Socialism

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LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

GIF^T OF"
THE FAMILY OF REV. DR. GEORGE MOOAR

Class

SOCIALISM.

SOCIALISM

BY

ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D.

NEW YORK:

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY,

900 BROADWAY, COR. 2OTH ST.

1879.

COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY.

NEW YORK:

EDWARD O. JENKINS, PRINTER,
20 North William St,

CONTENTS.

I. SOCIALISM IN GENERAL, 7

II. COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM, .... 24

III. ANTI-COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM, . . 65

IV. CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM, . 88

143

I.

SOCIALISM IN GENERAL.

THROUGHOUT Christendom a cloud has
been gathering, and is gathering still, whose
shadow falls upon the streets of every great
city from St. Petersburg to San Francisco.
Our civilization, whose present special type
dates back now some four hundred years, in
spite of all it has achieved and all it promises,
has an under side to it of terrible menace ; as,
in ancient Athens, the Cave of the Furies was
underneath the rock, on whose top sat the
Court of the Areopagus. This under side of
our civilization is inequality of social condition,
keeping pace with the civilization ; no new
thing in history, but now commanding both
scientific and popular attention as never be-
fore : — part of it sheer and simple dividend,
more or less according to the invested capital
of talent, industry, and thrift ; part of it Provi-
dential visitation by sickness, or accident, or
premature bereavement ; part of it vicissi-

8 SOCIALISM

Vv\ x
tude, inseparable fr^n -^ompuVated

part of it inexorable retribution, according to
the observance or infraction of moral laws ;
part of it, no doubt, wages unfairly restrained ;
but all of it blurred and hazy ; misunderstood
by the careless masses who have everything
at stake ; and misrepresented by the hideous
fraternity of conspirators who have nothing
at stake, and are bent on mischief. I am no
pessimist. It is not ruin that I see ahead,
but trouble, which can not be too promptly
met. The Communism of our day is a real
Cave of the Furies.

The terms Communism and Socialism are
much used interchangeably ; but they are not
synonymous. Communism is related to_£o.-
cialism as sperjf-^ to crermc;. All Communists
are Socialists ; but not all Socialists are Com-
munists. For example, in Germany, where
Socialism, repeating in this respect the his-
tory of the old Rationalism in theology, is a
recent and rank exotic, it is decidedly, even
fiercely, Communistic ; while in France, where
it is indigenous and finer, it has come to
be decidedly and soberly Anti-communistic.
These two kinds of Socialism are not to be

IN GENERAL. 9

confounded. Nor yet may we disregard the
relationship between them. The trunks are
two ; the root is one.

I shall therefore speak first of Socialism
in general ; or, rather, of the problem it un-
dertakes to solve.

"The poor ye have with you always," is
both historic and prophetic. Inequality of
social condition is a permanent fact in political
economy ; variable only in degree. If, by
some heroic treatment, it could be got rid of
to-day, it would return to-morrow. Readjust-
ment would be necessary every few years ;
every year, might be better still. The causes
of this inequality, most of them, are likewise
permanent. Mankind are not equal in en-
dowment. In stamina of constitution, one is
strong, and another weak. Brains are larger
or smaller, coarser or finer. Natural appe-
tites and passions are more or less overbear-
ing and vehement. The will is here a master,
and there a slave. It is not merely that there
are different grades of work to be done, which
call for graded remuneration, but, in the same
grade, one will surpass another. One man

10 SOCIALISM

just manages to keep soul and body together,
barely making the ends of the year meet.
Another man, whose chances are no better,
comes out with a surplus. He may, or he
may not, have earned more, but, being more
provident and self-denying, he has saved more.
This surplus is capital ; and if every man had
saved, labor and capital would never clash.

All this is exclusive of sickness and acci-
dent, which, if the sickness be brief, or the
accident not disabling, the patient himself
may have provided for in advance ; but if the
sickness be protracted or hopeless, and the
accident be crippling, society may have to be
taxed for the deficit, and the inequality may
become chronic and burdensome. Exclusive
also of those distressing casualties which fre-
quently plunge whole families into sudden and
helpless poverty by striking down the hus-
bands and fathers, whose daily labor brought
them their daily bread.

There is also the liability to commercial dis-
aster; a liability that begins with commerce
itself; and commerce begins with capital ; and
capital, as we have said, is surplus. Many of

IN GENERAL. II

these reverses are only tidal and transient.
But some are final. To the young man,
bankruptcy may be only a fall on the ice ; in
a moment he is up again. The old man, ten
to one, goes through and under. It has been
said, that in the United States only five trad-
ers in a hundred never fail* In older coun-
tries, the failures are fewer.

But the greatest inequality is that which
comes of immoralities ; the chiefest of which
are willful indolence, intemperance, and licen-
tiousness. In their coarser forms these three
vices give us by far the greater part of all our
paupers and outcasts. The fashionable vices,
as they are called, do not provoke immediate
expulsion from society ; but, by and by, the
moral lepers will be found outside the lepers'
gate. Audacity in stealing may threaten us
every now and then with a new plutocracy,
more vulgar and flaunting than its predeces-
sor ; but, after all, there is an inner side to
the iron bars.

* Horace Wright, before the Hewitt Committee in New York,
May 23, 1878, testified that during the last four years 37,000
firms out of 680,000 had failed.

12 SOCIALISM

The inequality of condition thus indicated,
was unquestionably greater in the ancient
than it is in the modern world. Our Chris-
tian civilization has certainly surpassed the
Classic. But now in Christendom itself, al-
though slavery has been abolished, the ine-
quality is greater than it was four hundred
years ago, greater than it was one hundred
years ago. Socialistic writers say the ine-
quality is still increasing. But France cer-
tainly is better off than she was fifty years
ago, and England is better off than she was
twenty-five years ago. And so perhaps it
would be safe to say, that the tide has turned ;
that the inequality is now diminishing. But
the times are critical. Our civilization is
sharply challenged. Passion, science, con-
science are all aroused. Under these new
lights, it is as if the inequality were but just
discovered. It maddens like a new wrong.
The Furies are not asleep in their Cave.

Our present civilization, nominally Chris-
tian, is nevertheless distinctively and intense-
ly materialistic. Its special task has been the

IN GENERAL. 13

subjugation of nature. It can not be called
exclusively Protestant, but, along with Prot-
estantism, whose handmaid it has always
been, it was cradled amidst inventions and
discoveries which have changed the very
channels of history. Printing with movable
types, Gunpowder for the battlefield, the
Mariner's Compass, the Passage round Good
Hope, the Discovery of new Continents, were
the signs and wonders of the new epoch. By
new applications of science, by new sciences,
both land and sea are considerably more pro-
ductive than they were. These products are
wrought up into endless varieties of form,
both for use and for ornament. And com-
merce, which began on the Persian Gulf, has
now all oceans for its own.

The result is great wealth, rapidly accu-
mulated, with an inequality in the distribution
of it which can not be wholly justified ; an
inequality which only began not very long
ago to be redressed : in France, by the Revo-
lution of 1789, and the Code Napoleon; in
England, about twenty-five years ago ; in
Germany, and most other European conn-

14 SOCIALISM

tries, not yet. Here in the United States,
the inequality to be redressed has never
equalled that in Europe. As a fair represent-
ative of our present civilization, take England,
all things considered, the first nation in Eu-
rope : her industry the most diversified, her
wealth the greatest, her will the stoutest.
In the fifteenth century she was quoted
throughout Europe for the number of her
land-owners and the comfort of her people.*
In 1873 about 10,000 persons owned two-
thirds of the whole of England and Wales.
In Scotland, it is still worse, half the land be-
ing owned, it is said, by ten or twelve persons.
Over against this growing wealth and dwin-
dling number of proprietors, stands the ragged
army of paupers, of which England is ashamed.!
The continental contrasts are not so startling ;
France, indeed, is quite the other way, with
her 5,000,000 of land-owners. But taking
Europe as a whole, and comparing the prices

* Chancellor Fortescue, cited by Laveleye, "Primitive Prop-
erty," p. 263.

t In 1871, 900,000; in 1878, 726,000.

IN GENERAL. 15

of labor with the cost of living — food, clothing,
and shelter, it can be proved that the average
European peasant of the fourteenth century,
as also of the fifteenth, was better off relative-
ly than the average European peasant of the
nineteenth century.* As Froude has said,
the upper classes have more luxuries, and the
lower classes more liberty ; while in regard
to the substantial comforts of life, they are
farther apart now than they were then. And
the greater the wealth of the nation as a
whole, the greater the inequality between its
upper and its lower classes.

This is due largely to the extraordinary ad-
vances made in manufacturing and commerce,
which have reacted even upon agriculture,
revolutionizing also its methods. Everywhere
now machinery carries the day. Inventors

* In England, for example, when the wages of a common
farm hand were fourpence a day, a penny went as far as a
shilling goes now. At this rate, the common laborer should
now be getting four shillings a day, whereas in fact he is get-
ting only about two. Mechanics' wages, owing to the Trade
Unions, are a trifle higher relatively than they were then. In
Germany, the highest price paid farm hands anywhere is 56
cents a day; on the lower Rhine, the price paid is 31 cents;
in Silesia, only 18 cents.

1 6 SOCIALISM

are the potentates, replacing the Alexanders,
the Caesars, the Ghengis Khans, the Na-
poleons of the past. Look at the mowing-
machine, sweeping across the hay-field like
a charge of cavalry ; but anybody can learn
to manage it who has wit enough to whet
and swing a scythe. In one of our cotton
mills I saw a machine, called the Warper,
which, from 358 spools, was taking the 358
threads required for the warp of a web of
cloth, and was winding them upon a drum or
cylinder for the loom. When a thread broke,
the machine instantly stopped, to have the
ends tied. A child was tending the machine.
Which was master, the child or the machine ?
And which was servant, the machine or the
child ? Our best pocket chronometers, that
used to be called by the names of their fa-
mous makers, Patek, Jiirgens, Frodsham, now
bear the name of the Massachusetts village
whose factory turns them out by the hundred,
as some other factory turns out its wooden
pails. Our machinery is marvelous. Al-
ready some of it talks. If only it could be
made to think, very little would be left for

IN GENERAL.

brains to do, except, possibly, to invent a
new machine occasionally. Some of this
machinery certainly requires very careful
handling, but much of it may be handled by
almost anybody. The very design of it is
not merely to cheapen and stimulate produc-
tion, but also to supplement the scarcity of
skilled labor. And so, apparently, its tendency
has been to lower the average of artisan abil-
ity. It not only permits, but encourages the
employment of women and children, who
ought rather to be at home, or in school.
Machinery thus gets the better of manhood.
Our civilization becomes a pyramid, whose
base is broad and crushing. Steam drives
the machinery ; coal generates steam ; and
men go down for coal with something of the
risk of regiments going into battle. About
the year 1350, coal, which had been discover-
ed some fifty years before, on the banks of
the Tyne, began to be used for fuel in Lon-
don.* Now the coal mines of England, be-

* In 1373 its use was forbidden by proclamation on account
of its effluvia, supposed to be unhealthy. But. about 1400 the
consumption of it was extended.

18 SOCIALISM

sides all the semi -barbarism they breed, are
costing- her, by accidents of one sort and an-
other, more than a thousand human lives a
yean In the old classic Levant, every sailor
was on deck, with a chance to be schooled by
sea, and sky, and star, and storm, into the
higher grades of service. Now we steam
round the globe in huge leviathans, at the
mercy of grimy firemen out of sight, deep
down where day and night, calm and storm,
summer and winter, are all the same.

On the whole, unhealthful employments
appear to multiply with the advancing arts.
More and more men take their lives in their
hands for their daily bread. Brave soldiers,
you tell me, do the same. Only mercenaries,
I reply, do that ; and war, no matter how
righteous it may be, is always terribly de-
moralizing. Say what you will, things are
not just as they should be when a man is
forced into some loathsome and hazardous
employment because there is nothing else for
him to do ; and then is so exiled and humbled
by it, that his children after him shall be al-
most hopelessly foredoomed to the same em-

IN GENERAL. 19

ployment. Even in armies, where authority
is absolute, and obedience must be implicit,
volunteers are generally called for in forlorn
assaults, partly, to be sure, that only the very
best may go, but also because it is considered
simply fair that men should have always every
possible liberty of choice when their own
lives are at stake. Pensions likewise await
the widows and orphans of them that fall.
Ancient nations made unhealthful employ-
ments a part of their penal discipline. For-
feited life gained something by being sent
" to the mines."

Another incidental evil, of considerable
magnitude, is the liability to over-production,
or, as some prefer to say, disproportionate
production, which is over-production in some
directions ; the very calamity, or one of the
calamities, upon us now. Plethora begets
paralysis. Hounded on by the hum of our
own machinery, we manufacture more than is
wanted. Mills stop, and workmen, narrowed,
dulled, dwarfed, almost crippled by our sys-
tem of labor, are flung out helpless upon the
street. They can not dio-, to beg they are

20 SOCIALISM

ashamed. They ask only for work ; but, till
consumption catches up again with produc-
tion, there is no more work to be had.

In Europe another characteristic infelicity
of our present civilization, is the supposed
necessity of maintaining large standing armies.
The old Roman Empire, holding the better
part of Europe, and portions of Asia and Af-
rica, with a population of a hundred millions,
half freemen, half slaves, had a regular army
of 175,000 men. Of auxiliaries, furnished
by the provinces, there were about as many
more ; with some 75,000 naval troops. So
that the whole military strength of the Em-
pire was a little more than 400,000. Now,
instead of that one Empire, there are five or
six powerful kingdoms, several of which are
stronger in arms than Rome was. For ex-
ample, France and Germany, having each a
population of about 40,000,000, have each a
regular army of nearly 500,000 men. The
heart of Europe is one vast military encamp-
ment. Millions of men are under arms all
the time ; consuming without producing ; in-

IN GENERAL. 21

capacitated for any other employment* The
waste is enormous. And in Germany es-
pecially, where the discipline is sternest, So-
cialism waxes fiercer and fiercer year by year.
The cry is, " Disarm." But no nation dares
disarm alone ; and they can not agree to dis-
arm together. To such a pass has our civili-
zation come in about four hundred years,
since Charles VII., in France, organized for
himself the first standing army of 22,000
archers and 900 horsemen ; just about the
size of our United States army, which an-
swers our purpose, only because the Atlantic
Ocean rolls between us and the politics of
Europe.

This inequality of social condition, thus far
increased, rather than diminished, by our ad-
vancing civilization, is very painful to think
of. One has no need to be a Christian, to be
grieved by it. It offends the most rudimental
sense of human brotherhood. How has it
come about that children of the same family

* See " The Armies of Asia and Europe," by Emory Up-
ton: 1878.

22 SOCIALISM

are so far apart in their fortunes? And what
can be done, not to bridge, but to narrow,
and, if possible, annihilate, the chasm between
them ? These are the two cardinal Socialis-
tic questions of our day, and of all days.
The former suggests what may be called the
diagnosis, the latter what may be called the
therapeutics of Socialism.

Socialism, in this sense of the word, is not
a bad thing. It seems very much like philan-
thropy, but they differ. Philanthropy con-
cerns itself about the whole nature, condition,
and destiny of man, for time and for eter-
ity. Socialism concerns itself about the out-
ward environment, and ends with time. So-
cialism claims to be more realistic than phi-
lanthropy ; it is, in fact, more likely to be sen-
timental. Pronounced and professional So-
cialism easily becomes a cant and a quackery.
Dealing so exclusively with outward prob-
lems, it prescribes for the symptoms and
misses the disease. It may not go so far as
to say, that the individual is for society, rather
than society for the individual ; men for insti-
tutions, rather than institutions for men. But

IN GENERAL. 23

it does overrate society and underrate the in-
dividual ; it does overrate institutions and un-
derrate men. And so it dreams of regenera-
ting society, without regenerating the individ-
ual ; or, at all events, it insists upon regener-
ating society first.

II.

COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM.

THIS leads me to consider the Commun-
istic Socialism.

To-day there is not in our language, nor in
any language, a more hateful word than Com-
munism. In Paris seven years ago, in Pitts-
burg last year, in Berlin this year, it meant,
and still it means, wages without work, arson,
assassination, anarchy. In this shape of it,
the instant duty of society, without taking a
second breath, is to smite it with the swiftness
and fury of lightning. Incorrigible tramps,
packing and prowling round together, de-
manding the best from door to door, camping
in farmers' barns, smashing farmers' machines,
insulting decent men, and terrifying women
and children, on public roads, should not
expect to be reasoned with. Mad wretches,
whose hands smoke with blood, can not be

(24)

SOCIALISM. 25

put out of the way too soon, nor too far. The
preachers of this satanic crusade against capi-
tal are not, of course, to be silenced where
free speech has a genealogy running so much
farther back than our separate existence as a
nation ; a freedom which is not of Moses, but
of the fathers. This planting of dragons'
teeth is not, I suppose, to be stopped. But
wild mobs, wrecking railway trains, and sack-
ing our cities, are a kind of crop which can
not be mowed down too close.

Even such barbarities must not provoke us
to be despisers of history. Communism, in
its essential genius, is not new, is not con-
temptible, is not abominable. It is a tradition,
a philosophy, a gospel. As related to the
tenure of landed property, it is one of the old-
est traditions of the race. As a philosophy,
it deals with those social and civil problems,
in regard to which mankind have been always
the most divided, and the most at fault. Its
gospel, to be sure, has no God in it, only
humanity — the fraternity of the fatherless ;
but it preaches social regeneration, and
promises a millennium.

26 COMMUNISTIC

It is a point of very considerable interest
historically, that Practical Communism should
have preceded Speculative Communism by so
long an interval. The origin of property is
confessedly obscure, like most other origins.
Hypothesis therefore takes the place of his-
toric certainty. And opinions have widely
differed ; for example, as to whether property
in land came first, or property in the products
of land ; and in regard to landed property,
which kind of ownership came first, separate
or joint, individual or communal. With
respect to this latter point, the generally
accepted theory used to be, that individual
property was the earlier, and communal
property the later form. The more advanced
historico-political science of our day has chal-
lenged this theory, and reversed the order.
The literature of the subject is very learned
and able, as well as abundant. This particu-
lar question of the relative antiquity of in-
dividual and communal property in land be-
longs especially to three writers of great
breadth and penetration, Sir Henry Maine in
England, Maurer in Germany, and Laveleye

SOCIALISM. 27

in France.* Of different tendencies, predis-
posing them to different applications and uses
of the principle involved, these three eminent
writers are agreed in the conclusion, after in-
dependent and great research, that common
property in land was, in many parts of the
world, perhaps everywhere, undoubtedly the
original form of ownership.

This antiquity of Communism, almost newly
discovered, certainly never before seen in such
a light as now, is evidently doing a great deal
to strengthen the argument for it, even with
people who have not been in the habit of car-
ing much for historic precedents. Commun-
ism, once treated with scorn as a raw and
recent heresy, now claims for itself the honors
of age. The ancient Dalmatians, according
to Strabo (vii. 5, 5), divided their acres every
seven years ; the Vaccaei in Spain, according
to Diodorus Siculus (v. 34), every year. The

*Sir Henry Maine, first in his lectures at the Middle Tem-
ple (1854-62), afterward in his "Ancient Law" (1861), and
"Village Communities" (1871); Maurer, in his " Einleitung
zur Geschichte der Mark-Hof-Dorf-und Stadt Verfassung"
(1854), and "Mark Verfassung" (1856) ; and Laveleye in his
"De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives" (1874), trans-
lated into English by Marriott (1878).

28 COMMUNISTIC

ancient Germans, according both to Caesar
(£. G. iv. i), and to Tacitus {Germ. § 26),
were Communists. So, also, in Russia, in
India, in the island of Java, in Mexico, and
in other countries, traces are found of the old
joint tenure of land.* Christian people are
reminded of the Agrarianism of the Mosaic
legislation, the general basis of which was
tribal, with a provision for bringing back,
every fiftieth year, every acre of the land,
except what belted the Levitical cities, to
some representative of its original proprietor.
Still more account is made of the pentecostal
Communism of the Apostolic Church. It is
idle to deny it, as some have done. The
Apostolic Communism, to be sure, was not
obligatory and absolute, but voluntary, and
might be partial ; still it was Communism.

This argument from antiquity — heathen,
Hebrew, Christian, is not to be brushed
away by a breath, We must be able to show
that the earliest and oldest things are only
sometimes, not always, the best. Blos-
soms are not better than fruit. The human
*See Woolsey s "Political Science," § 25.

SOCIALISM. 29

race must have had an infancy ; not as I sup-
pose of barbarism, but of crude capacity ~
awaiting development. Ideas and institutions
of every kind — religious, moral, political,
must have grown ; but especially political
ideas and institutions, as pertaining more to
what is outward, mutable, and transient. On
no other ground can we defend the Patri-
archal and Jewish economies.

Communism, we may say then, is not ex-\
actly barbarous, though frequently found j
amongst barbarians, but infantile. It was'
admirably suited to the Hebrews — a people
of nomadic parentage, who were to be held
back from commerce that they might be held
back also from heathen contamination. And
yet, for some reason or reasons, the Mosaic
jubilee arrangement was so poorly observed,
that Michaelis doubts whether it was ever
observed at all. E \vald thinks that after hav-
ing declined, the observance of it was revived
by Josiah. On the whole, the Agrarian idea
appears never to have been very fully realized.
As for Christian Jerusalem, it was evidently
an exceptional city in the Apostolic age. Men

30 COMMUNISTIC

were gathered there out of all countries.
Their new faith as Christians practically out-
lawed them. They were poor — very poor ;
distressed, a great many of them. Some
were well off. It occurred to them to try the
experiment of a partial Communism. Whether
it was proposed, or only consented to, by the
Apostles, does not appear. It is certainly
not recommended in any Apostolic Epistle.
Furthermore, the Jerusalem Church was al-
ways poor, always an object of charity to
other Churches ; and the Communistic experi-
ment was not tried anywhere else.

Later on, in the fourth century, the Mo-
nastic Communism makes its appearance. It
was a good thing for Europe in the perilous
infancy of its institutions ; a good thing down
even to the time of Charlemagne — since then,
a bad thing.

Shakerism, of British parentage, but now
almost exclusively American, is a curious
compound of religious enthusiasm and of
worldly thrift. Strictly Communistic with re-
spect to property, and rejecting the family life,
it grows slowly, when it grows at all, by ex-

SOCIALISM. 31

ternal accretion ; and is so sincere, so inoffen-
sive, so industrious and frugal, but also so
entirely exceptional and so insignificant nu-
merically (less than 2,500 in 1874), that no
reason can be given why it should die very
soon. Indeed, it appears to have been gain-
ing in numbers during the last few years of
commercial depression.

Mormonism is a great national humiliation,
which we must have deserved, or we should
not have had it. But it is very far from being
exclusively, or even predominantly, American.
It takes the bad blood of all Europe to keep
it agoing. It is a vile, polygamous Com-
munism, which, we hope, may not be too
long in dying.

Of other Communistic Societies in the
United States, numbering in all about 2,500
persons, in fourteen settlements, one is
French, two are American, and the rest
mostly German. Only two of them, the
American Societies at Oneida and Walling-
ford, practice community of wives and chil-
dren. The Rappists, or Harmonists, near
Pittsburg, numbering no, and dwindling,

32 COMMUNISTIC

are celibates like the Shakers. All the others
maintain the ordinary family life. All, except
the Icarians in Iowa, originally founded by
Cabet, now numbering only sixty-five per-
sons in eleven families, have a religious basis.
Most of them are mainly agricultural in their
industry, and all are prosperous ; but the pros-
perity is that of peasants. Life has little va-
riety, or breadth, or uplift. Nobody supposes
that such Communism can ever become gen-
eral*

Antiquity certainly lends a charm to this
Practical Communism. We look back upon
it with an interest akin to that which is felt in
looking at the plows, hand-mills, and looms
still to be seen in the Orient. Its antiquity,
however, is more against it than for it. Thej
real age of gold is not behind us witf
heathen poets, but before us with Hebrew
prophets ; and the resort to Communism, nov\
so fervently urged upon us, would be a retro
gression, not indeed to, but certainly towards
barbarism.

* See " The Communistic Societies of the United States."
By Charles Xordhoff. New York: 1875.

SOCIALISM. 33

Speculative Communism has a brilliant his-
tory. It begins about six hundred years be-
fore Christ with Phaleas of Chalcedon, whom
Milton speaks of as the first to recommend
the equalization of property in land.

Plato favors Communism. In the fifth book
of the " Republic," Socrates is made to ad-
vocate, not merely community of goods, but
also community of wives and children. This
was no after-dinner debauch in the groves of
the Academy, as Milton too severely sug-
gests.* It was a logical conclusion from a mis-
taken premise. The individual was to be ab-
sorbed in the organism. The ideal aimed at,
was the unity of the State, whose pattern ap-
pears to have been partly Pythagorean, and
partly Spartan. In regard to property, the
formulated purpose was, not to abolish wealth,
but to abolish poverty. In the " Laws " (v.
13), Plato would allow to the richest citizen
four times as much income as to the poorest.
In regard to women, the aim was not sensual
indulgence, but the propagation and rearing
of the fittest offspring. This community of

* " Areopagitica," Milton's Prose Works, ii. 71, 72.

34 COMMUNISTIC

wives and children was for the ruling class
only ; not for the husbandmen, nor for the
artificers. So also, probably, the community
of goods. We say probably, for the scheme
is not wrought out in all its details, and Plato
himself had no hope of seeing his dream
realized till kings are philosophers, or philos-
ophers are kings.

The echoes of this Platonic speculation
have been loud and long. About the year
316 B.C., Evemerus, sent eastward by Cas-
sander, King of Macedon, on a voyage of
scientific discovery, reports in his "Sacred
History "* the finding of an island, which he
calls Panchaia, the seat of a Republic, whose
citizens were divided into the three classes of
Priests, Husbandmen, and Soldiers ; where all
property was common ; and all were happy.

In 1516 Sir Thomas More published his
"Utopia;" evidently of Platonic inspiration.
More also chose an island for his political and
social Paradise. He had Crete in mind. His
island, crescent-shaped, and 200 miles wide

Reported by Diodorus Siculus, Hist. v. 42-46.

SOCIALISM. 35

at the widest point, contained 54 cities. It
had community of goods, but not of women.

The " Civitas Solis " of Campanella, publish-
ed in 1623, was in imitation perhaps of More's
" Utopia." This City of the Sun stood on a
mountain in Ceylon, under the equator, and
had a community both of goods and of
women.

About the same time Lord Bacon amused
himself by writing the " New Atlantis," a
mere fragment, the porch of a building that
was never finished.

In the great ferment of Cromwell's time the
" Oceana" of Harrington appeared (1656); a
book famous in its day, with high traditional
repute ever since, but now seldom read ex-
cept by the very few who feel themselves
called upon to master the literature of the
subject. Hallam pronounces it a dull, pedan-
tic book ; and nobody disputes the verdict.
Harrington advocates a division of land, no
one to have more than two thousand pounds'
(ten thousand dollars') worth. The upshot
of it all would be, a moderate aristocracy of
the middle classes.

36 COMMUNISTIC

Such books belong to a class by them-
selves, which may be called Poetico-Political ;
aesthetic, scholarly, humane, and hopeful.
They are not addressed to the masses. If
they make revolutions, it is only in the long
run. They are not battles, nor half battles,
but only the bright wild dreams of tired sol-
diers in the pauses of battles.

Communistic books with iron in them —
Marcian's iron for Attila, are not modern
only, but recent. Modern Communism, now
grown so surly and savage everywhere, be-
gan mildly enough. As a system, it is mostly
French, name and all. The famous writers
are Saint-Simon, Fourier, Considerant, Proud-
hon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc. The earlier
apostles, Saint-Simon, who died five years be-
fore, and Fourier, who died seven years after,
the Revolution of 1830, which they did so
much indirectly to bring about, had for their
disciples the aristocratic youth of France.
Considerant, whose " Destinee Sociale" ap-
peared between 1834 and 1844, followed in
the same path. These men were philoso-
phers of the dreamy sort, reconstructing so-

SOCIALISM. 37

ciety, as the walls of Troy were built, with
strains of Olympian music. Their whole
tone was serenely Academic. They appealed
only to what is most generous in human senti-
ment.

In Cabet's "Voyage en Icarie " (1842),
and still more in Louis Blanc's " L'Organiza-
tion du travail " (1840), we begin to hear the
ring of steel forging into something sharper
than trowels. In 1840 Proudhon tells France,
and tells Europe, that "Property is Robbery."
More pestilent words were never spoken. In
1848 this short sentence was the dagger that
stabbed the Republic of Lamartine. The
man on horseback soon hove in sight. The
New Empire rode in, bringing with it the
prosperity that comes of order, the burdens
that come of glory. Then followed champion-
ship of the Latin races, the Mexican Protec-
torate, the Suez pageant, wicked war with
Germany, and terrible Sedan. France went
mad. The wild Marseillaise rang out, the
Commune stamped its angry foot, evil spirits
answered the call, and the streets of Paris
were hot and red with flames and blood, as

38 COMMUNISTIC

never before, and probably never to be again.
So perished Communism in France.

Perished, I say, in France ; but not in Eu-
rope, nor in America. In Russia, less than
twenty years ago, it began, as it did in France,
with scholars and students, invading and in-
fecting the Universities.* Now it poisons the
blood, and maddens the brains, of artisans
and peasants. Self-christened, Nihilism de-
scribes it well ; its ambition is not to re-con-
struct, but simply to destroy.

German Communism is hardly of age yet,
but old for its years. Its recent growth has
been rapid, antagonizing the rapid develop-
ment of the new German Empire, whose
" Blood and Iron " {Blut rtnd Eiseri) it de-
tests, denounces, and defies. Like almost
everything else German, Bismarck and his
Empire of course excepted, it is eminently
scholastic. It wears glasses, studies history,
idolizes science, and, whether it builds or
fights, always observes the rules. Its chief
apostles have been Ferdinand Lasalle and

* The term "Nihilist" was first used in 1862 by Tourga-
nieff in his novel, " Peres et Enfans."

SOCIALISM. 39

Karl Marx. Lasalle was only thirty-eight
years of age when he fell in a duel in 1864,
barely two years after becoming an acknowl-
edged leader. Marx is still living, an exile in
London. Lasalle, an author of books, but
better known, and more effective, as a prolific
and brilliant pamphleteer, was comparatively
moderate and patriotic, leading the right wing
of German Communism. The left wing fol-
lowed Marx, till, in 1875, the right wing went
over to his side, and he has since commanded
the whole army. From his cottage in Lon-
don, he keeps his glass upon the field, and
directs every movement. His voluminous
work "On Capital" shows us what he is,
and what he wants. He cares no more for
Germany than he cares for Greece or Egypt.
He loudly proclaims his allegiance only to
labor, though living himself, as Lasalle did,,
in luxury. Private capital must be abolished,
all industries adopted, organized, and man-
aged by the State, money advanced by the
State to individuals as may be needed in the
development of new enterprises, wages largely
increased, family life reconstructed, and God

40 COMMUNISTIC

dethroned. Such is German Communism,
lumbering pedantic volumes, condensed in
countless pamphlets, inculcated by more than
forty journals, sustained, in 1877, by nearly
half a million of voters out of five millions
and a half, as yet only every eleventh voter,
but represented in Parliament by a steadily-
growing party, that may soon hold the bal-
ance of power.* It blundered when it fired
once and again at the brave old Emperor.

In America we are getting the refugees :
Frenchmen, disgusted that Paris proposes no
more barricades ; Germans, willing to endure
less science, if they may only find more safety ;
not much like those English refugees, so long
ago, who said their prayers, and sang their
hymns, on "the wild New England shore."
These new fugitives, too many of them, fly
hunted by justice, or to forestall the hunt.
In ordinary times, their bad breath would be
lost in the fresh breezes of the Continent.
Just now they speak to ears that listen for idle

* In the recent election, the number of Socialistic members,
which had been steadily increasing, was cut down from twelve
to nine.

SOCIALISM. 41

hands, to hearts that are aching at the cry of
hungry mouths at home. Our Roman Cath-
olic Irish workingmen, as hard pressed as
any of us, are behaving much better than
might have been expected ; partly, no doubt,
because our institutions are schooling them,
and partly because they have more common
sense of their own than they had the credit
of, but also, and largely, because their Church
has denounced the agitators. Of strictly in-
digenous Communism, there is very little
among us ; and there would have been still
less, but for the unparalleled industrial pa-
ralysis of the last five years. It is out of place
here ; it suits neither our blood nor our ge-
ography. The Teutonic instinct of individu-
alism, which, with other things, may be relied
upon to carry Germany safely through the
impending crisis in her history, belongs also
to us as an essentially Teutonic people, and,
with other things, one of which is an immense
reserve of cheap, good land, may be relied
upon to save us also from the crushing des-
potism of this new Social Democracy.

How Russia shall deal with her Commun-

42 COMMUNISTIC

ism, is a Russian question. How Germany
shall deal with hers, is a German question.
How we shall deal with ours, is our question,
which may have to be answered sooner, and
answered more sharply, than perhaps we
think.

Red-handed Communism would stand no
chance at all here. We have in the United
States nearly 3,000,000 of land-owners, firmly
grasping the continent.* They will not be
robbed of their acres. They are not to be
frightened into hiring men whose services
they do not need. Other shots may yet be
heard round the world, besides those fired by
Massachusetts farmers at Concord bridge,
shots fired, next time, in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Indiana, or Illinois. I will risk our farmers.
No French engineering could barricade a
prairie ; no German bullets shoot off the na-
tion's head.

One thing greatly needed now and always,
is less fear of ruffians. Have you never ob-

* The United States Census for 1870 gives 2,659,985 farms,
averaging 153 acres. In 1860 the average size was 199, and
in 1850, 203 acres.

SOCIALISM. 43

served how often burglars get the worst of it
in a struggle, with every advantage on their
side except the courage that goes with a good
conscience ? The brutal mob, which some of
us saw surging down Broadway, in the sum-
mer of 1863, flushed from the sacking of the
Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue,
was swept from the pavement in less than ten
minutes by a squad of resolute policemen,
using only their clubs. The German army at
Austerlitz had muscle enough ; at Sedan it
had brain enough. But institutions that are
not subverted, may yet be rudely shaken, or
radically changed. In the last analysis it will
be found that Caesar was Rome's escape from
Communism. The rich were being plundered
by the poor ; they lifted up their voices in
wild alarm, and the avenging eagles hastened
across the Rubicon. History may easily be
persuaded to repeat her retributions. Com-
munism is in the air. Section is poisoned
against section, class against class, interest
against interest. The poorer West and South
are incited to despoil the richer East. Farm-
er, manufacturer, and merchant, natural

44 COMMUNISTIC

friends, are being told that they are natural
enemies. Long-continued commercial dis-
tress, instead of being recognized as a com-
mon calamity, in Europe as well as here, with
special reasons for it in our own case, grow-
ing out of the war that saved the Union, is
fiercely denounced as the crime of a class.
Men, or the representatives of men that
loaned their money to the Government, to
carry on the war that saved it, money loaned
in patriotic faith, on condition it should not be
taxed, such men are stigmatized as " bloated
bondholders." The outcry is infamous. No
matter what the amount maybe, one billion or
two billions. No matter where the bonds now
are, here or in Europe. No matter in whose
hands they are, though Shylock should hold
them all. The bonds speak for themselves ;
they went for the saving of the nation's life.
The thought of taxing them, with exemption
from taxation written as it were in blood across
their face, is a dishonest thought, basely dis-
honest. " Bloated bondholders ! " Dema-
gogues are supposed to know what they are
about. Nicknames just now are only cheap

SOCIALISM. 45

substitutes for arguments ; but, by and by,
they mean brickbats, and paving-stones, and
torches, and firebrands, when the mob, which
the atmosphere of great cities always holds
in solution, begins to blacken the pavement.
The situation is a grave one. It is no pro-
cession of peaceful industries that I see
marching now. Labor and Capital, from op-
posing camps, are moving on towards one an-
other ; to meet, I hope and believe, as Esau
and Jacob met amongst the mountains of
Gilead, to be reconciled ; but, it may be, to
meet as Pompey and Caesar met at Pharsalia.
I confess I expect no Caesar. I find on our
map no Rubicon. But then I expect to see
this Communistic madness rebuked and
ended.* If not rebuked and ended, I shall
have to say, as many a sad-eyed Roman
must have said, nineteen hundred years ago,
/ prefer Civilization to the Republic.

I have said that Communism is in the air.
What is Communism ? There is no mystery
about it. It is simply the absorption of the
individual in the community, the citizen in the
State. The individual as such has no rights ;

46 COMMUNISTIC

the community has absorbed them all. What
the community ordains, must be done, or en-
dured. Not relations only, but employments,
everything, must be determined by the State.
Not only must everybody work, but every-
body must do just the kind, and just the
amount, of work the community shall set him
to do. In short, the State undertakes to do
everything, or almost everything, which in-
dividuals and corporations now do. The
State owns all the lands, and all the houses ;
all the railways, factories, and banks ; and all
the vessels. There is no more any private
property or private business. No one shall
even braid for himself a palm-leaf hat, or
cobble his own shoes. If it be answered,
that no one will wish to do any such thing for
himself, having no occasion to do it, it follows,
that present motives to industry and economy
will have ceased to operate. The inability to
better one's condition will have extinguished
the desire to do it. The right to do it will
be no longer debatable. All freedom has
perished. The citizen is nothing, the State
is all ; and, in a Republic, that all may be

SOCIALISM. 47

barely a majority of one, and that one car-
ried drunk to the polls. One drunken voter
may thus be master of us all. It is a mon-
strous doctrine. But we have got something
more to do than howl it down. It is a phi-
losophy, and has got to be argued down.

First of all, we should make it clear to our-
selves, and so be prepared to make it plain to
others, that the State is for the citizen, not the
citizen for the State ; society for the individual,
not the individual for .society. The greatest
of teachers has said, that even God's Sab-
bath was made for man ; not merely to serve
him as he is, but to make him still more of a
man. Institutions are mortal ; men immortal.
The historical, temporal Judgment is of insti-
tutions and organisms. The final Judgment
is of individuals, each one of us all giving ac-
count of himself to God. Personality is au-
gust. Consciously responsible to moral law,
we must have perfect freedom, in order to be
up to the responsibility. And so the humblest
of us has rights, which all the rest of us,
banded together, may not dare to touch. I
have a right to my life ; and society, without

48 COMMUNISTIC

my consent, shall not take it away, till it has
been forfeited by crime. I have a right to
my liberty ; and society shall not enslave me.
I have a right to my property, whether earned
or inherited ; and society shall not use it,
against my wishes, without appraisal and in-
demnity. The final end of society is not
itself, but the individual. What will Germany
be good for, when a plain, godly peasant like
Hans Luther of Eisleben is no longer pos-
sible? What shall we be good for, when
Paine's " Age of Reason " has supplanted
Butler's "Analogy?" Society, of course,
has its sphere, its prerogatives, its authority.
It may command me to assist the policeman
in arresting a murderer. It may send me in-
to battle. Society is under bonds to defend
us all, in defending itself; and I am a party
to the contract. Society may build its roads
and bridges ; but when it crosses my meadow,
or hurts my business, it must settle with me
for the damage. Not to do it, is Communism.
Society may abate nuisances ; but it may not
undertake the organization of labor or ex-
change. It may not tell me what I shall do

SOCIALISM. 49

for a living". That society would only ruin
our industries in adopting and trying to man-
age them, is almost demonstrable. Practical
business men, who are succeeding in business,
pronounce it a very foolish scheme, which has
always miserably failed. But this is the lesser
argument against it. It would be usurpation
and outrage. These rights that I have named,
rights of person and of property, are not inalien-
able only, but awfully sacred ; and somehow
or other, sometime or other, the infringement
of them is avenged. The Persians have a
proverb, that when the orphan cries, the
throne of the Almighty rocks from side to
side. The Persians are Mohammedans, and
perhaps they are too religious. It may be
the theists are all mistaken. Possibly there
is no throne to rock, and no Almighty Person
anywhere above us. But in history I think I
find an Almighty Something, whose Day of
Judgment is always rising, and never sets ;
and I think I hear the sound of mills, whose
grinding is exceeding fine.

But rights imply duties ; and duties rights.
Society, in absorbing the individual, becomes

50 COMMUNISTIC

responsible for his support ; while the individ-
ual, in being absorbed, becomes entitled to
support. This was the doctrine of Proud-
hon's famous Essay. Nature, he said, is
bountiful. She has made ample provision for
us all, if each could only get his part. Birth
into the world entitles one to a living in it.
This sounds both humane and logical. And
it is logical. The right of society to absorb,
implies the duty to support ; while the duty
of the individual to be absorbed, implies the
right to be supported. But premise and con-
clusion are equally false. Society has no
right to absorb the individual, and conse-
quently is under no obligation to support him,
so long as he is able to support himself; while
the individual has no business to be absorbed,
and no right to be supported. Experience
has taught us to beware of the man who says
that society owes him a living. The farmer
has learned not to leave his cellar door open,
when such theorists are about. Society has
entered into no contract to support anybody
who is able to support himself, any more than
Providence has entered into such a contract.

SOCIALISM. 51

Providence certainly is a party to no such
contract ; or there was a flagrant breach of
contract in the Chinese famine lately ; and
there have been a great many such breaches
of contract, first and last. I read in an old
book, which some Communists have called
Agrarian, that the God of the Hebrews used
to hear the young ravens when they cried;
but I do not read that no young raven ever
starved.

Communism, as it has seemed to me, owes
much of its present vitality and vigor to sev-
eral widely prevalent popular hallucinations,
pertaining to property in general, to money
and capital in particular ; hallucinations which
must be carefully and patiently refuted.

Political economy has been taught and stud-
ied now, with some diligence, amongst En-
glish-speaking peoples especially, for several
generations. It is more than a hundred years
since Adam Smith published his " Wealth of
Nations." And yet I will venture to say, that
no science, claiming to be popular, is so
poorly understood. Its very first principles,

52 COMMUNISTIC

and plainest lessons, are constantly contra-
vened. Communism of course finds its op-
portunity in this stupid treatment of a science
which no free people can afford to slight. Of
all collateral studies, not one just now is of
more immediate importance to theological
students than this. The old Hebrew proph-
ets, leaders of public opinion in their day and
nation, were more than political economists,
they were statesmen. The time, I will not
say is coming, it has already come, when ev-
ery publicly educated man in this nation
should understand the laws of political econ-
omy, and be able to make them plain to the
masses.

Prominent among the hallucinations re-
ferred to, is the one pertaining to money.
What is money? Not this Five-Dollar Bill,
which is worth absolutely just what the mak-
ing of it cost, paper and printing, no more,
no less. Here is a Paper Dollar, issued by
Kossuth in 1852, in the name of the Republic
of Hungary, that was to be. It cost me an-
other Paper Dollar, redeemable in coin, which
was a part of my contribution to the Hun-

SOCIALISM. 53

garian cause. It cost the Republic that was
to be just what the paper and the printing
cost, was worth that 'then, and now is worth
the value of the paper. And here is a Five-
Dollar Bill, issued in Richmond in 1863, in the
name of another Republic that was to be. It
cost that Republic what the paper and the
printing cost, was worth it then ; but now is
worth only what it might sell for as a souvenir.
These bits of paper are not money, never were
money, and never will be ; they are only cur-
rency. Bank of England notes are not mon-
ey. Money can not be printed. The only
money for civilized peoples is coin of gold
and of silver — the precious metals, as they
are called. They come out of the ground
by the sweat of human brows, represent
human labor, and are accordingly of intrinsic
worth. They are not only worth all they
cost, but they have actually cost all they are
worth. This idea of making money by print-
ing or writing it, is absurd. Any farmer, any
mechanic, any merchant, who entertains this
idea, and acts upon it, unless he dies very
soon, will live long enough to come to grief.

54 COMMUNISTIC

Any Parliament or Congress that tries to do
it, commits either a folly or a fraud. The
time for mincing matters has gone by. Plain
words are best. Inflation of our currency is
Communism. Somebody is cheated and
plundered by it. Anybody who advocates it,
calling himself a statesman, scornful of sci-
ence, scornful of history, is either an igno-
ramus or a demagogue.

An exaggerated estimate of the amount of
money in existence, is another popular hallu-
cination that helps the Communists. Of sil-
ver, used largely in the Orient, the statistics
are not quite so exactly ascertainable. But
of gold, the Occidental standard of value, the
total amount in existence has been computed
at about eight billions, or eight thousand mil-
lions. Melted down and massed, it would
make a block sixty feet long, thirty feet wide,
and a trifle more than twelve and one-quarter
feet high. Coined into Five-Dollar gold pieces
(Half-Eagles or Sovereigns), and served out
amongst us all of the human family, giving us
each a Half-Eagle or Sovereign, there would

SOCIALISM. 55

be only about enough to go round. And how
long do you think it would last ? Longer, of
course, in Hong Kong, or Yokohama ; but
here in New York, it would last our theolog-
ical students only about a week.

Land also is property. And what is land
worth ? As mere land, unimproved, much
less than is commonly supposed. To get at
the intrinsic value of land, you must go back
to barbarism. Where a hundred civilized
men now till the soil, imagine ten nomads,
tending their flocks and herds ; where ten
nomads pitch their tents, imagine one savage,
hunting and fishing. This is the ascertained
ratio of civilization to nomadism, of nomad-
ism to barbarism. Stop plowing now with
your oxen, and what was worth a hundred
dollars, will be worth only ten. Let your
cattle all go wild again in the woods, and
what was worth ten dollars, will be worth
only one. I spend my summers by Narra-
gansett Bay, in Massachusetts, on a farm
near Mount Hope, where, a little more than
200 years ago, King Philip, chief of the

$6 COMMUNISTIC

Wampanoags, fished and hunted. It is a
farm of about eighty acres. Had we belong-
ed to the Wampanoags — my family and I,
with only wild land round our wigwam, we
should have required at least eight thousand
acres, to be as well off as we now are. And
so it is, that landed property is largely hu-
man ; ninety-nine one hundredths of it. Even
these improvements, as they are called, which
give land so nearly the whole of its rated
value, would very soon be lost, and disap-
pear entirely, should tillage cease. After all,
and always, it is the farmer's foot, that both
measures and makes the farm.

But the one hallucination which most of
all, perhaps, inflames the discontent and cu-
pidity of Communism, relates to capital. It
is constantly talked of as if it were some
mysterious power, out of sight like gravita-
tion or electricity, but of tremendous potency,
liable at any time to strike in avalanche or
thunderbolt. What is it ? Simply surplus :
that which is saved and goes over of what
the farmer raises ; that which is saved and

SOCIALISM. 57

goes over of the workman's wages. Any
farmer may have capital, who will consume
less than he raises. Any mechanic may have
it, who will spend less than he earns. My
dollar spent has to be earned over again ; I
am no better off than I was before, and must
go back to the field or shop. My dollar
saved gets me ready for the rainy day. And
my dollar is as good as yours.

\Yhat may be called the chronology of
capital, and the amount of it in existence, are
also very wildly overrated. It is imagined to
be a vast, almost inexhaustible fund, that has
been a very long time in accumulating. Great
wealth, especially of nations, is supposed to
have begun a long way back, like a great
oak, or the delta of some great river. The
wealth of England, for example, is supposed
to be the growth of centuries. But John
Stuart Mill has asserted that a great part of
it is only about twelve months old. And this
can easily be proved. It is equally true of
ourselves. Our principal crops are three :
hay, grain, cotton. The hay is fed to our
cattle ; in a year, it is nearly all gone. The
3*

58 COMMUNISTIC

grain is divided between our cattle and our-
selves ; in a year, that, too, is nearly all gone.
The cotton lasts longer, but as cloth, not as
crude cotton. Of our minerals, gold and sil-
ver of course are enduring, but the crop of
them in our country is less than a quarter
part as valuable as the hay crop. Iron .lasts
some time, but wears out after a while. Coal
is consumed about as fast as we mine it. The
products of the sea are more perishable still.
Fish, unless salted, in less than a week would
be good for nothing but to dress the land.
These products of the land and sea make up
a considerable part of what we call property.
Very little of it is spontaneous. Most of it
comes by toil. Human brain and muscle are
in it. Proclaim now your jubilee of sloth ;
let all this industry instantly and absolutely
cease ; unyoke the oxen, call up the miners,
shut down the mills, stop the vessels, stop the
carts ; and in twelve months' time what be-
comes of your property ? Gone, a great part
of it, like smoke into the sky.

What else have we for property ? Roads,
of course. Some bits of old Roman roads

SOCIALISM. 59

have lasted well, though neither Italy, nor
any other country, is much the better for them
to-day. But our roads have to be mended
every year, or they would soon become im-
passable. Railroads have to be mended al-
most every day.

Buildings are also property : Pyramids,
Temples, Cathedrals, Churches, Warehouses,
but especially the houses we live in. How
much buildings are worth, depends upon how
long they will last. To determine this, we
must take the original cost of construction
for a dividend, and for a divisor the percent-
age required to keep the buildings in good re-
pair. Measured by this rule, the Pyramids
are the best pieces of property in existence.
If let alone, as they should have been, they
would never have needed repairing. But of
what use are they ? Egyptian Temples rank
next. But the Egyptian climate is exception-
al. St. Peter's Church in Rome is said to
have cost $48,000,000 ; but $30,000 have to
be spent upon it every year to keep it in re-
pair. Let it alone for fifty years, and what pro-
portion of its original cost would any business

6o COMMUNISTIC

man be willing to bid for it? How long do
our dwelling-houses last ? Not so very much
longer than the black tents of the Bedaween.

We have property also on the sea : vessels
of wood and of iron. How long do they
last ? Where is the ship on whose deck Nel-
son was shot ? Where is our own frigate, the
Constitution f Where is the first steamboat
that went up the Hudson ?

The upshot of the matter is, that a great
part of what we call our property comes and
goes with the revolving seasons. Commun-
ists and children may dream of inexhaustible
wealth locked up and guarded by hard and
heartless men, who might unlock it if they
would. So may poets sing of perennial
fountains, like those which burst from the
roots of Hermon to make the Jordan. But
let Hermon miss the rains of a single winter,
Hermon and the range to which it belongs,
and soon there will be no more Jordan.

It remains to glance at what we have called
the Gospel of Communism. The expression
may have grated on your ears. The points

SOCIALISM. 6 1

are mostly of contradiction, not of resem-
blance. Our Christian Gospel has in it the
three elements of incarnation, atonement, and
regeneration. The Gospel of Communism
has no God in it at all, incarnate or any
other. And it preaches neither atonement
nor regeneration, for it recognizes no sin,
only disease to be cured, or discord to be at-
tuned. There is trouble enough in the world,
but it all comes of inequality of social con-
dition. Change that, and all will be changed.
Equalize conditions, and there shall be " no
more sea." Equalize conditions, and Paradise
returns. Return it shall, says Communism,
for Communism, like Christianity, is militant,
only the weapons of its warfare arc carnal.
Equality of condition may be only preached
as yet ; by and by, when converts are multi-
plied, it shall be carried, as Mohammed car-
ried Arabia, by force of arms. Enforced
equality of social condition, that is the con-
summation ; equality enforced, and re-en-
forced, from generation to generation.

Behold now the recovered Paradise. Nat-
ure is here, with all her laws, but with no

62 COMMUNISTIC

transparency of land, or sea, or sky. No
light shines through. We have science, such
as it is, the science of second causes. Poets
and theologians are all dead. There is no
God, nothing but unconscious force, which
hears no prayers. " Like as a father pitieth
his children," is part of an old Hebrew lulla-
by. We need no pity, only an equal chance.
Humanity is sufficient unto itself; is Provi-
dence enough, and Grace enough. There
are no families any more, not even a family,
but only a flock or a herd. Human brother-
hood is cant and nonsense, where no child
calls any man father on earth, and there is no
Father in Heaven. We are not brothers,
only companions, oarsmen together in the
galley, oxen together in the furrow. We
have no favors to ask of anybody. All we
need, and all we want, is wages for our work.
As for work, organization of labor takes care
of that, both to find it for us, and to keep us
at it. In the Orient, children are seldom seen
playing together, and women seldom smile.
Here, too, when Communism triumphs, the air
will have lost its oxygen. There will be no

SOCIALISM. 63

more play. And there will be no more hero-
ism. Moral character is of no account, so
long as the work goes on. Genius is of no
account, where the brightest must fare no
better than the dullest. By and by, ambition
is all gone. Competition is the name of a
lost art. The arts are all lost. Coarser prod-
ucts deteriorate. Production declines. Ev-
erything declines. The alarm is sounded :
We are going to ruin ; we must all of us
work more, and work better. Who shall
make us work more and better? One an-
other. And so our Paradise bristles with
bayonets.

We had better be calling things by their
right names. This is no Paradise of men,
but of animals : of dull oxen first, each under
his own end of the yoke by day, and each at
night in his own stall, yokes and stalls all
alike ; presently, it will be of dogs, each
growling and gnawing his well-picked bone ; I
by and by it will be of wolves, howling and
chasing down the belated teams ; but at last
it will be of tigers, tearing one another to
pieces in the jungle. So the chapter, and

64 COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM.

so the volume, ends, this tragic volume of
human history : at the bottom of the final
page, after a fashion of the old printers,
Memento mori, with skull and cross-bones,
though not of man, but of beast. The cir-
cle is now completed. The evolution ends.
Beast thou art, and unto beast shalt thou re-
turn. Whether Law or Gospel, science said
it ; and so it is.

III.

ANTI-COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM.

FROM the Communistic Socialism we turn
to the Anti-Communistic, and at the same
time merely Secular, Socialism, which will
not detain us so long. The two have so
much in common, that the separate points of
interest, belonging exclusively to the latter,
are comparatively few.

Nothing has occurred in Europe these
many years of so much real moment to po-
litical science as what befell Paris and the
French Republic in 1871.* Already the
frightful horrors of the Commune are of less
concern to history, than their acknowledged
logical legitimacy, and what appears to have
been their absolute conclusiveness. French
Communism acted itself all out, pursuing

* Between March i8th, and May 27th, 1871.

(65)

66 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

every premise to its bitter conclusion. And
whether France ever had common sense be-
fore or not, she has it now. French Com-
munism fell in that duel, and was buried
where the road forks, that Europe may think
twice before choosing which way to go. It
is carved now on the monument, what Com-
munism is. It denies and violates sacred
natural rights of the individual. It is des-
potism of the most searching and relentless
character. As compared with any regal or
imperial despotism, that France or any other
nation ever saw, it is the bear that meets the
man fleeing from the lion. Europe will think
more than twice before going where the bear
is. It is an immense gain to civilization, that
France is now so nearly in her right mind,
denouncing and deriding Communism as an
exploded heresy, false to science, and fatal to
every charm and chanty of life.

But Socialism in France survives Com-
munism ; all the wiser for what has been for-
gotten, all the stronger for what has been en-
dured. It makes a great difference that labor
is now using its own lungs and its own lips,

SOCIALISM. 67

stating and arguing its own case. The Work-
ingmen's Congress, which met in Lyons on
the 28th of January, 1878, and was in session,
constantly debating the labor question, for
twelve days, was attended by 140 delegates,
nine of whom were women, and three of
whom were peasants, representing most of
the trades and districts of France. The
speakers were not pestilent professional agi-
tators, but all of them practical working men
and women. The ablest man in the Con-
gress, who would make his mark anywhere,
doing credit to the training of the best schools,
was Finance, a house-painter in Paris. Clear,
incisive, rousing, he is evidently one of the born
orators, whose felicities of utterance become
the mottoes of banners and the watchwords
of parties. The doings of that Congress,
judging, as I have had to do, from a sketch
and synopsis of them given by Frederic Har-
rison in the subsequent May number of the
Fortnightly Review, are a study for the
wisest of our political economists. Besides
Finance, two other Parisian workingmen,
Magnin and Laporte, were prominent ; of

68 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

whom Mr. Harrison says : " It is my deliber-
ate conviction that nothing in modern eco-
nomic literature exceeds the truth, the origi-
nality, and the eloquence of these speeches by
three Parisian workingmen." One is sur-
prised, when he thinks of it, to see how the
old Communistic leaders are forsaken. Fou-
rier, Cabet, Louis Blanc are not even named ;
and Proudhon is only incidentally quoted.
These men were before the Deluge. The ora-
cle now is Comte. The problem no longer is,

i

how to abolish inequality of social condition,
which is accepted as inevitable, but how to
lessen it, smooth its sharp edges, and get the
virus out of it ; dealing just now especially with
the present exceptional distress of industry,
but planning for a more stable and better fu-
ture. One is curious to know what such
men and women have to say, both in regard
to what the matter is, and what shall be done
about it Finance charges the present dis-
tress, first, upon machinery, and, secondly,
upon the caprices of fashion. Capital is not
in the way, is not to be abolished, is not even
to be regulated by the State. Individual

SOCIALISM. 69

ownership of property is recognized as an
advance upon communal. Property is sa-
cred, as life and liberty are. The family
also is sacred, guarded by the instincts of
women, of whom it is finely said by Finance,
that "their conscience is better than our
science." The State is not to take matters
in hand at all ; there is no remedy to be found
in laws. Public opinion is our only hope.
We need no new legislation, only a new
morality ; something to stop this headlong
rush for money. Theology is a melancholy
failure, for it has nothing to say but to preach
almsgiving to the rich, and resignation to the
poor. In the final era, already dawning, la-
bor shall take the place of war, science of
theology, and humanity of God.

Such is the new French Socialism ; in
amazing contrast with that mad Communistic
Socialism, which, only seven years ago, had
to be shot down in the streets. I shall speak
of it again in another connection. In this
connection, I will simply call it a vain at-
tempt to realize the Christian morality, with-
out the Christian religion. It does not say

70 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

with Agrippa, " Almost thou persuadest me
to -be a Christian." Very likely it does not
know, even as well as Agrippa did, what
Christianity is. And so, at last, it will have
to say to its coveted morality, as the dying
Brutus said to virtue, " I have pursued thee
as a goddess, and find thee to be but a phan-
tom."

Socialism in England is very decidedly En-
glish, home-born and homely ; coming neither
from abroad, nor from books. It has had very
little to say for itself in the way of theory.
The average English workingman would be far
more likely to remind you, that "fine words
butter no parsnips." The philosophy of the
thing- is left to Frenchmen and Germans.

o

The only theory has been, that wages were
too low, and that workingmen themselves
must combine to push them up. And so the
whole movement has resolved itself into a
trial of strength and endurance between labor
and capital. The struggle has been a very
dogged one on both sides, altogether too
rough sometimes, but gradually toning down,

SOCIALISM. 71

and tending" on the whole to good results.
Not only have wages risen, but labor and
capital respect each other much more, and
treat each other much better, than they did.

The two main features of English Socialism
are Trade-Unions and Strikes. The litera-
ture of the subject is already considerable.
Besides Toulmin Smith's "English Guilds,"
with Brentano's Essay prefixed (1869), we
may name, as specially noteworthy, the
Comte de Paris' " Trades' Unions of En-
gland," edited by Thomas Hughes (1869);
Brassey's "Work and Wages" (1872);
Thornton's elaborate work "On Labour"
(1869); Howell's "Conflicts of Capital and
Labour" (1878); and several Papers of
marked ability by Frederic Harrison and
others, in the Fortnightly Review. When
the balance-sheet comes to be made up, it
will probably appear that the Trade- Unions
have done much good, with some harm ;
while the Strikes have also done more good
than harm, but with the good and the harm
more nearly balanced. The orthodox an-

72 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

thropology, at all events, has apparently no
revision to fear, since labor has proved that
capital is supremely selfish, and capital has
proved the same of labor. Each has had to
look out for itself. No considerable number
of capitalists have yet been found to pay
higher wages than are demanded ; and no con-
siderable number of laborers have been found
to take lower wages than are offered.

Trade-Unions are peculiarly at home in
England. More immediately, they succeed
the mediaeval Craft-Guilds, which rendered
such important service in developing the mid-
dle class in Europe. More remotely, their
descent is traced from the Frith- Guilds, which
originated in England in the time of Ina (688
-725 A.D.), and which, in the ninth and tenth
centuries, became general throughout Europe.
Frith-Guilds mark, as it were, the infancy of
civil society, when it crosses the line of kin-
ship, and the family begins to merge itself in
the State. Their design was to supple-
ment the deficiencies of the State. Guild
now means a corporation or society.

SOCIALISM. 73

Originally, it meant both a feast and the
company gathered to it ; which suggests re-
lationship to the ancient German gather-
ings, which were both banquets and assem-
blies of the people, at which all matters of
public interest were considered and deter-
mined. These old Frith-Guilds, or Town-
Guilds, as they might be called, were partly
social, partly religious, and partly protective.*
Trade-Unions are neither social nor relig-
ious, but simply protective ; not sodalities,
but combinations. They have no use for fine
phrases ; they care only for the rights and in-
terests of their members, which are the rights
and interests of labor. They unite in them-
selves the advantages of Savings Banks and
Mutual Assurance Companies. Each mem-
ber pays, first, an admission fee, generally
ranging from five to twenty shillings, accord-
ing to the rank of the trade ; and, after that,
from twopence to a shilling a week, generally
from three to four pence. Whoever has paid
these dues, may be taken down with fever,
without hearing the wolf at his door ; or give

* Howell's "Conflicts of Capital and Labour," p. 4.
4

74 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

decent burial to one of his family, without
running into debt to the undertaker. If fac-
tories stop, for whichever of the reasons,
whether to keep down production, or to keep
down wages, the workmen have joint capital
of their own to fall back upon ; not so very
much, but enough for a good, stout fight
either against hard times or hard masters.

Associations resembling the present Trade-
Unions existed in England before 1562, but
they were pretty much confined to the build-
ing trades. Trade-Unionism, as an important
factor in the industrial life of the nation, has
grown up out of the factory system. It be-
gan just before the opening of the present
century, but its main development has been
within the last twenty years. The change
from handiwork to machinery was a revolu-
tion. Capital at once massed itself in few
hands at a few great manufacturing centers.
Labor also massed itself at the same centers.
With production suddenly and immensely in-
creased, violent fluctuations in market values,
hardly possible under the old system, soon
became frequent. Under these greatly

SOCIALISM. 75

changed conditions of massed capital,
massed labor, and increased production,
even had the manufacturers been philan-
thropists, experimenting" in political economy,
a satisfactory adjustment of wages would have
been very difficult. Wages paid in flush times
could not, of course, be paid in hard times.
But workmen never like to have their wages
reduced. Neither would they like it any bet-
ter, nor so well, to have the rate fixed per-
manently at some point between the highest
and the lowest tide-water marks. When the
tide was out, they would be no more than sat-
isfied ; and hopelessly discontented every time
the tide was in. But manufacturers were not
philanthropists experimenting in political
economy ; they were only average English-
men of their class, trying to make money,
and, like the men employed by them, trying
to make all they could. The less they paid
out in wages, the more they had left after
selling their goods ; the more they paid
out in wages, the less they had left. Which
now shall dictate to the other — labor to cap-
ital, or capital to labor? Of course, the

76 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

stronger to the weaker. And capital is now
much stronger than labor ; strengthened by
the massing, which has weakened labor al-
most to helplessness. Goods need not be
sold to-morrow, nor next day ; but labor
must find a market for itself or starve. Cap-
ital was tempted. And it must be confessed,
that capital was hard on labor. But it was
English labor, six hundred years after Run-
nymede ; and again the right triumphed.
English labor emancipated itself from the tyr-
anny of English capital. Wages, that were
too low, and would have remained so, are
now as high, perhaps, as they can be without
ruining trade. Many abuses have been re-
formed. Working hours have been reduced
in most branches of industry, except in fac-
tories, and even there for women and chil-
dren. Best of all, laborers in general are
decidedly more intelligent and more moral.
The Trade-Unions are Banks, and Assurance
Companies, and Schools, and Debating Clubs,
all in one. They are steadily educating their
members in self-control, self-respect, and in
the laws of trade ; and they are steadily

SOCIALISM. 77

weeding out the really objectionable features
in their own organization and management.
In 1871, after a most searching investigation
of their affairs, they were legalized by Act of
Parliament. Dullest and last of all, agricult-
ural laborers formed a Trade-Union in 1872.
So now the whole industry of the nation is
thoroughly organized. Some 3,000 societies
are in existence, enrolling at least a million
and a quarter of workmen. Thus far they
have had little or nothing to do with politics.
They will make themselves felt in the gov-
ernment of the country by and by.

Strikes are not altogether modern. Indeed,
few things are modern, except some of our
mechanical inventions. A real strike occur-
red in England, causing great embarrassment
and loss, at the time of the Black Death, in
1349; but was not known by this name, the
word not being found either in Johnson's
Dictionary, or in Adam Smith's " Wealth
of Nations." Strikes have been a part of the
tactics of labor in its hard struggle with capi-
tal ; and have been strongly condemned, even

78 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

by some of the best friends of the laboring
classes. They are simply combined refusals
to work for the wages that are offered. And if
no personal violence is inflicted, or threatened,
and no damage is done to property, the right
of men in masses to refuse work, is just as
clear as their right to do so individually,
which nobody disputes. But the policy of
strikes is another matter. The good they
may do is certainly done at great cost, and
with serious drawbacks. On a rising market
for goods, strikes for an advance of wages
usually succeed, manufacturers, it may be,
having orders to fill, or, at all events, seeing
a profit for themselves in spite of the advance.
But on a declining market, strikes against a
reduction of wages usually fail, manufacturers
sometimes being more than willing to shut
down their mills. Successful, or unsuccess-
ful, they leave a sting behind, for they are
warlike ; and civilized nations have learned
that arbitration is better than war. The
Trade - Unions, wiser than workmen were
twenty years ago, have greatly diminished

SOCIALISM. 79

the frequency of strikes, and expect in no
long time to prevent them altogether.

In our own country, the organization of
labor is a long way behind what it is in En-
gland. Indeed, until very recently labor had
almost nothing to complain of. Wages have
been so high, that America has been called
the Paradise of labor. Now, for the first
time in our history, wages are sinking down
towards, and, in some trades, have already
reached the European level, perhaps have
even gone below it. Hence great distress,
and still greater outcry about distress, from
one end of the country to the other. Congress
did wisely at its last session in appointing the
Labor Committee, of which Mr. Hewitt is the
intelligent and able chairman, to inquire into
the causes of this distress, and suggest reme-
dies. And this Committee have done wisely
in giving a hearing to all classes of theorists
and malcontents. Most of them were Com-
munists ; and sensible people have to thank
them for making Communism ridiculous.

80 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

Wiser men have followed. And whatever
the Committee may conclude to say, the pop-
ular verdict, by an overwhelming majority, will
probably be, that the present distress is due
to causes, general and special, and calls for
remedies, with which the Government, whether
of any State, or of the whole Nation, has al-
most nothing at all to do. For example, the
Government has no business to meddle with
wages ; nor to limit the hours of work, ex-
cept for minors ; and would do well to let
even the rate of interest, like the price of corn
or of any other commodity, take care of itself.
One thing it might very properly do : it might
establish, as Massachusetts has already done,
a Labor Bureau, whose business it should be
to collect and tabulate statistics of every sort
pertaining to the industries of the country,
adding those also of other countries, which
would not only be of great service to individ-
uals in search of remunerative employment,
but might also lead to the opening of new
channels of trade. Such information for the
masses would be quite as legitimate a func-
tion of Government as the teaching of chil-

SOCIALISM. 8 1

dren in the Common School. Anything more
than this Government should be slow to un-
dertake. Schemes of colonization, in the in-
terest of agriculture, would not be wise. De-
sirable immigrants will make their own way
into new territories. Protective tariffs, in
the interest of manufactures, can be justified
only as a temporary expedient in order to na-
tional independence, especially in case of war.
Absolute free trade everywhere, it must, how-
ever, be considered, will inevitably bring labor
to one level; a level to be determined by
China more than by France, England, or the
United States. Subsidies, in the interest of
commerce, may help the infancy of great enter-
prises ; but, in the long run, trade will do best
to be let alone. Again, if patents are issued as
a just reward, and proper stimulant, of inven-
tion, a limit should be set to prices put upon
patented articles. Three or four times the
actual cost of manufacture, is an extortion,
against which the public has a right to be pro-
tected. One of the most vital questions of the
day relates to Corporations. Some things, too
large for individual enterprise, may undoubt-

82 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

edly be much better managed by Corpora-
tions than by Governments. But when a
Railway Corporation can dictate its own char-
ter, and is permitted to injure the property of
individuals without indemnity, or is exempted
from taxation, or can so " water " its stock as
to put fortunes that were never earned into
the pockets of a favored few, the time has
come for indignant denunciation and radical
reform, unless we prefer to wait awhile for a
revolution. Corporation abuses are now sim-
ply monstrous, and have got to be stopped.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., has expressed
the opinion, that " if any change had taken
place in the power of the railroads over legisla-
tion within the past few years, he* thought it
had slightly diminished." Some sort of gov-
ernmental supervision of railroads is certain-
ly desirable, but may easily be carried too
far. Governmental ownership is hardly to be
thought of. And yet incorporated turnpikes,
once very common and very serviceable, have
now almost everywhere given place to public
highways.

It all comes to this, that labor, by which in/

SOCIALISM. 83

this connection I mean muscular drudgery,
must for the most part look out for itself.
For the present this may well be done by
Co-operative Associations of one kind and
another, not unlike the Trade-Unions of En-
gland. The organization of a Labor Party
in politics, I feel constrained to say, seems to
me not the best thing to be done. The ques-
tions to be settled are questions of political
economy, which ought, on every account, to
be settled dispassionately. Men may vote as
they please, but the laws of production and
of trade are as inexorable as the laws of nat-
ure. Water will not run up hill ; two and two
do not make five ; and greenbacks are not
money. The fact is, our industries are out
of normal proportion to one another. Manu-
factures and commerce have outrun agriculture.
Farming towns have been losing their popu-
lation. Factory villages and cities have been
multiplying. We have manufactured more
than we could find a market for ; and have
built more railways than were needed. We
thought we were manufacturing and building
only a little ahead of the demand ; we have

84 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

learned, to our cost, and to our humiliation,
that we were also ruinously ahead of divi-
dends. There is only one road out of this
trouble, between the high stone-walls of in-
dustry and economy. Such another inflation
of our currency as seemed necessary during
the Civil War, would now be like the relapse
which sometimes follows a typhoid fever ; the
last state of the patient would be much worse
than the first. The safety of universal suf-
frage will soon be tested as never before in
our history. Should our demagogues suc-
ceed in committing an ignorant and head-
strong majority to the financial heresies of
late so current, we are in for another financial
agony. Another such agony as we have just
experienced might indeed provoke a very
prompt reaction, and make this soft-money
nonsense forevermore impossible. But a
people of our boasted intelligence ought not
to be fooled in this way. We can not afford
to repeat the experiment. Once in a genera-
tion is enough. Jealousy of capital, organized
and inaugurated as a permanent factor in our
political life, would imperil first our whole

SOCIALISM. 85

prosperity, and then our free institutions.
Legislation unfriendly to capital would
frighten it off to other countries, where it
might hope for better treatment. Or if other
countries join in the crusade against it, then
it wastes everywhere rapidly away. Some
German Socialistic writers, in discussing the
sources of wealth, name only nature and la-
bor, omitting capital, which Malthus and oth-
ers, of the older and better school, have
named as the third source. Capital, to be
sure, is the product of past labor, but labor
itself has not conserved it. If, as Theremin
says, eloquence is a virtue, one is tempted to
say the same of capital. It represents not
intelligence only, but self-denial and self-
control. Wages have been saved that
might have been spent in show or luxury.
Not many men are very rich, any more than
many men have genius. And it requires even
greater ability, and greater care of course, to
keep a fortune than to make it. The idea of
crowding incomes down to some prescribed
maximum, is now, after all the experience of
ages, an idea worthy of Bedlam. Labor with-

86 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC

out capital, is to-day without yesterday.
Capital is indispensable to labor in the pro-
duction of any considerable amount of wealth.
And then there are higher uses. Capital
procures leisure ; leisure promotes culture ;
culture multiplies wants ; wants stimulate
production. Labor all the while is taking
lessons of capital, and multiplying its own
wants, which are likewise to be supplied.
And so the two help each other on. Higher
wages, without higher tastes and wants,
would be only a curse, and not a blessing.
Capital is finer than labor, just as brain is
finer than muscle. But there should be no
schism. The duel now arranging between
labor and capital, ought to become a debate.
Labor is too well informed to be kept in the
dark in regard to the dividends of capital;
and may be trusted by and by, if not imme-
diately, to demand for itself only what is just,
for this reason, if for no other, that in the long
run only the just is politic. A thoroughly
good understanding between labor and capi-
tal is of equal importance to both of them.

SOCIALISM. 87

If capital is foolish, it will madden labor into
permanent insurrection. If labor is foolish,
it will insist upon the submission of capital,
and discover too late that its triumph is fatal
to civilization and to itself.

IV.
CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM.

WE come now to the Christian Socialism.

One might hesitate to put these two words
together ; partly, as risking offence to Chris-
tian people who associate nothing good with
Socialism, partly, as risking the imputation of
seeming to court the favor of Socialists who
associate nothing good with Christianity.
Strauss, in his " Life of Jesus," criticises the
unlettered, childless peasant of Galilee for the
narrow range of his teachings, which ignore,
as Strauss alleges, science, art, the family,
and the State. And the new French Social-
ism, as we have seen, waves its adieu to
Christianity as a social failure, on the ground
that almsgiving and resignation are its last
words. If these are indeed its last words,
then the time for adieus has come. Chris-
tianity may sail on, down the horizon, out of
sight, out of mind, and we will wait till some

(88)

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 89

other ship, with a better device upon her
streaming flag, comes ploughing through this
black and bitter sea. But almsgiving and
resignation are not the last words. There
must be a real Christian Socialism ; and there
is. Dumb animals know who their friends
are ; so do children ; so do plain men. The
sympathies of the common people, as we call
them, who have most need to better their
condition, went over to the side of Christianity
when it was first preached in one of the most
severely governed provinces of the Roman
Empire ; and have remained on that side ever
since. In many a struggle with Brahminism,
Buddhism has carried the day as the more
democratic religion. Christianity has had al-
ways the same advantage over every other
religion with which it has ever measured
its strength. Somehow, it has captured the
hearts of men. If, just now, there be any-
where, in the older Christian countries, what
looks like a popular revulsion from Christian-
ity, it is not spontaneous and natural, but in-
stigated, strange, and exceptional. When,
either by the bigotry of its friends, or the

QO CHRISTIAN

I malice of its enemies, Christianity is narrow-
ed down into mere religion, we shall find men
preferring the good Samaritans.

Practical Christianity is both religion and
philanthropy, love to God, and love to man ;
the former impossible without the latter. This
problem of social inequality, now agitating
the civilized world, is older than Christianity.
Christianity has never been indifferent to it,
and never can be. Better even than the
miracle that followed, was this saying of our
Lord : " I have compassion on the multitude,
because they have now been with me three
days, and have nothing to eat. And if I send
them away fasting to their own houses, they
will faint by the way." From this first and
lowest of human wants to the highest, Chris-
tianity extends its care ; but indulges in no
sentimentality. First of all, it must know the
facts. Like a wise physician, it undertakes to
cure only the curable ; and in every case pre-
scribes for the disease, not for its symptoms.

Obviously, there is much inequality of so-

SOCIALISM. 91

cial condition, which results from inequality
of endowment. From genius like that of
Francis Bacon, down to the dullness of a
Yorkshire peasant, the distance is even
greater than any difference there can be in
food, raiment, or social environment. It is
folly to commiserate the peasant, if only he
has his human rights, and is comfortable. It
would be absurd to offer him advantages he
could not improve. And it would be wicked
to inflame him with a discontent, which is
simply rebellion against the Providential or-
dering of his lot. The system under which
he lives, is, after all, much more elastic than it
seems. Under the most oppressive institu-
tions, of any age, it is astonishing how quick-
ly condition responds to character and cult-
ure. Epictetus was born a slave ; perhaps
also Plautus. Christendom cares as much ,
for Onesimus as it does for Philemon; pos-J
sibly a little more. There is no mistaking
where the stress is laid ; not on endowment,
but on the use made of it. In moral endow-
ment we fare alike, as in the Parable of the Ten
Pounds. In bodily and mental endowment

92 CHRISTIAN

we differ, as in the Parable of the Talents.
But in both it is use, and not quantity, that
measures our real stature, and determines our
destiny. Equality of social condition, with
inequality of endowment, would be no kind-
ness to anybody. If once established, it
could not endure. Whoever properly re-
spects himself, asks for nothing but a hearty
recognition of his manhood, as Burns puts it
in one of the finest of his poems. And
Christianity looks out for that. Slavery has
gone down before it over all the globe. Des-
potisms that could not be cured, have yet been
softened by it. Republics, which Gervinus
sees at the end of the historic course, are
born of it. But it breeds no Catalines. You
| need not smite the vase in which an acorn is
; planted ; the growing oak will shatter it. At
bottom, it is an immorality to fight against
this inequality of condition, which simply cor-
responds with inequality of endowment. Only
what he has honestly gained by a fair use of
his gifts and opportunities, should any man
desire. And all that he has thus gained,

SOCIALISM. 93

should every other man be willing, and more
than willing, that he should have.

The aristocracy of eminent ability is not
large, and never will be. How many Crom-
wells and Miltons may have died in their moth-
ers' arms, nobody knows. But the grown-
up Cromwells and Miltons have all been
heard from. Mere culture is not creative.
Very few men ever originate anything. The
bulk of mankind are very common people,
and always will be. Great bankers and mer-
chants are as rare as great philosophers and
poets. The possibilities of production are
also limited. There never can be property
enough in the world for everybody to be rich.
The great mass of mankind, at best, will get
only a little more than their daily bread for
their daily labor. We brought nothing into
the world, can carry nothing out, and, be-
tween these two poverties, behind and before,
are instructed to be content with food and
raiment. The present wealth of England is
exceptional, being nearly five-fold what it was
when she began her manufacturing career

94 CHRISTIAN

seventy-five years ago, with more than twice
as much now as then, were it equally divided,
for every man, woman, and child in the king-
dom. She will have to share that wealth
with us, just as soon as we make her share
with us the markets of the world. Then
other nations will challenge both of us. And
at last, when the whole globe comes to be
densely peopled, like Belgium and Holland,
and every people shall do its utmost to sup-
ply its own wants, the daily prayer for daily
bread will be an honest and an urgent prayer
from the rising to the setting sun. The
resignation then preached and practised will
not be cowardly submission to social wrong,
but submission to Providence, to law, to nat-
ure.

We have to meet the question of graded
compensation. How shall workmen be paid
for what they do ? By the day, or by the
job ? By the day, says Communism ; and all
alike, no matter what difference there may be
with respect to skill, quickness, or diligence
in any given kind of work, no matter what
difference there may be with respect to the

SOCIALISM. 95

kinds of work. Men are equal, and one
man's time is no more precious than another's.
Eight hours of the finest brain-work shall
bring in no more than eight hours of the
coarsest hand - work. This Communistic
claim to indiscriminate wages is simply pre-
posterous, and Christianity need not be ask-
ed for an opinion about it. But as between
time-work and job-work, an opinion may well •
be asked for. While graded endowment
grades work, and graded work grades wages,
personality is always sacred, and is most se-
cure when one is most absolutely master of
his own time. It may not be wise, but I con-
fess I look with some pity upon the day la-
borer, whose time is not his own, whether it
be for ten hours, or only for eight, or six. I
remember what is said of the " master's eye,"
and would rather not be the one to get more
work out of men in this way than would be
realized if the men were left to themselves.
It is better all round that job-work be substi-
tuted for time-work whenever and wherever
it can possibly be done. " Built by the day,"
recommends a house, to be sure. But careful

g CHRISTIAN

superintendence ought to be a sufficient pro-
tection against slighted work; and the fair
thing is to pay, and be paid, for just what is
actually done.

The question of women's wages, which has
delicate and important moral relations, is
easily settled on this basis of job-work. In
time-work, muscle must determine wages, de-
manding more for men than for women. It
is also urged, in justification of lower wages
for women, that men have more responsibil-
ity than women for the support of others.
But it frequently happens that one woman,
an elder daughter perhaps, is the main stay
of a whole household. This, however, is
shifting the ground of a discrimination some-
times made, or maintained, for the basest of
reasons. It were more just, and better every
way, that the work actually done be paid for,
no matter who does it, man or woman. In
job-work physical inequality is of no account.
Moral equality suggests equality of wages.
This thing will have to be looked after by an
advancing civilization.

The introduction of machinery necessitates

SOCIALISM. 97

a new adjustment of wages. The man who
rides the mowing machine all day should get
more than the man who swings the scythe ;
and the weaver in a cotton mill should get
more than the weaver at a hand loom ;
partly, because labor is a unit as well as cap-
ital, partly, because some machinery must be
very skillfully, and all of it very carefully,
used, but partly also because so much more
grass is cut, and so much more cloth is made,
and the advantage of machinery should not
belong exclusively to capital.

Extra hard and hazardous labor calls for
extra pay. The miner should get more than
the wood-chopper, the engineer and fireman
more than the sailor, because the risk to
health and life is so much greater in the one
case than in the other.

The just and proper minimum of wages for
the humbler grades of labor, is another nice
and important question. Political economy
answers the question promptly enough. La-
bor, it is said, must be sold, as its products
are sold, for what it will fetch. The laborer
names his price, and the employer may give
5

98 CHRISTIAN

it or not, as he pleases. Or the employer
makes an offer, and the laborer accepts it or
not, as he pleases. It is contract, and noth-
ing more. Legally, the laborer can claim
only the enforcement of the contract, which
the employer also may claim. This all seems
fair enough. But from the Christian stand-
point, it may be anything but fair. I need
not sell to-day the corn, or the hay, I have
just harvested ; but with my labor to sell,
and nothing else, I must sell it to-day, or
starve, or beg,' or steal. And so capital has
me at a prodigious disadvantage, compelling
me to take less than I ask, less than I ought
to have. Capital has no need to confer with
capital, has no need to organize against la-
bor ; it is in itself already an organization
from the start. Once in a while, as in the
height of harvesting, with great crops and
few to gather them, or, in a sudden freshet,
with dams and embankments giving way, la-
bor can name its own terms. But ordinarily
the job will keep, and capital can wait till la-
bor is hungry enough to accept what is offer-
ed. That this great advantage of capital has

SOCIALISM. 99

been much abused, is beyond dispute. Labor
has been oppressed by capital, crowded down
towards the point of bare subsistence. Here
Christianity steps in as the champion of labor,
demanding that, in times of ordinary pros-
perity, workmen shall not, like oxen, get
barely enough to keep them in good working
condition. It is due the manhood of the
humblest workman, that, with good economic
and moral habits, he shall ordinarily have a
margin to live upon, lying down at night with
something in store for another day,

Christianity has a word also for the work-
man. Him, too, it admonishes to beware of
the greed of gain ; denounces violence and
exorbitant demands ; and lays it upon his
conscience, when wages are lowest, if pos-
sible, to spend less than he earns.

As between employers and employed, brain
and muscle, capital and labor, Political Econ-
omy sees only a selfish struggle, ending at
best in a selfish compromise. Christianity
proposes a hearty concord between the more
favored few and the less favored many, what-
ever may be the ratio between them, whether

100 CHRISTIAN

as one to two, or as one to four. The law is,
" Let each esteem other better than them-
selves. Look not every man on his own
things, but every man also on the things of
others." If this be impossible, then a per-
manent high civilization is impossible ; for
there can be no high civilization without free-
dom, and no freedom without the inequality
of condition which corresponds with the rec-
ognized inequality of endowment.

Unavoidable inequality of condition comes
also in part through sickness, accident, and
premature bereavement, which frequently re-
duce whole families to want. A riper Chris-
tian civilization may probably be relied upon
to lessen the absolute pauperism resulting
from such casualties, by stimulating men to
forethought and frugality. But this tax upon
Christian charity will never wholly cease.
And the entire problem of Christian charity
needs to be thoroughly overhauled. Hos-
pitals for poor sick people, it is now well
known, are not so exclusively Christian as
used to be supposed. Buddhists had them

SOCIALISM. IOI

some time before the Christian era. But the
way they multiplied during" the fourth century,
when Christianity began to be felt as a new
civilization, struck the heathen world with
amazement. The Grseco-Roman civilization
had produced nothing" of the kind ; indeed, it
had produced hardly a charitable institution
of any kind. Poor Laws existed in Athens,
but nowhere else in Greece, so far as we
know. The distribution of corn in Rome,
whether at half price, as by the law of the
elder Gracchus, or gratuitously, as afterwards
by the law of Clodius, was the work, not of
philanthropists, but mostly of demagogues.*
Christianity, beginning with the personal min-
istry of its Founder, has cared always for the
poor. But great mistakes have been made.
Impulse has had too much, and cool judgment
has had too little, to do in the matter. Our
Lord's economy is conspicuous in the great
miracles of feeding. The thousands were
marshalled with a sort of military precision,
and the fragments were carefully gathered up.

* XVoolsey's "Political Science," § 249.

102 CHRISTIAN

With His followers, the waste and loss have
been enormous, both in private and in public
charities ; so that one is tempted to think,
and to say, that the good done in relieving
want has been equalled, if not exceeded, by
the evil done in fostering and perpetuating
pauperism. The better the chanty, the worse
it has been abused, as, for example, in En-
gland. So now, after the experience of ages,
how to deal wisely with pauperism is one of
the most difficult questions in political science.
It will certainly never do for us to forget, that
what may be called the poverty of misfortune
is small in amount compared with what may
be called the poverty of fault. And certainly
there ought to be some way of making a dif-
ference between the two. Neither will it do
for us to forget, that there is a great risk in
charity, at the best. The risk is that of en-
feebling the will of the receiver. Absolute
gratuities are hazardous, much more so than
good people generally are aware of. Free beds
in hospitals must continue to be furnished, as
are free seats in churches, but low-priced beds,
and low-priced seats, are better still.

SOCIALISM. 103

Another cause of inequality of condition,
partly curable, is commercial fluctuation. Com-
mercial risks are greatest of all. Agriculture
has its own risks from drought, flood, frost,
noxious insects, and the like. Manufacturing
has its risks, mainly from the freaks of fashion.
The risks of commerce include all these, with
others of its own. But the periodicity of
commercial ups and downs, as of French
Revolutions, with their cycles of twenty
years, suggests the working of a law. It is
the fever-heat of excessive speculation, some-
times caused by, sometimes causing, excess-
ive production, which is followed by its ague
chill. Everybody is wise in the event, and
after it, for a while. But fever is in the air
again, and the wisest mistake it for summer
warmth ; or, if not deceived themselves, have
to suffer with others. One might expect
some good from the lessons of history by
and by, were not these lessons already so old
and familiar. There is light enough to sail
by, were it only at the right end of the ship ;
prow light, instead of stern light. The only
chance of good is in moderating the greed of

104 CHRISTIAN

gain. It is now a dreadful fever, holding its
own till the frost comes, the sharp frost of
adversity. Christianity undertakes to drive it
out of the blood. Covetousness is challenged
as idolatry, and the love of money is de-
nounced as the root of all evil. If now there
be anything in Christianity beyond its lessons,
if it be a power, as well as a protest, we may
hope for Christians enough by and by to
make the commerce of the world more sane
and sober.

But the chief cause of inequality of con-
dition, wholly curable, is immorality of some
sort, but especially in the use of intoxicating
drinks. Most of the pauperism which we are
taxed to support, and most of the crimes
which we are taxed either to prevent or to
punish, may be traced directly to this single
source. Legislation on the subject has been
stigmatized as sumptuary. It is no such
thing. It is not the cost of the indulgence
that is considered, nor the effect of it upon
the individual, but the effect of it upon his
family, who may be beggared by it, and

SOCIALISM. 105

thrown upon the public for support. The

• *

thing sought to be restrained, is the immoral-
ity of injuring others. One way of doing
this is by strict License Laws, rigidly en-
forced. The argument for such Laws is, that
they respect the liberty of the individual, and
leave room for moral suasion. The argument
against them is, that they license an immoral-
ity. Another way of doing the same thing
is by absolute prohibition. The argument
for this is, that it is self-consistent and effect-
ual. The argument against it is, that it in-
fringes upon the liberty of the individual,
attempts the impossible, and will only make
matters worse in the end. The argument
from experience in the case of the famous
Maine Law, is not considered altogether con-
clusive The great success of prohibitory
legislation in the State where it originated
twenty-seven years ago, is now generally ad-
mitted. Neither of the two great political
parties dares to disturb the Law. Crime has
sensibly diminished, and pauperism has been
almost annihilated. But Maine is a border
State, with a homogeneous population, most-

5*

106 CHRISTIAN

ly rural ; and success there, it may be said,
gives no assurance of success in States like
Massachusetts and New York, whose ex-
posure is greater, whose populations are
more mixed, and whose cities are larger and
more numerous. Either way, we have ascer-
tained to a certainty the origin of nearly all
our abject and stubborn pauperism, and
Christian philanthropy sees clearly just what
it is called upon to do.

There certainly remains no very consider-
able amount of social inequality fairly charge-
able upon the selfishness of capital. Much
that did exist has already yielded to the
equally selfish pressure of labor ; and more
of it will have to yield to the same pressure.
A wise Christian Socialism would rather see
the struggle ended quickly by the manly con-
cession to labor of all its rights.

In short, the social problem is complex.
Inequality of condition is only in part avoid-
able, only in part deplorable. So much of it
as corresponds with inequality of endowment,
is no more than graded wages for graded

SOCIALISM. ID/

work. So much of it as results from casual-
ties, is simply Providential. So much of it as
follows commercial fever, must be expected
as commercial chill. So much of it as has a
vicious parentage, must endure the righteous
retribution. And so much of it as Christian-
ity can not approve, Christianity should in-
telligently, promptly, and indignantly rebuke.
But there must be no wild dreams of an im-
possible abundance, gathered without care or
toil. For mankind at large the surplus must
always be small, and the margin narrow. To
the end of time, if men would get on pros-
perously, they must learn just these two les-
sons of intelligent industry and strict econ-
omy.

Secular Socialism, whether Communistic or
Anti-Communistic, mistakes the true relation
of social condition to character. It assumes
that equality of condition will ultimately bring
about equality of character ; and that the con-
dition being good, the character will also be
good. This is not according to human ex-
perience. Undoubtedly some poor men steal

108 CHRISTIAN

because they are poor, who would not steal
if they were not poor. But not all poor men
steal. And some of the worst stealing in
our day has been done by men who were far
enough from being poor. The fact is, char-
acter determines condition far more than con-
dition determines character. Aristotle saw
this very clearly. Arguing against Commun-
ism, he says the evils complained of arise,
none of them, from not having things in com-
mon, but from the moral badness of mankind.*
This precisely is the assumption of Christian-
ity. No religion was ever so intensely demo-
cratic. But it levels up. Nothing is ever
levelled down but pride, egotism, haughty
and hateful self-assertion. The incurable is
declared and accepted. The curable is brought
home to the consciousness, and to the con-
science, of the individual. We learn to say,
with Cassius :

" The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

The one persistent challenge of Christianity
is, " Make the tree good." No matter how

* " Politica," B. ii. 5.

SOCIALISM. 109

good the soil is : grapes will not come of
thorns, nor figs of thistles.

But it will not do to say, no matter how
bad the soil is. It does matter. Grapes may
be very sour, and figs may be very bad.
Good fruit requires good soil. In villages on
the Lebanon, Christian houses are known by
the glazed windows, which have taken the
place of wooden shutters, that men and wom-
en may read their Bibles through the winter
storms. It is a sure instinct which has thus
bettered the condition of poor peasants. The
same instinct demands a bettered condition
for others as well as for ourselves. And he
is a poor Christian who does not concern
himself about the condition of others.

It is a monstrous heresy to suppose and
say, that character being right, condition will
take care of itself. You might just as well
suppose and say, that religion being right,
morality will take care of itself. Martin Lu-
ther hurt Protestantism when he called the
Epistle of James " a veritable Straw-Epistle.'*
Morality must be preached, or immorality
will abound, in spite of justification by faith.

1 10 CHRISTIAN

So must condition be cared for, if Christianity
holds its own in these fast-coming days of
challenge and conflict.

That Christianity will hold its own, I do
not for a moment doubt. To be sure, it has
never perfectly realized its Divine ideal. But
always it has been the best thing in the world ;
and always it has conquered the world. In
the Ancient Age, it was ascetic against licen-
tiousness. In the Middle Age, it was auto-
cratic against violence. In the Modern Age,
it will be humane against selfishness.

Many there be who say that this our Chris-
tian civilization is mortal like every other,
from the Chaldsean down ; that this sacred
river, too, is on its way to the Bitter Sea ; is
already shooting the rapids ; Hermon, with
its transfiguring glory, far behind ; Galilee,
with its Cana and its beatitudes, behind; Sa-
maria behind, with its Joseph's tomb and its
Jacob's well; the Judsean hills that are round
about Jerusalem sinking one by one. Fear
not. Declension is not apostasy ; discipline
is not destruction. It is the bitterness of the
Sea, not the sweetness of the River, that is

SOCIALISM. 1 1 1

doomed. Consider the vision of the Prophet.
The little stream from under the threshold of
the Sanctuary, rising to the ankles, to the
knees, to the loins, becomes a river to swim
in, and the waters of the Sea are healed.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

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