Views Expressed by J.M. Patterson, of
Chicago, Who Has Resigned Office
Because of His Convictions.
One of the most recent converts to Socialism is Joseph Medill Patterson,
of Chicago. Though he is now only twenty-seven years of age, Mr. Patterson
has had a strong taste of public life as commissioner of public works in
Chicago. In the local campaign of 1905 he supported Judge (now Mayor)
Dunne, who, after election, gave him his important appointment. He has now
resigned the commissionership. In his letter of resignation he says:
It was through a common belief in the cause of municipal
ownership of municipal utilities that I first became
acquainted with you, and in this letter of resignation I
desire to express publicly just how my views on this subject
have changed. They have not diminished. They have enlarged.
I used to believe that many of the ills under which the
nation suffers, and by which it is threatened, would be
prevented or avoided by the general inauguration of public
ownership of public utilities. But my experience in the
Department of Public Works has convinced me that this policy
would not be even one-fourth of the way sufficient.
He then goes on to say that in Great Britain--where municipal trading has
been highly developed--the problem of the unemployed is becoming very
intense; while in Germany--where municipal and government ownership of
public utilities has become almost the rule--the gap between the
possessions of the rich and the poor grows wider every day. The letter
concludes:
The universal ballot gives every male citizen an equal
political opportunity. The common ownership of all the means
of production and distribution would give everybody an equal
chance at music, art, sport, study, recreation, travel,
self-respect, and the respect of others. I, for one, cannot
see why those things should be concentrated more and more in
the hands of a few.
Two hundred years ago a proposition for equal political
opportunity would have seemed more absurd than to-day seems
the proposition for equal opportunity in all things on this
earth for which men strive.
I have hardly read a book on socialism, but that which I
have just enunciated I believe in general to be its theory.
If it be its theory, I am a socialist. You will find, and
other advanced liberals and radicals who believe as I do
will also find, that you are merely paltering with skin-deep
measures when you stop short of socialism.
Interviewed regarding his conversion to socialism, Mr. Patterson adds:
When we say that things should be divided equally we mean
that every man should have a chance. Men like Schwab and
Carnegie have risen from poor young men to wealth; but they
are the extraordinary young men. The ordinary young man is
not able to rise above his birth, and the extraordinary
young man is one in a million.
I don't mean that all the money in the country should be cut
up into equal parts. What I mean is that the people should
own in common all the means of production, the sources of
wealth, and divide the results. The talk of economical
equality is no more ridiculous now than was the talk of
social equality years ago.
Suppose Alfred G. Vanderbilt has five million dollars
invested in his railroads. Say there are twenty-five
thousand employees. Out of his investment he receives, say,
five per cent, which is two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year. He doesn't turn a wheel, he doesn't move a
locomotive, he doesn't do a thing for the railroad. He
simply owns it. He doesn't contribute toward making the road
safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he
should give them what they earn, instead of taking it
himself?
My idea is to have things equally divided so that when a man
dies his children shall not inherit wealth.
Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W.
Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago _Tribune_, is a conservative, opposed
to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting
everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that
if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the _Tribune_
certainly will not support him.