BOOK I

[1]"Capital," by Karl Marx.

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

[3]Engels and others have described Marxian or Economic Socialism as scientific, on the ground that Marx was the first to reduce Socialism to a science. But the word science has become so inseparably connected in our minds with chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, and geology, etc., that it seems wiser to define Marxian Socialism as economic and to keep the word scientific for that view of Socialism which is built on the sciences proper and principally on biology.

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

[5]Book III, Chapter VI.

[6]See Appendix.

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

ToC

Socialism is not a subject which can be put into a nutshell. On the contrary it resembles rather a lofty mountain which has to be viewed from every point of the compass in order to be understood. Mont Blanc, approached from the North or Swiss side, presents the aspect of a round white dome of snow; approached from the South or Italian side it presents that of a sharp black peak of rock. Yet these totally different aspects belong to the same mountain. It takes a mountaineer about three days to go round Mont Blanc on foot; it takes an ordinary pedestrian who has to stick to roads about a week. It is probable, therefore, that the reader new to the subject will take at least a week to understand Socialism, which is quite as big a subject as Mont Blanc and considerably more important. He is likely, however, to take much more than a week if, as happens in most cases, he starts in a forest of prejudices any one of which is sufficient to obstruct his view. In the confusion in which the ordinary citizen finds himself, owing to this forest of prejudices which constitutes the greatest obstacle to the understanding of Socialism, he may very possibly wander all his life, and the first duty, therefore, of a bookon Socialism is to take him out of the forest which he cannot himself see "because of the trees."

The great enemy to a sound understanding of Socialism used to be ignorance; to-day, however, there is less ignorance, but a great deal more confusion; and the confusion arises from two sources: confusion deliberately created by false denunciations of Socialism, and confusion unconsciously created by personal interests and prejudice.

The confusion arising from these two sources may be described as subjective obstacles to Socialism because they exist within ourselves. They are to be distinguished from objective obstacles to Socialism which exist outside of ourselves. For example, if a majority of us were in favor of adopting Socialism, we should still find many objective obstacles to it; for example, if we proposed to expropriate the trusts, we should undoubtedly be enjoined by the courts; we should find ourselves confronted with federal and State constitutions; we perhaps would have to amend these constitutions. These difficulties are outside of us. But before we reach these obstacles, we have to overcome others that exist within us and are to-day by far the most formidable. These subjective obstacles reside in our minds and are created there by vested interests, property, ignorance and misrepresentation. We are all of us under a spell woven about us by the economic conditions under which we live.

For example, the workingman who has saved a few hundred dollars and goes out West to take up land, thinks that by so doing he will escape from wage slavery. He does not know that he is not escaping slavery at all, but only changing masters. Instead of being the slave of an employer, he becomes the slave of his own farm. And the farm will prove an even harder taskmasterthan a Pittsburg steel mill, for it will exact of him longer hours during more days of the year and seldom give him as high a wage. Nevertheless, the fact that he owns the farm—that the farm is his property—awakens in him the property instinct that tends to rank him on election day by the side of the bourgeois.

So also the store-keeper who, because he owns his stock, buys goods at a low price and sells them at a high, and makes profit, considers himself superior to the wage-earner, unmindful of the fact that his store adds to long hours and low wage the anxieties of the market and that, thanks to trusts and department stores, he is kept perpetually on the ragged edge of ruin.

The clerk, too, whose only ambition is to rise one grade higher than the one which he occupies, is prevented by the narrowness of his economic field from appreciating the extent to which he is exploited. Instead of being bound by class consciousness with his fellow clerks, he is, on the contrary, in perpetual rivalry with them, and is likely to be found on election day voting with the owner who exploits them all.

And even the wage-earner, the factory hand, who is the most obviously exploited of all, is in America still so absorbed by his trade union, by his fight with his employer, that he has not yet learned to recognize how much stronger he is in this fight on the political than on the economic field. So he too, instead of recognizing the salvation offered to him by Socialism as his fellow workingmen in Germany do, allows himself regularly to be betrayed into voting for one of the capitalist parties which his employer alternately controls.

And the darkness in which these men are regarding matters of vital interest to them is still further darkened by their own ignorance, by the ignorance of those aroundthem and, I am afraid I must add, by deliberate misrepresentation.

Let us begin by extricating ourselves from the forest of prejudice that makes all clearness of vision impossible and, when we can see with our eyes, we shall take a rapid walk around this mountain of Socialism, as all climbers do, if only to choose the best points from which to climb it.

There is in the archives of the House of Commons a petition filed by the gardeners of Hammersmith in opposition to a proposed improvement of the country roads, which would enable gardeners further removed from London to compete with Hammersmith gardeners on the London market. They regarded themselves as having a vested right in bad roads and actually took these so-called rights sufficiently seriously to petition Parliament not to improve roads which were going to bring them into competition with gardeners already at a disadvantage by being further removed from the market than themselves.

This is an illustration of the extent to which the human mind can be perverted by personal interest. But there is another illustration of so-called vested interests much more revolting in its nature and yet perhaps more justified in fact. When the cholera broke out in Paris, in 1830, and it was believed to have been brought into the country through rags, a bill was presented before the French Parliament for the destruction of all deposits of rags in the city. This was violently opposed by the rag pickers, who pointed out that these rags constituted their only source of existence, and they found many membersof the French Parliament to support their view. We, who can dispassionately consider the situation of these rag pickers, have to admit that, if they could earn their living in no other way than rag picking, it would be a mistake for Parliament to deprive them of their source of living without giving them some other employment. But it would be worse still were Parliament to allow Paris to be decimated by cholera because the rag pickers claimed a vested right in pestiferous rags.

A similar situation presents itself in the city of New York to-day. The tenement-house commission has imposed upon tenement-house owners certain obligations which involve an expenditure of considerable sums of money, and many of our best citizens are indignant because the tenement-house law is not always rigidly enforced. Yet all who have followed the recent rent strike on the East Side, know that the tenement houses there are in large part owned by men as poor as those who live in them. The immense congestion in this district brought about such competition for lodgings that speculators were enabled to buy tenement houses at their utmost value and to sell them at a still higher price by persuading the thriftiest of the inhabitants of the district that, if they purchased these tenement houses and acted as their own janitors and agents, they could earn more money than was then being earned. Victims were found who have put all their savings into these tenement houses, leaving the larger part of the purchase on mortgage. These new landlords raise the rent in order to make the houses pay for themselves. These pauper tenement-house owners are in the same position to-day as the Paris rag pickers of 1830.

The question of what, if any, compensation should be paid when the state interferes with vested rights cannotbe decided by any general rule. The demand for compensation by the Hammersmith gardeners was absurd; but that of the rag pickers was justified; that of poor tenement-house owners on the East Side seems also to be justified; but if the state in taking over these unwholesome tenements were to find one in the hands of a speculator, would compensation be to the same degree justified?

So these questions seem to become questions of detail; they cannot be disposed of by a general rule: "there shall be compensation" or "there shall not be compensation." Above all things, these so-called general rules must not be erected into dogmas or "principles" under the standard of which Socialists are to group themselves and fight one another.

It is interesting to consider in connection with this subject the geographical character of the objections to Socialism as illustrated by the attitude taken by England and America respectively on the subject of municipal ownership.

In England, municipal ownership of gas is the rule rather than the exception. Indeed Manchester has owned its own gas plant from 1843, and has furnished the public with gas at 60 cents per thousand cubic feet, and even at that price[8]made a net profit in 1907-8 of £57,609, which has been applied to the diminution of rates and extension of the service. Birmingham, which had to pay an extravagant price for its gas plant, nevertheless immediately reduced the price of gas and brought it down from $1.10 under private ownership to 50 cents to-day. In England, therefore, it is perfectly respectable to approve of municipal ownership of gas. But inasmuch as water has been until very latelyfurnished to London in great part by a private company chartered by James I. the stock of which has increased in value a thousand per cent and which counts among its stockholders royalty itself, anybody until very lately who proposed municipal ownership of water in London, was regarded as a dangerous anarchist.

The New York situation is just the reverse. For New York, after having tried private ownership of water and abandoned it as early as 1850 on account of the corruption that resulted therefrom, undertook public ownership of water with such success that no disinterested citizen to-day wants to go back to the old plan. So a New Yorker can advocate municipal ownership of water and still be regarded as a perfectly respectable citizen; but should he venture to favor municipal ownership of gas he is at once classed with those whose heads are only fit to be beaten with a club.

How long are we going to allow our opinions to be manufactured for us by water companies in London and gas companies in New York? Obviously we cannot take an impartial and intelligent view of this great question until we have divested ourselves of the prejudices created by vested interests. If the propertied class, which is committed to existing conditions by the fact that it profits by them, is willing to yield no inch to the rising tide of popular dissatisfaction and the awakening of popular conscience, it is probable that the revolutionary wing of the Socialist party will prevail, if only because under these circumstances the evolutionary wing will not be allowed to prevail. If, on the other hand, the propertied class become alive not only to the danger of undue resistance, but also to the reasonableness and justice of the Socialist ideal, there is no reason why vested interests, save such as owe their existence to downrightrobbery and crime, should materially suffer in the process of Socialist evolution. If this be true the words "menace of Socialism" will turn out to be inappropriate and unfounded. Sound Socialism has no menace for any but evil-doers.

Having now climbed out of the forest of prejudices created by private or so-called vested interests, let us next consider the different points of view created by temperament and economic conditions, from which the subject of Socialism tends to be regarded.

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

Every man who is earning a living is profoundly affected by all that affects his living. If Socialism seems to threaten this living, he instinctively and often unconsciously repudiates it. From one point of view, Socialism presents a more formidable aspect than from another. It takes a very skilled climber to scale Mont Blanc from the Italian side, whereas from the Swiss side it is simply a matter of endurance. The same thing is true of Socialism.

Now there are three distinct and opposing points of view: The bourgeois point of view, the revolutionist point of view, and the evolutionist point of view.

The bourgeois point of view is that which students of political science have been in the habit of describing as individualism. But there are objections to this use of the word individualism, as will appear later on.

The bourgeois view is that the production and distribution of the things we need can best be conducted by allowing every man to choose and do his own work under the stimulus of need when poor and of acquisitiveness when rich. This system is well described in themaxim: "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost." The first part of this maxim has in it considerable merit, for it encourages the self-reliance that has made the prosperity of America. But the latter part merely expresses a pious wish that is seldom gratified. The devil does not take the hindmost. The devil leaves them here to stalk through our highways and streets, a permanent army of about 500,000 tramps, swelled at all times by thousands and in such times as these by millions of unemployed.[9]

The bourgeois view is that of the man who owns or expects to own property; the bourgeois class represents a small proportion of the whole population, and is sometimes described as the propertied class.

But as the propertied class is in control of our schools, colleges and press, it has hitherto made the opinions of the vast majority. Thus the bourgeois view is not only that of the propertied class, but also that of most of those who have no property. It is the view of the man in the street.

Lately, however, Socialism has been making inroads into the opinions of both classes, and this has divided Socialists into two groups which, though generally found fighting under the same banner, nevertheless take different views of the subject, which tends to confuse the uninitiated. These two views are conveniently described as revolutionist and evolutionist. Let us study the revolutionist point of view first:

Marx rendered a great service by pointing out the extent to which the non-propertied class is exploited bythe propertied class—the proletariat by the bourgeois—the factory hand by the factory owner. Marx, however, did not himself confine Socialism to the struggle between the factory hand and the factory owner. But there has arisen out of the Marxian philosophy a school which has emphasized the observation of Marx that the factory hands increased in number while the factory owners decreased in number, and that this tends to produce a conflict between the two—a revolution from which the factory hand must emerge released from the incubus of the factory owner. Two ideas dominate this school: the class struggle—a struggle practically confined to the factory worker on the one hand and the factory owner on the other; and the revolution—the eventual clash between the two. The triumph of the factory hand is, according to this school, to result in the complete overturn of the whole social, industrial and economic fabric of society, the community[10]succeeding to the individual in the ownership of all land and all sources of production—all profit now appropriated by the factory owner accruing to the community and inuring to all the citizens of the state.

This revolutionist school regards Socialism from the point of view of a class that has no property—the proletariat—just as the bourgeois looks at Socialism from the point of view of those who have property. Both points of view tend to be partial; the bourgeois tends to see only what is good for himself in existing conditions and all that is bad for him in Socialism; the revolutionist tends to see all that is bad for him in existing conditionsand only what is good for him in the proposed new Socialism. This fact tends to make revolutionists dominate the Socialist party (which is mainly recruited from the proletariat) and is, therefore, entitled to the most serious consideration. Private interest is the dominating motive of political action to-day. It is the avowed motive of the bourgeois. He has, therefore, no excuse for denouncing this same motive in the proletariat, all the less as the bourgeois has to admit that his industrial system produces pauperism, prostitution, and crime; whereas the proletariat points out that Socialism will put an end to pauperism and prostitution and in great part also to crime.

Because revolutionists believe that this change cannot be effected without a revolution—without a transfer of political power from the bourgeois to the proletariat—they speak of their movement as revolutionary, and often say that Socialism must come by revolution and not by reform.

But these words must not be allowed to mislead. Although the Socialist platform says that "adequate relief" cannot be expected from "any reform of the present order," it nevertheless embraces a series of reforms entitled "Immediate Demands." This is proof positive that the Socialist party is not opposed to legislative measures that in the bourgeois vocabulary are known as reforms, since it advocates them.

Socialists make a distinction between legislation that tends to transfer political power from the exploiters to the exploited and those that do not; the former are termed revolutionary and the latter are termed mere reforms. The former are what they stand for. But they do not for that reason remain indifferent to legislation that improves human conditions. On the contrary,the immediate demands of the Socialist platform include:

The scientific reforestation of timber lands and the reclamation of swamp lands; the land so reclaimed to be permanently retained as a part of the public domain:

The enactment of further measures for general education and for the conservation of health. The Bureau of Education to be made a department. The creation of a department of public health. The free administration of justice.

Obviously, therefore, even revolutionary Socialists advocate certain reforms; but they will be content with nothing less than the transfer of political power from those who now use it ill to those who will use it better.

Last, but not least, revolution does not in the Socialist vocabulary involve the idea of violence. It is used in the same sense as we use the expression "revolution of the planets," "revolution of the seasons," "revolution of the sun." Undoubtedly there are Socialists willing to use violence in order to attain their ends just as there are Fricks willing to use Pinkerton men, and mine owners willing to use the militia to attain theirs. But the idea of violence has been expressly repudiated by the leaders of the Socialist party. And the word "revolution" must not be understood to include it. This question is studied in fuller detail in Book III, Chapter II.

The evolutionist point of view claims to be wider than either of the foregoing. The evolutionist is not content to study Socialism from the point of view of any one class. He undertakes to climb out of the forest of prejudicescreated by class to a point where he can study Socialism free from every obstruction. He studies Socialism from the point of view of the whole Democracy, including the employer, the employee, and those who neither employ nor are employed; as, for example, the farmer who farms his own land without the assistance of any farm hands outside of his own family. From this point of view, he can denounce the evils of the existing system of production and distribution—if system it can be called[11]—without the bitterness that distorts the view of the victims of this system, and can therefore see perhaps more clearly the methods by which the evils of the existing system can be eliminated.

The evolutionist points to history to prove that forcible revolution is generally attended by great waste of property and life, and is followed by a reaction that injuriously retards progress. He therefore seeks to change existing conditions without revolution, by successive reforms. This class of Socialist is denounced by revolutionists under a variety of names. He is called a parlor Socialist, an intellectual Socialist, but perhaps the name that carries with it the most contempt is that of step-by-step Socialist. He answers, however, that when he finds his progress arrested by a perpendicular precipice such as we are familiar with at the top of the Palisades, he refrains from throwing himself—or advising his neighbors to throw themselves—headlong into the abyss, but takes the trouble to find a possibly circuitous way round. He will not consent to sit at the top of the precipice until he grows wings, as the Roman peasant sat by the Tiber "until it ran dry." The step-by-step Socialist is content to adopt a winding path which sometimes turns his back to the place which he wishes to reach, because he holdsin his hand a compass whose unerring needle will bring him eventually to the desired goal.

Again, the evolutionist claims to be supported by ethical and scientific considerations which the revolutionary Socialist regards as of secondary importance. But for the present it is convenient to postpone the study of the ethical and the scientific aspects of Socialism and to content ourselves with stating two principal claims made by the evolutionist, viz.:

First: that his view is likely to be clearer than that of either the bourgeois or the revolutionist, because it is not obstructed by class interest;

Second: that his policy is likely to be wise, because it is neither stationary as that of the bourgeois nor headlong as that of the revolutionist.

In conclusion, the revolutionist keeps his eye fixed on the horizon—perhaps it may even be said that he fixes his eye beyond the horizon, if that be possible; he looks forward to a state of society which, because it seems unrealizable to-day most of us are inclined to regard as visionary; and in presenting to us a commonwealth in which every personal interest will be vested in the community, he attacks at once the personal interests of every man who owns property in the country. Obviously, if all agriculture is to be owned by the community, every farmer will lose his farm. If all the factories are to be owned by the community, every factory owner will lose his factory. If all distribution is to be managed by the community, every storekeeper will lose his store. The revolutionary Socialist therefore raises against himself every property owner in the land; and all the more because there is division in the ranks of revolutionists as regards compensation, to which I have already referred. (See Vested Interests, p. 18.)

The evolutionist on the contrary confines his attention for the present to existing conditions. He adopts, it is true, as an ultimate goal the coöperative commonwealth advocated by the revolutionists. It is indeed the point to which his compass is always directing him. It constitutes the ideal to which he believes the race will eventually adapt itself. But in addition to historical fact regarding the cost of revolution in the past, and in view of certain other scientific facts which will be dwelt upon later, he recognizes that personal or vested interests are likely to interfere more than anything else with the adoption of Socialism as an ultimate goal, and that these interests therefore no statesman can afford to disregard.

[9]December, 1908.

[10]I am careful to use the word "community" and not the word "state," for state ownership is not Socialism. The Prussian State stands for state ownership, and even Mr. Roosevelt would not characterize the Prussian Government as Socialistic.

[11]Book II, Chapter III.

Michaelangelo has said that sculpture is the art of chipping off superfluous stone. The sculptor sees a statue in every block. This is what Whistler used to call the "divine art of seeing." The sculptor's task is to remove those parts of the block that hide the statue from the layman's eye. So the Socialist sees the coöperative commonwealth imprisoned within the huge, rough, cruel mass that we call modern civilization, and his task is to remove from the beautiful form he sees the errors which mask it from the view of the unenlightened. If we can but remove these errors our task is in great part accomplished; and the first of these errors is that which confounds Socialism with Anarchism.

Nothing is more unjustified than the confusion which exists in people's minds between Anarchism and Socialism. This confusion is not altogether unnatural, for Socialism and Anarchism have one great feature in common—both express discontent with existing conditions. The remedies, however, propounded by the Anarchists for evil conditions and those propounded by Socialists are contradictorily opposite. They are so opposite thatthe bourgeois turns out to be more nearly associated with the Anarchist than the Socialist is.

The theory upon which our present economic and political conditions are founded is that the less government interferes with the individual's action, the better. This theory may be said to have taken its start at the period of the French Revolution, and is generally connected in the minds of English-speaking people with Adam Smith, the Manchester School oflaissez faire, the earlier works of John Stuart Mill, and all the works of Herbert Spencer. When, however, the pernicious consequences of allowing every individual to do as he chose with his own became felt, as for example in the poisoning of rivers by allowing every factory to pour its waste into them; and in degeneration of the race through unlimited exploitation of women and children in factories and mines, governments all over the world have been obliged as measures of self-defence to enact laws limiting individual action. The individualism of the beginning of last century has been gradually leading to the Socialism of to-day, Socialism being, among other things, an intelligent limitation of the abuse of property in accordance with a preconceived plan, instead of spasmodic limitation of the abuse of property forced upon us by the pernicious consequences thereof, often creating new abuses as bad as those suppressed.[12]While therefore the Socialist asks that the functions of government be extended sufficiently to secure to every man the greatest amount of liberty, and the bourgeois on the contrary demands that thereshall be the least amount of government consistent with the protection of property and life, the Anarchist asks that there shall be no government at all. The bourgeois, therefore, is closer to the Anarchist than the Socialist is—in fact he stands between the two.

Socialists and Anarchists then are polar opposites. There is a whole world between them. Indeed it is impossible to conceive two theories of government more opposite one to another than that of Socialism, which demands more government, and that of Anarchism, which demands the destruction of government altogether.

Those who derive their information regarding Socialism solely from books are apt to be puzzled by the word "Communism," because it has at different times stood for different things. The early Christians were Communists; so were Plato and Sir Thomas More; so also was Proudhon, whom Mr. Roosevelt places in the same category with Karl Marx. He does not seem to be aware that Proudhon and Marx were the protagonists of conflicting schools and that Marx drove Proudhon—who was a communistic Anarchist—and his followers out of the Socialist party of that day. For from Marx' economic doctrine of value was derived a totally new idea in the movement; this idea is couched in a formula which has become so familiar to Socialists that it seems incredible that anyone undertaking to write about Socialism should ignore it; namely, that thelaboring class is entitled to the full product of its labor; that is to say, that it shall securely have exactly what it earns; no more, no less; that it shall be deprived of it neither by the capitalist asto-day nor by the thriftless or vicious as under the Communism of Apostolic times.

Mr. Roosevelt accuses Socialists of "loose thinking." Is there not a little loose thinking about this confusion of Socialism and Communism? Or is it that Mr. Roosevelt is just a century behindhand? Or is it that he has never read the works of Proudhon and Karl Marx, whom he groups together as propounding the same kind of Socialism? As a matter of fact, Proudhon has been so discredited by Marx that few Socialists think it worth while to read his works; whereas "Capital" is to-day the Bible of the Socialist movement.

One word, however, must be added about Communism before dismissing the subject: There are two kinds of Communists, just as there are two kinds of Anarchists; those who adopt Communism and Anarchism out of discontent with the present system; and those who adopt them because they stand for perfection. With the first category we need not concern ourselves. Their day is over. With the second there is an important point to be noted: Such writers as Kropotkin see further than the average citizen. They look forward to a day when the spirit of mutual helpfulness which ought to attend the substitution of coöperation for competition will have entirely changed human nature; when men will have acquiredhabitsof industry, of justice, and of self-restraint that seem now incredible to us; they will then as naturally work as they now naturally shirk; they will as naturally help one another as they now naturally fight; they will as naturally share with one another as they now despoil one another. This may seem wildly impossible to us now; but if we look back to the day when our forbears lived in hordes, when children bore their mother's name because they did not know their father's,when no woman could move from her hut alone without being subject to assault, when self-indulgence prevailed except in so far as it was checked by fear, we can appreciate the scorn with which one of them would have listened to a prophet who should announce that men and women would ultimately mate once for all and be faithful to one another; children know their fathers and bear their father's name; women travel from one end of the country to another with perfect security, and self-restraint cease to be an imposition and become a habit. If then man has become so profoundly modified by the progress from the promiscuousness of the horde to the self-restraint of the family, why should he not be capable of one step further—from the habits that result from competition to the habits that would result from coöperation—from mutual hatred to mutual helpfulness? This is the hope and faith of such writers as Kropotkin. But it is not yet within the range of practical politics. So the Socialist party rightly confines its program within practical limits. There are too many idle and vicious among us to-day; too many products of human exploitation; too many worn-out men, women, and children; too much degeneration; too much hypocrisy; too much "looseness of thought." We must cut our garment to our customer. All that the Socialist asks to-day is to have what he earns. Morally he is entitled to it. Can our system of production be so modified as to assure this to him? This is the problem we have to solve. Socialists say that it can be so modified, or that it can, at least, be so modified as to put an end to pauperism, prostitution, and in great part to crime. This is the practical Socialism of to-day as distinguished from the Communism of centuries ago or that of centuries ahead. This is what the Socialist party stands for, and it is by thisstandard and no other that the Socialist party must be judged.

Socialism then does not stand to-day for Communism. On the contrary, it demands that the workers be assured, as exactly as is humanly possible, the product of their labor, and not share it with the idle and vicious on the one hand or be deprived of it by the capitalist on the other.

One reason why Communism has been discarded by the Socialist party is that generations of competition have so molded human nature that it is extremely probable that production would suffer were it suddenly eliminated. A man who has accustomed himself to the stimulus of arsenic cannot be suddenly deprived of arsenic without developing the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. It will doubtless be indispensable to maintain competition in the coöperative commonwealth. There is no longer question then of discarding competition; the question is in what doses shall it be administered; in doses that produce the pauperism and prostitution of to-day, or in doses that will furnish the necessary stimulus for human exertion without pushing that stimulus to exhaustion and degeneracy?

This question brings us to our next subject:

No modern Socialist maintains that all competition is bad, or that it would be advisable to eliminate competition altogether from production and distribution. But it has become the duty of every sane man to consider whether it may not be possible to eliminate the excessive competition that gives rise to pauperism, prostitution, and crime. To answer this question, we must begin bydetermining what competition is good and what bad; and if the bad can be eliminated and the good maintained.

Competition is a part of the joy of life; healthy children race one another as they are let out from school; they challenge one another to wrestle and leap; and when they are tired of emulation, they join hands and dance. Competition and coöperation are the salt and the sweet of life; we want the one with our meat and the other with our pudding; we do not want all salt or all sweet; for too much sweet cloys the mouth while too much salt embitters it.

We all unconsciously recognize this by encouraging games and discouraging gambling. Now what is the difference between games and gambling? One is a wholesome use of time for the purpose of wholesome amusement; the other is an unwholesome abuse of time for the purpose of making money. The one incidentally encourages a beneficial action of muscle and brain; the other, on the contrary, promotes a detrimental appetite for unlawful profit.

We are all perfectly agreed about this so long as we confine ourselves to games and gambling; but as soon as we extend our argument to production and distribution we shall at once come into collision with the bourgeois. Let us therefore be very sure that our premises are sound and our deduction sure before we confront him.

Even as regards gambling there are degrees of vice; some would justify old people who bet only just enough on the issue of a game of piquet to make it worth while to count the points; whereas all would condemn a bet that involved the entire fortune, much more the life or death of a human being.

Now it may seem extravagant to assert that the competitive system of production imposes upon the majoritya bet involving life or death, yet statistics demonstrate that mortality is from 35 to 50 per cent higher with those who lose than with those who win in the game of life.[13]But it is not extravagant to assert that it imposes upon the majority a bet involving a thing quite as precious as life—I mean health. A man who bets his life and loses is free from pain on this earth at any rate; but the man who bets his health and loses is committed to a period of misery not only for himself, but for all those around him so long as breath is in his body.

The greatest evil that attends the competitive system of production is that it commits all engaged in it to a game the stake of which is the life happiness not only of himself, but of all dependent on him.

If this were a matter of mere sport there is not a man with a spark of moral sense in him who would not condemn it. He would denounce it as a gladiatorial show; as belonging to the worst period of the worst empire known to history. But because it is a matter of production the bourgeois has for it no word save of justification and praise. He justifies it by the argument of necessity: "the poor you have with you always." He praises it because it "makes character."

If there were indeed no other system of production possible but the competitive system, the plea of necessity would be justified. But when we are dealing with a question involving the happiness of the majority of ourfellow creatures, we must be very sure that there is no better system before the plea can be admitted. And as to those often misquoted words of Christ, there will undoubtedly under the coöperative as well as the competitive system always be some shiftless, some poor. But everything depends on what is meant by the word "poor." To-day the poor are on the verge of starvation; poverty means not only misery, but disease and crime. Under a coöperative system there need be no starvation; no fear of starvation; less disease; and infinitely less crime! The vast majority of men do not need the lash to drive them to their work; it is no longer necessary to keep before us the fear of want, of misery, of starvation; we have passed that stage; and just as the lash is used by trainers only for wild beasts, and gentler animals are better trained by the hope of reward than by the fear of punishment, so humanity has reached a point of moral development which makes it no longer inferior to the lower animals—the bourgeois notwithstanding. Better work can be got from a man by the prospect of increased comfort than by the fear of misery and unemployment.

As to the second justification, that the competitive system makes character; look for a moment at the character of the men who have succeeded in the competitive mill. Are these the saints of the latter day? Or are our saints not to be found amongst those who have never been in the competitive mill—who have resolutely kept out of it—Florence Nightingale, Father Damien, Rose Hawthorne, the Little Sisters of the Poor?

The real problem is not whether we should or can eliminate competition altogether from the field of production, but whether we should or can eliminate it to the extent necessary to put an end to the three great curses of humanity to-day.

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