The Common Sense of Socialism Part 5

Do you think a nation with such conditions existing at its very heart ought to be called a civilized nation? I don't. I say that it is a _brutalized_ nation, Jonathan!

And now I want you to look over a list of another kind of shameful social conditions--a list of some of the vast fortunes possessed by men who are not victims of poverty, but of shameful wealth. I take the list from the dryasdust pages of _The Congressional Record_, December 12, 1907, from a speech by the Hon. Jeff Davis, United States Senator from Arkansas. I cannot find in the pages of _The Congressional Record_ that it made any impression upon the minds of the honorable senators, but I hope it will make some impression upon your mind, my friend. It is a good deal easier to get a human idea into the head of an honest workingman than into the head of an honorable senator!

Don't be frightened by a few figures. Read them. They are full of human interest. I have put before you some facts relating to the shameful poverty of the workers and their pitiable condition, and now I want to put before you some facts relating to the pitiable condition of the non-workers. I want you to feel some pity for the millionaires!

THE RICHEST FIFTY-ONE IN THE UNITED STATES.

"When the average present-day millionaire is bluntly asked to name the value of his earthly possessions, he finds it difficult to answer the question correctly. It may be that he is not willing to take the questioner into his confidence. It is doubtful whether he really knows.

"If this is true of the millionaire himself, it follows that when others attempt the task of estimating the amount of his wealth the results must be conflicting. Still, excellent authorities are not lacking on this subject, and the list of the richest fifty-one persons in the United States has been satisfactorily compiled.

"The following list is taken from Munsey's Sc.r.a.p Book of June, 1906, and is a fair presentation of the property owned by fifty-one of the very richest men of the United States.

=====+=======================+================+================ Rank | Name. | How Made. | Total Fortune.

-----+-----------------------+----------------+---------------- 1 | John D. Rockefeller | Oil | $600,000,000 2 | Andrew Carnegie | Steel | 300,000,000 3 | W.W. Astor | Real Estate | 300,000,000 4 | J. Pierpont Morgan | Finance | 150,000,000 5 | William Rockefeller | Oil | 100,000,000 6 | H.H. Rogers | do | 100,000,000 7 | W.K. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 100,000,000 8 | Senator Clark | Copper | 100,000,000 9 | John Jacob Astor | Real Estate | 100,000,000 10 | Russell Sage | Finance | 80,000,000 11 | H.C. Frick, Jr. | Steel and c.o.ke | 80,000,000 12 | D.O. Mills | Banker | 75,000,000 13 | Marshall Field, Jr. | Inherited | 75,000,000 14 | Henry M. Flagler | Oil | 60,000,000 15 | J.J. Hill | Railroads | 60,000,000 16 | John D. Archbold | Oil | 50,000,000 17 | Oliver Payne | do | 50,000,000 18 | J.B. Haggin | Gold | 50,000,000 19 | Harry Field | Inherited | 50,000,000 20 | James Henry Smith | do | 40,000,000 21 | Henry Phipps | Steel | 40,000,000 22 | Alfred G. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 40,000,000 23 | H.O. Havemeyer | Sugar | 40,000,000 24 | Mrs. Hetty Green | Finance | 40,000,000 25 | Thomas F. Ryan | do | 40,000,000 26 | Mrs. W. Walker | Inherited | 35,000,000 27 | George Gould | Railroads | 35,000,000 28 | J. Ogden Armour | Meat | 30,000,000 29 | E.T. Gerry | Inherited | 30,000,000 30 | Robert W. Goelet | Real Estate | 30,000,000 31 | J.H. Flager | Finance | 30,000,000 32 | Claus Spreckels | Sugar | 30,000,000 33 | W.F. Havemeyer | do | 30,000,000 34 | Jacob H. Schiff | Banker | 25,000,000 35 | P.A.B. Widener | Street Cars | 25,000,000 36 | George F. Baker | Banker | 25,000,000 37 | August Belmont | Finance | 20,000,000 38 | James Stillman | Banker | 20,000,000 39 | John W. Gates | Finance | 20,000,000 40 | Norman B. Ream | do | 20,000,000 41 | Joseph Pulitzer | Journalist | 20,000,000 42 | James G. Bennett | Journalist | 20,000,000 43 | John G. Moore | Finance | 20,000,000 44 | D.G. Reid | Steel | 20,000,000 45 | Frederick Pabst | Brewer | 20,000,000 46 | William D. Sloane | Inherited | 20,000,000 47 | William B. Leeds | Railroads | 20,000,000 48 | James P. Duke | Tobacco | 20,000,000 49 | Anthony N. Brady | Finance | 20,000,000 50 | George W. Vanderbilt | Railroads | 20,000,000 51 | Fred W. Vanderbilt | do | 20,000,000 | | +---------------- | Total | | $3,295,000,000 -----+-----------------------+----------------+----------------

"It will thus be seen that fifty-one persons in the United States, with a population of nearly 90,000,000 people, own approximately one thirty-fifth of the entire wealth of the United States. The Statistical Abstract of the United States, 29th number, 1906, prepared under the direction of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor of the United States, gives the estimated true value of all property in the United States for that year at $107,104,211,917.

"Each of the favored fifty-one owns a wealth of somewhat more than $64,600,000, while each of the remaining 89,999,950 people get $1,100.

No one of these fifty-one owns less than $20,000,000, and no one on the average owns less than $64,600,000. Men owning from $1,000,000 to $20,000,000 are no longer called rich men. There are approximately 4,000 millionaires in the United States, but the aggregate of their holdings is difficult to obtain. If all their holdings be deducted from the total true value of all the property in the United States, the average share of each of the other 89,995,000 people would be less than $500.

"John Jacob Astor is reputed to have been the first American millionaire, although this is a matter impossible to decide. It is also claimed that Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, the great grandfather of Congressman Longworth, was the first man west of the Allegheny Mountains to ama.s.s a million. It is difficult to prove either one of these propositions, but they prove that the age of the millionaire in the United States is a comparatively recent thing. In 1870 to own a single million was to be a very rich man; in 1890 it required at least $10,000,000, while to-day a man with a single million or even ten millions is not in the swim. To be enumerated as one of the world's richest men you must own not less than $20,000,000."

I am perfectly serious when I suggest that the slaves of riches are just as much to be pitied as the slaves of poverty. No man need envy Mr. Rockefeller, for example, because he has something like six hundred millions of dollars, an annual income of about seventy-two millions. He does not own those millions, Jonathan, but they own him.

He is a slave to his possessions. If he owns a score of automobiles he can only use one at a time; if he spends millions in building palatial residences for himself he cannot get greater comfort than the man of modest fortune. He cannot buy health nor a single touch of love for money.

Many of our great modern princes of industry and commerce are good men. It is a wild mistake to imagine that they are all terrible ogres and monsters of iniquity. But they are victims of an unjust system.

Millions roll into their coffers while they sleep, and they are oppressed by the burden of responsibilities. If they give money away at a rate calculated to ease them of the burdens beneath which they stagger they can only do more harm than good. Mr. Carnegie gives public libraries with the lavishness with which travellers in Italy sometimes throw small copper coins to the beggars on the streets, but he is only pauperising cities wholesale and hindering the progress of real culture by taking away from civic life the spirit of self-reliance. If the people of a small town came together and said: "We ought to have a library in our town for our common advantage: let us unite and subscribe funds for a hundred books to begin with," that would be an expression of true culture.

But when a city accepts a library at Mr. Carnegie's hands, there is an inevitable loss of self-respect and independence. Mr. Carnegie's motives may be good and pure, but the harm done to the community is none the less great.

Mr. Rockefeller may give money to endow colleges and universities from the very highest motives, but he cannot prevent the endowments from influencing the teaching given in them, even if he should try to do so. Thus the gifts of our millionaires are an insidious poison flowing into the fountains of learning.

Mind you, this is not the claim of a prejudiced Socialist agitator.

President Hadley, of Yale University, is not a Socialist agitator, but he admits the truth of this claim. He says: "Modern University teaching costs more money per capita than it ever did before, because the public wishes a university to maintain places of scientific research, and scientific research is extremely expensive. _A university is more likely to obtain this money if it gives the property owners reason to believe that vested rights will not be interfered with._ If we recognize vested rights in order to secure the means of progress in physical science, is there not danger that we shall stifle the spirit of independence which is equally important as a means of progress in moral science?"

Professor Bascom is not a Socialist agitator, either, but he also recognizes the danger of corrupting our university teaching in this manner. After calling attention to the "wrongful and unflinching way"

in which the wealth of the Standard Oil magnate has been ama.s.sed, he asks: "Is a college at liberty to accept money gained in a manner so hostile to the public welfare? Is it at liberty, when the Government is being put to its wits' end to check this aggression, to rank itself with those who fight it?"

And the effect of riches upon the rich themselves is as bad as anything in modern life. While it is true that there are among the rich many very good citizens, it is also perfectly plain to any honest observer of conditions that great riches are producing moral havoc and disaster among the princes of wealth in this country. Mr. Carnegie has said that a man who dies rich dies disgraced, but there is even greater reason to believe that to be born rich is to be born d.a.m.ned.

The inheritance of vast fortunes is always demoralizing.

What must the mind and soul of a woman be like who takes her toy spaniel in state to the opera to hear Caruso sing, while, in the same city, there are babies dying for lack of food? What are we to think of the dog-dinners, the monkey-dinners and the other unspeakably foolish and unspeakably vile orgies constantly reported from Newport and other places where the drones of our social system disport themselves? What shall we say of the shocking state of affairs disclosed by the disgusting reports of our "Society Scandals," except that unearned riches corrode and destroy all human virtues?

The wise King, Solomon, knew what he was talking about when he cried out: "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Unnatural poverty is bad, blighting the soul of man; and unnatural riches are likewise bad, equally blighting the soul of man. Our social system is bad for both cla.s.ses, Jonathan, and a change to better and juster conditions, while it will be resisted by the rich, the drones, with all their might, will be for the common good of all. For it is well to remember that in trying to get rid of the rule of the drones, the working cla.s.s is not trying to become the ruling cla.s.s, to rule others as they have been ruled. We are aiming to do away with cla.s.ses altogether; to make a united and free social state.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Mark 14:7.

[4] Quar. Pub. American Statistical a.s.sociation, June 1907.

VI

THE ROOT OF THE EVIL

All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in all ages to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.--_Adam Smith._

Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding!

Know the rights and the rights are won.

Wrong shall die with the understanding, One truth clear, and the work is done.--_John Boyle O'Reilly._

The great ones of the world have taken this earth of ours to themselves; they live in the midst of splendour and superfluity. The smallest nook of the land is already a possession; none may touch it or meddle with it.--_Goethe._

I have by no means exhausted the evils of the system under which we live in the brief catalogue I have made for you, my friend. If it were necessary, I could compile an immense volume of authentic evidence to overwhelm you with a sense of the awful failure of our civilization to produce a free, united, healthy, happy and virtuous people, which I conceive to be the goal toward which all good and wise men should aspire. But it is dreary and unpleasant work recounting evil conditions; constantly looking at the sores of society is a morbid and soul-destroying task.

I want you now to consider the cause of industrial misery and social inequality, to ask yourself why these conditions exist. For we can never hope to remove the evils, Jonathan, until we have discovered the underlying causes. How does it happen that some people are thrifty and virtuous and yet miserably poor and that others are thriftless and sinful and yet so rich that their riches weigh them down and make them as miserable as the very poorest? Why, in the name of all that is fair and good, have we got such a stupid, wasteful, unjust and unlovely social system after all the long centuries of human experience and toil? When you can answer these questions, my friend, you will know whither to look for deliverance.

You said in your letter to me the other day, Jonathan, that you thought things were bad because of the wickedness of man's nature.

Lots of people believe that. The churches have taught that doctrine for ages, but I do not believe that it is true. It is a doctrine which earnest men who have been baffled in trying to find a satisfactory explanation for the evils have accepted in desperation. It is the doctrine of pessimism, despair and wild unfaith in man. If it were true that things were so bad as they are just because men were wicked and because there never were good men enough to make them better, we should not have any ground for hope for the future.

I propose to try and show you that the wickedness of our poor human nature is not responsible for the terrible social conditions, so that you will not have to depend for your hope of a better society upon the very slender thread of the chance of getting enough good men to make conditions better. Bad conditions make bad lives, Jonathan, and will continue to do so. Instead of depending upon getting good men first to make conditions good, we must make conditions good so that good lives may flourish and grow in them naturally.

You have read a little history, I daresay, and you know that there is no truth in the old cry that "As things are now things always have been and always will be." You know that things are always changing. If George Was.h.i.+ngton could come back to earth again he would be amazed at the changes which have taken place in the United States. Going further back, Christopher Columbus would not recognize the country he discovered. And if we could go back millions of years and bring to life one of our earliest ancestors, one of the primitive cave-dwellers, and set him down in one of our great cities, the mighty houses, streets railways, telephones, telegraphs, wireless telegraphy, electric vehicles on the streets and the s.h.i.+ps out on the river would terrify him far more than an angry tiger would. Can you think how astonished and alarmed such a primitive cave-man would be to be taken into one of your great Pittsburg mills or down into a coal mine?

No. The world has grown, Jonathan. Man has enlarged his kingdom, his power in the universe. Step by step in the evolution of the race, man has wrested from Nature her secrets. He has gone down into the deep caverns and found mineral treasuries there; he has made the angry waves of the ocean bear great, heavy burdens from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e for his benefit; he has harnessed the tides and the winds that blow and caught the lightning currents, making them all his servants. Between the _lowest_ man in the modern tenement and the cave-man there is a greater gulf than ever existed between the beast in the forest and the _highest_ man dwelling in a cave in that far-off period.

Things are not as they are to-day because a group of clever but desperately wicked men came together and invented a scheme of society in which the many must work for the few; in which some must have more than they can use, so that they rot of excess while others have too little and rot of hunger; in which little children must toil in factories so that big strong men may loaf in clubs and dens of vice; in which some women sell themselves body and soul for bread while other women spend the sustenance of thousands upon jewels for pet dogs. No. It was no such fiendish ingenuity which devised the capitalistic system and imposed it upon mankind. It has _grown_ up through the ages, Jonathan, and is still growing. We have grown from savagery and barbarism through various stages to our present commercial system, and the process of growth is still going on. I believe we are growing into Socialism.

There have been many forces urging mankind onward in this long evolution. Religion has played a part. Love of country has played a part. Climate and the nature of the soil have been factors. Man's ever growing curiosity, his desire to know more of the life around him, has had much to do with it. I have put the ideals of religion and patriotism first, Jonathan, because I wanted you to see that they were by no means overlooked or forgotten, but in truth they ought not to be placed first. It is the verdict of all who have made a study of social evolution that, while these factors have exerted an important influence, back of them have been the material economic conditions.

In philosophy this is the basis of a very profound theory upon which many learned volumes have been written. It is generally called "The Materialistic Conception of History," but sometimes it is called "Economic Determinism" or "The Economic Interpretation of History."

The first man to set forth the theory in a very clear and connected manner was Karl Marx, upon whose teachings the Socialists of the world have placed a great deal of reliance. I don't expect you to read all the heavy and learned books written upon this subject, for many of them require that a man must be specially trained in philosophy in order to understand them. For the present I shall be quite satisfied if you will read a ten-cent pamphlet called _The Communist Manifesto_, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and, along with that, the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of my book, _Socialism_, about a hundred pages altogether. These will give you a fairly clear notion of the matter. I shall not mention the hard, scientific name of this philosophy again. I don't like big words if little ones will serve.

If you enjoy reading a good story, a novel that is full of romance and adventure, I would advise you to read _Before Adam_, by Jack London, a Socialist writer. It is a novel, but it is also a work of science. He gives an account of the life of the first men and shows how their whole existence depended upon the crude weapons and tools, sticks picked up in the forests, which they used. They couldn't live differently than they did, because they had no other means of getting a living. How a people make their living determines how they live.

For many thousands of years, the scientists tell us, men lived in the world without owning any private property. That came into existence when men saw that one man could produce more out of the soil than he needed to eat himself. Then, when they went out to war with other tribes, the members of a tribe instead of trying to kill their enemies, made them captives and used them as slaves. They did not cease killing their foes from humane motives, because they had grown better men, but because it was more profitable.

From our point of view, slavery is a bad thing, but when it first came into existence it was a step upward and onward. If we take the history of slave societies and nations we shall soon find that their laws, their customs and their inst.i.tutions were based upon the mode of producing wealth through the labor of slaves. There were two cla.s.ses into which society was divided, a cla.s.s of masters and a cla.s.s of slaves.

When slavery broke down and gave way to feudalism there were new ways of producing wealth. The laws of feudal societies, their customs and inst.i.tutions, changed to meet the needs brought about through the new methods of making things. Under slavery, the slaves made wealth for their masters and were doled out food enough to keep them alive. The slave had no rights. Under feudalism, the serfs produced wealth for the lords parts of the time, working for themselves the rest of the time. They had some rights. The bounds of freedom were widened. Under neither of these systems was there a regular system of paying wages in money, such as we have to-day. The slave gave up all his product and took what the master was pleased to give him in the way of food, clothing and shelter. The serf divided his time between producing for the owner of the soil and producing for his family. The slave produced what his owner wanted; the serf produced what either he himself or his lord wanted.

There came a time, about three hundred years ago, when the feudal system broke down before the beginnings of capitalism, the system which we are living under to-day, and which we Socialists think is breaking down as all other social systems have broken down before it.