_Socialism_
The most eloquent passages from the pens of those who foresee
the definite solution of the problems of economic inequality.
Every aspect of the Socialist movement is represented.
Is It Nothing to You?
(_From "Merrie England"_)
BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD
(See pages 66, 121, 170, 383)
Go out into the streets of any big English town, and use your
eyes, John. What do you find? You find some rich and idle,
wasting unearned wealth to their own shame and injury, and the
shame and injury of others. You find hard-working people packed
away in vile, unhealthy streets. You find little children,
famished, dirty, and half naked outside the luxurious clubs,
shops, hotels, and theatres. You find men and women overworked
and underpaid. You find vice and want and disease cheek by jowl
with religion and culture and wealth. You find the usurer,
the gambler, the fop, the finnikin fine lady, and you find
the starveling, the slave, the vagrant, the drunkard, and the
harlot.
Is it nothing to you, John Smith? Are you a citizen? Are you a
man? And will not strike a blow for the right nor lift a hand
to save the fallen, nor make the smallest sacrifice for the
sake of your brothers and your sisters! John, I am not trying
to work upon your feelings. This is not rhetoric, it is hard
fact. Throughout these letters I have tried to be plain and
practical, and moderate. I have never so much as offered you
a glimpse of the higher regions of thought. I have suffered
no hint of idealism to escape me. I have kept as close to the
earth as I could. I am only now talking street talk about the
common sights of the common town. I say that wrong and sorrow
are here crushing the life out of our brothers and sisters. I
say that you, in common with all men, are responsible for the
things that are. I say that it is your duty to seek the remedy;
and I say that if you seek it you will find it.
These common sights of the common streets, John, are very
terrible to me. To a man of a nervous temperament, at once
thoughtful and imaginative, those sights must be terrible. The
prostitute under the lamps, the baby beggar in the gutter, the
broken pauper in his livery of shame, the weary worker stifling
in his filthy slums, the wage slave toiling at his task,
the sweater's victim "sewing at once, with a double thread,
a shroud as well as a shirt," these are dreadful, ghastly,
shameful facts which long since seared themselves upon my heart.
All this sin, all this wretchedness, all this pain, in spite of
the smiling fields and the laughing waters, under the awful and
unsullied sky. And no remedy!
These things I saw, and I knew that I was responsible as a man.
Then I tried to find out the causes of the wrong and the remedy
therefor. It has taken me some years, John. But I think I
understand it now, and I want you to understand it, and to help
in your turn to teach the truth to others.
Sometimes while I have been writing these letters I have felt
bitter and angry. More than once I have thought that when I
got through the work I would ease my heart with a few lines of
irony or invective. But I have thought better of it. Looking
back now I remember my own weakness, folly, cowardice. I have
no heart to scorn or censure other men. Charity, John, mercy,
John, humility, John. We are poor creatures, all of us.
The Sign of the Son of Man
BY VIDA D. SCUDDER
(See page 289)
Thy Kingdom, Lord, we long for,
Where love shall find its own;
And brotherhood triumphant
Our years of pride disown.
Thy captive people languish
In mill and mart and mine;
We lift to Thee their anguish,
We wait Thy promised Sign!
Thy Kingdom, Lord, Thy Kingdom!
All secretly it grows;
In faithful hearts forever
His seed the Sower sows;
Yet ere its consummation
Must dawn a mighty doom;
For judgment and salvation
The Son of Man shall come.
If now perchance in tumult
His destined Sign appear,--
The rising of the people,--
Dispel our coward fear!
Let comforts that we cherish,
Let old traditions die,
Our wealth, our wisdom perish,
So that He draw but nigh!
Poverty Makes All Unhappy
BY JOHN RUSKIN
(See pages 106, 491, 752, 756)
For my own part, I will put up with this state of things,
passively, not an hour longer. I am not an unselfish person,
nor an evangelical one; I have no particular pleasure in doing
good; neither do I dislike doing it so much as to expect to be
rewarded for it in another world. But I simply cannot paint,
nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else I like,
and the very light of the morning sky has become hateful to me,
because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of where I
know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly.
The One Duty
(_From "The Measure of the Hours"_)
BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK
(Belgian poet, dramatist and philosopher, born 1862)
Let us start fairly with the great truth: for those who possess
there is only one certain duty, which is to strip themselves
of what they have so as to bring themselves into the condition
of the mass that possesses nothing. It is understood, in every
clear-thinking conscience, that no more imperative duty exists;
but, at the same time, it is admitted that this duty, for lack
of courage, is impossible of accomplishment.
For the rest, in the heroic history of duties, even at the
most ardent period, even at the beginning of Christianity and
in the majority of the religious orders that made a special
cult of poverty, this is perhaps the only duty that has
never been completely fulfilled. It behooves us, therefore,
when considering our subsidiary duties, to remember that the
essential one has been knowingly evaded. Let this truth govern
us. Let us not forget that we are speaking in shadow, and that
our boldest, our utmost steps will never lead us to the point
at which we ought to have been from the first.
Land Titles
BY HERBERT SPENCER
(See page 460)
It can never be pretended that the existing titles to landed
property are legitimate. The original deeds were written with
the sword, soldiers were the conveyancers, blows were the
current coin given in exchange, and for seals, blood. Those who
say that "time is a great legaliser" must find satisfactory
answers to such questions as--How long does it take for what
was originally wrong to become right? At what rate per annum do
invalid claims become valid?
The Rights of Labor
BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(See pages 234, 623)
It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with
capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning
capital, somehow by the use of it, induces him to labor. This
assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital
shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own
consent, or buy them and drive them to do it without their
consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded
that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call
slaves.
Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as
here assumed.... Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, could never have existed if
labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital,
and deserves much the higher consideration.
A Marching Song
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
(See pages 376, 637)
We mix from many lands,
We march for very far;
In hearts and lips and hands
Our staffs and weapons are;
The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.
It doth not flame and wane
With years and spheres that roll,
Storm cannot shake nor stain
The strength that makes it whole,
The fire that moulds and moves it of the sovereign soul....
From the edge of harsh derision,
From discord and defeat,
From doubt and lame division,
We pluck the fruit and eat;
And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet....
O nations undivided,
O single people and free,
We dreamers, we derided,
We mad blind men that see,
We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be.
Ye sitting among tombs,
Ye standing round the gate,
Whom fire-mouthed war consumes,
Or cold-lipped peace bids wait,
All tombs and bars shall open, every grave and grate....
O sorrowing hearts of slaves,
We heard you beat from far!
We bring the light that saves,
We bring the morning star;
Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are....
Rise, ere the dawn be risen;
Come, and be all souls fed;
From field and street and prison
Come, for the feast is spread;
Live, for the truth is living; wake, for night is dead.
The Duties of Man
BY GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
(Italian patriot and statesman, 1805-1872; the deliverer of his
country here urges the deliverance of mankind)
We improve with the improvement of Humanity; nor without the
improvement of the whole can you hope that your own moral and
material conditions will improve. Generally speaking, you
cannot, even if you would, separate your life from that of
Humanity; you live in it, by it, for it. Your souls, with the
exception of the very few men of exceptional power, cannot
free themselves from the influence of the elements amid which
they exist, just as the body, however robust its constitution,
cannot escape from the effects of corrupt air around it. How
many of you have the strength of mind to bring up your sons to
be wholly truthful, knowing that you are sending them forth
to persecution in a country where tyrants and spies bid them
conceal or deny two-thirds of their real opinions? How many
of you resolve to educate them to despise wealth in a society
where gold is the only power which obtains honors, influence,
and respect, where indeed it is the only protection from the
tyranny and insults of the powerful and their agents? Who is
there among you who in pure love and with the best intentions
in the world has not murmured to his dear ones in Italy, _Do
not trust men_; _the honest man should retire into himself
and fly from public life_; _charity begins at home_,--and
such-like maxims, plainly immoral, but prompted by the general
state of society? What mother is there among you who, although
she belongs to a faith which adores the cross of Christ, the
voluntary martyr for humanity, has not flung her arms around
her son's neck and striven to dissuade him from perilous
attempts to benefit his brothers? And even if you had strength
to teach the contrary, would not the whole of society, with its
thousand voices, its thousand evil examples, destroy the effect
of your words? Can you purify, elevate your own souls in an
atmosphere of contamination and degradation?
And, to descend to your material conditions, do you think they
can be lastingly ameliorated by anything but the amelioration
of all? Millions of pounds are spent annually here in
England, where I write, by private charity, for the relief of
individuals who have fallen into want; yet want increases here
every year, and charity to individuals has proved powerless to
heal the evil--the necessity of collective organic remedies is
more and more universally felt....
There is no hope for you except in universal reform and in
the brotherhood of all the peoples of Europe, and through
Europe of all humanity. I charge you then, O my brothers, by
your duty and by your own interest, not to forget that your
first duties--duties without fulfilling which you cannot hope
to fulfil those owed to family and country--are to Humanity.
Let your words and your actions be for all, since God is for
all, in His Love and in His Law. In whatever land you may be,
wherever a man is fighting for right, for justice, for truth,
there is your brother; wherever a man suffers through the
oppression of error, of injustice, of tyranny, there is your
brother. Free men and slaves, YOU ARE ALL BROTHERS.
From Revolution to Revolution
BY GEORGE D. HERRON
(See page 730)
We have talked much of the brotherhood to come; but brotherhood
has always been the fact of our life, long before it became a
modern and insipid sentiment. Only we have been brothers in
slavery and torment, brothers in ignorance and its perdition,
brothers in disease and war and want, brothers in prostitution
and hypocrisy. What happens to one of us sooner or later
happens to all; we have always been unescapably involved in
a common destiny. We are brothers in the soil from which we
spring; brothers in earthquakes, floods and famines; brothers
in la grippe, cholera, smallpox and priestcraft. It is to the
interests of the whole of mankind to stamp out the disease that
may be starting tonight in some wretched Siberian hamlet; to
rescue the children of Egypt and India from the British cotton
mills; to escape the craze and blight of some new superstition
springing up in Africa or India or Boston. The tuberculosis of
the East Side sweatshops is infecting the whole of the city
of New York, and spreading therefrom to the Pacific and back
across the Atlantic. The world constantly tends to the level of
the downmost man in it; and that downmost man is the world's
real ruler, hugging it close to his bosom, dragging it down to
his death. You do not think so, but it is true, and it ought to
be true. For if there were some way by which some of us could
get free apart from others, if there were some way by which
some of us could have heaven while others had hell, if there
were some way by which part of the world could escape some form
of the blight and peril and misery of disinherited labor, then
would our world indeed be lost and damned; but since men have
never been able to separate themselves from one another's woes
and wrongs, since history is fairly stricken with the lesson
that we cannot escape brotherhood of some kind, since the whole
of life is teaching us that we are hourly choosing between
brotherhood in suffering and brotherhood in good, it remains
for us to choose the brotherhood of a co-operative world, with
all its fruits thereof--the fruits of love and liberty.
The March of the Workers
BY WILLIAM MORRIS
(English poet and artist, 1834-1896; founder of the "Arts and
Crafts" movement, and a lifelong Socialist)
What is this--the sound and rumor? What is this that all men hear,
Like the wind in hollow valleys when the storm is drawing near,
Like the rolling-on of ocean in the eventide of fear?
'Tis the people marching on.
CHORUS
Hark the rolling of the thunder!
Lo! the sun! and lo! thereunder
Riseth wrath, and hope, and wonder,
And the host comes marching on.
Forth they come from grief and torment; on they go towards
health and mirth.
All the wide world is their dwelling, every corner of the earth.
Buy them, sell them for thy service! Try the bargain what 'tis worth,
For the days are marching on. (Chorus)
Many a hundred years passed over have they labored deaf and blind;
Never tidings reached their sorrow, never hope their toil might find.
Now at last they've heard and hear it, and the cry comes down the wind
And their feet are marching on. (Chorus)
"Is it war then? Will ye perish as the dry wood in the fire?
Is it peace? Then be ye of us, let your hope be our desire.
Come and live! for life awaketh, and the world shall never tire;
And hope is marching on. (Chorus)
The Working Day
(_From "Capital"_)
BY KARL MARX
(A German Jew, father of modern revolutionary Socialism,
1818-1883. Of his epoch-making work the scope of this
collection permits but a brief passage, by way of illustration)
What is a working day? What is the length of time during
which capital may consume the labor-power whose daily value
it buys? How far may the working-day be extended beyond the
working time necessary for the reproduction of labor-power
itself? It has been seen that to these questions capital
replies: the working day contains the full twenty-four hours,
with the deduction of the few hours of repose without which
labor-power absolutely refuses its services again. Hence it is
self-evident that the laborer is nothing else, his whole life
through, than labor-power; that therefore all his disposable
time is by nature and law labor-time, to be devoted to the
self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for intellectual
development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for
social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental
activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a country
of Sabbatarians!)--moonshine! But in its blind, unrestrainable
passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labor, capital
oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical
maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for
growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It
steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air
and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating
it where possible with the process of production itself,
so that food is given to the laborer as to a mere means of
production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil
to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the
restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers, to
just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism,
absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal
maintenance of the labor-power which is to determine the
limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily
expenditure of labor-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory
and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of
the laborers' period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the
length of life of labor-power. All that concerns it is simply
and solely the maximum of labor-power, that can be rendered
fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening
the extent of the laborer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches
increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.
The Organization of Labor
BY LOUIS BLANC
(Early French Utopian Socialist, 1811-1882)
What is competition, from the point of view of the workman? It
is work put up to auction. A contractor wants a workman; three
present themselves.
"How much for your work?"
"Half a crown; I have a wife and children."
"Well; and how much for yours?"
"Two shillings; I have no children, but I have a wife."
"Very well; and now how much for yours?"
"One and eightpence are enough for me; I am single."
"Then you shall have the work."
It is done; the bargain is struck. And what are the other two
workmen to do? It is to be hoped they will die quietly of
hunger. But what if they take to thieving? Never fear; we have
the police. To murder? We have the hangman. As for the lucky
one, his triumph is only temporary. Let a fourth workman make
his appearance, strong enough to fast every other day, and his
price will run down still lower; there will be a new outcast,
perhaps a new recruit for the prison.
The Wastes of Capitalism
(_From "The Laws of Social Evolution"_)
BY THEODOR HERTZKA
(An Austrian economist, one of the few in the world who have dealt
with the real problem of economic science, the elimination of waste
and the rationalizing of the system of production. In the following
passage he investigates the question what proportion of human labor
is lost through our competitive methods of industry. The passage has
been frequently quoted, in a mistranslation which obscures its real
significance. The following is not so much a translation as a summary
of the essential statements)
We are to investigate what labor-power is required, under
circumstances now existing in Austria (1886), to produce the
most essential food-stuffs, and suitable housing and clothing.
For every family has been allowed a separate, five-roomed
house, about forty feet square, and calculated to last fifty
years. I have reckoned all men between the ages of sixteen and
fifty as capable of working: there being of such in Austria
about five million. I find that it requires the labor of
615,000 workers to supply the population of 22,000,000 with
food, clothing and shelter: that is to say, it requires only
12.3 per cent of available labor-power, and each worker needs
to labor only six weeks in the year, in order to provide for
himself and his family the necessary means of life.
In order that no one should conclude that the production of the
luxuries of the better situated part of the population consumes
the balance of the available labor-power, let us add the
labor-cost of all the luxury-industries in the widest sense.
Including the labor-cost of transportation, these require
315,000 workers, or 6.3 per cent of the available labor-power.
As a precaution, I increase the total of 18.6 per cent to 20
per cent, and so find that by working sixty days in the year,
the actual existing consumption should be fully satisfied.
There remains now this double question: What becomes of the
additional two hundred and forty days, which are actually spent
in labor? What abyss swallows up the other 80 per cent of the
nation's labor-power? And second, how can it be that in spite
of hard work, the majority are the prey of misery, when at the
utmost 20 per cent of the available labor-power should suffice
for the maintenance of all?
BY G. BERNARD SHAW
Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge
of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an
inferior.
From Revolution to Revolution
BY GEORGE D. HERRON
(See pages 730, 792)
Under the Socialist movement there is coming a time, and the
time may be even now at hand, when improved conditions or
adjusted wages will no longer be thought to be an answer to
the cry of labor; yes, when these will be but an insult to
the common intelligence. It is not for better wages, improved
capitalist conditions, or a share of capitalist profits that
the Socialist movement is in the world; it is here for the
abolition of wages and profits, and for the end of capitalism
and the private capitalist. Reformed political institutions,
boards of arbitration between capital and labor, philanthropies
and privileges that are but the capitalist's gifts--none of
these can much longer answer the question that is making the
temples, thrones and parliaments of the nations tremble. There
can be no peace between the man who is down and the man who
builds on his back. There can be no reconciliation between
classes; there can only be an end of classes. It is idle to
talk of good will until there is first justice, and idle to
talk of justice until the man who makes the world possesses the
work of his own hands. The cry of the world's workers can be
answered with nothing save the whole product of their work.
The Internationale
BY EUGENE POTTIER
(Hymn of the revolutionary working-class of all nations)
Arise, ye pris'ners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For Justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth.
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise, ye slaves! No more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
We have been naught, we shall be all.
REFRAIN
'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place,
The International Party
Shall be the human race.
Behold them seated in their glory,
The kings of mine and rail and soil!
What would you read in all their story
But how they plundered toil?
Fruits of the people's work are buried
In the strong coffers of a few;
In voting for their restitution
The men will only ask their due. (Refrain)
Toilers from shops and fields united,
The party we of all who work;
The earth belongs to us, the people,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the noisome birds of prey
Shall vanish from our sky some morning,
The blessed sunlight still will stay. (Refrain)
The Syndicalist
(_From "The Red Wave"_)
BY JOSEPH-HENRY ROSNY, THE ELDER
(See pages 585, 669)
Like a thousand others, Rougemont wanted the daily revolution,
which should ferment in the brain, not like a dream, but like
an energy, should manifest itself by a discipline and a method,
by daily exercises to keep it in condition. It was no longer
a question of brandishing the torch. It was necessary to
understand and to will, to organize social experience, to wage
petty warfare--sallies, raids, ambuscades; to entertain cold
hatreds, logical and continuous, to haggle over wages as the
Norman peasant haggles over chickens, and above all to create
a sort of happy excitement, a fraternal exaltation which would
bring to the gatherings ideas of security, of trust, of mutual
aid.
The strikes will be beautiful schools of social struggle.
They will open the path for magnanimous instincts, heroic and
adventurous, which air the human soul. Always better organized,
they will no longer reduce the artisan to famine, they will
demand of him only to undergo some privations which the
beauty of revolt will render almost joyous. They will develop
generosity, abnegation, the richest spirit of sacrifice. Their
recollection will awaken magnificent and powerful images; they
will lend to the social life that passionate unforeseen, which
is evoked in us by the virgin forest, the open plain, the
palpitant sea.... Everywhere, finally, the proletariat will
build its visions upon the basis of reality.
The Communist Manifesto (1848)
BY KARL MARX AND FREDERICK ENGELS
(See pages 234, 514, 795)
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They
openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let
the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a
world to win.
Workingmen of all countries, unite!
The Workingman's Program
BY FERDINAND LASSALLE
(One of the founders of the German Socialist movement,
1825-1864. Lassalle was arrested and sentenced to prison for
delivering the address from which the following paragraph is
taken)
Whoever invokes the idea of the working-class as the ruling
principle of society, does not put forth a cry that divides and
separates the classes of society. On the contrary, he utters a
cry of reconciliation, a cry which embraces the whole of the
community, a cry for the abolishing of all the contradictions
in every circle of society; a cry of union, in which all should
join who do not wish for privileges, for the oppression of the
people by privileged classes; a cry of love, which having once
gone up from the heart of the people, will forever remain the
true cry of the people, and whose meaning will still make it a
cry of love, even when it sounds as the people's war cry.
Jurgis Hears a Socialist Speech
(_From "The Jungle"_)
BY UPTON SINCLAIR
(See pages 43, 143, 194, 274, 403, 776)
It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature--a
mountain forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon
a stormy sea. Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of
confusion, of disorder, of wild and meaningless uproar. The man
was tall and gaunt, as haggard as his auditor himself; a thin
black beard covered half of his face, and one could see only
two black hollows where the eyes were. He was speaking rapidly,
in great excitement; he used many gestures--as he spoke he
moved here and there upon the stage, reaching with his long
arms as if to seize each person in his audience. His voice was
deep, like an organ; it was some time, however, before Jurgis
thought of the voice--he was too much occupied with his eyes
to think of what the man was saying. But suddenly it seemed
as if the speaker had been pointing straight at him, as if he
had been singled out particularly for his remarks; and so
Jurgis became suddenly aware of the voice, trembling, vibrant
with emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things
unutterable, not to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be
suddenly arrested, to be gripped, transfixed.
"You listen to these things," the man was saying, "and you say,
'Yes, they are true, but they have been that way always.' Or
you say, 'Maybe it will come, but not in my time--it will not
help me.' And so you return to your daily round of toil, you
go back to be ground up for profits in the world-wide mill of
economic might! To toil long hours for another's advantage;
to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and
unhealthful places; to wrestle with the spectres of hunger
and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease and
death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more
cruel; each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the
iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little tighter.
Months pass, years maybe--and then you come again; and again
I am here to plead with you, to know if want and misery have
yet done their work with you, if injustice and oppression
have yet opened your eyes! I shall still be waiting--there
is nothing else that I can do. There is no wilderness where
I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can
escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find
the same accursed system,--I find that all the fair and noble
impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of
martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized
and predatory Greed! And therefore I cannot rest, I cannot
be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness,
health and good repute--and go out into the world and cry out
the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by
poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats
and ridicule--not by prison and persecution, if they should
come--not by any power that is upon the earth or above the
earth, that was, or is, or ever can be created. If I fail
tonight, I can only try tomorrow; knowing that the fault must
be mine--that if once the vision of my soul were spoken upon
earth, if once the anguish of its defeat were uttered in human
speech, it would break the stoutest barriers of prejudice, it
would shake the most sluggish soul to action! It would abash
the most cynical, it would terrify the most selfish; and the
voice of mockery would be silenced, and fraud and falsehood
would slink back into their dens, and the truth would stand
forth alone! For I speak with the voice of the millions
who are voiceless! Of them that are oppressed and have no
comforter! Of the disinherited of life, for whom there is no
respite and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison,
a dungeon of torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little
child who toils tonight in a Southern cotton-mill, staggering
with exhaustion, numb with agony, and knowing no hope but the
grave! Of the mother who sews by candle-light in her tenement
garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the mortal hunger of
her babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags, wrestling
in his last sickness and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of
the young girl who, somewhere at this moment, is walking the
streets of this horrible city, beaten and starving, and making
her choice between the brothel and the lake! With the voice
of those, whoever and wherever they may be, who are caught
beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of Greed! With the voice
of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of the everlasting soul
of Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of its
prison--rending the bands of oppression and ignorance-groping
its way to the light!"
The Marseillaise
BY CLAUDE JOSEPH ROUGET DE LISLE
(French captain of engineers, 1760-1836. He composed this most famous
of all revolutionary songs in 1792, when the French republicans were
resisting the armies of all the kings and emperors of Europe. The
volunteers from Marseilles marched into Paris singing it--"seven
hundred Marseillais who know how to die")
Ye sons of toil, awake to glory!
Hark, hark, what myriads bid you rise;
Your children, wives and grandsires hoary--
Behold their tears and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,--
Affright and desolate the land,
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?
CHORUS
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
Th' avenging sword unsheathe!
March on, march on, all hearts resolved
On Victory or Death.
With luxury and pride surrounded,
The vile, insatiate despots dare,
Their thirst for gold and power unbounded,
To mete and vend the light and air;
Like beasts of burden would they load us,
Like gods would bid their slaves adore,
But Man is Man, and who is more?
Then shall they longer lash and goad us? (Chorus)
O Liberty! can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy generous flame?
Can dungeons' bolts and bars confine thee,
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept bewailing,
That Falsehood's dagger tyrants wield;
But Freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing! (Chorus)
Trial for High Treason
(_From "My Life"_)
BY AUGUST BEBEL
(A German woodworker, 1840-1912, who founded the Social-democratic
party, and guided it for fifty years. In the following passage
from his memoirs he tells of his first imprisonment, as a part of
Bismarck's long campaign to destroy the Socialist movement in Germany)
The jury comprised six tradesmen, one aristocratic landowner,
one head forester, and a few small landowners. The court
was crowded every day. The Minister of Justice and the
Attorney-General were present on several occasions. As the
leading papers of Germany gave extensive reports of the
trial, their readers became for the first time aware of what
Socialism meant and at what it aimed. The trial thus became
eminently serviceable from the propagandist point of view;
and we, especially Liebknecht, who was the chief propagandist,
were not loath to avail ourselves of this opportunity. But
our opponents, day after day, were hard at work seeking to
prejudice the jury against us, meeting them in the restaurant,
when the events of the day were discussed, and exploiting these
to our disadvantage.
On the thirteenth day the "pleadings" for and against us
commenced. The Public Prosecutor closed his speech with the
words: "If you do not find against the accused, you will
sanction high treason for all time to come."
Our counsel replied, and tore the indictment to tatters; but
after two and a half hours of deliberation the jury came in
with a verdict of guilty. The Public Prosecutor demanded
two years' imprisonment in a fortress, and the court passed
judgment accordingly.
Our party friends were exceedingly angry on hearing the verdict
and sentence; but I, feeling reckless, proposed that we should
go together to Auerbach's cellar--rendered famous by the scene
in Goethe's _Faust_--and have a bottle of wine. Our wives,
who received us with tears, were not pleased with our levity;
but finally, plucky women that they were, they came with us.
My doctor consoled my wife in a curious way. "Frau Bebel," he
said, "if your husband gets a year in prison you may rejoice,
for he needs a rest!"
[Illustration: ONCE YE HAVE SEEN MY FACE YE DARE NOT MOCK
CARTOON FROM THE "NEW AGE," LONDON]
[Illustration: JUSTICE
WALTER CRANE
(_English artist and Socialist, 1845-1915_)]
Jimmie Higgins
BY BEN HANFORD
(A New York printer who literally gave his life for the
Socialist movement, dying of consumption caused by overwork. He
was the party's candidate for Vice-president in 1904)
A comrade who shall be called Jimmie Higgins because that is
not his name, and who shall be styled a painter for the very
good reason that he is not a painter, has perhaps had a greater
influence in keeping me keyed up to my work in the labor
movement than any other person.
Jimmie Higgins is neither broad-shouldered nor thick-chested.
He is neither pretty nor strong. A little, thin, weak,
pale-faced chap. But he is strong enough to support a mother
with equal physical disabilities. Strong enough to put in ten
years of unrecognized and unexcelled service to the cause of
Socialism.
What did he do? Everything.
He has made more Socialist speeches than any man in America.
Not that he did the talking; but he carried the platform on his
bent shoulders when the platform committee failed to be on hand.
Then he hustled around to another branch and got their platform
out. Then he got a glass of water for "the speaker." That
same evening or the day before he had distributed hand-bills
advertising the meeting.
Previously he had informed his branch as to "the best corner"
in the district for drawing a crowd. Then he distributed
leaflets at the meeting, and helped to take the platform down
and carry it back to headquarters, and got subscribers for
Socialist papers.
The next day the same, and so on all through the campaign, and
one campaign after another. When he had a job, which was none
too often, for Jimmie was not an extra good workman and was
always one of the first to be laid off, he would distribute
Socialist papers among his fellows during the noon hour, or
take a run down to the gate of some factory and give out
Socialist leaflets to the employees who came out to lunch.
What did he do? Jimmie Higgins did everything, anything.
Whatever was to be done, THAT was Jimmie's job.
First to do his own work; then the work of those who had become
wearied or negligent. Jimmie Higgins couldn't sing, nor dance,
nor tell a story--but he could DO the thing to be done.
Be you, reader, ever so great, you nor any other shall ever do
more than that. Jimmie Higgins had no riches, but out of his
poverty he always gave something, his all; be you, reader, ever
so wealthy and likewise generous, you shall never give more
than that.
Jimmie Higgins never had a front seat on the platform; he never
knew the tonic of applause nor the inspiration of opposition;
he never was seen in the foreground of the picture.
But he had erected the platform and painted the picture;
through his hard, disagreeable and thankless toil it had come
to pass that liberty was brewing and things were doing.
Jimmie Higgins. How shall we pay, how reward this man? What
gold, what laurels shall be his?
There's just one way, reader, that you and I can "make good"
with Jimmie Higgins and the likes of him. That way is to be
like him.
Take a fresh start and never let go.
Think how great his work, and he has so little to do with. How
little ours in proportion to our strength!
I know some grand men and women in the Socialist movement. But
in high self-sacrifice, in matchless fidelity to truth, I shall
never meet a greater man than Jimmie Higgins.
And many a branch has one of him.
And may they have more of him.
FROM THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
but God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and
things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things
which are not, to bring to naught things that are.
Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket
BY VACHEL LINDSAY
(See pages 335, 599, 672, 699)
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
Man is a curious brute--he pets his fancies--
Fighting mankind to win sweet luxury;
So he will be, tho' law be clear as crystal,
Tho' all men plan to live in harmony.
Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.
Progressivism and After
BY WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING
(American Socialist writer, born 1877)
A certain measure of progress is to be expected through the
self-interest of the governing classes. This is the national,
or industrial, efficiency movement.
Far greater progress is to be expected from the successive
rise into power and prosperity of new elements of the
middle-class--and of the upper layers of the wage-earners. This
is the progressive and the Laborite movement.
By far the greatest progress is to be expected as a direct or
indirect result of the revolt of the lower classes. For this is
the only force that can be relied upon to put an end to class
government and class exploitation of industry, and to establish
that social democracy which is the real or professed aim of
every progressive movement.
BY OTTO VON BISMARCK
(Speech in the German Reichstag, 1884)
I acknowledge unconditionally the right to work, and I will
stand up for it as long as I am in this place.
The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race
(_From the Preface_)
BY ROBERT OWEN
(Early English Utopian Socialist, 1771-1858)
The Past has been inevitable, and necessary to produce the
Present; as the Present will necessarily produce the Future
state of human existence. The past has produced a repulsive,
unorganized, ignorant, and to a great extent, miserable state
of society, over the world, as now existing. The present,
however, has been made to develop all the materials requisite
to produce an attractive, organized, enlightened and happy
future, for the human race, in all parts of the globe.
Those informed know that all the materials are amply prepared,
ready to create a happy future; but that to effect this result,
the materials must be wisely applied, to form a scientific
arrangement of society, based on an accurate knowledge of human
nature. Means are, therefore, now required to induce the public
to investigate this important subject, which is in direct
opposition to the false and fatal association of ideas which,
from birth, have been forced into the minds and upon the habits
of people.
Running a Socialist Paper
(_From "Comrade Yetta"_)
BY ALBERT EDWARDS
(See pages 205, 244)
For half an hour they bent their heads over balance-sheets.
It was an appalling situation. The debt was out of all
proportion to the property. To be sure much of it was held by
sympathizers, who were not likely to foreclose. But there was
no immediate hope of decreasing the burden. Any new income
would have to go into improvements. The future of the paper
depended not only on its ability to carry this dead weight, but
on the continuance of the Pledge Fund and on Isadore's success
in begging about a hundred dollars a week.
"It's hopeless," Yetta said. "You might run a good weekly on
these resources, but you need ten times as much to keep up a
good daily."
"Well, if you feel that way about it, Yetta, I hope you'll
resign at to-night's meeting." His eyes turned away from her
face about the busy room, and his discouraged look gave place
to one of conviction. A note of dogged determination rang in
his voice.--"Because it isn't hopeless! Our only real danger
is that the executive committee may kill us with cold water.
If we can get a committee that believes in us, we'll be all
right. A paper like this isn't a matter of finance. That's what
you--and the other discouragers--don't see. You look at it from
a bourgeois dollar-and-cents point of view. It's hopeless,
is it? Well, we've been doing this impossible thing for more
than a year. It's hopeless to carry such indebtedness? Good
God! We started with nothing but debts--nothing at all to
show. Every number that comes out makes it more hopeful. The
advertising increases. The Pledge Fund grows. Why, we've got
twelve thousand people in the habit of reading it now. That
habit is an asset which doesn't show in the books. Six months
ago we had nothing!--not even experience. Why, our office force
wasn't even organized! And now you say it's hopeless--want us
to quit--just when it's getting relatively easy. We----"
Levine's querulous voice rose above the din of the
machines--finding fault with something. A stenographer in a
far corner began to count, "One! two! three!" Every one in the
office, even the linotypers and printer's devil beyond the
partition took up the slogan.
"O-o-oh! Cut it out and work for Socialism."
The tense expression on Isadore's face relaxed into a confident
grin.
"That's it. You think we need money to run this paper? We're
doing it on enthusiasm. And nothing is going to stop us."
Renovating the State
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(See pages 235, 522, 631)
What is strange, there never was in any man sufficient faith in
the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design
of renovating the State on the principle of right and love.
All those who have pretended this design have been partial
reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of
the bad State. I do not call to mind a single human being
who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the
simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full
of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained
except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits
them dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and
churchmen; and men of talent, and women of superior sentiments,
cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue
to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm.
The New State
(_From the "Panama-Pacific Ode"_)
BY GEORGE STERLING
(See pages 504, 552, 597)
O dark and cruel State,
Whose towers are altars unto self alone,--
Whose streets with tears are wet,
And half thy councils given unto hate!
Shall Time not hurl thy temples stone from stone,
And o'er the ruin set
A fairer city than the years have known?
Out of thy darkness do we find us dreams,
And on the future gleams
The vision of thy ramparts built anew.
Mammon and War sit now a double throne,
Yet what we dream, a wiser Age shall do.
Be ye lift up, O everlasting gates
Of that far City men shall build for man!
O fairer Day that waits,
The splendor of whose dawn we shall not see,
When selfish bonds of family and clan
Melt in the higher love that yet shall be!
O State without a master or a slave,
Whose law of light we crave
Ere morning widen on a world set free!
The Coming Dawn
(_From "Woman"_)
BY AUGUST BEBEL
(See page 807)
Every day furnishes fresh proof of the rapid growth and
spread of the ideas that we represent. In all fields there is
tumult and push. The dawn of a fair day is approaching with
mighty strides. Let us then ever battle and strive forward,
unconcerned as to "where" and "when" the boundary-posts of the
new and better day for mankind will be raised. And if, in the
course of this great battle for the emancipation of the human
race, we should fall, those now in the rear will step forward;
and we shall fall with the consciousness of having done our
duty as human beings, and with the conviction that the goal
will be reached, however the powers hostile to humanity may
struggle or strain in resistance. _Ours is the world, despite
all; that is, for the workers and the woman._
Labor Irresistible
(_From "Violence and the Labor Movement"_)
BY ROBERT HUNTER
(American Socialist writer, born 1874)
Here it is, "the self-conscious, independent movement of the
immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority,"
already with its eleven million voters and its fifty million
souls. It has slowly, patiently, painfully toiled up to a
height where it is beginning to see visions of victory. It has
faith in itself and in its cause. It believes it has the power
of deliverance for all society and for all humanity. It does
not expect the powerful to have faith in it; but, as Jesus
came out of despised Nazareth, so the new world is coming out
of the multitude, amid the toil and sweat and anguish of the
mills, mines, and factories of the world. It has endured much;
suffered long ages of slavery and serfdom. From being mere
animals of production, the workers have become the "hands"
of production; and they are now reaching out to become the
masters of production. And, while in other periods of the
world their intolerable misery led them again and again to
strike out in a kind of torrential anarchy that pulled down
society itself, they have in our time, for the first time in
the history of the world, patiently and persistently organized
themselves into a world power. Where shall we find in all
history another instance of the organization in less than half
a century of eleven million people into a compact force for
the avowed purpose of peacefully and legally taking possession
of the world? They have refused to hurry. They have declined
all short cuts. They have spurned violence. The "bourgeois
democrats," the terrorists, and the syndicalists, each in
their time, have tried to point out a shorter, quicker path.
The workers have refused to listen to them. On the other hand,
they have declined the way of compromise, of fusions, and of
alliances, that have also promised a quicker and shorter road
to power. With most maddening patience they have declined to
take any other path than their own--thus infuriating not only
the terrorists in their own ranks but those Greeks from the
other side who came to them bearing gifts. Nothing seems to
disturb them or to block their path. They are offered reforms
and concessions, which they take blandly, but without thanks.
They move on and on, with the terrible, incessant, irresistible
power of some eternal, natural force. They have been fought;
yet they have never lost a single great battle. They have
been flattered and cajoled, without ever once anywhere being
appeased. They have been provoked, insulted, imprisoned,
calumniated, and repressed. They are indifferent to it all.
They move on and on--with the patience and the meekness of a
people with the vision that they are soon to inherit the earth.
From the Magnificat
BY MARY, MOTHER OF JESUS
He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the
proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the
mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He
hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath
sent empty away.
To Labor
(_From "In This Our World"_)
BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
(See pages 200, 209, 421, 662)
Shall you complain who feed the world?
Who clothe the world?
Who house the world?
Shall you complain who are the world,
Of what the world may do?
As from this hour
You use your power,
The world must follow you!
The world's life hangs on your right hand!
Your strong right hand,
Your skilled right hand,
You hold the whole world in your hand,
See to it what you do!
Or dark or light,
Or wrong or right,
The world is made by you!
Then rise as you never rose before!
Nor hoped before!
Nor dared before!
And show as was never shown before,
The power that lies in you!
Stand all as one!
See justice done!
Believe, and Dare, and Do!
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
BY ROBERT TRESSALL
(See page 663. In the character of "Owen," the author here
tells of his own efforts to awaken his fellow-workers in
England)
Toward the end of March the outlook began to improve. By
the middle of April Rushton and Company were working eleven
and a half hours a day. In May, as the jobs increased and
the days grew longer, they were allowed to put in overtime;
and, as the summer months came round, once more the crowd of
ragged-trousered philanthropists began to toil and sweat at
their noble and unselfish task of making money for Mr. Rushton.
Papering, painting, white-washing, distempering, digging
up drains, repairing roofs, their zeal and enthusiasm were
unbounded. Their operations extended all over the town. At all
hours of the day they were to be seen going to or returning
from jobs, carrying planks and ladders, paint and whitewash,
chimney pots and drain pipes, a crowd of tattered Imperialists,
in broken boots, paint-splashed caps, their clothing saturated
with sweat and plastered with mortar. The daily spectacle of
the workmen, tramping wearily home along the pavement of the
Grand Parade, caused some annoyance to the better classes, and
a letter appeared in _The Obscurer_ suggesting that it would
be better if they walked on the road. When they heard of this
letter most of the men adopted the suggestion and left the
pavement for their betters.
On the jobs themselves, meanwhile, the same old conditions
prevailed, the same frenzied hurry, the same scamping of the
work, slobbering it over, cheating the customers; the same
curses behind the foreman's back, the same groveling in his
presence, the same strident bellowing from Misery: "Get it
_Done_! For Gord's sake, get it _Done_! 'Aven't you finished
yet? We're losing money over this! If you chaps can't tear into
it we'll have an _Alteration_!" and the result was that the
philanthropists often tore into it to such an extent that they
worked themselves out of a job, for business fluctuated, and
occasionally everybody was "stood off" for a few days....
They were putting new floors where the old ones were decayed,
and making two rooms into one by demolishing the parting wall
and substituting an iron girder. They were replacing window
frames and sashes, replastering cracked ceilings and walls,
cutting openings and fitting doors where no doors had ever been
before. They were taking down broken chimney pots and fixing
new ones in their places. They were washing the old whitewash
off the ceilings, and scraping the old paper off the walls. The
air was full of the sounds of hammering and sawing, the ringing
of trowels, the rattle of pails, the splashing of water brushes
and the scraping of the stripping knives. It was also heavily
laden with dust and disease germs, powdered mortar, lime,
plaster, and the dirt that had been accumulating within the old
house for years. In brief, those employed there might be said
to be living in a Tariff Reform Paradise--they had Plenty of
Work.
At twelve o'clock Bob Crass, the painter's foreman, blew a
prolonged blast upon a whistle and all hands assembled in the
kitchen, where Bert the apprentice had already prepared the tea
in the large galvanized iron pail placed in the middle of the
floor. By the side of the pail were a number of old jam jars,
mugs, dilapidated teacups, and one or two empty condensed milk
tins. Each man on the "job" paid Bert threepence a week for
the tea and sugar--they did not have milk--and although they
had tea at breakfast time as well as at dinner the lad was
generally considered to be making a fortune....
As each man came in he filled his cup, jam jar, or condensed
milk tin with tea from the steaming pail, before sitting down.
Most of them brought their food in little wicker baskets, which
they held on their laps, or placed on the floor beside them.
At first there was no attempt at conversation and nothing was
heard but the sounds of eating and drinking and the frizzling
of the bloater which Easton, one of the painters, was toasting
on the end of a pointed stick at the fire.
"I don't think much of this bloody tea," suddenly remarked
Sawkins, one of the laborers.
"Well, it oughter be all right," retorted Bert; "it's bin
bilin' ever since 'arf past eleven...."
"Has anyone seen old Jack Linden since 'e got the push?"
inquired Harlow.
"I seen 'im Saturday," said Slyme.
"Is 'e doin' anything?"
"I don't know: I didn't 'ave time to speak to 'im."
"No, 'e ain't got nothing," remarked Philpot. "I seen 'im
Saturday night, an' 'e told me 'e's been walkin' about ever
since."
Philpot did not add that he had "lent" Linden a shilling, which
he never expected to see again.
"'E won't be able to get a job again in a 'urry," remarked
Easton; "'e's too old."
"You know, after all, you can't blame Misery for sackin' 'im,"
said Crass after a pause. "'E was too slow for a funeral."
"I wonder how much _you'll_ be able to do when you're as old as
he is?" said Owen.
"Praps I won't want to do nothing," replied Crass, with a
feeble laugh. "I'm goin' to live on me means."
"I should say the best thing old Jack could do would be to go
in the workhouse," said Harlow.
"Yes: I reckon that's what'll be the end of it," said Easton,
in a matter-of-fact tone.
"It's a grand finish, isn't it?" observed Owen. "After working
hard all one's life to be treated like a criminal at the end."
"I don't know what you call bein' treated like criminals,"
exclaimed Crass. "I reckon they 'as a bloody fine time of it,
an' we've got to find the money."
"Oh, for Gord's sake, don't start no more arguments," cried
Harlow, addressing Owen. "We 'ad enough of that last week. You
can't expect a boss to employ a man when 'e's too old to work."
"Of course not," said Crass.
Old Joe Philpot said--nothing.
"I don't see no sense in always grumblin'," Crass proceeded;
"these things can't be altered. You can't expect there can be
plenty of work for everyone with all this 'ere labor-savin'
machinery what's been invented."
"Of course," said Harlow, "the people what used to be employed
on the work what's now done by machinery has to find something
else to do. Some of 'em goes to our trade, for instance. The
result is there's too many at it, and there ain't enough work
to keep 'em all goin'."
"Yes," said Crass, eagerly, "that's just what I say. Machinery
is the real cause of all the poverty. That's what I said the
other day."
"Machinery is undoubtedly the cause of unemployment," replied
Owen, "but it's not the cause of poverty; that's another matter
altogether."
The others laughed derisively.
"Well, it seems to me to amount to the same thing," said
Harlow, and nearly everyone agreed.
"It doesn't seem to me to amount to the same thing," Owen
replied. "In my opinion we are all in a state of poverty even
when we have employment. The condition we are reduced to when
we're out of work is more properly described as destitution.
"Poverty," continued Owen after a short silence, "consists in a
shortage of the necessaries of life. When those things are so
scarce or so dear that people are unable to obtain sufficient
of them to satisfy all their needs, they are in a condition
of poverty. If you think that the machinery which makes it
possible to produce all the necessaries of life in abundance
is the cause of the shortage, it seems to me there must be
something the matter with your minds."
"Oh, of course we're all bloody fools, except you," snarled
Crass. "When they was servin' out the sense they give you such
a 'ell of a lot there wasn't none left for nobody else."
"If there wasn't something wrong with your minds," continued
Owen, "you would be able to see that we might have 'Plenty
of Work' and yet be in a state of destitution. The miserable
wretches who toil sixteen or eighteen hours a day--father,
mother, and even the little children--making matchboxes, or
shirts or blouses, have 'Plenty of Work,' but I for one don't
envy them. Perhaps you think that if there was no machinery,
and we all had to work thirteen or fourteen hours a day in
order to obtain a bare living, we should not be in a condition
of poverty? Talk about there being something the matter with
your minds--if there were not you wouldn't talk one day about
Tariff Reform as a remedy for unemployment, and then the next
day admit that machinery is the cause of it! Tariff Reform
won't do away with machinery, will it?" ...
No one answered, because none of them knew of any remedy; and
Crass began to feel sorry that he had reintroduced the subject
at all.
"In the near future," continued Owen, "it is probable that
horses will be almost entirely superseded by motor cars and
electric trams. As the services of horses will no longer be
required, all but a few will die out; they will no longer
be bred to the same extent as formerly. We can't blame the
horses for allowing themselves to be exterminated. They have
not sufficient intelligence to understand what's being done.
Therefore, they will submit tamely to the extinction of the
greater number of their kind.
"As we have seen, a great deal of the work which was formerly
done by human beings is now being done by machinery. This
machinery belongs to a few people; it is being worked for the
benefit of those few, just the same as were the human beings it
displaced.
"These few have no longer any need of the services of so
many human workers, so they propose to exterminate them! The
unnecessary human beings are to be allowed to starve to death!
And they are also to be taught that it is wrong to marry and
breed children, because the Sacred Few do not require so many
people to work for them as before!"
"Yes, and you'll never be able to prevent it, mate!" shouted
Crass.
"Why can't we?"
"Because it can't be done!" cried Crass, fiercely. "It's
impossible!" ...
There was a general murmur of satisfaction. Nearly everyone
seemed very pleased to think that the existing state of things
could not possibly be altered.
Wealth Against Commonwealth
BY HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD
(American social reformer, pioneer in what later came to be
known as "muck-raking"; 1847-1903)
One of the largest stones in the arch of "consolidation,"
perhaps the keystone, is that men have become so intelligent,
so responsive and responsible, so co-operative, that they can
be trusted in great masses with the care of vast properties
owned entirely by others; and with the operation of complicated
processes, although but a slender cost of subsistence is
awarded them out of fabulous profits. The spectacle of the
million and more employees of the railroads of this country
despatching trains, maintaining tracks, collecting fares and
freights, and turning over hundreds of millions of net profits
to the owners, not one in a thousand of whom would know how
to do the simplest of these things himself, is possible only
where civilization has reached a high average of morals and
culture. More and more the mills and mines and stores, and
even the farms and forests, are being administered by other
than the owners. The virtue of the people is taking the place
Poor Richard thought only the eye of the owner could fill. If
mankind driven by their fears and the greed of others can do
so well, what will be their productivity and cheer when the
"interest of all" sings them to their work?
Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution
BY PETER KROPOTKIN
(This work of the great Russian scientist is a most important
contribution to modern thought, overthrowing as it does the
old-fashioned view of "Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin," which
was the basis of early biologic teaching and is still the basis of all
bourgeois economic ideas)
As soon as we study animals--not in laboratories and museums
only, but in the forest and prairie, in the steppe and in
the mountains--we at once perceive that though there is an
immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst
various species, and especially amidst various classes of
animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps
even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence
amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to
the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as
mutual struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to
estimate, however roughly, the relative numerical importance
of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect
test, and ask Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are
continually at war with each other, or those who support one
another?" we at once see that those animals which acquire
habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have
more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective
classes, the highest development and bodily organization. If
the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support
this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual
aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle; but
that as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far
greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development
of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and
further development of the species, together with the greatest
amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual,
with the least waste of energy.
Co-operation and Nationality
BY "A.E." (GEORGE W. RUSSELL)
(See pages 252, 513)
Wherever there is mutual aid, wherever there is constant give
and take, wherever the prosperity of the individual depends
directly and obviously on the prosperity of the community about
him, there the social order tends to produce fine types of
character, with a devotion to public ideas; and this is the
real object of all government. The worst thing which can happen
to a social community is to have no social order at all, where
every man is for himself and the devil may take the hindmost.
Generally in such a community he takes the front rank as well
as the stragglers.
New Worlds for Old
BY H. G. WELLS
(See pages 519, 675, 712)
Socialism is to me a very great thing indeed, the form and
substance of my ideal life and all the religion I possess. I
am, by a sort of predestination, a Socialist. I perceive I
cannot help talking and writing about Socialism, and shaping
and forwarding Socialism. I am one of a succession--one of a
growing multitude of witnesses, who will continue. It does
not--in the larger sense--matter how many generations of us
must toil and testify. It does not matter, except as our
individual concern, how individually we succeed or fail, what
blunders we make, what thwartings we encounter, what follies
and inadequacies darken our private hopes and level our
personal imaginations to the dust. We have the light. We know
what we are for, and that the light that now glimmers so dimly
through us must in the end prevail.
Socialism and Motherhood
BY JOHN SPARGO
(American Socialist writer and lecturer, born in England, 1876)
The message of Socialism is a message of Life and Liberty
and Love. It promises to destroy the political, social, and
economic disabilities imposed upon womanhood; to give the
mothers of the race equal freedom with the fathers of the race.
It pledges itself to destroy those conditions of life and labor
which weaken the mothers and deny to their babies the right to
be well born. It claims for every child all the advantages of
healthful and beautiful environment. It would destroy the dread
fear of want which drives the mother from the service of her
child into the service of a great factory. It would bestow upon
every child, as its rightful heritage, opportunity to develop
all its powers. It would apply the principles of the family to
the state. It would abolish the body and soul debasing labor of
children, and give to the little ones their Kingdom of Laughter
and Dreams. It would end the waste of human lives by poverty,
and make true wealth possible for all. It would put an end to
war--the war of classes as well as the war of nations--and
organize and direct the genius and power of the race, now so
largely given to destruction, to the enrichment of life for all
and the realization of Human Brotherhood.
Socialism comes to the mother as an Angel of Light and Life,
bearing the torch of a great hope. "I am Life Abundant,"
cries the angel, "and I bring you as gifts the Freedom and
Opportunity and Joy and Peace for which you have prayed. See,
my Sister, Mother of Men, all these are yours if you will put
forth your hand and receive them."
Progress in Medicine
BY JAMES P. WARBASSE
(Contemporary American physician)
Servetus and Harvey were not spurred on to the discovery of the
circulation of the blood by the expectation of profits. One was
burned to the stake and the other was mobbed for his pains. The
whole history of medicine, with its splendid list of martyrs,
is a glorious refutation of the sophistry that competition for
profits is important to human progress. The competitive system,
which surrounds and harrasses medical advancement, hindered it
from the beginning, and retards it still.
The Socialist Faith
BY GEORGE D. HERRON
(See pages 730, 792, 799)
Despite the paradoxical and deathful nature of our capitalist
civilization, despite the industrial insanity and spiritual
chaos, a new world is surely forming; dimly may we discern the
white pinnacles and the green gardens of the gathering city
of man. There is approaching--and it is not so far off as it
seems--a world arranged by the wisdom hid in the human heart;
a world that is the organization of a strong and universal
kindness; a world redeemed from the fear of institutions and of
poverty. Even now, derided and discouraged as it is, socially
untrained and inexperienced as it is, if the instinctual and
repressed kindness of mankind were suddenly let loose upon the
earth, sooner than we think would we be members one of another,
sitting around one family hearthstone, and singing the song of
the new humanity....