(Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations.)
(Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations.)
It has been indicated that the new society will be different in different countries and in different parts of the same country, in different industries and at different times. No one can predict exactly what it will be, and anyone who tries to predict is unscientific. But every man can work out his own ideas of the most economical and sensible arrangements for a co-operative society, and in these final chapters I set forth my ideas.
One of the first things people ask is, "Will there be money in the new society, or how will labor be rewarded and goods paid for?" I answer that there will be money, and the business methods of the new society will be so nearly the same as at present that in this respect you would hardly realize there had been any change. The only difference will be that in the new society you will be paid several times as much for your labor; or, if you prefer to put it the other way, you will be able to buy several times as much with your money. Why should we waste our time working out systems of "credit-cards," when we already have a system in the form of gold and silver coins and paper currency? Why should we bother with "labor checks," when we have a banking and clearing-house system, understood by everyone but the illiterate? The only difference we shall make is that nobody can get gold and silver coins or paper currency, except by performing labor to pay for them; nobody can have money in the bank and draw checks against it, until he has rendered to society an equivalent amount of service.
When you have earned your money in the new world, you will spend it wherever you please, and for whatever you please; the only difference being that the price you pay will be the exact labor-cost of producing that article, with no deduction for any form of exploitation. As I wrote sixteen years ago in "The Industrial Republic," you will be able to get, if you insist upon it, a seven-legged spider made of diamonds, and the onlyquestion society will ask is, Have you performed services equivalent to the material and labor necessary to the creating of that unusual article of commerce? Of course, society won't put it to you in that complicated formula; it will simply ask, "Have you got the price?" Which, you observe, is exactly the question society asks you at present.
The next thing that everybody wants to know is, "Shall we all be paid the same wages?" I answer, yes and no, because there will be three systems of payment. There will be a basic wage, which everybody will get for every kind of useful service necessary to production; this will be, as it were, the foundation of our economic structure. On top of this will be built a system of special payments for special services, which are of an intellectual nature, and cannot be standardized and dealt with wholesale. In addition, there will be for a time a third arrangement, applying to agricultural work, which is in a different stage of development, and to which different conditions apply.
Let us take, first, our standard wage. The census of our Utopian commonwealth reveals that we have ten million able-bodied workers engaged in mining, manufacturing, and transportation; this including, of course, office-work and management—everything that enters into these industries. By scientific management, the best machinery, and the elimination of all possible waste, we find that they produce eighty million dollars worth of goods an hour. A portion of this we have to set aside to pay for the raw materials which they do not produce, and for the upkeep of the plant, and for margin of error—what our great corporations call a surplus. We find that we have fifty million dollars per hour left, and that means that we can pay for labor five dollars per hour, or twenty dollars for the regular four-hour day. This is our standard wage, received by all able-bodied workers.
But quickly we find that our industries are not properly balanced. A great many men want to work at the jobs which are clean and pleasant, such as delivering mail, and very few want to work at washing dishes in restaurants and cleaning the sewers. There is no way we can adjust this, except by paying a higher wage, or by reducing the number of hours in the working day, which is the same thing. The only other method would be to have the state assign men to their work, and that would be bureaucracy and slavery, the essence of everything we wish to get away from in our co-operative commonwealth.
What we shall have, so far as concerns our basic industries, is a government department, registering with mathematical accuracy the condition of supply and demand in all the industries of the country. Our demand for shoes is increasing, for some reason or other; a thousand more shoe-workers are needed, therefore the price of labor in the shoe industry is increased five cents per day—or whatever amount will draw that number of workers from other occupations. On the other hand, there are too many people applying for the job of driving trucks, therefore we reduce slightly the compensation for this work. There are more men who want jobs in Southern California than in Alaska, therefore the payment for the same grade of work in Alaska has to be higher. All this is not merely speculation, it is not a matter of anybody's choice; it is an automatic, self-adjusting system, subject to precise calculations. The only change from our present system is from guesswork to exact measurement. At present we do not know how many shoes our country will require next season, neither do we know how many shoes are going to be made, neither do we know how many people can make shoes, nor how many would like to learn, nor how many would like to quit that job and take to farming. It would be the simplest matter in the world to find out these things—far simpler that it was to register all our possible soldiers, and examine them physically and mentally, and train them and feed them and ship them overseas to "can the Kaiser."
Of course, we drafted the men for this war job; but in the new world nobody is drafted for anything. It is any man's privilege to starve if he feels like it; it is his privilege to go out into the mountains and live on nuts and berries if he can find them. Nobody makes him go anywhere, or makes him work at anything—unless, of course, he is a convicted criminal. To the free citizen all that society has to say is, if he buys any products, he must pay for those products with his own labor, and not with some other man's labor. Of course, he may steal, or cheat, as under capitalism; our new world has laws against stealing and cheating, and does its best to enforce them. The difference between the capitalist world and our world is merely that we make it impossible for any man to get moneylegallywithout working.
Under these conditions the average man wishes to work, and the only question remaining is, how shall he work? If he wants to work by himself, and in his own way, nobody objectsto it. He is able to buy anything he pleases, whether raw materials or finished products. If he wants to buy leather and make shoes after his own pattern, no one stops him, and if he can find anyone to buy these shoes, he can earn his living in that way. He is able to get land for as long a time as he wants it, by paying to the state the full rental value of that land, and if he wants to farm the land, he can do so, and sell his products. As a matter of theory, he is perfectly free to hire others to farm the land for him, or with him. There is no law to prevent it, neither is there any law to prevent his renting a factory and buying machinery, and hiring labor to make shoes.
But, as a matter of practical fact, it is impossible for him to do this, because the community is in the business of making shoes, and on an enormous scale, with great factories run democratically by the workers, and there is very small chance of any private business man being able to draw the workers away from these factories. The community factories have all the latest machinery; they apply the latest methods of scientific management, and they turn out standard shoes at such a rate that private competition is unthinkable. Of course, there may be some special kind of shoes, involving an intellectual element, in which there can be private competition. This kind of manufacture is covered in our second method of payment; but before we discuss it, let us settle the problem of our most important basic industry, which is agriculture.
(Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes.)
(Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes.)
Farming the land is a very ancient industry, and while its tools have been improved, its social forms have been the same for a long time. The worker on the land is conservative, and the Russian Bolsheviks, who tried to rush their peasants into Communism, found that they had only succeeded in stopping the production of food. We make no such blunder in our new society. We have found a way to abolish speculation in land, and exploitation based on land-ownership, while leaving the farmer free to run his business in the old way if he wants to.
In our new society we take the full rental value of all land which is not occupied and used by the state. The farmer and the city dweller alike "own" their land, in the sense that they have the use of it for as long as they please, but they pay to the state the rental value of the land, minus the improvements. So they cannot speculate in the land or rent it out to others; they can only use it, and they only pay for what they actually use. They may put improvements on the land, with full assurance of having the use and benefit thereof, and they may sell the improvements, and the new owner enters into possession, with no obligation but to pay the rental value of the unimproved land to the state.
The farmer goes on raising his products, and if he wants to drive to town and deliver them to his customers, he may do so; but he finds it cheaper to market them through the great labor co-operatives and state markets. As there is no longer any private interest involved in these activities, no one has any interest in cheating him, and he gets the full value of the products, less the cost of marketing. If the farmer wishes to continue all his life in his old style individualistic method of working the land, he is free to do so. But here is what he sees going on within a few miles of his place:
The state has bought a square mile of land, and has taken down the fences and established an agricultural co-operative forpurposes of experiment and demonstration. The farm is run under the direction of experts; the soils are treated with exactly the right fertilizers for each crop, the best paying crops are raised, the best seed is used, and the best machinery. The workers of this new agricultural co-operative receive the standard wage, and they live in homes specially built for them, with all the conveniences made possible by wholesale production. Also, these co-operators live in a democratic community; they determine their own conditions of labor, being represented on the governing board, along with the experts appointed by the state.
The farmer watches this experiment, at first with suspicion; but he finds that his sons have less suspicion than he has, and his sons keep pointing out to him that their little farm is not making the standard wage or anything like it; and, moreover, the standard wage is constantly increasing, whereas, the price of farm-products is dropping. And here is the state, ready to direct new co-operative ventures, inviting a score of farmers in the community to combine and buy out the unwilling ones, and establish a new co-operative. Sooner or later the old farmer gives way; or he dies, and his sons belong to the new world.
So ultimately we have our national agricultural system, in which all the requirements of our people are studied, and all the possibilities of our soil and climate, and the job of raising the exact quantities of food that we need, both for our own use and for export, is worked out as one problem. We know how much lumber we need, and we raise it on all our hillsides and mountain slopes, and so protect ourselves from floods and the denuding of our continent. We know where best to raise our wheat, and where best to raise our potatoes and our cabbages, and we do not do this by crude hand-labor, nor by the labor of women and children from daybreak till dark. We have special machines that plant each crop, and other machines that reap it or dig it out of the ground and prepare it for market.
A few days ago I read a discussion in the Chamber of Commerce of Calcutta. Some one called attention to the wastes involved in the current method of handling rubber. One consignment of rubber had been sold more than three hundred separate times, and the cost of these transactions amounted to three times the value of the rubber. This is only one illustration, and I might quote a thousand. If you doubt my figures as to the possibility of production in the new society, remind yourself that a large percentage of the things you usehave been bought and sold many scores of times before you get them. Consider the cabbage, for which you pay six or eight cents a pound in the grocery store, and for which the farmer gets, say, half a cent a pound.
In this new world the state has an enormous income, derived from its tax on land values. It no longer has to send around men once a year to ask you how many diamond rings your wife has, and to tax you on your honesty, if you have any. It no longer has to make its money by such lying devices as a tariff, therefore its moral being is no longer poisoned by a tariff-lobby. It taxes every citizen for the right to use that which nature created, and leaves free from taxation that which the citizens' own labor created; this kind of taxation is honest, and fair to all, because no one can evade it. The state uses the proceeds of this land tax in the public services, the libraries and research laboratories and information bureaus; in free insurance against fire and flood and tempest; and in a pension to every member of society above the working age of fifty-five, or below the working age of eighteen. Of course, the state might leave it to every man to save up for his old age, but not all men are this wise, and the state cannot afford to let the unwise ones starve. It is more convenient for the state to figure that all men, or nearly all, are going to be old, and to hold back some of their money while they are young and strong, in the certainty that when they are old, they will appreciate this service. Also the state takes care of the sick and incapacitated, and the mentally or physically defective. But we do not leave these latter loose in the world to reproduce their defects; we have in our new world some sense of responsibility to the future, and there is nothing to which we devote more effort than making certain that nothing unsound or abnormal is allowed entrance into life.
The problem of the care of children is a complicated one, and our new society is in process of solving it. We look back on the old world in which the having of children was heavily taxed, in the form of an obligation to care for these children until they were old enough to work. Then the parents were allowed to exploit the labor of the children, so that among the very poor the raising of children was a business speculation, like the raising of slaves or poultry. But in our new world we consider the interest of the child, and of the society in which that child is to be a citizen. We decide that this society must have citizens, and that the raising of the future citizens is awork just exactly as necessary and useful as the raising of a crop of cabbages. Therefore, we pay a pension to all mothers while they are raising and caring for children. At the same time we assert the right to see that this money is wisely spent, and that the child is really cared for. If it is neglected, we are quick to take it away from its parents, and put it in one of our twenty-four-hour-a-day schools.
We realize that the home is an ancient industry, even more ancient than agriculture, and we do not try to socialize it all at once. But just as we demonstrate to farmers that the individual farm does not pay, so we demonstrate to mothers the wastefulness of the single laundry, the single kitchen, the single nursery. We establish community laundries, community kitchens, community nurseries, and invite our women to help in these activities, and to learn there, under expert guidance, the advantages of domestic co-operation. We convince them by showing better results in the health and happiness of the children, and in the time and strength of the mothers. So, little by little, we widen the field of co-operative endeavor, and increase the total product of human labor and the total enjoyment of human life.
(Discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.)
(Discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.)
Karl Kautsky, intellectual leader of the German Social-democracy, gives in his book, "The Social Revolution," a useful formula as to the organization of the future society. This formula is: "Communism in material production, Anarchism in intellectual production." It will repay us to study this statement, and see exactly what it means.
Material production depends directly upon things; and as there is only a limited quantity of things in the world, if any one person has more than his share, he deprives some other person to that extent. So there have to be strict laws concerning the distribution of material products. But with intellectual things exactly the opposite is the case. There is no limit in quantity, and any one person can have all he wants without interfering with anybody else. Everybody in the world can perform a play by Shakespeare, or play a sonata by Beethoven, and everybody can enjoy it as much as he pleases without keeping other people from enjoying it all they please. Also, material production can be standardized; we can have great factories to turn out millions of boxes of matches, each match like every other match, and the more alike they are the better. But in intellectual affairs we want everyone to be different, or at least we want everyone to be free to be different, and if some one can become much better than the others, this is the most important kind of production in the world, for he may make over our whole intellectual and moral life.
For the production of material things our new society has great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. That is our "Communism in material production." On the other hand, in our intellectual production we leave everybody free to live his own life, and to associate himself with others of like aims, and we place as few restrictions as possible upon their activities.This is the method of free association, or "Anarchism in intellectual production."
Our problem would be simple if material and intellectual production never had to mingle. But, as it happens, every kind of intellectual production requires a certain amount of material, and every kind of material production involves an intellectual element. Therefore, our two methods have to be combined, and we have a complex problem which we have to solve in a variety of different ways, and upon which we must experiment with open minds and scientific temper.
First, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the production of purely material things, such as matches and shoes and soap. Let us take invention. Naturally, we do not want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same old way forever. On the contrary, we want to stimulate all the workers in these industries to use their wits and improve the processes in every possible way. The whole of society has an interest in this, and the soap workers have an especial interest. Our soap industry has an invention department, with a group of experts appointed by the executive committee of the national council of soap workers. All soap workers are taxed, say five cents a day, for the support of this activity. Likewise the state contributes a generous sum out of its income toward the work of soap research. In addition to this, the soap industry offers prizes and scholarships for suggestions as to the improvement of every detail of the work, and at meetings of every local of soap workers somebody makes new suggestions as to methods of stimulating their intellectual life—not merely as regards soap, but as regards citizenship, and art and literature, and human life in general. Our soap workers, you must understand, are no longer wage-slaves, brutalized by toil and poverty; they are free citizens of a free society. Our soap workers' local in every city has its own theatre and concert hall and lecture bureau, and publishes its own magazine.
Every industry has its immediate intellectual problems, its trade journals in which these are discussed, and its research boards in which they are worked out. The ambitions of the young workers in that industry are concentrated upon getting into this intellectual part of their trade. Examinations are held and tests are made to discover the most competent men, and written suggestions are considered by boards of control. It is, of course, of great importance to every worker that the channelsof promotion should be kept open, and that the man who really has inventive talent shall get, not merely distinction and promotion, but financial reward, so that he may have time and materials to continue his experiments.
This research department, you perceive, is a sort of superstructure, built upon the foundation of our standard wage; and this same simile applies to numerous other forms of intellectual production. For example, our community paper mills turn out paper, and our community printers are prepared to turn out millions of books. How shall we determine what is to be the intellectual content of these material books? There are many different methods. First, there is the method of individualism. A man has something to say, and he writes a book; he works in the soap factory, and saves a part of his standard wage, and when he has money enough he orders the community printers to print his book, and the community booksellers to handle it for him, and the community postoffice to deliver it for him. Again, a group of men organize themselves into an association, or club, or scientific society, and publish books. The Authors' League takes up the work of publishing the writings of its members, and the Poetry Society does the same.
This is the method of Anarchism, or free association. But there is no reason why we should not have along side it the method of Socialism; there is no reason why we should not have state publishing houses, just as we have state universities and state libraries. The state should certainly publish standard works of all sorts, bibles and dictionaries and directories, and cheap editions of the classics. In this new world our school boards are not chosen by business men for purposes of graft, they are chosen by the people to educate our children; so it seems to us perfectly natural that the National Educational Association should conduct a publication department, and order the printing of the school books which the children use.
In the same way, anyone is free to write a play, or to put on a play, and invite people to come and see it. But, like the individual farmers and the individual mothers of families, the play-producer in our society is in competition with great community enterprises, which set a high standard and make competition difficult. The same thing applies to the opera, and to concerts, and to all the arts and sciences. You can start a private hospital if you wish, but you will be in competition with public institutions, and you can only succeed if you are a manof genius—that is, if you have something to teach, too new and startling for the public boards of control to recognize. You try your new method, and it works, and that becomes a criticism of the public boards of control, and before long the people by their votes turn out the old board of control and put you in.
That is politics, you say; but we in our new world do not use the word politics as one of contempt. We really believe that public sentiment is in the long run the best authority, and the appeal to public sentiment is at once a social privilege and a social service. What we strive to do is to clear the channels of appeal, and avoid favoritism and stagnation. To that end we maintain, in every art and every science and every department of human thought, endless numbers of centers of free, independent, co-operative activity, so that every man who has an inspiration, or a new idea, can find some group to support him or can form a new group of his own.
This is our "Anarchism in intellectual production," and it is the method under which in capitalist society men organize all their clubs and societies and churches. Devout members of the Roman Catholic Church will be startled to be told that theirs is an Anarchist organization; but nevertheless, such is the case. The Catholic Church owns a great deal of property, and speculates in real estate, and to that extent it is a capitalist institution. It holds a great many people by fear, and to that extent it is a feudal institution. But in so far as members of the church believe in it and love it and contribute of their free will to its support, they are organizing by the method which all Anarchists recommend and desire to apply to the whole of society. Anarchist clubs and Christian churches are both free associations for the advocacy of certain ideas, the only difference being in the ideas they advocate.
In our new world such organizations have been multiplied many fold, and form a vast superstructure of intellectual activity, built upon the foundation of the standard wage. In this new world all the people are free. They are free, not merely from oppression, but from the fear of oppression; they have leisure and plenty, and they take part naturally and simply in the intellectual life. The old, of course, have not got over the dullness which a lifetime of drudgery impressed upon them, but the young are growing up in a world without classes, and in which it seems natural that everyone should be educated and everyone should have ideas. They earn their standard wage,and devote their spare time to some form of intellectual or artistic endeavor, and spend their spare money in paying writers and artists and musicians and actors to stimulate and entertain them.
These latter are the ways of distinction in our new society; these are the paths to power. The only rich men in our world are the men who produce intellectual goods; the great artists, orators, musicians, actors and writers, who are free to serve or not to serve, as they see fit, and can therefore hold up the public for any price they care to charge. Just now there is eager discussion going on in our world as to whether it is proper for an opera singer, or a moving picture star, or a novelist, to make a million dollars. Our newspapers are full of discussions of the question whether anyone can make a million dollars honestly, and whether men of genius should exploit their public. Some point out that our most eminent opera singer spends his millions in endowing a conservatory of art; but others maintain that it would be better if he lowered his prices of admission, and let the public use its money in its own way. The extremists are busy founding what they call the Ten-cent Society, whose members agree to boycott all singers and actors who charge more than ten cents admission, and all moving picture stars who receive more than a hundred thousand dollars a year for their service. These "Ten-centers" do not object to paying the money, but they object to the commercializing of art, and declare especially that the moral effect of riches is such that no rich person should ever, under any circumstances, be allowed to influence the youth of the nation. In this some of the greatest writers join them, and renounce their copyrights, and agree to accept a laureateship from some union of workers, who pay them a generous stipend for the joy and honor of being associated with their names. The greatest poet of our time began life as a newsboy, and so the National Newsvenders' Society has adopted him, and taken his name, and pays him ten thousand dollars a year for the privilege of publishing his works.
(Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world.)
(Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world.)
We have briefly sketched the economic arrangements of the co-operative commonwealth. Let us now consider what are the effects of these arrangements upon the principal social diseases of capitalism.
The first and most dreadful of capitalism's diseases is war, and the economic changes here outlined have placed war, along with piracy and slavery, among the half-forgotten nightmares of history. We have broken the "iron ring," and are no longer dependent upon foreign concessions and foreign markets for the preservation of our social system and the aggrandizement of a ruling class. We can stay quietly at home and do our own work, and as we produce nearly everything we need, we no longer have to threaten our neighbors. Our neighbors know this, and therefore they do not arm against us, and we have no pretext to arm against them. We take toward all other civilized nations the attitude which we have taken toward Canada for the past hundred years.
We have a small and highly trained army, a few regiments of which are located at strategic points over the country. This army we regard and use as we do our fire department. When there is widespread damage by fire or flood or storm or earthquake, we rush the army to the spot to attend to the work of rescue and rebuilding. Also, we have a small navy in international service; for, of course, we are no longer an independent and self-centered nation; we have come to realize that we are part of the world community, and have taken our place as one state in the International Socialist Federation. We send our delegates to the world parliament, and we place our resources at the disposal of the world government. However, it now takes but a small army and navy to preserve order in the world. We govern the backward nations, but the economic arrangements of the world are such that we are no longer driven to exploit and oppress them. We send them teachers instead ofsoldiers, and as there are really very few people in the world who fight for the love of fighting, we have little difficulty in preserving peace. We pay the backward peoples a fair price for their products which we need. Our world government takes no money out of these countries, but spends it for the benefit of those who live in the countries, to teach them and train their young generations for self-government.
Next, what are the effects of our new arrangements upon political corruption and graft? The social revolution has broken the prestige of wealth. Money will buy things, but it no longer buys power, the right to rule other men; it no longer buys men's admiration. Everybody now has money, and nobody is any longer afraid of starvation. It is no longer the fashion to save money—any more than it is the fashion to carry revolvers in drawing-rooms or to wear chain mail in place of underclothing. So our political life is cleansed of the money influence. People now get power by persuading their fellows, not by buying them or threatening them. The world is no longer full of men ravenous for jobs, and ready to sell their soul for a "position." So it is no longer possible to build up a "machine" based on desire for office.
The changes have resulted in an enormous intensification of our political activities. We have endless meetings and debates; we have so many propaganda societies that we cannot keep track of them. And some of these societies, like the Catholic Church, have a large membership, and large sums of money at their disposal. But a few experiments at carrying elections by a "campaign-chest" have convinced everybody that to have the facts on your side is the only permanent way to political power. Our new society is jealous of attempts to establish any sort of ruling class, and the surest way to discredit yourself is to advocate any form of barrier against freedom of discussion, or the right of the people's will to prevail.
Next, what is the status of crime? We have too recently escaped from capitalism to have been able to civilize entirely our slum population, and we still have occasional crimes of violence, especially crimes of passion. But we have almost entirely eliminated those classes of crime which had to do with property, and we have discovered that this was ninety-five per cent of all crime. We have eliminated them by the simple device of making them no longer profitable. Anybody can go into our community factories, and under clean and attractive working conditions,and without any loss of prestige or social position, can earn the means of satisfying his reasonable wants by three hours work a day. Almost everybody finds this easier than stealing or cheating.
But more important yet, as a factor in abolishing crime, is the abolition of class domination and the prestige of wealth. We no longer have in our community a ruling class which lives without working, and which offers to the weak-minded and viciously inclined the perpetual example of luxury. We no longer set much store on jewels and fine raiment; we do not make costly things, except for public purposes, where all may enjoy them; and nobody stores great quantities of money, because everyone has a guarantee of security from the state. So we are gradually putting our policemen and jailers and judges and lawyers to constructive work.
Next, what about disease? The diseases of poverty are entirely done away with. We are now able to apply the knowledge of science to the whole community, and so we no longer have to do with tuberculosis and typhoid, or with rickets and anæmia in children, or with heavy infant mortality. We have sterilized our unfit, the degenerates and the defectives, and so do not have to reckon with millions of children from these wretched stocks. We now give to the question of public health that prominence which in the old days we used to give to war and the suppression of crime and social protest. Our public health officers now replace our generals and admirals, and we really obey their orders.
Next, as to prostitution. Just as in the case of crime, we are still too close to capitalism not to have among us the victims of social depravity, both men and women. We still have a great deal of vice which springs from untrained animal impulse, and we have some cultivated and highly sophisticated pornography. But we have entirely done away with commercial vice, and we have done it by cutting the root which nourished it. Women in our communities are really free; and by that we do not mean the empty political freedom which existed in the days of wage slavery—we mean that women are permanently delivered from economic inferiority, by the recognition on the part of the state of the money value of their special kind of work, the bearing and training of children. This kind of work not merely receives the standard wage, it also receives the best surgical and nursing treatment free. Housework and home-making arelegally recognized services; and the woman before marriage and after her children have been nursed is free to go into the community factories and earn for herself the standard wage, with no loss of social position. Consequently, no woman sells her sex, and no man buys it.
This does not mean, of course, that we have solved the sex problem in our new society. There are two great social problems with which we have to deal, the first of these being the sex problem, and the second the race problem. Our scientists are occupied with eugenics, and we are finding out how to guide our young people in marriage, so that our race may be built up, and the ravages of capitalism remedied as quickly as possible. Also we are trying to find out the laws of happiness and health in love. We are founding societies for the purpose of protecting love, and, as hinted in the Book of Love, we have a determined social struggle between two groups of women—the mother-women and the mistress-women—those who take love gravely, as a means of improving the race, and those who take it as a decoration, a form of play. Our men are embarrassed by having to choose between these groups, and occupy themselves with trying to keep the struggle from turning into civil war.
Second, the race problem. Our economic changes have, of course, done away with some of the bitterest phases of this strife. White workingmen in the North no longer mob and murder negro workingmen for taking their jobs, and in the South our land values tax prevents the landlord from exploiting either white or negro labor. But our white race is still irresistibly bent upon preserving its integrity of blood, and the more far-seeing among the negroes have come to realize that there can never be any real happiness for them in a society where they are denied the higher social privileges. There is a movement for the development of a genuine Negro Republic in Africa, and for mass emigration. Also there is a proposition, soon to be settled at an election, for the dividing of the United States into three districts upon racial lines. First, there are to be, in the Far South, three or four states which are inhabited and governed solely by negroes, and to which white men may come only as temporary visitors; a large group of states in the North which are white states, and to which negroes may come only as visitors; and finally, a middle group of states, in which both whites and black are allowed to live, as at present, but withthe proviso that no one may live there who takes part in any form of racial strife or agitation. This program gives to race-conscious negroes their own land, their own civilization, their own chance of self-realization; it gives to race-conscious white men the same opportunity; and it leaves to those who are not troubled by the problem, a country where black and white may dwell in quiet good fellowship.
Finally, what has been the effect of our economic changes upon the purely personal vices which gave us so much trouble and unhappiness in the old days? What, for example, has been the effect upon vanity? You should see our new crop of children in our high schools! There are no longer any social classes among them; the rich ones do not arrive in private automobiles, to make the poor ones envious, and they do not isolate themselves in little snobbish cliques. They arrive in community automobiles, and all wear uniforms—one of the simple devices by which we repress the impulse of the young toward display of personal egotism. They are all full of health and happy play, and their heads are busily occupied with interesting ideas. Our girls are trained to thinking, instead of to personal adornment; they are developing their minds, instead of catching a rich husband by sexual charms. So we have been able, in a single generation of training, to make a real and appreciable difference in the amount of vanity and self-consciousness to be found among our young people.
And the same thing applies to a score of other undesirable qualities, which, under the system of competitive commercialism, were overstimulated in human beings. In those old days everyone was seeking his own survival, and certain qualities which had survival value became the principal characteristics of our race. Those qualities were greed and persistence in acquisitiveness, cunning and subtlety, also bragging and self-assertiveness. In that old world people destroyed their fellows in order to make their own safety and power; they wasted goods in order to be esteemed, to preserve what they called their "social position." But now we have cut the roots of all these vile weeds. We have so adjusted the business relationships of men that we do not have to have hysterical religious revivals in order to keep the human factors alive in their hearts. We have established it as a money fact, which everyone quickly realizes, that it pays better to co-operate; there is more profit and less bother in being of service to others. So we have prepared a soil inwhich virtues grow instead of vices, and we find that people become decent and kindly and helpful without exhortation, and with no more moral effort than the average man can comfortably make. Of course, we have still personal vices to combat, and new virtues to discover and to propagate; but this has to do with the future, whereas we are here confining ourselves to those things which have been demonstrated in our new society.
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Y
Abortion, 61Abortions,30Advertising,163Agricultural co-operative,206Anarchism,210Anarchist,89,90Anarchy,172Anglo-Saxon,62,111"Appeal to Reason",149Aristocratic doctrine,116Armour,128Atherton, Gertrude,87Babies,63Bachelorhood,52Bacon, Francis,51Banking system,192Bankruptcy,162Barbarism,124Barnum, P. T.,27Berkman, Alexander,173Biology,103Birth control,61,76Birth Control Review,64Blatchford, Robert,55,161"Blind" love,58Bolsheviks,172Breach of promise suit,91Brothel,66Brothels,31Burbank, Luther,99Business man,143Capital,158Capitalism,136,168Capitalists,142Carnegie,168Catholic Church,213,216Celibacy,51,52,64Chastity,51Chattel slavery,186Childbirths,70Children,70,72,85,208Christianity,115,133"Clarion",31Class struggle,133,177Clay, Henry,186Coleridge,85"Collier's Weekly",122,163Committee on Waste,160Commune,129Communism,10,170,210Compensation,179Competition,108,127Competitive wage system,148"Complex",49Comstock, Anthony,20Confiscation,179Congress,138Contraception,61Co-operation,109,199,200Coquetry,38Corporation,127Courtship,91Credit,152,154,192,200Credit-cards,202Crime,164,216Culture,62Cutting, H. C.,200Dances,15Debs, Eugene V.,155Degeneration,121"Demi-monde",80Democratic doctrine,115Dictatorship,180,183,185Dill, James B.,25Disarmament,157Discouragement,164Disease,217Divorce,32,93,97Double standard,5"Douglas plan",199"Dumping",152Economic evolution,123Economic man,108Emerson,186Emulation,112Engagements,72England,120,156,175Eugenics, 58Evolution,122Exogamy,105Exploitation,181Exploiting,148Exports,153Factory system,129Farming,206"Favorable balance",151Fear,122,164Federal Reserve Act,154Feminist,69Feudal stage,124Fires,163Foreign trade,151"Free love",44,87"Free lover",92France,175France, Anatole,44Freud,104Gens,9Germany,155,156Gillette, King C.,200Goldman, Emma,173Gonorrhea,30Goode, Mary J.,41Government,166"Graft",127,216"Great Adventure",188Hammurabi,78"Hamon case",26"Hard times",144Hardy,13Harris, Frank,21"High life",23Home,42,209Honeymoon,56Hoover, Herbert,160House of Commons,137Huguenots,134Human nature,99Hunger,122Ideals,132Imports,153Income tax,143,188Industrial evolution,126Infant,103Infanticide,61Inflation,196Inheritance tax,188"Ingenues",19Instinct,57Insurance,163Intellectual production,211"Iron ring",158Island,145I. W. W.,169James, William,16Jealousy,89Jews,127vKautsky, Karl,210"King Coal",139Kropotkin,109,129,173Labor,158Labor checks,202Labor union,199Laissez faire,110Land tax,190Land titles,179Land values,208Late marriage,67Lecky,6,33Leviticus,78Liberty motor,164London, Jack,62Los Angeles Times,157Love,34,47,100,112,218Lust,48Luther, Martin,129Luxury,60Machinery,149"Magic gestures",104Magna Carta,134Malthusian law,108Markham, Edwin,139Marquesas Islands,33Marriage,4Marriage club,71Marriage market,68Marx, Karl,132,138,176Materialistic interpretation, 132Material production210Maternity endowment79Meredith, George43"Merrie England"161Metchnikoff, Elie33,46Mexico121Middle class176,186Minor, Robert173Mistress12Money37,192,202Money Trust194Monogamy5,83,90Moors134Moralists59Morgan128Mother's pension79Moving pictures17Negro218Negroes116Neuroses105Neurotics103North Dakota194North, Luke188O'Brien, Frederick10Oedipus complex104"Open-shop"177Panic154Parasitism74Passion58Permanence87Piracy111Pity74Plumb plan198Political evolution123Political revolution125Politics213Pornography20Postal savings bank195Poverty40Primitive man9Privilege36Professor Sumner122Profit system148,158"Progressive polygamy"90Proletariat142Promiscuity87Property marriage44Prosperity144Prostitute6Prostitution4,31,41,217Proudhon179Psycho-analysis49,103Public bank194Publishing212Quick, Herbert165Race prejudice62Race problem218Racial immaturity116Raffeisen bank200Reeve, Sidney A.160Republic125Research212"Resurrection"53Revolt134Ricardo108Richardson, Dorothy26Ring148Robinson, Dr. William, J,21,30,70,77Roman Catholic church90"Romance"91"Romantic" love55Roosevelt61Rulers119Russia129,185Sanger, Margaret63School of marriage75Selection8Sex8Sex education72Sex impulse46Sex problem218Sex urge86Sex war81Shelley59,89"She-towns"29Shop management168Sienkiewicz13Sims, District Attorney28Single tax188Slavery10,126,136"Smart set"24Smith, Adam108Snobbery 61Socialism,166Social revolution,128,147,175Soviets,130,171"Speeding up",138Spencer, Herbert,122Spirituality,64Sport,113Standard wage,203Steel Trust,137Stopes, Dr. Marie C.,77Strikes,162Syndicalism,167Syphilis,30Tabu,9Tariff,153Taxes,191Tennyson,38,120"The Brass Check",31,137"The Conquest of Bread",173"The Cost of Competition",160"The Industrial Republic",202"The Jungle",139"The Lady",12"The Long Day",26,29"The Nature of Man",33"The Profits of Religion",137"The Social Revolution",210"The Strangle Hold",200Thompson, A. M.,31Tolstoi,53"Totem and Taboo",104"Triangle",56Unconscious,105Unemployment,147"Vamps",19Vanity,219Varietism,85Venereal disease,30,67,83Voltaire,36Voluntary Parenthood League,64War,162Wars,155Waste,165Wells, H. G.,89Wharton, Edith,95"Wild oats",6White man's burden,117White, William Allen,17Worker,140Workers,176Working class,140Woman,12"Young love",56,73