and distinguished presidents boldly advocating the fundamental principles of scientific Socialism, and actually whipping the corporations and criminal capitalists into obedience or subjecting them to prosecution in the courts.

M. Demoulins apparently has founded his conclusions on too roseate a view of the economic conditions that prevail among the nations of the Anglo-Saxon races. Because they have come to dominate, economically and industrially, the nations of the world, as he sets forth, on the strength of the individual force that their Particularistic predilections have inculcated, he assumes that the people under a Capitalistic program of social development are really freer and more highly developed than among nations where the communistic forces prevail more effectively.

To a degree he is right. But manifestly such views are too superficial. Is this really a Nation establishing a contition of individual freedom consonant with its reputation? Is this a Nation devoid of class-rule and class-strife? Is this a Nation in which every citizen is equally important in the eyes of the law and where justice is meted out evenly to all? Is this a Nation, Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding, wherein every citizen without prejudice enjoys the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Is this Nation really free from an enviable Bourgeoisie-a smug, self-satisfied, selfish and uncharitable class, whose wealth is hourly increasing mountain-high,-and a Proletariat-the toiling multitude, whose sweat is daily hardened into coin which their shrewd masters shall cunningly filch from them, and whose comparative poverty is ceaselessly increasing with the rising and the setting of the sun?

Unless these questions can be truthfully answered in the affirmative then it will be difficult to differentiate it economically from the more settled and stereotyped civilizations of the continent across the

Atlantic, and may hint of a reason why alleged Germanistic socialism is rapidly rooting itself on our supposed freest of political soils. Is it not possible that we have been reading into our own national life an interpretation on which we have established as false a reputation for our actual political conditions as those which M. Demoulins so cheerfully attributes to us? May it not be that even though, as he truthfully asserts the particularistic predilections are so deeply inwoven in the very tissues of the Anglo-Saxon that instinctively he repels every intimation of a communistic government, nevertheless that social forces are so verging on economic and industrial despotism among us that here, as well as on the transatlantic Continent, the theories of Socialism are beginning to be cheerfully welcomed?

The fundamental ground on which Socialism is accepted and made popular in the European countries is not, as M. Demoulins intimates, because there inheres in the Teutonic race the disposition to Paternalism-the communistic bias-but because industrial and political conditions are so oppressive that the burden of a personal government can be no longer endured, and the relief is believed to be found in the associated control and utilization of the collective capital. The people now realize their actual industrial slavery, despite their partial apparent constitutional freedom, and refuse to be longer deceived and duped by the dynastic powers which have for so many centuries held them in awe by the authority of personal Capitalism.

This is the real, the fundamental cause of the rise and rapid spread of the Socialistic revolt on the Continent, and to a degree in England.

Human nature being everywhere the same, notwithstanding the varying dispositions caused by climate and territorial environment, it must be that if Socialism spreads on this Western Continent the fundamental cause of its uprising is identical with that of the European uprising. Now is it?

Herbert Spencer naïvely intimates that human nature is the same everywhere and then instantly forgets that being the same, the same conditions will naturally cause everywhere the same effects. He insists that the reason why people fly to legislators for relief is because of the "ill-working of a human nature but partially adapted to the social state," forgetting apparently that the "state" is shaped by this very human nature and must be made to adapt itself to human nature, and not to expect that human nature shall force itself into adaptation to a "state" which is inharmonious with itself. Now, in order to discern how it is in truth the force of “human nature" that is playing in all this tremendous industrial revolution which is sweeping the nations, and that wherever it appears it is directly and only the result of this natural cause, let us study Herbert Spencer's definition of a “social slave" that we may make some comparisons. He is arguing vigorously against the popularization of the Socialistic propaganda and asks: "But why is this change described as the coming Slavery'? The reply is simple. All socialism involves slavery." He will now proceed to condemn the socialistic system because of this inherent slavery. He asks "What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. To be more than nominal, however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave's actions-a control which is habitually for the benefit of the controller. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of sundry gradations. Remembering that originally a slave is a prisoner whose life is at the mercy of his captor, it suffices here to note that there is a harsh form of slavery in which, treated as an animal he has to expend his entire effort for his owner's advantage." Here he presents the varying gradations of the slave-conditions and then proceeds: "What

is it which, in these cases, leads us to qualify our conception of slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit."

Tested by this definition of a slave is the American continent yet free from that industrial odium notwithstanding a fouryears' bloody conflict to eradicate African slavery in the South? One would need but accept Herbert Spencer's definition and then seek its application to the industrial conditions now existing in our factories, sweat-shops, and indeed the entire commercial system controlled by corporate interests, to find speedily that such slavery is indeed still flagrantly extant upon our continent.

So well fitted are his terms to the prevalent industrial conditions that one would be inclined to think he is employing sarcastic terms in seeking to justify the present capitalistic form of government in preference to the proposed socialistic.

Mark his terms: "owned by others." Now one may be owned by another because of physical or logical necessity. If one is seized by the throat by an irresistible power he must needs yield to the will of such power so long as its control continues. But if one has his natural opportunities seized from him by a power which he cannot resist, he must also yield to the control of such power, simply because he is logically convinced that his happiness depends on such submission. In either case the condition of slavery equally exists.

Now, in the present form of civilization physically forcible possession is impossible. But logically, economic control, which according to Spencer's definition is slavery, popularly prevails. Every day-laborer, who knows that his daily bread is dependent on his wage-pittance is proof of this fact.

To be more specific, however, Spencer further explains that the "control must be habitually for the benefit of the controller."

he

In the wide range of industrial employment, under the present stress of economic pressure, where shall we behold the control of the toiling masses which is not more specifically for the benefit of the controller than it is for that of the controlled? On this point it would be well to quote one sentence from Thorold Rogers' famous work, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, when says: "It may well be the case, and there is every reason to fear that it is the case, that there is collected a great population in our greater towns which equals in amount the whole of those who lived in England and Wales six centuries ago, but whose condition is more destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose means are more uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless, than those of the poorest serfs of the middle ages and the meanest drudges of the medieval cities."

If perchance Herbert Spencer's definition of the slave be true, then assuredly these urban multitudes who live subject to the control of the powers that force them into such despicable conditions are social slaves, indeed, more pitiable than the beggarly slaves of the middle ages.

"That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires.”

In economic interpretation another's desires can mean nothing more than the aggrandizement of another's wealth. Are, then, those who live to-day in coercion forced chiefly to gratify the desires of others? The comparative parallel existing between the increase of the nation's wealth and the average wage of the laborer should afford data sufficient to solve that problem. Perhaps the following facts, given by Cleveland Moffett a year ago in the New York Herald, will throw some light on the issue. He says:

"Five thousand persons in this nation actually own nearly one-sixth of our entire National wealth, money, lands, mines, buildings, everything; which sixth if put

into gold would give them all the gold in the world, and leave them nine thousand million dollars still owing them. All this for five thousand men whether they work or not."

The grim fact thus baldly stated sufficiently demonstrates how shamefully the mass of the population are exploited by those who in Spencer's term actually "control" them for the gratification of their own desires, and thus proves that they, which means all of us, are in truth their slaves. What an appalling realization for us to contemplate: eighty millions of people actually exploited (that is, according to Herbert Spencer, enslaved) by five thousand individuals! Have we not reached the stage of the Roman oligarchy ?

But as if this fact did not in itself sufficiently satisfy Spencer's definition to prove that we are really the economic slaves of as brazen an oligarchy as ever oppressed a people, let us further quote from Waldron's Handbook of Currency and Wealth, which is held as official on such matters.

66

He declares that more than four million families, or nearly one-third of the nation must get along on incomes of less than $400 annually; more than onehalf the families get less than $600; twothirds of the families get less than $900; while only one in twenty of the nation's families is able to obtain an income of over $1,000."

Mr. Spencer insists that what distinguishes a slave is that he labors under coercion to gratify another's desires. If statistics cannot prove that the entire American nation is made tributary to the gratification of the desires of a handful of men who so control the opportunities of industry that they force us into subjection to their wills, then statistics can prove nothing.

Mr. Spencer protests too much. In his enthusiastic defense of the present personal and capitalistic system of government he unwittingly presents the

very economic grounds on which Socialists rest the defense of their proposed revolution. Heretofore, however, we Americans have been nonchalantly confident that such inequable and unjust social conditions prevailed only in the effete civilizations of Europe and the Orient, but that within the confines of our own prosperous commonwealths no such conditions could be discerned. For years our political Pecksniffs have been wont to deplore the morbid state of European industrial life-the pathology of the social body of transatlantic countries-with the assurance that we ourselves were free from pauper labor and vermin-covered lazzaroni, and insisted upon the erection of a high Chinese tariffwall against their undesired intrusion upon our economic paradise.

And we poor fools believed them long enough to allow a pitiful handful of them to grasp us, eighty millions strong, by the throat, and coerce us into shameful submission to their autocratic desires. If this were not so then there would be no opportunity for the supposed Teutonic Socialism of the Continent to find a footing in this country. It would have proved to be an unclimatizable exotic, which would have died a speedy and natural death. M. Demoulins looked too far for his fundamental reason with which to explain the intrustion of Socialism in Anglo-Saxon races. He thought the Anglo-Saxon would never welcome its presence. He lives to see the refutation of his dream. He conceived that the fundamental force which underlay the advance of Socialism was psychological; the fact is that it is sociological and biological. It is, after all, merely a question of bread and butter; the problem of the maintenance of life.

Nevertheless, the Socialism of revoltthat primitive form of Socialism which sprung from the dream of the Utopianists which leaped upon us a score of years red-handed and hot-breathed, breathing slaughter and assassination, not that form of Socialism which

ago,

is

took or ever can take root among us.

Iconoclastic Socialism, the Socialism of revolution, the Socialism of Parisian Communists or even of the German Internationalists is not the Socialism which finds a welcome on our borders.

The Socialism, which we are unconsciously absorbing and partially welcoming, is that form of the propaganda which has filtered down to the masses by first passing through the academy, the college, the university; which comes by the way of intellectual apprehension and analysis and finally incorporates itself as an inspiration in the heart of the multitude.

It is a modified form of European Socialism adapted to the needs and requirements of the American. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the present incumbent of the office of the Chief Magistracy of the nation is encouraging, emphasizing and forwarding this revolutionary propaganda.

Will it succeed? That is the problem. As yet it has had no opportunity to put any of its principles into operation on any extensive scale. Its practical workings, as a system of society and a basis of civilization, are therefore as yet purely academic and problematical.*

But the ethics of Socialism are beyond

*The writer does not mean by this sentence to reflect upon the practical possibilities of Socialism or to insinuate that if tried it would prove defective. None can dispute the fact that the program of Socialism as set forth in the quadrennial platforms of the Socialist party not only is susceptible of practical operation in the affairs of this nation, but that some of its most salient features have already been, or are about to be, adopted by the predominant parties. For instance, the national control of mines, railroads, telegraphs, etc., toward which the present administration seems to be moving with rapid strides; the municipalization etc., which many of our cities are beginning of local trawmays, ferries, water-works, gas-works, inaugurate; progressive income tax and tax on inheritance; and above all "the people to have the right to propose laws and to vote upon all measures of importance, according to the referendum principle,' now known to everybody through Mr. Bryan's advocacy as the Initiative and Referendum; have all been incorporated in the Socialist party's program almost from the date of its inauguration in the United States. Therefore, should the party it will legislate for the whole people with sound ever come into full control it is quite apparent that statesmanship and a sensible political science.

to

controversy. They are as axiomatic and as true as the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed that Sermon might be taken as a Scriptural text on which to expound the fundamental moral philosophy of modern Socialism. Both are idealistic, and their practical application to the affairs of men are still relegated to the age of the millennium.

The fact, however, which has sent its fire into the blood of the masses in this country is that they may, in this land of boasted freedom, be as thoroughly ground under the wheels of the capitalistic juggernaut as they are in Europe or Asia or Africa; that the terrors and injustice of economic oppression may be as overwhelming in a so-called free Republic as they are beneath the shadow of Parliaments and Reichstags, protected by hereditary rulers and hireling armies.

The uprising of Socialism has brought home to the startled consciousness of all thoughtful Americans the fact that we are drifting, however unintentionally, toward aristocracy in wealth and oligarchy in government, which unchecked would overshadow in oppressiveness all the historic monarchies of the past.

The massing of predatory wealth in the hands of the few; the formation of gigantic combines whose power already exceeds the dream of the most avaricious of monarchs; the existence of pluto

cratic trusts, now grown so bold they dare flip their fingers in the face of the American people and flippantly insult their Chief Magistrate; the tendency of all the industries of the nation to merge in the hands of a few owners, as especially exemplified in the rapid merging of the great railroad systems of the nation (thus significantly forestalling, the fulfilment of the fundamental prophecy of Marxian Socialism);—these are some of the conditions that have caused the revolution in popular sentiment concerning the invasion of European economic theories which we are now witnessing.

One thing is sure: as the imposition and the injustice of the economic control known as Capitalism increases and becomes more oppressive, Socialism will wax stronger and become more popular.

Socialism is the set enemy of every industrial wrong. However crude and inoperative its theories may be for the present, unless some remedy can be discovered in the régime of government now extant which shall redress or rectify existing wrongs, it must needs be that the entire system will ultimately be overturned and the whole world begin anew on a basis of equity and justice, brotherhood and human solidarity, that will insure peace and justifiable contentment throughout the globe. HENRY FRANK. Montrose, N. Y.

TH

HOSE who would point out a rational solution of the divorce problem, must first thoroughly understand the history and underlying philosophy of the marriage institution, for to groping mortals the experiences of the past must in a large measure guide us in the future.

Morgan's Ancient Society divides the history of mankind into three epochs, savagery, barbarism and civilization. These are subdivided into lower, middle and upper savagery; lower, middle and upper barbarism; ancient and modern civilization. In the earlier periods of savagery every man belonged to every