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 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 BY 
 
 Annie Besant. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FRKETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1886. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE BESANT. 
 
 LONDON 
 FKEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 1886.
 
 LONDON 
 
 FEINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHAELES BEADLAT7GH, 
 C3, FLEET STEEET, E.C.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 GREAT changes are long in the preparing, and every 
 thought that meets ultimately with wide acceptance is 
 lying inarticulate in many minds ere it is syllabled out by 
 some articulate one, and stands forth a spoken Word. The 
 Zeitgeist has its mouth in those of its children who have 
 brain to understand, voice to proclaim, courage to stand 
 alone. Some new Truth then peals out, sonorous and far- 
 sounding as the roll of the thunder, melodious to the ears 
 attuned to the deep grand harmonies of Nature, but terrible 
 to those accustomed only to the subdued lispings of artificial 
 triflers, and the murmurs which float amid the hangings of 
 courtly halls. 
 
 When such an event occurs a few hearken, study, and 
 then rejoicingly accept the new Truth ; these are its 
 pioneers, its apostles, who go out to proclaim it to the as 
 yet unbelieving world. They meet with ridicule, then with 
 persecution; for ever the new Truth undermines some 
 hoary Lie, which has its band of devoted adherents living 
 on the spoils of its reign. Slowly, against custom and 
 tradition, against selfishness and violence, even against 
 indifference, deadliest foe of all, this band of devoted 
 teachers makes its onward way. And the band grows and 
 grows, and each convert becomes in his turn a pioneer; 
 until at last the victory is won, and the minority has 
 become the majority ; and then the time comes for some 
 new Truth once more, and the old struggle is gone over 
 afresh, and so again and again ; and thus the race makes 
 progress, and humanity climbs ever upward towards the 
 perfect life. 
 
 During the last century and a quarter the social problem 
 has been pressing for solution on all who have brains to
 
 4 MODERX SOCIALISM. 
 
 think and hearts to feel. The coexistence of wealth and 
 penury, of idle prodigality and laborious stint ; the terrible 
 fact that " progress and poverty " seem to march hand-in- 
 hand ; the growing slums in large towns ; the huge for- 
 tunes and the starving poor; these things make content 
 impossible, and force into prominence the question: "Must 
 this state of things continue ? Is there no possible change 
 which will cure, not only palliate, the present evils ? 
 
 Great hopes have sprung into being from time to time, 
 each in turn to be blighted. Machinery was to double 
 production and diminish toil, to spread comfort and suffi- 
 ciency everywhere. It made cotton-lords and merchant- 
 princes with one hand, and with the other created a prole- 
 tariat unlike aught the world had seen, poor in the midst 
 of the wealth it created, miserable in the midst of luxury, 
 ignorant in the midst of knowledge, savage in the midst 
 of civilisation. When the repeal of the Corn Laws was 
 striven for and accomplished, once more hope rose high. 
 Cheap food was to put an end to starvation. Alas ! in 
 the streets of the wealthiest city in Christendom, men and 
 women perish for lack of a loaf of bread. 
 
 Nor is this persistence of misery and of squalor the only 
 sign which troubles the brain and the heart of the student 
 of the social problem. He notes the recurring crises in 
 industry, the inflations and depressions of trade. At one 
 time all is prosperous ; demand is brisk, and supply can 
 scarce keep pace with it ; wages rise, full time is worked, 
 production is enormously increased. Then a change creeps- 
 over all ; supply has overtaken, has surpassed demand ; 
 the market is glutted ; the warehouses are filled with 
 unsaleable goods ; short time begins ; wages fall ; mills are 
 closed ; furnaces are damped out ; many workers are dis- 
 charged. Then the unemployed in the large towns increase 
 in number ; the poor-rate rises ; distress spreads upwards. 
 After a while the depression passes ; trade improves ; and 
 the whole weary circle is trodden once more. Nor is this 
 all ; although there has been " over-production " there is 
 want of the necessaries of life; there are unsaleable clothing 
 goods in the warehouses, and half-naked people shivering 
 outside ; too many blankets, and children crying them- 
 selves to sleep for cold. This monstrous absurdity, of com- 
 modities a drug in the market, and human beings perishing 
 for want of those very commodities, stares us ever in the
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 6 
 
 face. Cannot human brain discover some means to put an 
 end to this state of things, a state which would be ludicrous 
 were it not for the horrible suffering involved in it '? Some 
 say, this must always be so ; that the poor shall be for 
 ever with us ; that commercial crises are inevitable ; that 
 these evils are not susceptible of complete cure. If this 
 indeed be true, then I know not that any better advice can 
 be given to humanity than that given to Job by his wife, 
 to " curse God and die ". But I think not so meanly of 
 human intelligence ; I believe not that our present indus- 
 trial system, little more than a century old, must needs be 
 eternal ; I believe that the present system, devised by man 
 and founded in greed of gain, may by man be changed ; 
 and that man's growing power over external nature may 
 be used to bring comfort and wealth to each, and not, as 
 now, to enrich the few at the cost of the enslavement of 
 the many. 
 
 Various attempts to bring about a better social state 
 have been made by earnest and noble-hearted men during 
 the last hundred years. I leave aside such systems as 
 those of the Moravians, because they cannot be regarded 
 as in any sense schemes for the reconstruction of society. 
 They, like the monastic communities, were merely attempts 
 to create oases, fenced in from the world's evils, where 
 men might prepare for a future life. The efforts I allude 
 to are those classed as "Socialistic"; they were really 
 crude forms of Communism. With these the name of 
 Robert Owen will be for ever associated. 
 
 Owen's first experiment was made at New Lanark, in 
 connexion with the cotton-mills established there by Mr. 
 Dale, his father-in-law. He became the manager of these 
 in 1797, and set himself to work to improve the condition 
 of the operatives and their families. The success which 
 attended his efforts, the changes wrought by education 
 and by fair dealings, encouraged him to plan out a wider 
 scheme of social amelioration. In 1817 he was asked to 
 report on the causes of poverty to the Committee on the 
 Poor Laws, and in this report he dwelt on the serious in- 
 crease of pauperism which had followed the introduction 
 of machinery, and urged that employment ought to be 
 found for those who were in need of it. He " recommended 
 that every union or county should provide a farm for the 
 employment of their poor; when circumstances admitted
 
 6 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 of it, there should be a manufactory in connexion with it " 
 ("Kobert Owen," by A. J. Booth, p. 70). On the farm, 
 buildings were to be built for housing the laborers, con- 
 sisting of "a square, divided into two parallelograms by 
 the erection of public buildings in the centre " ; these would 
 consist of "a kitchen, mess-room, school-rooms, library 
 and lecture-hall. The poor would enjoy every advantage 
 that economy could suggest: the same roof would cover 
 many dwellings : the same stove might warm every room : 
 the food would be cooked at the same time, and on the 
 same fire : the meals would be eaten from the same table, 
 in the society of friends and fellow- workers. Sympathies 
 now restricted to the family would be thus extended to- 
 a community : the union would be still further cemented 
 by an equal participation in the profits, an equal share in 
 
 the toil Competition is the cause of many vices ; 
 
 association will be their corrective" (Ibid, pp. 70-72). 
 Soon after this report, Mr. Owen published a letter, urging 
 the reconstitution of "the whole of society on a similar 
 basis"; the lowest class was to consist of paupers, to be 
 drafted into the proposed establishments ; the second of 
 the "working-class"; the third of laborers, artisans, and 
 tradesmen, with property of from 100 to 2,000; the- 
 fourth of persons unable or unwilling to work, owning 
 from 1,000 to 20,000 ; these were to employ the second 
 class. The workman was to be supported by this class in 
 comfort for seven years in exchange for his labor, and then 
 was to be presented by it with 100, so that he might 
 enter class three ; if he remained as a worker for five years 
 more he was to have 200. 
 
 A community of workers, as recommended by Owen, was 
 started in 1825, under the management of Abraham 
 Combe, at Orbiston, nine miles east of Glasgow, and it 
 began well; but Combe died in 1827, and with his death 
 the whole thing went to pieces. A few months before the 
 settlement at Orbiston, Eobert Owen sailed for America, 
 and he purchased a property named Harmony, consisting 
 of 30,000 acres in Indiana, from the Eappites, a religious 
 communistic body. He advertised for inhabitants, and 
 gathered together a mixed crowd; "there were some 
 enthusiasts who had come, at great personal sacrifice, to 
 face a rude life and to mix among rude men, who had no 
 object but to work out the great problem of a New Society ;.
 
 MODERN" SOCIALISM. 7 
 
 there were others who fancied they could secure abundance 
 with little labor, prepared to shirk their share in the toil, 
 but not to forego their share in the reward " (Ibid, p. 106). 
 In the following year, 1826, "New Harmony " inaugurated 
 a system of complete Communism, much against Owen's 
 judgment ; a number of small independent communities 
 were soon formed, eight of these having already broken 
 off from New Harmony early in 1827, the difficulties 
 attendant on widely extended common life being found 
 insuperable. In 1828, Eobert Owen was forced to confess 
 that his efforts had failed, and that ' ' families trained in 
 the individual system " could not suddenly be plunged into 
 piire Communism with success. It boots not to dwell here 
 on his further efforts in England. Eobert Owen's experi- 
 ments failed, but out of his teaching arose the co-operative 
 movement, and the impulse to seek some rational system 
 of society has, since his time, never quite died out in 
 England. 
 
 In America a large number of communities have been 
 established, mostly religious in character. Erom the 
 careful account given of them by Charles Nordhoff, the 
 following brief details are taken (all numbers relate to 
 1874). The Amana community consists of 1,450 members; 
 they have a property of 25,000 acres, and live in seven 
 small towns; they are Germans, very pious and very 
 prosperous ; their head is a woman, who is directly inspired 
 by God. The Harmony Society, Economy, near Pittsburg, 
 consists of followers of Eapp, who founded the society in 
 1805. They are all Germans and number 110, in addition 
 to about 100 hired laborers and some sixty children. They 
 live in comfort, and have clearly done well unto them- 
 unto themselves, owning now a very large amount of pro- 
 perty. The Separatists of Zoar, Ohio, are, once more, 
 Germans: they started in 1817, have now about 300 
 members, own 7,000 acres of land, and are prosperous 
 exceedingly. The Shakers, established in 1792, are scat- 
 tered over several States, number about 2,415, own about 
 100.000 acres of land, are divided into fifty-eight commu- 
 nities, and are wealthy and prosperous ; the members are 
 American and English. The Perfectionists of Oneida and 
 Wallingford are American, and the first attempt by them 
 at communal living took place in 1846. They number 521, 
 and own 894 acres of land. They also are prosperous.
 
 8 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 The Aurora and Bethel Communes, in Oregon, are German, 
 or " Pennsylvania Dutch "; they started in 1844, and now 
 number some GOO persons : their property extends to 
 23,000 acres, and they live in much comfort. The Icarians, 
 founded by Etienne Cabet in 1848, are nearly all French; 
 they have hitherto been less fortunate than the preceding 
 societies, in consequence of mismanagement at the start ; 
 a heavy debt was incurred early in the movement, and 
 members fell off ; but a few resolute men and women 
 settled down steadily in Iowa, with 4,000 acres of land, 
 and 20,000 dollars of debt; they had to give up the land 
 to their creditors, but managed to redeem nearly half of it, 
 and they are now 65 in number, own 1,936 acres, 
 have no debts, and have acquired a large live stock. They 
 still live very plainly, but are on their way to prosperity, 
 having conquered all the difficulties amid which they 
 started ; their constitution is perfectly democratic and they 
 are without religion. A Swedish community at Bishop 
 Hill, Illinois, was formed by a pietist sect which emi- 
 grated to America to escape persecution in 1846-1848. 
 They were terribly poor at first and lived in holes in the 
 ground, with a tent for a church, but gradually acquired 
 property; until in 1859 they owned 10,000 acres of land, 
 worth 300,000 dollars, and some magnificent live stock. 
 Unfortunately their piety led to such extreme dullness that 
 the younger members of the society revolted: debt was 
 incurred, individuality was advocated, the property was 
 divided, and the community ceased to exist. Lastly, there 
 are two small communities, founded in 1871 and 1874 ; the 
 former, the Progressive Community, at Cedar Vale, consists 
 partly of Eussians ; it possesses 320 acres of good land, 
 and has only eight members, of whom one is a child. The 
 second, the Social Freedom Community, consists of three 
 adults and three lads, Americans, and has a farm of 333 
 acres. 
 
 The whole of these societies can only be regarded as in 
 the nature of experiments, and as such they are extremely 
 interesting; each community has succeeded in gaining 
 comfort and independence, but these small bodies, living 
 chiefly by agriculture in a thinly-populated country on 
 virgin soil, while they show the advantages of associated 
 labor, really offer no data for the solution of the problems 
 which beset a complex society. They are a return to more
 
 SOCIALISM. 
 
 9 
 
 primitive forms of living, not an onward social evolution, 
 and they are only possible in a " new country ". Further, 
 while they are communistic so far as their own members 
 are concerned, they are individualistic and competitive in 
 their aspect to the outer world ; each small group holds its 
 own property, and transacts all its business on the old lines 
 in its dealings with the rest of the nation. This is, of 
 course, inevitable, since each is encircled by competition ; 
 but it must not be overlooked that all these organisations, 
 like co-operative societies at home, are nothing more than 
 enlarged families, and are essentially individualistic ; win- 
 ning sufficiency for their own narrow, isolated circles, but 
 leaving untouched the question of national poverty. They 
 are arks, rescuing their inmates from the deluge, but they 
 do nothing to drain away the seething ocean of misery. 
 
 We turn next to Socialism, as distinct from Communism. 
 The distinction between these, though recognised by so 
 orthodox an economist as John Stuart Mill, is generally 
 ignored by those who oppose any radical reconstruction of 
 Society. Mr. Mill divides into two classes the assailants 
 of the present system of purely individualistic property : 
 "those whose scheme implies absolute equality in the 
 distribution of the physical means of life and enjoyment, 
 and those who admit inequality, but grounded on some 
 principle or supposed principle, of justice or general 
 expediency, and not, like so many of the existing social 
 inequalities, dependent on accident alone. At the head of 
 the first class, as the earliest of those belonging to the 
 present generation, must be placed Mr. Owen and his fol- 
 lowers. M. Louis Blanc and M. Cabet have more recently 
 become conspicuous as apostles of similar doctrines (though 
 the former advocates equality of distribution only as a 
 transition to a still higher standard of justice, that all 
 should work according to their capacity, and receive 
 according to their wants). The characteristic name for 
 this economical system is Communism, a word of conti- 
 nental origin, only of late introduced into this country. 
 The word Socialism, which originated among the English 
 Communists, and was assumed by them as a name to 
 designate their own doctrine, is now, on the Continent, 
 employed in a larger sense ; not necessarily implying 
 Communism, or the entire abolition of private property, 
 but applied to any system which requires that the land and
 
 10 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 the instruments of production should be the property, not 
 of individuals, but of communities or associations, or of 
 the government" ("Principles of Political Economy", 
 Book II., chap, i., sec. 2). Communism implies the com- 
 plete abolition of private property, and the supply of the- 
 wants of each individual from a common store, without 
 regard to the contributions to that common store which 
 may, or may not, have been made by the individual. 
 Socialism merely implies that the raw material of the soil 
 and the means of production shall not be the private pro- 
 perty of individuals, but shall be under the control of the 
 community ; it leaves intact a man's control over himself 
 and over the value of his work subject to such general 
 laws as are necessary in any community but by socialising 
 land and capital it deprives each of the power of enslaving- 
 his fellows, and of living in idleness on the results of their 
 labor instead of on the results of his own. It may be that at 
 some future time humanity shall have evolved to a point 
 which shall render Communism the only rational system ; 
 when every man is eager to do his share of work ; anxious 
 not to make too much for his own enjoyment ; holding the 
 scales of justice with a perfectly even hand ; his one aim 
 the general good, and his one effort the service of his- 
 brethren ; when each individual is thus developed, law will 
 have become unnecessary, and Communism will be the 
 natural expression of social life ; perfect freedom will be 
 the lot of each, because each will have become a law unta 
 himself. But to that stage of development man has not 
 yet attained, and for man as he is Communism would mean 
 the living of the idle on the toil of the laborious, the 
 rebirth, under a new name, of our present system. 
 
 Modern Socialism is an attempt to get at the root of the 
 poverty which now prevails ; to find out how fortunes are 
 made ; why commercial crises occur ; what are the real 
 relations of capital and labor at the present time. 
 
 In speaking of "fortunes", I do not here include for- 
 tunes made by gambling, as on the Stock Exchange. They 
 fall under another category, for in gambling, whether on 
 the Stock Exchange or on the card table, wealth is nofr 
 really made ; it only passes from one pocket to another. 
 The gambler, or the burglar, may " make a fortune " so 
 far as he is himself concerned ; but it is not done by the 
 creation of wealth, but only by transferring wealth already
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 11 
 
 existing from the pocket of its temporary possessor into 
 his own ; in both, businesses the profits are large because 
 the risks are great, and the penalty for failure heavy for 
 the moment. 
 
 Socialism, as an industrial system, is chiefly concerned 
 with fortunes in the making, with the way in which the 
 wealth created by associated labor passes into the hands 
 of individuals who do little or nothing in exchange for it. 
 These fortunes arise from the ownership of the instruments 
 of production, or of the raw material out of which wealth is 
 to be manufactured ; from the ownership, that is, of capital 
 or of land. 
 
 PRODUCTION. 
 
 Let us take the case of the possessor of capital employed 
 in manufacture. This man desires to obtain more wealth 
 than he can produce alone, more than he can individually 
 produce even with the help of machinery. He must con- 
 sequently hire others, who, in exchange for a certain fixed 
 sum to be paid to them by him, shall allow him to take 
 over the whole results of their labor, and to pocket the 
 difference between those results and the fixed sum paid 
 by him. This fixed sum is known as wage, and is "the 
 market price of labor". We have therefore here two- 
 classes face to face with each other : one is a class which 
 is the owner of capital, that is, which possesses the instru- 
 ments of production ; the other is a class which possesses 
 the labor-force, without which the instruments of produc- 
 tion are useless, but which must perish if it cannot get 
 hold of some of those instruments. (Behind the capitalists 
 is a third class, the land-owning, with which the capitalist 
 has to come to terms ; that will be dealt with afterwards.) 
 This second class stands therefore at this disadvantage ; that 
 while the capitalist can, if he pleases, utilise his own labor- 
 force for his own subsistence, it cannot subsist at all except 
 with his consent and aid, being shut out from the raw 
 material by the landowner, and from the instruments of 
 production by himself. Put a naked man on fertile soil in 
 a decent climate and he will subsist ; he will live on fruit 
 and berries while with his hands he fashions some rough 
 tool, and with the help thereof makes him a better one ; 
 out of the raw material he will form an instrument of pro- 
 duction with those original instruments of production given
 
 12 3IODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 him lay nature, his fingers and the muscles of his body ; 
 then with his instrument and the raw material at his feet 
 he will labor and win his livelihood. But in our complex 
 society this opening is not before him ; the raw material 
 is enclosed and trespassers are prosecuted; if he picks fruit 
 for food, he is a thief ; if he breaks off a bough to make 
 a rough tool, he is arrested ; he cannot get an instrument 
 of production, and if he could he would have nothing to use 
 it on; he has nothing but his labor-force, and he must either 
 sell that to someone who wants it, or he must die. And the 
 sale must be complete. His labor-force is bought for so 
 much down per week or per month ; it no longer belongs 
 to himself, it is owned by his master, and he has not any 
 right over that which it produces ; he has sold it, and if he 
 wants to resume possession he must give notice of his wish 
 to the owner thereof ; having resumed possession it is of no 
 use to him ; he can only live by selling it to somebody else. 
 He is "free", in so far that he is able to change his 
 master ; he is a slave in that he must sell the labor force 
 in his body for food. The man whose labor-force has been 
 sold to another for life is regarded by all as a slave ; the 
 man whose labor-force is sold for stated terms is regarded 
 by most as free ; yet in comparing the conditions of the two, 
 it is well to bear in mind that the slave, in becoming a 
 chattel, becomes of value to his master, and it is the 
 interest of the latter to feed him well and to keep up his 
 physical strength as long as is possible ; also in old age he 
 is fed and housed, and can die in peace amid his fellows. 
 "Whereas the wage-earner has no such value, but it is his 
 master's interest to get as much work out of him as is 
 possible, without regard for his health, there being plenty 
 to take his place when he is worn out ; and when he is 
 old, he is separated from wife and child and is left to die 
 in the prison we call a workhouse. The slave is valuable, 
 as the horse and the ox are valuable, to his owner ; the 
 wage-earner is valuable only as a garment, which is cast 
 into the dusthole when it is worn out. 
 
 It may be answered that the wage-earner by good for- 
 tune, industry, and thrift, may be able so to save of his 
 earnings that he may escape the workhouse, and may even 
 himself become independent and an " employer of labor ". 
 True. So might a lucky slave become free. But the 
 truth that some may rise out of their class does not render
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 13 
 
 satisfactory the state of the class, and the very fact that 
 such rising is held out as a reward and a stimulus is an 
 admission that an escape from the proletariat must be the 
 natural longing of every proletarian. The rising of a few 
 does not benefit the proletariat as a whole, and it is the 
 existence of this unpropertied proletariat which is the evil 
 thing. 
 
 To this proletariat, waiting to sell its labor-force, the 
 capitalist goes, for it is here that he will be able to obtain 
 the wealth-making strength which he requires. The next 
 question is: What determines the wage which he is to- 
 pay ? That is : what fixes the market price of labor- 
 force ? Putting on one side temporary and comparatively 
 trivial causes, which may slightly affect it one way or the 
 other, there are two constant determinants : population, 
 and standard of living. The market-price of labor-force 
 will largely depend on the quantity of labor-force in the 
 market ; if the supply exceed the demand, the price will 
 be low ; if the demand exceed the supply, the price will 
 go up. If an employer requires fifty laborers, and two- 
 hundred laborers compete with each other for the employ- 
 ment he offers, and if the employment stands between 
 them and starvation, he will be able to beat down their 
 price until it touches the lowest point at which they can 
 subsist. The more rapid the multiplication of the prole- 
 tariat, the better for the capitalist class. 
 
 The other determinant is the "standard of living" or 
 "standard of comfort". Wage can never sink beyond 
 the point at which a man and his family can exist thereon; 
 this is the extreme limit of its fall, inasmuch as a man 
 will not work unless he can exist on the results of his 
 work. As a matter of fact, it does not often sink so low ; 
 the wage of an ordinary operative is more than barely 
 suffices to keep him and his family alive, but large num- 
 bers of the laboring poor are habitually underfed, and are 
 liable to the diseases brought on by low living, as well as 
 to premature aging and death arising from the same cause. 
 It is a significant fact that the deathrate of the poor is 
 much higher than the deathrate of the rich. Wage is 
 lower in countries in which the standard of living is low, 
 than in those in which it is, by comparison, higher. Thus 
 in parts of Scotland, where oatmeal is much used for food, 
 and children run much barefoot, wage is normally lower
 
 14 MODEKN SOCIALISM. 
 
 than in England, where wheaten flour and shoes and 
 stockings are expected. Any general lowering of the 
 standard of living is therefore to be deprecated as the 
 wide substitution of cheap vegetable food-stuffs for more 
 expensive articles of diet. The standard of living also 
 (and chiefly, in any given country) affects wages through 
 its effect on population. Mill points out (" Principles of 
 Political Economy," Book II., chap, xi., sec. 2) that 
 "wages do adapt themselves to the price of food ", either 
 {a) from children dying prematurely when food rises, and 
 wages were before barely sufficient to maintain them, or 
 (b) from voluntary restriction of the growth of population 
 when the laborers refuse to sink below a certain standard 
 of living. In each case the diminution of labor supply 
 causes a rise of wage. "Mr. Blcardo", says Mill, " con- , 
 siders these two cases to comprehend all cases. He as- 
 sumes, that there is everywhere a minimum rate of wages : 
 either the lowest with which it is physically possible to 
 keep up the population, or the lowest with which the 
 people will choose to do so. To this minimum he assumes 
 that the general rate of wages always tends ; that they 
 can never be lower, beyond the length of time required for 
 a diminished rate of increase to make itself felt, and can 
 never long continue higher." This is the "iron law of 
 wages ", and it is the recognition of its truth which, among 
 other reasons, sets Socialists against the wage-system of v 
 industry. [It must not be forgotten that the phrase 
 "ordinary operative" does not include all the workers. 
 There is a large class which obtains barely subsistence 
 wage, and those who are not regularly employed are on 
 the very verge of starvation. The hard lot of these must 
 not be left out of sight in impeaching the present social 
 state.] 
 
 The capitalist, then, buys as much labor-force as he 
 desires, or as his means allow, at the market price, deter- 
 mined in the way we have seen. This labor-force he pro- 
 poses to utilise for his own advantage ; with some of his 
 capital he buys it ; some of his capital consists in machinery, 
 and the labor- force set at work on this machinery is to 
 produce wealth. The labor-force and the instruments of 
 production are now brought together ; they will now pro- 
 duce wealth, and both they and the wealth they produce 
 are the property of the capitalist.
 
 MODERX SOCIALISM. 15 
 
 Our next inquiry is : Where does the capitalist look for 
 lis profit? He has bought machinery; he has bought 
 labor-force ; whence comes the gain he is seeking ? The 
 profit of the capitalist must arise from the difference be- 
 tween the price he pays for labor-force and the wealth 
 produced by it ; out of this difference must be paid his 
 rent, the loss incurred by wear-and-tear, and the price of 
 the raw material on which his machinery works ; these 
 provided for, the remainder of the difference is his "profit ". 
 The analysis of the way in which this profit arises is, then, 
 the task that comes next. 
 
 In Karl Marx's "Das Capital" may be found a carefully 
 elaborated exposition of " surplus- value ". The term is a con- 
 venient one, and the student will do well to read his 7th chap- 
 ter, on the "production of use-value and surplus-value"; 
 in- reading, he must remember Marx's definitions of value 
 and use-value, which of course govern the whole. Value 
 is human labor incorporated in a commodity ; use- value 
 is that which in a commodity satisfies some human want. 
 The " use-value " of Marx is identical with the " intrinsic 
 natural worth" of Locke. Locke says: "The intrinsic, 
 natural worth of any thing, consists in its fitness to supply 
 the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life " 
 ("Considerations of the Lowering of Interest," etc., Locke's 
 Works, vol. ii., p. 28, ed. 1777). As an instance of the 
 production of surplus-value that is of the difference be- 
 tween the capital which the capitalist expends in produc- 
 tion and that which he possesses when the production is 
 complete Marx takes the case of the manufacture of ten 
 pounds of thread. The capitalist buys ten pounds of 
 cotton at 10s. ; wear-and-tear of machinery in the spinning 
 of the cotton into thread raises his expenditure to 12s.; 
 further, six hours of work are necessary to turn the ten 
 pounds of cotton into ten pounds of thread. 
 
 Now suppose that a man in six hours is able to produce 
 sufficient to maintain himself for a day ; that is that he 
 produces as much as might be exchanged for a day's con- 
 sumption of the necessaries of life. Let us value this at 
 3s. in money. That 3s. which is the monetary equivalent 
 of his six hours' labor must be added to the cost of pro- 
 duction of the thread ; its value has therefore risen finally 
 to 15s. If the capitalist now sells his ten pounds of thread 
 for 15s., he will only receive back as much as he has
 
 16 MODEKX SOCIALISM. 
 
 expended ; lie will have made no profit. But suppose the 
 working day be of twelve hours instead of six, the wages 
 paid will none the less be fixed at 3s. by the standard of 
 living ; but in that second six hours the operative can 
 transform another ten pounds of cotton into another ten 
 pounds of thread ; as before, cotton and wear-and-tear will 
 amount to 12s. ; but these ten pounds of thread have a 
 value of 15s. as had the previous ten pounds, although they 
 have only cost the capitalist 12s. Hence the final product 
 of the day's labor has a value of 30s., but has cost the 
 capitalist only 27s. The value added by the operative in 
 the second six hours has brought him no equivalent ; it is 
 " surplus- value", value added by him over the value whose 
 equivalent he receives in wage ; this creation of surplus- 
 value is the aim of the capitalist. 
 
 Now without tying ourselves down to the exact figures 
 given by Marx, we may yet see by a little thought that his 
 position as to " surplus- value " is essentially correct. If a 
 capitalist buys 1 worth of raw material ; if his machinery 
 is depreciated say by the value of one shilling in working 
 up the raw material ; if he pays in wage 5s. for the labor- 
 force expended on it ; he will most certainly not be content 
 with selling the finished product for 26s. He demands a 
 "profit" on the transaction, and this profit can only be the 
 difference between that which is paid to labor, and the 
 value, in the ordinary sense of the word, which labor 
 creates. 
 
 It is sometimes objected that nothing is gained by 
 Marx's divisions of "value", " surplus value ", and "ex- 
 change value", but that, on the contrary, they transport 
 economics into a metaphysical region away from the solid 
 ground of facts. It is urged that it is better to represent the 
 conditions thus : that the worker produces a mass of com- 
 modities ; that the capitalist sells these commodities for 
 what they will fetch in the market, the price being fixed, 
 not by the duration of the labor embodied in them, but by 
 the relative utilities of money and commodity to buyer and 
 seller ; that the capitalist gives over to the producer suffi- 
 cient of the results of the sale to enable the producer to 
 exist, and pockets the remainder. This presentment is a 
 statement of the facts as they are; Marx's "value" is 
 a metaphysical abstraction, corresponding to nothing exist- 
 ing at the present time, however true it would be under
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 17 
 
 ideal conditions. The main point to grasp, however, is 
 obvious, whichever of these presentments is thought pre- 
 ferable. Capital, under our present industrial system, is 
 the result of unpaid labor a matter to be further con- 
 sidered later in this essay. But it must be remembered 
 that, as a matter of fact, the profit made by the capitalist 
 is not a fixed quantity, as is the " surplus value " of Marx ; 
 but that the capitalist not only preys on the worker, but 
 also on the necessities of the consumer, his profit rising 
 and falling with the changes of demand and supply. The 
 phrase " surplus value " is, as I have said, a convenient 
 one, but it might well be extended to cover the whole 
 difference between the price paid to labor for the com- 
 modities it produces, and the price obtained for those com- 
 modities by the capitalist employer of labor. It is in this 
 wide sense that the phrase is used in the following pages, 
 not in the metaphysical sense of Marx. 
 
 We are now in a position to understand how large for- 
 tunes are made, and why Capital and Labor are ever at 
 war. 
 
 Before the commencement of the Industrial Period 
 which may be fairly dated from the invention of the Spin- 
 ning Jenny in 1764 it was not possible to accumulate 
 great wealth by the employment of hired labor. By hand- 
 work, or by the use of the very simple machines available 
 prior to that date, a single operative was not able to pro- 
 duce sufficient to at once support himself and to largely 
 enrich others. " Masters and men" consequently formed 
 a community of workers, without the sharp divisions that 
 now exist between capitalist and "hands"; and the em- 
 ployer would have been as much ashamed of not working 
 deftly at his trade, as the son of a Lancashire cotton-lord 
 would be if he were suspected of throwing a shuttle in 
 one of his father's looms. Under these conditions there 
 was very little surplus-value to be absorbed, and there 
 were consequently no great aggregations of purely indus- 
 trial classes. The introduction of machinery multiplied 
 enormously the productive power of the operative, while it 
 did not increase the wage he received. A man receiving 
 3s. for a day of twelve hours, produced, we will say for the 
 sake of illustration, surplus- value to the amount of Is.; 
 after the introduction of machinery he received the same 
 wage and produced an enormously increased surplus- value.
 
 18 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 Thus the fortunes of the lucky possessors of the new 
 machinery rose by " leaps and bounds " ; lads who began 
 at the loom were owners of palaces by middle age ; even 
 later on, after the first rush had spent itself, I have myself 
 met Lancashire cotton-lords who were mill-hands in their 
 youth ; but most certainly their wealth had only been made 
 by the results of the toil of many becoming concentrated in 
 the hands of one. 
 
 Another step was taken to increase surplus- value. De- 
 pending, as it does, on the difference between the value 
 produced by the worker and the amount paid to him as 
 wage, it is obvious that if it be possible to obtain the same 
 amount of produce from purchased labor-force while re- 
 ducing the purchase-money, the surplus- value will become 
 larger. This step was soon taken, for it was found that 
 many machines could be superintended by a woman quite 
 as effectively as by a man, while female labor-force was 
 
 Eurchasable in the market at a lower rate. Hence the 
 irge introduction of female "hands" into cotton mills, and 
 as married women were found more "docile" than un- 
 married docility increasing with the number of mouths 
 crying for bread at home there came the double curse on 
 the producers, of male labor being pushed aside by female 
 labor at lower wage, and of untidy home and neglected 
 children, bereft of mother's care. Yet another step. Child- 
 labor was cheaper even than woman-labor, and by utilising 
 children, with their pitiful wage, surplus- value might be 
 swollen to yet larger proportions ; and as wives had fought 
 with husbands for wage, so children now fought with 
 fathers and mothers, until verily a man's foes in the labor- 
 market were they of his own household. 
 
 There was, however, a way of increasing surplus-value 
 apart from the amount of daily wage. The lengthening of 
 the hours of labor has obviously the same result in this 
 respect as the lowering of wage. The very zenith of the 
 production of surplus- value, the most complete exploitation 
 of the producers, the perfect triumph of the capitalist ideal 
 of free contract and of laissez-faire, were reached when little 
 children, at nominal wage, were worked from fifteen to 
 sixteen hours a day, and princely fortunes were built up 
 by human sacrifice to the devil of greed, in fashion that 
 shall never, so help us tongue, and pen, and arm, be again 
 possible in this fair English land.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 19 
 
 We have at the present time no exact figures available 
 which can enable us to judge of the precise amount of sur- 
 plus value produced in the various departments of industry. 
 In America, the Bureaus of Labor Statistics help us, and 
 from these we learn some suggestive facts. 
 
 Average wage paid Extra net value pro- 
 
 to worker. duced by worker. 
 
 1850 .. 49 12 .. .. 41 16 
 
 1860 . . 58 8 . . . . 65 10 
 
 1870 .. 62 .. .. 69 
 
 1880 . . 69 4 . . . . 64 14 
 
 (Taken from Laurence Gronlund's quotation of these re- 
 turns in his "Co-operative Commonwealth", chap. i. The 
 same figures, as regards total net produce and wages paid, 
 have appeared in a capitalist work.) I trust that we shall 
 soon have in England Labor Bureaus similar to those now 
 existing in the United States and in Canada. Charles 
 Bradlaugh, M.P., has succeeded in passing a resolution in 
 favor of the official publication of similar statistics through 
 the House of Commons, and among the many priceless ser- 
 vices he has done to the workers, the obtaining of these is by 
 no means the least. Exact knowledge of the present state 
 of things is a necessary precedent of organic change, and 
 the figures supplied by the Labor Bureaus will give us 
 the very weapons that we need. 
 
 The absolutely antithetical interests of Capital and 
 Labor have necessitated and must continue to necessitate 
 while the present system lasts a constant and embittered 
 war. As Capital can only grow by surplus value, it strives 
 to lengthen the working day and to decrease the daily 
 wage. Labor struggles to shorten the hours of toil, and 
 to wring from Capital a larger share of its own product in 
 the form of higher wage. While Capital is the possession 
 of one class, and Labor is the only property of the other, 
 this strife must go on. There can never be industrial 
 peace until this root of war be pulled up, and until Capital, 
 under the control of the community, shall be used for the 
 fertilisation, instead of for the oppression of Labor. 
 
 Since large fortunes are made by manufacturers, and 
 there is no source of wealth save labor applied to natural 
 objects, it is clear that these fortunes are due to the fact 
 that the manufacturers are able to become the owners of 
 
 c2
 
 20 MODEKN SOCIALISM. 
 
 the means of production and of labor-force ; even these very 
 means of production, with which the present labor-force 
 works, are but past labor-force crystallised. The wage- 
 earners must produce sufficient to maintain themselves 
 from day to day and to increase the capital of the wage- 
 payers, else they will not be employed. Hence arises 
 another evil, the waste of productive force. Men are not 
 employed because their labor-force, embodied in the neces- 
 saries of life, will spread sufficiency and comfort throughout 
 the community. They are only employed when the articles 
 produced can be sold at a profit by a third party ; their 
 products, fairly exchanged for the products of their fellow- 
 laborers woven cloth, say, for shoes would clothe warmly 
 the shivering population ; but above the cloth produced by 
 the one, and the shoes produced by the other, stand the 
 capitalists, who demand profit for themselves ere the cloth 
 shall be allowed to shield the naked back, or the shoes 
 keep off the pavement the toes blued by the frost. If the 
 employment fails, the wage-earner is out of food ; but the 
 erstwhile wage-payer has the capital made by the former 
 to live upon, while its maker starves. The capitalist, truly, 
 cannot increase his capital, unless he can buy labor-force ; 
 but he can live on his capital. On the other hand the 
 labor-force must perish unless it can find a purchaser. 
 Let us put the position plainly, for as the great majority 
 of people think the arrangement a perfectly fair one, there 
 is no need to cover it over with a veil of fine phrases and 
 roundabout expressions. The owner of raw material and 
 of the means of production faces the unpropertied pro- 
 letarian, and says to him : "I hold in my hands the means 
 of existence ; unless you can obtain the means of existence 
 you will die ; but I will only let you have them on one 
 condition. And that is that you shall labor for me as 
 well as for yourself. For each hour that you spend in 
 winning bread, you shall spend another in enriching me. 
 I will give you the right to win a hard existence by your 
 labor, if you will give me the right to take whatever you 
 produce beyond that bare existence. You are perfectly 
 free to choose ; you can either accept my terms, and let 
 me live on your work, or you can refuse my terms, and 
 starve." Put so baldly, the proposition has a certain 
 brutality in it. Yet when we Socialists argue that a system 
 is bad which concentrates the means of existence in the
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 21 
 
 hands of a propertied class, and leaves an unpropertied 
 class under the hard condition of winning only the right 
 to exist on such .terms as may be granted by the propertied ; 
 when we urge this, we are told that we are incendiaries, 
 thieves, idiots, or, at the mildest, that our hopes of freeing 
 these enslaved ones are dreams, mere castles in the air. 
 
 We have now reached the foundation of modern So- 
 cialism. We say : As long as the industrial classes are 
 divided into capitalists and proletarians, so long must con- 
 tinue the present strife, and the present extremes of wealth 
 and of poverty. It is not a mere modification, but a com- 
 plete revolution of the industrial system which is required. 
 Capital must be controlled by labor, instead of controlling 
 it. The producers must obtain possession of their own 
 product, and must regulate their own labor. The present 
 system has been weighed in the balances and found wanting, 
 and on the wall of the capitalist banqueting- room is written 
 by the finger of modern thought, dipped in the tears and 
 in the bloody sweat of the over-tasked proletariat: "Man 
 hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. It is divided 
 among the myriads thou hast wronged." 
 
 COMPETITION. 
 
 Strife is the normal condition of the whole industrial 
 world ; Capital strives against -Labor, and Labor against 
 Capital, lock-outs and strikes being the pitched battles of 
 the struggle ; capitalists strive against capitalists for profits, 
 and the list of the vanquished may be read in the bank- 
 ruptcy court ; workers strive against workers for wage, and 
 inj are their own order in the fratricidal combat. Every- 
 where the same struggle, causing distress, waste, hatred, 
 in every direction ; brothers wronging brothers for a trifling 
 gain ; the strong trampling down the weak in the frantic 
 race for wealth. It is the struggle of the wild beasts of 
 the forest transferred to the city ; the horrible struggle 
 for existence, only in its "civilised" form hearts are 
 wrenched and torn instead of limbs. 
 
 It is constantly urged that competition is advantageous 
 because it develops capacity, and by the struggle it causes 
 it brings about the survival of the fittest. The allegation 
 may be traversed on two grounds : granting that capacity 
 is developed by struggle, it is yet developed at great cost 
 of suffering, and it would be more worthy of reasoning
 
 22 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 Beings to seek to bring about the capacity and to avoid the 
 suffering ; to borrow an illustration which suggests itself 
 by the very word " struggle ", we know that actual fighting 
 develops muscle, endurance, readiness of resource, quick- 
 ness of the senses ; none the less do we regard war as a 
 disgrace to a civilised people, and we find that the useful 
 capacities developed by it may be equally well developed 
 in the gymnasium and the playing-field, without the evils 
 accompanying war. So may education take the place of 
 competition in developing useful qualities. Further we 
 deny that "the fittest" for social progress survive in the 
 competitive struggle. The hardest, the keenest, the most 
 unscrupulous, survive, because such are the fittest for the 
 brutal strife ; but the generous, the magnanimous, the 
 just, the tender, the thoughtful, the sympathetic, the very 
 types in whose survival lies the hope of the race, are 
 crushed out. In fact, competition is war, and the very 
 reasons which move us to endeavor to substitute arbitra- 
 tion for war, should move us to endeavor to substitute 
 co-operation for competition. 
 
 But it is urged, competition among capitalists is advan- 
 tageous to the public, and it is shown that where two or 
 three railway lines compete for custom, the public is better 
 served than where there is only one. Granted. There is 
 an old adage which says that "when thieves fall out, 
 honest men come by their own " ; none the less is it better 
 to stop thieving, than to encourage it under the hope that 
 the thieves may fall out, and some of the stolen goods be 
 recovered. So long as capitalists are permitted to exploit 
 labor, so long is it well that they should compete with each 
 other and so have their profits lessened ; but it would be 
 still better to stop the exploitation. Accepting the railway 
 instance, it may be rejoined that the German State railways 
 have comfortable carriages that can hold their own against 
 all comers, and that whereas a railway company, eager for 
 dividends, can only be forced into providing decent carri- 
 ages by fear of losing customers to a rival, a State railway 
 is managed for the benefit of the public, and improvements 
 are readily introduced. Our post-office system shows how 
 improvements are made without any pressure of competi- 
 tion ; it has given us cheaper postage, cheaper telegraphing, 
 and is giving us cheaper parcel-delivery ; so that we can 
 send from London a letter to Wick for a penny, a telegram
 
 MOBERX SOCIALISM. 23 
 
 thither for sixpence, and a parcel for threepence ; it is a 
 matter of pride to the Postmaster-General of the day, as a 
 public servant, to improve his department, although he is 
 protected by law (save in the case of parcels, only just 
 undertaken) from competition. 
 
 Even some economists who approve of competition see 
 the need of limiting its excesses. Mr. B. S. Moffat, for 
 instance, approves of it and thinks that "competition is 
 not only the best, but the only practical means of meet- 
 ing" "the conflicting natural conditions, between the 
 exigencies of an unknown demand and the fluctuations of 
 an uncertain supply", "that ever has been, or is ever 
 likely to be, discovered" ("The Economy of Consump- 
 tion," p. 114, ed. 1878). Yet Mr. Moffat points out that 
 " the material cost of competition includes two items : first, 
 superfluous production, or wasted labor ; and secondly, ill- 
 balanced distribution, or misdirected labor " (p. 115); and 
 he declares: "Not content with promoting a healthful 
 industry, it enforces tyrannous laws upon labor, and exacts 
 from the free laborer an amount of toil which the hardest 
 taskmaster never succeeded in wringing from the slave. 
 It disturbs by its excesses the balance of industry which 
 its moderation had established. In times of prosperous 
 production it accumulates stocks till they become a nuisance 
 and a source of the most serious embarrassment to pro- 
 ducers, who do not know where to turn for employment to 
 their productive resources ; and in adverse times it gambles 
 with them, and deprives consumption of their support at 
 the very time for which they were provided" (pp. 116, 117). 
 "It is upon laborers", he says, " not only as individuals, 
 but as a class, that the great burden of over-production 
 falls" (p. 119). 
 
 I propose to consider, I., the evils of competition ; H., 
 the remedy proposed by Socialism. 
 
 I. THE EVILS. Many of these lie on the surface ; others 
 become palpable on very slight investigation. They affect 
 the capitalist manufacturer ; the distributor ; the con- 
 sumer ; and the producing classes. 
 
 An ingenious capitalist sees a want and devises an article 
 to meet it ; or he devises an article and sets to work to 
 create the want. He places his article before the public, 
 and a demand for it arises. The article either supplies a 
 real want, or it becomes "the fashion", and the demand
 
 24 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 increases and outstrips the supply. Other capitalists rush 
 in to compete for the profit which is to be made ; capital 
 flows rapidly into the particular industry concerned ; high 
 wages are offered ; operatives flock to it ; the supply swells- 
 until it overtops the demand. But when this point is 
 touched, the supply is not at once lessened ; so long as 
 there is any hope of profit, the capitalists manufacture ; 
 wage is lessened to keep up the profit, but this expedient 
 fails ; short hours are worked ; at last the market becomes 
 thoroughly overstocked. Then distress follows, and while 
 capital seeks new outlets, the operatives fall into the great 
 army of unemployed ; and very often the small capitalists, 
 who went into the rush just when profit was at its highest, 
 and who have not sufficient capital to hold out against the 
 fall, and to await a rise, meet the fate of earthenware 
 pots, carried down a torrent among iron ones. When this 
 happens, the result of their speculative folly is held up as 
 an example of the "risks run by capitalists ". Nor is this 
 the only way along which a small capitalist sometimes 
 travels to the bankruptcy court. He often borrows money 
 "to extend his business", and if the business shrinks 
 instead of expanding, he becomes bankrupt. In the uni- 
 versal war, the big capitalist fish devour the small fry. 
 
 And, after all, even the "successful man" of our com- 
 petitive society is not one whose lot is to be envied by 
 the healthy human being. Not for him the pure joy in 
 natural beauty, in simple amusements, in intellectual 
 triumph, which is the dower of those unstained by the 
 fight for gold. For the successful competitor in com- 
 mercial war Nature has no laurel-crown. He has bartered 
 himself for a mess of pottage, and his birthright of healthy 
 humanity is gone from him for evermore. Well does 
 Moff at write his fate : "The man who strives to make a 
 fortune contemplates his own ease and enjoyment, not the 
 good of society. He flatters himself that through his 
 superior skill, tact, wisdom, energy, or whatever quality it 
 is he thinks himself twice as strong in as his neighbors, 
 he will be able to do in half a lifetime what it takes them 
 their whole lives to do. For this he toils and sacrifices his 
 health ; for this he rushes upon reckless speculations, and 
 hazards his character and reputation ; for this he makes 
 himself indifferent to the rights and callous to the feelings 
 of others ; for this he is sordid, mean, and parsimonious.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 25 
 
 All these are the means by which, according to different 
 temperaments, the same end is pursued. And what is the 
 end? An illusion, nay, worse, a dishonesty. The man 
 who pursues a fortune is not qualifying himself for any 
 other course of life besides that which he at present lives. 
 He is merely striving to escape from duty into enjoyment. 
 And the fever of the strife frequently becomes his whole 
 existence ; so that when he has obtained his object, he finds 
 himself unable to do without the excitement of the struggle" 
 (p. 220). Surely in judging the merits of a system it is 
 fair to take into account the injuries it works to its most 
 successful products. Its masterpieces are the withered and 
 dehumanised ; its victims are the paupers and the suicides. 
 
 Nor can we leave out of account in studying competitive 
 production the waste of material, and of the time spent in 
 working it up, which result from over-production. The 
 accumulation of stock while the demand is lessening means 
 the making and storing of unneeded wares. Some of these 
 are forced into the market, some lie idly in the great 
 warehouses. The retail dealers find themselves over- 
 stocked, their shelves laden with unsaleable goods. These 
 fade, and spoil, and rust away so much good material 
 wasted, so much human labor spent for nought, monu- 
 ments of a senseless system, of the barbarous, uncalcu- 
 lating blindness of our productive force. 
 
 More heavily yet than on the capitalist does competition 
 press on the distributor. A dozen traders compete for the 
 custom which one could satisfactorily supply. The com- 
 petition for shops in a thickly populated neighborhood 
 drives up the rent, and so adds to the retailer's burden. He 
 is compelled to spend large sums in advertising, striving 
 by brilliancy of color or eccentricity of design to impress 
 himself on the public mind. An army of commercial 
 travellers sweeps over the country, each man with his 
 hand against his neighbor in the same trade, pushing, 
 haggling, puffing his own, depreciating his rival's wares. 
 These agents push their goods on the retailer, often when 
 no real demand for them is coming from the public, and 
 then the retailer puffs them, to create a demand on his 
 supply. Nor must we omit from notice the enormous 
 waste of productive energy in this army of canvassers, 
 advertisers, bill-posters, multiplied middlemen of every 
 kind. The distributive work done by these is absurdly out
 
 26 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 of proportion to their number. We see several carriers' 
 carts half -filled, instead of half the number filled; each 
 carrier has to deliver goods over the whole of a wide area, 
 so that a man may have to drive five miles to deliver a 
 single parcel at a house a stone's throw from a rival office. 
 Yet each man must receive his full day's wage, and must 
 be paid for the hours he is compelled to waste, as well 
 as for those he spends in useful work. It is the same 
 thing in every business. Three or four carts of each 
 trade daily down each road, covering the same ground, 
 supplying each one house here and one there, losing time, 
 wearing out horses and traps, a foolish shameful waste. 
 And all these unnecessary distributors are consumers when 
 they might be producers, and are actually making unneces- 
 sary work for others as well as for themselves. 
 
 Short-sighted people ask : Would you add all these to 
 the crowds of half-starving unemployed now competing 
 for work ? No, we answer. We would not add them to 
 the tmemployed ; it is only in a system of complete com- 
 petitive anarchy that there could be unemployed labor on 
 the one hand, and people clamoring for the necessaries 
 of life on the other. We have already seen that under 
 the present system men are only employed where some 
 profit can be made out of them by the person who hires 
 them. Under a saner system there would be none unem- 
 ployed while the food and clothing supply was insufficient, 
 and the turning of non-productive consumers into produc- 
 tive ones would only mean shorter hours of labor, since 
 the labor necessary to supply the consumption of the 
 population would be divided among a larger number than 
 before. If wealth be the result of labor applied to raw 
 material, poverty may come from the pressure of popula- 
 tion on the raw material which limits the means of sub- 
 sistence, but never from the greater part of the population 
 working to produce wealth on raw material sufficient for 
 their support. 
 
 On the consumer falls much of the needless additional 
 expense of advertisements, canvassers, and the rest. The 
 flaming advertisements we see on the walls we pay for in 
 the price of the puffed articles we buy. The trader feels 
 their burden, and tries to recoup himself by adding a 
 fraction of it to the price of the goods he sells. If he is 
 forced to lower his nominal prices in consequence of the
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 27 
 
 pressure of competition with his rivals, yet by adulteration 
 he can really raise, while he seems to lower, them. The 
 nominal width of fabrics does not correspond with the 
 real ; woollen goods are sold of which the warp is cotton ; 
 tobacco is sold damped unfairly to increase its weight ; 
 sand is mixed with sugar ; lard or dripping with butter ; 
 chicory with coffee ; sloe-leaves with tea ; turnip with 
 orange in marmalade ; foreign meat is offered as home- 
 grown ; damaged flesh is chopped up for sausages ; until, 
 at last, as Moffat caustically remarks : "It is not rogues 
 and vagabonds alone who have recourse in trade to ex- 
 pedients which could not be justified by a strict theoretical 
 morality. When this incline is entered upon, there is no 
 resting upon it. Morality itself becomes subject to com- 
 petition ; and the conventional standard of trade morality 
 gets lower and lower, until the things done by respectable 
 people can hardly be distinguished from those done by 
 people who are not respectable, except by the respectability 
 of the people who do them" (p. 154). And in all this 
 adulteration the consumer suffers in health, comfort, and 
 temper. Not only does he pay more than he should for 
 what he buys, but he buys a good deal more than he 
 pays for. 
 
 Heaviest of all is the burden on the operative classes, 
 and they suffer in a double character, both as consumers 
 and producers. As consumers, they share the general in- 
 jury ; as producers, their case is yet more serious. If they 
 are in work, their wages are driven down by the competi- 
 tion for employment ; they are the first to feel a lessening 
 demand in lengthened hours, in lower wage ; as the de- 
 pression goes on, they are thrown out of work ; illness not 
 only incapacitates them for the time, but their place is filled 
 up, while they lie helpless, by the eager waiters for hire ; 
 when they combine to strike for fairer treatment, the fringe 
 of unemployed labor around is used against them by the 
 employers ; the lowest depth is reached by the crowd who 
 at the dockyard gates at the East of London literally fight 
 for a place in which the foreman's eye may fall on them, 
 and out of the struggling hundreds units are taken on for 
 the day at miserable wage for heavy exhausting work, to 
 be turned out at night to undergo a similar struggle next 
 morning. 
 
 The only classes who gain by competition are the big
 
 28 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 capitalists and the landlords. The big capitalists engaged 
 in manufacture gain by the crushing out of their smaller 
 rivals, and by their ability to hold over stocks produced 
 when wages are low until prices are high. Capitalists 
 who only lend out money on usury, and live on the interest 
 thereby obtained, flourish when the demand for money is 
 brisk. Most of all do landlords, who live on rent, profit 
 by the struggle. In a growing neighborhood rents of 
 commercial premises rise rapidly, and the shopkeeper finds 
 himself heavily taxed by the landlord, who imposes on him 
 practically a graduated income-tax for his own advantage. 
 Thus the chief gainers by competition are the idlers who 
 are permitted to hold the nation's soil, and who live in 
 luxury on the toilers, laughing to see how the fratricidal 
 struggles of those who labor turn to the advantage of 
 those who lounge. And so the strain of living constantly 
 increases for the one class, while the luxury and ostenta- 
 tion of those who levy tax on toil become ever greater, 
 and more aggressive by the contrast. 
 
 II. THE REMEDY. These evils can be radically cured 
 only in one way ; it is by the substitution of co-operation 
 for competition, of organisation for anarchy in industry. 
 The relation of employer and employed must disappear, 
 and a brotherhood of workers, associated for facilitation 
 of production for use, must replace the band of servants 
 toiling for the enrichment of a master by profit. The full 
 details of socialised industry cannot be drawn at length ; 
 but it is not difficult to see that the already existent co- 
 operative societies offer a suggestive model, and the trades 
 unions a sufficiently competent means for change. Pro- 
 bably each industry in each district will organise itself, 
 and own, for use, all its means of production ; thus the 
 miners of Durham, for instance, organised in their lodges, 
 with their central executive, would form the mining trade 
 society of that district ; all the mines of that district 
 would be under their control, and they would elect their 
 officers of all grades. So with all mining districts through- 
 out the land. These separate trade societies would be 
 federated, and a General Board elected by all. The 
 elements of such a self-organised industry exist at the 
 present time, and the more closely the miners can band 
 themselves into district unions, and the unions into a 
 national federation, the more prepared will they be to play
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 29 
 
 their part in the great industrial revolution. It is probable 
 that something of the nature of the royalties now paid to 
 the individual mine-owners will be paid into the National 
 Exchequer, in exchange for the right to work the national 
 soil. A similar organisation would be needed for each 
 productive industry, and probably representatives of each 
 separate industry would form a central Industrial Board. 
 But, I repeat, these details cannot now be laid down autho- 
 ritatively, any more than the details of the present in- 
 dustrial competitive system could have been laid down 
 before the Industrial Period. On these details Socialists 
 would inevitably differ considerably at the present time, 
 and no special scheme can be fairly stamped as " Socialist " 
 to the exclusion of the rest. But on this main principle all 
 Socialists are agreed; that the only rightful holders of 
 capital are industrial groups, or one great industrial group 
 the State, i.e., the organised community; that while 
 individuals may hold private property for use, none should 
 hold capital that is wealth employed in production for- 
 individual profit ; that while each may have property to 
 consume and to enjoy, none should be allowed to use 
 property to enslave his neighbor, to force another to work 
 for his advantage. 
 
 The revolution in distribution will be as great as that 
 in production, and here again co-operation must take the 
 place of competition. We already see the beginnings of a 
 distributive change in the establishment of huge stores for 
 the supply of all the necessaries of life, and the way in 
 which these are crushing out the smaller retail shops. 
 Housewives find it more convenient to go to the single 
 building, than to trudge wearily from shop to shop. Q-oods 
 bought in very large quantities can be sold more cheaply 
 than if bought in small, and economy, as well as con- 
 venience, attract the purchaser to the store. At present 
 these stores are founded by capitalists and compete for 
 custom, but they are forerunners of a rational distributive 
 system. The very enmity they create in the minds of the 
 small traders they ruin is paving the way for the com- 
 munity to take them over for the general advantage. 
 Under Socialism all goods manufactured by the producers 
 would be distributed to the central store of each district ; 
 from this central store they would be distributed to the 
 retail stores. Anyone who thinks such distribution im-
 
 30 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 possible had better study the postal system now existing ; 
 we do not have post-offices jostling each other as do 
 baker's and butcher's shops : there are sufficient of them 
 for the requirements of the district, and no more. The 
 letters for a town are delivered at the General Post Office ; 
 they are sorted out and delivered at the subordinate offices ; 
 the distribution of the correspondence of millions is carried 
 on by a Government Department, quietly, effectively, 
 without waste of labor, with celerity and economy. But 
 then in the Post Office co-operation has replaced com- 
 petition, organisation has replaced anarchy. Such a system, 
 one hundred years ago, would have been pronounced 
 impossible, as the Conservative minds of to-day pronounce 
 impossible its extension to anything except letters and 
 telegrams and parcels. I look for the time when the 
 success of the Post Office will be repeated and improved 
 in every department of distribution. 
 
 CAPITAL. 
 
 We have already seen that Capital is accumulated by 
 withholding from the producer a large part of the value he 
 produces, and we have now to look more closely into the 
 growth of Capital and the uses to which it is put. A 
 glance over the historical Past, as well as the study of 
 the Present, inform us that Capital has always been as 
 indeed it always must be obtained from unpaid labor, or, 
 if the phrase be preferred, by the partial confiscation of 
 the results of labor. In communities the economic basis of 
 which was slave-labor, this fact was obvious ; the owner 
 confiscated the whole products of his slaves' toil, and he 
 became a capitalist by this process of continued confiscation ; 
 while the slave, fed, clothed, and housed out of the fruit 
 of his own labor by his master, never owned anything as of 
 right, nor had any property in that which he created. As 
 civilisation advanced, serf -labor replaced slave-labor ; here 
 also the confiscation of the results of labor was obvious. 
 The serf was bound to give so many days of work to his 
 lord without payment; this service rendered, the remainder 
 of his time was his own, to produce for his own subsist- 
 ence ; but the lord's capital increased by the confiscation 
 of the results of the serf's labor during the days whereon 
 he worked for his lord. In modern times "free labor" 
 has replaced serf -labor, but in the present industrial system,
 
 MODEKN SOCIALISM. 31 
 
 as truly as in slave and in serf communities, Capital results 
 from unpaid labor, though now from the unpaid labor of 
 the wage-earner. We may search the whole world over, 
 and we shall find no source of wealth save labor applied 
 to natural agents. Wealth is never rained down from 
 heaven, nor is it ever a spontaneous growth ; unless indeed 
 wild fruits taken for food be counted wealth, and even to 
 these must human labor be applied in the form of picking 
 ere they can be used. It is the result of human labor ; 
 and if one man has more than he has produced, it neces- 
 sarily follows that another man has less than he has pro- 
 duced. The gain of one must be the loss of another. There 
 are but sixteen court cards in the fifty-two, and if by in- 
 genious shuffling, packing, and dealing, all the court card 
 fall to one player, only the lower cards can remain for the 
 others. 
 
 Separating "Capital" from "Wealth" we may conve- 
 niently define it as "wealth devoted to purposes of profit", 
 and as "wealth is the result of labor applied to raw ma- 
 terial", Capital becomes the result of labor devoted to 
 purposes of profit. John Stuart Mill says the " accumu- 
 lated stock of the produce of labor is termed Capital ". 
 Macleod : " Capital is any Economic Quantity used for the 
 purpose of Front ". Senior: "Economists are agreed that 
 whatever gives a profit is properly called Capital ". Some- 
 thing more, however, than the activity of labor is implied 
 in the existence of Capital. There must have been saving, 
 as well as production. Hence Marshall speaks of Capital 
 as "the result of labor and abstinence "; Mill of Capital 
 as " the result of saving" ; and so on. It is obvious that 
 if the products of labor were consumed as fast as they 
 were made, Capital could not exist. We have, therefore, 
 reached this certainty when we contemplate Capital ; some- 
 one has worked, and has not consumed all that he has 
 produced. 
 
 Under these circumstances, we should expect to find 
 Capital in the hands of industrious and abstinent pro- 
 ducers. But as Mill very justly points out : " In a rude 
 and violent state of society it continually happens that the 
 person who has Capital is not the very person who has 
 saved it, but some one who, being stronger, or belonging 
 to a more powerful community, has possessed himself of 
 it by plunder. And even in a state of things in which
 
 32 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 property was protected, the increase of Capital has usually 
 been, for a long time, mainly derived from privations 
 which, though essentially the same with saving, are not 
 generally called by that name, because not voluntary. The 
 actual producers have been slaves, compelled to produce 
 as much as force could extort from them, and to consume 
 as little as the self-interest or the usually very slender 
 humanity of their task-masters would permit." How 
 many of our great capitalists have produced and saved 
 until they accumulated the fortunes they possess ? These 
 fortunes are greater than any human being could save 
 out of his makings, even if he lived most abstemiously, 
 instead of with the luxury and ostentation of a Rothschild 
 or a Vanderbilt. But if they have not made and saved, 
 how come they to possess ? Mill gives the answer, though 
 he did not mean it to be applied to modern industrialism. 
 " In a rude and violent state of society " Capital is not in 
 the hands of the producer and saver, but in the hands of 
 those who possess themselves "of it by plunder" legal- 
 ised plunder, in our modern days. The "saving" is not 
 voluntary; it is " derived from privations "; the " actual 
 producers " are wage-earners, who are " compelled to pro- 
 duce as much as" pressure can extort from them, and to 
 "consume as little" in the form of wage as they can be 
 beaten down to by the competition of the labor-market. 
 These men " have labored, and " others " have entered into 
 their labors ". 
 
 A very brief comparison of those who produce and save, 
 and those who possess themselves of the results of labor 
 and abstinence, will suffice to show the inequality which 
 characterises the present system. The worker lives hardly 
 and dies poor, bequeathing to his children the same neces- 
 sity of toil : I do not forget that the more fortunate workers 
 have shares in Building Societies, a few pounds in the 
 Savings Bank, and even an interest in a Burial Club, so 
 that the parish may not have the expense of burying them ; 
 but I say that these poor successes vast indeed in the 
 aggregate, but paltry when the share of the individual is 
 looked at bear no kind of reasonable proportion to the 
 wealth created by the worker during his life-time. On 
 the other hand the capitalist either starts with inherited 
 wealth, grows richer, and bequeaths the increased wealth 
 to his children; or he begins poor, saves a little, then
 
 MODERX SOCIALISM. 33 
 
 makes others work for him, grows rich, and bequeaths his 
 wealth. In the second generation, the capitalist can simply 
 invest his wealth and live on the interest ; and since all in- 
 terest must be paid out of the results of labor, the workers 
 not only lose a large proportion of their produce, but this 
 very confiscated produce is made into a future burden for 
 them, and while the fathers build up the capitalist, the 
 children must toil to maintain his children in idleness. 
 
 Capital may also be accumulated by the ownership of raw 
 material, since no wealth can be produced until labor can 
 get at this. The question of rent will be considered under 
 the head of Land ; here we are only concerned with the 
 fact that wealth appropriated in this way is investible, and 
 on this also interest can be obtained. 
 
 Now the enormous burden placed on labor by the invest- 
 ment of money at interest, is not appreciated as it ought 
 to be. The interest on the National Debt, including termi- 
 nable annuities, amounted in 1884-5 to 28,883,672 12s.; 
 how much is paid in dividends on railway, tram-car, and 
 companies' shares, it would be difficult to discover. Mr. 
 Giffen, in his " Progress of the Working Classes ", esti- 
 mates that the capitalist classes receive from capital ex- 
 cluding "wages of superintendence" and salaries some 
 400,000,000 a year. In 1881, the income-tax returns 
 quoted by Mr. Giffen show that the income from capital 
 was no less than 407,000,000, and in estimating those in 
 Schedules B and D (Part I.) Mr. Giffen certainly takes care 
 to make the gains on "idle capital" as small as he can. 
 Mr. Giffen takes the aggregate income of the whole nation 
 at about 1,200,000,000, so that according to his own 
 figures Capital takes more than a third part of the national 
 income. I should be prepared to contend that the burden 
 on the producers is heavier than he makes out, but even 
 taking his own calculations the result is bad enough. For 
 all this money which goes to capitalists is money not earned 
 by the receivers mark that all which is in any sense 
 earned, as wages of superintendence, etc., is excluded and 
 by all this is lessened the share of the produce of labor 
 which goes to labor. 
 
 We have already dealt with the way in which the worker 
 suffers injustice when capital is invested in machinery 
 owned by private individuals ; we have now to consider 
 the portion of it used as loans, cases in which the capitalist 
 
 D
 
 34 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 takes no part in the management of any industrial con- 
 cern, but merely lends his money at usury, living on the 
 interest he receives. There is so much confusion of thought 
 on this subject, so much idea that a man has "a right" 
 to invest money at interest, that it is necessary to try to 
 get at the "bed-rock" of the question. Take the case of 
 a man who earns 30s. in a week ; suppose he spends 20s. 
 and saves 10s. For the 20s. he spends he receives their 
 equivalent in commodities, and these he consumes ; he has 
 had his "money's worth", and he is content, and if he 
 requires more commodities he knows he must labor again 
 to earn their equivalent in money. The 10s. he has saved, 
 however, are to have a different fate ; they represent, also, 
 so much possibility of possession of their equivalent in 
 commodities which he could consume ; but he desires to 
 defer this consumption to a future day, to defer it, perhaps, 
 until he is too old to give labor in exchange for his needs. 
 One might suppose that the equivalent of commodities for 
 the 10s. would be as satisfactory as the equivalent of com- 
 modities for the 20s. But it is not so. He desires to in- 
 vest his 10s. at interest; let us suppose he invests it at 5 
 per cent. ; at the end of twenty years he will have received 
 back his 10s. by instalments of 6d. a year, and will have 
 exchanged it for 10s. worth of commodities ; yet at the end 
 of the twenty years he expects to receive back in addition 
 his full 10s. ; to have spent it all, and yet to find it un- 
 diminished ; so that for his 10s. saved he expects to receive 
 20s. worth of commodities in twenty years, to have his 
 labor paid for twice over. In the case of money only is it 
 possible to eat your cake and have it, and after you have 
 eaten it to pass it on as large as ever to your descendants, 
 so that they may eat it and yet find it, like the widow's 
 cruse, ever miraculously renewed. 
 
 Those who defend usury do so generally on its supposed 
 collateral advantages, rather than on its central theory. It 
 is argued that "if a man gets no interest on Ms savings, he 
 has no incitement to work ". To this it may be answered : (a) 
 That there is clearly no incitement to work on the part of 
 those who live on interest, since their money comes tumbling 
 in whether they work or idle ; it is the labor of others on 
 which the interest-receiver lives, (b) That the incitement 
 to work would be greater if the reward of work were not 
 diminished by the imposition on it of a tax for the benefit
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 35 
 
 of the idle ; surely the abstraction of 400,000,000 annually 
 for interest can hardly act as an incitement to those whose 
 labor returns are diminished to that extent, (c) That the 
 real incitement to work is the desire to possess the result 
 of labor, and that the more completely that desire is satis- 
 fied the greater will the incitement become. Would the 
 incitement to tramcar employees be lessened, if the necessity 
 of paying 10 per cent, on shareholders' capital no longer 
 kept down their wages ? But, in truth, this argument as 
 to incitement to workers is either ignorant, or disingenuous. 
 The mainspring of the worker's toil is, as a matter of fact, 
 compulsion, not the incitement of hope of reward. Had 
 he control over the product of his own labor, then the 
 desire to obtain more might incite him to work harder, as, 
 indeed, has been found to be the case with piece-work, and 
 in co-operative undertakings: with his fixed wage it is to 
 him a matter of indifference how much or how little he 
 produces. The desire for interest is an incitement to the 
 capitalist to press his wage-toilers to work harder, so that 
 after he has satisfied his own power of consumption he 
 may lay by all the surplus value he can squeeze out of 
 them, and increase the capital he has out at interest. The 
 higher the interest obtainable, the greater the compulsion 
 to work put upon the producers. But this compulsion is 
 clearly an evil, not a good, and in the case of the tramcar 
 employees just cited, it is compulsion which forces them to 
 accept the long hours of labor, and the compulsion is exer- 
 cised in order to obtain interest for the shareholders. 
 
 " The incitement to thrift icill disappear" But () the 
 interest obtainable by "thrift" is too small to serve as an 
 incitement, for the savings of the industrious poor are not 
 sufficient to give interest enough to subsist on. The Savings 
 Banks are resorted to as a convenient place wherein to put 
 money saved for future use ; it is the safe keeping of the 
 money "for a rainy day ", not the trifling interest, which is 
 the attraction to the anxious poor. The small amount per- 
 mitted to an individual and the low interest are sufficient 
 proofs of this assertion ; no one must put in more than 30 
 in a year, the interest is only 2^- per cent., and this is not 
 paid yearly, but is added to the principal. And this future 
 necessity is the real incitement to thrift. A man earns, say, 
 sufficient this week to support himself for a fortnight ; 
 having satisfied his needs, he does not want to satisfy them 
 
 D2
 
 36 MODERN SOCIALISM:. 
 
 twice over ; he knows that some years hence his power of 
 work will have disappeared, while his necessity of consump- 
 tion will remain, and he defers his consumption of half the 
 results of his labor till that time. Why should he look 
 for added power of consumption as a reward for deferring 
 his consumption for his own convenience? Without in- 
 terest, thoughtful people would save, for the sake of com- 
 fort in their old age. It may however be conceded that 
 the incitement to annex the results of the thrift of others- 
 the only way in which big fortunes can be made will 
 disappear with the disappearance of interest, and the pos- 
 sibility of living idly by taxing the labor of others. 
 
 "It will not be possible to get money for railroads, tramcars, 
 etc., if interest on share capital disappears." But the indes- 
 tructible reason for making railroads, tramways, etc., is the 
 need for the conveniences they afford. And Socialism 
 would place the making and carrying on of all means of 
 transit in the hands of local bodies, municipalities, and so 
 forth, who would raise the requisite funds from the com- 
 munity which is to enjoy the increased facilities. These 
 funds would be used in remuneration of the labor expended 
 on them, and none would have a right to levy a perpetual 
 tax on the public on the pretence of having lent the 
 money originally employed in the construction. Now a 
 man claims the right to tax all future labors and all future 
 consumers for the benefit of his posterity, as a reward 
 for having worked and saved, or mostly as a reward for 
 having transferred into his own pockets the results of his 
 neighbor's toil. It is time that the immorality of this claim 
 should be pointed out, and that people should be told that 
 while they may rightly save and live on their savings, 
 they ought not to use their savings for the enslavement 
 and the taxing of other people. An effective step towards 
 the abolition of interest might be taken by the closing of 
 the sources of idle investment, the taking over by local 
 bodies of the local means of transit, the gas and water 
 supply, etc., while the central authority takes over the 
 railways. The question of compensation would be solved 
 with the least amount of injustice to exploiters and ex- 
 ploited by paying over a yearly dividend to shareholders 
 until the dividends amounted to a sum equal to the nominal 
 value of the shares held; thus a 100 share would be 
 extinguished by the payment of a sum of 10 annually for
 
 MODERX SOCIALISM. 37 
 
 ten years, leaving the shareholder richer than he was 
 originally by all the interest received during the past, but 
 terminating his right to tax within a brief period. 
 
 There is, however, one argument in favor of interest 
 which brings conviction to many minds ; an individual 
 wants to perform a piece of productive work, but has no 
 capital and is unable to do it; he borrows the capital and 
 performs the work ; since the man who lent the capital has 
 facilitated the doing of the work, ought he not to share 
 in the product, which would have had no existence but for 
 his capital ? Now it might be answered to this that if his 
 capital is returned to him in full he has lost nothing by 
 the transaction, but has, on the contrary, gained the ad- 
 vantage of having his money taken care of without trouble 
 to himself, and returned to him uninjured at the time that 
 he requires it. But the real answer is that interest is in- 
 evitable so long as Capital remains in private hands, so 
 long as individuals are permitted to annex the results of 
 the unpaid labor of others, and so manufacture a lien on. 
 all future industry. Interest will only be abolished when 
 the results of the past unpaid labor of many are held by 
 the many to facilitate the future labor of many. Now, 
 industry can only be carried on with the permission and 
 the assistance of those whose stores of wealth have been 
 piled up for them by thousands of patient toilers ; and that 
 permission and assistance can only be gained by taxing 
 labor for the enrichment of the lender. In the future those 
 vast stores will be used to carry on production, and while 
 labor will constantly replace the capital it uses in produc- 
 tion, it will not also be taxed for the benefit of individuals. 
 Interest and private property in the means of production 
 must stand and fall together. At the present time no law 
 against usury could be passed, and even were the passing 
 of such a law possible it would be a dead letter, so 
 thoroughly is the present system built on the paying of 
 interest. All Socialists can do for the moment is to expose 
 the fundamental dishonesty and injustice of usury, and so 
 pave the way for a better state of things. 
 
 Apart from the abuse of Capital here indicated Capital 
 has a function which, of course, no Socialist ignores. Capital 
 is necessary for all forms of industry, and its function is : 
 to save labor, as by machinery ; to facilitate it, by the in- 
 troduction of improvements therein ; to support it while it
 
 38 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 is employed in production, and until its products are ex- 
 changed. The true use of the savings of past labor is to 
 lighten future labor, to fertilise production. But in order 
 that it may be thus used, it must be in the hands of the 
 community instead of in the hands of individuals. Being^ 
 as it is, and must be, the result of unpaid labor, it should 
 pass to the community to be used for the common good,, 
 instead of to individuals to enrich them to the common, 
 loss. 
 
 LAND. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to argue, at this time of day, that 
 Land, i.e., natural agents, ought not to be the private pro- 
 perty of individuals. No absolute property in land is in- 
 deed recognised by the laws of this realm, but the proposi- 
 tion that land ought not to be private property goes, of 
 course, much further than this legal doctrine. It declares 
 that the soil on which a nation lives ought to belong to 
 the nation ; that those who cultivate it, or who mine in it, 
 and who for practical purposes must have for the time the 
 exclusive usufruct of portions of it, should pay into the 
 national exchequer a duly-assessed sum, thus rendering an 
 equivalent for the privilege they enjoy, and making the 
 whole community sharers in the benefits derived from 
 natural agents. 
 
 The present system of permitting private ownership of 
 land has led to three great and increasing evils ; the esta- 
 blishment of an idle class, which grows richer by increas- 
 ingly taxing the industrious ; the divorce of the really 
 agricultural class from the soil ; the exodus from the country 
 districts into the towns. 
 
 Private ownership of natural agents must inevitably re- 
 sult in the first of these three evils. These natural agents 
 are the basis of wealth ; the very subsistence of the nation 
 depends on their utilisation ; yet a comparatively small class 
 is permitted to claim them as private property, and to appro- 
 priate the rent to its private use. Hence, one of the first 
 charges on the results of labor is rent, and rent, be it 
 noted, not to the community, but to an individual who has 
 acquired the legal right to stand between labor and land. 
 Now just as wage is determined practically by the standard 
 of living, so is rent determined by the same thing. The 
 landlord exacts as rent the value of the produce minus the
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 39 
 
 subsistence of the tenant, and in many cases, if the farmer's 
 receipts sink and there is no corresponding lowering of 
 rent, the farmer cannot even subsist, and becomes bank- 
 rupt. Hence, if a farmer improves the land and so obtains 
 from it larger returns, the landlord steps in and raises his 
 rent, claiming ever as his, produce minus subsistence, and 
 confiscating for his own advantage the results of the labor 
 and invested capital of the farmer. Thus also with the 
 spread of commercial prosperity comes a rise in the tax 
 levied by the landlords ; as towns grow larger the land 
 around them becomes more valuable, and thus the Stanleys 
 grow wealthy by the growth of Liverpool, and the Gros- 
 venors and Russells by that of London : competition drives 
 up rents, and landlords may live in Italy or Turkey, and 
 become ever wealthier by the growth of English trade, and 
 the toil of English laborers. Moffat points out (" Economy 
 of Consumption," p. 142) that part of the retailer's profit, 
 and possibly the larger part of it " is purely local, and 
 which he could not carry away with him. It distinguishes 
 the site of his business, and resolves itself into rent. If 
 the retailer owns his own premises, he may be content with 
 this part of his profits, and handing the business to another 
 become a landlord. If they are owned by another, the owner, 
 unless the retailer is able to find other suitable premises 
 within a moderate distance, will be able to levy all the 
 extra profit from him in the shape of rent. Hence the 
 rapid rise of rents in the central localities of large towns." 
 Socialists are accused of desiring to confiscate property but 
 the regular and uncensured confiscation of the property of 
 busy people by idlers, the bloodsucking of the landlord 
 leeches, pass unnoticed year by year, and Society honors 
 the confiscators. The expropriation of small cultivators 
 has been going on for the last 400 years, partly by big 
 landlords buying up small ones, and partly by their thefts 
 of common land. The story of Naboth's vineyard has been 
 repeated in hundreds of country districts. The exorbitant 
 rents demanded by landlords, with the pressure of Ameri- 
 can competition aided by capitalists on this side, have 
 ruined the farming class, while the absorption of small 
 holdings has turned into day-laborers at miserable wage 
 the class that formerly were independent tillers of the soil. 
 Attracted by the higher wage ruling in manufacturing 
 towns this dislanded class has flocked into them, has
 
 40 MODERX SOCIALISM. 
 
 crowded into unsuitable houses, increased the slums of our 
 great cities, and, under most unwholesome conditions has 
 multiplied with terrible rapidity. This exodus has been 
 further quickened by the letting of formerly arable land 
 for sheep-pasture, and the consequent forced migration of 
 the no longer needed tillers. And thus have come about 
 the under-population of the agricultural districts, and the 
 over-crowding of cities : too few engaged in agricultural, 
 and too many competing for industrial, employment ; until 
 we find our own land undercultivated, and even in some 
 districts going out of cultivation, while food is being im- 
 ported to an alarming extent, and the unemployed are 
 becoming a menace to public tranquillity. The effect on 
 England of revolution abroad is apt to be overlooked in 
 studying our own labor difficulties. A considerable portion 
 of our imports represents rent and interest from estates 
 abroad and foreign investments. This portion would sud- 
 denly stop as regards any country in which a revolution 
 occurred, and foreign workmen were, in consequence, no 
 longer subjected to exploitation for the benefit of English 
 capitalists. Now this likelihood of foreign revolution is 
 yearly increasing, and Europe is becoming more and more 
 like a boiler with armed forces sitting on the safety valve. 
 The first attempt to move in the right direction is the 
 Land Cultivation Bill introduced into the House of Com- 
 mons by Charles Bradlaugh. This proposes to expropriate 
 landlords who hold cultivable land waste ; to give them, 
 as compensation, payment for twenty-five years equal in 
 amount to the annual value of the produce obtained from 
 the confiscated land so that if there is no produce there 
 will be no payment ; to vest the land in the State, and to 
 let it, not sell it, to cultivators. Thus, if the Bill passed, 
 a large area of land would be nationalised early in next 
 year. Such an Act, followed up by others taking over all 
 land let on building leases as they run out probably pay- 
 ing to the present landlords, for life, the original ground- 
 rents ; making the Land Tax an adequate rent paid to the 
 State ; taking back without compensation all common lands 
 that have been stolen ; breaking up the big estates by crush- 
 ing taxation; steps like these, if taken with sufficient 
 rapidity, may effect a complete Land Revolution without 
 violence, and establish Socialism so far as the ownership of 
 natural agents is concerned.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM:. 41 
 
 It is of vital importance to progress in a Socialist direc- 
 tion that an uncompromising resistance should be offered 
 to all schemes for the creation of new proprietors of the 
 soil. Peasant cultivators, paying rent to the State, are 
 good. Peasant proprietors are a mere bulwark, raised by 
 landlords to guard their own big estates, and will delay the 
 realisation of the true theory that the State should be the 
 only landowner. It is also important that Socialists should 
 popularise the idea of communal, or co-operative, farming. 
 There can be no doubt that cereal crops can be raised most 
 economically on large holdings, and such holdings should 
 be rented from the body or bodies representing the com- 
 munity by groups of cultivators, so that both large and 
 small farms should be found in agricultural districts. But 
 it must be distinctly stated that the Socialisation of Land 
 without the Socialisation of Capital will not solve the social 
 problem. No replanting of the people in the soil, no im- 
 proved balance of agricultural and industrial production, 
 will by themselves free the wage-slaves of our towns. 
 Means of production, as well as natural agents, must come 
 under the control of the community, before the triumph of 
 Socialism can be complete. The tendency of Radicals to 
 aim only at the nationalisation of land has an effect, how- 
 ever, which will ultimately prove of service. It irritates 
 the landlord class, and the landlords devote themselves to 
 proving that there is no essential difference between pro- 
 perty in Land and property in Capital. Just as they helped 
 to pass the Factory Acts to restrain capitalists as a retort 
 for the capitalist agitation against the Corn Laws, so they 
 will be likely to help in nationalising Capital in revenge 
 for the nationalisation of Land. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 For the successful maintenance of a Socialist State a wide 
 and thorough system of national education is an absolute 
 necessity. A governed people may afford to be ignorant ; 
 a, self-ruling community must be instructed, or it must 
 perish. And the education contemplated by Socialism is 
 a very different thing from the paltry modicum of know- 
 ledge deemed sufficient for the "masses" to-day. Under 
 our present system education is a matter of class, and it 
 is a misnomer to call it "national" ; it is partly supported 
 by the parents of the children who attend the Board
 
 42 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 Schools, and partly by the rates and taxes ; it is limited to 
 the mere elements of learning; the one object of the 
 teachers is to cram the children so that they may pass 
 stated examinations, and thus obtain a Government grant 
 per head. Under Socialism the whole system will be 
 revolutionised, as the one aim then will be to educate in 
 such a way as will ensure the greatest possible healthy 
 development of the young, with a view to their future 
 position as members of a free community. 
 
 The foundations of complete social equality will be laid 
 in the school. All the children will be educated in the 
 communal schools, the only distinction being that of age. 
 Boys and girls will not be separated as they are now, 
 but a common education will prepare for common work. 
 Every child will be led through a course, which will em- 
 brace a thorough training in the elements of the various 
 sciences, so that in after life he may feel an intelligent 
 interest in each, and if his taste so lead him acquire later 
 a fuller knowledge of any special branches. He and 
 "he " here includes " she" will be instructed also in the 
 elements of art, so that the sense of beauty may be 
 developed and educated, and the refining influence of 
 instructed taste may enrich both mind and manners. A 
 knowledge of history, of literature, and of languages will 
 widen sympathy and destroy narrowness and national 
 prejudices. Nor will physical training be forgotten; 
 gymnastics, dancing, riding, athletic games, will educate 
 the senses and the limbs, and give vigor, quickness, 
 dexterity, and robustness to the frame. To this will be 
 superadded technical training, for these educated, cultured, 
 graceful lads and lasses are to be workers, every one of 
 them. The foundations of this technical training will be 
 the same for all ; all will learn to cook and scrub, to dig 
 and sew, and to render quick assistance in accidents ; it 
 is probable also that the light portions of household 
 duties will form part of the training of every child. But 
 as the child grows into the youth, natural capacities will 
 suggest the special training which should be given, so as 
 to secure for the community the full advantages which 
 might accrue from the varied abilities of its members. No 
 genius then will be dwarfed by early neglect, no rare 
 ability then perish for lack of culture. Individuality will 
 then at last find full expression, and none will need to
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 4* 
 
 trample on his brother in order to secure full scope for 
 his own development. It is probable that each will learn 
 more than a single trade an easy task when brain acute- 
 ness and manual dexterity have been cultured so as to- 
 promote adaptability in the future industrial life. 
 
 Now to many, I fear to most, of my readers, this sketch, 
 of what education will be in a Socialist community will 
 appear a mere Utopian dream. Yet is it not worth while 
 for such to ask themselves : Why should not such an 
 education be the natural lot of every child in a well- 
 ordered community ? Is there anything in it superfluous- 
 for the thorough development of the faculties of a human 
 being? And if it be admitted that boys and girls thus- 
 educated would form nobler, completer, more many-sided 
 human beings than are the men and women of to-day, 
 is it not a rational thing to set up as an object to be 
 worked for the realisation of an idea which would prove 
 of incalciilable benefit to the community ? 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that education, in a Socialist 
 State, would be "free " i.e., supported at the public cost, 
 and compulsory. Free, because the education of the young^ 
 is of vital importance to the community ; because class 
 distinctions can only be effaced by the training of children 
 in common schools ; because education is too important a 
 matter to be left to the whims of individuals, and if it be 
 removed from the parent's direction and supervision it is 
 not just to compel him to pay for it. Compulsory, because 
 the State cannot afford to leave its future citizens ignorant 
 and helpless, and it is bound to protect its weak members 
 against injustice and neglect. 
 
 Two objections are likely to be raised: the question of 
 cost, and the question of unfitting persons for "the dirty 
 work of the world, which someone must do". 
 
 As to cost. It must not be forgotten that this education 
 is proposed for a Socialist community. In such a State 
 there would be no idle adult class to be supported, but 
 all would be workers, so that the wealth produced would 
 be much greater than at the present time. Now according 
 to the figures of anti-Socialist Mr. Giffen, the aggregate 
 income of the people is at present about 1,200,000,000 ; 
 of this the workers are assigned by him 620,000,000; 
 deduct another 100,000,000 for return from investments 
 abroad; this leaves 480,000,000 absorbed by the non-
 
 44 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 producing class. (It must be remembered, further, that a 
 large number of the "workers" are unnecessary distribu- 
 tors, whose powers could be utilised to much better purpose 
 than is done to-day.) The wealth producers have to bear 
 the Church on their shoulders, and provide it with aii 
 income variously stated at from 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 
 a year. They have to bear the "landed interest", with 
 its appropriation in rents, royalties, etc., of something like 
 200,000,000. They have to bear the ultimate weight of im- 
 perial and local taxation, estimated at about 120,000,000 
 ior the present year. All these charges, by whomsoever 
 nominally paid, have to come out of the wealth produced 
 by the workers. Is it then to be pretended that when the 
 idle class has disappeared there will not be wealth enough 
 produced for the education of the children, or that their 
 education will be as heavy a burden as the drones are to- 
 day ? Nor must it be forgotten that there are millions of 
 acres of land that would produce wealth if labor were sent 
 to them, and that plenty of our idlers will there find produc- 
 tive work which will enormously increase the national wealth. 
 Nor also that the waste which results from luxurious idle 
 living will be of the past, and that a simpler, manlier rate 
 of expenditure will have replaced the gluttony and intem- 
 perance now prevalent in the "higher circles of society ". 
 
 But it will indeed be of vital importance that the propor- 
 tion of workers to non-workers shall be considered, and 
 that there shall not be in a Socialist community the over- 
 large families which are a characteristic of the present 
 system. Families of ten or a dozen children belong to 
 the capitalist system, which requires for its success a 
 numerous and struggling proletariat, propagating with 
 extreme rapidity, so as to keep up a plentiful supply of 
 men, women, and children for the labor-market, as well 
 as a supply of men for the army to be food for cannon, 
 and women for the streets to be food for lust. Under a 
 Socialist regime, the community will have something to 
 say as to the numbers of the new members that are to 
 be introduced into it, and for many years supported by it ; 
 and it will prefer a reasonable number of healthy, well- 
 educated children, to a yearly huge increase which would 
 overburden its industry. 
 
 As to unfitting persons for work. So long as manual work 
 is regarded as degrading, education, by increasing sensi-
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 45 
 
 tiveness to public opinion, tends to make people shrink 
 from it, at least if their sensitiveness is greater than their 
 intelligence. But even now an educated person of strong 
 will and clear judgment, who knows that all useful work 
 is worthy of respect, finds that his education fits him to- 
 perform work more quickly and more intelligently than is 
 possible to an ignorant person ; and respecting himself in 
 its thorough accomplishment he is conscious of no degra- 
 dation. Weak persons, compelled to labor for their bread, 
 and aware that manual work is considered to place the 
 worker in a subordinate social class, feel ashamed of the 
 inferior position assigned to them by public opinion ; and 
 knowing by experience that they will be snubbed if they 
 treat their " superiors " as equals, they live down to their 
 social rank, and long to raise their children into a class 
 above their own. One consequence of the absurd artificial 
 disadvantage attached to manual work, is that the children 
 of the more successful workers crowd the inferior profes- 
 sional occupations, and a man prefers to be a clerk or a 
 curate on 90 a year to being an artisan on 150. But in 
 the Socialist State only idleness will be despised, and all 
 useful work will be honored. There is nothing more 
 intrinsically degrading in driving a plough than in driving 
 a pen, although the ploughman is now relegated to the 
 kitchen while the clerk is received in the drawing-room. 
 The distinction is primarily a purely artificial one, but it is 
 made real by educating the one type while the other is left 
 ignorant, and by teaching the one to look on his work as 
 work "fit for a gentleman", while the other is taught that 
 his work is held in low social esteem. Each reflects the 
 surrounding public opinion, and accepts the position 
 assigned by it. In Socialism, both will be educated 
 together as children ; both will be taught to look on all 
 work as equally honorable, if useful to the community ; 
 both will be cultured "gentlemen", following each his 
 natural bent ; the ploughman will be as used to his pen 
 as the clerk ; the clerk as ready to do heavy work as the 
 ploughman ; and as public opinion will regard them as 
 equals and will hold them in equal honor, neither will feel 
 any sense of superiority or inferiority, but they will meet 
 on common ground as men, as members of a social unity. 
 As to the physically unpleasant work such as dealing 
 with sewers, dung-heaps, etc. much of that will probably
 
 -4G MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 be done by machinery, when there is no helpless class on 
 whose shoulders it may be bound. Such as cannot be 
 done by machinery, will probably be divided among a 
 large number, each taking a small share thereof, and the 
 amount done by each will thus become so insignificant, 
 that it will be but slightly felt. In any case the profound 
 selfishness, which would put all burden on a helot class, 
 and rather see it brutalised by the crushing weight than 
 bear a portion of the load on one of its fingers, must be 
 taught that Socialism means equality, and that the divine 
 right of idlers, to live at ease on the labor of others and 
 to be shielded by the bodies of the poor from all the un- 
 pleasantnesses of the world, is one of the notions against 
 which Socialism wars, and which must follow the corre- 
 lative superstition of the divine right of kings. 
 
 JUSTICE. 
 
 The pretence that under the present system there is one 
 law for rich and poor is so barefaced a piece of impudence, 
 that it is hardly worth while to refute it. Everyone knows 
 that a rich man is fined for an offence for which a poor 
 man is sent to gaol ; that no wise man goes to law unless 
 he has plenty of money ; that in a litigation between a rich 
 and a poor man, the poor man practically stands no chance, 
 for even if he at first succeeds the rich man can appeal, 
 and secure in the power of his money-bags wear out his 
 poor antagonist by costly delays and by going from court 
 to court. The poor man cannot fee first-class counsel, seek 
 out and bring up his witnesses from various parts of the 
 country, and keep a stream of money continually running 
 through his solicitor's hands. There might be the same 
 law for him as for the rich man, if he could get it ; 
 but it is far away behind a golden gate, and he lacks the 
 key which alone will fit the wards of the lock. Yet surely 
 one of the primary duties of a State is to do justice among 
 its members, and to prevent the oppression of the weak 
 by the strong. In a civilised State justice should be dealt 
 out without fee or reward ; if a man gives up his inherent 
 right to defend himself and to judge in his own quarrel, 
 he ought not to be placed in a worse position than he would 
 be in if society did not exist. Lawyers, like judges, 
 should be officials paid by the State, and should have no
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 47 
 
 pecuniary interest in winning the case in which they are 
 engaged. 
 
 The administration of justice in a Socialist State will be 
 a very much simpler matter than it is now. Most crimes 
 arise from the desire to become rich, from poverty, and 
 from ignorance. Under Socialism poverty and ignorance 
 will have disappeared, and the desire to grow rich will 
 have no raison d'etre when everyone has sufficient for com- 
 fort, is free from anxiety as to his future, and sees above 
 him no wealthy idlers whose luxury he desires to ape, and 
 whose idleness is held up to him as a matter of envy, as 
 the ideal state for man. 
 
 AMUSEMENT. 
 
 There is a curious inconsistency in the way in which 
 people deal with the question of amusement at the present 
 time. We should have an outcry about " pauperisation" 
 and " interference with private enterprise ", if anyone pro- 
 posed that the theatres should be open to the public without 
 charge. Yet Hyde Park is kept gorgeous with flowers, 
 Rotten Row is carefully attended to, a whole staff of 
 workers is employed, in order that the wealthy may have 
 a fashionable and pleasant lounge ; and all this is done at 
 the national expense, without any expression of fear lest 
 the wealthy should be pauperised by this expenditure on 
 their behalf. Nor is complaint made of the public money 
 spent on the other parks in London ; the most that is 
 suggested is that the money wanted ought to be taken 
 from the London rates and not from the national taxes. 
 No one proposes that the parks should be sold to the 
 highest bidder, and that private enterprise should be 
 encouraged by permitting some capitalist to buy them, and 
 to make a charge at the gate for admission. It is signi- 
 ficant that once anything gets under State control, the 
 advantages are found to be so great that no one would 
 dream of bringing it back under private exploitation. In 
 some parks a band plays, and people are actually de- 
 moralised by listening to music for which they do not pay 
 directly. Nay more ; the British Museum, the National 
 Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, are all open free, 
 and no one's dignity is injured. But if the National 
 Gallery be open free, why not the Royal Academy? If 
 -a band may be listened to in the open air without pay-
 
 48 MODEKK SOCIALISM. 
 
 ment, why not in a concert room ? And if a concert may 
 be free, why not a theatre ? Under the present system, 
 the Royal Academy, the concert, the theatre, are all private 
 speculations, and the public is exploited for the profit of 
 the speculators. The National Gallery and the Museums 
 are national property, and the nation enjoys the use of its 
 own possessions. In a nation which has gone so far in 
 the direction of providing intellectual amusement, it cannot 
 be pretended that any principle is involved in the question 
 whether or not it shall go further along the same road. 
 A nation which collects the works of dead painters can 
 hardly, on principle, refuse to show the works of living 
 ones; and we Socialists may fairly urge the success of 
 what has already been done in the way of catering for the 
 public amusement as a reason for doing more. 
 
 As it is, with the exception of a few places, the poor, 
 whose lives most need the light of amusement and of 
 beauty, are relegated to the very lowest and coarsest 
 forms of recreation. Unreal and intensely vulgar pictures 
 of life are offered them at the theatres which specially 
 cater for them ; they never have the delight of seeing 
 really graceful dancing, or noble acting, or of hearing 
 exquisite music. Verily, the amusements of the wealthier 
 leave much to be desired, and theatre and music-hall alike 
 pander to a low and vulgar taste instead of educating and 
 refining it ; but still these are better than their analogues 
 at the East End. Under Socialism, the theatre will be- 
 come a great teacher instead of a catch-penny spectacle ; 
 and dramatists and actors alike will work for the honor 
 of a noble art, instead of degrading their talents to catch 
 the applause of the most numerous class of an uneducated 
 people. Then an educated public will demand a higher 
 art, and artists will find it worth while to study when 
 patient endeavor meets with public recognition, and crude 
 impertinence suffers its due reproof. Theatres, concerts, 
 parks, all places of public resort, will be communal pro- 
 perty, open alike to all, and controlled by elected officers. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 It remains, in conclusion, to note the chief objections 
 raised to Socialism by its opponents. Of these the most 
 generally urged are three : that it will check individual
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 49 
 
 initiative and energy ; that it will destroy individuality ; 
 that it will unduly restrict personal liberty. 
 
 That it will check individual initiative and energy. This 
 objection is founded on the idea that the impulse to initia- 
 tive must always be desire for personal money gain. But 
 this idea flies directly in the face of facts. Even under the 
 individualistic system, no great discovery has ever been 
 made and proclaimed merely from desire for personal 
 money profit. The genius that invents is moved by an 
 imperial necessity of its own nature, and wealth usually 
 falls to the lot of the commonplace man who exploits the 
 genius, and not to the genius itself. Even talent is moved 
 more by joy in its own exercise, and in the public approval 
 it wins, than by mere hope of money gain. Who would 
 not rather be an Isaac Newton, a Shelley, or a Shakspere, 
 than a mere Yanderbilt ? And most of all are those of 
 strong individual initiative moved by desire to serve their 
 "larger self", which is Man. The majority of such 
 choose the unpopular path, and by sheer strength and 
 service gradually win over the majority. We see men and 
 women who might have won wealth, position, power, by 
 using their talents for personal gain in pursuits deemed 
 honorable, cheerfully throw all aside to proclaim an un- 
 popular truth, and to serve a cause they believe to be 
 good and useful. And these motives will become far more 
 powerful under Socialism than they are now. For the 
 possession of money looms unduly large to-day in conse- 
 quence of the horrible results of the want of it. The 
 dread of hunger and of charity is the microscope which 
 magnifies the value of wealth. But once let all men be 
 secure of the necessaries and comforts of life, and all the 
 finer motives of action will take their proper place. 
 Energy will have its full scope under Socialism, and in- 
 deed when the value of a man's work is secured to him 
 instead of the half being appropriated by someone else, it 
 will receive a new impulse. How great will be the in- 
 centive to exertion when the discovery of some new force, 
 or new application of a known force, means greater com- 
 fort for the discoverer and for all ; none thrown out of 
 work by it, none injured by it, but so much solid gain 
 for each. And for the discoverer, as well as the material 
 gain common to him and his comrades, the thanks and 
 praise of the community in which he lives. And let not
 
 50 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 the power of public opinion be undervalued as a stimulus 
 to exertion. What Greek athlete would have sold his 
 wreath of bay for its weight in gold ? Only one kind of 
 energy will be annihilated by Socialism the energy that 
 enslaves others for its own gain, and exploits its weaker 
 brethren for its own profit. For this kind of energy 
 there will be no room. The coarse purse-proud mediocrity, 
 who by sheer force of pushing brutality has trampled 
 his way to the front, will have vanished. The man who 
 grows rich by underpaying his employees, by being a 
 "hard business man", will have passed away. Energy 
 will have to find for itself paths of service instead of 
 paths of oppression, and will be honored or reprobated 
 according to the way in which it is used. 
 
 That it will destroy individuality. If this were true, the 
 loss to progress would indeed be incalculable. But So- 
 cialism, instead of destroying individuality will cultivate 
 and accentuate it, and indeed will make it possible for 
 the first time in civilisation for the vast majority. For 
 it needs, in order that individuality shall be developed, 
 that the individual shall have his characteristics drawn out 
 and trained by education ; it needs that he shall work, 
 in maturity, at the work for which his natural abilities fit 
 him ; it needs that he shall not be exhausted by excessive 
 toil, but shall go fresh and vigorous to his labor ; it 
 needs that he shall have leisure to continuously improve 
 himself, to train his intellect and his taste. But such 
 education, such choice of work, such short hours of labor, 
 such leisure for self-culture, where are all these to-day for 
 our laboring population ? A tremendous individuality, 
 joined to robust health, may make its way upward out 
 of the ranks of the handworkers to-day; but all normal 
 individuality is crushed out between the grinding-stones 
 of the industrial mill. See the faces of the lads and 
 lasses as they troop out of the factory, out of the great 
 mercantile establishments ; how alike they all are ! They 
 might almost have been turned out by the dozen. We 
 Socialists demand that individuality shall be possible for 
 all, and not only for the few who are too strong to crush. 
 
 That it will unduly restrict personal liberty. Socialism, 
 as conceived by the non-student of it, is an iron system, 
 iu which the " State " which is apparently separate from 
 the citizens shall rigidly assign to each his task, and
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. > 1 
 
 deal out to each his subsistence. Even if this caricature 
 were accurate, Socialism would give the great majority 
 far more freedom than they enjoy to-day ; for they would 
 only be under the yoke for their brief hours of toil, and 
 would have unfettered freedom for the greater portion of 
 their time. Contrast this compulsion with the compulsion 
 exercised on the workers to-day by the sweater, the 
 manager of the works or business, and above all the 
 compulsion of hunger, that makes them bend to the yoke 
 for the long hours of the working day, and often far into 
 the night : and then say whether the " freedom " of Indus- 
 trialism is not a heavier chain than the "tyranny " of the 
 most bureaucratic Socialism imagined by our opponents. 
 But the "tyranny of Socialism", however, would consist 
 only in ordering and enforcing the order if necessary 
 that every healthy adult should labor for his own subsist- 
 ence. That is, it would protect the liberty of each by not 
 allowing anyone to compel another person to work for him, 
 and by opening to all equal opportunities of working for 
 themselves. The worker would choose his own work 
 certainly as freely as he does now : at the present time, if 
 one class of work has enough operatives employed at it, 
 a man must take some other, and I do not see that 
 Socialism could prevent this limitation of choice. At any 
 rate, the limitation is not an argument against Socialism, 
 since it exists at the present time. 
 
 Imagine the glorious freedom which would be the lot of 
 each when, the task of social work complete, and done 
 under healthy and pleasant conditions, the worker turned 
 to science, literature, art, gymnastics, to what he would, 
 for the joyous hours of leisure. For him all the treasures 
 of knowledge and of beauty ; for him all the delights of 
 scenery and of art ; for him all that only the wealthy 
 enjoy to-day ; all that comes from work flowing back to 
 enrich the worker's life. 
 
 I know that our hope is said to be the dream of the 
 enthusiast; I know that our message is derided, and that 
 the gospel of man's redemption which we preach is scorned. 
 Be it so. Our work shall answer the gibes of our oppo- 
 nents, and our faith in the future shall outlast their 
 mockery. We know that however much man's ignorance 
 may hinder our advance ; however much his selfishness 
 may block our path ; that we shall yet win our way to the
 
 52 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 land we have seen but in our visions, and rear the temple 
 of human happiness on the solid foundation stones of 
 science and of truth. Above all sneer and taunt, above all 
 laughter and bitter cries of hatred, rings out steadily our 
 prophecy of the coming time : 
 
 " O nations undivided, 
 O single People, and free, 
 We dreamers, we derided, 
 We mad blind men that see, 
 We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be."
 
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