CHAPTER II

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TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIALISM

TWENTIETH CENTURY

SOCIALISM

_WHAT IT IS NOT; WHAT IT IS:

HOW IT MAY COME_

BY

EDMOND KELLY, M.A., F.G.S.

Late Lecturer on Municipal Government at Columbia University,

in the City of New York

Author of "Government or Human Evolution,"

"Evolution and Effort," etc., etc.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1911

Copyright, 1910

BY

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

First Edition, May, 1910

Reprinted, November, 1910

May, 1911

THE SCIENTIFIC PRESS

ROBERT DRUMMOND AND COMPANY

BROOKLYN, N.Y.

INTRODUCTION

I

No one whose intellectual parts are in working order believes that the

industrial world will go back to an unorganized individualistic

production and distribution of wealth. No one whose moral sense is

awake desires to see the chief means of production owned and

controlled by a small number of monstrously wealthy men, however great

their ability or good their intentions. Nevertheless, most persons of

moral sense and normal mentality are disturbed when one suggests in so

many words that if industry cannot henceforth be individualistic and

should not be owned and controlled by the Big Few, it will,

apparently, have to be owned and controlled by the Many. This

paradoxical psychology possibly indicates that we queer human beings

do our real thinking and perform our occasional feats of moral

self-examination in lucid intervals, alternating with states of

mind--and conscience--which were better not described in non-technical

language.

Edmond Kelly was a man whose lucidity was not interrupted. It was a

necessity of his nature to think clearly and coherently. Not less

necessary was it for him to think comprehensively, for his sympathy

was boundless. Every phase of life interested him. He found nothing

but meanness contemptible; and nothing but injustice moved him to

hate. To such a mind the partial view is intolerable. A fact must be

seen from every side and its relations to other facts must be traced

out. From his earliest manhood Mr. Kelly looked upon the struggle for

existence as both evolution and effort. Accepting the Darwinian

explanation of life, he yet could not admit that man is powerless to

control his fate. Physical evolution shades into physiological, and

physiological evolution into psychological. Effort, foresight, and

directed effort are products of evolution, but having been produced,

they become forces in further evolution. In the higher evolution of

man, they have become principal forces. From the moment that Mr. Kelly

grasped this thought his mind was busy with it through all the years

of his exceedingly active life, mastering its implications, examining

it in its social or collective, no less than in its individual aspect,

and forecasting the chief lines of constructive effort by an

enlightened mankind industrially and politically organized for the

most effective cooperation.

Yet it was not until a few years before his death that Mr. Kelly

became a declared Socialist. The slow advance to his ultimate

conclusions was characteristic. Though his mind moved swiftly, his

intellectual integrity compelled him to examine every position as he

went on. Because of these qualities his books form a series,

consecutive in premisses and argument; a logical sequence

corresponding to their chronological order. Thus, in his early work,

"Evolution and Effort," Mr. Kelly was content to do thoroughly one

particular thing, namely, to demonstrate that the Spencerian

philosophy of evolution could be accepted without committing mankind

to the practical programme of _laissez faire_, upon which Mr. Spencer

himself so strongly insisted. This work Mr. Kelly did so well that

there is no need for anyone to do it over, and it provided a firm

foundation for his further constructive efforts. _The Popular Science

Monthly_, which was then, under the editorship of Professor Edward L.

Youmans, unreservedly committed to Spencerian views, acknowledged that

it was the most telling attack upon what Professor Huxley had called

"administrative nihilism" that had been made in any quarter. The main

ideas of "Evolution and Effort" were elaborated and clinched in the

two large volumes on "Government or Human Evolution," and were

concretely applied to pressing practical questions in the unsigned

book, "A Programme for Workingmen."

Each of the two volumes on "Government" was devoted, as "Evolution and

Effort" had been, to establishing firmly a specific proposition. When

Mr. Kelly began writing the first volume, which bore the sub-title

"Justice," he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at

Columbia University and was intensely interested in the movement for

the reform of municipal politics in New York city. Believing that

adequate organization was the chief need, he had founded the City Club

and the subsidiary Good Government Clubs. In the discussions which

this movement called forth, he says: "One fact stood out with

startling conspicuousness. Not one out of a thousand was able to

formulate a clear idea as to the principles upon which he stood; upon

one measure he was an Individualist; upon another, a Collectivist; one

day he was for strong governmental action; the next for liberty of

contract; and of those who presented the claims of expediency and

justice respectively, no one was able to say what justice was."

It seemed, therefore, to Mr. Kelly that on the theoretical side we

needed first, and above all else, a clear conception of justice as an

end to be attained. For conclusions already arrived at in "Evolution

and Effort" made it impossible for him to believe that justice is

satisfied by merely "rewarding every man according to his

performance." Seeing in evolution possibilities beyond present

attainment, he believed that a way should be found to enable every man

to achieve his potential performance. Thus his notion of justice,

derived from the principle of evolution, became substantially

identical with that which had been set forth two thousand years ago by

Plato in _The Republic_. To quote Mr. Kelly's own words: "Justice may,

then, be described as the effort to eliminate from our social

conditions the effects of the inequalities of Nature upon the

happiness and advancement of man, and particularly to create an

artificial environment which shall serve the individual as well as the

race, and tend to perpetuate noble types rather than those which are

base."

It was inevitable that with such a conception of justice in mind, a

thinker scientifically so remorseless as Mr. Kelly was, should find

individualistic prejudices shaken before he completed his task.

"Beginning with a strong bias against Socialism of every kind," he was

forced before he reached the end of his first volume to "a reluctant

recognition that by collective action only could the uncorrupted many

be rescued from the corrupt few, and could successful effort be made

to diminish the misery of poverty and crime."

Having arrived at this conclusion, Mr. Kelly was able to make his

second volume on the respective claims of Individualism and

Collectivism an exposition which, for clearness of insight, acuteness

of philosophical observation, wealth of historical knowledge, and

sanity of judgment, has few equals in the modern literature of social

problems. He demonstrated the inevitable failure of individualism as

an adequate working programme for a complex civilization. He showed

that collectivism must be accepted, whether we like it or not, if we

desire justice; and, more than this, he showed, not speculatively, but

from concrete and experimental data, that a civilized mankind may be

expected to like a reasonable collectivism when it begins to

understand and to adopt it, far better than it has liked

individualism, and for the adequate reason that collectivism will

diminish misery and increase happiness.

Not even upon the completion of this remarkable volume, however, was

Mr. Kelly quite ready to take the final step of identifying himself

with the Socialist party. So strong was that nature within him which,

without theological implications, we may call the spiritual or

religious, that he would have been glad if he could have seen the

possibility of attaining the ends which Socialism contemplates through

a movement essentially subjective, that is to say, through

developments of the intellectual and moral nature of man which would

impel all human beings, irrespective of class distinctions, to work

together spontaneously and unselfishly, for the creation of a

wholesome environment and essential justice in social relations. It

was this feeling that led him to write the anonymously published,

"Practical Programme for Workingmen," in which essentially socialistic

measures are advocated, but with strong emphasis upon the vital

importance of character and sympathy.

When a strong-minded man of strict intellectual honesty has thus

advanced, step by step, from one position to another, at every stage

of his progress surveying the whole field of human struggle;

observing it dispassionately, as a scientific evolutionist; observing

it sympathetically, "as one who loves his fellowmen," comes at last to

the socialistic conclusion, and devotes the last weeks of his life to

the preparation of a new statement of socialistic doctrine, the fact

is more significant, as an indication of the way mankind is going,

than are all the cries of "lo here, lo there" that arise from the din

of party discussion. In Mr. Kelly's case the significance was deepened

by all the circumstances of taste and association. Intensely

democratic in his relations to men, Mr. Kelly was in breeding, in

culture, in delicacy of feeling an aristocrat of the purest type.

Educated at Columbia and at Cambridge, his university acquaintance and

his political and professional activities in New York and in Paris had

kept him continually in touch with what the socialist calls "the

capitalist class." In joining the Socialist party he jeopardized

friendships and associations that meant more to him than anything else

save the approval of his own conscience.

The book now given to the public, written when he knew that his days

were numbered, is, all in all, the most remarkable of his works. All

writers of experience know that it is far easier to write a first

statement of a newly discovered truth, than to restate the chief

principles of a system already partly formulated; a system more or

less vague where it is most vital, more or less unscientific and

impossible where it is most specific. No one knew better than Mr.

Kelly did that while the larger-minded leaders of the Socialist

movement would generously welcome any thought which he had to give,

there would be some of the rank and file who would feel that, in

differing from the accredited writers, he was revealing himself as a

convert not yet quite informed on all tenets of the creed--perhaps

not even quite sound in the faith. A less enthusiastic nature, or one

less resolutely determined to complete his life work as best he could,

would have shrunk from such an undertaking as this book was. That

under the circumstances he could put into it the vigor of thought and

of style, the incisive criticism, the wealth of fact and illustration;

above all, the freshness of view, the practical good sense and the

strong constructive treatment which we find in these pages, is indeed

remarkable.

How clearly he saw what sort of a book was needed, is best indicated

in his own account of what he desired to do. It should be first of

all, he thought, comprehensive. Socialism has been presented from the

economic standpoint, from the scientific, from the ethical and from

the idealistic. As Mr. Kelly saw it, Socialism is not merely an

economic system, nor merely an idealistic vision. It is a consequence

and product of evolution. "Science has made it constructive," he says,

"and the trusts have made it practical." It is ethical because "the

competitive system must ultimately break upon the solidarity of

mankind," because the survival of the fit is not the whole result of

evolution. The result still to be attained is "the improvement of

all." And Socialism is idealistic because it not only contemplates,

but gives reasonable promise of "a community from which exploitation,

unemployment, poverty and prostitution shall be eliminated."

But besides making an exposition of Socialism as a whole and in all

its parts, Mr. Kelly aimed to make a book "for non-socialists." With

this purpose in view he has kept closely to concrete statement and

above all has tried to avoid vagueness and loose generalization. He

has described possibilities in terms that all know and understand.

With the precision of the trained legal mind, he seizes the essential

point when he says: "It is not enough to be told that there are a

thousand ways through which Socialism can be attained. We want to see

clearly one way." With the last strength that he had to spend Mr.

Kelly showed one way; and no bewildered wayfarer through our baffling

civilization, however he may hesitate to set his feet upon it, will

venture to say that it is not clear.

FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

NEW YORK, April 19, 1910.

II

An immense revolution, a wonderful revolution, is opening in the mind

of the human race; a new driving force is taking hold of the souls of

men--the devotion to the welfare of the whole; a new sense, with all

the intensity of a new-born feeling, is emerging in the consciousness

of men--the sense that one cannot himself be healthy or happy unless

the race is happy and healthy. A hundred theories appearing here and

there, a thousand organizations springing up, a million acts of

individuals everywhere, attest each day the presence and the growing

power of this vast solidarizing movement.

Among these manifestations throughout the world, the most pronounced

and the most clearly defined is that compact, fiercely vital

organization known as the international Socialist party. Yet the

Socialist party is not the movement, any more than the cresting billow

is the torrent. It is an imperatively necessary element; but the

movement itself is vastly broader and deeper than any manifestation of

it.

An uncounted multitude in all lands are gradually becoming conscious

of this sweeping tendency and of their own part in it--a multitude as

yet not bearing any specific title. Out of these a considerable number

are fully conscious of the movement, and are willing partakers. These

we might call solidarists, in token of their conviction that the goal

ought to be and will be an economic solidarity. But of even these it

is only a part who are distinctively to be called Socialists, only

those who have perceived two certain mighty facts: first, that men's

mass-relations in the process of making a living are fundamental to

their other relations, to their opinions and motives, and to all

revolutions; and, second, that the chief agency in bringing about

changes in the great affairs of the human race has always been and

continues to be the pressure and clash between enduring masses of men

animated by opposite economic interests. The Socialist is one who sees

these social and historic facts and whose action is guided by such

sight; the non-Socialist solidarist is one who, though animated by the

socializing impulses, has not yet perceived these two most weighty

facts.

Now Edmond Kelly, as was natural from his antecedents, was for nearly

the whole of his life a non-Socialist solidarist. But, about two years

before his death, being at the height of his powers of insight and

intellect, he attained the clear vision of the "class-struggle," and

no longer had any doubts where he himself belonged in the army of

humanity--he became and remained a comrade--a loyal comrade.

There is a certain bit of doggerel, said to derive from Oxford, which

tells us that:

"Every little boy or gal,

Who comes into this world alive,

Is born a little Radical,

Or else a small Conservative."

And this all-pervading division penetrates even that most radical of

bodies, the Socialist party. That party has its own conservative and

radical wings--its right and its left--and Edmond Kelly is distinctly

of the right.

One who is inclined by instinct to the one wing, and by logic to the

other, can realize the indispensableness of both--the special

contribution which each makes, and which the other cannot make, to the

common cause. The motive of this note is to appeal to the comrades of

the left not to shut their eyes to the value of this book, not to

forego its special usefulness. For the very attitude of its author,

which may be distasteful to them--his making appeals which they no

longer make, his using forms of speech which they reject, his making

so little use of that which is their main appeal, fit him especially

to influence the minds of that numerous fringe of educated persons who

must evidently be first made "rightists" before they can become

"centrists" or "leftists." It may even be imagined that the difficult

type of working man, he who thinks himself too noble-minded to respond

to class appeal, might begin to rouse himself if he could once be

brought under the charm of this book.

Aware that he had not long to live, Mr. Kelly hastened to finish the

first draft of the book, and indeed he survived that completion only

two weeks. He knew that considerable editorial work was needed, and

this he entrusted to Mrs. Florence Kelley, author of "Some Ethical

Gains through Legislation" and translator of Marx' "Discourse on Free

Trade," and of Friedrich Engels' work on the "Condition of the

Working Class in England." She undertook and has fulfilled this trust,

and has been aided throughout by the untiring labors of Shaun Kelly,

the author's son. Thus this book of Mr. Kelly's is doubly a memorial

of love--of his for man, and of ours for him.

RUFUS W. WEEKS.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY NOTES: PAGE

By Professor Franklin H. Giddings v

By Rufus W. Weeks xii

INTRODUCTORY 1

BOOK I

_WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT_

CHAPTER

I. SUBJECTIVE OBSTACLES TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIALISM 18

Vested Interests 18

II. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 23

1. Bourgeois, Revolutionist, and Evolutionist 23

(_a_) The Bourgeois Point of View 23

(_b_) The Revolutionist Point of View 24

(_c_) The Evolutionist Point of View 27

III. MISREPRESENTATION AND IGNORANCE 31

1. Socialism is not Anarchism 31

2. Socialism is not Communism 33

3. Socialism will not Suppress Competition 36

4. Socialism will not Destroy the Home 40

5. Socialism will not Abolish Property 42

6. Socialism will not Impair Liberty 46

7. Conclusion 51

BOOK II

_WHAT CAPITALISM IS_

EVILS OF CAPITALISM 53

I. CAPITALISM IS STUPID 57

1. Overproduction 57

2. Unemployment 66

3. Prostitution 79

4. Strikes and Lockouts 86

5. Adulteration 88

II. CAPITALISM IS WASTEFUL 94

1. Getting the Market 95

2. Cross Freights 96

III. CAPITALISM IS DISORDERLY 101

1. Anarchy of Production and Distribution 102

(_a_) Tyranny of the Market 102

(_b_) Tyranny of the Trust 104

(_c_) Tyranny of the Trade Union 106

IV. PROPERTY AND LIBERTY 112

1. Origin of Property 113

V. RESULTS OF PROPERTY 131

1. The Guilds 135

2. Trade Unions 140

3. The Unsolved and Insoluble Problems of Trade Unionism 159

(_a_) The Conflict between the Trust and the Trade

Union 167

(_b_) Advantage of Trusts over Unions 169

(_c_) Advantage of Unions over Trusts 171

VI. MONEY 176

VII. CAN THE EVILS OF CAPITALISM BE ELIMINATED BY COOPERATION 199

BOOK III

_WHAT SOCIALISM IS_

I. ECONOMIC ASPECT OF SOCIALISM 204

II. ECONOMIC CONSTRUCTION OF THE COOPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH 235

1. How Socialism May Come 239

2. Reform and Revolution 243

3. Possible Transitional Measures 248

4. Farm Colonies 263

5. Land 278

6. Summary of the Productive Side of Economic Construction 286

7. Distribution 288

8. Remuneration 303

9. Circulating Medium under Socialism 307

10. Summary 313

III. POLITICAL ASPECT 317

1. Education 325

2. Churches 328

3. Political Construction 329

IV. SCIENTIFIC ASPECT 335

1. Natural Environment 337

(_a_) Struggle for Life or Competitive System 337

(_b_) Cooperative System 342

2. Human Environment 349

3. Effect of Competitive System on Type 357

4. Brief Restatement 360

5. Can Human Nature be Changed by Law 364

6. Summary 374

V. ETHICAL ASPECT 378

1. Conflict between Science and Religion 378

2. Conflict between Economics and Religion 389

3. Socialism Reconciles Religion, Economics, and Science 395

VI. SOLIDARITY 402

APPENDIX 413

INDEX 433

TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIALISM

INTRODUCTORY

My reason for writing this book is that I do not know of any one book

that gives in small compass to the uninformed a comprehensive view of

Socialism. It would be fatal to suggest to one not quite certain

whether he wants to know about Socialism or not, that he should read

the great economic foundation work of Karl Marx.[1] The excellent book

of Emil Vandervelde,[2] which seems to me to contain one of the most

compendious accounts of economic Socialism, is written from the

Belgian and European point of view rather than from the American; it

does not attempt to give either the scientific[3] or the ethical

argument for Socialism, nor does it contain specific answers to the

objections which are most imminent in American minds to-day. The

recent book by Morris Hillquit,[4] deservedly recognized as one of the

leaders of the party in America, an authoritative, clear and admirable

statement of what the Socialist party stands for, seems to be

addressed to the Socialist rather than to the non-Socialist.

Innumerable books and pamphlets by Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, John

Spargo, William Morris and others throw light on this enormous

subject. But for years past when asked by the average American what

one book would give him a complete account of Socialism, I have been

at a loss what to recommend. The book that first opened my eyes to the

possibilities of Socialism was "Fabian Tracts"; but I doubt whether

this would appeal to many American readers. An economic mind must be

given the economic argument; a scientific mind the scientific

argument; an idealistic mind, the ideal; an ethical mind, the ethical;

but the average mind must be given all four; for it is in the

convincing concurrence of all four that the argument for Socialism is

unanswerable.

Another reason for writing this book is the desire to put Socialism

firmly on the solid foundation of fact. It is the progress of science

and the economic development of the last few years that have made

Socialism constructive and practical. Science has made it constructive

and the trusts have made it practical. It no longer rests on the

imagination of poets nor on the discontent of the unemployed. On the

contrary, Science with its demonstration that man is no longer the

mere result of his environment, but can become its master, teaches us

that by constructing our environment with intelligence we can

determine the direction of our own development. The trusts, with

their demonstration of the waste and folly of competition, teach us

that what a few promoters have done for their own benefit the whole

community can do for the benefit of all.

Again, history has revealed a fact upon which the competitive system

must ultimately break; it may break under the hammer of the new

builder or through the upheaval of a mob; but that it must eventually

break is as certain as that day follows night. This fact is the

solidarity of mankind. Whether it was wise of the Few to share the

government with the Many it is too late now to inquire. The thing has

been done--_alea jacta_. And that the Few should imagine that, after

having put a club in the hands of the Many with which they can, when

they choose, at any election smash to pieces the machinery--political

and industrial--that oppresses them; and having established a system

of education--nay, of compulsory education--through which the Many

_must_ learn during their childhood, how upon attaining majority, they

can use this club most effectually, the Many will refrain from using

it--is one of those delicious inconsequences of the governing class

which throws a ray of humor over an otherwise tragic scene.

I do not believe it was in the power of the Few to perpetuate their

reign; I think there are evidences of a Power working through

Evolution to which even Herbert Spencer has paid the tribute of a

capital P, which ordained from the beginning that Man should progress

not as his forbears did, through the survival only of the fit, but as

Man has unconsciously for centuries been doing, through the

improvement of all. I think this is the Power that some worship under

the name of Jah and others under the name of God. But this view will

not be insisted upon, for it is not necessary to insist upon it. The

fact of human solidarity will, I think, be demonstrated,[5] and it

will, I hope, at the same time be shown that Socialism is no longer a

theory born of discontent, but a system developed by fact, and as

inevitably so developed as the tiger from the jungle of India, or

cattle from the civilization of man.

Again, I do not think it is sufficient to demonstrate that Socialism

is sound in theory. We have also to show that it is attainable in

fact.

The practical American will not be satisfied with being told that

there are a thousand different ways through which Socialism can be

attained. He does not want to be told how many ways there are to

Socialism, but wants to be shown one way along which his imagination

can safely travel.

What the "bourgeois" wants to know is just how Socialism is going to

work. He cannot conceive of industry without capitalism, any more than

he can conceive of the world without the sun. Some concrete picture

must be presented to his mind that will enable him to understand that

while capital is not only good, but essential, the capitalist is not

only bad, but superfluous. Nothing less than a picture of industry

actually in operation without capitalism will suffice; and this,

therefore, I have attempted to draw. No pretence is made that the

picture is the only possible Socialist state, or that it will ever be

realized in the exact shape in which it is drawn. The only claim to be

made for it is that it furnishes a fair account of an industrial

community from which exploitation, unemployment, poverty and

prostitution are eliminated; that such an industrial community is more

practical because far more economical than our own; and that it is the

goal towards which, if we survive the dangers attending the present

conflict between capital and labor, industrial and ethical evolution

are inevitably driving us.

Again, there is probably no feature connected with Socialism that it

is more important to demonstrate and define than its economy. It

occurred to me that we possessed in our official reports, and

particularly in the 13th Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor, figures

which would enable us to arrive at a considerable part of this economy

with some mathematical certainty. I pointed out my plan to Mr. J.

Lebovitz, of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., who has a

better talent for statistics than myself, and I cannot but

congratulate myself and my readers upon the results to which, thanks

to his help, we have jointly come.

It must be admitted that the figures in our possession do not enable

us to estimate the whole economy of Socialism; but they do enable us

to give a tentative estimate of how many hours a workingman would have

to work to produce the things which the average workingman consumes if

no account be taken of profit, rent, interest, and the cost of

distribution. Of course, though profit, interest and rent would be

eliminated in a cooperative commonwealth, we should still be subject

to the cost of distribution and, therefore, the figures we arrive at

are incomplete in the sense that we have to take into account the fact

that they do not include this cost. But there would be economies

exercised in a cooperative commonwealth, such as the economy of

insurance, of advertising, of unnecessary sickness, of strikes and

lockouts, of the cost of pauperism, crime and in some measure that of

dependents, defectives and delinquents, etc., which would probably pay

the cost of distribution. I feel, therefore, that although our figures

are not absolute, they do furnish a starting-point more satisfactory

than has heretofore been obtained.

The most impelling reason for writing this book is the persistently

false and misleading statements made regarding Socialism by the very

persons whose business it is to be informed on the subject. For years

now the men we elect to office as best fitted to govern us--Presidents

and Presidential candidates, Roosevelt, Taft and Bryan, have in spite

of repeated protests and explanations been guilty of this offence. Mr.

Roosevelt stands too high in the esteem of a large part of our voting

public, and I myself entertain too high an opinion of his ability, for

such charges as those he has made against Socialism to go unanswered.

And in answering them I shall take as my justification the platform of

the Socialist party,[6] which must be carefully read by all who want

to understand what Socialism really is in the United States of

America. It is of course impossible in a platform to give the whole

philosophy of Socialism, but the platform does state with sufficient

precision what Socialists stand for to make it impossible for anyone

who has read it to remain any longer under the false impression

created by ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation.

I take Mr. Roosevelt's articles in the _Outlook_ as the special object

of my explanations, not only because they express very widespread

fallacies regarding Socialism, but because they emanate from one who

for popularity and reputation casts every other American in the shade;

and also because, for this reason, his utterances not only command the

attention of the foolish--this he easily gets--but should also, in

view of his position, arrest that of those who tend by his

exaggerations to be estranged from him.

So I have felt it an urgent duty to explain not only what Socialism

is, as Hillquit, Vandervelde, Thompson,[7] and many others have so

ably done, but specifically to point out what it is not: That it is

not Anarchism, but order; not Communism, but justice; that it does not

propose to abolish competition, but to regulate it; nor to abolish

property, but to consecrate it; nor to abolish the home, but to make

the home possible; nor to curtail liberty, but to enlarge it.

Now if this last is to be done, it is indispensable to have clear

notions as to what liberty is; no intelligent understanding of liberty

is possible unless there is an equally intelligent understanding of

property, which is more closely connected with liberty than is

generally recognized. The necessary relation between property and

liberty has escaped some of our ablest lawyers. Just after James C.

Carter had finished his argument in Paris on the Seal Fishery case and

was preparing a supplementary brief that he had been given permission

to file, he told me that he felt it necessary to study up the

fundamental question of what property was and had been advised to read

Proudhon! I did not know much about Socialism at that time, but did

know enough to explain to him that Proudhon was an anarchistic

communist; and asked him if he thought the court was disposed to

listen to this kind of argument. Mr. Carter was shocked in the

extreme, and lowering his voice, asked, a little shamefacedly, what

Anarchism and Communism were, and were they the same as Socialism.

This led to a discussion of property, of the views held regarding it

by Socialists, Communists and Anarchists respectively; and to the

strange conclusion that the brief which Mr. Carter was preparing in

order to maintain the liberty of the United States to protect seals

as the property of humanity at large was Socialism Simon pure! To his

dismay he found himself on the verge of preaching the very doctrine

which of all doctrines he most abhorred!

I do not know any standard work on Socialism that enters carefully

into the nature of these things. I attempted it in "Government or

Human Evolution," to which I shall have occasion sometimes to refer.

But this book was addressed to students of Political Science and is

not short or compendious enough for the general public.

In a word, I have written this book to supply what I believe to be a

crying need--for a compact, simple statement of what Socialism is not,

of what Socialism is, how Socialism may come about, and particularly

distinguishing modern Socialism from the crude ideas that prevailed

before Marx, Darwin and the development of trusts.

The public imagines to-day that Socialism is Utopian. This is

singularly erroneous. Socialism is the only intelligent, practical

system for providing humanity with the necessaries and comforts of

life with the least waste, the least effort and the least injustice.

The competitive system under which these things are now produced and

distributed has been condemned by the business men whose opinions the

business world most respects, because it involves infinite labor to a

vast majority of the race and useless cost to all, without, I venture

to add, assuring happiness to any.

Socialism, on the other hand, presents a simple, obvious and

unanswerable solution of the manifold problems presented by the

competitive system. This solution ought to appeal to business men

because it undertakes to do for the benefit of the nation what our

greatest business men have been engaged for some years in doing for

the benefit of themselves.

It is not likely that the American public, once it understands the

situation, will refuse to adopt the only practical method of ridding

itself of a wasteful system and a corrupt government just because the

few who profit by it for very obvious reasons do not want them to. All

the public needs is a clear understanding of what Socialism really is;

how it is certain to come eventually; and how it is best that it

should come.

Many Socialists make the mistake of asking us to look too far ahead.

We are not all equally far-sighted. Some are very near-sighted. In

fact the habit of looking closely at our ledgers and at our looms

tends to make us near-sighted. Socialists too may be wrong in their

forecast centuries ahead. This book therefore makes a distinction

between those things that can be demonstrated and those which, on the

contrary, are still matter for mere speculation.

It can be demonstrated that a _partial_ substitution of cooperation

for competition in definite doses will put an end to pauperism,

prostitution and in great part to crime. Whether a _wholesale_

substitution of cooperation for competition will still further promote

human development and happiness is a matter of speculation--as to

which men can legitimately differ.

The contention made in this book is that a substitution of cooperation

for competition in the dose herein prescribed _must_ put an end to the

three gigantic evils above mentioned, and incidentally confer upon us

a larger and truer measure of liberty and happiness than the world has

ever yet known.

One word about the language of this book. As it is addressed to

persons not familiar with the Socialist vocabulary, I am going to

abstain to the utmost possible from using this vocabulary. I am not

going to use the words "surplus value" when the more familiar word

"profit" can be used with practically the same advantage. I am going

to avoid the expression "materialist interpretation of history" when

the words "economic interpretation of history" are equally correct and

less likely to mislead. And I am above all going to avoid, wherever I

can, the use of the words "individualism" and "individualists,"

because these words have been already used by capitalists to beg the

whole question. Capitalists have quietly appropriated this word to

themselves and Socialists have been foolish enough to permit them to

do it. Capitalism does indeed promote a certain kind of individualism;

but we shall have to discuss later just what is the nature of the

individualism promoted by existing conditions and compare it with the

individualism that will be promoted by Socialism. I think it will

become clear that it is the peculiar province of Socialism to rescue

the vast majority of men from conditions which make the development of

the individual impossible, and to put opportunities of individual

development at the disposal of all; that, indeed, the highest type of

individualism can be realized only in a cooperative commonwealth that

will give to every man not only opportunity for developing his

individual talents, but leisure for doing so--the very leisure of

which the vast majority are deprived under the present system and of

which the few who have it profit little.

It is not easy to find words to substitute for individualist and

individualism. The word that best describes the individualist is

"egotist." But the use of the word "egotist," for the very reason that

it is the truest word for describing the individualist, would arouse

such protest in the minds of those so designated as perhaps to

prevent this book from being read by the very persons to whom it is

chiefly addressed.

The word "capitalist" cannot be used for this purpose either, because

by no means all who have capitalistic ideas are capitalists, and some

capitalists are free from capitalistic ideas.

So instead of the words "individualist," "egotist" and "capitalist," I

am going to use the French word "bourgeois." It seems to convey what

it is intended to convey with least error and most consideration for

capitalistic susceptibilities. It is true that "bourgeois" is a French

word and should be avoided in consequence, but it has been now so

acclimated to our language that many editors print it without

quotation marks. The word "bourgeois" roughly includes all those who

have property or employ labor, or who can be psychologically classed

with these. It includes the small shop-keeper who keeps a clerk, or

perhaps only a servant, and the millionaire who keeps thousands of men

at work in his factories, mines, railroads or other industries. It

includes the large farmer who employs help, but not the small farmer

who employs no help; it includes the lawyer, the broker and the agent

who depend upon the capitalist but are lifted above the hunger line.

Instead of the word "individualism," I shall use another French

expression which has also become acclimated--that is to say, _laissez

faire_; for _laissez faire_ are words adopted by the bourgeois to

describe the system for which he generally stands. This expression is

peculiarly appropriate to-day, when we hear our business men clamoring

to be "let alone." Indeed were it not for the awkwardness of the

expression "let-alone-ism," this literal translation of _laissez

faire_ would just suit my purpose.

It is true that the _laissez faire_ of to-day differs from that of the

last century. For there is at present a very wide belief in the

possibility of controlling corporations, and whereas the _laissez

faire_ of the last century went so far as to deny the necessity of

government control, that of to-day very largely admits it. By laissez

faire, therefore, I mean the controlled _laissez faire_ that now

prevails as well as the uncontrolled _laissez faire_ of a century ago,

the essential difference between _laissez faire_ and Socialism being

that the former implies leaving the production and distribution of

everything to private capital whether controlled or uncontrolled by

government; whereas Socialism implies putting production and

distribution of at least the necessaries of life into the hands of

those who actually produce and distribute them without any

intervention or control of private capital whatever.

I have been careful to take my facts and figures not from Socialist

publications, but from government publications or economists of

admitted authority. I have, too, in every case where it seems

necessary quoted my authority so that there may be no doubt as to the

source from which my facts are drawn.

In conclusion it must be stated that there are four very different

standpoints from which Socialists start--the economic, the political,

the scientific and the ethical.

Ethical writers began by disregarding the economic side of Socialism

altogether, and some economic Socialists are therefore disposed to

despise ethical and so-called Christian Socialism; whereas the ethical

view is not only useful, but essential to a complete understanding of

the subject.

The scientific view of Socialism has been comparatively little

treated, but it is not for that reason the least important. On the

contrary, Herbert Spencer and his school have built a formidable

opposition to Socialism based upon pseudo-scientific grounds. It

becomes, therefore, important to point out the extent to which Herbert

Spencer was wrong and Huxley right in the application of science to

this question.

My own conviction is that the highest Socialism is that which

reconciles all four views--the economic, the political, the scientific

and the ethical. But as this is a work of exposition rather than of

controversy, I have abstained from insisting upon this view and have,

on the contrary, endeavored to give a fair account of all four

arguments, in the hope that those who are inclined to the economic

view may adopt it for economic reasons; those inclined to the

political view may adopt it for political reasons; those who are

attracted by the scientific view may adopt it for scientific reasons;

and those who are attracted by the ethical view may adopt it for

ethical reasons, leaving it to time to determine whether the strongest

argument for Socialism is not to be found in the fact that it is

recommended by all four.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Capital," by Karl Marx.

[2] "Collectivism and Industrial Revolution," Emil Vandervelde.

[3] Engels and others have described Marxian or Economic Socialism as

scientific, on the ground that Marx was the first to reduce Socialism

to a science. But the word science has become so inseparably connected

in our minds with chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, and geology,

etc., that it seems wiser to define Marxian Socialism as economic and

to keep the word scientific for that view of Socialism which is built

on the sciences proper and principally on biology.

[4] "Socialism in Theory and Practice." Macmillan, 1909.

[5] Book III, Chapter VI.

[6] See Appendix.

[7] "The Constructive Program of Socialism," Carl D. Thompson.

BOOK I

_WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT_

Socialism is not a subject which can be put into a nutshell. On the

contrary it resembles rather a lofty mountain which has to be viewed

from every point of the compass in order to be understood. Mont Blanc,

approached from the North or Swiss side, presents the aspect of a

round white dome of snow; approached from the South or Italian side it

presents that of a sharp black peak of rock. Yet these totally

different aspects belong to the same mountain. It takes a mountaineer

about three days to go round Mont Blanc on foot; it takes an ordinary

pedestrian who has to stick to roads about a week. It is probable,

therefore, that the reader new to the subject will take at least a

week to understand Socialism, which is quite as big a subject as Mont

Blanc and considerably more important. He is likely, however, to take

much more than a week if, as happens in most cases, he starts in a

forest of prejudices any one of which is sufficient to obstruct his

view. In the confusion in which the ordinary citizen finds himself,

owing to this forest of prejudices which constitutes the greatest

obstacle to the understanding of Socialism, he may very possibly

wander all his life, and the first duty, therefore, of a book on

Socialism is to take him out of the forest which he cannot himself see

"because of the trees."

The great enemy to a sound understanding of Socialism used to be

ignorance; to-day, however, there is less ignorance, but a great deal

more confusion; and the confusion arises from two sources: confusion

deliberately created by false denunciations of Socialism, and

confusion unconsciously created by personal interests and prejudice.

The confusion arising from these two sources may be described as

subjective obstacles to Socialism because they exist within ourselves.

They are to be distinguished from objective obstacles to Socialism

which exist outside of ourselves. For example, if a majority of us

were in favor of adopting Socialism, we should still find many

objective obstacles to it; for example, if we proposed to expropriate

the trusts, we should undoubtedly be enjoined by the courts; we should

find ourselves confronted with federal and State constitutions; we

perhaps would have to amend these constitutions. These difficulties

are outside of us. But before we reach these obstacles, we have to

overcome others that exist within us and are to-day by far the most

formidable. These subjective obstacles reside in our minds and are

created there by vested interests, property, ignorance and

misrepresentation. We are all of us under a spell woven about us by

the economic conditions under which we live.

For example, the workingman who has saved a few hundred dollars and

goes out West to take up land, thinks that by so doing he will escape

from wage slavery. He does not know that he is not escaping slavery at

all, but only changing masters. Instead of being the slave of an

employer, he becomes the slave of his own farm. And the farm will

prove an even harder taskmaster than a Pittsburg steel mill, for it

will exact of him longer hours during more days of the year and seldom

give him as high a wage. Nevertheless, the fact that he owns the

farm--that the farm is his property--awakens in him the property

instinct that tends to rank him on election day by the side of the

bourgeois.

So also the store-keeper who, because he owns his stock, buys goods at

a low price and sells them at a high, and makes profit, considers

himself superior to the wage-earner, unmindful of the fact that his

store adds to long hours and low wage the anxieties of the market and

that, thanks to trusts and department stores, he is kept perpetually

on the ragged edge of ruin.

The clerk, too, whose only ambition is to rise one grade higher than

the one which he occupies, is prevented by the narrowness of his

economic field from appreciating the extent to which he is exploited.

Instead of being bound by class consciousness with his fellow clerks,

he is, on the contrary, in perpetual rivalry with them, and is likely

to be found on election day voting with the owner who exploits them

all.

And even the wage-earner, the factory hand, who is the most obviously

exploited of all, is in America still so absorbed by his trade union,

by his fight with his employer, that he has not yet learned to

recognize how much stronger he is in this fight on the political than

on the economic field. So he too, instead of recognizing the salvation

offered to him by Socialism as his fellow workingmen in Germany do,

allows himself regularly to be betrayed into voting for one of the

capitalist parties which his employer alternately controls.

And the darkness in which these men are regarding matters of vital

interest to them is still further darkened by their own ignorance, by

the ignorance of those around them and, I am afraid I must add, by

deliberate misrepresentation.

Let us begin by extricating ourselves from the forest of prejudice

that makes all clearness of vision impossible and, when we can see

with our eyes, we shall take a rapid walk around this mountain of

Socialism, as all climbers do, if only to choose the best points from

which to climb it.

CHAPTER I

SUBJECTIVE OBSTACLES TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIALISM

VESTED INTERESTS

There is in the archives of the House of Commons a petition filed by

the gardeners of Hammersmith in opposition to a proposed improvement

of the country roads, which would enable gardeners further removed

from London to compete with Hammersmith gardeners on the London

market. They regarded themselves as having a vested right in bad roads

and actually took these so-called rights sufficiently seriously to

petition Parliament not to improve roads which were going to bring

them into competition with gardeners already at a disadvantage by

being further removed from the market than themselves.

This is an illustration of the extent to which the human mind can be

perverted by personal interest. But there is another illustration of

so-called vested interests much more revolting in its nature and yet

perhaps more justified in fact. When the cholera broke out in Paris,

in 1830, and it was believed to have been brought into the country

through rags, a bill was presented before the French Parliament for

the destruction of all deposits of rags in the city. This was

violently opposed by the rag pickers, who pointed out that these rags

constituted their only source of existence, and they found many

members of the French Parliament to support their view. We, who can

dispassionately consider the situation of these rag pickers, have to

admit that, if they could earn their living in no other way than rag

picking, it would be a mistake for Parliament to deprive them of their

source of living without giving them some other employment. But it

would be worse still were Parliament to allow Paris to be decimated by

cholera because the rag pickers claimed a vested right in pestiferous

rags.

A similar situation presents itself in the city of New York to-day.

The tenement-house commission has imposed upon tenement-house owners

certain obligations which involve an expenditure of considerable sums

of money, and many of our best citizens are indignant because the

tenement-house law is not always rigidly enforced. Yet all who have

followed the recent rent strike on the East Side, know that the

tenement houses there are in large part owned by men as poor as those

who live in them. The immense congestion in this district brought

about such competition for lodgings that speculators were enabled to

buy tenement houses at their utmost value and to sell them at a still

higher price by persuading the thriftiest of the inhabitants of the

district that, if they purchased these tenement houses and acted as

their own janitors and agents, they could earn more money than was

then being earned. Victims were found who have put all their savings

into these tenement houses, leaving the larger part of the purchase on

mortgage. These new landlords raise the rent in order to make the

houses pay for themselves. These pauper tenement-house owners are in

the same position to-day as the Paris rag pickers of 1830.

The question of what, if any, compensation should be paid when the

state interferes with vested rights cannot be decided by any general

rule. The demand for compensation by the Hammersmith gardeners was

absurd; but that of the rag pickers was justified; that of poor

tenement-house owners on the East Side seems also to be justified; but

if the state in taking over these unwholesome tenements were to find

one in the hands of a speculator, would compensation be to the same

degree justified?

So these questions seem to become questions of detail; they cannot be

disposed of by a general rule: "there shall be compensation" or "there

shall not be compensation." Above all things, these so-called general

rules must not be erected into dogmas or "principles" under the

standard of which Socialists are to group themselves and fight one

another.

It is interesting to consider in connection with this subject the

geographical character of the objections to Socialism as illustrated

by the attitude taken by England and America respectively on the

subject of municipal ownership.

In England, municipal ownership of gas is the rule rather than the

exception. Indeed Manchester has owned its own gas plant from 1843,

and has furnished the public with gas at 60 cents per thousand cubic

feet, and even at that price[8] made a net profit in 1907-8 of

L57,609, which has been applied to the diminution of rates and

extension of the service. Birmingham, which had to pay an extravagant

price for its gas plant, nevertheless immediately reduced the price of

gas and brought it down from $1.10 under private ownership to 50 cents

to-day. In England, therefore, it is perfectly respectable to approve

of municipal ownership of gas. But inasmuch as water has been until

very lately furnished to London in great part by a private company

chartered by James I. the stock of which has increased in value a

thousand per cent and which counts among its stockholders royalty

itself, anybody until very lately who proposed municipal ownership of

water in London, was regarded as a dangerous anarchist.

The New York situation is just the reverse. For New York, after having

tried private ownership of water and abandoned it as early as 1850 on

account of the corruption that resulted therefrom, undertook public

ownership of water with such success that no disinterested citizen

to-day wants to go back to the old plan. So a New Yorker can advocate

municipal ownership of water and still be regarded as a perfectly

respectable citizen; but should he venture to favor municipal

ownership of gas he is at once classed with those whose heads are only

fit to be beaten with a club.

How long are we going to allow our opinions to be manufactured for us

by water companies in London and gas companies in New York? Obviously

we cannot take an impartial and intelligent view of this great

question until we have divested ourselves of the prejudices created by

vested interests. If the propertied class, which is committed to

existing conditions by the fact that it profits by them, is willing to

yield no inch to the rising tide of popular dissatisfaction and the

awakening of popular conscience, it is probable that the revolutionary

wing of the Socialist party will prevail, if only because under these

circumstances the evolutionary wing will not be allowed to prevail.

If, on the other hand, the propertied class become alive not only to

the danger of undue resistance, but also to the reasonableness and

justice of the Socialist ideal, there is no reason why vested

interests, save such as owe their existence to downright robbery and

crime, should materially suffer in the process of Socialist evolution.

If this be true the words "menace of Socialism" will turn out to be

inappropriate and unfounded. Sound Socialism has no menace for any but

evil-doers.

Having now climbed out of the forest of prejudices created by private

or so-called vested interests, let us next consider the different

points of view created by temperament and economic conditions, from

which the subject of Socialism tends to be regarded.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] "Municipal Year Book," 1909, p. 482.

CHAPTER II

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

BOURGEOIS, REVOLUTIONIST, AND EVOLUTIONIST

Every man who is earning a living is profoundly affected by all that

affects his living. If Socialism seems to threaten this living, he

instinctively and often unconsciously repudiates it. From one point of

view, Socialism presents a more formidable aspect than from another.

It takes a very skilled climber to scale Mont Blanc from the Italian

side, whereas from the Swiss side it is simply a matter of endurance.

The same thing is true of Socialism.

Now there are three distinct and opposing points of view: The

bourgeois point of view, the revolutionist point of view, and the

evolutionist point of view.

(_a_) _The Bourgeois Point of View_

The bourgeois point of view is that which students of political

science have been in the habit of describing as individualism. But

there are objections to this use of the word individualism, as will

appear later on.

The bourgeois view is that the production and distribution of the

things we need can best be conducted by allowing every man to choose

and do his own work under the stimulus of need when poor and of

acquisitiveness when rich. This system is well described in the

maxim: "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost." The

first part of this maxim has in it considerable merit, for it

encourages the self-reliance that has made the prosperity of America.

But the latter part merely expresses a pious wish that is seldom

gratified. The devil does not take the hindmost. The devil leaves them

here to stalk through our highways and streets, a permanent army of

about 500,000 tramps, swelled at all times by thousands and in such

times as these by millions of unemployed.[9]

The bourgeois view is that of the man who owns or expects to own

property; the bourgeois class represents a small proportion of the

whole population, and is sometimes described as the propertied class.

But as the propertied class is in control of our schools, colleges and

press, it has hitherto made the opinions of the vast majority. Thus

the bourgeois view is not only that of the propertied class, but also

that of most of those who have no property. It is the view of the man

in the street.

Lately, however, Socialism has been making inroads into the opinions

of both classes, and this has divided Socialists into two groups

which, though generally found fighting under the same banner,

nevertheless take different views of the subject, which tends to

confuse the uninitiated. These two views are conveniently described as

revolutionist and evolutionist. Let us study the revolutionist point

of view first:

(_b_) _The Revolutionist Point of View_

Marx rendered a great service by pointing out the extent to which the

non-propertied class is exploited by the propertied class--the

proletariat by the bourgeois--the factory hand by the factory owner.

Marx, however, did not himself confine Socialism to the struggle

between the factory hand and the factory owner. But there has arisen

out of the Marxian philosophy a school which has emphasized the

observation of Marx that the factory hands increased in number while

the factory owners decreased in number, and that this tends to produce

a conflict between the two--a revolution from which the factory hand

must emerge released from the incubus of the factory owner. Two ideas

dominate this school: the class struggle--a struggle practically

confined to the factory worker on the one hand and the factory owner

on the other; and the revolution--the eventual clash between the two.

The triumph of the factory hand is, according to this school, to

result in the complete overturn of the whole social, industrial and

economic fabric of society, the community[10] succeeding to the

individual in the ownership of all land and all sources of

production--all profit now appropriated by the factory owner accruing

to the community and inuring to all the citizens of the state.

This revolutionist school regards Socialism from the point of view of

a class that has no property--the proletariat--just as the bourgeois

looks at Socialism from the point of view of those who have property.

Both points of view tend to be partial; the bourgeois tends to see

only what is good for himself in existing conditions and all that is

bad for him in Socialism; the revolutionist tends to see all that is

bad for him in existing conditions and only what is good for him in

the proposed new Socialism. This fact tends to make revolutionists

dominate the Socialist party (which is mainly recruited from the

proletariat) and is, therefore, entitled to the most serious

consideration. Private interest is the dominating motive of political

action to-day. It is the avowed motive of the bourgeois. He has,

therefore, no excuse for denouncing this same motive in the

proletariat, all the less as the bourgeois has to admit that his

industrial system produces pauperism, prostitution, and crime; whereas

the proletariat points out that Socialism will put an end to pauperism

and prostitution and in great part also to crime.

Because revolutionists believe that this change cannot be effected

without a revolution--without a transfer of political power from the

bourgeois to the proletariat--they speak of their movement as

revolutionary, and often say that Socialism must come by revolution

and not by reform.

But these words must not be allowed to mislead. Although the Socialist

platform says that "adequate relief" cannot be expected from "any

reform of the present order," it nevertheless embraces a series of

reforms entitled "Immediate Demands." This is proof positive that the

Socialist party is not opposed to legislative measures that in the

bourgeois vocabulary are known as reforms, since it advocates them.

Socialists make a distinction between legislation that tends to

transfer political power from the exploiters to the exploited and

those that do not; the former are termed revolutionary and the latter

are termed mere reforms. The former are what they stand for. But they

do not for that reason remain indifferent to legislation that improves

human conditions. On the contrary, the immediate demands of the

Socialist platform include:

The scientific reforestation of timber lands and the reclamation of

swamp lands; the land so reclaimed to be permanently retained as a

part of the public domain:

The enactment of further measures for general education and for the

conservation of health. The Bureau of Education to be made a

department. The creation of a department of public health. The free

administration of justice.

Obviously, therefore, even revolutionary Socialists advocate certain

reforms; but they will be content with nothing less than the transfer

of political power from those who now use it ill to those who will use

it better.

Last, but not least, revolution does not in the Socialist vocabulary

involve the idea of violence. It is used in the same sense as we use

the expression "revolution of the planets," "revolution of the

seasons," "revolution of the sun." Undoubtedly there are Socialists

willing to use violence in order to attain their ends just as there

are Fricks willing to use Pinkerton men, and mine owners willing to

use the militia to attain theirs. But the idea of violence has been

expressly repudiated by the leaders of the Socialist party. And the

word "revolution" must not be understood to include it. This question

is studied in fuller detail in Book III, Chapter II.

(_c_) _The Evolutionist Point of View_

The evolutionist point of view claims to be wider than either of the

foregoing. The evolutionist is not content to study Socialism from the

point of view of any one class. He undertakes to climb out of the

forest of prejudices created by class to a point where he can study

Socialism free from every obstruction. He studies Socialism from the

point of view of the whole Democracy, including the employer, the

employee, and those who neither employ nor are employed; as, for

example, the farmer who farms his own land without the assistance of

any farm hands outside of his own family. From this point of view, he

can denounce the evils of the existing system of production and

distribution--if system it can be called[11]--without the bitterness

that distorts the view of the victims of this system, and can

therefore see perhaps more clearly the methods by which the evils of

the existing system can be eliminated.

The evolutionist points to history to prove that forcible revolution is

generally attended by great waste of property and life, and is followed

by a reaction that injuriously retards progress. He therefore seeks to

change existing conditions without revolution, by successive reforms.

This class of Socialist is denounced by revolutionists under a variety

of names. He is called a parlor Socialist, an intellectual Socialist,

but perhaps the name that carries with it the most contempt is that of

step-by-step Socialist. He answers, however, that when he finds his

progress arrested by a perpendicular precipice such as we are familiar

with at the top of the Palisades, he refrains from throwing himself--or

advising his neighbors to throw themselves--headlong into the abyss,

but takes the trouble to find a possibly circuitous way round. He will

not consent to sit at the top of the precipice until he grows wings, as

the Roman peasant sat by the Tiber "until it ran dry." The step-by-step

Socialist is content to adopt a winding path which sometimes turns his

back to the place which he wishes to reach, because he holds in his

hand a compass whose unerring needle will bring him eventually to the

desired goal.

Again, the evolutionist claims to be supported by ethical and

scientific considerations which the revolutionary Socialist regards as

of secondary importance. But for the present it is convenient to

postpone the study of the ethical and the scientific aspects of

Socialism and to content ourselves with stating two principal claims

made by the evolutionist, viz.:

First: that his view is likely to be clearer than that of either the

bourgeois or the revolutionist, because it is not obstructed by class

interest;

Second: that his policy is likely to be wise, because it is neither

stationary as that of the bourgeois nor headlong as that of the

revolutionist.

In conclusion, the revolutionist keeps his eye fixed on the

horizon--perhaps it may even be said that he fixes his eye beyond the

horizon, if that be possible; he looks forward to a state of society

which, because it seems unrealizable to-day most of us are inclined to

regard as visionary; and in presenting to us a commonwealth in which

every personal interest will be vested in the community, he attacks at

once the personal interests of every man who owns property in the

country. Obviously, if all agriculture is to be owned by the

community, every farmer will lose his farm. If all the factories are

to be owned by the community, every factory owner will lose his

factory. If all distribution is to be managed by the community, every

storekeeper will lose his store. The revolutionary Socialist therefore

raises against himself every property owner in the land; and all the

more because there is division in the ranks of revolutionists as

regards compensation, to which I have already referred. (See Vested

Interests, p. 18.)

The evolutionist on the contrary confines his attention for the

present to existing conditions. He adopts, it is true, as an ultimate

goal the cooperative commonwealth advocated by the revolutionists. It

is indeed the point to which his compass is always directing him. It

constitutes the ideal to which he believes the race will eventually

adapt itself. But in addition to historical fact regarding the cost of

revolution in the past, and in view of certain other scientific facts

which will be dwelt upon later, he recognizes that personal or vested

interests are likely to interfere more than anything else with the

adoption of Socialism as an ultimate goal, and that these interests

therefore no statesman can afford to disregard.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] December, 1908.

[10] I am careful to use the word "community" and not the word

"state," for state ownership is not Socialism. The Prussian State

stands for state ownership, and even Mr. Roosevelt would not

characterize the Prussian Government as Socialistic.

[11] Book II, Chapter III.

CHAPTER III

MISREPRESENTATION AND IGNORANCE

Michaelangelo has said that sculpture is the art of chipping off

superfluous stone. The sculptor sees a statue in every block. This is

what Whistler used to call the "divine art of seeing." The sculptor's

task is to remove those parts of the block that hide the statue from

the layman's eye. So the Socialist sees the cooperative commonwealth

imprisoned within the huge, rough, cruel mass that we call modern

civilization, and his task is to remove from the beautiful form he

sees the errors which mask it from the view of the unenlightened. If

we can but remove these errors our task is in great part accomplished;

and the first of these errors is that which confounds Socialism with

Anarchism.

Sec. 1. SOCIALISM IS NOT ANARCHISM

Nothing is more unjustified than the confusion which exists in

people's minds between Anarchism and Socialism. This confusion is not

altogether unnatural, for Socialism and Anarchism have one great

feature in common--both express discontent with existing conditions.

The remedies, however, propounded by the Anarchists for evil

conditions and those propounded by Socialists are contradictorily

opposite. They are so opposite that the bourgeois turns out to be

more nearly associated with the Anarchist than the Socialist is.

The theory upon which our present economic and political conditions

are founded is that the less government interferes with the

individual's action, the better. This theory may be said to have taken

its start at the period of the French Revolution, and is generally

connected in the minds of English-speaking people with Adam Smith, the

Manchester School of _laissez faire_, the earlier works of John Stuart

Mill, and all the works of Herbert Spencer. When, however, the

pernicious consequences of allowing every individual to do as he chose

with his own became felt, as for example in the poisoning of rivers by

allowing every factory to pour its waste into them; and in

degeneration of the race through unlimited exploitation of women and

children in factories and mines, governments all over the world have

been obliged as measures of self-defence to enact laws limiting

individual action. The individualism of the beginning of last century

has been gradually leading to the Socialism of to-day, Socialism

being, among other things, an intelligent limitation of the abuse of

property in accordance with a preconceived plan, instead of spasmodic

limitation of the abuse of property forced upon us by the pernicious

consequences thereof, often creating new abuses as bad as those

suppressed.[12] While therefore the Socialist asks that the functions

of government be extended sufficiently to secure to every man the

greatest amount of liberty, and the bourgeois on the contrary demands

that there shall be the least amount of government consistent with

the protection of property and life, the Anarchist asks that there

shall be no government at all. The bourgeois, therefore, is closer to

the Anarchist than the Socialist is--in fact he stands between the

two.

Socialists and Anarchists then are polar opposites. There is a whole

world between them. Indeed it is impossible to conceive two theories

of government more opposite one to another than that of Socialism,

which demands more government, and that of Anarchism, which demands

the destruction of government altogether.

Sec. 2. SOCIALISM IS NOT COMMUNISM

Those who derive their information regarding Socialism solely from

books are apt to be puzzled by the word "Communism," because it has at

different times stood for different things. The early Christians were

Communists; so were Plato and Sir Thomas More; so also was Proudhon,

whom Mr. Roosevelt places in the same category with Karl Marx. He does

not seem to be aware that Proudhon and Marx were the protagonists of

conflicting schools and that Marx drove Proudhon--who was a

communistic Anarchist--and his followers out of the Socialist party of

that day. For from Marx' economic doctrine of value was derived a

totally new idea in the movement; this idea is couched in a formula

which has become so familiar to Socialists that it seems incredible

that anyone undertaking to write about Socialism should ignore it;

namely, that the _laboring class is entitled to the full product of

its labor_; that is to say, that it shall securely have exactly what

it earns; no more, no less; that it shall be deprived of it neither by

the capitalist as to-day nor by the thriftless or vicious as under

the Communism of Apostolic times.

Mr. Roosevelt accuses Socialists of "loose thinking." Is there not a

little loose thinking about this confusion of Socialism and Communism?

Or is it that Mr. Roosevelt is just a century behindhand? Or is it

that he has never read the works of Proudhon and Karl Marx, whom he

groups together as propounding the same kind of Socialism? As a matter

of fact, Proudhon has been so discredited by Marx that few Socialists

think it worth while to read his works; whereas "Capital" is to-day

the Bible of the Socialist movement.

One word, however, must be added about Communism before dismissing the

subject: There are two kinds of Communists, just as there are two

kinds of Anarchists; those who adopt Communism and Anarchism out of

discontent with the present system; and those who adopt them because

they stand for perfection. With the first category we need not concern

ourselves. Their day is over. With the second there is an important

point to be noted: Such writers as Kropotkin see further than the

average citizen. They look forward to a day when the spirit of mutual

helpfulness which ought to attend the substitution of cooperation for

competition will have entirely changed human nature; when men will

have acquired _habits_ of industry, of justice, and of self-restraint

that seem now incredible to us; they will then as naturally work as

they now naturally shirk; they will as naturally help one another as

they now naturally fight; they will as naturally share with one

another as they now despoil one another. This may seem wildly

impossible to us now; but if we look back to the day when our forbears

lived in hordes, when children bore their mother's name because they

did not know their father's, when no woman could move from her hut

alone without being subject to assault, when self-indulgence prevailed

except in so far as it was checked by fear, we can appreciate the

scorn with which one of them would have listened to a prophet who

should announce that men and women would ultimately mate once for all

and be faithful to one another; children know their fathers and bear

their father's name; women travel from one end of the country to

another with perfect security, and self-restraint cease to be an

imposition and become a habit. If then man has become so profoundly

modified by the progress from the promiscuousness of the horde to the

self-restraint of the family, why should he not be capable of one step

further--from the habits that result from competition to the habits

that would result from cooperation--from mutual hatred to mutual

helpfulness? This is the hope and faith of such writers as Kropotkin.

But it is not yet within the range of practical politics. So the

Socialist party rightly confines its program within practical limits.

There are too many idle and vicious among us to-day; too many products

of human exploitation; too many worn-out men, women, and children; too

much degeneration; too much hypocrisy; too much "looseness of

thought." We must cut our garment to our customer. All that the

Socialist asks to-day is to have what he earns. Morally he is entitled

to it. Can our system of production be so modified as to assure this

to him? This is the problem we have to solve. Socialists say that it

can be so modified, or that it can, at least, be so modified as to put

an end to pauperism, prostitution, and in great part to crime. This is

the practical Socialism of to-day as distinguished from the Communism

of centuries ago or that of centuries ahead. This is what the

Socialist party stands for, and it is by this standard and no other

that the Socialist party must be judged.

Socialism then does not stand to-day for Communism. On the contrary,

it demands that the workers be assured, as exactly as is humanly

possible, the product of their labor, and not share it with the idle

and vicious on the one hand or be deprived of it by the capitalist on

the other.

One reason why Communism has been discarded by the Socialist party is

that generations of competition have so molded human nature that it is

extremely probable that production would suffer were it suddenly

eliminated. A man who has accustomed himself to the stimulus of

arsenic cannot be suddenly deprived of arsenic without developing the

symptoms of arsenical poisoning. It will doubtless be indispensable to

maintain competition in the cooperative commonwealth. There is no

longer question then of discarding competition; the question is in

what doses shall it be administered; in doses that produce the

pauperism and prostitution of to-day, or in doses that will furnish

the necessary stimulus for human exertion without pushing that

stimulus to exhaustion and degeneracy?

This question brings us to our next subject:

Sec. 3. SOCIALISM WILL NOT SUPPRESS COMPETITION

No modern Socialist maintains that all competition is bad, or that it

would be advisable to eliminate competition altogether from production

and distribution. But it has become the duty of every sane man to

consider whether it may not be possible to eliminate the excessive

competition that gives rise to pauperism, prostitution, and crime. To

answer this question, we must begin by determining what competition

is good and what bad; and if the bad can be eliminated and the good

maintained.

Competition is a part of the joy of life; healthy children race one

another as they are let out from school; they challenge one another to

wrestle and leap; and when they are tired of emulation, they join

hands and dance. Competition and cooperation are the salt and the

sweet of life; we want the one with our meat and the other with our

pudding; we do not want all salt or all sweet; for too much sweet

cloys the mouth while too much salt embitters it.

We all unconsciously recognize this by encouraging games and

discouraging gambling. Now what is the difference between games and

gambling? One is a wholesome use of time for the purpose of wholesome

amusement; the other is an unwholesome abuse of time for the purpose

of making money. The one incidentally encourages a beneficial action

of muscle and brain; the other, on the contrary, promotes a

detrimental appetite for unlawful profit.

We are all perfectly agreed about this so long as we confine ourselves

to games and gambling; but as soon as we extend our argument to

production and distribution we shall at once come into collision with

the bourgeois. Let us therefore be very sure that our premises are

sound and our deduction sure before we confront him.

Even as regards gambling there are degrees of vice; some would justify

old people who bet only just enough on the issue of a game of piquet

to make it worth while to count the points; whereas all would condemn

a bet that involved the entire fortune, much more the life or death of

a human being.

Now it may seem extravagant to assert that the competitive system of

production imposes upon the majority a bet involving life or death,

yet statistics demonstrate that mortality is from 35 to 50 per cent

higher with those who lose than with those who win in the game of

life.[13] But it is not extravagant to assert that it imposes upon the

majority a bet involving a thing quite as precious as life--I mean

health. A man who bets his life and loses is free from pain on this

earth at any rate; but the man who bets his health and loses is

committed to a period of misery not only for himself, but for all

those around him so long as breath is in his body.

The greatest evil that attends the competitive system of production is

that it commits all engaged in it to a game the stake of which is the

life happiness not only of himself, but of all dependent on him.

If this were a matter of mere sport there is not a man with a spark of

moral sense in him who would not condemn it. He would denounce it as a

gladiatorial show; as belonging to the worst period of the worst

empire known to history. But because it is a matter of production the

bourgeois has for it no word save of justification and praise. He

justifies it by the argument of necessity: "the poor you have with you

always." He praises it because it "makes character."

If there were indeed no other system of production possible but the

competitive system, the plea of necessity would be justified. But when

we are dealing with a question involving the happiness of the majority

of our fellow creatures, we must be very sure that there is no better

system before the plea can be admitted. And as to those often

misquoted words of Christ, there will undoubtedly under the

cooperative as well as the competitive system always be some

shiftless, some poor. But everything depends on what is meant by the

word "poor." To-day the poor are on the verge of starvation; poverty

means not only misery, but disease and crime. Under a cooperative

system there need be no starvation; no fear of starvation; less

disease; and infinitely less crime! The vast majority of men do not

need the lash to drive them to their work; it is no longer necessary

to keep before us the fear of want, of misery, of starvation; we have

passed that stage; and just as the lash is used by trainers only for

wild beasts, and gentler animals are better trained by the hope of

reward than by the fear of punishment, so humanity has reached a point

of moral development which makes it no longer inferior to the lower

animals--the bourgeois notwithstanding. Better work can be got from a

man by the prospect of increased comfort than by the fear of misery

and unemployment.

As to the second justification, that the competitive system makes

character; look for a moment at the character of the men who have

succeeded in the competitive mill. Are these the saints of the latter

day? Or are our saints not to be found amongst those who have never

been in the competitive mill--who have resolutely kept out of

it--Florence Nightingale, Father Damien, Rose Hawthorne, the Little

Sisters of the Poor?

The real problem is not whether we should or can eliminate competition

altogether from the field of production, but whether we should or can

eliminate it to the extent necessary to put an end to the three great

curses of humanity to-day.

Sec. 4. SOCIALISM WILL NOT DESTROY THE HOME

Mr. Roosevelt in his _Outlook_ editorial[14] said of the "Socialists

who teach their faith as both a creed and a party platform" that "they

are and necessarily must be bitterly hostile to religion and

morality," that they "occupy in relation to morality and especially

domestic morality a position so revolting--and I choose my words

carefully--that it is difficult even to discuss it in a reputable

paper."

When, however, he undertakes to substantiate this, he is obliged to

admit that he cannot find any traces of it in American writers, and has

to go to France and England for his examples. Had he been better

informed, he would have known that not only is there no trace of

immorality in our American Socialist press, but that there is one

Socialist organ--the Christian Socialist--which has in the most vigorous

terms denounced all those whose writings tend in any way to attack the

fundamental principles of marriage. It is true that Christian Socialists

in Mr. Roosevelt's opinion "deserve scant consideration at the hands of

honest and clean-living men and women"; but he has not explained why.

Nor has he ventured any explanation why Christian Socialists or any

other Socialists should be "necessarily--bitterly hostile to religion

and morality."

I must postpone to the chapter on the Ethical Aspect of Socialism[15]

the explanation why Socialism, far from being "necessarily bitterly

hostile to religion and morality," as Mr. Roosevelt maintains, is--on

the contrary--the only form of society ever proposed which could make

religion and morality possible. At the present time, it seems

sufficient to point out the obvious fallacy of Mr. Roosevelt's

syllogism.

Here it is:

Gabriel Deville wants to destroy the home.

Gabriel Deville is a Socialist;

Therefore: All Socialists want to destroy the home. The logic of this

is bad enough, but even the premiss is false. Deville is no longer a

Socialist; and if he does want to destroy the home, no one that I know

of in America wants him back in the fold.

In exactly the same manner our ex-Presidential logician argues

regarding divorce:

Herron divorced;

Herron is a Socialist;

Therefore: All Socialists divorce. Herron was divorced in 1901. He is

the only leading Socialist who has divorced during twenty years to Mr.

Roosevelt's knowledge or to mine. Whereas, during that time here are

the statistics of divorces for the United States:

Total number of marriages 1887-1906, 12,832,044

Total number of divorces 1887-1906, 945,625 or about one in 12,[16] in

all of which the majority of the men presumably voted for Mr.

Roosevelt.

Can anyone who knows the family life of Socialists assert that the

divorce rate among them is greater than that of the community in which

they live?

Again, the pretence that the American home to-day is one which a

capitalist like Mr. Roosevelt can hold up to the admiration of the

world will not stand scrutiny.

Where there is wealth for leisure, there we find immorality enthroned

as a vice; and where there is no leisure, there we find immorality

imposed as a necessity. Are the filthy tenements and promiscuous

lodgings of the congested districts in our large cities the homes to

which Mr. Roosevelt is fearful that Socialism will put an end?[17] Or

is it the so-called She-towns in New England from which men are driven

because there is no employment in them for any save women and

children?[18] Or the lumber camps to which these men are driven where

there is no employment for women?[19] Or the home of the unemployed to

which the bread-winner has returned day after day for two years now,

seeking employment and finding none--guilty of no crime save that no

man has hired him? Thousands--nay, hundreds of thousands of such

so-called homes are scattered over the face of this land which Mr.

Roosevelt has during seven years administered.

As a matter of fact, no decent home is possible for the majority of

our fellow citizens so long as they are called upon to support it at

present prices on present wages. All this will, I think, be made clear

in the description of industrial conditions. Suffice it to say here

that these conditions furnish a few luxurious and often licentious

homes for the propertied class and a few comfortable and moral homes

for the aristocracy of the working class, but leave a vast number of

our families so nearly upon the edge of poverty as to drive their

daughters to prostitution and their sons to crime.

Sec. 5. SOCIALISM WILL NOT ABOLISH PROPERTY

Another charge made by Mr. Roosevelt is that Socialists propose to

abolish property and distribute wealth. It has been repeated by both

Mr. Taft and Mr. Bryan and is still being repeated _ad nauseam_ by the

press. Workingmen so absorbed by the making of bread that they have

no time to discuss questions of government may be excused for being

ignorant on such a point as this; to them ignorance cannot be imputed

as a fault. But that those who set themselves up as the persons best

fitted to govern and educate our country--as indeed the only persons

in the country possessing the knowledge of statesmanship necessary to

handle our governmental affairs and publish our daily press--should

either never have taken the trouble to find out what Socialism is, or,

having taken the trouble, should so traduce it, is a sad commentary

upon our editors and statesmen.

Just as it has been demonstrated that Socialism is opposed to

Anarchism, so can it be demonstrated that Socialism is opposed to the

distribution of wealth or the abolition of property. Far from

distributing wealth, the essence of Socialism is that it seeks to

concentrate it. Far from wanting to abolish property Socialism seeks

to put it on a throne. The question of property is so important that a

special chapter has been devoted to it. I shall therefore only say

here just enough to remove the error created by the misstatements

current on the subject.

Property is not only the basis of our present civilization, but must

be the basis of all conceivable civilizations. It may be said that not

only all law, but all government, is founded upon it. Property was

instituted to furnish to every industrious man security as regards

himself, his family, and the means of their support; to protect him

and them from theft, from fraud and evil doing.

Unfortunately property, like every human institution--even the best of

them[20]--has been abused to serve the selfishness of the crafty; and

there have arisen, therefore, notions and laws regarding property

which have reversed the results which property was instituted to

secure. Instead of making every industrious man secure as regards

himself, his family, and the means of their support, it has actually

deprived the majority of all security regarding these things and,

indeed, put the majority as regards these things at the mercy of a

very few. Not only this, it has created conditions which to-day are

depriving several millions of us not only of all means of support, but

of all opportunity of earning them.

The bourgeois' excuse for such conditions is that no better can be

devised. Here is the whole issue of Socialism raised; for Socialism

contends that these conditions are totally unnecessary; that it does

not need any imagination or invention to substitute for them a system

that will put an end to such evils as pauperism, prostitution, and, in

great part, crime; that we have but to adopt as a community the

principles already adopted by the men--the makers of the trusts--to

whom the whole business world looks up as infallible on these

subjects; and that this can be accomplished by ridding the institution

of property of the fallacies with which it has been industriously

defaced. Just indeed as the truly religious have during all ages

sought to rescue religion from the crafty who tend to use it for their

own ends--Christ from the Pharisee, Plato from the Sophist, Luther

from the Borgias, so Socialists are now seeking to rescue property

from the few who, under a mistaken theory of happiness, use property

to injure their fellow creatures when these very few can attain

happiness only by so using property as to benefit those they now

injure.

It must, however, be specifically stated that Socialism does not

involve the concentration of all wealth in the state. No sane

Socialist proposes to vest in the state the things which a man uses,

his personal apparel, his personal furniture, his objects of art, his

musical instruments, his automobile, or even his private yacht.

There is no intention to suppress private property except so far as it

is used for exploitation. Light is thrown upon this subject in another

paragraph, which indicts the capitalist system for making the

production of the necessaries of our lives the object of their

competitive enterprises and speculations.

What the Socialist party proposes to do is not to abolish property,

but to abolish the capitalist system, as it expressly states; and it

proposes to do this not only in the interest of the proletariat, but

also in the interest of the capitalist himself, who, to quote the

words of the platform, is "the slave of his wealth rather than its

master." The extent to which this last is true will be discussed in a

subsequent chapter and ought to constitute an impressive argument for

all--even millionaires--who have become the slaves of the very

fortunes they have made. And the moral tendency to restore property to

its original intention by abolishing the capitalist system is

expressly stated in the platform as not an attempt "to substitute

working-class rule for capitalist-class rule, but to free all humanity

from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man."

If this be immoral, then a great many of us do not know what morality

is.

Nor does it propose to vest in the state anything but what it is

indispensable for a state to own in order to rescue the unwealthy

majority from the exploitation of the wealthy few. Nothing is more

false or libelous than the allegation that Socialism proposes to

destroy property, or to deprive a man of the benefit of his talents,

or of the enjoyment of the products of his work. It is the present

industrial system that deprives the majority of the product of their

work. Socialism aims at the opposite of these things. What Socialism

does propose is to preserve wealth by eliminating waste and to ensure

to all men the fullest benefit of their talents and the enjoyment of

the whole product of their work. It does not propose to level down, as

is so often claimed; the necessary effect of Socialism is to level up,

if indeed it levels at all. The extent to which it may be wise to

concentrate wealth in the state, or whether it is necessary to

concentrate it in the state at all, is a question which must be

postponed until we have a clear idea of what Socialism is.

Meanwhile I venture to suggest one view of Socialism which, although

it does not attempt to define it, may help us as a first effort to get

a correct apprehension of it.

Socialism is the concentration of just so much wealth in the

community--please note that I do not say "state"--as may be necessary

to secure the liberty and the happiness of every man, woman, and child

consistent with the liberty and the happiness of every other man,

woman, and child.

We are obviously here brought to the question of what is liberty, and

to the discussion of another error regarding Socialism upon which the

bourgeois is disposed to insist, viz.: Socialism will impair liberty.

Sec. 6. SOCIALISM WILL NOT IMPAIR LIBERTY

The same thing must be said of liberty as of property: both are such

important subjects that they demand a chapter to themselves. But there

are current errors about liberty which, when removed, will prepare

the mind for the undoubted fact that Socialism, far from impairing

liberty, will greatly enlarge it.

When negro slavery existed people thought that if slavery were only

abolished, liberty would be secured. It was found, however, that when

negro slavery was abolished there was still another liberty to be

secured--political liberty.

Now that we have secured the constitutional right and the

constitutional weapon by which political liberty ought to be attained,

we discover that these rights and weapons are useless to us so long as

the immense majority of us are still economic slaves.

Let us consider for a moment just what is meant by an economic slave.

An economic slave is a man who is dependent for his living on another

man or class of men and who, because all his waking hours and all his

vitality must be devoted to making a living, has no leisure either to

exercise his political rights or to enjoy himself.

It may seem exorbitant to say that the "immense majority" of us are

economic slaves, yet a very little consideration will, I think,

convince that we are.

Workingmen are dependent on their employers under conditions worse

than negro slavery. For a slave owner had an interest in the life of

his slave just as a farmer has an interest in the life of his stock.

He therefore fed his slaves and did not overwork them. Nor was a slave

subject to losing his job. The factory owner, on the contrary, not

being the owner of his factory hands, is free to dismiss them as soon

as they are worn out, and it is to his interest, by speeding up his

machinery, to get the most work out of his hands possible, regardless

whether he is overworking them; for as soon as they show signs of

overwork he has but to dismiss them and employ a younger generation.

Nor can it be said of workingmen that they have leisure for education,

politics, or enjoyment. Now the last census shows that our industrial

population numbers 21,000,000.

In the second place, the farmer works himself as hard--if not

harder--than the factory owner works his factory hand. He is driven by

the same necessity as the factory owner--the necessity of making

money.[21] There are of course a few large farmers who own enough land

to work it as the factory owner works his factory--by the use of

machinery and men. But these are few, and it is the extraordinary

economy that these men make in working their farms that obliges the

small farmer to work night as well as day to make a bare living out of

his land. Now by the last census the farming population in the United

States numbers 30,000,000.

And what has been said of the workingman is true of the clerk and

domestic; and what has been said of the small farmer is true of the

small tradesman. Now clerks, domestics, and tradesmen number

30,000,000. Summing up we have:

Industrial population 21,000,000

Farmers 30,000,000

Clerks, domestics and tradesmen 30,000,000

----------

81,000,000

out of a total population of 90,000,000 are economic slaves.

And of the 9,000,000 that remain, how many are economically free?

These are in part teachers, physicians, and lawyers. I leave it to

teachers to tell us how much time they can call their own. As to the

rest, it is the dream of a young doctor to get a large practice; and

when his dream is realized, how much leisure does he enjoy? He is at

the mercy of his practice, not only weekdays, but Sundays--days and

nights. He is the slave of his own practice. It is the dream of the

young lawyer to get rich clients and handle big cases. When he gets

them, he discovers that he must have an office that costs between

$30,000 and $50,000 a year to take care of them, and that he must earn

these large sums before there is a penny left for himself. So he too

is the slave of his own office.

But further than this: Our great business men--amongst them the very

greatest--I have seen with my own eyes slowly sink under the burden of

the very institutions their own genius had created. They too have

become the slaves of their own creations.

So we are all slaves, the greatest and the least of us, with

exceptions so few that they are hardly worth mentioning. And how do

these exceptions use their leisure? It were better not too closely to

inquire. Too much leisure is as detrimental to happiness and progress

as too much work. The enormous increase of lunacy in late years is a

straw that shows how the stream runs. Because of too much work or too

much leisure the race is marching with fatal speed toward general

prostration of nerve, of body, and of mind.

Whether then we look at this question from the point of view of human

progress or of human happiness, it seems indispensable that the whole

machinery of production be speeded down a little instead of

continuously up. Now this is what Socialism proposes to do: It

proposes by the substitution of cooperation for competition to make

the same economy for all humanity as trust promoters have made for

themselves. And the economy will be an economy of time. We shall work

as hard while we are working, but we shall work four hours instead of

eight and twelve. And the rest of the time we shall have to ourselves;

we shall be economically free.

Yet if the reader has in his mind any such idea of Socialism as Mr.

Roosevelt's "state free lunch counter," resulting in an "iron

despotism over all workers compared to which any slave system of the

past would seem beneficent because less utterly hopeless"--he will be

disposed to condemn in advance any economic freedom purchased at such

a price. I beg the reader, therefore, to try to rid his mind of the

prejudice created by such views as Mr. Roosevelt's until he has read

the chapters on the Economy of Socialism and How Socialism May Come.

If in these chapters the errors of Mr. Roosevelt's notions are not

dissipated, then this book will have been written in vain.

One thing more, however, must be said on this subject. Inexcusable

though Mr. Roosevelt may be in most of his attacks on Socialism, it

must be admitted that the "iron despotism" to which he thinks

Socialism will lead is justified by many Socialist authors, and it is

only very lately that a way has been found for introducing cooperation

without compulsion. Again, Mr. Roosevelt is in good company in making

this charge. It is the great _cheval de bataille_ of every

anti-Socialist.

In "A Plea for Liberty," edited by Herbert Spencer, the idea of

concentrating wealth in the community is denounced as a "conception of

life or conduct" which would compel men "to rise at morn to the sound

of a state gong, breakfast off state viands, labor by time according

to a state clock, dine at a state table supplied at the state's

expense, and to be regulated as to rest and recreation."

In fact, Socialism proposes none of these things. But if it did, a

factory hand might very well ask whether such a conception of life or

conduct would be worse than to rise at morn by the sound of a factory

bell, labor by time according to a factory clock, neither breakfast

nor dine at a factory table supplied at the factory's expense, but be

regulated as to rest and recreation by factory rules. When we come to

discuss liberty, we shall be in a position to compare the liberty

enjoyed under Socialism with the liberty enjoyed to-day.

In the chapter on Property and Liberty, the subject of liberty is

carefully analyzed; no more, therefore, need be said on this subject

except in conclusion to insist that it is the competitive system of

to-day that makes slaves of practically all of us, and that it is the

cooperative system alone that will secure for us the last and greatest

of all the liberties--economic liberty--because it is economic liberty

alone that will enable us to enjoy the other two.

Sec. 7. CONCLUSION

Having now chipped off some but not all of the errors that prevail,

regarding Socialism, let us sum up what Socialism is not; it will help

us to a study of what Socialism is.

Socialism is not Anarchism. It is the contradictory opposite of

Anarchism. It believes in regulation, but demands that the

regulation be wise and just.

Socialism is not Communism. On the contrary it demands that

workingmen be assured as nearly as possible the product of their

labor.

Socialism does not propose to eliminate competition, but only to

abolish excessive competition that gives rise to pauperism,

prostitution and crime.

Socialism is not hostile to the home. On the contrary, it seeks

to remove the evils that make the homes of our millions

insupportable.

Socialism is not immoral. On the contrary, it seeks to make the

Golden Rule practical.

Socialism does not propose to abolish property or distribute

wealth. It proposes, on the contrary, to consecrate property and

concentrate wealth so that all shall enjoy according to their

deserts the benefits of both.

Socialism will not impair liberty. On the contrary, it will for

the first time give to humanity economic liberty without which

so-called individual and political liberty are fruitless. It

proposes to regulate production, consecrate property, and

concentrate wealth only to the extent necessary to assure to

every man the maximum of security and the maximum of leisure;

thereby putting an end to pauperism, prostitution, and in great

part, to crime, and furnishing to man environment most conducive

to his advancement and happiness.

Whether it will accomplish these things can only be determined

by approaching it from the positive side. We shall proceed next

then to answer the question what Capitalism is.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] The principal evil attending such laws is that they give rise to

graft. In other words, our political machine actually favors such

laws, because they put a club in the hands of the machine through

which it can not only levy political contributions, but coerce their

victims into support of the machine.

[13] The death rate in 1900 among occupied males in the professions

was 15.3 per 1000; in clerical and official classes 13.5; mercantile,

12.1; laboring and servant classes 20.2 per 1000 (12th Census U.S.)

Dr. Emmett Holt, writing in the _Journal of the American Medical

Association_, points out the marked contrast between the death rate of

the children of the poor and the children of the rich. See Appendix,

p. 421.

[14] _Outlook_, March 20, 1909.

[15] Book III, Chapter V.

[16] U.S. Census Bulletin 96, p. 7, 12.

[17] "Poverty," by Robert Hunter. (Macmillan.)

[18] "Socialism and Social Reform," by R.T. Ely, p. 43. (Crowell.)

[19] Ibid.

[20] "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. II, p. 88 _et seq._, by the

author.

[21] "The American Farmer," A.M. Simons.

BOOK II

_WHAT CAPITALISM IS_

Socialism is necessarily twofold: destructive and constructive;

critical and remedial. We shall take the critical or destructive role

of Socialism first; setting down the evils in our existing industrial

system which Socialism criticizes and seeks to destroy, and leaving

the remedial or constructive role of Socialism where it properly

belongs--to the end. For this reason the present book, which treats of

the evils of the existing industrial system, is entitled "What

Capitalism is."

EVILS OF CAPITALISM

For nearly two centuries men have produced and distributed the things

they needed, upon what is called "the competitive system." That is to

say, every individual is free to choose his particular share in this

work and to make out of his work all that he can, in order with the

money so made to purchase for himself the things that he individually

needs. The farmer undertakes to furnish us with food, the forester

with lumber, the miner with iron. Another set of men run railroads,

steamboats, wagons, etc., to distribute the things produced to those

who are engaged in selling them--by wholesale to the trade, or by

retail to the consumer. Every man engaged in production and

distribution is in a measure competing with every other man engaged in

it, each trying to make out of his particular calling the largest

amount of money possible with the view of being able with the money so

earned to purchase for himself the largest amount of necessaries,

comforts, and luxuries. This so-called competitive system has been

elaborately described by all writers of political economy from de

Quesnay and Adam Smith, the fathers of our present system of political

economy, to the present day; and because it follows the predatory plan

of nature (by which one set of animals lives by devouring another

set), it is claimed by some so-called philosophers to be "natural" and

therefore wise. The most notorious author of this so-called scientific

justification of the competitive system is Herbert Spencer.

The competitive system, however, has been found to result in great

waste, misery, and disease; and it is to these evil consequences that

the Socialist desires to put an end. He claims that the competitive

system is not wise, not scientific, and above all, not economical, but

is the most wasteful system conceivable. He alleges that the only

intelligent, economic way of producing and distributing the things we

need is by cooperation; and the whole economic issue between Socialism

and our present industrial system is that Socialism stands for

cooperation, and our present system for competition.

It is by no means a necessary part of Socialist philosophy that

competition be entirely eliminated. On the contrary, it has been

pointed out and will later be further seen that competition has many

useful qualities.[22] Socialism, however, points out that

competition, when allowed full sway in producing and distributing the

necessaries of life, is the direct occasion of the larger part of the

misery in the world, and insists, therefore, that as _regards

production and distribution of the necessaries of life_, competition

be sufficiently eliminated to assure to all men the opportunity to

work, and as nearly as possible the full product of their work. The

limitation in italics is the definite dose to which reference has

already been made.[23]

One prominent feature of the competitive system is that men do not

work for the purpose of supplying the needs of their fellow creatures.

The Steel Trust does not manufacture steel to satisfy our need for

steel; the farmer does not raise wheat to satisfy our need for bread;

they produce these things simply for the purpose of making money for

themselves in order that with this money they can procure for

themselves the things they need. Socialism claims that the role played

by money in the competitive system is unfortunate, because the amount

of money available at any given time is not always properly adjusted.

Sometimes it is so badly adjusted that there is more cotton in one

place than the people in that place can use, and in another more

people who need cotton than there is cotton to give them; so that it

is deliberately proposed to burn cotton for lack of consumers in one

place, while consumers are allowed to suffer for lack of cotton in the

other. So a short time ago thousands were dying of starvation for lack

of wheat in India, while we had such a superabundance of it in America

that we were exporting it every day. But that wheat was not available

for India because it had to be converted into money.

Socialists allege that this bad situation would never arise if things

were produced for the purpose of satisfying human needs instead of for

making money.

Let us enumerate some of the most important evils of the competitive

system, which Socialism seeks to correct. These evils briefly are: The

competitive system is stupid because wasteful and disorderly; it is

unnecessarily immoral, unjust and cruel.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] See Book I, Chapter III.

[23] See Book I, Chapter III.

CHAPTER I

CAPITALISM IS STUPID

Sec. 1. OVERPRODUCTION

The first and most glaring evil of the competitive system is that it

is stupid. In support of this I shall call as witnesses captains of

industry whom the business men regard as the greatest authorities in

the world: John D. Rockefeller[24], Henry O. Havemeyer[25], Elbert H.

Gary[26] and others.

Socialists are accused of being impractical. I shall have failed in

properly presenting the Socialist case if I do not succeed in

demonstrating that the impractical people are the bourgeois, the

Roosevelts, Tafts and Bryans who, though aware of the waste of the

competitive system, insist upon maintaining it; and that the only

practical people are those who, like the Socialists, having perceived

the waste that attends the competitive system, seek to replace it by a

more economic plan.

No one will, I think, deny that the most practical business men to-day

in America are Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, Havemeyer, and the others

who have been engaged in organizing our great trusts. Now the only

object of a trust is to eliminate the unnecessary waste of

competition; and the only difference between the Socialist and the

trust magnate is that the Socialist wants the benefit derived from

reducing competition to be shared by all; whereas Rockefeller,

Pierpont Morgan and the other trust magnates want the profit secured

by the elimination of waste all to themselves.

I do not suppose there is any man living so prejudiced or so dull as

to deny that, if Socialism could present a system by which all could

be made to profit from the elimination of the waste of the competitive

system in such a manner that the profit of each shall be proportional

to the amount which each contributes, Socialism would be justified.

The only point upon which there can be discussion is whether it is

possible to suggest a workable plan under which the evils of

competition can be eliminated, and the blessings of cooperation take

their place. In other words, is cooperation a practical cure for

competition? It is obviously impossible to decide whether a given

treatment would constitute a cure for a given disease, without a

thorough knowledge of the disease. It is therefore essential that we

should be clear as regards the defects of the competitive system, and

how far these defects are curable and how far incurable.

The beauty of the competitive system upon which the bourgeois loves to

dwell is that it is automatic; whenever there is overproduction in an

industry prices fall, profits disappear and therefore capital flows

away from it; as soon as overproduction comes to an end prices rise,

profits reappear and capital flows back to it. And the beauty of this

automatic system is the more commended because it closely follows

Nature; and indeed, the system of Nature is beautiful in the extreme.

The sun draws the vapor of pure water from the salt ocean; lifts it

high into the air, wafts it by propitious breezes to the continent;

sheds it in beneficent rain upon the thirsty land, and deposits it in

gigantic reservoirs of ice and snow upon our mountain heights; there

is the supply upon which during hot summers we depend; and the hotter

the summer, and the more therefore we need moisture, the more the snow

and glaciers melt and furnish us with torrents of refreshing streams;

so that at last the vapor that has been drawn by the sun from the

ocean, in obedience to the inevitable law of gravitation, returns to

it in a thousand rivers, after having performed its function of

nutrition and refreshment on the way.

In the same fashion demand is ever beckoning labor and capital to seek

new fields, tempting them from the low levels of low interest to high

levels of high profit; and supply, increasing through their efforts,

is forever bringing them back, like the force of gravitation, to the

point whence they started; and the cycle is repeated over and over

again, performing its mission of production and distribution on the

way.

Unfortunately, Nature, though beneficial in the main, does not

accomplish its work without distressing incidents. Breezes are not

always propitious; they sometimes create disastrous havoc; torrents

are sometimes more than refreshing, and summers unduly hot.

For example, the more abundant a crop is, the more prosperous the

country which grows the crop ought to that extent to be; but it

sometimes happens that, in such case, prices fall so low as to bring

disaster to those who have grown it.[27]

Nature is not always to be depended on. Occasionally a crop entirely

fails, and when this happens, as lately in India, millions are exposed

to starvation and thousands actually starve.

Even when Nature is most bountiful the competitive system results in

misfortune. For example, the President of the Boston Chamber of

Commerce in a speech to the Chamber said in 1891:

"In 1890 we harvested a cotton crop of over eight million

bales--several hundred thousand bales more than the world could

consume. Had the crop of the present year been equally large, it would

have been an _appalling calamity_ to the section of our country that

devotes so large a portion of its labor and capital to the raising of

cotton."[28]

In 1905 the newspapers announced "the South is proposing to burn

cotton so as to keep up its price."[29] And still more recently the

same suggestion has been made regarding the tobacco crop in Kentucky.

Again, the competitive system under which every man goes into the

business where he sees most profit, inevitably leads to periods of

overproduction, and overproduction leads to unemployment and misery.

No political economist denies the obvious fact that whenever an

industry is known to be profitable, capitalists are likely to engage

in this industry--indeed, this is one of the automatic processes which

the Manchester school has put forward as constituting the chief merit

of the system. It is, of course, important for the community at large

that prices should in no one industry become excessive; and obviously

the disposition of capital to rush into industries where profits are

high, does by competition tend to reduce prices, and thus prevent them

from becoming excessive. But economists, especially those of the

Manchester school, have not been willing to recognize that this

disposition of capital to flow into productive enterprises may, though

sometimes beneficial, be also sometimes ruinous; may, indeed, often

result in a devastating deluge. These economists, therefore, it may be

well to confront with a brief history of one or two of our largest

combinations. Let us take as a first example the sugar trust.

Just before the organization of this trust, overproduction had become

so excessive that of forty refiners in the United States eighteen

became bankrupt. Of the twenty-two that remained, eighteen combined.

Of the refineries belonging to these eighteen, eleven were closed,

leaving seven to do profitably the work which had previously been done

unprofitably by forty.

The history of the whisky trust shows overproduction to a still more

aggravated degree. Before the organization of the Distilling and

Cattle-Feeding Company, agreements were entered into by the majority

of the distillers; under one of them they agreed to reduce production

to forty per cent of what it at that time was; subsequently they

agreed to reduce still further to twenty-eight per cent; and of eighty

of the principal distillers who organized the Distilling and

Cattle-Feeding Company, the establishments of sixty-eight were closed,

leaving only twelve distilleries operating.

The same succession of events is found in the history of the American

Steel and Wire Company, and indeed of practically all American trusts.

This inevitable tendency towards overproduction vitally concerns

workingmen, for it is upon them that the evil consequences of this

process first and most fatally fall. As soon as the process results in

the inevitable reduction of prices to near cost, the manufacturer must

either throw workmen out of employment or reduce wages. Wages

constitute the only elastic element in cost, and it is therefore the

workingman who first pays for the evil working of this system. And not

only does the workingman pay for it, but the employer pays for it

also; for workingmen, to protect their interests, strike, and only the

wealthiest employers can stand the strain of a strike; the rest are

ruined by it.

Even a reduction of the hours of work or the days of employment in the

week will, if it lasts long enough, ruin the employer, for he has

still to pay the fixed charges of the factory, and if prices get low

enough, and he cannot sell his goods except at a ruinous loss, he ends

by not having means to pay these charges; and this process is

illustrated in the cases just mentioned; for example, eighteen out of

forty sugar refiners became bankrupt; and it was not till the eighteen

were ruined that a combination was possible amongst the rest.

One method employed by trusts to keep up prices at home is to sell

their excess of goods in foreign markets at prices below cost.

Mr. Gary, President of the Federal Steel Company, testified before the

Industrial Committee that steel had been recently shipped to Japan at

a price below the domestic price.[30]

Mr. J.W. Lee, President of the three independent pipe-line

organizations, testified that prior to 1895 "oil for export was sold

below the cost of crude at the refinery."[31]

Again, at a time when the American trade was paying $28 for steel

rails, the same steel rails were sold in Japan at $20.[32]

Obviously, the nations who are the victims of this process are not

long going to tolerate it; but this is a relatively small part of the

international complications produced by overproduction. The most

serious consequence of overproduction is that manufacturers, when they

can no longer get a remunerative price for their goods in the home

markets, are inevitably driven to seek it elsewhere. They seek foreign

markets, and failing foreign markets, they seek new markets by

colonization or conquest.

It is impossible to read the history of the British Empire during the

last 150 years without becoming persuaded that its so-called greed for

conquest inevitably results from the necessity under which English

manufacturers have been to secure markets for their increasing goods.

Either British factories had to close, and British workmen to be

thrown out of employment, or England must, by colonization or

conquest, secure a price outside her own borders for the goods which

competition perpetually tended to make her factories overproduce.

Indeed, the war through which England compelled China to purchase

Indian opium looks like the greatest of international crimes; yet,

when we understand this so-called crime of England, it turns out to

have been a commercial necessity; for the remunerative prices obtained

by the production of opium in India had so developed this branch of

business that millions of Indians depended for their lives upon it,

and either Chinese must poison themselves with opium, or Indians must

die of hunger. The responsibilities of England were to her subjects

first. The Chinese had to pay the price of this responsibility.

No better illustration of the wicked despotism that results from

existing industrial conditions could be given than this; it brought

about a condition of things under which England must commit a crime

against China, or millions of her subjects must perish in Hindustan.

The millions that would starve in India if the opium market were

suddenly closed remind us of the millions who are on the verge of

starvation here in the United States,[33] and have been for two years

past because of inherent and incurable defects in our industrial

system. It is no answer to say that the evil results of overproduction

are promptly remedied by the fluidity of capital to flow towards

profitable and to withdraw from unprofitable manufactures. Every time

such withdrawal takes place a corresponding number of workmen are

thrown out of employment, are subjected to want and anguish of

anxiety. The evil of this system cannot be explained away by pointing

out that the capital withdrawn from one manufacture will soon be

reinvested in another. A cotton-spinner cannot in a week or a month

become a boilermaker. The commercial system which makes it easy for a

capitalist to maintain income at cost of agony to the workingman does

not recommend itself to the political student seeking the

establishment of Justice in economic conditions. For, unfortunately,

labor is not as "fluid" or insensible as capital. The workingman is a

human being with the capacity for pain and anxiety that characterizes

our race; and every time that capital profits by its fluidity to flow

from one industry to another, the lives of men, women, and children

are threatened by want. Even in prosperous times memories of the last

panic and the certainty of a recurring panic keep their hearts haunted

by fear.

Overproduction is by no means the only cause for these periods of

unemployment. Indeed, the panic of 1907 was not the result of

overproduction, but of overinvestment, or what the French call the

"immobilization of capital." Every nation has two very different uses

for wealth: one for keeping its population alive and comfortable, the

other for developing the resources of the country, e.g., building

roads and railroads, exploiting mines and quarries, etc. If too much

wealth is immobilized in the latter, there is not enough for the

former. The important function of regulating this matter is in the

hands of bankers who make money not only out of the prosperity of

prosperous times, but out of the panic of panic periods. Thus in May,

1907, the bankers, knowing that there had been overinvestment, took

care of themselves by selling securities at top-notch prices,

occasioning what was called the "rich man's panic," because the rich

men of leisure were its victims; so that when the poor man's panic

came in October and stocks tumbled to one-half of May prices, the

bankers were able to reinvest the proceeds of May sales at fifty per

cent profit. One of the consequences of this operation was that in

October, 1907, neither manufacturers nor railroad men could get money

to keep their work going; gangs of five thousand men at a time were

summarily dismissed by railroads, and manufactures shut down.

Of course, the bankers did not "make the panic," as has been

sometimes ignorantly asserted; they only made money out of it both

ways--out of high prices in May and out of low prices in November. And

this illustrates one of the great defects of the competitive

system--that it puts different sets of men in a position where they

can make individual profit out of the misfortunes of their neighbors;

bankers out of panics; distillers and liquor dealers out of

drunkenness; manufacturers and retailers out of adulteration, and so

down the whole gamut of production and distribution; and this is the

process which the bourgeois approves because it "makes character."

But the unemployment that is the necessary result of all periods of

depression, whether produced by overproduction or overinvestment,

deserves more than passing mention for its fruits in the shape of

misery, pauperism, prostitution and crime, are menacing and

prejudicial to the race.

Sec. 2. UNEMPLOYMENT

The subject of Unemployment has just been treated by an expert in a

book[34] hailed by the press as the final word on the subject. All the

theories ever propounded as to the cause of unemployment have been

reviewed in this book, from overproduction, underconsumption,

competition, to "spots on the sun." And the author concludes in favor

of competition.[35] As regards the facts and the explanation of these

facts, there seems to be no essential disagreement between orthodox

economists and Socialists. Both trace unemployment back to

competition. And in addition to the arguments given by Mr. Beveridge

for tracing unemployment to competition, I venture to add that

competition must be decided to be the primary cause, because it is

itself the cause of the other so-called causes occasionally

proposed--overproduction, underconsumption, underemployment,

underpayment--in fact, all except "spots on the sun," which can, I

think, except for purposes of hilarity be definitely abandoned.

But although we are agreed as to facts, we very much differ as to

emphasis. Mr. Beveridge, and indeed all orthodox economists, pass

lightly over the injustice, the immorality and the agony of

unemployment. He refers to the "cyclical fluctuation" which gives rise

to unemployment as a mere failure of adjustment between demand and

supply. "No doubt," he says, "the adjustment takes time and may

only[36] be accomplished with a certain amount of friction and loss."

Now this "friction and loss," when expressed in money and wealth, seem

to us socialists stupid because avoidable; but when expressed in human

life and misery, they seem so intolerable that we are prepared if

necessary to shatter to bits the whole system that underlies them, in

order to "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." We are relieved

then when we discover that by applying wisdom instead of temper to the

solution of the problem, it is unnecessary to do any shattering, that

we can remould it without violence, and that this is what Socialism

proposes to do. Mr. Beveridge disposes of the Socialist solution in a

sentence: "To abolish the competitive stimulus," he says, "is to

abolish 'either the possibility of, or the principal factor in

material progress.'"[37] But these few words beg the whole question:

Need we abolish the competitive stimulus in the adoption of the

Socialist cure? Can we not confine ourselves to eliminating the

gambling element in it? Can we not diminish the stakes without

abandoning them altogether? Can we not take our arsenic in tonic

instead of in fatal doses? These questions belong to our constructive

chapters at the end of the book. I shall take up here only a few other

points about unemployment which orthodox economists do not

sufficiently emphasize, in order that there may be no doubt as to the

magnitude of this evil and as to the duty upon us to eliminate it if

we can.

Few things irritate the bourgeois more than to speak of workingmen as

"wage slaves." I have seen college professors lose their temper over

this word so often that they have served to suggest that in using it

we are, as children say, getting "warm." We are very near the Negro we

are looking for in the woodpile. Unemployment will help us in our

search.

Not only the slave, but the savage, has a great advantage over the

workingman, in that the former is never unemployed and the latter need

never be so unless he chooses. Unemployment then is the peculiar

product of our civilization. It is only under this competitive system

of ours that a strong, hearty, able-bodied man, not only willing, but

burning to work, with plenty of work to be done and with plenty of

food to be eaten, is refused both. Although there are vacant lots in

the heart of our cities and deserted farms within a few miles of them,

the unemployed and the women and children dependent on them are to

starve because owing to the "failure of adjustment between supply and

demand," no one for two years past has been able to make money by

employing them. Why this is so will more fully appear in Book II,

Chapter III. It is only necessary here to point out the forces that

tend to make the wage slave not only more unfortunate, but more

dangerous to the community than the African slave.

The slave owner has the same interest in the welfare of his slaves as

the cowboy in his cattle. God knows this is not much, but it is

sufficient to keep slaves and cattle in good condition if only for the

purpose of getting work out of the one and high prices out of the

other. The interest that a slave owner has in the health of his slaves

is a continuing one; it lasts during the working years of his slave.

The owner has paid a price or his slave has cost him a certain amount

to raise. The interest of the owner, therefore, is to get the most

work out of the slave during his working years. For this purpose he

lengthens these working years to the utmost possible; and accordingly

feeds and clothes his slave sufficiently and does not overwork him.

The interest of the factory owner is just the opposite. He has paid

nothing out of his capital for what is called the "free labor" he

employs; and because free labor exacts a high wage and short hours, it

is to the interest of the factory owner to get the greatest work

possible out of his employee, regardless whether his employee is

overworked. It is to his interest, not only to use his employee, but

to use him up; and to this end he speeds up his machinery to the

utmost point in order to force his employees to do the greatest work

possible during the hours of employment, and has recourse to

pacemakers. He does this with perfect security, because he has an

unlimited amount of young labor always at his disposal to replace

employees prematurely worn out from overwork and the diseases that

come from overwork. The factory owner does not adopt these methods out

of hardness of heart, but out of the necessity of the market. If he

pays a workingman high wages for short hours, he must get the greatest

work out of him if he is to compete successfully with other factory

owners in the same line of business. Even the most merciful factory

owners have to overwork their employees in order to sell goods at

prices fixed by the merciless market. This system results in manifold

evils. It creates a class not only of unemployed, but of

unemployables; men who cannot render efficient service because of

disease and of the drunkenness to which overwork tends; for when a

workingman feels his strength begin to wane he has recourse to

stimulants to last his day out, and once the habit of stimulants is

contracted, he loses his appetite for nourishing food and becomes

thereby more and more confirmed in the use of intoxicants.

We have here, therefore, a perpetual and necessary production of

unemployed and unemployable; the industrial town resembles a gigantic

threshing machine which produces its regular quota of unemployed and

unemployables as certainly as a threshing machine produces chaff.

This leads to another point to which I wish to attract special

attention. Unemployment is generally regarded as a purely temporary

evil. Indeed, the New York _Times_ took me to task for speaking of it

as a permanent evil.[38] The reason for this widespread error is that

permanent unemployment is a thing to which we have grown accustomed.

Charitable societies are familiar with it and know that it exists all

the time; but it is only when unemployment adopts gigantic proportions

so that the unemployed crowd our parks and streets and even indulge in

public demonstrations, that the public becomes aware of it. And it is

not only the regular operation of the industrial threshing machine

that produces the unemployed and unemployables; it is the character of

certain industries and occupations such as seasonal industries--for

example, carpentering and casual occupations, such as stevedores and

longshoremen. Mr. Beveridge gives a very graphic picture of the

unemployment on the London docks:[39]

Most of us have heard of the great Dock Strike of 1889, and of the

distinguished men who undertook to settle it. Efforts were made then

to regulate work on the wharves, and while these efforts did improve

the condition of the best of the men, as Mr. Beveridge says, "it is

seldom realized how small a proportion of the total field of dock and

wharf labor is really covered by the reform."[40]

He attributes the maintenance of evil conditions still prevailing on

the docks to the "separation of the interests of wharfingers,

shipowners, and contractors," to our old enemy--competition.

To appreciate the evil effects of casual or irregular employment, we

have again but to quote Mr. Beveridge:

"The knowledge that any man, whatever his experience, however bad his

antecedents, might get a job at the docks, attracted to their

neighborhood a perpetual stream of blackguards, weaklings and failures

from other every occupation. The experience, soon made, that regular

attendance was not necessary to secure selection on days when work

happened to be plentiful, and the daily alternations of hard exercise

and idleness rapidly developed in those who came, if they had it not

before, the greatest irregularity of habits, and physical or moral

incapacity for continuous exertion. The low physique and half-starved

condition of many of the laborers made their work dear at 4d. an

hour."[41]

Here he falls in with the evil feature of the competitive system which

has been described as gambling with nothing less for stakes than life,

health and happiness: "Finally," concludes Mr. Beveridge, "the door is

opened to abuse of patronage; convivial drinking and even direct

bribery are not unknown as a means of securing employment."[42]

The form of bribery paid by employees when of the female sex is a

still darker side of this dark subject.[43]

Another permanent cause of unemployment is underemployment and

underpayment. In many occupations, such as coal mining,

underemployment is averaged over a year so as to cause little

unemployment but much distress; the high wages which the miners are

able to stipulate for through their trade unions are reduced by

diminishing the days of work in the year. In other occupations

underemployment and underpayment reduce employees to a state of

starvation, which of course swells the rank of the unemployables.

Having seen how the pressure of the market forces factory owners to

overwork their employees and to dismiss all who are not able to earn

the wages they receive; how casual employment creates and keeps alive

a class of labor such as is described by Mr. Beveridge, and as must

perpetually throw employees either upon charity or into the street;

and having seen that this is a result of inherent and constant

conditions of our industrial system, we are not surprised to find

that statistics of unemployment indicate that it exists not only in

periods of industrial depression, as is imagined by the New York

_Times_ and others, but is, on the contrary, a permanent feature. For

example, the September Report of the New York Commissioner of Labor

shows that the average percentage of unemployment during the

prosperous period between 1902 and 1907, was 16.1 per cent. We shall

see later when we endeavor to calculate the amount of our population

affected by unemployment, that 16.1 per cent, being derived entirely

from trade union reports, does not fully represent the whole, because

it is generally admitted that unemployment prevails in much larger

proportion in unorganized labor than in organized.[44] The last United

States Census sets down the number of factory hands at over 7,000,000.

Taking therefore the official figures as representing the minimum of

constant unemployment, 16 per cent of 7,000,000 is 1,120,000, and as

every factory hand has on an average four persons dependent upon him,

this means a total population of 4,480,000, or roughly, four millions

and a half permanently in want in the United States owing to this

unemployment which orthodox economists recognize as a necessary result

of the competitive system.

But the public takes no account of the fact that our industrial system

regularly reduces a population of 4,500,000 to want. The public only

takes account of the extraordinary unemployment which occasions

disorder and riot in times of panic and industrial depression. Panics

and industrial depressions must not be confounded. We have seen that

industrial depressions are the inevitable result of what Mr. Beveridge

calls "cyclical fluctuations" and recur with abominable regularity.

Quite independent, however, of these regularly recurring industrial

depressions due to the working of the competitive system, there are

financial crises or panics due to similar perturbations in our money

market. Although they differ in many respects from industrial

depressions, nevertheless they have in common with them the inevitable

result of producing unemployment on a large scale. The panic of 1907

began as a purely financial crisis, but promptly became a lengthy

period of industrial depression. It is not necessary at this point to

discuss the relation between these two. But it is important that mere

scarcity of money in the panic of 1907 produced unemployment more

suddenly and in larger proportions than any other panics that have

preceded it.

Not only private enterprises such as railroads, but public bodies such

as municipalities, being no longer able to borrow money, had not only

to abandon work already voted, but to put a sudden stop to work

already undertaken. Laborers were dismissed in batches of five

thousand at a time, and every manufacturing and railroad plant was

driven by the impossibility of borrowing money to cutting down

expenses with a view to increasing the efficiency of the plant. Thus

the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that it had so increased the

efficiency of its plant that it was able to dismiss 30,000 men during

the year; the New York Central during 1907 dismissed ten per cent of

the staff upon its main line alone; seventy-six railroads, operating

over 172,000 miles of railroad, report an economy of nearly

$100,000,000, most of which constituted an economy in wages,[45] and

Senator Guggenheim, in an interview published in the _Wall Street

Journal_,[46] said:

"For the first time in many years the employer is getting from his men

the 100 per cent in efficiency for which he pays. It is a safe

assertion that prior to the panic the efficiency of labor was no

higher than 75 per cent, perhaps not even that."

Special attention is directed to the foregoing because unemployment is

ceasing to be a merely accidental and periodic phenomenon and is

assuming not only larger, but more permanent proportions. In other

words, the 30,000 men dismissed by the Pennsylvania Railroad were not

dismissed because of a temporary cessation of traffic. They were

dismissed because the Pennsylvania Railroad has succeeded in so

raising the efficiency of their system that they can permanently run

their lines with 30,000 less employees than they could before.

Let us endeavor to form some idea of the unemployment during the last

two years. The only State that regularly publishes official reports on

this subject is New York. The State of New York derives its

information from such trade unions as report to it; and from these

reports it seems that during 1908, the average unemployment has been

about one-third.

As has been intimated, an average of one-third of organized labor

reported by trade unions, means a very much larger proportion of

unorganized labor. It is true that Mr. Beveridge disputes this in one

passage,[47] but he himself furnishes the evidence of its truth in

several others; as for example, where he says that "in practice,

therefore, it is found that acute recurrent distress at times of

seasonal depression is confined to the unskilled occupations";[48] and

again, he points out how the lack of intelligence of unorganized and

semi-skilled and unskilled workmen makes it impossible for them to

take account of the fluctuations that produce unemployment. "The

measure of their failure," he says, "is to be found in those periods

of clamant distress which evoke Mansion House Relief Funds."[49]

In Chapter V, again, he points out the chronic distress of unskilled

men and that unemployment is largely due to lack of organization. It

stands to reason that whereas a factory owner thinks twice before

dismissing a skilled workman he will not hesitate to dismiss an

unskilled workman whom he can replace at any time.[50]

However much authorities may differ on this in Europe, there can be no

question about it in America. It was impossible to read the daily

papers in October, 1907, without being satisfied that the first men to

suffer were the unorganized and unskilled. Hardly a day passed for

weeks without papers announcing the discharge of workingmen in batches

of thousands at a time. It was only later that factories shut down,

and then for the most part, a day or so in the week. Unfortunately,

because the unskilled workingman is unorganized, it is impossible to

get any information regarding the extent of unemployment in their

ranks; but it can be stated without fear of contradiction, that the

percentage of unemployment is much larger in the ranks of the

unorganized than in those of trade unions.

The one-third, therefore, as shown by the New York Labor reports, is

below the mark, I will not undertake to say how much. In endeavoring

to make an estimate as to the extent of unemployment throughout the

entire Union, we must remember that the percentage of employment in

New York is likely to be larger than in purely agricultural States. On

the other hand, nowhere is the percentage of unemployment greater than

in the States devoted to mining. The difficulty under which we find

ourselves, therefore, in giving the exact figure of the extent of

unemployment, makes it wise not to increase the one-third reported by

trade unions in New York in consequence of the certainty that this

proportion was far larger in unorganized labor; and on the other hand,

not to decrease it out of the consideration that there were some

States in which the percentage would not be as much as in the State of

New York. Under these circumstances it may be assumed that the

percentage reported by the trade unions to the Labor Department fairly

represents the average unemployment throughout the whole United States

of America. Taking the census figures of over 7,000,000 as that of the

workingmen in the country, one-third of 7,000,000 is 2,333,333; add to

this the number of persons dependent on these workingmen; four to

each, 9,333,333; add this to the first figure and we get a population

of 11,666,666 which for two years has been on the edge of starvation,

and saved from it only through accumulated earnings, help from trade

unions and charity. As the unskilled workingman can hardly ever save

money owing to the low rate of his wages, and as he is not organized

and never receives benefits from a union, it may be said that the

large majority of these have been living for two years on the charity

of their neighbors.

It is probable, too, that the trade union member has been reduced to

depending upon charity; for the last report on savings banks shows

that $25,000,000 have been withdrawn during the last year, and their

presidents, when interviewed, recognized that this diminution was

caused by the withdrawal of funds by the unemployed.

It was also due to the withdrawal of funds by the trade unions. In

October, 1907, many trade unions had large sums accumulated which have

been applied during the year to the support of the unemployed. The

Union of Pressmen had $30,000 last October, all of which has gone to

support the unemployed during the year, and this union has suffered

comparatively little, only 20 per cent being now idle. This 20 per

cent is supported by assessments on those who are at work.

As regards remedies for unemployment, Mr. Beveridge says that "no cure

for industrial fluctuation can be hoped for; the aim must be

palliation." And he dwells at great length upon the palliative

measures to which Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and to a less extent,

France, have recourse; employment bureaus, insurance against

unemployment, and farm colonies, to which last he refers only

incidentally, pointing out that Hollesley Bay had proved for the most

part ineffectual.[51] These palliatives have, however, rendered

comparatively small service. In Germany, where they have all been

applied, unemployment during 1908 reached the rioting stage, at which

it becomes dangerous and commands the attention of our economists, as

in England. The palliative, to which Mr. Beveridge only incidentally

refers, is, to my mind, calculated not only to diminish the evil

immediately, but to serve as an important bridge over which the

unemployed and unemployables may pass into the Promised Land. The

farm colony, however, belongs to the constructive chapter at the end

of the book.

Another necessary consequence of the competitive system is a form of

unemployment which, because of its importance, deserves consideration

by itself--Prostitution.

Sec. 3. PROSTITUTION

Prostitution is not an easy or agreeable subject to treat; it will be

disposed of, therefore, in the fewest words possible. The treatment of

it will be summary, not because the subject is unimportant, but

because it is abominable. And if it is true that Socialism would put

an end to it, this alone, for those who can comprehend the horrors

thereof, ought to justify Socialism whatever be the sacrifice

necessary to the realization of it. If our present competitive system

is responsible for the evil to both sexes that results from

prostitution, then the maintenance of this system is, so far as every

one of us by indifference tolerates it, nothing less than crime.

We must begin by making ourselves clear as to what prostitution is.

Mere promiscuity of sexual relation does not constitute prostitution,

for many a woman is unfaithful to her husband many times without

losing social consideration, provided only she conduct herself with

sufficient discretion to avoid scandal.

Nor does intercourse for money constitute prostitution; for then

prostitution would include all those who marry for money. The real

definition of a prostitute is a woman who has intercourse both

promiscuously and for a money reward, promiscuity and gain must be

united.

Now it will later be made clear that in a Socialist state because

every woman would be furnished an opportunity to work, none would be

driven to prostitution.

Prostitution is generally the direct result of the disgrace put upon a

woman by loss of virtue. She is turned out of her home and her

legitimate employment. She has then but one recourse. It is sometimes

due to lack of employment; sometimes to the greater facility

prostitution affords for making a livelihood with the least labor. In

all these cases the _primum mobile_ is the making of a livelihood. As

Socialism would remove this _primum mobile_, would assure a livelihood

to every woman upon the single condition of her performing her

allotted work--there would be no motive for prostitution. If she

refused to perform her allotted task she would become a pauper--but a

prostitute never; for a Socialist state, as will be later explained,

would segregate paupers in farm colonies, where they would be

compelled to support themselves, and would not leave them to

demoralize their neighbors by profligacy and prostitution.

It may be objected that society keeps itself pure by casting out women

of loose character, and that an innocent girl should not be called

upon to work in a factory side by side with one who will deprave her

if she can. An exhaustive answer to this would involve a study of the

special conditions of each State, the laws of each State, the mental

attitude of the people, their tolerance of immorality or their

intolerance of it. It is a problem common to every society. This

exhaustive study it is not the province of this book to undertake; the

subject must be disposed of, therefore, by the following general

considerations:

In the society of the wealthy to-day we are confronted by the same

problem as would be presented in a cooperative commonwealth in which

prostitution would be rendered impossible by state employment

regardless of morality. In other words, wealth does for the wealthy

class what Socialism would do for the unwealthy; it makes prostitution

improbable if not impossible. And the wealthy manage to solve the

problem of promiscuity--every wealthy society for itself in its own

way.

In one country the woman who outrages morality is socially ostracized;

in another she is tolerated; in one country divorces are not only

lawful, but fashionable; in others the church forbids divorce but

tolerates the complaisant husband. _All these are problems of sex

which Socialism does not undertake to solve._ Later on the scientific

and ethical aspects of Socialism will, I hope, lead to the conclusion

that Socialism will so raise our ethical standards and habits of mind

that sexual irregularities will tend to diminish. Prostitution,

however, is not a sex, but an economic problem. A woman does not

receive money payment except for economic reasons. If the economic

pressure is removed she may be licentious, but she will not be a

prostitute. Chastity ought to be a purely moral or social question,

not an economic one. The competitive system makes it economic, and of

all the crimes imputable to the competitive system, this is the

greatest, for it directly perverts not only the human body, but the

human soul. Of course, unemployment, in degenerating the body,

ultimately degenerates the soul also, but the latter generation is

more or less remote; the public conscience may be forgiven for not

having discovered or taken account of it. But that we should see women

daily compelled by hunger to sell soul as well as body and should then

shut against them the door of our homes and our hearts, is a crime not

only against them, but against ourselves. We are hardening our hearts

as well as theirs. We are forcing our minds to that obliquity which

sees in Socialism only "pornographic literature" and "pornographic

propaganda" and charges the men who sacrifice their lives to the

putting an end to the conditions that produce prostitution with

"criminal nonsense" and "grave mental or moral shortcoming."[52]

This evil, like all evils that arise from the competitive system, is

not incidental or occasional, but inherent and necessary. It cannot be

better stated than by Miss Woodbridge, the secretary of the Working

Women's Society, in a report made to the Society on May 6, 1890:

"It is a known fact that men's wages cannot fall below a limit upon

which they can exist, but woman's wages have no limit, since the paths

of shame are always open to her. The very fact that some of these

women receive partial support from brothers or fathers and are thus

enabled to live upon less than they earn, forces other women who have

no such support either to suffer for necessities or seek other means

of support."

The extent to which wages are reduced below starvation rates is also

stated as follows:

"The wages, which are low, we find are often reduced by excessive

fines, the employers placing a value upon time lost that is not given

to service rendered. The salaries of saleswomen range from $2.00 to

$18.00, but the latter sum is only paid in rare instances in cloak and

suit departments. The average salary in the best houses does not

exceed $7.00, and averages $4.00 or $4.50 per week. Cashiers receive

from $6.00 to $15.00, averaging about $9.00. Cash girls receive from

$1.50 to $2.50 per week, though we know of but one store where $2.50

is paid. In the Broadway stores boys are employed, usually on

commission. The average salary of one large shop for saleswomen and

cash girls is $2.40; another $2.90; another $3.10; but in the latter,

the employees are nearly all men and boys. We find in many stores the

rule to fine from five to thirty cents for a few minutes' tardiness.

In one store all women who earn over $7.00 are fined thirty cents for

ten minutes' tardiness. Cash girls who earn $1.75 per week are fined

ten cents for ten minutes' tardiness."

It is hardly necessary to comment on a wage to saleswomen varying from

$2.40 to $3.10 a week, and this liable to reduction by fines. It will

be observed too that owners of department stores are compelled by the

pressure of the market to seek this half-supported help. Miss

Woodbridge says:

"In all the stores the tendency is to secure cheap help. You often see

the advertisement reading thus: 'Young misses, just graduated, wanted

for positions as saleswomen;' which means that being girls with homes

they can afford to work cheaper than those who are self-supporting."

The words "just graduated" constitute a direct appeal to the

educated--that is to say, partially supported--women.

So a self-respecting young girl who desires to contribute to the

expenses of the home, sets the rate of wages which drives her less

fortunate sister to misery and crime, and thus becomes the unconscious

instrument of her shame.

If anyone is not satisfied that the conditions above described must

result, unsavory details of a kind to persuade him will be found in

the report of Miss Maud E. Miner, probation officer of city

magistrates' courts, published in the Survey.

Lastly, temptation would be indirectly as well as directly diminished

by the absence of prostitutes as a class. It has been already

intimated that prostitution committed injustice to _both_ sexes. By

this it was intended to refer to the injustice of exposing our young

men to perpetual temptation furnished by the facilities for

prostitution. The whole question of sexual morality is mainly one of

suggestion. Take eight men accustomed to believe that they cannot

dispense with sexual connection; put them in a crew and remove the

suggestion that they can obtain relief at any time by substituting

therefor the notion of loyalty to the crew or a desire to win a race,

and the desire which before seemed uncontrollable practically

disappears. The moment the race is over, the old suggestion returns,

and the night of a boat race has become proverbial in consequence. The

same is true of men who go on hunting expeditions, yachting cruises,

into lumber camps, etc. Desire becomes dormant or controllable as soon

as facilities for gratifying it disappear; the moment the facility

returns, the suggestion is revived, and desire becomes uncontrollable.

What, then, would be the consequence if the suggestion were minimized

by the absence of prostitution altogether?

But this is not all: Men who seduce young girls and married women have

learned to gratify their passions through the facility afforded by

prostitution. If our youths were never afforded the chance of taking

that first step which leads to the _facilis descensus_, they would,

from the fact of never having gratified their passions, be less likely

to undertake to gratify them at the cost of seduction. The suggestion

would be absent; all women would tend to be as sacred to a man as his

sister. The relation of brother and sister is due entirely to the

absence of suggestion; he has learned to regard her with an

unconscious respect which removes the possibility of erotic

suggestion. What actually happens in the small family of to-day could

also happen in the larger family of to-morrow.

This must not be understood as a contention that Socialism would

destroy immorality. Far from it. All that is claimed is that it might

diminish immorality and that it would put an end to prostitution. This

last is reason enough for it.

It is impossible to treat of the economic cause of prostitution

without discussing its ethical consequences, because the consequences

react upon the cause. But we are here chiefly concerned with its

economic features; and it is impossible to put too much emphasis upon

the fact that the greatest permanent blot upon our civilization is the

necessary result of a competitive system that leaves a large part of

our women no other means of livelihood.

Although we have carefully distinguished between the woman who sells

herself to one man for a fortune and the common prostitute who sells

herself to many men for a pittance, the first is often more to blame

than the latter, because the latter is compelled by hunger while the

former often barters her chastity out of sheer love of luxury. The

whole heredity of man may be altered by the elimination through

Socialism of the sordid motive for marriage. Avarice may become

diminished by sexual selection. For although sexual selection is not

to-day found to have the force in animal heredity that Darwin thought,

it is an important factor in human heredity, thanks to the opportunity

for deliberate selection furnished by our institution of marriage. But

this belongs to another chapter.

From a purely economic point of view, prostitution is to be classed

with unemployment, which burdens the community with the support of a

class that in a cooperative commonwealth would be self-supporting. It

seems hardly necessary to state that the dissipation that attends the

life of a prostitute unfits her for work. And not content with being

idle herself, she causes others to be idle and constitutes a permanent

source of contagion, moral and physical, in our midst.

This is a necessary consequence of the competitive system.

Sec. 4. STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS

Another necessary result of a system of production that sets the man

who works with his hands against the man who works with his head, is

the conflict between capital and labor, that expresses itself in

strikes and lockouts. The conflict itself is treated in detail in the

chapter entitled Trusts and Trade Unions. Here we shall confine

ourselves to its wastefulness in time and money.

The sixteenth Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of

Labor,[53] for 1901, estimates the loss to employees resulting from

strikes and lockouts from January 1, 1881, to December 1, 1900--a

period of twenty years--at $306,683,223, and the loss to employers

during the same time at $142,659,104--together $449,342,327; or

roughly--$450,000,000. It is interesting to note how much less is the

loss to employers who are relatively able to bear it than to employees

who are relatively unable to bear it. But without regard to the

injustice of a system that bears so hardly upon the workingman, no

practical American who desires to see production attended with the

least waste and friction, can look upon such a loss as this without

impatience and humiliation.

Quite irrespective of the misery that results from unemployment and

the evils that attend it for the whole community--employed as well as

unemployed--too much emphasis cannot be put upon the foolish waste of

human energy that unemployment occasions. There have been for two

years in this country over a million (and probably much more than a

million) able-bodied men willing and anxious to assist in the

production and distribution of the things we need, and who have not

been permitted to do so--the energy of over a million, and probably a

great many more, absolutely wasted.

I have been amazed at the indifference of our wealthy class, and even

of the philanthropists amongst our wealthy class, at this condition of

the unemployed until a clue to this indifference was furnished by the

naivete of a few of our captains of industry.

Here is what one of them, Daniel Guggenheim, president of the American

Smelting and Refining Company, says to the _Wall Street Journal_,

August 10:

"Every manufacturer in the country has lowered his costs of

production, partly through cheaper prices for raw materials, but

principally on account of the increased efficiency of labor. The

latter is one of the redeeming features of the current depression.

"For the first time in many years the employer is getting from his men

the 100 per cent in efficiency for which he pays. It is a safe

assertion that prior to the panic the efficiency of labor was no

higher than 75 per cent, perhaps not even that.

"Another thing--wherever a thousand men are needed, twelve hundred

apply. The result is that the thousand best men are picked; the

others, of necessity, must be turned away. But the thousand work more

conscientiously, knowing that two hundred are waiting to take the

places of the incompetents."

Here again we have one small class benefited by the misery of

millions of unemployed, and willing to perpetuate this condition of

unemployment in order to profit by it. Of all the waste that attends

the competitive system this waste of human energy is the most unjust,

and the most unjustifiable, unless it can be found that the pauperism

it imposes on the millions and the heartlessness it promotes in the

few, contribute, as the bourgeois tells us, "to make character!" But

if the waste of human energy at the cost of human agony is a matter of

indifference to business men, there is another form of waste which is

likely to appeal to them. We Americans pride ourselves upon our

business efficiency. In the next chapter we will consider the waste of

money that attends the competitive system and how the ablest business

men have set about eliminating it.

Sec. 5. ADULTERATION

It would seem as though the indifference of the public at large to

such wicked and wasteful things as unemployment, strikes, lockouts and

prostitution, were due to hardness of heart; but if we observe a

similar indifference to adulteration which concerns every individual

to the utmost, we have to recognize that tolerance of the evils of the

competitive system is due not so much to hardness of heart as to

stupidity. For since the dawn of our present civilization,

adulteration has been a constant and abominable evil. As the

Encyclopedia Americana puts it: "Adulteration is coexistent with

trade;"[54] and as the Britannica puts it: "The practice of

adulteration has become an art in which the knowledge of science and

the ingenuity of trade are freely exercised."

Before industrialism had reached its present development the statutes

enacted against adulteration were severe. They punished it with the

pillory and tumbrel. The following are the words of the statute:

"If any default shall be found in the bread of a baker in the city,

the first time, let him be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to

his own house through the great street where there be most people

assembled, and through the great streets which are most dirty, with

the faulty loaf hanging from his neck; if a second time he shall be

found committing the same offence, let him be drawn from the Guildhall

through the great street of Cheepe, in the manner aforesaid, to the

pillory, and let him be put upon the pillory, and remain there at

least one hour in the day; and the third time that such default shall

be found, he shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down, and

the baker made to forswear the trade in the city forever."[55]

As the Encyclopaedia puts it: "All this has given way to the force of

free trade." In other words, freedom of industry has been interpreted

to mean freedom of adulteration, and the Act of 1872 accordingly

punishes adulteration with "a sum not to exceed fifty pounds," and

only provides imprisonment in case of a second offence.[56]

It is interesting to take up any standard encyclopaedia and read the

cold-blooded accounts of the various poisons introduced into our food

and other commodities for the purpose of adulteration. The matter has

been well treated by Mr. W.J. Ghent;[57] and in spite of the fact that

he is a prominent Socialist his book may be read, because in every

case he cites an authority, and his authorities are, for the most

part, reports of State Commissions and Health Departments.

It is probable that no article enters more universally into

consumption than milk, and of all the articles that we consume, it is

most important that milk should be pure, because it is the food of

infants and children. Yet in spite of all the laws passed for the

prevention of adulteration of milk, "in New York city, during 1902, of

3970 samples of milk taken from dealers for analysis, 2095, or 52.77

per cent, were found to be adulterated. The arrests in the city under

the inspection acts were 193 in 1899, 460 in 1900, 464 in 1901, and

722 in 1902."[58]

The experience in Ohio has been just the same as that of New York:

"The Dairy and Food Department of that State was created in 1886.

After seventeen years of inspections, arrests and prosecutions,

adulterations of milk still continue. 'Out of 1199 samples tested by

the chemists,' says the report for the year ending November 15, 1903,

'about one-fourth were found to be either below the required standard

in solids and butter fats, or adulterated with that base adulterant

known as "formalin" or "formaldehyde."'"[59]

Mr. A.J. Wedderburn calculates that 15 per cent of all our products

are adulterated; that is to say, $1,125,000,000 per annum.[60] And

this figure does not include adulterations of wine, whisky, beer,

tobacco, drugs or patent medicines.

Of eleven samples of coffee compounds analyzed by the Pennsylvania

Department in 1897-1898, "six contained no coffee whatever, and none

contained more than 25 per cent. The contents ranged from pea hulls

(65 per cent in one instance) to bran and the husks of cocoa

beans."[61]

The Ohio Report of 1898, in describing what is called "renovated

butter," says as follows:

"These factories have agents in all the large markets who buy up the

refuse from the commission men and retailers, taking stale, rancid,

dirty and unsalable butter in various degrees of putrefaction; this

refuse is put through a process of boiling, straining, filtering, and

renovating, and is finally churned with fresh milk, giving it a more

salable appearance. The effect is only temporary, however, as in a few

days the stuff becomes rancid and the odor it gives off is something

frightful. It is usually sold to people having a large trade who will

dispose of it quickly, for if it is not consumed at once it cannot be

used at all without being further renovated."[62]

After immense agitation we have had recent legislation of a character

to render adulteration difficult; the Federal Food and Drug Act which

went into effect January 1, 1907, since reenacted in thirty of our

States, and I suppose that many of our fellow-citizens think that this

Food and Drug Act is going to some extent to put an end to

adulteration. But is the experience of the entire race during its

entire history to be treated as of no importance in this connection?

Have we not had laws of this kind before, punishing adulteration in

every way--by the pillory and tumbrel as well as by fines and

imprisonment--and has any of them had any permanent effect in putting

an end to adulteration? How many more centuries are to elapse before

we learn the lesson that, so long as you give to one set of men an

irresistible motive for adulteration, no laws--no penalties, light or

severe, will materially check that impulse. If they are severe the

courts will not enforce them; if they are light the trade will

disregard them.

It is true that the adulteration of the things we eat and drink is

more important than the adulteration of things we wear. Nevertheless

it is a matter of no small importance that there is hardly a thing

that we do wear that is not adulterated in an astonishing degree. An

interesting paper on this subject was read before the Lake Placid

Conference on Home Economics, 1908.[63] The art of adulterating

textiles seems to be taught in our textile schools: "As a student in a

textile school said to a visitor: 'Our teacher is so clever, he can

spin wool and cotton together so they can never be detected;'" and

adulteration appears to be practically authorized under our New York

State law of 1900, which provides that "collars marked 'linen,' 'all

linen,' and 'pure linen,' must contain at least one thickness or ply

of pure linen." It is a common saying that, although the total supply

of wool in the world is only sufficient to meet one-third of the

demand, there is always wool to be had.

Of course, one principal reason why adulteration prevails is that it

is impossible for the ordinary consumer to detect it. For example, in

order to analyze stockings they must be destroyed. No consumer is

possessed of the technical schooling necessary to distinguish all-wool

or all-silk goods. Indeed it is stated by high authority that such a

thing as all-silk and all-wool is not to be purchased in the market,

though we continually buy articles declared to be all-wool or

all-silk.

I do not know whether the advocates of the present industrial

condition, on the ground that it "makes character," would go so far as

to approve of adulteration for this reason. It must be admitted,

however, that virtually everybody engaged in manufacture, production,

and distribution is a partner in the deliberate adulteration of things

for the purpose of cheating the public. This has been coexistent with

trade and has become recognized as one of our modern arts. The extent

to which adulteration is organized can be judged by the fact that "no

less than 40,000,000 pounds of fiber made from old rags, called

'shoddy,' are annually made in Yorkshire, at an estimated value of

L8,000,000 sterling, and that all is used for adulterating woolen

cloth."[64]

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Industrial Commission Report, Vol. I, p. 794.

[25] Ibid., p. 101.

[26] Ibid., p. 982.

The results of the work of this Commission are well summed up in Ind.

Com. Rep., Vol. I, Pt. I, p. 39, by Professor Jenks; and the waste

eliminated by trusts still more compendiously treated in "Government,"

Vol. II, p. 543, by the author.

[27] See N.Y. _Tribune_, Jan. 1, 1905, p. 2, column 2. Ibid., Jan. 2,

1905, p. 11, column 1.

[28] "Socialism and Social Reform," by R.T. Ely, p. 134.

[29] See N.Y. _Tribune_, Jan. 1, 1905, p. 2, column 2. Ibid., Jan. 2,

1905, p. 11, column 1.

[30] Report of the Industrial Commission, 1900. Vol. I, p. 199.

[31] Report of the Industrial Commission, Vol. I, 1900, p. 121.

[32] _Monde Economique_, Feb. 20, 1897.

[33] July 19, 1909.

[34] "Unemployment: A Problem of Industry," by W.H. Beveridge and

others. (Longmans.)

[35] Ibid., p. 61.

[36] "Unemployment: A Problem of Industry," by W.H. Beveridge and

others.

[37] Ibid., p. 63.

[38] N.Y. _Times_, Oct. 2, 1908.

[39] "Unemployment." W.H. Beveridge, p. 87.

[40] Ibid., p. 91.

[41] "Unemployment." W.H. Beveridge, p. 87.

[42] Ibid., p. 98. See also "Problems of Unemployment in the London

Building Trades." N.B. Dearles (1908, J.M. Dent). Cf. pp. 87-8.

[43] Book II, Chapter I.

[44] Mr. Beveridge denies this in one place, p. 21; but himself

produces proof of it later, p. 35.

[45] _Financial Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1908.

[46] August, 1908.

[47] Beveridge, "Unemployment," p. 21.

[48] Ibid., p. 35.

[49] Beveridge, "Unemployment," p. 65.

[50] The managers of Trusts have pointed out that in order to keep

their highly skilled men, they have to sell often at a loss; and they

give this as the reason for what is called "dumping" their goods into

foreign markets. In other words, in order not to lower prices in

America during periods of depression due to overproduction, they sell

their goods at a loss abroad.--Industrial Commission, Vol. I, p. 282,

[51] Beveridge, "Unemployment," p. 182.

[52] Mr. Roosevelt in the _Outlook_, 1909, p. 622.

[53] P. 24.

[54] Americana, Vol. I, Subj. Adulteration.

[55] Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. I, p. 51.

[56] An act to amend the laws of adulteration of food, drinks, and

drugs, 1872.

[57] "Mass and Class," by W.J. Ghent, p. 180-200.

[58] "The Health Department." A pamphlet published by the City Club

(1903), p. 23.

[59] Eighteenth Annual Report of the Ohio Dairy and Food Commission

(1903), p. 8.

[60] Address of Dr. W.C. Mitchell of the Colorado State Board of

Health, before the Portland Pure Food Convention (1902). Journal of

Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Convention of the National Association

of State Dairy and Food Departments, held at Portland, Ore., pp.

378-383.

[61] "Portland Proceedings," p. 469.

[62] Ohio Report (1898), p. 10.

[63] "The Study of Textiles," by Miss Nellie Crooks, Teachers College,

Columbia University, 1908.

[64] Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. I, Subj. Adulteration.

CHAPTER II

CAPITALISM IS WASTEFUL

Under the system of free competition in the beginning and middle of

the last century, every investor who saw a profit in refining oil or

sugar, or making steel, put up a refinery or factory. The aim of every

factory was to manufacture the largest amount possible and sell it at

the highest price possible; and this is what Herbert Spencer[65] and

the Manchester School regard as the ideal system of production. Now

let us see just what happens as a result of this system of unlimited

competition.

Sec. 1. GETTING THE MARKET

Every manufacturer and refiner has to find purchasers for his product.

This effort to find purchasers is called in the trade, "getting the

market."

The expression "getting the market" covers all the expenses attending

the bringing of goods to the attention of the public, and they may be

roughly divided into two principal categories--advertising and

commercial travellers. The public little appreciates the enormous cost

which attends the work of finding a purchaser. Mr. Bradley, after a

careful calculation, estimates that "somewhere between the distiller

and the consumer in this country forty millions of dollars are lost;

this goes primarily to the attempt to secure trade."[66] Mr. Dowe[67]

the President of the Commercial Travellers' National League, testifies

that 35,000 salesmen have been thrown out of employment by the

organization of trusts, and 25,000 reduced to two-thirds of their

previous salaries. This would represent a loss of $60,000,000 in

salaries on a basis of $1200 each. He cites, as instances of trusts

that have dismissed salesmen, the baking powder, bicycle, chair,

paper-bag, rubber, tin-plate, steel and rod, sugar, coffee, thread and

type-founders' combinations. Not only do trusts dismiss salesmen, they

substitute for salesmen who, prior to the organization of the trust

had been earning $4000 to $5000 a year, cheaper salesmen who receive

$18 a week. He also estimates that the dismissal of commercial

travellers means a loss to railways of about $250 per day, 240 days in

the year; in all, $25,000,000. The loss to hotels is about as much,

and "many hotels are likely to become bankrupt if any more travellers

are taken off."

Sec. 2. CROSS FREIGHTS

Another waste attending the competitive system results from "cross

freights," the double freight a refiner sometimes pays for hauling oil

from the well, or sugar from the nearest seaboard and back over

exactly the same ground, when refined, to the customer. So also the

steel manufacturer sometimes pays freight for hauling ore to the coal

mine or coal to the ore, and back, after smelting, to the customer.

This waste resulting from cross freights is only a small part of a

similar waste that results from competition in the task of

distribution--or retail trade.

We are all familiar with the amazing results obtained by the national

enterprise known as the Post Office, and how, for the insignificant

sum of two cents, a letter written in New York can be delivered in an

incredibly short space of time in San Francisco, and even perhaps more

incredibly in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Let us consider for a moment the cost of doing this were letters

distributed throughout the country in the same way as our other

commodities, as for example, milk, coal, or bread. It would be

interesting to calculate how many hundred dealers in milk there are in

New York[68] or London, equipped with their own horses, wagons, and

men, each engaged in delivering milk all over the city; add to these

the thousands distributing in like manner bread, and the thousands

distributing coal, and so on with butter, eggs, meat, fish,

vegetables, and all other things that enter into our daily

consumption.

Every block of houses is served with milk by this large number of milk

dealers instead of by one, as would be the case if the distribution of

milk were in the hands of one agency; so every block is furnished with

butter, eggs, meat, fish, and vegetables by this large number of

dealers in butter, eggs, meat, fish, and vegetables, instead of by

one, and so on, through every article that enters into our daily use.

Compare with this the economy of time, labor, and expense effected by

the Government Post Office through sorting letters beforehand

according to streets, and confining the distribution in any one street

to a single carrier who distributes the letters with the greatest

economy of time and labor, from door to door.

No practical business man would be guilty of the stupidity of putting

a hundred men to do the work that could be done just as well by a

single man; and yet, this is exactly the stupidity of which the

competitive system is guilty. Let us consider the unnecessary number

of butcher shops in the city of New York.[69]

Before methods of communication had attained their present

development, it was necessary that there should be butcher shops in

every block to satisfy the needs of the people in the block. But

to-day, the telephone service permits of ordering meat at a great

distance, and the automobile permits of this meat being rapidly

delivered to the consumer. The best housekeepers residing downtown

to-day go for their meat to a butcher who lives in Harlem. Now there

is no reason why this Harlem butcher should not furnish all the meat

to the island of Manhattan, or indeed to all in Greater New York. But

there is a reason why under our competitive system this should not

take place, and this is the stupidity of butchers in particular and

the stupidity of the community at large. Most butchers believe that

they can make most money by cheating their customers; and the public

at large believe all butchers equally dishonest and therefore deal

with the butcher nearest them. This stupidity is to a great extent

justified. The art of the butcher consists in finding out to which

customers he can sell third-class meat at first-class prices;[70] and

as a rule, he is so successful in doing this that no butcher is ever

known to fail. On the contrary, they all grow rich. This being the

rule, the public is justified in giving up the expectation of being

honestly served, so that it is only the most intelligent housewives

who discover that there are butchers who do not have dishonest

methods. Thus the stupidity of butchers and public tends to encourage

the multiplicity of shops and keeps in the butcher business an

enormously larger number than is necessary. If now we take into

consideration that what is true of butchers is true of almost every

dealer in the articles of food we consume, we shall appreciate how

much waste of human effort there is in this business of distribution.

But all this waste, encouraging stupidity in the customer and

dishonesty in the retailer, is endorsed because it "makes character!"

Last but not least is the loss of by-products that inevitably results

from manufacturing upon anything less than a gigantic scale.

The managers of the Standard Oil Trust testify that among the waste

products capable of being utilized in sufficiently large refineries

are gasoline, paraffine, lubricating oil, vaseline, naphtha, aniline

dyes, and no less than two hundred drugs; and that the total value of

these waste products is actually as great as that of the oil

itself.[71]

Is or is not the contention with which this chapter started,

justified? It was charged that the competitive system is stupid

because wasteful and disorderly, and that it was unnecessarily

immoral, unjust, and cruel. The testimony of men recognized as the

highest authorities has been produced to demonstrate its wastefulness:

Waste of capital owing to bankruptcy, to working at irregular

efficiency, to frequent change of dimension, to cost of "getting the

market," to cross freights, to anarchy of distribution, to loss of

by-products;

Waste of human energy in the work of competition; and above all in

unemployment leading to vagrancy and pauperism.

And we need produce no testimony to prove things so obvious as the

immorality, injustice, and cruelty of overemployment and unemployment

and the necessary results thereof: drunkenness, disease, pauperism,

prostitution, insanity, and crime.

One word only still needs explanation: It has been stated that this

immorality, injustice, and cruelty are "unnecessary." It is useless to

rail at these things if they are necessary. Nature is often immoral,

unjust and cruel. The survival of the few fit and the corresponding

sacrifice of the many unfit has no justification in morality. Death,

deformity, and disease are often both unjust and cruel. Yet against

these last we are in great part helpless. It is not enough to show

that the competitive system results in evil; we have to demonstrate

that these evils are avoidable; and that our remedy for them will not

involve still greater evils. This belongs to the final chapters on

Socialism; and is referred to here only to assure the reader that it

has not been overlooked.

Sufficient emphasis, however, has not yet been put upon the lack of

order that characterizes the competitive system.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] "A Plea for Liberty," p. 17:

"Under our existing voluntary cooperation with its free contracts and

its competition, production and distribution need no official

oversight. Demand and supply, and the desire of each man to gain a

living by supplying the needs of his fellows, spontaneously evolve

that wonderful system whereby a great city has its food daily brought

round to all doors or stored at adjacent shops; has clothing for its

citizens everywhere at hand in multitudinous varieties; has its houses

and furniture and fuel ready made or stocked in each locality; and has

mental pabulum from halfpenny papers, hourly hawked round, to weekly

shoals of novels, and less abundant books of instruction, furnished

without stint for small payments. And throughout the kingdom,

production as well as distribution is similarly carried on with the

smallest amount of superintendence which proves efficient; while the

quantities of the numerous commodities required daily in each locality

are adjusted without any other agency than the pursuit of profit."

[66] Report of the Industrial Commission, pp. 829-831, Vol. I, 1900.

[67] Ibid., pp. 27-36.

[68] This work has been in part eliminated by combination. But the

economies resulting therefrom have all gone to the combinations. The

consumer pays just as much as he did before.

[69] Trow's Business Directory of New York city, 1909, lists about

4000 retail butcher shops in Manhattan and The Bronx. There are about

275 postal stations in the same territory.

[70] All good housekeepers know this by experience. I know it from the

butchers themselves, who explained it in the course of an effort to

arrange a combination of butchers in Paris.

[71] Testimony of Mr. Archbold (pp. 570-571) in the Report of the

Industrial Commission, Vol. I, 1900.