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diff --git a/old/64373-0.txt b/old/64373-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index df65688..0000000 --- a/old/64373-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6652 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The industrial republic, by Upton Sinclair - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The industrial republic - a study of the America of ten years hence - -Author: Upton Sinclair - -Release Date: January 23, 2021 [eBook #64373] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC *** - - - - - THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC - - - - - BOOKS BY UPTON SINCLAIR - - THE JUNGLE - MANASSAS - THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING - PRINCE HAGEN - KING MIDAS - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Everybody’s Magazine_ - - “VOORUIT” - Home of the Socialist Societies of Ghent -] - - - - - The Industrial Republic - A Study of the America of Ten Years Hence - - - By - UPTON SINCLAIR - - ILLUSTRATED - -[Illustration] - - New York - Doubleday, Page & Company - 1907 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY - PUBLISHED, MAY, 1907 - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES - INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN - - - - - TO H. G. WELLS - “THE NEXT MOST HOPEFUL” - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -The thought of the time has familiarised us with the evolutionary view -of things; we understand that life is the product of an inner impulse, -labouring to embody itself in the world of sense; and that the product -is always changing—that there is nothing permanent save the principles -and laws in accordance with which development goes on. We understand -that the universe of things was evolved by slow stages into what it is -to-day, that all life has come into being in the same way. We have -traced this process in the far-distant suns and in the strata of the -earth; we have traced it in the vegetables and in the animals, in the -seed and in the embryo; we have traced it in all of man’s activities, -his ways of thinking and acting, of eating and dressing and working and -fighting and praying. - -This book is an attempt to interpret in the light of evolutionary -science the social problem of our present world; to consider American -institutions as they exist at this hour—what forces are now at work -within them, and what changes they are likely to produce. The -subject-matter dealt with is not abstract speculation, but rather the -everyday realities of the world we know—our present political parties -and public men, our present corporations and captains of industry, our -present labour unions and newspapers, colleges and churches. The thing -sought is an answer to a concrete and definite question: _What will -America be ten years from now?_ - -Inasmuch as the people who are most interested in practical affairs are -very busy people, I judge it to be a common-sense procedure to set forth -my ideas in miniature at the outset; so that one may learn in two or -three minutes exactly what my book contains, and judge whether he cares -to read it. - -It is my belief that the student of a generation from now will look back -upon the last two centuries of human history and interpret them as the -final stage of a long process whereby man was transformed from a -solitary and predatory individual to a social and peaceable member of a -single world community. He will see that men, pressed by the struggle -for existence, had united themselves into groups under the discipline of -laws and conventions; and that the last two centuries represented the -period when these laws and conventions, having done their unifying work, -and secured the survival of the group, were set aside and replaced by -free and voluntary social effort. - -The student will furthermore perceive that this evolutionary process had -two manifestations, two waves, so to speak; the first political, and the -second industrial; the first determined by man’s struggle to protect his -life, and the second by his struggle to amass wealth. The culmination of -the first occurred successively in the English revolutions, the American -and French revolutions, and the other various efforts after political -freedom. After each of these achievements the historian notices a period -of bitterness and disillusionment, a sense of failure, it being -discovered that the expected did not occur, that Liberty, Equality and -Fraternity did not become the rule of men’s conduct. After that, -however, succeeds a period of enlightenment, it having been realised -that the work has only been half done, that man has been made only half -free. The political sovereignty has been taken out of the possession of -private individuals and made the property of the whole community, to be -shared in by all upon equal terms; but the industrial sovereignty still -remains the property of a few. A man can no longer be put in jail or -taxed by a king, but he can be starved and exploited by a master; his -body is now his own, but his labour is another’s—and there is very -little difference between the two. So immediately there begins a new -movement, the end of which is a new revolution, and the establishment of -THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC. - -What do I mean by an Industrial Republic? I mean an organisation for the -production and distribution of wealth, whose members are established -upon a basis of equality; who elect representatives to govern the -organisation; and who receive the full value of what their labour -produces. I mean an industrial government of the people, by the people, -for the people; a community in which the means of production have been -made the inalienable property of the State. My purpose in writing this -book is to point out the forces which are now rapidly developing in -America; and which, when they have attained to maturity, will usher in -the Industrial Republic by a process as natural and as inevitable as -that by which a chick breaks out of its shell or a child comes forth -from the womb at the proper hour. I believe that the economic process is -whirling us on with terrific momentum toward the crisis; and I look to -see the most essential features of the great transformation accomplished -in America within one year after the Presidential election of 1912. - -If I had been a tactful person I should have kept that last statement -until far on in my argument. For I find many people who are interested -in the idea of an Industrial Republic, and some few who are willing to -think of it as a possibility; but I find none who do not balk when I -presume to set the day. Yet the setting of the day is a vital part of my -conviction, and I should play the reader false if I failed to mention it -in this preliminary statement of my argument. It is a conviction to -which I have come with the diligent use of the best faculties I possess, -and after a preparation of a sort that is certainly unusual, and -possibly even quite unique. - -Perhaps I cannot do better by way of introduction than to explain just -what I mean. Our country has passed through two great crises, when -important political and social changes came with startling suddenness. I -refer to the Revolution and the Civil War; and to the latter of these -crises, or rather the period of its preparation—1847 to 1861—I once had -occasion to give two years of an interesting kind of study. I read -everything which I could find in the two largest special collections in -the country; not merely histories and biographies, but the documents of -the time, speeches and sermons and letters, newspapers and magazines and -pamphlets. I literally lived in the period; I knew it more intimately -than the world that was actually about me. My purpose was to write a -novel which should make the crisis real to the people of the present; -and so I had to read creatively, I had to get into the very soul of what -I read. I had to struggle and to suffer with the people of that time, to -forget my knowledge of the future, and to watch through their eyes the -hourly unfolding of the mighty drama of events. - -There were so many kinds of men—statesmen and business men, lawyers and -clergymen, heroes and cowards; and I had to study them all, and see the -thing through the eyes of each of them. And of course, I could only play -at ignorance, for I knew the future; and I saw all their mistakes, and -the reasons for them, and the pity and the folly and the tragedy of it -all. Knowing, as I did, the great underlying forces which were driving -behind the events, I saw all these people as puppets, moved here and -there by powers of whose existence they never dreamed. - -And, of course, all the while I was also reading my morning newspaper, -and watching the world of to-day; and inevitably I found myself testing -the people of the present by these same methods. I would find myself -seeking for the forces which were at work to-day, and striving to reach -out to the future to which they were leading. I would find myself, by -the way of helping in this interpretation, comparing and balancing the -two eras, and transposing its figures back and forth. This famous -educator or this newspaper editor of to-day—what would he have been -saying had he lived in 1852? And this clergyman friend of mine, this -politician—where would he fit into that period? Or if Yancey had been -alive to-day, what would he have been doing? Where should I have found -Seward—what parts would Edward Everett and Wendell Phillips and -Jefferson Davis have been playing? - -It was really a fascinating problem in proportion. The men of fifty -years ago stood thus and so to a known crisis; similar men of the -present stand thus to an unknown crisis—and now find the crisis. When I -had finished “Manassas” I took up the writing of “The Jungle”; which is -simply to say that I was drawn on irresistibly to seek for this latter -crisis, and to try to understand it—to get into the heart of it, and -live it and follow it to its end, just as I had done with the earlier -one. So now I feel that I have much the same sort of power as Cuvier, -the naturalist, who could construct a prehistoric animal from a bit of -its bone. I have far more than the bone of this monster—I have his tail, -beginning far back in the seventies; and I have the whole of his huge -body—the present. I have counted his scales and measured his limbs; I -have even felt his pulse and had his blood under the microscope. And now -you ask me—How many more vertebræ will there be in the neck of this -strange animal? And what will be the size and the shape of his head? - -So it is that I write in all seriousness that the revolution will take -place in America within one year after the Presidential election of -1912; and, in saying this, I claim to speak, not as a dreamer nor as a -child, but as a scientist and a prophet. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - Introduction vii - - CHAPTER - I. The Coming Crisis 3 - - II. Industrial Evolution 27 - - III. Markets and Misery 72 - - IV. Social Decay 103 - - V. Business and Politics 138 - - VI. The Revolution 179 - - VII. The Industrial Republic 215 - - - - - ILLUSTRATIONS - - - “Vooruit,” Home of the Socialist societies of Ghent _Frontispiece_ - - FACING PAGE - A Socialist view of the Trusts 48 - - Reaping by hand and by machinery 92 - - Child labor in glass factories and coal mines 114 - - The Social contrast in New York 126 - - Coxey’s Army on the march and in Washington 206 - - The competitive vs. coöperative distribution of information 220 - - Helicon Hall 274 - - - - - THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC - - - - - CHAPTER I - THE COMING CRISIS - - -The thing which most impresses the student of the Civil War struggle, is -how generally and completely the people who lived through it failed to -understand it themselves. We of the present day know that the War was a -clash between two incompatible types of civilisation; between an -agricultural and conservative aristocracy, and a commercial and -progressive democracy. We can see that each society developed in its -people a separate point of view, separate customs and laws, ideals and -policies, literatures and religions. We can see that their differing -interests as to tariffs, police regulations, domestic improvements and -foreign affairs, made political strife between them inevitable; and that -finally the expansion which was necessary to the life of each brought -them into a conflict which could only end with the submission of one or -the other. Yet, plain as this seems to us now, the people of that time -did not grasp it; through the whole long process they were dragged, as -it were, by the hair of their heads, and each event as it came was a -separate phenomenon, a fresh source of astonishment, alarm, and -indignation. Even after the war had broken out, the vast majority of -them would not be enlightened as in regard to it—a few of them have not -been enlightened yet. I talked recently with an old Confederate naval -officer, who said to me: “Oh, yes; it was the politicians who made the -war.” I recall the astonished look which crossed the old gentleman’s -face when I ventured the opinion that the politicians of this country -had never yet made anything except their own livings. - -It seemed not merely that they _could_ not understand the thing; they -_would_ not. The truth did not please them, and the best and wisest of -them appeared to have the idea that they had only not to see it, and it -would cease to be the truth; after the manner of the learned men of -Galileo’s time, who declined to look through his telescope, or to watch -him drop weights from the Tower of Pisa. They made it a matter of -offence that anyone should understand; the ability to predict political -events was held to imply some collusion with them. When Lincoln, just -before the crash, ventured to doubt the stability of “a house divided -against itself,” his enemies fell upon him precisely as if he had -declared, not that such a house would fall, but that he intended to -knock it down. And this was the established view of all the conservatism -of the country, only two or three years before there burst upon it one -of the most fearful cataclysms of history. - -Let us endeavour to place ourselves in the position of the average man -of 1860, and see now the whole matter appeared to him. - -Way back in the early thirties, eight or ten more or less insane -fanatics—“apostate priests and unsexed women,” as one writer described -them—had got together and begun an agitation for a wholly impossible and -visionary (to say nothing of revolutionary and unconstitutional) -programme—“the immediate and unconditional emancipation of the slaves.” -They formed a society and started a paper called the _Liberator_. When -governors of Southern states protested concerning it, the Hon. Harrison -Gray Otis, Mayor of Boston, wrote as follows: “It appeared upon inquiry -that no member of the city government, nor any person of my -acquaintance, had ever heard of the publication. Sometime afterward it -was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the -paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only -visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a very few ignorant -persons of all colours. This information, with the consent of the -Aldermen, I communicated to the above named governors, with an utterance -of my belief that the new fanaticism had not made, nor was likely to -make, proselytes among the respectable classes of the people.” - -Nevertheless, the danger of this propaganda was recognised, and before -long the Abolitionists were being stoned and shot, their presses -smashed, and their meetings broken up; a “broadcloth mob” put a rope -round the neck of the editor of the _Liberator_ and dragged him through -the streets of the city. And still, in spite of this, the agitation went -on. All the “cranks” of the country gradually rallied about the -movement. Their leader was a woman’s suffragist, an infidel, a -prohibitionist, and a vegetarian; he denounced the Constitution as “an -agreement with Death, and a covenant with Hell.” There was one man among -them who addressed meetings with clanking chains about his wrists, and a -three-pronged iron slave-collar about his neck; and who declared to the -people of a town that they “had better establish among them a hundred -rum-shops, fifty gambling-houses and ten brothels, than one church.” -They allowed Negroes to speak on the platform with them, and they opened -schools for Negro girls, or tried to, until these were broken up. One of -them refused to pay taxes to a slave-holding government, and went to -jail for it. - -Assuredly, no common-sense person would have thought that here was -anything save a madness that might be allowed to run its course. Yet the -Abolitionists kept at it. In the election of 1840, a wing of them split -off, and nominated a candidate for the Presidency, who received seven -thousand votes out of a total of two or three millions. Four years -later, when the Democratic Party was on the verge of forcing the country -into a war with Mexico, they raised a hue and cry that this was a -“slave-driver’s enterprise,” with the result that their vote went up to -sixty-two thousand. And by keeping up the ceaseless agitation all -through the war, and taking advantage of a factional quarrel in New York -state to nominate a politician who came into their camp for the sake of -revenge, they cast, in 1848, a vote of two hundred and ninety-one -thousand. - -And also they had by this time succeeded in colouring a great mass of -the popular thought with their views. They had gotten the country -unsettled; they had made people feel that something was wrong, and all -sorts of anti-slavery measures were beginning to be championed. Some -wanted to exclude slavery from the new Territories; some wanted to -exclude it from the National Capital; some wanted to restrict the -domestic slave-trade. All of these people, of course, denied indignantly -that they were Abolitionists, denied that they had any sympathy with -Abolitionism, or that their measures had anything to do with it. But the -South, whom the matter concerned, understood perfectly well the folly of -such a claim—understood that the institution of Slavery was one which -could not be made war upon, or limited, and that the first hostile move -which was made against it would necessarily mean its downfall. Hence, to -the South, all these people were “Abolitionists.” - -Over the California question, there came at last a crisis, and all the -Conservative forces of the nation were scarcely equal to the settling of -it. Edward Everett and Rufus Choate and Calhoun and Clay and Webster, -and a dozen others that one might name, exerted all their influence, and -went about warning their countrymen of the danger, and denouncing what -Webster called “the din and roll and rub-a-dub of Abolition presses and -Abolition lectures.” Under these circumstances the “Compromise” was -adopted, and the vote of the Abolitionist Party fell off to one hundred -and fifty-six thousand. - -But then came the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which brought -Lincoln into politics. The Abolition clamour surged up as never -before—here was one proof the more, they said, that Slavery was menacing -American institutions. The whole country seemed suddenly to be full of -their supporters; and the Kansas Raid only added more fuel to the flame. -The Republican Party was formed, the _Black_ Republican Party, as the -slave-holders called it; and at the Presidential election of 1856, they -cast more than one million three hundred thousand votes, about one-third -of the total vote of the country. - -After that came, in due course, the attempt of the Supreme Court to put -an end to the Abolitionist agitation, declaring that Congress could not -restrict slavery in the Territories, which meant that the Republican -Party had no right to exist. To “cheerfully acquiesce” in the decision -of the Supreme Court, was the duty of “all good citizens,” according to -President Buchanan; yet the only result of the action of the Supreme -Court was to cause the agitation to burst out afresh. In Illinois, -Abraham Lincoln ran for senator in flat defiance of the Supreme Court’s -decision, and the Republican Party all over the country went on in its -revolutionary course, precisely as if no Supreme Court had ever existed. -A year or two later an agitator made matters still worse by his attempt -to set free the slaves by force. “It is my firm and deliberate -conviction,” said Senator Douglas, “that the Harper’s Ferry crime was -the natural, logical and inevitable result of the doctrines and -teachings of the Republican Party.” And he was perfectly right. - -It was disgraceful, and yet it would not stop. The North had by this -time become so full of Abolitionism, that even the Democrats were not to -be trusted. When the split came, in Charleston, Yancey of Alabama -explained this. “When I was a boy in the Northern States,” he said, -“Abolitionists were pelted with rotten eggs. But now this band of -Abolitionists has spread and grown into three bands—the Black -Republicans, the Free-soilers, and the Squatter-sovereignty men—all -representing the common sentiment that Slavery is wrong.” And when -Abraham Lincoln was elected President by a minority of the people, upon -a platform which declared that the Constitution was to be disregarded, -the party of conservatism and tradition resorted to _force_ to maintain -its rights. - -And what happened then? Why, simply this: a group of fanatical -visionaries who had for thirty years been jeered at for demanding of the -country something that was revolutionary and inconceivable—the -destruction of an institution which had stood for centuries, and was -built into the very framework of the nation—suddenly began to see the -mighty structure totter, to see cracks open in it, to see its pillars -crumble, its roof fall in; and at last, before they had fairly time to -realise what was happening, the whole heaven-defying colossus lay a heap -of dust and ruins at their feet! - - -I have said that I believe that our country is now only a few years away -from a similar great transformation. In order to maintain that thesis, -it will be necessary to show, first, a great underlying economic cause, -working irresistibly to force the issue; and second, a consequent -movement of protest, slowly making headway and ultimately permeating the -whole thought of the country. - -What was the cause of the Civil War? To put it into a phrase, it was the -need under which Slavery laboured of securing new territory. The reader -may find a contemporary exposition of the situation in Olmstead’s -“Cotton Kingdom.” Slave labour was a very wasteful means of -cultivation—only the top of the soil was used, and ten or fifteen crops -exhausted it. Virginia was once a great exporting state, but in the -forties and fifties it had become simply a slave-breeding ground for the -younger generation, which had moved to the Far South. And then, when the -Far South began to prove insufficient, there was another move, into -Texas; and finally an attempt at still a third, into Kansas—which -brought on the clash with the free states. - -At the present day we have a society, industrial instead of -agricultural; and the struggle which we are witnessing is that between -capital and labour. It is a struggle, not for land, but for profits; and -if we are to show that it is, like the Civil War, “an irrepressible -conflict between opposing and enduring forces,” we must show in this -case also that the thing struggled for is limited in quantity, and -ultimately insufficient to satisfy the needs of both the contending -parties. - -That our industrial system is based upon profits, and that a failure of -profits would lead to its collapse, will be admitted by anyone. But how -could profits ever fail? the reader asks. Will not the soil always -produce? And does not every man who comes into the world bring a pair of -hands with him, to produce things and earn his living? And so, can there -not always be profitable exchange? There could, I answer, provided that -the various pairs of hands were to remain upon equal terms. But suppose -that one pair were to get some advantage over the other pairs, and use -that advantage to get constantly increasing advantage; might there not -then come a time when the other pairs, having less and less, were -finally unable to furnish as much profits as were necessary? - -We began the economic battle in this country upon equal terms. Some got -the advantage and became masters, the others becoming wage-workers. This -advantage—that is, capital—brought constantly increasing -advantage—profit, rent, interest; and those who had not the advantage -stayed meanwhile just where they were—they got enough to live on, and no -more. Numerous exceptions to this do not in the least disturb the main -facts—that as a class the wage-workers stayed wage-workers, and the -masters stayed masters. Neither does the fact that wages rose constantly -in the least disturb the main fact, for the cost of living rose also; -the wage-worker got his living then, and he gets it now. And meanwhile, -according to the way of nature, and in spite of the outcry of moralists -and old-fashioned statesmen, the strong went on growing stronger, and -fighting among each other, the victors growing ten times stronger yet; -until now we have come to a stage where, industrially speaking, we are a -nation of eighty million pygmies and a dozen giants. Nor is the work -quite done yet—it is going straight on, in spite of anti-trust decisions -and the labour of the “muckrake man”—and within a very few more years -the dozen giants will be but one giant. - -The dozen, meanwhile, are giants, and they are that because the -industrial opportunities of the nation are their property. They are the -nation, economically speaking; they own its railroads and telegraphs, -its coal mines, oil fields, factories and stores. And they grant to the -eighty millions of the nation the right to these opportunities and a -chance to earn their living upon one certain definite condition—that of -what they produce, they receive only a part, yielding up the balance to -be “profits.” - -It is also important to notice that these profits are not taken “in -kind”—the product must first be sold, so that both wages and profits can -be paid in money. It thus follows that the amount of profits is strictly -limited by the amount of _market_ that can be found; in other words, -that a society whose income is limited, is also limited as to its -profit-yielding capacity—that, for instance, a society of eighty -millions of people receiving a mere living wage will be able to yield -just so much rent, interest and dividends, and not any more. - -But what it yields has in the past been enough, says the reader. Why -will it not be enough for the future? - -Just this is the crux of the whole matter. Rent, interest, dividends, it -must be understood, are fractions; and fractions may be decreased as -well by increasing the denominator, as by decreasing the numerator. A -man, for instance, who invested a hundred dollars and made six, would -receive six per cent. interest; but if he invested the second year one -hundred and six dollars, and was able still to gain only six, his profit -would be, not six per cent., but only five and a fraction. If he wished -to make six, he would have to squeeze out a little more than six -dollars; would have to compel the man who paid it to him to work just a -little harder. And that, in miniature, is a representation of what is -going on in our society to-day. You, the well-meaning reader, who are -struggling to make the world better, and failing—whether the thing which -you are trying to reform be politics or literature or religion, New York -or Colorado or the Philippines, Fifth Avenue or Wall Street or Hell’s -Kitchen—you are meeting with failure because of that little arithmetical -difficulty which has just been set forth. - -Consider our millionaire fortunes, how they grow. Consider, for -instance, that Mr. John D. Rockefeller makes fifty per cent. a year upon -his holdings in the Standard Oil Company. The stock of the Standard Oil -Company is now at five hundred, and has been as high as eight hundred in -the market. This is assuming that Mr. Rockefeller invested in the stock -at par—though as a matter of fact, he put in only about twenty dollars a -share, which would make his profit two hundred and fifty per cent. His -income is at least fifty million dollars a year. - -What does he do with it? Of course, he can’t spend it—if he treated -himself to a St. Louis Exposition every year, he couldn’t spend it. What -he does with it is to take it promptly, and reinvest it in the form of -new capital; he employs a staff of thirty-two trained experts to aid him -in this work. The effect of this is, of course, to make his income fifty -per cent., _compound_ interest, instead of simple; and what it will be -in the course of time is a problem for those who like figures. While he -is doing this, all the other capitalists are doing the same—the American -millionaire lets his wife and daughters spend as much of his money as -they can, but he seldom spends any himself; he is more interested in -“doing things.” The consequence is, therefore, that year after year we -are paying the vast mass of our people mere living wages, and all the -surplus product of our toil we are selling, and devoting to the creation -of new instruments of production. We have, mark you, machinery that -creates products for hundreds of times as many men as it employs, and -still we skim off the surplus and devote it to making new machines. Is -it not obvious that this cannot go on forever? And that the time must -come that we make all that we need—or rather that our people have money -to buy, wages being what they are? And if that ever happens, then of -course the factories will have to shut down. We shall have millions of -men out of work, and starving on our streets; and when they form -processions and begin agitating, demanding that we give them work, then -we say—that is, our newspapers, our preachers, our politicians, -everybody says— - -“But, my good man, there is no more work to be done!” - -“But I am starving,” insists the workingman, “we are _all_ starving. -_Why_ is there no work?” - -“The reason there is no work is ‘overproduction.’ The market is clogged -with products, you must understand, and we can’t sell them. What is your -trade?” - -“I work in a shoe-factory.” - -“But the shoe market is already glutted—there are twice as many shoes as -there is any use for.” - -“Twice as many shoes! But my feet are on the ground!” - -“Well, we can’t help that, my good man; that’s because you have no money -to buy them with.” - -“And my friend here,” goes on the workingman—“he is a tailor, and he is -naked because there are too many coats on the market?” - -“Exactly.” - -“And the baker here is starving because we are both too poor to buy his -bread?” - -“Exactly.” - -“And then this druggist is sick because we have no money to buy -medicine?” - -“Exactly.” - -After which, the workingman stands and scratches his head for a moment. -“There is too much of everything,” he reflects. “There is no more work -to be done.” And suddenly the light breaks. “Oh, I see!” he cries, “we -have finished our work for the capitalists!” And you answer, “Exactly! -Everything is complete, and of course there is no more room for you. -Therefore you had best be off to another planet!” - - -So it would be, if the workingman were content to take his doctrines -from the other side—from the retainers of those “to whom God in His -Infinite Wisdom has entrusted the care of the property interests of the -country.” But, meantime, the workingman has been thinking for -himself—and evolving a quite new doctrine, all his own, concerning the -property interests of the country. This doctrine is, in a word, that the -means of production of wealth belong of right to no individual, but to -the whole people; and that in the hour of the collapse of the -profit-making system, the thing for the people to do is to take -possession of the machinery, and use it to produce goods, no longer for -those who own, but for those who work. - -And that brings me to the second of my tasks. I have shown the “great -underlying economic cause, working irresistibly to force the issue”; -there remains to show the consequent “movement of protest.” - -I have before me, as I write, a little pamphlet published by the -“Standard Publishing Company,” of Terre Haute, Indiana, and entitled, -“The American Movement,” by Eugene V. Debs. It opens with the statement -that “The twentieth century, according to the prophecy of Victor Hugo, -is to be the century of humanity,” and will witness “the crash of -despotism and the rise of world-wide democracy, freedom and -brotherhood.” The reader, continuing, soon discovers that the “American -movement,” with which this pamphlet deals, is the American Socialist -movement. The writer tells of its early “Utopian” forms, the Owenites -and the Brook-farmers, and names the exiles who came from abroad in -1848, bringing the Marxian doctrine, and influencing such men as Horace -Greeley and Parke Godwin. “The first large society to adopt and -propagate Socialism in America,” he writes, “was composed of the German -Gymnastic Unions. Through the sixties and seventies the agitation -steadily increased, local organisations were formed in various parts of -the country. Following the Paris Commune of 1871, and its tragic ending, -many French radicals came to our shores and gave new spirit to the -movement. In 1876 the Workingman’s Party was organised, and in 1877, at -the convention held in Newark, it became the Socialist Labour Party. The -Socialists were intent upon building up a working-class party for -independent political action.” This party, “composed of thoughtful, -intelligent men, aggressive and progressive, of rugged honesty and -thrilled with the revolutionary spirit and aspiration for freedom, -became from its inception a decided factor in the labour movement. The -busy, ignorant world about the revolutionary nucleus knew little or -nothing about it; had no conception of its significance, and looked upon -its adherents as foolish fanatics whose antics were harmless and whose -designs would dissolve like bubbles on the surface of a stream. In -March, 1885, was inaugurated the strike of the Knights of Labour. On May -1st of the same year, the general strikes for the eight-hour work-day -broke out in various parts of the country. In 1884, Laurence Gronlund -published his “Coöperative Commonwealth.” In 1888 Edward Bellamy -published his “Looking Backward,” and it had a wonderful effect upon the -people. The editions ran into hundreds of thousands.” - -The author then goes on to narrate his version of the Pullman strike of -1893. He declares that the American Railway Union, of which he was -president, had won, when the General Managers’ Association caused the -swearing in of “an army of deputies,” whom the Chief of Police of -Chicago declared to be “thieves, thugs and ex-convicts,” and that it was -these men who caused the violence which led to President Cleveland’s -action, and the breaking of the strike. He then continues the story of -the Socialist movement. _The Coming Nation_, started at Greensburg, -Indiana, by J. A. Wayland, in 1893, was the first popular propaganda -paper to be published in the interests of Socialism in this country. It -reached a large circulation, and the proceeds were used in founding and -developing the Ruskin coöperative colony in Tennessee. Later Mr. Wayland -began the publication of the _Appeal to Reason_, and it now numbers its -subscribers by the hundreds of thousands. It is not saying too much for -the _Appeal_ that it has been a great factor in preparing the American -soil for the seed of Socialism. Its enormous editions have been and are -being spread broadcast, and copies may be found in the remotest recesses -and the most inaccessible regions. The periodical and weekly press, so -necessary to any political movement, is now developing rapidly, and -there is every reason to believe that within the next few years there -will be a formidable array of reviews, magazines, illustrated journals, -and daily and weekly papers to represent the movement and do battle for -its supremacy. The last convention of the American Railway Union was the -first convention of the Social Democracy of America, and this was held -in Chicago, in June, 1897, the delegates voting to change the railway -union into a working-class political party. _The Railway Times_, the -official paper of the union, became the _Social-Democrat_, and later the -_Social-Democratic Herald_, and is now published at Milwaukee in the -interest of the Socialist Party. Since the election of 1900, there has -been greater activity in organising, and a more widespread propaganda -than ever before. In the elections of the past, it can scarcely be -claimed that the Socialist movement was represented by a national party. -It entered these contests with but few states organised, and with no -resources worth mentioning to sustain it during the campaign. It is far -different to-day. The Socialist Party is organised in almost every state -and territory in the American Union. Its members are filled with -enthusiasm and working with an energy born of the throb and thrill of -revolution. The party has a press supporting it that extends from sea to -sea, and is as vigilant and tireless in its labours as it is steadfast -and true to the party principles. - -“Viewed to-day from any intelligent standpoint, the outlook of the -Socialist movement is full of promise—to the capitalist, of struggle and -conquest; to the worker, of coming freedom. It is the break of dawn upon -the horizon of human destiny, and it has no limitation but the walls of -the universe.” - - -Whatever the reader may think about the foregoing narrative, there is -one part of it which he cannot dismiss; the statements concerning the -growth of the American Socialist Party. In 1888 the Socialist vote was -two thousand. In 1892, it was twenty-one thousand. In 1896, it was -thirty-six thousand. In 1900, it was one hundred and thirty-one -thousand. In 1904, it was four hundred and forty-two thousand. - -The Socialist Party has some twenty-seven thousand subscribing members, -who pay monthly dues. It has over eighteen hundred “locals,” or centres -of agitation; the members of these “locals” are for the most part -workingmen, who give their spare hours to the cause, holding meetings -and debates, and circulating the literature of Socialism. In the larger -cities, there are generally several lectures each week, and there are a -score of “national organisers,” who travel about, speaking night after -night in various towns, forming new “locals,” and taking subscriptions -to the Socialist publications. Of these there are four monthlies and -about thirty-five weeklies. Since 1892, Wayland’s paper, _The Appeal to -Reason_ (Girard, Kansas), has increased its paid circulation from one -hundred and twenty-six thousand to over two hundred and seventy-five -thousand, and last year it printed one edition of two millions and a -half, and another of over three millions. Another Socialist paper, -_Wilshire’s Magazine_ (New York), has increased its circulation from -fifty-five thousand to two hundred and seventy thousand in a single -year. In addition to this, there are many publishing companies, which -distribute books, leaflets and pamphlets, at little more than cost. I -have before me a treatise, the price of which is one cent, of which over -five million copies have been sold since its publication some years ago. -Its title is “Why Workingmen Should Be Socialists,” by Gaylord Wilshire. - -And in giving the figures of the Socialist growth, it is worth while to -point out that this is not merely a local movement, but a world -movement; that the United States is one of the most backward of the -civilised nations in respect to Socialism. In Australia the labour -unions have adopted a full Socialist program, and the labour unions hold -the balance of power. In England, they have just elected twenty-seven -members of Parliament; they have now members in the Cabinet of France, -and in Italy they have turned out ministries. In Belgium, the vote of -the party is half a million, and in Austria it is nearly a million, -while in Germany it has grown from thirty thousand in 1870, to five -hundred and forty-nine thousand in 1884, one million, eight hundred and -seventy-six thousand in 1893, three million and eight thousand in 1903 -and three million two hundred and fifty thousand in 1907. The Socialists -are electing representatives in Argentina and South Africa; in spite of -government persecution, the movement is now growing rapidly in Japan. -Including all languages, the Socialist journals number nearly seven -hundred, and the Socialist vote of the world is figured at nearly eight -million. Allowing for women, and for the disfranchised proletariat of -such nations as Russia, Austria, and Italy, there are estimated to be -thirty million class-conscious Socialists in the world. - -To overlook the significance of a movement such as this, is but to -repeat upon a larger scale the error of half a century ago, and to pay -with blood and anguish for blundering and indifference. The processes of -time have their laws, which can be studied; and all the waste and ruin -of history, which make its records scarcely to be read, are consequences -of the fact that man has to be lashed to his goal through the darkness, -instead of marching to it in the light. You take but a shallow view of -the problems of our present time, if you do not realise that when thirty -million people, in every corner of the civilised world, organise -themselves into a political party, they do it because of some -fundamental and tremendous motive, and that they will not be apt to -abandon their efforts until they have accomplished some proportionately -significant result. - - - - - CHAPTER II - INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION - - -Herbert Spencer gives a definition of Evolution, phrased in technical -terms, which might be roughly summed up in these words: A process -whereby many similar and simple things become dissimilar parts of one -complex thing. If we trace, for instance, the evolution of human -society, we see about as follows: In the beginning man exists in widely -scattered and unrelated tribes, having a very loosely organised -government, each individual doing about as he pleases, and all -individuals being very much the same. Each finds his own food and cooks -it, makes his own weapons and clothing, and looks and thinks and acts -like his neighbour. Little by little, as the tribe grows, it begins to -come into contact with other tribes that also are growing, and a -pressure begins; the tribes make war upon each other, and each -individual of the tribe is forced by the presence of danger to unite -himself more closely with his fellows, to establish a more rigid rule of -obedience, and to force refractory members to the general will. Then, -under still growing pressure, one tribe unites with another against a -common enemy, and the strongest man in the two rules both; which process -of combining continues until at last there results an organism of great -complexity, whose members are no longer equal and self-sustaining, but -have different activities and ranks and characteristics, and are each -dependent upon the rest. If, for instance, we examine France during the -Feudal period, we find numerous principalities, duchies and baronies, -each one an elaborate and complex organisation, with various classes and -hierarchies and tributary parts, and a whole system of laws and customs -and beliefs to correspond. And no sooner is this process complete than -an evolution begins among these organisms; under the stress of -jealousies and ambitions they too begin to struggle, to combine; and -presently in one of them arises a strong man who secures command of them -all. When the process is completed, there stands in the place of a -hundred principalities, one kingdom, the Kingdom of France. - -The object of all this long labour is, of course, to get some kind of an -organism that shall be capable of maintaining itself in a world of -ferocious strife; that shall be able to withstand all enemies that may -come against it, and all rebellions that may arise within it. The French -monarchy was a marvellous piece of work when it was done; it had men -graded into a thousand different classes and occupations, and everything -fitted perfectly and ran like a clock. It had peasants to till the soil, -and soldiers and sailors to fight; artisans to make all its necessaries, -and merchants to handle them; and rising tier upon tier, a whole pyramid -of governing and administrative officials, up to the king. It had -likewise the whole outfit of ideas and customs necessary to its -operation; it was complete and perfect and sublime—it was like a mighty -vessel defying the tempests; it had also its pennons that waved, and its -songs for the crew to sing. Was it any wonder that those who had made it -were proud of it, and felt that there was nothing more to be done in the -world but to keep it going? - -And yet evolution was not through with it. Men grow weary and want to -rest, they become “conservative” and fret at the bare thought of -change—but the processes of life go on inexorably. This mighty -structure, the Kingdom of France, was only a means and not an end—its -purpose was to bind the people of the nation together and protect them -until they were able to take care of themselves. It took a long time for -this idea to make its way; it took a fearful struggle—men were -imprisoned and exiled, burned and beheaded; but the idea went right on, -and the nation went right on; and when the time came, it burst the old -integument to pieces, and out of the Kingdom of France there emerged the -French Republic. - -What a marvellous event that was, and what a stir it made in the -world—what a stir especially in our own corner of the world—every one -knows. Looking at it from a century’s distance, and calmly, we see the -whole age-long event as an exemplification of the process of life; the -combining of a number of simple things into one complex thing. The means -was struggle and rivalry—it was a cruel process; but you will notice -that at the end the effort and the pain are all gone—that the organism -fulfils its functions freely and joyfully, and that the only difference -between the first stage and the last is that the individual man has been -raised to a higher plane of being. - -Now, as I have said before, the first care of a man is to protect his -life; the second is to accumulate wealth. A man does not set much store -by his goods while his enemies are within sound; but just as soon as -they are dispersed, the tribe begins to gather flocks, and to till the -soil. And so, following close upon the heels of the evolution of -political society, you have the evolution of _industrial_ society. - -And it is precisely the same process. We may see nearly the whole of it -in this country. It begins with the colonial village, where every man -owns a little land and raises his own food; also he cobbles his own -shoes, spins his own wool, weaves his own cloth, and makes his own -clothes. In the very earliest days, he never buys anything, because -there is nothing to buy. He may be the deacon or the schoolmaster or the -judge, but still he has his own farm, and any other man in the village -is about as well fitted to be the deacon or the schoolmaster or the -judge as he. But then his goods expand and war begins—industrial war, I -mean—a horse-trade, for example. Political evolution is slow, because -the rate of increase of men is limited; but the rate of increase of -goods proves to be unlimited. Machines are invented, and straightway the -industrial process is accelerated tenfold. It took a thousand years to -evolve a monarchy; it took only a hundred to evolve a trust. - -The industrial units fight each other, and the strongest survive as -employers, the weakest becoming employees. Then, as growth continues, -these various little groups all over the country come into contact, and -they struggle also. The struggle is of course no longer fighting with -swords—it is underselling; but the process is exactly the same, and its -purpose is the building up of a capable industrial organism. Precisely -as in one case the tribes by combining find they are stronger to fight, -the employers, by combining, find that they are stronger to undersell; -and this process goes on until you have an industrial feudalism, -corresponding in all its details to the political feudalism of France. -And then, as before, the barons and the princes and the dukes fight -among each other, until out of the midst arises a strong man, a -Rockefeller or a Harriman, who smashes them right and left, and makes -himself a king. - -He is a king in precisely the same way, and to precisely the same -purpose, as Louis the Great was king. You know how Richelieu served the -nobility of France—if they would not obey they simply lost their heads. -If you have read Miss Tarbell’s “History of the Standard Oil Company,” -or Henry D. Lloyd’s “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” you know how Mr. -Rockefeller served the oil nobility; how he tricked them and crushed -them; how sometimes, it is said, he blew up their refineries with -dynamite, or burned them with fire. You know how Louis said he was the -State; and you heard the president of one of the coal companies, who is -doing business in flat defiance of the laws of the land, declare that -God in His Infinite Wisdom had entrusted to him the property interests -of the country. It is not necessary to pursue this analogy; if you do -not see that in the due and inevitable course of evolution, our -industrial organism has attained the monarchical stage, it is simply -because you do not wish to see it, and no amount of exposition will -avail. I have only to add, as before, that the purpose of _this_ process -was to evolve an organism which should be capable of maintaining itself -against all enemies, without and within. The task of King Louis was the -aggrandisement of France; the task of Mr. Rockefeller is the keeping up -of Standard Oil stock. Incidentally, Louis the Great gave the world a -race-heritage and a civilisation; incidentally, Mr. Rockefeller -furnishes the world with oil. Also—what is true in one case is true in -the other—the Standard Oil Company is a marvellous piece of work. It has -men graded into a thousand different classes and occupations, and all -fitting perfectly and running like a clock. It has labourers to till the -soil, lobbyists and salesmen to fight, factories to make all its -necessaries, and railroads to handle them; and, rising tier upon tier, -it has a whole pyramid of governing and administrative officials, up to -the president. It has likewise the whole outfit of ideas necessary to -its operation; it is complete and perfect and sublime—it is like a -mighty vessel, defying the tempests. Is it any wonder that those who -have constructed it are proud of it, and feel that there is nothing more -to be done in the world but to keep it going? - -It is of course clear that the next step, according to my parallel, -would be into an Industrial Republic. The reader differs from most -Americans whom I meet if this idea is not startling to him. Let us go -forward slowly. - -In Mr. John Bach McMaster’s “History of the People of the United -States,” is a narrative of the terrible yellow-fever epidemic which -occurred in Philadelphia in the year 1793, causing the death of over -four thousand people in four months. In those days men had strange ideas -as to the causes of yellow fever; they believed, in this case, that it -“had come from a pile of stinking hides that had been on one of the -wharves.” The historian goes on to describe the strange expedients they -adopted to get rid of it. “People were bidden to keep out of the sun, -and not to get tired. The doctors had little faith in bonfires as -purifiers of the air, but much in the burning of gunpowder. Every one -then who could buy or borrow a gun, loaded and fired it from morning -till night. Then one remedy after another would be suggested, and people -would cover themselves with it—nitre, tobacco, and garlic, mud-baths, -camphor, and thieves’ vinegar. The last could only be procured by going -to the shop. The purchaser going to get it was careful to have a piece -of tarred rope wet with camphor at his nose, and in his pocket his -handkerchief soaked with the last preventive he had heard of. He shunned -the footpaths, fled down the nearest alley at sight of a carriage, and -would go six blocks to avoid passing a house where a dead body had been -taken out a week before. He would not enter a shop where another man -stood at the counter; he would rush in, throw down the money, and rush -home—soak everything in this prepared vinegar, and live on a prescribed -diet, water-gruel, oatmeal, tea, barley-water, or a vile concoction -called apple-tea. If his head pained him or his tongue felt rough, he -would immediately wash out his mouth with warm water and honey and -vinegar——” etc., etc. At the time when I read all this, it made a -peculiar impression upon me, because the newspapers happened just then -to be full of the discovery of the true cause of yellow fever. And so -all the time that I was reading about the man with the tarred rope in -his hands and a sponge wet with camphor at his nose, I had this thought -in my mind: And while he was waiting outside of the shop, a mosquito -flew up, all unheeded, and bit him. And so he died! - -It seemed to me a peculiarly neat illustration of the precise difference -between knowledge and ignorance. It led me to reflect how very eager men -ought to be to possess the former; and I put the anecdote away in my -mind, thinking, “I shall use it some day when I want—all of a sudden—to -scare someone out of a prejudice!” - -For just imagine, if you can, that mosquitoes, instead of being a pest -about which every man was glad to believe evil, had been the basis of -some important industry, or otherwise the source of incalculable -advantage to the dominant classes of the community; that universities -were endowed, and newspapers owned, and churches and hospitals -supported, out of the proceeds of the mosquito monopoly! Are you sure -that in that case the discovery of the physicians in Havana would have -been hailed as a triumph of Science? Or do you not think that there -might have been a strong opposition to the fantastic speculation, and -that the men who had published it might have been denounced as enemies -of society, and turned out of office for their incendiary teachings? -That other physicians of high standing might have been found to ridicule -the idea? That newspapers might have refused to print arguments in -favour of it—that, in short, the mosquito monopoly might have succeeded -in conjuring up before the imaginations of the multitude so horrible an -image of this doctrine and its consequences, that they would have looked -upon anyone who advocated it as in some way morally deformed? Assuming -that this could have been done, there are only two things to be added. -The first is that all the while the mosquitoes would have gone right on -causing the yellow fever; and the second is that the people would have -found it out in the end—that all that the makers of public opinion would -have done, would be to put just so many millions of dollars into the -pockets of the mosquito monopoly, at a cost of just so much misery to -the human race. - -At the outset of this argument, I very much wish that you, the reader, -would commune with yourself prayerfully, as to whether or not it might -not possibly be that the ideas you have in your head concerning an -“Industrial Republic” are really not ideas of your own at all, but -prejudices which other people have put there for purposes known to them. - - -Let me repeat the definition which I gave at the outset of this -argument: I mean by an Industrial Republic, an organisation for the -production of wealth, whose members are established upon a basis of -equality; who elect representatives to govern the organisation; and who -share equally in all its advantages. - -A century or two ago our ancestors were governed, “by grace of God,” by -an unamiable old gentleman over in England, who controlled their -destinies, and sent his representatives over here to tax and oppress -them; and they impiously rose up and adopted a declaration to the effect -that all men were born free and equal; and they seized the property and -revenues of their king, and thereafter managed the country for their own -benefit solely. “No taxation without representation,” had been their -doctrine beforehand. And you, who are an American, and celebrate the -Fourth of July, and teach your children to admire the men who threw the -tea into Boston Harbour—do you think that you could give me any reason -why a man has a right to be represented where he pays his taxes, and no -right to be represented where he gets his daily bread? Do you not -perceive that a man who can say to me, “Do thus, or you and your -children can have nothing to eat,” is just as much my lord and master as -the man who can say to me, “Do thus, or be put into jail?” - -You stop and think. “The case is not quite the same,” you say. “One is -not represented, to be sure; but certainly every man has a right to get -his daily bread as he pleases.” - -Indeed, I answer. Suppose, for instance, that his occupation happens to -be that of a steel-worker; has he any way of getting his daily bread, -except upon certain precise terms which a certain group of men offer -him? - -“H’m,” you say, “that’s so. But then, if he doesn’t like it, can’t he -change his occupation?” - -My answer is, I do not believe that George the Third would have had any -objection to one of our ancestors going to France to become a subject of -King Louis. But I understand that freedom began in America when the men -of Lexington and Bunker Hill resolved to _stay at home_ and be free. - -“This is all very well in theory,” you say, “but how can it ever be -realised?” As I said before, I expect to see it realised in the United -States of America within the next ten years. I expect to see it, exactly -as I should have expected to see the French Revolution, had I known what -I know now; understood that institutions and systems have their day, and -perceived the signs of a breakdown as they existed in France in 1780, -and as they exist in America in 1907. - -What was the cause of the French Revolution? The French monarchy was -organised upon a basis of force, represented by taxes; and those who ran -the machine had no idea but that a machine so organised could go on -forever. But in the long process of time, there developed a tendency on -the part of those to whom the taxes came, to grow richer and richer, -while those by whom the taxes were paid grew poorer and poorer. Little -by little, all the property and all the land of France came into the -hands of the nobility; until at last they had everything, and the -populace had nothing. Then suddenly the machinery of a society organised -upon a basis of force and taxes began to refuse to work; the French -peasantry had stood everything, but they could not stand being required -to pay taxes when they had nothing to pay with. So the States-General -had to be sent for, and the Revolution came. - -And note this—that the trouble was not at all that the country was poor. -Everyone is familiar with the picture of the horrible condition of the -peasantry of that time, how they were little better than wild animals, -hiding in holes, naked, and with blackened skins. Yet all the while -France was full of wealth—all the trouble was that it was stagnant in -the hands of a single class; the fields of France were ready to produce, -but the people were too poor to till them. And notice the curious fact, -that no sooner was the Revolution accomplished than the difficulty -vanished in a flash. The machinery started up again—the peasant had land -and tilled it, and the artisans of the cities found work. It seems -strange to read that under the “Terror,” when the heads of the -“aristocrats” were falling by the dozens every day and all the world was -convulsed with horror, the _people_ of France were more prosperous and -happy than ever they had been before in history. And when war broke out, -the nation that had been on the verge of bankruptcy for a generation, -withstood the armies of the combined kingdoms of Europe for more than -twenty years! - -Here in America, we all started even. Wages were high, and there was -work for every man; there was no need to strike—a workingman had only to -leave and go elsewhere if he were not pleased. We found employment for -the stream of immigrants as fast as they came—we had an enormous country -to build up, and an inexhaustible supply of new lands for the settler. -We manufactured only for our own use, and we could not manufacture half -of what we needed. - -But time passed on. Some who were frugal and diligent—and others who -were cunning and unscrupulous—grew rich; and then machinery came in, and -the pace grew faster. The rich were on top, and they stayed there. As -the country expanded, railroads were built, and fortunes made; the war -came, with its enormous expenditures, and still more fortunes were made. -Capital grew; but it could not grow fast enough—in the seventies the -rate of interest was ten per cent., and the promoters made fortunes -besides. It was in those days that the battles of the giants were -fought, the railroad wars in which the Gould and Vanderbilt millions -were accumulated. Still there was plenty to do; the people had money, -and there were some of them to buy everything we could make, and what -came from abroad besides. The cities grew and spread, and the immigrants -flowed in; railroads and factories were built, and the mighty structure -of our modern industrial machine began to take shape. It must be -understood that all the while inventions and improvements were being -made, that enabled one man to do the work of ten, of fifty, of a -hundred; and each such improvement set free so many thousands more men, -to turn their attention to another part of the structure and to rush it -on to completion. - -_Completion!_ Has it never dawned upon you that this machine might -possibly some day reach completion? - -The purpose of it is a very definite and obvious one—it is to supply the -needs of men; and when it is adequate to that purpose, it is complete. -But how will you know when _that_ is? Why, by the simplest of methods in -the world—by that insufficiency of profits which I described before. You -are in business for profits, you understand; and when you are making -something that men need, you make profits; and when you are making -something that men do not need, you _stop_ making profits. It would be -too bad if men went on making railroads where no one wanted to ride, and -building houses for no one to occupy; how fortunate that Nature has -arranged it so that we all know when our work is done! - -We were trembling on the very verge—in fact, we were half-way over the -verge—three years ago, when the Russo-Japanese War came along and saved -us. Everybody had begun to realise the peril. The investor, who had been -making ten per cent. in the seventies, came down to three. The -workingman who had a job that did not suit him, stuck to it all the -same, because he saw a million men in the country who had no job at all. -And the capitalist, the captain of industry—he mounted into his -watch-tower, and proceeded to scan the landscape. A market! A market! My -kingdom for a market! - -Our newspapers a few years ago were quite wild with delight over a -phenomenon called the “American Invasion.” They told how we were -conquering all over the world—how Europe stood shuddering with -fright—how our exports were mounting by leaps and bounds! How prosperous -we were! What ocean-tides of wealth were coming in to us! It seemed so -strange to read it all, and to understand that this “Invasion” which the -editors were celebrating, was in reality the last death-kick of the -industrial system which they had been taught to consider the foundation -of all society! - -It will be more convenient to consider the whole question of foreign -markets at a later stage; suffice it here to say, that if my analysis of -the overproduction of capital be correct, then the first signal of -danger will be what is commonly hailed as a “favourable balance of -trade”—the existence of a surplus product which must be sold abroad. You -must distinguish, of course, between a mere exchange of goods, where -exports are balanced by imports, and _selling_, which is sending out -goods and taking in gold, or promises to pay gold. In 1893 our exports -were eight hundred and forty-seven million dollars and our imports were -eight hundred and sixty-six millions. But in 1901, our exports had -leaped to one billion, four hundred and eighty-seven million dollars, -and our imports had sunk to eight hundred and twenty-three millions; and -during the next four years the excess of exports over imports amounted -to a total of over a billion and a half of dollars! According to an -estimate made public on January 6, 1907, by the Secretary of the -Treasury, the figures for 1906 will be: Imports, one billion, two -hundred million dollars, and exports, one billion, eight hundred million -dollars. And for how many more years does anyone imagine that the world -will be able to pay us six hundred million dollars in cash, for those -surplus products which we are compelled to sell? - -Do not fail to mark the word “compelled.” If we cannot sell them, we -cannot make profits; and if we cannot make profits, we cannot pay -dividends. “I am a great clamourer for dividends,” said Mr. Rockefeller; -and other captains of industry share in his weakness. And when a few -years ago they found that foreign markets were beginning to fail, they -set to work to remedy the evil in the only other possible way—by -combining, and limiting the product, and raising prices. And that brings -us to the other great symptom of the approach of the breakdown—the -organising of the trusts. For six or eight years the process has been -going on, irresistibly, automatically—while the country raged and -stormed, and poured out its wrath upon the greedy capitalist. And yet -the capitalist was no more to blame than a steam-engine that turns aside -when it comes to a switch. The capitalist was making profits; and he -saw, by the cessation of his profits, that the industrial machine of the -country was getting too big for the country’s use. Unless he, and the -machine also, were to go to smash, competition in that particular -industry must be ended. - -The work is done now; we have only to sit by and wait until the people -get through trying to undo it. I never realise more keenly the naïve and -touching incompetence of our so-called intellectual classes, than when I -reflect that while our men of action have been accomplishing this mighty -work—one of the greatest labours ever wrought for civilisation—our -benevolent editors and college presidents have gone right on with their -prattling of “freedom of contract” and “_laissez faire_.” And actually, -civilisation must sit by and wait ten years, until our people have got -through butting their heads against the granite wall of this -accomplished fact! - -But we Socialists have to take the world as we find it, and cultivate a -cheerful disposition; and so behold our great national spectacle, the -morality-play of the terrible hundred-headed monster of Competition! The -terrible monster has killed and destroyed himself, according to the -nature of him; but now by Congressional statute and Supreme Court decree -he has been patched together again, and will be compelled to go on -fighting! Or at least he shall be stuffed and mounted, and shall look as -if he were fighting! He shall have wires attached to his joints and -electric lights to gleam from his eyes; he shall be taken out in the -gorgeous Presidential campaign chariot, drawn by the Grand Old Party -elephant, and all the people shall see him, and marvel at his ferocity, -and at the deadly conflict he wages among his various heads! Come now, O -people!—come editors and statesmen and judges and bishops—come and see -how the terrible hundred-headed monster rends and tears himself, and -shout for four years more of the “full dinner-pail.” - -But surely we must destroy the trusts! you say. _Why_ must we destroy -the trusts? The trusts are marvellous industrial machines, of power the -like of which was never known in the world before; they are the last and -most wonderful of the products of civilisation—and we must destroy them! -We have been a century building them—you, and I, and the balance of the -American people have toiled for three generations night and day, -stinting and starving ourselves, so that we might get these trusts -finished; we have taxed ourselves ten, twenty, thirty per cent. of our -incomes, under the disguise of a protective tariff, to maintain and -develop them; and now that they are complete, we must destroy them! - -But they belong to Rockefeller! you protest to me. They belong to -Rockefeller in precisely the same way and to precisely the same extent -as the Kingdom of France belonged to Louis XIV, or the North American -colonies to George III. They belong to the people of the United States, -who made them, who contributed every plank of them, and drove every nail -of them, and who paid Mr. Rockefeller and his family ample living wages -while they superintended the job. - -But you only answer again—we must destroy the trusts! Go ahead then, and -have your try! Have it out with them! War to the hilt with them!—and see -which is the stronger, two corporations which are resolved not to cut -each other’s throats, or you with your law that they _shall_ cut each -other’s throats! Two railroad systems which know that they cannot -continue to exist separately, or you who are resolved that they shall -not exist together!—It makes one think of the scene in “Twelfth Night,” -where Sir Toby has engineered a bloody duel between two terror-stricken -antagonists. “Pox on’t, I’ll not meddle with him!” cries Sir Andrew -Aguecheek. “Come, Sir Andrew,” says Sir Toby. “There’s no remedy. Come -on, to’t.” But poor Sir Andrew will not to’t, he fights with his back to -the enemy. - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Wilshire’s Magazine_ - - A SOCIALIST VIEW OF THE TRUSTS -] - -You will hear people abuse the Socialists for wishing to abolish -competition. No Socialist wishes to abolish competition, no modern -Socialist at any rate. He watches competition, as the mischievous -Irishmen watched the Kilkenny cats; keeping off at a suitable distance -during the battle, and simply proposing to the spectators that when it -is all over they shall recognise the accomplished fact. - -There is some competition in the world to-day among the nations; there -was recently competition between Russia and Japan, and there will -perhaps be competition between some of the others. But what competition -is left to-day within the limits of the United States, is left simply -because it is of a kind so petty that the capitalists have not yet had -time to bother with it. For the most part it exists between a swarm of -retailers of trust-made products, and takes the form of the screwing -down of the wages of helpless clerks and errand-boys, the adulteration -of products, and the placarding of the surface of the land with blatant -advertisements which affect a decent man like the stench of a carcass. -One of the “competitive” industries that is flourishing just now is that -of cereals prepared in packages and labelled with names that suggest -Hiawatha and the South Sea Islands. The usual price of one of these -packages is fifteen cents, and of that, two cents and a half represents -the cost of the product, and nearly all of the balance goes into the -effort to trap the public into buying it. And did not the “boodle” -investigations in Missouri disclose the fact that William Ziegler had -spent a fortune in bribing newspapers and legislatures to implant in the -public mind the idea that “alum baking-powders” were poisonous, so that -the Royal Baking Powder Trust might have the custom of the country? - - -But, you say, if competition perishes, what becomes of incentive—of -initiative? Will not individual enterprise be destroyed? I answer that -it depends entirely upon what you mean by individual enterprise. If you -mean that ardent desire which now consumes every man to cut his -neighbour’s economic throat, to get the better of him and make money out -of him, to beat him down and leave him a financial wreck—why, -civilisation will suppress this ardent desire in precisely the same way -that it has suppressed the duel, or the right of private vengeance, and -piracy, or the right of private war upon the high seas. The putting down -of these things went hard, you know, for they had been the greatest -glory of men, and all progress has been due to them. “Franz von -Sickingen was a robber-knight,” writes Henderson, in his “History of -Germany,” “but with such noble traits, and such a concept of his -calling, that one wonders if he ought not rather to be put on the level -of a belligerent prince. In carrying on feuds, he seldom aimed lower -than a duke, or a free city of the Empire; and there are persons who -insist to this day that his weapons were only drawn in favour of the -oppressed. Be that as it may, he was not above exacting enormous fines; -and being an excellent manager, he greatly increased his possessions. He -was lord of many castles, which he furnished with splendid defences.” - -And then the historian goes on to describe the gallant struggle of this -old nobleman against the advancing power of the Empire. “He determined, -by one brilliant feud, to restore the tarnished splendour of his name. -He would help the whole order of knighthood to assert itself against the -power of the princes.” The end of it was that “the enemy appeared in -full force, demolished in a single day an outer tower with walls the -thickness of twenty feet, and made a breach in the actual ramparts.” -Having been wounded, “the grim commander was carried to a dark, deep -vault of the castle, where it was thought he would be safe from the -cannon-balls of his pursuers; such an unchristian shooting, he declared -to an attendant, he had never heard in all his days.” The castle -surrendered, and his foes gathered about him. “He had now to do, he -said, with a greater lord, and a few hours later he closed his eyes. The -three princes knelt at his side and prayed God for the peace of his -soul.” Let us hope that the makers of our Industrial Republic will not -forget to pray for the souls of Baer and Parry, if these gallant -captains of industry should perish in defending the elemental right of a -capitalist to manage his own business in his own way. - -This is all very well, you say, but will not such a system decrease -production? I rather think that it will; I hope to see the prophecy of -Annie Besant come true, that when men no longer have to struggle to get -a living, they will at last begin to live. That they will at last open -their eyes to the world of books and music, of nature and art, of -friendship and love, that stretches out its arms to them; that they will -cease to regard ingenuity and rapidity in the production of material -things as the final end and goal of the creation of man; that they will -cease to look upon a human being as a machine for the getting of -money—to be valued like an automobile, by the number of miles an hour it -can be driven, by the number of thousands of miles it can cover before -it is worn out and ready for the scrap-heap. - - -Let us have the philosophy of this thing, in order that we may -understand it. We saw that the process of evolution, in an individual or -in a society, consists of an expansion and a struggle, the end of which -is the emergence of the organism into a higher state of being. There is -a certain life impulse, and there is a certain environment, certain -difficulties with which it contends. We have perhaps no right to speak -of purpose in the process, but we have a right to speak of results; and -the result of this contest is to shape the organism, to educate it, to -bring out certain qualities in it which it did not possess before; until -finally it triumphs over its environment, and emerges from its -prison-house. - -The struggle for life goes on, but the form of it changes unceasingly; -and this changing is _progress_. Without it there can be none—the very -essence of progress consists in the suppressing of old forms of strife, -the conquest of old difficulties and the escape from their thraldom. We -know that there was once a time when men were hairy beings who dwelt in -caves, and contended with club and hatchet against the monsters which -assailed them; and now supposing that we could take some man of modern -times, some one who has risen to eminence and power under the conditions -which now prevail, and put him among those cavemen, how do you suppose -that he would make out? How do you suppose that he would fare, if he -were placed even one century back, in the country of the Iroquois, where -the snapping of a twig and the flight of an arrow decided the fate of a -man? Is it not obvious that there has been here an entire change in the -_form_ of the struggle for existence? - -The same thing is true of nations. Once upon a time a nation was an -army, and fighting was its business, the conquering of its neighbours -was its glory and its ideal; but now we have moved on, we have become -complex and highly organised, and can no longer afford to conquer our -neighbours. It would not pay us financially, and intellectually and -morally it would destroy us. We have, for instance, a powerful country -to the north of us; and imagine what would be the inconvenience and -waste were we under the necessity of fortifying all our boundary lines, -and keeping garrisons at every few miles of them; if every day we were -shaken by rumours that an army was gathering at Montreal, that a fleet -of torpedo-boats was building at Toronto. As a matter of simple fact, do -we not both go quietly on our way, understanding that we are two -civilised nations, between which a war of conquest would be an -unthinkable crime? - -We have grown to used to the change, that the mere memory of the old -ways of life makes us shudder; it seems to us horrible, and we forget -that it was once beautiful and delightful to men: that the Germans of -the time of Tacitus held fighting the joy of life, and imagined a heaven -where a man might be patched up every night and fight again the next -day. We have passed so far beyond such a state that we cannot even -imagine it, and we have lost the power of seeing that it was ever -necessary and right; that to those long ages of struggle we owe our -physical being, with all its perfections, which we take so as a matter -of course; a swift foot and a dexterous hand, an ear attuned to every -sound, an eye that adjusts itself to every distance, a mind quick and -alert, a spirit bold and enterprising. And in the same way the nations -owe to war their unity and their complexity, and a great deal of their -power, not merely physical, but industrial and moral as well. - -It was one of the noblest of the world’s poets who wrote that: - - “God’s most dreaded instrument, - In working out a pure intent, - Is man—arrayed for mutual slaughter; - Yea, Carnage is His daughter.” - -And to the same purpose writes Fletcher: - - “Oh great corrector of enormous times, - Shaker of o’er-rank states—that heal’st with blood - The earth when it is sick.” - -And yet the time of wars is past. We still have them, of course, and we -still have a war-propaganda; but it would be easy to show that these -wars are never military, but always commercial—that when two civilised -states fight nowadays, it is not because they expect to subjugate each -other, or desire to, but because their capitalists both need the same -foreign market. I am acquainted with only one writer of any standing in -the United States, Captain Mahan, who is nowadays willing even to hint -that wars may still be necessary to the disciplining of a nation; and I -think one might assert without fear of contradiction that people now go -to war, not because they want to, but because they are persuaded they -have to; and that right-thinking men throughout the world know that a -war is a national calamity, a cause of evils innumerable, scarcely ever -overbalanced by good. - -And it is of the utmost importance to notice how this has been done; how -it is that the military ideal is universally discredited in the world. -It has not been due to the preachings of moralists and enthusiasts; it -has not been brought about by the intervention of any _deus ex machina_. -It has come about in the perfectly inevitable course of nature. No hero -has arisen to slay the demon of war—the demon of war has slain himself. -It is simply that the work of war is _done_. It is simply that war has -brought about a survival of the fittest, and that there is no more need -of conquest, and no possibility of it. The peoples have gone on to a -different life, they have almost forgotten for thought of conquering, or -of being conquered; they know that they cannot afford it; they know that -their social organism is of too delicate a type to stand it; they can no -more stand it than one of our modern captains of industry could stand -the shock of jousting with Richard Cœur de Lion. - -We have moved on to another kind of struggle—to the kind which is known -as industrial competition. And we are to come to the end of that in -precisely the same way. We are to see the fittest survive, and grow, and -establish themselves impregnably; and so long as there is room for -competition they will compete; and when they find there is no longer -room for competition, that by continuing it they are doing as much harm -to themselves as to their rivals, they will put an end to competition, -and no power on earth can prevent their putting an end to it. Any power -which really tried to prevent their putting an end to it would simply -destroy them, as two civilised nations would be destroyed if they could -be compelled to keep on making war against each other. - -The great task of civilisation is the leading of men to recognise when -these mighty changes have taken place. For so far I have spoken of only -one side of the evolutionary process; I have shown the victory—but there -are also defeats. Sometimes in the struggle between the individual and -his environment, it is the environment that conquers. Sometimes the man -or the society is not equal to the new task, and falls back; and the law -of this is death. The stag which can run swiftly enough escapes, and is -able to run all the more swiftly as the result of the race; the stag -which cannot run quite swiftly enough becomes venison. The tiny shoot -which can grow high enough finds the light, and becomes a mighty tree; -its neighbour which could not grow quite so high, turns to mould. There -comes now and then in the history of every living thing some moment when -its future hangs in the balance; when it summons all its forces, and -lives or dies. The butterfly faces such a crisis when it emerges from -the chrysalis; the child when it is born. You have known such fateful -hours in your own moral life; and you can go through history and put -your finger upon them—here when the Greeks drove back the Persians, here -when the Franks drove back the Saracens, here on the field of Waterloo, -on the hills of Gettysburg. - -You would like to stay as you are, of course; for that is the least -trouble. You have your routine and your habits, your old well-worn paths -in which your thoughts move—you would like to stay as you are. But the -curse of life is upon you—you cannot stay as you are. You have to go -forward, or else to go back. When the crisis comes there is no escaping -it—it _comes_. When the birth-pangs begin, either the child is born, or -the mother dies; when the throes of revolution seize a nation, either -the old forms are shattered, or the life of the people is crushed. There -was once a reformation and a revolution in France; there was no -reformation and no revolution in Spain. So in one case you have new life -and abounding vigour—literatures and philosophies and sciences, and -impulse after impulse without end; and on the other hand you have -stagnation and ruin. - -The task was simply too hard for the Spanish nation; they had lived for -centuries in imminent proximity to an enemy of an alien faith, and the -result was the fastening upon the people of a system of military -despotism and religious bigotry. And when the danger was by, when the -work of these forces was done, and the time came for the people of Spain -to throw them off, their efforts were of no avail; their kings and their -priests tortured them and burned them at the stake; and so the impulse -died, and never afterwards did they lift their heads. In the same way -consider the “Negro question,” as we have it in the United States. Here -also we are dealing with a defeated race; a race which was bred where -nature proved too strong for man—where savage beasts fell upon him, and -deadly diseases smote him, and the swift powers of the jungle balked his -every effort to rise. So for centuries and ages he was trampled upon and -crushed, until every spark of genius was extinguished in him; and now we -strive with all the resources of our civilisation—our noblest and best -have given their lives to the task; and we do not know yet if we are to -win or lose. - -Let the reader of this book get a clear understanding upon at least one -point—that no Socialist expects to abolish competition, and the survival -of the fittest; all that any Socialist expects to do is to change the -_kind_ of competition and the standard of the fitness. The purpose of -industrial competition is to raise up the industrially fit, and to -establish a system for the feeding and clothing of men. The sign that -the former task is done is the outcry against the money-madness of the -time; the sign that the latter is done is “overproduction” and the -“trust.” - -The purpose of this little book is to lay before candid and -truth-seeking Americans the overwhelming evidence which exists of the -fact that industrial competition, as an evolutionary force, has done its -work in our society: that it has disciplined our labourers in diligence -and skill, and our leaders in foresight, enterprise and administrative -capacity; that it has built us up a machine for the satisfying of all -the material needs of civilisation, a machine that has only to be used; -and that until we have found out how to use it, our national life must -remain at a standstill, stagnation must take the place of progress, and -in every portion of our body politic, the symptoms of disease and decay -must multiply and grow more and more alarming. - -We have been taught to think that the institutions of freedom in this -country are so secure that we may go about our business and our play, -and leave them to take care of themselves. And yet, “eternal vigilance -is the price of liberty,” is the motto our ancestors left us. For the -forms of tyranny change from generation to generation, and it is always -out of the old freedom that the new slavery is made. You think that you -can stay free by clinging to the good old ways, by repeating the good -old formulas, by standing by the good old faiths; but you cannot, for -freedom is not a thing of institutions, but of the soul. It has always -been under the forms of spirituality that men have been chained by -priestcraft; and it is with the very pennons and banners of liberty that -this land is bound to-day. It always has been so, and it always will be -so—that the despot asks nothing save that things should stay as they -are. What was it that the slave-holder wanted, but that things should -stay as they were? That men should hold by the Constitution as it was, -while America was made into a Slave Empire? What is it that our masters -want to-day, save that we should stand by the good old traditions of -American individualism, freedom of contract and the right of every man -to manage his own business as he pleases—the while the Republic of -Jefferson and Lincoln is forged into a weapon for the enslaving of -mankind? - -There is not one single tradition of the early times that is not being -used to-day for the betraying of liberty. Take the Monroe Doctrine, for -instance. We shout for it every Fourth of July, and we are rushing to -completion a score or two of battleships to defend it; whenever it is in -peril, our most rabid anti-trust editors and politicians drop everything -and take to singing Yankee Doodle. And yet, has never the least -suspicion about it come to you? Has it never occurred to you to look who -it is that is leading you upon this crusade of freedom—this strange -propaganda of civilisation and republican institutions by battleship and -rapid-firing gun? This zeal of our captains of industry for the spread -of American institutions among the Filipinos and Hawaiians and Porto -Ricans and Panamanians and Venezuelans, the while they are so busy -crushing American institutions in Rhode Island and Colorado! - -There was once a time when all the despotisms of Europe were banded -together to destroy republican institutions, and when the threatening -gesture of this young republic held them back from half a world. And -thus bravely we guarded civilisation with our Monroe Doctrine, until the -lesson of freedom had been learned. But now time has passed, and we have -come to a new age, with new perils and new duties; there is a new kind -of slavery in the world, and a kind in which we lead all civilisation. -The control of our Republic has passed out of the hands of the people; -by fraud and force our liberties have been overthrown—the very word has -been relegated to schoolboy orations and Grand Army reunions. And by -this new despotism of greed the people have first been plundered and -crushed, and now are to be marshalled and led out to do battle with -other peoples, similarly beguiled. In this work every force of reaction -and conservatism in civilised society is now enlisted, every tradition -of olden time has been called into service. No pretence is too hollow, -no blasphemy too abominable to be employed; every national prejudice, -every racial hatred, every religious bigotry is made use of—and the -starving wretches of the slums and gutters of London are sent into South -Africa to capture diamond mines for the glory of free Britannia, while -the helpless peasants of Russia are led out with jewelled images of the -Virgin in front of them to steal Manchuria in the name of Jesus Christ. - -It is with Germany that we Americans are scheduled to battle for the -sake of the Monroe Doctrine. And what is the situation in Germany? There -is first of all, the degenerate who sits upon its throne, and proclaims -himself by grace of God the lord and master of the German people. There -is in the second place, the hide-bound mediæval nobility of the Empire, -the direct descendants of those robber-knights of whom we read a while -ago, some of them living in the very same castles from which their -ancestors made their raids. There is in the third place, the aristocracy -of the army, whose insolent and dissolute officers beat, kick and maim -the helpless country boys and artisans who are herded like sheep under -their command. There is in the fourth place, the bigoted -seventeenth-century Protestant Church, with its snuffy country parsons -and doctors of dusty divinity. There is in the fifth place, the mediæval -Roman Catholic Church, with its confessional and other agencies of -Darkness. There is in the sixth place, a subsidised “reptile press,” -whose opinions are written and whose news is garbled by knavish bureau -officials. And every one of these powers, forgetting all past -differences, and uniting with brotherly affection, are struggling with -every prejudice they can appeal to, and every threat which they can -wield, to hold the German people subject to the identical same “System” -that rules in America, the industrial aristocracy of cunning and greed; -is working them upon starvation wages at home, and driving them to serve -in armies and navies, to conquer markets abroad; to threaten Dewey at -Manila, and to seize Chinese ports and conduct “punitive expeditions” -against Chinamen; to sell bad whiskey and firearms to Hereros and then -slaughter them when they rebel; to blockade ports in Venezuela and to -sink “pirates” in the West Indies; and to sound and measure channels as -a preliminary to the taking of a naval base and the inauguration of a -war with the United States! - -But then, you say, _we_ can’t help that. What can we _do_? Is the only -thing you can think of to do, to build battleships and get ready for the -strife? How differently our fathers did it, in the old days when the -Monroe Doctrine was really what it pretends to be—a pledge of freedom to -men! How the impulses that started in this land thrilled through the -civilised world and made the “despots of Europe” tremble! What messages -of brotherhood flashed upon invisible wires from continent to continent, -bearing hope and comfort to all the oppressed of mankind! How we -welcomed Lafayette, as if he had been an emperor! How the whole nation -turned out in honour of Kossuth, making his long journey one triumphal -procession! And are we doing anything like that now? - -The people of Germany, you must understand, are closed in a death grip -with all these powers of infamy. In spite of obloquy and contempt, in -spite of lies and blandishments and menaces, in spite of persecution and -exile and imprisonment, for a generation they have been toiling—devoted, -heroic men and women have given their labour and their lives to the task -of teaching, writing, speaking, exhorting, to open the eyes of the -masses to the truth. And step by step they have marched on, gathering -force every hour, strengthened by each new persecution, training -themselves in literary and political combat, building up a system of -scientific thought which has never been refuted and never can be, -inspired by a moral purpose as noble as any the world has ever -seen—preparing in all ways for the glorious hour when the people of the -Fatherland are to come to their own! The man at their head was once a -poor working boy, a wheelwright, and he has raised himself to the -leadership of the mightiest effort after freedom that the world now -sees; and day by day in the Reichstag he leads the opposition to -militarism and savagery, and his speeches are such as a century ago, and -even half a century ago, would have set this land aflame from end to end -with revolutionary fervour. And this is no isolated movement of a -nation, it is a world movement—it is a movement to which the lovers of -liberty all over the earth are welcomed as comrades and brothers. It is -a movement at one with every high tradition of American life; and -you—what is your attitude to it? What do you know about it—what do you -care about it? Do you hold public meetings and send messages of -sympathy? Do the halls of Congress ring with fervid speeches, as they -did in the days of Webster and Henry Clay? Do your papers teem with -glowing editorials, with news about the movement, and sketches of its -leaders? What have you to say about it, what have you to do for it—but -to repeat day in and day out one miserable, pitiful lie, with which you -try to blind and deceive the masses of your own country, that this -tremendous Socialist movement is not really a Socialist movement at all, -but only a movement of political reform! - -I do not think that we shall sleep forever; I do not think that the -memories of Jefferson and Lincoln will call to us in vain forever; but -assuredly there never was in all American history a sign of torpor so -deep, of degeneration so frightful, as this fact that in such a crisis, -when the downtrodden millions of the German Empire are struggling to -free themselves from the tyranny of military and personal government, -there should come to them not one breath of sympathy from the people of -the American Republic! And all our interest, all our attention, is for -that strutting turkeycock, the war-lord whose mailed fist holds them -down! That monstrous creature, with his insane egotism, his blustering -and his swaggering, his curled mustachios and military poses! An -epileptic degenerate, who spends his whole life in cringing terror of -hereditary insanity: whose spies and police agents are invading the -homes of German Socialists, searching for letters in behalf of the -agents of the Czar, obtaining evidence to send men in Russia to exile -and death! This ruler of his people, who the other day cashiered a near -relative, an army officer who had advised soldiers to complain when they -were maltreated! whose generals and admirals are swaggering about and -spitting in the face of civilisation—and making maps and plans for a -naval station in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine! - -Forty years ago, at the time of our Civil War, when the fate of this -nation hung trembling in the balance, when the Emperor of France and the -aristocracy of England saw a chance to cripple republican government and -to set back civilisation half a century—what was it then that prevented -them? What was it but the fact that in England there existed an -organised opposition, alert and watchful, trained by a generation of -parliamentary conflict, and with leaders who in such a crisis could not -be put down? What was it but the fact that the workers of the factory -towns of Great Britain had been disciplined and taught, and could not be -deceived—that they chose rather to starve than to help the cause of -Slavery? And if you care to see what would have happened had not that -opposition been ready, go back three- or four-score years, when the -people of France struck their blow for liberty, and see the leaders of -the British aristocracy crushing out protest and imprisoning objectors, -and hurling the nation into a criminal and causeless war! Hear the king -and the nobility, statesmen and authors, newspapers and pulpits -screaming in frenzy and goading the people on, till they had desolated -Europe with fifteen years of hideous slaughter, from the moral and -spiritual effects of which the world has not yet recovered! - -And now you stand and contemplate another such crime against -civilisation. The two most enlightened peoples of the world are to come -together and strip for a fight. The powers that rule in each of them -made up their minds years ago, and among the officers, both in the army -and in the navy of each, the coming conflict is taken for granted. Two -or three years ago a German officer promised that an army corps would -march from one end of this continent to the other; and an admiral in our -own navy has publicly foretold the struggle. The German capitalists are -in desperation for new markets, and the German people are on the edge of -a revolt, with an irresponsible military despot in absolute control of -them, who knows that his only chance to put off the revolution is to -pick a quarrel and beat the war-drum, and summon the masses to the -defence of the honour of the Fatherland. When that supreme hour comes, -and when the war-lust begins to burn, upon the Social-Democratic Party -of Germany will fall the task of saving civilisation; and what shall -_we_ have done to help them—what encouragement shall _we_ have sent -them? We have sent ships of grain to the cotton-operatives of Lancashire -when they were starving; but what have we done for the people of -Germany? What reason have we given them, with our tariffs and -imperialisms, to think of us otherwise than as a nation of shopkeepers, -a nation sunk in greed and commercialism, and dead to every noble -impulse of men? - - - - - CHAPTER III - MARKETS AND MISERY - - -I gave in the first chapter a brief outline of my view of the process of -wealth-concentration. It is now time to consider the present status of -affairs, and determine if we can exactly how near to completion our -industrial machinery has come. Because of the vital part which the -question of foreign markets has played and must play in our affairs, it -is necessary that this inquiry should include a careful survey of -conditions in the rest of the world. - -The manufactures of the United States have grown from one hundred and -ninety-eight million dollars in 1810, to five billion in 1890, and -thirteen billion in 1900. Our exports to foreign countries increased -from sixty-six million dollars in 1810 to eight hundred and fifty-six -million in 1890, and a billion and half in 1905. Of course, if we could -find unlimited markets abroad we might go on for half a century, or at -least until our people grew tired of doing hard work for the rest of the -world, and getting in return either bad debts, or else money to be used -in building new machines to do more work of the same sort. But this is -not the case, as it happens; there are half a dozen nations that have -been building up industrial machines of their own, and have completed -them; the meaning of the Socialist movements of England and Germany and -France and Belgium and Italy is simply that all these nations are now -able to manufacture more than their own people are able to buy, under -the old deadly combination of a monopoly price and a competitive wage. -And so when we go over to Europe to look for markets, we meet people who -are coming over to look for markets among us; and when in our -desperation we begin to sell out at any cost, the German capitalist -cries out in protest, and the German workingmen are thrown on the -streets, and the German Socialists increase their vote. And when the -German capitalist retaliates and sells out at cost, _our_ capitalists -are checked, and _our_ mills are stopped—and _our_ Socialist vote goes -up. - -Look at the figures. England was the first in the field. The output of -coal of Great Britain was one hundred and fifty million dollars in 1810; -it was six hundred and sixty-five million dollars in 1878; in the same -period the exports of manufactures rose from two hundred and thirty -million dollars to one billion dollars. All that while, of course, -England ruled the sea and had things her own way. In 1820 the value of -all her manufactures was about seven billion dollars—equal to that of -Germany and Austria combined, or to France and the United States -combined, or to all the rest of the world, excluding these four nations. -But then, little by little, the others began to catch up with her: in -1880, instead of manufacturing one-fourth of the world’s products, Great -Britain manufactured one-fifth, and in 1894 she manufactured less than -one-sixth. Between the years 1894 and 1902, British exports increased -only thirteen per cent., while those of France increased sixteen per -cent., those of Germany thirty-nine per cent., and those of the United -States sixty-six per cent. The result was that a few years ago tens and -hundreds of thousands of starving men were parading the streets of -London, and all England was startled by Mr. Chamberlain’s announcement -that the last hope of England was a tariff which would reserve for her -the trade of the colonies! Of course England could not have made money -by a tariff unless her colonies had consented to lose money; and the -colonies were not planning to lose money—they were counting on making -some by England’s tax on food. So the plan simply reduced itself to an -invitation to the British workingman to pay more for his bread so that -he could get starvation wages for doing the manufacturing of Canada and -Australia and India. Is it any wonder that the reply to the proposal -should have been an independent labour vote which sent a thrill of alarm -through the nation? - -And meanwhile Canada and Australia and India are straining every nerve -to build up manufactures of their own! “No person connected with the -cotton industry can be ignorant of the progress of cotton manufactures -in India,” wrote the _Textile Recorder_ in 1888. “Indian cotton -piece-goods are coming to the front and displacing those of Manchester.” -The Bombay Factory Commission of the same year recorded in Parliament -how this was being done. “The factory engines are at work as a rule from -5:00 A. M. to 7:00, 8:00 and 9:00 P. M. In busy times it happens that -the same set of workers remain at the gins and presses night and day, -with half an hour’s rest in the evenings.” And, like India, Canada also -puts duties on British goods to protect her own growing industries! - -Meanwhile, also, the rest of the world is hard at work. Let us continue -viewing that same industry of cotton-spinning. The value of the -manufactured-cotton product of Austria has grown from fifteen million -dollars in 1834, to thirty-five million dollars in 1860, and ninety -millions in 1894. The textile manufactures of Belgium trebled themselves -in three years previous to 1894; those of Germany have increased -twenty-fold in sixty years; those of Italy nine-fold in twenty years, -while even such backward countries as Russia and Spain have doubled -their textile industries, one in thirty, the other in twenty years. Most -unexpected and disconcerting of all, however, is Japan, who was once -looked upon as a permanent customer, but whose home industries have been -growing like a magic plant. The textile manufactures of Japan doubled in -value in the three years between 1896 and 1899. From six million pounds -of cotton spun in 1886, Japan advanced to ninety-one million in 1893, -and to one hundred and fifty-three million in 1895, in nine years -increasing twenty-four fold. The value of all her textile produce was -six million dollars in 1887, and it was seventy million dollars in 1895. -Therefore her imports of cotton goods from Europe fell from eight -million dollars in 1884 to four million in 1895. - -And while this was going on in the rest of the world, in the United -States the value of manufactured cotton was rising from forty-five -million dollars in 1840, to two hundred and ten million dollars in 1880, -to two hundred and sixty-seven million dollars in 1890, and to three -hundred and thirty-nine million in 1900! Under such circumstances, is it -any wonder that, at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war, the -factories of Massachusetts and Canada were running on half-time, and -dozens not running at all; that British cotton manufacturers found that -prices had decreased fifteen per cent. in as many years; that the -weavers of Belgium were starving, and the country was full of riots and -insurrections; and that all the nations of Europe were gathering in the -Far East like vultures about a carcass—knowing that the sole condition -upon which any one of them could maintain its industrial and social -régime for another decade, was its ability to secure the custom of some -hundreds of millions of Chinamen, who are so poor that a handful of rice -and a cotton shirt are all they own in the world! - -I often wonder what our college presidents and other after-dinner -economists make of facts such as these. They do not discuss them in -their speeches. I am acquainted with only one man among all our orthodox -advisers who believes in the permanence of the competitive régime, and -at the same time really understands what it is and what it implies—who -cares for the truth, follows his views to their conclusions, and then -speaks the conclusions. When I first became acquainted with this -gentleman—intellectually acquainted, that is—it affected me painfully, -and even now the sight of his book gives me internal sensations akin to -those of a man in an ascending elevator which comes to a sudden halt. - -The book is “The New Empire,” and the author is Mr. Brooks Adams. He -writes coldly and dispassionately, and with the certainty of the man of -science, whose conclusions may not be disputed. His style is -characteristic; it is brief and to the point, and there are no -apologies. - -Mr. Adams is the apostle of competition. He explains that he is this, -not from choice but from necessity. “Very probably keen competition is -not a blessing. We cannot alter our environment. Nature has cast the -United States into the vortex of the fiercest struggle ever known.” His -theory of life Mr. Adams condenses as follows: “For the purpose of -obtaining a working hypothesis it is assumed that men are evolved from -their environment like other animals, and that their intellectual, -moral, and social qualities may be investigated as developments from the -struggle for life.... Food is the first necessity, but as most regions -produce food more or less abundantly, the pinch lies not so much in the -existence of the food itself as with its distribution.... To satisfy -their hunger men must not only be able to defend their own, but, in case -of dearth, to rob their neighbours, where they cannot buy, for the -weaker must perish.... Life may be destroyed as effectually by peaceful -competition as by war. A nation which is undersold may perish by famine -as completely as if slaughtered by a conqueror.... For these reasons men -have striven to equip themselves well for the combat, and since the end -of the Stone Age no nation in the more active quarters of the globe has -been able to do so without a supply of relatively cheap metal.... Thus -the position of the mines has influenced the direction of travel. The -centre of the mineral production is likely to be the seat of empire. I -believe it is impossible to overestimate the effect upon civilisation of -the variation of trade routes. According to the ancient tradition, the -whole valley of the Syr-Daria was once so thickly settled that a -nightingale could fly from branch to branch of different trees, and a -cat walk from wall to wall and from housetop to housetop, from Kashgar -to the Sea of Aral.” But the trade route across central Asia was -displaced, “and so it has come to pass that Bagdad has sunk into a mass -of hovels, and the valley of Syr-Daria is a wilderness. The fate of the -empire of Haroun-al-Raschid exemplifies an universal law.” - -“The greatest prize of modern times,” in Mr. Adams’s opinion, is -northern China, and upon this the fate of empire rests. His book was -published in 1901, and he considered then that the chances were all with -the United States. Ten years before we had been “tottering upon the -brink of ruin.... Relief came through an exertion of energy and -adaptability, perhaps without a parallel.... In three years America -reorganised her whole social system by a process of consolidation, the -result of which has been the so-called trust. But the trust is in -reality the highest type of administrative efficiency, and therefore of -economy, which has as yet been attained. By means of this consolidation -the American people were enabled to utilise their mines to the full.... -The shock of the impact of the new power seems overwhelming.... In -March, 1897, Pittsburg achieved supremacy in steel, and in an instant -Europe felt herself poised above an abyss.... The Spanish Empire -disintegrated, and Great Britain displayed a lassitude which has -attracted the attention of the entire world.... Germany has also been -perturbed.... Russia has, however, suffered most. - -“The world seems agreed that the United States is likely to achieve, if -indeed she has not already achieved, an economic supremacy. The vortex -of the cyclone is near New York. No such activity prevails elsewhere; -nowhere are undertakings so gigantic, nowhere is administration so -perfect; nowhere are such masses of capital centralised in single hands. -And as the United States becomes an imperial market, she stretches out -along the trade routes which lead from foreign countries to her heart, -as every empire has stretched out from the days of Sargon to our own. -The West Indies drift toward us, the Republic of Mexico hardly longer -has an independent life, and the City of Mexico is an American town. -With the completion of the Panama Canal all Central America will become -a part of our system. We have expanded into Asia, we have attracted the -fragments of the Spanish dominions, and reaching out into China, we have -checked the demands of Russia and Germany, in territory, which, until -yesterday, had been supposed to be beyond our sphere. We are penetrating -Europe, and Great Britain especially is assuming the position of a -dependency, which must rely upon us as the base from which she draws her -food in peace, and without which she could not stand in war.” - -“Supposing the movement of the next fifty years only equal to that of -the last,” continues our author, ... “the United States will outweigh -any single empire, if not all empires combined. The whole world will pay -her tribute. Commerce will flow to her, both from east and west, and the -order which has existed from the dawn of time will be reversed.” - -There is only one peril about all this, in the opinion of Mr. Adams. -“Society is now moving with intense velocity, and masses are gathering -bulk with proportional rapidity. There is also some reason to surmise -that the equilibrium is correspondingly delicate and unstable. If so -apparently slight a cause as a fall of prices for a decade has been -sufficient to propel the seat of empire across the Atlantic, an equally -slight derangement of the administrative functions of the United States -might force it across the Pacific. Prudence therefore would dictate the -adoption of measures to minimise the likelihood of sudden shocks.... If -the New Empire should develop, it must be an enormous complex mass, to -be administered only by means of a cheap, elastic and simple machinery; -an old and clumsy mechanism must, sooner or later, collapse, and in -sinking may involve a civilisation.” - -By “an old and clumsy mechanism” Mr. Adams explains elsewhere that he -means our American political system. Our ancestors were opposed to much -consolidation, and they formed a constitution that was practically -unchangeable, because they believed they had “reached certain final -truths of government.” “The language of the Declaration of Independence, -in which they proclaimed one of these truths (that all men are created -equal), varies little from that of a Catholic council,” says Mr. Adams. -An American is apt to believe such formulas, being “dominated by -tradition.” But a modern thinker views them “as having no necessary -relation to the conduct of affairs in the twentieth century.” “If men -are to be observed scientifically, the standard by which customs and -institutions must be gauged cannot be abstract moral principles, but -success.... Institutions are good when they lead to success in -competition, and bad when they hinder.” - -The United States now forms a “gigantic and growing empire. She occupies -a position of extraordinary strength. Favoured alike by geographical -position, by deposits of minerals, by climate, and by the character of -her population, she has little to fear either in peace or war, from -rivals, provided the friction created by the movement of the masses with -which she has to deal does not neutralise her energy.”... - -“The alternative presented is plain. We may cherish ideals and risk -substantial benefits to realise them. Such is the emotional instinct. Or -we may regard our government dispassionately, as we would any other -matter of business.... The United States has become the heart of the -economic system of the age, and she must maintain her supremacy by wit -and force, or share the fate of the discarded. What that fate is the -following pages tell.... With conservative populations _slaughter_ is -nature’s remedy.” - -Never in my life shall I forget the hours in which I wrestled with these -problems—the weeks and the months of perplexity and despair. It happened -long before I ever heard of Mr. Adams—for of course these thoughts of -his are the thoughts of the time, there is a whole literature of them, -from Kipling, Roosevelt, and the Kaiser down. And to look back over the -weary wastes of history—the blind, hideous nightmare of blood and -tears—and then to look forward, and in all the future see nothing else! -To see never any rest for agonised humanity, only kill or be killed for -ages upon ages! To see this newest and noblest effort of man after -freedom and peace—the American Republic—turned into an engine of -slaughter and oppression! To be shown by cold, scientific formulas that -my reverence for the traditions of Lincoln was merely an “emotional -impulse,” and that the end of it could only be that my country would -share “the fate of the discarded!” I could not believe it—I cried out in -the night-time for deliverance from it. - -[1]There is a certain relentlessness about Mr. Adams, which fills the -reader with rebellion, and makes him think. The average imperialist -carefully avoids doing this; he veils his doctrines with moral phrases, -with the decent pretence of “destiny” at the very least. But Mr. Adams -dances a very war-dance upon the thing called “moral sense”—never before -was it made to seem such an impertinent superfluity. - -Footnote 1: - - Portions of the following argument were published as an article in the - _North American Review_. - -Have you, the reader, never had one smallest doubt? Does it not, for -instance, seem strange to you now, when you think of it, that this -mighty people cannot stay quietly at home and live their own life and -mind their own affairs? How does it happen that our existence as a -nation depends upon expansion? Is it that our population is growing so -fast? But here is our Imperialist President lamenting that our -population is not growing fast enough! And so we have to fight to find -room for our children; and we have to have more children in order that -we may be able to fight! We deplore race suicide, and we give as our -reason that it prevents race-murder! - -Picture to yourself half a dozen men on an island. If the island be -fertile they can get along without any foreign trade, can they not? And -then why cannot a _nation_ do it? According to Mulhall, in 1894 two -millions of our agricultural labourers were raising food for foreign -countries. And all our imports are luxuries, save a few things such as -tea and coffee and some medicines! And still our existence as a nation -depends upon foreign trade—trade with Filipinos and Chinamen, with -Hottentots and Esquimaux! Why? - -Can you, the reader, tell me? We manufacture more than we can use, you -say. Unless we can sell the balance to the Chinamen some of our -factories must close down, and then some of our people would starve. But -why, I ask, cannot our own starving people have the things that go -abroad—some of all that food that goes abroad, for instance? Why is it -that the Chinamen come first and our own people afterwards? Until we -have made some things for the Chinamen, you explain, we have no money to -buy anything ourselves. And so always the Chinamen first. It seems such -a strange, upside-down arrangement—does it not seem so to you? For, look -you, the people of England are in the same fix, and the people of -Germany are in the same fix—the people of all the competing nations are -in the same fix! They actually have to go to war to kill each other, in -order to get a chance to sell something to the Chinamen, so that they -can get money to buy some things for themselves! They were actually -doing that in Manchuria for eighteen months! More amazing yet, they had -to go and murder some of the Chinamen, in order to compel the rest to -buy something, so that they could get money to buy something for -themselves! - -How long can it be possible for a human being, with a spark of either -conscience or brains in him, to gaze at such a state of affairs and not -_know_ that there is something wrong about it? And how long could he -gaze before the truth of it would flash over him—that the reason for it -is that some private party owns all the machinery and materials of -production, and will not give the people anything, until they have first -made something that can be sold! That all the world lies at the mercy of -those who own the materials and machinery, and who leave men to starve -when they cannot make profits! And that this is why we Americans cannot -stay at home and be happy, but are forced to go trading with Filipinos -and Chinamen, Hottentots and Esquimaux, and competing for “empire” with -our brothers in England and Germany and Japan! - -If the reader be an average American, these thoughts will be new to him. -He has been brought up on a diet of misunderstood Malthusianism. He is -told that life has always been a struggle for existence and always will -be; that there is not food enough to go round, and that therefore, every -now and then, the surplus population has to be cut down by famine and -war. It is to be pointed out concerning the doctrine that, while he -swears allegiance to it, he doesn’t like to think about it, and when it -comes to the practical test he shows that he does not really believe it. -Whenever famine comes, he subscribes to a grain-fund, and does his best -to defeat nature; when war comes, he gets up a Red Cross Society for the -same purpose. And yet he still continues to swear by this wiping out of -the nations, and any discussion about abolishing poverty he waves aside -as Utopian. - -The writer may fail in his purpose with this paper, but he will not have -written in vain if he can lead a few men to see the pitiful folly of -that half-baked theory which ranks men with the wild beasts of the -jungle, and ignores the existence of both science and morality. He can -do that, assuredly, with any one whom he can induce to read one little -book—Prince Kropotkin’s “Fields, Factories and Workshops.” - -The book was published nine years ago, but apparently it has not yet had -time to affect the cogitations of the orthodox economists. You still -read, as you have been used to reading since the days of Adam Smith, -that the possibilities of the soil are strictly limited, and that -population always stays just within the starvation limit. Nearly all the -fertile land in this country, for instance, is now in use, and so we -shall soon reach the limit here. The forty million people of Great -Britain have long since passed it, and they would starve to death were -it not for our surplus. And there are portions of the world where -population is even more dense, as in Belgium. All this you have known -from your school-days, and you think you know it perfectly, and beyond -dispute; and so how astonished you will be to be told that it is simply -one of the most stupid and stupefying delusions that ever were believed -and propagated among men; that the limits of the productive -possibilities of the soil have not only not been attained, but are, so -far as science can now see, absolutely unattainable; that not only could -England support with ease her own population on her own soil, and not -only could Belgium do it, but any most crowded portion of the world -could do it, and do it once again, and yet once again, and do it with -two or three hours of work a day by a small portion of its population! -That England could now support, not merely her thirty-three million -inhabitants, but seventy-five and perhaps a hundred million! And that -the United States could now support a billion and a quarter of people, -or just about the entire population of this planet! And that this could -be done year after year, and entirely without any possibility of the -exhaustion of the soil! And all this not any theory of a closet -speculator or a Utopian dreamer, but by methods that are used year after -year by thousands and tens of thousands of men who are making money by -it in all portions of the world—in the market-gardens of Paris and -London, of Belgium, Holland and the island of Jersey, the truck-farms of -Florida and Minnesota, and of Norfolk, Virginia! - -Prince Kropotkin writes: - -“While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a -limited number of lovers of nature and a legion of workers, whose very -names will remain unknown to posterity, have created of late a quite new -agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is superior -to the old three-fields system of our ancestors. They smile when we -boast about the rotation system having permitted us to take from the -field one crop every year, or four crops every three years, because -their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of -land every twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and -bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such -quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it; otherwise, it -would raise up the levels of their gardens by half an inch every year. -They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass to the acre, as we -do, but from fifty to one hundred tons of various vegetables on the same -space; not twenty-five dollars’ worth of hay, but five hundred dollars’ -worth of vegetables, of the plainest description, cabbages and carrots. -That is where agriculture is going now.” - -The writer tells about all these things in detail. Here is the _culture -maraîchere_ of Paris—a M. Ponce, with a tiny orchard of two and -seven-tenths acres, for which he pays five hundred dollars rent a year, -and from which he takes produce that could not be named short of several -pages of figures: twenty thousand pounds of carrots, twenty thousand of -onions and radishes, six thousand heads of cabbage, three thousand of -cauliflower, five thousand baskets of tomatoes, five thousand dozen -choice fruit, one hundred and fifty-four thousand heads of “salad”—in -all, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds of vegetables. Says the -author: - -“The Paris gardener not only defies the soil—he would grow the same -crops on an asphalt pavement—he defies climate. His walls, which are -built to reflect light and to protect the wall-trees from the northern -winds, his wall-tree shades and glass protectors, his _pépinières_, have -made a rich Southern garden out of the suburbs of Paris.” - -The consequence of this is that the population of the districts of that -city, three millions and a half of people, could, if it were necessary, -be maintained in their own territory, provided with food both animal and -vegetable, from a piece of ground less than sixty miles on a side! And -at the same time, by the same methods, they are raising thirty tons of -potatoes on an acre in Minnesota, and three hundred and fifty bushels of -corn in Iowa, and six hundred bushels of onions in Florida. And with -machinery, on the prairie wheat-farms, they raise crops at a cost which -makes twelve hours and a half of work of _all kinds_ enough to supply a -man with the flour part of his food for a year! And then, as if to cap -the climax, comes Mr. Horace Fletcher with his discovery that all the -ailments of civilised man, (including old age and death) are due to -overeating; and Professor Chittenden with his practical demonstration -that the quantity of food needed by man is about four-tenths of what all -physiologists have previously taught! [2]And while all this has been -going on for a decade, while encyclopedias have been written about it, -our political economists continue to discuss wages and labour, rent and -interest, exchange and consumption, from the standpoint of the dreary, -century-old formula that there must always be an insufficient supply of -food in the world! - -Footnote 2: - - Horace Fletcher: “The A-B-Z of Our Own Nutrition.” R. L. Chittenden: - “Physiological Economy in Nutrition.” - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Wilshire’s Magazine_ -] - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Wilshire’s Magazine_ - - REAPING BY HAND AND BY MACHINERY -] - -Such is the state of affairs with agriculture: and now how is it with -everything else? In the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of -Labour (1898), Carroll D. Wright has figured the relative costs of doing -various pieces of work by hand and by modern machinery. Here are a few -of the cases he gives: - -“_Making of 10 plows_: By hand, 2 workmen, performing 11 distinct -operations, working a total of 1,180 hours, and paid $54.46. By machine, -52 workmen, 97 operations, 37½ hours, $7.90. - -“_Making of 500 lbs. of butter_: By hand, 3 men, 7 operations, 125 -hours, $10.66. By machine, 7 men, 8 operations, 12½ hours, $1.78. - -“_Making of 500 yds. twilled cottonade_: By hand, 3 men, 19 operations -7,534 hours, $135.61. By machine, 252 men, 43 operations, 84 hours, -$6.81. - -“_Making of 100 pairs of cheap boots_: By hand, 2 workmen, 83 -operations, 1,436 hours, $408.50. By machine, 113 workmen, 122 -operations, 154 hours, $35.40.” - -Thus we see human labour has been cut to the extent of from eighty to -ninety-five per cent. From other sources I have gathered a few facts -about the latest machinery. In Pennsylvania, some sheep were shorn and -the wool turned into clothing in six hours, four minutes. A steer was -killed, its hide tanned, turned into leather and made into shoes in -twenty-four hours. The ten million bottles used by the Standard Oil -Company every year are now blown by machinery. An electric -riveting-machine puts rivets in steel-frame buildings at the rate of two -per minute. Two hundred and sixty needles per minute, ten million -match-sticks per day, five hundred garments cut per day—each by a -machine tended by one little boy. The newest weaving-looms run through -the dinner hour and an hour and a half after the factory closes, making -cloth with no one to tend them at all. The new basket-machine invented -by Mergenthaler, the inventor of the linotype, is now in operation -everywhere, “making fruit-baskets, berry-baskets and grape-baskets of a -strength and quality never approached by hand labour. Fancy a single -machine that will turn out completed berry-baskets at the rate of twelve -thousand per day of nine hours’ work! This is at the rate of one -thousand three hundred per hour, or over twenty baskets a minute! One -girl, operating this machine, does the work of twelve skilled hand -operators!” - -Since all these wonders are the commonplace facts of modern industry, it -is not surprising that here and there men should begin to think about -them; here is the naïve question recently asked by the editor of a -Montreal newspaper which I happened on: - -“With the best of machinery at the present day, one man can produce -woollens for three hundred people. One man can produce boots and shoes -for one thousand people. One man can produce bread for two hundred -people. Yet thousands cannot get woollens, boots and shoes, or bread. -_There must be some reason for this state of affairs._” - -There is a reason, a perfectly plain and simple reason, which all over -the world the working-people, whom it concerns, are coming to -understand. The reason is that all the woollen manufactories, the boot -and shoe and bread manufactories, and all the sources of the raw -materials of these, and all the means of handling and distributing them -when they are manufactured, belong to a few private individuals instead -of to the community as a whole. And so, instead of the cotton-spinner, -the shoe-operative and the bread-maker having free access to them, to -work each as long as he pleases, produce as much as he cares to, and -exchange his products for as much of the products of other workers as he -needs, each one of these workers can only get at the machines by the -consent of another man, and then does not get what he produces, but only -a small fraction of it, and does not get that except when the owner of -the balance can find some one with money enough to buy that balance at a -profit to him! - -Prof. Hertzka, the Austrian economist, in his “Laws of Social -Evolution,” has elaborately investigated the one real question of -political economy to-day, the actual labour and time necessary for the -creation, under modern conditions, of the necessaries of life for a -people. Here are the results for the Austrian people, of twenty-two -million: - -“It takes 26,250,000 acres of agricultural land, and 7,500,000 of -pasturage, for all agricultural products. Then I allowed a house to be -built for every family, consisting of five rooms. I found that all -industries, agriculture, architecture, building, flour, sugar, coal, -iron, machine-building, clothing, and chemical production, need 615,000 -labourers employed 11 hours per day, 300 days a year, to satisfy every -imaginable want for 22,000,000 inhabitants. - -“These 615,000 labourers are only 12.3 per cent. of the population able -to do work, excluding women and all persons under 16 or over 50 years of -age; all these latter to be considered as not able. - -“Should the 5,000,000 able men be engaged in work, instead of 615,000, -they need only to work 36.9 days every year to produce everything needed -for the support of the population of Austria. But should the 5,000,000 -work all the year, say 300 days—which they would probably have to do to -keep the supply fresh in every department—each one would only work 1 -hour and 22½ minutes per day. - -“But to engage to produce all the _luxuries_, in addition, would take, -in round figures, 1,000,000 workers, classed and assorted as above, or -only 20 per cent. of all those able, excluding every woman, or every -person under 16 or over 50, as before. The 5,000,000 able, strong male -members could produce everything imaginable for the whole nation of -22,000,000 in 2 hours and 12 minutes per day, working 300 days a year.” - -But then you say: If this be true, if two hours’ work will produce -everything, how can everybody go on working twelve hours forever? They -can’t; and that is just why I am writing this book. They can do it only -until they have filled the needs, first of themselves, then of all the -Filipinos and Chinamen, Hottentots and Esquimaux who have money to buy -anything—and then until they have filled all the factories, warehouses -and stores of the country to overflowing. Then they cannot do one single -thing more; then they are out of work. They can go on so long as their -masters can find a market in which to sell their product at a profit; -then they have to stop. And then suddenly (_instantly_, God help them!) -they have to take their choice between two alternatives—between an -Industrial Republic, and a political empire. Either they will hear -Prince Kropotkin, or they will hear Mr. Brooks Adams. Either they will -take the instruments and means of production and produce for use and not -for profit; or else they will forge themselves into an engine of war to -be wielded by a military despot. In that case, they will fling -themselves upon China and Japan, and seize northern China, “the greatest -prize of modern times.” They will enter upon a career of empire, and by -the wholesale slaughter of war they will keep down population, while at -the same time by the wholesale destruction of war they keep down the -surplus of products. So there will be more work for the workers for a -time, and more profits for the masters for a time; until what wealth -there is in northern China has also been concentrated and possessed, -when once more there will begin distress. By that time, however, we -shall have an hereditary aristocracy strongly intrenched, and a -proletariat degraded beyond recall; so that our riots will end in mere -slaughter and waste, and we shall never again see freedom. We shall run -then the whole course of the Roman Empire—of frenzied profligacy among -the wealthy, and beastly ferocity among the populace: until at last we -fall into imbecility, and are overwhelmed by some new, clean race which -the strong heart of nature has poured out. - -Empires have risen and have fallen; but it has not been, as Mr. Adams -asserts, because of “variations of trade routes,” but solely because of -wealth-concentration, with its ensuing corruption, ignorance and -brutality among the populace, and avarice and luxury among the rich. Let -the reader take Froude’s “Cæsar,” and read, in the first chapter, his -picture of the last days of the Roman Republic: - -“An age in so many ways the counterpart of our own, the blossoming -period of the old civilisation, when the intellect was trained to the -highest point that it could reach, and on the great subjects of human -interest, on morals and politics, on poetry and art, even on religion -itself and the speculative problems of life, men thought as we think, -doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue, aspired and struggled after -the same objects. It was an age of material progress and material -civilisation; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; an age -of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and of dinner-parties, or -senatorial majorities and electoral corruption. The highest offices of -state were open in theory to the meanest citizen; they were confined, in -fact, to those who had the longest purses, or the most ready use of the -tongue on popular platforms. Distinctions of birth had been exchanged -for distinctions of wealth. The struggles between plebeians and -patricians for equality of privilege were over, and a new division had -been formed between the party of property and a party that desired a -change in the structure of society. The free cultivators were -disappearing from the soil. Italy was being absorbed into vast estates, -held by a few favoured families and cultivated by slaves, while the old -agricultural population was driven off the land, and was crowded into -towns. The rich were extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical -interest, except for its material pleasures; the occupation of the -higher classes was to obtain money without labour, and to spend it in -idle enjoyment. Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant -the ascendancy of the party which would maintain the existing order of -things, or would overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good -things which alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the -laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The -educated in their hearts disbelieved it. Temples were still built with -increasing splendour; the established forms were scrupulously observed. -Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on -their opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life -had any serious meaning there was none remaining beyond the circle of -the silent, patient, ignorant multitude.” - -Is not this a parallel to make one pause and think? And if our American -republic is to escape the fate of Rome, to what cause will it be due? -The Roman failure was due to the fact that “the men and women by whom -the hard work of the world was done were chiefly slaves”; those who held -the franchise, the free Roman citizens, were a comparatively small -class, and the patricians bought them with “bread and circuses,” and so -held the reins of power. In our present time, however, those who do the -work and those who have the ballot are the same class; and also they -have the public school and the press, and the whole of modern science at -their backs. More important yet—the all-dominating fact—is the machine. -The Roman chattel-slave worked with his hands, while the modern -wage-slave works with tools of gigantic speed and power; which means -that our modern economic process, while infinitely more cruel and -destructive, makes up for these qualities by the certainty and swiftness -with which it rushes to its end. So it is that a Revolution which in -Rome took centuries to culminate and fail, will require only decades in -America to accomplish its inevitable triumph. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - SOCIAL DECAY - - -If my analysis of the industrial process be correct, there will be two -developments observable in our society: the first a material change, a -kind of economic apoplexy, the concentration of wealth in one portion of -society, accompanied by an intensification of competition, a falling in -the rate of interest, and a steady rise in the cost of living; and -second, a spiritual change coincident with the material one, a protest -against the rising frenzy of greed, and against the constantly -increasing economic pressure. - -It is important that these two processes should be clearly perceived, -and their relationship correctly understood; for there is no aspect of -the whole problem about which there is more bad thinking done. The two -are cause and effect, and they explain and prove each other; and yet -almost invariably you will hear them cited as contradicting each other. -If, for instance, one speaks of the ever-rising tide of misery and -suffering in our society, he will be met with the response that “the -world is getting better all the time.” And when he asks for some proof -of the statement, the reply will be that a great national awakening is -going on, that we are developing new ideals and a new public spirit! - -Similarly I have, time and again, when advocating this or that concrete -remedy, been met with the statement that the cure for the evils of the -time is publicity—that the people must be educated—that we must appeal -to men’s moral sense, etc. It is useless to argue with a person who -cannot perceive that all these things are simply means to an end, and -not the end. You cannot educate people just to be educated; when you -appeal to them, you have to appeal to them to _do_ something. - -One cannot insist too strongly upon the futility of sentiment in -connection with this process. We are dealing with facts, with grim and -brutal and merciless reality. And it will not avail you to try to smooth -it over—it will not do any good to turn your head and refuse to face it. -Here is the monster machine of competition, grinding remorselessly on; -the wealth of the world is rushing with cyclonic speed into one portion -of the social body, and in the other portion whole classes of men and -women and children are being swept out of existence, are being wiped off -the economic slate. Exactly as capital piles up—at compounded and -re-compounded interest—so also piles up the mass of human misery of -every conceivable sort—luxury, debauchery and cynicism at the top, -prostitution, suicide, insanity, and crime at the bottom. Political -corruption spreads further and eats deeper, business practice becomes -more impersonal and more ruthless; and all progress awaits the swing of -the pendulum, the time when the cumulative pressure of all this mass of -misery shall have driven the people to frenzy, and forced them to -overturn the system of class exploitation and greed. - -I purpose to cite in detail the symptoms of disease and decay in our -body politic; before I begin, I wish to put my interpretation of them -into one sentence, which a man can carry away with him. I say that the -evils of our time are due without exception to one single cause—_that -our people are being driven, with constantly increasing rigour, to the -ultimately hopeless task of paying interest upon a mass of capital which -is increasing at compound interest_. - -Consider in the first place the broader aspect of the situation—the -dollar-madness of the time which is the staple theme of the moralist. I -have a friend who is in control of a great business concern, and who -will read this little book with intense disapproval; and yet so -fearfully has this man been driven by the lash of competition that when -I saw him last he could scarcely digest a bit of dry bread, and his hand -trembled so that he could hardly lift a glass of water to his lips. He -talked of his business in his sleep, and he could not go for a walk and -forget it for five minutes. And why? Was it money? He has so much that -his family could not spend it if they lived a hundred years; but it was -his business, it was his life. He was caught in the mill and he could -not get out. His is one of those few industries which have not yet -formed a trust, and he is in the last gasp of the competitive -struggle—he has to plot and plan day and night to get new orders, and to -cut down expenses, and to keep up the dividends upon which his -_reputation_ rests. - -And as it is with him, so it is with the rest of us. We have to play the -game; we have to cut our neighbour’s throat, knowing that otherwise our -neighbour will cut ours. And year after year the pressure of the whole -thing grows more tense. Suicide in the United States has increased from -twelve per one hundred thousand of population in the year 1890, to -sixteen in the year 1896, and seventeen in the year 1902; in Germany it -rose from twenty to nearly twenty-two in the three years between 1900 -and 1903; in England it rose from thirty in 1894, to thirty-five in -1904. According to the _Civiltà Cattolica_ the frequency of this crime -in Europe has increased four hundred per cent. while population has -increased only sixty per cent.; and there have been over one million -suicides recorded in the last twenty-five years. There were ninety-two -thousand insane persons in the United States in 1880, one hundred and -six thousand in 1890, and one hundred and forty-five thousand in 1896. -Per one thousand of population, there were twenty-nine prisoners in -1850, sixty-one in 1860, eighty-five in 1870, one hundred and seventeen -in 1880, and one hundred and thirty-two in 1890. In 1876 the population -of this country consumed eight and sixty-one one-hundredths gallons of -liquor per capita; in 1890 they consumed fifteen and fifty-three -one-hundredths, and in 1902 they consumed nineteen and forty-eight -one-hundredths. The actual consumption at the last date was a billion -and a half of gallons. These figures take but a few lines to state; and -yet no human imagination can form any conception of the frightful mass -of human anguish which they imply. They constitute in themselves a proof -of the thesis here advanced, that there is at work in our society some -great and fundamental evil force.[3] - -Footnote 3: - - “An experienced magistrate, Recorder John W. Goff of New York, told me - not long since that in his judgment the course of crime in this - country is not only towards more frequency and gravity, but that it is - changing its old hot impulsiveness, openness and directness for cold - calculation, secretiveness and deliberate intention to strike without - being discovered. This progress and difference he attributes mediately - and immediately to extending and deepening poverty.” Henry George: - “The Menace of Privilege.” - -Whenever the administrators of our “constantly increasing mass of -capital” find they are no longer making profits, they either reduce -wages, or raise the price of their product. One or the other they must -do, because without profits the machine cannot run. When good times come -they sometimes raise the wages again—because of the unions; but they -never lower the price of the product—the poor consumer is a nonunion -man. Two years ago Mr. Rockefeller put up the price of oil one cent, and -the Beef Trust has done the same about once a year. And of course a -general increase in prices is exactly the same as a general cut in -wages—in either case the consumer has to work a little harder to make -ends meet, and if he cannot work harder, he dies. The coal-miners -rejoiced in the award of the Commission, untroubled by the extra fifty -cents the coal companies put on the product; but when the miner comes to -add up his account with the butcher and the oil man, he finds he is just -where he was before. He does not know why, you understand—it is merely -that he finds himself compelled to do without something he used to -consider a necessity. Dun’s Review, figuring the cost of living in the -United States upon a basis of 100, puts it at 72.455 in 1897, and -102.208 in 1904—an increase of forty-one per cent. Bradstreet, reckoning -in another way, shows an increase from 6.51 in 1897, to 9.05 in 1904, or -thirty-nine per cent. According to the annual report of the Commissary -General, United States Army, the cost of feeding the soldiers of the -army has increased from eighteen cents in 1898 to thirty-four and -six-tenths cents in 1903. Statisticians have figured that the average -employee earns ninety dollars a year more than he did twenty years ago, -while it costs him to live on the same scale, one hundred and thirty -dollars a year more. According to the last United States census the -average compensation per wage earner was only three hundred and forty -dollars, while the value of the manufactured product was two thousand -four hundred and fifty dollars per wage earner. Perhaps no clearer -statement of the intensification of exploitation can be found than in -the fact that whereas the average profit on the products of all -industries was three hundred and seventy-five dollars per wage earner in -1880, in 1900 it had increased to six hundred and twenty-six dollars. - -Another consequence of the increasing strain is “race suicide”; which is -simply a popular term for that “elimination of the middle class” which -Karl Marx predicted half a century ago. The homilies of President -Roosevelt may have caused a few more superfluous bourgeois babies to be -born; but I rather fancy that in general it has been a case of -“everybody’s business and nobody’s business”—that the average -middle-class American has no idea of lowering his standard of living for -the purpose of affecting the census returns. As a result of a -confidential census of “race suicide,” taken in England and reported in -the _Popular Science Monthly_, Mr. Sidney Webb found that the offspring -had been voluntarily limited in two hundred and twenty-four cases out of -a total of two hundred and fifty-two marriages; and out of the one -hundred and twenty-eight cases in which the causes of limitation were -given, economic causes were specified in seventy-three. Similar results -would certainly follow an inquiry in this country; in fact Americans of -refinement have come to have an instinctive feeling of repugnance to a -large family; to have six or seven children is vulgar and “common,” and -suggestive of foreigners. The reason is simply that conditions now -prevail which make large families impossible, except to Poles and -Hungarians and Italians and French-Canadians, people who are too -ignorant to limit their offspring, and whose standards of life are close -to animals—their children earning their own livings in sweatshops, mines -and factories, as soon as they are able to walk. - -And yet, low as our lowest classes have been ground, they are not low -enough. Thousands of agents of steamship companies are gathering the -outcasts from the sewers of Europe and shipping them here. The rate of -immigration into this country was three hundred and eleven thousand in -1899, four hundred and eighty-seven thousand in 1901, six hundred and -forty-eight thousand in 1902, eight hundred and fifty-seven thousand in -1903, and over a million in 1905—more than one-half of the last -shipments being from Hungary, Russia, and southern Italy. All this, you -must understand, is managed by the “System” which rules in our centres -of industry. “In that unhappy anthracite country,” writes Mr. John -Graham Brooks, a person of authority, “the employers will tell you -openly, and with conscious bravado, that they must get cheaper and -cheaper labour to keep wages down, else they could make no money.” And -it was recently estimated by George W. Morgan, State Superintendent of -Elections in New York, that in one past year over six hundred thousand -dollars profit was made by selling false naturalisation papers. The -Federal authorities who had been investigating the frauds believed that -over one hundred thousand sets of such papers had been sold, and that -thirty thousand of these had been issued in New York City. Fully thirty -per cent. of the Italian citizens in the southern district of New York -were estimated to hold false papers. - -Cheaper and cheaper labour! Women’s labour and children’s labour! Over -one million of women are at present working in factories alone in this -country; and one million and three-quarters of children between ten and -fifteen years of age are engaged in gainful occupations. In the cotton -factories of the South, while the number of men employed increased -seventy-nine per cent. in the past ten years, the number of women -increased one hundred and fifty-eight per cent. and the number of -children under sixteen increased two hundred and seventy per cent. The -number employed in Alabama alone was estimated by the Committee on Child -Labour to be fifty thousand, with thirty-four per cent. of them under -twelve years, and ten per cent. under _ten_ years. These children work -twelve hours a day, and the oldest get fifty cents and the youngest get -nine cents. Here are the descriptions of observers: - -“A little boy of six years has been working 12 hours a day, from 6:20 A. -M. to 6:20 P. M. (40 minutes off at noon), for 15 cents per day. - -“Three boys aged respectively 9, 8, and 7 years. The boy aged 9 has been -working two years, the boy aged 8 has been working three years; the boy -aged 7 years has been working two years. These little fellows work 13 -hours a day, from 5:20 A. M. to 6:30 P. M., with twenty minutes for -dinner. In ‘rush’ periods their mill works until 9:30 and 10 P. M. They -were refused a holiday for Thanksgiving and they obtained Christmas Day -only by working till 7 P. M. in order to make up the time.” - -Mrs. Irene Ashby-Macfadden says: “I have talked with a little boy of -seven years, in Alabama, who worked for forty nights; and another child -not nine years old, who at six years old had been on the night shift -eleven months.” - -Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago, says: “In South Carolina, in a large new -mill, I found a child of five working at night. In Columbia, S. C., in a -mill controlled by Northern capital, I stood at ten-thirty at night and -saw many children who did not know their own ages, working from 6 P. M. -to 6. A. M.” - -Here is a description of their surroundings: - -“An atmosphere redolent of oil, thick with lint, the deafening, -incessant whir of machinery, in summer stifling heat, always the -insensate machinery claiming the strained attention of young eyes and -tiny fingers, broken threads clamorously crying for adjustment, all -requiring not hard work, but incessant vigilance, springing feet and -nimble fingers. Young eyes watching anxiously for a fault in these -intricately constructed machines, paying with crushed or broken members -for an error in judgment, for the crime of carelessness, how must the -responsibility—lightly smiled at by adults—weigh upon the barely -developed intelligence of a young child? And after long hours, lagging -footsteps, throbbing heads, wandering attention—what sort of stone is -this, O Brothers, to be placed in the children’s hands who cry for -bread?” - -Several years ago I saw in the _Independent_ an advertisement setting -forth the advantages of the State of Alabama as an investing-place for -capital. I wish I had cut it out. The point of it was that there were no -“labour-troubles” in Alabama; the boycott being prohibited there, and -labour unions being sued for damages and smashed. The advertisement -might have added that there is no factory-legislation to amount to -anything, and that the percentage of native white illiteracy is fourteen -and eight-tenths. There _is_ factory-legislation in Massachusetts, and -it is enforced, and the percentage of native white illiteracy is only -eight-tenths of one per cent., or one-eighteenth of the proportion of -Alabama. So in the last overproduction crisis the mills of Alabama were -running, while those of Massachusetts were shut down; and the special -correspondence of the New York _Evening Post_ contained the following -pregnant item: - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee_ -] - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee_ - - CHILD LABOR IN GLASS FACTORIES AND COAL MINES -] - -“ATLANTA, Ga., June 12—‘The sceptre of commercial supremacy is falling -from the palsied hand of New England industry; apparently it is to be -taken up by the South. Grasp it firmly. The whole country, torn by -labour disputes, looks to the South to make the final stand against -legislative encroachments on the liberty of the individual workman and -the individual employer.’ - -“So Daniel Davenport of Bridgeport, Conn., spoke to the members of the -Georgia Industrial Association, at their annual convention at Warm -Springs, Ga., last week. This association was one of the earliest to -recognise the depressing effect of restrictive labour legislation upon -the cotton manufacturing of New England; its members fear that similar -legislation in the South would be followed by even more disastrous -consequences, and what has injuriously affected the more hardy and older -establishments of the North, would, they believe, stunt the growth of -the infant industries of the South, if it did not actually crush them.” - -I made an effort in “The Jungle” to show what is happening to the wage -earner in our modern highly concentrated industries, under the régime of -a monopoly price and a competitive wage. I spent seven weeks in -Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest -detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact -as a government report. But the reader does not have to take my word for -it, there are any number of studies by independent investigators. Let -him go to a library and consult the American Journal of Sociology for -March, 1901, and read the reports of a graduate of the University of -Chicago, who investigated the conditions in the garment-trade in that -city. Here were girls working ten hours a day for forty cents a week. -The average of all the “dressmakers” was but ninety cents a week, and -they were able to find employment on the average only forty-two weeks in -the year. The “pants-finishers” received a dollar and thirty-one cents, -and they were employed only twenty-seven weeks in the year. The general -average in the entire trade was less than two dollars and a half a week, -and the average number of weeks of work was only thirty-one, _making an -average yearly wage for a whole industry of seventy-six dollars and -seventy-four cents per year_. Or let the reader get Mr. Jacob A. Riis’s -pictures of conditions in the slums of New York. In his book, “How the -Other Half Lives,” Mr. Riis states that in the block bounded by Stanton, -Houston, Attorney and Ridge streets, the size of which is two hundred by -three hundred feet, are two thousand two hundred and forty-four human -beings. In the block bounded by Sixty-first and Sixty-second streets, -Amsterdam and West End avenues, are over four thousand. Jack London, in -his “War of The Classes,” quotes the Rev. Dr. Behrends, speaking of the -block bounded by Hester, Canal, Eldridge and Forsyth Streets: “In a room -twelve feet by eight, and five and a half feet high, it was found that -nine persons slept and prepared their food. In another room, located in -a dark cellar, without screens or partitions, were together two men with -their wives and a girl of fourteen, two single men and a boy of -seventeen, two women and four boys, nine, ten, eleven and fifteen years -old—fourteen persons in all!” Apropos of this it may be well to add that -an investigation conducted in Berlin established the fact that with -families living in one room the death rate was one hundred and -sixty-three per thousand, while with families living in three or four -rooms it was twenty. What it was with three or four families living in -one room does not appear. According to a recent report of the New York -Tenement House Commission there were four hundred thousand “dark -rooms”—rooms without any outside opening whatever. Mr. Riis has been so -successful in battling with such conditions that he has been called by -President Roosevelt “the most useful American.” Neither the President -nor Mr. Riis understand economics, and so probably they are both -perplexed at the result of his ten years of effort—which is that rents -on the East Side have gone up about fifty per cent. in the last two -years, and there have been riots and evictions—and a Socialist all but -elected to Congress! - -But Mr. Riis is a business man, and he can figure the social cost of -these evil conditions. Of the New York tenements he writes: - -“They are the hot beds of epidemics that carry death to the rich and -poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and -police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to -the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the -last eight years a round half million beggars to prey upon our -charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all -that that implies; because, above all, they taint the family life with -deadly moral contagion.” - -In his newly published discussion of social problems called “In the Fire -of the Heart,” Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine writes of the country’s situation -as follows: - -“And over ten millions of our people are in a state of chronic poverty -at this very hour—almost one out of every seven, or, to make full -allowance, one out of every eight of all our people are in the condition -where they have not sufficient food, and clothing, and shelter to keep -them in a state of physical and mental efficiency. And the sad part of -it is that large additional numbers—numbers most appalling for such a -country as this, are each year, and through no fault of their own, -dropping into this same condition. - -“And a still sadder feature of it is, that each year increasingly large -numbers of this vast army of people, our fellow-beings, are, unwillingly -on their part and in the face of almost superhuman efforts to keep out -of it till the last moment, dropping into the pauper class—those who are -compelled to seek or to receive aid from a public, or from private -charity, in order to exist at all, already in numbers about four -million, while increasing numbers of this class, the pauper, sink each -year, and so naturally, into the vicious, the criminal, the inebriate -class. In other words, we have gradually allowed to be built around us a -social and economic system which yearly drives vast numbers of hitherto -fairly well-to-do, strong, honest, earnest, willing and admirable men -with their families into the condition of poverty, and under its weary, -endeavour-strangling influences many of these in time, hoping against -hope, struggling to the last moment in their semi-incapacitated and -pathetic manner to keep out of it, are forced to seek or to accept -public or private charity, and thus sink into the pauper class. - -“It is a well-authenticated fact that strong men, now weakened by -poverty, will avoid it to the last before they will take this step. Many -after first parting with every thing they have, break down and cry like -babes when the final moment comes, and they can avoid it no longer. -Numbers at this time take their own lives rather than pass through the -ordeal, and still larger numbers desert their families for whom they -have struggled so valiantly—it is almost invariably the woman who makes -her way to the charity agencies. The public and private charities cost -the country during the past year as nearly as can be _conservatively_ -arrived at, over two hundred million dollars. - -“Moreover, a strange law seems to work with an accuracy that seems -almost marvellous. It is this. Notwithstanding the brave and almost -superhuman struggles that are gone through with, on the part of these, -before they can take themselves to the public or private charity for -aid, when the step is once taken, they gradually sink into the condition -where all initiative and all sense of self-reliance seems to be stifled -or lost, and it is only in a rare case now and then that they ever cease -to be dependent, but remain content with the alms that are doled out to -them—practically never do they rise out of that condition again. Talk -with practically any charity agent or worker, one with a sufficiently -extended experience, and you will find that there is scarcely more than -one type of testimony concerning this. And as this condition gradually -becomes chronic, and endeavour and initiative and self-respect are lost, -a certain proportion then sink into the condition of the criminal, the -diseased, the chronically drunk, the inebriate, from which reclamation -is still more difficult.” - -The fullest and most authoritative treatise upon conditions in America -is of course Mr. Robert Hunter’s “Poverty.” Mr. Hunter is a settlement -worker, and he has gathered his material in the midst of the conditions -of which he writes. He quotes, for instance, the following definite -facts, which are obtained from official sources: - -“1903: twenty per cent. of the people of Boston in distress. - -“1897: nineteen per cent. of the people of New York state in distress. - -“1899: eighteen per cent. of the people of New York state in distress. - -“1903: fourteen per cent. of the families of Manhattan evicted. - -“Every year ten per cent. (about) of those who die in Manhattan have -pauper burials.” “On the basis of these figures,” Mr. Hunter continues, -“it would seem fair to estimate that certainly not less than fourteen -per cent. of the people, in prosperous times (1903), and probably not -less than twenty per cent. in bad times (1897), are in distress. The -estimate is a conservative one, for despite all the imperfections which -may be found in the data, and there are many, any allowance for the -persons who are given aid by sources not reporting to the State Board, -or for those persons not aided by the authorities of Boston, or for -those persons who, although in great distress, are not evicted, must -counterbalance the duplications or errors which may exist in the figures -either of distress or evictions. - -“These figures, furthermore, represent only the distress which manifests -itself. There is no question but that only a part of those in poverty, -in any community, apply for charity. I think anyone living in a -Settlement will support me in saying that many families who are -obviously poor—that is, underfed, underclothed, or badly housed—never -ask for aid or suffer the social disgrace of eviction. Of course, no one -could estimate the proportion of those who are evicted or of those who -ask assistance to the total number in poverty; for whatever opinion one -may have formed is based, not on actual knowledge, gained by inquiry, -but on impressions, gained through friendly intercourse. My own opinion -is that probably not over half of those in poverty ever apply for -charity, and certainly not more than that proportion are evicted from -their homes. However, I should not wish an opinion of this sort to be -used in estimating, from the figures of distress, etc., the number of -those in poverty. And yet from the facts of distress, as given, and from -opinions formed, both as a charity agent and as a Settlement worker, I -should not be at all surprised if the number of those in poverty in New -York, as well as in other large cities and industrial centres, rarely -fell below twenty-five per cent. of all the people.” - -Such are the conditions in America to-day; what they would be in the -future, if present tendencies went on unchecked, the reader may learn by -going to Europe, where industrial evolution has been slower in coming to -a head, and where the people have been held down by religious -superstition and military despotism. Let him take Mr. Richard Whiteing’s -“No. 5 John Street”; or, if he has a particularly strong stomach, let -him try Jack London’s “People of the Abyss,” or Charles Edward Russell’s -terrifying story of the poverty of India, in his “Soldiers of the Common -Good.” Here is a scene in a London park, selected, by way of example, -from the first-named book: - -“We went up the narrow, gravelled walk. On the benches on either side -was arrayed a mass of miserable and diseased humanity, the sight of -which would have impelled Doré to more diabolical flights of fancy than -he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of filth and rags, of -all manner of loathsome skin-diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, -indecency, leering monstrosities and bestial faces. A chill, raw wind -was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping -for the most part, or trying to sleep. Here were a dozen women, ranging -in age from twenty years to seventy. Next a babe, possibly nine months -old, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor -covering, nor with anyone looking after it. Next, half a dozen men -sleeping bolt upright, and leaning against one another in their sleep. -In one place a family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother’s -arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated -shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags -with a knife, and another woman with thread and needle, sewing up rents. -Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a -man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with his head in the -lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep. -‘Those women there,’ said our guide, ‘will sell themselves for -thru’pence or tu’pence, or a loaf of stale bread.’ He said it with a -cheerful sneer.” - -And then turn back to the preface: “It must not be forgotten that the -time of which I write was considered ‘good times’ in England. The -starvation and lack of shelter I encountered constituted a chronic -condition of misery, which is never wiped out, even in the periods of -greatest prosperity. Following the summer in question came a hard -winter. To such an extent did the suffering and positive starvation -increase that society was unable to cope with it. Great numbers of the -unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and -daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread. Mr. Justin -McCarthy, writing in the month of January, 1903, to the New York -_Independent_, briefly epitomises the situation, as follows: ‘The -workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who -are craving every night at their doors for food and shelter. All the -charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise -supplies of food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars -of London lanes and alleys.’” - -And then consider that in the city where this was going on, the leading -newspaper (the _Times_) was printing a three-column article setting -forth the fact that competition had grown so great that it was now no -longer possible for a “gentleman” to maintain his status with a family -in London upon an income of half a million dollars a year! - -Yet if one wishes for social contrasts, there is really no need of -crossing the ocean. Mr. Schwab’s nine million dollar palace in New York -will answer the purpose; or so will the St. Regis Hotel. The swinging -doors of the St. Regis, so the visitor is informed, cost ten thousand -dollars apiece; the panelling of the smoking-room cost forty-five -thousand dollars, and the carriage-entrance rain-shed cost eighty-five -thousand dollars. The walls of it are covered with a silk brocade, which -cost twenty dollars a yard, and the ceiling is gilded with material -costing one dollar an ounce. It cost a hundred thousand dollars to fit -up the office, and four million dollars to build the whole structure. A -two-room apartment in it, without meals, is valued at nine thousand six -hundred dollars a year; and for your meals you may try—say, “milk-fed -chicken” at two dollars for each tiny portion. - -[Illustration: - - _Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee_ -] - -[Illustration: - - _From Stereograph, Copyrighted 1906, by Underwood & Underwood_ - - THE SOCIAL CONTRAST IN NEW YORK -] - -Perhaps this seems monstrous; but it really is not—it is a perfectly -inevitable consequence of industrial competition, and of the “constantly -increasing mass of capital.” Mr. John Jacob Astor, who owns the hotel, -has an income of more than its value every year, and he is in desperate -straits to find any way of investing it by which he can make profits. -There are seven thousand millionaires in this country, who want the -best, the only best they know being what costs the most; and so he knew -that if he built a hotel exceeding in cost any other hotel in the world, -that hotel would pay him profits. For precisely the same reason a number -of buildings are now being torn down in Brooklyn to make room for a -graveyard for wealthy people’s pet dogs. - -The founder of the Astor fortune came to New York a century ago and -bought land while it was cheap. Millions of men have since contributed -their labour to the building up of New York; and no one of them did -anything without adding to the wealth of the Astors—who merely sat by -and watched. Now the property of the family is estimated to be worth -four hundred and fifty millions of dollars, according to Mr. Burton J. -Hendricks’s recent account of it in _McClure’s Magazine_. It includes -half a dozen hotels like the St. Regis; it includes also innumerable -slum-tenements with “dark rooms.” Its value grows by leaps and -bounds—one corner lot on Fifth Avenue “made” them seven hundred thousand -dollars in two years. To Mr. William Waldorf Astor alone the harried and -overdriven population of Manhattan Island delivers eight or ten millions -of tribute money every year; and Mr. William Waldorf Astor resides at -Clieveden, Taplow, Bucks, England—giving as his reason the fact that -“America it not a fit place for a gentleman to live in.” - -The fundamental characteristic of the régime under which we live is that -it values a man only in so far as he is capable of producing wealth. -Hence one of the signs of the increasing difficulty of making profits -will be an increasing recklessness of human life. Our railroads killed -six thousand people in 1895, seven thousand in 1899, eight thousand in -1902, nine thousand in 1903, and ten thousand in 1904; they injured -thirty-three thousand in 1895, forty-four thousand in 1899, sixty-four -thousand in 1902, seventy-six thousand in 1903, and eighty-four thousand -in 1904. According to the statistics of the Interstate Commerce -Commission, our railways injured one passenger out of every one hundred -and eighty-three thousand passengers they carried in 1894; in 1904 they -injured one out of every seventy-eight thousand. If casualties are to -continue increasing at the same rate until 1912, there are one hundred -thousand people under sentence of sudden death, and a number doomed to -be maimed greater than the entire population of the District of -Columbia, Delaware, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho and -the Hawaiian Islands. - -In 1890, before the present appalling slaughter began, we were killing, -of a given number of employees, twice as many as the State-owned roads -of Germany, and three times as many as Austria. The street railroads of -New York City alone take one human life every day, or one in ten -thousand of the population every year. People walk about the streets -carelessly, but tremble when there is a thunderstorm; yet the -street-cars kill ten persons in a year for every one that the lightning -kills in the lifetime of a man! - -These things create indignation in our pulpits and editorial rooms; but -any practical railroad man could tell you that to stop them would be to -overthrow society. The reason they occur is that it costs less to pay -the damages than it would to take proper precautions, and if the -railroads were forced to take the precautions, many of them would have -to shut down at once. The situation is covered so completely in the -following news item, clipped from the Minneapolis _Journal_ of May 26, -1904, that I cannot do better than to quote it entire: - -“Because James J. Hill guaranteed eight per cent. to the stockholders of -the Burlington when he assumed control of that system, many of the older -employees are undergoing what they consider real hardship. Ten days ago -the _Journal_ voiced the complaints of Burlington employees on other -parts of the system, mentioning the fact that the runs to and from the -Twin Cities had been combined in some way, to squeeze more work out of -the train crews. The new schedule has now been in effect longer and -complaints are correspondingly more emphatic. No dissatisfaction is -openly expressed, as the Hill guillotine gets nobody more surely than -the man who talks too much. - -“Trainmen complain that with the long runs and long hours they are -forced to work to a point almost beyond human endurance. They are -haunted by the fear of accidents from unpreventable neglect of duty. -They hold that the running of trains in safety depends upon the -vigilance and alertness of the crews and they cannot do themselves and -their employers justice, when compelled to work long hours on fast runs. - -“Crews are now running from Minneapolis to Chicago, a distance of about -430 miles, with seventy-two stops. The men start from Minneapolis at -7:30 A. M., and arrive, on locals, in Chicago at 9:35 P. M. The men -leaving Chicago on No. 50 at 10:50 P. M. arrive in Minneapolis at 1:20 -P. M. the next afternoon. - -“Trainmen declare that in making this schedule the management has broken -faith and virtually abrogates previous working agreements. Hints of a -strike are made. In discussing the conditions an old Burlington employee -said: - -“‘A conductor and his crew feel a sense of responsibility for the lives -of those upon a train. A man can only be worked so far when he becomes -actually irresponsible. I hate to feel that I am in any way responsible -for the lives of passengers on a train when the length of the run and -hours have worked me beyond my limit. There is no flagman on the train, -and the brake-man has to help load baggage, brake, flag, and do anything -that comes up. He is certainly not in good condition to be an alert -flagman on the latter end of the run.’”[4] - -Footnote 4: - - “In the matter of rigging the stock-market the American railroad - manager has no superior. In the matter of providing safe and - expeditious facilities for transportation he has no inferior in any - nation of the first rank. He can manipulate political conventions. He - can debauch legislatures. He can send his paid attorneys to Congress - and sometimes put them on the bench. In these matters he is a master, - just as he is a master in the art of issuing and juggling securities. - It is only in the operation of railroads that he is deficient. The - mere detail of transporting lives and property safely and - satisfactorily he seems to regard as unworthy of his genius. His - equipment is usually inadequate. His road-bed is generally second - class or worse. His employees are undisciplined and his system is - archaic. Whatever the causes may be, the fact remains that, judged by - the results of operation, the American railroad manager is - incompetent, and the records of death and disaster prove it.”—_New - York World._ - -In the same way it is cheaper for a theatre-manager to bribe police -officials with free tickets than to comply with the regulations of the -Fire Department; and so it is that five or six hundred people are burned -up in five minutes. It is easier to bribe a building inspector than it -is to put steel rivets in a building, and so you have a Darlington Hotel -collapse, and kill ten or twenty workingmen. And a few weeks later came -the _Slocum_ disaster, and a helpless steamboat captain was punished, -and the responsible capitalists not even named. At the same time, in -Trenton, New Jersey, some other capitalists were arrested for making -life-preservers with iron bars in them. Of course they were not -punished, for everyone understands that such things cannot be helped. In -1893 the number of miners killed in the United States and Canada was two -and fifty-three hundredths per thousand; in 1902 it was three and -fifty-one hundredths. Better precautions against accidents were one of -the demands for making which the miners of Colorado were strung up to -telegraph poles, shut in bull-pens, beaten and “deported.” Their -mortality was thirty-two per thousand in ten years; the mortality among -railroad brake-men is now thirty-two per thousand in _two_ years, so it -was very unreasonable of the miners to complain. - -There are annually, says _Social Service_, 344,900 accidents among the -7,086,000 people engaged in this country in manufacturing and mechanical -pursuits. It calculates that if the percentage of accidents among the -other 23,000,000 employed in other occupations is only one-tenth as much -as the above, it means that another 100,000 must be added to the list. -“This is perpetual war on humanity,” the paper goes on to say, “and more -bloody than any civil or international war known to history. This war is -costing suffering, physical and mental, which is beyond calculation. It -is costing great economic loss. It is creating a sense of wrong and a -feeling of class-hatred on the part of those who are its victims.” - -In the same category of waste of human life belong all the facts of -over-driving, long hours, and irregular employment among workingmen. -Under the old Southern system of slavery the master took care of his -servant the year round; but the wage-slave is kept only while he is -needed, and only while he remains at his maximum of working efficiency. -Recently in a single month, I clipped from a New York newspaper, items -to the effect that the Brooklyn street-railroad combine was discharging -all of its superannuated employees; that the master-pilots of the Great -Lakes had agreed to engage no man over forty; that the Delaware and -Hudson Railroad Company had just published a rule barring all over -thirty-five; and that the Carnegie Steel Company had done the same. - -And in this same category of waste of human life belong all the facts of -woman and child-labour. For of course the children die; and the women -produce deformed and idiot and degenerate offspring, to fill our asylums -and prisons. The reader is referred, for first-hand accounts of the life -of the American woman wage-slave, to Van Vorst’s “The Woman who Toils,” -and to that fascinating human document, “The Long Day.” In Mr. John -Spargo’s “The Bitter Cry of the Children,” he will find a mass of facts -about child-labour, the most hideous of all the evils incidental to the -process of wealth-concentration. - -There is, if one had only time to point it out, no tiniest nook of our -society where human lives are not being ground up for profit; the -capitalists are ground up, as Mr. Schwab was, and the meanest woman of -the town shares his fate. There was a time when a prostitute was an -independent person, who could support herself until she grew old; -nowadays, under the stress of competition, every city has its -prostitution trust. It takes capital to pay the police, and the business -is therefore in the hands of the proprietors of houses, who buy young -girls out of the slums and immigrant population by thousands and tens of -thousands, use them up in a year or two, and then fling them out into -the gutters to die, often when they are not out of their teens. In the -same way the gambler and the saloon-keeper are now as much employees as -are the officials of the Standard Oil Company: the whole profits of -these occupations flowing into the hands of some “captain of industry” -as inevitably as all the rills on the mountain-side flow into the river. -All of these facts are perfectly familiar, but for the sake of -concreteness, I will quote a paragraph from Mr. Steffens’s book, “The -Shame of the Cities.” He is telling of the city of Pittsburg: - -“The vice-graft ... is a legitimate business, conducted, not by the -police, but in an orderly fashion by syndicates, and the chairman of one -of the parties at the last election, said it was worth two hundred and -fifty thousand dollars a year. I saw a man who was laughed at for -offering seventeen thousand five hundred dollars for the slot-machine -concession; he was told that it was let for much more. ‘Speakeasies’ -(unlicensed drinking places) pay so well that when they earn five -hundred dollars or more in twenty-four hours their proprietors often -make a bare living. Disorderly houses are managed by ward syndicates. -Permission is had from the syndicate real-estate agent, who alone can -rent them. The syndicate hires a house from the owners at, say, -thirty-five dollars a month, and he lets it to a woman at from -thirty-five to fifty dollars a week. For furniture, the tenant must go -to the ‘official furniture-man,’ who delivers one thousand dollars worth -of ‘fixings’ for a note for three thousand dollars, on which high -interest must be paid. For beer the tenant must go to the ‘official -bottler,’ and pay two dollars for a one-dollar case of beer; for wines -and liquors to the ‘official liquor-commissioner,’ who charges ten -dollars for five dollars’ worth; for clothes to the ‘official -wrapper-maker.’ These women may not buy shoes, hats, jewellery, or any -other luxury or necessity except from the official concessionaries, and -then only at the official, monopoly prices.” - -And by way of conclusion, in reference to this particular aspect of the -consequences of the “increasing mass of capital,” let me quote the -following little incident, which a friend of mine clipped from one of -the New York newspapers: - -“One night a young girl called at the entrance to the House of the Good -Shepherd in New York City; she asked for food and a place to sleep. -’Twas a pitiful tale she told the matron in charge. She told of her -parents having died and left her alone in the great dark city; she told -of jobs she had secured but was discharged owing to her physical -inability to keep pace with the machine, and as a last resort she -appealed to this institution for succour and support. The matron in -attendance, after having heard this terrible tale of woe and being -thoroughly convinced as to the girl’s honesty and integrity, as well as -to her virtue, informed her that she could not take her in there, as -that institution was established for the reclamation of fallen women -only. The poor girl went away, but on the following night she -returned.... ‘You may take me now,’ she said, ‘you may take me now, for -I am a fallen woman!’” - - - - - CHAPTER V - BUSINESS AND POLITICS - - -In this discussion of the process of wealth-concentration, I have so far -purposely omitted all mention of the most important aspect of the -phenomenon—the seizing by the “constantly increasing mass of capital” of -the powers of the State, and their use for purpose of intensifying -exploitation. I have avoided that feature, partly because it is -conspicuous enough to deserve a chapter to itself, but mainly in order -to make clear my view-point, that the phenomenon, while important, is -secondary—an effect rather than a cause. - -This is, of course, contrary to the view usually taken. In most -discussions of the problems of the time, it is taken for granted that -“government by special interests” is the source of all the evil. But -while recognising how enormously the process of wealth concentration has -been accelerated by the political alliance, it is my thesis that exactly -the same conditions would have developed had economic forces been left -to work out their own results. I maintain that economic competition is a -self-destroying stage in social development; and that to regard it as -permanent is simply not to realise what it is. For competition is a -struggle, and the purpose of every struggle is a victory; to conceive of -a struggle without the intention to end the struggle, is simply -impossible in the nature of things. In the industrial combat the end is -the victory of a class, and the reduction of all other classes to -servitude—with the ultimate extinction of all individuals not needed by -the victors. - -Again, it is generally the custom to regard this phenomenon of -class-government with indignation and astonishment, as if it were -something abnormal and monstrous; but from the point of view of this -discussion, it is a perfectly natural and inevitable incident of the -intensification of competition. You are to picture Capital, seeking -profits; like a wild beast in a cage, pacing about, watching for an -opening, here and there; like water, caught behind a dam, creeping up, -crowding forward, feeling for a weak spot. And the one thing to be -determined is: _Is there any way in which profits can be made through -the powers of government?_ If so, it is quite certain that there will be -an attempt made by capital to get possession of those powers. - -You can see the thing in its germ in any primitive community; I once -amused myself by studying it in a little village in Canada, where the -trusts had never been heard of. The storekeeper was a rich man, and he -had a “pull” with the squire and with the constable and with the -game-warden; he did little favours for them, and they for him—so that a -poor “Frenchman” who was suspected of stealing a pair of socks found -himself in jail before he knew why. And then there was a big “lumber -man” in the township; he owned all the jobs, and he traded with the -storekeeper, and the storekeeper in return ran the political machine. -That was the whole story of the politics of the district—except that -there were several fellows of independent temperament, who grumbled, and -who constituted the germ of the Socialist movement. - -Political corruption first became epidemic in our country in 1861, when -the government had to go into business upon an enormous scale. There -were contractors—and competition. And then, of course, there was the -tariff, a shrewd scheme to compel the people to pay high prices without -knowing it. Later on someone discovered the brilliant idea of the -franchise, the selling for a nominal sum of the right to tax the public -without limit. And so capital went into politics. - -At first it did a purely retail business, buying up the legislators as -it needed them; but soon the thing became systematised, and Capital got -wholesale prices—it financed the machines, and chose its own candidates. -The process culminated at the beginning of the present decade, when “big -business” was in practically undisputed possession of both the majority -parties, of Congress and the Presidency, and of the governments in every -town, city and state in America. - -You see, it was as if our society was in unstable equilibrium. We had a -political democracy, and we were developing an industrial aristocracy; -and it was impossible for them to exist side by side. Innocent people -had taken it for granted that they could; but it is no more possible for -a democracy to be aristocratic in any of its aspects and remain a -democracy, than it is for a virtuous man to be vicious in one -particular, and remain a virtuous man. Democracy is not a code of laws, -nor is it a system of government—it is an attitude of soul. It has as -its basis a perception of the spiritual nature of man, from which -follows the corollary that all men either are equal, or must become so. -And so between aristocracy and democracy, wherever and under whatever -aspects they appear, there is, and forever must be, eternal and deadly -war. Here is the testimony and the warning of the greatest of American -democrats, Abraham Lincoln, who if he could rise from his grave to speak -to us in these times of our country’s trial could speak no more -pertinent words than these. He had declared that the Slavery question -was one between right and wrong. “Right and wrong,” he said—“that is the -issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of -Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle -between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They -are the principles which have stood face to face from the beginning of -time and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of -humanity, and the other is the divine right of kings. It is the same -principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit -that says: ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No -matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who -seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of -their labour, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving -another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” - -It is worth while pointing out the utter hopelessness of the struggle. -On the one hand was the capitalist, with his millions, alert, aggressive -and resourceful; he had an army of experts to help him—shrewd attorneys, -skilful lobbyists, newspapers and publicity bureaus, political henchmen -trained all their lifetime to the trade; he was cold and unscrupulous—as -a rule he was not a man at all, but a corporation, a thing without a -soul, a monster “clamouring for dividends.” He had a thousand devices, a -thousand pretences, a thousand disguises. And opposed to him was the -Public—unorganised, uninformed, and sound asleep! - -Recently, when Mr. H. G. Wells was in this country, I had a long talk -with him, and he asked me how I accounted for the saturnalia of -corruption in our political life; he said that our people did not seem -to him degraded or brutal, and he could not understand why things were -so much worse here than in England. I said that in England the economic -process had been modified by the existence of an hereditary aristocracy, -holding over from old times and having high traditions of public -service. By nature this aristocracy sympathised with capital, and to a -certain extent fraternised with it; but it would not abdicate to it, and -occasionally, to preserve its own power, it made concessions to the -public, and so served as a check upon the forces of commercialism. On -the other hand the American people had only themselves to rely upon and -until they had been goaded into revolt, there was no limit whatever to -the power of greed. - -I suppose it is unnecessary to offer any proofs of the existence of -“government by special interests.” If there is anyone who has been out -of the country for the past three years and has not read any of the -magazines, it will be sufficient to refer him to the two books of Mr. -Lincoln Steffens—“The Shame of the Cities” and “The Struggle for Self -Government.” - -Steffens himself is a proof of the evil conditions: a man who has spent -ten years studying our politics, who went to the task with no -preconceptions, and only a passion for honesty and fair dealing—and who -has been made into a thorough-going radical by the irresistible logic of -facts. It was his particular service to the Republic to trace the stream -of graft to its fountain-head, which is what he calls “big business”; -and the series of papers in which he proved that thesis to our people -will long be studied as models of the higher journalism—the journalism -which is to ordinary newspaper writing what statesmanship is to -politics. - -As I say, there is no need of proof; but simply by way of illustration, -and to call the picture to the reader’s mind, let me quote a few -paragraphs from one of these papers—“Pittsburg, a City Ashamed”: - -“The railroads began the corruption of this city. There always was some -dishonesty, as the oldest public men I talked with said, but it was -occasional and criminal till the first great corporation made it -business-like and respectable. The Pennsylvania Railroad was in the -system from the start, and as the other roads came in and found the city -government bought up by those before them, they purchased their rights -of way by outbribing the older roads, then joined the ring to acquire -more rights for themselves and to keep belated rivals out. As -corporations multiplied and capital branched out, corruption increased -naturally, but the notable characteristic of the ‘Pittsburg plan’ of -misgovernment was that it was not a haphazard growth, but a deliberate, -intelligent organisation.... The Pennsylvania Railroad is a power in -Pennsylvania politics, it is part of the State ring, and part also of -the Pittsburg ring. The city paid in all sorts of rights and privileges, -streets, bridges, etc., and in certain periods the business interests of -the city were sacrificed to leave the Pennsylvania road in exclusive -control of a freight traffic it could not handle alone.” - -The “bosses” who ruled Pittsburg were Magee and Flynn, and Mr. Steffens -prints in full the agreement between them and Senator Quay, by which -they divided the boodle of the state. “Magee and Flynn were the -government and the law. How could they commit a crime? If they wanted -something from the city they passed an ordinance granting it, and if -some other ordinance was in conflict it was repealed or amended. If the -laws of the state stood in the way, so much the worse for the laws of -the state; they were amended. If the constitution of the state proved a -barrier, as it did to all special legislation, the Legislature enacted a -law for cities of the second class (which was Pittsburg alone) and the -courts upheld the Legislature. If there were opposition on the side of -public opinion, there was a use for that also. - -“As I have said before, unlawful acts were exceptional and unnecessary -in Pittsburg. Magee did not steal franchises and sell them. His councils -gave them to him. He and the busy Flynn took them, and built railways, -which Magee sold and bought and financed and conducted, like any other -man whose successful career is held up as an example for young men. His -railways, combined into the Consolidated Traction Company, were -capitalised at thirty million dollars. There was scandal in Chicago over -the granting of charters for twenty-eight and fifty years. Magee’s read, -‘for nine hundred and fifty years,’ ‘for nine hundred and ninety-nine -years,’ ‘said Charter is to exist a thousand years,’ ‘said Charter is to -exist perpetually,’ and the Councils gave franchises for the ‘life of -the charter.’” - -And all this was a regular profession, a custom of the country, which -its devotees studied. “Two of them told me repeatedly that they -travelled about the country looking up the business, and that a -fellowship had grown up among boodling aldermen of the leading cities in -the United States. Committees from Chicago would come to St. Louis to -find out what ‘new games’ the St. Louis boodlers had, and they gave the -St. Louisans hints as to how they ‘did the business’ in Chicago. So the -Chicago and St. Louis boodlers used to visit Cleveland and Pittsburg and -all the other cities, or, if the distance was too great, they got their -ideas by those mysterious channels which run all through the ‘World of -Graft.’ The meeting place in St. Louis was Decker’s stable, and ideas -unfolded there were developed into plans which the boodlers say to-day, -are only in abeyance. In Decker’s stable was born the plan to sell the -Union Market; and though the deal did not go through, the boodlers, when -they saw it failing, made the market-men pay ten thousand dollars for -killing it. This scheme is laid aside for the future. Another that -failed was to sell the court-house, and this was well under way when it -was discovered that the ground on which this public building stands was -given to the city on condition that it was to be used for a court-house -and nothing else.... The grandest idea of all came from Philadelphia. In -that city the gas-works were sold out to a private concern, and the -water-works were to be sold next. The St. Louis fellows have been trying -ever since to find a purchaser for their water-works. The plant is worth -at least forty million dollars. But the boodlers thought they could let -it go at fifteen million dollars, and get one million dollars or so -themselves for the bargain. ‘The scheme was to do it and skip,’ said one -of the boodlers who told me about it, ‘and if you could mix it all up -with some filtering scheme it could be done. Only some of us thought we -could make more than one million dollars out of it—a fortune apiece. It -will be done some day.’... - -“Such, then, is the boodling system as we see it in St. Louis. -Everything the city owned was for sale by the officers elected by the -people. The purchasers might be willing or unwilling takers; they might -be citizens or outsiders; it was all one to the city government. So long -as the members of the combines got the proceeds they would sell out the -town. Would? They did and they will. If a city treasurer runs away with -fifty thousand dollars there is a great halloo about it. In St. Louis -the regularly organised thieves who rule have sold fifty million -dollars’ worth of franchises and other valuable municipal assets. This -is the estimate made for me by a banker, who said that the boodlers got -not one-tenth of the value of the things they sold.” - -Two or three years ago, before I met Mr. Steffens, I thought that he -knew only as much as he “let on”; and so I wrote him an “open letter,” -to point out the consequences of this régime of “big business.” The -story of this manuscript is an amusing one, and worth telling for the -light it throws upon my argument. Mr. Steffens was so good as to say -that it was the best criticism of himself that he had ever read; and it -was scheduled for publication in one of our three or four largest -magazines. But alas—it was purchased by the enthusiastic young editor, -and then read by the elderly and unenthusiastic proprietor. When I -rebelled at the long wait which followed, the proprietor invited me to -dinner, and unbosomed his soul to me. He was the dearest old gentleman I -ever met, and he put his arm about me while he explained the situation. -“My boy,” he said, “you are a very clever chap, and you know a lot; but -why don’t you put it all into a book, where you can’t hurt anyone but -yourself? Why do you try to get it into my magazine, and scare away my -half million subscribers?” - -So the letter was shelved. But the questions it asked are now the -questions which events are asking of the American people; and so I shall -take the advice of the elderly and unenthusiastic proprietor—and publish -some of the letter in a book! It ran as follows: - - -This is the question I have wished to ask you, Mr. Steffens. “A -revolution has happened,” you tell us; we have no longer “a government -of the people, by the people, for the people,”—we have “a government of -the people, by the rascals, for the rich.” And if we find that that -revolution, which has overthrown the law, and which defies the law, -cannot be put down and overcome by the means of the law—what are we -going to do then? Are we going to sit still, and content ourselves with -saying it is too bad? Are we going to bear it—to bear it forever? _Can_ -we bear it forever? And if we cannot bear it forever what are we going -to do when we can bear it no longer? - -A revolution is a serious thing, Mr. Steffens. A man should not talk -about a “revolution” except with a thorough realisation of what the word -implies. A revolution means that the social contract has been broken, -that rights have been violated and justice defied—that, in a word, the -game of life has not been fairly played, that those who have lost may -possibly have had the right to win. And the game of life is a pretty -stern game for many of us, Mr. Steffens. - -You and your friends, I and my friends, belong to a class whom this -“system” touches only through our ideals. Editors and authors, clergymen -and lawyers, we are pained to know that corruption is eating out the -heart of our country—but still, if the problem be not solved to-day, we -can put it off till to-morrow, and not realise what a difference it -makes. But there are some in our country whom the System touches far -more intimately and directly than this—some to whom the difference -between to-day and to-morrow is simply a difference between life and -death. I happened only yesterday to be reading a letter from a man who, -I think, knows that “System,” which is our new government, in this -personal and intimate way. I will quote a few words from his letter: - -“I have been arrested, put in jail, prosecuted and persecuted. I have -had my customers driven away; I have been boycotted to the extent that -men who dared to trade with me have lost their jobs; I have had my home -broken into at night; been beaten with guns and abused by vile and -foul-mouthed thugs; been torn, partly dressed and bleeding, from the -side of my wife, who was driven from her bedroom and roughly handled; -and finally I have been shipped out and told that if I returned to my -home I would be hung. Not satisfied with this they have twice deported -my brother, who was conducting the business in which we were both -earning our living, so that it became necessary for an adjuster to take -charge, of our store.” All this was, needless to say, in Colorado; the -writer is Mr. A. H. Floaten, a storekeeper of Telluride, but now of -Richmond County, Wisconsin, where he was working in a hayfield when he -wrote. He goes on to add that the charge upon which he was “deported” -was that of selling goods to members of the Western Federation of -Miners. “As for my brother and myself,” he states, “I defy any and all -persons to show a single instance where either of us have ever violated -any law or even been suspected of crime, or have ever wronged any -person.” - -Here is your “revolution,” Mr. Steffens, in full swing. One of the -questions which I have for some months found myself longing to ask you -is, how clearly you recognised in the Colorado civil war the natural and -inevitable consequences of a continuation of your “government of the -people, by the rascals, for the rich?” Here is an unequivocal -declaration, by a vote of two to one, by the people in one of the states -of this free country, in favour of a constitutional amendment permitting -an eight-hour law; and here are representatives of both the majority -parties pledging themselves to enact it, and then openly and shamelessly -selling themselves out to the predatory corporations of the state. The -people then resort to a strike to secure their rights; and when they are -seen to be winning, the militia is summoned, criminals are hired to -commit a dynamite outrage and afford the necessary pretext, and then -every tradition of American liberty and every safeguard of free -institutions is overthrown, and the strike crushed and the striker’s -organisation exterminated with a ruthlessness and a recklessness which -no police official in Russia could have surpassed. And then the party of -“law and order”—that is the “System”—sat enthroned in Colorado, and the -guileless reader of newspaper despatches believed that an “election” -took place in that state last November! The “System” suspended the -_Habeas Corpus_ Act, censored newspapers and telegrams, opened mails, -entered houses without warrant and drove women from their beds at dead -of night, deported men, defied and threatened judges, shut down mines in -spite of their owners’ will—and finally haled a score or two of elected -officials before it and put ropes around their necks and compelled them -to resign. And then the “rebellion,” that is, the agitation for an -eight-hour law, attempted to reassert itself in the form of ballots; and -by means of a threat of deposition it compelled the newly elected -governor to accede in everything to its will—and in particular to retain -in office the infamous militia official who was its agent in these -crimes! - -But we, as I said before, are touched by these things only through our -ideals. We are sorry to see American institutions overthrown in an -American state; but we do not live in Colorado, and we are quite sure -that there is no danger of our being turned out of our homes. And yet we -know that the system exists in our own city and state, and sits just as -surely intrenched there as in Colorado. And we know also that it exists -for a purpose—that it exists to rule. And are we to imagine that it -exists to rule the people of Patagonia, of Greenland and Afghanistan? Do -we not know that it exists to rule _us_? - -How does it rule us? How does it rule the people of Colorado? Whatever -is it that is wanted of the people of Colorado? Why, simply that they -should go into the mines and factories and work, not eight hours a day, -as they wished to, but twelve hours a day, the time the “System” bade -them to. And what is it that it wants everywhere else—in California, in -Maine and in Texas? What, save that those who have labour to sell shall -sell it at the price the “System” is paying, and that those who have -goods to buy shall buy them at the price the “System” asks? If this be -so, is not the only difference between us and the people of Colorado -that they went on strike against the “System,” whereas we are not on -strike—we _pay_? - -Let us deal with facts. Here is a corporation which runs a -street-railroad in a city. It gives an abominable service, its cars are -cold and filthy, its employees are underpaid wretches who work thirteen -and fifteen hours a day—and the fare is just double that of the splendid -government service of Berlin. And the public-spirited men of the city -have for ten or twenty years been trying to do something with that -corporation at the state capital; but the corporation has its lobby and -continues to pay pig dividends upon its watered stock year after year. -And then do the people of the city organise and go on strike against -that corporation? No indeed—they pay. - -You know of the agitation for a parcels post; you know that under the -parcels-post system an Englishman can send a package to California for -one-third of what it costs us to send one from New York. In Germany a -ten-pound package may be sent anywhere in the Empire for twelve cents; -and our post office pays the railroads more for its service than all the -rest of the civilised world combined, though the quantity of mail matter -carried is less than that of Great Britain, France and Germany alone! -Yet we know that it is a waste of ink setting these facts forth. Is not -the president of the United States Express Company the United States -senator from your own state? The railroad systems of this country have, -of course, their lobby in every state capital, and in Washington as -well; and every single year the railroad systems of this country -slaughter and maim the equivalent of a Gettysburg campaign—there were as -many people killed in the last three years as the British lost in the -entire Boer war. Yet there is not the least reason for this; the -railroads could, if they chose, build cars which will not crumble up -like matchboxes—they have proven it by killing only six Pullman-car -passengers in the same three years. But of course you have to pay a -large sum extra to ride in a Pullman car. If you cannot pay with money, -you pay with your bones—in either case, of course, you pay. - -And then there is the tariff. You, Mr. Steffens, are a man who has both -the ability and the honesty to think, and you know what the tariff is. -You know that it is a device to keep out foreign competition and thus -enable home manufacturers to charge higher prices. You know that in the -early days its effect was to make manufacturing possible by keeping -prices at a level where a fair profit was paid. Above this level they -could not go, because there was free domestic competition. The tariff -was thus a tax, self-imposed by every man in the country, for the -purpose of building up the country’s home industries; exactly as if the -owner of a sugar-plantation should conclude it would pay him to grind -his own cane, and should set aside his gains for a few years to buy the -machinery. Now I might stop to argue the socialistic implications of -such a procedure—involving as it does the doctrine that the manufactures -are the interest and concern of the whole people, to the advantages of -which, when completed, they all have a right. (No plantation master, I -take it, would expect to furnish himself with machinery out of the wages -of his hands.) Continuing, however, to discuss facts and not theories, -you see that these industries which we have “encouraged” have now become -the mightiest power in the land. It is they who have accomplished the -revolution and set up the “System”; it is they who use the money which -the people have turned over to them, to maintain and perpetuate the old -arrangement—an arrangement which now enables them, since they have -become monopolies, to charge for their products from thirty to fifty per -cent. more than a fair price, as is proven by what they charge abroad. - -The workingman, you know, Mr. Steffens, has all this justified to him by -the fact that he gets his share of this “prosperity”; but of late the -workingman has been finding that he does _not_ get his share. He has -brought the industrial machinery of the country to such a pitch of -perfection that he produces more than the country needs; and so when -foreign markets fail he is out of work part of the time; and the mass of -unemployed labour operates by the “iron law” to beat down wages and to -break strikes, and to make his share less and less. And all the time, to -pay interest on the constantly increasing capital of the country, the -prices of trust products are being raised yet higher, and the cost of -living is rising, year by year. - -In the cotton mills of Alabama and Georgia little children six and eight -years of age are working twelve hours for a wage of nine cents a day. -And how do you think they fare in this fearful race for profits—what do -you think is the effect upon them of the continued operation of the -“System”? You may remember that I said a little way back that there were -people in this country to whom the difference between to-day and -to-morrow is simply a difference between life and death. It was such -people as these I had in mind. - -Look, Mr. Steffens; you go from town to city, and from city to state, -and everywhere you show us hordes of political parasites battening on -corruption; and you tell us that the fortunes that they make represent -but a small portion of what is made by the “big business men” who bribe -them. Magee and Quay, you tell us, made thirty millions out of the -street railroads of Pittsburg; and all over this land, year in and year -out, such sums are being “made.” And soon afterward came Mr. Lawson’s -story of how the Standard Oil group “made” forty-six million dollars in -a single deal without turning over their hands. Mr. Lawson expatiates -upon this way of “making” dollars—he makes reflections which I had often -wondered if you were making. I have wondered if you realised entirely -that these millions of dollars were _real_ dollars? Dollars that a man -might spend, just the same as any other dollars—with which he might -purchase food that men had toiled to raise, and houses that men had -toiled to build! I am writing these words in October, and the windows of -my room look out upon a cornfield. All the year long I have watched a -farmer and his son at work in this field—first plowing it, then -harrowing it back and forth and across, then planting the corn, -patiently, row by row. The field is ten acres in size, and it seemed to -me that not a week passed all summer that the farmer was not plowing and -weeding it; and now that the fall has come he has cut it stalk by stalk, -and stacked it; and now I can see him and his son sitting on the bare, -bleak hillside this morning, husking it, ear by ear. That will take them -all of two or three weeks, and when the whole thing has been done they -will gather up the ears to cart them to town, and the farmer will have -five hundred bushels of corn and will get for them two hundred and fifty -dollars. And then I read Mr. Lawson’s account of how the Rockefellers -“made” forty-six million dollars out of Amalgamated Copper—and strive to -realise that what they made was the equivalent of the labour of the -farmer and the farmer’s sons and the farmer’s horses in one hundred and -eighty-six thousand ten-acre cornfields such as the one I look out upon! - -Is it not obvious that if I were to have the power to call a piece of -paper one dollar and to put it into circulation, exchanging it for two -bushels of corn, I could only do it by diminishing the value of every -other dollar in the country a certain small amount? Supposing that the -total wealth of the country was one billion dollars, I should diminish -every single dollar by one-billionth. Suppose that similarly I “made” -one million dollars—by any sort of “making” whatever save by producing -some useful thing and increasing the total wealth of the country—I -should then tax the holder of every dollar one mill. A man who owned ten -thousand dollars would be robbed by me of ten dollars—he would be robbed -of it just as literally and as actually as if I had broken into his -house and stolen his watch. He would not know that he was robbed, -perhaps—all that he would know would be that when he spent his ten -thousand dollars he would not get quite so much. In Dun’s and -Bradstreet’s the event would be recorded in the statement that the cost -of living had risen one-tenth of one per cent. since last week, and that -interest rates had similarly declined. And now here is the young girl -who works in the sweatshops of Chicago for a wage of forty cents a week, -as thousands of them do. The great Amalgamated Copper deal is -consummated, Mr. Rockefeller and his fellow-conspirators “make” -forty-six million dollars—and the young girl’s wage becomes thirty-nine -cents and a fraction. At forty cents she was hanging on for her life; at -thirty-nine cents and a fraction she enters the nearest brothel. Here is -the little child of eight years toiling from six at night till six in -the morning in the midst of throbbing cotton-looms for nine cents. Magee -and Quay of Pittsburg “make” thirty million dollars in street -railroads—and the little child’s wage becomes eight cents and a -fraction. At nine cents he was starving; at eight and a fraction he -faints, and the machinery seizes him, and his arm has been torn out of -him before anyone can answer his screams. So it is, Mr. Steffens, that -there are people in this country to whom the difference between to-day -and to-morrow is simply a difference between life and death. - -That farmer about whose work I spoke will take his two hundred and fifty -dollars to the bank for deposit; and in the line before the window will -be a young spendthrift idler with a month’s income from his father’s -estate, and a politician with a bribe for a street railway franchise; -and to the banker all these deposits will stand upon equal terms, they -will all be equally “good,” and will claim and get interest at the same -rate. The farmer will have to content himself with a lower rate, because -of the competition of the others; and next week, when the activities of -some speculator in Wall Street bring about a failure of the bank, he -will get not a bit more out of the wreck than the other two. And then he -will go back and toil for another year, to raise a similar crop—and what -will he find then? Why this: the forty-six millions of the Standard Oil -gang will have survived all mischances, and having by their enormous -mass attracted profits, will have become fifty millions, or even sixty; -and the thirty millions of Magee and Quay will have become thirty-five. -All the untold millions of the capital of the country will have -increased similarly; and the investment field will have become more -crowded yet, and the prizes fewer yet, and the chances more hazardous -yet; and the cost of living will be a little higher yet; and the -interest rate a little lower yet, and wages a little lower yet; and the -whole of human society will be toiling a little harder yet to pay the -profits upon that heaped-up mass of wealth. More men will be taking to -drink, and more women will be taking to brothels—more to suicide, -madness, vagabondage and crime. The race for profits will be a little -more fierce, social ostentation will be a little more vulgar, political -corruption will be a little more shameless, strikes and riots will be a -little more common, the socialists will be a little more active—and you, -Mr. Lincoln Steffens, will be a little more saddened at the sight of -your country’s downward career. - -I have noticed the very curious fact about your views, that all your -hope of betterment is in the future—it is always how we can prevent new -stealing, never how we can punish the past. And so those thirty million -dollars of Magee and Quay, the forty-six millions of the Amalgamated -deal—they are safe and beyond recall forever? Mr. Lawson talks about -“restitution”; do you think he will ever bring it about—do you see any -signs of it so far? And yet those forty-six million dollars, assuming -that they grow at ten per cent., a small earning for such a sum—year -after year they will be, roughly speaking, as follows: 46, 51, 56, 63, -69, 76, 84, 92, 101, 111, 122, 134, 147, 162, 178, 196, 216, 238, 262, -288, 318, and so on. In other words, the heirs of the “Amalgamated” -financiers will twenty years from now have multiplied that sum nearly -seven times, and be receiving nearly seven times as much tribute from -the sewing-girl in the Chicago slums and the children in the Georgia -cotton mill. I, Mr. Steffens, am one of those who look upon all profits, -rent, interest, and dividends as a survival of barbarism, the last but -not the least of the devices whereby the strong enslave the weak and -profit by their toil; but I assume that you are not one of these—that -you are one of the class I heard described by a speaker the other night, -“who think that the first dollar is a male dollar and the second a -female, and that when you put them in the bank together they bring forth -dimes and nickels, which in the course of the years grow up to be -dollars as big as their parents.” Yet even so, you can not but recognise -the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. You can -not—to drop an inconvenient metaphor—claim that society can by any -possibility whatever be required to go on paying tribute to that stolen -forty-six millions—the three hundred and eighteen millions of twenty -years from now. It is a maxim of law, Mr. Steffens, that there is no -wrong without its redress. - -And if you grant this and begin to examine the millions in that -light—what perplexities you come upon! Only take the tariff, for -instance—is there a dollar invested in the business of this country -to-day which has not profited by that, and which is therefore not made -up out of the tiny contributions of thousands of persons who not only do -not own that dollar, but do not own any other dollar? And then consider -that the beginnings of most of our great fortunes were made in Civil War -times, when the nation in its extremity paid two dollars for every -dollar in value it received! And consider the chaos of political -corruption that followed, the twenty years of plundering of every -variety that American ingenuity could invent, from Black Friday to the -Western land grabs and railroad steals! Try to figure how many crimes -are represented by the Vanderbilt millions, how many by the Goulds’s; -think of the commercial assassinations represented by the word Standard -Oil—the secret rebates and discriminations, the wholesale buyings of -legislatures and elections; think of the whole institution of corruption -of the present day, of the “System,” intrenched in village and town, -city, and state, and nation, owning both parties, the executive, the -legislative, and the judicial branches of the Government, the schools, -the colleges, the pulpits, the press, literature, and art, and public -opinion—making it, not figuratively and hyperbolically, but literally, -simply, and indisputably the fact that there is not to-day in the land a -place where a man can take a dollar and invest it, and get back a copper -cent that is not tainted with corruption, polluted by violence, treason, -and crime, and stained with the blood and tears of uncounted thousands -of agonised women and children! - - -So much for the letter. If there is anyone who, after reading it, is -still of the opinion that the people should pay the tribute demanded -twenty years from now, there is nothing more that I can say to -him—except to give a few statistics by way of further elucidation, -showing him how many more millions of dollars there will be to enter -their claim. There will be, for instance, the four hundred and fifty -million dollars of the Astor family—all invested in New York City real -estate, and at the rate of growth of the city, certainly destined to be -a billion dollars in twenty years from date. There is the half billion -dollars of Mr. Rockefeller, increasing by a most conservative estimate -at the rate of ten per cent. per year, and therefore destined to be over -four billions at that time. And then there are the railroads of the -country. We are now being prepared for a decision to be some day -delivered by the Supreme Court, to the effect that any rate regulation -which interferes with dividends is confiscation, and therefore -unconstitutional. And yet we know that railroad capitalisation is simply -a function of earning-power; that what the financiers have uniformly -done was to charge all the traffic would bear, and then water their -stock until the rate of dividends came down to the market average. The -capitalisation of the railroads of the country, fixed upon this basis, -is thirteen billion dollars, whereas their actual cost was only six or -seven billions. To give one or two samples of this process, the Western -Maryland Railroad was bought up by the Goulds, and watered from nine -millions up to fifty-one millions. The Central Railroad of Georgia, -which cost less than seven millions, has now been watered up to -fifty-five millions. Assuming that the watering were to stop to-day, and -that the railroads simply re-invested their dividends at the present -rate of six per cent., in twenty years we should be paying interest upon -over forty billion dollars. - -From a brokerage circular which recently came in my mail, I have clipped -a few more instances of the workings of trust finance. The argument of -the circular is that I need not be frightened at their offer to make my -money earn more than six per cent.—that over a hundred per cent. is -“being frequently earned by legitimate business.” Thus the Diamond Match -Company recently paid ten per cent. on a capitalisation of fifteen -million dollars, when its original capitalisation had been only six -million dollars. The Western Union Telegraph Company began in 1858 with -only three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, yet in 1874 it paid -one hundred and fourteen per cent. on seventeen million dollars. Anyone -who had invested one thousand dollars in this stock in 1858 would by -1890 have received fifty thousand dollars in stock dividends and one -hundred thousand dollars in cash dividends. The present capital is over -ninety-seven millions—“and the greater part of the equipment has been -created out of the earnings of the company!” In the case of the -Prudential Life Insurance Company (owing, though the circular does not -state it, to a little deal between United States Senator Dryden and the -New Jersey State Legislature) for every one thousand dollars originally -paid in, the stockholders now own twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth of -stock and received annual cash dividends of twenty-two hundred dollars, -or two hundred and twenty per cent. upon their original investment! - -And then, to diversify the subject, let us consider the tariff, and its -variegated plunderings. In a letter to the New York _Evening Post_ of -Oct. 26th, 1904, Mr. J. R. Dunlap gave some figures showing the -“scandalous taxes imposed by trusts upon the people”: - -“Now, to show how the Dingley duty of eight dollars per ton on steel -rails taxes American railroads and hence reaches deep into the pockets -of shippers and travellers on American railroads, I need only cite the -fact that, during the year 1903 our American railroads purchased from -the steel pool exactly three million forty-six thousand eight hundred -and thirty-six tons of new steel rails (see statistical abstract, -Department of Commerce and Labour). The price to _foreign_ railroads -being, say twenty dollars per ton—as we _now know_—and the pool price to -American railroads being twenty-eight dollars per ton, that means that -the American people, _during the single year last past_, contributed a -clean net profit of twenty-four million three hundred and seventy-four -thousand six hundred and eighty-eight dollars to the rail pool—by -reason, presumably, of their “patriotic” belief in the Dingley duties! -And during the past six years—since the Dingley Bill was enacted—these -same American railroads have been forced to contribute to the few -members of the rail pool exactly one hundred and two million six hundred -and twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty-six dollars, or eight -dollars per ton on twelve million eight hundred and twenty-seven -thousand six hundred and fifty-seven tons of rails bought and used. -Dividing that stupendous sum of protection profit (one hundred and two -million six hundred and twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty-six -dollars) by eighty million of population, we see that the rail pool -alone—to say nothing of other combinations “sheltered” by the Dingley -duties—has collected a tax of exactly one dollar and twenty-eight and -one-quarter cents ($1.28¼) for every man, woman, and child in America, -white and coloured. - -“To further indicate the fabulous profits which the Dingley duties make -possible to our ‘infant’ iron and steel industries, I need only cite -recent and familiar records. In the spring of 1899, when the Steel Trust -was in process of formation, and when it became necessary for the -influential men in the steel industry to _prove_ what enormous profits -the steel manufacturers were making, and thus to induce the investing -public to put their money into Steel Trust stocks—then it was that Mr. -Charles M. Schwab, president, wrote to Mr. Henry C. Frick, chairman of -the Carnegie Steel Company, the famous letter of May 15, 1899, now -public property, in which Mr. Schwab used these words:’ - -“‘What is true of rails _is equally true of other steel products_.... -_You know_ we can make rails for less than twelve dollars per ton, -leaving a nice margin on foreign business.’ - -“Mark you, that was in 1899, when the boom was at its zenith, when wages -were highest, and when all the costs of production were far above all -averages of recent boom years. - -“To show how accurate Mr. Schwab was in these statements, and to show -how trustworthy was his confident forecast of future profits, I need -only cite the following speaking figures from the two annual statements -which have been made public by the United States Steel Corporation, -namely: - -Total number of employees: - - 1902. 1903. - 168,127 167,709 - -Total annual salaries and wages paid: - - $120,528,343.00 $120,763,896.00 - -Net earnings: - - $133,308,763.72 $109,171,152.35 - -“It will be observed that during these two years the average annual net -earnings of the Steel Trust _exceeded the total labour cost of their -entire product_!” - - - MEDICINAL PRODUCTS - -“Turning from the iron and steel industry, we might take quinine, and -many other medicinal products; we might take chemicals, many of them -most essential in manufacturing industry; we might take borax, which -sells in America at seven and one-half cents per pound, and in Britain -at two and one-half cents per pound, because the Dingley duty is exactly -five cents per pound; we might take mica, a mining product largely used -in the electrical, wall-paper and stove-making industries, and which -enjoys a modest protection ranging from one hundred and fifty to four -thousand per cent. In short, we might take each and every staple product -now made in America, and needlessly sheltered by the Dingley duties, and -prove, by comparative prices at home and abroad, that the fabulous -profits which the gentlemen engaged in these industries are now -making—and which they have capitalised into watered “industrials”—are -due chiefly and directly to the fostering care of the Dingley Bill, -which was designed to protect our ‘infant’ industries.” - -In the same issue, another correspondent, Mr. W. J. Gibson, shows how -the Government serves as a tool of the trusts in tariff exactions. He -gives several columns of facts about such outrages as the “Rupee Cases.” -For instance: - -“There have been nine or ten decisions on this one question against the -Government, and still the secretary of the treasury refuses to refund -the money which the courts have decided so often he has exacted -illegally. The money he has directed to be wrongfully assessed and -collected, and is retaining in these cases, known as “the Rupee Cases,” -amounts to over a million dollars. The parties cannot get any interest -for their money so wrongfully withheld, and the customs officials are -still being directed to assess all merchandise coming from India on the -basis of the rupee at the value of thirty-two cents in our money. This -has gone on for more than six years, and against the decision of the -United States Circuit Court since January 7, 1899.” - -And now, can we get any broad view of the results of this long process -of wealth-concentration? In 1850 the wealth of the United States was -estimated at nine billions; in 1870 it was thirty billions; in 1890 it -was sixty-five billions; and in 1900 it was ninety-five billions. How is -this wealth distributed? Writing in 1896, Dr. C. B. Spahr made his -famous calculation, embodied in the statement that one-eighth of the -population owned seven-eighths of the wealth, and that one per cent. -owned more than the remaining ninety-nine per cent. And at that time the -machinery of exploitation had hardly more than got under way. The best -attempt at an estimate since then is the one by Lucien Sanial, published -by the American Branch of the International Institute of Social Science. -This is the result of a careful analysis of the census of 1900; it shows -that of ninety-five billions of the country’s present wealth, -sixty-seven billions are owned by a capitalist-class of two hundred and -fifty thousand persons, twenty-four billions by a middle class of eight -million four hundred thousand persons, and four billions by a -working-class of over twenty million persons. And now, if the -sixty-seven billions owned by the capitalists be assumed to earn ten per -cent.—which is surely a reasonable average amount—our people will be -paying interest upon four hundred and fifty billion dollars at the end -of the twenty year period! - -And that represents the centralisation of the actual ownership of -wealth; but one does not get a real understanding of the situation until -he begins to consider the centralisation of the _control_ of wealth. In -explaining the struggle over the surplus of the life-insurance -companies, one of our financial magnates remarked to me: “I would rather -have the power of manipulating four hundred million dollars, than the -actual ownership of fifty millions.” And with that crucial fact in mind, -let one consider the figures given by Mr. Sereno S. Pratt in _The -World’s Work_ for December, 1903, and summarised in Dr. Strong’s “Social -Progress,” as follows: - -“One-twelfth of the estimated wealth of the United States is represented -at the meeting of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel -Corporation. - -“They represent as influential directors more than two hundred other -companies. These companies operate nearly one-half of the railroad -mileage of the United States. They are the great miners and carriers of -coal. The leading telegraph system, the traction lines of New York, of -Philadelphia, of Pittsburg, of Buffalo, of Chicago, and of Milwaukee, -and one of the principal express companies, are represented in the -board. This group includes also directors of five insurance companies, -two of which have assets of seven hundred millions of dollars. In the -Steel Board are men who speak for five banks and ten trust companies in -New York City, including the First National, the National City, and the -Bank of Commerce, the three greatest banks in the country, and the heads -of important chains of financial institutions. Telephone, electric, real -estate, cable, and publishing companies are represented there, and our -greatest merchant sits at the board table. - -“What the individual wealth of these men is, it would be impossible and -beside the point to estimate; but one of them, Mr. John D. Rockefeller, -is generally estimated to be the richest individual in the world. But it -is not the personal, but the representative, wealth of those men that -makes the group extraordinary. They control corporations whose -capitalisations aggregate more than nine billion dollars—an amount (if -the capitalisations are real values) equal to about the combined public -debts of Great Britain, France, and the United States. It is this -concentration of power which is significant. There were at the time of -the last statement sixty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-five -stockholders in the Steel Corporation. But the control of this -corporation is vested in twenty-four directors, and this board of -directors is guided by the executive and finance committees, which in -turn are largely directed by their chairmen, who are probably selected -by the great banker who organised the corporation and in a large part -sways its policy. - -“Examinations show that the concentration of control of these great New -York City banks has gone so far that a comparatively small group of -capitalists possesses the power to regulate the flow of credit in this -country. In the last analysis it is found that there are actually only -two main influences, and that these are centred in Mr. Morgan and Mr. -Rockefeller. It is possible to express in approximate figures the extent -of the Morgan influence”—which the writer shows in a table to figure up -over six billion two hundred and sixty-eight million dollars. How very -conservative is Mr. Pratt’s estimate is shown by the fact that he gives -the number of holders of shares of the railroads of this country as nine -hundred and fifty thousand persons; with which the reader may contrast -the following editorial paragraph from a recent issue of the New York -_Times_: - -“It would appear from evidence collected by the Interstate Commerce -Commission and communicated to the Senate, that the ownership of the -railroad system of this country is not as widely diffused as has been -supposed. On the 30th of June, 1904, the 1,220 railroads reporting to -the Commission had only 327,851 stockholders of record. This total -includes many duplications, as it was impossible to know in how many -instances one capitalist was represented in the stockholding interest of -several railroads. Assuming the population of the United States to be, -in round figures, eighty millions, the entire mileage of the railroads -doing an interstate business is owned by about four-tenths of 1 per -cent. of the people of this country.” - - -Such is the situation. It completes our view of the process of -Industrial Evolution, so far as it has progressed up to date. The -condition is like that of an oak tree planted in a jar, or a chick -developing within its shell; the indefinite continuance of the process -is inconceivable. What form the collapse will assume, and when it may be -expected to occur, is the problem next to be taken up. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - THE REVOLUTION - - -One is at a great disadvantage just at present in picturing an -industrial crisis. We are at the very flood-tide of prosperity; the -railroads are paralysed by the volume of the country’s business; the -coal mines cannot furnish the coal, and the farmers are burning their -grain because they cannot get it to market; the steel trust has orders -for two years ahead—and so on without limit. I have to ask the reader to -picture interest rates going down to zero, at a time when they are -higher than they have been in a decade; I have to ask him to picture too -much of everything in the country, at a time when there is not enough of -anything. And yet all this excess of “prosperity” is an integral part of -the phenomenon we are studying. - -If the process of wealth-concentration and overproduction of capital -went on unmodified by any other factor, we should witness a gradual rise -in the price of commodities, a gradual increase in the number of -unemployed, and a gradual fall in the rates of interest. As it happens, -however, the movement proceeds in rhythmic pulses, like the swinging of -a pendulum, or the ebbing and flowing of the tide. This is owing to the -factor of credit-expansion, which we have still to interpret. - -We have pictured Capital, ubiquitous, endlessly resourceful, incessantly -alert—“clamouring for dividends.” Competition is a forcing-process by -which every device that will increase profits is driven into general -use, and subjected to its maximum strain. The most obvious of these -devices is that of credit. - -A business man has a certain amount of capital. If he makes his “turn -over” once a year, he gains, say, ten per cent. profit; if he can make -the “turn over” twice a year, he gains twenty per cent. He sees the -business ahead, and so he goes into debt. And of course this step gives -an impulse to the business of the man who manufactures his machinery, -and to the man who raises his raw material, and to the railroads which -handle both. The effect of that condition, prevailing throughout a whole -community, is to accelerate enormously the industrial process; under it -the capital of the community becomes, exactly as in the case of the -railroads, not the actual definite cost of the instruments of production -existing, but an altogether hypothetical thing, a function of -anticipated earnings. - -So it is that you have a “boom”—a period of furious and fevered -activity, in which everyone sees fortunes springing up about him; and -then comes some disturbing factor, which suggests to a number of men the -advisability of realising on their expectations; and a chill settles -upon the community, and there is a wild rush to collect, and the -discovery is made that most of the anticipated profits are not in -existence. - -There is one more consideration which has to be touched upon before we -are prepared to consider the concrete problem in America. The process -which has been outlined is an industrial one; events have been pictured -here as they would take place in a community given altogether to -manufacturing, mining, and transportation. But as a matter of fact we -have not only to reckon with thirteen billions a year of manufactured -products, but also with four billions a year of farm products. The -importance of this new element lies in the fact that the ownership of -the farms is still largely in the hands of the masses; which means that -once every year the process we have been picturing is stayed while the -American people get rid of four billion dollars of spending money, which -comes to them outside of and independent of the wage-fund. Thus, strange -as it may seem, abundant crops tend to mitigate an “overproduction” -crisis, while a failure of crops would do more than anything else in the -world to precipitate one. - -With these facts in mind we are now in position to interpret our recent -industrial history. We have generally had our hard times in America at -ten year intervals, with especially severe crises at twenty year -intervals. We had our last severe attack in 1893, and we were due to -have one of the lesser sort in 1903. What happened then was very -interesting to watch, in the light of the views just explained. In the -early winter and spring of 1904, the avalanche was well under way. Here, -for instance, is an item clipped from the Chicago _Tribune_ in April of -that year: - -“Organised labour is facing the greatest wage crisis since the panic of -1893, if the forecast of its leaders is correct. It is estimated that -before the close of the year the greatest employing concerns of the -country will have dismissed nearly one million men, most of them -labourers and general-utility workers. Of this number the railroads are -expected to discharge two hundred thousand employees; the mine -operators, fifty thousand; the machine shops, iron, steel, and tin plate -plants, two hundred and fifty thousand; and the building trades, forty -thousand. The railroads and the steel mills have already begun the work -of reducing their forces, and the wage liquidation threatens to become -as sensational as was the recent liquidation in stocks.” - -And then on May 25th following, the New York _Herald_ reported that the -railroads of the country had laid off seventy-five thousand men; and -quoted the following in an interview with James J. Hill: - -“The whole question falls back primarily upon decreasing business and -the reason for it. Why are the railroads carrying less freight than they -were a year or two years ago? Because the demand for the products of the -United States is not commensurate with the supply. We manufacture and we -grow and we mine more than we can consume in the United States. Hence we -are dependent upon foreign markets in order to sell the surplus.” - -The reasons why we got over this period of liquidation with only a -severe scare are two: First, because there came in the fall a “bumper” -crop of unprecedented proportions, which gave the railroads a new start; -and second, and most important, because it happened that at the precise -hour of our stress, there broke out one of the greatest military -struggles of all history. - -The war, you understand, was a new world-market. All at once a million -or two of men were set to work at destroying manufactured articles; and -at the same time several millions more were taken from their regular -tasks to provide and maintain them while they did it; and the greater -part of the surplus capital of civilisation was drawn off to pay the -bills. It was not merely that during the first four months of the -conflict Japan and Russia bought fifty million dollars’ worth of our -spare products, or that they took hundreds of millions of our spare -cash. It made no real difference where the money was raised, or where it -was spent; the man who got it spent it again, and sooner or later the -bulk of it came to us, because we had the things to sell. Under the -conditions of modern Capitalism, all the world is one; and when a nation -goes to war, whoever has a spare dollar lends it to pay the bills, and -wherever in the world there is an idle labourer, he is put to work to -help support the fighters of both nations. In return, the world gets -from the warring governments a paper promise to wring an equivalent -amount of service out of their people at some future date. - -Before going on I ought to mention that there is another view of the -events of 1904. I have heard Mr. Arthur Brisbane maintain that we are to -have no more overproduction crises, for the reason that, competition -having been abolished in all our principal industries, our trust -magnates can so adjust supply to demand as to mitigate the stress, and -give instead periods of partial idleness in widely scattered industries. - -[Illustration: - - _Diagram prepared by Wilshire’s Magazine_ - - DIAGRAM SHOWS HOW HIGH PRICES FOLLOW WARS - - Range of average prices of 25 leading Railway Stocks for the past 22 - years -] - -If this is true, it is very important, for it means a long continuance -of Trust government; but I do not believe that it is true. The trusts -have, of course, put an end to blind production without any assurance of -a market; but even assuming that our industry were so far systematised -and our management so conservative that we never manufactured goods -except upon a definite order—how would that be able to hold in check a -community gone mad with prosperity-drunkenness? For instance, the steel -trust now has orders enough ahead for two years; and upon the basis of -these orders, its administrators are going ahead building a new “steel -city.” Yet does the steel trust know what proportion of its orders for -steel rails are intended for the transportation of purely speculative -freight? Does it know what proportion of its orders for structural steel -is intended for buildings for imaginary tenants? Does it concern itself -with the problem whether its customers are going to be able to find any -use for the materials which they have bought? - -There might be more plausibility in the argument, if our trust magnates -were men of conscience and a keen sense of responsibility; but as a -matter of fact their attitude toward their work is purely predatory. -They are not administrators of production at all, but parasites upon -production, exploiters and wreckers. Far from striving to regulate the -madness of the public, they are competing among themselves to fan it to -a flame, so that they may capitalise the expectations of their own -properties.[5] - -Footnote 5: - - Anyone who wishes to make a scientific study of the true functions of - modern finance is advised to read Professor Veblen’s last book, “The - Theory of Business Enterprise,” a most extraordinary study of the - whole field of present-day economics. In my opinion this book, - together with its author’s other masterpiece, “The Theory of the - Leisure Class,” constitutes the greatest contribution to social - science ever made in America, and perhaps the greatest in the world - since Carl Marx. It might be worth while to add in passing that - Professor Veblen was turned out of Mr. Rockefeller’s University of - Chicago for writing it. - -The ebb of the tide is coming; the only question is, when? According to -precedent, it should come in 1913; but I expect it much sooner, partly -because I do not believe that we had anything like a thorough -liquidation in 1904, and partly because of the extreme violence of the -present activity. During the last year the “boom” has reached real -estate, and that always means that other avenues of investment are -clogged. - -I anticipate the storm in 1908 or 1909; but I do not predict it, because -it depends upon uncertain factors. Another great war might put it off -ten years; and on the other hand, crop failures might precipitate it -this summer. What I do believe that I can predict—for reasons which I -stated in the introduction to this argument—is the course which -political events in this country will take from the hour when the “hard -times” arrive. - -As we saw from the Chicago _Tribune_ item, the first sign of trouble is -the turning out of work of a million workingmen; and what are the -consequences—the economic consequences—of the turning out of work of a -million men? According to the census the average yearly wage of the -factory employee is four hundred and thirty-seven dollars. Dr. Peter -Roberts says that the average wage in the anthracite coal district is -less than five hundred dollars. In the Middle States a third of all the -workers get less than three hundred a year, and in the South nearly -sixty per cent. get less. It was proven before the Industrial Commission -that the maximum wage of the hundred and fifty thousand railroad and -track hands and the two hundred thousand carmen and shopmen, was a -hundred and fifty dollars in the South, and less than three hundred and -seventy-five in the North. And this to feed and clothe a family, and -provide against sickness, accident, and old age! The meaning of it is -simply that when a million men are laid off, in a month or two they and -their families are starving. - -And that, you understand, means a loss of a _market_—of a market of five -million people—a population equal to that of the Dominion of Canada. And -of course, therefore, those whose work it has been to supply these -people, will be out of work, and likewise those who supply the -suppliers. And even this is by far the least of the consequences; for -another part of our domestic market depends upon the fact that our -workingmen too have been able to form trusts. And when this period of -depression comes, their trusts will fall to pieces, and competition will -begin again—a process which they will find all the brickbats and -dynamite in the country cannot check. The employers will, of course, be -straining every nerve to make ends meet; and so wages will go down, and -when strikes are declared, the starving workingman will “scab” and the -strikes will fail. We shall have riots, and perhaps gatling guns in our -streets, but the wages will go down; and step by step as the wages go -down, consumption goes down, with the loss of another Dominion of -Canada. When the thing is once started, it will be an avalanche that no -power upon earth can stop; and it will be the beginning of the -Revolution. - -The word has an ominous sound. The reader thinks of street battles and -barricades. By a Revolution I mean the complete transfer of the economic -and political power of the country from the hands of the present -exploiting class to the hands of the whole people; and in the -accomplishment of this purpose the people will proceed, as in everything -else they do, along the line of least resistance. It is very much less -trouble to cast a ballot than it is to go out in the streets and shoot: -and our people are used to the ballot method. However, the staid and -respectable _Harper’s Weekly_, which calls itself a “Journal of -Civilisation,” suggested in 1896 that if Mr. Bryan were elected, it -might be necessary for the propertied classes to keep him out of office. -If anything of that sort is attempted in this coming crisis, why then -there will be violence—just as there will be in such countries as -Germany and Russia, which have yet to learn to let the people have their -own way. The worst feature of the situation with us is that we have -gotten into the habit of letting our elections be carried by bribery; -and that is likely to play us some ugly tricks in this new emergency. - -The reader perhaps objects to my theory that this change must come with -suddenness. It is such a tremendous change—and would it not be better if -it were brought about little by little? Undoubtedly it would have been a -great deal better; but the time to begin was ten or twenty years ago. -Now the horse is stolen, and we are venting all our energies, and cannot -even succeed in getting the stable-door locked afterward. - -They are bringing it about gradually in Australia and New Zealand—the -only countries in the world in which the people are effectually -regulating the progress of the Juggernaut of Capitalism. That is because -these countries are very young, with comparatively little capital, no -slums, and an intelligent working-class. I have an idea—I do not know -whether there is anything in it—that the extraordinary success of New -Zealand may in part be due to the fact that it was a convict-settlement; -the men whom capitalism makes into criminals being for the most part a -very superior class of people, active, independent, and impatient of -injustice. Transported to a new land, and given a fair chance, I should -think that a burglar or a highwayman ought to make a very excellent -Socialist. - -You ask, perhaps, if the thing is not also being accomplished gradually -in England and on the Continent; you point to “Municipal trading,” to -the London County Council, to the state-owned railroads and telephones -of Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, etc. You have been accustomed to hear -these things referred to as State Socialism, and you have accepted the -statement—not understanding that the essence of Socialism is democracy, -and that it is fundamentally opposed to paternalism in every conceivable -form. Municipal and State ownership is not State Socialism at all, but -State Capitalism. Under it, the government buys certain franchises, pays -for them with bonds, and then runs the roads to pay the bondholders. -Undoubtedly it is a better system for the people than private -Capitalism, for the reason that it fixes the exploiters’ tax, instead of -letting stock-watering go on indefinitely. But, unfortunately, -economical administration by the State is possible at present only in -such countries as have an aristocratic governing-class, jealous of the -power of the capitalist. In this country the holders of the municipal -bonds, who also own the street-car factories and the steel mills and the -coal mines, would use the interest they got from the city to bribe the -city’s servants to pay exorbitant prices for all the street-cars and -steel rails and coal and other supplies which the city would have to -have in order to operate the roads. You have seen that perfectly -illustrated in the case of our Post Office. For example, we pay the -railroads in rent for our mail-cars twice as much per year as it costs -to build the cars; and the cars are so flimsy that the insurance -companies, which own a large share of the railroads and the cars, refuse -to insure the lives of the mail-clerks who work in them! - -However, the advisability of Municipal Ownership under present -conditions is a purely academic question, for the reason that the -capitalist will never give us a chance to try it. The capitalist is in -possession, and he “stands pat.” When you talk about “reform,” he will -make you as many fine speeches and deliver you as many moral discourses -as you wish; but when it comes to giving up any dollars—he has spent all -his lifetime learning to hold on to his dollars. - -You are thinking, perhaps, of President Roosevelt, who is hailed as a -successful reformer. In the first place, it is of importance to point -out that President Roosevelt is a complete anomaly in our political -life; he was probably the last Republican in the country who would have -been selected to rule us. He made himself governor by a shrewd device -called “the Rough Riders;” he was made President for the first time by -the bullet of an assassin, and the second time by the death of Mark -Hanna. By a series of such blind chances as these the people have been -given a chance to vote for what they want, and they of course have -seized the chance. But assuredly it was no part of the “System’s” plan -to ask them what they wanted, nor even to let them find out what they -wanted themselves. - -Under the peculiar circumstances, there has been nothing for the -“System” to do but make sure that the President accomplishes nothing; -and that it has done as a matter of course. In saying this, let me -remind the reader once more of my distinction between moral revolt and -economic remedy. I have no wish to under-estimate the tremendous -importance of President Roosevelt’s services in awakening the people; -but I say that so far as actual concrete accomplishment is concerned, he -might just as well never have lifted a finger. In one case, that of the -suit against the Paper Trust, he did effect a lowering of prices; but in -that case he was simply a pawn in the struggle between two trusts—of -which the Newspaper Trust proved to be the stronger. In no case where -the people alone were concerned has he effected any economic change -whatever. The Northern Securities decision was evaded by another device; -the Beef Trust and the Standard Oil suits ended with nominal fines. Over -the rate regulation question we had two years’ agitation—and not one -single rate has been lowered. In the struggle for life-insurance reform, -to which the President gave all his moral support, a few grafting -officials were hounded to death; but the real and vital evil, the -exploitation of the surplus for purposes of stock-manipulation, was -scarcely even touched upon. And then came the Chicago packing-house -scandals—and I can speak with some knowledge of them. Sometimes, when I -look back upon them, it seems like a dream—I can hardly believe that I -ever played my part in that cosmic farce. Only think of it—we had the -President and Congress and all the newspapers of the country discussing -it—we had this entire nation of eighty million people literally thinking -about nothing else for months—nay, more, we had the attention of the -whole civilised world riveted upon those filthy meat-factories. We -uncovered crimes for which the condemnation of every dollar’s worth of -property in Packingtown would have been a nominal punishment; and then -we settled back with a sigh of contentment, because we had put a few -more inspectors at work and forced the whitewashing of some -slaughter-house walls. And we left the monster upas-tree of -commercialism to flourish untouched—to go on year after year bearing its -fruit of corruption and death! - -There is nothing whatever to be got from the capitalist. I used to think -that the same thing was true of the politician. In common with most -Socialists, I thought that the Revolution would have to wait until the -people had come to full consciousness of their purpose, and had elected -a Socialist president and a Socialist congress. But at the time of the -coal-strike, when Dave Hill came out for government ownership of the -coal mines, I realised that the politician is the jackal and not the -lion. Of course we have amateur politicians—capitalists who play at the -game—and they will not give way; but the professional politician is not -a rich man—the competition has been too keen. He has served the -capitalist because it paid; and when the people get ready to have their -way, it will pay to serve the people. This is really a very important -matter, for our political machinery is complicated, and the people have -got used to it. It would be a frightful waste of energy to create new -machinery—in fact, I do not think that our Constitution could stand the -strain. - -We will now assume that the industrial crisis has come. What will be the -political consequences? It takes two or three years for industrial -conditions to get themselves translated into political acts in this -country; it means an immense amount of agitating—tens of thousands of -meetings have to be held and hundreds of thousands of speeches made; and -then there is all the machinery of conventions and elections. The panic -of 1893, for instance, resulted in the Bryan movement of 1896. That -movement was a revolt of the debtor class; if it had succeeded it would -have precipitated a panic, and that would have been a misfortune, for -the reason that both the people and their leaders were ignorant, and -instead of the Industrial Republic, we should have had a severe -reaction. Mark Hanna was a cunning man; but if he had been still more -cunning, he would never have raised six million dollars to buy the -presidency for William McKinley—he would have let the people have free -silver, and then he would have had the people. - -We came to the election of 1900 on the crest of a prosperity wave; but -prosperity too takes its time to be realised, and so Hanna took the -precaution to raise four million dollars and buy the election again.[6] -And then came 1904, which, I think, was the most interesting election of -them all. With the politicians the prosperity boom still held sway. Mark -Hanna had Roosevelt all ready for the shelf; and the old-time -“state-rights” Democrats arose and buried Mr. Bryan in the deepest vault -of their party catacombs. But then came the people—with the country -trembling on the verge of another “hard times.” They gave President -Roosevelt the most tremendous majority ever recorded in America; and -incidentally, as if this were not enough to show how they felt, they -gave nearly half a million votes to Eugene V. Debs! - -Footnote 6: - - Figures quoted, evidently upon inside information, by the Washington - _Post_, in 1906. - -This election, according to my schedule, corresponds with the election -of 1852 in the Civil War crisis. The “safe and sane” Democracy, which -received its death-blow in 1904, corresponds with the old Whig party. It -will probably make independent nominations in 1908 and 1912, exactly as -did the Whigs, and will receive the votes of all those who believe in -dealing with new conditions according to old formulas. - -In the meantime, the real contestants of the coming crisis are forming -their lines. Under ordinary circumstances the Republican party would -have been the party of disguised but unrelenting conservatism; and our -Presidents in 1904 and 1908 would have been either figureheads like -Fairbanks and Shaw, or shrewd beguilers of the people like Cannon and -Root. As it is, it looks now if President Roosevelt were to remain the -master of his party, in which case we shall have in 1908 a mild reformer -like Taft, or possibly even Governor Hughes. The one thing certain is -that whoever receives the Republican nomination will be the next -President. If it is a Roosevelt man, the President’s prestige will elect -him; or if the “System” concludes to have its own way, he will be put in -by bribery. In any case, he will go in, and it is best that he should go -in. So long as we are to have Capitalism, it is proper that the -capitalist should have a free hand. Personally I should consider the -election of a radical in 1908 a calamity; for “hard times” will be just -about to break, and I greatly desire to see Cannon and Aldrich and the -rest of them “caught with the goods on.” - -Who will be the Democratic candidate? Will it be the champion of the -Western farmers, or of the proletariat of our Eastern cities? I do not -know, but I am inclined to think that it will be Mr. Bryan; and I am -sorry, in a way, because that will put him out of the race in 1912. I -conceived an intense admiration for Mr. Bryan after his last speech in -New York City. - -Never in our history did a public man face a greater temptation than he -did after his two years of travel; everything in the country seemed to -have turned conservative, and the money-power, frightened by Roosevelt, -was ready to throw itself into his arms. What he did was to take his -stand upon the great issue over which the battle of the next six years -will be fought out—the nationalisation of the railroads; and in doing it -he placed his name upon the roll of our statesmen. - - THE TYPE. CHATTEL SLAVERY. WAGE SLAVERY - (1846–1863.) (1893–1914.) - - The Conservative Daniel Webster. Grover Cleveland - Reformer - - The Unwilling Prophet John C. Calhoun Marcus A. Hanna - - The Great Compromiser Henry Clay Theodore Roosevelt - - The Timid Conservative Edward Everett. Alton B. Parker. - - The Editor of Horace Greeley. Arthur Brisbane - Radicalism - - The Statesman of Charles Sumner. Wm. J. Bryan. - Radicalism - - The Politician of Wm. H. Seward. Robt. M. LaFollette. - Radicalism - - The Agitator of the Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Eugene V. Debs. - Revolt - - The Orator of the Wendell Phillips. Geo. D. Herron. - Revolt - - The Martyr of the John Brown. Charles H. Moyer ( ?). - Revolt - - The Voice of the Victim Frederick Douglass. Jack London. - - The Compromising Stephen A. Douglas. John C. Spooner. - Reactionist - - The Aggressive Jefferson Davis. Nelson W. Aldrich. - Reactionist - - The Organiser of Wm. Lownds Yancey. David M. Parry. - Reaction - - The Last Figurehead James Buchanan (1856). William H. Taft (1908). - - The Untried Hope Abraham Lincoln (1860). Wm. Randolph Hearst - (1912). - -A couple of years ago I was sketching out my comparison of the Civil War -crisis and our own, in conversation with an English gentleman, who asked -me to make him a table showing the parallel between the men of the two -periods. This table was afterwards published in the _Independent_, with -an explanatory letter, (in the course of which I pointed out that one -must not take it too literally, or look for a resemblance in external -details).[7] - -Footnote 7: - - See table on page 199. - -In the course of its editorial comment, the _Independent_ suggested -another parallel, that between “The Jungle” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; and -then it went on to express its perplexity at my venturing to compare -Hearst with Lincoln. - -There is no man in our public life to-day who interests me so much as -William Randolph Hearst. I have been watching him for ten years, during -the last half-dozen of them weighing and testing him as the man of the -coming hour. I do not say that he will be the man; all that I can say is -that he stands the best chance of being the candidate of the Democratic -party in 1912; and that the man who secures that nomination will, if he -does his work (and for him to fail to do it is almost inconceivable) -write his name in our history beside the names of Washington and -Lincoln. - -Mr. Hearst is one of the by-products of the industrial process—a member -of the “second generation.” You are to picture many thousands of young -men, heirs of the enormous fortunes of our captains of industry; they -are brought up in luxury, and in complete idleness—the world gives them -_carte blanche_, with the result that at an early age they are sated -with all the ordinary pleasures of human beings. And at the same time -they have big, healthy bodies, and they crave excitement. - -It would be interesting to compile a list of some of the things they -have done. Of course, a great many simply follow in the footsteps of -their fathers, and become commercial buccaneers; some devote themselves -to automobiles and race-horses, some to society and gossip, some to mere -brutal dissipation—such as the scions of the now extinct line of -Pullman, who used to smash up the saloons of Chicago, and now and then -amuse themselves by hurling brickbats through the windows of their -father’s home. Now and then there is one who goes in for big game, or -for monkey-dinners, or for Sunday-schools, or for Socialism, or for -flying-machines; and there was one who went in for newspapers! - -His father was reluctant to humour the whim—he thought that a million -dollar racing-stable would cost less in the end than a forty thousand -dollar newspaper: which of course put the young man upon his mettle—made -him set out to make the paper pay, and “show the old man.” To make it -pay he had to get circulation; and to get circulation he had to get -something new—there was no use doing things like the old newspapers, -which were not paying, but had to be funded by the political powers -which used them. So once more you see capital, as I have pictured -it—“like a wild beast in a cage, pacing about, watching for an opening -here and there.” - -And where is the opening? Why, the people! The people, whom the -merciless machinery of exploitation beats down and tramples upon, and -pushes out of the way and forgets. They are brutalised and ignorant, -they are stupid with toil—but yet they are human beings, they crave -life. They never read newspapers—but give them what they want, and they -will learn to read. Give them big head-lines, and a shock on every page; -give them royalty and “high life,” scandal and spice, battle, murder and -sudden death—and then they will buy your paper. - -It was good fun for Mr. Hearst to do this. Watching his newspapers, what -has struck me most is the sheer audacity of them. Audacity is his -characteristic quality, and it is a characteristic American quality—it -places him among our national treasures, along with Mark Twain, and P. -T. Barnum, and Buffalo Bill, and the Mississippi steamboats with the -“nigger on the safety-valve.” - -I am told by friends of Mr. Hearst that his instinct from the start was -for democracy. If so, so much the better; but it is not necessary to my -hypothesis. A newspaper has to have editorial opinions; and they had -best be opinions that please its readers. If we are to publish a paper -for the masses to read, we must also voice the hopes and the longings of -the masses. - -So Mr. Hearst turned traitor to his class. He seems to have done this -instinctively, and without pangs. I find, what is very singular and -striking, that the members of his own class hate him, not only publicly, -but personally. It seems to have pleased him to defy _all_ their -conventions. I was told, for example, that when he first came to New -York, he made himself a scandal in the “Tenderloin.” I was perplexed -about that, for the members of our “second generation” are generally -well known in the Tenderloin, and nobody calls it a scandal. But one -young society man who had known Hearst well gave me the reason—and he -spoke with real gravity: “It wasn’t what he did—we all do it: but it was -the way he did. He didn’t take the trouble to hide what he did.” - -I have made clear in this book my belief that the masses are driven to -revolt by the pressure of stern and ruthless economic force. They were -ignorant and helpless, and among our men of wealth and power there was -no one to help them—there was no one among all our intellectual leaders -to voice their wrongs. They were left to help themselves—so what more -natural than that it should occur to some enterprising young millionaire -to leap into the breach? There was endless excitement and notoriety to -be won—and at the end, perhaps, power of a new and quite incredible -sort. - -You will observe that I am taking, deliberately, the lowest possible -view. I am dealing with material conditions and picturing a material -remedy for them. My point is, that whatever he may be personally, Mr. -Hearst is mortgaged, body and soul, to the course to which he has given -himself; not only his public reputation, but his entire fortune, is in -his newspapers, and the public is the master of his newspapers. He has -conjured a storm which he cannot possibly control—he must play out to -the end the part he has chosen. - -It is very curious to observe how his rôle has taken hold of him and -changed him. I am told that when he first came to New York he wore -checked trousers and fancy ties; and now he wears the traditional soft -hat and frock coat of our statesmen. And also, I think, the rôle has -changed his character. For this struggle is a real one, it is a struggle -of the people for life; the cause is a cause of truth and justice, and -the man does not live who can do battle for it as Mr. Hearst has done, -and not come to take fire with the passion of it. The man does not live -who can make the enemies Mr. Hearst has made, and not take a real and -vital interest in the task of bringing them to their knees. I believe -that Mr. Hearst is to-day as sincere a man as we have in political life. - - -It may be, of course, that some one else will get the Democratic -nomination in 1912; that matters not at all in my thesis—the one thing -certain is that it will be some man who stands pledged to put an end to -class-government. Following it there will be a campaign of an intensity -of fury such as this country has never before witnessed in its history. - -Let us outline in a few words the situation as it will then exist. - -In the first place there will be two or three million—perhaps five or -ten million—men out of work. They will have been out for a year or two, -and have had plenty of time to work up excitement. They may have forced -Congress to provide them some temporary employment—which will, of -course, be the first taste of blood to the tiger. They will certainly -have been waging strikes of a violence never before known—they will have -been shot down in great numbers, and they may have done a great deal of -burning and dynamiting. That some particularly conspicuous individual -like Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Baer may have been assassinated, seems more -than likely; that a “Coxey’s Army” of much larger size will have marched -on Washington, seems quite certain. - -When I was in Chicago, just after the last “Beef Strike,” I met half a -dozen labour leaders who told me an interesting story. Chicago has the -most thoroughly revolutionary working-class of any city in the country, -and towards the end of this strike they were deeply stirred, and there -had been several conferences in which a complete program had been laid -out for an “anti-rent strike.” On a certain day, all the working people -of Chicago were to refuse to pay rent until the meat-packers gave in. -The project was nipped by the settlement of the strike, but it only -waits a new occasion to be put into effect. By the time which we are -picturing here, it will quite certainly have spread east and west to the -two oceans, so that not half our city population will be paying any rent -for their homes at this time. - -[Illustration: - - _Copyright, 1894, Leslie’s Weekly_ -] - -[Illustration: - - _Copyright, 1894, Leslie’s Weekly_ - - COXEY’S ARMY ON THE MARCH AND IN WASHINGTON -] - -And also, of course, there will have been processions in the streets, -and unemployed demonstrations every day. There will be a Socialist -meeting round every corner—all through this period of stress, you are to -picture the Socialists working like bees at swarming time. That is the -function of the Socialist party all through this crisis, to stir up and -organise the proletariat, to make certain that in the crisis the people -are not ignorant of the way. They will be heading the hunger-parades, -carrying the banners and making the speeches, circulating tracts and -five-million-copy editions of the “Appeal to Reason.” They will be -polling unheard of votes—in one or two cities they will be carrying the -elections, and Socialist mayors will be confiscating street-railroads, -and clapping obstructive judges into jail. The Socialist party is a -party of agitation rather than administration; but it is of vital -importance that it should everywhere exist, as a party of the last -resort, a club held over Society. Everywhere the cry will be: Do this, -and do that, or the Socialists will carry the country. - -So will be ushered in the election campaign and the death-grapple. You -will try to beat the people back, as you have done before—but you will -not succeed this time. Before this, the people were ignorant—but now -they will know. They will have had the whole of the festering ulcer of -commercialism laid open before their eyes. You will not be able to blame -it on the labour unions, nor on the Rate Bill, nor on Roosevelt, nor on -the Negro, nor on the Esquimau. You will not be able to awe the people -with any great names, nor to fool them with respectability. They will -have been taught to regard the leaders of our business affairs as -convicted and unpunished criminals; and if you were to propose such a -thing as a “business man’s parade,” you would be greeted with a scream -of fury. - -You will be utterly terrified at the state of affairs. Credit will be -failing, and the business of the country will be holding its breath. You -will subscribe a campaign fund of ten—fifteen—twenty millions of -dollars—but there will be Mr. Hearst with his extras in a dozen cities, -and his twenty million free copies a day, and he will tell how much you -are raising and a whole lot more. So there will be committees of safety -to guard the ballot—and a few more good campaign cries. There will be -frenzied conferences among our political millionaires, and a week or two -before election day Mr. Hearst’s opponent—quite probably ex-President -Roosevelt—will come out favouring nearly all of his radical proposals, -but declaring that they ought not to be carried into effect by a -Socialist like Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst will reply with his ten thousand -and tenth declaration that he is not a Socialist, and has no sympathy -with Socialism—a statement which the Socialists, who will not understand -in the least the meaning of events, will cordially substantiate. Mr. -Hearst will declare that he stands upon a platform of Americanism, and -that he seeks only equal rights for all—and therefore Federal ownership -of all criminal monopolies. - -So election day will come, and Mr. Hearst will be elected; and within -the next week the business of the country will have fallen into heaps. -Banks will have closed, mills will be idle—there will be no freight, and -railroads will be failing. The people of New York will be reminded that -if the railroads stop the city will starve to death in a couple of -weeks; and so, perhaps even before Mr. Hearst takes office, government -ownership of the railroads will be realised. - -How will it be accomplished? It is a charmingly simple process—I could -do it all myself. Have you ever heard the inside story of how the last -coal strike was settled? The operators were standing upon their rights -as the persons to whom God in His infinite wisdom had entrusted the care -of the property interests of the country; and all winter long the people -had been lacking coal. Then suddenly President Roosevelt, who is a -master of the art of feeling the public pulse, made the discovery that -government ownership of coal mines was about to crystallise into an -issue of practical politics. So he sent Secretary Root to see Morgan, -and tell him that the coal operators must give in. Morgan saw the -operators, and they insisted upon their rights, and so Root went back to -Washington, and came again to say that, as Mr. Morgan well knew, the -coal roads were doing business in flat violation of the law; and that -unless within twenty-four hours they gave their consent to the -appointment by the President of a board of arbitration, the whole power -of the United States Attorney General’s office would be turned upon an -investigation of their business methods. And so the strike was settled -in a day. - -And in very similar ways will the future problems be settled. There will -be similar conferences; and then some fine day a duly-accredited -commissioner from the President will travel, say to Philadelphia, and -enter the offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad, arch-corrupter of the -great Keystone state. The directors of the company will receive him with -bows and smiles, and will spread their books before him and his staff, -and place themselves and their office at his disposal. He will hear a -brief account of the situation, and will then give his orders to the -president and other officials of the road: to the effect that schedules -are to be continued as previously; that all salaries will remain -unaltered until further notice; and that passenger and freight rates are -to be dropped to a point where net profits will be wiped out. Then he -will shake hands with the directors and thank them for their services in -building up the road, adding that their services are now at an end. And -that, for all practical purposes, will be the application of Socialism -to the Pennsylvania Railroad. - -But, you say, by my hypothesis the road could not run; how will it be -able to run now? The reason it couldn’t run before was that there were -no profits; but now it will not be run for profits, but for service, -like the Post Office. To help it over its momentary embarrassment, of -course, the credit of the government may be needed: but even that is not -likely. For exactly the same thing which happens to the Pennsylvania -Railroad will be happening to the Steel Trust and the Oil Trust and the -Coal Trust and the Beef Trust; and all these industries will be starting -into activity, and so there will be plenty of freight. With the captains -of each of these trusts there will have been secret Presidential -conferences, at which these gentlemen will have been told that since -they can no longer run their business, they must allow the Government to -take possession and run it—the price to be paid for their stock being a -matter for future negotiation, and a matter of no great importance to -them in any case, because of the income and inheritance tax laws just -then being rushed through Congress. - -Such will be the Revolution—and the gateway into the Industrial -Republic. Precisely as in France we saw that the peasant who was -starving because he could not pay his taxes, began to till the land and -grow rich without any taxes, so in the midst of universal destitution, -it will suddenly be discovered that the farmer who could not sell his -grain, and therefore had no hat to wear, may now exchange his grain with -the operative in the hat factory who had produced so many hats for his -master that he was himself out of a job, and could not get any bread. -And all the cotton mills which were shut because we could no longer sell -shirts to the Chinamen, will now start merrily to work making shirts for -all the shirtless wretches the length and breadth of America. And the -shoe operatives of Massachusetts, who were making shoes for the -Filipinos, which the poor Filipinos had to be forced at the point of the -bayonet to buy, will begin making shoes for their own children, and for -the unhappy people of the tenements who were before going barefooted. -And the Steel Trust will suddenly leap into action, because those -misery-smitten four hundred thousand families in the “dark rooms” of the -New York City tenements will now earn money to build themselves decent -habitations. And the tens of thousands of little boys and girls who are -now being ground up in the glass factories of New Jersey and the cotton -mills of Georgia and the coal mines of Pennsylvania, will come out into -the sunlight and play, while their parents are building schools to which -they can be sent. And the young girl who stands shuddering on the brink -of prostitution, working ten hours a day in an East Side sweatshop for a -wage of forty cents a week, will receive the full value of her product, -and be able to maintain herself by two hours of work a day. - -I know what is the attitude of the medical profession towards a -“cure-all”; and yet it is but the sober truth that for nearly every evil -that troubles our age there is one remedy and only one—the -democratisation of our industry. If you were to take a growing boy and -rivet an iron band about his chest, there would come sooner or later a -time when the boy would show symptoms of distress—and for every symptom -there would be but one remedy. Is the boy cross and complaining? Break -the band! Is he pale and sickly? Break the band! Does he gasp and cry -out? Break the band! Do you not know that in the monarchy of France, in -the year 1780, a man who set out to find a remedy for this or that evil -of the hour would have found but one remedy for all of them—the -overthrowing of the aristocracy? And similarly all the diseases of this -period, which are the despair of the moralist and the patriot, are -consequences of the fact that our society is gasping in a last desperate -agony of effort to maintain its system of competitive industry. We are -like a man running on a railroad track pursued by a train. The train is -increasing its speed, and do what he will, it gains upon him; he cries -out, he gasps for breath, he is agonised, wild with terror, making his -last leap with the engine at his very heels—and then suddenly it occurs -to him to leap to one side, and so the train flashes by, and he sits -down and mops his brow and thinks how very stupid it was of him! - - - - - CHAPTER VII - THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC - - -And now let us imagine that society has abolished exploitation and the -competitive wage-system, and got its breath and found leisure to examine -itself under the new régime. How will it find things proceeding? - -One of the first objections that you will run up against, if ever you -start out to agitate Socialism, is your lack of definiteness. Give us -your program, people will say—we want to know what sort of a world you -expect to make, and how you are going to make it. And they will grow -angry when they find that you have not a cut-and-dried scheme of society -in your pocket—that you have stirred them up all to no purpose. And yet -that is just what you have to go on doing. There used to be Utopian -Socialists—Plato was the first of them and Bellamy was the last—who knew -the coming world from its presidents to its chimneysweeps; who could -tell you the very colour of its postage-stamps. But nowadays all -Socialists are scientific. They say that social changes are the product -of the interaction of innumerable forces, and cannot be definitely -foretold; they say that the new organism will be the result of the -strivings of millions of men, acted upon by various motives, ideals, -prejudices and fears. And so they call themselves no longer builders of -systems, but preachers of righteousness; their answer to objectors is -that I once heard given by Hanford, recent candidate for vice-president -on the Socialist ticket, to a lawyer with whom he was debating: “Do you -ask for a map of Heaven before you join the Church?” - -This much we may say, however. The Industrial Republic will be an -industrial government of the people, by the people, for the people. -Exactly as political sovereignty is the property of the community, so -will it be with industrial sovereignty—that is, capital. It will be -administered by elected officials and its equal benefits will be the -elemental right of every citizen. The officials may be our presidents -and governors and legislatures, or they may be an entirely separate -governing body, corresponding to our present directors and presidents of -corporations. In countries where the revolution is one of violence they -will probably be trade-union committees. The governing power may be -chosen separately in each trade and industry, by those who work in it, -just as the officials of a party are now chosen by those who vote in it; -or they may be appointed, as our postmasters and colonial governors are -appointed, by some central authority, perhaps by the President. All of -these things are for the collective wisdom of the country to decide when -the time comes; meanwhile it is only safe to say that there will be as -little change as possible in the business methods of the country—and so -little that the man who should come back and look at it from the -outside, would not even know that any change had taken place. I have -heard a distinguished Republican orator, poking fun at Socialism in a -public address, picture women disputing in the public warehouses as to -whether each had had her fair share of shoes and fish. In the Industrial -Republic the workingman will go to the factory, will work under the -direction of his superior officer, and will receive his wages at the end -of the week in exactly the same way as to-day. He will spend his money -exactly as he spends it to-day—he will go to a store, and if he gets a -pair of shoes he will pay for them. The farmer will till his land -exactly as he does to-day, and when he takes his grain to market he will -be paid for it in money, and will put it in the bank and will draw a -check upon it to pay for the suit of clothes he has ordered by express. -The only difference in all these various operations will be that the -factories will be public property, and the wages the full value of the -product, with no deductions for dividends on stock; and that the street -cars, the banks and the stores will be public utilities, managed exactly -as our post office is managed, charging what the service costs, and -making no profits. In the year 1901 the U. S. Steel Corporation paid one -hundred and twenty-five million dollars and employed one hundred and -twenty-five thousand men; under Socialism the wages of each employee of -the U. S. Steel Corporation would therefore be increased one thousand -dollars a year, which is two or three hundred per cent. In the same way, -the wages of an employee of the Standard Oil Company would be increased -four thousand dollars, which is from eight to ten hundred per cent. The -fare upon the government-owned street railroads in the City of Berlin is -two and a half cents, which would mean that our workingman’s car-fare -bill would be cut by fifty per cent. The toll of the government-owned -telephone of Sweden is three cents, which would mean that the -workingman’s telephone bill would be cut seventy per cent. The -elimination of the speculator and the higher piracy of Wall Street would -raise the price of the farmer’s grain by fifty per cent.; the -elimination of the millers’ trust and the railroad trust would lower the -price of bread by an equal sum. The elimination of the tariff on wool, -of the sweater and the jobber, the department store and the express -trust, would probably lower the price of the farmer’s suit of clothes -sixty per cent; the elimination of the sweatshop and the slum might -raise it to its original level, while decreasing the farmer’s doctor’s -bills correspondingly. Of course I do not mean to say that the gains -from the abolition of exploitation will be distributed in exactly the -ratios outlined above. They will be distributed so as to equalise the -rewards of labour. The point is that there will be a saving at every -point—because at every point there is exploitation. - -I have sketched in “The Jungle” (Chapter 36) a few of the social savings -incidental to the abolition of competition. The reader who cares for a -thorough and scientific study of the subject is referred to a recently -published book, “The Cost of Competition,” by Sidney A. Reeve. I had -never heard of Professor Reeve until his publishers sent me his book. -They say that he worked on it for seven years; and when I read it I -counted myself that many years to the good, for I had meant to try to do -the task myself. Professor Reeve has done it in a way which leaves not a -word to be said. It is a marvellous analysis of the whole of our present -productive system; and best of all, it is free from the jargon of the -schools—it is the work of a man who has kept in touch with actual life, -and has moral feeling as well as scientific training. - -Professor Reeve analyses, not merely the “economic costs” of -competition, but also the “ethical costs,” which after all are the most -important. The difference to the workingman will be, not merely that his -wages will be several times as great, but that he himself will no longer -be a wage-slave, obliged to serve another man for his bread, to cringe -and grovel for a a job, to toil all day for another man’s profit, and -save up his little hoard and live in dread of the next wage reduction, -the next strike, or the next closing down of the factory. He will be a -free and independent member of a coöperative State. He will be delivered -from the necessity of getting the better of his neighbour, because his -neighbour will no longer be able to get the better of him. He will be -certain of permanent employment, without possibility of loss or failure -of payment—certain that so long as he works he will receive just what he -produces, that in case of accident or old age he will be maintained, and -that in case of death his children will be cared for and brought up to -become coöperative partners in the great Industrial Republic. - -[Illustration: - - _From “The Cost of Competition_” - - THE COOPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION - - The Congressional Library -] - -[Illustration: - - _From “The Cost of Competition_” - - THE COMPETITIVE DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION -] - -How, you ask, could Socialism guarantee every man permanent employment? -Could there not be overproduction under Socialism? There could not; the -surplus product being the property of the man who had produced it, and -not, as now, the property of some other man, in a case of overproduction -the workingman would be, not out of work, but on a vacation. As a matter -of fact, only a reasonable surplus would be produced, because the -workingman would stop when he had produced what he wanted—just as you -stop eating when you have satisfied your hunger. - -In the Industrial Republic there will be an administrative officer, a -cabinet official with a bureau of clerks, whose task it will be to -register the decrees of the law of supply and demand. It is found, let -us assume, that the amount of coal needed by the community is -represented by the labour of two million men, five days in the week, and -six hours a day; the number of shoes is represented by the labour of -half a million men the same time. The wages in each trade are ten -dollars a day, and at this rate it is found that two million men go to -the shoe factories to work and only half a million to the coal mines. -The wages of coal mining are therefore made twelve dollars, and the -wages of shoe-making eight dollars; if the balance still does not adjust -itself, it will at the rate of thirteen to seven, or fourteen to six. -Every week the government list shows the wages that can be earned in the -various trades; stoking in a steamship is a painful and dangerous -task—stokers in steamships are receiving twenty dollars a day, and still -few takers, so that the steamships have to be fitted with stoking -machinery at once. On the other hand, driving a rural-delivery -mail-wagon is pleasant work, and is paying at present only five dollars -a day, and with prospects of going still lower. And does all this seem -fantastic to you? But it is exactly the way our employment problem is -solved to-day, when it is solved at all; it is solved by means of “Help -Wanted” advertisements and viva voce rumours—imperfectly, blindly and -sluggishly, instead of instantly, intelligently and consciously by a -universal government information bureau. Out in the country where I -lived two years ago the farmers were unable to get help for love or -money, while millions were out of work and starving in the cities; and -that is only one of the thousands of illustrations one could give of -“how much depends, when two men go out to catch a horse, upon whether -they devote their time to catching him, or to preventing each other from -catching him.” - -The _Independent_ recently published an article entitled “Poverty: Its -Cause and Cure,” by Mr. James Mackaye, a Harvard graduate and -technological chemist; in the course of its editorial comment the paper -hailed his plan for the abolition of poverty as “nothing less than a -very great invention.” “It adds something that was lacking in the older -schemes of Socialism,” the _Independent_ continued, “but absolutely -necessary to any Socialism that would be practically workable.” This -“something” is a device to increase the salaries of managers of the -various industrial departments in proportion as they reduced the -“producing time” of the commodity for which they were responsible. Mr. -Mackaye is another student who, like Professor Reeve and Professor -Veblen, have come into Socialism by their own routes. In his elaborate -book, “The Economy of Happiness,” he shows so thorough a grasp of the -whole subject that I cannot suppose him to share in the ignorance of the -literature of modern proletarian Socialism, which leads the -_Independent_ to hail his plan as a “great invention.” As a matter of -fact, I could name a score of Socialist books and pamphlets in which -such plans are suggested and discussed. I personally have always -rejected them as unsound in theory and unnecessary in practice. I have -already suggested the likelihood of a continuance of present official -salaries after the revolution; but there will be a strong tendency to -reduce these, and I can see no ultimate result except equality of -compensation by the State. I can see no theoretical basis for the -State’s paying to any employee more than it pays to another in the same -industry—hand labour being equally as necessary to the production of -wealth as is superintendence. To my mind, the only necessary stimulus to -efficiency is the community of interest of all the workers. The -incentive to the manager is emulation, and the higher range of activity -which goes with a position of command; and I should be very jealous of -the introduction of any pecuniary motive into the struggle for -promotion—as likely to continue the old evils of graft and favouritism -to which we are now subject. I do not think that, when you have so -organised industry that every man is working for himself, you will find -it necessary to employ any outside force to impel him to work; and in -fact I should consider it a violation of the rights of the worker to -attempt anything of the sort. Of course if the workers themselves chose -to offer a bonus to a manager to invent new methods, that would be -another matter; but that would come under the head of intellectual -production, which I shall consider later on. - -In discussing the question of salaries, it is to be pointed out what a -vast difference will be made in the amount of money which every -individual needs, by the socialisation of all the leading industries. In -the Industrial Republic a thousand dollars a year will buy more comfort -and happiness than ten thousand in the world as at present organised. -There will come, at the very outset, the great economic savings already -outlined; and then, the whole power of the coöperative mind of man being -applied to the elimination of waste and the making of beauty and joy, we -shall have in a very short time a world in which few men will care to -cumber themselves with possessions of any sort excepting the clothes -upon their backs and the few tools of their intellectual trades,—books, -music, etc. The abolition of privilege and class exploitation will of -course wipe out at a stroke all that competition in ostentation which -Professor Veblen has entitled “conspicuous consumption of goods.” In the -Industrial Republic there will be no luxury, for there will be no -slavery. There will be no menial service of any sort under Socialism. I -believe that this gives one a key by which he can do a great deal of -predicting as to what will be found in the world when the impending -revolution has taken place. In the Industrial Republic no man will work -for another man—except for love—because no other man will be able to pay -the “prevailing rate of wages.” - -It is the vision of this that makes the critics of Socialism cry out -that it will destroy the home. What they mean is that it will destroy -that kind of a home which exists upon a basis of butlers, cooks and -kitchen maids, banquets and carriages, jewellery and fine raiment, sweat -shops, and slums, prostitution, child-labour, war and crime. Unless I am -very much mistaken, those people who now wear diamonds, and decorate -their homes with all sorts of objects of “art,” would do a great deal -less of it if they had to pay for it with their own toil—if they were -not able to pay for it with money extracted from the toil of others. I -imagine that those who now, in our restaurants and banquet halls, gorge -themselves upon the contents of earth, sea, and sky, would dine very -much more simply—and very much more wholesomely—if they had to wash the -dishes. For this reason, I expect that in the Industrial Republic there -will be very little of that pseudo-art which ministers to vanity and -sensuality. Our houses and clothing will become simpler and more -dignified, and the artist will turn his thoughts to public works—he will -decorate the parks and public buildings, the theatres, concert halls and -libraries, the great coöperative dining halls and apartment houses. In -the cities and towns of the Industrial Republic there will of course be -possibilities of beauty such as we cannot even dream of at present. Now -our cities grow haphazard, and are typical of all our blindness, -selfishness, and misery. At every turn in them one comes upon new and -more painful signs of these things—filthy and horrible slums, blatant -and vulgar advertisements, insolent rich people in carriages, wan and -starving children in the gutters. In the Industrial Republic a city will -be one thing, and a work of art. It will not be crowded, for the -combination of poverty and the railroad trust will not make spreading -out impossible. Intelligent, coöperative effort having become the rule, -nearly all the things that are now done privately and selfishly will be -done socially. Manual work will not be a disgrace, and poverty will not -keep any man ignorant, filthy and repulsive. There will be no classes -and no class feeling. There will be not only public schools and -academies—there will be public playgrounds for all children, and clubs -and places of recreation for men and women. In the Industrial Republic -you will not mind going to such places and letting your children go. You -will not be afraid of disease, because there will be public hospitals -for all the sick; and you will not be afraid of rowdies, because the -rowdy is a product of the slum, and there will not be any slum. - -At present, we are all engaged in a struggle to beguile as much money -out of each other as we can; and the State has nothing to do save to -stand by and see fair play—and commonly finds that task too much for it! -As a consequence, we find ourselves confronted with an infinite variety -of little petty exactions—we have to spend money every time we turn -around. Very soon after the Revolution, I fancy, men will begin to -realise that these little exactions are more of a nuisance than a -saving. For instance, I shall be very much surprised, if, a generation -from now, the use of postage-stamps is not abolished. At present, with -society wasting so immense a portion of its energy in competitive -advertising, every piece of matter which goes into the mail has to be -made to pay its way; but once do away with competition, and the only -mail is government documents and personal letters—and the time it takes -to stamp and cancel them will be many times greater than the cost of -carrying the additional number of letters that a free mail service would -bring forth. In the same way it will be found not worth while to employ -conductors and spotters, and print tickets and transfers; after that we -shall ride free on our street-cars, and perhaps ultimately in our -government railroad trains. Similarly, all our places of recreation and -of artistic expression would come to be free; and then some one would -realise the waste incidental to our present system of book buying, and -we should then have a universal national library, from which at frequent -intervals delivery service would bring you any books then in existence. -I have just witnessed in New York an exhibition of an invention which -will make music as free as air. Bellamy was ridiculed for predicting -“electric music” in the year 2000; and it is on sale in New York City in -the year 1907. By this marvellous machine, the “telharmonium,” all -previously existing musical instruments are relegated to the junk heap; -and all music composed for them becomes out of date. At one leap the art -of music is set free from all physical limitations, and the musician is -given command of all possible tones, and may play to ten thousand -audiences at once. It is worth while pointing out, that, living under -the capitalist system as we are, the inventor had no recourse save to -use his machine to make profits, and so the newspapers, which are also -in business for profits, left it to make its own way. So it came about -that the first public exhibition of an invention which means more to -humanity than any discovery since the art of printing, received mention -in only one New York paper, and that to the extent of three or four -inches. - - -But to return to the Revolution, and the first steps which have to be -taken. - -There are some industries which anyone can see are all ready for public -ownership; and when the people have once found out the way, they will be -very impatient with all remaining forms of rent, interest, profit and -dividends. Also, the exploiters will soon learn to give way. Just as -soon as the proprietors of department stores find that the people -seriously intend to open a public store in every city, and to sell goods -at cost, they will be glad to sell out for a few cents on the dollar; -just as soon as the bankers find out that there is really to be a -national bank, charging no interest, and incapable of failing, they will -do the same with their buildings and outfits. To quote a paragraph from -“The Jungle” (page 405), “The coöperative Commonwealth is a universal -automatic insurance company and savings bank for all its members. -Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared by all and -made up by all. The bank is the universal government credit account, the -ledger in which every individual’s earnings and spendings are balanced. -There is also a universal government bulletin, in which are listed and -precisely described everything which the Commonwealth has for sale. As -no one makes any profit by the sale, there is no longer any stimulus to -extravagance, and no misrepresentation, no cheating, no adulteration or -imitation, no bribery, no ‘grafting.’” - -There remains only one other great problem to be mentioned—that of -agriculture. I think no one will want to interfere with the farmer, any -more than with the cobbler, the small storekeeper, the newsman or any -other petty business. The farmer will stay on his land, and make -money—and study the situation. He will find in the first place that -coöperation is a success, and has come to stay. He will find that while -he is working with his hands, the rest of society is working with steam -and electricity, and leaving him far behind. He will find that he can no -longer hire help—that his hired man is employed as a coöperative worker, -and receiving several times more than the farmer himself. He will -understand that to get his share of all the good things of the new -civilisation, he will have to put his land into the common fund, and -work for the commonwealth and not for his own wealth. In this case, of -course, all the risks and losses of his trade will be shared by the -whole community—the result of a bad crop in Maine being made up by a -good crop in California, so that the farmer who works will be as certain -of gain and as free from care as the factory hand. - -And now let us consider the effect of this new system upon certain of -the leading features of our civilisation. What, for instance, will be -the effect of Socialism upon crime? The man who becomes a criminal at -present finds himself in a world where he is compelled to work for some -other man’s profit, and to have flaunted in his face every hour the -wealth which has been exacted from his toil. But now he will find -himself in a world from which luxury and pauperism have been banished, -and in which coöperation and mutual fellowship is the law. He will find -that he gets just what he produces, and that he can produce in a day -more than he can steal in a month. Don’t you think that the criminal may -find these powerful motives to become a worker? He may be a degenerate, -of course, in which case we shall put him in a hospital; we should do -that now, if we did not feel dimly that it would be of no use, because -our social system is making criminals faster than we can pen them up, -and makes the life of the majority of the working-class so horrible that -men have been known to steal on purpose to get into jail. - -I have tried in “The Jungle” to give a picture of the process whereby -the forces of commercialism turn honest workingmen into criminals and -tramps. There is also another story to which I would refer the reader -who cares to have more acquaintance with such conditions—“An Eye for an -Eye,” by Clarence Darrow.—And also, while we are considering this -subject, let us not forget how the change would affect the criminals of -the future, the wretched children of the slums and gutters, who will now -be cared for by the State, and made into decent citizens in public -asylums and hospitals, training schools and playgrounds. - -What will be the effect of Socialism upon prostitution? Any young girl -can go to the public factories or stores, to the coöperative boarding -houses and hotels, the schools and nursery playgrounds, and secure -employment for the asking, and support herself by a couple of hours’ -work a day in decent and attractive surroundings. She will, moreover, be -able to marry the man who loves her, because the problem of a living -will no longer enter into the question of marriage. She will be able to -restrict her family to as many as she and her husband care to support, -because she will be as intelligent and sensible as the women of our -present upper classes. - -The question of the relationship of the system of wage-slavery to the -lives of women is too vast a one to be even outlined here; suffice it to -say that the Socialist battle is the battle of woman, even more than it -is the battle of the workingman. I cannot do better than to refer the -reader to another book in which the whole question of the effects which -age-long conditions of economic inferiority has wrought in the minds and -bodies of women is discussed in scientific and yet fascinating form—Mrs. -Gilman’s “Woman and Economics.” - -What will be the effect of Socialism upon drunkenness? Under Socialism -the workingman will have a decent home, and attractive clubs, reading -rooms, and places of entertainment of all sorts, with plenty of time to -frequent them. He will have steady employment, wholesome food, a -pleasant place to work in, and—railroad fares being almost nothing—a -trip to the country when he fancies it. His wife will not be an -overworked, repulsive drudge, and his children will not be starving -brats. When he wants a drink he will go to a public drinking-place and -get it; what he gets will be pure, and will be sold him by a man who has -no interest in getting him drunk. On the contrary, the attendant may be -getting a royalty upon all nonintoxicating drinks he sells, and the -drinker will quite certainly be paying a big tax upon all the -intoxicating drinks he buys. Do you not think that all this may have -some effect upon the nation’s drink bill, which now is doubling itself -every decade? - -Recently I was invited by the _Christian Herald_ to contribute to a -symposium upon the question of prohibition. I wrote as follows: “In my -opinion the drink evil is primarily an effect, and not a cause; it is a -by-product of wage-slavery. The working classes are to-day organised as -the bond slaves of capital. The conditions under which they live are -such as to brutalise and degrade them and drive them to drink. As I have -phrased it in “The Jungle,” if a man has to live in hell, he would a -great deal rather be drunk than sober. The solution of the drink evil -waits upon the coming of Socialism. - -“As a part of the capitalist system, you have liquor sold for profit, -and the liquor interests are one of the forces which dominate the land. -Therefore, you are unable to effect any legislation to correct the evil. -Liquor is sold in order to make money out of the victim, therefore every -inducement and temptation is laid before him. Under Socialism, the only -barkeeper would be the community, and the community would have every -object in limiting the traffic. The children of the masses would be -taken in hand and taught the secret of right living; and when they grew -up they would have enough to eat and the means of keeping in working -condition, and would know other sources of happiness than drunkenness. -At present, attempts to reform the evil are attempts to sweep back the -tide. Moreover, it is to be noticed that many of those who are most -active in the work are themselves busily engaged in exploiting the -working-class in their private business, and are therefore directly -identified with the cause of the evil they are attempting to combat.” - -What will be the effect of Socialism upon war? The New York _Sun_ -recently expressed the opinion that the end of war will come only with -the Golden Age. If so, the Golden Age is within sight of all of us. -Socialism will abolish war as inevitably, as naturally and serenely, as -the sunrise abolishes the night. The cause of war is foreign markets; -and under Socialism the markets will all be at home. Under Socialism the -existence of the workers of the United States, of England, Germany, and -Japan, will not be dependent upon the ability of their masters to sell -their surplus products for profit to Chinamen. Under Socialism an -international Congress will take in hand the backward nations, will -clean out their sewers and wipe out their plagues and famines, their -kings and their capitalists, their ignorance, their superstition and -their wars. It will do these things because they need to be done—it will -not do them as a mere pretence to cover greed for gold mines and -markets. Outside of mines and markets there is no longer any cause of -war, save the old race hatreds which these have begotten; and race -hatreds are not known among Socialists. In their last International -Congress a Russian and a Japanese shook hands upon the platform, while -their countrymen were flying at each other’s throats in Manchuria. The -Socialist movement is a world movement—it has brought under its banners, -working shoulder to shoulder, men and women of all religions, races and -colours. With their victory, and only with their victory, will the -efforts of “Peace Congresses” bear fruit. - -Finally, what will be the effect of Socialism upon the “System”? It is -important to distinguish between corruption as a sporadic event, an -accident here and there, and corruption as a national institution. In -the Industrial Republic a worker might of course bribe his foreman to -let him cheat the community; but that would be every man’s loss, and -there would be every inducement to find it out and make it known, and no -hindrance whatever to its punishment. At present, however, we have -corruption organised in town, county, city, state, and nation, with -every inducement to keep it hidden, and almost no possibility of -punishing it. Everybody understands that we have corporations, and that -the corporations rule us; all that everybody does not yet understand is -that the continuance of their rule would mean the ruin of free -institutions in America, and ultimately the downfall of civilisation -itself. - - -I have outlined the economic and political conditions which I believe -will prevail in the Industrial Republic; there remains to consider what -influences these will exert upon the moral and intellectual life of men. - -When people criticise the Socialist programme they always think about -government censors and red tape, and limitations upon free endeavour; -and so they say that Socialism would lead to a reign of tameness and -mediocrity. They tell us that under the new régime we should all have to -wear the same kind of coat and eat the same kind of pie. They argue that -if all the means of production are owned by the Government there will be -no way for you to get your own kind of pie; failing to perceive that -government control of the means of production no more implies government -control of the product, than government control of the post office means -government control of the contents of your letters. Said a good -clergyman friend of mine: “What possible place, for instance, would -there be for _me_ in your Socialist society.” And I answered, “There -would be just exactly the same place for you that there is at present. -How is it that you get your living and your freedom? You are maintained -by an association of people who want the work you can do. Every -clergyman in the country is maintained in that way—and so are thousands -upon thousands of editors, authors, artists, actors—so are all our -clubs, societies, restaurants, theatres and orchestras. The Government -has absolutely nothing to do with them at present—and the Government -need have absolutely nothing to do with them under Socialism. The people -who want them subscribe and pay for them. Under our present system they -pay the cost to private profit-seekers; under Socialism they would pay -the State.” - -In the Industrial Republic a man will be able to order anything he -wishes, from a flying machine to a seven-legged spider made of diamonds; -and the only question that anyone will ever dream of asking him will be: -“Have you got the money to pay for it?” There remains only to add that, -the system of wealth-distribution being now one of justice, that -question will mean: “Have you performed for society the equivalent of -the labour-time of the article you desire society to furnish you?” - -Nine-tenths of the argument against Socialism dissolves into mist the -moment one states that single all-important fact, that Socialism is a -science of _economics_. For instance, Mr. Bryan has recently published -in the _Century Magazine_ an article entitled “Individualism versus -Socialism;” and here is the way he contrasts the two: “The individualist -believes that competition is not only a helpful but a necessary force in -society, to be guarded and protected; the Socialist regards competition -as a hurtful force, to be entirely exterminated.” Now there are endless -varieties of competition with which Socialism could in no conceivable -way interfere: the competition of love, and of friendship; the -competition of political life; the competition of ideals, of music and -books, of philosophy and science. It is the claim of the Socialists that -by setting men free from the money-greed and the money-terror—from the -need of struggling to deprive other men of the necessities of life in -order to prevent them from depriving you of these necessities—the mind -of the race would be set free for more vigorous competition in these -other fields, and thus the development of real individuality would be -for the first time made possible. This being the desire of the -Socialist, it should be clear how fundamental is the misconception of -Mr. Bryan, indicated by the bare title of his article—“Individualism -versus Socialism.” Socialism is not opposed to Individualism, and to set -the two in opposition is like the attempt to imagine a fight between an -elephant and a whale. - -Socialism is a proposition for an economic re-organisation; as such, the -only thing to which it can logically and intelligently be opposed is -Capitalism. Mr. Bryan indicates that he discerns this, in another -portion of his article. He says; “For the purpose of this discussion -Individualism will be defined as the private ownership of the means of -production and distribution where competition is possible, leaving to -public ownership those means of production and distribution in which -competition is practically impossible; and Socialism will be defined as -the collective ownership, through the State, of all the means of -production and distribution.” For general unfairness this statement -makes me think of the story of a man who was riding through the country -and stopped to admire a fine pair of turkeys, and after praising them -with enthusiasm, remarked to the farmer: “I will match you for them! -Heads they are mine, and tails they stay yours.” Mr. Bryan has composed -a subtly worded definition of Individualism which takes all the kernels -from the Socialist ear, and leaves to the Socialist only the husk. -“Leaving to public ownership those means of production and distribution -in which competition is practically impossible!” What a beautiful field -for controversy, and what endless opportunities for compromise and -concession, for advance or retreat! Ten years ago Mr. Bryan would not -have appreciated the necessity of inserting this clause; industrial -evolution had not proceeded quite so far, and all our radicals were -bending their efforts to destroying the trusts. It was only after the -last presidential election, unless I am mistaken, that Mr. Bryan -definitely committed himself to the public ownership “of those means of -production and distribution in which competition is practically -impossible.” - -If Mr. Bryan would only procure and read a really authoritative treatise -upon modern scientific Socialism (say Vandervelde’s “Collectivism and -Industrial Evolution”) he would understand that his programme is so -close to that of the Socialists that the difference would require a -microscope to discern. In fact, I imagine that the majority of modern -proletarian thinkers would be willing to subscribe to the programme of -“Individualism” exactly as Mr. Bryan states it: “the private ownership -of the means of production and distribution where competition is -possible, leaving to public ownership those means of production and -distribution in which competition is practically impossible.” - -The one point to be made absolutely clear in this matter is that the -Industrial Republic will be an organisation for the supplying of the -_material necessities_ of human life. With the moral and intellectual -affairs of men it can have very little to do. What Socialism proposes to -organise and systematise is industry, not thought. The difference -between the products of industry and those of thought is a fundamental -one. The former are strictly limited in quantity, and the latter are -infinite. No man can have more than his fair share of the former without -depriving his neighbour; but to a thought there is no such limit—a -single poem or symphony may do for a million just as well as for one. -With the former it is possible for one man to gain control and oppress -others; but it is not possible to monopolise thought. And it is in -consequence of this fact that laws and systems are necessary with the -things of the body, which would be preposterous with the things of the -mind. The bodily needs of men are pretty much all alike. Men need food, -clothing, shelter, light, air, and heat; and they need these of pretty -nearly the same quality and in pretty nearly the same quantity—so that -they can be furnished methodically year in and year out, according to -order. This is being done by our present industrial masters for profit; -in the Industrial Republic it will be done by the State, for use. - -Quite otherwise is it with things in which men are not alike—their -religions and their arts and their sciences. The only conditions under -which the State can with any justice or efficiency have to do with -production in these fields, is after men have come to agreement—when -opinion has given place to knowledge. For instance, we have, in certain -fields of science, methods which we can consider as agreed upon; it -would be perfectly possible for the State to endow astronomical -investigators, and seekers of the North Pole, and inventors of flying -machines, and pioneers in all the technical arts. In the same way we -come to agree, within certain limits, what is a worth-while play or -book; in so far as we agree, we can have government theatres and -publishing houses, government newspapers and magazines. If ever science -should discover the rationale of the phenomenon of genius, so that we -could analyse and judge it with precision, we should then have the whole -problem solved. - -You are a writer, perhaps; and you say that you would not relish the -idea of bringing your book to a government official to be judged. Ask -yourself, however, if some of your prejudice may not be due to your -conception of a government official as the representative of a class, -and of the interests of a class. In the Industrial Republic there will -be no classes, and the officers of the coöperative publishing house will -have no one to serve but the people. If they are not satisfactory to the -people, the people can get rid of them—something the people cannot do -anywhere in the world to-day. You think, perhaps, that you choose your -own governors in this country—but you do not. What you do is to go to -the polls and choose between two sets of candidates, both of whom have -been selected by your economic rulers as being satisfactory to them. - -While I do not profess to be certain, I imagine that an author who -wanted his book published by the Government would have to pay the -expenses of the publication. This would not be any hardship, for wages -in the Industrial Republic could not be less than ten dollars for a day -of six hours’ work. With the rapid improvement in machinery and methods -that would follow, they would probably soon be double that—and of course -it would rest with the people who were doing the work to see that it was -done in an attractive place, with plenty of fresh air and due safeguards -against accidents. Under these conditions a man of refinement could go -to a factory to work for pleasure and exercise, instead of pulling at -ropes in a gymnasium, as he commonly does nowadays. And when a young -author had earned the cost of making his book, he would have done all -that he had to do. He would not have to enter into a race in vulgar -advertising with exploiting private concerns; nor would the public form -its ideas of his work from criticisms in reviews which were run to -secure advertisements, and which gave their space to the books that were -advertised the most. Neither would his critics be employed by a class, -to maintain the interests of a class, and to keep down the aspirations -of some other class. Also, the book-reading public would no longer -consist—as our present society so largely consists—of idle and unfeeling -rich, and ignorant, debased and hunger-driven poor. - -And then, as I said, there is a second method—the method of the churches -and clubs. Out in Chicago there was, four years ago, a man who thought -there ought to be more Socialist books published than there were. He had -no money; but he drew up a programme for a coöperative publishing house, -to furnish Socialist literature at cost to those who wanted it. He got -some ten thousand dollars in ten-dollar shares, and since then he has -been turning out half a million pieces of Socialist literature every -year. That seems to me a perfect illustration of what would happen in -the new society, the second way in which books would be published. Such -concerns—free associations, as they are termed in the Socialist -vocabulary—would spring up literally by the thousands. They would cover -every field that the liberated soul of man might be interested in, they -would care for every type of thinker and artist, no matter how -eccentric; they would offer encouragement to every man who showed the -slightest sign of power in any field. The only reason we do not have -many times as many of these associations as we have now, is simply that -those people who really care about the higher things of life are almost -invariably poor and helpless. - -One of the curious things which I have observed about those who pick -flaws in the suggestions of the Socialist, is how seldom it ever occurs -to them to apply their own tests to the present system of things. How is -it with art and literature production now—are all the conditions quite -free from objection? Is the man of genius always encouraged and -protected, and set free to develop his powers? - -In the _North American Review_ a couple of years ago there appeared an -article by Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, in which she set forth her opinion -that “American literature to-day is the most timid, the most anæmic, the -most lacking in individualities, the most bourgeois, that any country -has ever known.” This seemed to perplex Mrs. Atherton very much—she -could not comprehend why such a very great country should have a -“bourgeois” literature. I replied to her in a paper which was published -in _Collier’s Weekly_, in which I maintained that “American literature -is the most bourgeois that any country has ever known, simply because -American life is the most bourgeois that any country has ever known.” I -shall quote a few paragraphs from the essay, which began with an attempt -to define the word “bourgeois”: - -It signifies, in a sentence, that type of civilisation, of law and -convention, which was made necessary by the economic struggle, and which -is now maintained by the economic victors for their own comfort and the -perpetuation of their power. The _bourgeoisie_, or middle class, is that -class which, all over the world, takes the sceptre of power as it falls -from the hands of the political aristocracy; which has the skill and -cunning to survive in the free-for-all combat which follows upon the -political revolution. Its dominion is based upon wealth; and hence the -determining characteristic of the bourgeois society is its regard for -wealth. To it, wealth is power, it is the end and goal of things. The -aristocrat knew nothing of the possibility of revolution, and so he was -bold and gay. The bourgeois _does_ know about the possibility of -revolution, and so it is that Mrs. Atherton finds that our literature is -“timid.” She finds it “anæmic,” simply because the bourgeois ideal knows -nothing of the spirit, and tolerates intellectual activity only for the -ends of commerce and material welfare. She finds also that it “bows -before the fetich of the body,” and she is much perplexed by the -discovery. She does not seem to understand that the bourgeois represents -an achievement of the body, and that all that he knows in the world is -body. He is well fed himself, his wife is stout, and his children are -fine and vigorous. He lives in a big house, and wears the latest thing -in clothes; his civilisation furnishes these to every one—at least to -every one who amounts to anything; and beyond that he understands -nothing—save only the desire to be entertained. It is for entertainment -that he buys books, and as entertainment that he regards them; and hence -another characteristic of the bourgeois literature is its lack of -seriousness. The bourgeois writer has a certain kind of seriousness, of -course—the seriousness of a hungry man seeking his dinner; but the -seriousness of the artist he does not know. He will roar you as gently -as any sucking dove, he will also wring tears from your eyes or thrill -you with terror, according as the fashion of the hour suggests; but he -knows exactly why he does these things, and he can do them between chats -at his club. If you expected him to act like his heroes, he would think -that you were mad. - -The basis of a bourgeois society is cash payment; it recognises only the -accomplished fact. To be a Milton with a “Paradise Lost” in your pocket -is to be a tramp: to be a great author in the bourgeois literary world -is to have sold a hundred thousand copies, and to have sold them within -memory—that is, a year or two. With the bourgeois, success is success, -and there is no going behind the returns; to discriminate between -different kinds of success would be to introduce new and dangerous -distinctions. As Mr. John L. Sullivan once phrased it: “A big man is a -big man, it don’t matter if he’s a prize-fighter or a president.” Mr. -John L. Sullivan is a big man himself; so is Mr. Frank Munsey, and so -was Mr. Henry Romeike, and so was Senator Hanna. So are they all, all -honourable men, and when you look up in “Who’s Who,” you find that they -are there. - -The bourgeois ideal is a perfectly definite and concrete one: it has -mostly all been attained—there are only a few small details left to be -attended to, such as the cleaning of the streets and the suppressing of -the labour unions. Thus there is no call for perplexity, and no use for -anything hard to understand. Originality is superfluous, and -eccentricity is anathema. The world is as it always has been, and human -nature will always be as it is; the thing to do is to find out what the -public likes. The public likes pathos and the homely virtues; and so we -give it “Eben Holden” and “David Harum.” The public likes high life, and -so we give it Richard Harding Davis and Marie Corelli. The public does -_not_ like passion; it likes sentiment, however—it even likes heroics, -provided they are conventionalised, and so to amuse it we turn all -history into a sugar-coated romance. The public’s strong point is love, -and we lay much stress upon the love-element—though with limitations, -needless to say. The idea of love as a serious problem among men and -women is dismissed, because the social organisation enables us to -satisfy our passions with the daughters of the poor. Our own daughters -know nothing about passion, and we ourselves know it only as an item in -our bank accounts. To the bourgeois young lady—the Gibson girl, as she -is otherwise known—literary love is a sentiment, ranking with a box of -bonbons, and actual love is a class marriage with an artificially -restricted progeny. - -These which have been described are the positive and more genial aspects -of the bourgeois civilisation; the savage and terrible remain to be -mentioned. For it must be understood that this civilisation of comfort -and respectability furnishes its good things only to a class, and to an -exceedingly small class. The majority of mankind it pens up in filthy -hovels and tenements, to feed upon husks and rot in misery. This was -once easy, but now it is growing harder—and thus little by little the -_bourgeoisie_ is losing its temper. Just now it is like a fat poodle by -a stove—you think it is asleep and venture to touch it, when quick as a -flash it has put its fangs in you to the bone. - -The bourgeois civilisation is, in one word, an organised system of -repression. In the physical world it has the police and the militia, the -bludgeon, the bullet, and the jail; in the world of ideas it has the -political platform, the school, the college, the press, the church—and -literature. The bourgeois controls these things precisely as he controls -the labour of society, by his control of the purse-strings. Unless -proper candidates are named by political parties, there are no campaign -funds; unless proper teachers and college presidents are chosen, there -are no endowments. Thus it happens that our students are taught a -political economy carefully divorced, not merely from humanity, but also -from science, history, and sense; any other kind of political economy -the student sometimes despises—more commonly he does not even know that -it exists. And it is just the same with the churches and with theology. -We have at present established in this land a religion which exists in -the name of the world’s greatest revolutionist, the founder of the -Socialist movement; this man denounced the bourgeois and the bourgeois -ideal more vehemently than ever it has since been denounced—declaring in -plain words that no bourgeois could get into Heaven; and yet his church -is to-day, in all its forms, and in every civilised land, the main -pillar of bourgeois society! - -With the press the bourgeois has a still more direct method than -endowment; the press he owns. All the daily newspapers in New York, for -instance, are the property of millionaires, and are run by them in their -own interests, exactly the same as their stables or their _cuisine_. -That does not mean, of course, that many of their journalistic menials -are not sincere—it does not mean that the college presidents and -clergymen may not be sincere. One of the quaintest things about the -bourgeois editor, the bourgeois college president, the bourgeois -clergyman, is the whole-souled naïveté with which he takes it for -granted that just as all civilisation exists for the comfort of the -bourgeois, so also all truth must necessarily be such as the bourgeois -would desire it to be. - -And then there is literature. The bourgeois recognises the novelist and -the poet as a means of amusement somewhat above the prostitute, and -about on a level with the music-hall artist; he recognises the essayist, -the historian, and the publicist as agents of bourgeois repression -equally as necessary as the clergyman and the editor. To all of them he -grants the good things of the bourgeois life, a bourgeois home with -servants who know their places, and a bourgeois club with smiling and -obsequious waiters. They may even, on state occasions, become acquainted -with the bourgeois magnates, and touch the gracious fingers of the -magnates’ pudgy wives. There is only one condition, so obvious that it -hardly needs to be mentioned—they must be bourgeois, they must see life -from the bourgeois point of view. Beyond that there is not the least -restriction; the novelist, for instance, may roam the whole of space and -time—there is nothing in life that he may not treat, provided only that -he be bourgeois in his treatment. He may show us the olden time, with -noble dames and gallant gentlemen dallying with graceful sentiment. He -may entertain us with pictures of the modern world, may dazzle us with -visions of high society in all its splendours, may awe us with the -wonders of modern civilisation, of steam and electricity, the flying -machine and the automobile. He may thrill us with battle, murder, and -Sherlock Holmes. He may bring tears to our eyes at the thought of the -old folks at home, or at his pictures of the honesty, humility, and -sobriety of the common man; he may even go to the slums and show us the -ways of Mrs. Wiggs, her patient frugality and beautiful contentment in -that state of life to which it has pleased God to call her. In any of -these fields the author, if he is worth his salt, may be -“entertaining”—and so the royalties will come in. If there is any one -whom this does not suit—who is so perverse that the bourgeois do not -please him, or so obstinate that he will not learn to please the -bourgeois—we send after him our literary policeman, the bourgeois -reviewer, and bludgeon him into silence; or better yet, we simply leave -him alone, and he moves into a garret. The bourgeois garrets resemble -the bourgeois excursion steamers. They are never so crowded that there -is not room for as many more as want to come on board; and any young -author who imagines that he can bear to starve longer than the world can -bear to let him starve, is welcome to try it. Letting things starve is -the specialty of the bourgeois society—the vast majority of the -creatures in it are starving all the time. - -So much for things as they are. The Revolution will, of course, not -change our present bourgeois people—except that it will scare them -thoroughly, and make them teachable. But it will bring to the front an -enormous class of people to whom life is a new and wondrous thing; and -their children also will grow up in a different world, and with a -different ideal; and so a generation from now there will be a new art -public. The people who compose it will not have been forced to consider -money the only thing in life, the sole test of excellence and power; -they will not have been brought up on the motto, “Do others or they will -do you.” They will have been brought up in a world in which no man is -able to “do” another man, and in which all men stand as equals as -regards money. They will have been brought up in a world in which work -and a decent life are the right and duty of every man, and are taken for -granted with every man; in which influence, reputation, and command are -given for other things than money. If it be true that faith, hope, and -charity are greater things than wealth, it is perhaps not altogether -Utopian to suppose that these will be the things that the new public -will honour and will contrive to promote. The best way in which one can -be sure about this is to study the writers who are shaping the ideals of -Socialism—such men as Whitman and Thoreau, Ruskin and William Morris, -Kropotkin and Carpenter and Gorky. Above all I wish that I could be the -cause of the reader’s looking into one book, in which one of the -master-spirits of our time has made an attempt to picture this beautiful -world that is to be. When I met Mr. H. G. Wells last year, I had not -read any of his books; so he sent me a copy of his “Modern Utopia,” -graciously inscribing it: “To the most hopeful of Socialists, from the -next most hopeful!” Afterward, I was asked by _Life_ to name the book -which had given me the most pleasure during the last year, and I named -this one. It is, in my opinion, one of the great works of our -literature; it is worthy to be placed with the visions of Plato and Sir -Thomas More. It has three great virtues which are rarely, if ever, found -in combination. In the first place, it is characterised by a nobility -and loftiness of spirit which makes its reading a religious exercise. In -the second place, it is the work of an engineer, a man with the modern -sense of reality and acquainted with the whole field of scientific -achievement. In the third place, it is written in a a literary style -which makes the reading of each paragraph a delight in itself. It is a -book to love and to cherish; one leaves it, refreshed and strengthened, -to wait with patience and cheerfulness the hour of the Great Change. - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - THE COÖPERATIVE HOME - - -In all that I have outlined concerning the Industrial Republic, I have -tried to indicate my belief that it will be the creation of no man’s -will, but a product of evolution—the result of many forces which are now -at work in our society. These forces we can study and analyse; and in -picturing their final product, we are not simply indulging in fantastic -speculation, but are making scientific deductions. I believe that we -have now in our present world the half-developed embryo of everything -which I have pictured in the future; the Revolution, which comes -suddenly, and in the midst of strain and agony, is precisely the -parallel of a child-birth. In our present “trusts,” for instance, we -have perfect examples of the centralising and systematising of -production and distribution; absolutely the only thing needed to fit -them into the world I have pictured is a change of ownership. Again, in -the labour unions, we see the building up of the machinery of industrial -self-government. And similarly, in our churches and clubs, our -benevolent and artistic and scientific associations, we have the germs -of all the coöperative activities of the future. In our public -educational system, we have a complete and perfect piece of practical -Socialism, ready to fit into the structure of our Industrial Republic. -In our Post Office we have still another, while in the army and navy we -have examples of industrial paternalism which need only the breath of a -new ideal to make them indispensable for all time. We saw after the San -Francisco earthquake the real use of standing armies; and for such -purposes they will continue to exist, long after war shall have become a -nightmare memory. - -It has occurred to me that in concluding my argument, it might be well -to tell of another such seed of the future, in the planting of which I -myself have had the pleasure of assisting. I refer to the Helicon Home -Colony, at Englewood, New Jersey, where I have been living while writing -this book. - -Our industries are organised at present under the competitive system; -and I do not believe that any coöperative method of production can drive -human beings to the same pitch of effort as they are driven by the lash -of wage-slavery. So I consider that any form of coöperation in -production is doomed to failure, under present conditions; and I should -prefer to watch from the outside any attempt to found “colonies” of the -Brook Farm and Ruskin type. The case is quite otherwise, however, when -it comes to coöperation in _distribution_, in the expenditure of one’s -income. We are familiar with hundreds of forms of that sort of -association—coöperative stores, benevolent fraternities, social clubs -and churches. The practicability of any such enterprise depends upon two -questions: First, are there a sufficient number of people who want the -same thing, and second, can they get it more effectively in combination -than otherwise. - -The idea of coöperation in domestic industry has been well worked out in -theory—notably in Mrs. Gilman’s book “The Home.” The first attempt to -realise it in practice, so far as I know, is the Helicon Home Colony. - -The plan was broached in an article which I published in _The -Independent_, in June of 1906. In the course of the article, I outlined -the situation as follows: - -Here am I on my little farm, living as my ancestors lived—like a cave -man or a feudal baron. I have my little castle and my retainers and -dependants to attend me, and we practise a hundred different trades: the -trade of serving meals, and the trade of cleaning dishes, the trade of -washing and ironing clothes, of killing and dressing meat, of churning -butter, of baking bread, of grinding meal, of raising chickens, of -cutting wood, of preserving fruit, of heating a house, of decorating -rooms, of training children, and of writing books! And all these crowded -into one establishment, in close proximity, and all jarring and clashing -with each other! And all carried on in the most primitive and barbarous -fashion, upon a small scale, and by unskilled hand labour. It takes a -hundred cooks to prepare a hundred meals badly, while twenty cooks could -prepare one meal for a hundred families, and do it perfectly. It costs a -hundred thousand dollars to build and equip a hundred kitchens; it would -cost only five thousand dollars to build one kitchen! But, of course, if -you have large-scale cooking at present, you can only have it under -capitalist auspices; and so it is associated in your minds with -uncleanness, and bad service, and high prices. It takes a hundred churns -and a hundred aching backs to make a thousand pounds of butter; it would -take only one machine and a man to tend it to make the same thousand -pounds, and the cost of making it would be cut ninety-five per cent. But -of course you cannot have large-scale butter-making except it is done -for profit—and that means adulteration and poisoning! It takes a hundred -ignorant nursemaids to take care of the children of a hundred families, -and develop every kind of ugliness and badness in them; it would take -only twenty or thirty trained nurses and kindergarten teachers to take -care of them coöperatively, and bring them up according to the teachings -of science. - -One could show this same thing in a thousand different forms, if it were -necessary; but it has all been reasoned out in Charlotte Perkins -Gilman’s book, “The Home,” and anyone to whom the idea is new may read -it there. The purpose of this paper is not to persuade anyone, but to -move to action those already persuaded. There must be, in and near New -York, thousands of men and women of liberal sympathies, who understand -this situation clearly, and are handicapped by its miseries in their own -lives—authors, artists and musicians, editors and teachers and -professional men, who abhor boarding houses and apartment hotels and yet -shrink from managing servants, who have lonely and peevish children like -my own, and are no fonder of eating poisons or of wasting their time and -strength than I am. There must be a few who, like myself, have realised -that it is a question of dragging through life a constantly increasing -burden of care, or making an intelligent effort and solving the problem -once for all. To such I offer my coöperation. I am not a business man, -but circumstances have forced me to take up this problem, and I am not -accustomed to failing in what I undertake. I have said that “Socialism -is not an experiment in government, but an act of will”; and I say the -same of this plan. Having gotten the figures from experts and found out -exactly what we can do, the one thing remaining is to go ahead and do -it. - -I suppose that the average professional man invests ten thousand dollars -in a home (or else pays rent equal to interest upon that sum); and that -he pays two thousand dollars a year living expenses for his family. Let -a hundred such families combine to found a coöperative home, and there -would be a million dollars for building and equipment, and two hundred -thousand dollars a year for running expenses; I believe that for half -the outlay five hundred people could live and enjoy comforts at present -possible only to millionaires. I have, however, no intention of asking -anyone to risk his money upon such a guess. I write this to find out if -there are people disposed to consider the project; and if there are -enough, I will have the plan figured upon by architects, contractors, -stewards, and other qualified experts, and have prepared a definite -business proposition, and a plan of organisation for a stock company. - -The following embodies my own conception of what such a “home colony” -should be. It would be located within an hour of New York, and would -have one hundred families, and three or four hundred acres of land, -healthfully located, near some body of water, and as unspoiled by the -hand of man as possible. It should have an abundant water supply and a -filtering plant; an electric light and power plant, and a large garden -and farm, raising its own stock, meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables, -and canning the last for winter use. It should be administered by a -board of directors, democratically elected. For the management of its -various departments salaried experts should be employed; machinery -should be installed wherever it could be made to pay, and the best -modern methods should be applied in every industry. All its purchases -should be in bulk and tested for quality; and, so far as the preparation -and serving of food is concerned, the processes should be kept as -aseptic as a surgical operation. - -We are accustomed to having our buildings for public purposes endowed by -persons with a great deal of money and few ideals; and so we consume -much space and material and accomplish little, exactly typifying our -civilisation. The buildings of this home colony should be of frame at -the outset, of simple and expressive design, each structure exactly -adapted to its specific purpose. The buildings should be conveniently -grouped—those for the children in one place, those for cooking and -eating in another, those for reading, for music and social intercourse, -for recreation and exercise, in still other places. The greater part of -the land would of course be given up to farm and woodland, and to the -individual dwellings of the families. The ground available for this -latter purpose should be divided into lots, priced according to size and -location, and eased to stockholders for long terms. Each would erect his -own home, according to his own taste—a home, of course, of a kind -hitherto unknown, with no provision for the cooking of food, or the -training of children, or other trades and professions. It would be a -place where the family met, to rest and play and sleep. It might be -large or small, anything that the owner chose to make it—my own would be -a four- or five-room cottage, of rustic design, and it would cost from -six to eight hundred dollars. Besides these there should be apartment -buildings, owned by the colony, and dormitories with rooms for single -men and women. - -As to the public buildings, there should be a large and beautiful dining -hall, and a modern, scientifically constructed kitchen. There should be -separate tables for each family, or for congenial groups of people. The -service should be unexceptionable, the food simple, but perfect in -quality and preparation; there should be a vegetarian service for those -who prefer this cheaper mode of life, and the charge for board should be -based upon the cost of the service. As to what the cost would be, with a -colony raising nearly all its own food upon the premises, I can only -submit three experiences of my own: First, it cost me for my family of -three to board in New York City, in one room and in the cheapest way, a -thousand dollars a year. Second, it cost us, living in a three-room -cottage in the country, doing our own work and buying our food from a -farmer at wholesale prices, seven hundred dollars a year. Third, it cost -us, living upon a sixty-acre farm, which represented a total investment -of four thousand dollars, doing no work ourselves but the managing, -paying a man and woman five hundred and forty dollars a year, having a -horse and carriage, and feeding five persons instead of three, a total -of less than six hundred dollars a year. Lest this should be -unbelievable, I put it in another form—the total expenses of the farm, -including labour, were less than twelve hundred dollars, the income was -six hundred dollars, and the net loss, or the cost to us of a year’s -living, was less than six hundred. And these figures, it should be -explained, included not merely board, but also household supplies and -repairs of all sorts, items which would appear in other places in the -community’s accounts. I will probably be laughed at, but I believe that, -granting the land, horses and machinery, buildings, equipment and -capital, the members of such a colony as I describe could be provided -with perfect service and an abundance of food of the best quality at a -total cost of one hundred dollars a year per person. - -So much for the coöperative preparation of food. And now for the caring -for children. There should be two separate establishments, one for -infants, who like to sleep, and one for children, who like to run and -shout. Both should be scientifically constructed and ventilated and kept -as clean as an up-to-date hospital; the food should be prepared under -the general direction of a physician. No building for children should be -over two stories high, and the upper windows should be beyond the reach -of children; no matches or exposed fire should be permitted, and there -should be a night watchman, fire extinguishers, and an automatic -sprinkling apparatus. These establishments should be under the -supervision of a board of women directors; and the actual work of caring -for the children, washing, dressing and feeding them, playing with them -and teaching them, should be done by trained nurses and kindergarten -teachers who live in the colony as the friends and social equals, of its -members. In other words, it is my idea that the caring for children -should be recognised as a profession, and that servants should have -nothing to do with it; it is my idea that it should be done in a place -built for the purpose, with floors for babies to crawl where there is no -dirt for them to eat, with playgrounds for children where there are no -stoves and no boiling water, no staircases and wells, no cats and dogs, -no workbaskets, lamps, pianos, sewing machines, jam closets, inkstands, -and authors’ writing tables. Instead, there should be sleeping rooms and -bedrooms, and sun parlours for nursing mothers; a separate building for -the sick; kindergarten rooms and indoor playgrounds for bad weather, and -a big all-outdoors romping ground, with sunny places and shady places, -swings, rocking horses, sand piles, and all other accessories of a -children’s heaven. Of course, any mother should come and play with or -care for her own children just as much as she pleased, or take them -home, as she chose; though I think that no one would care to assist this -plan who did not believe that children should be cared for in accordance -with the principles of science, and preserved from the corrupting -influence of grandmothers and aunts. Of course, any mother who believed -that her work in the world was caring for children, and who wished to -care for her own and others, according to the methods of the -commonwealth, would be free to do so, and to earn her living by doing -it. - -I have already explained that I should not regard this as an experiment -in Socialism; but I do think that those who undertook it would have to -be in sympathy with the spirit of Socialism, which is the spirit of -brotherhood and democracy. Whenever I have mentioned this plan to -friends they have always said: “The great difficulty would be to get -together a community of congenial people.” It does not seem to me that -this would be a difficulty at all. Every member of the community would -have his own home, to which he would invite his personal friends as he -chose; and the other members of the community he would meet in the same -way that he meets acquaintances in business and politics, in theatres, -restaurants, and clubs. I myself am the most unsociable of human beings -when I am busy, and have no idea of giving up my hermit’s tastes. In a -colony of a hundred families there ought to be persons of every kind of -inclination, and it would not be in the least necessary for anyone to -associate with those who were not congenial. - -Of course there are people in the world whom we should not want near us -at all; but such people, I think, would not care to join our colony. -Vulgar and snobbish people get along very well in the world as it is, -and do not find it a task to give orders to servants. Those who would be -interested in such a plan would be men and women who wished to practise -“plain living and high thinking”; and they would naturally wish to get -as far as possible from every suggestion of ostentation and -conventionality. They would establish the shirt-waist and the short -skirt as _en règle_, and would, I trust, allow me in without a dress -suit. They would be all hard-working people themselves, and they would -not look down upon honest labour. This spirit, if wisely and earnestly -cultivated, would solve the “servant problem” for the colony, and solve -the health problem for its members as well. I know business and -professional men who, when they need exercise, have to go down into the -basement and lift weights and pull at rubber straps; and they envy me my -farm, where I can hoe the garden, or pitch hay, or pick fruit, and not -merely benefit my body, but also put money in my purse. In this -community every member would be credited for the time he worked; and it -ought to become the custom for the men to help with the harvests, and -the women with the preserving of fruit, and the children with the berry -picking and the weeding of the gardens. I have no doubt that there are -thousands of young men and women in New York City, students of art and -music and the professions, who would be glad of a chance to earn their -way in a community where class feeling did not make labour degrading. I -appreciate the difficulties in the way of such a project; the chances at -present are against a coal-heaver’s being a socially possible person, -and I am not insisting that the day labourers should share in the -privileges of the community. But I do think that this should certainly -be the case with those whom we select to care for and teach our -children, and also, if possible, with those whom we permit to prepare -and serve our food; if I am not willing to shake a man’s hand or sit -next to him in a reading-room, I do not see why I should be willing to -eat what he has cooked. I personally know a young man who is studying -art, and who earns his living by washing dishes in a downtown -restaurant, because it takes only two or three hours a day of his time. -In Memorial Hall at Harvard University, in the sanitarium at Battle -Creek, and in many other places I might name, those who wait upon the -tables are college students; and anyone who knows the difference which -there is in the atmosphere of such a dining hall knows what I should -wish to attain. - - -The above article brought me replies from four or five hundred persons; -and committees were named, which met all through the summer to work out -the details of the plan. In October of the same year the purchase of -Helicon Hall was made, and the “Colony” began its career. Six months -after the publication of my first article, I contributed to _The -Independent_ an account of how the experiment was succeeding; I quote -from it the following paragraphs: - -We made many mistakes; I shall tell about some of them in due course, -for the benefit of future pioneers. But there is one thing to be said -here at the start: we made no mistake in believing in democratic -institutions. It was a point about which the critics of our plan were -all agreed, that it could not possibly work, because people could never -decide what they wanted. That dreadful bugaboo called “human nature” -would wreck us in the end. I, for my part, believed that people in -America were used to the methods of majority government, and I believed -that if we should apply those same methods in a coöperative home, a -group of intelligent and sincere people could manage to solve all their -problems. From the beginning our policy was publicity and democracy; and -from the beginning it brought us through. At the committee meetings -everyone had his say. And little by little you would see a majority -opinion taking shape on the question at issue, until, finally, when all -had been heard, the matter was put to a vote. There was no case where -the minority did not give way with all courtesy. And now that the colony -really exists we sit round the fireside and talk out our questions, and -as a rule we do not even have to take a vote—an informal discussion is -enough to make clear to everyone what is fair and right. - -I am a believer in the materialistic conception of history; I am -accustomed to interpret the characters of men from this position—to say -that competition has made them selfish and deceitful, and that -coöperation will make them beautiful and sincere. I think that I can see -it working out in this colony. We have founded it upon justice and -truth; socially we stand upon terms of equality, and economically we pay -for exactly what we get. These are the principles we have built upon, -and all take them for granted, and no other idea ever enters their -thought. - -[Illustration: - - _Photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals, N. Y._ - - HELICON HALL -] - -“But will this last?” you ask. I do not see how it can fail to last, and -to grow—admitting, of course, that my analysis of the cause is correct. -We did not start out with any enthusiasms and religious ecstasies; we -had simply cold common sense; we employed lawyers and business men to -put us on a sound basis. Our only real peril was at the beginning, -before the colony spirit was well developed in our members, and some of -us were tired and overworked; and even then there were no -misunderstandings that a little discussion could not clear up. Now -things are beginning to run smoothly, and we are realising some of the -benefits. - -We are as yet in our infancy, of course; there is no one of the -departments in which we do not intend to make numerous improvements; but -we have got over the roughest parts of the road, and we can begin to -look about us a little. We are living in what I think is the most -beautiful suburban town near New York. We have nine and a half acres of -land, sloping down from the western brow of the Palisades, and -commanding a view of thirty miles, and we have only half a mile to walk -to come out upon the Hudson, where there is scenery which tourists would -travel many miles to look at, if they only knew about it. The hall -itself has nearly six thousand square feet of floor space on the ground -floor alone, devoted to rooms for social purposes; there is a central -court filled with palms and rubber trees, which have grown to the very -top of the three-story building. We have a large pipe-organ, a swimming -pool and bowling alley, a theatre, and a billiard room. We have -thirty-five bedrooms, ranged in galleries about the court, so that we -can look out of our windows in the morning and see the sun rise, and -then look out of our door and see the tropics. We have the finest -heating system in the world—we pump fresh air in from outside, heat it -in a three-thousand-foot steam coil, and then distribute it to all the -rooms, with the result that we feel as well all the time as other people -feel when they take a trip to Arizona or the Adirondacks. In such a -place as this we have a comfortable bedroom or study, where we can go -and be by ourselves and never be disturbed, for $3 a week. And -downstairs we have a huge fireplace, where, if we happen to feel in a -sociable humour, we can sit and talk with our friends. And also, we have -a dining-room, where a group of cultivated people meet three times a day -to partake of wholesome and pleasant-tasting food, prepared by other -members of our big family, whose cleanliness and honesty are matters of -common knowledge to us. This last-named privilege costs us $5 a week, or -$4 if we only eat two meals; and we do not have to add to this price any -care or worry, because the price includes the salary of a superintendent -and a manager, who work sixteen hours a day each to straighten out all -the kinks and keep the machine running. - -Finally, this magical building contains a dormitory and a children’s -dining-room and play-room, where ten happy and healthy children receive -their lessons in practical coöperation at a cost of four dollars a week -for each child. It was over these “institutionalised infants” of ours -that the critics of our plan were most incensed. Several dear ladies who -had read my books and conceived a liking for me, sat down and wrote me -tearful letters to point out the wickedness of “separating the mother -from her children.” As a matter of fact, we have five mothers in the -colony, and the work of caring for the children is divided among four of -them. (The fifth is studying medicine in New York.) By the simple -process of combining the care of the ten children we accomplish the -following results: First, the labour and trouble of caring for each -child is reduced about two-thirds; second, the child has playmates, and -is happy all day long; third, we can afford to keep the child in a more -hygienic place than the average nursery—we have a pump driving fresh air -into his play-room all day; and, fourth, we can dispense with the -services of nurse maids, and go away, leaving the child in the care of a -friend. - -Of course we cannot have everything that we should like in the -“children’s department.” We have to wait for more colonists for that. -With only ten children we have to dispense with a resident physician; we -cannot even afford a kindergarten. And, of course, we have not the -scientifically constructed dormitory of which we dream; we have only a -converted theatre, and instead of the uniform cots and the dustproof -walls and all the rest, we have to make apologies to visitors. However, -our children are all enjoying it meantime; and our five mothers are -holding meetings and learning to coöperate. - -The other big problem which we promised to tackle is the servant -problem. All the world is waiting to hear about this, so we are told; -even the aristocracy of Englewood is waiting; the ladies come in and -tell us their troubles and ask if we will feed them in cases of -emergency. They were even going to invite me to lecture them about -it—until one of them recollected that I was a Socialist “of a -particularly dangerous type.” - -We have been only a few months at it; and we have still a great deal -left to accomplish. But we think that we have got far enough to claim to -have proven our thesis—that by means of coöperation, with the saving -which it implies, the introduction of system and of labour-saving -machinery, household labour can be lifted to the rank of a profession, -and people found to do it who can be admitted to the colony as members. -Those who wish to make fun of the idea have assumed this to mean that we -insist upon college diplomas from our cooks and chambermaids. It does -not mean that at all; as a matter of fact, we prefer to employ people -who have always earned their living by doing the work they do for us. It -means simply that we look for people who are cleanly and courteous and -honest; and that then, when they come into the colony, we treat them, -simply and as a matter of course, exactly as we treat everyone else. So -far as I know, there is no one here who has experienced the least -difficulty or unpleasantness in consequence. - -There remains to explain the financial organisation of the colony. The -property is owned by the Home Colony Company, a separate corporation, -which was formed to raise the necessary capital. The company puts the -building in thorough repair and equips it for use as a residence, and -the colony rents it upon a three-year lease, assuming responsibility for -the interest on the mortgages, the insurance, taxes, and other charges, -and paying eight per cent. dividends upon the company stock. The -ownership of stock is thus entirely optional. One may live in the colony -without contributing any capital. - -The Helicon Home Colony is a membership corporation. It is governed by a -board of directors, elected every six months by secret ballot. The only -conditions to residence in the colony are “congeniality” and freedom -from contagious disease; one may reside in the colony indefinitely -without becoming a member, but only members have the right to vote. The -conditions of membership are one month’s residence, election by a -four-fifths vote, and the payment of an initiation fee of $25. The -constitution of the colony provides for initiative, referendum and -recall of members of the board of directors; also for a complete -statement of the financial affairs of the colony, to be rendered every -three months. - - -I have quoted this at length because, as I said before, I believe that -it is the seed from which mighty forests are destined to grow. We should -never have given the time and strength which we have given to this -experiment, but for our certainty that all the world will some day be -following in our footsteps. We are living in a coöperative home because -we wish to do it—but some day you will be doing it because you _have_ -to. You get along badly enough with your servants, you admit; still you -get along somehow or other. But has it ever occurred to you what your -plight would be if, when you went to the “intelligence-office,” instead -of getting a bad servant, you got no servant at all? When that time -comes, you will be grateful to us pioneer “home-colonists.” - -It is a most interesting thing to watch; it is the Industrial Republic -in the making. We care nothing whatever about the intellectual opinions -of the people who come to live in the colony; but I have observed that -nearly every non-Socialist who has come here has been turned into a -Socialist in the course of a month or two. And that is not because we -argue with him, or bother him; it is simply because facts are facts. -What becomes of the old shop-worn argument that it would be necessary to -change human nature—when human nature is suddenly discovered to be so -kindly and considerate as it is in this big home of ours? And what -becomes of the ponderous platitudes about “Socialism versus -Individualism” in a place where so many different kinds of individuals -are developing their individualities. - -I am often moved to use this experiment of ours as an illustration of -what I said in the previous chapter, concerning the difference between -material and intellectual production. Here in Helicon Hall we have all -the dreadful machinery of paternalism which frightens our capitalist -editors and college presidents whenever they contemplate Socialism; we -submit ourselves to the blind rule of majorities—we allow a majority to -decide what we shall pay for our rooms, and when we shall pay it; to lay -out our _menu_, and refuse to give us pie for breakfast; to forbid our -giving tips, or whistling in the halls, or dancing after a certain hour -at night. And we have all the symbols of oppression—constitution and -by-laws and boards of directors and managers. And yet somehow, we are -freer than we ever were in the world before; because, by means of these -little concessions, we have made possible a _system_—and so flung from -our shoulders all at once the burden of care which used to wear the life -out of us. - -And in consequence of that, for the first time in our experience we find -ourselves really free with regard to the real things of life. We have -absolutely not a convention in the place. We do as we please, and we -wear what we please. We are free to come and go, where we please and -whenever we please. We have each our own rooms or apartments, to which -we retire, and it never comes into anyone’s mind to ask what we are -doing there. We may work all night and sleep all day, if we feel like -it—so little do we bother with each others’ affairs that I have known -people to be away for a day or two without being missed. - -And on the other hand, if we feel like company, we can have it; there is -always a group around our wonderful four-sided fireplace in the evening, -and you can always find someone willing to play billiards or go for a -walk. And as for our intellectual freedom—you should see the sparks -scatter when our half-score assorted varieties of “Fabians” and -“impossibilists,” “individualists” and “communist-anarchists,” all get -together after dinner! There are so many typewriters in Helicon Hall -that as you wander about the galleries in the morning you can fancy you -hear a distant battle with rapid-firing guns; and the products of the -industry vary from discussions of Yogi philosophy and modern psychic -research to magazine fiction, woman’s suffrage debates, and Jungle -“muck-raking.” And yet all these people share amicably in the ownership -of the fireplace and the swimming-pool and the tennis-court; providing -thereby a most beautiful illustration of the working out of the formula -laid down by Kautsky for the society of the future: “Communism in -material production, anarchism in intellectual.” - -It is working out so beautifully, that the spirit of it has got hold of -even our children, and they are holding meetings and deciding things. Of -our nine youngsters seven are under six years of age; and last night I -attended a meeting of the whole nine, at which a grave question was -gravely discussed: “When a child wakes up early in the dormitory, is it -proper to wake the other children, or should the child lie still?” After -a long debate, Master David (aged five) remarked: “All in favour, please -say Aye.” Everybody said “Aye.” - - -The above was written in the middle of December, 1906. On March 16, -1907, at four o’clock in the morning, Helicon Hall was burned to the -ground, and forty-six adults and fifteen children were turned out -homeless upon the snow. The story of our ill-fated experiment is left to -stand as it was first printed. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. - 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. - 3. 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