the trusts.

Now, the first means that we should leave these great monopolies in the hands of their present owners and directors, but enact various laws curtailing their powers to exploit the people. Laws are to be passed limiting the capital they may employ, the amount of profits they may make, and so on. But nobody explains how they expect to get the laws obeyed. There are plenty of laws now aiming at regulation of the trusts, but they are quite futile and inoperative. First we spend an enormous amount of money and energy getting laws passed; then we spend much more money and energy trying to get them enforced—and fail after all!

I submit to your good judgment, Jonathan, that so long as we have a relatively small class in the nation owning these great monopolies through corporations there can be no peace. It will be to the interest of the corporations to look after their profits, to prevent the enactment of legislation aimed to restrict them and to evade the law as much as possible. They will naturally use their influence to secure laws favorable to themselves, with the inevitable result of corruption in the legislative branches of the government. Legislators will be bought like mackerel in the market, as Mr. Lawson so bluntly expresses it. Efforts will be made to corrupt the judiciary also and the power of the entire capitalist class will be directed to the capture of our whole system of government. Even more than to-day, we will have the government of the people by a privileged part of the people in the interests of the privileged part.

You must not forget, my friend, that the corruption of the government about which we hear so much from time to time is always in the interests of private capitalism. If there is graft in some public department, there is an outcry that graft and public business go together. As a matter of fact the graft is in the interests of private capitalism.

When legislators sell their votes it is never for public enterprises. I have never heard of a city which was seeking the power to establish any public service raising a "yellow dog fund" with which to bribe legislators. On the other hand, I never yet heard of a private company seeking a franchise without doing so more or less openly. Regulation of the trusts will still leave the few masters of the many, and corruption still gnawing at the vitals of the nation.

We must own the trusts, Jonathan, and transform the monopolies by which the few exploit and oppress the many into social monopolies for the good of all. Sooner or later, either by violent or peaceful means, this will be done. It is for the working-class to say whether it shall be sooner or later, whether it shall be accomplished through the strife and bitterness of war or by the peaceful methods of political conquest.

We have seen that the root of the evil in modern society is the profit motive. Socialism means the production of things for use instead of for profit. Not at one stroke, perhaps, but patiently, wisely and surely, all the things upon which people in common depend will be made common property.

Take notice of that last paragraph, Jonathan. I don't say that all property must be owned in common, but only the things upon which people in common depend; the things which all must use if they are to live as they ought, and as they have a right to live. We have a splendid illustration of social property in our public streets. These are necessary to all. It would be intolerable if one man should own the streets of a city and charge all other citizens for the use of them. So streets are built out of the common funds, maintained out of the common funds, freely used by all in common, and the poorest man has as much right to use them as the richest man. In the nutshell this states the argument of Socialism.

People sometimes ask how it would be possible for the government under Socialism to decide which children should be educated to be writers, musicians and artists and which to be street cleaners and laborers; how it would be possible to have a government own everything, deciding what people should wear, what food should be produced, and so on.

The answer to all such questions is that Socialism would not need to do anything of the kind. There would be no need for the government to attempt such an impossible task. When people raise such questions they are thinking of the old and dead utopianism, of the schemes which once went under the name of Socialism. But modern Socialism is a principle, not a scheme. The Socialist movement of to-day is not interested in carrying out a great design, but in seeing society get rid of its drones and making it impossible for one class to exploit another class.

Under Socialism, then, it would not be at all necessary for the government to own everything; for private property to be destroyed. For instance, the State could have no possible interest in denying the right of a man to own his home and to make that home as beautiful as he pleased. It is perfectly absurd to suppose that it would be necessary to "take away the poor man's cottage," about which some opponents of Socialism shriek. It would not be necessary to take away anybody's home.

On the contrary, Socialism would most likely enable all who so desired to own their own homes. At present only thirty-one per cent. of the families of America live in homes which they own outright. More than half of the people live in rented homes. They are obliged to give up practically a fourth part of their total income for mere shelter.

Socialism would not prevent a man from owning a horse and wagon, since it would be possible for him to use that horse and wagon without compelling the citizens to pay tribute to him. On the other hand, private ownership of a railway would be impossible, because railways could not be indefinitely and easily multiplied, and the owners of such a railway would necessarily have to run it for profit.

Under Socialism such public services as the transportation and delivery of parcels would be in the hands of the people, and not in the hands of monopolists as at present. The aim would be to serve the people to the best possible advantage, and not to make profit for the few. But if any citizen objected and wanted to carry his own parcel from New York to Boston, for example, it is not to be supposed for an instant that the State would try to prevent him.

Under Socialism the great factories would belong to the people; the trusts would be socialized. But this would not stop a man from working for himself in a small workshop if he wanted to; it would not prevent a number of workers from forming a co-operative workshop and sharing the products of their labor. By reason of the fact that the great productive and distributive agencies which are entirely social were socially owned and controlled—railways, mines, telephones, telegraphs, express service, and the great factories of various kinds—the Socialist State would be able to set the standards of wages and industrial conditions for all the rest remaining in private hands.

Let me explain what I mean, Jonathan: Under Socialism, let us suppose, the State undertakes the production of shoes by socializing the shoe trust. It takes over the great factories and runs them. Its object is not to make shoes for profit, however, but for use. To make shoes as good as possible, as cheaply as good shoes can be made, and to see that the people making the shoes get the best possible conditions of labor and the highest possible wages—as near as possible to the net value of their product, that is.

Some people, however, object to wearing factory-made shoes; they want shoes of a special kind, to suit their individual fancy. There are also, we will suppose, some shoemakers who do not like to work in the State factories, preferring to make shoes by hand to suit individual tastes. Now, if the people who want the handmade shoes are willing to pay the shoemakers as much as they could earn in the socialized factories no reasonable objection could be urged against it. If they would not pay that amount, or near it, the shoemakers, it is reasonable to suppose, would not want to work for them. It would adjust itself.

Under Socialism the land would belong to the people. By this I do not mean that the private use of land would be forbidden, because that would be impossible. There would be no object in taking away the small farms from their owners. On the contrary, the number of such farms might be greatly increased. There are many people to-day who would like to have small farms if they could only get a fair chance, if the railroads and trusts of one kind and another were not always sucking all the juice from the orange. Socialism would make it possible for the farmer to get what he could produce, without having to divide up with the railroad companies, the owners of grain elevators, money-lenders, and a host of other parasites.

I have no doubt, Jonathan, that under Socialism there would be many privately-worked farms. Nor have I any doubt whatever that the farmers would be much better off than under existing conditions. For to-day the farmer is not the happy, independent man he is sometimes supposed to be. Very often his lot is worse than that of the city wage-earner. At any rate, the money return for his labor is often less. You know that a great many farmers do not own their farms: they are mortgaged and the farmer has to pay an average interest of six per cent. upon the mortgage.

Now, let us look for a moment at such a farmer's conditions, as shown by the census statistics. According to the census of 1900, there were in the United States 5,737,372 farms, each averaging about 146 acres. The total value of farm products in 1899 was $4,717,069,973. Now then, if we divide the value of the products by the number of farms, we can get the average annual product of each farm—about $770.

Out of that $770 the farmer has to pay a hired laborer for at least six months in the year, let us say. At twenty-five dollars a month, with an added eight dollars a month for his board, this costs the farmer $198, so that his income now stands at $572. Next, he must pay interest upon his mortgage at six per cent. per annum. Now, the average value of the farms in 1899 was $3,562 and six per cent. on that amount would be about $213. Subtract that sum from the $572 which the farmer has after paying his hired man and you have left about $356. But as the farms are, not mortgaged to their full value, suppose we reduce the interest one half—the farmer's income remains now $464.

Now, as a general thing, the farmer and his wife have to work equally hard, and they must work every day in the year. The hired laborer gets $150 and his board for six months, at the rate of $300 and board per year. The farmer and his wife get only $232 a year each and part of their board, for what is not produced on the farm they must buy.

Under Socialism the farmer could own his own farm to all intents and purposes. While the final title might be vested in the government, the farmer would have a title to the use of the farm which no one could dispute or take from him. If he had to borrow money he would do it from the government and would not be charged extortionate rates of interest as he is now. He would not have to pay railroad companies' profits, since the railways being owned by all for all and not run for profit, would be operated upon a basis of the cost of service. The farmer would not be exploited by the packers and middlemen, these functions being assumed by the people through their government, upon the same basis of service to all, things being done for the use and welfare of all instead of for the profit of the few. Under Socialism, moreover, the farmer could get his machinery from the government factories at a price which included no profits for idle shareholders.

I am told, Jonathan, that at the present time it costs about $24 to make a reaper which the farmer must pay $120 for. It costs $40 to sell the machine which was made for $24, the expense being incurred by wasteful and useless advertising, salesmen's commissions, travelling expenses, and so on. The other $54 which the farmer must pay goes to the idlers in the form of rent, interest and profit.

Socialism, then, could very well leave the farmer in full possession of his farm and improve his position by making it possible for him to get the full value of his labor-products without having to divide up with a host of idlers and non-producers. Socialism would not deny any man the use of the land, but it would take away the right of non-users to reap the fruits of the toil of users. It would deny the right of the Astor family to levy a tax upon the people of New York, amounting to millions of dollars annually, for the privilege of living there. The Astors have such a vast business collecting this tax that they have to employ an agent whose salary is equal to that of the President of the United States and a large army of employees.

Socialism would deny the right of the English Duke of Rutland and Lord Beresford to hold millions of acres of land in Texas, and to levy a tax upon Americans for its use. It would deny the right of the British Land Company to tax Kansans for the use of the 300,000 acres owned by the company; the right of the Duke of Sutherland and Sir Edward Reid to tax Americans for the use of the millions of acres they own in Florida; of Lady Gordon and the Marquis of Dalhousie to any right to tax people in Mississippi. The idea that a few people can own the land upon which all people must live in any country is a relic of slavery, friend Jonathan.

So you see, my friend, Socialism does not mean that everything is to be divided up equally among the people every little while. That is either a fool's notion or the wilful misrepresentation of a liar. Socialism does not mean that there is to be a great bureaucratic government owning everything and controlling everybody. It does not mean doing away with private initiative and making of humanity a great herd, everybody wearing the same kind of clothes, eating the same kind and quantities of food, and having no personal liberties. It simply means that all men and women should have equal opportunities; to make it impossible for one man to exploit another, except at that other's free will. It does not mean doing away with individual liberty and reducing all to a dead level. That is what is at present happening to the great majority of people, and Socialism comes to unbind the soul of man—to make mankind free.

I think, Jonathan, that you ought to have a fairly clear notion now of what Socialism is and what it is not. You ought to be able now to distinguish between the social properties which Socialism would establish and the private properties it could have no object in taking away, which it would rather foster and protect. I have tried simply to illustrate the principle for you, so that you can think the matter out for yourself. It will be a very good thing for you to commit this rule to memory.—

Under Socialism, the State would own and control only those things which could not be owned and controlled by individuals without giving them an undue advantage over the community, by enabling them to extract profits from the labor of others.

But be sure that you do not make the common mistake of confusing government ownership with Socialism, friend Jonathan, as so many people are in the habit of doing. In Prussia the government owns the railways. But the government does not represent the interests of all the people. It is the government of a nation by a class. That is not the same thing as the socialization of the railways, as you will see. In Russia the government owns some of the railways and has a monopoly of the liquor traffic. But these things are not democratically owned and managed in the common interest. Russia is an autocracy. Everything is run for the benefit of the governing class, the Czar and a host of bureaucrats. That is not Socialism. In this country we have a nearer approach to democracy in our government, and our post-office system, for example, is a much nearer approach to the realization of the Socialist principle.

But even in this country, government ownership and Socialism are not the same thing. For our government is a class government too. There is the same inequality of wages and conditions as under capitalist ownership: many of the letter carriers and other employees are miserably underpaid, and the service is notoriously handicapped by private interests. Whether it is in Russia under the Czar and his bureaucrats, Germany with its monarchial system cumbered with the remnants of feudalism, or the United States with its manhood suffrage foolishly used to elect the interests of the capitalist class, government ownership can only be at best a framework for Socialism. It must wait for the Socialist spirit to be infused into it.

Socialists want government ownership, Jonathan, but they don't want it unless the people are to own the government. When the government represents the interests of all the people it will use the things it owns and controls for the common good. And that will be Socialism in practice, my friend.



X

OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM CONSIDERED

I feel sure that the time will come when people will find it difficult to believe that a rich community such as our's, having such command over external nature, could have submitted to live such a mean, shabby, dirty life as we do.—William Morris.

Morality and political economy unite in repelling the individual who consumes without producing.—Balzac.

The restraints of Communism would be freedom in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race.—John Stuart Mill.

I promised at the beginning of this discussion, friend Jonathan, that I would try to answer the numerous objections to Socialism which you set forth in your letter, and I cannot close the discussion without fulfilling that promise.

Many of the objections I have already disposed of and need not, therefore, take further notice of them here. The remaining ones I propose to answer—except where I can show you that an answer is unnecessary. For you have answered some of the objections yourself, my friend, though you were not aware of the fact. I find in looking over the long list of your objections that one excludes another very often. You seem, like a great many other people, to have set down all the objections you had ever heard, or could think of at the time, regardless of the fact that they could not by any possibility be all well founded; that if some were wise and weighty others must be foolish and empty. Without altering the form of your objections, simply rearranging their order, I propose to set forth a few of the contradictions in your objections. That is fair logic, Jonathan.

First you say that you object to Socialism because it is "the clamor of envious men to take by force what does not belong to them." That is a very serious objection, if true. But you say a little further on in your letter that "Socialism is a noble and beautiful dream which human beings are not perfect enough to realize in actual life." Either one of the objections may be valid, Jonathan, but both of them cannot be. Socialism cannot be both a noble and a beautiful dream, too sublime for human realization, and at the same time a sordid envy—can it?

You say that "Socialists are opposed to law and order and want to do away with all government," and then you say in another objection that "Socialists want to make us all slaves to the government by putting everything and everybody under government control." It happens that you are wrong in both assertions, but you can see for yourself that you couldn't possibly be right in both of them—can't you?

You object that under Socialism "all would be reduced to the same dead level." That is a very serious objection, too, but it cannot be well founded unless your other objection, that "under Socialism a few politicians would get all the power and most of the wealth, making all the people their slaves" is without foundation. Both objections cannot hold—can they?

You say that "Socialists are visionaries with cut and dried schemes that look well on paper, but the world has never paid any attention to schemes for reorganizing society," and then you object that "the Socialists have no definite plans for what they propose to do, and how they mean to do it; that they indulge in vague principles only." And I ask you again, friend Jonathan, do you think that both these objections can be sound?

You object that "Socialism is as old as the world; has been tried many times and always failed." If that were true it would be a very serious objection to Socialism, of course. But is it true? In another place you object that "Socialism has never been tried and we don't know how it would work." You see, my friend, you can make either objection you choose, but not both. Either one may be right, but both cannot be.

Now, these are only a few of the long list of your objections which are directly contradictory and mutually exclusive, my friend. Some of them I have already answered directly, the others I have answered indirectly. Therefore, I shall do no more here and now than briefly summarize the Socialist answer to them.

Socialists do propose that society as a whole should take and use for the common good some things which a few now own, things which "belong" to them by virtue of laws which set the interests of the few above the common good. But that is a very different thing from "the clamor of envious men to take what does not belong to them." It is no more to be so described than taxation, for example is. Socialism is a beautiful dream in one sense. Men who see the misery and despair produced by capitalism think with joy of the days to come when the misery and despair are replaced by gladsomeness and hope. That is a dream, but no Socialist rests upon the dream merely: the hope of the Socialist is in the very material fact of the economic development from competition to monopoly; in the breakdown of capitalism itself.

You have probably learned by this time that Socialism does not mean either doing away with all government or making the government master of everything. Later, I want to return to the subject, and to the charge that it would reduce all to a dull level. I shall not waste time answering the objections that it is a scheme and that it is not a scheme, further than I have already answered them. And I am not going to waste your time arguing at length the folly of saying that Socialism has been tried and proved a failure. The Socialism of to-day has nothing to do with the thousands of Utopian schemes which men have tried. Before the modern Socialist movement came into existence, during hundreds of years, men and women tried to realize social equality by forming communities and withdrawing from the ordinary life of the world. Some of these communities, mostly of a religious nature, such as the Shakers and the Perfectionists, attained some measure of success and lasted a number of years, but most of them lasted only a short time. It is folly to say that Socialism has ever been tried anywhere at any time.

And now, friend Jonathan, I want to consider some of the more vital and important objections to Socialism made in your letter. You object to Socialism

Because its advocates use violent speech Because it is "the same as Anarchism" Because it aims to destroy the family and the home Because it is opposed to religion Because it would do away with personal liberty Because it would reduce all to one dull level Because it would destroy the incentive to progress Because it is impossible unless we can change human nature.

These are all your objections, Jonathan, and I am going to try to suggest answers to them.

(1) It is true that Socialists sometimes use very violent language. Like all earnest and enthusiastic men who are possessed by a great and overwhelming sense of wrong and needless suffering, they sometimes use language that is terrible in its vehemence; their speech is sometimes full of bitter scorn and burning indignation. It is also true that their speech is sometimes rough and uncultured, shocking the sensitive ear, but I am sure you will agree with me that the working man or woman who, never having had the advantage of education and refined environment, feels the burden of the days that are or the inspiration of better days to come, is entitled to be heard. So I am not going to apologize for the rough and uncultured speech.

And I am not going to apologize for the violent speech. It would be better, of course, if all the advocates of Socialism could master the difficult art of stating their case strongly and without compromise, but without bitterness and without unnecessary offense to others. But it is not easy to measure speech in the denunciation of immeasurable wrong, and some of the greatest utterances in history have been hard, bitter, vehement words torn from agonized hearts. It is true that Socialists now and then use violent language, but no Socialist—unless he is so overwrought as to be momentarily irresponsible—advocates violence. The great urge and passion of Socialism is for the peaceful transformation of society.

I have heard a few overwrought Socialists, all of them gentle and generous comrades, incapable of doing harm to any living creature, in bursts of tempestuous indignation use language which seemed to incite their hearers to violence, but those who heard them understood that they were borne away by their feelings. I have never heard Socialists advocate violence toward any human beings in cold-blooded deliberation. But I have heard capitalists and the defenders of capitalism advocate violence toward Socialists in cold-blooded deliberation. I have seen in Socialist papers upon a few occasions violent utterances which I deplored, but never such advocacy of violence as I have read in newspapers opposed to Socialism. Here, for example, are some extracts from an editorial which appeared January, 1908, in the columns of the Gossip, of Goldfield, Nevada:

"A cheaper and more satisfactory method of dealing with this labor trouble in Goldfield last spring would have been to have taken half a dozen of the Socialist leaders in the Miners' Union and hanged them all to telegraph poles.

"SPEAKING DISPASSIONATELY, AND WITHOUT ANIMUS, it seems clear to us after many months of reflection, that YOU COULDN'T MAKE A MISTAKE IN HANGING A SOCIALIST.

"HE IS ALWAYS BETTER DEAD.

"He, breathing peace, breathing order, breathing goodwill, fairness to all and moderation, is always the man with the dynamite. He is the trouble-maker, and the trouble-breeder.

"To fully appreciate him you must live where he abounds.

"In the Western Federation of Miners he is that plentiful legacy left us from the teachings of Eugene V. Debs, hero of the Chicago Haymarket Riots.

"ALWAYS HANG A SOCIALIST. NOT BECAUSE HE'S A DEEP THINKER, BUT BECAUSE HE'S A BAD ACTOR."

I could fill many pages with extracts almost as bad as the above, all taken from capitalist papers, Jonathan. But for our purpose one is as good as a thousand. I want you to read the papers carefully with an eye to their class character. When the Goldfield paper printed the foregoing open incitement to murder, the community was already disturbed by a great strike and the President of the United States had sent federal troops to Goldfield in the interest of the master class. Suppose that under similar circumstances a Socialist paper had come out and said in big type that people "couldn't make a mistake in hanging a capitalist," that capitalists are "always better dead." Suppose that any Socialist paper urged the murder of Republicans and Democrats in the same way, do you think the paper would have been tolerated? That the editor would have escaped jail? Don't you know that if such a statement had been published by any Socialist paper the whole country would have been roused, that press and pulpit would have denounced it?

Socialists are opposed to violence. They appeal to brains and not to bludgeons; they trust in ballots and not in bullets. The violence of speech with which they are charged is not the advocacy of violence, but unmeasured and impassioned denunciation of a cruel and brutal system. Not long ago I heard a clergyman denouncing Socialists for their "violent language." Poor fellow! He was quite unconscious that he was more bitter in his invective than the men he attacked. Of course Socialists use bitter and burning language—but not more bitter than was used by the great Hebrew prophets in their stern denunciations; not more bitter than was used by Jesus and his disciples; not more bitter than was used by Martin Luther and other great leaders of the Reformation; not more bitter than was used by Garrison and the other Abolitionists. Men with vital messages cannot always use soft words, Jonathan.

(2) Socialism is not "the same as Anarchism," my friend, but its very opposite. The only connection between them is that they are agreed upon certain criticisms of present society. In all else they are as opposite as the poles. The difference lies not merely in the fact that most Anarchists have advocated physical violence, for there are some Anarchists who are as much opposed to physical violence as you or I, Jonathan, and it is only fair and just that we should recognize the fact. It has always seemed to me that Anarchism logically leads to physical force by individuals against individuals, but, logical or no, there are many Anarchists who are gentle spirits, holding all life sacred and abhorring violence and assassination. When there are so many ready to be unjust to them, we can afford to be just to the Anarchists, even if we do not agree with them, Jonathan.

Sometimes an attempt is made by Socialists to explain the difference between themselves and Anarchists by saying that Anarchists want to destroy all government, while Socialists want to extend government and bring everything under its control; that Anarchists want no laws, while Socialists want more laws. But that is not an intelligent statement of the difference. We Socialists don't particularly desire to extend the functions of government; we are not so enamoured of laws that we want more of them. Quite the contrary is true, in fact. If we had a Socialist government to-morrow in this country, one of the first and most important of its tasks would be to repeal a great many of the existing laws.

Then there are some Socialists who try to explain the difference between Socialism and Anarchism by saying that the Anarchists are simply Socialists of a very advanced type; that society must first pass through a period of Socialism, in which laws will be necessary, before it can enter upon Anarchism, a state in which every man will be so pure and so good that he can be a law unto himself, no other form of law being necessary. But that does not settle the difficulty. I think you will see, friend Jonathan, that in order to have such a society in which without laws or penal codes, or government of any kind, men and women lived happily together, it would be necessary for every member to cultivate a social sense, a sense of responsibility to society as a whole. Each member of society would have to become so thoroughly socialized as to make the interests of society as a whole his chief concern in life. And such a society would be simply a Socialist society perfectly developed, not an Anarchist society. It would be a Socialist society simply because it would be dominated by the essential principle of Socialism—the idea of solidarity, of common interest.

The basis of Anarchism is utopian individualism. Just as the old utopian dreamers who tried to "establish" Socialism through the medium of numerous "Colonies," took the abstract idea of equality and made it their ideal, so the Anarchist sets up the abstract idea of individual liberty. The true difference between Socialism and Anarchism is that the Socialist sets the social interest, the good of society, above all other interests, while the Anarchist sets the interest of the individual above everything else. You could express the difference thus:

Socialism means We -ism Anarchism means Me -ism

The Anarchist says: "The world is made up of individuals. What is called "society" is only a lot of individuals. Therefore the individual is the only real being and society a mere abstraction, a name. As an individual I know myself, but I know nothing of society; I know my own interests, but I know nothing of what you call the interests of society." On the other hand, the Socialist says that "no man liveth unto himself," to use a biblical phrase. He points out that in modern society no individual life, apart from the social life, is possible.

If this seems a somewhat abstract way of putting it, Jonathan, just try to put it in a concrete form yourself by means of a simple experiment. When you sit down to your breakfast to-morrow morning take time to think where your breakfast came from and how it was produced. Think of the coffee plantations in far-off countries drawn on for your breakfast; of the farms, perhaps thousands of miles away, from which came your bacon and your bread; of the coal miners toiling that your breakfast might be cooked; of the men in the engine-rooms of great ships and on the tenders of mighty locomotives, bringing your breakfast supplies across sea and land. Then think of your clothing in the same way, article by article, trying to realize how much you are dependent upon others than yourself. Throughout the day apply the same principle as you move about. Apply it to the streets as you go to work; to the street cars as you ride; apply it to the provisions which are made to safeguard your health against devastating plague, the elaborate system of drainage, the carefully guarded water-supply, and so on. Then, when you have done that for a day as far as possible, ask yourself whether the Anarchist idea that every individual is a distinct and separate whole, an independent being, unrelated to the other individuals who make up society, is a true one; or whether the Socialist idea that all individuals are inter-dependent upon each other, bound to each other by so many ties that they cannot be considered apart, is the true idea. Judge by your experience, Jonathan!

So the Socialist says that "we are all members one of another," to use another familiar biblical phrase. He is not less interested in personal freedom than the Anarchist, not less desirous of giving to each individual unit in society the largest possible freedom compatible with the like freedom of all the other units. But, while the Anarchist says that the best judge of that is the individual, the Socialist says that society is the best judge. The Anarchist position is that, in the event of a conflict of interests, the will of the individual must rule at all costs; the Socialist says that, in the event of such a conflict of interests, the will of the individual must give way. That is the real philosophical difference between the two.

Anarchism is not important enough in America, friend Jonathan, to justify our devoting so much time and space to the discussion of its philosophy as opposed to the philosophy of Socialism, except for the bearing it has upon the political movement of the working class. I want you to see just how Anarchism works out when the test of practical application is resorted to.

Just as the Anarchist sets up an abstract idea of individual liberty as his ideal, so he sets up an abstract idea of tyranny. To him Law, the will of society, is the essence of tyranny. Laws are limitations of individual liberty set by society and therefore they are tyrannical. No matter what the law may be, all laws are wrong. There cannot be such a thing as a good law, according to this view. To illustrate just where this leads us, let me tell of a recent experience: I was lecturing in a New England town, and after the lecture an Anarchist rose to ask some questions. He wanted to know if it was not a fact that all laws were oppressive and bad, to which, of course, I replied that I thought not.

I asked him whether the law forbidding murder and providing for its punishment, oppressed him; whether he felt it a hardship not to be allowed to murder at will, and he replied that he did not. I cited many other laws, such as the laws relating to arson, burglary, criminal assault, and so on, with the same result. His outcry about the oppression of law, as such, proved to be just an empty cry about an abstraction; a bogey of his imagination. Of course, he could cite bad laws, unjust laws, as I could have done; but that would simply show that some laws are not right—a proposition upon which most people will agree. My Anarchist friend quoted Herbert Spencer in support of his contention. He referred to Spencer's well-known summary of the social legislation of England. So I asked my friend if he thought the Factory Acts were oppressive and tyrannical, and he replied that, from an Anarchist viewpoint, they were.

Think of that, Jonathan! Little boys and girls, five and six years old, were taken out of their beds crying and begging to be allowed to sleep, and carried to the factory gates. Then they were driven to work by brutal overseers armed with leather whips. Sometimes they fell asleep at their tasks and then they were beaten and kicked and cursed at like dogs. Little boys and girls from orphan asylums were sent to work thus, and died like flies in summer—their bodies being secretly buried at night for fear of an outcry. You can find the terrible story told in The Industrial History of England, by H. de B. Gibbins, which ought to be in your public library.

Humane men set up a protest at last and there was a movement through the country demanding protection for the children. Once a member of parliament held up in the House of Commons a whip of leather thongs attached to an oak handle, telling his colleagues that a few days before it had been used to flog little children who were mere babies. The demand was made for legislation to stop this barbarous treatment of children, to protect their childhood. The factory owners opposed the passing of such laws on the ground that it would be an interference with their individual liberties, their right to do as they pleased. And the Anarchist comes always and inevitably to the same conclusion. Factory laws, public health laws, education laws—all denounced as "interferences with individual liberty." Extremes meet: the Anarchist in the name of individual liberty, like the capitalist, would prevent society from putting a stop to the exploitation of its little ones.

The real danger in Anarchism is not that some Anarchists believe in violence, and that from time to time there are cowardly assassinations which are as futile as they are cowardly. The real danger lies first in the reactionary principle that the interests of society must be subordinated to the interests of the individual, and, second, in holding out a hope to the working class that its freedom from oppression and exploitation may be brought about by other than political, legislative means. And it is this second objection which is of extreme importance to the working class of America at this time.

From time to time, in all working class movements, there is an outcry against political action, an outcry raised by impetuous men-in-a-hurry who want twelve o'clock at eleven. They cry out that the ballot is too slow; they want some more "direct" action than the ballot-box allows. But you will find, Jonathan, that the men who raise this cry have nothing to propose except riot to take the place of political action. Either they would have the workers give up all struggle and depend upon moral suasion, or they would have them riot. And we Socialists say that ballots are better weapons than bullets for the workers. You may depend upon it that any agitation among the workers against the use of political weapons leads to Anarchism—and to riot. I hope you will find time to read Plechanoff's Anarchism and Socialism, Jonathan. It will well repay your careful study.

No, Socialism is not related to Anarchism, but it is, on the contrary, the one great active force in the world to-day that is combating Anarchism. There is a close affinity between Anarchism and the idea of capitalism, for both place the individual above society. The Socialist believes that the highest good of the individual will be realized through the highest good of society.

(3) Socialism involves no attack upon the family and the home. Those who raise this objection against Socialism charge that it is one of the aims of the Socialist movement to do away with the monogamic marriage and to replace it with what is called "Free Love." By this term they do not really mean free love at all. For love is always free, Jonathan. Not all the wealth of a Rockefeller could buy one single touch of love. Love is always free; it cannot be bought and it cannot be bound. No one can love for a price, or in obedience to laws or threats. The term "Free Love" is therefore a misnomer.

What the opponents of Socialism have in mind when they use the term is rather lust than love. They charge us Socialists with trying to do away with the monogamic marriage relation—the marriage of one man to one woman—and the family life resulting therefrom. They say that we want promiscuous sex relations, communal life instead of family life and the turning over of all parental functions to the community, the State. And to charge that these things are involved in Socialism is at once absurd and untrue. I venture to say, Jonathan, that the percentage of Socialists who believe in such things is not greater than the percentage of Christians believing in them, or the percentage of Republicans or Democrats. They have nothing to do with Socialism.

Let us see upon what sort of evidence the charge is based: On the one hand, finding nothing in the programmes of the Socialist parties of the world to support the charge, we find them going back to the utopian schemes with communistic features. They go back to Plato, even! Because Plato in his Republic, which was a wholly imaginary description of the ideal society he conceived in his mind, advocated community of sex relations as well as community of goods, therefore the Socialists, who do not advocate community of goods or community of wives, must be charged with Plato's principles! In like manner, the fact that many other communistic experiments included either communism of sex relations, as, for example, the Adamites, during the Hussite wars, in Germany, and the Perfectionists, of Oneida, with their "community marriage," all the male members of a community being married to all the female members; or enforced celibacy, as did the Shakers and the Harmonists, among many other similar groups, is urged against Socialism.

I need not argue the injustice and the stupidity of this sort of criticism, Jonathan. What have the Socialists of twentieth century America to do with Plato? His utopian ideal is not their ideal; they are neither aiming at community of goods nor at community of wives. And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the first fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, as in Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all religious communities. In a word, all these experiments which antagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of various interpretations of the Bible and the efforts of those who accepted those interpretations to rule their lives in accordance therewith. In every case communism was only a means to an end, a way of realizing what they considered to be the true religious life. In other words, my friend, most of the so-called free love experiments made in these communities have been offshoots of Christianity rather than of Socialism.

And I ask you, Jonathan Edwards, as a fair-minded American, what you would think of it if the Socialists charged Christianity with being opposed to the family and the home? It would not be true of Christianity and it is not true of Socialism.

But there is another form of argument which is sometimes resorted to. The history of the movement is searched for examples of what is called free love. That is to say that because from time to time there have been individual Socialists who have refused to recognize the ceremonial and legal aspects of marriage, believing love to be the only real marriage bond, notwithstanding that the vast majority of Socialists have recognized the legal and ceremonial aspects of marriage, they have been accused of trying to do away with marriage. Our opponents have even stooped so low as to seize upon every case where Socialists have sought divorce as a means of undoing terrible wrong, and then married other husbands and wives, and proclaimed it as a fresh proof that Socialism is opposed to marriage and the family. When I have read some of these cruel and dishonest attacks, often written by men who know better, my soul has been sickened at the thought of the cowardice and dishonesty to which the opponents of Socialism resort.

Suppose that every time a prominent Christian becomes divorced, and then remarries, the Socialists of the country were to attack the Christian religion and the Christian churches, upon the ground that they are opposed to marriage and the family, does anybody think that that would be fair and just? But it is the very thing which happens whenever Socialists are divorced. It happened, not so very long ago, that a case of the kind was made the occasion of hundreds of editorials against Socialism and hundreds of sermons. The facts were these: A man and his wife, both Socialists, had for a long time realized that their marriage was an unhappy one. Failing to realize the happiness they sought, it was mutually agreed that the wife should apply for a divorce. They had been legally married and desired to be legally separated. Meantime the man had come to believe that his happiness depended upon his wedding another woman. The divorce was to be procured as speedily as possible to enable the legal marriage of the man and the woman he had grown to love.

Those were the facts as they appeared in the press, the facts upon which so many hundreds of attacks were made upon Socialism and the Socialist movement. Two or three weeks later, an Episcopal clergyman, not a Socialist, left the wife he had ceased to love and with whom he had presumably not been happy. He had legally married his wife, but he did not bother about getting a legal separation. He just left his wife; just ran away. He not only did not bother about getting a legal separation, but he ran away with a young girl, whom he had grown to love. They lived together as man and wife, without legal marriage, for if they went through any marriage form at all it was not a legal marriage and the man was guilty of bigamy. Was there any attack upon the Episcopal Church in consequence? Were hundreds of sermons preached and editorials written to denounce the church to which he belonged, accusing it of aiming to do away with the monogamic marriage relation, to break up the family and the home?

Not a bit of it, Jonathan. There were some criticisms of the man, but there were more attempts to find excuses for him. There were thousands of expressions of sympathy with his church. But there were no attacks such as were aimed at Socialism in the other case, notwithstanding that the Socialist strictly obeyed the law whereas the clergyman broke the law and defied it. I think that was a fair way to treat the case, but I ask the same fair treatment of Socialism.

So far, Jonathan, I have been taking a defensive attitude, just replying to the charge that Socialism is an attack upon the family and the home. Now, I want to go a step further: I want to take an affirmative position and to say that Socialism comes as the defender of the home and the family; that capitalism from the very first has been attacking the home. I am going to turn the tables, Jonathan.

When capitalism began, when it came with its steam engine and its power-loom, what was the first thing it did? Why, it entered the home and took the child from the mother and made it a part of a great system of wheels and levers and springs, all driven for one end—the grinding of profit. It began its career by breaking down the bonds between mother and child. Then it took another step. It took the mother away from the baby in the cradle in order that she too might become part of the great profit-grinding system. Her breasts might be full to overflowing with the food wonderfully provided for the child by Nature; the baby in the cradle might cry for the very food that was bursting from its mother's breasts, but Capital did not care. The mother was taken away from the child and the child was left to get on as best it might upon a miserable substitute for its mother's milk. Hundreds of thousands of babies die each year for no other reason than this.

There will never be safety for the home and the family so long as babies are robbed of their mothers' care; so long as little children are made to do the work of men; so long as the girls who are to be the wives and mothers are sent into wifehood and motherhood unprepared, simply because the years of maidenhood are spent in factories that ought to be spent in preparation for wifehood and motherhood. Here is capitalism cutting at the very heart of the home, with Socialism as the only defender of the home it is charged with attacking. For Socialism would give the child its right to childhood; it would give the mother her freedom to nourish her babe; it would give to the fathers and mothers of the future the opportunities for preparation they cannot now enjoy.

I ask you, friend Jonathan, to think of the tens and thousands of women who marry to-day, not because they love and are loved in return, but for the sake of getting a home. Socialism would put an end to that condition by making woman economically and politically free. Think of the tens of thousands of young men in our land who do not, dare not, marry because they have no certainty of earning a living adequate to the maintenance of wives and families; of the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes in our country, the vast majority of whom have been driven to that terrible fate by economic causes outside of their control. Socialism would at least remove the economic pressure which forces so many of these women down into the terrible hell of prostitution. I ask you, Jonathan, to think also of the thousands of wives who are deserted every year. So far as the investigations of the charity organizations into this serious matter have gone, it has been shown that poverty is responsible for by far the greatest number of these desertions. Socialism would not only destroy the poverty, but it would set woman economically free, thus removing the main causes of the evil.

Oh, Jonathan Edwards, hard-headed, practical Jonathan, do you think that the existence of the family depends upon keeping women in the position of an inferior class, politically and economically? Do you think that when women are politically and economically the equals of men, so that they no longer have to marry for homes, or to stand brutal treatment because they have no other homes than the men afford; so that no woman is forced to sell her body—I ask you, when women are thus free do you believe that the marriage system will be endangered thereby? For that is what the contention of the opponents of Socialism comes to in the last analysis, my friend. Socialism will only affect the marriage system in so far as it raises the standards of society as a whole and makes woman man's political and economic equal. Are you afraid of that, Jonathan?

(4) Socialism is not opposed to religion. It is perfectly true that some Socialists oppose religion, but Socialism itself has nothing to do with matters of religion. In the Socialist movement to-day there are men and women of all creeds and all shades of religious belief. By all the Socialist parties of the world religion is declared to be a private matter—and the declaration is honestly meant; it is not a tactical utterance, used as bait to the unwary, which the Socialists secretly repudiate. In the Socialist movement of America to-day there are Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Spiritualists and Christian Scientists, Unitarians and Trinitarians, Methodists and Baptists, Atheists and Agnostics, all united in one great comradeship.

This was not always the case. When the scientific Socialist movement began in the second half of the last century, Science was engaged in a great intellectual encounter with Dogma. All the younger men were drawn into the scientific current of the time. It was natural, then, that the most radical movement of the time should partake of the universal scientific spirit and temper. The Christians of that day thought that the work of Darwin and his school would destroy religion. They made the very natural mistake of supposing that dogma and religion were the same thing, a mistake which their critics fully shared.

You know what happened, Jonathan. The Christians gradually came to realize that no religion could oppose the truth and continue to be a power. Gradually they accepted the position of the Darwinian critics, until to-day there is no longer the great vital controversy upon matters of theology which our fathers knew. In a very similar manner, the present generation of Socialists have nothing to do with the attacks upon religion which the Socialists of fifty years ago indulged in. The position of all the Socialist parties of the world to-day is that they have nothing to do with matters of religious belief; that these belong to the individual alone.

There is a sense in which Socialism becomes the handmaiden of religion: not of creeds and theological beliefs, but of religion in its broadest sense. When you examine the great religions of the world, Jonathan, you will find that in addition to certain supernatural beliefs there are always great ethical principles which constitute the most vital elements in religion. Putting aside the theological beliefs about God and the immortality of the soul, what was it that gave Judaism its power? Was it not the ethical teaching of its great prophets, such as Isaiah, Joel, Amos and Ezekiel—the stern rebuke of the oppressors of the poor and downtrodden, the scathing denunciation of the despoilers of the people, the great vision of a unified world in which there should be peace, when war should no more blight the world and when the weapons of war should be forged into plowshares and pruning hooks? Leaving matters of theology aside, are not these the principles which make Judaism a living religion to-day for so many? And I say to you, Jonathan, that Socialism is not only not opposed to these things, but they can only be realized under Socialism.

So with Christianity. In its broadest sense, leaving aside all matters of a supernatural character, concerning ourselves only with the relation of the religion to life, to its material problems, we find in Christianity the same great faith in the coming of universal peace and brotherhood, the same defense of the poor and the oppressed, the same scathing rebuke of the oppressor, that we find in Judaism. There is the same relentless scourge of the despoilers, of those who devour widows houses. And again I say that Socialism is not only not opposed to the great social ideals of Christianity, but it is the only means whereby they may be realized. And the same thing is true of the teachings of Confucius; Buddha and Mahomet. The great social ideals common to all the world's religions can never be attained under capitalism. Not till the Socialist state is reached will the Golden Rule, common to all the great religions, be possible as a rule of life. No ethical life is possible except as the outgrowing of just and harmonic economic relations; until it is rooted in proper economic soil.

No, Jonathan, it is not true that Socialism is antagonistic to religion. With beliefs and speculations concerning the origin of the universe it has nothing to do. It has nothing to do with speculations concerning the existence of man after physical death, with belief in the immortality of the soul. These are for the individual. Socialism concerns itself with man's material life and his relation to his fellow man. And there is nothing in the philosophy of Socialism, or the platform of the political Socialist movement, antagonistic to the social aspects of any religion.

(5) I have already had a good deal to say in the course of this discussion concerning the subject of personal freedom. The common idea of Socialism as a great bureaucratic government owning and controlling everything, deciding what every man and woman must do, is wholly wrong. The aim and purpose of the Socialist movement is to make life more free for the individual, and not to make it less free. Socialism means equality of opportunity for every child born into the world; it means doing away with class privilege; it means doing away with the ownership by the few of the things upon which the lives of the many depend, through which the many are exploited by the few. Do you see how individuals are to be enslaved through the destruction of the power of a few over many, Jonathan? Think it out!

It is in the private ownership of social resources, and the private control of social opportunities, that the essence of tyranny lies. Let me ask you, my friend, whether you feel yourself robbed of any part of your personal liberty when you go to a public library and take out a book to read, or into one of our public art galleries to look upon great pictures which you could never otherwise see? Is it not rather a fact that your life is thereby enriched and broadened; that instead of taking anything from you these things add to your enjoyment and to your power? Do you feel that you are robbed of any element of your personal freedom through the action of the city government in making parks for your recreation, providing hospitals to care for you in case of accident or illness, maintaining a fire department to protect you against the ravages of fire? Do you feel that in maintaining schools, baths, hospitals, parks, museums, public lighting service, water, streets and street cleaning service, the city government is taking away your personal liberties? I ask these questions, Jonathan, for the reason that all these things contain the elements of Socialism.