THE VIRTUOUS GRAFTERS AND THEIR GRAVE OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM
It is an old saying that the tree that bears the best apples has the
most clubs under it. Enough clubs are under the tree of Socialism to
stock a wood-yard. Some of the clubs bear the imprints of honest men.
Some do not. The great grafters of the present day are the most
persistent foes of Socialism. The great grafters say, not only that
Socialism is anti-religious, but that it would destroy the family. The
grafters also say that Socialism stands for free love.
It may be amusing to hear a grafter oppose Socialism on the ground that
it is against religion. It may be diverting to hear gentlemen with Reno
reputations charge that Socialism would establish free love and thus
destroy the family. But such charges cannot be dismissed by laughing at
those who make them. Honest men and women want to know the truth.
The truth is that there is no truth in the charge that Socialism is
against religion. Socialism is purely an economic matter. It has no more
to do with religion than it has to do with astronomy. It is no more
against religion than it is against astronomy. Men of all religious
denominations are Socialists, and men of no religious denomination are
Socialists. Nor is there any reason why this should not be so. The very
pith and marrow of Socialism is the contention that the people, through
the government, should own and operate, for their exclusive benefit, the
great machinery of production and distribution that is now owned and
operated by the trusts. Either this contention is sound or it is not.
Whether it is sound or not, a man’s religious beliefs cannot possibly
have anything to do with what he thinks of it.
But while Socialism is in no sense anti-religious, it is in one sense
pro-religious. So good an authority as the Encyclopedia Britannica
declares that “the ethics of Socialism and the ethics of Christianity
are identical.” One of the concerns of Christianity is to establish
justice upon earth. The only concern of Socialism is to establish
justice upon earth. Socialism seeks to establish justice by giving each
human being an equal opportunity to labor, while depriving each human
being of the power to appropriate any part of the product of another
human being’s labor. If the Socialist program contains a word of comfort
for either grafters or loafers, neither the grafters nor the loafers
have found it.
Nor does the Socialist program contain a word of comfort for the Reno
gentlemen. Socialists beg leave frankly to doubt the sincerity of
certain wealthy men who profess to believe that Socialism would destroy
the family by bringing about free love. Socialists say the best proof
that these men believe nothing of the kind is that they do not make
application to join the Socialist party. The wives of some of them
certainly make enough applications for divorce.
Addressing themselves to the members of the capitalist class, Socialists
therefore speak as follows:
“If the preservation of the family depends upon you, God help the
family. If the preservation of womanly women depends upon you, God help
the women. You are not all bad, but you are all doing bad. Some of you
are doing bad without knowing it; some of you are doing bad though
knowing it. But, whether you know it or not, all of you are doing bad
because your capitalist system is bad. Your system makes those of you
who would do good do bad. It makes you fatten upon the labor of
children, because your competitors are fattening upon the labor of
children. It makes you fatten upon the labor of women, because your
competitors are fattening upon the labor of women. It makes you fatten
upon the labor of men because your competitors are fattening upon the
labor of men. It makes you keep men, women and children poor, because in
no other way could you become rich.
“And you are the ones who are so fearful lest Socialism shall destroy
the home. Why do you not worry a little lest the poverty caused by
capitalism shall destroy the home? Why are you so slightly stirred by
the spectacle of little children torn from their firesides and their
schools to work for starvation wages in factories and department stores?
Why are you so well able to control your grief when the census reports
tell you that more than 5,000,000 women and girls have been compelled to
become wage earners because their husbands and fathers receive so little
wages that they cannot support their families? Why are you so well able
to bear up when the white-slave dealer gets the little girl from the
department store?
“None of these facts, nor all of these facts seem to suggest to you
wealthy gentlemen who are opposing Socialism that the conditions under
which you have become rich are doing anything to disrupt the family or
to bring about free love. But you profess to be stunned to a stare when
Socialists present a program that is devoted to the single purpose of
preventing you, who do no useful labor, from robbing those who do it
all. If you have other grounds for opposing Socialism, state them. But
in the name of common decency, don’t come forward as the protectors of
women and children. Your hands are not clean.”
Socialists contend that Socialism would do more to purify, glorify and
vivify the family than capitalism has ever done or can do. Their
reasoning takes this form:
_Unless poverty is good for the family, capitalism is not good for the
family, because capitalism means poverty or the fear of poverty for all
but a few and can never mean anything else. Capitalism can never mean
anything else because capitalism is essentially parasitical in its
nature. It lives and can live only by preying upon the working class._
_If plenty for everybody, without too much or too little for anybody
will purify, glorify and vivify the family, Socialism will purify,
glorify and vivify it. Socialism will place all of the great machinery
of modern production in the hands of the people, to be used fully and
freely for nobody’s advantage but their own._
Of course, the family cannot be improved without changing it. Upon this
obvious fact is based the whole capitalist attack upon Socialism as a
destroyer of the home. Socialists believe that freedom from poverty
would have a profound effect upon domestic relationships. And Socialist
writers have tried to picture the world as it will be when all of the
hot hoops of want have been removed from the compact little group that
is called the family.
They have pictured woman standing firmly upon her feet, with the ballot
in one hand and the power under the law to live from her labor with
comfort and self-respect, either inside or outside of her home. But no
Socialist has ever pictured a world in which woman would be compelled to
work outside her home if she did not want to. Such a picture is reserved
for capitalism in the present day. Socialists merely contend that
Socialism would make women economically independent, by guaranteeing to
them the full value of their labor. No woman would be compelled to marry
to get a home. No woman who had a home would be compelled by poverty to
stay in it if she were badly treated. For the sake of her children, she
might do so if she wished, but she could not be compelled to do so. She
would simply be free to act as her judgment might dictate—to profit from
a wise choice or to suffer from an unwise one.
Briefly, such is the Socialist picture of the Socialist world for women.
No Socialist contends that it is a picture of a perfect world. A perfect
world could contain neither fools, hotheads, nor vicious persons. The
hard conditions of the present world, and the harder conditions of those
long past have created too many fools, hotheads and vicious persons to
justify the hope that all such persons can quickly be made wise, cool
and good. Socialists, with all their optimism, are not so optimistic as
that. They have absolutely no program, patented or otherwise, for making
people good.
Their only contention is that they have a program under which people can
be good if they want to. They know, only too well, that with the coming
of Socialism, everybody will not suddenly want to be good. They expect
to have to deal with the bad man and the bad woman. But they do not
expect to have to deal with so many bad men and bad women as we now have
to deal with. They do not expect to have to deal with any men or women
who have been made bad by poverty or the fear of poverty. They do not
expect to have to deal with women who have been forced into prostitution
because there seemed to be no other way to keep soul and body together.
Socialists say that if there are any prostitutes under Socialism they
will be women who deliberately choose prostitution as a vocation.
Perhaps women, better than men, can judge how many such women there are
likely to be.
It is this picture of economically independent womanhood that is hailed
by the wealthy detractors of Socialism as the sign that the Socialists
plan to destroy the home and supplant it with free love. Socialists say
that such conclusions can be based only upon these assumptions:
That nothing but poverty keeps women from being “free-lovers.”
That if women were given the power to support themselves decently and
comfortably outside of the home, they would at once desert their
children, their husbands and “destroy the family.”
Socialists believe women can safely be trusted with enough money to live
on. Yet the word “trust,” as here used, is not quite the word.
Socialists do not believe it is within their province either to trust or
to distrust women. Socialists believe economic independence is a right
that women should demand and get, rather than a privilege that man
should grant or deny, as he may see fit. If women do well with economic
independence, well and good. If they do ill with it, still well and
good. If they have not yet learned to use economic independence, they
cannot begin learning too quickly, nor can they learn except by trying
to use it.
In any event, Socialists do not claim the right of guardianship over
women. They do not believe any human being, regardless of sex, has a
right to coerce another when that other is not invading the rights of
some other. They believe that women to-day are being coerced. Coerced by
poverty. Coerced by fear of poverty. Coerced by men who presume upon
their own economic independence and the economic dependence of women.
They cite, as proof of their beliefs, the growing number of divorces,
together with the fact that women are the applicants for most of the
divorces.
And, the astounding circumstance about all of this is that because
Socialists hold these views, they are denounced by rich grafters and
their retainers as “destroyers of the family,” and “free-lovers.”
The Socialists have said no more than Herbert Spencer said about the
folly of trying to promote happiness with coercion. They say that
weakness pitted against strength and dependence against independence
invite coercion—no more in a family of nations than in a family of
individuals; that a woman whose economic dependence prevents her from
doing what all of her instincts call upon her to do is coerced. Here is
what Herbert Spencer says in _Social Statics_ (p. 76):
“Command is a blight to the affections. Whatsoever of
beauty—whatsoever of poetry there is in the passion that unites the
sexes, withers up and dies in the cold atmosphere of authority. Native
as they are to such widely-separated regions of our nature, Love and
Coercion cannot possibly flourish together. Love is sympathetic;
Coercion is callous. Love is gentle; Coercion is harsh. Love is
self-sacrificing; Coercion is selfish. How then can they co-exist? It
is the property of the first to attract, while it is that of the last
to repel; and, conflicting as they do, it is the constant tendency of
each to destroy the other. Let whoever thinks the two compatible
imagine himself acting the master over his betrothed. Does he believe
that he could do this without any injury to the subsisting
relationship? Does he not know rather that a bad effect would be
produced upon the feelings of both by the assumption of such an
attitude? And, confessing this as he must, is he superstitious enough
to suppose that the going through of a form of word will render
harmless that use of command which was previously hurtful?”
Nobody ever called Spencer a “destroyer of the home,” or a “free-lover”
for that. Yet, if Spencer meant anything, he meant that coercion is
primarily wrong because it deprives the individual of the right to be
guided by his own judgment. Socialists contend that women have a right
to be guided by their own judgment, even if they make mistakes. Men do
so. Women rebel against the denial of their equal right. They rebel
against the coercion that is worked against them by their inability to
earn decent, comfortable livings outside of their homes. Socialists say
the family can never be what it might be or what it should be so long as
this warfare continues. They say that since the weak never coerce the
strong, there should be no economically weak members of the community.
Men and women should both be economically independent. Each is likely to
treat the other better if they are so.
Francis G. Peabody, Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard, has been
as fortunate as Spencer in escaping the charge of being a “destroyer of
the family” and a “free-lover.” The professor is quoted in the press as
follows:
“One thing is certain, the family is rapidly becoming disorganized and
disintegrated.... Divorces are being granted at an ever-increasing
rate. It may be computed that if the present ratio of increase in
population and in separation is maintained, the number of separations
of marriage by death would at the end of the twentieth century be less
than the number of separations by divorce....
“Owing to industrial life, the importance of the family is already
enormously lessened. Once every form of industry went on within the
family circle, but as the methods of the great industry are
substituted for work done in the home, the economic usefulness of the
family is practically outgrown.”
Then, painting a picture of the world to come, as he sees it, the
professor said:
“Thus with the coming of the social state, family unity will be for a
higher end. The wife, being no longer doomed to household drudgery,
will have the greater blessing of economic equality. Children will be
cared for by the community under healthful and uniform conditions, and
we shall arrive at what has been called the happy time when continuity
of society no longer depends upon the private nursery.”
But what Professor Peabody has said, or what Socialists have said with
regard to the next step in the evolution of the family is a little
beside the point, and is mentioned so at length only because the
detractors of Socialism make so much of it. The point is: _Ought the
world if it can, to get rid of poverty, and will Socialism do it?_ If
Socialism will rid the world of poverty, ought we to retain poverty to
keep women good? Who knows that economic independence would make women
bad? The grafters intimate that they know. But who believes the
grafters? The grafters say the present status of the family is so good
that we should be content to remain poor in order to preserve it.
Professor Peabody says the present status of the family is so bad that
it is falling to pieces. The professor has proof of his statement in
every divorce court. The grafters have proof of their statement in no
court, nor anywhere else.
Besides, the testimony of the grafters is properly subject to suspicion.
If Socialism would remove poverty it would also remove the grafters. If
Socialism would not remove poverty or the grafters, but would bring
about free love, do you believe the grafters would oppose it? Is it not
more likely that the grafters believe Socialism would remove both
poverty and themselves and that they are trying to throw a scare into
the people by howling about the threatened destruction of the family? If
not, why do not the grafters themselves do something to stop their own
destruction of the family? A $100 bill will make more happiness in a
home than a sermon against Socialism. Why don’t they give up their
dividends and let the workers have what they produce? Why don’t they
drum Professor Peabody out of Harvard? If the Socialists are
free-lovers, Professor Peabody is a free-lover. Why don’t they put him
out? Is it because he does not also advocate Socialism?
“Ah,” say the grafters, “but the lives of Socialists do not bear out
their protestations of devotion to the family. Look at the ‘affinities’
that some of them have had.”
“Quite true,” say the Socialists, “but one affinity does not make a
fire, nor do two make a forest. What if one or two Socialists of more or
less prominence have been divorced? Are affinities and divorces unknown
among Democrats and Republicans? Is the percentage of divorces greater
in Socialist families than it is in Democratic or Republican families?
Where is your proof? What have you got on Debs? What have you got on
Berger? What have you got on Seidel, the former Socialist Mayor of
Milwaukee? These men are in the limelight. If they should make a
mismove, you would blazon it. What do you know against them?”
The foregoing pretty well sums up the situation, so far as the free-love
and destroying-the-family charges are concerned. There is nothing in
them. Socialists are trying to eradicate poverty _now_. They have no
other immediate concern. If the eradication of poverty should send the
world to hell, the Socialists, if they can, will send the world to hell.
They do not believe anything that can be kept only with poverty is worth
keeping. Their observation has taught them that poverty is always and
everywhere a curse. They believe no other curse is nearly so great
except the curse of excessive riches.
Let us now pass to objections to Socialism that are both pertinent and
honest. It is the common belief of those who do not understand Socialism
that, under a Socialist form of government, the government would do
everything and the people could therefore do nothing; that “everybody
would be held down to a dead level,” and that as a consequence of the
individual’s inability to rise, nobody would have an incentive to work.
Here are several kindred objections rolled into one. Let us pick them to
pieces and see what is in them.
Let it be conceded that under Socialism the government would own and
operate all of the great industries. What of it? The people would do
precisely what they are doing now, except that they would do it through
the government for themselves, instead of through capitalists for
themselves and the capitalists. The people are now engaged in useful
labor. A small body of parasites are appropriating much that the people
produce. Under Socialism, the parasites will have to go to work. The
people will simply continue to work, though under better conditions and
for a greater return than they now receive.
Now, let us see just what is meant by “keeping everybody upon a dead
level.” As the world stands to-day, people differ chiefly as to wealth
and to intellect. If one person is not on a “dead level” with another it
is because he is more intelligent or more stupid than that other, or
because he is richer or poorer. Nobody, of course, believes that
Socialism or anything else could put Edison on a dead level with the
boss of Tammany Hall. If Socialism is to establish a dead level, it must
therefore be by establishing equality as to wealth.
Capitalism has pretty nearly done that already. The great bulk of the
world is poor, living from hand to mouth, worrying about the increased
cost of living, and going to the grave as empty-handed as when it came
into the world. Only a few have any money, beyond their immediate needs,
and as a rule that few is composed of men who perform no useful labor.
Here and there is a man who combines a little useful labor with a great
deal of cogitation as to how he can appropriate something that somebody
else has produced. He may have enough to cause him to mortgage his house
to buy an automobile, and to make a little pretence of affluence. But
financially he is a faker and he knows it. On the other hand, the men
who are not financial fakers are not workers. That is to say, either
they do no work that is useful to society, or the work they do that is
useful justifies but a small part of their incomes.
To illustrate: The owner of a great industry devotes his time to the
management of that industry. So far as his managerial activities pertain
to the production and distribution of his product, they are socially
useful. So far as they pertain to obtaining a profit for himself upon
that product they are not socially useful. The value of the socially
useful part of his activities may be approximately measured by what he
would pay another man for managing the manufacturing and distributing
end of his business. The extent to which he is a parasite upon the
community may be approximately measured by the difference between his
net income from the industry and the sum he would pay another man to
manage the manufacturing and distributing end of his business. A hired
manager might receive $5,000 a year. The capitalist proprietor may
receive $50,000 a year or he may receive nothing—he is in a gambler’s
game and must take a gambler’s chances. If he receives $50,000 a year
$45,000 of it is because he owns the machinery. If he did not own the
machinery, he himself would be compelled to hire out as a manager at
$5,000 a year. In other words, $45,000 a year is the price that the
workers pay the capitalist for the privilege of working with his
machinery. Socialists therefore contend that we are already on a dead
level of wealth, except as to the fact that we have permitted a few who
do little or no useful labor to rise above those who do nothing else.
Socialists, however, are not opposed in principle to the economic dead
level, and they do not believe anybody else is. If it were desirable
that each human being should have a billion dollars, and, by pressing a
button, each human being could have a billion dollars, Socialists do not
believe there would be an extended Alphonse and Gaston performance over
the ceremony of pressing the button. Socialists are opposed only to a
dead level that is so nearly level with the hunger line. They want to
raise the level to the point where it will comfort, not alone the
stomach, but the heart and the brain.
Now, mind you, Socialists have no patented wage scales that they intend
to force upon the people. If Socialism stands for anything, it stands
for the expression of popular will, and therefore it will be for the
people to say, when Socialism comes, whether the manager of a railway
system shall receive greater compensation than a train conductor on that
system. I do not fear contradiction when I say almost every Socialist
believes extraordinary ability should be rewarded with extraordinary
compensation—not $10,000 a month for the manager of a railway system
that pays its conductors $100 a month, but enough more than the
conductor to show that the manager’s services are appreciated at their
worth. Socialists would also give garbage men and sewer diggers
extraordinary wages, on the theory that their work is vitally necessary
to everybody else and extremely disagreeable to themselves.
But to satisfy those who want the dead level objection analyzed to the
bone, suppose everybody were to receive equal compensation? Should we
not have less injustice in the world than we have now? Should we have
any suffering from hunger and cold? Should we have so many crimes due to
poverty? Should we have any women forced into prostitution by poverty?
Should we have a single human being upon the face of the earth haunted
by the constant fear that he could not get work and could not get food?
We have all of these evils now. Are they worth thinking about? Are they
serious enough to justify us in trying to be rid of them? Granted, for
the sake of argument, that we cannot get rid of them without doing an
injustice to the railroad manager who would be paid no more than a
conductor—is it not better to do injustice to an occasional person who
would still be treated as well as any of the others, than to compel all
the others to endure present conditions? If not, the “good of the
greatest number” is a fallacy, and majority rule is a crime.
But would anyone question either the right or the expediency of such
action if the situation were reversed? Suppose that the present system
under which a few men own almost everything had made almost everybody
rich. Suppose the few who were not rich—corresponding in numbers to the
present capitalist class—were to demand that the rules of the game be so
changed that they could be made rich by making everyone else poor. Let
us suppose, even, that the few were to say that the present system,
while it worked satisfactorily for everybody else, worked an injustice
to them. Let us go farther and say that the mere handful of objectors
were right in such contention. Would the 95 per cent. of the people who
were prospering under the system nevertheless voluntarily overturn it
and impoverish themselves merely that 5 per cent. might become wealthy?
But there is still another side to the “dead level” objection. Is not
enough enough? Who but a glutton wants more food than he should eat? Who
but a fop wants more clothing than he needs to wear? Who but a man who
has been pampered with riches, or spoiled by the envy that riches so
often produce, wants more than a comfortable, roomy, sanitary house in
which to live? Does the possession of more things than these make the
few who have them happier?
Socialists doubt it. If they did not doubt it, they would still be
against conditions that give such advantages to a few who are not
socially useful while denying even ordinary comforts to everyone else.
And, right here, Socialists again ask these questions: “Even if such
luxuries be conceded as advantages, are we not paying too great a price
to give them to a few? Is it well that so many should have no home in
order that a few should have many homes? And, if there is to be any
difference in homes, ought not the difference to be in favor of those
who are most useful instead of those who are the most predatory?”
Socialists contend that under Socialism, everybody could not only have
work all the time, but that everybody could live as well as now does the
man whose income is $5,000 a year. They point to the fact that the man
who now spends $5,000 a year on his living, does not consume the
products of very much human labor. He has a comfortable house, but
comfortable, sanitary houses are not hard to build. Machinery makes
almost all of the materials that go into them, and makes them cheaply.
And a house properly built lasts a lifetime.
The $5,000–a-year man and his family also eat some food. But the flour
is made with machinery at low cost, as are also many other articles. The
raw materials come from the earth at the cost of human labor, but the
profits that are added to them by capitalists represent no sort of
labor.
So is it with clothing, furniture and everything else that the
$5,000–a-year man and his family consume. Everything is made cheaply and
rapidly with machinery. The workers who make these things get little.
The consumer pays much. The difference between the cost of making and
the selling price is what eats up a large part of the $5,000. Socialists
believe that by cutting out all of this difference and cutting out
enforced idleness, everybody could live as well as the $5,000–man now
lives. This is only an approximation, of course.
Now we come to the question of rising. What chance would a man have to
rise under Socialism?
Let us see, first, what is meant by rising. A man can rise with his
fellows or he can rise without them. I am speaking now, of course, only
of rising in the financial scale. Habits of thought have been inculcated
in us which too often prevent us from thinking of rising in any other
way. When we think of bettering our condition, we usually think in terms
of money. We seldom think in terms of greater leisure and greater
freedom to do the things that make life really worth while; knowing that
rich men are usually the slaves of their money, we nevertheless want to
be slaves.
Socialism is not intended to help the man who wants to rise financially
above his fellows. It throws out no bait to him. A few men will
undoubtedly rise a little above their fellows during the early stages of
Socialism, but they will not rise very much and there will not be very
many of them. Socialism is for all, not for a few. It is devoted to the
task of raising the financial standing of everybody who does useful
labor and lowering the financial standing of everybody who does not.
Socialists say that if Socialism were otherwise, it would be no better
than the lottery which is provided by the capitalist system. Socialists
do not believe in the lottery principle. They have observed that the
gentlemen who run lotteries, rather than the ones who play them, wear
the diamonds. Nor does the fact that an occasional washerwoman draws
$22,000 with which she knows not what to do, change their minds about
the game.
See what a game it is that we are now playing. We teach our small boys
that this is a country of glorious opportunities. In picturing the
possibilities before them, we know no bounds. We go even to the brink of
the ultimate and look over. Away in the distance, we see the White
House, and point to it. “There,” we say to our boys, “there is where you
may some day be. Each of you has a chance to be President. And, if you
should not be President, each of you has a chance to be a Rockefeller or
a Carnegie. Carnegie began as a bobbin boy. Rockefeller began as a clerk
in an oil store. If you are honest and industrious, perhaps you can do
as much.”
Now, what are the facts? Not one of those boys has much more chance of
becoming the President than a ring-tailed monkey has of becoming Caruso.
It is not that the boys are worthless—they may have in them better
timber than any past President ever contained. But unless we shorten the
Presidential term, and shorten it a good deal, we cannot accommodate
very many of the lads with the use of the White House. During the next
eighty years, even if no President shall serve more than one term, there
can be no more than twenty Presidents. During the same time—if we go on
repeating such foolishness—perhaps a billion boys will be solemnly
assured that each of them has a chance to be President, though, as a
matter of fact, only twenty boys can cash in on their chances.
Do we never consider how ridiculous we make ourselves? Do we never fear
the crushing question that some bright boy some day will ask: “Dad, just
how much do you think twenty chances in a billion are worth?”
I mention this only to show at what an early age we begin to hold out to
our boys false hopes of the future. I cannot attempt to explain the fact
that no boy asks his father why, in such a country of glorious
possibilities as this, he contents himself with driving a truck—but that
does not matter. The point is that we go on fooling the boys until they
are old enough to know better. They are not very old when this time
comes. The world teaches them young. It is the exceptionally stupid
young man who does not know, at the age of twenty-five, that the chances
against him in playing for a Presidency, a Rockefellership, or a
Carnegieship are infinitely greater than would have been the chances
against him, if he had lived two generations earlier and played the
Louisiana Lottery. Beside such a prospect, the chance of winning a
fortune at the race track looks like a certainty. Yet we drove the
Louisiana Lottery from the country because it was such a delusion that
it amounted to a swindle, and we are beginning to drive the race tracks
out of the country for the same reason.
Socialists believe it would be better not to promise so much and to
perform more. They believe it would be better to promise each
industrious man approximately the present comfort-equivalent of $5,000 a
year _and give it to him_, than to hold out to him the hope of great
riches and give him, instead, great poverty or great uneasiness because
of the fear of poverty.
The Socialists may be wrong in all of this, but they cheerfully place
the burden of proof that the world is well upon those who make the claim
that it is well. They ask the capitalists to find more than the
exceptional, rare man who has realized more than a fraction of the
promises that were held out to him in his youth. For every such man that
the capitalists may produce, the Socialists will undertake to find
twenty men who are living from hand to mouth, either in poverty or in
the fear of poverty.
Such is the Socialist position with regard to “rising” in the world. So
far as Socialists are able to discover, all of the rising that most
persons do is done in the early morning—about an hour before the 7
o’clock whistle blows.
“Early to bed and early to rise” is not in violation of the Socialist
constitution, but Socialists respectfully contend that the rising should
be made worth while. And, they also contend that if the people must be
promised something to make them rise, it is better, in the long run, to
promise something and give it to them than to promise more and not give
it to them. The best that can be said for the latter plan is that it has
been a long time tried and until recently has worked satisfactorily for
those who made the promises they failed to keep.