FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[207]TheAmerican Magazine, October, 1911.[208]Winston Churchill,op. cit., p. 389.[209]Die Neue Zeit, Oct. 27, 1911.[210]Speech just before Congressional Elections of 1910.[211]Speech delivered by Mr. Roosevelt, Dec. 13, 1910.[212]John Spargo, "Karl Marx."[213]Edward Bernstein, "Evolutionary Socialism," p. 143.[214]Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 58-59.[215]TheOutlook, March 13, 1909.[216]Karl Kautsky inVorwaerts(Berlin), Feb. 7, 1909.[217]Quoted by Jaurès, "Studies in Socialism," p. 103.[218]Karl Kautsky, "Erfurter Programm," p. 258.[219]Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 48-49.[220]TheInternational Socialist Review(Chicago), October, 1911.[221]H. G. Wells, "This Misery of Boots," p. 34.[222]Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," p. 51.

[207]TheAmerican Magazine, October, 1911.

[208]Winston Churchill,op. cit., p. 389.

[209]Die Neue Zeit, Oct. 27, 1911.

[210]Speech just before Congressional Elections of 1910.

[211]Speech delivered by Mr. Roosevelt, Dec. 13, 1910.

[212]John Spargo, "Karl Marx."

[213]Edward Bernstein, "Evolutionary Socialism," p. 143.

[214]Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 58-59.

[215]TheOutlook, March 13, 1909.

[216]Karl Kautsky inVorwaerts(Berlin), Feb. 7, 1909.

[217]Quoted by Jaurès, "Studies in Socialism," p. 103.

[218]Karl Kautsky, "Erfurter Programm," p. 258.

[219]Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 48-49.

[220]TheInternational Socialist Review(Chicago), October, 1911.

[221]H. G. Wells, "This Misery of Boots," p. 34.

[222]Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," p. 51.

I have pointed out the relation of the Socialist movement to all classes but one,—the agriculturists,—a class numerically next in importance to the industrial wage earners.

On the one hand most agriculturists are small capitalists, who, even when they do not own their farms, are often forced to-day to invest a considerable sum in farm animals and machinery, in rent and interest and in wages at the harvest season; on the other hand, a large part of the farmers work harder and receive less for their work than skilled laborers, while the amount they own, especially when tenants, scarcely exceeds what it has cost many skilled workers to learn their trade. Are the great majority of farmers, then, rather small capitalists or laborers?

For many years Socialists paid comparatively little attention to the problem. How was it then imagined that a political program could obtain the support of the majority of the voters without presenting to the agricultural population as satisfactory a solution of their difficulties as that it offered to the people of the towns? On the other hand, how was it possible to adapt a program frankly "formulated by or for the workingmen of large-scale industry" to the conditions of agriculture?

The estimate of the rural population that has hitherto prevailed among the Socialists of most countries may be seen from the following language of Kautsky's:—

"We have already seen how the peasant's production [that of the small farmer] isolates men. The capitalists' means of production and the modern State, to be sure, have a powerful tendency to put an end to the isolation of the peasant through taxation, military service, railways, and newspapers. But the increase of the points of contact between town and country as a rule only have the effect that the peasant farmer feels his desolation and isolation less keenly. They raise him up as a peasant farmer, but awake in him a longing for the town; they drive all the most energetic andindependently thinking elements from the country into the towns, and rob the former of its forces. So that the progress of modern economic life has the effect of increasing the desolation and lonesomeness of the country rather than ending it."The truth is that in every country the agricultural population is economically and politically the most backward. That does not imply any reflection on it; it is its misfortune, but it is a fact with which one must deal."[223]

"The truth is that in every country the agricultural population is economically and politically the most backward. That does not imply any reflection on it; it is its misfortune, but it is a fact with which one must deal."[223]

Not only Kautsky and Vandervelde, but whole Socialist parties like those of Austria and Germany, are given to the exploitation of the supposed opposition between town and country, the producer and the consumer of agricultural products. At the German Socialist Congress of 1911, Bebel declared that to-day those who were most in need of protection were the consumers of agricultural products, the workingmen, lower middle classes and employees. He felt the day was approaching when the increased cost of living would form the chief question before the German people, the day when the German people would raise a storm and tear down the tariffs on the necessaries of life as well as other measures that unduly favor the agriculturists—while the proposal of socialization would come up first in the field of agriculture.

While, in view of the actual level of prices in Germany, there is no doubt that even the smallest of the agriculturists are getting some share of the spoils of the tariffs and other measures Bebel mentions, there can also be little question that in such a storm of revolt as he predicts the pendulum would swing too far the other way, and they would suffer unjustly. It is true that the agriculturist produces bread, while the city worker consumes it, but so also do shoe workers produce shoes that are consumed by garment workers, and certainly no Socialist predicts any lasting struggle between producers of shoes and producers of clothing. It is true also that if the wage earner's condition is to be improved, some limit must be set to prices as wages are raised. But the flour manufacturer and the baker must be restrained as well as the grain producer. Nor do Socialists expect to accomplish much by the mere regulation of prices. And when it comes to their remedy, socialization, there is less reason, as I shall show, for beginning with land rent than with industrial capital, and the Socialist parties of France and America recognize this fact.

But it is the practical result of this supposed opposition of town and country rather than its inconsistency with Socialist principles that must hold our attention. Certainly no agricultural program and no appeal to the agricultural population, perhaps not even one addressed to agricultural laborers, can hope for success while this view of the opposition of town and country is maintained; for all agriculturists want what they consider to be reasonable prices for their products, and their whole life depends directly or indirectly on these prices. When the workmen agitate, as they so often do in Europe, for cheap bread and meat, without qualifying their agitation by any regard for the agriculturists, all hope of obtaining the support ofanyof the agricultural classes, even laborers, is for the time being abandoned.

The predominance of town over country is so important to Kautsky that he even opposes such a vital piece of democratic reform as direct legislation where the town-country population is the more numerous than that of the towns. "We have seen" he says, "that the modern representative system is not very favorable to the peasantry or to the small capitalists, especially of the country towns. The classes which the representative system most favors are the large owners of capital or land, the highly educated, and under a democratic electoral system, the militant and class-conscious part of the industrial working class. So in general one can say parliamentarism favors the population of the large towns as against that of the country."

Far from being disturbed at this unjust and unequal system, Kautsky prefers that it shouldnotbe reformed, unless the town population are in a majority. "Direct legislation by the people works against these tendencies of parliamentarism. If the latter strives to place the political balance of power in the population of the large towns, the former puts it in the masses of the population, but these still live everywhere and for the most part in a large majority, with the exception of England, in the country and in the small country towns. Direct legislation takes away from the population of the large towns their special political influence, and subjects them to the country population."[224]

He concludes that wherever and as long as the agricultural population remains in a majority, the Socialists have no special reason to work for direct legislation.

Of course Kautsky and his school do not expect thisseparation or antagonism of agriculture and industry to last very far into the future. But as long as capitalism lasts they believe agriculturists will play an entirely subordinate rôle in politics. "While the capitalist mode of production increases visibly the difficulties of the formation of a revolutionary class (in the country), it favors it in the towns," he says. "It there concentrates the laboring masses, creates conditions favorable to every organization for their mental evolution and for their class struggle.... It debilitates the country, disperses the agricultural workers over vast areas, isolates them, robs them of all means of mental development and resistance to exploitation."[225]

Similarly Vandervelde quotes from Voltaire's essay on customs a sentence describing the European peasantry of a hundred and fifty years ago as "savages living in cabins with their females and a few animals," and asks, "who would dare to pretend that these words have lost all their reality?" He admits that "rural barbarism has decreased," but still considers the peasantry, not as a class which must take an active part in bringing about Socialism, but as one to which "conquering Socialism will bring political liberty and social equality."[226]

Kautsky says that either the small farmer is not really independent, and pieces out his income by hiring himself out occasionally to some larger landowner or other employer, or else, if entirely occupied with his own work, that he manages to compete with large-scale cultivation only "by overwork and underconsumption, by barbarism, as Marx says."

"To-day the situation of the city proletariat," Kautsky adds, "is already so superior to the barbaric situation of the older peasants, that the younger peasants' generation is leaving the fields along with the class of rural wage earners." There can be no question that small farms, those without permanent hired labor, survive competition with the larger and better equipped, only by overwork and underconsumption. But the unfavorable comparison with city wage earners and the repetition to-day of Marx's term "barbarism" is no longer justified. Where these conditions still exist, they are due largely to special legal obstacles placed in the way of European peasants, and to legal privileges given to the great landlords,—in other words, to remnants of feudalism. Kautsky's error in making this as a statement of general application would seem to be based on a confusionof the survivals of feudalism, as seen in some parts of Europe, with the necessary conditions of agricultural production, as seen in this country.

Kautsky himself has lately given full recognition to another factor in the agricultural situation—the horrors of wage slavery, which acts in the very opposite manner to these feudal conditions andpreventsboth small agriculturists and agricultural laborers from immigrating to the towns in greater numbers than they do, and persuades them in spite of its drudgery to prefer the life of the owner of a small farm.

"Since labor in large-scale industry takes to-day the repulsive form of wage labor," he says, "many owners of small properties keep holding on to them with the greatest sacrifices, for the sole purpose of avoiding falling into the serfdom and insecurity of wage labor. Only Socialism can put an end to small production, not of course by the forceful ejection of small owners, but by giving them an opportunity to work for the perfected large establishments with a shortened working day and a larger income."[227]Surely there is little ground to lay special stress on the "barbarism" of small farms, if such a large proportion of farmers and agricultural laborers prefer it on good grounds to "the serfdom and insecurity" of labor on large farms or in manufacturing establishments.

It is doubtless chiefly because European conditions are such as to make the conversion of the majority of agriculturists difficult, that so many European Socialists claim that an existing or prospective preponderance of manufacturers makes it unnecessary. But, while in many countries of Europe the remnants of feudalism, or rather of eighteenth-century absolutism and landlord rule, to which this backward political condition is largely due, have not only survived, but have been modernized, through the protection extended to large estates, so as to become a part and parcel of modern capitalism, this condition does not promise to be at all lasting. There are already signs of change in the agricultural sections of Bohemia, Hungary, and Italy, while in France, where the political influence of the large landlord class is rapidly on the decline, the Socialists have appealed successfully, under certain conditions, not only to agricultural laborers, but also to small independent farmers.

As Socialists come to take a world view, giving due prominence to countries like France and the United States, whereagriculture has had its freest development, they grow away from the older standpoint and give more attention to the rural population. The rapid technical evolution of agriculture and the equally rapid changes in the ownership of land in a country like the United States have encouraged our Socialists to reëxamine the whole question. I cannot enter into a discussion, even the most cursory, of agricultural evolution in this country, but a few indications from the census of 1910 will show the general tendencies.

Farm owners and tenants probably now have $45,000,000,000 in property (1910), fully a third of the national wealth, and with 6,340,000 farms they are just about a third of our population. This calculation does not allow for interest (where farmers have borrowed) or rent (where they are tenants); on the other hand, it does not allow for the fact that many farmers have bank accounts and outside investments. But it indicates the prosperity of a large part of the farming class.

The value of the land of the average farm has doubled since 1900 ($2271 in 1900—$4477 in 1910) in spite of a decrease in the size of farms, while the amount spent for labor increased 80 per cent, which the statistics show was due in part to higher wages, but in larger partto the greater amount of labor and the greater number of laborers used. Other expenditures increased almost proportionately, and the capital employed in land, buildings, machinery, fertilizers, and labor has almost doubled in this short period. As prices advanced less than 25 per cent during the decade, all these increases were largelyreal. The gross income of the average farm owner, measured in what it could buy, evidently rose by more than 50 per cent, and hisrealnet income nearly as fast. The average farm owner then was receiving a fair share of the increase of the national wealth.

But farmers cannot profitably be considered as a single class. Tenants are rarely at the same time landlords. Farmers paying interest are usually not the same as those holding mortgages. A few of the debtors may be very successful men who borrow only to buy more land and hire more labor. But very few tenants are in this class. We may safely assume that those who own without a mortgage or employ labor steadily with one are gettingmorethan an average share of the national wealth, while tenants or those who have mortgaged their land heavily and do not regularly hirelabor (except at harvest) are, in the average case, getting less. Investments of borrowed money in the best machinery or farm animals by a single family working alone and on a very small scale, may give a good return above interest, but this return is strictly limited unless with most exceptional or most fortunate persons.

Now the statistics of the increase of agriculturalwagesshow that they rose in no such proportion as the increase of agricultural capital—and the possibility of a farm hand saving his wages and becoming the owner of one of these more and more costly farms is more remote than ever. But there is a third solution—the agricultural laborer may neither remain a laborer nor become an owner. If he can accumulate enough capital for machinery, horses, farm animals, and seed, he can pay for the use of the land from his annual product, he can become a tenant. On the other side, if the value of the usual 160-acre homestead rises to $20,000 or $30,000, the owner is easily able to make a few thousand dollars in addition by selling his farm animals and machinery and to retire to the country town and live on his rent.

It is evident that the position of most of these farm tenants is very close to that of laborers. Though working on their own account, it is so difficult for them to make a living that they are forced to the longest hours and to the exploitation of their wives and children under all possible and impossible circumstances. Already farm tenants are almost as numerous in this country as farm owners. The census figures indicated that the proportion of tenants had risen from 23 per cent in 1880 to 37 per cent in 1910. Not only this, but a closer inspection of the figures by States will show that, whereas in new States like Minnesota, where tenancy has not had time to develop, it embraced in 1900 less than 20 per cent of the total number of farms, in many older States the percentage had already risen high above 40. This increase of tenants proves an approach of the United States to the fundamental economic condition of older countries—the divorce of land cultivation from land ownership, and the census of 1910 shows that three eighths of the farms of the United States are already in that condition.

Land and hired labor are the chief sources of agricultural wealth, and capital is most productive only when it is invested in these as well as other means of production. That is, if the small farmer is really a small capitalist, if he is to receive areturn from his capital as well as his own individual and that of his family labor, he must, as a rule, either have enough capital to provide work for others and his family, or he must get a share of the unearned increment through the ownership of his farm, or long leases without revaluation. Farm tenants who do not habitually employ labor, or those whose mortgages are so heavy as practically to place them in the position of such tenants, are, for these reasons, undoubtedly accessible to Socialist ideas—as long as they remain farm tenants.

But now after discarding all the European prejudices above referred to, let us look at the other side. Tenants everywhere belong to those classes which, as Kautsky truly says, in the passage quoted in a previous chapter, are also a recruiting ground for the capitalists. They are more likely to be the owners of the capital, now a considerable sum, needed tooperatea small farm (cattle, machinery, etc.) than are farm laborers, and it is for their benefit chiefly that the various governmental plans for creating new small farms through irrigation, reclamation, and the division of large estates are contrived. And it is even possible that practically all the present tenants may some day be provided for.

By maintaining or creating small farms then, or providing for a system of long leases and small-sized allotments of governmentally owned land, guaranteed against any raise in rents during the term of the lease, capitalist governments may gradually succeed in firmly attaching the larger part of the struggling small farmers and farm tenants to capitalism. While still in the individualistic form capitalism will establish, wherever it can, privately owned small farms; when it will have adopted the collectivist policy, it will inaugurate a system of national ownership and long leases.

Even the small farmer who hires no labor, and does not even own his farm, will probably be held, as a class, by capitalism, but only by the collectivist capitalism of the future, which will probably protect him from landlordism by keeping the title to the land, but dividing the unearned increment with him by a system of long leases, and using its share of this increment for the promotion of agriculture and for other purposes he approves.

Socialists, then, do not expect to include in their ranks in considerable numbers, either agricultural employers or such tenants, laborers, or farm owners as are becoming, or believethey will become, employers (either under present governments or under collectivist capitalism).

Only when the day finally comes when Socialism begins to exert a pressure on the government adversely to the interest of the capitalist class will higher wages and new governmental expenditures on wage earners begin to reverse conditions automatically, making labor dearer, small farms which employ labor less profitable, and a lease of government land less desirable, for example, than the position of a skilled employee on a model government farm. All governments will then be forced by the farming population itself to lend more and more support to the Socialist policy of great national municipal or county farms, rather than to the artificial promotion or small-scale agriculture.

For the present and the near future the only lasting support Socialists can find in the country is fromthe surplusof agricultural laborers and perhapsa certain partof the tenants,i.e.those who cannot be provided for even if all large estates are everywhere divided into small farms, all practicable works of reclamation and irrigation completed, and scientific methods introduced—and who will find no satisfactory opportunity in neighboring countries. It must be acknowledged that such tenants at present form no very large part of the agricultural population in the United States. On the other hand, agriculturists are even less backward here than in Europe, and there is less opposition between town and country, and both these facts favor rural Socialism.

If, however, the majority of farmers must remain inaccessible to Socialism until the great change is at hand, this is not because they are getting an undue share of the national wealth or because they are private property fanatics, or because agriculturists are economically and politically backward, or because they are hostile to labor, though all this is true of many, but because of all classes, they are the most easily capable of being converted into (or perpetuated as) small capitalists by the reforms of the capitalist statesman in search of reliable and numerically important political support.

I have shown the attitude of the Socialists towards each of the agricultural classes—their belief that they will be able to attach to themselves the agricultural laborers and those tenants and independent farmers who are neither landlords nor steady employers, nor expect to become such. But whatnow is the attitude of laborers, tenants, etc., towards Socialism, and what program do the Socialists offer to attract them? Let us first consider a few general reforms on which all Socialists would agree and which would be acceptable to all classes of agriculturists. Socialists differ upon certainfundamentalalterations in their program which have been proposed in order to adapt it to agriculture. Aside from these, all Socialist parties wish to do everything that is possible to attract agriculturists. They favor such measures as the nationalization of forests, irrigation, state fire insurance, the nationalization of transportation, the extension of free education and especially of free agricultural education, the organization of free medical assistance, graduated income and inheritance taxes, and the decrease of military expenditures, etc. It will be seen that all these reforms are such as might be, and often are, adopted by parties which have nothing to do with Socialism. Community ownership of forests and national subsidies for roads are urged by so conservative a body as Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life. They are all typical "State Socialist" (i.e.State capitalist) measures, justifiable and indispensable, but not intimately related with the program ofSocialism. The indorsement of such measures might indeed assure the Socialists the friendly coöperation of political factions representing the agriculturists, but it could scarcely secure for them the same partisan support in the country as they have obtained from the workingmen of the towns.

Besides such legislative reforms as the above, the Socialists generally favor legislative encouragement for every form of agricultural coöperation. Kautsky says that coöperative associations limited to purchase or sale, or for financing purposes, have no special connection with Socialism, but favorsproductivecoöperation, and in France this is one of the chief measures advocated by the most ardent of the Socialist agriculturist agitators, Compère-Morel, who was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from an agricultural district. Compère-Morel notes that the above-mentioned governmental measures of the State Socialistic variety are likely to be introduced by reformers who have no sympathy either with Socialism or with labor unions, andas a counterweighthe lays a great emphasis on coöperative organizations for production, which could work with the labor unions and their coöperative stores and also with Socialist municipalities.In France and elsewhere there is already a strong movement to municipalize the milk supply, the municipalization of slaughterhouses is far advanced, and municipal bakeries are a probability of the near future. Such coöperative organizations, however, like the legislative proposals above mentioned, are already so widely in actual operation and are so generally supported by powerful non-Socialist organizations that Socialist support can be of comparatively little value.

There is no reason why a collectivist but capitalist democracy should not favor both associations for productive coöperation and friendly relations between these and collectivist municipalities; nor why they should fail to favor an enlightened labor policy in such cases, at least as far as the resulting increase of efficiency in the laborer justified it,i.e.as long as his product rises, as a result of such reforms, faster than what it costs to introduce them.

Socialists also favor the nationalization of the land, but without the expropriation of self-employing farmers, as these are felt to be more sinned against than sinning. "With the present conservative nature of our farmers, it is highly probable that a number of them would [under Socialism] continue to work in the present manner," Kautsky says. "The proletarian governmental power would have absolutely no inclination to take over such little businesses. As yet no Socialist who is to be taken seriously has ever demanded that the farmers should be expropriated, or that their goods should be confiscated. It is much more probable that each little farmer would be permitted to work on as he has previously done. The farmer has nothing to fear from a Socialist régime. Indeed, it is highly probable," he adds, "that these agricultural industries would receive considerable strengthening through the new régime."

Socialists generally agree with Mr. A. M. Simons's resolution at the last American Socialist Convention (1910): "So long as tools are used merely by individual handicraftsmen, they present no problem of ownership which the Socialist is compelled to solve. The same is true of land. Collective ownership is urged by the Socialist, not as an end in itself, not as a part of a Utopian scheme, but as the means of preventing exploitation, and wherever individual ownership is an agency of exploitation, then such ownership is opposed by Socialism."[228]

Exploitation here refers to the employment of laborers, and this is the central point of the Socialist policy. To the Socialists the land question and the labor question are one. Every agricultural policy must deal with both. If we were confronted to-day exclusively by large agricultural estates, the Socialist policy would be the same as in other industries. All agricultural capital would be nationalized or municipalized as fast as it became sufficiently highly organized to make this practicable. And as the ground rent can be taken separately, and with the least difficulty, this would be the first to go. Agricultural labor, in the meanwhile, would be organized and as the day approached when the Socialists were about to gain control of the government, and the wages of government employees began rapidly to rise, those of agricultural and all other privately employed labor would rise also, until private profits were destroyed and the process of socialization brought rapidly to completion.

But where the scale of production is so small that the farmer and his family do the work and do not habitually hire outside labor, the whole case is different. The chief exploitation here is self-exploitation. The capital owned is so small that it may be compared in value with the skilled worker's trade education, especially when we consider the small return it brings in, allowing for wages for the farmer and his family. Even though, as owner, he receives that part of the rise in the value of his land due to the general increase of population and wealth and not to his own labor (the unearned increment), his income is less than that of many skilled laborers.

Two widely different policies are for these reasons adopted by all reformers when dealing with large agricultural estates and small self-employing farmers. On this point there is little room for difference of opinion. But small farmers are not a sharply defined class. They are constantly recruited from agricultural laborers and tenants on the one hand, and are constantly becoming employing farmers on the other—or the process may take the opposite course, large farms may break up and small farmers may become laborers—for all or a part of their time. All agricultural reforms may be viewed not only in their relation to existing small farmers, but as to their effect on the increase or decrease of the relative proportions of small self-employing farmers, of employing farmers, and of agricultural laborers.

And here appears the fundamental distinction between theSocialist program and that of collectivist capitalism as far as the small farmers are concerned. Socialists agree in wanting to aid those small farmers who are neither capitalists nor employers on a sufficient scale to classify them with those elements, but they neither wish to perpetuate the system of small farms nor to obstruct the development of the more productive large-scale farming and the normal increase of an agricultural working class ready for coöperative or governmental employment. They point to the universal law that large-scale production is more economical, and show that this applies to agriculture. Small farming strictly limits the point to which the income of the agricultural population can rise, prevents the cheapening of the production of food, and furnishes a constant stream of cheap labor composed of discontented agricultural laborers who prefer the more steady income, limited hours, and better conditions of wage earners.

"Even the most energetic champions of small farming," says Kautsky, "do not make the least attempt to show its superiority, as this would be a hopeless task. What they maintain is only the superiority of labor on one's own property to wage labor for a strange exploiter.... But if the large farm offers the greater possibility of lessening the work of the agricultural laborers, then it would be a betrayal of the latter to set before them as a goal, not the capture and technical development of large forms, but their break up into numerous small farms. That would mean nothing less than a willingness to perpetuate the drudgery under which the agricultural laborers and small farmers now suffer."[229]

But how shall Socialists aid small farmers without increasing the number of small farms? It might be thought that the nationalization of the land would solve the problem. The government, once become the general landlord, could use the rent fund to improve the condition of all classes of agriculturists, without unduly favoring any, agricultural evolution could take its natural course, and the most economical method of production,i.e.large farms or large coöperative associations, would gradually come to predominate. But the capitalist collectivists who now control or will soon control governments, far from feeling any anxiety about the persistence of small-scale farming, believe that the small farmers can be made into the most reliable props of capitalism. Accordingly collectivist reformers either promote schemes of division of large estates and favor the creation of largemasses of small owners by this and every other available means, such as irrigation or reclamation projects, or if they indorse nationalization of the land in order to get the unearned increment for their governments, they still make the leases on as small a scale and revaluations at as long intervals as possible, and so do almost as much artificially to perpetuate the small farm under this system as they could by furthering private ownership.

Although there is no necessary and immediate conflict of interest between wage earners and small farmers, it is evident that it is impossible for Socialists to offer the small farmers as much as the capitalist collectivists do,—for the latter are willing in this instance to promote, for political purposes, an uneconomic mode of production which is a burden on all society.

Here, however, appears an economic tendency that relieves the situation for the Socialist. Under private ownership or land nationalization with long leases and small-scale farms, it is only once in a generation or even less frequently that farms are subdivided. But the amount of capital and labor that can be profitably applied to a given area of land, the intensity of farming, increases very rapidly. The former self-employing farmer, everywhere encouraged by governments, soon comes to employ steadily one or more laborers. And it is notable that in every country of the world these middle-sized or moderate-sized farms are growing more rapidly than either the large-scale or the one-family farms. This has an economic and a political explanation. Though large farms have more economic advantages than small, the latter have nothing to expend for superintendence and get much more work from each person occupied. The middle-sized farms preserve these advantages and gradually come also to employ much of the most profitable machinery, that is out of reach of the small farmer. Politically their position is still stronger. They are neither rich nor few like the large landholders. Their employees are one, two, or three on each farm, and isolated.

Here, then, is the outcome of the agricultural situation that chiefly concerns the Socialist. The middle-sized farmer is a small capitalist and employer who, like the rest of his kind, will in every profound labor crisis be found with the large capitalist. His employees will outnumber him as voters and will have little hope that the government will intervene someday to make them either proprietors or possessors of long-term leases. The capital, moreover, to run this kind of farm or to compete with it, will be greater and greater and more and more out of their agricultural laborer's reach. These employees will be Socialists.

We are now in a position to understand the divisions among the Socialists on the agricultural question. The Socialist policy as to agriculture may be divided into three periods. During the ascendency of capitalistic collectivism it will be powerless to do more than to support the collectivist reforms, including partial nationalization of the land, partial appropriation of unearned increment by national or local governments, municipal and coöperative production, and the numerous reforms already mentioned. In the second period, the approach of Socialism will hasten all these changes automatically through the rapid rise in wages, and in the third period, when the Socialists are in power, special measures will be taken still further to hasten the process until all land is gradually nationalized and all agricultural production carried on by governmental bodies or coöperative societies of actual workers.

If the Socialists gain control of any government, or if they come near enough to doing this to be able to force concessions at the cost of capital, a double effect will be produced on agriculture. The general rise in wages will destroy the profits of many farmer employers, and it will offer to the smallest self-employing farmers the possibility of an income as wage earners so much larger, and conditions so much better, than anything they can hope for as independent producers that they will cease to prefer self-employment. The high cost of labor will favor both large scale production, either capitalistic or coöperative, and national, state, county, and municipal farms. Without any but an automatic economic pressure, small-scale and middle-scale farming would tend rapidly to give place to these other higher forms, and these in turn would tend to become more and more highly organized as other industries have done, until social production became a possibility. Not only would there be no need of coercive legislative measures, but the automatic pressure would be, not that of misery or bankruptcy pressing the self-employing farmer from behind, but of a larger income and better conditions drawing the majority forward to more developed and social forms of production.

In France a considerable and increasing number of the Socialist members of Parliament are elected by the peasantry, and the same is true of Italy. In Hervé the French have developed a world-famed ultra-revolutionary who always makes his appeal to peasants as well as workers, and in Compère-Morel, one of the most able of those economists and organizers of the international movement who give the agriculturists their chief attention. The latter has recently summed up the position of the French Party in a few incisive paragraphs—which show its similarity to that of the Americans. His main idea is to let economic evolution take its course, which, in proportion as labor is effectively organized, will inevitably lead towards collective ownership and operation and so pave the way for Socialism:—

"As to small property, it is not our mission either to hasten or to precipitate its disappearance. A product of labor, quite often being merely a tool of the one who is detaining it, not only do we respect it, we do something more yet, we relieve it from taxes, usury, scandalous charges on the part of the middlemen, whose victim it is. And this will be done in order to make possible its free evolution towards superior forms of exploitation and ownership, which become more and more inevitable."This means that there is no necessity at all to appeal to violence, to use constraint and power in order to inaugurate in the domain of rural production, the only mode of ownership fit to utilize the new technical agricultural tools: collective ownership."On the other hand, a new form of ownership cannot be imposed; it is the new form of ownership which is imposing itself."It is in vain that they use the most powerful, the most artificial, means to develop, to multiply, and animate the private ownership of the land; the social ownership of the land will impose itself, through the force of events, on the most stubborn, on the most obstinate, of the partisans of individual ownership of the rural domain."

"This means that there is no necessity at all to appeal to violence, to use constraint and power in order to inaugurate in the domain of rural production, the only mode of ownership fit to utilize the new technical agricultural tools: collective ownership.

"On the other hand, a new form of ownership cannot be imposed; it is the new form of ownership which is imposing itself.

"It is in vain that they use the most powerful, the most artificial, means to develop, to multiply, and animate the private ownership of the land; the social ownership of the land will impose itself, through the force of events, on the most stubborn, on the most obstinate, of the partisans of individual ownership of the rural domain."

The French Socialists do not propose to interfere with titles of any but very large properties, or even with inheritance. Whether they have to meet government ownership and 33-year leases now being tried on a small scale in New Zealand, or whether a capitalist collectivist government allows agricultural evolution and land titles to take their natural course, they expect to corner the labor supply, and in this way ultimately to urge agriculture along in the Socialist direction. From the moment they have done this, they expect a steady tendency on the part of agriculturists to lookforward, as the workingmen have done, to the Socialist State:—

"The question arises, under a Socialist régime, will small property, the property cultivated by the owner and his family, be transmissible, allowed to be sold, or left as inheritance to the children, to the nephews, and even to very remote cousins? From the moment this property is not used as an instrument of exploitation—and in a Socialist society,labor not being sold, it could never become one—what do we care whether it changes hands every morning, whether it travels around through a whole family or country?"

For, since the Socialist State will furnish work for all that apply, at the best remuneration, and under the best conditions, especially as it will do this in its own agricultural enterprises, relatively few farmers will be able to pay enough to secure other workers than those of their own families.

In the United States the Party has definitely decided by a large majority, in a referendum vote, that it does not intend to try to disturb the self-employing farmer in any way in his occupation and use of the land. In a declaration adopted in 1909, when, by a referendum vote of nearly two to one, the demand for the immediate collective ownership of the land was dropped from the platform, the following paragraph was inserted:—

"There can be no absolute private title to land. All private titles, whether called fee simple or otherwise, are and must be subordinate to the public title. The Socialist Party strives to prevent land from being used for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It demands the collective possession, control, or management of land to whatever extent may be necessary to attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those using it in a useful bona fide mannerwithout exploitation." (My italics.)

Those American Socialists who have given most attention to the subject, like Mr. Simons, have long since made up their minds that there is no hope whatever either for the victory or even for the rapid development of Socialism in this country unless it takes some root among the agriculturists. Mr. Simons insists that the Socialists should array against the forces of conservatism, privilege, and exploitation, "all those whose labor assists in the production of wealth, for all these make up the army of exploited, and all are interested in the abolition of exploitation."

"In this struggle," he continues, "farmers and factory wage workers must make common cause. Any smaller combination, any division in the ranks of the workers, must render success impossible. In a country where fundamental changes of policy are secured at the ballot box, nothing can be accomplished without united action by all classes of workers.... The better organization of the factory workers of the cities, due to their position in the midst of a higher developed capitalism and more concentrated industry, makes them in no way independent of their rural brothers. So long as they are not numerous enough to win, they are helpless. 'A miss is as good as a mile,' and coming close to a majority avails almost nothing."[230]

Looking at the question after this from the farmers' standpoint, Mr. Simons argues that many of the latter are well aware that the ownership of a farm is nothing more than the ownership of a job, and that the capitalists who own the mortgages, railroads, elevators, meat-packing establishments, and factories which produce agricultural machinery and other needed supplies, control the lives and income of the agriculturists almost as rigidly as they do those of their own employees. Mr. Simons's views on this point also are probably those of a majority of the party.

Mr. Victor Berger does not consider that farmers belong to that class by whom and for whom Socialism has come into being. "The average farmer is not a proletarian," he says, "yet he is a producer."[231]This would seem to imply that the farmer should have Socialist consideration, though perhaps not equal consideration with the workingman. Mr. Berger's main argument apparently was that the farmers must be included in the movement, not because this is demanded by principle but because "you will never get control of the United States unless you have the farming class with you," as he said at a Socialist convention.

Thus there are three possible attitudes of Socialists towards the self-employing farmer, and all three are represented in the movement. Kautsky, Vandervelde, and many others believe that after all he is not a proletarian, and therefore should not or cannot be included in the movement. The French Socialists and many Americans believe that he is practically a proletarian and should and can be included. The "reformists" in countries where he is very numerous believe he should be included, even when (Berger) theydo not consider him as a proletarian. The Socialist movement, on the whole, now stands with Kautsky and Vandervelde, and this is undoubtedly the correct position until the Socialists are near to political supremacy. The French and American view, that the self-employing farmer is practically a wage earner, is spreading, and though this view is false and dangerous if prematurely applied (i.e.to-day) it will become correct in the future when collectivist capitalism has exhausted its reforms and the small farmer is becoming an employee of the highly productive government farms or a profit-sharer in coöperative associations.

At the last American Socialist Convention (1910) Mr. Simons's resolution carefully avoided the "reformist" position of trying to prop up either private property or small-scale production, by the statement that, while "no Socialist Party proposes the immediate expropriation of the farm owner who is cultivating his own farm," that, on the other hand, "it is not for the Socialist Party to guarantee the private ownership of any productive property." He remarked in the Convention that the most prominent French Marxists, Guesde and Lafargue, had approved the action of the recent French Socialist Congress, which had "guaranteed the peasant ownership of his farm," but he would not accept this action as good Socialism. Mr. Berger offered the same criticism of the French Socialists, and added that the guarantee would not be worth anything in any case, because our grandchildren would not be ruled by it.

However, there is a minority ready to compromise everything in this question. Of all American States, Oklahoma has been the one where Socialists have given the closest attention to agricultural problems. The Socialists have obtained a considerable vote in every county of this agricultural State, and with 20,000 to 25,000 votes they include a considerable proportion of the electorate. It is true that their platform, though presented at the last national convention, has not been passed upon, and may later be disapproved in several important clauses, but it is important as showing the farthest point the American movement has gone in this direction. Its most important points are:—The retention andconstant enlargement of the public domain.By retaining school and other public lands.By purchasing of arid and overflow lands and the State reclamation of all such lands now held by the State or that may be acquired by the State.By the purchase of all lands sold for the non-payment of taxes.Separation of the department of agriculture from the political government.Election of all members and officers of the Board of Agriculture by the direct vote of the actual farmers.Erection by the State of grain elevators and warehouses for the storage of farm products; these elevators and warehouses to be managed by the Board of Agriculture.Organization by the Board of Agriculture of free agricultural education and the establishment of model farms.Encouragement by the Board of Agriculture of coöperative societies of farmers—For the buying of seed and fertilizers.For the purchase and common use of implements and machinery.For the preparing and sale of produce.Organization by the State of loans on mortgages and warehouse certificates, the interests charges to cover cost only.State insurance against disease of animals, diseases of plants, insect pests, hail, flood, storm, and fire.Exemption from taxation and execution of dwellings, tools, farm animals, implements, and improvements to the amount of one thousand dollars.A graduated tax on the value of rented land and land held for speculation.Absentee landlords to assess their own lands, the State reserving the right to purchase such lands at their assessed value plus 10 per cent.Land now in the possession of the State or hereafter acquired through purchase, reclamation, or tax sales to be rented tolandlessfarmers under the supervision of the Board of Agriculture at the prevailing rate of share rent or its equivalent. The payment of such rent to cease as soon as the total amount of rent paid is equal to the value of the land, and the tenant thereby acquires for himselfand his childrenthe right of occupancy. The title to all such lands remaining with the commonwealth.[232]I have italicized the most significant items. The preference given to landless farmers in the last paragraph shows that the party in Oklahoma does not propose to distribute its greatest favors to those who are now in possession of even the smallest amount of land. On the other hand, once the land is governmentally "owned" and speculation and landlordism (or renting) are provided against, the farmer passes "the right of occupancy" of this land on to his children. European Socialist parties, with one exception, have not gone so far as this, and it is doubtful if the American Party will sustain such a long step towards permanent private property. It may well be doubted whether the Socialist movement will favor giving to children the identical privileges their parents had, simply because they are the children of these parents, especially if these privileges had been materially increased in value during the parents' lifetimeby community effort,i.e.if there has been any large "unearned increment." Nor will they grant any additional right after forty years of payments or any other term, but, on the contrary, as the land rises, through the community's efforts they would undoubtedly see to it thatrent was correspondingly increased. Socialists demand, not penalties against landlordism, but the community appropriation of rent—whether it is in the hands of the actual farmer or landlord. Why, moreover, seek to discriminate against those who are in possessionnow, and then favor those who will be in possession after the new dispensation, by giving the latter an almost permanent title? May there not be as many landless agricultural workers forty years hence as there are now? Why should those who happen to be landless in one generation instead of the next receive superior rights?Not only Henry George, but Herbert Spencer and the present governments of Great Britain (for all but agricultural land) and Germany (in the case of cities), recognize that the element of land values due to the community effort should go to the community. The political principle that gives the community no permanent claim to ground rent and is ready to give a "right of occupancy" for twoor morelifetimes (for nothing is said in the Oklahoma program about the land returning to the government) without any provisions for increased rentals and with no rents at all after forty years, isreactionaryas compared with recent land reform programs elsewhere (as that of New Zealand).Even Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life goes nearly as far as the Oklahoma Socialists when it condemns speculation in farm lands and tenancy; while Mr. Roosevelt himself has suggested as a remedy in certain instances the leasing of parts of the national domain. Indeed, the "progressive" capitalists everywhere favor either small self-employing farmers or national ownership and leases for long terms and in small allotments, and as "State Socialism" advances it will unquestionably lean towards the latter system. There is nothing Socialistic either in government encouragement either of one-family farms or in a national leasing system with long-term leases as long as the new revenue received goes for the usual "State Socialistic" purposes.

The retention andconstant enlargement of the public domain.

By retaining school and other public lands.

By purchasing of arid and overflow lands and the State reclamation of all such lands now held by the State or that may be acquired by the State.

By the purchase of all lands sold for the non-payment of taxes.

Separation of the department of agriculture from the political government.

Election of all members and officers of the Board of Agriculture by the direct vote of the actual farmers.

Erection by the State of grain elevators and warehouses for the storage of farm products; these elevators and warehouses to be managed by the Board of Agriculture.

Organization by the Board of Agriculture of free agricultural education and the establishment of model farms.

Encouragement by the Board of Agriculture of coöperative societies of farmers—

For the buying of seed and fertilizers.

For the purchase and common use of implements and machinery.

For the preparing and sale of produce.

Organization by the State of loans on mortgages and warehouse certificates, the interests charges to cover cost only.

State insurance against disease of animals, diseases of plants, insect pests, hail, flood, storm, and fire.

Exemption from taxation and execution of dwellings, tools, farm animals, implements, and improvements to the amount of one thousand dollars.

A graduated tax on the value of rented land and land held for speculation.

Absentee landlords to assess their own lands, the State reserving the right to purchase such lands at their assessed value plus 10 per cent.

Land now in the possession of the State or hereafter acquired through purchase, reclamation, or tax sales to be rented tolandlessfarmers under the supervision of the Board of Agriculture at the prevailing rate of share rent or its equivalent. The payment of such rent to cease as soon as the total amount of rent paid is equal to the value of the land, and the tenant thereby acquires for himselfand his childrenthe right of occupancy. The title to all such lands remaining with the commonwealth.[232]

I have italicized the most significant items. The preference given to landless farmers in the last paragraph shows that the party in Oklahoma does not propose to distribute its greatest favors to those who are now in possession of even the smallest amount of land. On the other hand, once the land is governmentally "owned" and speculation and landlordism (or renting) are provided against, the farmer passes "the right of occupancy" of this land on to his children. European Socialist parties, with one exception, have not gone so far as this, and it is doubtful if the American Party will sustain such a long step towards permanent private property. It may well be doubted whether the Socialist movement will favor giving to children the identical privileges their parents had, simply because they are the children of these parents, especially if these privileges had been materially increased in value during the parents' lifetimeby community effort,i.e.if there has been any large "unearned increment." Nor will they grant any additional right after forty years of payments or any other term, but, on the contrary, as the land rises, through the community's efforts they would undoubtedly see to it thatrent was correspondingly increased. Socialists demand, not penalties against landlordism, but the community appropriation of rent—whether it is in the hands of the actual farmer or landlord. Why, moreover, seek to discriminate against those who are in possessionnow, and then favor those who will be in possession after the new dispensation, by giving the latter an almost permanent title? May there not be as many landless agricultural workers forty years hence as there are now? Why should those who happen to be landless in one generation instead of the next receive superior rights?

Not only Henry George, but Herbert Spencer and the present governments of Great Britain (for all but agricultural land) and Germany (in the case of cities), recognize that the element of land values due to the community effort should go to the community. The political principle that gives the community no permanent claim to ground rent and is ready to give a "right of occupancy" for twoor morelifetimes (for nothing is said in the Oklahoma program about the land returning to the government) without any provisions for increased rentals and with no rents at all after forty years, isreactionaryas compared with recent land reform programs elsewhere (as that of New Zealand).

Even Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life goes nearly as far as the Oklahoma Socialists when it condemns speculation in farm lands and tenancy; while Mr. Roosevelt himself has suggested as a remedy in certain instances the leasing of parts of the national domain. Indeed, the "progressive" capitalists everywhere favor either small self-employing farmers or national ownership and leases for long terms and in small allotments, and as "State Socialism" advances it will unquestionably lean towards the latter system. There is nothing Socialistic either in government encouragement either of one-family farms or in a national leasing system with long-term leases as long as the new revenue received goes for the usual "State Socialistic" purposes.

The American Party, moreover, has failed so far to come out definitely in favor of the capitalist-collectivist principle of the State appropriation of ground rent, already indorsed by Marx in 1847 and again in 1883 (see his letter about Henry George,Part I, Chapter VIII). In preparing model constitutions for New Mexico and Arizona (August, 1910), the National Executive Committee took up the question of taxation and recommended graduated income and inheritance taxes, but nothing was said about the State taking the future rise inrents. This is not a reaction when compared to the present world status of non-Socialist land reform, for the taxation of unearned increment has not yet been extended to agricultural land in use, but it is decidedly a reaction when compared with the Socialists' own position in the past.

In a semiagricultural country like the United States it is natural that "State Socialism" should influence the Socialist Party in its treatment of the land question more than in any other direction, and this influence is, perhaps, the gravest danger that threatens the party at the present writing.

By far the most important popular organ of Socialism in this country is theAppeal to Reasonof Girard, Kansas, which now circulates nearly half a million copies weekly—a large part of which go into rural communities. TheAppealendeavors, with some success, to reflect the views of the average party member, without supporting any faction. As Mr. Debs is one of its editors, it may be understood that it stands fundamentally against the compromise of any essential Socialist principle. And yet the exigencies of a successful propaganda among small landowners or tenants who either want to become landowners or to secure a lease that would amount to almost the same thing, is such as to drive theAppealinto a position, not only as to the land question, but also to other questions, that has in it many elements of "State Socialism."A special propaganda edition (January 27, 1902) is typical. Along with many revolutionary declarations, such as that Socialism aims not only at the socialization of the means of production, but also at the socialization ofpower, we find others that would be accepted by any capitalist "State Socialist." Government activities as to schools and roads are mentioned as examples of socialization, while that part of the land still in the hands of our present capitalist government is referred to as being socialized. The use of vacant and unused lands (with "a fair return" for this use) by city, township, and county officials in order to raise and sell products and furnish employment, as was done by the late Mayor Pingree in Detroit, and even the public ownership of freight and passenger automobiles, are spoken of as "purely Socialist propositions." And, finally, the laws of Oklahoma are said to permit socialization without a national victory of the Socialists, though they provide merely that a municipality may engage in any legitimate business enterprise, and could easily be circumscribed by state constitutional provisions or by federal courts if real Socialists were about to gain control of municipalities and State legislature. For such Socialists would not be satisfied merely to demand the abolition of private landlordism and unemployment as theAppealdoes in this instance, since both of these "institutions" are already marked for destruction by "State capitalism," but would plan public employment at wagesso high as to make private employment unprofitable and all but impossible, so high that the self-employing farmer even would more and more frequently prefer to quit his farm and go to work on a municipal, State, or county farm.

A special propaganda edition (January 27, 1902) is typical. Along with many revolutionary declarations, such as that Socialism aims not only at the socialization of the means of production, but also at the socialization ofpower, we find others that would be accepted by any capitalist "State Socialist." Government activities as to schools and roads are mentioned as examples of socialization, while that part of the land still in the hands of our present capitalist government is referred to as being socialized. The use of vacant and unused lands (with "a fair return" for this use) by city, township, and county officials in order to raise and sell products and furnish employment, as was done by the late Mayor Pingree in Detroit, and even the public ownership of freight and passenger automobiles, are spoken of as "purely Socialist propositions." And, finally, the laws of Oklahoma are said to permit socialization without a national victory of the Socialists, though they provide merely that a municipality may engage in any legitimate business enterprise, and could easily be circumscribed by state constitutional provisions or by federal courts if real Socialists were about to gain control of municipalities and State legislature. For such Socialists would not be satisfied merely to demand the abolition of private landlordism and unemployment as theAppealdoes in this instance, since both of these "institutions" are already marked for destruction by "State capitalism," but would plan public employment at wagesso high as to make private employment unprofitable and all but impossible, so high that the self-employing farmer even would more and more frequently prefer to quit his farm and go to work on a municipal, State, or county farm.

The probable future course of the Party, however, is foreshadowed by the suggestions made by Mr. Simons in the report referred to, which, though not yet voted upon, seemed to meet general approval:—

"With the writers of the Communist Manifesto we agree in the principle of the 'application of all rents of land to public purposes.' To this end we advocate the taxing of all lands to their full rental value, the income therefrom to be applied to the establishment of industrial plants for the preparing of agricultural products for final consumption, such as packing houses, canneries, cotton gins, grain elevators, storage and market facilities."[233]

There is no doubt that Mr. Simons here indorses the most promising line of agrarian reform under capitalism. But there is no reason why capitalist collectivism may not take up this policy when it reaches a somewhat more advanced stage. The tremendous benefits the cities will secure by the gradual appropriation of the unearned increment will almost inevitably suggest it to the country also. This will immensely hasten the development of agriculture and the numericalincrease of an agricultural working class. What is even more important is that it will teach the agricultural laborers that far more is to be gained by the political overthrow of the small capitalist employing farmers and by claiming a larger share of the benefit of these public funds than by attempting the more and more difficult task of saving up the sum needed for acquiring a small farm or leasing one for a long term from the government.

The governmental appropriation of agricultural rent and its productive expenditure on agriculture will in all probability be carried out, even if not prematurely promised at the present time, by collectivist capitalism. Moreover, while this great reform will strengthen Socialism as indicated, it will strengthen capitalism still more, especially in the earlier stages of the change. Socialists recognize, with Henry George, that ground rent may be nationalized and "tyranny and spoliation be continued." For if the present capitalistic state gradually became the general landlord, either through the extension of the national domain or through land taxation, greater resources would be put into the hands of existing class governments than by any other means. If, for example, the Socialists opposed the government bank in Germany they might dread even more thepresentgovernment becoming the universal landlord, though it would be useless to try to prevent it.

It is clear that such a reform is no more a step in Socialism or in the direction of Socialism than the rest of the capitalist collectivist program. But it is a step in the development of capitalism and will ultimately bring society to a point where the Socialists, if they have in the meanwhile prepared themselves, may be able to gain the supreme power over government and industry.

Socialists do not feel that the agricultural problem will be solved at all for a large part of the agriculturists (the laborers) nor in the most satisfactory manner for the majority (self-employing farmers) until the whole problem of capitalism is solved. The agricultural laborers they claim as their own to-day; the conditions I have reviewed lead them to hope also for a slow but steady progress among the smaller farmers.

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