Commons, appointed to consider the best means of improving the
condition of the "aged and deserving poor." The report read: "Cases
are too often found in which poor and aged people, whose conduct and
whose whole career has been blameless, industrious and deserving, find
themselves from no fault of their own, at the end of a long and
meritorious life, with nothing but the workhouse or inadequate outdoor
relief as the refuge for their declining years."
And what is true of England in this respect is equally true of
America.
Let me repeat here that I am not defending intemperance. I believe
with all my heart that we must fight intemperance as a deadly enemy of
the working class. I want to see the workers sober; sober enough to
think clearly, sober enough to act wisely. Before we can get rid of
the evils from which we suffer we must get sober minds, friend
Jonathan. That is why the Socialists of Europe are fighting the drink
evil; that is why, too, the Prussian Government put a stop to the
"Anti-Alcohol" campaign of the workers, led by Dr. Frolich, of Vienna.
Dr. Frolich was not advocating Socialism. He was simply appealing to
the workers to stop making beasts of themselves, to become sober so
that they could think clearly with brains unmuddled by alcohol. And
the Prussian Government did not want that: they knew very well that
clear thinking and sober judgment would lead the workers to the ballot
boxes under Socialist banners.
I care most of all for the suffering of the innocent little ones. When
I see that under our present system it is necessary for the mother to
leave her baby's cradle to go into a factory, regardless of whether
the baby lives or dies when it is fed on nasty and dangerous
artificial foods or poor, polluted milk, I am stirred to my soul's
depths. When I think of the tens of thousands of little babies that
die every year as a result of these conditions I have described; of
the millions of children who go to school every day underfed and
neglected, and of the little child toilers in shops, factories and
mines, as well as upon the farms, though their lot is less tragic than
that of the little prisoners of the factories and mines--I cannot find
words to express my hatred of the ghoulish system.
I should like you to read, Jonathan, a little pamphlet on _Underfed
School Children_, which costs ten cents, and a bigger book, _The
Bitter Cry of the Children_, which you can get at the public library.
I wrote these to lay before thinking men and women some of the
terrible evils from which our children suffer. _I know_ that the
things written are true. Every line of them was written with the
single purpose of telling the truth as I had seen it.
I made the terrible assertions that more than eighty thousand babies
are slain by poverty in America each year; that some "2,000,000
children of school age in the United States are the victims of poverty
which denies them common necessities, particularly adequate
nourishment"; that there were at least 1,750,000 children at work in
this country. These statements, and the evidence given in support of
them, attracted widespread attention, both in this country and in
Europe. They were cited in the U.S. Senate and in Europe parliaments.
They were preached about from thousands of pulpits and discussed from
a thousand platforms by politicians, social reformers and others.
A committee was formed in New York City to promote the physical
welfare of school children. Although one of the first to take the
matter up, I was not asked to serve on that committee, on account of
the fact, as I was afterwards told, of my being a Socialist. Well,
that Committee, composed entirely of non-Socialists, and including
some very bitter opponents of Socialism, made an investigation of the
health of school children in New York City. They examined, medically,
some 1,400 children of various ages, living in different parts of the
city and belonging to various social classes. If the results they
discovered are common to the whole of the United States, the
conditions are in every way worse than I had declared them to be.
_If the conditions found by the medical investigators for this
committee are representative of the whole of the United States, then
we have not less than twelve million school children in the United
States suffering from physical defects more or less serious, and not
less than 1,248,000 suffering from malnutrition--from insufficient
nourishment, generally due to poverty, though not always--to such an
extent that they need medical attention._[4]
Do you think a nation with such conditions existing at its very heart
ought to be called a civilized nation? I don't. I say that it is a
_brutalized_ nation, Jonathan!
And now I want you to look over a list of another kind of shameful
social conditions--a list of some of the vast fortunes possessed by
men who are not victims of poverty, but of shameful wealth. I take the
list from the dryasdust pages of _The Congressional Record_, December
12, 1907, from a speech by the Hon. Jeff Davis, United States Senator
from Arkansas. I cannot find in the pages of _The Congressional
Record_ that it made any impression upon the minds of the honorable
senators, but I hope it will make some impression upon your mind, my
friend. It is a good deal easier to get a human idea into the head of
an honest workingman than into the head of an honorable senator!
Don't be frightened by a few figures. Read them. They are full of
human interest. I have put before you some facts relating to the
shameful poverty of the workers and their pitiable condition, and now
I want to put before you some facts relating to the pitiable condition
of the non-workers. I want you to feel some pity for the millionaires!
THE RICHEST FIFTY-ONE IN THE UNITED STATES.
"When the average present-day millionaire is bluntly asked to name the
value of his earthly possessions, he finds it difficult to answer the
question correctly. It may be that he is not willing to take the
questioner into his confidence. It is doubtful whether he really
knows.
"If this is true of the millionaire himself, it follows that when
others attempt the task of estimating the amount of his wealth the
results must be conflicting. Still, excellent authorities are not
lacking on this subject, and the list of the richest fifty-one persons
in the United States has been satisfactorily compiled.
"The following list is taken from Munsey's Scrap Book of June, 1906,
and is a fair presentation of the property owned by fifty-one of the
very richest men of the United States.
=====+=======================+================+================
Rank | Name. | How Made. | Total Fortune.
-----+-----------------------+----------------+----------------
1 | John D. Rockefeller | Oil | $600,000,000
2 | Andrew Carnegie | Steel | 300,000,000
3 | W.W. Astor | Real Estate | 300,000,000
4 | J. Pierpont Morgan | Finance | 150,000,000
5 | William Rockefeller | Oil | 100,000,000
6 | H.H. Rogers | do | 100,000,000
7 | W.K. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 100,000,000
8 | Senator Clark | Copper | 100,000,000
9 | John Jacob Astor | Real Estate | 100,000,000
10 | Russell Sage | Finance | 80,000,000
11 | H.C. Frick, Jr. | Steel and Coke | 80,000,000
12 | D.O. Mills | Banker | 75,000,000
13 | Marshall Field, Jr. | Inherited | 75,000,000
14 | Henry M. Flagler | Oil | 60,000,000
15 | J.J. Hill | Railroads | 60,000,000
16 | John D. Archbold | Oil | 50,000,000
17 | Oliver Payne | do | 50,000,000
18 | J.B. Haggin | Gold | 50,000,000
19 | Harry Field | Inherited | 50,000,000
20 | James Henry Smith | do | 40,000,000
21 | Henry Phipps | Steel | 40,000,000
22 | Alfred G. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 40,000,000
23 | H.O. Havemeyer | Sugar | 40,000,000
24 | Mrs. Hetty Green | Finance | 40,000,000
25 | Thomas F. Ryan | do | 40,000,000
26 | Mrs. W. Walker | Inherited | 35,000,000
27 | George Gould | Railroads | 35,000,000
28 | J. Ogden Armour | Meat | 30,000,000
29 | E.T. Gerry | Inherited | 30,000,000
30 | Robert W. Goelet | Real Estate | 30,000,000
31 | J.H. Flager | Finance | 30,000,000
32 | Claus Spreckels | Sugar | 30,000,000
33 | W.F. Havemeyer | do | 30,000,000
34 | Jacob H. Schiff | Banker | 25,000,000
35 | P.A.B. Widener | Street Cars | 25,000,000
36 | George F. Baker | Banker | 25,000,000
37 | August Belmont | Finance | 20,000,000
38 | James Stillman | Banker | 20,000,000
39 | John W. Gates | Finance | 20,000,000
40 | Norman B. Ream | do | 20,000,000
41 | Joseph Pulitzer | Journalist | 20,000,000
42 | James G. Bennett | Journalist | 20,000,000
43 | John G. Moore | Finance | 20,000,000
44 | D.G. Reid | Steel | 20,000,000
45 | Frederick Pabst | Brewer | 20,000,000
46 | William D. Sloane | Inherited | 20,000,000
47 | William B. Leeds | Railroads | 20,000,000
48 | James P. Duke | Tobacco | 20,000,000
49 | Anthony N. Brady | Finance | 20,000,000
50 | George W. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 20,000,000
51 | Fred W. Vanderbilt | do | 20,000,000
| | +----------------
| Total | | $3,295,000,000
-----+-----------------------+----------------+----------------
"It will thus be seen that fifty-one persons in the United States,
with a population of nearly 90,000,000 people, own approximately one
thirty-fifth of the entire wealth of the United States. The
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 29th number, 1906, prepared
under the direction of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor of the
United States, gives the estimated true value of all property in the
United States for that year at $107,104,211,917.
"Each of the favored fifty-one owns a wealth of somewhat more than
$64,600,000, while each of the remaining 89,999,950 people get $1,100.
No one of these fifty-one owns less than $20,000,000, and no one on
the average owns less than $64,600,000. Men owning from $1,000,000 to
$20,000,000 are no longer called rich men. There are approximately
4,000 millionaires in the United States, but the aggregate of their
holdings is difficult to obtain. If all their holdings be deducted
from the total true value of all the property in the United States,
the average share of each of the other 89,995,000 people would be less
than $500.
"John Jacob Astor is reputed to have been the first American
millionaire, although this is a matter impossible to decide. It is
also claimed that Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, the great
grandfather of Congressman Longworth, was the first man west of the
Allegheny Mountains to amass a million. It is difficult to prove
either one of these propositions, but they prove that the age of the
millionaire in the United States is a comparatively recent thing. In
1870 to own a single million was to be a very rich man; in 1890 it
required at least $10,000,000, while to-day a man with a single
million or even ten millions is not in the swim. To be enumerated as
one of the world's richest men you must own not less than
$20,000,000."
I am perfectly serious when I suggest that the slaves of riches are
just as much to be pitied as the slaves of poverty. No man need envy
Mr. Rockefeller, for example, because he has something like six
hundred millions of dollars, an annual income of about seventy-two
millions. He does not own those millions, Jonathan, but they own him.
He is a slave to his possessions. If he owns a score of automobiles he
can only use one at a time; if he spends millions in building palatial
residences for himself he cannot get greater comfort than the man of
modest fortune. He cannot buy health nor a single touch of love for
money.
Many of our great modern princes of industry and commerce are good
men. It is a wild mistake to imagine that they are all terrible ogres
and monsters of iniquity. But they are victims of an unjust system.
Millions roll into their coffers while they sleep, and they are
oppressed by the burden of responsibilities. If they give money away
at a rate calculated to ease them of the burdens beneath which they
stagger they can only do more harm than good. Mr. Carnegie gives
public libraries with the lavishness with which travellers in Italy
sometimes throw small copper coins to the beggars on the streets, but
he is only pauperising cities wholesale and hindering the progress of
real culture by taking away from civic life the spirit of
self-reliance. If the people of a small town came together and said:
"We ought to have a library in our town for our common advantage: let
us unite and subscribe funds for a hundred books to begin with," that
would be an expression of true culture.
But when a city accepts a library at Mr. Carnegie's hands, there is an
inevitable loss of self-respect and independence. Mr. Carnegie's
motives may be good and pure, but the harm done to the community is
none the less great.
Mr. Rockefeller may give money to endow colleges and universities from
the very highest motives, but he cannot prevent the endowments from
influencing the teaching given in them, even if he should try to do
so. Thus the gifts of our millionaires are an insidious poison flowing
into the fountains of learning.
Mind you, this is not the claim of a prejudiced Socialist agitator.
President Hadley, of Yale University, is not a Socialist agitator, but
he admits the truth of this claim. He says: "Modern University
teaching costs more money per capita than it ever did before, because
the public wishes a university to maintain places of scientific
research, and scientific research is extremely expensive. _A
university is more likely to obtain this money if it gives the
property owners reason to believe that vested rights will not be
interfered with._ If we recognize vested rights in order to secure the
means of progress in physical science, is there not danger that we
shall stifle the spirit of independence which is equally important as
a means of progress in moral science?"
Professor Bascom is not a Socialist agitator, either, but he also
recognizes the danger of corrupting our university teaching in this
manner. After calling attention to the "wrongful and unflinching way"
in which the wealth of the Standard Oil magnate has been amassed, he
asks: "Is a college at liberty to accept money gained in a manner so
hostile to the public welfare? Is it at liberty, when the Government
is being put to its wits' end to check this aggression, to rank itself
with those who fight it?"
And the effect of riches upon the rich themselves is as bad as
anything in modern life. While it is true that there are among the
rich many very good citizens, it is also perfectly plain to any honest
observer of conditions that great riches are producing moral havoc and
disaster among the princes of wealth in this country. Mr. Carnegie has
said that a man who dies rich dies disgraced, but there is even
greater reason to believe that to be born rich is to be born damned.
The inheritance of vast fortunes is always demoralizing.
What must the mind and soul of a woman be like who takes her toy
spaniel in state to the opera to hear Caruso sing, while, in the same
city, there are babies dying for lack of food? What are we to think of
the dog-dinners, the monkey-dinners and the other unspeakably foolish
and unspeakably vile orgies constantly reported from Newport and other
places where the drones of our social system disport themselves? What
shall we say of the shocking state of affairs disclosed by the
disgusting reports of our "Society Scandals," except that unearned
riches corrode and destroy all human virtues?
The wise King, Solomon, knew what he was talking about when he cried
out: "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Unnatural poverty is bad,
blighting the soul of man; and unnatural riches are likewise bad,
equally blighting the soul of man. Our social system is bad for both
classes, Jonathan, and a change to better and juster conditions, while
it will be resisted by the rich, the drones, with all their might,
will be for the common good of all. For it is well to remember that in
trying to get rid of the rule of the drones, the working class is not
trying to become the ruling class, to rule others as they have been
ruled. We are aiming to do away with classes altogether; to make a
united and free social state.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Mark 14:7.
[4] Quar. Pub. American Statistical Association, June 1907.
VI
THE ROOT OF THE EVIL
All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in all
ages to have been the vile maxim of the masters of
mankind.--_Adam Smith._
Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding!
Know the rights and the rights are won.
Wrong shall die with the understanding,
One truth clear, and the work is done.--_John Boyle O'Reilly._
The great ones of the world have taken this earth of ours to
themselves; they live in the midst of splendour and
superfluity. The smallest nook of the land is already a
possession; none may touch it or meddle with it.--_Goethe._
I have by no means exhausted the evils of the system under which we
live in the brief catalogue I have made for you, my friend. If it were
necessary, I could compile an immense volume of authentic evidence to
overwhelm you with a sense of the awful failure of our civilization to
produce a free, united, healthy, happy and virtuous people, which I
conceive to be the goal toward which all good and wise men should
aspire. But it is dreary and unpleasant work recounting evil
conditions; constantly looking at the sores of society is a morbid and
soul-destroying task.
I want you now to consider the cause of industrial misery and social
inequality, to ask yourself why these conditions exist. For we can
never hope to remove the evils, Jonathan, until we have discovered the
underlying causes. How does it happen that some people are thrifty and
virtuous and yet miserably poor and that others are thriftless and
sinful and yet so rich that their riches weigh them down and make them
as miserable as the very poorest? Why, in the name of all that is fair
and good, have we got such a stupid, wasteful, unjust and unlovely
social system after all the long centuries of human experience and
toil? When you can answer these questions, my friend, you will know
whither to look for deliverance.
You said in your letter to me the other day, Jonathan, that you
thought things were bad because of the wickedness of man's nature.
Lots of people believe that. The churches have taught that doctrine
for ages, but I do not believe that it is true. It is a doctrine which
earnest men who have been baffled in trying to find a satisfactory
explanation for the evils have accepted in desperation. It is the
doctrine of pessimism, despair and wild unfaith in man. If it were
true that things were so bad as they are just because men were wicked
and because there never were good men enough to make them better, we
should not have any ground for hope for the future.
I propose to try and show you that the wickedness of our poor human
nature is not responsible for the terrible social conditions, so that
you will not have to depend for your hope of a better society upon the
very slender thread of the chance of getting enough good men to make
conditions better. Bad conditions make bad lives, Jonathan, and will
continue to do so. Instead of depending upon getting good men first to
make conditions good, we must make conditions good so that good lives
may flourish and grow in them naturally.
You have read a little history, I daresay, and you know that there is
no truth in the old cry that "As things are now things always have
been and always will be." You know that things are always changing. If
George Washington could come back to earth again he would be amazed at
the changes which have taken place in the United States. Going further
back, Christopher Columbus would not recognize the country he
discovered. And if we could go back millions of years and bring to
life one of our earliest ancestors, one of the primitive
cave-dwellers, and set him down in one of our great cities, the mighty
houses, streets railways, telephones, telegraphs, wireless telegraphy,
electric vehicles on the streets and the ships out on the river would
terrify him far more than an angry tiger would. Can you think how
astonished and alarmed such a primitive cave-man would be to be taken
into one of your great Pittsburg mills or down into a coal mine?
No. The world has grown, Jonathan. Man has enlarged his kingdom, his
power in the universe. Step by step in the evolution of the race, man
has wrested from Nature her secrets. He has gone down into the deep
caverns and found mineral treasuries there; he has made the angry
waves of the ocean bear great, heavy burdens from shore to shore for
his benefit; he has harnessed the tides and the winds that blow and
caught the lightning currents, making them all his servants. Between
the _lowest_ man in the modern tenement and the cave-man there is a
greater gulf than ever existed between the beast in the forest and the
_highest_ man dwelling in a cave in that far-off period.
Things are not as they are to-day because a group of clever but
desperately wicked men came together and invented a scheme of society
in which the many must work for the few; in which some must have more
than they can use, so that they rot of excess while others have too
little and rot of hunger; in which little children must toil in
factories so that big strong men may loaf in clubs and dens of vice;
in which some women sell themselves body and soul for bread while
other women spend the sustenance of thousands upon jewels for pet
dogs. No. It was no such fiendish ingenuity which devised the
capitalistic system and imposed it upon mankind. It has _grown_ up
through the ages, Jonathan, and is still growing. We have grown from
savagery and barbarism through various stages to our present
commercial system, and the process of growth is still going on. I
believe we are growing into Socialism.
There have been many forces urging mankind onward in this long
evolution. Religion has played a part. Love of country has played a
part. Climate and the nature of the soil have been factors. Man's ever
growing curiosity, his desire to know more of the life around him, has
had much to do with it. I have put the ideals of religion and
patriotism first, Jonathan, because I wanted you to see that they were
by no means overlooked or forgotten, but in truth they ought not to be
placed first. It is the verdict of all who have made a study of social
evolution that, while these factors have exerted an important
influence, back of them have been the material economic conditions.
In philosophy this is the basis of a very profound theory upon which
many learned volumes have been written. It is generally called "The
Materialistic Conception of History," but sometimes it is called
"Economic Determinism" or "The Economic Interpretation of History."
The first man to set forth the theory in a very clear and connected
manner was Karl Marx, upon whose teachings the Socialists of the
world have placed a great deal of reliance. I don't expect you to read
all the heavy and learned books written upon this subject, for many of
them require that a man must be specially trained in philosophy in
order to understand them. For the present I shall be quite satisfied
if you will read a ten-cent pamphlet called _The Communist Manifesto_,
by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and, along with that, the fourth,
fifth and sixth chapters of my book, _Socialism_, about a hundred
pages altogether. These will give you a fairly clear notion of the
matter. I shall not mention the hard, scientific name of this
philosophy again. I don't like big words if little ones will serve.
If you enjoy reading a good story, a novel that is full of romance and
adventure, I would advise you to read _Before Adam_, by Jack London, a
Socialist writer. It is a novel, but it is also a work of science. He
gives an account of the life of the first men and shows how their
whole existence depended upon the crude weapons and tools, sticks
picked up in the forests, which they used. They couldn't live
differently than they did, because they had no other means of getting
a living. How a people make their living determines how they live.