Twentieth Century Socialism Part 19

Socialism not only derives strength from each of these results, it unites the divergencies between economics and politics, and solves the conflict between science and religion. So that these four great departments of human thought, instead of being independent or actually in conflict with one another, find themselves in Socialism united in one great harmonious whole.

Just as Christianity derived its strength from the discontent of the oppressed, so Socialism has pushed its first roots in the misery of the proletariat. But we do not judge of a flower exclusively from its roots. So must we not judge Socialism exclusively from that part of it which at present flourishes in dark tenements and in the misery of the unemployed. It is our fault that the tenements are dark, that the unemployed suffer. It will be our fault if Socialism remains the Gospel of the Poor when we can make of it the final Gospel of the whole human race.

For humanity has nearly finished the first great phase of its existence; it has played the role of the worm long enough; already is it cribbed, cabined, and confined by silk threads of its own weaving that for a hundred years the coc.o.o.n has been acc.u.mulating about it, repressing here, regulating there, till it is stifling under limitations created by itself. But the very pressure of these limitations has been developing new functions in us--a conscience restive under false standards, a capacity for wider sympathies--the wings of the grub, destined to burst the chrysalis of worn-out prejudices, regulations, legislations, and despotisms; to spread out into new s.p.a.ces where there shall be development and happiness.

Whether these hopes are well founded or not is the subject of our inquiry, beginning first with Economics--the roots of our flower; proceeding then to Politics--its stem; next to Science--its structure, and lastly to Morality and Religion--its blossom and its fruit. And if I group Morality and Religion, it is because these have both from the beginning of years and not always hand in hand, been groping after the same thing--Happiness.

CHAPTER I

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF SOCIALISM

Let us begin by considering how large a part of our population is now devoting its entire time to the work of compet.i.tion, as distinguished from that which is devoting its time to the task of production.

It is obvious that all who are devoting their time to the work of compet.i.tion would, in a cooperative commonwealth, be free to give their entire time to production; and the time they gave to production would be so much taken away from the time which those now engaged in production have to give to it. For example, the United States to-day keeps alive, according to the census of 1900, over 76,000,000 men, women, and children; of these the working population is estimated at a little over 29,000,000, of which, however, many are not engaged in production or distribution; as for example, actors, clergymen, lawyers, soldiers; and although some others, such as journalists, physicians, and surgeons, are not occupied in production and distribution, they nevertheless are so necessary to every community that they may be regarded as a part of the working population. The percentage excluded, however, by excluding those not engaged in production and distribution, is so small that it is not worth while taking them into account; and for purposes of easy calculation we should, therefore, consider the whole population in round figures--75,000,000, of which 30,000,000 are engaged in production and distribution, the remaining 45,000,000 consisting of the aged, sick, women, and children who cannot work and in fact, all who by wealth or disability are deprived of the necessity of working. Now if, of the 30,000,000 who do the work of production, it is found that 15,000,000, or one-half, are engaged in work that results from the compet.i.tive character of our industrial system, it is clear that in a Socialist community in which there is no compet.i.tion, these 15,000,000 would be applied to the work of production; and therefore every man would have to work only one-half the number of hours he now works in order to keep the community alive.

Let us see if we can form any idea how many are engaged in the wasteful work of compet.i.tion, and how many, therefore, would in a Socialist society be set free to relieve the labor of those engaged in production.

It is conceded that of every one hundred men who start a new business ninety become insolvent. This means that for every ten fit and able to conduct a new business ninety engage in new business who are unable to earn their bread at it. In a cooperative commonwealth the exact number of men necessary to conduct business in any given place could be mathematically determined; and the ninety unsuccessful men who are now engaged in futile efforts to destroy the business of the ten successful men would be employed in production to their own advantage and to the relief of those already engaged therein.

The wastefulness, however, of the present plan is not confined to the circ.u.mstance that many are engaged in attempting to do what can better be done by a few, but is increased by the fact that in the conflict between the successful and the unsuccessful a vast horde of men are employed by compet.i.tion, who would be thrown out of employment and therefore be serviceable for production in case compet.i.tion were avoided. Amongst the men so employed are commercial travellers; these men occasion waste to the community, not only because instead of themselves producing they are living on the production of others, but because they const.i.tute a large part of the pa.s.senger traffic of the country. The railroads are put to the expense of carrying these travellers all over the United States that they may each have an opportunity in every corner of the United States of decrying the goods of one another. And this throws a side light on the evils of our present plan, for the railroads have an interest in encouraging this work. If they did not have this horde of commercial travellers to carry about the country, many of them might not be able to pay interest on their bonds. The testimony taken by the Industrial Commission furnishes admirable instances of the waste attending compet.i.tive production and the corresponding economy that would attend a Socialist system. Mr. Edson Bradley, President of the American Spirits Manufacturing Company, testifies that in the whisky business "somewhere between the distiller and the consumer in this country, $40,000,000 is lost. This goes primarily to the attempt to secure trade."[133] Now the whole capital invested in liquors and beverages is, according to the last census, $660,000,000, whereas the total manufactures amount to about $12,686,000,000. It will be seen, therefore, that the capital invested in liquors and beverages is about one-twentieth of that invested in other manufactures. If, therefore, $40,000,000 are lost in getting the trade in the liquor business, it may be inferred that twenty times this amount--that is to say, $800,000,000--are lost in getting the trade by all the manufactures in the country. This represents only the expense of advertising in manufactures; it does not cover the advertising done by the whole retail trade, the department stores, insurance companies--life insurance, fire insurance, t.i.tle insurance--real estate agents, quack medicines, and that vast body of population known as middlemen, who raise the price of commodities to the consumer and whose services would be eliminated in a cooperative commonwealth.

This latter cla.s.s of advertising is very much larger than that of the manufacturer, because it is the peculiar function of the retailer to sell--to get the market--and the burden of advertising falls heavier upon him. If $800,000,000 therefore represents the cost to the manufacturer of getting the market, it is probable that the total cost of getting the market by the whole community does not fall short of twice this sum.

The advertiser practically pays the whole cost of printing and publis.h.i.+ng the innumerable newspapers and magazines of this country.

The one cent paid for such a paper as the _American_ does not cover the cost of the paper alone; it is the advertis.e.m.e.nts that pay handsomely for all the rest.

Advertising would be unnecessary in a cooperative system, where practically everything would be furnished by a single industry. As the Reverend E. Ellis Carr says,[134] the United States Government does not find it necessary to advertise postage stamps. The Standard Oil no longer advertises oil. Those of us who are old enough remember how, prior to the organization of the oil trust, our fences were placarded by the rival claims of a dozen different oils: Pratt's Astral oil, etc., in letters of huge and ungainly size.

The only advertising necessary would be that of private enterprises started in such industries as did not give satisfaction to the public, and these, it is to be hoped, would be relatively small.

Mr. Dowe, President of the Commercial Travellers' National League, testified[135] that "35,000 salesmen had been thrown out of employment by the organization of trusts and 25,000 reduced to two-thirds of their previous salaries.... The Baking Powder Trust has replaced men at $4000 to $5000 a year by others at $18 a week.... The displacement of travelling men represents also large loss to railways, amounting, on the estimate that each traveller spends $2.50 a day for 240 days, to $27,000,000, while the loss to hotels would be at least as much as to railways." Adding up these losses, we reach the following result:

35,000 salesmen at an average compensation (including commissions) of $3000 each a year $105,000,000 Loss in railroad travelling 27,000,000 Loss in hotel expenses 27,000,000 ------------ Together $159,000,000

In the few industries, therefore, in which compet.i.tion has been diminished by the trust system, an economy of $159,000,000 was estimated to have been already effected in the employment of salesmen alone. And this was ten years ago. These figures enable us to appreciate the enormous economy that would result from an elimination of compet.i.tion from our industries. An economy that const.i.tutes a loss to commercial travellers, railroads, and hotels under the compet.i.tive system would const.i.tute a pure gain to a Socialist community; for it would mean so much more labor for production. Our present system then encourages useless expenditure, whereas Socialism would eliminate it.

Another important economy would be made in the running of public enterprises, through the absence of the necessity of collecting revenue therefrom. In munic.i.p.al tramways, for example, one-half the force could be dispensed with, for the functions of the conductor are practically confined to collecting fares. A similar economy would be practised on railroads; in telegrams; no stamps would be required for postage; no costly corps of clerks for bookkeeping.

Under our system gas is furnished to our cities by gas companies, each one of which tears up the streets at great detriment to public convenience and health, to lay its mains for the mere purpose of competing with existing companies, with the result of forcing a consolidation which tends to make gas dearer instead of cheaper to the consumer. Professor Ely estimates[136] that the consolidation of gas companies in Baltimore has cost eighteen millions, of which ten millions represent pure loss.

Much the same thing is true of railroads. Professor Ely quotes a railroad manager who states that if the railways of the United States were managed as a unit instead of by competing companies, such management would effect an economy of two hundred million dollars a year; he cites, as an instance of useless paralleling of roads, the numerous railroads which connect New York with Chicago. He estimates that these lines cost two hundred million dollars, and that the maintenance of the useless lines involves perpetual loss. To-day, when railroads have doubled in length and traffic, the possible economy may well be estimated at twice this amount. He is obliged, however, to admit that the paralleling of railroads results in considerable accommodation, when parallel lines pa.s.s through different places and occasion some advantage in the time-table. With many lines in the United States this, however, is not the case. The Colorado Midland parallels the Denver and Rio Grande, pa.s.sing through virtually the same places, and as both are subjected to the necessity of connecting and forwarding pa.s.sengers to lines at their extremities, both are obliged to run trains at the same hours. There is in this case no advantage either to the time-table or to new places.

Nor does the compet.i.tion of parallel roads always furnish better accommodation to the public. Between Chicago and Denver one line is able easily to run trains from place to place in twenty-four hours; but for the purpose of avoiding a freight war with competing lines, it has entered into an arrangement with them under which it agrees not to run pa.s.senger trains in less than thirty-six hours. The public, therefore, instead of gaining, loses an advantage of twelve hours, thereby learning at no small inconvenience that compet.i.tion does not always compete.

What is true of the railroads and gas companies is also true of telegraph business. The Western Union was capitalized at one hundred million dollars. It is estimated that the cost of laying the lines actually used by the Western Union was not more than twenty millions; eighty million dollars, therefore, have been wasted by the existing system, which encourages private companies to construct lines with the result of compelling other companies to buy them up. Professor Ely adds that "it cost England nearly as much to make the telegraph a part of the postoffice as it did all the other countries of Europe put together, because in these the telegraph has been from the beginning a part of the postoffice, and the wastes of compet.i.tion had been avoided."[137]

Another most wasteful feature attending our present system is the expense of distributing goods; for example, the articles which enter most into our daily life, milk, bread, b.u.t.ter, eggs, meat, fish, and vegetables. Compare the method of distributing these things with that for distributing letters adopted by the postoffice. The fact that the government is the only instrumentality through which letters are distributed permits it to effect economy in time, labor, and expense by sorting the letters beforehand according to streets and confining the distribution in any one street to a single carrier, who distributes the letters door by door.

This is the economical system for distributing all things in regular use that would be adopted by the Socialist plan. Compare this now with the plan necessitated by the compet.i.tive system. Every block is served with milk by a number of milk dealers instead of by one;[138] every block is furnished with bread by a very large number of dealers instead of by one; every block is furnished with meat by a very large number of dealers instead of by one; and so on through every article which enters into our daily use.

Not only is there great waste of labor in the business of producing and distributing the necessaries of life under the compet.i.tive system, but the system itself creates a large cla.s.s of business that absorbs much of the wealth of the community and employs a very large number of its members. For example, under a socialist system there would no longer be any necessity or advantage in insurance, whether against death or fire, or accident, or hail, or defective t.i.tle, or any other danger. The reason of this is obvious: we insure against pecuniary loss arising out of these accidents because otherwise the whole loss will fall upon ourselves. In a Socialist society some of occasions for loss would not exist at all, and those that did exist would fall upon the entire people and would consequently be inappreciable by any one member of it. For example, a man insures his life so that his children will not be reduced to poverty by his death; but in the Socialist society the widow and the child are provided for, being all of them members and all sharers in its income. Death in such a case would practically not const.i.tute a loss to the state financially, because the number of deaths of the very old and the very young--the unproductive members of the community--is far greater than that of its productive members.

Insurance companies are beginning to understand the importance of keeping their policy holders in good health. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company is to-day maintaining nurses for this purpose.

Another business that would be eliminated in a Socialist state is the entire business done by brokers; not only Wall Street brokers, but real estate brokers, mining brokers, and brokers of every description, in so far as they are engaged in compet.i.tion. The abolition of Wall Street would carry with it the abolition of gambling in stocks which is a necessary feature thereof. No law has yet been devised, though the attempt has often been made, that would, so long as the compet.i.tive system endures, put a stop to gambling in stocks. A law which would successfully stop gambling in stocks would stop legitimate dealing in stocks also. But the immoral element involved in "puts" and "calls" is only an exaggeration of the immoral element involved in all industrial transactions built upon the principle of private profit.

For although business can be conducted in such a way as only to furnish to those engaged in it a fair remuneration, it perpetually furnishes a temptation to contrive so that it shall furnish a large rather than a fair return. In fact, the whole struggle of business consists in endeavoring to secure the largest return of profit for the least expenditure of labor. The man who succeeds in getting the largest return for the least expenditure is the successful business man; and no man does this with more security than the next cla.s.s to which attention may be called, whose occupation would come to an end in the Socialist state; namely, the bankers.

It would take too long to enter here into an accurate and fair estimate of the service rendered by the banker and the reward he obtains for it. Most writers who favor Socialism undervalue the functions of the banker. They are so impressed by the enormous incomes which bankers make that they do not appreciate the great services they render; and although, in a Socialist state, the banker _qua_ banker would tend to disappear, the man who to-day does the work of a banker would, it is hoped, do the same work for the state. So that although the business of banking would disappear, the best form of government would be that in which individuals who have been discovered to be best fitted for the onerous and difficult duties of finance would be those to whom these duties would be intrusted. Whether the man best fitted to do this difficult work would be intrusted with it under the Socialist plan is a doubt raised as an objection to Socialism which will be considered later.[139]

Another large cla.s.s of intelligent men, now engaged in carrying on the quarrels which result from the compet.i.tive system, would be left without an occupation under the Socialist plan; namely, the lawyers.

With them, the hatred and vindictiveness which arise from litigation would in a Socialist society, in great part, disappear also. For lawyers const.i.tute the cla.s.s whose business it is to conduct these quarrels, and, alas! also to inflame them. When we consider that in New York city alone there are nearly ten thousand practising lawyers, and add to these the clerks, stenographers, bookkeepers, and office-boys employed by each of them, those employed in the courts, the sheriff's office, the county clerk's office, marshals, deputy sheriffs, and others; and take into account that most of these men are engaged in fighting, we cannot but be struck by the enormous advantage to the community of a system which would practically eliminate this cla.s.s altogether.

I must not be understood to mean, however, that there would be no necessity for courts under the Socialist plan. Even though crimes against property were eliminated by Socialism, there would still be a temptation to commit crime, owing to s.e.xual jealousy and in a certain degree to intemperance and idleness. It cannot be doubted that intemperance and idleness would tend to diminish with the disappearance of the misery that reduces men to the physical condition that engenders these vices, but there would still, doubtless, be some intemperance and some idleness; there would certainly remain unhappy marriages; and as every man is to remain possessed of a small amount of property there would be minute questions of property sometimes involved. But it is hardly conceivable that such questions could involve any system of justice more elaborate than that of the justice of the peace, and possibly a single court of appeal. The diminution of compet.i.tion would so simplify the law that no question would be likely to arise that the parties to the litigation could not themselves explain. How little litigation would be likely under a Socialist _regime_ may be judged by comparing the litigation to which the administration of the postoffice gives rise with the interminable lawsuits which result from the administration of railroads.[140]

Moreover, it is to be hoped that a Socialist community would at last have leisure to study criminology and to understand that the criminal has to be treated as a sick man rather than a wicked one. The whole system of criminal procedure would be changed, and the type now known as the criminal lawyer would disappear. The existing system, under which every prosecuting officer considers his reputation involved in securing the punishment of every accused person brought before the court,[141] necessarily gives rise to a corresponding cla.s.s of lawyer who regards his reputation as well as his fee involved in opposing the efforts of the prosecuting officer by any means, however unjustifiable. Of course, to the extent to which the compet.i.tive system was left standing, there would have to be lawyers to protect compet.i.tive interests. But these lawyers would be supported by the compet.i.tive system.

If, now, we consider that the large number of men liberated by the subst.i.tution of Socialism for our present form of government would not only diminish the labor of those now engaged in production, but that it const.i.tutes the part of our population engaged in fanning the flame of hatred in the minds of men, the advantage to a community of having this perpetual source of trouble removed will be obvious. But we are not concerned so much now with the reduction of hatred under the Socialist plan as with its economy.

Let us next pa.s.s to the consideration of the wastefulness involved in the field of production itself:

In 1894 horses in the West became so valueless that they were left unbranded by their owners, lest the branding of them involve the payment of taxes thereupon. Cattle, on the other hand, have of late risen in value; the price of them fell so low some time ago as to involve the ruin of all those largely engaged in raising them; but to-day everyone is rus.h.i.+ng back into this business. This state of things furnishes a fair opportunity of judging how imperfectly informed the producer is as to the needs of the community. _He is only informed that the community is overstocked with an article by being ruined in the course of producing it._ This plan is not only productive of misery to a large number of individuals in every community, but is necessarily an extremely wasteful one. The object of every community ought to be to produce the things it needs, not the things it does not need. The present system, on the contrary, obliges the community to be continually producing the things it does not need as the only means by which it can arrive at a knowledge of what it does need.

For under the existing system, overproduction occasions a surplusage of things in themselves valuable, but the exchange value of which has been diminished by their abundance. And the producer cannot afford to keep this surplusage, because he has fixed charges to pay. He has to sell his crop at a loss because he must have money to pay rent, or interest on mortgage, or salaries, or for his own support during the year. It is this pressure he is under to sell which impoverishes him.

And its consequences are far-reaching; for as the price of raw cotton goes down, cotton manufacturers are encouraged to buy, and to increase the output of their factories; and so overproduction of raw material tends to result in overproduction of manufactured goods.

In a Socialist society the industry or good harvest of one year would have for effect a diminution of labor the next; or greater comfort or luxury next year for the same labor; no man's labor would be lost, and the bountifulness of Nature would be a blessing and not, as now, a misfortune.

The efforts to prevent the overproduction of cotton in the South gave rise to a convention in 1892, regarding which Professor Ely quotes a telegram from Memphis, January 8, as follows:

"That the farmers of the South are in earnest in their endeavors to solve the serious problems of overproduction of cotton is evinced by the enthusiastic meeting of delegates to the convention of the Mississippi Valley Cotton Growers' a.s.sociation, which was called to order in this city this morning."[142]

And again the speech of the President of the Boston Chamber of Commerce:

"In 1890 we harvested a cotton crop of over eight million bales--several hundred thousand bales more than the world could consume. Had the crops of the present year been equally large, it would have been an appalling calamity to the section of our country that devotes so large a portion of its labor and capital to the raising of cotton."[143]

Nothing could better ill.u.s.trate the evil of our present system and the benefits of Socialism than such a state of things as is described in the speech already quoted from the President of the Boston Chamber of Commerce.[144] If in a Socialist Society more bales of cotton were produced in any given year than the community or the world could consume, the community would store away the unused cotton and modify its agriculture in a manner to bring the cotton crop into proper relation to existing needs. But such an event could not be an "appalling calamity"; it could not be anything but a benefit; so much more wealth for the community; so much less labor for its citizens.

And what is true of the cotton crop is equally true of all other crops. Overproduction is impossible in a cooperative community, for all the overproduction of one year would mean less work in that particular kind of production the next. Every citizen in the community would profit by so-called overproduction instead of, as now, suffering from it.

Overproduction is closely allied to invention, which, as is well known, has been a source of despair to workingmen; for improvements in machinery almost always throw large numbers of them out of employment.

In India, as has been described, the destruction of hand-loom weavers by machinery brought about a misery hardly paralleled in the history of war; "the bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching on the plains of India." Yet invention, far from bringing distress to the workingmen, as under our system it must, would in a cooperative commonwealth prove an unqualified advantage. For every invention that increases the efficiency of human labor diminishes the amount of time that must be spent in labor to obtain the same result. In a cooperative state the saving of labor is a benefit to every individual in the community, whereas under the compet.i.tive system the saving of labor is of immediate benefit to the owner of the patent alone, and means immediate distress to the laborers it particularly affects.

A standard objection to Socialism is that it would remove all stimulus to invention. This I believe to be a profound mistake.

In the first place, inventors are not always urged to invention by the prospect of financial reward. The great discoveries of humanity, at the basis of all our practical advances, were made by men who neither sought nor obtained a reward therefor. It was not with the view of making money that Newton discovered and propounded the laws of gravity, or Ohm the laws of electrical resistance. Nor do inventors to-day reap the reward of their inventions. Capitalists often have an interest in suppressing inventions; for inventions generally involve the expensive transformation of existing plants. For example, Mr.

Babbage[145] describes how a patent for welding gun-barrels by machinery had long been unused because of the cheapness of hand labor; but as soon as a strike forced up wages recourse was had to the patent, which until then had been neglected.