Hume, Gibson, A.M., Ph. D.(Head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Canada.)
To endorse and accept all the various conflicting and even contradictory proposals loosely and popularly called Socialism would indeed be absurd and ridiculous. Nevertheless, on the whole the term Socialism has stood for constructive rather than destructive plans. What might be termed Christian Socialism, or perhaps still better constructive Christian Socialism, has ideals and aims that I unhesitatingly adopt as noble, just and right. When it comes to a program or plan to give practical application and realization to these ideals there is much room for debate and difference of opinion. Here, it seems to me, we face real problems.
Christian theology dealing with the relations of God and man succeeded long ago in definitely rejecting the abstract atomism of atheism, and also, though perhaps not so clearly and definitely, the pantheism which over-zealous for God forgot to leave a place for human personality.
In our time modern Christianity is concentrating its attention on the problems of the relation of man to man, of the individual to the community, and logically and consistently with its past speculations opposes the extreme individualism that issues in anarchism and atomism, and also opposesthe other extreme of communism which overshadows the individual overmuch in its zeal for the collective standpoint, and the opposition in this instance is the more notable because the early Christian Church for a short time really tried the experiment of having "all things in common." While modern constructive Christian Socialism rejects the opposing panaceas of a simple character offered by the extreme individualist on the one hand and the extreme collectivist on the other, it nevertheless sees in each of these one-sided proposals and theories a certain measure of truth, and it therefore faces the much more difficult and complex problem of trying to combine and harmonize these partial truths in such a manner as to secure a proper self-respecting individualism or personal responsibility on the one hand, and an adequate collectivistic co-operation on the other.
With this double aim and purpose in mind there has arisen a beginning at least of a positive and constructive program leading toward this goal. Emerging from the mediaeval twilight where the fallacy was widespread that made religion a thing apart, modern Christian thought is suspicious of any religious creed or profession which remains a merely intellectual assent or declaration of faith, and demands that a true religion should also permeate and transmute the life and issue in conduct touching and helping the lives and conduct of others.
The key to the Christian social position is the "Golden Rule," not as a mere sentiment of kindliness, though that is good as far as it goes, but it must be made to go further and issue in a principle of action, a principle in action controlling the practice, guiding and inspiring the actual conduct of life, both in its individual and in its social or collective aspect.
At the outset, then, it respects and preserves the individual, not by the negative and suicidal method of rejecting the claims of society, but, on the contrary, insisting that the individual can develop his moral personality only by accepting the duties of social service, which when properly understood becomes not a burden but a privilege, since in this way alone may real self-hood become realized.
Zeal for the preservation of the other person inspired the earlier attack on slavery; it now reappears in a crusade against industrial bondage. Corporations now resist control on the plea that it is an interference with personal liberty. The Christian view-point never granted to the individual a selfishliberty of defying properly constituted authority, much less such right to a corporation. It now makes it perfectly plain that the individual has duties, and to this view of the individual it would be ludicrous for the corporation to appeal in its dislike to bow to social demands.
In international relations the claim of Christianity to be under the Prince of Peace makes modern Christian Socialism demand that other nations should be treated not simply as good neighbors, but as actual brothers, since all are children of the same Father. Hence it follows that the brutality, waste and wickedness, the wholesale butchery and murder known as war, must be condemned and opposed. Furthermore, all militarism and jingoism, all journalistic or other stirring up of bad feeling, leading to strife between different races, the atavistic revival of ancient blood feuds or modern commercial intrigues to reap profit out of the piling up of armaments oppressing the common people, are all to be resisted. The specious claim that armies and navies are merely policy restraining criminals is easily seen to be erroneous, for if each army claims to be a policy restraining criminals, it must follow that each army is by the other army put among the class of criminals. And the fallacious claim that preparation for war is a guarantee of peace, an insurance policy against war, is met by the counterclaim that the best way in times of peace to insure the continuance of peace is to extend the principles and practices that teach the value of peace, that conduce to peace, that make people desirous that peace may continue. The bellicose claim that our neighbors cannot or will not attack us if we are powerful enough in armaments to intimidate them, simply teaches other nations to pursue the same policy of attempted intimidation, which can only breed ill will and ultimately tend to provoke actual hostilities.
When disputes and misunderstandings arise, Christian Socialism favors arbitration as a peaceful way of settling differences, appealing to right and justice and intelligence, not to brute force and blind passion. Hence the development of the principles of international law and justice, the establishing of international courts of appeal and arbitration in matters of divided jurisdiction or conflict of interests is explicitly approved. Within the State, the principles of Christian Socialism demand that each person participate in governing, making government to become simply collective self-controlthrough willing co-operation. In proper theories of government much progress has been made towards at least the partial adoption of "the rule of the people, by the people, for the people," though this maxim is disregarded for earlier tyrannical or paternal theories of government wherever women are debarred from taking their share in the duty of directing and controlling the laws governing all and affecting all, not only men but also women. The reason for still excluding children is simply due to the fact of their immaturity.
It is in the field of industry and commerce that the greatest reconstruction will need to be made, for after having struggled so long to secure the freedom of the individual when it becomes clearly recognized that the only freedom that is even partially secured is the negative one of being left alone and that positive freedom of efficient action is lacking, there is bound to be a new direction to the constant efforts of civilization to secure the good of its component members. When aggregations, companies, corporations, trusts, etc., become an "imperium in imperio," turning the powerful engine of combination into the work of consolidating selfish aggrandizement and rendering impossible the development of a normal and healthy life among the great masses of the unorganized, the lesson taught by the power of organization is likely to be learned by the masses, and this will point to the attempt to secure the control for the co-operative community of all those great fundamental factors that are sometimes called natural monopolies, and the old regime that allowed these to be used as toll houses on the highway of progress to levy tribute to private monopoly and leading to the formation of a class of idle rich on the one hand and of idle poor on the other, will require most radical reconstruction in the interests of mankind.
As Christian Socialism has no simple formula to solve all the manifold and complex economic difficulties, it must go slowly, cautiously and experimentally. As it sympathizes with both the individualist and the collectivist in certain respects in each case, it may seem to favor opposing policies, but perhaps it is a case of walking forward by first moving up the left foot, then the right foot.
Where competition is found by experience to be both feasibly and advantageous, Christian Socialism will strive to secure real competition and so will assist in removing anydevice tariff or tax that favors one and penalizes the other. On the other hand, where monopolistic control is unavoidable or economically advantageous, it will strive to have such monopolistic enterprize strictly supervised and controlled by government or where it is practicable owned and operated by the community through its government, central or local.
Christian Socialism stands unambiguously and clearly for the sanctity and preservation of the family as a fundamental social unit more significant than the disconnected individuals in whose interests much legislation has been made bearing heavily on the family and favoring unduly those who have selfishly preferred to stand alone. As the perpetuation of the race is one of the most obvious and outstanding of the purposes of the family, marriage will need to be safeguarded still more with this in view, that is to the securing of fit and proper persons as parents through the guardianship, complete supervision and restraint of the unquestionably unfit. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism could scarcely be expected to endorse some of the wild and even shockingly cruel and barbarous proposals of the eugenic group.
The child is the special ward and care of Christian Socialism, and here all the earlier paternalism of primitive Christianity may still find beneficent scope. The child should be protected, nurtured and cared for, and trained in such a manner as to prepare for the most efficient and noble service at maturity. In the child we see embodied our hope for the future, hence as the most promising road to the fulfillment of the dreams of all social reformers and idealists we must eventually learn to concentrate our efforts on the child. How can the child be trained so as to develop most fully his latent aptitudes and abilities so as to be capable on the one hand of reaching his own greatest realization and on the other hand contributing most to the good of the race? Surely we should all aim to secure for each and every child the fullest development of all his powers, physical, mental, moral-religious, and the moral-religious most of all if we are to secure that altruistic character, that unselfish disposition without which all plans, schemes and programs must necessarily end in failure.
Fleming, William Hansell.(Lecturer, Author and Editor.)
If by Socialism you mean that the individual in asserting and demanding his rights should consider and grant equal rights to all others in the community, then I am in favor of Socialism.
Whitaker, Robert.(Clergyman and Editor.)
I am in favor of Socialism because I see no other way out of the world-wide social distress which afflicts all the industrial nations today. Capitalism has outlived its historic function, and is today a cause of intolerable oppression, immeasurable misery and irrepressible conflict. The whole order of things by which society exists for the exploitation of the many by the few, either through competition or private monopoly, is fundamentally awry, and must be superseded by an order which shall give us the largest measure of practicable co-operation for ends of common service. There can be no real or lasting peace between capital and labor until society recognizes the common rights of all in natural resources, until we meet the marvelous multiplication of human effort through mechanical invention with social ownership and democratic control of the machine, and until the whole industrial order is organized so as to eliminate the waste of competition not in the interest of a few great industrial barons, but in the interest of the whole body of laborers. This is the program of Socialism in a large way, a system of social service as against a system of private profit, of co-operation as against exploitation, whose threefold objective is to make every man a partner with every other man in the commonwealth of nature, in the common gain of the world's inventive genius which is fundamentally social and not individual in its origin, and in the organization of industrial life, which ought to be democratic and not autocratic or oligarchic in its end.
I am for Socialism because Socialism is the economic expression of both democracy and religion, and because as such it is as inevitable as the movement of the suns.
Schindler, Solomon.(Author.)
If Socialism means the adjustment of social conditions of the past to the industrial and commercial needs of the present or some future day; if its objects are the utilization of natural forces, inventions and discoveries, for the benefit, not of the few, but for the greatest number—I am thoroughly in favor of Socialism.
Or, if Socialism stands for an endeavor to improve all things human, to attack all the hostile forces that threaten human well-being, such as hunger, sickness, ignorance, etc.—I, again, am in favor of Socialism or any "ism" that will try to make this world a happy abode of human beings.
But, if Socialism should stand for upheaval by force instead of peaceable evolution; if it should appeal to class hatred nurtured by envy; if it should endeavor to realize dreams of an impossible economic equality by means of the ballot or nitro-glycerine—in that case I am not in favor of Socialism.
Show me your Socialism, and I will tell you whether I am in favor of it or not.
Axon, Stockton.(University Professor and Writer.)
I think that all people who hold progressive opinions are desirous of getting a more equitable distribution of the wealth which is produced by the many, of getting such governmental adjustments as will destroy favors and special privileges under the government, of getting a government sensitive to the interests of all instead of a few. I believe these things can be accomplished by the free processes of democracy in the hands of a thoroughly aroused and informed people, sufficiently informed to make their own choices, and sufficiently determined to hold their leaders responsible to themselves, the people.
Every progressive platform has in it something that may be called Socialistic, and I am not sure just how much progressivism is necessary to make a Socialist.
Politically, I am a Democrat, and I was never stronger than now in the faith that Democracy can be free and powerful to serve the best interests of the whole people.
Clare, Israel Smith.(Historian, Author of "Library of Universal History," 15 Vols. Address: Lancaster, Pa., R.F.D. 2.)
I am a Socialist because Socialism is right; because it is industrial democracy and economic freedom; because it is in accordance with the principle of human brotherhood; because it is against dividing up, against breaking up the home, against free lust (wrongfully called "free love," as all love is free love, there being no forced love or compulsory love), against killing good incentive or good personal initiative; because it is against robbing the producer of four-fifths of his product; because it is against poverty, misery, prostitution, vice, crime, insanity, war, murder, suicide, pestilence, famine, ignorance and all that is bad; because its ethics are identical with the ethics of Jesus Christ; because it would make man's existence in this life a heaven upon earth; because the Socialism we already have works so well, as our post-office system, our public school system, our free textbook system, our public water and fire departments, our public roads, our public parks, our public playgrounds, our public libraries, etc.; because it is the next step in accord with economic revolution and is inevitable, is destined to come in spite of all opposition, in spite of all obstacles thrown in its way to obstruct or retard it, and in spite of all mistakes or shortcomings of Socialists themselves; in short, because Socialism is a rising sun.
I am opposed to Capitalism, because it is social and economic slavery; because it is in accord with the doctrine of human greed and selfishness; because it robs the workers and the industrious and rewards the shirkers and the exploiters; because it is for dividing up with a vengeance; because it breaks up the home by low wages, unemployment and high cost of living, as shown by government statistics, which tell us that there are a million divorces every ten years in this country; because it promotes race suicide, as the marriage rate and the birth rate are decreasing, and the death rate increasing, in all so-called civilized countries; because it causes panics and business depressions and makes ninety-eight out of every hundred business men fail (according to Dunn's Agency figures); because it discourages all good incentive and encourages all bad incentive; because it promotes free lust, or so-called "free love;" because it causes poverty and then punishes its victims for being poor; because it breeds poverty, misery, crime,prostitution, drunkenness, insanity, political corruption, pestilence, famine, war, murder, suicide, ignorance and all that is bad; because it is in accordance with the ethics of His Satanic Majesty; because it is a setting sun, a dying system, as it is destroying itself, is impregnated with the seeds of its own dissolution, is slowly committing suicide and digging its own grave, giving up the ghost, unwept, unhonored and unsung.
O'Neill, John M.(Editor, The Miners' Magazine, Denver, Colo.)
I am in favor of Socialism because I believe that Socialism in operation means the emancipation of the human race. It is idle to talk about political liberty while the vast majority of the people are without industrial liberty. The man who owns a thousand jobs, owns a thousand lives. Such a statement may sound harsh and brutal to the man whose cradle has been rocked beneath the starry banner of young Columbia, and he may say to me, "I am not a slave for I can quit the owner of the job," but if he quits the owner of the job and he belongs to the disinherited class, the wage earning class, then necessity demands that he shall seek another owner of jobs, and he has merely changed masters and he is still a slave.
For men to be free, they must own their jobs, and to own the jobs the people must own collectively, the natural resources of the earth, and its machinery of production and distribution.
I am in favor of Socialism because collective ownership of the earth and its machines of production and distribution will open wide the gates of equal opportunity to every man, woman and child who live upon the face of the earth. Socialism means that the profit system shall be destroyed and that upon its shattered ruins shall be built a real republic, beneath whose sheltering dome, there can live no master and no slave.
James, W.E.S., M.A., B.D.(Clergyman, Ayr, Ont., Canada.)
Socialism is the scientific analysis of the present state of society and the theory of social development founded thereon.A Socialist is one whose study of this scientific analysis has convinced him that society is progressing towards a co-operative commonwealth. My study extends over fifteen years, and I clearly see the gradual concentration of capital—the gradual consolidation of labor interests and the life and death struggle between them. As no question is ever settled until it is settled right, this can have only one result—the capturing of the wealth of the nations by the producers of wealth and the utilizing of it, not for the few, but for the whole people.
With the passing of the small privately owned shop through the coming of the large manufactury, socially operated but privately owned, way was prepared for the larger, nation-wide manufactury, socially operated and socially owned. It must come.
As right has behind it all the power of omnipotence and so must prevail the present system, which makes the many toil in poverty while the few live on the earnings in idleness and luxury, must make way for a system which will provide a more equitable reward of labor.
As competition is based on man's selfishness and so is un-Christian, co-operation, based on man's brotherhood, the essence of Christianity, must supersede it.
The capitalistic system must consider profits first—business must pay—and men second. The last hundred years has traced the gradual rise of man and the next twenty-five will see him freeing himself from this system of wage slavery and evolving another which will dethrone the dollar and will enthrone the rights of man.
When the ballot was given to the masses and free education to their children, the inevitable result was the rise of these masses to assert their freedom and their right to all the product of their labor—possible only in a co-operative commonwealth.
Every great religious awakening of the past has resulted from the preaching of some great neglected truth especially needed in that age. The next great religious awakening will come from preaching the one sadly neglected truth of this age—economic justice and brotherhood. It will be greater, more fundamental, more stupendous in its effects than any reformation or revolution of the past. It is inevitable.
This coming emancipation of man—dethronement of competition and dollar rule—the new moral, social and religiousawakening—these give my life its greatest joy, its highest hope, and its greatest inspiration to service. I am in favor of Socialism.
Peake, Elmore Elliott.(Author.)
The word "Socialism" (aside from its partisan use) has so many connotations that one can hardly say he is either for it or against it without being misconstrued. With Socialism's cardinal tenet, the better distribution and the better production of wealth, I am heartily in sympathy, as I suppose everybody is. People disagree as to the means by which this may be obtained. Public ownership of wealth-producing factors is evidently coming more and more into favor, as is evidenced by the municipal ownership of electric, gas and water plants. This principle is bound to be extended.
But it seems to me that Socialism stands with Prohibition to this extent: Long before either of them has made sufficient converts to put their party in power, their principles will have been incorporated by other parties which do not confine themselves to these specific contentions.
Weber, Gustavus Adolphus.(Economist.)
The ideal of Socialism, as I understand it, is a condition of society in which each individual will render his share of service in the production and distribution of wealth, and in which each will receive his proportionate share for consumption. I do not dispute the desirability of such a condition. I take issue with the Socialists in their contention that this condition can be brought about, or that a material advance toward such a condition can be accomplished, by legislation.
Society must advance by gradual evolution, as it has done since its beginning, and I believe that this ideal condition is still many generations, perhaps centuries, distant. The only way to strive for its realization is for each generation to do its part in promoting a spirit of temperance, co-operation, fairness and intellectuality. Society will then gradually realizethe waste, unfairness and barbarism of industrial competition, of inheritance and of unequal distribution and consumption. While man is thus slowly becoming civilized, he will naturally devise from time to time, such laws and such forms of government as will fit each stage of his development.
Strobell, George H.
I work and vote for Socialism. Every age has its special problems, its special tyranny to combat, its own liberty and independence to preserve, to hand down to its descendants. The machine has destroyed hand labor and association in labor is inevitable. The machine, too large and complex to be owned by individuals, has made necessary combinations of owners. Combinations of owners destroyed competition, and, through resultant economy and increase of production and profit, became rich and powerful corporations. These corporations control the means of life of over nine-tenths of the people. The owners no longer are the administrators of their property. They hire the necessary business abilities to run the business machine, but they insistently demand higher dividends and profits. These demands cause the virtual slavery of the workers, and millions work today long hours at a speed and productive capacity never before known in the world, and get so little for it that they are hungry all the time, live in squalor and dress poorly. More and better machinery being constantly invented, turns loose on the labor market a host of unemployed to compete with their fellow workers for work. We are not the freeman our fathers were.
Fortunes so vast as to stagger the imagination for a few; dire, ever-increasing poverty for the masses is now and will be increasingly the result of this development unless—
Unless we look at it in the sane way, as a development toward a new order, where the people will, in their collective capacity, own and operate and democratically manage all industry. That will be Socialism. There is no other way of escape in sight. Socialism is not, however, inevitably the outcome. There must be conscious action by the people to turn this evolution away from its present tendency. To continueas we are is to invite the destruction of our civilization. Therefore I work and vote for Socialism. It is a step forward in the progress of the race and a promise of the fulfillment of the prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven."
Kalley, Ella Hartwig.(Lecturer.)
I have long felt the need of a more humane form of government, a system of justice regulating international commercial relations, insuring peace and education for the older as well as the younger persons.
Our country should be a republic, industrially as well as politically, and liberate the wage slave by the abolition of the capitalist.
As a writer, I shall continue to defend the interests of the masses instead of the classes, and as a Temperance Suffragette Socialist lecturer, I shall endeavor to inspire my audiences above the misty horizon of all other political parties to the star line of true reform, which is "the hoe of promise" and basis of a nation's greatness.
I am not alone in the thought that a temperance plank added to the Socialist Platform would cause the greatest majority to leave other parties, as Socialism would be more attractive than ever, to the very finest and best representatives of society everywhere, while justice would flower and bloom and the Dove of Peace perch upon our banners. It would be a lame platform for any political party to overlook the crying need of reform on all lines and to enforce the boasted pure food law, and at the same time to tolerate and uphold distilleries, saloons and breweries, is to herald the weakness and sandy foundation of the parties, old or new. As comrades and co-workers in behalf the downtrodden, let loyal men and women unite and lead in the vanguard of Christian political victory.
Levermore, Charles Herbert.(Educator and Author.)
I am in favor of Socialism because I believe in the common ownership of land and water and of instruments ofproduction and distribution, and because I believe that the highest ideals of social and moral perfection would lead us all to labor for the welfare of the community rather than of any individual.
But I am not convinced that any party now called Socialist, or any group of avowedly Socialist leaders has as yet shown a safe and practicable plan for the realization of those ideals.
Kinney, Abbot.(Author, Venice, Cal.)
We are all Socialists. Man is a social animal. It is consequently impossible that any government of man should be anything but a Socialism.
The people have lost sight of the fact that all property in a State belongs to the State. The exercise by every State of the right of eminent domain is an illustration of this. Modern governments customarily pay the private user or holder of property, when the property is taken for public use. This is always the rule when property is taken by corporations, or persons under a delegation to them of the right of eminent domain. It is only properly so delegated for public utilities in private hands.
Public payment for property so taken is a matter of convention and convenience. It is deemed fair that property taken from one member of the society for the benefit of all, should be paid for by all. Or, if such property is taken by a common carrier, for instance, that such common carrier should pay for it. In case of public stress, however, as in the blowing up of a row of houses to stop the course of a fire, or in the seizure of food or quarters for the use of military in national defense, or in the clearing away of houses or property for defensive purposes, payment may or may not be made as the conditions indicate.
More than this, every human life in a society belongs to the State. Thus the State may draft its citizens to fight fire, suppress disorder, or take part in the military defense of the society or State. The State also imprisons and even executes its members who attack the general welfare.
Cazalet, Edward Alexander.(President of the Anglo-Russian Literary Society, Imperial Institute, London.)
The ideals of Socialism might be realized by the precepts of Christianity, "love your neighbor as yourself." Difficult social questions which cannot be solved by the head are sometimes settled by the heart, for it appeals to the conscience, diminishing selfishness and making all classes friends. Christian Socialism, by encouraging mutual concessions, might perhaps attain better results than agitation and violence.
Allen, Fred Hovey.(Clergyman and Author.)
I believe in a Socialism which levels upward, which makes a man what he was not, only a higher, nobler, richer being. I believe that next to being God, the greatest thing is to be a man. The more Godlike he becomes, the more man will reflect the true and only permanent Socialism.
I am in favor of such Socialism as will attach the chain of brotherhood to the lowest, if that lowest is capable of rising into true manhood, because truth, honesty, love and kindness mean the Kingdom of Heaven begun on earth, and equal rights to all the children of God.
Helms, E.J.(Clergyman.)
I am in favor of Socialism insofar as it is the practical application of Christianity to our economic and industrial life.
Conger-Kaneko, Josephine.(Editor, The Progressive Women.)
I am in favor of Socialism because it seems to be the next step in social evolution, carrying the human race toward a more perfect civilization.
Hitchcock, Charles C.(Merchant and Author.)
We are fast coming to realize that co-operation in the use of our economic resources is the only form of society worthy of civilized people.
A co-operative commonwealth demands that the able-bodied individual shall not be allowed to consume more wealth as measured in labor power, than he creates. Is not this so evidently reasonable that the system should command the approval of every fair mind? It doubtless would do so were we not born into and environed by the capitalist order, thereby being naturally prejudiced against an innovation so radically different as is Socialism.
Perhaps no more comprehensive definition of Socialism can be given than that by Walter Thomas Mills, which is:
"First. The collective ownership of the means of producing the means of life."
"Second. The democratic management by the workers of the collectively owned means of producing the means of life."
"Third. Equal opportunities for all men and women to the use and benefits of these collectively owned and democratically managed means of producing the means of life."
Under the present order of society the means of producing the means of life are privately owned and controlled; the owners thereby forming a privileged class and are enabled to dictate the terms on which the means of life—land and the machinery of production—can be used.
As a result of this private ownership labor receives but a portion of the product, the larger part of wealth produced being either wasted in the strife of competition or retained by the capitalist in the form of interest, rent and profit.
The wealth we command merely through the ownership of stocks and bonds—so-called income producing capital—is wealth received which we do nothing to produce; hence this wealth must, of necessity, be produced by others who are deprived of a portion of their product. This wealth thus appropriated is wealth derived from profit in the employment of labor (surplus value). A thorough study of economics shows clearly that interest, rent, and profit result in exploitation of labor—the robbery of labor. It is this profit system which is strangling our civilization. Poverty and the greater portion of crime can be traced directly to this exploitive system.
The aim of the Socialist movement is the dethronement of capital and the capitalistic class by merging all humanity into one class, a producing class.
The exploited majority, the poverty stricken, the submerged, as now under capitalism, will under a Socialistic Republic come into their inheritance—equality of opportunity to the resources of wealth and production—and be enabled to retain the wealth they produce.
The capitalist class, in any fair view of the situation, while being obliged to surrender the privileges now retained through the private ownership of "the means of producing the means of life," will under a Social Republic receive indirect benefit which we claim will out-weigh any advantage they may now seem to possess.
Human nature does not stand in the way of the realization of a co-operative commonwealth. It is natural that mankind not only seek but demand that to which they are in equity entitled. Under capitalism the majority are exploited out of a good share of their product. As the producer awakens to an understanding of the present situation, it is this normal and justifiable self-interest—selfishness—which will prove to be a strong, if not the leading, factor in bringing about Socialism.
The unseemly antagonism and strifes so manifest today under capitalism are largely traceable directly to our conflicting economic interests occasioned by the private ownership of the means of life.
A study of social evolution leads clearly in the direction of Socialism. But it is when we carefully consider the economic situation that we become aware of the fallacy of the capitalist system and realize that the wealth producing majority will in time inevitably demand, as a matter of justice, the co-operative commonwealth; that is, will insist that the wealth producer receive the wealth he produces—that the capitalist, who as capitalist receives usury thereby commanding, without labor, wealth produced by others, must cease to be a parasite on labor.
This changed order, this revolution, can be brought about only through socialization of the means of production and of distribution.
Not very long ago the advocate of Socialism was the voice "crying in the wilderness." Today he bears "good tidings of great joy" to a rapidly assembling multitude.
Noll, Aaron.(Clergyman.)
I have been a member of the Socialist Party since the year 1900. I have, also, for twenty-five years, been a Christian minister, serving pastorates, in regular connection with an orthodox denomination—the Reformed Church in the United States. I am increasingly persuaded of the righteousness of the Socialist Movement. To me it seems that Socialism will make possible, in a practical way, the social ideals of the founder of the Christian Religion. The Church, at any period of its history, may, or it may not, truthfully, stand for the practical application of those ideals. But the Socialist Movement, at all times, the world over, stands for social and industrial justice. Jesus implanted in the consciousness of man the worth of the individual life. Socialism will make possible the true development of the individual unto a complete life. Socialism will throw around every individual a wall of protection against the rapacity of the strong, greedy, selfish individual, and it will put into the hands of every one the means of life whereby he may rise to the full stature of his being, there being none to hinder or oppress him. The concern of each will be the concern of all. But it will be a concern founded on justice, love and peace. Socialism, being scientifically correct, holds out to all men a vision of future good that inspires a hope that makes life seem worth while.
Russell, Charles Edward.(Journalist and Author.)
I am in favor of Socialism because Socialism would put an end to the monstrous system of injustice by which men toil to create wealth and then are deprived of the wealth that they create. All wealth is created by labor and should belong to the men and women whose labor creates it.
Socialism would abolish poverty, put an end to child labor, make education the universal possession, abolish prostitution and make the earth fit for the inhabitation of its children. It would obliterate the slum, the breeder of nine-tenths of the evils that now afflict society. It would mean industrial as well as political democracy. I believe in democracy. Therefore, I believe in Socialism, which is perfected and applied democracy.